Inspector Green Mysteries 9-Book Bundle (101 page)

Green’s instincts quickened. It was a long shot, perhaps, but it made sense. What else but a woman could draw a man back to his despised and long-abandoned roots, and what else but a woman could plunge him into suicidal despair?

He glanced at his watch, which registered nearly one o’clock. A lunch break was in order, combined with an impromptu visit to the troops still conducting interviews in Ashford Landing. And perhaps a short side trip of his own to find out the identity of Sophia.

Seven

 S
andy Fitzpatrick was a man whose every emotion showed on his face, an unfortunate trait for someone engaged in sales but a windfall for Green. Even before Sandy skidded his pickup to a complete stop in the gravel outside the Boisvert house, his bewilderment and alarm were etched on his ruddy face.

Green had phoned him en route to ask him to meet him at the farm and had himself arrived only five minutes earlier. Isabelle had been showing him where she’d found the tin, and they were both knee-deep in the tangle of brush and dying raspberry canes when Sandy arrived. He vaulted down from his truck, dressed in a hunting vest, big rubber boots and thick work gloves. As he clumped over towards them, he replaced his alarm with his familiar hearty grin.

“Is there a problem, Isabelle? I hope you’re not doing all this work yourself!”

Before she could answer, Green extended his hand amiably. “Sandy, thank you for coming. You used to visit here as a child, so your recollections might be very useful to our investigation. Do you recall what if anything was located here?”

Sandy’s brows shot up. “Here in this brush? Why?”

“Mrs. Boisvert found some remnants of burned planking which suggests it may have been a firepit.”

“It was a shed. Built as a carriage house originally, but it burned down years ago.”

“What was the shed used for?”

Sandy shrugged. “Nothing much. Balers and plows and that, back when the farm was more productive. But for years before it burned down, it was pretty much...” He looked at Isabelle sympathetically. “I know it’s an eyesore. If you like, I can get a construction buddy of mine—”

“What was it used for twenty years ago?” Sandy coloured as if embarrassed. “Well, when we were kids, we all used to play in it, pretend it was a fort or a secret hide-out. It was mostly filled with hay, and there was a beautiful antique horse carriage. The leather was all cracked, but with the right care... Anyway, we used to bring old blankets inside and have sleep-overs.”

“We?”

“Lawrence and me. Lawrence loved that shed, and when he got sicker, he hung out there more and more, although the other boys liked it too. To get away from their parents.”

“When did it burn down?”

Sandy scratched his nose with his massive glove. “So long ago I can’t remember.”

“Before or after Lawrence was sent away?”

Sandy stared off towards the river as if the answer could be found in the ribbon of gold and red along the edge. He looked uncomfortable at being forced to dredge up old times. “About the same time,” he said finally. “I’m not sure exactly, because I’d stopped coming here.”

“Why?”

“Well...my mother was the protective type, and she got it in her head that Lawrence was dangerous.” With that admission came some anger. “But now that I’m thinking about it, that shed burned down right about the time Lawrence was taken away, because I remember seeing the smoke. It was early May, and the leaves were just budding on the trees, so you could see a lot easier across the fields. The shed was old, and the hay inside was dry as a bone, so the place went up like a bonfire.”

Green pondered the implications. He sensed that something bad had happened that spring of 1984, something that had so upset the family that they had committed their child to a mental hospital and severed all contact with him. Something that had so frightened Lawrence that he panicked at the mere mention of returning home.

Had the shed burned down accidentally, or had Lawrence set it on fire? “Did Lawrence or any of the other boys play with fire in there?”

“Not Lawrence. But Tom smoked in there. Their mother was very strict, and she wouldn’t have any smoking or drinking in the house—”

“I thought the father was a heavy drinker.”

“That was later. In those days, he was a real holy roller. He used to—” Sandy paused as if weighing the wisdom of revealing such private details, then once again anger seemed to urge him on. “He used to keep all the boys in line with a strap. Most of them toed the line, but Tom fought him every inch of the way. He’d sneak out to the shed to smoke, did marijuana there too, with his gang of loser buddies and all the girls he could get his hands on. The horse carriage came in mighty handy.”

Green went to his car to retrieve the tin can. Before he could even open the evidence bag, Sandy’s eyes widened in astonishment.

“Lawrence’s magic box!”

