(11/40) A Little Yuletide Murder Read online

  My back was to Mary and Jake. I heard shuffling behind me, but thought nothing of it. My attention was too intently focused upon Jill, who had started to weep silently. She pressed against me, and I wrapped my arms around her. She said in a voice so soft I could barely hear, “Yes.”

  “Jill, did Mr. Brent arrange your abortion?”

  The noise behind me had stopped. Jill dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hands and slowly shook her head.

  “Who did then?”

  “No one. I ... I had the baby.”

  A muttered curse from Mary Walther caused me to turn. Mary had taken the shotgun from Jake. It was pointed at me.

  I was surprised at how calmly I said, “Put the shotgun down, Mary. This can all be worked out. The important thing is that the pieces be put together so that Rory Brent’s murder is solved, and we can get on with our lives. All of us. Christmas is almost here. What’s happened to you and your family is tragic, and I ache for you. But don’t do anything to make it worse.”

  “You just don’t understand, do you?” Mary said. “You’ve lived a charmed life, never had to worry about where your next meal was coming from, never had to wonder what people were saying behind your back. I know how people view Jake and me in this town. Do you think I’m stupid?”

  “Of course not.”

  “You write your books and travel all over the world, live in a nice house, have money in the bank. Like most folks in Cabot Cove. But we’ve struggled just to survive ever since we bought this farm and tried to make a go of it. It’s never been easy. But we always kept our dignity, always believed in ourselves as a family. And we had a daughter. There she stands, Ms. Jill Walther. All our hopes were with her, that she’d make something of herself and the Walther name. But then she went and got herself pregnant with that bum, Robert Brent, and everything we hoped for went up in smoke.”

  I said to Jill, “You said you had the baby. While you were in school?”

  “Yes.”

  “I never even knew you were pregnant,” I said.

  “Nobody did,” Mary said. “She never showed much. Couldn’t even tell she was carrying. Had the child down in Salem at some home for girls like her. Was there just a few days. Called in sick to school.”

  “Where is the child now?” I asked. “Adopted,” Mary said. “Don’t know who. They don’t tell you such things.”

  “You poor girl,” I said to Jill. “Have you seen your son since giving birth?”

  “It was a girl, Mrs. Fletcher. A little girl. I named her Samantha.”

  “Samantha,” I repeated absently. “Did Rory Brent make that donation to keep your pregnancy quiet and to protect his son?”

  Mary answered for her. “Mr. Big Shot, Rory Brent, wanted Jill to end the pregnancy. He sent her to that agency, hoping they’d talk some sense into her.”

  “I take it Mr. Skaggs at Here-to-Help did just the opposite,” I said, feeling a sudden warmth for the bearlike man who ran Here-to-Help.

  “He urged me to have the baby,” Jill said. “And I did.”

  “Was Mr. Brent angry with your decision?” I asked.

  “Sure as hell was,” Jake Walther said. “Said he’d bury us all if we didn’t do things the way he wanted.”

  I smiled at Jill. “But you stuck to your guns.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But if sending you to the agency didn’t result in ending your pregnancy, the way Rory wanted it to end, why did he make that large contribution?”

  “Because I told him I intended to have an abortion,” Jill said.”

  “You lied to him?”

  “I didn’t know what to do, what was right and what was wrong. I decided to keep my baby. He sent the money before I changed my mind.”

  Brent having sent five thousand dollars to Tom Skaggs at Here-to-Help was an act of supreme arrogance. He’d wanted Skaggs to convince Jill to end her pregnancy, and was rewarding him for it. Good for you, I thought, looking at Jill.

  Discovering that my thesis had been wrong—that Jill had had an abortion—forced me to shift gears and to try to fit this new piece into the scenario under which I’d been operating. What took front and center in my thinking at that moment was the role this information possibly played in Rory Brent’s murder.

  I asked Jill, “What did Rory do after he learned that you decided to keep the baby?”

  Her mother answered for her. “Oh, Rory Brent was hopping mad.” She looked at her husband. “Wasn’t he, Jake?”

