The Secluded Village Murders Read online

  “Babs, can you just for once stop messing around? I am trying to get a bead on what’s going on around here. Tell me the latest on Miranda Shaw.”

  “Why?”

  “Just humor me, okay? Please?”

  Affecting an erect pose as if reciting the answers to a quiz, Babs said, “Miranda Shaw, busty English wench, poaches enticing males in our midst up until late summer. Does God-knows-what whilst at home in the UK. As for the unmovable fake Tudor, I haven’t a clue. In short, I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got her claws into someone local, who will go nameless for now. But she’s back in the UK at the moment, while trying to move her McMansion here, and playing both ends against the middle.”

  Suddenly, Babs looked up from her camera and stared at Emily. “Hold it. Why do I have the sinking feeling I’ve been duped? That you’ve actually totally forgotten all about tomorrow?”

  When it finally came to her, Emily said, “Right. We had an arrangement.”

  “Damn straight. Why, pray tell, did I just take all these stills of your healthy, glowing countenance? Why did you prod me the other day, saying a promo and sidebar would be so great? First day of school, appealing to the little brats who, in turn, would prod their parents to hook up with one of your oh-so-special guided tours. What is this, sudden amnesia?”

  “Look, Babs, I’m booked to take off first thing tomorrow. After what I’ve been through—I mean with Chris and all this stuff that’s percolating underneath . . .” Emily stopped herself, realizing that none of what she’d been alluding to made any sense.

  “Something happen to Chris?”

  “Yes. He fell off that fake Tudor roof.”

  “Wow.” Babs got off her signature flip repartee for a moment, quickly recovered, and carried on. “Anyway, no taking off first thing. First thing tomorrow, first day of school, you’re going to tell the kiddies what wonders Auntie Em is going to bring back for show-and-tell about her wild adventures in the spooky moors. You are not going to leave me holding the bag.”

  “I’m telling you, I don’t see how I can the way things are going.”

  “The way things are going, pal, is what we call life.” Babs segued to a few clichés about fulfilling one’s obligations. Dropping that tack, she said, “Okay, let’s have it. What is the upshot here?”

  Emily realized that, given the drastic change of circumstances, she hadn’t taken this under consideration. Hadn’t come up with some way to juggle the meeting with the kids on the first day of school, which had completely slipped her mind, while enlisting Babs’s help to keep tabs on the machinations back home while she was off in England. At the moment, all Emily could say was, “I’ll get back to you.”

  Walking off, Emily barely heard Babs yelling behind her. “Hey, what is this? Fair is fair. Ever hear of it?”

  Emily hurried back to the Green as Babs’s shouts trailed off. Enlisting Babs’s help was not the first thing on her list. The first thing was dealing with Harriet as she attempted to leave Silas and Pru in the lurch. Stop her from taking off and make her have it out with her siblings—or something to that effect.

  Percolating beneath her thoughts were Doc’s insinuations coupled with the GDC’s ploys and resources. Which, by some hook or crook, led somehow to Chris’s tenuous hold on life and was linked to the phone call and Miranda Shaw’s leaky roof. She thought about Brian’s and Martha’s response to the very mention of Miranda’s name, back again to Harriet’s sudden panic, and the seemingly taboo subject of Chris’s fall. Emily was speculating like crazy. Whatever way she looked at it, there was no way she could get her mind around this jangle of loose ends while groping for some way to deal with her obligations.

  Even so, there was so much at stake here, including promising her mother that she would keep track and make sure everything was okay back home. Even so, there was no way Emily could dismiss any of it.

  Chapter Five

  Emily pulled over across from the ramshackle Curtis colonial. She let the motor idle for a while as a few cars zipped up the vertical curve on their way to the Massachusetts border, the southern Berkshires, and beyond.

  Seen from this angle, the Curtis place held its own as the oldest house in Lydfield. In the hazy afternoon light, it stood with its flat Federalist façade, white clapboard beneath a steeply-pitched roof, black shutters flanking paned windows, and a semi-circular fanlight above the central entry. Just as traditional was the left front door, added on to eliminate the prospect of walking straight into the stairway.

