MURDER TUNED IN (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 4) (7 page)

              "Can we meet for lunch?"

              These five words held great weight for Allie Griffin. She'd sat with people in various locations and had some good luck getting them to talk. But the best locations were the eateries. There was something about the comfort of food that relaxed the mind and freed it of just enough inhibition to serve the Truth.

              Angus MacFetridge agreed to the meet. She couldn’t believe it.

              She was nervous, to say the least. She'd watched the man in dictatorial action at the theater and found herself terrified by him. Here was a man who had no compunction toward destroying the hopes of vulnerable young actors. But this was the life Allie had chosen for herself. She had a job to do. For the first time in her life it seemed, she was her own person, and that simple fact both frightened and electrified her.

              The Creek Falls Café gave her the home team advantage. Everyone knew her here. She'd flirted with just about every one of the waiters, and on more than one occasion enjoyed a beverage on the house just for being the local celebrity. This latter compliment she took with all due humility. But the attention was nice.

              All her hopes were immediately dashed to the rocks when she walked in and saw Angus MacFetridge sitting in a booth surrounded by four or five waiters and waitresses, telling an animated story to their vocal delight.

              So much for the home team advantage.

              "Well would you look who's about to grace my table," he said, interrupting himself.

              Allie was greeted heartily by her café friends. She parked herself in the booth and asked for a coffee.

              "Go on," said Angus, "lest your boss suspect me of organizing you, you tip slaves."

              He smiled at Allie. "My people. All future actors. For some reason they take it upon themselves to think I possess some secret, some wizardry, that all I would have to do would be to execute some dexterous pass and,
voici
, a Broadway star fashioned from the Verdenier working class like some Disney fairytale." He opened the menu and glanced up and down at it. "It doesn’t work that way but damned if they'll ever learn. You have to be harsh, Ms. Griffin. These adorable little munchkins have no idea what it's like to be too old for Broadway. They need to hear it from someone in my position that they have no chance of ever making it. Do you know why they need to hear it? Because there are far too many actors and actresses in the world and far too few scientists and medical professionals. The real artists can’t be discouraged. They're incapable of it. But the ones who are better suited to a life of serving humanity for the greater good, better to have their false hopes crushed early. I don’t believe I've ever had the grilled eggplant panino, have you?"

              Allie Griffin had a mouthful of nothing to offer.

              Angus gave a close-mouthed smile and said, "You need not be afraid of me, Ms. Griffin. I'm a declawed kitten."

              "A rabid declawed kitten," said Allie.

              He brought forth a chesty laugh. "You've only seen me in the theater, my dear. That's my theater self. This, this humble, aging stalk of boiled celery is the true Angus MacFetridge. Now, what is it you'd like to discuss?"

              The waiter came by with Allie's coffee, took their orders, and then scurried off.

              "The phone calls."

              "Phone calls," he repeated.

              "To Tad Mills. He thinks you were threatening him. Trying to scare him or something."

              "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

              "Let me refresh your memory, Mr. MacFetridge."

              "Angus, Ms. Griffin."

              "Allie, Mr. MacFetridge. Tad Mills was receiving phone calls of a threatening nature. It seems someone had it in mind to make him think his days were numbered. A descending major scale, I believe is what they call it. One tone a day every day up until the day Sally Kane was murdered."

              The man's face had fallen. "I think you may have the wrong person. It's strange...you... Tad told you about this?"

              "He did. He told me you were after him for insulting Sally."

              A small chuckle grew in the man's chest and made its way to the top of his throat. "Sally Kane?"

              "You two had an affair, did you not?"

              "Oh, it wasn't a secret. At least I don’t think it was. We were...how do you put it? On and off. Yes, I was angry at Tad. And yes, I guess I can say it now, Sally sent those messages. I had nothing to do with them, but I knew about them. I suppose this makes me an accessory after the fact."

              "Why did she do it?"

              "Like you said: To put the fear of God into him. Sally didn’t take insults peacefully. No, she was rather like a spitting cobra who regarded an insult as a poke with a sharp stick. It's what attracted me to her. All that beauty in a fiery little package. It ignited this icy old blood of mine."

              The food arrived and they stopped talking to enjoy the first few bites of food and chat about this eatery, which they both admitted was one of the best things about Verdenier.

              "So," Allie said, "you take care of your mother?"

              He nodded at his plate. "My lot in life. I was a terrible little child. Drove her crazy. Literally."

