Plain Murder (8 page)

“I know you and your brother were close,” Rachel said, wondering if it would be offensive to ask the questions that were troubling her. She didn't want to be insensitive, not when George was grieving so, but her uncle's future, maybe even his life, was at stake. “Were you concerned when Willy didn't come home that night?” she ventured. “If you don't mind me asking.”

“I don't mind. I like—” He stopped and started again. “Talking about him. We'd breakfasted together that morning.” The teakettle sputtered, and George put the dog gently on the floor and got up to pour the water into the pot. “I made Assam,” he said. “If that's all right with you.”

“Love it,” Rachel answered. “You say you and Willy had breakfast together the day he disappeared. At Junior's?”

George nodded as he poured the hot water. “Friday mornings we always had breakfast out. It was a tradition. Usually, it was my treat. You know how Willy was with his money. Frugal. Between you and me, there was no need to worry. Our Grandfather O'Day made his money in the railroads . . . and in mining. Coal. He left us . . .” George hesitated as he came back to the table with the teapot and set it down. “Let's just say that we never had to worry. It's how I could do this after retiring from the state.” He waved at the expanse of bookshelves. “Bookstores are a dying institution, so they tell me. Everyone purchases e-books on the Internet. But it's not the same. I like the feel of books, the smell of them.”

“Did Willy seem different in any way that morning?” Rachel asked, trying to gracefully steer the conversation back to Willy's murder. “Anxious? Worried about anything?”

George shook his head. “No, to the contrary, he was in the best of moods. It was the first of the month—when Willy collected his rents. It always cheered him up.” He glanced at his watch, the vintage Montblanc she'd never seen him without. “Almost ready. Three minutes exactly. Some people leave tea leaves in the pot after it's finished brewing, or let the water get too hot. Like it's coffee.” He shook his head again. “Completely wrong for good tea.”

“So—”

“I think I'd like to establish a scholarship in Willy's name,” George went on, not seeming to hear her. “For college. You know how it is with most of our young people in Stone Mill. Money has been so tight for families in the valley that many bright kids are falling through the cracks. The only thing is . . .” He hesitated. “I'm concerned that our Amish neighbors would feel slighted . . . because their children couldn't benefit.” He looked at her questioningly. “I wouldn't want to cause hard feelings.”

Rachel considered. “I think a scholarship fund would be a fine idea. And it wouldn't occur to the Amish families that they were being slighted. They don't consider themselves part of your—” She corrected herself. “Part of
our
world.” She, again, tried to steer the conversation back to Willy. George had a reputation for being a talker. Not that that was bad; ordinarily, she enjoyed her chats with him immensely. It was just that today . . .

George poured the tea into the two pottery mugs he'd brought to the table. They were handmade here in Stone Mill by Coyote Finch, one of their newest residents. Coyote was a potter. She and her husband had discovered Stone Mill on the Internet and moved here with their four children in the spring, setting up shop down the street from The George.

“You were telling me about your breakfast with your brother?”

“Willy was quite pleased with himself. He didn't say why, but he was in such a good humor that he gave our waitress, Dawn, a twenty percent tip. Even she looked shocked. And she liked Willy. The ladies did, you know. They all liked him, in spite of his wandering eye and his frugality. They saw him as he really was, not as a lot of men saw him. Willy had a good heart. Under that tough business exterior, he really was a sweet person.” George spooned sugar into his tea. “He was always good to me, looked after me when we were kids. He was the oldest. By only twenty minutes, but the elder, nevertheless, and he took his position seriously.” George uttered a muffled sound of grief, quickly smothering it with a napkin. “I'm sorry, Rachel. Forgive me, but this is so hard.”

“I can't imagine losing one of my brothers,” she said. “And I have four of them.”

“It's not something anyone should ever have to do,” he said. “I always thought it would be me that went first . . . I inherited a faulty valve in my ticker from my father. Kept me from playing school sports. Not Willy, thank God. He was healthy as a horse. He was a quarterback in college. Did you know that? I was so proud of him. I never missed a game.”

“George,” she said, “after breakfast, you didn't see Willy again?”

He shook his head. “No. Friday, October first, rent day.” He added half-and-half to his cup. “The more I think about it, the more I'm afraid it was a robbery.”

“You think someone robbed him and killed him?” she asked, stirring the honey into her tea.

“Makes sense. He would have had the money from the rent. In cash. Just in a rubber band. The cash wasn't found on his body.”

“A robbery,” she mused. She glanced up at him. “You think it could have been a robbery even though they didn't take his diamond ring?”

He stared into his mug as he stirred.

She gave him time to think.

“It was tight on him. Hard to get off. I think he'd put on a little weight.” He went silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was full of regret. “I told him it was dangerous. That someone would hit him over the head and rob him. I tried and tried to convince him not to collect the rent personally or take cash. But he wouldn't listen.”

