Authors: Leslie Meier

Valentine Murder (7 page)

BOOK: Valentine Murder

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“Me? No way. I've got a jar at home I put all my spare change in. Last year I had enough to buy a new sofa.”

“You're a smart girl.”

“Yeah, too smart to stay in this job. I've got my name in at the bank. As soon as there's an opening, I'm outta here.” The bell jangled and she turned to help a customer.

“Thanks for all your help,” said Lucy, concluding the interview so Lois could get back to work. “Good luck with the bank job.”

“Hey,” said Lois, turning to tear off a handful of scratch tickets. “You make your own luck, know what I mean?”

Lucy gave her notebook a satisfied little pat as she left the store. Thanks to Lois she had gotten some good quotes she could use in her story. She'd love to talk to the owner, George, to find out exactly how much of his business came from the lottery but doubted he'd cooperate. In her experience, small-business owners tended to be close-mouthed when it came to facts and figures.

She climbed in the car and started the engine. If only she knew someone who was a compulsive gambler, she thought, or a recovered compulsive gambler. That would give the story a face, someone the readers could identify with.

At least she had a good start, she thought, backing the car around and turning onto Main Street. The next step was to get some information from the lottery commission. But before she tackled that, she wanted to pay a little visit to Miss Tilley.

It was the least she could decently do, she rationalized. After all, she had been friends with the former librarian ever since she and Bill first moved to Tinker's Cove nearly twenty years ago. Furthermore, both she and Miss Tilley were members of the library board of directors. Paying a visit to a fragile and elderly colleague who was undoubtedly distressed by this violent turn of events could hardly be construed as attempting to investigate Bitsy's murder.

“I suppose you're investigating Bitsy's murder,” said Miss Tilley, when Rachel Goodman admitted Lucy to the little antique Cape Cod house. Rachel worked mornings for Miss Tilley, taking care of the housekeeping and laundry and preparing a substantial midday meal for her.

“Can you stay for lunch?” asked Rachel. “I'm making fish chowder.” Rachel's son Richie was good friends with Toby, and she and Lucy were well acquainted.

“It smells delicious,” said Lucy, inhaling the rich fragrance. She guessed that Rachel would welcome some relief from Miss Tilley. “But I can only stay for an hour or so. I have to pick up Zoe at twelve.”

“How about some tea, then?” offered Rachel, taking Lucy's coat.

“I'd love it. Thanks.”

“Sit right down,” invited Miss Tilley, who was ensconced in her favorite wing chair by the fireplace. She made a cozy picture, sitting beside the glowing fire with a colorful crocheted afghan warming her legs. “It's about time you got here. You have to get to the bottom of this.”

“I've been told not to meddle,” Lucy informed her dutifully. “Lieutenant Horowitz doesn't want me interfering in his investigation.”

“Nonsense. You're in a far better position to discover who killed Bitsy than anyone else.”

“I don't know about that,” demurred Lucy, taking the tea from Rachel.

“I have work to do in the kitchen, so I'll leave you two to visit,” said Rachel. A cloud seemed to pass over her usually sunny face. “It's just awful about Bitsy. I can hardly believe it really happened.” She dabbed at her nose with a tissue and returned to the kitchen.

“I can believe it,” said Miss Tilley. “I would have liked to strangle her a few times myself.”

“Well, thinking about it and actually doing it are two separate things. There are times when we'd all like to do away with someone . . .”

“Bitsy asked for it,” said Miss Tilley, smoothing the afghan with gnarled fingers. “Right from day one.”

“I'm really surprised to hear you say that,” said Lucy. “I always thought she did a great job.”

Miss Tilley threw up her hands in disgust. “Hardly. She was so disorganized. It was a scandal. Things were always such a mess.”

“Her style was different from yours, but you have to admit that she did some good things.” Lucy wanted to say that Bitsy was friendly and welcoming, but was afraid Miss Tilley would be insulted. “A lot of people liked the way she ran thingsâmore people than ever were using the library.”

