Carried to the Grave and Other Stories Page 5

  “So I hear,” Bello replied, and I wondered if there was a history of trouble involving law enforcement.

  “What I don’t know,” I said, grateful for Adam’s arm around me, “is how Lou Mary was poisoned. Nan couldn’t have known she’d eat the casserole. What if we’d served it as part of the festival? Half the town could have gotten sick. Unless something else happened to her. A reaction to a bad mushroom, maybe.”

  And I couldn’t think of a reason Nan would go after Lou Mary. If Joe still paid her maintenance or alimony or whatever it’s called, it couldn’t have been much.

  “We don’t know what symptoms Lou Mary experienced before she collapsed,” Adam said. “But at that point, her symptoms and Joe’s were very similar.”

  “Even if someone had tampered with two dishes”—Bello was frowning—“how did one end up in the Merc?”

  “What if,” I said, remembering Lou Mary’s comment that Joe could see five moves ahead of an adversary and beat them at their own game, “what if Joe poisoned a dish, intending for Nan to eat it later. Then she put it aside to take to the festival and poisoned another, for him? The dishes all looked alike.” The bundle she’d been carrying, the extra dish that hadn’t fit in the cooler.

  I heard a muffled gasp behind me. Nan stood in the doorway, eyes wide, hands to her mouth. Gordon Springer stood behind her.

  “Gordon,” I said. “You’re a pharmacist. Does what you saw in my courtyard look like digoxin toxicity?”

  “Could be. But I’m pretty sure I’ve never filled a digoxin prescription for Nan.”

  I pictured the small orange bottles in the bathroom. The labels hadn’t all been the same. Joe wasn’t the only person in this marriage who could plan ahead.

  “I don’t know how she did it,” I told the detective, “but I think you’ll find that she filled her prescription at different pharmacies around the valley and built up a stash.”

  From the look on Nan Crawford’s face, I thought we were going to have to call the EMTs yet again. But no vertigo or vomiting this time, no delirium or abdominal pain. It was the faint of the guilty. Gordon caught her before she hit the floor and Adam checked her pulse—strong and steady—while Bello called for backup. She was only out for a minute or two, and when she came around, she confessed, horrified to realize that the husband she had tried to poison had done the same to her. I was too horrified to ask any questions, leaving it all to Bello. There are times when the trained professionals really are the right people for the job.

  Backup arrived, with a crime scene unit. Another was on its way to the Merc. Deputies cuffed Nan and led her away. Bello took a call, motioning for us to wait before stepping into the kitchen, out of sight and earshot.

  “Do you think she wanted him to die,” I asked Adam and Gordon, “or just wanted out of the constant demands of caring for him? And what do you think Joe intended?”

  But before they could answer, Bello returned, call finished.

  “That was my deputy in the ER. Mrs. Vogel is doing well. They want to keep her overnight—”

  “Can we see her?” I burst out.

  “I imagine so. Unfortunately, Mr. Crawford died en route.”

  Murder or a mercy killing? I couldn’t say, but the horror of it all hit me in the heart.

  Any man’s death diminishes me, I thought, recalling the poet’s words, because I am involved in mankind.

  That’s what it meant to be part of a community. To feel the joy, and some days, the pain.

  ∞

  It was midweek before we reopened the Merc. The crime scene unit had finished their work in our kitchen and courtyard by Sunday, but I wasn’t in the mood for selling soap and soup mix, for hawking honey and huckleberry jam. Lab tests confirmed that the mushrooms were innocent; digoxin was found in both the elk medallions Nan had left at home and an identical dish they’d brought to the Merc. I packed up my beautiful red-and-white pans and sent them to a friend. Adam and I were working on our wedding gift registry; we’d choose new bakeware, in another color.

  Polly’s enchiladas had won the casserole category. Margo Springer’s Butter Rum Blondies took the cookie prize and she finally agreed to give me the recipe, in exchange for my rigatoni recipe and a pound of buffalo sausage. A pricey trade, but worth it.

