The Mournful Teddy (21 page)

She had a round cheerful face, Delft china-blue eyes, plump pink cheeks, and a curly corona of glossy white hair. Other than the fact she was in a wheelchair, the only evidence of the stroke she’d suffered was an opaque plastic support brace that was tucked inside of her sensible left shoe and Velcro-strapped to her left calf. She wore a sweet, matronly pink dress and a tiny gold cross on a matching modest chain around her neck. The only props omitted in this archetypal grandmotherly persona were oven mitts and a metal baking sheet loaded down with oatmeal cookies.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Lyon. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. Please, sit back down.” Her voice was a strong contralto and although she was a Southerner, the accent struck me as sounding contrived. It was over the top—too musical and way too much Vivian Leigh
Oh-Rhett-whatever-shall-become-of-me?

“Thank you for seeing me.” I sat down.

“Meredith tells me that you may have some bad news about my nephew.” Miss Ewell glanced backwards at Meredith, who was standing behind the wheelchair.

“Honey, please sit down. You aren’t a servant.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Meredith looked a little surprised and sat down.

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Miss Ewell nodded at me to begin. I said, “Before I get started, I have to explain a few things. I used to work for the San Francisco Police Department as a homicide inspector, but my wife and I moved here a few months ago. You may have known my wife when she was young.

Her name is Ashleigh and her maiden name was Remmelkemp.”

“Of course. Laurence’s daughter. I’m certain they’ve told you just dreadful things about me.”

“Actually, Lolly’s never said a word to me about you.

Ash, on the other hand, loathes you.” I thought it wouldn’t hurt to find out sooner rather than later how she was going to react to unpleasant truths.

Meredith blinked nervously while Miss Ewell looked a little sad. “I suppose that’s understandable. She was very young when that unfortunate dispute over the land occurred and didn’t realize that it wasn’t personal—just business.”

“Children often have a great deal of trouble telling the difference between grand larceny and business.” I tried my best to sound reflective and not sarcastic.

Furthermore, I was fascinated with Ewell’s behavior.

If someone came to my house hinting at possessing bad news about a relative who’d disappeared while in the possession of an item of great value, we wouldn’t have sat and chitchatted about what other people thought of me.

We’d have gotten to the point immediately. It was possible this was an insight into how Ewell viewed herself and other people. On the other hand, it was also likely she assumed I bore terrible tidings and might have been trying to delay delivery of the news—I’d encountered that too. I didn’t know quite what to make of her yet, but I hoped to have a better idea in a moment.

I continued, “But, to get back to the reason for my visit.

Yesterday morning I found a dead man in the river near our house.”

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John J. Lamb

“We heard something about that after church today, Miss Ewell.”

“Hush, dear. Let the inspector talk.”

“Well, there’s no good way to say this, but I’m almost one-hundred-percent certain it’s your nephew.”

I’ve always hated making death notifications to next-of-kin. It’s almost always the same: You break the terrible news and there’s a second or two of tense silence not unlike the reaction of a stunned victim to an ugly practical joke. Both women’s faces revealed shock and then the customary swift denial.

Ewell said, “That can’t be. Are you sure?”

“I watched the body being pulled from the river. I’m as sure as I can be . . . under the circumstances.”

“Under
what
circumstances?”

“Before we get to that, I’d like to describe the man, just to make sure that we’re talking about the same person. He was about five-five, maybe thirty-five years old, thin build, had a shaved head, with a moustache and goatee. He was wearing jeans, an orange tee-shirt, a leather jacket, and tennis shoes.”

“Oh my God,” moaned Miss Ewell and she reached out for Meredith’s hand.

“I’m genuinely sorry for your loss and that you had to learn about it this way.”

“How? What was he doing in the river?” Ewell began to cry.

“Forgive me, but some of the things I have to say now are going to be graphic and probably very upsetting. Your nephew was in the river because someone threw his body in there. But he wasn’t drowned, he was strangled.”

“Oh my God, oh my God!” Ewell wailed.

Meredith wore a look of sick shock. “But the people at church told me that the sheriff said the man had drowned.”