  Looking more closely, what marked the Curtis house—apart from the sagging roof and peeling paint—was the absence of a front stoop that had long since rotted away. Even more curious were the steps to the side entrance that had also rotted away. In their place were loose wooden planks supported by concrete blocks. It was a wonder to Emily how Harriet, Silas, and Pru managed to venture in and out, especially in winter, without spraining an ankle or worse. Especially Harriet, in her late sixties, ungainly and accident prone. All in all, it was patently obvious that the Curtises were strapped for cash.

  But what really caught Emily’s attention was the sight of red flags, like the boundary lines of a foot race, leading away from the Curtis side yard and up the slope to the tree line and the high meadow. As she eased her car back along the road, it dawned on her that it would be highly dangerous for the GDC to place the entrance to a gateway community of 120 luxury townhouses, a clubhouse, and whatnot on such a steep curve. The surging bedrock would make it almost impossible and prohibitively expensive to construct.

  Emily drove off, passed the crest of the hill, made a U-turn and stopped in front of her mother’s B&B. If her mother did sell out, with a bit of excavation, the GDC could use their driveway to connect to the trail up to the meadowland. But the GDC wouldn’t have filed a site application banking on that remote contingency, which Doc had already intimated was a highly iffy option and not the optimum linchpin.

  On the other hand, driving back down the vertical curve and past the looming rise of the meadowland, the solution became glaring. There, less than a hundred yards back, the tiny red flags leading up and away from the Curtis side yard created a safe entrance from the point where the road flattened out, past the long side of the Curtis estate, to an easy access up and onto the coveted site.

  Emily switched off the motor. One way or another she was going to confront Harriet about the flags and the check she had ostensibly received from the GDC. This represented not only the end of Emily’s mother’s way of life due to the imminent excavation and destruction of the high meadow, but the very quaint, historic character of the village. A peaceful and cozy ambiance that affected everyone.

  But as luck would have it, Emily’s timing was off. She had no sooner gotten out of her car when a blue cab with yellow markings swerved in front of her and parked. The cabbie, a scrawny man in a tacky brown shirt and green tie, popped open the lid of his trunk and headed down the front lawn toward the loose-plank steps. Harriet appeared at the side door lugging a suitcase. While the cabbie was struggling to grab the suitcase and keep Harriet from stumbling, into the mix, hot on Harriet’s heels, came Doc, dressed in his shirtsleeves.

  “Hold it! I tell you, we gotta talk. Where you think you’re going?” Doc yelled.

  “I have nothing further to say to you,” Harriet called out in that flinty voice of hers. “I have nothing further to say to anyone.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, lady, you got another think coming.”

  The befuddled cabbie threw the suitcase in the trunk, slammed the lid, slid behind the wheel, and gunned the motor. Harriet jerked open the passenger door handle and shouted back, “It will simply have to wait!”

  “Like hell,” said Doc, waving his hands like a traffic cop. “You can’t pull this now.”

  Emily wanted to do something, step in somehow, but in all the confusion she hadn’t a chance.

  Spotting Emily, Harriet peered out the passenger window and called to her over the noise of the motor. “Handle
Silas and Pru for me, won’t you? As I asked. Come up with something, anything. Our situation, our association, is completely untenable. And don’t forget the logistics—our rendezvous time and itinerary.”

  Before Emily could reply, the cab took off with a lurch, heading east to beat the traffic on its way to Granby and the Bradley Airport north of Hartford.

  “How do you like that?” said Doc glancing at Emily. “Looks like now I got to deal with you.”

  “Keep away from me, okay?”

  “Fat chance.”

  They were standing approximately the same distance apart as they had during their exchange in the drizzle up on the high meadow that morning. Except that now they were in full sight of passing cars and there was no way Emily could put up with him.

  “Okay, all right,” said Doc, softening his tone. “When you wouldn’t even take my card, I could see I was maybe coming on a little strong.”

  Emily pondered her next move as Doc carried on.