              "I think that's part of a child's job."

              He didn’t smile. "Don’t get me wrong. She deserved much of it."

              "Listen," Allie said, fearing the conversation had taken an awkward turn, "I happen to know you're a fan of cigars."

              He looked up at her. "Who told you that?"

              "I lived with a cigar smoker for many years. I detected a whiff of it on you. Plus, your key chain has one of those cigar cutter thingies on it."

              "My key chain? But you didn’t see it."

              "Yeah, I did. When I walked in you had it on the table and then you took it off as I came to sit down."

              "You do possess a keen eye. No wonder you have the reputation you have. Your husband then, I gather, was the smoker?"

              "He's long gone, but would you believe I still have the humidor?"

              "You don’t say."

              "A little desktop thing made from Spanish cedar. There are some cigars left. I could send the whole kit 'n' caboodle to you."

              "Oh, I wouldn’t dare—"

              "It's nothing. Please, I'm over it. Things are just things. I have the memories of him. That's all I need. It's taking up space in my closet."

              "Well, I don’t know what to say."

              "I'll need your address."

              "Oh, of course."

              He took a pen from his breast pocket and grabbed a napkin.

              Right-handed.

              He handed the napkin to her.

              "Great," said Allie. "I'll send it to you this week. Hey, if you don’t mind my saying, you have the most beautiful penmanship I think I've ever seen in my life."

              "Thank Sister Agatha from St. John the Baptist elementary school for that," he said, replacing the pen in his pocket. "Don’t let these boyish looks fool you. I'm old enough to have survived the days when Catholic school nuns didn’t spare the rod. I got my knuckles cracked with a yardstick every time my cursive was uneven."

              "Yikes."

              "I once came home from school with a red hand print on my face. One of the sisters had slapped me that hard. When I got home, you know what dear old mother said? She said:
Why did you make her do that?
Pleasant woman."

              "I— I'm sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up—"

              "Please, it's all over now. Sister Agatha died years ago. I saved her obituary."

              Allie felt a more than a tinge of awkwardness, for the man's features had suddenly transformed. Here was the child before her, hurt, betrayed, and angry. His dark eyes had narrowed and his face tightened like a drum skin. There was something of the masochist in him now, seeming to revel in this revealed bit of morbidity.

              "Well," said Allie, "I guess old habits die hard."

              The man's face loosened. "Pardon?"

              "Habits? Nuns? Never mind."

              He didn’t smile "Hm. Amusing."

              "Sorry."

              "No, no, please. You are an extraordinary woman, Allie. I told you, I prefer women who have a fire in them."

              He stared right into her eyes.

              "That's why I always carry Tums," said Allie."So...how about those Patriots?"             

              It was several minutes before the awkwardness dissipated. By that time her heart had sunk a few more inches within her, weighted as it was by the increasing suspicion she had about Tad Mills.

              Several months ago, Allie Griffin had unwittingly signed up for a program with the ambiguous title of "Verdenier Roots." It was at one of the farmers' markets held every Saturday in Allen Park from May through September, rain or shine. This one particular Saturday was a busy one, for a bunch of college-aged kids with no particular collegiate affiliation had set up a booth at the very end of the line. What made these enterprising youths so distinguished in their actions was their dedication to the cause. Not content with containment inside a meager six feet by six feet of booth space, they spread like spilled beads across the whole of the park, shedding pamphlets and slogans wherever they went. A bunch of them held clipboards, and their strategy was a devilishly crafty one: A baby-faced male with clipboard in hand approached an innocent market-goer and began spouting platitudes regarding the virtues of being grass-fed and farm-raised and how GMOs caused three-headed baby lizards to storm a tiny communist village somewhere in Central America and chew up all the straw in the rooftops. At the same time, a pigtailed female clad in Daisy Dukes and tank top approached the victim with a tray featuring a delectable assortment of milky treats—yogurt-coated raisins and peanuts,
tres leches
cake glistening with sticky sugar, and so forth—and they explained that the man with the ice cream would be by in a few minutes. By this time, the mark will have already signed the clipboard, befuddled as he or she was with the onslaught of buzzwords and confectionary shrapnel. And in three weeks, the unfortunate victim would begin to receive weekly deliveries of milk at five in the morning, accompanied by a one-time delivery of a cooler to be placed as close to the most accessible door as possible, and a bill for that week's delivery (and a one-time deposit for the cooler).

