A Most Curious Murder (7 page)

Jenny set the hatchet on the table. “Didn’t smell that coming, I’ll bet.”

Zoe’s eyebrows shot up toward the fuzzy halo that was her hair. “That’s all?”

“What’s that, dear?” Dora asked, standing to lean forward. “A hatchet? Where on earth did you get that?”

“It was buried in Adam’s yard. I’d say it hasn’t been there long.”

Zoe crawled up on her knees to see better. “Wow! Think he used it on the Little Library?”

Dora looked from one to the other. “I don’t think Adam was that evil. We knew him from the moment Jim and I first moved to town. A little odd, you might say. But that was all.” She sat down heavily. “I don’t understand anything anymore. If Adam did the Little Library in, why did somebody decide to do the same to him?”

Jenny went to call Ed Warner. If he asked how she’d found the hatchet, she decided she would just tell him the truth: hunting for Fida. Maybe Zoe could make fast and loose with reality, but Jenny wasn’t that brave.

Before she could make the call, the phone rang.

“Jenny, is that you? For goodness sakes, it’s me, Lisa.”

Lisa the Good! A voice from a different world, where all the days were sunny and all the citizens tripped merrily about their happy chores.

“I’m so glad you’re there with Mom.” Lisa’s voice went up an octave. “She told me about Dad’s library house. And now Adam Cane’s been murdered. Awful! Poor Mom. Poor Zoe. Right in her own backyard. I guess you’ve met her by now. Wonderful person. And so good with Mom.”

Jenny pushed her hair back from her face. She looked toward the ceiling.

“You there?” Lisa asked.

“Yeah, I’m here. A lot of things going on.”

“I heard. Nothing else, I hope?”

“No. Just that Mom’s really upset. I’ve only been here a couple of days, but it feels like a month.”

“Must be awful for you. You sure don’t sound good.” Lisa’s voice slid down the scale.

“I’m okay. It’s just . . . well, you know, coming home hasn’t been as restful as I expected.”

“Is Mom right there? Can you talk in front of her?”

“And Zoe, too.”

“Oh. Say hi for me.” Lisa seemed to be thinking. “You don’t have to say anything but yes or no. Is the divorce final?”

“Yes. But—”

“And you’re okay with everything?”

“Happy as a clam.”

“Okay, so did they find whoever murdered Adam Cane?”

“Not yet. It’s early.”

“How about the library mauler? They get him yet?”

“No.”

“Terrible.”

“Even worse.”

“Oh no. Not Johnny?”

“Guessed right.”

“Oh dear. How was it?”

“Like you’d imagine.”

Lisa’s voice flattened. “I’m starting to feel bad I ever suggested you go home. I thought it would do both of you—” She interrupted herself. “Bad timing, I guess.”

Lisa the Good sounded repentant. Jenny took pleasure in the rare event.

“Anyway, I called to say I’m coming home. I’m catching a plane on Sunday. I should be at Cherry Capitol about eight. Could you pick me up?”

“Sure. Mom’ll be thrilled to hear.”

She looked around at the two faces turned her way. She raised her eyebrows.

“I’m giving you to Mom.”

“Sure,” Lisa said without her usual enthusiasm.

Jenny handed the phone to Dora, who chatted merrily, so happy to soon have both her girls at home with her. “The way it used to be, Lisa. I can’t wait.”

“I’ll call Chief Warner as soon as Mom’s through,” Jenny whispered to Zoe.

Zoe wrinkled her nose. “Thanks for trying. I still don’t know . . . Guess I’ll go home and wait for a knock at the door.”

“This has nothing to do with you, Zoe.”

“You want to bet?” She slid off her chair and left with only the tiniest wave of her hand.

***

Ed Warner sent a deputy to the house to pick up the hatchet and take a brief statement. When she told him her story about looking for books—which she decided to use after all, leaving Zoe completely out of it, the deputy raised an eyebrow at her.

“You see the sign on the door over there?” the cop asked. His back stiffened as if every time an infraction of the law was mentioned, he was required to stand at attention.

“I didn’t go in the house. I was only in his backyard.”

“Looking for books?”

She nodded. Dora rolled her eyes, but he couldn’t see her.

“Yes. Adam checked out a few of Mom’s books, and we need them back.”

“Thought he hated that library.”

Jenny, thinking now what a lame excuse she’d used, smiled cheerily.

“So you were digging in Mr. Cane’s yard, searching for buried books.” He squinted down at her.

“No.” Jenny shook her head. “Not exactly. I was just looking around when I tripped and fell. All I did was check the ground to see what tripped me. I found a place where the dirt was disturbed, so I checked it out and found the hatchet.” She raised her eyebrows at the young officer.

