An Open Book Read online

  “Why couldn’t Edith have been found in a nice convenient—and warm—place?” she asked plaintively.

  “That’s what I keep asking myself,” I replied. “She wouldn’t deliberately inconvenience anyone.” To my mind, all the more evidence that something was not right here. I was sure Edith would have preferred a more dignified passing.

  Van approached Edith’s body carefully, and spent a long minute staring down at her. I suspected it was more to honor the woman than to look for clues; I seemed to recall that Edith had been Van’s fourth-grade teacher. I gave Van her moment of silence.

  Finally she turned around to me. “I shouldn’t be saying this, since I’m the professional here, but you knew Edith and you know this path. What do you think happened here? Did she get here on her own?”

  I stamped again. My toes were definitely numb. “If you’re asking for my opinion, I think it’s highly unlikely that Edith would have walked all the way out here, or at least, not without a very good reason.”

  “Why not?” Van asked.

  I would have ticked off my points on my fingers, but mittens made that kind of difficult. “One, that hip replacement she had not long ago. I wouldn’t have said it to her face, but it was taking her a long time to recover from it. She walked into town only because her doctor told her to. Two, Edith had no interest in pretty scenery, so she wasn’t looking for a view to admire. And there’s not much else out here except a couple of houses—I can’t tell you if she knew who lives in them. Three, I think you can rule out suicide. Apart from the hip replacement, Edith was in good health. At least, that’s what she said, and I didn’t see anything to suggest otherwise. Her mind was as good as ever. She hadn’t withdrawn from any of her usual activities. Not that she would have necessarily told anyone if she had a real problem. She was private that way.”

  “Maybe she figured she’d go out while things were still good?” Van asked.

  I shook my head. “You asked, so I’m telling you: Edith was not the type to commit suicide, any more than she was the type to take scenic hikes. And if she had planned to die, she would have done it in a more civilized way, not out here in the middle of nowhere, in a heap of snow.”

  Van stared at me. “So you’re saying that someone else was involved in her death? Why here? Why drag her, dead or alive, halfway across town and then up a hill?”

  “Oh, Van, I have no idea. I can’t think of anyone in town who would do that. I never heard anyone say a bad word about her. In a purely physical sense, I suppose it wouldn’t have been difficult to carry her, though. She couldn’t weigh much over a hundred pounds, even in a coat and boots.”

  “You try carrying a hundred pounds half a mile up a hill,” Van retorted. “Still, I guess that doesn’t rule out a strong woman, not that I’d want to try it.” She made a three hundred sixty degree sweep of the landscape, then pointed down the hill. “Only one house with a sight line. Wonder if they saw anything?” she said, mostly to herself.

  I tried to wrap my head around the image of a woman throwing Edith over her shoulder and trudging up a hill, and failed. And wouldn’t that have left some trace? “I haven’t seen any activity at the house since I’ve been here, and now there’s your car sitting on the road there “too” with the lights going—you’d think someone would have noticed that, if they were at home.”

  “Probably,” she replied. “Well, I don’t know that there’s much we can do until the coroner’s people show up. This has to fall under the heading of ‘not readily explainable’, unless I can convince them it’s ‘suspicious circumstances.’”

  “You mean they have to do an autopsy?” When Van nodded I hurried to add, “There’s one more reason why Edith wouldn’t have wanted to die this way. She would have been horrified at the idea of some stranger poking around her insides. So undignified!” I could almost hear Edith’s voice as I said it. “Hey, have you ever handled a murder?”

  “No, actually—I looked up the regulations online before I made those calls, just to be sure,” Van admitted. “You don’t need to stay. I know where to find you. You didn’t notice anything else, did you? On your way over, or once you got here?”

  “Not that I can remember, but I’ll let you know if I remember anything. I didn’t see her until I got close to her, but I didn’t notice anything particularly out of the ordinary along the way.”