“And a lot of people knew that Willy had that cash on the first of the month,” she said, thinking out loud.

“Exactly.”

She added a splash of half-and-half to her tea. Willy had been missing for seven months; she was now vague about some of the details. “So he didn't come home that night?”

“No. He never came home.”

“Did he often come home late on rent days? Could you have been asleep and missed . . .”

“No. I was awake. I'd recorded an old John Wayne movie. We liked to pop a frozen pizza in the oven and have a glass of wine with it as we watched a little TV.” He offered the first hint of a smile she'd seen all evening. “Willy loved John Wayne.”

“I imagine you went over all this with the police.”

“Of course, when he went missing. Then again yesterday, and again this morning. I really didn't have much to tell them.”

“You must have been worried when he didn't come home.”

“A little. I sat up until . . . oh . . . a little after one a.m. Then I took Sophie out for her late-night duty, and we went to bed. When I woke up, Saturday morning, there was still no word from Willy.”

“And that's when you called the police?”

“No.” George flushed and looked away. “I thought... well, I thought that Willy had . . .” He raised his head and met her gaze. He looked as if he was about to start crying again. “Willy had lady friends. I'm not judging him. He was just that way.”

“And you assumed he'd spent the night with one of them?”

“He and Dawn had been friendly at breakfast.” George took another sip of his tea. “Honestly, Rachel, I thought he and Dawn had taken off for the weekend. He sometimes did that. Atlantic City . . . Dover, Delaware. Willy liked to gamble. Not to excess. He'd set aside a certain sum, and win or lose, he'd play with that.”

“When did you decide that something was wrong? That you needed to contact the authorities?”

“Monday morning. He should have been back by Sunday afternoon. Even if he'd driven to Atlantic City, Willy would have returned and slept in his own bed Sunday night. I wanted to call the police Sunday evening, but I didn't. God help me, I didn't. I felt foolish. What was I thinking? What if he was still alive Sunday? I'm old and foolish.”

“You aren't old, George.”

“No?” A few of the creases smoothed around his eyes. “We were sixty-seven on our last birthday. That's not exactly right . . .” He drew in a ragged breath. “I guess
I
was sixty-seven. Our birthday came after . . . after he disappeared. I suppose Willy . . .” His Adam's apple bobbed. “I suppose Willy was sixty-six when he passed.”

“Sixty-seven isn't old, not today.”

He exhaled slowly. “I suppose not, but it feels old. And looking at what years I have ahead . . . alone . . . without anybody but Sophie . . .”

“George . . .” She hesitated. “Did the police ask you about a notebook or journal Willy had? They found it . . . on him.”

He nodded. “Always carried it in his pants pocket. Always scribbling in it. What he needed to do or buy . . . or collect on. If I owed him a cup of coffee, Willy would write it down. He kept phone numbers. Lists. You name it, Willy had it in that book.”

“Do you know what ‘A.T.B.R.' might mean? It was written in his notebook the day he disappeared.”

George's gaze met hers. “I wish it had been me instead of him, Rachel. If I could go back and trade places, it would be me taken and my brother would still be alive.”

Stone Mill House was quiet when Rachel arrived home. She was tired, but it was still too early to go to bed, and her mind was in turmoil. Had it only been yesterday that Willy's body had been discovered? It seemed like days ago . . .

It gave her some satisfaction to know that Uncle Aaron was back with his family tonight, not sleeping in a police station cell. But she couldn't help wondering how long he would remain with them. Equally scary was the thought that a killer was walking free somewhere . . . a monster who held human life so cheaply that he could commit murder and then bury his victim with as little hesitation as a dog burying an old bone.

Rachel retrieved her laptop from the office and carried it and a tray with apple juice, a tangerine, and a ham biscuit up to her apartment. As she climbed the stairs, she saw that her remaining guest's door, off the second-floor hallway, was closed. There was a sliver of light seeping under the door, and she could hear the murmur of canned laughter from the television.

She continued up another flight of stairs to her apartment. She switched on the light and found Bishop already curled up in the middle of her bed on a folded quilt. As she entered the room, the cat raised his head, stared at her through slitted eyes, and yawned. “Just me,” Rachel said. She carried her laptop and her supper tray to the end table that stood beside a comfy leather recliner.

Her retreat was on the third floor in the main section of the house, and her bedroom was en-suite, complete with a big soaking bathtub. She had plans for a separate sitting room and a small kitchen, but those would have to wait until her business began showing a healthy profit. For now, she made do with the recliner, a mini-fridge, and a microwave on a table pushed against the wall. In one corner of the room, she had a desk with a printer on top. Mounted on the wall, beside the desk, was a big white dry-erase board she used to keep track of tasks she needed to do.