“You didn’t go in the house, did you?”

“No. Of course not. The man next door saw me. You can ask him.”

“You mean Warren Schuler?” He nodded a time or two, wrote in his book, and stood to take a large plastic bag from his back pocket. Pulling out a handkerchief, he used it to load the hatchet into the bag.

The deputy gathered his things and left without saying much beyond wishing them a good day.

***

Back in her bedroom that night, Jenny slid both back and side windows open and sat in her window seat. The warm night air blew straight across the room, billowing the curtains and ruffling the edges of magazines she’d set on the chest of drawers.

Eventually, she got up and slipped into a pair of pajama bottoms and an old T-shirt. She pulled
Alice in Wonderland
from the bookcase where all her childhood books stood wedged together. She climbed into her bed, hoping to stay there all night, then wishing she could make herself small enough to fit in the room as she read by the dim light how Alice grew very small and then very large and discovered a group of very odd creatures.

The bed was too cramped, the nightlight too yellow—bright circles shining on the ceiling. She snapped off the light, even though she felt better with the light on, and wrapped the sheet completely around her. Finally, she gave up and trailed back to the window seat.

A dark night. She heard pine trees rustling and what she thought was the sound of Lake Michigan waves. A night bird called. Once in a while, a car drove up or down Elderberry Street.

Johnny’s face was in her head. His brown, unclipped hair hanging past his shirt collar—so different from the clean-cut guy he’d been when they made plans to marry after college. He was unshaven—all she had really seen of him during his slow move toward her. Different but familiar. There was a time when she would have run to him to feel his arms slide around her body, his chin resting on top of her head. To inhale the smell of him—mostly Dial soap and his mother’s laundry detergent.

She hadn’t dared acknowledge him there in the parking lot and didn’t dare let him get close enough to be able to see him mouth her name. Johnny had made the choice for both of them. He was Angel’s—now and forever.

She shut her eyes and let herself remember her and Johnny near the high school gym. The last month of senior year. In the fall, they’d be at Michigan State—even that was planned so they could be together. They were standing the way they often stood—with him leaning over her, hand balanced on the cinderblock wall behind her, close, as if he was going to kiss her right there in the school, three doors down from the principal’s office.

They’d made love for the first time the weekend before graduation, on the beach, just at dusk, holding each other and later laughing at the sand in their clothes.

The feeling afterward had puzzled her—not what she expected and not such a big deal after all, though he was pleased. He kept telling her how great she was and touching her and leaning in close as if he somehow owned her now.

She’d believed it. She belonged to him after that, and she had a right to hold his arm tight at her side, touch his hair whenever she wanted to, and look up at him with a smile that went so deep, she could feel it in every part of her body. Then her period had been late, and they were both scared. When it finally came, she called him with the almost disappointing news because, in a fog of romance, she’d partially moved on to the white picket fence.

A week later, her father was killed and the police searched for and failed to find whoever did it—probably a tourist or salesman passing on the way down to Traverse City, the old police chief told her mother. It was a destructive slash through their lives. Nothing was the same. Not a thought went to Johnny as
she moved into a strange world of mourning, where only Lisa, Mom, and she knew how to exist. After a solid month, she’d finally reached out to Johnny—only he didn’t return her call. She went to his house, and his sad mother said he wasn’t there—that he’d gone away with his brother, Gerry. They were in Chicago. She’d told herself it was understandable; she’d been so distant, and he was getting ready to go away to college. Why not have some fun with his brother?

Weeks passed, and when he came home again, they saw each other in the drugstore on Holly Street.

She’d asked, her hand on his arm, “Are you leaving for Lansing next week?”

“Can’t go. Mom needs me at home. Gerry moved out, you hear?”

“But . . .” She didn’t believe him. “You’ve got a scholarship. You can’t stay in Bear Falls . . .”

He’d shrugged and looked over her head at a wall of pink hairnets.

“Call me,” she whispered when she was too choked to talk anymore.

He’d nodded and walked away.

“Are we . . . ?” She called after him. “Are we still . . . together?”

Johnny, his hair already longer than before, his jeans stained at the knees, looked back, and for a moment they were the way they used to be—the same connection. The look gave her hope. Especially when he walked back and leaned down to whisper in her ear.

He said, “Angel’s pregnant.”

A piece of gossip? She’d looked up at him, wanting to laugh.

“It’s mine,” he said. Nothing showed on his face but anger.

He left her standing in the store feeling as if she would fall into one of the glass-fronted counters, feeling as if her legs were melting under her.

