Meddling in Murder

By Carol Z. Howell

The small community of New Liberty in rural Maine is horrified when a young girl is brutally raped and murdered.

Dodd's Convenience Store serves as the social center of the town, and Clary Dodd is one of its most prominent citizens. Clary is an inveterate puzzle solver. She has helped the police with one or two minor cases in the past and feels herself uniquely qualified to catch the murderer. Against the advice of her husband and with the help of her friend Laura Dearborn, the indomitable Clary digs into the backgrounds of people she's known for years and turns up disturbing information about many of them. A second violent death clouds the picture and escalates tension in the town. Ignoring threats to their safety, Clary and Laura persist in their investigations only to find themselves in mortal danger as they close in on the murderer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 25, 2003
• ISBN: 9781469739557

Carol Z. Howell

Howell?s first published mystery novel was Imitations of Immorality. The charming town in rural Maine where she spent several years became the inspiration for Meddling in Murder. Several of her romantic short stories have appeared in Woman?s World magazine and several memoirs in anthologies. She currently resides in Lexington, Massachusetts.

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CHAPTER 1

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INDEPENDENCE DAY

It was at the Fourth of July church picnic that young Sam Dearborn and his new friend Roddy LaRue found the dead body of sixteen year old Cheryl Pardy.

I’d been sitting with Sam’s mother. Laura Dearborn was a good-looking woman, not exactly pretty, maybe. Some people might have thought her mouth was too wide and her nose a shade too prominent. In my book a decent size nose is an asset. Little snub noses irritate me. Her biggest asset in the looks department was thick auburn hair. I worry about my own hair. Seems to me it’s getting a little thin.

I felt sorry for Laura. She was a newcomer and the locals here resent anyone who hasn’t been born within fifty miles of New Liberty, Maine. I should know. I’m from Connecticut.

That day Alice Grimble had been the first to give Laura a hard time. She bustled up to us while we were chatting by the supper table, her husband Larry trailing behind her. Being the Sheriff’s wife was Alice’s claim to fame.

I’ve always liked Larry Grimble even though he’s too soft on the criminal element around here. He’s a big man with a deep voice that might alarm a stranger who didn’t know what a pushover he really was. But Alice was a different kettle of fish, skinny, sharp featured with an even sharper tongue. She seemed to think having a lawman for a husband gave her the right to poke her nose into everyone’s business.

You must be one of the folks who bought the Burden place, Alice said before I had a chance to open my mouth.

Laura, I put in. Meet Mr. and Mrs. Grimble.

Alice’s chin went up. Sheriff Grimble, she said. We live up on Great Mountain Road, too, further along past the Burden place.

I’m so pleased to meet you both. Laura shook Alice’s hand and then Larry’s. We’ll certainly feel safe having the Sheriff for a neighbor.

I try to keep an eye on things, ma’am, Larry said, falling into the role of rustic keeper of the peace.

Alice’s brows arched like they always did when there was more on her mind than on her tongue, which wasn’t very often. You folks got a bargain buying the place so cheap.

We fell in love with the farm. We had no idea it was a bargain,

Hard on the Burdens, losing their home like that. And those poor little kids of theirs-. Alice pulled a long face as if she really gave a damn.

Come on, Alice. Larry took his wife’s arm. Let’s get some grub. He nodded to Laura. Nice to have met you, Ma’am.

Do stop by when you have a minute. I know my husband would enjoy meeting you, Laura called after them as they walked away.

Then he must be a masochist, I muttered under my breath. I guess I said it louder than I meant to, because Laura grinned.

I spotted Clyde Emmons coming out the church door. I didn’t recognize him right off because he wasn’t wearing the usual dusty black suit. With his skinny arms and legs the Hawaiian printed shirt and Bermuda shorts made him look like one of those pipe cleaner figures we used to make in school.

Emmons’ main church is over in Waterville. He does the service here on Sunday afternoons. New Liberty isn’t big enough to rate its own minister. Alice Grimble doesn’t like him. I’m not sure why. Anyway, she voted against rehiring him last year, but the board gave him the contract again, anyway.

I was surprised to see him at the picnic that Monday, because he’d held the Sunday service the day before as usual, and he’d never seemed that committed to our little flock. Anyway, I figured I’d introduce him to Laura. He’d be sure to give her a warm welcome if he knew she could afford a vacation home. Emmons was big on the blessedness of giving.

Sure enough he was all charm when I introduced him. Welcome to our little community. He oozed up a shade too close.

Laura took a step back. Thank you.

