Bernadine Fagan - Nora Lassiter 01 - Murder by the Old Maine Stream (4 page)

“Lori?”

“Hi, Nora. How’s it going?”

“Oh, just fine. I can’t talk now. I’ll call you back later.”

“I’ll send the résumé to your phone so you can check it before I print it.”

“Okay,” I said automatically.

“See ya.”

“No, wait. Too many dead spots up here. You’d better fax it. I’ll have to get back to you with a number. I’m pretty busy at the moment.”

“Ida. Where are you?” one of the aunts called.

“Too busy? You are coming back, aren’t you?” Lori asked.

“I-da.” the other aunt called. “I-da.”

I closed my eyes. “Absolutely.” Why had I ever left?

Four

Hannah and Agnes, the great-aunts I hadn’t seen since I was a child, were in their mid-eighties, like Ida. Hannah, a diminutive five-three with the whitest hair I’d ever seen, wore a purple blouse with a red ruffled scarf. As soon as she walked in, she grabbed me in a bear hug and got weepy.

“I’m so happy to see you,” she said, making little sobbing noises that touched my heart. “At last. I just wish you hadn’t found a body on your second day up here. How horrible for you. Are you all right?”

“It was a bit scary, but I’m all right now.”

“Good. My poor little Nora.” She touched my face and stood back, then sniffled again as she studied me. “Lots of Lassiter around the eyes. Same shade of blue as Viola’s. Don’t you think, Agnes?”

“Same trade as Viola?” Agnes repeated, cupping her ear.

“Geez,” Ida mumbled impatiently, holding the jail cell open.

Trimble looked on with interest.

Hannah clarified, “Same
shade
eyes as Viola.”

“Oh. Yes, yes. Beautiful eyes,” Agnes agreed.

“Aunt Agnes,” I said, moving from Hannah to hug her. My arms did not quite fit around Agnes, who was planetary in size.

“I remember you when you were a little girl. Such a darling girl.”

“Who’s Viola?” I asked.

“The vamp in the family tree,” Hannah supplied immediately. “We’ll not talk about that one. We don’t speak unkindly about the deceased.”

Hannah looked me over again, this time more slowly, from head to toe to left hand to fourth finger.

“You’re not married yet, Nora. How is that?”

“I was engaged once,” I blurted, defending my status, aware of Trimble hanging on every word. Then another cop appeared in the doorway behind him and Trimble acknowledged him.

“Chief.”

Sheriff Nick Renzo’s brows rose a notch when he looked at me. This was the first time I’d seen him without his uniform hat. I liked his hair. It was a touch longer than most cops wear it, dark, with a bit of a wave. I forced my recently un-engaged self to look away.

Hannah’s hand went up, palm out like a traffic cop. “No explanations necessary. You’re pretty enough to grace a magazine cover. What with your floppy, striped hair and your Viola-blue eyes you should meet a nice man and get married.”

Floppy hair? Stripes? I’d paid a bundle for those highlights, and I’d used the hair dryer to style the floppy do this morning. I thought it looked fine.

The sheriff and his deputy seemed to be studying my hair, too.

“We’ll see what we can do to move things along.” Hannah looked from Agnes to Ida. “We’ll have a party. That’s the proper way of it. Shouldn’t be a problem.”

A party to meet a man? No. Please no. “Not necessary. I don’t want to meet a man right now,” I said, and that was the truth.

“But why?” Great-aunt Agnes asked.

The sheriff leaned against the door frame, arms folded, his expression hard to read as he took it all in, and waited for my answer like the rest of them. Well, he wasn’t going to hear it.

I used his arrival to shift the aunts’ focus. “I see the sheriff is here.”

Despite his casual pose, he looked tense, stressed. This had to be the first murder case he’d handled. He was a novice.

