The Gift of the Magpie Page 18

  “But—” she began.

  “But on top of all that, right now Mr. Dunlop’s house is part of my crime scene,” the chief said. “And even if you’d already had that will probated and it was your house, it would still be my crime scene. So unless you have some bit of information that will help me figure out just who killed Mr. Dunlop, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop wasting my time.”

  Tabitha looked hurt. She made a sound that was a cross between a tortured sob and a cat bringing up a hairball. Then she batted her eyes as if trying very hard to hold back tears. When she realized her visible sorrow wasn’t having much effect on the chief, she glanced at Vern and then at me. Evidently we didn’t look any more sympathetic. She choked back another even more dramatic sob, turned on her heel, and ran out of the station.

  We stood for a few moments staring after her. Vern was the first to break the silence.

  “You think that thing’s legit?” He craned his head to take another look at the photocopy the chief was holding.

  “I have no idea,” the chief said. “I’m going to make a call to the state crime lab. We’re going to need a forensic document examiner.”

  He turned and headed for the corridor that led to his office. Then he turned back.

  “Meg, you think the crew we’re sending can pack up the rest of Mr. Dunlop’s papers tonight?”

  “I think so,” I said. “Josh and Jamie got close to half of it all by themselves yesterday afternoon.”

  “How much was that?”

  “A little over a hundred boxes.”

  He winced. Then he nodded.

  “While y’all are packing everything up, keep an eye out for examples of Mr. Dunlop’s signature.”

  “Can do, Chief,” Vern said. “Or anything that looks like another will, I guess.”

  “Or anything that looks like correspondence between Mr. Dunlop and an attorney,” the chief said. “Or anything that might have anything to do with this old-time bank of the Dunlops. I have a hard time thinking that has anything to do with his murder, but stranger things have happened.”

  “Chief, if we’re going to be looking through the papers—” I began.

  He frowned, but cocked his head in a question.

  “I can think of two town employees who’d be a big help in spotting relevant documents,” I said. “What Ms. Ellie Draper doesn’t know about this town probably isn’t worth knowing—and she’s on the town payroll. The same for Judge Jane Shiffley—does she count as an employee?”

  “More like an authority,” the chief said. “But yes, like Randall, she’d be acceptable.”

  “So what if we enlist them to help out?”

  He thought for a moment.

  “I don’t want either of them toting and carrying boxes,” he said. “And you know they’d insist on trying.”

  “Why don’t I let Vern and company handle the packing,” I said. “I’ll go over to Harvey’s house and help them figure out where the relevant stuff is. And then I can invite Judge Jane and Ms. Ellie to join me over at the furniture store to work on the boxes that are already there. I can kind of postpone mentioning that there are more boxes coming.”

  “Good plan. And I’ll send over Aida to supervise at the furniture store. Keep it official.” He smiled, then turned and disappeared into his office.

  “I guess the chief has his doubts about Ms. Tabitha,” I said to Vern as we started putting on our rain gear. “What’s the penalty for forging a will?”

  “Forgery in general’s a class five felony,” Vern said promptly. “One to ten years, and possibly a fine. No idea if there’s any special penalty for forging a will, though if you ask me there ought to be. Chief!” he called out. “You want me to call someone to mind the desk?”

  The chief came out, talking on his cell phone, and sat behind the desk where Vern had been.

  “No, not yet,” he was saying on the phone. “But I think she intends to.”

  He waved at us, so Vern and I pushed open the front door of the station and dashed through the renewed rain to our vehicles.

  I made a quick detour past Muriel’s Diner for a carryout of chili and fries before heading over to Harvey’s house. Was it only my imagination, or did the place look sadder and more dilapidated in the rain? In yesterday’s sunlight you might not notice that the yard was more dirt than grass. Today, with the patches of dirt turning into mud and puddles, you couldn’t help seeing it. Rain dripped off the roof in random places, including one just above the front door. At least the tarps all seemed intact. No feral kitten in the trap, but the little door into the crawl space was open, as it was supposed to be.