  “Yup,” Jake muttered.

  “Mr. Rory Brent liked to call the shots,” Mary continued. “He didn’t want his precious son to have to take financial responsibility, and said he’d see to it that he never had to.”

  “What did he mean?” I asked.

  “He said that if Jill didn’t give up the baby, he’d trash her so bad—trash us—we might as well be dead. We weren’t in no position to argue with him. If Jill kept the baby, that would have ended her dreams, and ours, too. Another mouth to feed? We’ve had trouble putting food on the table just for us.”

  “Did you want to keep the baby, Jill?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But your parents urged you to give it up because of finances?”

  Jill didn’t answer. I looked to Mary and Jake, but they, too, said nothing.

  Jill had again sat on the bottom step of the staircase. I sat next to her and took her hand in mine. I then said to no one in particular, to the room itself, “Why was Rory Brent killed?”

  Jake and Mary Walther looked at each other. It was Jake who spoke. ‘The man was no good, Mrs. Fletcher. Him and that goddamn son’a his. Raped Jill and—”

  “That’s not true,” Jill quickly said. “Robert and I ... we got together, that’s all, sort of found each other. The other kids never liked me much, or him. A couple of nerds. It just happened, that’s all. One day at his house.”

  “Jake,” I said, “if someone was mad at Robert Brent for getting Jill pregnant, why would he kill his father?”

  “For trying to use what his son did to our daughter to blackmail us, hold it over our heads,” Mary said. “Jake just snapped, that’s all. Had enough from that so-called saint, Rory Brent. Mr. Santa Claus.”

  I stood and said, “You didn’t kill him because of what happened between Jill and Robert.”

  “What are you saying?” Mary said.

  I pulled the envelope from my purse that had been left at my house by Joe Turco, opened it, and removed the papers it contained. “Rory had taken your farm from you.”

  Mary reached for the papers, but I kept them from her reach. “You were about to lose the farm to the bank. Rory lent you the money to save it, but charged exorbitant interest and attached an impossible repayment schedule. If you didn’t meet the deadline to pay it back, the farm was his. And that’s exactly what happened, isn’t it?”

  Mary started to say something, but I cut her off.

  “You weren’t the only ones to have this happen,” I said. “I’m not certain how it worked, but these papers indicate Rory was involved with a company in Indianapolis, a partnership of some kind that made its money identifying farmers who’d fallen on hard times, lending them money with their farms as collateral, and taking the farms when they couldn’t make the payment. They’ve been doing it all over the country for years. It’s called loan sharking in big cities.”

  I waited for an answer.

  “You got it right,” Jake said.

  “So now, you know what happened,” Mary said. “Can you blame Jake for wanting him dead?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t blame Jake at all—because Jake didn’t murder Rory Brent.”

  Mary glared at me.

  “You killed him, Mary.”

  Mary’s response was flat, void of emotion. She slowly lowered the shotgun and said, ‘That’s all we had left, the farm. It never gave us much, but at least we had a roof over our heads and a place to grow vegetables.” Her voice gained strength.”Everybody walked
around talking about what a wonderful person Rory Brent was. He wasn’t wonderful, Mrs. Fletcher. Sure, on the outside he looked like a perfect gentleman, putting on his Santa Claus costume every year, giving to charity, everybody loving good old Rory. But he was an evil man. He wouldn’t have cared if he put all of us in the ground. He and Jake had an argument about a month before about him taking the farm from us. I wanted Jake to do something, but what could he do? Look at him.” She turned and extended her hand to her husband. ”Jake’s just a dirt-poor, hardworking man who drinks too much and lets the world stomp all over him. But he’s always tried, for me and for her.” She pointed at Jill. ”But sometimes you can’t let people walk on you, Mrs. Fletcher. Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands and right a wrong.”

  “And you shot him to right that wrong,” I said.

  “Don’t say nothin’ more, Mary,” Jake said.

