Authors: Arlene Sachitano
They moved on, leaving Connie and Harriet to roll duty.
"Hey,” Carlton said and held his plate out to Connie. “This looks delicious.” His plate was filled with scrambled eggs, bacon and fruit salad. He'd left a large space for a cinnamon roll.
"Do you have any smaller rolls?” Bebe asked as she came up behind him. “My baby is watching his weight.” Her plate held a teaspoonful of eggs and several pieces of fruit.
Carlton looked longingly at the pan of rolls before mumbling “never mind” and moving on to the end of the table to pick up plastic utensils and a napkin.
"She's a real piece of work,” Connie said as she placed a roll on the next plate held out to her.
"Do you want me to hand out a few?” Harriet offered.
"I think I can handle it. Besides, you're making me nervous with all that pacing. Why don't you go find your young man and spend a little of that nervous energy on him?"
"If you're sure you don't need me."
Connie rolled her eyes skyward. “Go,” she said.
The tables had been set up on a grassy verge that separated the battlefield from the sutlers’ area. The two end booths in the sutler's area had been emptied and re-configured into a food service space. Harriet walked out onto the verge and looked for Aiden.
He spotted her first and waved, catching her attention. He was seated at a table on the far side of the eating area. She wended her way through the tables, greeting people as she went.
"Good job on all this,” Aiden said and made a sweeping motion that encompassed the entire park. He rose and kissed her on the cheek then pulled out her chair before sitting back down, flicking a strand of his silky black hair from his white-blue eyes as he did so.
"I'm glad it's over. I just wish Gerald Willis hadn't been the grande finale."
"Yeah, that's pretty weird. I wonder if it's still considered murder if the victim has been dead for twenty years."
"That's one of the questions the Loose Threads identified last night. Not the murder question, but the declared dead part. We want to see his death certificate. We figure Mavis must have one."
"She probably does, but whether it's real is another story.” Aiden leaned back in his chair. “I'll bet I could get on the internet and within five minutes have a copy of a Malaysian death certificate and with a little cut-and-paste I could make it be anyone's. You copy it onto fancy paper, and who in Foggy Point is going to know it's a fake?"
"You're right. If she showed me a death certificate right now, I'd have no way of knowing if it was valid or not."
"How's Mavis holding up?"
"You know Mavis. She was shocked, but now she wants answers just like the rest of us. It has to hurt, though—they were married for a long time when he left."
"We don't know what his reason was, though. Maybe he had a good one."
"Yeah, well, I'd like to hear it. The re-enactors are all worried that one of their horses was involved. I think I'll walk across the field and check out the area where he died again. Want to come?"
"I'd love to, but...” He paused and pointed at the dark-haired toddler sitting and banging a pair of Styrofoam cups together in the grass just beyond the table. “I'm on nanny duty. Carla went for a walk with her friend."
Harriet got up. “Well, I'm going to look. I'll let you know if I find anything."
"Can you wait until Carla gets back?"
"How long is she going to be?” She could tell from his face he had no idea.
"I told her to take her time,” he said.
Harriet reached out and turned his arm so she could see the face of his watch.
"I better go on and look—I have to be back in a half-hour to clean up after brunch."
"Stop here first and I'll help."
"If Carla's back, you mean."
"Come on, don't be like that. If you'd been there when Terry asked Carla to go for a walk, you would have offered to babysit, too."
"But she didn't ask
me
, did she?” With that, Harriet strode away toward the bleachers and the forest beyond the field.
The bleachers were all but gone. The rental people had been there for several hours disassembling the structure. She paused to look at the spot in the forest where she had first noticed Gerald.
From this distance, she couldn't see any large stumps or broken trees in the area where she'd found him. There were clumps of brambles and vines separating two pathways that went deeper into the forest; she'd have to take a closer look to see if the berry vines were hiding a secret.
The dry grass crunched as she circled the end of the battlefield and moved along the edge of the woods. Since the re-enactors were still in the park, the police had removed their yellow crime scene tape as soon as they were finished documenting the location. Carlton and the mayor both had spent the morning circulating through the brunch, glad-handing the out-of-town visitors and encouraging them to come back next year while downplaying Gerald's death at the same time.
