LeGarde Mysteries Box Set, page 79
part #1 of LeGarde Mystery Series
She snapped her head toward me. “What?”
“Yeah. No tequila sunrises on a beach for him.”
“He’s been there the whole time?” She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “That’s just…horrible.”
I swerved around broken branches and rolling garbage cans, but in less than a half mile, the ridge returned to normal. We passed fields of oats, tall corn, and gently rolling wooded hills. The entire area to the north of the church—at least what we could see from the car—appeared to be undamaged.
When we arrived, Johnny was still asleep. Shelby was restless, and immediately raced upstairs to her room to call her best friend, Emma. I lifted my sleeping buddy from the car. He flopped against me in that way only sleeping children do, his head lolling on my shoulder with damp ringlets on the back of his neck. I carried him upstairs and laid him in his bed. He mumbled and stirred, but thankfully fell back to sleep. I watched him with envy for a few minutes. A nap sounded good right now.
Camille emerged from the bathroom in shorts and a lightweight cotton shirt, carrying her sundress over one arm. She hung it in the closet, looking back over her shoulder at me. “I’ve gotta call Mom back. I told her I would when we got home safely.”
I could just imagine the jitters Maddy would be going through. In addition to being my mother-in-law, she also doubled as my secretary in the music department at Conaroga University. She was nosy, flamboyant, and bossy. And I loved her. “Okay. You’d better, or she’ll be climbing the walls.”
She approached me from behind and slipped her arms around my middle. “I love you, Gus LeGarde.” She repeated those words several times since we reached the safety of our bedroom.
I turned to hold her against me, kissing her forehead and cheeks. “I know, baby. And I love you, too.” I backed up a few inches. “But I’ve gotta head back and help. There are people with no vehicles now who need rides. And God knows what else they’ll need me for.”
She smiled and smoothed the fabric on the front of my shirt. “I know. You do what you’ve gotta do. I’ll see you when you get home.” She picked up her phone and padded down the hall in bare feet. I heard her light step on the stairs. The screen door opened and closed.
For a few seconds, I just stood and stared, watching from our bedroom window. She ambled around the backyard with the phone clamped between her shoulder and ear and with both arms gesturing in grand sweeping motions. Her melodic tones wafted up to the window. Every so often, I heard the words “twister” and “winds.”
With a heavy sigh, I shook myself out of the daze. I changed out of my good pants and shirt into jeans and a tee shirt, then poked my head into my daughter’s room. Freddie and the twins still lay asleep on the queen-sized bed. Celeste sprawled sideways across her mother’s legs and Marion curled in a ball beside Max, my beloved mutt, who didn’t wake when I stood and listened to their collective breathing, silently thanking God for sparing them. My heart hammered hard when I thought of what might have happened.
I forced myself to stop thinking like that and focused on Marion’s little chest as it moved up and down. When her breath puffed from her lips, Max’s fur lifted. One hand curled around the dog’s front leg, pudgy fingers loosely holding him, lest he escape. Escape, however, seemed the furthest from the pooch’s intentions. He lay sound asleep and I swore I saw him smile.
I backed away and headed downstairs. When I was outside, I waved to Camille, who sat on Johnny’s swing with the phone clamped to her ear, pushing back and forth. Her bare feet dusted the ground and untidy hair tumbled over her face. I resisted the temptation to join her. It would be so nice to sit on the grass, my head in her lap, the sun on my face.
Instead, I headed back to the church to chauffeur stranded parishioners.
Two hours later, the temperature had soared back to eighty. I cranked the air conditioner in the Sequoia to its max setting. My stomach was starting to roll with embarrassing gurgles by the time we arrived at Lillian and Abigail Philips’ place. Their rusty 1987 Oldsmobile still lay upside down in the cornfield.
My stomach rumbled again. “Ugh. Sorry, ladies.”
“No problem, Gus,” laughed Abigail. “I’m pretty darned hungry, myself.”
When they pulled themselves together to disembark from my vehicle—dresses smoothed, hair patted, handbags retrieved—they tottered around to my side.
