A Simple Shaker Murder (33 page)

A gust of wind blew the door to the nursery shut, making both cousins jump. “Yeah, right, I'm just fine,” Renie said in a startled voice. “But look at this. How creepy can Creepers get?”

Judith followed Renie's finger. In the top floor of the half-version of the tower was a bed, a chair, a table, and a tiny doll in a long dark dress. The doll was lying facedown on the floor in what looked like a pool of blood.

The lights in the nursery went out.

February

Carolyn Hart is the multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity Award-winning author of the “Death on Demand” series as well as the highly praised Henrie O series. In
Death on the River Walk,
sixty something retired journalist Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins must turn her carefully honed sleuthing skills to a truly perplexing crime that's taken place at the luxurious gift shop Tesoros on the fabled River Walk of San Antonio, Texas. See why the
Los Angeles Times
said, “If I were teaching a course on how to write a mystery, I would make Carolyn Hart required reading . . . Superb.”

DEATH ON THE RIVER WALK

by Carolyn Hart

S
IRENS SQUALLED.
W
HEN THE POLICE ARRIVED, THIS AREA
would be closed to all of us. Us. Funny. Was
I
aligning myself with the Garza clan? Not exactly, though I was charmed by Maria Elena, and I liked—or wanted to like—her grandson Rick. But I wasn't kidding myself that the death of the blond man wouldn't cause trouble for Iris. Whatever she'd found in the wardrobe, it had to be connected to this murder. And I wanted a look inside Tesoros before Rick had a chance to grab Iris's backpack should it be there. That was why I'd told Rick to make the call to the police from La Mariposa.

The central light was on. That was the golden pool that
spread through the open door. The small recessed spots above the limestone display islands were dark, so the rest of the store was dim and shadowy.

I followed alongside the path revealed by Manuel's mop. It was beginning to dry at the farther reach, but there was still enough moisture to tell the story I was sure the police would understand. The body had been moved along this path, leaving a trail of bloodstains. That's what Manuel had mopped up.

The sirens were louder, nearer.

The trail ended in the middle of the store near an island with a charming display of pottery banks—a lion, a bull, a big-cheeked balding man, a donkey, a rounded head with bright red cheeks. Arranged in a semicircle, each was equidistant from its neighbor. One was missing.

I used my pocket flashlight, snaked the beam high and low. I didn't find the missing bank. Or Iris's backpack.

The sirens choked in mid-wail.

I hurried, moving back and forth across the store, swinging the beam of my flashlight. No pottery bank, no backpack. Nothing else appeared out of order or disturbed in any way. The only oddity was the rapidly drying area of freshly mopped floor, a three-foot swath leading from the paperweight-display island to the front door.

I reached the front entrance and stepped outside. In trying to stay clear of the mopped area, I almost stumbled into the pail and mop. I leaned down, wrinkled my nose against the sour smell of ammonia, and pointed the flashlight beam into the faintly discolored water, no longer foamy with suds. The water's brownish tinge didn't obscure the round pink snout of a pottery pig bank.

Swift, heavy footsteps sounded on the steps leading down from La Mariposa. I moved quickly to stand by the bench. Iris looked with wide and frightened eyes at the policemen following Rick and his Uncle Frank into the brightness spilling out from Tesoros. I supposed Rick had wakened his uncle to tell him of the murder.

Iris reached out, grabbed my hand. Rick stopped a few feet
from the body, pointed at it, then at the open door. Frank Garza peered around the shoulder of a short policeman with sandy hair and thick glasses. Rick was pale and strained. He spoke in short, jerky sentences to a burly policeman with ink-black hair, an expressionless face, and one capable hand resting on the butt of his pistol. Frank patted his hair, disarranged from sleep, stuffed his misbuttoned shirt into his trousers.

When Rick stopped, the policeman turned and looked toward the bench. Iris's fingers tightened on mine, but I knew the policeman wasn't looking at us. He was looking at Manuel, sitting quietly with his usual excellent posture, back straight, feet apart, hands loose in his lap.

Manuel slowly realized that everyone was looking at him. He blinked, looked at us eagerly, slowly lifted his hands, and began to clap.