Rachel wasn't complaining. The private bathroom, with its walk-in shower and marble-topped sink, was a treasure beyond counting. As a girl who'd grown up with eight brothers and sisters in a house without electricity and only a single bathroom, she appreciated the marvels of English plumbing. Sometimes, she was sure that she liked her bathroom even more than modern electric appliances.

She'd jump in the shower before bed, but for now, she wanted to check her email and then see if there were any new orders on the Stone Mill Heirloom Arts website. One of the things that she was most proud of, since her return to her hometown, was the crafts co-op she'd organized.

Her Amish community didn't know anything about the Internet, so they had had no idea that they could reach customers worldwide without leaving their workshops or kitchen tables. Like Mary Aaron with her quilts, others had found a market for rush-seat chairs, wooden toys, baskets, and other traditional crafts.

Tonight, she was pleased to find an order for one of Mattie Beiler's rag rugs, six jars of honey, and a willow egg basket fashioned by her oldest brother Paul's wife. Miriam would be delighted. She'd only finished the basket a few weeks ago, and the profit from her work would pay for the first goslings that she'd been wanting to buy to start her own flock. Best of all, a customer in Boston wanted additional information and photographs of another of Mary Aaron's quilts—the queen-size “Jacob's Ladder.”

After Rachel sent the orders to the office printer downstairs, where Mary Aaron would collect and start filling them the next day, she toyed with the idea of trying to locate the missing waitress. There were a few questions she'd like to ask Dawn, wherever she was.

Of course, if Dawn were the murderer, no one would find her anytime soon. But Rachel doubted that the waitress had committed the crime. Not that a woman wasn't capable of killing, but she just couldn't picture the thin blonde burying a body in the dark of night in a cow pasture. No . . . Willy had been a tall man. This was definitely the work of a male.

Unless . . . Could Dawn have been involved in the murder as an accomplice? If so, with whom? Her boyfriend? What was his name? Floyd? Boyd? No, Roy. But he was probably innocent because he hadn't run away. Roy was still living in that run-down shack just outside of town. She'd seen him at Howdy's Garage and Tow two weeks ago, buying five dollars' worth of gas. And if Roy had robbed and murdered Willy, he would hardly still be driving an '84 lime-green pickup with the cracked windshield and expired tags.

Someone had told Rachel that Dawn had family in Florida. She went to a people-locator site on the Web and keyed in Dawn's name and the state. Immediately, five Dawns popped up . . . Palm Coast, Jacksonville, Orlando, and two towns that Rachel had never heard of. A few more minutes and she had a list of phone numbers. She glanced at the clock. It was eight thirty, a little late to call, but not outrageous.

The first two Dawns were strikeouts. The first was a nursing home, the second a disconnected number. She looked at the clock again: 8:42. Now it was probably too late to make the call . . . no sense in disturbing strangers or angering the real Dawn Clough, if she did find her tonight. She closed her laptop, placed it on the floor beside her chair, and reached for her supper tray. Tomorrow, she'd try again after breakfast. And if she couldn't find the waitress, there were some people right here in Stone Mill who could talk about her.

“What do you think, Bishop?” The cat switched his tail, but kept his eyes tightly closed. “Mouse-chasing dreams again?” she asked. Not that he would stoop to chasing mice. The Siamese was well aware of his exalted position in the household. Swatting at spiders was as plebian a pursuit as Bishop would stoop to.

Chuckling, Rachel reached for her tangerine. Maybe she would start taking notes on her investigation. Wasn't that the logical way to approach this? Then she thought of something else . . . another search she might make without leaving her recliner. Willy's rentals. If he had made his usual collections on the day he disappeared, maybe it would be smart to see what he owned. That way, she could retrace his steps; who knew what she might uncover?

 

Park Estates?
Rachel had to laugh whenever she passed the mobile home park, which wasn't often as it was located at the end of a dead-end gravel road, a lane that could only be called a road in the most general sense. Willy's low-income housing venture was wedged into a narrow hollow between a ten-foot-high chain-link fence surrounding an abandoned gravel pit and a boulder-strewn hill that rose abruptly.

As Rachel geared the Jeep down into second and turned into the community, she saw that there had once been lots for a dozen mobile homes, with a single driveway between each trailer and a turnaround at the far end of the narrow street. Now the park held seven; one was a double-wide that took up two spaces. There were three burned-out hulks and a bare lot now partially occupied by an industrial-size Dumpster. Once off the access road and into the park proper, the gravel petered to nothing more than a few broken bricks, mud puddles, and sand.

“A veritable oasis,” Rachel muttered. Her comment was lost in a cacophony of snarls, yips, and angry barking. Two mixed-blood pit bulls tied to the back step of the nearest trailer threw themselves against their chains, straining to attack the Jeep and, presumably, her. A German shepherd, caged beneath the mobile home across the driveway, bared his teeth, lunged, and added his vocal threats to her welcome. Other smaller dogs added to the din, peering out of windows, yelping from outside pens, or simply running loose.

