A Murder in Christmas Village (Christmas Village Mysteries Book 0) (2 page)

“Shouldn’t we wait for the sheriff? I imagine he has the matter well in hand.”

“I’d wager differently. But if nothing else, we can pass the time while waiting for Sheriff Fell to enlighten us.”

Maribel walked over to where Angela was standing, a chaffed Doc Wilcox in tow, and was promptly greeted by her niece and introduced to Deputy Brock Bentley: a tall, fair-haired man of an age that suggests he would have been a school mate of Angela’s had he not been born and raised in Glyn Allen, the burg just to the east of Christmas Village.

“So, what’s been learned so far?” asked Maribel. Angela and Bentley stared at each other, not sure who should start.

“Okay, I’ll go first,” said Doc, surprising the others who had forgotten he was standing there. “The body had been that of one Willard Wilkinson of Achtungbury. I’ll leave it to the sheriff to get the particulars, but he looked about forty-five to me. I’d say he was six feet long – “

“You mean tall?” inquired Angela.

“Not the way I met him. He was murdered in the property room on the second floor. Not prop storage, mind you, but where they actually build the props; sawing and painting and so forth. Every bit of the floor was covered with oak shavings. Very fine, more like dust. I learned the sawing was done earlier today by one of Carlton Moore’s men, a local who works part-time for the theater. No known association with the victim. He finished his work and left the theater well before the murder occurred.”

“What’s the saw dust tell you, Doc?” asked Deputy Bentley, his tone more that of a wide-eyed school boy than a seasoned policeman.

“I’m getting to that in due course, young man,” continued Doc. “The body was lying on its left side, more or less, about five feet into the room. Smack dab in the middle of the floor. He was dressed to go on stage in his western shirt, chaps, and fancy boots with spurs on them. A ten-gallon hat was lying a few inches from his head, telling me it was on him up until he hit the ground.”

“Hit the ground?” interjected Maribel.

“Pardon my crude English, Mrs. Claus. What I meant was –“

“I wasn’t offended by your choice in words, I was fascinated by it. Are you saying he was standing when
it
happened? What direction was he facing?”

“Now, Auntie,” said Angela, “how could he possibly know that?”

“You mentioned on the phone that his throat was cut.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, that being the case, an artery must have been severed and the arterial flow should tell the good doctor precisely what position he was in at the moment the killer struck.”

“Oh, of course.” Said Angela, swatting her hand through the air. “I knew that.”

“He was facing the door.” Replied Doc.

Maribel nodded. “I see. And could you tell if there was a struggle?”

Doc grinned, his cheeks wrinkling and folding like a bed sheet. “It’s funny you ask that, Maribel.”

“Funny?” asked Maribel.

“Not funny so much as strange,” said Angela.

“You don’t say.” Maribel only half-heartedly tried to contain her relish. 

The doctor cleared his throat. “You’ll recall the sawdust I mentioned? It completely covered the floor. The tree that produced it had been felled locally, only three days prior, so the wood was still moist. If you so much as touched a finger to the floor the dust would have recorded the impression. There is no question that only two people walked on that floor after that wood went through the saw.”

“That makes perfect sense,” offered Maribel. “Mr. Wilkinson and his killer?”

Doc shook his head in silence for a moment as though building up to something. “No, that’s impossible. Because there’s no doubt that one set of prints belonged to the man who did the sawing. You see, his right foot is clubbed. That is to say it bends to one side, leaving a very distinctive print.”

“You must be referring to Billy Menges,” said Maribel.

Deputy Bentley suddenly stood two inches taller and pointed at the open air in the direction of the front doors. “That’s right, and I say we need to pull him back in here to explain how he’s the only person besides the victim who was in that room.”

Angela shook her head in protest. “That’s what the deputy and I were arguing about when you walked up.”

“Arguing?” said Bentley. “Where I come from we call that discussing. It’s not arguing until you get loud.” He smiled at Angela, who reciprocated. Maribel noted the exchange and grinned inward to herself.

“As I was explaining to the deputy here,” Angela continued, “Billy Menges is the salt of the earth and as harmless as a fly.”

Bentley faced Angela. “And as I was explaining to Scoops Magee here-“

“Scoops Magee?”

“-every killer is the boy next door until they’re caught. Am I right, Doc?”