Hannah nodded at Sheriff Nick Renzo in acknowledgment, but continued, “We’ll have the party tomorrow night. Saturday. Agnes,” she shouted, “you make your famous strawberry short cake. You can use those berries we put up in June. We said they’d be for a special occasion and so they will. Ida, how about your famous banana nut bread? Maybe some zucchini bread, too? I’ll make my prizewinning New England clam chowder. The young folks can do the main dishes. I’m thinking lobster salad, for one.”

“Oh, yes.” Ida smiled. “I just made banana bread this morning.”

“We’ll go straight to my place and make our plans,” Hannah said. “When Nora is finished here with this nasty business, she can join us.”

“Don’t you want to stand in the jail cell first? Have your picture taken?” Ida asked the aunts as she handed me her camera.

“Absolutely,” Hannah said looking around. “Not every day we get behind bars.”

All three aunts chuckled. Next thing, they were in the closed cell, their hands on the bars, looking out. I took their picture while the sheriff, his deputy and one or two others came in to watch.

“How about you?” Nick asked me, holding out his hand for the camera. “Want to get in the picture?”

“No, sheriff.” I gave the camera to Ida, and the aunt-trio emerged from incarceration.

Hannah headed down the hall, Agnes and Ida close on her heels. I followed behind the slow procession, shaking my head. I had to get out of here.

“Aunt Hannah, it’s thoughtful of you to want to give me a party, but I’ll be leaving Monday after the reading of the will, so maybe we’d better skip it.”

The convoy stopped short in the hall. Had we been moving at anything approaching a normal clip, we would have piled up. As it was, some teetering took place.

“I was afraid she was going to say that,” Ida said. “She did mention it when she first arrived. We’ll have to lobby for her to change her mind.”

Agnes bellowed, “Find? What did she find? Another body? Oh, dear heaven. How does she keep finding bodies?”

“
Mind,
not find. Change her mind.” Shaking her head, Ida repeated the rest of what she’d said.

Agnes frowned.

Hannah took the news in stride. “You’ll meet the relatives, won’t you?” She paused dramatically, adjusting her lacy red cuffs with the fussiness of an actress going onstage to accept an Oscar. “Unless you don’t care about your relatives?”

Renzo and Trimble, along with the aunts, waited for any feeble reply I might come up with.

What could I say other than, “Relatives would be fine.”

Everyone nodded and smiled, and the procession continued.

“Good. Before you return to the big city,” Hannah said, “it’s only proper you meet the family you haven’t seen in so long. The Lassiters’ heritage is here, Nora. That’s not something to lose sight of in this fast-paced world. Family. Jeb Lassiter settled here in 1842 and founded this town. You were born here, your father was born here and his father before him, and so on back to Jeb. Your father, God rest his soul, felt as if he had to leave all those years ago, and we lost you and Howie in the process.”

Agnes said. “Nora, we’re all so glad you’re back.”

“Ladies, I hate to hurry you along, but there’s important business to take care of,” Nick said when we reached the main room. “You go work on the party plans. I’ll talk to Nora first, then you, Ida. Nora, if you’ll come into my office… .”

* * *

As soon as he closed the door to his office, I asked, “Have you found out anything about the murder?”

“Like who did it?” he asked as he sat behind the gray metal desk, gesturing for me to take the chair in front.

I sat on the edge of the seat. “I don’t suppose you’re up to that part yet.”

“Not likely. We know a shotgun was used. And where the shooter stood. Maybe fifty yards away. That’s about it at the moment.”

“How do you know that?”

“Good detective work.”

“You have footprint evidence? Did you make a plaster cast? Did you bag any other trace evidence?”

He stared at me without replying, his forearms resting on the desk.

“What?” I demanded.

“I’m the cop. This is my investigation. I ask the questions.”

“What’s to ask? I don’t know anything. I found him. I skipped the mouth-to-mouth because I knew he was dead. I called you. End of my report. Or
debriefing,
as Aunt Ida would say.”

“Suppose you tell me again why you were in the woods this morning and how you found the body.”

“Why? You think I shot the guy?”