“Oh, she was Miss Nicey-nice to the patrons, I'll give you that. Never bothered with overdue fines, never even made the children wash their hands before they handled the books.”

Lucy couldn't help smiling. She knew a lot of Tinker's Cove natives remembered Miss Tilley's insistence that they wash their “little finger bones” as soon as they entered the library.

“I know people think it was silly, but the library has always had a limited budget,” continued Miss Tilley. “Making the children wash their hands saved quite a bit of wear and tear on expensive books. But that's neither here nor there.” She waved her blue-veined hand back and forth. “The point I was trying to make is that she talked about people behind their backs.”

“You're not the first person I've heard say that.”

“Oh, yes,” nodded Miss Tilley. “For instance, if you took out a book on, oh, say sexual dysfunction, Bitsy would notice. And she'd talk about it. She'd mention it to the next person who came along, and the next. And each time she'd embellish it. First it would be âGuess who took out a book on sexual dysfunction.' Then it would be âI guess Lucy Stone is having some problems with Bill'. Before the day was out she'd have you considering divorce because you and Bill were sexually incompatible!”

“Did she really say those things about me?” said Lucy, feeling rather sick.

“Oh, I don't know. I was just using you as an example.” She took a sip of tea and looked at Lucy over her teacup. “But I don't see why not you, too. She talked about everybody.”

“After Zoe was born I took out a book on abnormal psychology and she asked me if I was suffering from post-partum depression,” recalled Lucy.

“I heard about that,” volunteered Rachel, returning with the teapot.

“I never had post-partum depression!” exclaimed Lucy.

“Everybody thought you did,” said Rachel. “I was so relieved when I saw you'd gotten over it.”

“I never had it,” insisted Lucy.

“Okay. I believe you,” Rachel said diplomatically. “More tea?”

“No, thanks,” said Lucy, furrowing her brow thoughtfully. “I don't knowâthis seems kind of a stretch. What kind of secret could she have found out that would be damaging enough that somebody would have to kill her? Besides, she's done a lot of good. Just look at the new additionâthat would never have happened without Bitsy.”

“That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard, Lucy Stone!” Miss Tilley was quivering with rage. “That is absolutely untrue! I don't know where you got an idea like that! The board decided to build the addition, and the board raised the money. Bitsy had nothing to do with it!”

“I'm sorry,” said Lucy, hastening to make amends. “I must have misunderstood.”

“You certainly did. In fact, all Bitsy contributed to the fund-raising effort were some harebrained ideas. She proposed using the endowment fund, said it was too little money to bother about keeping, and she even suggested we sell Josiah's Tankard to buy computers. As if computers will ever replace books! But she wouldn't hear itâall she ever talked about was computer-this and computer-that! I don't know what people see in those newfangled machines anyway.”

Lucy thought of her struggle to disengage Zoe from the computer earlier that morning and smiled. “They're certainly not all they're cracked up to be. Sometimes they're more trouble than they're worth.”

“My thoughts exactly,” said Miss Tilley. “And most of the board members agreed with me.”

“So Bitsy was out of favor with the board?”

“She certainly was. In fact, I had suggested taking steps toward dismissing her. It's tricky these days, you know. People sue for wrongful dismissal. Chuck told us we had to be very careful and begin documenting all the reasons why we were unhappy with her.” She paused and smacked her lips. “Now we won't have to bother with all that. Looks like whoever killed that creature did the board a big favor.”

“That's a terrible thing to say.” Lucy was truly shocked. “Maybe you didn't like her, but she didn't deserve to die!” She paused a moment. “And she wasn't a âcreature'âshe was a person.”

“I have a right to my opinion,” the old woman said stubbornly. “And I can call her a creature if I want to.”

“Well, not to me, you can't,” said Lucy. She was appalled at her old friend's attitude. She got to her feet and placed her cup and saucer on Miss Tilley's antique tavern table, then looked straight at the old woman. “You're really going too far. I'm not going to listen to talk like this.”

