Dead and Buried Read online

  A blank, tell-no-secrets expression on his face, Rancourt scribbled in his notebook. He was in his mid-fifties, I thought, with a face ten years older than that. He wasn’t overweight—not by a lot, anyway—but his skin was pale and puffy. Long hours, donuts, and potato chips from the police station’s vending machine. That’s what I put it down to.

  “What about your husband, Mrs. MacKenzie? Did he know the deceased?”

  “No, he didn’t.”

  “What does he do for a living these days?”

  “These days? He works in construction. Hotels, mostly, but sometimes embassies. A lot of overseas work. So you know him?”

  “I haven’t seen him in a long time. He’s in Bangor, you said?”

  “I’m sure he’s left Bangor by now. He’s flying to Halifax and then on to London.”

  “Do you have more than one vehicle?”

  “Two. He took our Ford.”

  “He plans to leave it at Bangor International?”

  “Yes.”

  Rancourt scribbled again, and Emily shot me a look. She didn’t like the direction the conversation was taking.

  “Why would someone half-bury Patti in the cemetery?” I asked. “That suggests she was murdered there.”

  Still scribbling, Rancourt grunted at me again. I felt like telling him to drink his coffee. He hadn’t touched it, but he obviously needed the caffeine.

  “And why would someone dig her up and leave her in Emily’s yard?” I went on. “It’s risky moving a body, though I’m sure they did it in the dark.”

  “Why my yard?” Emily said. “Until two weeks ago I’d never met Patti Albert—or anyone else in the historical society.”

  “Did anyone in the society have it in for Patti?” I asked.

  From the corner of my eye, I saw Rancourt lay down his pen.

  “She wasn’t well liked,” Emily replied. “There were arguments.”

  “What kind of arguments?” Rancourt asked.

  “Over the bats, for one thing. Everyone but her liked the idea of adding them. I know it sounds silly, but she was very opinionated when it came to the cemetery and house tours. I even quarreled with her about the Fairfield Mansion.”

  “How so?” Rancourt said.

  “Oh.” Emily hesitated. “It wasn’t a bad quarrel. She wanted to close off the top floor, that’s all, and she wanted everyone to go along with her. I said we shouldn’t do that because that’s the floor visitors want to see. It’s where most of the ghost stories you hear about take place. Thomas Fairfield’s library on the third floor.”

  “Why did Mrs. Albert want to close it off?”

  “She said to save money. But I pointed out that we’d have fewer people paying to go on the tour if the best part of the mansion was out of bounds.”

  “Sounds like I’d argue with her too,” I said.

  “Did you argue with anyone else in the group?” Rancourt asked.

  Emily’s head jerked. “No, and I wasn’t the only one who argued with Patti. She was abrasive and petty.”

  I was about to vouch for Emily’s even temper and good character when the back door popped open and Officer David Bouchard stepped inside. Having met the freckle-faced youngster last month, after the death of my neighbor, I’d recognized him immediately. But either he didn’t recognize me or he was too coolly professional in front of his boss to let on that he did.

  “Okay to move the body, sir?” he asked.

  “Yep,” Rancourt said.

  Bouchard exited and Rancourt shoved himself to his feet. “I’ll need to speak to you again, Mrs. MacKenzie,” he said. “Your husband too.”

  “He won’t be back for five days,” she said.

  Bouchard reached for his cup and finally took a drink of coffee. “Let’s hope we don’t have to interrupt his trip.”

  I stood and looked the detective square in the eye. “Laurence MacKenzie wouldn’t hurt anyone. Besides, he left the house at six-thirty this morning, just like Emily said. I saw him drive off.”

  “I’m not suggesting that he—”

  “Yes, you are,” I countered.

  The door creaked open. Bouchard was back, and this time he was holding a clear plastic bag with a hammer in it. “Sir?” He held the bag higher, up to his chest. “We found the murder weapon. Mrs. Albert was on top of it.”

  I felt Minette stir in my pocket.

  Her eyes riveted to the bag, Emily rose. “Is that green tape on the handle?”

