Murder on Old Main Street (Kate Lawrence Mysteries) (5 page)

“I am sorry you had such a distressing day,
Cara
,” said Armando, taking my hand, “but at least this time you are not in any danger.” This last part referred to the murder that had occurred a year previously, which Margo, Strutter and I had helped to solve.

“Yeah, this getting involved in murder investigations is getting to be a habit with you, Ma. It’s a little kinky, but if you and the girls get tired of real estate, you can always get your P.I. licenses,” Joey chuckled.

I glared. “I am not involved in a murder investigation. I merely found the body. And ‘the girls’ are the same age as your mother, roughly speaking, so kindly show a little respect.”

Joey dumped Jas and Simon from his lap, where they had been jockeying for position, then stacked up our plates and headed for the kitchen to load the dishwasher. “Whatever you say, you old bat,” he agreed cheerfully.

“How did I manage to raise two completely disrespectful offspring?” I called after him.

“What goes around comes around,” he yelled back, and I let him have the last word. He probably had a point. After crashing plates and cutlery into the dishwasher, he rejoined us to make his farewells. “So long, Ma,” he said, enveloping me in his usual bear hug, and I wondered for the hundredth time how a colicky, six-pound infant had morphed into this strapping young man who routinely wrestled 70-foot tractor trailer rigs over the highways and byways.

“Be a good boy,” I delivered as my part of our silly farewell ritual, a gesture to the old days. It was my personal talisman to keep him safe during the long night of driving ahead of him.

Releasing me, Joey turned to Armando and leaned forward as if to give him a smooch. Instinctively, Armando recoiled in macho horror, and Joey cracked up. “Gotcha, man,” he triumphed as Armando rolled his eyes. Then he rumpled the cats’ fur and was gone, leaving the house oddly quiet after the kitchen door banged shut behind him.

“So,” said Armando.

“So.”

“How are you doing with all of this?”

“Better now,” I said, enjoying his scent of soap and expensive cologne as I nestled against his cashmere-covered chest.

“And Emma? How is she doing?”

I considered. Being the center of a drama during the workday was one thing. How was she faring alone in her apartment after this difficult day? I reached for the wireless and punched in her number, but all I got was her recorded message. Between boyfriends at the moment, she was either out with one or another of her many girlfriends or sound asleep with the ringer off. Either way, I knew intellectually she was fine, but the mom part of me fretted a bit. “Guess she’s having an early night,” I concluded, replacing the phone in its charger.

“Probably a good idea,” Armando smiled. I smiled back, and without further discussion, we headed for my bedroom. The phone rang, and I groaned.

“Yes,” I answered distractedly, expecting to hear Emma’s voice. Instead, Abby Stoddard spoke into my ear.

“Sorry to bother you, Kate,” she apologized, “but frankly, I just didn’t know where else to turn, and you having experience with this sort of thing … well, I thought you might be willing to help me sort something out.” Abby sounded uncharacteristically flustered, as well she might after the day she’d had.

Inwardly, I cringed. As intriguing as the events of last year had been, they had left me with the fervent hope that I would never again be forced to delve into other people’s personal lives. I preferred to live in blissful ignorance. Still, Abby had been very helpful to us over the past year, filling us in on the vicissitudes of running a business in a small town, and a friend was a friend. “You bet, Abby. What can I do?”

There was a short silence. “I’m not sure what anybody can do,” she said finally, “but I need somebody else to know what’s been happening before it’s too late. Meet me at the diner when you can tomorrow, will you?”

“Well, sure, but what do you mean, ‘before it’s too late’?” I asked, not really wanting to know.

“Before someone else is murdered,” she said flatly and broke the connection.

Three

Abby Stoddard came from a long line of Stoddards, most of whom lay at rest in the Reverend Dr. Henry Griswold’s churchyard diagonally across the street from the Village Diner. You couldn’t travel the length of Wethersfield without running across a road, building or other memorial to one or another of her ancestors.

For as long as anyone could remember, Abby had kept company with Frank Wainwright, the previous owner of the diner and about 10 years her senior, but the two had never married. “Just not the marrying kind, neither one of us,” Abby explained without apology, but they were as much a couple as the longest-married pair in town. For the most part their devotion was unquestioned, but until Frank’s death a few years previously, they had endured the scorn of a few self-righteous prigs, particularly when Abby took Frank into her home to care for him during his final illness, “and them not even married in the sight of God!” But even the most vocal critics fell silent when at last the cancer claimed poor Frank, and he left the diner to Abby in his will—lock, stock and trash barrels.

I thought about how difficult those next few years must have been for Abby as I walked down the street to the diner the next afternoon. Running a restaurant, even one as well established as this one, was a tricky business. Keeping ahead of expenses was a challenge for an experienced owner, let alone someone with no experience whatsoever. Still, Abby had dug in and somehow managed to keep the place afloat, keeping a roof over her head and that of her aged mother in the bargain.

The crime scene tape in front of the antiques shop and Blades had been removed, and the scarecrows and their props had been hauled off by the police for forensic examination. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view—our little murder hadn’t deterred the tourists who flocked to see this year’s crop of scarecrows. If anything, the crowds were bigger and earlier than most years, the locals assured me. Although most of the sightseers parked down at the cove and walked up the hill, we had noticed the increase in traffic at our end of the street, too. Usually, parking was at a premium only on weekends, but now it was becoming difficult for our clients to find a place to park during the week.