              This was Verdenier Roots' devious scheme, and it worked. The beneficiary was Teller Farms on Route 5, a dairy run by folks who'd missed their true calling as Atlantic City con artists.

              And so it came to be that Allie Griffin woke up one day to a shipment of six quarts of farm-fresh milk delivered right to her door, and a bill for same in her mailbox.

              She'd decided what many in her position decided: That it was indeed for a good cause, that the idea of bringing back milk deliveries was a novel one, but that six quarts a week was probably a bit much. So she decided to keep the service just as long as they behaved themselves. And she cut down the order to two quarts and a pint of cream a week. And everyone was more or less happy.

              That was several months ago.

              This morning she lay in bed having had a great deal of trouble sleeping the night before. Dinah had kept her up half the night mewling about the change in barometric pressure, and there were thoughts swirling in her head about the situation with Tad Mills. Foggily, she made her way to the kitchen and switched on the coffee pot from the night before. She fed Dinah, gave the kitty her shot, and then went for the coffee.

              No milk.

              Of course, today was Monday—delivery day. She went to her front door and opened it to access the cooler.

              Two quarts of milk and a pint of cream, as ordered. And a folded piece of paper.

              A bill? The bills were supposed to go in the mailbox. Perhaps there was a new delivery guy, one who'd not yet picked up on the subtleties of modern day milk delivery and billing.

              She opened the bill.

              It was a typed note:

SALLY KANE HUMMED THE FIRST FOUR NOTES OF                                                                                                   BEAUTIFUL SOUP.

              She stood there in the doorway, in her flannel pajamas with the constellations on them, staring at the note. An eerie chill spilled over her arms, and it wasn't from the early morning weather. This was definitely a shade from her first case, the Tori Cardinal case. She would be a fool not to recognize the reference to
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
. The mock turtle sang that song to Alice. Beautiful Soup.

              Now here was the reference staring her in the face. The last time she'd had this happen to her, the references had led her down a false path—one intended to make her believe that it was a path that led to a solution, when in actuality it was a path leading toward her own demise. She didn’t want to make the same mistake here.

              So the first question was:
Who?

              Who sent this note?

              Unfortunately the answer wouldn’t come easily. She was now well known in town, and not just as the queen of the cougars. Thank God that reputation was beginning to die down, but it was dying down in favor of her newfound reputation as a small-town sleuth, a real-life Jessica Fletcher—albeit a younger model with stylish clothes—and that reputation carried with it a whole new set of expectations. And here now was something else she hadn't foreseen, the ability of any anonymous party to push at her pressure points. Someone, somewhere had read or seen a story about her regarding the Tori Cardinal case, and now here was a throwback.

              The Sally Kane murder had made the news, but thankfully every story had failed to mention that local hero and citizen detective Allie Griffin had been on the scene. So, barring any news of her involvement leaked by rumor alone—it was possible that people were talking—the first and most likely candidate she could think of was someone who was also present at the scene. Someone wanted her and her alone to follow a certain path.

              Again came the resolution: She was not going to make the same mistake twice.

              So who was it?

              Of course, not making the same mistake twice would be tricky. Her first instinct now was as it had been before: To solve the puzzle. Ok then, she'd solve it, but only to clear up one part of the mystery. She wouldn’t be so careless this time as to follow it blindly into any traps.

              Beautiful Soup.

              She'd taken it upon herself to invent various melodies to the tune ever since she was a little girl, until she got older and found out that the tune was intended as a parody of a ballad popular back in Lewis Carroll's day. In one of her obsessive fits to accumulate as much
Alice
paraphernalia as humanly possible, without being featured on an episode of
Hoarders
, she had obtained the sheet music to the original song the mock turtle's tune was parodying. It was called "Star of the Evening, Beautiful Star" and was composed by one James M. Sayles.

              As she'd done with any piece of flotsam she couldn’t find and had sudden need for, she figured its current whereabouts was probably the Everything Closet.

              She opened the door to the closet and sighed. She would clean it one day. One day when the planets aligned just right. But right now there was work to be done. Important work. She rummaged through, pushing aside kids’ toys and decks of cards, kitchen utensils without any purpose defined by their physical appearance, bits of mail, a microscope, and, yes, here it was, in a stack of printed-out recipes from various websites and blogs, the sheet music for "Star of the Evening, Beautiful Star."