Green spread the items out on the hood of his car. Each of them had been bagged individually now to prevent contamination, but the contents were still clear. He picked up the bird skull and asked if Lawrence ever killed small animals.

“Oh, no, Lawrence loved birds! He loved to watch them fly overhead. He thought they were angels from God. When he was little, Lawrence thought God sat on those fluffy clouds up there next to Jack in the Beanstalk.” Sandy smiled wistfully at the memory, then picked up the bag with the feather. “He collected bird feathers because he thought they could ward off Satan, and when he got sicker...” His smile faded and his eyes grew sad as he fingered the bottle caps. “He developed strange rituals to drive away Satan.”

Green’s instincts began to tingle. “What sort of rituals?” The sharpness of his tone must have betrayed him, for Sandy drew back, furrowing his brow. “He wasn’t a violent person, wouldn’t in a million years hurt anyone. He’d only cut himself. He thought the feather could purify him and keep evil away. It sounds...creepy, I know, but it was only a tiny bit of blood.”

Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it, thought Green, but he kept his expression neutral. Close scrutiny revealed a few flakes of rusty residue on the feather, similar in colour to the smudge on the torn note. Green had assumed the note was simply dirty, but now he grabbed his magnifying glass for a closer look. This time he detected the fine circular traces of a fingerprint in the smudge. Finally, something Ident could sink its teeth into! He looked back at Sandy, pondering the significance of a fingerprint etched in blood on a torn fragment of a note. The first question was—whose blood?

He slid the note out of view casually. “Did he ever try to purify anyone else? His brothers, for example?”

“I remember he drove his brothers crazy. He prayed over them, confiscated their things. He stole cigarettes and porn magazines the boys had hidden in their rooms. He spied on their girlfriends.”

All of which could create a powder keg in the household, Green reflected. “Did he himself have a girlfriend?”

Sandy’s eyebrows shot up and a smile broke his taut features. “Good Lord, no. Lawrence would never know how to handle a real live girl.”

“Could there have been a girl he loved from afar? Or imagined he had a relationship with?”

“It’s possible, I suppose. But why...?” Sandy’s voice trailed off as his gaze travelled from the tin can to the tangled brush. “The body is Lawrence, isn’t it?”

“Possibly.” Green picked up the evidence bag containing the love letter. “Do you remember a girl named Sophia?”

Sandy looked sad as he studied the letter. “There was a girl in our grade, who lived in Richmond. Pretty girl with long black hair.”

“Last name?”

He shrugged. He’d been scrutinizing the letter, turning it over. “I seem to remember she was Tom’s girl, though. I don’t think Lawrence wrote this.”

Green handed him the scrap of paper with the fingerprint. “This is another handwriting, maybe to the same girl. Could that be from Lawrence?”

Sandy stared at the simple note. “Holy crap,” he whispered.

Green waited, but Sandy didn’t elaborate. Simply shook his head as he handed the note back. “What?” Green prompted, wondering if he’d recognized the smudge for what it was.

“I...these shreds of the past, they seem to speak volumes.”

“What volumes?”

Sandy shrugged and pulled his gloves back on his hands vigorously. “I was just a kid, but it makes you wonder what all was going on. All those horny boys, pretty girls, secret liaisons, the father going on about sin—”

“And Lawrence wandering around in the middle of it, crazy as a loon,” Green finished grimly. More than ever, he was convinced that Lawrence’s return, and his death, were linked to events long ago. “Where might I find this Sophia?”

“I haven’t seen her in years. Not since high school.”

Green scooped up the evidence bags and returned them to the car. “Then let’s check your high school year book. That will give us a name.”

When they arrived at Sandy’s house, they discovered the real estate office open and Edna McMartin firmly ensconced behind the desk. She was holding forth on the phone, arguing with someone about pies for the church bake sale. Sandy had to wait while she cast her vote for pumpkin, then she signed off and turned to her son with a smile. Which, Green noted, he didn’t return.

“Church business again, Mom? On my business phone?”

Her jaw thrust out. “Sandy, you won’t make any money if you never have anyone in the office to answer inquiries. I’ve taken three calls already this afternoon.”

“That’s what the answering machine is for, Mom.”

“People don’t like talking to machines,” she countered. “I made one appointment for you, which I’ll take if you don’t have time.” She fixed her gaze on Green pointedly, and her smile vanished. “Buying a country house, Detective?”

