Trick or Deceit (7 page)

“Well, that's one good thing that's happened today.”

“Did something else happen besides the murder?” asked Liv. “And the vandalism, of course?”

Bill clasped his hands behind his head and stretched. “I had to notify Carson—no easy way to do that. And take him to identify the body. We all knew who it was, but it had to be done. Then I had to tell him he couldn't have the body until they finished with the autopsy. Ugh. Awful.”

“So he wasn't with her last night,” Liv said.

“Not according to Carson.”

“He didn't pick her up at all?”

“Says he didn't.”

“He didn't report her missing?” Ted asked.

Bill shook his head.

“Didn't you think that was weird?” Liv asked.

Bill glanced at Ted but didn't answer.

“If your wife didn't come home all night, wouldn't you call the police?”

Two blank expressions looked back at her.

“Ugh. Why am I asking two bachelors?”

“It's not that, Liv. It's, uh . . .” Bill shifted in his seat. She didn't think it was his sciatica making him uncomfortable. “I guess it isn't the first time she didn't come home at night.”

“She—?”

Bill nodded.

“Did her husband know about her affairs?” asked Liv.

“How could he not,” Ted said.

“But not from any one of us,” Bill added.

“Is there a chance he'd finally had enough?”

Bill and Ted shook their heads simultaneously.

Liv saw it. The closing of ranks. Their locals to her outsider. They wouldn't even consider that someone they obviously liked and respected could kill his wife, even if she'd cheated on him more than once.

“Then,” Bill took up the thread of his conversation, curtailing any excursions into the Fosters' marital problems, “Barry reamed me for not ensuring proper security. At which point A.K. said that it was Barry's responsibility to hire additional security, because it was on private property. I thought they were going to get into it. But I tell you, that A.K. is cool as a cucumber.”

They'd obviously ended the discussion about Lucille and Carson Foster.

“We spent the rest of the morning trying to collect data from the most mucked-up crime scene I've ever seen.”

“We didn't know it was a crime scene,” Liv said. “I mean we did, but we thought it was just vandalism. And knowing there's not much the police can do if they don't catch the vandal red-handed, everyone just started helping out.”

“They were being good neighbors,” Ted added. “Good neighbors, not very good detectives and Lord, most of them can't act at all.”

“Do you think Barry can refurbish the exhibit before next weekend?” Liv asked.

“He says he's going to try, and since all those dummies had already been handled, I told him to go for it. Hope I wasn't mistaken.”

“Do you think it would be possible for us to go over and check on his progress? Or at least talk to him about his expectations?”

“Sure, at this point why not. Like you said, there's not much evidence to collect from vandals. We swept the house for anything out of the ordinary.”

Liv wondered what, at the Museum of Yankee Horrors, he'd considered ordinary.

“We looked for any signs of a struggle, even though the body was not found in the house or even for that matter on Barry's property. The vacant lot is still off limits. But we're working quickly. Rain is on its way.

“If you'll just wait until I eat, I'll go with you.”

Ted and Liv both gave their statements while they waited for Bill's lunch. Then they let him eat in peace—except for Whiskey, who was tired of being ignored, and came over to demand attention . . . or food.

Ted took him out for a quick walk, and they were soon all piled into the police cruiser. They made a quick detour to drop Whiskey off at home, then headed for the Museum of Yankee Horrors.

•   •   •

Bill pulled into the parking lot at the side of the museum. The vacant lot was cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape, but the crime scene and coroner's vans had left. A small knot of people stood across the street watching, though there wasn't much to see.

An officer was standing in front of the tape, guarding the pathway through the weeds they had created earlier that morning. Piles of garbage and castoffs littered the back of the parking lot. On closer inspection, Liv saw that the piles had been gathered and separated by the police force. Bottles in one pile, cans in another, paper, garbage, scrap metal, and what looked like pieces of clothing.

As soon as the cruiser came to a halt, Bill got out and went over to talk to the officer. Liv tried to see if there was anything interesting in the piles of detritus, but either whatever might be evidence had been taken away or there was none to begin with. Probably destroyed by the helpful theater group.

Ted waited at a discreet distance, though Liv had no doubt he was on high alert. She certainly was.

After a brief chat, Bill came back, and the three of them went up the front steps to the house.

