Birthday Party Murder Read online

  “Of course I trust you,” said Bill.

  Lucy knew he was done for. He’d let the lifeline slip from his fingers and it had floated out of reach.

  “Then I can have boys at the sleep-over?”

  “I guess so,” said Bill, surrendering to his fate.

  “Dinner’s ready,” said Lucy, lifting the salmon onto a platter.

  It had been a surprisingly pleasant dinner, thought Lucy, as she cleared the dirty dishes. They’d gotten the controversial stuff out of the way before sitting down at the table. And Zoe had been so cute, talking about how the pet mice had escaped their cage and run around her second-grade classroom. Amazingly enough, the heart-healthy, low-calorie salmon had disappeared without any complaints. It was an unfamiliar food and even Lucy had to admit she preferred flounder or cod, but little Zoe had finished her piece without protest.

  Lucy had stacked the plates and was reaching for the crumpled paper napkins when she discovered the truth. Both girls had hidden their portions of fish in their napkins . . . and so had Bill. Ten dollars’ worth of fish was going to the dog. A very heart-healthy dog.

  She was loading the dishwasher when the phone rang. It was Sue.

  “Just wanted to make sure you’re coming to breakfast tomorrow,” she began. “I’ve got some exciting news about Miss Tilley Day.”

  “Really? What?”

  “No fair,” said Sue, in a teasing voice. “You’ll just have to wait like everyone else. So be there.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” said Lucy.

  “How’s the show coming?” asked Sue.

  Lucy swallowed hard. “Not well,” she admitted.

  “Lucy! You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

  “No, I didn’t forget. I was going to interview Miss T this morning, but I had to go see Bob Goodman instead. He wants me to investigate his partner’s death.”

  “Do you have time for that? On top of the party and all?” inquired Sue. “Maybe you’d better leave this one to the police. After all, we don’t have that much time left. Only five weeks.”

  “I know. I’ll get right on it. First thing tomorrow. After breakfast.”

  “See you then,” trilled Sue.

  For a fleeting second Lucy envied Sue her leisurely lifestyle. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, she thought, to have oceans of time? Kudo nudged her knee, reminding her it was time for him to go outside. She reached down and scratched him behind the ears, then opened the door for him. Upstairs, she heard the girls squabbling. In the TV room, she heard the fanfare that announced Bill had switched on the evening news. Her life wasn’t perfect, she decided as she went to join him, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.

  “I guess we won’t be having salmon again,” she said, taking her usual seat on the couch. “I gave the leftovers to the dog and he’s in danger of exploding.”

  “Better him than me,” said Bill, who was stretched out in a recliner with the newspaper.

  “You know, I’m sorry about throwing the sleep-over at you like that. I didn’t mean to say it was okay without talking to you first. I got distracted and—”

  “That’s what she does,” interrupted Bill. “It’s divide and conquer.”

  “And she never gives up until she gets what she wants.”

  “She’s really getting to be a handful,” observed Bill. “I blame you. If you don’t watch it, that girl’s going to be out of control.”

  Lucy knew he wasn’t really serious, but she threw the ball right back at him anyway. “Me? What about you? Girls need a strong father.”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more,” said Bill. “But I’m getting too old for the job. I can’t keep up with her.”

  Lucy looked at him, taking in his work-roughened hands and his grizzled beard. It used to be a rich, chestnut brown.

  “All joking aside, it’s true that we’re getting older. Both of us. Sometimes I worry about you, working all alone. What if you fell or something? Not to mention those power tools. If you had an accident, how would you get help? Don’t you think maybe it’s time to hire a helper?”

  She got up, intending to get the remote, but he grabbed her by the waist as she passed and pulled her into his lap.

  “Don’t you worry. I’m not over the hill yet.”

  “Ow!” shrieked Lucy. “That hurts. I’ve got sore muscles from my age-defying workout.”

  “My back’s a little stiff sometimes, I admit it,” continued Bill, nuzzling her neck. “But everything else works just fine.”

  “I know.” Lucy smiled naughtily. “Later for you, mister, but please, be gentle.”