  Normally not much for letting other people help her, Lou Mary let Tracy, my mother, and me fuss as we got her settled back home. Turned out she was still the beneficiary of some of Joe’s assets, and if Nan was convicted of murder, might well inherit a bundle.

  “You could buy a new condo,” I suggested. “One without a view of a murder scene.”

  “No,” Lou Mary said. “This place is perfect. Plus, it’s close to the Merc. I can walk to work.”

  “Oh, thank goodness,” I said. “It wouldn’t be the Merc without you.”

  “No,” she agreed. “It wouldn’t.”

  Later that week, I ran into Detective Bello at the liquor store.

  “Well, if it isn’t our friend the murder magnet,” he said, gripping a bottle of gin.

  “How can you joke about it?” I said. “Lou Mary could have died.”

  “She’s too stubborn for that. Just like you.”

  “I prefer to think of myself as determined.” Like generations of women before me, who helped build this town.

  “That you are, Ms. Murphy,” he said. “That you are. And it’s our good luck.”

  The Christmas Stranger

  “Can you make copies yourself?”

  I turned to see an elfin man, no taller than my five-five, dark-haired though he had to be well past seventy, his skin weathered from time spent in sunnier climes than northwest Montana.

  “Oh, but you’d still have to wait in line to pay,” he continued, eyebrows creasing in concern as he surveyed the crowded shipping depot.

  It was eight days before Christmas and I was the last person in line. Six people ahead of me, each with at least one box to ship. Like me, half were multitasking, fiddling with their phones while they waited.

  “Busiest day of the year,” I heard a clerk say, “and the computers are cranky. Everything’s taking twice as long.”

  At my feet were three large plastic tubs filled with packages headed all across the country. Not my personal holiday shopping, you understand, but locally made jam, pasta sauces, and soap, all ordered from the Merc, the business I run in my family’s hundred-year-old grocery in the heart of the village of Jewel Bay. Not to mention bags of Cowboy Roast, our custom-blended coffee, and boxes of truffles.

  So. Many. Truffles.

  “I’ll show you,” I said. It was the last day we’d promised delivery in time for Christmas, though I suspected I’d be standing here tomorrow and the day after that. “It’s easy. You can sneak ahead to pay—no one will mind.”

  I slipped my phone in my bag and led him to one of the three giant machines that stood against the wall. In the modern world, copy machines seem like techno-tyrannosaurs, gulping up your documents at the touch of a button and doing mysterious things before spitting them out again. On this particular model, you never knew which mouth or other body part the copies would emerge from. I didn’t blame the man for being daunted.

  “Two copies,” he said, handing me his original and standing well back, clearly expecting me to make the copies. No biggie.

  “Do you want me to unstaple them, or can I fold over the top page to copy the second?”

  “What? Oh, no. Whatever’s easier. I hate technology.” He lowered his voice on that last comment, as if he didn’t dare utter such a dangerous opinion in public.

  “Line it up like this,” I said, “then push Copy and the quantity, and hit Start.”

  “Two,” he repeated, and I lowered the lid and pushed the buttons. We waited while pulleys pulled and lights lit up, while the copier drew paper through its cavernous bowels, then went silent. I lifted the lid and positioned the second page.

  “Seems like it’s taking over our lives,” he continued, still on th
e techno rant, but as rants go, it was mild. Almost sweet.

  “It does,” I said. “I run the Merc, the local foods market next to Red’s Bar, and I’ll admit, between the sales and inventory system, social media, and our own online sales platform, sometimes I feel like all I do is wrangle wayward computers.”

  The machine swallowed, chewed, and belched, and I slid the copies out of the belly of the beast. Gave them a quick glance to make sure they’d come out okay. A college transcript. Curious. At thirty-three, I hadn’t needed my college transcript in eons. Why did a man his age need copies? I lifted the lid and reached for the original, actually a well-worn copy, the paper thick and slippery, the ink faded.

  Probably an engineering major, I thought, laughing to myself. If the transcripts were his. I’d never seen him before and hadn’t looked closely enough to read the name on the records.