  “So, we got off on the wrong foot. You might have heard something I said over the cell phone about taking care of it right away, and then it was raining, really coming down. And then—I mean, these things happen. And now with this Harriet fleeing the coop, it’s all too damn much. Am I right or am I right?”

  Frustrated over Harriet’s sudden getaway, Emily decided her only option was to pick up the pieces. She turned back toward the house.

  Following close behind, Doc said, “Wait up, huh? You want to talk soccer? I know soccer. You were a striker, right? What happens when you get tripped up? You get on the ball, chip it over to a wing, get it back, and bang it home. So use your head, make like I’m the wing.”

  Ignoring Doc completely, Emily made for the loose-planked steps.

  Doc grabbed her elbow. She yanked herself free.

  “Don’t be like that. Look, you tell me what logistics this Harriet was talking about and I’ll figure some way we both make out. Just tell me exactly when and where you’re gonna meet. We both need everything nailed down, right? What can you lose?”

  Emily had only one thing to say as she stepped up to the side entrance. “You’re on my list, Doc.”

  “Oh, that’s cute. That’s real cute.”

  She passed under the weathered plaque inscribed with “Elijah Curtis 1781” in wrought iron. As she entered, whatever else Doc may have had to say evaporated into the woodwork as he left the premises, his curses tailing off.

  Making her way into the dingy interior, she sloughed off the musty odor, the shabby upholstered wing chairs, and frayed silk draperies, fixing her gaze on a drop-leaf table where a number of papers had spilled out of a double-sided satchel. She made a sharp turn into the keeping room, past the sooty fireplace with the dangling cast-iron pots and ladles, and called for Silas.

  There was no reply. She called for Pru with the same result.

  No matter what, she had no intention of taking off tomorrow and winding up alone with Harriet, who was up to God knew what. She hoped that she’d never wind up alone with any member of this flaky trio under any circumstances, but with Silas and Pru as a buffer, she might somehow be able to manage the tour and, at the same time, get a bead on the troubling games being played from across the pond. Which meant making sure Silas and Pru were squared away. Perhaps with all three in tow, Harriet would be rendered harmless, slip up somehow, and come to terms. Perhaps, by some stretch of the imagination, the tour would eventually run its course as planned.

  Presently, Emily heard shuffling from below and started down the rickety cellar staircase. As she was about to call out again, Silas rushed up. Sidestepping both Silas and the oak case he wielded that probably housed one of those antique dueling pistols of his, Emily let him pass.

  A few steps above her, Silas muttered, “After all I did for her . . . all I’ve done . . . and this is what I get.” He turned, peered over his silver-rimmed bifocals and, as if Emily had been there all the while, said in greeting, “Remember this?” He lifted the oak case.

  Glancing up in the dim cellar light, Emily remembered the way Silas’s mind worked. For Silas, time was telescoped, and yesterday and today were still fused. It was as if he was here and, at the same time, someplace else. Perhaps back in history, perhaps hanging on to something that had happened recently or long ago.

  Humoring him until she could get him to focus, she made a stab.

  “Bet you’ve got a matched pair of flintlocks with a walnut stock in there,” she said.

  “Plus?”

  Emily couldn’t possibly remember.

  “Battle trophies on the trigger guards,” said Silas, prompting her. “And pineapple finials. Wad cutter, ball mold, powder flask, and oil bottle in the original case. Look what I’ve had to resort to.”

  “You don’t mean selling them?”

  “What else can I . . .? To supplement Pru and I . . . our travel expenses, now that Harriet has skipped out. The fete is counting on us, you know. Especially because of all I can reveal about the historical link between our two villages.”

  Silas stopped talking and held still, as if posing for a family portrait. Except for his full head of gray, wooly hair, hound-dog face, and skinny frame, he looked every bit like Harriet’s brother, his rumpled tweed jacket contrasting with Harriet’s usual starched getup when flustered out on the town.

  “All the same, Silas,” Emily said, “I couldn’t help notice the papers strewn over the table in the parlor. I hope you’ve gone over my instructions carefully about packing, the rate of exchange, duplicate passports, and bringing drug prescriptions, just in case.”