“You are correct,” said Doc.

Bentley nodded an ‘I told you so’ at Angela.

“And so is Angela.” Everybody turned to look at Doc. “The deputy’s instincts are good, and in my forty years as the doctor in this village – 49 if you count the years I apprenticed under ol’ Doc Baxter before he retired – I’ve seen a number of nasty murders, and at least half the time I knew the guy who did it and didn’t have even a foggy notion that he had such a thing in him. But this is not one of those cases. Billy Menges was long gone by the time Mr. Wilkinson was murdered.”

“And how do you know that?” asked Bentley.

“The saw dust. There was no evidence of Menges entering the room, because he hadn’t started the saw, so there was no dust on the floor. You can see the spot where he stood sawing because the floor is bald bare where the dust landed around his shoes. And you can follow his trail from the table saw to the door and out into the hall.”

“Who’s to say he didn’t kill Wilkinson on his way out of the room?” objected Bentley.

“Once again, the saw dust. Mr. Wilkinson apparently paced the floor quite a bit before coming to a stop where he did. Some of his tracks fell on top of the ones made earlier by Menges as he was leaving. So there’s not a sliver of doubt in this crusty ol’ noggin of mine that Wilkinson entered that room very much alive after Billy had left for home.”

Angela quickly noted these points in her tablet. “As I said, we can dismiss Billy Menges as a suspect. So where does that leave us?”

Maribel cleared her throat softly, a white cloth waved before entering the line of fire. “I understand from Mr. Moore that the sheriff has a suspect in the office? Am I to assume there is some evidence against him?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. It’s a pretty strong case,” offered Angela.

“Oh? And what’s the case?”

Angela looked to Deputy Bentley as if to suggest that he should answer.

“Tex Bundy – that’s the man’s name – worked for Wilkinson at the scrap yard he owned and every summer he toured with the western show as both a stage hand and a performer. I took Mr. Dandridge’s statement and he informed me that Bundy had a rap sheet for breaking and entering and burglary. He was on hard times after getting out of prison when Wilkinson took him on. Turns out Bundy was a professional lock-pick.”

“Is that a significant point?” asked Maribel.

“The door to the prop room was locked. A standard deadbolt. Mr. Moore had to use his key to open it and the only other key was in Wilkinson’s pocket.”

“Isn’t it possible that Mr. Wilkinson himself locked the door and the killer was already inside?” asked Angela.

Bentley had already thought through this, but for Angela’s benefit he pretended to give her question serious consideration before answering. “That would be possible if there was another exit from the room. But there’s no other door, no windows, no traps in the floor, nothing. The only way in or out is through the door into the hall. Whoever killed Wilkinson locked that door behind him.”

“I mean no disrespect to our host,” whispered Maribel, “but I assume you inquired into Mr. Moore’s whereabouts at the crucial time?”

“Indeed we did. We know that Wilkinson was last seen by a stage hand alone in the prop room, with the door open, at six-fifteen in the PM. The door was locked when Mr. Moore was summoned to open it at six-fifty-nine, and that’s when the murder was discovered. Mr. Moore stated that for all of that time he was in the stage area seeing to lighting and sound. We were able to corroborate this with employees of the theater as well as members of Wilkinson’s traveling group. There doesn’t seem to be any way Mr. Moore could have done this.”

“Was Mr. Bundy able to provide an alibi?” asked Maribel.

“Not much of one,” said Deputy Bentley. “He claims he was in his dressing room the entire time. Problem is, he had the door closed. Nobody reports seeing him anywhere else, but then nobody can say for sure he was where he says he was.”

Maribel stepped away from the group, pacing a few feet one way and then back again. “You mentioned that Mr. Bundy was a performer in the show. What were his skills?”

Angela scribbled as they talked and Doc Wilcox leaned against the wall and yawned as Maribel and the young deputy played teacher and student. Who should be assigned which role might have been a matter of debate at that moment, but not for terribly much longer.

“He was a knife thrower. Mr. Wilkinson was the sharp shot, his wife - the whip and lasso lady, and Mr. Dandridge would join Wilkinson on stage for the dueling pistol routine. You’ve probably heard about it?”

“No, I can’t say I have.”

