Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (3 page)

We waited five seconds, ten. Then, whooping joyously, a consensus reached, the geese burst back over the trees and swooped down to the water in a graceful half-circle. The leader splashed down in the center of the cove, leaving room for his cohorts to follow suit and create a feathery blanket atop the water. They landed feet-first to slow their forward momentum, so utterly in unison that the maneuver seemed genetically choreographed. Within half a minute they were all at rest, gabbling to each other companionably as they bobbed on the surface. Time for food and rest, and if the weather was good tonight, they would depart on another leg of their journey to more hospitable winter quarters in the Carolinas.

It was magical. Emma and I smiled happily at each other. We turned back toward the street, setting a more leisurely pace. “Grace will be an enormous help, I know,” I said, picking up our conversation where we had left off, “but she can only clean around the stuff. She can’t prevent it from accumulating.” Grace Sajak was my twice-a-month cleaning person and a godsend to every one of her clients.

As soon as we pushed through the doors of the diner, the mingled aromas of hot coffee and cinnamon pastry washed over us, and we hurried to the counter to place our order. To our surprise, but not displeasure, Prudy was nowhere to be seen. Instead, we were greeted by Deenie Hewitt, the perpetually worried-looking college student who filled all the take-out orders during the morning shift before rushing off to afternoon classes.

“Hey, Emma, Miz Lawrence. Having the usual, or is this an off-diet day? We have nice, fresh sticky buns.”

Emma and I exchanged done-for looks. Abby’s sticky buns were truly awesome. At the same moment we said, “We’ll split one.” As always, Deenie pretended surprise.

“Coming right up then,” she said and busied herself removing a large, fragrant pastry from the doughnut tower on the counter. Deftly, she cut it in half, wrapped it up, and deposited it atop two coffees in a paper bag.

“Where’s your sidekick?” Emma asked Deenie while I dug in my pocket for exact change.

Deenie shrugged, her attention already shifting to the customer in line behind us. “No clue,” she said, nodding in the direction of Abby Stoddard, uncharacteristically taking an order at a booth in the rear. Normally, Abby spent her time tending to business in her cluttered office behind the kitchen. “Just didn’t turn up this morning. Didn’t even have the decency to call and make excuses. Miz Stoddard’s fit to be tied. You have a nice day now.”

We got out of her way and pushed back through the diner doors to the street. By unspoken mutual consent we immediately rummaged in the bag for the still-warm sticky bun. We each bit deeply and groaned in ecstasy, rolling our eyes at each other as we strolled back toward the Law Barn. Three big bites, and we were licking icing off our fingers as we approached the Blades Salon. We paused at the three lady scarecrows, circling around front to admire the exhibit more closely.

“This is amazing,” I said, lapping shamelessly at a final drip between my thumb and forefinger. “I know they’re scarecrows, but the wigs are such a great touch. Putting them in curlers and getting them to sit right on those straw noggins underneath the dryers must have taken forever.” I frowned as I noticed that some disgruntled smoker, no doubt protesting the new ban, had stubbed out a filter tip in one of the saucers. “And look at the hands on the one on the left! The skin is so realistic looking against her blue dress …” I trailed off uncertainly, my stomach tightening.

I looked at Emma, who had remained motionless during my commentary, clutching the bagged coffees to her chest. She was frozen, staring at the scarecrows while the color drained from her face. “Momma?”

Not a good sign,
I thought.
She only calls me Momma when she’s sick. Or scared.
The little hairs on the back of my neck prickled atavistically as I approached the exhibit on stiff, unwilling legs. From across the street, the three characters in the little tableau had looked like elderly sisters, but up close, the differences jumped out.
Which of these things is not like the others?
I thought idiotically, remembering the old “Sesame Street” jingle. The lady seated on the left was the obvious answer. Although dressed in similar clothing and sporting tufts of straw at her cuffs and hemline, the hands balancing her teacup in her lap were distinctly human, unlike the knotted straw ones of her companions. The skin, though bluish in tint, looked absolutely real as did the nails, which were both dirty and broken. While it was as gray as the others, her hair was clumped hastily around a few mismatched rollers in contrast to her neatly-set seatmate. Perhaps most alarmingly, her head drooped forward to rest against the front of the dryer, hiding most of her face.

Very deliberately, Emma placed her bag on the sidewalk and came to stand next to me. I didn’t want to, but I put a bracing hand against the woman’s right shoulder as Emma tipped the dryer hood up and back. The full weight of the upper body sagged against me, and Emma pushed on the left shoulder to help me sit blue-dress lady upright. Wearing her habitual dour expression and a slash of duct tape over her mouth, Prudence Crane sat before us, no longer among the missing, and very dead.

“Guess we’d better let Abby know that Prudy won’t be coming in today,” Emma commented matter-of-factly. She dug her cell phone out of her pocket and looked at it blankly. Then she sat down hard on the curb.

Two

After taking a few deep breaths apiece, Emma and I realized that our gruesome discovery had gone unnoticed by the few pedestrians on the street. A block away on the other side of the street, a cluster of small boys labored on their entry in the scarecrow competition, which, judging from the outdated uniform, spectacles and odd hat, seemed to a scout leader circa 1950. Other than Miriam Drinkwater, who was letting herself into the Keeney Memorial a block farther down for her morning shift as volunteer tour guide, the only citizens to be seen at this hour were scurrying from their parked cars into the diner and back. Rather than risk pandemonium by going back inside and calling for help, we used Emma’s cell phone to place a 911 call to the Wethersfield Police Department. Even though we made it clear that poor Prudy was beyond medical help, we braced ourselves for the inevitable rush of emergency vehicles that would arrive in conjunction with the official investigation that had been set into motion with our call.

