On the Rocks: A Willa Cather and Edith Lewis Mystery (9 page)

Daggett had already been through Mr. Brown’s room once the night before, when he had set the large brown leather suitcase on the luggage rack and pried its lock. The smaller case still lay open on the bed where Mr. Brown had placed it. There were no name tags and neither bag was packed full.

Daggett went through them again, beginning with the smaller case, taking everything out just as he found it. One copy of the book all the tourists were reading this season,
All Quiet on the Western Front.
One black leather notebook, its blue-lined pages entirely clean, a freshly sharpened pencil tucked into a pencil fastener inside. A small case containing shaving equipment and toiletries with nothing unusual. No prescription drugs, no wrist watch, no rings, either here or on the body. Daggett had recovered an Elgin pocket watch, a pair of gold cuff links, and a black leather belt from the body, all without peculiarity. Two garters and four pairs of socks, two black, two navy blue. One pair of cream colored pajamas. Four pairs of cotton underwear, one bow tie, and two linen handkerchiefs with
JBT
embroidered in the corner.

The larger case held one maroon bathrobe of good quality silk. One pair of leather slippers, their tan doeskin uncreased, heels unworn. Three starched shirts, white with French cuffs, still in their wrappings from Chin’s Chinese Laundry, 148 W. 13th Street, New Bedford, Massachusetts. One light wool plaid shirt and one sweater, a navy blue pullover, both from Abercrombie and Fitch in New York City. One pair of navy blue knickers. And one three-piece suit, a fine light gabardine, also navy blue, with Marvin Gates, Boston’s Finest Tailor, For
JBT
, embroidered on the label.

Daggett had already jotted down the numbers and names on the labels and laundry wrappers the night before and sent telegrams to the police in New York City, Boston, and New Bedford, asking for help in tracking down information about John T. Brown. Now he ran his hands over each piece of clothing to make sure he was missing nothing and then felt carefully around the inside of each bag, making small slits in their bottoms to check the linings. Nothing he hadn’t already seen made itself evident.

The room, too, was empty of new clues. Daggett shook his head. He’d gotten various descriptions of Mr. Brown, ranging from blue eyed and tall to green eyed and medium height, but Daggett had never seen the man, only his mutilated body. The body carried no pictures or identification. What had happened to the personal effects on Mr. Brown’s body, Daggett wondered and reached for his pipe. The key to his suitcase, for instance. And if Mr. Brown’s death had involved robbery, why hadn’t the killer taken the twelve American dollars from Mr. Brown’s pocket?

Nothing about this case made sense. Daggett tamped tobacco into his pipe and sat down in the room’s solitary chair, a hickory rocker with a yellow quilted cushion. The rocker was deep and made a pleasant creak with each forward roll. Daggett rested his head against its tall back. So far, the only hints that this was a murder case were the lack of identification on Mr. Brown’s body and the red-shirted figure that Miss Lewis had seen. Of course, Brown’s identification could have been lost in his fall. And so far, the red shirt implicated only one person, Sabra Jane Briggs.

Daggett closed his eyes. The bowl of his pipe felt smooth against his palm. He cradled it there. As soon as he asked Miss Briggs about the red shirt, she told him to make himself comfortable while she went to get it. Most of her lodgers were off for a day’s hike to Hay Point, but there were still five women in the sitting room, four playing bridge, the fifth reading a rumpled copy of
The New York Times.

“It’s like avoiding the bends,” Dottie Voorhees grinned, introducing herself. Miss Voorhees had deep dimples and eyes that laughed with her lips. “Have to come up slow. Takes at least a week for your head to leave New York and a good week more before you can give up the
Times.
”

When Daggett noticed a button missing from the left sleeve of Miss Briggs’ shirt, she said, yes, it had come off while she was hauling rocks around the previous afternoon. She had not been able to find the button and had worn the shirt with her sleeves rolled up. She offered to send the shirt back with Daggett if that would be helpful. After a moment’s hesitation he told her he thought that would not be necessary. But he also asked her not to sew on another button just yet.

It had taken several promptings before Miss Briggs recalled speaking with Mr. Brown. At first she protested she never met the man. But as she recounted her activities of the previous afternoon, at Daggett’s request, she recalled greeting a stranger in a pin-striped suit. Oh, she said, yes. A well-groomed man with hazel eyes and an odd manner of glancing off to the side when he spoke. Yes, she remembered she had given him the time of day. Literally. He had pulled a watch out of his pocket and set it.

It was 3:48, that’s what it was. Miss Briggs’ eyes focused somewhere beyond Daggett, her brow furrowed. Yes, she remembered she had been just about to put her parcels in the Reo and start home. She had spent the earlier part of the afternoon at Whale Cove with Miss Cather and Miss Lewis. They were building an herb rock garden behind their cottage. And before Daggett could express interest, she took him by the arm and led him out the back door of the big house to show him the rock garden she built for herself. Daggett didn’t mind. The farm that was now The Anchorage had once belonged to his uncle Jerome, and Daggett was curious to see the improvements Miss Briggs had made.

Before Daggett left, Miss Voorhees ran out after them to issue a special invitation to their theatricals the following Saturday evening. Miss Briggs was to play Brunnhilde, Miss Voorhees announced and clapped her on the back. And Miss Voorhees was to play a Valkyrie. Call me Voorhees the Viking, Miss Voorhees roared, and rolling her shoulders forward and placing a fist on each hip she began to swagger around the apple tree in front of the big house. Daggett drove off promising nothing.