  “It doesn’t much matter,” Mary said. “I couldn’t believe I did it. I went to talk sense to him, ask him to be fair and to let us stay till we found the money to pay him back. When I arrived that morning, I saw him leave the house and walk to the back barn. I followed him inside and pleaded with him, put my heart in my hand and offered it to him. All he did was laugh, Mrs. Fletcher. Oh, excuse me. Jessica. I forgot I’m supposed to call you by your first name, real friendly like. Rory said me and Jake were losers and didn’t deserve to have this piece of property. He called Jill a slut, said she seduced Robert and wasn’t any better than her mother and father. He just kept saying things like that until I couldn’t take it anymore. So yes, I shot him, shot him dead, and walked away not feeling guilty one bit.”

  I walked to where Mary stood and took the shotgun from her hand, then placed it on the table. “Mary, I’ll help in any way I can. No matter what happens, it’s important that Jill go on with her life, continue her education, and become the fine writer I know she will.”

  I turned to Jake, “You knew Mary shot him, didn’t you?”

  “ ’Course I did. I figured they’d think it was me’cause of my reputation. We had Dennis change his story so that Mary would have an alibi. I was hoping that if nobody could prove it was me, they wouldn’t ever think of her. You kind of knew all along, didn’t you?”

  I shook my head. “No, I didn’t, although I started to suspect when I learned that your boot had once again been matched up by the laboratory to the footprint in the barn.”

  I said to Mary, “I remember once being in a shoe store with you. You had to buy a man’s moccasin because none of the women’s sizes fit you. It occurred to me that you might easily have worn Jake’s boots that morning and left the footprint in the barn. Did you do that deliberately, to make Jake the suspect?”

  “No,” Mary said. “It just happened that way. I always wear Jake’s boots when I’m out and around.”

  “What about Dennis? Why did he lie?”

  “Like I said, to protect her,” Jake answered. “Dennis and me were fixing a fence that morning, just like he first said. But after she shot Rory, we wanted folks to think it was me.”

  “And you were willing to go to jail, maybe even the electric chair, to save her.”

  “Like she said, Mrs. Fletcher, we may be dirt poor, but we know we’re family. All we’ve got is each other.”

  This time, when I went to the door, no one attempted to stop me. I opened it and looked outside.

  “What did you do with Dimitri?” I asked.

  “Nothin’,” Jake said. “Just told him to get out of here, to get off my property before I blew his brains out.”

  As he said it, I saw lights approaching, some of them flashing. A moment later, Sheriff Mort Metzger pulled up the road and stopped outside of the house. Dimitri was in the car with him, along with two deputies.

  “You okay, Mrs. F.?” Mort asked as he ran up onto the porch.

  “Yes, Mort, I’m fine.”

  “Dimitri came and got me. Told me he’d dropped you here, but that Jake ran him off the property with a shotgun. I figured I’d better get out here pronto.”

  “And I appreciate that, Mort. But everything is fine now. I think if you talk to Mary, you’ll be able to put the Rory Brent murder in your file of solved cases. In the meantime, I am very tired and would appreciate a lift home.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  “‘Who said that?’ ”

  “The kindly old man looked around. Someone had said ‘I’m hungry.’ But as far as he knew, he was the only person in the house that Christmas morning.”

  Seth and I continued to read from “The Dog That Talked at Christmas,” the story of a lonely old man who’d found a stray puppy in a snow-storm on Christmas Eve. In front of us this Christmas Eve were more than a hundred small children, their eyes bright, their attention totally focused on this charming tale of all creatures, great and small, sharing in the Christmas spirit.

  “Could I please have something to eat?’ The old man spun around and looked down at the puppy. ‘Did you say that?’ he asked, his eyes open wide,” Seth read.

  I followed with, “The puppy said, ‘All I said was I’m hungry.’ ”

  Behind us on a large screen, color illustrations from the book were projected to coincide with the story’s progression. Seth and I alternated paragraphs.

  “ ‘You can talk? But you’re a dog. Dogs don’t talk.’ ”

  “ ‘Oh yes we can,’ the puppy said. We’re not supposed to, but I’m so hungry.’ ”

  “The old man sat and stared at the puppy. A talking dog, he thought. A Christmas miracle. He could become rich with a talking dog, go on television, make commercials, become famous.”

