Old Bones: a Hetty Fox Cozy Mystery (Hetty Fox Cozy Mysteries Book 2) (7 page)

M
onday morning arrived with a another wrinkle for the knitting group. Betty Clyde was scheduled to host the event, and she’d asked decided to have it in the morning rather than the afternoon as we usually did. Apparently her grandson was playing in a championship baseball game later that day, and she wanted her afternoon free so she could cheer him on.

I’d called her and offered to hold the affair at my house, but she’d declined my offer.  She said liked to honor her obligations
— apparently no
matter how many plans that upset for her guests. Coming as it did in the midst of the larger controversy raised by Valerie Jarrett,  I feared she might encounter some blowback.

So when I reached her home, I was glad to find our little group in reasonably good spirits. My fellow knitters seemed to have taken the shift in stride. Conversation only turned heated when the suggestion for shifting our sessions to Saturdays came up.

“I can’t see the point of it,” one of the elderly members groused. “We’ve been meeting on Mondays since time dawned.”

“The point is that meeting on a weekday excludes a most working women,” Laura Day said. Leave it to Laura, I thought, to try reason.

Pauline Carn looked up from her project and objected. “I’m not about to change my life just to accommodate them.”

“Why don’t they just form their own group?” another member asked.

Laura shrugged. “Why don’t we ask them?”

“I can’t believe Valerie didn’t come today,” another member groused. “ Where is she anyway? She started this whole mess.”

“She’s out of town,” I said.

Pauline scowled. “How do you know that?”

“I’ve been calling her,” I replied

Laura jumped into the conversation.  “I’ve asked Hetty to meet with Valerie. I’m hoping the two of them can work out a compromise.”

Pauline glared at me. “Well, you’d better not expect to ram whatever you decide down our throats.”

Laura stood and raised her hands in a calming-the-waters sort of way. “No one is going to shove anything down anyone’s throat. There will be a full vote on whatever Hetty and Valerie propose.” She shrugged. “If they can’t come up with any alternatives, the suggestion to shift meeting to Saturdays will automatically die for lack of a second.”

Pauline relented. “Well, at least that’s as it should be.”

Laura continued, “And don’t resent Valerie. She is only trying to be helpful.”

“Helpful to whom?” Pauline asked scornfully.

“To a group of women who feel left out.” Laura replied.

“I don’t want to meet on Saturdays. I like to keep my weekends free.” It was Cora Butler, another member who didn’t hesitate to throw her weight around when necessary. “What kind of compromise can they come up with? We either keep meeting on Mondays or we meet Saturdays. That’s the only question I can see on the table.”

“That’s only because we haven’t explored other options,” Laura shot back.

“What? Maybe we could only once a year on Thanksgiving Day, then everyone would fail to show up,” someone quipped. Laughter broke out across the room.

“Why Hetty? Why have her do the negotiating?”

“I thought we should use a neutral member. Someone who hasn’t been with us long enough to be set in her ways.”

There was a quiet moment. “I think you’re very brave to take this on, Mrs. Fox,” Becky Stiles said. She had accompanied her aunt to today’s session.

I wagged my finger at her. “Please, call me Hetty,” I reminded her. She blushed and nodded.

I smiled. “I hope you’re well today. You seemed a little upset when we last met.”

“Oh, yes. I’m tons better.”

“I take it you’ve made peace with your boyfriend, then?”

Her head jerked up. “How did you know about that?”

“My dear. I’m a woman. Man troubles are as old as the hills. They’re usually written all over or faces. But please remember this, too: most of us have gone a round or two with a man we adore, and most of us are still here to tell the tale.”

She grinned. “Everything is fine now. We’ve worked it out. Everything is just as it should be.”

Ah, certainty of youth.
“Does this fellow have a name?”

“Gordon White,” she replied.

“And what’s he like?”

She closed her eyes for a moment and smiled to herself. And when she opened them, she stared me right in the eye.  “He’s everything I’m not. Bright… charming… good looking.” Her face took on a faraway look.

I leaned forward, “My dear, I haven’t known you long, but I’d say you’re all those things, too.”

Her gaze shifted to me. She looked utterly shocked. “Oh, mercy not me. I’m shy and not at all bright. Laura had to call me twenty times to get me to come with her today.”

I finished up the last stitch in the row and turned my needle. “What do you do when you’re not mooning over your gentleman friend?”