  Chapter Seven

  The girls met for breakfast as usual on Thursday, but there weren’t very many laughs. Pam’s allergies were flaring up and she was miserable with a runny nose and red, puffy eyes. “It’s these spring flowers,” she explained, as she accepted a tissue from Sue. “I’m going to stop at the drugstore first thing and get something.”

  “That’s terrible,” sympathized Rachel, who was taking a dark view of things since Sherman’s death. “We wait all winter for the flowers, and when they finally bloom you can’t enjoy them. It’s not fair.”

  Lucy was having a hard time following the conversation because her mind kept drifting to the various projects she’d taken on: Sara’s birthday sleep-over, the investigation, her job at the paper and the interview with Miss Tilley. Still determined to lose weight and get in shape, she’d ordered a low-calorie bowl of cereal with skim milk and she couldn’t help feeling deprived as she saw other customers eating heaping platters of eggs and pancakes. She practically growled when Sue asked if she was still planning on interviewing Miss Tilley after breakfast.

  “It’s on the top of my list,” Lucy informed her.

  “Ouch!” exclaimed Sue. “You didn’t have to bite my head off.”

  She was obviously determined not to let the general gloom affect her good spirits.

  “Now, listen up,” she said, holding up a manicured finger for emphasis. “I have big news.”

  “Well, are you going to tell us?” challenged Lucy, busy scraping up the last soggy flakes of cereal with her spoon.

  “This is big, this is so big,” replied Sue, hugging her hands to her chest. “I need a fanfare or something.”

  “Bupababupa ba ba!” sputtered Pam, setting off a coughing fit.

  “Just tell us,” said Rachel, “before Pam has to be hospitalized.”

  “Okay, okay. Here it is: Norah is going to put the birthday party on her show!”

  Three jaws dropped open as the women considered this news. They all knew Norah Hemmings, the “queen of daytime TV,” whose afternoon talk show was at the top of the ratings, because she had a summer home in Tinker’s Cove. In fact, Sue’s daughter Sidra worked on the show and had recently been promoted to a full producer from her previous job as an assistant producer.

  “How is this going to happen?” asked Rachel. “Do we have to get Miss T to New York?”

  “It won’t be a surprise if we do that,” moaned Pam. “Besides, I’ve got the high school band all signed up. How are we going to get them to New York?”

  “Miss T on TV?” Lucy’s mind boggled at the very idea.

  “This is not the reaction I was expecting,” harrumphed Sue. “I thought you’d all be excited.”

  “It is exciting,” said Pam. “But I thought this was going to be a homegrown, hometown kind of celebration.”

  Lucy and Rachel nodded in agreement.

  “It still is,” said Sue. “Norah is going to come to us. They’re going to videotape Miss T and air it as a segment on her show. It will be part of a larger theme. Vital old women or something like that. All the details haven’t been worked out yet.” She paused and looked at Lucy. “That’s where you come in.”

  “Me?” Lucy’s voice was high and squeaky.

  “Yes!” Sue produced a sheet of paper from her purse. “Sidra faxed this to me yesterday. She needs some information so they can decide h
ow to do the segment and she needs the answers to these questions. I thought you could sort of mix them in with your interview.”

  Lucy reluctantly took the fax. She was beginning to think the machine was an invention of the devil, at least in Sue’s hands. As she expected, the list was long and the questions were complex, focusing on how women’s roles had changed through the years.

  “I’ll do what I can, but—” she began.

  “I knew I could count on you!” exclaimed Sue, cutting off her objections. “Now, moving right along, let’s talk about refreshments. Joe Marzetti’s promised us a hundred dollars’ worth of groceries at the IGA—whatever we want, soda or chips or paper goods—but that’s not going to be nearly enough if the whole town turns out and I’m pretty sure they will. Any ideas?”

  Lucy found her mind was wandering again, drifting back to Sherman Cobb, and she was relieved when Rachel looked at her watch and pushed her chair away from the table.

  “Sorry, guys, but I’ve got to get going. Miss T will be wondering where I am.”

  “I’ll go with you,” said Lucy, impatient to get moving. “I’ve got a lot of things to do today.”