  “Looks like it,” Bouchard said.

  “That’s from the Fairfield Mansion,” Emily said. “The historical society’s tools have green tape around the handles so employees and volunteers don’t mix them up with tools brought from home.”

  Rancourt reached for the bag. “Then you recognize this?”

  Emily cringed at the sight of blood on the working end of the hammer but managed to nod.

  “Who had access to this hammer?” Rancourt asked.

  “Everyone. We all knew where the tools were, and we worked at the mansion yesterday, getting it ready for the first tour.”

  “What was the hammer used for?” Rancourt said.

  “Lots of things. I used it to nail up a banner at the front gate.”

  “You used this yesterday?”

  “I seriously doubt I was the only one.”

  “And you returned it to the house when you’d finished?”

  “To the office, yes.”

  Bouchard glanced from Rancourt to Emily, the tilt of his head suggesting a sort of gotcha pity. The officer seemed to be a hard-working and diligent cop, but he didn’t strike me as the brightest bulb on the force. What was he thinking? Emily had used the hammer at the mansion so of course she’d murdered Patti? And then she had buried the woman in the cemetery, dug her up, and deposited her and the murder weapon in her own back yard?

  Rancourt, on the other hand, was a more perceptive man. Surely he saw how absurd the whole scenario was. For Emily’s sake, I hoped he did.

  CHAPTER 3

  After the police left Emily’s house, I dashed home, telling her I needed to change clothes before I returned a little later. But the clothes were an excuse to drop Minette off. Squirreled away in my coat pocket, she’d grown fidgety, and the instant I shut the front door, out she flew. As I walked for the kitchen—I needed more tea—she fluttered about my head, flying backward and forward while I bobbed and weaved and tried to dodge her.

  Just inside the kitchen, I halted and threw my hands up. “Minette, please.”

  She hovered a foot from my face, her wings vibrating. “Emily did not kill that woman, Kate.”

  “I know that. I just hope Rancourt does.”

  “Emily couldn’t kill her and bury her and dig her up and carry her to her house and bring the murder weapon with her. Never, ever. Rancourt must know. He must know.”

  “Minette, it’s all right.” I held out my hand, and she floated downward until she sat on my palm. Taking a long, small breath, she drew her knees to her chest. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “We’ll figure this out.”

  Still grasping her knees, she leaned slightly forward. “We must. Or they will put Emily in trouble.”

  “I’m starting the kettle. I need tea so I can think.” I stretched out my arm and she flew like a bird to my hutch.

  I filled the stainless kettle with water, set it on the stove, and began to rummage through my tea cabinet.

  “Almond oolong,” Minette said.

  “Smartypants.”

  “Pants?”

  “It’s a term of endearment. An old one.” Almond oolong it was. Delicious flavor, strong enough to give a bit of a caffeine kick, but not so strong I couldn’t enjoy five or six cups in a day. Which I often did. Looking to the hutch, I saw Minette in her favorite teacup, her chin and tiny hands on the rim. “Did you see Patti Albert’s body?” I asked.

  “Yes, I looked. When you got closer and kneeled down, I saw the blood.”

  “In her hair behind her ear, yes.” I ch
ose a teacup from the second shelf of the hutch and took it to the counter. “The poor woman.”

  “Emily wouldn’t do that.”

  “No, of course not.” Waiting for the kettle to boil, I turned and leaned on the counter next to the stove. “This would be easier if you’d let me tell Emily about you.”

  Minette stood in the cup, the four parts of her overlapping wings—like a butterfly, she had two round hindwings and two angular forewings—rising with her and spreading outward. As soft as rose petals, her wings were deceptively strong, capable of carrying her from one end of my house on the top floor to the other end on the bottom floor in two seconds.

  “I think yes,” she said.

  “Really?” I’d expected another argument.

  “I like Emily. She’s kind to ladybugs, like you. I don’t like to hide from her. I don’t like going up the fireplace all the time.”