  “Well, let me know if something else occurs to you, and try to keep this to yourself for now. I figure you’ll tell Henry, but I know he can keep his mouth shut. Just don’t pick up the phone and tell all your best friends, okay?”

  “Like I’d ever do that. But you’ve got to figure the news will be out by tomorrow, even tonight, if the news stations get hold of this. By eleven, even.”

  “I suppose. Is it your day at the library tomorrow?”

  “It is. You want me to keep my ears open?”

  “Please. Now go on home and enjoy a nice warm dinner . . . and maybe a bath . . . and your husband. I’ll take it from here.” She got no argument from me. I headed homeward at a half-jog, looking forward to all of the above.

  * * *

  I huffed into my house, warmed by the exercise, and inhaled the good cooking smells. “Henry, I’m home!” I called out.

  Henry, his rangy six-foot glory draped with a striped apron, emerged from the kitchen. “You look flushed. Did you hurry back just for me?”

  “Maybe,” I said. In response he wrapped me in his arms, and I welcomed the embrace, holding on longer than usual.

  Which he noticed. “Hey, babe, what’s wrong? What was going on out there that held you up?”

  I figured it would be easiest if I just said it flat out, kind of like ripping a bandage off. “I found Edith Hathaway dead in the snow, on the hill behind the Johnsons’ house.”

  His response was everything I could have hoped. “That nice old lady? That’s awful. I mean, it must have been awful for you to find her. Not just awful for her. What happened? Do you need a glass of wine? Come into the kitchen and tell me all about it.”

  I shucked off my down jacket, pulled off my boots, and in stockinged feet I followed him into the bright and steamy kitchen. He was waiting for me with a glass of red wine.

  “It’s a nice little California Shiraz. That’s what I used in the daube. So, sit down and tell me everything.”

  Despite his sympathetic expression, for some odd reason I felt reluctant to tell the story. Of course Henry had also known Edith—heck, everybody in town knew everybody else, and Edith had lived in Strathmere for half a century, at least. She had always spoken her mind, but she’d been fair and nonjudgmental, and usually right. How could she be dead? I fought back the prick of tears.

  “How well did you know Edith?” I asked, stalling.

  “We were both part of the town Green Space committee for a while, remember? She had very decided opinions, but she was willing to listen to other views. She certainly made the meetings more interesting. You knew her through the library, right?”

  “Yes, she was a regular there.” I took a deep breath. “I was almost ready to turn around and head back when I came up the hill near the Johnsons’ and found her lying in the snow. She looked so peaceful . . . but clearly she had been there for a while. She was kind of blue.”

  “Cyanosis? Due to hypothermia?” Henry asked, sounding a little ghoulish. But I was used to it: Henry is a research scientist, and he likes precise terms.

  “Yes, dear, I guess so. Her lips were blue, anyway. I didn’t take her gloves off to see if her fingers were too. Would that happen if . . . she died quickly?”

  “I won’t even guess—too many variables. No signs of violence?”

  I sighed. “None that I could see. Not that I examined her. I knew better than to touch anything, since there was nothing I could do for her.”

  “So what did you do?” Henry asked.

  I made a mental note to stop watching television procedural shows with Henry, because he seemed far too interested in the deta
ils—losing sight of the fact that this was not just a body, this was Edith, someone we had both known and respected. “I called Van, who called the necessary people. Once she showed up, she told me that I could go home. I assume I’ll have to give an official statement in the morning.” I took a hearty sip of my wine: rich, earthy, with a slightly rough edge to it. Nice. “You know, it seemed unreal. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at a body, and then another moment to recognize it was Edith. She was just so out of place up there. Like I told Van, I’d just seen her yesterday, when she returned a book.” Which made me think of something. “Hold on a sec,” I told Henry.

  I retrieved my cell phone from my coat pocket and hit Van’s cell phone number. “What?” she barked, when she answered.

  “It’s Sarabeth. You still at the scene?”

