Irregardless of Murder (Miss Prentice Cozy Mysteries) Read online

  It was still a beautiful October night in the Adirondacks, cool, but not bitter. I’d walked to the library tonight, enjoying the brisk wind gusts, sniffing the hint of smoke in the air. (Lily Burns had broken the air pollution law again and burned her leaves.) I loved that smell. It had been a great evening to be alive . . .

  Alive. A wave of guilt swept over me. I sat back in the seat and tried to think of nothing.

  Inasmuch as my house was only around the block, it was a short ride, but I was grateful and told Officer Perkins so. I couldn’t have walked back tonight. I hadn’t felt this shaken up in years. It was a real tragedy, too, since Marguerite was her mother’s only child. It was amazing how he had handled Lily, being so calm and all—

  All these things and more I babbled to the impassive Perkins as we navigated the long front walk and the porch steps. At the big front door, the dear, big, heavy, obstinate portal that had greeted me so many happy times in the past, Perkins cut to the chase and held out his palm.

  “Oh, yes, of course.” A tip. I blearily fumbled in my purse for my wallet until—

  “Your key, please?”

  “Oh! My key! Sure!”

  Perkins unlocked and opened the door without any of the jiggling, thumping, and lip-biting that had become my ritual. Apparently all the door needed was a firm hand. I marveled.

  My farewell to Officer Perkins was effusive, as it always was when I was especially glad to see someone leave and felt a little guilty about it. Thank him so very much, he had been more than kind. Yes, I would be fine. No, thanks, I didn’t need him to come in and look around for intruders. I’d be fine. Thanks again. I was the original brave little soldier, I was.

  But once the big door was shut with a brassy jingle and I had driven the bolt lock home, all the starch drained from my legs and I slid slowly to the floor, right on top of my great-grandmother’s heirloom oriental rug. Resting my head against the solid door, I closed my eyes and shut out the world.

  “Sam?” I called into the darkness.

  It was futile, of course. My parent’s obese, beloved old cat barely tolerated my presence. Sam and I had had a kind of inter-species sibling rivalry that I’d never experienced with my sister. The situation had only gotten worse after Dad and Mother died.

  All at once, Sam’s warm, furry bulk filled my lap and he was rubbing his head against my hand. Why he had come was a mystery. He had never once responded to me unless food was involved, but I wasn’t one to turn away a miracle, especially not tonight. I wrapped my arms around him and began to sob into his fur.

  I started to tell Sam about the night’s events and to express my shock at the tragedy, but as my monologue progressed, it gradually turned into a prayer. Sitting on the scratchy wool rug in the entryway, clutching an unusually meek Sam to my breast, I told God how I felt about things.

  It just wasn’t fair, I told Him. Marguerite, poor ditsy mite of a girl, dying so young and so senselessly. And what of her mother, Marie, abandoned by her husband at nineteen with a tiny baby to raise by herself? Dear, earnest, hard-working Marie, who had experienced so much heartache in her life, now left totally alone.

  I knew what it was like, I told Him. Hadn’t I nursed both my beloved parents through the agony of cancer? I had survived somehow, thanks to His help, never once begrudging my sister, Barbara, her beautiful home in Florida, her handsome husband, or her four children.

  And speaking of marriage, Lord, I was forty-one already. Was I ever—

  The doorbell rang. I froze. Sam struggled free of my embrace and bolted. The bell rang again. Slowly, I began to rise, first on hands and knees, and then gripping the doorknob, pulling myself painfully upright.

  Squinting cautiously through the stained glass panels that framed the doorway, I fumbled with the bolt lock. I could see that my visitor was tall, but he wasn’t familiar. I opened the door a tiny crack and saw a police car on the street.

  “Yes?”

  “Miss Prentice.” A disheveled file was thrust through the crack. “You left your papers on a chair in the library.”

  “Oh, Officer Perkins, it’s you. Thanks.”

  He bent over until his nose almost touched mine. I could have sworn he sniffed.

  “You all by yourself, ma’am? I thought I heard voices.”

  “Nope, just me. I live alone—well, there’s my mother’s cat around here somewhere.” I gestured back over my shoulder.