  “She won’t tell anyone else, even Laurence. But let’s wait awhile. She’s had a rough morning, and I don’t want to give her a heart attack.”

  I flicked off the stove as the kettle began to issue pre-boil gurgles, dropped tea leaves in a mesh ball, and made my oolong. How was I going to introduce Emily to Minette without scaring her? My world had been rocked when I’d found the tiny creature in my house. She had upended everything I thought I knew about the world and who and what lived in it.

  But Minette had a soothing sweetness about her. A high-pitched voice soft as flowing honey, light brown, glistening hair, pale but very human-looking skin, and the face of a human child—though she was middle-aged by human standards. “I was created fifty-seven years ago,” she’d told me more than once. Truth was, Minette inspired bewilderment more than fear.

  Drinking tea at the kitchen table, I contemplated my two puzzles. I set aside the first one—devising a way to tell Emily about Minette—in favor of concentrating on the second: finding out who had killed Patti Albert and keeping Emily from becoming a murder suspect.

  “After I change, I have to go back to Emily’s house,” I said. “You’ll have to stay here.”

  “I must go with you.” Minette tucked her legs beneath her, flicked her wings until she was out of the cup, and then sat on the edge of the hutch shelf, her legs dangling down, her wings acting as counterweights to keep her from tumbling.

  “We’ll tell Emily tonight, okay? Not now.”

  “I must do it now.”

  There was no more stubborn creature on the face of the earth than this seemingly fragile little fairy. When she wanted something, she was relentless. “Why now all of a sudden?”

  “So I can help you solve the murder.”

  “When I come back, I’ll tell you everything Emily and I talked about.”

  “You’ll go someplace without me.”

  “Probably. I’d like to visit this Fairfield Mansion.”

  “I must help.”

  “Minette, when I come back, I can tell you what I see and hear. Then we’ll talk about it.”

  “You don’t see everything. I see things you don’t.”

  “Let’s not start that again.”

  Minette scrunched up her face, and her split-pea-sized hands curled into fists. “I’m not talking about God. I’m talking about murder things you don’t see.”

  I downed the rest of my tea and set my cup on the table. “All right. Such as?”

  “Such as that hammer.”

  She flung herself horizontally, and knowing what was coming, I covered my face and reared back in my chair. Half a second later, she was sitting cross-legged next to my teacup.

  “You saw the hammer?” I asked.

  “I peeked.”

  “Don’t do that again. I can’t keep you safe if you do.”

  “Yes, Kate. Can I tell you about the hammer?”

  I nodded.

  “It didn’t kill that woman.”

  “There was blood on it.”

  “It looked funny—couldn’t you tell?”

  “To be honest, I didn’t look closely.”

  “There was only blood on the very bottom of it, where it hits nails.”

  “Huh.” I leaned in, crossing my arms on the table. “You mean you didn’t see blood higher up on the hammer head or on the handle?”

  “It was clean. It was not used to kill that woman.”

  “Good heavens.”

  Minette’s little mouth curved into a smile. “Someone wiped blood on the place where you hit nails to fool people.”

  “Yes, I see. Even if Patti’s coat wiped off some of the blood, you’d expect to see a speck somewhere besides the face of the hammer. Blood would have . . . spattered everywhere. How do you know these things? Did Ray teach you?”

  At the sound of Ray’s name, Minette’s smile vanished. She still grieved for Ray of the Forest, as she had called him. Ray Landry, my friend and neighbor, had been murdered in October. Ray’s father had been a policeman, and like me, Ray had loved thriller novels and the puzzles they posed. In all likelihood, he and Minette had discussed many cases, both in the news and in his collection of books.

  “He taught me things,” she said.

  “He was a good, kind man.”

  “Will the hammer fool the police?”

  “Not for long. But thank you, Minette. Do you know what this means? Someone is trying to set Emily up.”

  “We must stop them. Tell Emily about me.”

  “Tonight.”

  “You should tell her—”

  “Tonight, Minette. Not a second sooner.” I checked my watch. “I have to change my clothes. She’ll be wondering what happened to me.”

