Town Haunts (23 page)

“We won’t know
until after the autopsy,” John replied, taking off his hat and
rubbing the red mark on his forehead.

“Hmm. Well, how
about the sign around Henry’s neck? ‘MURDERER.’ What do you make of
that?”

“Hard to say.
Could mean a lot of things.”

“That’s fair,”
Anna said, flicking a piece of lint from her pant leg. She wasn’t
getting anywhere using the direct approach, so she decided to try a
different tack. “You know, Erna and May were just saying that Henry
seemed to disappear right after he attacked Frank at The Diner. You
guys never found him afterward, right?” John nodded, watching a
crow fly over the street. “Pretty clever of him, don’t you think? I
mean, if it were me, I’d probably have panicked and driven straight
to Calgary. Probably would have got picked up for speeding. You
found his car ‒ what ‒ two days later?” John nodded again, his face
still inscrutable. “So, where do you think Henry was before he
turned himself in?”

“That’s
currently under investigation.”

Anna frowned
and folded her arms over her chest. “I’m beginning to catch your
drift here, John. You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”
John frowned, slapped his hat back on his head, and rose wearily to
his feet.

“Death is about
as serious as it gets in a police investigation, Anna. I heard
about your involvement with your ex-husband’s case. I don’t want it
happening again here. You can pass that information along to Miss
Dombrosky and May, too.” He nodded and climbed down the steps,
headed for his car.

Anna jumped up
and followed him, kicking at the leaves when she reached the
boulevard. “Last time was different,” she said to his back. “I was
the prime suspect. I couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.”

“Okay,” he
said, leaning against the cruiser, “what’s your excuse for sticking
your nose in this time?”

“I found
Henry’s body, so I have a stake in this. Besides, I’ve been
involved ever since the first séance. All May, Erna, and I want is
to help Sherman.”

John studied
her for a moment before saying, “I wouldn’t worry too much about
helping Sherman if I were you.”

“Why?” she
asked, suddenly worried.

John shook his
head, climbed into his car, and shut the door. The engine started
up, and he powered down the window. “See you around, Anna,” he
called, waving before pulling away from the curb.

Anna stared
after him, her lips pressed together, wondering just what he meant
by his comment. Why shouldn’t she help Sherman? Did John think
Sherman was involved with Henry’s death, or was he referring to the
counterfeit money issue? After a moment of unfruitful
contemplation, however, she decided to ignore the comment and have
a look at the tree.

The rope was
gone from around the trunk, of course, but she could see where it
had scored the bark. Leaning her hand against it, she peered up
into the branches. That was the limb Henry had been hanging from,
right? Or was it the one beside it? Anna sighed. Some sleuth she
was. She couldn’t even remember an important detail like that.

She circled
around the tree, her eyes searching the ground. The grass was brown
and damp from its recent blanket of leaves, but she couldn’t see
any marks on it. What had the forensics team seen? She sighed. She
didn’t have any forensics training, so she couldn’t read the crime
scene from a scientific point of view. What she needed was a
different angle, something more intuitive. She closed her eyes and
tried to picture Henry standing under the tree. What had he been
feeling last night?

She remembered
how angry he had looked when he stormed into The Diner two
Saturdays ago. She had never seen Henry like that before. Sure,
he’d been a complainer, always ready to bend your ear with his
latest injustice, but she’d never thought of him as the violent
type. The way he’d shoved Judy into the cash register was so unlike
him. And trying to stab Frank! Well, it was obvious he’d been
deranged. Yet somehow he had managed to evade the police for two
days until disappearing into Calgary, and then he’d vanished again
after his friend had bailed him out of jail. How long had he been
back in Crane before he died, and where had he been hiding?

He wouldn’t
have risked staying at his house, no matter how cold it got at
night. If a neighbour had spotted him, it would have been all over.
Maybe he’d lived rough, hiding in different garden sheds or garages
to stay out of sight. Poor Henry, he had always been so fastidious;
she couldn’t imagine him surviving without clean clothes and a
daily shower.