  And inside, we were relieved to see that everything was still snug and dry.

  “So far,” Vern said. “But you were right to worry. Rain’s stubborn and patient. If it can’t get inside on a straight path, it’ll keep burrowing around until it finds a roundabout way.”

  “I guess that means we should get everything that could be damaged out before the rain wins,” I said.

  “We should get everything out, period,” Vern said. “Get it all safely locked up at the furniture store, slap a good security system on it, and that’ll keep it safe until we get an expert in to evaluate it all and see if there’s anything there that’s valuable. Or anything that gives us a clue to who did him in and why.”

  Beau and Osgood arrived and started packing.

  Vern strolled outside with me, although I suspected he actually wanted to check on what the neighbors were up to. Mr. Brimley wasn’t on his porch, but you could see his face from time to time at one or another window. Mrs. Gudgeon’s binoculars might have been glued in place.

  “Probably a good thing I’m here to fend off those two,” Vern said. “Especially her. Brimley’s had enough run-ins with the department to know we won’t put up with much of his nonsense—he’ll back away if I mention ‘interfering with a police investigation.’ But what can you do about a little old lady who thinks it’s her God-given right to know everything that’s happening in her neighborhood.”

  “Hmm.” I studied Mrs. Gudgeon’s staring binoculars for a few moments. “Maybe I can help.”

  “How?” Vern looked dubious.

  “I’ll figure it out when I get in there. I’m going to visit her. On official Helping Hands business, of course.”

  Chapter 22

  I fished around in the back of my car—which wasn’t as horrible as the back of Tabitha’s, but could use a good clearing out. Then again, ever since the first time I’d walked into Harvey’s house, I’d felt the almost irresistible urge to tidy everywhere I went. I found a clipboard, a pad of lined paper, and a pen that the dogs hadn’t yet used as a chew toy. Then I locked the car and strode down the street and up Mrs. Gudgeon’s front walk.

  A distinct improvement over Harvey’s front walk. The thought saddened me. Why couldn’t the killer have waited until after we’d finished clearing out and repairing Harvey’s house? So he’d at least have a little time to enjoy it. For that matter, why did the killer have to go after Harvey at all?

  I focused back on Mrs. Gudgeon’s walk, which was completely devoid of cracks or crumbled bits, and not a single fallen leaf or twig marred its surface. In fact, I couldn’t see so much as a stray dead leaf anywhere on her property. The bushes flanking her front stoop had been pruned into rectangles so perfect that from a distance I wondered if they were fake. They weren’t, but the blooming geraniums in pots on either side of her front door certainly were.

  I put on my most officious look and rang her doorbell. A harsh buzzer sounded somewhere inside.

  I kept my expression neutral and businesslike during the several minutes in which I was sure Mrs. Gudgeon was peering at me through her peephole. I began to wonder if I’d flunked her inspection and she was planning to ignore me indefinitely. But I didn’t want to betray impatience by ringing the doorbell again. And it might be interesting to see how long she was capable of ignoring someone standing on her front stoop.

>   Eventually I won our strange game of doorbell chicken. Mrs. Gudgeon opened the door and scowled at me.

  “I’m busy,” she said. “And I already talked to the police.”

  She didn’t actually say “go away” but I got the message. Got it, and blithely ignored it.

  “I know this has been very inconvenient for you, Mrs. Gudgeon,” I said. “I’d just like to ask you a few questions about the proximity impact, so we can complete or at least schedule any mitigating work.”

  She frowned as she tried to decipher that deliberate chunk of bureaucratese. A gust of wind sprang up, carrying with it some errant fallen leaves that swirled near her stoop—obviously from someone else’s yard. She shuddered and looked alarmed.

  “You’d better come inside and explain that in English,” she said. “Wipe your feet and leave your shoes by the door.”