Rachel, who had overheard them in the kitchen, hurried out and got Lucy's coat out of the closet. She held it up and whispered in Lucy's ear as she slipped her arms into the sleeves.

“Don't pay any mind when she says things like thatâshe's just getting old and she doesn't like it.”

Lucy squeezed Rachel's hand. “You're a saint to put up with an old witch like her,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. “Thanks for the tea.”

From the doorway, Rachel called after her, “Take it easy, Lucy.”

As she walked to the car, Lucy heard Miss Tilley's quavering voice.

“I don't know what she's got so high and mighty about!” she declared as Rachel closed the door.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Three little kittens,
They lost their mittens,
And they began to cry . . .

T
he snow squalls had stopped when Lucy left Miss Tilley's, and the sun was making a half-hearted attempt to break through the clouds. It didn't look as if it had much of a chance, Lucy thought glumly; the slim opening between the clouds was getting narrower by the minute. She shivered and pulled her hat down over her ears and got in the car.

She turned the key in the ignition and pushed the heater controls up to maximum. Then she pulled away from the curb, neglecting to check for traffic. The loud honk of a horn as a pickup truck swerved to avoid the Subaru made her jump.

Why am I so upset, she asked herself as she carefully checked her mirrors. Driving slowly along the snow-packed road, she wondered why she had found Miss Tilley's attitude so disturbing. She hadn't been especially good friends with Bitsy, after all, and Bitsy certainly hadn't minded spreading rumors about her. Still, she couldn't help but be saddened by her death. It was horrible and shocking, but, she realized, dwelling on it wasn't getting her anywhere. She had a few minutes before she had to pick up Zoe, so she decided to stop at the IGA.

The automatic door opened for her and she took a shopping cart. The fluorescent lights made the aging store look dreary; it was nothing like the shiny new superstore that had opened out on the Interstate. Nevertheless, it offered a change from the gray monotony of winter in Maine.

Lucy stopped at the magazine rack and leafed through one of the women's magazines but decided she didn't want to get organized and wasn't interested in perking up her wardrobe or spicing up favorite family meals. What she really wanted to know was who killed Bitsy, and why, information she wasn't going to find in
Family Circle
. She replaced the magazine and slowly pushed the cart along, pausing at the meagre display of fresh flowers and potted plants.

Why didn't they ever have anything but those ghastly carnations? The red color was an unpleasant reminder of Bitsy's blood, spreading out on the gray industrial tile of the workroom. She picked up a little polka-dot plant in a pink pot and examined it; it didn't look worth three ninety-nine so she put it back.

Dispirited, she pushed on to the produce department, wishing that she hadn't gotten so angry at Miss Tilley. She shouldn't have reacted the way she did; half of what Miss Tilley said was for effect. She loved to shock people, and she had certainly succeeded this morning. Lucy had found the old woman's callousness toward Bitsy's death shocking, but sometimes it seemed to her that old people didn't react in quite the same way to death as younger people. She remembered her own grandfather checking the obituaries every morning and his satisfaction when he occasionally discovered he'd outlived a younger acquaintance.

“Never touched a drop and wouldn't eat red meat,” he'd comment. “Didn't do him much good, did it?”

She smiled to herself, remembering a spry old fellow in a plaid flannel shirt neatly topped with a bow tie, and khaki pants held up by suspenders. He certainly enjoyed an occasional glass of whiskey, and insisted on meat and potatoes for dinner every night. Grandma's occasional experiments with spaghetti and Spanish rice had not been successful. He had lived to be eighty-five even though he never ate a raw vegetable and considered fruit unfit for human consumption unless it was baked inside a pie crust.

Lucy reached for a bag of oranges and, on further consideration, added a bag of grapefruit. Even if the board members had favored Bitsy, she thought, they would have been thoroughly dismayed by her proposal to sell Josiah's Tankard. An idea like that would have lost her some friends, that was for sure.