  “ ‘All dogs can talk,’ said the puppy. ‘But we know that if we do, we’ll have to go to work. Don’t tell any other dogs I broke the rule. They’ll be very mad at me.’ ”

  ‘The old man made them a hearty breakfast, and the puppy gave him a big, wet kiss. Tears came to the old man’s eyes. He’d been alone for so long. Having this Christmas puppy filled his house with joy and love. ‘Your secret is safe with me,’ he told the puppy. ‘But you will talk to me, won’t you?’ ”

  “ ‘Of course I will.’ ”

  The final picture came to life on the screen—the puppy and the old man together beneath the Christmas tree.

  “ ‘Good night,’ the old man said.”

  “ ‘Good night,’ said the puppy.”

  “Merry Christmas!” we said in concert.

  The kids got to their feet and applauded. Cynthia Curtis came from the wings and congratulated us on a wonderful performance.

  “Suppose I’d better get back to the house,” Seth told me. “Still some preparations to go for the party.”

  “Yes, you have twenty guests coming.”

  “And you have another performance.”

  “I know.” I raised my eyebrows and sighed. “I can’t believe I agreed to do it. I’d better get dressed.”

  His grin was wicked. “Can’t think of a better person to play Santa, Jessica. But don’t let the little tykes cough in your face. Bad flu season coming up.”

  A half hour later, after having pillows strapped to my waist and being outfitted with a brand-new Santa costume purchased by the festival committee, I sat in a large chair, propped a steady stream of children on my lap, and heard their wishes for Christmas presents. Roberta Brannason’s TV crew and the one from Portland filmed the action.

  When the last child had told me what he wanted Santa to bring—some sort of expensive video game I’d never heard of—Ms. Brannason approached.

  “You make a great Santa,” she said.

  “Thanks. But I think I’ll retire from the job. Not easy.”

  “You made it look easy, Mrs. Fletcher, like you were born to it. Now that the Brent murder has been solved, how about an interview?”

  “About the case? Nothing to say.”

  “No, not about the murder. About being the first female Santa Claus in Cabot Cove festival history.”

  I couldn
’t help but laugh. I’d removed my false white beard and red hat, enjoying the cool air on my face and head. I said, “Give me a minute to get this beard back on, and I’ll be happy to speak with you on camera.”

  The interview went well, and was actually fun. It gave me the opportunity to extoll the festival, the village, and the wonderful people who made Cabot Cove a special place at Christmas.

  “Thanks a lot, Mrs. Fletcher,” Brannason said. “I really appreciate it.”

  The TV folks left, and I was about to go back-stage to shed my Santa uniform when the door opened at the rear of the school gym. Jake Walther and his daughter, Jill, stepped into the gym and looked around. Jake had on his bib overalls, but wore an ill-fitting suit jacket over it. Jill was dressed in a pretty red-and-green dress suitable for the season. They slowly approached.

  Hello,” I said. I was about to add “Merry Christmas,” but thought better of it, considering Mary Walther had been arrested and was in prison this Christmas Eve.

  “Merry Christmas,” Jill said.

  “Merry Christmas,” I said. “Hello, Jake.”

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” he said.

  “You look great in that costume,” Jill said.

  “And I can’t wait to get rid of it. I’m surprised to see you.”

  “Didn’t want to come,” Jake muttered, “but the girl dragged me here.”

  I smiled. “I’m glad she did.”

  “Mrs. Fletcher,” Jill said, “I just wanted to come and thank you for everything you’ve done.”

  “My goodness,” I said, “I’m afraid there are no thanks in order. After all, I am responsible, to a great extent, for your mom being where she is at the moment.”

  “You did what you had to do,” Jake said.

  “I’m glad you see it that way, Jake.”

  “Mr. Turco says he’ll do everything he can to help Mary,” Jake said. “She’s a good woman. Never been in trouble her entire life. I guess the pressure got a smidge too much for her.”

  I didn’t respond.