Maybe someone
had helped him ‒ but who? Prior to the attack, she might have
imagined Frank or even Erna helping him, but no one afterward.

Still, he must
have foraged in someone’s garage for the stuff to make the sign. A
piece of cardboard, a brush, some paint, and a piece of string to
hang the sign around his neck. And the rope. She mustn’t forget the
rope.

Okay, time to
concentrate. After making the sign, he’d come here to kill himself.
But why here? If “MURDERER” was an accusation against Frank, why
hadn’t he hanged himself on Frank’s lawn? Or, even more poetic, in
front of The Diner, since he blamed Frank’s business for ruining
him. Dying here on Sherman’s lawn just didn’t make sense.

Wait a minute!
Anna stared up at the tree again. How had Henry got up there? He
certainly wasn’t the athletic type. There was no way he could have
climbed the tree, especially carrying a rope and the sign. He’d
have needed a ladder for sure. And she and Ben would have seen it
if there’d been one propped up against the tree or kicked over onto
the ground. For heaven’s sake, they’d have fallen over it in the
dark!

Anna shook her
head. She should have thought of that before, but the shock of
finding Henry’s body must have affected her thinking. Okay, there
was no ladder, so it seemed highly improbable that Henry had
committed suicide. He had been murdered.

She frowned. It
was easy for her to imagine poor Henry standing here on a chair,
trembling, waiting for his murderer to kick it out from under him.
Now came the hard part: imagining the face of the murderer.

Well, they had
just shared all kinds of theories at the restaurant. Personally,
she didn’t believe that Tiernay was the murderer. She might be vain
and selfish, and she might have a grossly exaggerated belief in her
own abilities, but she wasn’t criminally insane. And Frank or Judy
just couldn’t have killed Henry. They might be capable of killing
in self-defence in the heat of the moment, but not in cold blood,
and not by lynching.

So, she was
back to Sherman again. Her gut told her that he was still the best
bet. If Sherman had got it into his head that Henry had killed
Evelyn, then killing him here and labelling him a murderer made a
lot of sense, at least to someone mentally unstable. And despite
what Erna thought, Anna still considered Sherman to be mentally and
emotionally unstable.

She kicked at a
tree root. She and her friends hadn’t done him any favours, had
they? They should never have let Tiernay mess with his head, not
when he was already delusional about his wife calling to him from
beyond the grave. But guilt would have to wait until her next visit
to the confessional. For now, what mattered was protecting her
friends from Sherman.

Her mind made
up that Sherman was the most likely suspect, Anna strode across the
lawn, heading toward Erna’s house. It was time for a talk. She had
to convince Erna and May that Henry hadn’t committed suicide, and ‒
and what?

Reaching the
sidewalk, Anna paused, stuffing her hands in her pockets. There was
no way that she could persuade May of Sherman’s guilt unless she
had some bona fide evidence. And Erna had already said that her
ideas were half-baked when it came to Sherman. If she weren’t
careful, she’d end up estranging both her friends, and then what
help would she be?

Anna started
down the sidewalk; she always thought better on the move. If Erna
were here, she’d tell her to use logic and emotional detachment to
solve the problem, but if there was one thing Anna had learned over
the past week, it was that she and her friend approached
problem-solving differently. Maybe she was impetuous; didn’t that
mean she was good at thinking outside the box? And what she needed
was to come up with a fresh approach.

So, to
reiterate her dilemma, Henry had been murdered, and she was afraid
that Sherman had killed him. And why was that a problem? Because
she was afraid that he might hurt May and Erna. Fair enough, but
was that likely? Sherman was still staying with Father Winfield,
and with May housebound, she and Sherman hardly saw each other
anymore. And there was another point: the police already had their
doubts about Sherman because of the counterfeit money, and with
Henry being hanged on Sherman’s lawn, there was plenty to keep them
interested in him.

So, even if
Sherman were a murderer, all she had to do was keep her mouth shut
and wait for the police to arrest him. If she were wrong about him,
well, there was nothing that she could do to help the
investigation, was there? John had just told her to keep her nose
out of police business, hadn’t he? So, not doing anything was a
win/win solution to the Sherman problem.