Henry had been true to his word. The cast members from that morning had been joined by several others. It looked like his entire cast was busy refitting arms and legs, and re-dressing mannequins into their proper clothes. Two sewing machines had been set up and Henry Gallantine was leaning over one.

“Amazing,” Liv said.

Henry looked up at that, and gave a regal wave. “Needs must where the devil drives,” he intoned in a theatrical baritone.

“Please, no more talk about devils,” Liv said. “Which reminds me. Bill, that ranting idiot is still in the square.”

Bill nodded distractedly. He was looking at Officer Meese, who was sitting on a kitchen chair frowning at the piles of clothing and body parts. “I told Meese to stay here and look out for anything that might be a clue. Not that I expect you people left anything possibly recognizable.”

“Doesn't look like he's found anything,” Liv said.

A skill saw started up from somewhere out back, followed by hammering.

“Structural damage?” Liv asked Barry.

“Some, not too bad, mainly where the jackass yanked the figures from their moorings. Wrecked some parts though. Hope I can get replacements quick.”

“So do I. Do you think you can make it?”

Barry looked daggers at her. “You think I can't?”

Ted stepped up next to her. “Barry, if she knew, she wouldn't be asking. Can you get it up and running by the weekend?”

Barry turned away, looked from one scene to the next. Some of the scenery, like the Salem pillory, had been partially rebuilt. Liv had shuddered the first time she'd seen it during the judging. A puritan scene of a man whose head and hands were stuck through holes of a wooden yoke and a magistrate leaning over to nail his ear to the wood. That had been a shock, especially with the accompanying recording of the man's screams.

Today he had been returned to the pillory, though his legs lay unattached on the floor below him, while the two people working on the exhibit paused for a soda. The daylight did nothing to soften the experience. Today was all the more frightening since the magistrate, fully clothed in colonial gear, a hammer in one hand and a nail in the other, was as headless as the Horseman of Sleepy Hollow. And a lot more real looking.

“The Grave Diggers of Salem” was completely missing except for the red velvet ropes that kept the audience at bay.

It looked like an impossible job to reconstruct all of the scenes. Anything that could be torn down had been demolished, like someone had done it in a fit of rage, which didn't bode well for Ernie Bolton. He was the only person they knew of who had been angry that Barry won.

Partial displays were everywhere. Tests of sound systems fought in the air until the shrieks drove Liv back to the foyer where she found Barry gazing up the staircase, his hands shoved in his overalls.

“Well, at least he missed the ghost on the staircase,” Barry said dejectedly.

She looked up the staircase where a track ran along the ceiling, and from it hung a frame with a diaphanous gown. At the preview Liv had attended, the “ghost” had swept down the stairs, blown by the wind from a fan and sparkling in the theatrical lighting. It had greeted them as they'd entered. It had been pretty impressive the night of the judging. Today it just looked like a piece of fabric on a coat hanger.

“You'll make it,” Liv said and patted his arm. But she didn't have much hope. It was too bad. Ernie's Monster Mansion had all the standard features of a haunted house—spooks, and screams and wet spaghetti, and skeletons jumping out of coffins—but the museum had been special.

“You'll make it,” she said again and watched Barry wander off into the parlor. She continued on to the dining room where half-clothed mannequins were being glued back together. Two young women leaned over a table full of latex masks that would have to be repaired and reapplied to the mannequin's expressionless faces.

The future wasn't looking too rosy for Barry Lindquist.

Liv walked through the archway into the kitchen. Bill and Ted were talking to Officer Meese, who still sat at the kitchen table sorting odd bits of fabric and logging them into his notebook.

She reached them just as Barry stormed down the hall, a torso wearing a bloodied dress held under one arm and the presumably accompanying stocking-clad legs stuck under the other.

“Sheriff! We can't find Lizzie's shoes. They have to be out there somewhere.”

Bill looked to Meese, who consulted a piece of paper. “We didn't find anything but what's in those piles over there and what's left out in the parking lot. And that's mainly garbage that's been there for I don't know how long.”

“Then they must still be out there in the grass and your men somehow overlooked them,” Barry said. “When can we get back in to continue our search?”

“Do you have to have those exact shoes? Can't you replace them with something else?”

“No, they're crafted to look authentic. Cost me a load of money.”

Bill scratched his head. “Meese, take a couple of these folks out to the lot and let them search. But watch them and stop them if anything interesting turns up.”