“I work in the hospital over in Weaverton. I’m a clerk there. I have Monday’s off. That’s why Laura wanted me to come with her today.”

I glanced at her knitting. “It looks like you do good work.”

“Thanks. I enjoy handwork. It calms me.”

I nodded. “That’s true for me, too.”

“So what are you two doing with your heads huddled together?” Laura asked.

“Tending to our knitting,” I responded.

Becky chuckled and Laura grinned

“Where’s Toby?” I asked.

“She’s sick,” Laura answered.

I made a mental note to take her a get-well gift. I needed that woman on my good side if my negotiations were to have a ghost of a chance at succeeding.

Tabitha Cummings came and sat down next to me. She stared at me through a pair of spectacles, which were perched on the very tip of her nose. “How’s your son-in-law holding up? It’s such a shame about his aunt lying dead in an attic like that for all those years.”

I slipped my free needle into a loop and wound a strand of yarn around it. “He’s more than a little concerned. Like the rest of us, he never dreamed she was dead. Did you know Eva?”

“Not really. She was younger than me by a more than a few years. I’d seen her around, and, of course… well, being a Langdon… just about everyone would know her, wouldn’t they?” She glanced around for confirmation, and several heads nodded.

I set my  knitting down in my lap. “Was the family that important?”

“Oh goodness, her father thought he ran the town.”

“And did he?”

Tabitha  glanced over at me. “Pretty much. He was a man extremely fond of his own opinions.”

“Who’s that?” Dolly Wright asked. She was a young woman with curly blonde hair and a dimpled smile. She sat opposite Tabitha and was hard at work on a gaily colored lap rug.

“Eva Landon’s dad,” Valerie said.

“Oh my, isn’t that something?” Dolly asked. “A mummy, right here in Hendricksville.”

Laura scowled at the woman. “And as it turns out, she was related to our dear Hetty. Hetty is Damon Langdon’s mother-in-law in case you don’t know.

Dolly’s head swivelled my way. “Oh, I… I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude. I didn’t know.”

“No need to apologize.”

“You know, I’ve been thinking. Maybe the mummy isn’t our problem,” she said.

“What do you mean?” Tabitha asked.

“Maybe the mummy belonged to Ellen Lockett after all, and she’s trying to say it was already inside her attic when she moved here.”

I felt my brow furrow. “That doesn’t make sense. Eva had ties here. She knew people here. She must  have been killed here.”

“Maybe,” Dolly replied. “Or maybe she had ties to wherever it was that Ellen came from. Where was that again?”

I expelled a deep breath. “Denver. The Locketts moved here from Denver.”

“There you go then. Maybe that’s where she was killed.”

Well, I doubted that was the way it had happened, but I held my peace. Dolly had meant well. There was no need to crush her suggestion — nor was there any need to give it more weight than it deserved.

Pauline pulled more yarn free from her skein. “Well, no matter where this trouble is from, I imagine news of  Eva’s death came as a shock to Sam Hillman.”

“I’ve heard they may have dated a few times in high school,” I said.

Pauline paused to count stitches.  “They did. Made a handsome couple, too. I was surprised when they didn’t end up married.”

Dolly snorted. “Don’t say that around Willa. She’ll skin you alive.”

“Pauline  grinned. “She’d be bothered even if the attraction had ended while they were in kindergarten. Willa demands one-hundred percent of her man’s attention, let me tell you.”

I picked up my knitting and prepared to begin a new row. “Even at her age?”

Dolly chuckled. “I doubt she’ll stop standing guard over poor Sam until St. Peter has both of them standing before him.”

I suppressed a giggle. Dolly definitely had an overactive active imagination.

I
t was nearly ten the next morning before I reached Toby Spires’ home. It was a 1950s ranch built of red brick with white trim. The house was not overly large, but it was exceptionally nice. As I stood waiting for her to answer the door, I hoped I wasn’t overplaying my part. It was fairly well agree that as Toby viewed the issue dividing our group, so would most of the members. I needed her on my side, hence today’s bribe.

“Hetty,” she said, seemingly surprised to find me standing on her doorstep. “Please, come in.”

She wore a flowered housecoat. Her salt-and-pepper hair was dishevelled. Her complexion was pasty.

I smiled at her sympathetically. “I heard you were under the weather, so I’ve brought you a pot of soup.”

“Really? What kind?.” She swooped up the offering and stepped back to give room to step inside.

