Crowned and Moldering

Mac raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, nobody deserves to be hit with a shovel, but he clearly provoked her. Pushed her to the limit.” I slapped one hand on the truck fender. “Heck, he had me pushed until I was a raving lunatic just yesterday. He has a gift for rubbing people the wrong way.”

“Sounds like it.” Mac checked his wristwatch, then covered my hand with one of his. I appreciated the show of comfort and solidarity. “Denise is being interrogated by Eric right now, so I guess he’ll have to figure out whether it’s all justifiable or not. My guess is that she’ll be released.”

“I hope so.”

“Think about it,” he said. “By the time she actually hit him with the shovel, it was a case of fighting for her life.”

My mind narrowed in on one thing. “This must have something to do with Lily’s death.”

His eyes lit up and he gave my hand a squeeze before letting go. “Of course it does. Let’s discuss.”

I had to laugh. Mac loved tossing around murder theories. It was more grist for the mill. Or research for his books. “Okay,” I said. “Why would Cliff be blackmailing Denise? She was Lily’s best friend.”

“Keep talking,” he said.

“So you never heard what it was about?”

“Nope.”

Bummer, I thought. I’d have to theorize some more. “Okay. What if the two of them had been fooling around behind Lily’s back?”

“Which two?”

“Cliff and Denise.” I made a face. “I can’t believe she would ever be interested in him, but it could happen. So what if . . .”

“What if . . . ?” he prompted.

“Well, Cliff could’ve been threatening to tell Mr. Jones.” I frowned at that idea. “But if they were having an affair back in high school, it’s all in the past. Why would Mr. Jones care? This is weird.”

“Weird and wonderful,” he said, energized. “Let’s take Callie to school, then come back home and I’ll interview you some more. This will be more great background for my article.”

I sighed, torn between obligations and having fun. “I’d love to, but I really have to work for a few hours. But I can come home at lunch and we can talk then. Does that sound good to you?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

*   *   *

I drove Callie to school and talked to the guys for a while. They had everything under control with the parking-lot demolition, so I jogged back to the truck and drove out to the lighthouse mansion to work with Carla and her crew.

Carla greeted me with a look of puzzled concern on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Aldous Murch was here when I arrived first thing this morning.”

“Aldous? Did he drive himself?” I hoped not. The man was in his eighties and a little too fragile to be driving his own car.

“He said he took the Northline bus.”

“The bus? Was he looking for me?”

“No.” Her forehead creased in worry. “That’s the weird thing. He stood right here on the front porch and shouted that the truth needed to come to light. Then he pushed me out of the way, marched into the house, and started climbing the stairs. He had to stop on every step to catch his breath and was worn out by the second floor.”

“I hope you convinced him to go back downstairs.”

“Since he couldn’t breathe, it didn’t take much convincing. But while he was on the second floor, he walked back and forth down the hall, stopping at every doorway, mumbling about something. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ I think he was saying. And he kept coming back to the stairway, kept staring up toward the attic.”

“The attic?”

“Yeah. I finally asked if he wanted me to look for something in the attic for him.”

My stomach started its nervous twitching again. “What did he say? Did he leave something up there?”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Carla said. “He continued to mumble to himself, so I finally called his daughter, and she drove out to pick him up.”

“Good.” I shook my head, befuddled by Aldous’s strange behavior. What was he looking for? And why was he staring up at the attic?

Those questions led me to wonder, Did Aldous know Lily Brogan fifteen years ago? Had he seen her hiding out in the lighthouse mansion?

“Oh, God.” Was it possible that Aldous had something to do with Lily’s murder? Impossible. But I couldn’t let it go. Fifteen years ago, Aldous would’ve been in his late sixties. Maybe he was frail now in his eighties, but he would’ve been a strong man back then. Strong enough to pick up a woman and shove her inside a dumbwaiter? My mind started spi

“Absolutely not,” I muttered immediately. I was grasping at straws. But a tiny niggling doubt remained.

After all, from the very begi

There was only one way to find out. I would have to track him down and have a conversation with him. For now, though, I was here and ready to work off some of these worries with good, hard labor. I glanced at Carla, who still looked anxious. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll talk to Aldous.”

“Okay, good. Thanks, Sha

“For now, let’s go over the stuff you guys have been doing all week.”

“Sounds like a plan. Let’s start out here.” We circled the front porch, and she pointed out the items on my list they’d taken care of. “We’ve taken down all the shutters. I’m storing them up on the porch because it keeps threatening to rain.”

“Good thinking.” Two dozen pairs of shutters were neatly piled under the front window. Also, a number of wooden planks were chalked to indicate that they needed to be replaced.

“This header will have to come down, by the way,” she said, reaching up to slap the head beam that ran between the two main posts that stood on either side of the front steps. “Water damage.”

“Yeah, I had that on my list. The roof over the porch is warped, so I know water’s been leaking into those beams for years now.”

“That’s the downside of having a two-hundred-year-old house next to the ocean,” she said, shaking her head.

“Sad but true.” I pulled out my tablet and consulted my handy list of projects. “Did you get started on the kitchen yet?”

“Sure have,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”

We walked through the foyer into the dining room and pushed open the kitchen door. The sink and the entire counter and the cabinets above and below it were gone. “I had the guys put the old cabinets in the garage for safekeeping until you’re ready to do something with them.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d like to salvage them somehow. Maybe Mac has some ideas of ways to use them. The wood is so beautiful.”

Carla gestured toward the tools leaning against the wall where the sink used to be. “I’ve got a sledgehammer and a pickax sitting here, just in case you feel like attacking something.”

I laughed. “How did you know?” I crossed the room and lifted the ax. “Tell me what to work on next.”

She pointed to the other side of the room. “That pantry closet needs to come down. It’s all yours. Billy and I can start tearing apart the mudroom.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I stared at the south end of the kitchen, where a floor-to-ceiling pantry had been built out from the wall, taking up half the space on that side of the room. On the wall next to the cabinet was nothing but a faded, boxy outline, indicating that an old refrigerator had once stood there.

The wood cabinet was old and had been picked apart from the inside by termites, so I had no intention of salvaging any of it, except to use as kindling.

I slipped on my safety goggles and did a few practice swings before I slammed the ax into the side of the pantry. Splinters and chunks of wood went flying. I continued swinging until the doors and sides of the pantry were scattered in pieces across the floor.