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“The sheriff was lying and we’ll get into his reasons for that in a little bit. But right now, I’d like to ask some other questions first, if you’re up to it.” Ewell seemed to gather herself up and nodded in assent. I continued, “On Saturday morning you knew he was missing. If you don’t mind me asking, why didn’t you call the sheriff when Robert disappeared with the Mourning Bear?”

“Robert’s been in his share of trouble over the years and I was just hoping . . .” Her voice trailed off and her body was wracked with a fresh spasm of pathetic sobs.

After a few moments, she caught her breath and said,

“Meredith, will you please get me a box of tissues?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Meredith slipped from the room.

I completed Ewell’s unfinished statement. “You were hoping that he hadn’t come to the point where he was going to begin victimizing you and that he’d come back.”

“That’s true.”

“Did Robert own a red Chevrolet pickup truck?”

“I bought it for him.”

Meredith returned with a box of tissue. I waited until Miss Ewell dabbed her eyes and blew her nose before I broke more bad news. “I found that truck abandoned upriver a little way. The windshield has two gouges from gunfire and there was no sign of the Mourning Bear.”

“Shot at?” squeaked Meredith.

“How do you know about the bear?” asked Ewell.

The cold incongruity of the old woman’s question caught me flatfooted. I’d just informed her that Thayer’s truck had been used for target practice and that the odds were good that the same person who’d done the shooting had also murdered her nephew. Yet for all her tears, she wasn’t as curious about that as she was the extent of my knowledge about the Mourning Bear.

I said, “My wife and I were at the teddy bear show yesterday. I happened to be talking to one of the auctioneers 180

John J. Lamb

and he told me that Robert was supposed to have delivered the Mourning Bear on Friday night.”

“You said that
you
found Robert’s truck. Why isn’t the sheriff investigating?”

“Now we come to the interesting and very confusing part of the story. I hope you’ll bear with me. When we found the body we called the rescue squad. The fireman that pulled Robert from the river was Pastor Marc Poole.”

“Pastor Marc knew he was dead? But . . . this happened yesterday morning?” Miss Ewell looked at Meredith and back at me, her moist and reddened eyes sick with betrayal. “This morning he met us at the door, when services were finished, shook my hand, and wished us a good day and he
knew.
”

“Pastor Poole didn’t give us any indication either that he knew Robert. However, I’ve since learned that they were very well acquainted.” I didn’t think it was the right time to define Poole and Thayer’s relationship as coconspirators in what was likely a statewide burglary ring.

Things were bewildering enough already.

Miss Ewell frowned and her eyes became hard. “I should say they knew each other well. What’s more, they were supposed to meet Friday night! They were going into Harrisonburg together to deliver the Mourning Bear to the auctioneer.”

“Why would they have gone together?” I kept my voice nonchalant, as if the question was of minor interest.

“Because Pastor Marc was on the board of directors for the regional charity group that set up the auction.”

“So, I guess you would have called Pastor Poole when you learned that Robert had disappeared?”

“Meredith did. When she woke me up to tell me that the young man from the auction house had come by to tell us that Robert had disappeared with the bear, I was too angry and embarrassed to talk to anyone.”

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It was another major
Twilight Zone
moment—so much so that I half expected to see Rod Serling standing in the doorway, puffing on a coffin nail and delivering an ironic prologue to this episode into which I’d wandered. If everything I’d heard about the autocratic Miss Ewell was even partially accurate, the idea of her being embarrassed to talk to anyone was far stranger than the bizarre concept that Madonna can act. I added this anomaly to the growing list of things that didn’t make any sense and asked,

“Why was that?”

“Because the biggest charity event in the Shenandoah Valley was ruined by my nephew, the thief. It was the last straw.” The flare of anger was replaced by mortification and she began to cry again. “Oh God, I’ve been thinking nothing but bad things about him ever since and all this time he’s been dead.”

I looked at Meredith. “When did you talk to Pastor Poole?”

“Yesterday around noon—right after I learned that nobody from the auction house knew where Robert was.”

