Murder, She Wrote--A Date with Murder Read online

  Just like I intended to help Babs and Alyssa. The funeral had been scheduled for Friday, three days from now, and it promised to attract much of the town’s populace, given the couple’s popularity and the sudden, tragic nature of Hal’s passing. I found myself pondering again if the cause of death had truly been a heart attack.

  The storm conspired with my dark thoughts to steal any notion of a true night’s sleep. I had taken to skimming Hal’s memoir when I came to a portion that reclaimed my attention. The words seemed misdirected for the chapter in which they’d been placed, the way I sometimes include scenes in one spot yet know they will find a more appropriate home in my final draft.

  In Hal’s manuscript, mired within a chapter dominated by professional triumph, was a sudden allusion to the issues that had threatened to upend his marriage to Babs. He seemed to be lamenting his decision to stray when a combination of estrangement and time spent away from home in Granite Heights had led him to seek companionship elsewhere. He wrote in halting, embarrassed language about what he called the “juvenile” decision to sign up with an online dating service, the source perhaps of the rumors floating around town about marital infidelity on his part.

  I was a believer in the ultimate power of computers to succeed where humans had failed. My marriage was a mess at this point, a mess.

  A mess!

  So many random factors had come into play, the kind of things machines can avoid in their mechanical thinking process.

  A dating service?

  Why not?

  A good friend, a man whose judgment I trusted, recommended I give them a try, swearing by his own experience. I won’t mention his name because you probably wouldn’t believe he’d ever need to use an Internet dating service. He told me he’d gotten such great results, he ended up buying the company and that I could trust it completely. And if it was good enough for a man like him, what did I have to lose? I was lonely, all right? And if that makes me sound like a jerk, then, okay, I’m a jerk.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried to work things out with Babs—I had. Boy, had I ever. And I’m not saying we didn’t equally share blame for the problems we where having. People change, I guess, either together or apart. And at the time I registered on LOVEISYOURS.com, I thought we were finished. Saw no hope for finding a common ground or some form of reconciliation. We’d gone too far, strayed too far.

  This part of Hal’s memoir read like a confession, a man racked by guilt trying to explain away his sins, work things out through the writing process. I knew about that firsthand, but the stream-of-consciousness thinking, coupled with this section of the book seemingly dropped in out of context, made me think that Hal’s opus was more therapy than memoir. A man trying to make sense of his life and finding only more complications along the way.

  I read on:

  I came home purposely several times unannounced, hoping to catch Babs with another man. I wanted an excuse to find something on LOVEISYOURS that maybe I’d been looking for all along. I wanted someone who defined me by how I chose to define myself. That meant filling out a lengthy profile the site claimed was the most exhaustive in the industry and, thus, the most likely to find the right woman.

  The problem, as it turned out, was I didn’t know what I was looking for. I turned down several advances, or “arrows,” as the site called them, after Cupid, until I finally answered one of them. The woman’s name was Naomi, but for some reason she went by “Nan.”

  Nan . . .

  At this stage of my life I wasn’t looking for love, because love hadn’t worked beyond giving Babs and me a beautiful and intelligent daughter.

  Was that enough?

  It should have been.

  But it wasn’t.

  It went on like that, short paragraphs followed by even shorter paragraphs. Snippets of Hal’s longing and angst, assembling the puzzle of what sounded like a classic midlife crisis. He was searching for order amid the chaos, as his writing grew increasingly chaotic. The memoir didn’t feel to me as if it had been written for anyone else but him, although I’m certain that wasn’t the case when he started, at least not consciously.

  I continued reading:

  I was “matched” with Nan and proceeded with no expectations or preconceptions. It was one date and I hated every minute of it.

  Hated!

  I wish I could’ve taken a mulligan and made the whole thing go away, so deep was my embarrassment and discomfort. Yes, Babs and I were having problems. Yes, we had raised the “D” word. But being with another woman, even if it was just over dinner, even though Nan turned out to be even more lovely and attractive than her picture indicated, felt so wrong. What did she want with a man my age anyway? Twenty years or so my junior and as charming as she was beautiful.

  What is it they call women who chase after successful older men for their money? Black widows or something, isn’t it?

  Was that what Nan was?

  Had my lack of interest and clear discomfort waylaid her plans?

  I doubt it.

  It was the most difficult dinner of my life. I barely ate, can’t even tell you what I ordered. I never missed Babs more than in that moment and genuinely believe the experience vanquished the doubts I’d been harboring of our future together.

  What a fool I was! What a

  The memoir, what Hal had managed to complete of it anyway, ended there in the middle of a sentence, as if it hurt too much to finish. I’m sure he intended to come back to it another day, but never got around to writing more. Maybe he’d realized, mercifully, that the process wasn’t for him. Maybe in trying to tell his story, he recognized, as many do, that he didn’t have much of a story to tell. Clearly, though, the single date with whom he’d been matched, and that one miserable dinner, had proved a cathartic moment that showed him the error of his ways and made him realize how much he still loved his wife.