  Perkins glanced over my head into the hall and gave me a skeptical look. “Um, did the paramedic explain that you’re not supposed to have any alcohol? Just in case it’s a concussion, you know?”

  “Don’t worry, Officer, I don’t drink.” I pulled myself straighter and fumbled in my coat pocket for the handkerchief Dennis had given me. “And I know all about first aid and—honk—things.” I wiped the tears from my face and looked around, realizing for the first time that I was still wearing my coat and hadn’t turned any lights on.

  “I’ll be going up to bed now,” I announced, and snapped on the porch light.

  “Yes, ma’am, if you’re sure you’re okay.”

  “I am, I assure you.” I jutted out my chin.

  Perkins turned.

  “Thank you for bringing the papers,” I called after him. “I needed them.”

  As he sped away, I turned on the hall light. And the lamp in the front sitting room. And the light over the staircase. And the bedside lamp, as well as the one in the bathroom.

  It wouldn’t do to have the city police department thinking the English teacher was sitting alone in the dark, drinking. Such a thing could be all over town by sunup.

  ***

  “Oh, this is useless!”

  I sat up in bed. Only minutes before, I had been desperately exhausted, longing for sleep. Now I couldn’t turn off the movie that played inside my eyelids.

  Why did I go to the library tonight? Was I really such a creature of habit? If I’d stayed and corrected papers here at home, my head wouldn’t be hurting, I’d be able to sleep, and I wouldn’t be wearing this huge bandage.

  But Marguerite would still be dead.

  Marguerite dead. I couldn’t believe it. I closed my eyes, picturing that earnest child with the perpetually anxious expression on her pale face, the unruly brown hair tied at the back of her neck with a ribbon, and the long earrings that bounced as she trembled in uncontrollable enthusiasm over some silly thing or other. It was always something dramatic with Marguerite.

  Pig Latin, for instance. To my other students, the silly language had been a brief amusement, a mental toy to enjoy and cast aside. Marguerite, as always, overdid it, writing her name in pig Latin on her books, circulating notes in it, and even doing her homework in it. So much enthusiasm, so much energy—and now she was dead. How could it have happened? She’d seemed so healthy.

  I’d tripped over Marguerite in the copy room. I knew CPR. If I had been less clumsy, might I have been in time to save her? Maybe just a few minutes earlier . . .

  “This has got to stop!” I declared aloud. “Any more of this and I’ll go crazy.” I glanced around the room. “Sam? Come here.”

  From his curled position on Aunt Clarissa’s hand-braided rug, Sam stared at me, his eyes reflecting silver in the moonlight. He tilted his head questioningly.

  “That’s right,” I reassured him, patting the comforter beside me. “You can sleep up here. But just for tonight.” I made a kissing noise.

  Sam’s leap was graceful, but his four-point landing caused the bedsprings to creak in protest. Even before he curved himself into a ball at my side, his motor-like purring had begun. I settled back, sinking into the sedative rhythm and whispering my gratitude to heaven for the blessing of sleep. My eyes drooped, closed. There was no movie this time, just soothing blackness.

  I awoke at six-thirty a.m. to an alarm clock-telephone duet. Sam had deserted me some time in the night, presumably to use the litter box, which I had banished to the back porch. In one fluid movement, I pounded the top of the clock
with my fist and picked up the telephone.

  “Miss Prentice?” That somber bass could only belong to our principal.

  “Mr. Berghauser.”

  “I read about what happened in the paper this morning. Are you coming to school today?” That was Gerard B. all over. None of this how-are-you nonsense. Just get to the point.

  “It’s good of you to ask,” I said, deliberately misreading sympathy into his question, “but don’t worry now, I’ll be fine. Just a bit of a bandage on my head.”

  “Bandage? A large bandage?”

  I could hear the wheels turning. Such a spectacle might be distracting to the students. Worse yet, there might be negative publicity.

  “Oh, just average-sized, you know,” I said vaguely, enjoying his discomfort.

  “We have Coach Gurowski available to substitute . . . ”

  Oh no, you don’t! That man wasn’t going to play havoc with my grade book ever again! It took forever last time to straighten things out.

  “Thank you so much, but it’s not necessary.”