She stopped, resting her forearms on the handle of the cart, and considered a display of cereal. Now that she'd had time to think it over, Miss Tilley's attitude toward Bitsy wasn't really all that surprising. Miss Tilley had devoted her life to the library; she had worked there for fifty years or more. It was much more than a job to her. The library contained everything she held dearest in life, including Josiah's Tankard. She must have been deeply hurt when she was forced to retire and her job was given to Bitsy. And it certainly didn't help matters that Bitsy's attitudes were so radically different from hers.

If Miss Tilley was entitled to dislike Bitsy, if she regarded her as an enemy, Lucy guessed she couldn't blame her for taking some satisfaction in her demise. Putting it that way made it seem better, she decided. “Demise” was a much nicer word than “murder”.

Miss Tilley was just reacting in a very human way. Queen Elizabeth I probably indulged in a chuckle or two when she succeeded in detaching Mary, Queen of Scots' head from her neck.

And besides, she was never going to get to the bottom of this without Miss Tilley's help, she decided. Miss Tilley knew everything about everybody in town, and who had what skeletons hidden in which closet. She also knew a lot about Bitsy, even though that knowledge was tainted with disapproval. There was no way around it, Lucy concluded, pushing the cart to the check-out: she was going to have to apologize to Miss Tilley.

As she stood in line, Lucy regarded the woman in front of her. She was wearing a bright pink parka that certainly didn't complement her green-and-brown plaid polyester pants.

“Mrs. Withers!” exclaimed Lucy.

“Yes?” The woman turned, revealing a round face with narrow lips, brightly outlined in fuchsia lipstick.

“You don't know me,” began Lucy. “I'm Lucy Stone. I was the one who found Bitsy Howell yesterday.”

“The police said she was shot.” Mrs. Withers looked doubtful.

“That so?”

“Oh, yes.” Lucy nodded. “Do you have any idea who might have done it? Did she have a fight with her boyfriend or anything like that?”

“Not likely. She didn't have no boyfriend. No friends at all, far as I could tell. Kept herself to herself.” Mrs. Withers began unloading her cart onto the check-out conveyer.

“That was a terrible thing,” added Dot, the cashier.

“It's really quite a loss for me,” confessed Mrs. Withers sadly.

“You were close?” inquired Lucy.

“She was my tenant.” Mrs. Withers's penciled eyebrows shot up. “The police have sealed the apartment! I don't know when I'm going to be able to move out her stuff and get it rented again.”

“That's just normal procedure,” said Dot, ringing up a box of cookies.

“What will happen to her things?” asked Lucy.

“I spoke to her family, in New York someplace. I asked when they were coming and what to do with it all, and you know what they said? They said just give it all to the Salvation Army!”

“Everything?” Lucy was shocked.

“Everything! Imagine that.” Mrs. Withers's numerous chins quivered in indignation.

“Don't they want anything of hers? Something to remember her by?” asked Dot. “That'll be eight dollars and sixteen cents.”

“Not a thingâsaid I should just get rid of it all,” said Mrs. Withers, pulling her wallet out of her imitation leather purse. “Doesn't seem like they've got much family feeling, if you ask me.”

“Poor Bitsy,” sighed Lucy, reaching into her basket for the bag of oranges.

Back in the Subaru, driving down Main Street on her way to Kiddie Kollege, Lucy passed Hayden's antique shop, Northcross and Love. In the window she noticed a tavern table, similar to Miss Tilley's, with a couple of pewter tankards displayed on it. That was an idea, she thought. Miss Tilley might enjoy having a tankard similar to Josiah's Tankard. Of course, she couldn't afford one as old and valuable as Josiah's Tankard but she might find something that was less expensive. Even a reproduction. She resolved to come back to the shop when she had more time.

When she and Zoe got home, Lucy cut up some of the oranges and grapefruit and sprinkled a little dried coconut on top.

“It's called âambrosia',” she told Zoe.