  “Hey, Murph, you get a new job?”

  The ribbing came from an old high school classmate who’d just walked in. I grew up in Jewel Bay, though I left after high school and only moved back a year and a half ago. I waved, then smiled at my mystery man.

  “Murph?” he asked. “Are you the Murphy girl?”

  “One of them,” I replied. “Along with my sister and a couple of cousins. I’m Erin.” I resumed my place in the line, which hadn’t moved, and he followed me.

  “Tom Murphy’s girl,” he said, persisting, and I nodded. “Tom was a good man. Such a shame, what happened to him.”

  I bit my lower lip. My father was killed in a hit-and-run my senior year of high school, the case unsolved until I finally put all the pieces together last winter, nearly fifteen years to the day after the accident. The man responsible was now in prison. He wasn’t a bad man, and I knew he’d punished himself plenty. Though the delay had caused my family deep pain, justice had been served.

  But I would never stop missing my father, especially this time of year.

  I pulled out my phone. The details of running a business can be a useful distraction.

  “A good man,” the mystery man repeated, with a touch of sadness. How did he know my father? He wasn’t local, I was sure. Between growing up here, running a shop, and getting dragged into every event from judging high school drama team meets to organizing holiday decorating in the village, I had at least a passing acquaintance with nearly everyone in town.

  “How much will it be?” he said, bringing my attention back to the copies. He glanced at the line and the busy clerks.

  “Forty cents. But I’ve got a copy card, so it will only cost me twenty cents. Merry Christmas.”

  He tilted his head, not understanding.

  “My business keeps a prepaid account,” I explained. “We pop in, make copies, and leave without having to wait to pay or get a receipt. Plus, we get a price break. I’ll pay for your copies so you can take off. Merry Christmas.”

  I could almost see the gears turning in the man’s brain as he grasped my meaning.

  “Thank you,” he finally said. “Thank you. Merry Christmas.”

  He left, the bell on the door ringing behind him. The woman in front of me smiled and I smiled back. Christmas is like that, in the village.

  I thumbed my phone, glad to see an email update on a shipment of compostable bags for the pasta my mother makes. They’d been delayed by a snowstorm in the Midwest, but would be delivered this afternoon.

  The door opened, a blast of cold air hitting my backside, and the little man stood next to me. “How much did you say that cost?”

  “Forty cents,” I said, not bothering to explain the prepaid account this time.

  He stuck his hand in the pocket of his baggy corduroys and pulled out a book of stamps. “Let me give you a Christmas stamp.”

  “Okay, sure,” I said as he tried to tear one out of the book. The first stamp ripped and he tried another, the stiff peel-off paper resisting his efforts. He shoved his hand back in his pocket and brought out a small leather card case. Drew out a stamp and handed it to me with a grin. “Merry Christmas.”

  Then he was gone, before I could thank him or wish him a happy holiday. I tucked the stamp, a portrait of the Madonna and child, in my wallet and dropped it back in my bag. My classmate, who got his mail in a box here, paused on his way out and we chatted about the holidays and how great it was to see the town buzzing and our plans for watching this weekend’s parade. Then it was my turn. The computers had picked up speed, thank goodness, and I finished my transaction, stacked my empty tubs, and headed back to the Merc.

  ∞

  Sure enough, another day, another pile of packages. I lugged the last tub up from the basement—not the best spot for a pack-and-ship station, but the building had passed the century mark a while back and options were limited. I set my load by the back door, grabbed my bag and keys, and popped up front to tell Tracy, the Merc’s assistant manager, and Lou Mary, saleswoman extraordinaire, that I was leaving. Tracy was busy helping a woman choose truffles for her office Christmas party.

  “Oh, would you drop off my Christmas cards?” Lou Mary asked. “I’m short one stamp. Let me get some change—”

  “No worries. I’ve got a Christmas stamp right here.” I found it in my wallet and held it out. “Although when did you last see a stamp you actually had to lick?”

