Murder, She Wrote: Murder on Parade: Murder on Parade (25 page)

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Authors: Jessica Fletcher,Donald Bain

BOOK: Murder, She Wrote: Murder on Parade: Murder on Parade
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I picked up the other sneaker. Something metal had been stuffed in the toe. I shook it out. It was an ammunition clip. I don’t know why I was shocked. Rick was a former FBI agent, after all. But the evidence that he still carried a gun was disturbing. He was on vacation, wasn’t he? Why would he need a gun to watch a baseball game or attend an Independence Day parade? And where was the gun this ammunition fit into?
 
 
I checked to make sure Rick’s insurance card was in his wallet, placed it and his passport in the Dopp kit, then locked the room and returned the key to Jill at the front desk.
 
 
“I hope you found what you needed,” she said.
 
 
“I did.”
 
 
“Mary and I were nervous even going into his room. After the EMTs took Mr. Allcott, we stripped the bed right away. If one of us gets sick, we’re really in trouble. It’s so busy this time of year.”
 
 
“Are you all booked up?”
 
 
“We’ve been booked since April. I’ve had to turn people away, even local businesses that needed rooms. I told that fellow from Lennon-Diversified that we couldn’t guarantee a room for his company visitors with all the advance reservations.”
 
 
“Someone from Lennon-Diversified was asking for a room?”
 
 
“Yes, what was his name? Something foreign sounding.”
 
 
“Dante?”
 
 
“That’s it. Such a nice young man. He wanted to see the rooms anyway, in case we got a cancellation. Mr. Allcott has the biggest room, but he’d just gone out, so I couldn’t ask him to show it. I gave Dante the keys to two and three instead. He must have liked them; he said if we got a vacancy to let him know.”
 
 
Nick held the door of the taxi for me, and I slid into the backseat. “We’re off to the hospital now, right?” he said.
 
 
“Yes,” I said.
 
 
“Got everything you need, Mrs. Fletcher?”
 
 
“Yes,” I said again.
And more
, I thought.
 
 
Chapter Fourteen
 
 
Since the sheriff’s office was on the way to the hospital, I asked Nick to wait while I ran inside to deliver my eyewitness account of the attempted mugging that resulted in Seth’s injury. Mort was sitting at his desk reading a report.
 
 
“Nice to see you, Mrs. F,” he said. “Put it right there.” He nodded at a pile of papers, to which I added mine. “I was just reading a lab report and thinking about you. Have a seat.”
 
 
“I wish I could,” I said. “I have a taxi waiting outside—”
 
 
“Don’t you want to hear the results of Chester Carlisle’s GSR test?”
 
 
“GSR?” I said. “Oh, right. The gunshot residue test. Well, yes, of course.” I perched on the edge of the chair, hoping he would be brief.
 
 
Mort turned the report around and offered it to me. “See this?” he said, pointing to the concluding paragraph.
 
 
“Says ‘positive’ for gunshot residue. That’s enough for me to keep Mr. Carlisle in jail on suspicion of murder.”
 
 
I sighed. “I don’t suppose these kinds of tests can tell the difference between a gun fired in a crime and a gun fired to scare squirrels away from the bird feeder, can they?”
 
 
“You’re a tough one to convince,” Mort said. “But I feel a lot better knowing I’ve got the right man. We now know that Chester fired the gun we found in his car, and as soon as we have the ballistics report back, we can prove that’s the gun that was used to kill Lennon.”
 
 
An argument was on the tip of my tongue, but I thought better of it.
 
 
“By the way, Mrs. F, Maureen said if I saw you to invite you to dinner tonight.”
 
 
Maureen was Mort’s second wife and an enthusiastic, if not exactly accomplished, cook. She was famous, or perhaps “infamous” was the right word, for her culinary experiments, which was why a box of Charlene Sassi’s doughnuts could always be found in Mort’s office. I cast around for an excuse. “That’s very nice of her, but—”
 
 
“She invited Amos Tupper to come, and she likes to have even numbers at the table. Frankly, Mrs. F, you’d be doing me a real favor.”
 
 
I’d received more gracious invitations to dinner before. But it would be an opportunity to discuss the case further, and Mort and Maureen were good friends. “Of course,” I said. “How nice of Maureen to think of me. What time would you like me there?”
 
 
We arranged for me to be at the Metzgers’ house by six. I thanked Mort for letting me see the test results, and left to apologize to Nick for keeping him waiting.
 
 
Only two chairs were occupied when I entered the seating area outside the hospital’s emergency room. In one, a little girl with a tearstained face sat in her father’s lap, clutching a well-loved doll. What looked like a kitchen towel was wrapped around her hand and I assumed that whatever injury she had sustained was underneath the covering. Several seats down, a teenager sprawled in his chair, flipping through a sports magazine. Two skateboards were on the floor next to his feet. From his demeanor I gathered he was waiting for someone who was already inside receiving help.
 
 
A triage nurse sat behind a glass window, which she slid to one side when I approached.
 
 
“I’m looking for Dr. Seth Hazlitt,” I said. “Is he available?”
 
 
“Are you Mrs. Fletcher?”
 
 
“Yes.”
 
 
“He’s with a patient right now, but he told me you’d be by. You have Mr. Allcott’s insurance card?”
 