  Since it was only a few blocks to Miss Tilley’s house, Lucy decided to follow Video Debbie’s advice and walked, hoping the mild exercise would stretch out and relieve her still achy muscles. Rachel drove because she would need the car if Miss Tilley asked her to run some errands, so she was already there when Lucy came up the path to the neat Capestyle house built in 1799.

  Miss Tilley was sitting in the Boston rocker she favored, but her cheeks had lost their usual rosy pink color and she seemed frailer than ever. Lucy suspected she was taking the news of Sherman’s death rather hard.

  “Lucy, isn’t it terrible about Sherman?” she asked, as Lucy took her trembling hand and gave her a peck on the cheek.

  As soon as Lucy released her blue-veined and agespotted hand, Miss Tilley clasped it with the other and began kneading her swollen knuckles.

  Lucy nodded as she took the wing chair on the other side of the fireplace. Her glance wandered to the floor and she noticed Miss Tilley was indeed wearing a jazzy pair of silver running shoes on her size-four feet. Ordinarily, Lucy would have teased her about them, but not today.

  “He’ll be missed by a lot of people,” murmured Lucy, turning her attention to the cup of tea Rachel was offering her and doing her best to resist the gingersnaps perched on the saucer. “Did you know him well?”

  “I was always very fond of him,” said Miss Tilley, setting her teacup on the little antique tavern table next to her chair. “I watched him grow up, you know. He used to come into the library every week. He was a great reader. And then he went off to college and law school and I was his first client when he came back to Tinker’s Cove and opened his law practice. He handled the closing for this house.”

  Lucy bit into a gingersnap while Miss Tilley continued.

  “Honestly, I really don’t know what I’m going to do now.” She was agitated, practically wringing her hands. She was also shuffling her feet, setting off little explosions of colored lights that Lucy did her best to ignore. “I suppose I’ll never know what it was he wanted to talk to me about. He called Monday afternoon. He was quite insistent.”

  “He wanted to see you? I thought it was the other way round.” Lucy cast a questioning glance at Rachel, who was sitting on the couch. “I thought you wanted to get your affairs in order.”

  “My affairs are in order,” said Miss Tilley. “Always have been, thanks to Sherman. He always handled all my legal matters, you know. I’m too old to switch now. What will I do?”

  Lucy wanted to pursue the matter, but was interrupted by Rachel.

  “Don’t you worry,” said Rachel. “Bob will take care of everything for you.”

  Miss Tilley grimaced. “It won’t be the same. He’ll do his best, of course, I know that. But Papa had a very high opinion of Sherman.”

  She looked up at the oil painting of her father that hung above the fireplace. He was pictured in his flowing judge’s robe, holding a thick volume in one hand. His expression always reminded Lucy of the famous World War I poster of Uncle Sam pointing his finger and declaring “I Want You!” Lucy guessed the old judge didn’t want to enlist anyone into the military; he wanted to swoop down like winged justice and send them to jail for a good long time.

  “Papa always took an interest in Sherman Cobb,” said Miss Tilley, nodding up at the old buzzard fondly. “He left him money to go to law school, you know.”

  Lucy looked up at the painting, wondering if she’d misjudged the old guy, and bit into the third gingersnap. She reached into her bag and took out her reporter’s notebook, with the pen neatly tucked into the wire coil, and unfolded the fax. Before she could pose the first question, however, Miss Tilley turned the tables and questioned her.

  “You didn’t live here in 1965, the year we had the Centennial, did you?”

  Lucy shook her head. Maybe Miss Tilly was getting forgetful. The Bicentennial was in 1976.

  “Too bad. You really missed a swell time.”

  “Was that the town’s hundredth birthday?” asked Rachel, also puzzled.

  “No, no, no.” Miss Tilly flapped her hand. “It was the hundredth anniversary of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Courthouse and the restoration of the Union.”

  “The end of the Civil War,” said Lucy, wondering why the citizens of Tinker’s Cove had felt it was something worthy of celebration one hundred years after the fact. Nobody was then alive who had fought in the war; by then it had become little more than a chapter in a history book.

  “The town went all out,” said Miss Tilley, smiling at the memory. “We had a big parade and a pageant on the Village Green. Sherman wrote the pageant, you know. He included the part about my grandfather, the hero of Portland, and he insisted that I play Barbara Frietchie.”