“Yes, sir.” Meese motioned to two of the younger men and herded them out of the house. He'd obviously had enough of body part duty.

“Hold up,” Bill said. “Barry, what exactly are they looking for?”

“They're brown leather, small heels, buttons up the side.”

Bill turned to Meese. “Got it?”

Meese nodded. “Yes, sir, but sir . . .”

“Yes?”

Meese nodded to the sheriff and they stepped away from the others.

Liv watched Bill's expression turn from question to disbelief. He rubbed his hand across his face. Got out his phone and made a call. Hung up. He and Meese stood looking at the floor between them until Bill's phone pinged.

Bill swiped his finger across the screen, tapped it, and turned it for Meese to see.

Meese nodded and hung his head.

Bill came back. “Are these your missing shoes?” He turned the phone's screen so that Barry could see.

Liv and Ted looked, too.

“Yes, by gad, you took Lizzie's shoes as evidence?”

“You're positive? They were found with Lucille's body. We assumed they were hers.”

“Of course I'm sure. They're eighteenth-century costume shoes.”

Liv and Ted exchanged looks. And Liv knew they were both thinking the same thing.

If the police had Lizzie Borden's shoes, where were Lucille Foster's?

Bill returned his phone to his belt clip. “They'll send Lizzie's shoes back as soon as they've been dusted for prints and released. It might take a day or two, so, Barry, you'll just have be patient.” He turned to Liv. “Do you think you could recognize Lucille's shoes among those piles of shoes?”

Christian Louboutins?
“Oh, I think so,” Liv said. “I'll be glad to look.”

“Barry, can you show her where the extra shoes are?”

Barry mumbled something and led her down the hall. “I don't know why the police took Lizzie's shoes in the first place,” he groused.

“They must have been lying near Lucille and the police assumed they belonged to her.” Though frankly, Liv didn't understand how they could mistake Lizzie Borden's brown button-ups for Lucille's spike-heeled, red-soled Louboutins.

“The shoes are in there,” Barry said, and went off down the hall.

Liv stepped into a room that must have been a porch at one time. A double row of shoes and boots were lined up along one wall. There were more than forty completed pairs and another ten or so still waiting for their mates. Liv could tell at a glance that none of them were Lucille Foster's.

She went back to the exhibition rooms and searched each half-assembled scene. She pulled up skirts, looked in corners and under chairs on the outside chance someone had unthinkingly tossed them out of the way. She found work boots and patent leather evening shoes, thirties pumps, shoes with spats, straps, pointed toes, metal toes, button-up, lace-up, slip-ons. She even found one bedroom slipper and a pair of cowboy boots, which turned out to belong to one of the actors who'd taken them off because they were scuffing the staging area.

But no designer heels.

She called the workers together and made a general announcement. No one had seen any four-inch Christian Louboutin heels. She got a few blank looks and several sounds of appreciation. One young man asked if there was a reward.

“No,” Bill said. “But you won't go to jail if you turn them over.”

The man made an over-the-top Pulcinella sigh and went down on one knee in front of Marla Jean. “And I was going to give them to you.”

She jumped and slapped his outstretched hand.

Henry quelled them with an
ahem
.

Liv thanked them and they went back to work.

“Actors,” Bill said. “You can never get a straight answer out of them.”

“I think they would come forward if they'd seen the shoes though. Their fifteen seconds of fame,” Liv said. “Which means the shoes must still be out in the vacant lot.”

Bill rubbed his back.

Liv thought,
Please, don't come down with sciatica now.

He saw her looking at him and dropped his hand. “I'm fine, but would you mind going with Meese to take another look around? I don't think these guys would know the difference between those Lamber—whatever those shoes were—and a pair of mocs. I know I wouldn't.”

“I'll be glad to.” What else could she say? Though she was tempted to send the smart-aleck actor in her stead.

Officer Meese took Liv out to the edge of the parking lot. The other patrolman pushed away from the cruiser he'd been leaning against. Liv went right to the piles that were accumulating on the tarmac. A cursory look revealed no shoes.

Suddenly, the unmowed lot appeared to stretch for miles instead of to the next street over. And Liv said a few choice words about what she thought of the landscaping service that was supposed to have cleared out the lot several days ago.

Well, as soon as the area was released, she was going to get them over here, if she had to drag them herself. She couldn't have any more bodies popping up during the Halloween entertainments.