We’ll be looking forward to seeing you and your family at our Sunday service. Ours is a modest little Church, but we’re devoted to it. We’re raising funds now for a new roof. We can’t have our congregation getting wet, can we? He took another step forward, his face only inches from hers.

Laura stepped sideways.

All the while he was nattering about the church roof he was giving her the once over. Likes a bit of skirt, does the Reverend, though he’s a bachelor. Minnie Drinkwater, a spinster friend of mine, had high hopes in his direction. Knocked herself out on the church decorating committee to please him. But Emmons liked them either very young or very rich. More than likely he led Minnie on because she was useful to him. Meanwhile, he was running around with some well-heeled widow over in Craig’s Notch, and last year Alice Grimble saw him in Waterville arm in arm with a girl Alice swears wasn’t more than fifteen or sixteen.

I introduced Laura to some of the other locals. Most of the women gave her those cold-eyed smiles they keep for strangers and stared on past her. The men hadn’t a word to say for themselves.

It takes them a while to warm up, I told her. And then it’s never the same as if you were born here. They have a saying in these parts—just because the chicken was hatched in the oven doesn’t make it a biscuit.

Laura wrinkled her brow. What does that mean?

It means some of them still think of me as ‘that foreigner Lloyd Dodd married’ even though I’ve lived here over thirty years.

So Lloyd’s a native?

His mother was born right here in New Liberty. She married a Vermont man. When he walked out on her and Lloyd, she came back home to live. He was just a toddler then. Except for the time he spent in the Navy, he’s been here ever since.

Laura’s boy was doing better than his mother on the social scene, whizzing around, playing some wild game with the other kids. He nearly knocked one old woman, off her feet.

Sam. Laura caught hold of his arm as he scooted past. Take it easy. You almost crashed into that lady. And say ‘hello’ to Mrs. Dodd.

The youngster he was chasing, one of the LaRue boys, must have realized his mother was holding him back, because he stood stock-still until Sam pulled away. Then the chase picked up where it had left off.

We sat down on the blanket Laura had brought along. She kept craning her neck, looking at the crowd around the supper table. Syd promised he’d meet me here around five. Syd was her husband.

He might be off fishing with my Lloyd, I said.

Yes. That’s where he is. Lloyd came up around one o’clock this afternoon. They were going over to North Willet. Nick, our older boy, went with them.

She swatted at the flies. They were biting something awful that day. I don’t know why they have these outdoor suppers in black fly season. I opened my bag, took out the bug stuff, and handed it to her.

They’ve certainly hit it off, Lloyd and Syd. Her eyes seemed to ask a question. I never knew there was so much to fishing, different kinds of rods and lures and all.

Equipment’s their toys, I said. Let’s get some food, Laura, while there’s still something left.

We went over and picked up paper plates. The roast beef and the turkey were almost gone, and I didn’t like to take the last pieces, so I had some ham and one of Minnie’s biscuits.

All the time we were eating Laura acted edgy, shifting on the blanket and looking around.

You worried about Syd and the boy? I asked.

She flushed. A little, I guess.

Rest easy, Laura. Lloyd knows every inch of the Carrabassettt. Of course I’m a fine one to talk seeing as how I used to stew when Lloyd took our boys fishing up in the mountains and didn’t get home until nine or ten at night.

Laura bit her lip. It’s not only that. Syd, does this all the time. Forgets about me, as if I didn’t exist.

I was a little surprised, not that Syd forgot her, but that she’d let on about it. After all, she hardly knew me.

Trust me, Laura. It’s not you. When they’re fishing, they don’t know minutes or hours either. I got up. Come on. Let’s make sure we get some of that cherry pie.

Alice Grimble might be a gossip, but she turns out the best cherry pie in the county, which only goes to show there’s some good in everyone. Laura and I were just settling down with our plates when the yelling started, high-pitched yelling. Kids.

Laura dropped her plate. That’s my Sam.

Playing games, probably.

No. She stood up. Something’s wrong.

Sure enough, a second later Sam came dashing out of the woods behind the church with Roddy LaRue following on his heels.

Mom! Mom! The two boys ran up to us, their faces pale under smudges of dirt.

What is it, Sam? Laura put an arm around him and he didn’t pull away.

He pointed back towards the woods. It’s her. I think she’s—. He began to blubber so I couldn’t make out what he was saying.

I put a hand on Roddy’s shoulder. What’s wrong, Son? What’s he talking about?

Roddy looked up at me, eyes wide. It’s Cheryl Pardy, Mrs. Dodd. She’s hurt bad.