  “Well. If you’re sure, all right then,” he conceded, adding, “I’m afraid I was right about the LeBow girl. A shame, a real shame, but then, she was never really stable, was she? And when it comes to these drugs . . . ”

  “Drugs!” I squawked. “There was no question of drugs! It was some kind of seizure or something.”

  “That’s not what the Press Advertiser says.” I heard the rattle of newspaper as he read aloud: “‘Sources close to the family revealed that drugs had recently become a problem and that such an outcome was no surprise to those who knew Marguerite.’”

  What sources? What did they mean, no surprise? I knew Marguerite, too! I’d read her journal, filled with tumultuous adolescent idealism. Marguerite was quite literally an open book, but a clean one.

  I remembered her words: “It just isn’t right!” she’d said, when I’d challenged some emotional comments she made during a classroom debate her senior year.

  “I know, Marguerite, but there are better ways to get your point across without personally attacking your opponent. That’s called an ad hominem argument, and it’s, um, bogus,” I pointed out, trying to use terms to which she could relate. “You make a better point attacking his logic, using facts to refute it, rather than calling him names.”

  “I’m sorry, Miss Prentice,” she’d whispered, still quivering with emotion. I was reminded of a hummingbird. “I got carried away. It’s just so, so . . . evil!”

  The subject of the debate was the legalization of drugs.

  “It’s always drugs these days,” Berghauser was saying.

  Not always. “Well,” I said, “I don’t know about that. But anyway, I’ll be there right on time.”

  “Good,” he said, and hung up.

  Groaning, I climbed out of bed and headed for the dresser. The face in the mirror was pale, with an irritated, world-weary expression. I winced as I pulled away the edge of the bandage and squinted at the wound.

  A tiny white butterfly-shaped adhesive held together the edges of the bulging cut, which was dark maroon and surrounded by purple bruising. No, I wouldn’t be able to dispense with the big white bandage yet.

  Sunshine streamed through the stained-glass panels in the entryway as I came down the wide old stairs. My sister Barbara had been married in this house and descended this staircase, her long satin train rippling down behind her, just the way we had planned as little girls. The family had filled the house then, uncles and aunts, now dead; and their children, now far flung and lost to one another. Still, it was a lovely memory and I smiled.

  There was a brisk tap-tap-tap at the door announcing Lily Burns, a casserole in her hand and lively curiosity in her eyes.

  “Isn’t this doorbell working? I rang and rang.” She stepped inside. “Now, Amelia, I’ll take care of everything. Don’t say a word.”

  She swept past me into the kitchen. She didn’t mean it, of course. She was hoping I’d say many words, all on one particular subject.

  She opened the refrigerator. “I would have come last night, but that miserable Dennis O’Brien kept us at the library for hours. I almost came over irregardless. Did you know your porch lights were on all night?”

  “Regardless. Yes, I did, but Lily, I can’t.”

  “Don’t mention it. I was going to bring you the box of chocolates my broker gave me last Christmas. Tacky gift. But I know you like candy and it should be all right, because it was in the freezer the whole time. But I decided at a time like this you should eat healthy.” She held up the casserole proudly. “It’s chicken divan. Not a thing unhealthy in it except a little butter and a touch of sour cream. Four hundred degrees for half an hour and it’ll be all ready to eat. I’ll come back at noon and fix it for you, if you like. I’d stay all morning, but today’s the women’s auxillary meeting, you know, and I’ve promised to plan the . . . what’s that?”

  Having finished his business on the back porch, Sam was pulling himself with some difficulty through his newly-installed plastic cat door. I was gratified to see him actually use it, but it didn’t do much for his dignity. When he finally completed his struggle, his fur was sticking out in every direction and he had narrowly avoided stepping in his food dish.

  “Why looo-oook,” said Lily, stooping to stroke behind his ears. “It’s Samuel! How is oo? Did oo wike the snack I weft for oo yesterday?” She smoothed down his fur. “I had some leftover beef stroganoff from the covered dish supper and it seemed a shame to waste it,” she explained, looking up at me. “Besides, Sammy woves sour cweam, doesn’t oo, tweetheart?”