“It’s chicken and rice. I thought it best not to make something that might upset your digestion right now.”

“How in the world did you know I was sick?”

“You missed knitting group yesterday. I asked where you were.”

“Nice to know someone asked,” she said, nodding. “I couldn’t even have answered the door if you’d shown up here about then.”

“You’re feeling better?”

“Yes, I’ll be around to defeat any proposal you take to the group. Don’t think this attempt to butter me up is going to do any good.”

“I’m just glad to hear you’re feeling better.”

“I bet.”

“Odd time of year for the flu.”

She nodded me toward the couch. “I suspect I ate something that didn’t agree with me. Why don’t you take a seat while I carry this to the kitchen. Coffee?”

“Only if it’s already made. Please, don’t fuss on my part.”

She smiled. “Well you don’t deserve it, but I just made a pot. I’ll be right back.”

I sat on the couch and studied the room to fill time. It was a comfortable size with two large windows. The one facing east admitted the day’s brilliant sunshine. The one to the south provided  a view of the street.

Table tops shone and lampshades appeared to be dust free. An old desk in the far corner of the room played host to a pile of papers. My fingers itched to sort through them, but I didn’t dare. The last thing I needed was for Toby to find me snooping about in her rooms.

“Here you go,” Toby said stepping out from the kitchen. She approached me carrying a tray bearing two cups and saucers. I relieved her of one of the cups  took a pass on the cream and sugar.

Toby snatched up the remaining cup and settle herself opposite me. “So what did I miss at yesterday’s session?”

“Not much. There was a lot of talk of the mummy, of course.”

“Really? I thought maybe that would have died down by no. What were people saying?”

“Nothing terribly specific. They mentioned that Eva had once dated Sam HIllman. But you and Eva were around the same age. You probably already knew that?”

“I always thought their relationship wasn’t nearly the big deal some people believed it was. They were Homecoming royalty together for one week. That’s not much to hang a hat on.”

I swallowed a smile. She’d be stunned by the stories Willa and Sam had shared with me of the happenings the night Eva and Sam got together.

“Besides,” Toby continued, “I think you’ll find Sam is seriously devoted to his wife now.”

“Did they date in high school?”

“Who?”

“Sam and Willa.”

She took a sip of her coffee, then sat the cup back on the small table. “For a while… at least before Eva came along.”

“She broke them up?”

“Sam and Willa weren’t serious back then.”

“When did they take to each other?”

“About a year after Eva left for college, I think.”

Sam certainly hadn’t waited long to find himself a replacement for his high school heart throb. How could he have claimed to have been so fond of Eva or have been tempted to run off with her, if Willa was to be believed. It had taken me years to recover from dear Andrew’s death.

“Some people say you got tight with Oberton on that last murder,” Toby said. “Have you seen him since Eva’s death has come up?”

“I was there when he informed Damon that the mummy was his Aunt Eva, yes.”

“Do you think he has any leads?”

I laughed. “Trust me. I’m the last person Oberton would confide in.”

“Why’s that?”

“I’m Damon’s mother-in-law. Naturally, he’s not going to be forthcoming with me.”

“He suspects Damon?”

A small smile played around the corners of her mouth for a moment and then quickly disappeared. I couldn’t believe she’d left her dislike of me spill over onto her opinion of Damon. “I doubt Oberton’s looking at him too closely. My son-in-law was young when Eva was killed. I suspect at this point, he still suspects everyone.”

“But Damon hasn’t been ruled out yet?”

“Not that I’ve heard of, no.”

“What about Willa?”

“Sam’s wife?”

“Yes.”

For a minute I considered sharing Willa’s comments with Toby. Then, I rejected the idea. The tale might get back to Oberton. And I didn’t want the story being fed into the gossip mill, either. “What about Eden Lawry. Did you know him?” I asked.

“Of course. Our high school wasn’t large. We all knew each other.”

“Did you go to his dances?”

“Sometimes.”

“Why only sometimes?”

“I wasn’t part of that crowd.”

“What crowd was that?”

“Oh, you know, the
in
crowd.”

““But you went a time or two?”

“Yeah, I got lucky. One of the football players asked me. He was a real big boy. Sometimes Eden let me come over to help with the snacks and stuff.”

I shrugged. “It certainly makes the goings on there interesting with Eva’s body having been found in their attic.”

Toby nodded. “Yeah, years later, though. If you want to know more about Eden, ask Jack Brenner.”