Harriet wasn't sure what she was looking for. The grass was still flat where Gerald had collapsed. She squatted on her haunches to take a closer look. There were a few dark streaks of what must be blood. Not really that much, considering a man had died, she thought. She scanned the area to the left and then to the right.
A fine white powder dusted the area to the right of where Gerald's shoulders had been. She ran her fingers through the grass, picking up powder in the process. She expected it to feel slightly sticky, as pollen might have, but it was very smooth. She made a mental note to ask Darcy, a sometimes Loose Thread member and crime scene technician, if the criminalists used powder in their processing of an outdoor scene.
Harriet heard a branch rustle. She stood, and could see the leaves of the tree above her head moving in the slight breeze. She looked back across the field and spied Aiden's dark head as he sat at the table, Wendy in his lap. She turned and went farther into the woods in the direction Gerald must have come from.
A loop of root caught the toe of her shoe. She bent down to free her foot, and a small blue cylinder caught her eye. She reached to pick it up, and a burst of pain shot through her shoulder as she was smashed to the ground.
She heard a scream and realized it had come from her. A wave of nausea swept through her as she sank deeper into the prickly vines she'd landed on.
Strong hands lifted her.
"Are you okay?” a male voice asked.
"Aiden?” she mumbled and opened her eyes.
Instead of the ice-blue eyes she expected to see, a stranger's dark-brown ones looked intently at her. His hair was close-cropped, unlike Aiden's dark silky locks that hung below his ears.
"I can't feel my right arm,” she replied.
"Here, let me help you to that log.” Without waiting for an answer, he guided her to the end of a downed tree that lay parallel to the path. He didn't let go until she was seated.
"Harriet, what happened?” Carla asked. She'd apparently come from deeper in the woods while Harriet was moving to her current seat. “We heard someone scream, so Terry ran ahead to see what the problem was."
"I don't know what hit me. My foot caught on a root, and I bent down to free it and something hit me from behind. Do you see a tree branch where I was?” She leaned in the direction she'd come from. “I think a big branch fell on me."
"Harriet, that doesn't make sense,” Carla said. “It's not windy or anything, why would a branch that big suddenly fall?"
Terry stepped back to where Harriet had been sprawled on the ground. He reached into the berry vines beside the path and pulled out a club-like branch about the size of a baseball bat. He held it up.
"This isn't big enough to knock you down unless someone was swinging it."
"There must be another, bigger one,” Harriet insisted.
"If there is, I don't see it."
The feeling was starting to return to Harriet's arm, and it wasn't a good thing.
"I don't want to seem ungrateful, but who are you, anyway?” she asked the man. She realized an instant later it was obvious who he was. This had to be Carla's new friend.
"I'm Terry,” he said and held his hand out. “Terry Jansen. I'm a friend of Carla's."
Carla's cheeks turned pink. Harriet tried to extend her hand to shake his but winced in pain when her shoulder moved.
"We've been gone a long time,” Carla stammered, her previous confidence fleeing. “I need to check on Wendy. I'll tell Aiden what happened.” She didn't wait for a reply, just turned and hurried toward the battlefield.
Terry looked exasperated as he said, “Wait,” to her retreating back. He turned back to Harriet. “Let me check your shoulder."
"So, who are you and why are you in Foggy Point?” she asked. “And why should I let you check my shoulder?"
"My name is Terry Jansen,” he repeated. “I'm in town doing a little genealogy research, and I was a combat medic for two tours in Iraq."
She gingerly pulled her shoulder out of the sleeve of her hoodie—she was wearing an off-white linen tank top underneath. She tried to turn her head to see the top of her shoulder, but it hurt too much.
"Don't move,” Terry said. He gently probed her shoulder. “You're going to have a nasty bruise when the redness subsides.” He probed some more. “I can't feel any obvious breaks, but you should probably go by the emergency room and get it x-rayed."
"Get what x-rayed?” Aiden asked as he arrived, breathless from running. “What happened to her?” he asked Terry.