The Cottage Girls gave theatricals, too. Daggett’s wife had been once, his daughter twice. It was something to do and preferable, Daggett thought, to the moving picture shows at the Happy Hour Theatre. The movies had been installed, like the tennis courts and motor boat rides, to entertain the tourists, but they dazzled islanders, too. None more than his daughter until she saw the Cottage Girls perform
Jane Eyre.
Jennifer thought their costumes were lovely and said so for days. Miss Bromhall was beautiful and Miss Cobus so handsome, Jennifer’s eyes sparkled. Elizabeth said she thought perhaps the Cottage Girls were not the best influence on their daughter, but Jennifer and her best friend Alice Bright had gone on to play
Jane Eyre
for months until finally they read the book and announced that Rochester wasn’t so wonderful after all. Daggett wasn’t sure what they played now. They spent much of their time out of doors in the summer.

Daggett stopped the rocker. This was no help. He couldn’t even keep his mind on the crime. The room was quiet and orderly, its pale yellows restful, but something very disorderly had happened to its occupant, and it was up to Daggett to figure out just what that was and who was responsible. He hadn’t a clue.

What did he know about murder and murderers in any event? The rocker creaked again. He could never understand why some people chose to steal from other people, or drink more than they should, or hit one another. It’s God’s will, some people said, like war or pestilence. Other people said it was part of man’s nature. But what did that mean, for heaven’s sake? Daggett had sworn to keep the peace. His duty was to maintain law and order. That meant keeping people out of trouble. Well, he had failed. Or they had.

W
ILLA TOOK
E
DITH
’
S
hand to help her over a large fallen log, then held it for a moment, drawing her attention to their surroundings.

“Can this be the way they came, do you think?”

It was doubtful, Edith thought, but still possible. The log made negotiating the trail difficult, and once they were on the other side, the trail seemed to disappear altogether. Of course, this sort of thing happened all the time in the woods. Storms and high winds often rearranged the trees, fooling even hikers who knew the trails well. Willa and Edith long ago developed a routine for these occasions, the one behind stopping at the point where they lost the trail, while the other one scouted out and around. One opening in the trees looked very like another, the light slanting in the same direction, wildflowers blooming in similar clusters beneath the pines and scrub oak.

“No sign of twigs broken or undergrowth disturbed and no sign of the trail on this side,” Willa called far off to the left.

The noise from the brook had grown loud or soft as the trail approached and drifted away. Now its sound had almost disappeared with the trail. Willa and Edith were heading inland toward the road, the brook on their right. They had crossed it twice. Edith sat down on the log. Her left shoestring was untied. She glanced back in the direction they had just come. The trail was fairly evident there, so perhaps someone coming in from the road would not have missed it. Edith knew from experience that this was the best of numerous trails leading inland from the waterfall. They had taken it before, several times, stopping for picnics along the way. The brook afforded countless picnic spots and swimming holes. Dipping pools, Edith corrected herself. Even though Cobus built new dams every spring, none of them were large enough for an actual swim, and the water in the brook was generally too cool for anyone to linger.

Eel Brook

Refreshing, Cobus called it. Edith chuckled. Willa’s niece was shocked the first summer she visited.

“Those ladies just took off all their clothes in broad daylight and jumped in the water,” Mary Virginia’s voice rose almost to a squeal. “I didn’t know what to do. So I did it, too.”

Willa laughed and laughed.

“That’s just Cobus,” Edith finally intervened. “Cobus thinks it’s healthful to bathe where the water is bracing.”

“Yes,” Mary Virginia said slowly, then glanced at Willa, whose efforts to contain her laughter were beginning to appear painful, “I expect it is.”

“You did exactly the right thing,” Willa finally managed to say, “though heaven only knows how you came by such good sense.”

Willa put an arm around her niece’s shoulders and hugged her close to make sure Mary Virginia understood just how good she had been. Thirteen was a difficult age. “You should have seen your mother the time we took her with us to the Wind Mountains. Horrified, all the time, horrified.”

Edith smiled at the way Willa pantomimed Jessica’s horror and at her own first response to the Wind Mountains. Edith and Willa discovered Wyoming and the Wind Mountains at different times, but all Nebraskans eventually went west for camping and east for culture. Edith fell in love with the mountains the moment she arrived, but Willa’s sister Jessica, who was the same age as Edith, paid more attention to her own appearance than she did to the world around her. Jessica despised the mountains and hated tents.

“Animals, she called us. Animals. And she called your uncle Douglass a he-goat.” Willa threw back her head to bray like a donkey, “He-goat. He-goat.”

At that Mary Virginia, Edith, and Willa caught the giggles and Willa was unable to continue until tears streamed from her eyes.

“That’s when your uncle Douglass called your mother Jessicass,” another wave of laughter bubbled over, “and the name stuck,” Willa wiped her eyes.

Mary Virginia’s lips formed a large O.

“Oh, she hated the name. And she hated us,” Willa threw her hand to her forehead to assume the pose of Patience Betrayed.

“From then on Jessica was Jessicass, and Douglass was Billy Goat Gruff. And I tried out for the role of the Troll,” Willa’s grin deepened and she contorted her face and swung her arms and gallumphed several steps backward.

When their laughter subsided and Willa straightened up and shed her silly Troll grin, Mary Virginia was sitting on the ground where the giggles had dropped her, her arms draped across her body, still holding her sides.