  “Where else? The coroner guys aren’t here yet, the jerks. I refuse to believe there’s a crime wave in Bucks County and they’re swamped. What do you want?”

  From Van’s tone, I figured I’d better spit this out quickly. “I know this sounds silly, but Edith took out a library book yesterday. Can you keep an eye out for it?”

  “Hang on . . .” There were background sounds of voices and Van’s replies, then she spoke to me again. “I’m going to search her house tomorrow. Want to come along?”

  “Me? Is that legal?”

  “It is if I make you a deputy. Besides, you knew the woman.”

  If I protested, Van might not let me help her. But I couldn’t actually think of anyone who might have known Edith any better. “I was in her house a couple of times—she hosted some committee meetings there, so I’ve seen most of the downstairs. Does that count?”

  “Sure. You can help me figure out what shouldn’t be there, or what’s missing.”

  I thought about it for about three seconds. “I’ll do my best. When?”

  “Tomorrow morning. I figured it would be easier by daylight. What time are you supposed to be at the library?”

  “We open at ten on Saturdays.” Which she ought to have known—Vanessa wasn’t much of a reader, but she had to walk by the library to get to her office, and she’d pulled plenty of Saturday shifts.

  “I’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “Okay, see you then.”

  By the time I returned to the kitchen, Henry was draining boiled potatoes that would accompany his fancy French stew. “Just about ready to dish up. What was so hush-hush that you didn’t want me to hear?”

  “I just remembered that Edith had taken out a book yesterday, and I wondered how to retrieve it. So I called Van to ask her to watch for it, and she invited me to go check out Edith’s house with her tomorrow morning. Shoot, I didn’t mention it to Van, but if you needed one, that’s another argument against suicide: Edith would never have done that without returning her library book first. I mean, who takes out a library book when you know you aren’t going to finish it? Unless it was a truly awful book.”

  “There’s a charming dinner table topic: what books would drive you to kill yourself? But I’d agree with you. Edith Hathaway was not the kind of person to kill herself.” He set a steaming bowl of stew, rich with chunks of beef, carrots, mushroom and herbs, in front of me. “More wine?”

  “Please. And, no, she’d been looking forward to reading this book—she loves that author.”

  A discussion of how bad a book would have to be to convince someone to commit suicide—and likely candidates—carried us through most of dinner, which I made sure to savor. I’ve always thought a good meal was a good antidote for ugly realities.

  “So Vanessa’s searching Edith’s place tomorrow?” Henry asked, draining his glass and setting down his napkin.

  “Tomorrow, early. Vanessa wanted daylight for it. Did we have any plans for tomorrow?”

  “Just the usual chores. Afterwards, you’ll be at the library, right?”

  I nodded. “Until three. Am I cooking dinner tomorrow?”

  “Your turn. I’ll shop.”

  “Thank you. Shall we adjourn to the parlor?”

  “I’ll build a fire.”

  * * *

  The following morning I was ready and waiting when Vanessa pulled into my driveway in her police cruiser. Henry slept on, oblivious. At least he wasn’t worried about my involvement in Vanessa’s investigation into Edith’s death. I was reluctant to call it murder, which still seemed like an incongruous word when applied to Edith Hathaway.

  I hurried out to the car. The temperature had dropped overnight, and my feet crunched on the snow where it had drifted across the driveway. Inside the car, Vanessa had the heater cranked up high. “Anything new?” I asked as I buckled my seat belt.

  “The coroner’s team did their thing. No obvious wounds, but you’d already guessed that. They’ll do an autopsy, and blood work, of course, but it may be a while before we see results. Plus it’s a weekend.”

  “What are they thinking?”

  Van shrugged. “You think they’d tell me? Stroke, heart attack—who knows? Of course, they didn’t know Edith, and they’re happy to think she was an old lady with dementia who took a walk and got lost, and froze to death in a snowdrift, which unfortunately does happen. They didn’t seem very worked up about it. I’m supposed to look in the house for whatever meds she might have been taking.”