  I swabbed my eyes at that final realization he’d set to type, his love for his wife restored and indiscretion acknowledged. I felt as if this was something Babs needed to know, though perhaps I’d be opening the proverbial can of worms by even broaching the subject and thus forcing her to discuss a part of her relationship with her late husband better left alone. I had no way of knowing what Hal had told her, if anything, about the LOVEISYOURS dating site, how much he might have confessed about this Nan. And the last thing I wanted to do at such a difficult time was risk casting any aspersions on a relationship that had indeed been salvaged, especially given how they seemed to be getting along just two days earlier at their Labor Day party. Sometimes it’s best to leave things alone, even for a meddlesome sort like myself. Just be a friend. That’s what Babs and Alyssa needed now and that’s all I’d be.

  The hard copy of the memoir I’d just read had no time or date stamps, like the document on Hal’s computer surely would, so I had no idea how long ago Hal’s date with Nan had actually occurred. I knew only that the pages I’d just finished had made no mention of his financial impropriety or the circumstances that had somehow led Hal to lose the fortune he’d painstakingly built, including the business he loved, virtually overnight.

  Strange, to say the least, unless he’d typed that last word before everything went to hell and—

  My thinking froze there. I thought maybe it was a thunderclap that had shocked me alert, and it was in a way: a thunderclap of realization. Remember what I said about coincidence?

  I needed to do some serious digging, but it would have to wait until tomorrow.

  Chapter Ten

  The day dawned sunny and bright and I biked across town to meet Dr. Seth Hazlitt for breakfast at Mara’s Luncheonette. It’s not that driving a car scares me, but rather that the older I’ve gotten, the more intimidated I’ve grown by the whole process. Even as a passenger, I prefer the backseat because things seem to move slower from that vantage point. I guess that’s what has turned me off in general
about driving: things moving so fast that I couldn’t expect to control them.

  When I arrived at Mara’s, Seth had already staked claim to a table and was sipping from a steaming mug of coffee.

  “Breaking news,” he said, after I’d taken the chair across from his. “Hal Wirth died of a heart attack.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m sure I checked all the blood work and toxicology reports that were done on him, and I’m sure they revealed not a single anomaly that would make even your suspicious mind think twice.”

  “Nothing, Seth?” I said, considering anew the revelation that had come to me the night before. “Nothing at all?”

  Seth took another sip from his mug and the steam floated up from it, adding a sheen to his skin. “Nothing this old country doctor can find, anyway. But I don’t have to tell you, Jessica, that there are several ways to bring on a heart attack that wouldn’t necessarily show up in blood work or a toxicology report.”

  “And I’ve probably used every single one of them, at one time or another, in my books. Enough to know that the most likely ones, virtually all, must’ve occurred at the Wirths’ Labor Day party. Since every guest was a Cabot Cove resident, that doesn’t allow for a lot of prime suspects.”

  “I can see this insolvency thing of Hal’s has got your ears perked up, ayuh.”

  “There’s more,” I said, seeing the final pages of Hal’s memoir in my mind.

  “Care to share it with this old country doctor? At my age, I’ll probably forget whatever it is anyway.”

  “We’re practically the same age.”

  “Then I suppose you’d best get back to your writing while you remember where to find the letters on the keyboard. Now, about this thing you were just about to share with me . . .”

  Before we got any further, the waitress came and took our breakfast order.

  “It’s nothing, really,” I said, struck by a craving for the cup of tea I’d just ordered and not ready to share the thought I’d had last night, which maybe didn’t hold up as well in the light of day.

  “If it was nothing,” Seth said, “you wouldn’t have bothered bringing it up.”

  “Maybe I’m just getting old.”

  “We’re practically the same age, remember?”

  Seth smiled and sipped his coffee, as my phone rang and I snatched it from my bag, again regretting the decision to replace my old flip variety.

  “Jessica Fletcher,” I greeted.

  “I’m calling for Sheriff Metzger down at the station, Mrs. Fletcher,” a female voice greeted. “He was wondering if you could come down straightaway.”

  “I’m just down the street at Mara’s. Tell Mort I’ll be right there. Oh, and did he say what this was about?”

  Click.

  Too late. She’d already hung up.

  * * *

  • • •

  I wolfed down my English muffin and left Mara’s without finishing my tea, or sharing the revelation that had struck me last night like a figurative lightning bolt not long after I’d completed Hal’s manuscript. Outside, I climbed back on my bicycle in the warm, late summer air laced with humidity left over from last night’s storm, and set off on my way.

  The thing that never ceases to amaze me while pedaling about Cabot Cove is how I seem to see something new every time. A nook, a cranny, something tucked where it never seemed to be before, or a fresh coat of paint or siding splashed over a weather-beaten building facade. Our village was struggling with the challenges posed by encroaching modernity; the resident population (especially in the summer) had become the sort that lured all manner of chain stores capable of outlasting the more staid village staples that were disappearing one by one. Rents were skyrocketing and the real estate speculators who’d staked their claim to Main Street years ago were seeing their profits multiply dramatically. And the expansion of the Cabot Cove Marina, coupled with a spacious amphitheater, thanks to Deacon Westhausen, was certain to draw even more to a place that had previously been a secret well kept from the world.

