Touch-Me-Not (13 page)

C
HAPTER
23

Victoria tried to think of a tactful way to tell Sarah the State Police would be coming to question her, decided there was no tactful way at all, blurted it out, and finished up, “I’m sorry you have to go through questioning at a time like this.”

“I know it’s necessary,” said Sarah, and yanked another length of yarn out of the basket. “I watch the cop shows.” She stopped knitting long enough to blot her nose. “I suppose I’m a prime suspect. The spouse always is.” She leaned back to look at Jackie, who was standing close to her, gently rubbing her shoulders. “Would you stop doing that? You’re driving me crazy.”

Jackie said nothing, but stopped massaging her sister’s shoulders and turned away.

Within the hour, the police Bronco returned to the Watts house. The siren wailed once and died down. The twins tumbled out of the backseat and followed Casey into the kitchen. “The boys wanted to use the siren,” said Casey.

“Just once,” Zeke said.

Sarah put her arms around both boys, hugging them close to her, burrowing her face in their tousled hair.

Victoria looked away.

Sarah glanced up from her boys. “We’ll be all right.”

Jackie walked Victoria to the door. “Thanks for being here for Sarah, Mrs. Trumbull. I hope you didn’t think I meant it about, you know, her killing him. She wouldn’t, you know. I was upset.”

“Of course. Call me if Sarah needs anything.”

Casey parked under the maple tree at the end of Victoria’s drive. “I could use another cup of tea,” said Victoria. “That wasn’t a pleasant chore.”

“Tea sounds good to me, too.”

They climbed the steps and went through the entry into the kitchen. Victoria felt her age. Her sore toe throbbed. Her throat felt dry. Everything ached. McCavity appeared from some hideaway and rubbed up against her legs.

“What do you suppose caused LeRoy to strike his wife like that? I’ve never imagined him as a violent man.”

“You never know what goes on behind closed doors in a marriage,” said Casey.

“Sarah wasn’t pleased to have me summon her sister,” said Victoria when they were seated at the cookroom table with their tea. “I thought she needed to have someone with her, a family member.” Victoria glanced up at the baskets hanging from the rafters overhead, then out the window, its frame festooned with loopy vines of philodendron.

“Sarah’s probably in shock,” said Casey, stirring sugar into her tea. “That’s why she didn’t react the way you’d expect. Sometime tonight the shock will wear off and she’ll wake up to what’s happened to her. I’m glad Jackie was able to get there so soon.”

McCavity, sitting beside Victoria’s chair, looked up expectantly. Victoria patted her lap, and he leaped up, kneaded his claws into her gray corduroys, yawned hugely, and dozed off.

“The police have to question her right away,” said Casey. “Tough on a grieving spouse, but the first few hours are critical.” She took a sip of her tea, then added another spoonful of sugar and stirred it. “They have to rule out spouses and family.”

“I’m sure they’ll be sensitive,” said Victoria, stroking McCavity.

“When we were still at the shop, Sergeant Smalley called Howland Atherton and asked him to go through LeRoy Watts’s computer to see if he’d had any threats or problems with anyone.”

“I wouldn’t think anyone would make a threat that could be so easily traced,” said Victoria.

Casey shrugged. “Everything’s got to be looked at. Once he checks with the State Police, Howland’s going to call me either at the station or here.”

They’d finished their tea when Howland called. Victoria handed the phone to Casey, who listened for a short time, nodded, and hung up.

“What is it?” asked Victoria.

“You know those videos on Jerry Sparks’s computer?”

“Yes?” said Victoria.

“When the State Police asked Howland to check LeRoy Watts’s computer, he found the same videos that were on Jerry Sparks’s computer, only LeRoy’s had even more shower scenes and more recent ones. Howland’s on his way over.”

“In other words—” Victoria started.

“Yeah. LeRoy Watts was the video guy.”

Victoria sat back in her chair. “How strange. There must be some mistake. He was such a fine man.”