She called him from time to time but always hung up before the call went through. He never called her.

She heard about their wedding, and then in the months after she moved to Lansing, she heard they had a baby girl.

She married Ronald much later, after she’d graduated and had a job in Chicago. Years later, she heard Angel had another girl.

After that she stopped listening to news of Johnny Arlen.

Jenny rested her head back against the window casing. How she wished she could be like Zoe and have a fairy story to rewrite everything in life. So much easier to quote a piece of nonsense than explain how someone you thought loved you as much as you loved him could make love to another girl. So much easier to spout a nonsense riddle than to explain how that man could walk away and never explain what happened between them.

“Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.” One of Zoe’s Alice quotes.

Jenny laughed and then bit her lip. So a moral for everything.
Hogwash, Mr. Carroll
, she thought.

No moral to being dumped by Johnny Arlen. Unless it could be that the dumpables are always in danger of being dumped.

Maybe it happened so she could meet Ronald Korman, who was surely waiting patiently in line to find her.

Ah, the lesson of the lines. Ronald, waiting his turn to be the second man to dump her. All of it writ large in some book somewhere. And who would be the third? And the fourth to break the heart of the eminently dumpable Miss Jenny Weston?

A dog barked somewhere nearby.

She listened.

Another bark echoed farther down the street. Not the bark of a little dog, but she heard Zoe’s back door open.

“Fida? Fida?” Zoe called in a hopeful voice. “Is that you?”

Zoe whistled.

A few minutes later, the door closed.

“Ed Warner wants me down at the station.”

Zoe stood in their living room the next morning dressed in a jumbled outfit straight from the children’s department of a whimsical boutique: colorful animals on the shirt and trees on the mismatched shorts that fell below her knees. Her wild, uncombed hair was held back by a pink headband.

Zoe’s outfit might’ve been colorful, but her face was dead white.

“I can’t go alone.” The words were a moan. “And I can’t ask you, Dora.”

“Calm down, dear,” Dora bent to put her arm around the little woman, almost burying Zoe’s head against her breast. Dora stepped back. “Why can’t you ask me? You haven’t done anything. I’d be happy to go with you.”

“I wouldn’t put you through it.”

Dora sputtered, but Zoe looked toward Jenny. “Could you go?” she asked. “I smell the guillotine.”

Jenny rolled her eyes. “Michigan doesn’t have the death penalty, nor a guillotine.”

“You know what I mean. The first thing Ed Warner will say will be, ‘Off with her head.’ That’s what anyone would say.”

Jenny lowered her voice to a big-dog growl. “Cut it out, Zoe. You pull that stuff in front of the police chief and you’ll end up confined forever.”

Zoe had the good grace to blush. “Sorry. A bad habit. I blame Lewis Carroll. I think he gets a hold of a person’s mind and . . .”

Jenny gave her an exasperated look. “If you want me to go out in public with you, the quoting and the living a fairy tale stuff will have to stop. Understand?”

Zoe’s head drooped. She nodded. “I’ll try my best,” she promised.

Jenny took a deep breath, certain the victory would be short-lived. “Now, why does he want to see you?”

“He didn’t say.” Her voice was small.

“Okay. When does he want to see you?”

“Now. As soon as I can make it.”

“May I get dressed first?” Jenny motioned to her mismatched pajamas.

Zoe nodded. “Maybe it’s about the hatchet. I looked in my shed. Mine is still there. So it can’t be that one.”

“Let’s get to the station and find out.”

“Maybe he only needs a gardening tip or two. You have such a lovely garden,” Dora said, nodding and smiling now, hoping she’d solved the riddle of a policeman wanting to see Zoe.

Jenny threw on the clothes she’d worn the day before. Her long hair took all of thirty seconds to brush. Lipstick. Sandals from under her bed.

She drove her car because Zoe was too nervous, especially if she had to use the elevated pedals that were on hers. She swore she’d fall right off of them—she was that shaky.

***

The station was at the far end of Oak Street, a block beyond the old Cane mansion where Adam and Aaron’s sister, Abigail, lived alone in her big house, except for the people who worked there.

The house, the grandest in Bear Falls, sat atop a grassy mound—tall and rigid, built of solid limestone blocks. It stood beneath a canopy of old maples. The manicured yard bloomed with crabapples and mock orange, all surrounded by a black wrought iron fence. An arch of the same wrought iron stood above the front gate. The ornate, entwined leaves of the arch spelled out “Cane.”

“I’ve always detested that house,” Jenny said. “Looks like something out of a horror movie.”

Zoe shivered. “
Citizen Kane
.”

“Abigail must know Adam’s dead by now. I wonder what she’ll do about a funeral.”