  Not anymore, though.

  The SeaBasket, for example, was our new supermarket and part of a growing chain in Maine that had helped put the quaint old Cabot Cove Market out of business. Maybe the market’s demise was inevitable, but the coming of the SeaBasket to town certainly quickened it. I felt guilty whenever I shopped there, as a result, and could never pedal past the place without feeling pangs of nostalgia for the Cabot Cove Market, which had put in a special display in the front of the store for my books.

  I could hear the sea nearby, waves crashing against the rocks. Seagulls hovered in the wind, scoping prospective opportunities to pilfer unattended food. I rode past the hardware store and the pharmacy and the sheriff’s station, just past the next intersection. I’d heard the low rumble of an engine for a couple of blocks, and thought nothing of it until it sounded right behind me. I turned and spotted a dark sedan I’d never seen in town before that seemed to be following me.

  At first I appreciated that the sedan didn’t speed past me, as most cars do around bicyclists, but the close proximity became conspicuous. I slowed down and moved to the far right of the road to let the vehicle pass, but it slowed, too, and maintained the same distance. Up ahead a car was fast approaching, so I chalked the sedan’s hesitation to cautious driving. My head told me that.

  My heart told me otherwise, and it started to feel more like my heart was right when the engine sounds picked up and the sedan drew close enough for me to feel the heat sprouting from its hood.

  I held my pace steady, fighting the urge to look back, and decided to make a right turn at the next intersection, figuring I’d take a detour to the sheriff’s station, just to get the tailgater off my back. But its engine revved behind me, and it trailed my bike around the corner, drawing closer, so close I began to look for a yard or parking lot to dart into for cover. I couldn’t try the sidewalk because the sedan could easily trail me onto that as well, and I wasn’t about to endanger any bystander strolling innocently about.

  Could I use my cell phone to call Mort and keep pedaling at the same time? I didn’t dare stop, but I also didn’t dare slow my pedaling enough to allow me to lift my cell phone from my bag. Maybe I should have bought the voice-activated model that allowed you to order the phone around with verbal commands.

  Like, “Dial nine-one-one!”

  I fought against panic, and thought about just grinding to a halt and confronting whoever it was there and then. But I felt the sedan at my bike’s rear bumper, tapping up against it. I pedaled faster and it kept riding the back wheel, pushing me forward now. I realized I was approaching the next intersection much too fast to stop safely, knowing then I couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to.

  Even as I heard a horn blaring.

  A red pickup truck had just started on again through the four-way stop when my tires locked up from the handlebar brakes I was squeezing with all my strength. I remember hearing the screech of tires, their rubber bleeding smoke against pavement. The pickup clipped my bike’s rear tire and sent me flying, tumbling to a soft patch of grass fronting a Massage Envy storefront that had just moved into an old Victorian building.

  A Massage Envy in Cabot Cove? Really?

  Much to my surprise, I bounced back up in time to see the dark sedan screeching away and the red pickup grinding to a halt just slightly down the road from where we’d collided. A woman I didn’t recognize dropped down from the cab and rushed my way.

  “Oh, my God, are you all right? Please tell me you’re all right!”

  I checked myself over, found I was just that. A little sore, of course, but nothing seemed broken. I could move just fine and seemed to be intact.

  “I think so,” I said, through the shock sinking in.

  I knew that shock could mask injury for a time, even pain, but I also knew my body well enough to realiz
e I’d been remarkably fortunate.

  “Maybe you should sit down,” the woman said. “That was quite a tumble. You did a full flip through the air.”

  “I did?”

  “Looked like something from the Olympics.”

  “Too bad nobody was around to film it,” I tried to quip, casting my gaze down the street in the general direction the dark sedan had fled.

  “We should call the police,” the woman offered.

  “I was actually on my way there.”

  The woman looked at me strangely, not sure how to take that. “What about an ambulance? You should be checked at the hospital, to be on the safe side.”

  “No need. I’ll just call . . .”

  My voice tailed off when I realized the contents of my bag had been scattered in all directions around my demolished bicycle.

  “I have a doctor friend I just left at Mara’s. Do you have a phone I can use to call him?”

  The woman fished it from the pocket of her jeans, more people gathering around us now, the ones who knew or recognized me approaching.

  “Are you all right? Are you okay?” I heard again and again.

  “Just fine,” I reassured, as I dialed Seth’s number, glad I was able to pull it so easily from memory. “Did you happen to notice that dark sedan?” I asked the woman while waiting for Seth’s phone to ring.

  “Dark sedan? No.”

  Seth’s phone was ringing now.

  “Because I think it was following me. That’s why I sped into the intersection. This wasn’t your fault. We can go to the police together and tell them everything.”