I also knew that the dozens of private citizens who monitored police calls via scanners in their homes would ensure a crowd of gawkers on the scene very soon, so time was of the essence if the crime scene were to be preserved. And finally, the next person who came out of the diner would be certain to get the bare facts, then hustle back inside, bristling with self-importance, to take center stage as The First Person to Know About the Murder. The only question was, who would it be?

The answer wasn’t long in coming. No sooner did our ears pick up the wail of approaching sirens than Mavis Griswold, the Methodist minister’s wife, appeared from the direction of the diner. She came up behind us where we sat on the curb and paused as it became evident that the emergency vehicles were converging at the place where we stood.

“Are you all right?” she hastened to inquire, as befitted a clergyman’s missus. “Is anyone hurt?”

Her long-lashed, wide-set brown eyes and pleasant expression always reminded me, most irreverently, of Elsie the Cow. Under the present somber circumstances I admonished myself to get a grip and assured her that Emma and I were just fine. Then as gently as possible, I pointed out that Prudy Crane seemed to have gone to meet her maker, cause or causes unknown. That’s when Mavis surprised me. Instead of having an attack of the vapors, she turned slowly to confront Prudy where she sat, silver duct tape covering her mouth. And then Mavis smiled.

At the time I didn’t have an opportunity to ponder her odd reaction. A police cruiser screeched down Old Main Street from our left, followed closely by the emergency rescue van and two unmarked sedans with blue emergency lights on their dashboards. Next to arrive was the volunteer ambulance, driven at breakneck speed by Tom Clancy. Tom taught high school mathematics and lived for these occasions, which tended to elevate his standing among his students. Customers poured out of the diner to see what all the commotion was about, and arriving employees of the business establishments that lined the street soon joined the growing throng.

I was pleased to see Rick Fletcher, a young cop who had graduated from high school with Joey and one year ahead of Emma, emerge from the cruiser with his partner, who quickly began the job of backing off the crowd. Lieutenant John Harkness, the extraordinarily good-looking but perpetually dour commander of the detective division, stepped out of one of the unmarked cars. “Lieutenant Hardnose,” as he was known among the locals, quickly took charge of the crime scene. Rick grabbed a reel of yellow crime scene tape and began securing the area from civilian interference.

Harkness supervised the preliminary investigation. He consulted briefly with the State police team that had apparently been summoned to handle the forensics, then spoke with the investigator from the medical examiner’s office, whose job it was to deal with Prudy’s, ugh, body.

Once the bystanders were corralled at a safe distance, Rick’s partner produced a digital camera from their cruiser and carefully photographed the assembled crowd, while Rick himself walked over to where Emma and I still sat.

“Hey, Miz Lawrence, Emma,” he said politely. After checking out our ashen faces, he wisely refrained from asking us to stand up, opting instead to plunk down companionably next to Emma. “So how’s your day going so far?” he asked her, straight faced, and got the desired effect. Emma broke up, which got me giggling, and the tension was broken. A few shocked onlookers were apparently persuaded by the others that we must be having hysterics, and who could blame us, poor things, having found the body and all?

It didn’t take long for Rick to get the facts from us, as there wasn’t much to tell. His partner had replaced the still camera with a video cam and expertly panned the crime scene and the faces in the crowd. After listening to our story attentively, Rick nodded briefly and rose to his feet. “We’re going to have to take you down to the station to formalize your statements,” he said, offering me a discreet hand as I struggled to rise. Emma had already unfolded herself and dusted off the seat of her jeans. “It shouldn’t take more than an hour, but it needs to be done as fast as possible.” Nodding pleasantly at the gawkers on the sidewalk, Rick lifted the yellow crime scene tape for us to duck under, then shepherded us through the crowd to where a plainclothes detective waited by one of the unmarked vehicles. “Here’s your ride,” he smiled and introduced us to Detective Harold Bernstein.

Looking around self-consciously, we clambered into the rear seat of the sedan and were whisked the mile or so to the Wethersfield PD’s new headquarters on the Silas Deane Highway. I was relieved to note that the blue emergency light was not in use.

On the second floor of the pleasant brick building, we were escorted to an interview room, where Emma was ushered in first. Police procedure dictated that we give our statements separately.

“I thought it was supposed to be age before beauty,” Emma sassed me, her poise now restored. She walked into the room and looked around with interest. “What, no stenographer?”

“Sorry,” said Detective Bernstein. “Literate witnesses are asked to write out their statements in longhand. You could dictate to me while I enter your statement into my laptop,” he grinned apologetically, “but frankly, you’re better off with the pencil and paper. Our clerical assistant will type it up before you sign it.”

“So much for high-tech police techniques.” She rolled her eyes. “Are you okay, ‘Cita?”

“I’m perfectly happy to sit here in peace for a little while, so you just go scribble your little heart out, Dearie,” I assured her and sank gratefully into a visitor’s chair in the cubicle outside the door, where I was issued a lined pad and pencil of my own.

Nearly two hours later, our signed statements were secured, and Detective Bernstein delivered us back to the Law Barn, where we sank gratefully into the familiar territory of our work day.

Compared to the hubbub going on a few blocks away, the Monday morning chaos of the Law Barn was relatively soothing. At least here the activity had to do with the business of living, as opposed to what was taking place in front of Blades. At least the ladies would have no shortage of gossip today, I thought, but I was afraid that Emma and I would feature prominently in the clucking. The thing was, this wasn’t the first time I had discovered a body. Just about a year previously, I had been involved in a murder investigation at the law firm where Margo, Strutter and I worked. At this rate it wouldn’t be long before I became a local pariah like that lady sleuth on
Murder, She Wrote
. Everywhere she went, murder was sure to follow. I had never been able to understand why anybody invited her anywhere after the first year.