“Humph. Throw him in the lake, I imagine. Might as well do him in all the way. Treated him badly when he was alive, I heard. Her own brother.”

“Brothers,” Jenny corrected. “She was like that to both of them. Aaron is the younger one. Both somewhere in their late sixties, older than Abigail. Before their father died, they got along okay. That’s what my mother said. I never heard much about it. Whole different generation.”

“I wonder if Aaron knows about Adam yet. He lives out in the woods somewhere, doesn’t he?”

“Abigail must have told him,” Jenny said as she pulled into the police station parking lot. “Ed Warner, if nobody else. Maybe Ed should think about that brother first when he looks for a killer. Kind of biblical: Cane and Abel. Or Cane and Cane.”

“Yup.” Zoe thumped her hands in her lap. “His brother could’ve done it to him. Or maybe Abigail. She’s maybe sixty-six or seven, only a little younger than the boys. But what she would be doing in my backyard at night, I can’t imagine. Still, anyone’s better than me.”

The red brick building bore the discrete sign “Bear Falls Police Department” affixed to one of the heavy oak doors. Jenny let Zoe go in first, waiting for the little woman to straighten her colorful top and set her shoulders straight.

***

Ed Warner, head bobbing to one side, said no when Jenny asked if she could come into his office with Zoe.

“You wait out here.” He gestured to a row of wooden chairs along one wall. “I’ll talk to you when I’m through with her.”

“She’s very nervous . . . alone,” Jenny made the mistake of saying.

Ed narrowed his eyes, first at Jenny and then at Zoe. “What’s got you so nervous, Ms. Zola? If you don’t have anything to hide, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of.”

Zoe gave Jenny a “they’re going to fry me for sure” look over her shoulder and followed the chief back to his office. Jenny sat and crossed her hands in her lap.

And waited.

A very long hour later, during which Jenny got madder and madder, they were back, with Zoe leading the way, face blank. She hurried to Jenny, putting her small hands out.

She whispered, in a stunned voice, “He says he’s got evidence. He told me not to leave town. Oh, how I wish I had a place to hide.”

The chief bent toward Jenny. “Could you come on back for a minute? Just have a question or two about the hatchet.”

Zoe worked her way up into a chair, feet not reaching the ground, and said she’d wait right there. Jenny followed Ed Warner to a large, utilitarian office with file cases lined along two walls. She took the only chair, other than the desk chair, that was in the room.

“Zoe didn’t do anything to anybody, you know.” She sat forward, signaling she wasn’t staying long.

Ed settled slowly in his chair. He sighed and gave her a rueful look.

“Don’t know much of anything yet. Got a ways to go, I’d say.” He cleared his throat and opened the folder in front of him. “You found the body. What would you say happened?”

She shrugged. “I know Zoe didn’t kill him. First of all, can you see her swinging that hoe and striking the back of Adam’s head?”

“Remember, he fell over a trip wire first. The man was flat on the ground. Anybody could’ve gotten him.” He leaned back, entwined his hands behind his head, and looked up at the ceiling. “And who else could have put that wire in her garden?”

He leaned forward to hit the floor with the legs of his chair. “But first of all, as I said before, it’s good to see you, Jenny. Been a long time. How’re you finding things back here?”

“To tell you the truth, Ed, not too good.”

He chuckled. “I understand that well enough.”

She asked about his wife, Milly Sienkievitz, and how his kids were doing. There was no rushing talk of murder, not when old friends met.

Ed launched into a five-minute monologue on his son, Wally, and his football prowess. Then there was another five minutes on Rebecca, his youngest, who was a math whiz.

Jenny answered questions about living in Chicago and then, after the proper interlude, they got down to business.

“Why did you tell Zoe not to leave town?” Jenny asked. “Sounds to me like you’re suspicious of her.”

He pulled his smile down slowly and shook his head. “Standard thing to say. I don’t want her gone until I find out for sure what happened to Adam Cane.”

Ed’s voice was slow and deliberate. “Ya know, Adam was threatening that dog of hers. Hated the dog. No reason in particular except Adam hated a lot of things.”

“Like what? Maybe that’s where you’ll find the killer.”

“Like his sister and his brother, Abigail and Aaron. Like just about every neighbor he ever had—except maybe your mom. Always said what a fine woman Dora Weston was. Talked a lot about your dad. Blamed us for not catching the guy who left him to die like that. But that’s about the only thing Adam ever felt bad about.”

“What happened when you told his sister he was dead?”

“You know Abigail. Didn’t say much. Shook her head and asked if she could see him.”