Casey shrugged. “You never know.”

Ten minutes later, Howland dropped into an empty chair at the cookroom table. Victoria offered him tea.

“Thanks,” said Howland. He tore open a packet of sweetener and stirred the contents into his tea. “Looks like Watts was the creative talent behind the videos. Jerry Sparks copied them off of Watts’s computer.”

The phone rang, and Victoria answered again.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for the past half hour, Mother,” Amelia said with a touch of irritation in her voice. “I’m in Woods Hole and hoped you could ask Elizabeth to pick me up in Vineyard Haven.”

“What ferry will you be on?”

“The one-fifteen. I’m on it now.”

“I’ll be there,” said Victoria.

“I don’t want you driving, Mother.”

“Don’t worry,” said Victoria, and hung up. She could feel heat rising in her face.

“Who was that?” asked Howland with concern.

“My daughter. She’s on the ferry now and wants to be picked up. Would you mind giving me a ride?”

“I can take you,” said Casey.

“Thank you, but you don’t understand my daughter,” said Victoria. “I’d rather not arrive at the dock in a police vehicle.”

Casey laughed. “Call me when you can, Victoria. We have more to talk about.”

“Had you heard about the Watts twins’ problem at school?” Victoria asked as they headed into Vineyard Haven to meet the ferry.

“I understand they were reprimanded for taking their father’s Taser to school.”

“The preliminary coroner’s report suggested Tasering as one possible cause for Jerry Sparks’s death.”

“Under certain circumstances, a Taser can kill. If the trigger is pulled repeatedly, it continues to send pulses of current into a victim. If he’s in poor physical condition, that can kill him.” They came to the end of Old County Road and Howland turned right onto State Road. “We may never know how he died. He’d been in that shed awhile.”

“Then we still have the question of the phone breather,” said Victoria. “Surely LeRoy wasn’t both a phone stalker and a voyeur?”

“Could be.” Howland paused while he passed a slowly moving red Volvo station wagon. The driver, a young woman in her twenties, was talking on a cell phone.

“That should be illegal,” said Victoria, referring to the phone.

“They’ve got to stay in touch,” Howland said. “Back to Watts. Something drove him, something in his past, or in his genetic makeup. I don’t know that anyone has worked out the puzzle of why stalkers stalk. He probably saw himself as playing a harmless game.”

“With a camera?”

“Extending his phone call game to high tech,” said Howland. “He was an electrician, after all.”

Victoria was quiet for a few moments. “I’ve always been intrigued by his name. Watts. So appropriate for an electrician.”

“I once knew a dentist named Dodrill,” said Howland. “And an oceanographer named C. Weed. And Sparks, of course, worked for Watts.”

“Both dead now,” Victoria said.

They’d passed the Snake Hollow road when Howland spoke again. “Sergeant Smalley asked me to identify the women in the videos. I’d like you to view them, if you would. See if you recognise any of them.”

Victoria frowned.

“I’m afraid it’s necessary.”

“As you know, Howland, I don’t have a television set.”

“I have my laptop with me,” said Howland.

They pulled up to the curb at the Steamship Authority terminal just as the ferry was docking. Amelia was one of the first passengers to disembark, a tall, elegant woman in her early sixties, an older version of Elizabeth, slender, wearing an understated jacket and slacks.

She opened her arms to Victoria. “Darling! How good to see you.” She held her mother at arm’s length. “You look wonderful.”

“You, too, Amelia.”

“You’re not still driving, are you?”

Victoria felt her face flush again. Her daughter knew how to irritate her within the first seconds of greeting her. “My friend Howland Atherton is chauffeuring us today,” she said, trying for a light touch. “He’s waiting by the terminal building. How was the flight from Denver?”

“The weather was lovely most of the way. We ran into clouds over the Appalachians. Have you been keeping busy, Mother? You really do look great, by the way.”