              She needed a musician to help her decode the fly-speck notes that were spattered across the page before her. She needed Ben.

              She texted him, "
You home?
"

              A moment later: "
Yeah.
"

              She texted, "
Great I'm on my way
"

              A moment later: "
Bring cake.
"

#

              Exactly fifteen minutes later, she arrived at Ben's tiny cottage on North Street, a store-bought devil's food cake in hand.

              "Coffee's on," he said. "Oh, that's what you brought? I thought maybe you'd bake something."

              "Bake something? How would I have time?"

              "I don’t know. How long has it been since you texted you’d be over?"

              "Like, fifteen minutes."

              Ben rubbed the top of his balding scalp. "Huh. I've been working. I always lose track of time when I'm working. I'm sorry, come on in."

              The place was its usual artist's mess of a home: Music manuscript paper, both blank and filled, was scattered about here and there; the floors had not been vacuumed in days; the couch cushions were rumpled and unkempt.             

              She stopped him with a hand on his arm. "Listen, Ben. I'm sorry about the other day when I said— You know what I said. It's that Tomlin. He gets on my nerves and then everyone winds up getting the worst of me."

              "Allie, I know how you are. You don’t have to apologize."

              "Thank you. So, what are you working on?" she said, trying to ignore the state of the house.

              "Tweaking the score for
Radiant!
" he answered from the kitchen.

              "The show's off," she said.

              His face peered out. "I can’t help it. It still needs work." He disappeared again. "Besides," he yelled, "it will be a show again at some point."

              "I guess you’re right."

              He emerged once again. "Ok, sugar, what you got there?"

              She held up the sheet music. "Can you tell me what's going on here?"

              "What's going on here? It's a piece of sheet music."

              "Thanks. I mean, help me decode it."

              "Ok," he said, staring up and down at the sheet. "It's in two-four time; they call that
march
time."

             
March hare?
thought Allie.

              "In the key of C. It's a fairly simple tune. Wanna hear it?"

              "I'd love to."

              He brought the music over to the upright piano that dominated his living space, sat down and began to play.

              It was a lively tune, not at all what she’d expected, but in hearing it now, it fit perfectly with the mood of the story. Quaint, but slightly twisted in its presumed innocence. After one play through, Ben started another chorus. By this point, Allie was able to hum along and insert some lyrics from
Beautiful Soup
in there as well.

              "Wonderful," she exclaimed when he finished.

              "My law degree at work. Mom and Dad are proud."

              "Ok, so there's a mystery here."

              "Naturally. Allie Griffin drops in half-unexpectedly brandishing a piece of archaic sheet music. I didn’t think you were here because you wanted to have a singalong. What's the mystery?"

              She looked at the note-splattered page. "I'll know when I find it."

              "Oy. Del told me about that."

              "Yeah? What did she say?"

              "That it's one of your more annoying habits."

              "You don’t know the rest of them. What are these first four notes here? The ones you're supposed to sing the title over?"

              "G, G, C, and G again." He accompanied his words with a tap on the corresponding piano keys.

              "G-G-C-G," she repeated.

              She whipped out her phone and Googled the acronym.

              "I can see you're busy," said Ben, "so I'm just going to cut into this cake."

              "GGCG stands for the Greater Good Citizen's Government," she said, reading. "
The Greater Good Citizen's Government is a non-profit, grass roots organization dedicated to the betterment of Vermont life and society.
"

              "Sounds nice and responsible."

              "You've never heard of it?"

              "I've been out of the loop ever since I quit the practice five years ago. It must be relatively new."

              "My question is: why didn’t they call it the Citizen's Government for the Greater Good? That has a better ring to it."

She answered her question as soon as she asked it. "Of course, the acronym was taken. Here we go.
CGGG, the Center for Generalized Generational Guidance, a non-profit group dedicated to the betterment of today's disenfranchised youth so that they may lead healthy, more productive lives.
"

              "Ok then," Ben said around a mouthful of cake.

              The coffeepot beeped and he jumped and went to the kitchen.

              Allie read a little more of the GGCG website.

              "Interesting. Do you know what their About page says?"

              "Lay it on me, kid."

              "
The GGCG is committed toward cleaning up Vermont and taking it back from the social parasites that benefit from her resources while giving nothing back in return. We at the GGCG believe that it is our duty as citizens of this great land, in this great country, to ensure that all remains pure and beautiful as God intended
."