MURDER at CRAWFORD HOUSE (Allie Griffin Mysteries Book 3) (6 page)

              Sneaking around upstairs was not going to be as difficult as the women had previously thought. The storm outside was now raging to the point where the winds produced rose to a fever pitch in wild howls, then died down to a dull moan, then rose again, and so it went on into the night. Padded feet and a watchful eye were all that were needed to make it safely to Bertie's room undetected. After carefully closing the door behind them, Allie clicked on her phone's flashlight and the two went to work rummaging through the dead man's possessions.

              They whispered, though the noise of the storm was bad enough that one had to do so close to the ear of the other.

              Bertie's bed remained neat to the point that it looked as though the man had not laid a single piece of clothing or baggage upon it, even though Allie had seen him unpacking that way. In fact, the entire room looked as though it had not been occupied at all. Everything was pristine to the point of obsession. They discovered Bertie's luggage in the closet, tucked efficiently to one side. A couple of white cotton shirts hung overhead. No ties. The dresser drawers contained scant few items as well. Two shirts, two pairs of underwear, two pairs of socks, and that was it. All in all, it made sense for a man to pack this way, in contrast to Allie and Del, who had each packed a combined total of items that would shame a cabaret performer marooned on a desert island for a month. However, there was something in the scarcity of personal effects that made Allie a little sad, like seeing a lonely old man dining in a café late at night all by himself with nothing but a book to keep him company, knowing he'd go home that night to little more than the same. Allie felt for people like that; she was close to becoming one herself after her husband, Tom, had passed six years before.

              On the top of the dresser was an old leather travel grooming kit. It was unzipped. Inside were leather straps to hold bottles and sundries of varying sizes. Here was the soap in the bottom part of the case, housed in a rusty metal box. This was obviously where Bertie's available cash went: to his personal hygiene. Bertie seemed to have spared nothing toward the goal of being the cleanest man on the face of the planet. If that meant spending more for soap than he did on his entire wardrobe, so be it. Next to the soap was a glass vial that was the home for Bertie's toothbrush. The rest of the kit contained spaces for the following: a tube of toothpaste, a razor, a shaving brush, a collapsible shaving mug, a tin of powdered shaving cream, a bottle of aftershave, a shoehorn, a nail file, a lint brush, deodorant, a container of talcum powder, a comb, and a final extra space for some miscellaneous item. All items were snapped into their proper place and all the straps were filled save for the miscellaneous one. She then noticed something. Many of the items had a brand label, and every one of these labels had been picked at. Tiny gouges in the upper right corner of every label, ostensibly made with a fingernail. Bertie's own personal method of marking his belongings?

              Allie unscrewed the toothbrush tube and extracted the toothbrush. She clenched it in her fist and ran her thumb over the bristles. By the glow of the flashlight she could she a tiny spray misting off the brush. The tube of toothpaste had a small dent at its base. She replaced the toothbrush back in the tube and snapped the container back into place.

              Next to the bed was a small night table on which a travel alarm clock sat. Next to that were a glass of water, half-filled, and a bottle of prescription pills. Allie lifted the bottle and squinted at it by the glow of the flashlight.

              "Beta blockers," she whispered. "For heart disease. Tom was on these."

              She motioned for Del to accompany her back to the closet, from which they fetched Bertie's suitcase and took it to the bed.

              It was a very old piece of luggage, dating back to a time when men wore hats everywhere and typed letters to old friends, and an apple pie and coffee cost fifteen cents, and there were some still around who considered
that
overpriced. It was ragged without any of the character that vintage items tend to possess when kept in the same state of their acquisition and never used again. With fraying bands and rusty hinges, it was just a sad, used item that could only be called an antique because of its age, not because of any sort of rustic charm or personality.

              The latches opened without any discernible sound, so overused they were, and the thing smelled faintly of mothballs and less faintly of that soap that Bertie used. Other than that smell, it was completely empty.

              She closed the suitcase and replaced it in the closet in the exact spot where she found it.

              "I guess we're done in here. Now..." She motioned with her head.

              "Now what? What does that mean?"

              "You know. We talked about this."

              The look of realization came over Del's face. "Oh no."

              "We talked about it."

              "Yeah, but...no."

              "Come on," she said. "Back to our room. I have to get gloves."

              It certainly wasn't the first time either woman had seen a dead body. It was, however, the first time Allie ever laid her hands on one.

              The absence of life was a strange sensation. The body had all the physical feeling of a live body, but it lacked the warmth, the subtle movement, the vibration of life in it. Allie wore a pair of knit gloves she'd gotten as a gift from her friend Jimmy Welles's landlady, the year Allie had found Jimmy for her. She felt terrible using them for this ghastly purpose, but they were the only gloves she had on her. She promised herself she'd try not to touch too much.

              The initial shock wore off in a matter of minutes, and the logic and puzzlement of the case won over the emotional part of Allie's brain.

              With the wind howling outside, she found they both had to be extra quiet. No one would be coming into this bathroom, that much was certain. But every little noise reverberated off the walls of this room. She knelt down, the light from her phone's flashlight casting an eerie bluish glow over the body and sending splashes of the ghostly light over objects that made strange, wiggly shadows appear and disappear all around the room. She looked at Del, thinking,
here goes nothing
.

              The first thing she did was feel around in the pockets of Bertie's jacket. The only thing in there was his wallet. She opened it: a driver's license, two credit cards, a library card, and no cash. That was it. Replacing the wallet in the pocket, she took notice of the label on the jacket.

              "Interesting," she whispered.

              She looked up at Del, who was standing by the sink, looking away.

              "Hey," Allie said, "I want you to see this."

              "I'm getting creeped out here."

              "Just look, will you? Look at this label."

              Del squinted in the muted light. "Harris Tweed. Ok."

              "Notice anything?"

              "It's the Harris Tweed brand. They’re expensive jackets."

              "Ah ha, but you’re wrong. Harris Tweed is not the name of the maker; it's the name of the fabric. Jackets made of Harris Tweed do wind up being expensive jackets, but usually only when they're brand new or by some high-end garment maker. This one looks to be a second hand one. See the Harris Tweed label?"

              Del turned and glanced down quickly, nodding assent with clenched teeth.             

              Allie continued, "I only know this because Tom used to wear Harris Tweed jackets. This isn’t the usual Harris Tweed label, which means it was probably made specifically for a client by a tailor who put the Harris Tweed label on it. It's likely the client didn’t want a conspicuous tailor's label on there as well, which means..."

              She turned over the inside pocket and revealed a tiny label with plain printing on it. "Ah ha," she said, and squinted at the writing. "Robert J. Woodson Fine Clothing Maker, 1946.So there it is. Bertie either got this jacket second hand or he inherited it. What does that tell you, Watson?"

              "I'm really uncomfortable in here."

              "Ok, I'll tell you. It means that all these wonderful old things that Bertie owns were probably acquired through his dealings in antiques, but most likely were not that expensive to acquire. Remember that toiletry kit? It's old, yes, but not immaculate. Antiques dealers are extremely specific when it comes to the condition of the items they deal in. I've never known one who didn’t know the exact quality of a collector's item he dealt in."

              "That's great. Now can we get out of here?"

              "One second. I want to check something."

              With her gloved pinky, she lifted the corners of the dead man's lips. "Wow. Those detectives are so right. You really can tell a lot about a person by his teeth. Look here."

              "Oh, I'd rather not. Thank you, though, for thinking of me."

              "Well, fraidy cat, I can tell you that Bertie was sorely in need of dental work. His teeth are far from what you'd expect from so fastidious a person. He's even got a chipped tooth. If you ask me, it looks like our Bertie fell on hard times. Poor guy."

              "Yeah, listen, I'm more than a little queasy right now. Are we done?"

              "I can’t believe you don’t find this fascinating."

              "Whatever, Morticia."

              "Whatever indeed. There's nothing in his pants pockets, as far as I can tell. I guess we're done here."

#

              Back in their bedroom, Del collapsed on the bed. "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for the nightmare fuel."

              "I thought it was interesting. I should have gone into forensics."

              Del shuddered. "You're a better woman than I am, that's all I can say."

              "Not so fast. I still haven’t really discovered anything, other than the fact that Bertie really did have a heart condition, and that he's not doing well financially. Medical bills, maybe? Who knows? We still have a mystery about who locked that door behind him."

              Allie paced the room several times, gathering her thoughts. While pacing and visualizing the scenario in her head, she began to speak her thoughts aloud. "Now, we came up here after dinner. We talked a bit. You went to our bathroom and I went out to use the hallway bathroom. That was around 7:45. I remember the time because I went into a mild panic about giving Dinah her insulin shot as I always do when it's later than I think it is. So anyway, the hallway bathroom was occupied then. We can only assume, because neither of us remember hearing the toilet flush, that Bertie was in there at that time. Which means that in between the end of dinner and 7:45 p.m. – which was probably a window of about fifteen minutes or so – someone got to that bathroom door and locked it. I have to talk to some people tomorrow morning. This should be fun."

              She looked over at Del, who was fast asleep on the bed.

#

              Allie Griffin couldn’t sleep. Her mind was on fire.

              Images of Bertie’s room and his body in the bathroom crept into her thoughts whenever she tried to divert them.

              She turned over the images, just like photographs, and tried to clear her mind, but they returned. And they wouldn’t let her go.

              So she pored over them once again. Her eyes shut tightly, and with the howling of the blizzard winds just outside her windows, she put herself back in that room of his. What was the problem there? The pills on the dresser? The alarm clock? No. It was the desolation, the starkness, the loneliness of it all.

              The emptiness...

              Something about that suitcase. It bothered her.

              She'd experienced this feeling once before. The feeling that she'd missed something, that there was a tiny detail that her brain had registered and logged but failed to make her conscious mind aware of it. Now, here in this surreal environment, with the blasts of snow beating against this very old house, she felt free to let her deepest thoughts out to play. And play they did. The images danced before her and taunted her.

              It was time to get up. To throw on a robe and a pair of soft socks and go back to the dead man's bedroom. To dig out that suitcase. It was the suitcase. It was too empty.

              And here she found herself, her cellphone flashlight in hand –
Thank God this thing's good for something
, she thought – padding around in the haunted room, moving steadily toward the haunted closet. Carefully, she opened the door. There it was, right where she had left it.

              She brought it over to the bed. Once again, the latches gave without any sound.

              Completely empty.

              Until Allie caught sight of a tear in the lining, about the length of her cellphone. She felt the frayed edges of it, and then ran her hand along the inner lining. Something was in there. She felt it – long, thin, hard angles. She was able to insert her hand through the tear into the lining and pull out a plain white envelope, unmarked.

              She almost laughed, such was the feeling of elation at having revealed the phantom of her mind that forbade her sleep.

              She closed the suitcase, put it back where it had been, and went back to her room, envelope in hand.

Sherriff's Department

City of Shelburne, Vermont

SEARCH WARRANT

Her eyes skipped down the page.

Proof of affidavit having been made this day to me by Officer Peter Caldwell #4814.

I am satisfied that there exists probable cause to believe that:

[x] On person of suspect Sommersville, Bertrand Russell, Male, DOB 4/10/1969, 5'9", 175 lbs.

[x] Or, on the premises described as Old Lace Antiques at 1545 Milford Lane

in the City of Shelburne, County of Chittenden, State of Vermont, there is now being possessed or concealed certain property described as:

Stolen Merchandise with the intent of trafficking and/or selling the merchandise at a fee determined by the individual.

              And here she paused. The rest of the page was all legal mumbo jumbo. The meat of it, though, she'd read. And she read it again, just to make sure.

              Bertie, and by extension his antiques store, was suspected of being, in criminal law slang, a "fence" – the middle man between a thief and the buyers of his goods.

             
Good luck trying to sleep now
, she thought.