“Thank you. Yes, we’ve been busy.” Victoria held back, with some satisfaction, the fact that she’d just come from a murder scene.

Amelia lifted her suitcase from the baggage cart, set it on the ground, and pulled up the handle. “I don’t believe I’ve ever met your friend. You say his name is Howland? Someone you met at the senior center?”

Victoria wished for Howland to appear, and at that very moment he did, striding toward her, looking young and vigorous and handsome, with his wavy silver hair, a nose almost as fine as her own, although not as large, and an early tan, testifying to his outdoor life.

“This must be Amelia,” he said in his grand deep voice with a touch of Boston’s Beacon Hill. “Here, let me take that.”

Victoria noted with pleasure Amelia’s look of astonishment as she relinquished her suitcase. “You’re my mother’s friend?”

“Friend, colleague, and cohort,” said Howland. “We’re involved in a murder case at the moment.”

“Murder?” said Amelia in a small voice.

“We found the body just this morning.”

“
You
found . . .” Amelia turned to Victoria. “Mother, you didn’t tell me . . .”

“Here’s the car,” said Victoria. “I’ll sit up front.”

C
HAPTER
24

Howland followed Amelia upstairs with her suitcase, and Victoria came slowly after them.

“Amelia,” she called up. “I’m putting you in the West Room. I’m having some work done in your usual room.”

Amelia paused at the top of the stairs and looked down at her mother. “Really? What sort of work?”

“Minor electrical work,” said Victoria. “I’ll get clean sheets.”

“I can find them, Mother. Please, don’t bother.”

“I’d rather,” Victoria said. As she headed for the linen closet, she heard her daughter say to Howland, “I worry about her. She’s not as young as she thinks she is.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Victoria if I were you,” said Howland. “It’s fruitless.”

Victoria emerged from the linen closet with an armload of lavender-scented sheets and pillowcases.

Amelia hurried to take them from her. “Thanks so much, Mother. You should have let me do that.” She looked around at the paintings and photos on the wall. “I’ve always loved this room.”

Afternoon sunlight poured through the west window, bathing the old furniture in a mellow gold that hid the scuff marks of generations of children. In one corner of the room was a crib piled with old patchwork quilts. Sailors had made the crib for Victoria’s two aunts, born during a five-year whaling voyage. Victoria’s grandmother had gone to sea with her husband, the captain, rather than stay home with her formidable mother-in-law.

“What sort of electrical work are you having done in my room?”

“Repairing an electrical outlet.”

Howland snorted. “Actually, Amelia, the electrician repairing your mother’s outlet was the murder victim.”

Amelia abruptly dropped the linens on her bed. “Mother!”

Victoria suddenly remembered the tool chest LeRoy Watts had left. “Excuse me. I have to attend to something.”

Amelia glanced at Howland, who avoided her eyes.

Victoria strode across the hall to the East Chamber. When LeRoy Watts had left his tools behind on Monday, she’d wondered why he would leave something so necessary for his work. Now, she was thinking, perhaps he’d hidden something in it, perhaps a clue to the videos he’d been taking. She heard Amelia talking softly to Howland, and suspected the conversation had to do with her. Was Amelia trying to enlist an ally? Or was she, Victoria, simply becoming paranoid?

The toolbox was under the window, at right angles to the wall. It was a large chest, about the size of a filing cabinet drawer. Now that she saw it, she could understand why LeRoy decided to leave it here rather than toting the heavy chest back and forth. She tried to move it herself, but it was much too heavy.

“Need a hand, Victoria?” Howland came into the room, followed closely by Amelia.

“What is it, Mother?”

“LeRoy Watts’s tool chest. I’d like to look inside.”

“But Mother . . .”

“Absolutely right, Victoria,” said Howland. “It’s not locked, is it?”

Victoria eased herself to her knees, twisted the latch that held the lid down, and lifted the top. The box smelled of WD-40. Inside, the tools were neatly nested, pliers and wrenches and screwdrivers, all clean with a sheen of oil. At one end of the chest was a cigarette pack–size plastic box with thin wires wrapped around it.