March

Nevada Barr's brilliant series featuring Park Ranger Anna Pigeon takes this remarkable heroine to the scene of heinous crimes at the feet of a national shrine—the Statue of Liberty. While bunking with friends on Liberty Island, Anna finds solitude in the majestically decayed remains of hospitals, medical wards, and staff quarters of Ellis Island. When a tumble through a crumbling staircase temporarily halts her ramblings, Anna is willing to write off the episode as an accident. But then a young girl falls—or is pushed—to her death while exploring the Statue of Liberty, and it's up to Anna to uncover the deadly secrets of Lady Liberty's treasured island.

LIBERTY FALLING

by Nevada Barr

H
ELD ALOFT BY THE FINGERS OF HER RIGHT HAND,
A
NNA DANGLED
over the ruined stairwell. Between dust and night there was no way of knowing what lay beneath. Soon either her fingers would uncurl from the rail or the rail would pull out from the wall. Faint protests of aging screws in softening plaster foretold the collapse. No superhuman feats of strength struck Anna as doable. What fragment of energy remained in her arm was fast burning away on the pain. With a kick and a twist, she managed to grab hold of the rail with her other hand as well. Much of the pressure was taken off her shoulder,
but she was left face to the wall. There was the vague possibility that she could scoot one hand width at a time up the railing, then swing her legs onto what might or might not be stable footing at the top of the stairs. Two shuffles nixed that plan. Old stairwells didn't fall away all in a heap like guillotined heads. Between her and the upper floor were the ragged remains, shards of wood and rusted metal. In the black dark she envisioned the route upward with the same jaundice a hay bale might view a pitchfork.

What the hell
, she thought.
How far can it be?
And she let go.

With no visual reference, the fall, though in reality not more than five or six feet, jarred every bone in her body. Unaided by eyes and brain, her legs had no way of compensating. Knees buckled on impact and her chin smacked into them as her forehead met some immovable object. The good news was, the whole thing was over in the blink of a blind eye and she didn't think she'd sustained any lasting damage.

Wisdom dictated she lie still, take stock of her body and surroundings, but this decaying dark was so filthy she couldn't bear the thought of it. Stink rose from the litter: pigeon shit, damp and rot. Though she'd seen none, it was easy to imagine spiders of evil temperament and immoderate size. Easing up on feet and hands, she picked her way over rubble she could not see, heading for the faint smudge of gray that would lead her to the out-of-doors.

Free of the damage she'd wreaked, Anna quickly found her way out of the tangle of inner passages and escaped Island III through the back door of the ward. The sun had set. The world was bathed in gentle peach-colored light. A breeze, damp but cooling with the coming night, blew off the water. Sucking it in, she coughed another colony of spores from her lungs. With safety, the delayed reaction hit. Wobbly, she sat down on the steps and put her head between her knees.

Because she'd been messing around where she probably shouldn't have been in the first place, she'd been instrumental in the destruction of an irreplaceable historic structure. Sitting
on the stoop, smeared with dirt and reeking of bygone pigeons, she contemplated whether to report the disaster or just slink away and let the monument's curators write it off to natural causes. She was within a heartbeat of deciding to do the honorable thing when the decision was taken from her.

The sound of boots on hard-packed earth followed by a voice saying: “Patsy thought it might be you,” brought her head up. A lovely young man, resplendent in the uniform of the Park Police, was walking down the row of buildings toward her.

“Why?” Anna asked stupidly.

“One of the boat captains radioed that somebody was over here.” The policeman sat down next to her. He was no more than twenty-two or -three, fit and handsome and oozing boyish charm. “Have you been crawling around or what?”

Anna took a look at herself. Her khaki shorts were streaked with black, her red tank top untucked and smeared with vile-smelling mixtures. A gash ran along her thigh from the hem of her shorts to her kneecap. It was bleeding, but not profusely. Given the amount of rust and offal in this adventure, she would have to clean it thoroughly and it wouldn't hurt to check when she'd last had a tetanus shot.