Cheryl? I hadn’t even known she was here. The Pardys never came to the picnics. As far as I know none of them had even been to church since Nora died.

Can you boys take us to where she is? I asked.

Sam shook his head and pressed close to his mother.

Just show us where she is, Honey, Laura said. We’ll take care of her.

He was still sniffling, but he and Roddy led the way to the back of the church lot where the woods began. Mae LaRue must have been watching, because she came up behind us.

Wait up," she said.

We stopped and she took a long look at Roddy’s pale face. What’s he been up to now? Has he been giving you back talk, Clary? Because if he has—. She raised a hand.

Nothing like that, I said. Seems Cheryl Pardy’s had an accident. The boys are taking us to her.

She dropped her hand and came along with us.

I’d never been back of the church myself, not being much for the woods, and as far as I knew it was all woods from the church grounds clear to the river. We threaded our way through thick underbrush, skirting patches of poison ivy, until we came to a kind of path. We followed that for some fifty yards through a stand of white pine. The fallen needles made a soft carpet sprinkled here and there with toadstools and glossy teaberry leaves.

Roddy stopped. Over there. He pointed to a cabin in a clearing about thirty yards ahead of us. The place was falling down, windows broken, tin roof rusted and sagging, the door nearly off its hinges. The boys hung back with Mae while Laura and I approached the place. Tall weeds poked through the front steps and vines clutched at splintered clapboards. The door rasped on its hinges as I pushed it open.

What I saw stopped me in my tracks. Cheryl Pardy lay crumpled like waste paper dropped carelessly on the rotted floorboards. Her shirt was ripped open, skirt bunched up above her waist, legs askew, torn underpants around one ankle.

I went closer. Her thighs were smeared with what looked like darkened rust.

Laura sucked in her breath. God!

My heart thumped so hard I thought it would bust right through my chest. I knelt beside Cheryl’s body. Her eyes were wide open, blank and staring. They’d been pretty, her eyes, blue with dark rims around the irises, the whites clear. Now a gray film lay over them like someone had drawn a curtain, and the pupils had widened so they covered all the blue. Bruises on her mouth and cheeks and neck smudged the swollen, bloodless flesh. I lifted her hand. It was cold, the wrist chafed raw. I had a hard time holding back the tears.

CHAPTER 2

▼

MURDER SCENE

As I knelt beside the dead girl’s body, the walls seemed to close in on me. For a few seconds I couldn’t move my arms and legs, and it must have been almost a minute before I could get to my feet.

We’ll have to send Mae to get the Sheriff, I said. I knew from watching TV that you’re not supposed to touch anything at the murder scene or leave the body alone.

I’ll tell Mae. Laura said.

She and I waited with Cheryl while Mae went back taking the boys with her.

It’s peculiar how an awful sight, a dead person, a road accident, a drowning, sometimes makes you want to look and not look at the same time. But that’s when it’s a stranger. This was Nora’s girl, the sweet, pretty child who’d hardly tasted life and never done harm to anyone as far as I knew.

It’s demeaning that human beings have the capacity to do something like this, Laura said.

We don’t all.

If one of us can, all of us can.

It was a depressing thought, and I don’t know as I agree with it.

While we waited, I looked around the cabin. What glass there was in the windows was so dirty you could hardly see out. The sun shining through a hole in the roof made an irregular circle on one wall. Spider webs hung from the ceiling, and empty beer cans, crushed and dented, lay scattered around the floor. There was no furniture in the place except for a chair that lay on its side and had one leg missing. A stick was lying near the chair. It looked like a branch off a sapling. It was about two inches in diameter, and about a foot and a half long, the rough bark covered in places with a stain I couldn’t identify. I edged toward it, trying not to let Laura see me. No need for both of us to be sickened if it turned out to be what I thought it was. The horror of what was going through my mind made me so dizzy I had to steady myself against the wall.

You all right, Clary, Laura asked.

I nodded and moved away from the awful object.

I wonder what on earth would have made her come to this place, Laura said.

Maybe she was forced to come.

She stared down at Cheryl’s face. Shouldn’t we close her eyes?

I think we’d better leave her.

How old was she, Clary?

Sixteen.

Laura bit her lip. The poor parents.

I wished there was a place to sit down. The mother’s dead, I said. Father’s a janitor over at the mill. He and the three kids live up in the trailer park off Twenty-seven.

We didn’t talk much more while we waited, which wasn’t long. Larry came in jig time with Alice right behind him.

God in heaven. He knelt by the body and looked it over carefully. Strangled.