“This has been such a trying day,” Lillian said, sniffing at her scented hanky. “Abby and I can’t thank you enough for your kindness, dear Gus. Thank you so much for the ride.”
“My pleasure,” I said.
Abigail leaned toward me. “Would you like us to make you a sandwich, Gus?”
I loosed a tired smile. “No, thank you. I’m heading home soon. And don’t forget. Call me if you need a ride, or need anything at all.”
Lillian and Abigail answered in unison; their heads dipping like bobble-head dolls. “We will. God Bless.” They wiggled their fingers goodbye.
I watched them hobble up the flowered walk to their bungalow, leaning on each other. The strain of the morning slowed their steps.
The little cottage needed paint and the porch railing sagged, but the yellow hollyhocks and purple coneflowers lining the walkway stood healthy and weed free, bordered by luxurious masses of lavender violas. I watched until they safely let themselves inside, and headed back to the church.
The place teemed with people. I recognized some of the men from the East Goodland Volunteer Fire Department who were helping to clear away debris. Emergency vehicles lined the street, and a National Grid crew was picking over the spot where the house trailer had been ripped from the ground. Word had it that with the help of a band of parishioners, Mr. and Mrs. Spencer had gathered what they could of their mangled belongings and joined their son in his farmhouse a mile down the road.
Siegfried, now stripped down to his tee shirt, had gathered a large pile of brush at the end of the church driveway. Several buckets of spent shingles sat neatly beside it. Dark smudges dappled his cheeks and forehead, and his muscles rippled across his broad back when he bent down to raise one end of a heavy tree limb to his shoulder.
I hurried to his side. “Sig, wait. Let me help you.”
He hoisted the timber and straightened. “Kein Danke,” he said. “It is no problem.”
My gargantuan friend dragged the limb with little effort to the pile at the end of the driveway. Returning to my side, he wiped perspiration from his brow and pointed toward the field behind the church. “Joe Russell is over there, Professor. He has been asking for you.”
Joe’s police vehicle sat skewed on the roadside near the wheat field, its red light flashing. My heart sank. I really didn’t feel up to facing the horror of Colin’s death again. I’d successfully pushed it out of my thoughts while dealing with the simple job of chauffeuring all morning, but now the dark thoughts began to filter back into my consciousness. Splintered bones. A skull. Scraps of clothing. Bullets that had torn through flesh and stopped the life of a decent man.
An ambulance and the coroner’s van gathered farther down the hill. Reluctantly, I continued toward them. I chastised myself, trying to buoy myself out of the funk. It wasn’t as if Colin and I had been best friends for life, or anything like that. Although we had been buddies during junior prom, and we’d driven to the dance together. And we’d served on endless church committees for the past decade.
On second thought, I had a right to be upset. The death of a good man was certainly grounds for such feelings.
Squaring my shoulders, I walked down to the murder scene.
Chapter 5
Joe’s police cruiser was parked a short distance from Colin Springer’s remains. He waved and met me at the car. His beefy face reddened when he leaned in and pulled out a roll of paper towels. He mopped his face and grunted at me. “Hey, Gus.”
The paper towels were Joe’s trademark. He never traveled without them, often expounding on their many uses, from mopping bird poop from his car windows to sopping up his frequently spilled coffee.
“Hey, Joe. Some morning, huh?”
Joe ran a hand through his curly salt and pepper hair. “Helluva mess. It’s a miracle no one was killed.” He motioned to the body, then swatted at a horsefly that dove at his head. “Except Mr. Springer, of course. You knew him?”
The horsefly came after me and stung me hard. I smashed my hand against my shoulder, flattening him. He fell off, but a blotch of red stained my shirt. I refocused on the skeleton in the trench, and then backed up a few paces as if it could actually distance me from the horror of the discovery. “Yeah, I did. Since elementary school, actually.”
Joe moved from Rochester to East Goodland, New York, three years ago—a relative newcomer to our parts. It would be years until he was accepted as a true East Goodlander. In fact, he’d probably always seem like a newcomer to most of the residents whose families had settled in the area in the late seventeen hundreds.