  “What? Let me see that,” Lou Mary said, lifting the readers she wore on a beaded chain into place. Today’s chain was made of bumpy red-orange beads that looked like coral, almost the same shade as her hair. Even with the glasses, she had to squint and hold the stamp up to the light. “Where did you get this?”

  I told her the story.

  “Humph,” Lou Mary said. “Let me do some research.” What she knew about stamps or how, I had no idea, but I knew better than to question her.

  The shipping depot was quieter today, and I didn’t have to wait long. As I piled my packages on the counter, I told the clerk about the mystery man baffled by the copy machine. “But then, I completely forgot to pay you. So charge me for four copies.”

  “No way,” she said. “Merry Christmas!”

  “No, really, he was willing to pay. He just didn’t want to break into the line, and I didn’t think he should wait, so let me—”

  “No,” she repeated. “I love this story so much. I’m not letting you pay.”

  “Thanks. Any chance you know who he is?”

  She shook her head. “It was so hectic, I barely noticed anything. I did see you making copies, but I didn’t give it another thought. Figures the computers would choose yesterday to act up.”

  We finished with the packages, then I bought Lou Mary’s single stamp and mailed her cards. I made one more attempt to pay for the man’s copies, which was soundly refused, and I left, the joy of the season on my face. After a couple of other errands, I drove back to the village, a.k.a. downtown. A parking problem is a good sign during the busy season, so I didn’t mind that the only spot was a good hike from our back door.

  There are few more beautiful sights than retail shops filled with customers. I hung up my coat and stashed my bag, then grabbed an apron and got to work.

  A regular bought gift packs of jam for each of her visiting children and grandchildren, and added a jar of huckleberry, the crème de la crème of jams, for herself. “I fill my own Christmas stocking,” she said, wagging her eyebrows. “That way, I know I’ll get what I want.”

  Then I helped a college student choose handmade soaps and lotions for his mother and sisters. Next came a couple picking up Christmas gift baskets they’d ordered, filled with a variety of our treats, and a woman who bought wine, pasta, and sauces for an easy Christmas Eve dinner.

  The front door closed, the place momentarily quiet. I poured myself a cup of Cowboy Roast, the rich aroma almost enough to perk me up without a sip. I perched on a stool at the stainless steel counter that divides the shop floor from our commercial kitchen. My mother found the red-topped chrome stools years ago in Pondera, pronounced Pahn-duh-RAY, the nearest big town, all
of thirty thousand, thirty miles away. They’d come from a long-closed soda fountain, and customers adore them. Unlike the wide plank floors, tin ceilings, and milk glass pendant lights, the kitchen and counter weren’t original to the building, which my great-grandfather built in 1910 when he opened the town’s first grocery, but they fit in perfectly. The Merc was my happy place, my home away from home, and when I came back from Seattle, after a ten-year stint as a grocery buyer for SavClub, the international warehouse chain, I knew right away that this was where I was meant to be. I’d reconnected with Adam Zimmerman, who’d crushed on me in college, though I’m embarrassed to admit I barely remembered him, and life here in Jewel Bay was just about all a girl could ask for. This girl, anyway.

  “I made a call,” Lou Mary said as she plopped onto the next stool. “An expert in Pondera will see you this afternoon. You and the stamp.”

  “What?” Her swift action took me by surprise. “In case you’ve forgotten, it’s a week before Christmas. I’m not going anywhere until the new year.”

  “No,” she said. “You need to do this now. I called your mother. She’s on her way in to spell you.”

  I should have been irritated. After all, I do run the place, though my mother owns it. And this was our busy time, second to the ninety days of summer when we live and breathe for tourists. But I’d learned to trust Lou Mary’s instincts.

  “Can’t we text him a picture? Or email it if he’s old school?”

  “He is seriously old school,” she replied. “Not to mention old. He needs to see it himself, with his own eyes and a magnifying glass.”

  I heard the back door open and shut, followed by footsteps. A moment later, my mother walked in. Everyone calls Francesca Conti Murphy Schmidt “Fresca.” I’ve been training to call her that myself, instead of Mom, when we’re in the shop.