 
I handed her Rick’s card.
 
 
“If you don’t mind waiting, Mrs. Fletcher, Dr. Hazlitt said he’ll see you when he’s free. He shouldn’t be too long.”
 
 
“I don’t mind waiting,” I said.
 
 
“I’ll let him know you’re here.”
 
 
I sat across from the little girl and smiled at her. She looked at me with sad eyes and held up her bandaged hand. “I have a boo-boo.”
 
 
“I see that,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
 
 
Her father smoothed her flyaway hair and looked at me. “Caught her hand in a door, racing after her brother,” he said. “She knows she’s not supposed to run in the house. Don’t think it’s anything more’n a bruise, but didn’t want to take the chance.”
 
 
“I don’t blame you,” I said.
 
 
“Wanna see it?” the little girl asked.
 
 
“Now, Chloe,” her father said in a soft voice.
 
 
“That’s all right,” I said. I looked at the little patient. “If you would like to show it to me, I’ll be happy to see it.”
 
 
She unwound the cloth to reveal a small hand clutching a plastic bag of frozen corn. “Mama put cut corn on it,” she said.
 
 
“Cut corn?” I asked.
 
 
Her father looked sheepish. “We use the frozen corn for all the kids’ bruises and sprains. We don’t eat it. That bag’s just for sprains and bumps and anything that needs icing. It’s more flexible than ice cubes.”
 
 
“What a clever idea,” I said.
 
 
Chloe held up her hand. It was a little red from holding on to the frozen bag, but didn’t look to me as if there were any serious injury.
 
 
At the sound of the glass window sliding open, we all turned our heads. “Mr. Fry, the doctor will see Chloe now,” the nurse announced. Father and daughter walked to the double doors that led to the ER examining rooms. Chloe turned and waved to me, and I waved back. “Good luck,” I called.
 
 
A few minutes later, a young man with a sling came through the same doors and used his good arm to signal his friend. “It’s nothing,” he said, going over to him. “Just a bone bruise.”
 
 
“Yeah, but what about that?” his friend said, eyeing the sling. “Can we still practice?”
 
 
“We’ll work around it.”
 
 
His friend shrugged. “Your funeral,” he said, picking up the skateboards.
 
 
I hope not
, I thought, as they walked out of the waiting area, leaving me alone with my thoughts. Young people can be so cavalier about their health. The exuberance of youth combined with the unfounded but absolute conviction that nothing bad will happen to them spurs them to take the kinds of chances those of us with more experience would never attempt. That could explain why so many extreme sports had worked their way into the public consciousness, even appreciation, in recent years. Seth and I had cringed while watching snowboarding competitions in the last Olympics. And I knew from the
Cabot Cove Gazette
that the town council was contemplating a skateboard section in the local park. “Better to give the skaters a recreational environment in which to practice at their own peril,” Mayor Shevlin had been quoted as saying, “than deal with the property damage, not to mention personal injury risks of them riding down the banisters in front of the high school.” Even though the mayor’s logic was sound, I didn’t believe the proposal stood much of a chance of passing. And I wasn’t sure how I would have voted were I sitting on the council in their place. I could hazard a guess at how Chester Carlisle might vote, if he ever returned to his seat on the council.
 
 
Seth interrupted my musings.
 
 
“Ah, good to sit down,” he said, sinking into the chair next to mine and running a hand over his close-cropped white hair.
 
 
“Busy day for you?” I said.
 
 
“Not bad.”
 
 
“How’s the injury?” I asked, nodding at his still-bandaged wrist.
 
 
“Just a flesh wound, as they say in the movies.” A small smile played around his lips.
 
 
“What is it, Seth? You look like the cat that ate the canary.”
 
 
“Damnedest thing, Jessica,” he said. “A man spends most of his life in a small town taking care of its citizens, builds a practice, has what you could consider moderate success—”
 
 
“I’d say it’s more like a great deal of success.”
 
 
“Mebbe. But then it all falls apart. Patients begin to think he’s an old fogey, accuse him of not keepin’ up with the times. All the experience and knowledge he’s built up over the years count for little, and patients start dropping away.”
 
 
“Is that what you think has been happening?”
 
 
“Ayuh. I do.”
 
 
I knew he had more to say, so I waited.
 
 
Seth cleared his throat, and straightened in his chair. “Then you get in a case like Allcott. Everyone here thought he had the flu.” He waved a hand around, indicating the emergency room staff. “They didn’t stop to think it’s not quite the right time of year for flu. Usually pops up in the fall and later. They wanted to send him back to Blueberry Hill and let him sweat it out. Not much you can do for the flu once someone gets it. Give ’em a pill for the aches, tell ’em to gargle with salt water—it’s an old remedy, but it works. And lots of rest.” He paused. “Seeing as it’s contagious, however, don’t imagine Mrs. Thomas would’ve been too happy to have Allcott staying at her place with the flu.”
 
 
“She wasn’t.”
 
 
“Don’t blame her. Same symptoms, you know—chills, fever, headache, muscle aches.”
 
 
“But you suspected it might be something else?”
 
 
“I did. Sounds funny, but after the EMTs brought him in and I had a chance to examine him, I kind of had a hunch it wasn’t flu.”

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