He smiled. “If it eases your mind, you’re not on my suspect list.”

“You have a list already?”

He shook his head. “I wish.”

“Okay. Like I told you. I was on my way to Uncle JT’s house. I figured he was probably at work so I’d see his wife, my Aunt Ellie. Mainly, I just wanted to see the house because I used to live there. I’d decided to cut through the woods. It’s miles shorter than going around by car. Besides, it was a beautiful day and I wanted to walk. And the trail? I used to take it as a kid, and miracle of miracles, it was still there. JT keeps it cleared. I was enjoying the walk, sort of, except for possible animal danger.”

His eyes narrowed. “Animal danger?”

“Moose. Deer. Porcupines. Especially porcupines. No, especially moose.” I shivered just thinking of such an awful encounter.

He nodded. “Okay.” Then, “How well did you know Al Collins?”

“I didn’t know him.”

“You sure? You gave me his name easily enough.”

“Oh, right. I had a thing going with Collins. That’s why I came to Maine. Did I forget to mention that?”

Nick smirked at me. He had a cute smirk. “Just answer the question.”

“I saw him for the first time yesterday at my Uncle JT’s auto repair place. Period. Never spoke to the guy.”

“What did he talk to your uncle about?”

“I don’t know.  They were outside, I was inside and couldn’t hear them.”

* * *

“Yoo-hoo. Nick. I’m up here,” Ida called, looking down from the big desk as we came out of his office. “I don’t want to be debriefed here, though.”

All three aunts were seated up behind the big desk with the two deputies, Trimble and Miller. Miller was a hunk. This guy could be a whole calendar all by himself. No woman would mind looking at him twenty-four-seven. I thought Miller was winking at me, until I realized he had a twitch in his left eyelid.

“Where do you want to be … debriefed?” Nick asked.

“That room where they question the suspects. You know, the one with the two-way mirror.”

“Sh-ur. We can do that.”

Ida made her way down. “You going to videotape me?”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

“I think it would be best. That way you’ll be able to refer back to it. Hear my testimony any time you need to.”

“Good idea. We’ll roll the camera, Ida.”

I stood with the aunts on the other side of the two-way mirror, watching Ida recount her story, wondering what on earth I was doing in Maine. I didn’t belong here, didn’t fit in.

My sweet Aunt Ida was going on about overhearing two people in the library.

“So you have no idea who was speaking?” Nick asked Ida. “Don’t recall anything special about their voices? An accent maybe?”

“No accent. They were from this area, I think. The only thing I can tell you definitely is that they weren’t kids, but they weren’t old either. I’m guessing middle-aged. Both of them moved fast. I heard their footsteps.”

“Could you have heard the librarian?”

“Oh, no. This woman had a harsh voice. Not soft like Margaret’s.”

“Tell me again what was said. Exactly.”

“Well, the woman said, ‘You get rid of him. Soon. Scared people do stupid things and we can’t afford that.’ And then the man said, ‘I can’t.’ The woman got angry and said, ‘You wanted in big-time, didn’t you? This has to be done. There’s no other way.’”

“Anything else?” Nick asked.

“They mumbled the next part. Something about a meeting. I heard the words woods and stream.”

Suddenly, she gasped. “I should have kept Nora from going along that trail, shouldn’t I? I never thought of the stream. She could have been killed.”

“Don’t go there, Ida. Nora is fine.”

“That’s all I remember, Nick.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you, Ida. Real sorry. My mistake.” He ran his hand through his hair. “From where you were standing could you guess their heights?”

Ida pursed her lips. “I was sitting on one of the step stools looking for a Sue Gafton mystery. Don’t know why they put the good authors down so low. Anyway, I think he was tall, just above the second shelf down from the top. His voice came through the Ken Follet section.”

Trimble, standing off to the side in the small room, smirked. But what Ida said had merit, and Nick seemed to realize it, too. He looked at Trimble and said, “Check it out. Take a tape measure with you.”