  I stepped inside, wiped my feet on a doormat almost the size of a twin mattress, and deposited my shoes alongside the regimented row of Mrs. Gudgeon’s footwear—a pair of black lace-up shoes, a nearly identical tan pair, and some utilitarian boots. She was wearing a pair of slippers that looked as if they got a lot more wear than any of the outdoor shoes. I could feel her disapproving eyes, but resisted the temptation to adjust my shoes so they were in perfect alignment with hers. Then I turned and saw that she was standing in the middle of the hallway, as if protecting the rest of the house while she waved me into the living room. I followed her directions, making sure I kept to the two-foot-wide path of plastic matting laid down to protect the spotless white shag carpet. Was this a temporary accommodation to the bad weather or a permanent feature? It seemed pretty firmly anchored.

  The plastic motif continued in the living room—covers on the chairs, the sofa, the lampshades. She motioned me to the sofa, whose thick plastic cover crinkled and squeaked as I sat down, and perched herself on the straightest and most uncomfortable-looking chair in the room.

  “So what is it you’ve come to bother me about?” she said. “I already told you that I don’t have need your charity.”

  “No, ma’am.” I took out my pen and held it over the clipboard. “But I would like to get a statement about any negative impact Mr. Dunlop’s hoarding has had on your property. Obviously we can’t proceed with the cleanup at his house until the police investigation is over and the issue of the house’s new ownership has been resolved. But part of our project is to ensure that we do everything we can to address the legitimate concerns of neighbors who have experienced hardship as a result of the situation we’re resolving.”

  It didn’t sound all that plausible to me, although I said it with a straight face. But Mrs. Gudgeon, clearly a woman with a grievance, swallowed the bait.

  “Hardship,” she exclaimed. “Yes, he’s caused me plenty of hardship, but I don’t know how you can possibly make up for most of it. Do you realize what it’s been like, living next to that eyesore for years?”

  I nodded with unfeigned sympathy. I knew I’d have found Harvey a trying neighbor—and I liked to think that more than a decade of living with lively twin boys had given me higher than usual tolerance for chaos. For someone like Mrs. Gudgeon, with her obvious need for neatness and organization, living beside Harvey must have been hell.

  “How long have you been here?”

  “Sixteen years.”

  “Before his father’s death, then,” I said, remembering the dates on the tombstones at Trinity.

  “That’s correct. And before you tell me that we should have known what we were getting into, it wasn’t that bad when we moved in. Not the yard, at least. It was a little messy, but I just assumed it was because he was distracted by his father’s illness. But then the old man had his heart attack and died, and I went over to drop off a casserole, and as long as I was going I thought I’d take a business card from my yard service and suggest he give them a call if he couldn’t handle it himself, and I got a look at the inside of that place.”

  She shuddered and looked pale.

  “It must have been a shock.” If I’d been in my own house I’d have fetched her a glass of water, but I got the distinct impression that she’d rather pass out than have me barging into other parts of her lair.

  “It was two months before he gave back my casserole dish, and by that time, after what I’d seen—well, I ran it through the dishwasher a couple of times and then donated it to Goodwill. The idea of eating out of it turned my stomach. And after that his yard got progressively worse. The house, too, from what little I can see. Cleanliness is next to godliness, you know.”

  From the angry look on her face, I suspected she was still bitter that Moses had come down off the mountain without an eleventh commandment about cleanliness.

  In fact, it went beyond anger. What I saw on her face was naked hate. For a moment, I had no doubt whatsoever that she could have killed Harvey. He’d been there for sixteen years, his hoarding and the condition of his house and yard steadily growing worse, spoiling her enjoyment of her own pristine home. And she’d finally had enough.

  Vern had called her a little old lady, and maybe she was in his eyes. By my reckoning she was probably well short of seventy, and not the least bit frail. What if Harvey, too, had seen her as a harmless old lady? Annoying, but harmless. Maybe that was the answer to the puzzle of how the killer had lured Harvey out of his locked house and into the garage.

  I’d mention that theory to the chief later. Meanwhile I listened to her rant about Harvey for a while, ending with “and I don’t care if you think I’m heartless, but I’m not sorry he’s gone.”