“Sort of,” she said, and told him about the stairs. “Should we check it out? Surely we'll have to make a report. You'll have to write a report,” she amended. “I'm just a hapless tourist.”

The policeman looked over his shoulder. The doorway behind them was cloaked in early night. “Maybe in the morning,” he said, and Anna could have sworn he was afraid. There was something in this strong man's voice that told her, were it a hundred years earlier, he would have made a sign against the evil eye.

April

Sister Rose Callahan, eldress of the Depression-era community of Believers at the Kentucky Shaker village of North Homage, knows that evil does not merely exist in the Bible. Sometimes it comes very close to home indeed.

In the next pages, Sister Rose confronts danger in the form of an old Utopian cult seeking new members among the peaceful Shakers.

A SIMPLE SHAKER MURDER

by Deborah Woodworth

A
T FIRST,
R
OSE SAW NOTHING ALARMING, ONLY ROWS OF
strictly pruned apple trees, now barren of fruit and most of their leaves. The group ran through the apple trees and into the more neglected east side of the orchard, where the remains of touchier fruit trees lived out their years with little human attention. The pounding feet ahead of her stopped, and panting bodies piled behind one another, still trying to keep some semblance of separation between the brethren and the sisters.

The now-silent onlookers stared at an aged plum tree. From
a sturdy branch hung the limp figure of a man, his feet dangling above the ground. His eyes were closed and his head slumped forward, almost hiding the rope that gouged into his neck. The man wore loose clothes that were neither Shaker nor of the world, and Rose sensed he was gone even before Josie reached for his wrist and shook her head.

Two brethren moved forward to cut the man down.

“Nay, don't, not yet,” Rose said, hurrying forward.

Josie's eyebrows shot up. “Surely you don't think this is anything but the tragedy of a man choosing to end his own life?” She nodded past the man's torso to a delicate chair laying on its side in the grass. It was a Shaker design, not meant for such rough treatment. Dirt scuffed the woven red-and-white tape of the seat. Scratches marred the smooth slats that formed its ladder back.

“What's going on here? Has Mother Ann appeared and declared today a holiday from labor?” The powerful voice snapped startled heads backward, to where Elder Wilhelm emerged from the trees, stern jaw set for disapproval.

No one answered. Everyone watched Wilhelm's ruddy face blanch as he came in view of the dead man.

“Dear God,” he whispered. “Is he . . . ?”

“Yea,” said Josie.

“Then cut him down instantly,” Wilhelm said. His voice had regained its authority, but he ran a shaking hand through his thick white hair.

Eyes turned to Rose. “I believe we should leave him for now, Wilhelm,” she said. A flush spread across Wilhelm's cheeks, and Rose knew she was in for a public tongue thrashing, so she explained quickly. “Though all the signs point to suicide, still it is a sudden and brutal death, and I believe we should alert the Sheriff. He'll want things left just as we found them.”

“Sheriff Brock . . .” Wilhelm said with a snort of derision. “He will relish the opportunity to find us culpable.”

“Please, for the sake of pity, cut him down.” A man stepped forward, hat in hand in the presence of death. His thinning
blond hair lifted in the wind. His peculiar loose work clothes seemed too generous for his slight body. “I'm Gilbert Owen Griffiths,” he said, nodding to Rose. “And this is my compatriot, Earl Weston,” he added, indicating a broad-shouldered, dark-haired young man. “I am privileged to be guiding a little group of folks who are hoping to rekindle the flame of the great social reformer, Robert Owen. That poor unfortunate man,” he said, with a glance at the dead man, “was Hugh—Hugh Griffiths—and he was one of us. We don't mind having the Sheriff come take a look, but we are all like a family, and it is far too painful for us to leave poor Hugh hanging.”

“It's an outrage, leaving him there like that,” Earl said. “What if Celia should come along?”

“Celia is poor Hugh's wife,” Gilbert explained. “I'll have to break the news to her soon. I beg of you, cut him down and cover him before she shows up.”

Wilhelm assented with a curt nod. “I will inform the Sheriff,” he said as several brethren cut the man down and lay him on the ground. The morbid fascination had worn off, and most of the crowd was backing away.