  “Yes . . . maybe. Not sure. They’re counting on me at the Twinning, you know,” said Silas, repeating himself. “The residents of Lydfield-in-the-Moor know little of the founding of the Greenwoods and the Western Lands. When the Brits came over, that’s what they called our village. So much else to tell them, which means I am absolutely obliged to . . .”

  “Sell that matched pair.”

  “Yes, yes, pawning this, selling that. But I shall recoup, I tell you. I can’t believe Harriet going off like this, as if Pru and I were extra baggage. But I definitely will recoup.”

  “What about my travel instructions, Silas?”

  Silas climbed up the remaining steps into the keeping room and turned. “On my desk. Bring them up and lock up tight, will you? And don’t mention a thing to Pru. Let her think I had extra money squirreled away for a rainy day. She’ll like that. Makes for a better story.”

  Emily wanted to ask where Pru could be found, but Silas kept moving off.

  “Good, good,” Silas muttered. “Emily Ryder over here to make sure we were included and all set with her instructions. Very good.”

  For the sake of expediency, she went along with Silas’s wishes, though she wished playing nanny didn’t so often come with the job.

  As the dimming afternoon light sifted through the cellar windows, Emily skirted the converted coal furnace, stepped up onto the raised flooring, and entered Silas’s makeshift vault. There it was, in as much disarray as the first time she encountered it. Cobwebs clustered in the corners of the drop ceiling; the temperature control and humming vented humidifier probably hadn’t been replaced in years. UV filters and silica gel anti-humidity packets were everywhere—inside the storage cabinets and glass cases and even on the shelves beneath the framed and faded colonial maps—while the wiring running across the edge of the vinyl flooring was frayed as ever.

  Her sense of unease grew worse by the second down in the dingy space.

  As she vaguely recalled, an old mahogany desk occupied the center of the room and held an old Mac computer, printer, fax machine, and phone, where Silas conducted most of his mail order business. She retrieved the travel instructions and shut the computer down.

  For good measure, she padlocked the display case housing the double barrel traveling pistols, ramrods, brass powder flasks and ammunition, the Colt, long-barreled cap and ball revolvers, and the like. It was a wonder there was still
a worldwide market for authentic firearms from the Revolutionary War.

  She noted that there was only one of a pair of hammerless, nickel-plated, .32 Smith and Wesson “Lemon Squeezers” and a box of assorted cartridges. He must have sold that too, she thought. But she didn’t discount the oddness that went with everything else today. She continued tidying up to comply with Silas’s wishes and, perhaps subconsciously, to put things in some kind of order.

  Absentmindedly, she moved faster and straightened up the silhouettes of heads and shoulders, jungle creatures, and other clip-ons for target practice. She secured a second display case of old books and pamphlets with a skeleton key that hung by a set of dangling pick locks.

  Just then, as the humidifier shut off, a familiar buzzing sound caught her attention. She located the model electric train perched on a plywood-and-sawhorse table in the far corner, replete with simulated green hills and valley. The replica of a steam engine caught her eye as well, along with the boxcars, freight cars, Pullman passenger cars, and a red caboose.

  Just as she had in restless times during her employment with Silas, she gripped the multi-volt transformer that would send the train tooting up the first steep grade, cascading down and over a bridge and round a curve, up a steeper rise and down again through the tunnel and long straightaway till it slowed in its return to Lionel City in honor of its brand name.

  On a whim, she fiddled with the dial and watched the toy train zip up the first grade and head straight down for the bridge. But something sparked along the tracks and switches and the overhead lights flickered. She shut the whole thing off.

  She checked the fuse box, reset a breaker, and replaced the blown fuse. Skirting around an open toolbox and a crumpled raincoat, she unplugged the transformer and switched the lights back on.

  Sitting down on a crate marked “Parts for Carlisle and Finch model trains,” she decided to draw the line. Once again, she realized she was fussing around to distract herself from all that was weighing on her mind. But she was not about to put away the tool box lying by her feet or the damp raincoat.