“Who’s he?”

“He sells insurance. You’ll find him listed in the phone book.”

I rose and patted her hand. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. But I’d better not tire you out. See you at the next knitting session?”

“You can count on it. And don’t think this little pot of soup has bought you my vote, either.”

I nodded and made my way to the door. I doubted I’d ever list this woman as a one of my best friends. I only hoped I hadn’t shot my chance at getting her to go along with the knitting group’s compromise — if I ever managed to bang one together.

***

Jack Brenner kept an office in an old storefront downtown. It faced the river and through its large front window one had a great view of the downtown and the river. Today that view featured a flock of ducks who were bobbing and cavorting along the river’s shimmering surface. Across from the ducks, the cliff that my house perched on rose skyward from a sandy shore.

The man himself sat behind an old wooden desk. A receptionist had assured me he’d be glad to meet see me, and the tone of his suggested his girl-Friday had been correct. He was balding with narrow eyes, but age had apparently failed to remove his enthusiasm for life.

He bounded to his feet the moment my feet stepped crossed his threshold. “Mrs. Fox. So nice to meet you.”

“And you,” I reached out and shook the hand he offered.

“You’re new to Hendricksville?” He indicated a seat across from his desk.

“Yes. I moved in a little before Christmas.”

“You are a brave soul. Given the state of our winters, I think I might have waited until spring to come.”

“I’m originally from Chicago, so I’m used to Midwest weather.”

“Ah, that explains it.” He rubbed his hands together and sat. ‘Now, what can I do for you?”

“I understand you knew Eden Lawry.”

He laughed. “A lifetime ago I did. Why?”

“My daughter is married to Damon Langdon. And as you probably know, Eden’s parents once owned the house Eva Langdon’s body was found in.”

“Oh, dear. I heard about Eva. Terrible tragedy, just awful. But I hadn’t made the connection with Eden.”

“I must admit I’m curious as to how Eva’s body could have turned up there.”

“Yes, mummified, wasn’t it. How did that happen, do you know?”

I sighed. “The police said something about the attic being a warm and dry place.”

I pushed down a shiver at the sudden memory of that dry, brittle corpse.

Brenner carried on undisturbed. “But what do you want to know about Eden? According to the news reports Eva was in her thirties when she died. Eden was long gone from Hendricksville by then.”

“Damon doesn’t remember much about his aunt. I’m trying to fill her out for him.”

“So why ask about Eden?”

“I’m clutching at straws. I don’t know anyone here, so I’m following every lead I can.”

Liar, liar, pants on fire.
I smiled sweetly up at him.

He expelled a large lungful of air. “Let’s see…. Eden was a brain. That’s probably the best place to begin. And as such, he figured he’d never be a top player in high school. It’s nearly impossible to compete with jocks and class presidents, you know. So he came up with the idea of hosting weekly dances.”

“I heard about those.”

“They became very cool events. Kids would die for invitations. I sat back and watched amazed.”

“And was Eva invited to them?”

“The girls only got to come if they were the date of one of the hot-shot guys.” He chuckled. “Worked a treat. The whole class fawned all over the dude.”

“Who was his date?”

“Even as popular as his dances were, he couldn’t interest a girl in going steady with him. So he played the field, bringing a new date most nights.”

“Eva?”

Brenner nodded. “Sure, a time or two.”

“What about Eva and Sam Hillman? I heard they were a number.”

“Yeah, later on, around the time Homecoming rolled around their senior year, they sorta paired up.

”And how did Eden feel about that?”

“He was cool. He had girls. One more or less didn’t matter to him.”

“What about Willa Hillman? Did she come to the dances?”

“Sometimes. She wasn’t as popular as some of the other girls.”

“But she ended up married to Sam Hillman.”

“Yeah, I’ve always wondered how Eva felt about that.”

“What do you mean? I thought it was Eva who held Sam at arm’s length?”

“I think she cared more for him than she admitted.”

“And you,” I asked. “Were you invited to the dances?”

“Of course. I didn’t miss any of them. After all, I was Eden’s best friend.”

“So how do you think Eva’s body ended up in your best friend’s attic?”

He blanched. “How would I know? I can tell you this, though. It certainly didn’t involve Eden. He was long gone by then.”

He shot me a large smile. “Now, what kind of insurance do you need? I do it all. Home. Auto. LIfe.”