Joe often relied on me to fill him in on people and news of the area. And I, in turn, relied on Oscar Stone, the town historian. Although I’d lived there my whole life, I stayed to myself and avoided local politics. I’d rather be in the garden with my grandson or cooking for the family than to consider stepping foot into a town meeting.
Oscar, on the other hand, delved with glee into all happenings, thriving on the scuttlebutt he heard at town gatherings and making notes of births and deaths in his town notebook.
I stopped and stared at the bones again. Now Oscar would have another death to add to the ledger.
An investigator bent over Colin’s bones, snapping photographs while two medical examiners waited to transport the remains to the morgue.
“So what do you think, Joe? Was it a hunting accident someone tried to cover up?”
Joe grimaced and shook his head. “Someone tried to cover it up, all right, but it was no accident. The shot went straight through the back of his head. His hands were tied behind his back. See that baling wire around the wrist bones? I suspect they made him kneel in his grave and let him have it. And it wasn’t a hunting rifle that put that hole in the skull, Gus. It was a revolver.” He held up an evidence bag with a bullet. “Found this in the trench near the skull.”
I blanched. Colin had disappeared in November. Almost eight months ago. According to Oscar, there’d been talk of Colin mishandling the town’s funds, accompanied by rumors of him fleeing to save his own skin. I hadn’t believed it at the time and had wondered where in the world he’d gone.
No doubt about it now.
I looked into the shallow grave. Could those bones and fragments of clothing really be all that was left of Marybeth’s vibrant husband? He’d played trumpet in the high school band with me and had been in my eighth grade 4H club.
Colin lived his whole life in East Goodland and had been a wonderful town superintendent over the past twelve years. I trusted him, and until his disappearance last fall, the whole town had trusted him, too.
Joe hitched his pants beneath his bulging belly and looked into the distance. “Marybeth was right all along. She knew he wouldn’t just up ‘n leave her like that. Kept hounding me to search for him. Said she knew something was wrong.”
“Something was wrong,” I said.
I backed up some more and moved aside to let the photographer climb out of the trench. He passed Joe with a loose salute and slung his camera to his shoulder. “All set, Joe. They can move him now.”
Joe thanked him and turned away from the grave, draping his arm around my shoulder. We plodded back to the church. “I shouldn’t be tied up much longer, Gus. Are we on for dinner? I’m not sure if you still feel like cooking.”
I checked my watch. Almost noon. “I’m not canceling. It’ll be good for us to get together and talk things over, anyway. How’s three o’clock sound?”
He looked at his own watch and frowned. “I think that’ll work. I’ll call if I’m gonna be late.”
I tossed him some incentive. “Maddy will be there.”
His eyes snapped to mine and he smiled broadly. When he realized he’d shown too much enthusiasm, his cheeks pinked and he cleared his throat. “Um. Er. That so? Good, I…uh…need to return her casserole dish.”
I raised one eyebrow and grinned. Her casserole dish? Things between my mother-in-law and Joe had been progressing faster than I’d realized.
Avoiding my eyes, he pivoted back to the crime scene and flapped his hand over his shoulder. “See you at three, then.”
Chapter 6
I left Siegfried working hard in the churchyard. He’d driven the Jeep that morning—which had also miraculously been spared—and promised to be home by three.
Our house sat on a ridge two miles north of the church, east of the five corners and a half-mile up Sullivan Hill, a rutted dirt road that wound through woods and along farmers’ fields and from which we could almost see Conesus Lake itself. What we could see was the Conesus valley, its beautiful tree-covered hills, and the voluminous puffy clouds that sailed overhead. To the west lay the bucolic splendor of the Genesee Valley, home to no lake, but to the meandering ribbon of the Genesee River, which travels all the way to Rochester and spills into Lake Ontario. And if we traveled a short distance west on East Goodland Road, we could glimpse a part of the dam and gorge at Letchworth State Park.
I passed the destruction near the church. Someone’s garage door had been ripped off and hung from one hinge. A swing set lay upended, and a blue doghouse sat on the side of the road (thankfully without its resident canine). I continued north on the winding hilly roads. Beyond the perimeter of the tornado’s damage, the late June wheat crop stood intact, ready for harvest.