  “I understand how you feel,” I lied. “Of course, we all want the chief to catch whoever did it. You can’t let a murderer get away with his crime.”

  “I’m not holding my breath,” she said. “Look how long it took them to do anything about his squalor.”

  “You can help, you know,” I said.

  Her face didn’t suggest that she was all that interested in helping.

  “I bet they have to keep their eye on his house, in case the killer returns to the scene of the crime,” I said.

  “We need better police protection in this neighborhood anyway,” she said.

  “And you’ll definitely get it for a while, because obviously anyone who goes over there could be the killer—even if they seem to have a good reason. They’re definitely going to be interrogating anyone who shows up. So I hope you won’t be shy about telling them when you spot anyone.”

  “I never am.” She sounded a little unsettled, as if she’d just realized how what I’d just said would cramp her style.

  “Well, I shouldn’t take any more of your time,” I said. “But please do give a little more thought to the question of whether you’re owed restitution. Odds are they’ll end up taking it out of his estate, you know, so it’s not like it would be charity.”

  I hoped she wouldn’t think that last bit through too much. Time to take my leave. I stood, marched along the assigned plastic path to the front hall, thanked her for her hospitality, donned my shoes, and left.

  I found Vern fetching another stack of flat moving boxes from the Shiffley Construction Company truck Beau and Osgood had arrived in.

  “Piece of work, isn’t she?” he said, nodding toward Mrs. Gudgeon’s house.

  “I hope the chief hasn’t taken her off his suspect list.” I related my conversation with Mrs. Gudgeon. Vern nodded thoughtfully when I described the look of hatred and malice that had crossed her face. And cracked up when I got to the part about the police suspecting anyone who showed up at the house.

  “You know, that just might keep her out of our hair,” he said. “Good work.”

  “She might make a few more calls to nine-one-one after you leave,” I said.

  “And some of them might actually be useful,” he said. “See you over at the furniture store. Oh—by the way. Chief told me to give you these. New keys for here and the furniture store.”

  “Roger.” I slid the keys onto my key ring and h
eaded for my car. “Keep your eyes on the cat trap,” I called over my shoulder.

  I put in the calls to Judge Jane and Ms. Ellie on my way over to the furniture store, and as I expected, both were not only willing but downright eager to join the paper chase. I must have made it sound like fun—if only I could do as well when trying to coax the boys into doing chores or homework.

  The store didn’t look nearly as festive as it had during our party the night before. The tree was still in the front window, and garlands decked the walls, but the long tables with their bright red and green covers had gone back to Trinity, and whoever had brought the red and green throws that had covered all the boxes had taken them home again.

  I found Aida at the store, setting up a few of the card tables and folding chairs we’d used for overflow.

  “I don’t know about you folks,” she said. “But if I’m going to spend a perfectly good afternoon sorting through Harvey Dunlop’s junk, I am not sitting on the floor to do it. I shoved all the boxes with papers in them over to this side. Is this all?”

  “No, Vern’s got a crew to fetch the rest of it.”

  “There’s more?” Judge Jane said, frowning slightly at the rows of boxes.

  “This is probably about half of it,” I said.

  “Well, let’s not waste time,” Judge Jane said.

  “Remember, nothing gets thrown away,” Aida warned us. “Not even a paper napkin. We can start a box of probable trash, but nothing actually gets pitched. And while we’re sorting, we keep our eyes open for anything that might give us a clue to why someone would bump Harvey off.”

  Aida set up Harvey’s little radio and tuned it to the college radio station—during the winter break they could usually be relied on in the afternoons for long, uninterrupted programs of instrumental Christmas music. Then we each grabbed a box, hauled it to a table, and dived in. After a while Randall turned up, and we got him started with a table and a box of his own.

  I very quickly realized how much more satisfying this would be if we were allowed to throw away trash, because so much of this overwhelming mass of paper was very clearly trash.