At least she was dressed for mucking about in overgrown grass. After the morning's exploits some inner sense must have guided her to black jeans and her fleece jacket.

She explained what they were looking for. Meese and two others nodded solemnly. Meese handed her a stick with a point on it that looked a little like a harpoon. She'd seen prisoners picking up garbage along the highway with the same instrument

“So you don't have to use your hands,” Meese explained.

Liv nodded. She had no intention of picking up anything with her hands.

They all went in the opening and spread out. Liv went straight through, headed for the far side. She didn't expect to find much. This morning it had seemed like whoever had stolen the mannequins had dumped most of them near the parking lot or only as far as he could throw them.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to keep looking.

They expanded the search to include the house, the grassy areas surrounding the parking lot, even the street.

They finally gave up when the sun began setting. They'd found a few more objects belonging to the haunted house display, but no shoes. And a lot of garbage. Not only was the lot neglected, it was clearly being used as a dumping ground.

Bill was sitting with Henry when Liv and Meese came back inside. The place was eerily quiet.

The sheriff eased himself out of the chair.

“No luck?”

“None. Where is everybody?”

“Breaking for dinner and enlisting other members of the cast, friends, and relatives to come to our aid,” Henry said.

“Miriam Krause is coming over to see if there is work she and her quilting club can help with,” Bill added.

“Bless her,” Henry said.

Liv agreed. Miriam had helped them out before in a pinch. The town should send her a nice thank-you. She got out her phone and made a note to bring that up in the next board meeting. There was sure to be one in the near future—once the mayor found out about the death of Lucille Foster.

She shut off her phone. “Henry, is this going to interfere with your play rehearsals?”

“Not at all. We were working with a partial cast this morning. And our next rehearsal isn't until Wednesday night. I hope by then we will have a whole regiment of worker bees.”

“Where's Barry?”

“We sent him home. The man was headed for a breakdown. The sheriff promised him the police would keep an extra vigil on the house until he can have a security system installed.”

The sheriff nodded. “We always patrol the streets at night. No one reported anything last night. Ted already left. I told him I'd drive you home.”

“Thanks. I wasn't looking forward to walking.”

They said good night to Henry, who was staying to organize the night shift of players. Bill drove her home and stopped at the curb.

“Thanks, Bill. I'll just jump out before the sisters see you and invite you in for a sherry.”

“Thanks. I want to see if any news has come in from the coroner or the crime scene people. I doubt it has. Even if it does, it will consist mainly of the crime scene boys complaining about how we didn't secure the area.”

“We stopped cleaning up as soon as we found the body. I don't see what they have to complain about.”

“Me neither, but I've seen them come down on EMTs for wrecking a scene, when they were just trying to save a life. This is a heavy, burnout, frustrating business sometimes.”

“Well, we appreciate you all for doing it. Get some rest.”

“You, too.”

Liv made it as far as the driveway, when the Zimmermans' front door opened and Ida came out on the porch. “Liv, Whiskey is here with us. We saved you some dinner. It's warming in the oven. Bill?” She motioned him to lower the window. “Have you eaten? There's plenty.”

“Thank you, Miss Ida, but I have to get back to the station.” He smiled and waved and drove away.

Liv didn't need any urging to climb the steps to the porch of the Victorian house. She was tired and hungry.

Miss Ida opened the door for her. “You poor thing. You come right in and sit down.”

After saying hello to Edna and making a fuss over her “poor neglected dog” (who was holding a new chew toy between his teeth), Liv excused herself to clean off the worst of her afternoon scavenger hunt, then rejoined the sisters and her dog in the kitchen.

“Does Bill have any leads?” Edna asked, pouring white wine into a cut-glass goblet and handing it to Liv. She held up the bottle to her sister.

“No, thank you, I have my tea.” Ida brought a mug over to the table and sat down.

“I don't know,” Liv said. “I don't think so. I heard they took Ernie Bolton in for questioning. He is the most obvious suspect. But Bill didn't say anything, so I guess it didn't pan out.”

“Besides, Ernie wouldn't kill Lucille,” Ida said. “They've been friends for years.”

Edna poured herself a small glass of wine and sat down on the other side of Liv. “But you spent the day with him, didn't you?”

“Let Liv eat, Edna. She must be starving.”

Liv cut a piece of chicken and chewed slowly. “This is delicious.”