For once, Alice didn’t say anything.

We’d never had a murder before in New Liberty, not that I ever heard of, anyway. I’d always thought the Pemberton girl might have been done away with. But other than that the crimes in these parts were mostly petty theft, drunk and disorderly, or what they call spousal abuse these days.

Surprising how calm Larry was. He seemed to know just what to do. First he used his cell phone to call Stuart Penrose, one of his deputies.

We need something to cover the girl, he said as he brushed away a couple of flies that had landed on Cheryl’s bare chest.

I have a blanket, Laura said. I’ll get it.

I’d appreciate that. Larry looked around. God awful dump, isn’t it? Hasn’t been lived in for some time, looks like.

It was old Tom Faraday’s place, Alice said. "He was some kind of hermit. I remember my Dad talking about him

Laura came back with the blanket, but she didn’t stay. Young Sam was upset and she wanted to get back to him if it was all right with the sheriff.

Sure, Mrs. Dearborn, Larry said. You go right along.

I figured if Alice was going to stay, no reason I shouldn’t. And I didn’t want to leave Cheryl. I felt, somehow, I needed to protect her. Foolish, maybe, now that it was too late.

When Stuart Penrose showed up, Larry sent him off to radio for a forensic team. I knew what that was, having read about it and seen it often enough on TV. I doubted Sunningdale had resources as sophisticated as what they show on those police procedurals.

Think you girls should go now. Larry looked at me. I’ll watch over her, Clary..

Alice didn’t want to go. While they were arguing, I went outside and waited for her. I figured this was one battle she wouldn’t win, and I didn’t relish the idea of going back through the woods alone.

Evidently a lot of people in town knew about this cabin, because there were even more beer cans and empty nips scattered around outside. A thicket of raspberry canes stretched from the edge of the clearing almost to the house. I walked over to take a look at them. The little white flowers were in full bloom. End of July the canes would be loaded with berries and there’s no fruit Lloyd and I like half so much. I noticed something shiny lying on the ground between the canes and the cabin and picked it up. It was a button, brass or something that looked like brass. It had a loop on the back so you could sew it on, and there was a little four-leaf clover kind of etched into it. Didn’t look to me like the kind of button that might have come off a beer drinker, at least not one who’d come out here to drink. I decided to give it to Larry. As I started to go back into the cabin Stuart Penrose came up behind me.

Hold it, Mrs. Dodd. What’s that you just picked up?

I held out the button. Someone dropped this over there. I pointed to the spot where I’d found it.

Sheriff don’t want anyone messing up the crime scene.

It might be an important clue, Stuart.

He pulled at his neckerchief. We don’t need no amateur detectives helping us out.

I thought Larry might want to see it.

You should have left it where it was.

Sorry, Stuart. He was right. I hadn’t remembered what I’d just said myself about disturbing evidence. I guess real life’s a better teacher than the TV.

Give it here. I’ll see the sheriff gets it.

Please, I said. You forgot the ‘please.’ Remember, Stuart, I knew you before you got to be a big shot deputy.

That don’t give you no special privileges, Mrs. Dodd. He pocketed the button and went back into the cabin.

Such a stickler for the letter of the law, that Stuart Penrose. With his beefy build and heavy-handed ways, he would have made a perfect agent of Hitler’s Gestapo.

Alice came out of the cabin. For once in her life she didn’t have much to say. When we got back to the churchyard, everyone clustered around us wanting to know what had happened.

Alice will fill you in, I told them, and went over to collect my platters.

✶ ✶ ✶ ✶

That evening I sat in the kitchen doing a crossword puzzle. Usually doing a puzzle puts everything else right out of my mind. But tonight I kept thinking about Cheryl and the way she died.

Death is an awesome phenomenon, terrible when it happens to one of your own. I’ve lost my parents and my big brother Bill along with a couple of close friends, so I know what it is to grieve. But when a youngster dies it’s more than sad. It seems unjust, as though God or nature or both weren’t doing their jobs. And that she should die so violently was almost an affront to the rest of humanity. I made up my mind that whoever did this would have to pay. And if Larry Grimble couldn’t find the guilty party, maybe I could. I’ve solved a couple of mysteries in my time—not big ones—no murders. Still, they never would have caught the man who burned down Amos Parish’s barn if it hadn’t been for me. And I was the one spotted Ron Arsenault breaking into the Nelson place. So I do have a little expertise when it comes to solving crimes, and I know the folks around here as well as anyone.

Lloyd finally walked in around nine fifteen with a full creel, looking for his supper. I