“See him? Isn’t that strange? After all the years they’ve lived in the same town and never bothered to see each other?”

“I thought it was, but the Canes are like that. Long as I can remember. All over the money. Just teaches you not to go thirsting after gold. Comes back to bite you in the—”

He cleared his throat and sat thinking. “That little friend of yours out there’s got quite a mind for investigation. She asked me about fingerprints on the metal stakes that held the trip wire. We had ’em tested in Traverse City. Told her nothing on ’em. Asked about the shoe print on the one book.” He shook his head. “Forensics lifted it, but it’s a kind of ordinary shoe. Big though. More like a boot than a tennis shoe or
anything like that. Guess your friend is cleared on the library thing, what with those little feet of hers. Then she wanted to know if I talked to the other neighbors, see if any of them had a problem with your mom’s library. Said there must be some connection—two crimes like that within a day of each other. She talk to you about that?”

Jenny shook her head, then asked, “What about Adam’s brother, Aaron? Does he know his older brother is dead?”

“Couldn’t find him. Went out to that little house of his. Had a devil of a time finding it, too. He wasn’t there. Knocked for five minutes. I’ll try again later. Can’t quite imagine Aaron killing him though. Aaron was the small one. Kind of timid. Bet if he tried anything, Adam would’ve knocked him cold.”

“Think about the way it was done, Ed. Adam was a target, stretched out on the ground. You told Zoe even she could’ve killed him that way. Same goes for Aaron.”

Jenny got up, but he stopped her.

“About that hatchet you found at Adam’s . . . Shouldn’t have touched it, you know. Fingerprints. Now the only prints we’ll get off of it are yours.”

She winced.

“I know you’re worried about your friend.” He shook his head.

“Not exactly a bosom buddy. I just met her.”

“Well, whatever. I know you don’t think she had anything to do with Adam’s death, but I just don’t see anybody else.”

She almost laughed at Ed. “Come on now. You take Zoe for a crazed criminal?”

“Seen stranger things.”

He reached into the top desk drawer and pulled out a large glassine sheet, laid it on the desk, then pushed it to Jenny. She immediately felt tricked by her laid-back classmate. When she turned the sheet around, she saw it was a letter. Typed.

“We found this in Adam Cane’s house,” Ed said, watching her closely. “Now you tell me what I should be thinking about your neighbor.”

She read,

Jenny looked up, in disbelief. “It’s typed. Anybody could have done that.”

“Who’d want to make a deal for Zoe’s dog but Zoe?”

“Come on! This is a setup.” Jenny was angry. “Everybody in this town knows the problems Zoe had with Adam Cane. I hope you aren’t taking that seriously.” She gestured toward the paper. “And Warren Schuler? Sorry, I can’t see Mr. Schuler out there in the middle of the night whacking my mother’s library with an axe. Lucky if he can find his way up and down his own steps. Did you find that axe? The one that’s supposed to belong to Warren Schuler?”

He shook his head. “But Ms. Zola was the first one who thought it was an axe used on the library. How’d she know that?”

“Even you said that’s what it was.”

He gave a slight shrug.

“This letter’s only a ploy to make Zoe look guilty. You talk to Mr. Schuler?”

“Just got back. Said he was down to Traverse City. Spent the night the library was destroyed with his son. I called his son on the way back here. Said his dad was there all right, too drunk to drive. And he never saw an axe with his dad’s initials on it.”

He reached back and scratched hard at his neck. “So you see, doesn’t look too good for your little friend.”

Exhausted from trying to follow Ed’s logic all over the place, Jenny stood to leave. “Chief, listen, your killer left that note for Adam. I’ll agree with you there. But it wasn’t Zoe Zola. First of all, it would have been better written. Second, she never would’ve said ‘urinating.’ Zoe’s a lot more direct than that. Third, none of that’s true. She doesn’t know who destroyed the library, and you said there was nothing in her shed for Adam to get.” She threw up her hands. “You believe anything you want to believe. I know she can be a big pain in the neck, but I won’t stand around while you take the easy way out and arrest Zoe for something she didn’t do. I’m not crazy about her, I’ll admit that, but I’ll get her a lawyer if I have to.”

He stood slowly, unfolding and stretching. His eyes were hard on her. “Not planning on getting in my way, are you, Jenny? I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Red faced, Jenny looked back from the doorway. “I’m going to do whatever it takes, Ed. Charging Zoe would be crazy.”

“Suit yourself. Maybe I should go a little slow. But one thing I’m not going to stand for is interference on this.” He raised his
eyebrows. “You want to think hard about that before you give me ultimatums.”

Jenny’s mouth dropped. Had she just been threatened?