I had deliberately waited until mid-afternoon when there would be a lull between the lunch and dinner rushes. As if she were expecting me, Abby sat at the counter with a cup of coffee as I pushed through the swinging door from the sidewalk. Trim and petite, Abby might have passed for forty were it not for the graying hair that she had decided to ignore and the worry lines that had etched themselves into her otherwise youthful forehead. The place was empty except for Mort Delahanty, the seedy-looking, middle-aged fellow who swept under the tables, emptied the trash, cleaned the restrooms, and performed other menial chores around the diner. As far as anyone knew, Mort didn’t speak. He certainly never had to me. He scowled wordlessly at me now and went back to refilling salt shakers.

I was surprised to see a cigarette smoldering between Abby’s fingers and raised my eyebrows. “I know,” she said. “You’d think watching Frank die of lung cancer would have been enough to put me off the things, but …” her voice trailed off, and she shrugged. “Frank needed to smoke. I hated it. So we accommodated each other. He didn’t smoke around me, and I never complained when he stepped outside for a cigarette. The hard thing now is knowing that if I’d been a little less accommodating, Frank might still be alive.”

“So you punish yourself by smoking?”

Abby looked at me a moment but didn’t reply. “Thanks for coming by, Kate. Let’s go back to my office.” She stubbed out the cigarette in her saucer and led the way through the kitchen to the cramped quarters that served as her office. A wooden desk overflowed with order forms, invoices, timesheets, and a huge, old-fashioned ledger. A computer workstation lurked in the corner, covered with dust. It looked as if it had never been turned on. Cartons of office supplies, samples, and unfiled correspondence were shoved against the wall. Abby scraped a pile of newspapers and catalogs off the wooden guest chair in front of her desk and motioned me into it. Instead of sitting herself, she folded her arms across her chest and started to pace back and forth behind the desk.

“I hope you didn’t just have lunch, because what I have to tell you is pretty gruesome. Do you remember when you found Prudy, her mouth was covered with duct tape?”

I nodded, dreading what I might hear next. With good reason, it turned out.

“Everyone knows by now that Prudy was poisoned.”

“I didn’t. What kind of poison?”

“The medical examiner says chlordane. It’s a very deadly chemical commonly found in industrial strength cleaners. You know, the kind of cleaner you’d use in a restaurant.” She stopped pacing and looked at me. “And that’s not all.”

I tried mightily to keep my expression neutral. “Okay. What else?”

Abby’s mouth twisted in disgust. “When they took the tape off her face, they discovered that Prudy’s tongue had been cut out. Hacked right off with a kitchen knife. Sorry!” she added, as my stomach roiled in protest, and I felt suddenly faint. I lowered my head into one hand and held up the other to ward off further horrific revelations, momentarily unable to speak. Abby walked over and patted me on the back briefly, but there was no stemming the flow of words. She plowed on, determined to get it all out.

“That wasn’t what killed her, of course. It was the poison. As a matter of fact, her tongue was cut out after she was dead. Otherwise, her mouth would have been filled with blood when they took the tape off.”

That did it. I fell forward and stuck my head all the way down between my knees as the room spun around me. Taking serious note of my plight at last, Abby crouched next to me, rubbing my back and making soothing noises. “I know, it’s a shock. You’ll feel better in a minute. Do you want some water?”

I nodded. I didn’t want any water, but getting some would get her out of the room for a couple of minutes and give me a chance to regroup. She opened the door and went out, and I breathed shallowly through my mouth so I wouldn’t hyperventilate. By the time Abby returned with a glass of ice water, I had recovered sufficiently to sit upright again. I accepted the water gratefully.

“Sorry, Abby. I’ve always been a little squeamish. You should have seen me in the emergency room when Joey accidentally stabbed himself in the leg with a pair of my sewing scissors about twenty years ago. I’m better now.”

Abby got to her feet. “The thing is, Kate, it was my knife. It came right out of the diner’s kitchen, and it had my fingerprints all over it.” She sagged suddenly into her desk chair and put her forehead into her hands. “I’m the number one suspect. They think I did it. They haven’t actually arrested me, but that could happen any time now.”

As shocked as I had been by Abby’s words, I was even more shocked at the idea of her being anyone’s murderer. Abby Stoddard had nursed Frank through his final illness. She had taken her aged mother into her home. And it was Abby who had given Prudy Crane a job when nobody else in town would. Outrage helped me find my tongue.

“That’s ridiculous. I don’t know you all that well, but even I know you’re incapable of killing anyone. For God’s sake, Deenie told me that you use Have-A-Heart mousetraps in your pantry. Who in the world would try to pin this on you?”

Abby lifted her head and stared into space over my shoulder. “The police, that’s who. It was my knife, Kate. It had my prints on it.”

“That’s circumstantial. Of course it had your prints on it. You probably used it every day. I take it you have no alibi for the time of death? When was that, anyway?”

“As far as the medical examiner could determine, the chlordane killed her sometime around midnight Sunday. The tongue was cut off later. Then the body was propped up outside Blades sometime in the wee hours, judging by how much blood pooled in the lower part of it.”

My head swam again, and I struggled to stay focused. “What about an alibi?”

“I was doing paperwork right here until about ten o’clock. Prudy had left at six. I assume she went back to her apartment in the old Wheeler house. I was just glad she was gone. When I locked up, I drove around for a while to clear my head, then went home and got into bed. Mom was already asleep, so I didn’t wake her up just to say goodnight. I was exhausted and fell asleep almost immediately. No witnesses,” she joked feebly.

“Even so, that’s all perfectly normal stuff for you. You always do the bookkeeping on Sunday night. Even I know that, because once when Margo and I were working late on a Sunday, we tried to get a sandwich, but even though the lights were on, the door was locked. You must have been here in the back room. A passer-by told us it was your custom to catch up on paperwork on Sunday nights.”