“Aha!” said Howland.

Victoria took a napkin out of her pocket and lifted the plastic box out of the tool chest. “Is this what I think it is?”

“A spent Taser cartridge,” said Howland. “Nice going, Victoria. Shall I call the State Police, or do you want to?”

Victoria held onto the arms of the rocking chair by the window to get to her feet again, and winced as her sore toe bumped against her shoe.

“Mother . . . are you all right?”

Victoria ignored her daughter. “I’d better go through channels and call Casey first. She can contact Sergeant Smalley.”

Amelia glanced from Howland to her mother. “What is going on?”

Casey arrived ten minutes later, and Sergeant Smalley followed shortly after. Smalley snapped on latex gloves, took charge of the tool chest, and carried it away.

The remaining four went downstairs.

“I hope you’re not overdoing things, Mother.” Amelia reached out and patted Victoria’s hand.

Casey laughed. “During the past week, your mother was barely getting warmed up. Video stalkings, obscene phone calls, stolen Tasers, and two murders.”

Howland added a few details, and Casey added a few more on top of his.

Amelia kept looking from Howland to the police chief, avoiding her mother’s bland expression. Occasionally she interrupted, saying, “But . . .” or “Really . . .” or “I can’t believe . . .” or, one time with a glance at Victoria, “Oh, Mother!”

After that, Howland set up his laptop on the cookroom table and Amelia went to the cupboard where Victoria kept her spirits. Without asking, she poured hefty drinks for everyone—Howland, Casey, Victoria, and herself. She delivered the drinks on a black tray decorated with a painted still life of onions.

With a look at Howland’s laptop, she lifted her own glass of Scotch off the tray and said, “If you don’t really need me, I believe I’ll go upstairs and read.” With that, she left.

Howland, Casey, and Victoria huddled around the laptop, drinks untouched.

“We need to identify as many of the women as possible,” Howland said as he started up the computer.

“I’m not sure I understand why we’re doing this,” said Victoria.

“We’ll have to contact the women and find out who worked on their bathroom electrical systems. Was it LeRoy Watts or Jerry Sparks or possibly someone else.”

He inserted the small metal thumb drive into the laptop. The thumb drive, smaller than a child-size domino, seemed much too small to hold any information at all, let alone movies with sound. Movies should come in metal canisters, reels of film that seemed substantial enough to mean something.

Howland continued to explain. “We also need to find out where the cameras were located and if any are still in place.”

Victoria nodded away her mental image of a humming movie projector and settled back in her chair. “I’ll do what I can.”

The pictures popped up on the laptop screen. Sounds of water running. A voice, singing.

“I don’t know her,” said Victoria.

“Nor I,” said Casey.

“I’ll fast-forward,” said Howland.

Water running. A voice called out, “Honey, I forgot the soap. Would you bring me a fresh bar?”

“Why, that’s Jessica Gordon, one of the knitters,” said Victoria. “I thought she lived alone.”

“Her boyfriend lived with her up until a couple of weeks ago,” said Casey.

“Fast-forward,” said Howland.

Water running. A young girl was shampooing her hair.

“Good heavens!” said Victoria. “That’s Jim Weiss’s daughter, Lily. He’s another one of the mathematical knitters.”

Howland pushed the pause button. Casey looked closely. “It’s Lily all right. She’s barely sixteen.”

“This is ugly,” said Victoria.

On and on and on, through a dozen short videos. Victoria didn’t know all of the women, but she knew most.

“I’ve seen enough,” said Casey.

“We’re almost at the end.”

Casey made notes. “I’ll contact the people we’ve identified, have them notify me if they find a camera. We’ll also send an announcement to the
Enquirer.
”

“I’ll write up something for my column. Not all the victims are from West Tisbury, but quite a few people from other towns read my column.” Victoria smoothed her hair.