I never tired of drinking in the beauty lining the streets between the church and our house, or those that curved and dipped from Sullivan Hill up to the village of Conaroga, where I worked. I slowed a little to soak it in.
Heavy-headed stalks waved in the breeze, creating great expanses of undulating patterns. A hint of green whispered beneath the golden-pink surf that rippled over the fields.
I reached Sullivan Hill and began the short drive up the dirt road. I turned into the driveway and bumped along until I arrived at the house. Built by Dr. David Hill in 1811, the Greek Revival structure featured several wings and porches that were added over the years.
Max lay on the porch, his head cradled in his paws. When I pulled to a stop beside the barn, his ears pricked up and he bounded toward me.
The friendly assault nearly knocked me over. “Whoa there, boy.” Crouching beside him, I ruffled his wiry gray coat around his ears, making a fuss over him as he licked my hands and tried for my face. “Good dog. Okay, I’m glad to see you, too. Come on, now. Let’s go, boy.”
He frolicked beside me and ran in circles, blue eyes shining. Max’s wiry gray coat came courtesy of his wire-haired dachshund mother, his coloring and eyes from his husky sire. When we reached the porch, I sagged onto the steps and let him flop on my lap while I patted him and stroked his ears. “What a good dog. Good boy.”
He pushed against my chest and licked my face. The ordeal of the morning melted away as I sat on the hot porch steps and enjoyed the simple company of my dog. He nosed behind me and grabbed his favorite toy, a fuzzy black and white soccer ball. He sunk his teeth into it; the ball squeaked when he clamped down on the center. After a few playful chews, he lay down on my lap and continued with the self-comforting squeaking ritual until his eyes closed and he fell asleep with the ball in his mouth.
The spicy scent of dianthus floated on the air. I breathed it in and smiled. My first wife, Elsbeth, had planted the perennials just before she died.
A familiar wave of loss rolled over me. Although it had been five years now, the hole in my heart still hadn’t completely healed, in spite of my new union with Camille.
I lifted my face to the warm sun, to the heavens above, certain she could see me, and confident she would be glad I’d found someone with whom to share my life.
Max still snoozed on my lap and I stroked his ears, inhaling the scent of mini-carnations flourishing near the border of the plot. Elsbeth would have been pleased with the results of her work. The fringy red carnation blossoms crowded around the base of tall red monarda that, in turn, were flanked by yellow sundrops and bright pink groundcover roses.
A lime-throated hummingbird flitted into the mass of red blossoms and hovered over the flowers, siphoning nectar from each. I scrubbed under Max’s ears and let my gaze wander across the lawn to the vegetable garden. The corn stood waist high, but dry. The morning’s rain hadn’t reached our hill. Most of Livingston County had seen tropical heat and drenching storms in May, but not a drop of rain since.
I sat up and shook off the melancholy. The Lincoln peas were ready. I needed to pick and shell them for dinner, and was about to move Max from my lap when the screen door opened behind me.
“Opa! The babies are cryin’.”
I turned to see Johnny’s worried faced mashed against the screen. “Coming, sport.” With a sigh, I eased Max off my lap and headed for the kitchen.
Chapter 7
Johnny held the door open and motioned for me to hurry. “Opa, hurry!”
Siegfried had referred to me as Opa, the German equivalent of “Grandpa,” since Johnny was born. The name stuck ever since, in spite of my French Canadian heritage.
“On my way, buddy. Opa’s comin’.”
Celeste’s pitiful wail alarmed me. Johnny and I scrambled to the second floor and found Freddie rocking the baby in my grandmother’s Boston rocker.
“Is she okay?” I patted the soft copper down on her head. Red-faced from crying, the baby whimpered and sucked on her fist.
Freddie got up and bounced on her toes, patting the baby’s back. “Not really, Dad. She was up from two to six, slept through the morning, and then woke up an hour ago. It’s her front bottom teeth. I think all four are coming in at once, poor little pumpkin.”