"It looks like someone clubbed her on the shoulder."
"Hello,” Harriet said. “I'm here. You can ask
me
what happened. And by the way, what are you doing here and where's Wendy?"
"Wendy and I were on our way over here when we ran into Carla. She said you'd been hurt, so here I am."
Harriet recounted her story again.
"My arm hurts, but I'm sure it will be fine,” she finished.
"Did you hear anyone or anything?” Aiden asked.
"No,” she said and then paused, wondering if the blue cylinder was worth mentioning.
"What did you see?” Terry asked.
"I didn't see anything. I thought I heard the bushes rustling, but I think the wind was blowing so I can't be sure."
"Let's get you out of here,” Aiden said. “And I don't want any arguments. We're going to the emergency room, and you need to talk to the police."
"There's nothing to tell. I don't know if anyone actually hit me, and if they did, I didn't see anything useful."
"Thanks for helping her, Terry,” Aiden said. “I can get it from here."
Harriet protested all the way to the emergency room. “This is so embarrassing,” she said as they settled in their cubicle to wait for a doctor.
"Yeah, you have been kind of a regular here since you've been back in town,” Aiden said. “But shoulders are nothing to mess around with."
Aunt Beth arrived as the nurse was leaving—she'd brought Harriet a fresh ice pack and offered to call the police. Harriet had declined. She looked at Beth and shook her head, but said nothing. The nurse was the same one who had tended to Harriet's head wound a few months earlier when Aiden's uncle had tried to discourage her from digging into his business.
"Honey, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, my shoulder hurts, and my collar bone has a crack, but otherwise nothing's wrong that won't heal."
"She's lucky the blow wasn't a few inches either way from where it was. It could have crushed her jugular vein on one side or torn up her rotator cuff on the other."
"Thanks for that bit of cheer,” Harriet said and glared at Aiden. “He exaggerates,” she told Aunt Beth.
"Well, never you mind, I'm staying with you until you're better."
"You don't need to do that,” Harriet protested.
"You're not going to be able to run Mable for a week or two, so since I'm going to be over there anyway, I can cook and take care of Fred. And don't try to tell me you don't have jobs lined up. I saw your receiving shelf."
Harriet rolled her eyes heavenward. She knew there was no hope. “Fine,” she mumbled.
"I can take it from here,” Beth said to Aiden.
"Okay, I need to go check a couple of my patients if you're sure you can contain our patient here.” He leaned toward Harriet and kissed her gently, being careful not to jostle her shoulder in the process.
"You run along,” she said. “Come on, honey, let's get you dressed. The doctor said he's got someone bringing you an arm wrap of some sort to immobilize your shoulder."
"What happened to doctor-patient confidentiality?"
"I've known Burt Pattee since he was in high school and used to come to the door selling coupons to raise money for the Foggy Point High School football team. Besides, having your arm in a sling isn't exactly a sensitive communication. In a few minutes, everyone's going to know about it anyway."
"You're impossible."
Mavis pulled into
Harriet's driveway just as Aunt Beth was helping Harriet out of her car to go into the house.
"Thanks for getting here so quickly,” Aunt Beth said.
"You called her?” Harriet asked her aunt, the disbelief clear in her tone.
"Of course she called me,” Mavis answered. “Did you imagine I'd be sitting home crying into my tea cup?"
Harriet cringed. That was exactly what she'd been thinking.
"Look, Harriet, Gerald died almost twenty years ago."
Harriet started to say something, but Mavis raised a hand to silence her.
"To me,” she finished. “That man you found in the woods—he looked like my Gerald but he wasn't my husband. My husband has been dead for a long time. I don't know who you found, but he wasn't my husband."
Harriet stopped and looked at her friend for a long moment before her aunt broke the tension by taking Harriet's good elbow in her hand and moving her up the stairs. Harriet pulled her arm free.
"I'm not crippled,” she said and opened the studio door and went inside.
No one said anything as Harriet dropped her purse in the wing-backed chair and then went through the interior door into the kitchen.