  “Barbara Frietchie?” asked Rachel.

  “You know,” prompted Lucy, who had majored in American lit. “In the poem. By Whittier.”

  “‘Shoot, if you must, this old gray head, but spare my country’s flag, she said,’ ” quoted Miss Tilley, repeating her line. The twinkling shoes rather spoiled the effect. “I was gray, then, of course, and the part just came naturally to me. If Stonewall Jackson had marched into Tinker’s Cove and told me to lower Old Glory from the pole in front of Broadbrooks Free Library, well, I would have done just as Barbara Frietchie did!”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Lucy, scribbling it all down in her notebook. This was great stuff for the profile she was going to write for The Pennysaver. Maybe they could even use it for the Norah! show. “What else do you remember?” inquired Lucy, posing one of the questions on the fax. “What’s your earliest memory?”

  “My earliest memory,” mused Miss Tilley. “I guess my sister, Harriet. With a big white bow on her head, pulling me along in a little wagon.” Her eyes had a faraway look; then she frowned. “She wouldn’t go fast enough. She said I’d fall out, because I was just a baby.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sister,” exclaimed Rachel. “Was she much older than you?”

  “Ten years.” A shadow fell across Miss Tilley’s face. “She died.”

  “How sad,” murmured Lucy, wondering if Harriet had died from some dreadful childhood scourge, diptheria or rubella, now hardly remembered except as the name of a vaccine. It occurred to her that in her ninety years of life Miss Tilley had witnessed most of the major advances that had taken place during the twentieth century. “Life has certainly changed since you were a little girl, hasn’t it? I mean, was there electric light when you were a girl? Indoor plumbing? Cars?”

  “We had indoor plumbing—there was a pump in the kitchen. Electricity and the telephone came around the same time. We had one of the first telephones. And dear Papa had the first motorcar in Tinker’s Cove. A Ford.”

  “That must have created a sensation,” guessed Lucy.

  “Oh, it did.” Miss Tilley chuckled a
t the memory. “Used to scare the horses something awful.”

  “It must have been rather uncommon for women to go to college back then,” began Lucy, posing another question from the fax. “How did that come about?”

  Miss Tilley sighed. “Well, Papa didn’t want his daughters to have to depend on a man for their supper.” Her head drooped momentarily, but she raised it to continue. The words came out slowly, with effort. “That’s exactly how he put it.”

  Rachel caught Lucy’s eye, signaling that it was time to wrap up the interview.

  Lucy held out her arm, checking her watch. “Oh, dear, I hadn’t realized it was so late. I’d better be going.”

  Miss Tilley snapped out of her doze and shifted in her chair. The shoes twinkled furiously. “That’s right. I mustn’t keep you.”

  “Thanks for the tea and the conversation,” said Lucy, tucking the list of mostly unanswered questions into her notebook and getting to her feet.

  Miss Tilley watched as Rachel showed Lucy to the door, raising her hand in a farewell wave. Then her hand fell heavily to her lap and she leaned back in her chair. Her eyelids drooped and her breaths became shallow.

  Returning to her charge, Rachel realized she’d nodded off and covered her with an afghan. It seemed to be happening more and more. One minute she’d be talking, and the next she’d doze off. Sometimes for only a few minutes, other times for an hour or longer.

  Doc Ryder had told her it was nothing to be concerned about, but Rachel wasn’t convinced. She couldn’t help wondering if these periods of unconsciousness weren’t a prelude to a final lapse into a coma, and then death. Rachel adjusted the afghan, pulling it a little higher, then placed her cheek against the old woman’s.

  It was hard to sit up straight on the shiny black seat of Papa’s new automobile. The leather was slippery, and Julia found herself sliding across the seat every time Papa turned a corner. She couldn’t brace herself against the dashboard because it was too far away and her legs wouldn’t reach; she was also too small to reach the strap that dangled from the roof. So she struggled mightily to keep her back straight, like a lady. Papa didn’t approve of slouching. He certainly wouldn’t want her to slouch in the automobile. He was very proud of it, and she knew she must make a good impression or he wouldn’t bring her along for any rides in the future.