  Sam arched to reach Lily’s outstretched hand. As they caressed and whispered sweet nothings to one another, I realized that a mystery had been solved: how Sam remained solidly obese on a diet of expensive lo-cal cat food. If it was possible for a cat to have a double chin, Sam did.

  “Now, don’t look at me like that, Amelia. It’s just that he’s a dear widdle fellow, who takes such pleasure in his food, don’t oo, tweetie?”

  Her words had a familiar ring. She had once used similar ones to describe her late husband Darryl, a kind, patient, agreeably plump man who died of a heart attack at age forty-seven.

  Lily pulled something from her coat pocket. “Here’s your paper, by the way. Don’t read it, though. No need to dwell on the negative. Besides, those idiots at the paper don’t know everything, do they?” She paused, presumably for breath, and examined my coffee machine.

  “Lily—” I began.

  “Let’s see, how does this thing work? Does it use a filter? Is this where you keep your coffee?” She pulled out the filter basket and began rummaging in my cupboards.

  “Lily—” I said again.

  “Say, how about instant? I always think the really good brands are every bit as good as the ground coffee. When I—”

  Thwock! I slapped the rolled-up paper on the kitchen table.

  “Lily!”

  Lily jumped slightly and stared at me, wide-eyed, like a startled deer wearing blue eye shadow. “Yes, Amelia?” She spoke softly and evenly, but I could tell I had annoyed her.

  “I’m sorry. It’s just—I mean, it’s awfully sweet of you to go to all this trouble, but . . . ”

  “No trouble at all,” she insisted frostily.

  “I just don’t have the time to visit. I have to be at school in forty-five minutes!”

  “Amelia, you mustn’t!” Lily put down the coffee filter and pointed at my bandage. “It could be a concussion! There could be internal bleeding! I had a great-great uncle who hit his head on the edge of an anvil and a week later, he keeled over, stone dead.” She snapped her fingers.

  “I promise you I’ll be careful.”

  “And besides,” she concluded, getting to the real bottom line, “you’ll make a spectacle of yourself, showing up at the school with that—” she pointed again, “big white thing half covering your face!”

  “I’m just fine. Really. My head doesn’t hurt but a l
ittle bit. You know it’s football season and there are half-a-dozen youngsters in school wearing casts and bandages. I should fit right in. Now,” I said, reaching in the cupboard for the coffee can, “I’ve got to get going. Will you have some coffee with me?”

  Lily pulled on her coat and gloves. “No, thank you,” she said primly.

  Sam and I escorted her to the front door. “Thank you for the casserole. You’re a much better cook than I am.” That was the truth, and we both knew it.

  Lily waggled her head modestly, and I could tell I was going to be forgiven. “It’s just one of those things off a box of something. Oh!” she exclaimed. “Forgot to ask you. There’s the sale at Peasemarsh this weekend. Wanna go?”

  JJ Peasemarsh was a sportswear company with a factory outlet store across Lake Champlain in Burlington, Vermont. Their clearance sale was a yearly pilgrimage for us.

  “I don’t know why not.”

  “Great! I’ll call to remind you later. So long, Samuel,” she cooed, scratching him behind his ear. “No, no, dear, watch the stockings! Bye.”

  Risking back strain, I picked Sam up to prevent his following Lily. The wretched cat had sold his affections for a dollop of sour cream.

  CHAPTER THREE

  After Lily left I had to scramble to get to school on time. Usually I walked the five blocks and was glad to get the exercise, but as I stepped from the shower, the clock read 7:30, my usual arrival time.

  I pulled on my clothes and considered one of my options: a seldom-used car safely padlocked in the garage out back. As I combed my hair, I tried to remember where I’d put the key. No use, my mind just wouldn’t work under pressure this morning. Besides it was all I could do to lift that heavy garage door on a good day.

  “Ouch!” The comb pulled the hair near my wound. That did it. Plan B. I grabbed the phone and called Labombard Taxi.

  Fleur Labombard had read the morning paper. Yes, I told her, I was all right. No, I hadn’t seen Marguerite’s body, actually. Yes, it was very, very sad. Now, about that taxi?

  Mrs. Labombard was glad I was all right. She’d send somebody right over.