Anna walked
past Erna’s house and smiled, feeling like a new woman. She was
going to turn over a new leaf ‒ no more sticking her nose into
other people’s business. From now on, Anna Nolan was going to play
it safe!

Feeling as if she
deserved a little self-indulgence after her hard work, Anna decided
to have a Saturday night in with a bowl of popcorn and a new
mystery novel. Erna had called during the afternoon to report that
no one at the store had any inkling as to Henry’s whereabouts once
he was back in town, or even a guess as to where he had been
hiding. She had also come up with the theory that Henry must have
committed suicide due to the absence of a stool or ladder at the
crime scene, and they had congratulated each other on their mental
acuity.

“But we’re no
closer to divining poor Henry’s killer,” Erna had said.

“No, afraid
not,” Anna replied, sticking to her resolution not to repeat her
concerns about Sherman. “Give it some time, though. I bet you’ll
figure it out before the police do.”

Erna had
laughed and said, “Thank you for your faith in me.” Their
conversation had ended on a high note, and Anna was pleased that
their earlier discord seemed to be healed.

Ben had also
called to check up on her when he had finished work. “Are you
scared being by yourself, Mom? Do you want me to come stay with you
tonight?” he had asked.

“No, that’s
okay. I’m actually feeling pretty good. I had a talk with John Fox
Child this morning, and he seems to have more up his sleeve than
he’s letting on. I’m sure that the police are on top of things. If
I were scared, I could sleep on Erna’s couch again tonight, but
that’s not necessary. I’m going to start a new book and go to bed
early. How about you? You put in a full day of work after finding
Henry’s body last night. You must be exhausted.”

“Yeah, I am a
little tired, but I’m planning to meet up with some friends at a
club later, so I wanted to call you first to see how you were
doing.”

“You’re going
out?”

“Sure.”

Anna had
chuckled. “The resilience of youth, taking death in its
stride.”

“Yeah, well,
what am I supposed to do?”

“Nothing,
honey. You have a good time, and I’ll call you if anything happens
before I see you again next Friday.”

“Okay, Mom.
Sleep well.”

“Night.”

Anna had just
pulled the popcorn out of her microwave and had settled down on the
couch when someone knocked on her front door. Sighing, she shuffled
to the foyer with Wendy trailing behind her, pausing to check the
peephole before opening the door.

“Hi, Anna,”
Steve said, pulling off his hat. The bandage had been removed, and
she could see where his hair had been shaved for the stitches.

“Oh, look at
your poor head!” she exclaimed.

He touched it
self-consciously. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.” She
shut the door behind him, and he followed her into the living room.
“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the recliner. “Can I get you
something to drink?”

He checked his
watch. “No thanks, I have to be on duty in twenty minutes. I just
wanted to talk to you first.”

“All right,”
she said, sitting down on the couch. “What’s up?”

He sat down
beside her. “I wanted to warn you to be careful. We don’t have the
autopsy report on Henry back yet, but the preliminary findings show
that he was murdered.”

Anna paused
before saying, “I sort of guessed that already.”

“You did?
How?”

“There was no
ladder on Sherman’s yard, so how did Henry hang himself?” Steve
nodded. “What did the preliminary findings show?”

“That he was
garrotted. The mark was still visible on his throat when the rope
was removed. Someone garrotted him first, and then hanged him.”

“Yuck,” Anna
said, touching her own throat. “That’s horrible.”

“The murderer
must have thought that the rope would obliterate the signs of the
garrotting, but it didn’t work. The coroner still found them.”

Anna remained
silent, her hand still at her throat.

“You okay?”
Steve asked, touching her arm. “I don’t want to scare you, but I
want you to be careful with a murderer on the loose. Don’t worry,
though, we’re investigating a very strong lead with the Calgary
police. The friend Henry was staying with and who posted his bail
is definitely a person of interest.”

She nodded.
“Thanks for telling me, Steve. You always look out for me.”