“Rosemary chicken. Edna got the recipe off the Internet.”

Liv gave her a thumbs-up because her mouth was full.

While she chewed, she wondered how much she was at liberty to tell the sisters, who had probably learned as much from the police band, in the comfort of their sitting room, as Liv had after spending all day mucking about the crime scene.

“Besides,” Ida continued, disregarding the rosemary chicken detour. “I don't believe for a minute that Ernie Bolton would kill anybody.”

“Nor do I,” Edna said. “But vandalize Barry's exhibit? He might, in a moment of—of temporary insanity.”

“What does Bill think?” Ida asked.

“He hasn't said, at least not to me.”

Both sisters leaned a little forward.

“What do you think?” Edna asked.

“I don't know what to think.”

“Well, what do you know?” Ida asked, encouragingly.

Liv put down her fork. “That's just it. Not a lot. And I don't think the police know much more than I do. It's more a question of what we don't know.”

“It always is, at the beginning of an investigation,” said Ida. “Or at least I would assume so.”

“So what don't you know?” Edna asked.

“Wait a minute, Edna.” Miss Ida pushed away from the table and went of to the counter where she opened a drawer and took out a tablet and a pencil. She carried them back to the table.

“Since you don't seem to have your computer with you.”

Liv scraped the last of the mashed potatoes off her plate and put down her fork.

“Would you like more, dear?”

“No, thank you, that was delicious.”

“And from the Internet of all places,” said Ida and whisked her plate away. She was back in a matter of seconds, Liv's plate squeaky clean and turned upside down on a drying rack, and Ida's attention focused on Liv.

“This is what we—I—know so far. You can fill me in on anything you learned over the airways.” Liv really just wanted to go home to her little carriage house, take a long, hot shower, and curl up with the television remote. Instead, she opened the tablet of paper and drew a grid with headers at the top: Events, Time, People, Evidence.

“So this morning around eight thirty, I was out running with Whiskey.”

At the mention of his name, Whiskey's head appeared from under the table, where he'd no doubt been in hiding, waiting to hijack a dropped morsel of food.

“I slowed down at the Museum of Yankee Horrors when I noticed that the vacant lot next to it had not been mowed.” Liv explained to them about the landscape company and how she'd stopped to take a photo to remind them of their contract. While she was talking she wrote down,
8:30, Liv /[email protected] HM
, for Horror Museum, in the grid boxes.

“I let the leash out so Whiskey could explore a little bit and he came out with an arm in his mouth.”

“The mannequin's,” Edna said.

“Yes, but it did give me start.”

She told them about seeing other parts of mannequins in the tall grasses, and about calling Barry. As she wrote she filled in more squares of the grid. When she got to the end of the day, she turned the paper around to show them.

“It looks like a lot but it doesn't tell us much. Just a lot of useless stuff.”

“Well, I'm not surprised.” Ida frowned at the page, then handed it to Edna, who nodded slowly.

“What?” Liv asked.

“To begin with, you left out last night.”

“But I . . . oh.” The sisters were absolutely right. Everyone had been so distracted by finding the body and getting the museum restored that no one had tried to trace Lucille's movements of the night before. Though she was sure Bill would get there eventually.

Liv took the tablet back. “At the award ceremony last night—”

“Now I'm sorry we didn't just bundle up and go,” Miss Ida said.

“You're the one who said it was too cold.”

“Besides, we didn't want to leave Whiskey by himself, sweet thing.”

Liv heard a couple of tail thumps from under the table. She wondered when he was going to give up waiting for crumbs and come out.

“Ida, stick to the point.”

Ida pursed her lips.

“Amanda Marlton-Crosby came into town to present her donation. A check for ten thousand dollars.”

“So we heard,” Edna said. “As well she should.”

“You don't like her?” Liv asked.

“Don't know her.”

“Knew her father though,” Ida said. “Old money.”

“They're from Celebration Bay?” Liv asked.

“No, no,” Ida said.

“From everywhere but here,” Edna added. “The family built that old manse back around the turn of the twentieth century. Fancied themselves part of the Gilded Age. Only summered here. And only occasionally, until Amanda's grandfather got the fishing bug, and passed it onto his son, Amanda's father.”

“Which is why they keep the fish camp?”

“Yes. Amanda was her father's pet, and now that he's not in good health and can't come up, she keeps the old place open to humor him.”