Rachel parked and reached for a Ziploc bag on the passenger seat: cut-up carrots she'd grabbed for a snack. She threw two out the open window to the two hounds nipping at her tires. A black-and-white terrier darted in to grab a carrot and dove under the Jeep to gulp down his prize. “In for a penny, in for a pound.” She tossed a few more carrot sticks out the driver's window, climbed over the stick shift, slid across the passenger seat, and cautiously got out of the vehicle.

Avoiding the mud puddle beside the door, she tried the first mobile home without a dog guarding the door. She went up a set of shaky metal steps and knocked. From inside came the shrill sound of cartoons and the cry of a baby. No one answered. Her gaze drifted to a rusty hasp: the hinged kind you used to secure a shed door. It seemed oddly out of place on a trailer door. She knocked louder.

The door opened a little, and an overweight young woman, barely out of her teens, peeked out. Her blond hair with dark roots was pulled back into an untidy ponytail. “Yeah?”

“Hi. I'm Rachel Mast. I was hoping you could answer a few questions about Willy O'Day. Your landlord,” she added.

The young woman, dressed in gray sweatpants and a Justin Bieber tee, asked, “Who are you?”

“I'm a friend of George O'Day. He told me that his brother came here the day he disappeared last fall—to collect the rent.”

“This is my grandmother's place,” she said. “Blanche Willis. She paid Willy that night. She's got a receipt. Do you want to see it? She keeps all her receipts.”

“Who is it?” someone asked from inside the residence.

An older woman's voice—Mrs. Willis, the resident, she presumed.

“Is it the police again?” the woman demanded.

“I'm just trying to get an idea of what happened,” Rachel said. “Any help you or your grandmother could give me would be greatly appreciated.”

The girl frowned and opened the door wider. “I thought they arrested Willy's killer. Some Amish guy.”

“No,” Rachel corrected. “No one has been arrested. It's important that we find out who really did kill Mr. O'Day, because the murderer might still be in the area.” The baby screamed louder. A second child, a little boy, two maybe, pushed past the girl and stared at Rachel. He was wearing an undershirt and a diaper, and had a baby bottle in his hand. Through the open door, Rachel caught the odor of a dirty diaper. “Please, if I could just speak with—”

“What does she want?” the other person, out of Rachel's line of vision, demanded in a strident tone.

Justin Bieber's fan stepped aside, pushing the door open wider, and a heavyset woman steered her wheelchair to the entrance. “We pay our rent every month. I called Willy O'Day's house after he disappeared, and his brother said I could just put a check in the mail. He said he didn't need cash. So I do. I send a check every month. Somebody's cashing them. I've got my bank statements to prove it.”

“I'm sure there's no problem with your rent. I didn't come to ask about that,” Rachel said as she smiled. “I know you heard that Willy is—”

“Dead.” The stout woman in the wheelchair scowled. “Serves him right, the old skinflint. Few around here will miss him, I can tell you that.”

“If I could just come in,” Rachel said. “I promise not to take up much of your time, Mrs. Willis.”

“Oh, let her in.” Mrs. Willis threw up her hand. “Nothing on television I want to see anyhow. They took off my show, you know. Twenty years I've watched that program.
As the Darkness Falls
. Did you watch it?”

“It's been off for more than a year, Gran.” The girl opened the door and waved Rachel in.

The combined living room and eating area wasn't as bad as Rachel had imagined. There were toys scattered everywhere, and from the way the little boy's diaper sagged, she suspected he needed changing, but the house was messy and cluttered rather than dirty. The linoleum floor was worn through in spots, and the couch had seen better days, but the forty-some-inch TV looked new. “Thank you,” Rachel said. “I'm Rachel.”

“I'm Blanchette Willis. You can call me Blanche, everybody does. This is my granddaughter Chelsea and her Justin.”

Rachel smiled and nodded. “Chelsea.”

“Chelsea stays with me and helps me out,” Blanche explained. “Chelsea pays me rent when she stays.” She waved toward the sofa. “Sit down.”

“Your personal affairs aren't any of my business,” Rachel assured her as she took a seat. Her fingers brushed something sticky on the edge of the couch, and she quickly put her hand in her lap.

“Sorry about the place. It's all we can afford. If Aunt Millie hadn't been tricked by that tightwad, Gran would have gotten everything when she died,” Chelsea put in. The little boy started whining, and his mother changed the channel on the TV. The child popped the bottle in his mouth and dropped onto an oversized pillow, shaped like a race car, to watch a cartoon cat chasing a squadron of mice across the screen.

“That Willy O'Day,” Chelsea continued. “He scammed my aunt, Gran's daughter, into writing a new will and leaving her dry cleaner's to him instead of Gran.”