  Before I set a foot on my stairs, the doorbell rang. I shooed Minette toward the hutch and opened the door to find Emily standing outside, rain pelting her umbrella.

  “It’s raining,” she said flatly.

  “Sorry,” I said, pulling her inside and shutting the door, “but I got waylaid by almond oolong.”

  She closed her umbrella and gave it a shake. “Come with me to the cemetery. I need to see where Patti was buried, before it all washes away. I need to remember where I was and where the others were when I saw her. Someone put Patti and that hammer in my yard deliberately. They’re trying to—”

  “Set you up. I know, Emily. It sure looks like that.”

  “Either me or Laurence. I think Rancourt’s going to make him come home so he can grill him.”

  “Once he takes off for London, there’s not a lot the police can do. Let me get my umbrella.”

  “I’m dripping water all over your house. I’ll meet you in the dooryard.”

  While Emily walked to the side of my house, toward the driveway, I grabbed an umbrella from the coat closet and reminded Minette that she could not, under any circumstances, follow me. Still, I checked my coat pockets after I shut the side door and before I hopped into my Jeep Wrangler.

  Emily and I tossed our umbrellas on the back seat of the Jeep and I drove backward down the driveway until I got to the wide turnaround Michael had excavated years ago to keep me from sliding on ice, back end first, all the way down to Birch Street.

  “Do you think it’s someone in the historical society?” I asked, taking a left onto Birch.

  “It must be, but why? I hardly know them, and Laurence doesn’t know them at all.”

  I shot her a skeptical look. “Laurence knows everyone.”

  In his former work life, before the construction business, Emily’s husband had traveled to embassies around the world, doing “government work,” as she’d once told me. He’d never been an ambassador and never been assigned to a specific embassy, so it was anyone’s guess what services he’d actually performed. All Emily knew was he had brought home lots of boring paperwork, griped about the bureaucracy, and didn’t like to discuss his job after long, tiring flight. She thought his work had involved research and planting new embassies. I liked to think he’d been a spy.

  What we did know was that doors opened at the sound of the name Laurence MacKenzie.
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  I made a turn onto the Bog Road and drove for Route 2 and Mount Hope Cemetery. “Did you say you’re leading a tour tonight? Is that still on?”

  “My first tour. I’m not backing out if they want me to go on with it.”

  “Won’t they cancel because of Patti?”

  “I don’t know. They need the money. If they don’t cancel, will you come with me?”

  “Of course I will.”

  On Route 2, I slowed to a crawl, searching for the cemetery’s gated entrance among the pines on the left side of the road.

  “About fifty feet up,” Emily said, pointing out the windshield.

  I swung left, passed between a pair of dark green iron gates, and drove straight until Emily directed me down a narrow asphalt road to the right and told me to park. I shut off the engine, stopping the windshield wipers in mid-sweep.

  “We’re restricted to this old area,” she said, grabbing her umbrella and handing me mine. “It’s creepier, so they say, and we’re not offending any living relatives.”

  “It’s an odd thing, isn’t it?” I said, sliding down from the seat. I opened my umbrella and shut the Jeep’s door. “Should a cemetery be creepy?”

  Emily opened her umbrella too and circled around the back. “You mean the tours are odd?” She shrugged. “They’re popular, and along with the mansion tours they finance the historical society for six months out of the year. That’s why they do them.”

  Farther up on the asphalt road, I spotted a length of yellow tape. “I think I see crime-scene tape up there. It must be around the Dawson headstone. Where does the tour usually begin?”

  “Right about here,” Emily said. “Let’s walk on. I’ll give you an abbreviated version of my tour talk.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “About two hundred years ago, this was the only cemetery for fifty miles around,” Emily said as we walked toward the crime tape. “I start the tour like that, with a bit of history, and we walk the same path we’re walking now. Some of the headstones in this area are in bad shape. Some are leaning over, and some have fallen and broken. There are stories—I don’t believe them—about ghosts standing over their fallen headstones, mourning their deteriorated state.”