“What did he say?”

“Actually, I don’t know if I should say this . . . but, he was kind of evasive.”

“He was what? Why didn’t you tell me that?” Miss Ewell peered at the younger woman accusingly over a wad of crumpled tissue.

“It was just a feeling, ma’am, and you were already so upset I couldn’t see any point in telling you.”

“What did the pastor say?” I asked.

Meredith’s gaze shifted upward and became momentarily unfocused. “Well, I told him that Robert hadn’t shown up at the teddy bear show and asked him if he’d seen Robert on Friday night, like they planned. Pastor Marc told me that Robert had called to say he was going into Harrisonburg by himself to make the delivery.”

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“But that didn’t make any sense to you, did it?”

“No, especially since when Robert left he mentioned that he didn’t know which motel to go to.” She looked at me and I saw her eyes were now rimmed with red. She continued in an acidic voice, “The last thing Pastor Marc told me was that I shouldn’t worry, Robert was fine. But if what you say is true, he must have already known Robert was dead.”

“Yeah.”

“Why would a minister of the gospel lie like that?”

“For the same reason everyone else lies. He was afraid of being caught for doing something wrong.”

“Did Pastor Marc kill my nephew?” The old woman wore an expression that was as hard and cold as the rock face of Half Dome at Yosemite in January. I realized that I’d just caught a glimpse of the real Miss Elizabeth Ewell.

“I think he’s up to no good about something—he may even know who killed Robert—but at this moment I don’t believe Poole did it.”

“Why?”

“This is going to answer your earlier question about why I’m investigating this murder and not the Sheriff ’s Department. A deputy came to our house right about the same time the rescue squad was pulling Robert’s body from the river. I saw evidence that told me Robert had been strangled and I showed it to the deputy.”

“What sort of evidence?” Meredith asked.

“How descriptive do you want me to get?” I directed the question at Ewell.

“It’s enough that you’re certain he was strangled and you are, correct?”

“There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever.”

“Please continue.”

“The deputy was ready to initiate a homicide inquiry, but was immediately stopped by Sheriff Holcombe.

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Without even looking at the body, he determined that Robert had drowned accidentally. Then he tried to feed me an unconvincing story that someone had seen your nephew jump or fall from the Island Ford Bridge.”

“That’s patently ridiculous.”

“That’s what I thought too, but when I told the sheriff that, he promised to toss me into jail if I did anything to undercut his authority.”

“Yet you proceeded with your own inquiry. Why?”

“I’ll admit part of it was ego. I don’t like being bullied and I
really
don’t like anyone threatening my wife.

Mostly, though, it was because it was just the right thing to do. Call me old-fashioned, but cops aren’t supposed to cover up murders.”

“Do you know why he was trying to conceal the true cause of Robert’s death?”

“I have a hypothesis, but before I share it, I need to ask some questions and some of them are going to be disturbing.”

Chapter 16

Miss Ewell peered out the window. “I think it’s late enough in the day for a drink, and even if it wasn’t, I need one. Inspector Lyon, you look like a Scotch-drinking man.”

I knew Ewell wasn’t scatterbrained, so this was the second time she’d deliberately tried to butter me up by using my old SFPD title. That, along with the unexpected offer of booze from a supposed belligerent teetotaler made me wonder why she was so interested in securing my goodwill. My guess was that—like a shark smelling blood in the water—she detected the opportunity to file a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the Sheriff ’s Department and realized she’d need my assistance.

Deciding to match flattery for flattery, I replied, “You’re an excellent judge of a man’s drinking habits.”

“Can I interest you in a wee dram of Lagavulin?”

“That would be wonderful.”

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A teetotaler with excellent taste in booze,
I thought.

Lagavulin was a premier single-malt Scotch whiskey and a bottle of the stuff was priced at over eighty bucks, which placed it well beyond our budget.

“Meredith, go into the library and bring the decanter and two glasses. Oh, and get yourself a soda.”

“Yes, ma’am, and I don’t need anything to drink. I’m not thirsty.” Meredith slipped from the room like a wraith.