Starved for vitamin C and sunshine, the two of them finished the entire bowl. Then Zoe scampered off to the family room, and Lucy got out her gambling notes. She put in a call to the state lottery commission for information and learned most of what she wanted was on the commission's website. Then she made a second call and left a message with Gamblers Anonymous. After that she called Ted to discuss the illustration for the story.

“We need some good art,” she told him. “I was thinking of a photograph of discarded lottery tickets in a parking lot or something.”

“I'll see what I can come up with,” he said. “Any luck getting some quotes from a problem gambler?”

“I've got a call in to Gamblers Anonymous, and I'm waiting for some info from the lottery commission. It's coming along. It would be a lot easier if I knew a compulsive gambler.” She paused and studied the dirty lunch dishes that were still on the kitchen table. “What have you heard about the murder?”

“Not much. They're keeping a particularly tight lid on this one.”

“Anything about the funeral arrangements?”

“Her family's made arrangements to have her cremated. There'll be a memorial service at a later date.”

“That's about what I expected.”

“Is the library board going to do anything?”

“I don't think so,” said Lucy. “What I hear is that the board members weren't happy with Bitsy and at least some of them wanted to fire her.”

“Bitsy?” Ted was astonished.

“I was surprised, too. I thought everybody loved her.” Lucy heard the school bus, down at the bottom of the hill. “I've got to goâthe kids are home. But you know, I heard something funny today, and it might be a motive for whoever killed her. It seems that Bitsy liked to gossip about the books people took out of the library. You know, like if you took out a book about alcoholism she would start telling other people.”

“So what?”

“Well, from what I heard, she would start with the fact that you borrowed the book but pretty soon you would be a full-fledged alcoholic.”

“Oh,” said Ted, grasping the possibilities. “That would be a very dangerous thing to do in a town like this.”

“I know,” agreed Lucy as the kitchen door flew open and the kids blew in. “ 'Bye.”

She hung up the receiver and faced her offspring, a nononsense expression on her face.

“Boots on the newspaper under the radiator, please. Coats on hooks. Bookbags, well, anywhere except the kitchen floor. Got it?”

“Aye, aye!” said Toby, giving her a mock salute.

“Unnnh!” grunted Sara, tugging at her boots without bothering to untie them.

“You'd think we were idiots,” grumbled Elizabeth. “It isn't as if we didn't know to hang up our coats.”

Lucy decided to let that one go and started putting the lunch dishes in the dishwasher. The kitchen gradually emptied as the older kids finished taking off their snow gear, and Zoe appeared in the doorway.

“Toby made me stop playing computer,” she complained.

“Well, you've been playing for hours. It's time to give somebody else a turn. Why not help me make some fruity Jell-O for dessert?”

After they had finished filling a mold with lemon-flavored gelatine studded with orange pieces, Lucy decided to see if one of the kids would help her access the lottery commission on the computer.

When she went into the family room, she found Toby, Elizabeth, and Sara huddled together over the keyboard. For once, they weren't fightingâwhatever they were looking at was equally fascinating to all three. Lucy stood behind them and peered over their shoulders, but all she saw was line after line of text.

“Type in: I'm 18, I have long blond hair, and I have a 36-inch bust,” prompted Elizabeth.

“Better make it 39 inches,” said Toby, prompting peals of giggles from the girls.

Wow!
appeared on the screen.
I'd reelly like to meet you.

“Stop it!” exclaimed Lucy. “He's probably some pervert.”

“Mom, he's just some hopeless computer nerd in Chicago or somewhere,” said Elizabeth with a toss of her short, black bangs.

“It's fun to get him going.”

“He thinks we're a gorgeous blonde,” said Sara, giggling.

“Well what if he finds out our address or something? He might even come hereâwhat about that?”

“The only address he knows us by is B.Boobs.” Toby was laughing.

“Are you sure?” Lucy was suspicious. “He doesn't know where we live?”

BOOK: Valentine Murder

4.47Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub