Broken Strings Page 5

  He nodded emphatically. “So when do we start packing up?”

  “Tomorrow morning. After milking. More tea?”

  “If there’s no yew in it.” He smiled.

  “Willard!” It was Beets, crashing into the house with a model engine. “It won’t run.”

  “He slammed it down, that’s why,” young Apple said, trotting in after him.

  “I did not slam it,” Beets said. “I was trying to get it to go, that’s all.” He gave her a punch in the arm and Apple yelped. Fay shook a warning finger at the foster boy.

  Willard cradled the engine in his big hands. Fay saw how gentle he was, turning it over, touching its screws here and there. The way he’d make and operate marionettes. He put a hand on Beets’s shoulder and it stopped quivering.

  “He did so slam it,” Apple said when Beets and Willard went back out; the girl’s cheeks flamed. She went to the refrigerator. “Where’s that bottle of cranberry juice?”

  “Consumed.” Fay found a new one in the pantry. She sat the girl down and took a seat herself. She’d had a thought. “Bonjour, ma petite,” she said.

  Apple grinned. She was wearing pink plastic apples in her pierced ears, a birthday gift from aunt Glenna. “Bonjour,” she said back, in a lovely French accent.

  “Comment allez-vous?” ‘How are you,’ was practically all Fay recalled from a long ago French class.

  Apple smiled at Fay’s pronunciation. But she answered anyway. “Je vais bien,” she said. “Et toi?”

  She was using the familiar ‘you,’ Fay recalled. The way Mademoiselle would have taught – nothing but the familiar for Mademoiselle. “So you’re in Mademoiselle LaFleur’s group in school?” And when the girl nodded: “What day does she come?”

  “Mercredi,” Apple said in her sweet accent. Mademoiselle had taught her well.

  Fay ran the French days of the week through her mind. Lundi – Monday. Mardi – Tuesday. “Mercredi!” she cried. “Wednesday. Oui, oui! Merci, petite. Cookie?” She took a breath, she’d exhausted all the French she knew.

  “Oui, merci, madame,” said Apple, and jumped up to retrieve the cookie jar. “Voici,” she said, and offered one to Fay.

  “Thanks a bundle,” Fay said, and gave the foster girl a hug.

  Wednesday, she thought. Mademoiselle was at the school Wednesday. The day Marion drank or kissed the yew. Or rubbed her hands with a rosin pad – Fay had just thought of the rosin pad Marion always rubbed her hands with before a show – to keep a firm grip on the controller.

  She ran to the dictionary to look up the word rosin. There it was: MF. Middle French. Rosin was a French word. It figured.

  Chapter Six

  Death Threats and an Unexpected Visitor

  Wednesday, September 26

  Sergeant Nosy had the goodness to call before he came. Well, his name was actually Nova, but once her tongue had said Nosy, the name stuck. Maybe at age fifty-seven Fay was ready for a hearing aid.

  “Just a couple questions,” he said, looking embarrassed, his nose blinking red. He stood there at the door in his cop’s uniform, turning a clipboard over and over in his hands. Lack of confidence, she decided, lack of experience. And this was the man Higgins had put in charge of a murder investigation? She felt the weight of a grave, new responsibility. To find answers for herself.

  “Just a couple, that’s all I’ve time for now,” Fay said. “I’ve an appointment in town.” Which was true. She and Willard were to take both vehicles to Cedric’s house – it was Cedric’s house now, yes – to pack away the marionettes and accessories. Willard was outside raking leaves, waiting for her call. Glenna was in the living room listening to the morning news. “That’s a lie!” she was shouting at the reporter. “Check your facts!”

  So Fay sat the sergeant down on a kitchen chair. He seemed a likable fellow, if green around the proverbial gills. The green shirt he was wearing was no asset to his complexion. He was staring down at his clipboard, two hands gripping the coffee cup she’d given him. Finally he said, right out of Agatha Christie: “So can you tell me where you were on the morning of September sixteenth?”

  She laughed, and his big chalky face overspread with red. Then he chuckled, checked his notes, and answered the question himself. “You were with the deceased. You were operating a marionette at the Branbury Elementary School.”

  “I was indeed,” she said, smiling to put him at ease. She waited for the next question. This time it came as a surprise.

  “I understand there was ground yew in the deceased’s body. How do you think it came to be there? I mean, who might have had access to, say, the deceased’s – ”

  “Please don’t use that word. Her name was Marion.” She was suddenly angry.

  “Don’t turn her into an object. Her spirit is still with us – with me.”

  “Marion’s, um, thermos of – yes.”

  “All four of us were there.” She blew her nose, regained composure. “Not to mention any of the schoolchildren or teachers or any other visitors who might have been in the school at that time.” She thought of Mademoiselle but decided not to mention her for now – not until she was more sure of the woman’s relationship with Cedric. “We’d left our purses and stuff in an adjacent classroom. Anyone could have slipped in there while we were doing the first scene. Put the taxine in her thermos. Or in the rosin pack.”

  “Rosin pack,” he repeated and wrote it down. Then looked up with a raised eyebrow. She decided that she liked Nova. He knew how to listen. She took three quick breaths to calm down.

  “She kept it in her purse with the cigarettes. I saw her rub her hands with it. Anyone could have opened her purse, I suppose, and put it in the pack. Me, I could’ve done it.”

  She smiled up at the sergeant. His nose was a red stop light. He was so excited now he could hardly write. She saw him tracing over his words to make them legible.

  “Rosin pack,” he said aloud, a little breathless. It was okay to give him the credit for discovering the fact. She wasn’t in this for the notoriety, she didn’t want to be promoted to anything. Like Nova, she just wanted to find out who took Marion’s life.

  “She was a smoker?” he asked.

  “Oh yes. Cedric complained about the secondhand smoke, so she usually went outdoors for the cigarette. Her mother has Alzheimer’s, so did the grandmother. It was something she worried about in herself.”

  He looked up quizzically. Was that a non sequitur: Alzheimer’s to nicotine? She said: “Marion read that nicotine can help with disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. Something about the risk of those diseases being twice as high for non-smokers than for smokers. So Marion smoked.”

  “Nicotine’s a poison too.”

  “But it wasn’t nicotine that killed her. It was yew.”

  “Uh, yeah, I know.” The sergeant was writing up a storm; he’d already flipped over to a second page on his yellow-lined pad.

  “But you can see we’re all suspects, aren’t we?” she said, smiling, bringing him back on topic.

  He nodded. He broke the point of his pencil making a note and pulled out a new one. The man knew his flaws.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me if I did it? If I put the yew in the tea or the rosin pack?”

  “Oh. Did you?” The nose blinked at her. The pad trembled a little in his hand. It was his first murder investigation. Hers, too.

  “No. I did not.” She blinked back at him. Blinked directly in his eyes, for she’d read that liars looked away on being questioned. Fay had lied on occasion, of course, small lies, white lies. But black lies she could never get away with. Her nose blinked red, too.

  “Then” – he gulped his coffee – “who you think, I mean, maybe, um, well, did it?”

  His nerves increased her cool. “There were four of us operating that day. Obviously it wasn’t suicide so you can cross that out. I didn’t do it, so I can cross out myself but I realize you can’t do that. Our foster girl Chance was a third operator, and sh
e liked Marion; she was writing a play for her.” She stared the cop down. “That leaves Cedric.”

  “Ah. Motive? Uh, money? Cedric inherited the house and most of Marion’s money. Some went to the half-sister. I already looked into that.” He smiled at Fay.

  “Good for you. Well, there might have been others. You’ll have to speak to everyone who was at the school that day. Or in the audience. Except the children. Though children can sometimes act for grownups. Anyway, I have to go now.”

  “If you find that rosin pack, why – ”

  “Lieutenant Higgins took her purse,” she said. “The rosin must be in it. Can you ask him to look in that pack, have it analyzed?”

  “I will, thank you.” Standing up, Sergeant Nova shoved forward a rough hand. He’d been in the force long enough, she realized, to get some of the dirty jobs; he wasn’t a complete neophyte. She wondered if he was married, though she didn’t see a ring.

  Stupid thought. She was always looking for rings. And not every couple married. And Nova was too young for her. But what the heck.

  “Let me know what you find out. And keep me on the list of suspects till you find the killer. I don’t mind. It keeps my mind on things other than Marion.”

  She’d played a suicide in one play, but never a killer. Now she could experience being a suspect at least. Anyone could kill, she’d read somewhere. Even a grandmother. A grandmother like herself? Imagine it! If anyone tries to hurt any of my kids, she thought, and balled her fists. Then realized she was counting the three foster kids in with her grandson and daughter. Well why not? She adored these kids.

  “Come back any time,” she told the sergeant. “Any time at all.”

  * * *

  “Hey, look what I found,” she told Willard. They were at Cedric’s going through Marion’s files, the one labeled Feedback. Cedric had gone out to work in his garden, wanting to stick around while she and Willard were in the house, she supposed. Marion’s black and tan Maine Coon cat was rubbing against her legs. Cedric didn’t like cats. What would happen to Marion’s six-year-old Bashful?

  “Take him home?” Willard said. “Your Gandalf might like a companion.” Gandalf was cousin Glenna’s rescued greyhound. Rabbits weren’t safe with him, he’d been trained to chase rabbits in his racing days. The animal had only three toes on one foot after one of them had been chopped off at the track, but was otherwise in good health. Could the cat cope?

  “I’ll talk to Cedric. Anyway,” she held up the letter she’d found; it had no name but was mailed in Montpelier. “This seems to be a crank letter. There are several of them, clipped together, along with newspaper reviews. In this one a spectator is angry about the way Marion subverted Little Red Riding Hood.”

  “How so?” he asked, holding up a clown, ready to be packed.

  “Because Marion had made Riding Hood the villain and the Wolf the victim. It was during her save-the-gray wolf phase. But this writer tells her to stop destroying the hopes and dreams of kids. Quote: ‘You broke a taboo. You made a child the villain’.”

  “I can sort of see her point,” Willard said. “Little Red Riding Hood a villain?”

  “Marion turned her into a teenaged female hood, complete with an AK 47.”

  “For the kids’ shows?”

  “Adults. Though mommas brought their kids, that was the problem. They couldn’t get away from the old stereotypes. If it’s little Red Hood, it’s gotta be sweet.”

  “Ah.” He packed away the clown in tissue, careful not to tangle the strings. Willard had long slender fingers. He’d do a better job than klutzy Fay, who invariably unhooked the hooked rugs she tried to make, not to mention the marionette strings.

  “Here’s a review from a small town paper in New Hampshire. A conservative paper it would appear – a byline by a woman named Gertrude Church. ‘Mrs. Valentini’s puppets,’” she read aloud, “‘are well constructed but the story line is wrong. Parents who brought their children to our senior center were rightfully upset to see young Alice embracing the Red Queen in the Valentini production of Alice in Wonderland. If it shocked our elders, what are children to think? What questions will they ask their parents?’”

  “It was my fault, that embrace,” Fay said. “My Alice’s strings got tangled with the Red Queen’s. I got giggling and so did Marion. Even so – ”

  “Even so, what?” said an abstracted Willard, untangling the White Rabbit’s strings.

  “Even so she was thinking of putting a lesbian twist on the end of Sleeping Beauty. I love the way Marion subverts – subverted – the old tales. Give the audience a little jolt in the end, she’d say. A surprise. The gay folk in the audience would love it; others might simply smile. Or walk out. Cedric, of course, was horrified. It was just before she died, poor woman.” She turned to Willard, who was upended in a packing box. “Would it bother you, Will, to see two women embrace?”

  Willard’s cheeks were coloring. Turning furiously fuchsia, in fact. “Of course it wouldn’t bother me. No. My brother, though, was more careful. With good reason.”

  “You have a brother, Will? How come you never – ”

  “Henry died,” Willard said. “He drowned himself senior year in high school. It was after two classmates found him with another, um, another boy. They teased him. He couldn’t, well, he couldn’t handle it.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “How awful for him. For you and your mother.”

  “Oh, Mother denied it, you know. Back then – all that prejudice. The Italians, the Poles, the Irish…”

  “Still, that prejudice. It hasn’t gone away. It just hides now and then behind all that political correctness. Marion saw it; it may be why she died.”

  “Oh. Anyway, we pulled Henry out of Lake Champlain.” After all these years, Willard’s eyes still watered. “His ashes are buried behind the house. Another reason why Mother said not to sell it. Or to move the ashes if I did.”

  “Though I feel bad that the puppets would keep you from selling it.”

  “No!” He shook his head vigorously. It was hard to tell his mop of white hair from the White Rabbit’s head. There was an element of unpredictability about modest Willard that she loved. Like this sudden confidence about his brother. She supposed the mother kept denying the homosexuality – insisted Willard not tell. The old Puritan reserve. Herself, she was glad to have had an Irish mother who told all and to everyone.

  She went back to the Feedback file. “Uh oh,” she drew in a breath. “This one’s a threat. A death threat, looks like. ‘Stop destroying these innocent folktales. Now! If you keep on, you will be very, very sorry’.” The letter, written in red ink, was signed X and underscored by a hand-drawn skull.

  Willard whistled, looked up at Fay with his wide blue eyes. “Do you think…?”

  “We have to consider it,” she said. “We have to chase down this red X.” He could be in cahoots with Cedric, she thought. She wasn’t going to let Cedric go. The envelope, she saw, was dated July 24, just two months before, and mailed from Greensboro, a town in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. The maverick Kingdom was home to artists, writers, rum and heroin runners, but also to a cave of conservative folks.

  There were two more letters from X, the most recent dated September 16. Prepare to die, it said. “And she ignored it!” Fay cried. “At least she said nothing to me. I’ll have to ask Cedric. Unless it was Cedric himself sending the letters?” She lowered her voice, hearing a door slam in the back of the house. “Oh my God, do you think so?”

  “Oh, I can’t imagine he would do that. He’s not a nice man, but he wouldn’t want to hurt his wife. Surely not! No.” Her white rabbit had finished packing the puppets, checking them against the inventory Marion had made. “All here,” he said, “except one called, um, Ganesha?”

  “Ganesha. Sure. That Hindu puppet with the long elephant nose, a symbol of learning. Marion brought it back from her travels. Maybe she gave it away to someone.”

  He grunted, shrugged, and gathered up bits and pi
eces of wood, clay, papier mâché and disembodied heads lying about on tables and shelves. But her mind was on the most recent hate letter. She handed it to Willard and heard him whistle again. She supposed she wouldn’t have taken the threat seriously had she been Marion, alive and healthy and full of creative ways to bring the old tales to life; ways to provoke and challenge thought. Marion even had ideas for a show on global warming to take around to schools. And then there was Chance’s play on bullying, with her cast of whimsical goats.

  But Marion was dead and the threats took on fresh significance. How was Fay – or Nova – to track down this nasty letter writer?

  “An artist, I’d think,” Willard said, holding the letter close to his myopic eyes. “From the way he’s drawn the skull. All that detail, the angles, like he might be drawing from an autopsy.”

  “Brilliant deduction, Mr. Holmes,” she cried, wanting to run over and hug him but keeping her distance – she didn’t want to scare him off. “I’ll tell Sergeant Nova.”

  “You have to tell him about all those hate letters?”

  “Willard, you old Vermonter you! We can’t keep back evidence. They don’t do that on TV, on any of the umpteen crime shows.”

  “I suppose.” He laughed, and flushed.

  “Something funny going on in here?” Cedric peered in the room – back from the veggie garden.

  “Not funny. Awful, in fact. Did Marion show you this?” She handed him the hate letter. Studied his expression. It didn’t change, though there might be a small fire in his cheeks. She’d remember that.

  “Some kook,” Cedric said. “She mentioned it to me. We didn’t take it seriously.”

  “I’ll make copies and let the police have the originals. Let them bring in a handwriting expert. I think we need to find this person.”

  Cedric looked at the ceiling. Following his glance, she noticed a stain where the rain had come through. He said, “Definitely a suspect, that letter writer.” He was sober today, and his cold seemed better. He was holding a wire basket full of tomatoes. “Want some?”