  “Makes sense.”

  Vanessa pulled up in front of Edith’s house and parked on the street. The house was a trim bungalow, built in the 1920s, and sat on a small, neatly-tended plot of ground studded with big old rhododendrons. In summer it was rich with roses and brightly colored annuals. Gardening was one of Edith’s other passions and had also passed as exercise, keeping her limber.

  “Looks normal. Path’s been shoveled,” Vanessa noted.

  “I think she hired one of the neighborhood high school kids to do it for her. I can ask around, see if whoever it was saw her yesterday when they shoveled.”

  “She didn’t have a car, did she?”

  I shook my head. “She stopped driving a few years ago, I think when she turned eighty. She realized her eyesight wasn’t what it used to be, and besides, she could walk into town if she needed anything.”

  “Wish more of our senior citizens thought that way—a lot of them don’t belong behind a wheel. You ready?”

  “I am. Did you find her keys?”

  “In her pocket.”

  “No sign of her purse?”

  “Not yet. Keep your eyes peeled for it in the house.”

  I pondered what the absence of her purse might mean as we made our way up the clean brick path to the front door. I couldn’t remember seeing her without it, except when she was gardening in her yard. If Edith hadn’t taken it with her, she couldn’t have expected to go far or spend much time out. Yet she had her keys on her, so she hadn’t been dragged out of her house unwillingly. “Have you identified her next of kin?”

  “Nope. Maybe there’ll be some useful information in the house. You know anything about any relatives?” Vanessa fitted the key in the lock. There was both a dead bolt and a keyed doorknob, I noted, and both were locked. While there was little crime here, as a woman living alone, Edith had been careful.

  “She told me once that she was the last of her family. Her husband died a few years ago. They never had children. I think she might have had a sister, but she’s gone too.”

  Vanessa opened the door, and we both dutifully stomped off what little snow clung to our boots on the mat in front of the door before entering. Then we paused to take in the space.

  It was a small house, scrupulously neat and clean. We had stepped straight into the living room, which had a fireplace in the middle of the end wall. A hallway led off to the right, and I could see a kitchen running along the back. A staircase rose along the wall to my right. I wondered if Edith had used an upstairs bedroom, or if the stairs had proved to be too much for her and her new hip. The furniture I judged to come from an earlier generation—her parents’? There were framed prints on the
walls, and a few photographs on the mantelpiece. The air smelled faintly of lavender. The real kind, not the spray kind.

  “Where do we start?” I asked Vanessa.

  “Let’s try the kitchen. We might find out when she last ate.”

  I followed her through the living room into the small kitchen, with a round table to the right, and a tall hutch against the wall behind it. The counters were clear, and a few clean dishes sat in the drainer next to the sink. Whatever meal it had been, Edith—or someone—had tidied up afterwards. “What about the trash? Pickup was yesterday, so anything in there would have come after eight o’clock in the morning or so.”

  Vanessa pulled on a pair of latex gloves and handed me a pair. “Be my guest. Use these.”

  “I feel silly,” I said as I put them on. The trash basket was not very revealing. Edith had obviously taken out her trash on schedule and replaced the bin liner. There were only a few torn envelopes in it now, from local utilities like electric and phone. Edith had not graduated to the computer world, so she probably had paid her bills by check, while sitting at the kitchen table. No doubt her checkbook would be nearby, unless it was in her purse. Where was her purse? I still hadn’t seen it yet.

  “Did you see the purse, Van?”

  “Not yet. Anything in the trash?”

  “Envelopes from bills. I was wondering where her checkbook is.”

  Vanessa pointed toward the hutch. “Try the drawers over there.” She turned back to searching the cupboards.

  I pulled open the first drawer to find Edith’s checkbook, along with a roll of stamps, pad, pencils, pens, stationery, and a small black leather address book, everything neatly aligned. I took the checkbook and the address book, and sat down at the table.