The deputy smiled big and Angela noticed how white his teeth shown, even in the brown shadows of the theater’s old hallway. “I caught their show a few years back when I was home in Glyn Allen. Maybe you have to be a gun man to appreciate it, but it was the most impressive six-shooter display I’ve ever seen. I don’t know if it’s true, but they say that Wilkinson was the best shot around. I wouldn’t disagree with that.”

Maribel stopped pacing for a moment. “I can see why the sheriff is so taken with the idea that this Bundy was the culprit. After all, Wilkinson died from a cut throat and Bundy’s skilled with knives. The door was locked from the outside, but without a key, and Mr. Bundy’s a lock-pick. But why would a man with a criminal record and so few options kill his employer?”

“According to Mr. Dandridge, Wilkinson wasn’t going to be Bundy’s employer much longer. Wilkinson was in business for himself, but in a small way. He owns a scrap yard. He found out Bundy was pulling good parts from cars and selling them on the side for himself. He decided to fire Bundy after the summer tour. Tonight was the last night, so the working theory is that Bundy found out he was being fire and snapped.”

Maribel resumed her pacing. “So he had the means in that he was good with knives, he had the opportunity, and he had a motive.”

Bentley snapped his fingers in the air as though Maribel had just split the atom. “That’s right, and if that Billy fellow you know isn’t good for it, then I suppose it’s got to be Bundy. There’s no one else with the means, the motive,
or
the opportunity. Looks like he’s going to swing for it.”

“This isn’t Glyn Allen. We don’t hang people here,” said Angela.

“It’s just a term, Scoops. I don’t think they hang people any more anywhere.”

“Scoops!”

“You’re a reporter, you get scoops. You’re Scoops.” The electricity was palpable, although Maribel was too distracted at that moment to notice.

“What was it you said on the phone, Angie? You said the case against him was too good. Right now, I’m inclined to agree.”

Maribel’s words pulled the plug on Bentley’s connection with Angela. He turned his attention to the senior woman. “What? Not you too. You sound just like your niece here. Now, I’ve only been a cop a few years, but that’s long enough to know that the better the evidence, the better the chances the guy did it. There’s no such thing as a case that’s too good.”

“Oh, but there is such a beast,” chimed Maribel, as though regaling a roomful of youths with fantastic stories of mysterious worlds. “From what you’ve told us, Bundy was a career criminal, but not a particularly good one. He had a tendency to get caught, did he not? You didn’t mention any violence in his history, so there’s no reason to suppose he’d strike out and kill someone over the loss of job.”

“As I said earlier, a man’s never a murderer until he kills somebody. Even the Christmas Village Creeper was free of that sin until the day he held that piece of rope in his hands and decided to -”

“It’s the saw dust,” blurted Maribel.

“Pardon?”

“The sawdust. If Wilkinson confronted Bundy in that room, then where are Bundy’s footprints?”

“I already thought of that. His prints aren’t in that room because he wasn’t in it. He was a knife thrower, remember? He could have thrown it from the hall.”

“Perhaps, if he had been stabbed, but Doc says he was cut. You youngsters would know better than me – and certainly my husband could tell us if he were here – but I don’t believe the Wisenheimers in their labs with the white coats have figured out a knife that flies in a room, cuts left to right or right to left, and floats back out the way it came in.”

“She’s right,” agreed Doc.

Bentley rubbed his eyes. “I don’t pretend to be a knife expert. But Bundy was a knife expert, and he could have figured out a way. And who else but a lock pick could have locked the door without a key?”

“Yes, yes, I see what you mean,” said Maribel as she stared at the carpet for answers. “And please forgive me for saying this, but I think you might be asking the wrong question.”

“And what question is that?”

“How. You’re asking ‘How’ when I think perhaps you should be asking ‘Why’. I don’t disagree that Mr. Bundy might possess the wherewithal to cut a man’s throat, or the skill to lock a door without a key, or that given the proper time and inclination could devise a method of committing such a murder without leaving any sign of his presence. When we ask ‘How’ and ‘What’, you have answers, and those answers lead directly to Mr. Bundy.”

“I won’t disagree with that.”

“I’m just a doting old woman with nothing better to do than to stick my nose where it doesn’t belong, so please feel free to disregard my ravings. But…”

“You’re no such thing, and whatever you have to say is more than welcome by me.”