Sandy glanced at Green. “Perhaps we should do this upstairs.” Edna was instantly alert, her shrewd eyes narrowing. Ready to protect yet another of her babies from my intrusion, Green thought, even if this baby was nudging forty and clearly unappreciative of her efforts. Yet the friction might be interesting, and many a secret inadvertently slipped out in the heat of a family dispute. Besides, no one in the village was likely to know more about the Pettigrew secrets than their long-time neighbours.

Green dropped into the client’s chair and looked up at Sandy casually. “Why don’t you bring all your yearbooks down here, and I’ll keep your mother out of trouble.”

Sandy opened his mouth to protest but thought better of it. Flushing, he turned around and clumped upstairs.

“Yearbooks?” Edna’s lips pursed warily.

“We’re trying to gather some background on Lawrence Pettigrew.” He smiled amiably. “I understand Sandy was a good friend of Lawrence growing up, but at some point you forbade your son to go over there anymore. Why?”

Her eyes grew shuttered, and she folded her arms over her chest. Green held up a soothing hand. “Not being critical, just wondering.”

“Because the boy was a dangerous lunatic.”

She was still bristling, so Green cast about for a means to soften her. “I know he was schizophrenic, and I’m not questioning the family’s decision. I’m sure his illness was very hard on them. But I’m wondering if you know what happened. Perhaps Lawrence’s mother confided in you?”

“What does all this matter now? Lawrence is dead. That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it? He’s thrown himself off that old church tower, and as far as I’m concerned, good riddance.”

Green kept his expression friendly with an effort. “Why did you forbid your son to go over there?”

She pressed her lips together stubbornly, but he waited her out with his notebook poised and his gaze steady. Finally she seemed to relent. “Even Katherine was afraid of him. And afraid for Robbie, who was only a young lad. She told me one day Lawrence threw out all the knives in the house because knives were evil. Another time he cut up Derek’s sheets because, well, frankly, they were dirtied. But the final straw was Tom’s centrefolds. Tom had them taped on his wall, and Lawrence slashed all the girls’ bodies with a razor. Would you want your small child growing up with that?”

Dismayed, Green stopped writing. The deeper he dug in this family, the more sinister the picture became. Edna was watching him as if daring him to come to the madman’s defence.

“No, I wouldn’t,” he replied truthfully. “Do you recall the circumstances surrounding the fire that destroyed the shed?”

She had just begun to relax, but now she stiffened in surprise. “What the dickens has the shed got to do with anything?”

Green explained about Lawrence’s recent visit to the place where the shed had been.

“They burned it down,” she said. “That shed was Lawrence’s special hideout. And after they shipped him off, they got rid of all his things. Clothes, books, belongings. Burned every last one of them, like they were contaminated by the devil.”

There was a thumping on the stairs, and Sandy burst back into the room with a slim volume open in his hands. “I found her. Sophia Vincelli.” He handed Green the book and jabbed his finger at the photo of a beautiful, porcelain-fine girl with long black hair falling in a sheet below her shoulders. The same girl who had been clinging to Tom in the photo Robbie Pettigrew had shown them.

“Tom’s girl,” Edna said without hesitation.

“One of Tom’s girls,” Sandy amended. “Come on, Mom, they usually only lasted a week.”

“Oh, but she was a beautiful girl. I remember her from that school play in your Grade Eleven year. She played Ophelia. I’m surprised you don’t remember her, dear. All you boys were cross-eyed over her.”

Sandy rolled his eyes so quickly that Edna didn’t notice, but Green smiled to himself, suspecting Edna rarely missed the chance to remind her son of all the ones who got away. Sandy parried the thrust with practised ease. “For all the good it ever did any of us,” he replied. “If she was dating Tom Pettigrew, she was way out of our league. He’d already dropped out of school by then and was working. Tom always picked off the best ones, only to break their hearts and dump them when the next one came along.”

His mother leaned over to peer at the yearbook. After a moment, she tapped the picture thoughtfully. “I know Tom was a ladies’ man, but I seem to remember this one was different. Katherine Pettigrew told me it ended badly for Tom. The girl simply vanished one day, probably ran off with someone else. Broke Tom’s heart. That’s why he left town. Of course, she was Italian.”