Элизабет Чандлер - The Back Door of Midnight

Now it was a college town and summer retreat, with rows of wooden porches and about a zillion flowerpots and hanging baskets. Many of the visitors docked their boats in the marinas along the Sycamore River or stayed at bed-andbreakfasts.

Zack had said the sheriff’s office was at the corner of Jib and Water. The one-story brick building looked like a house, except for the municipal flags that were flying outside. A handwritten sign hung on the door: GONE FOR DONUTS.

“Gone for how long?” I exclaimed, exasperated. Turning on my heel, I ran head-on into a man carrying a paper bag and coffee.

“Sorry. . Sheriff McManus?”

“That’s right.”

He was a small man with a sunburned face and short, bristly hair that caught the light like pale velour. He set his coffee and bag on a plastic chair, unlocked the door, and gestured for me to enter.

There was a neat disorder to the room we enteredpapers everywhere, but all of them in distinct piles with bricks for paperweights.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, settling into a chair behind a desk. “Have a seat. You’re new around here.”

“I’m visiting. My name is Anna.”

He nodded, opened his bag, and pulled out three packets of sugar, adding all of them to his coffee.

“Anna O’Neill Kirkpatrick.”

He had been stirring his coffee. Now he stopped and gazed at me. “Joanna’s daughter. Iris’s great-niece.”

“That’s right.”

“Last time I saw you, you wore pigtails and ribbons and came up to my elbow. But I don’t expect you to remember me. Did Ms. Nolan send you around?”

“Ms. Nolan?”

“Will and Iris’s attorney. I’ve been meaning to ask her if she’d contacted you.”

“She didn’t.”

“Well, then, I’m glad Iris had the sense to call you. I been kinda worried. As far as I know, you’re the only other living relative.”

“No one called me. Uncle Will wrote to me several weeks back, and I came yesterday, expecting to spend the summer with him.”

The sheriff’s response was a stare, then a nod. “Must have been a shock. A real shock. Where you living? Was it Baltimore you went to?”

“Yes.”

At his request I gave him my home address and phone number, as well as my cell phone number, which he wrote down in a little notebook that he pulled out of his shirt pocket.

“Please tell me everything you know about my uncle’s death.”

He was silent for a moment, gazing down at his brown bag, then he reached in and asked, “Doughnut?”

“No thanks. I was told some things, but Aunt Iris gets very confused. I’m not sure what to believe. She said he was found in the trunk of a burning car.”

“That’s right. How old are you, Anna?”

“Almost eighteen. My birthday’s in July.”

He thought about this, then nodded and said, “The fire department found William in an abandoned car on Tilby’s Dream, an old farm on your side of the creek. About fifty percent of his body was burned.”

His tone of voice was matter-of-fact — he could have been describing last week’s weather — but he was watching me closely, I guess to see how I’d deal with the information. “He was dead before that — how long before, we’re waiting to hear. Looks like he died of blunt force trauma to the back of the head, but we’ll know more with the coroner’s report.

We’re required to send our bodies to the lab in Baltimorethat’s why Iris can’t have him back yet. I know she’s upset about that.”

“She said it happened Wednesday.”

“Thursday, actually — after midnight — but we don’t yet know when or where he was murdered. Iris said she thought he was off fishing, but she couldn’t remember when he had left. She told us that sometimes William went for days. Is that true?”

“I don’t know.”

“It was William’s lawyer, Ms. Nolan, who noticed him missing Monday, the Monday before the fire. William didn’t keep a two o’clock appointment, and Ms. Nolan couldn’t reach him by phone. Actually, she mentioned this to me at the time, but I wasn’t worried, just figured William’s mind was going the same winding road as Iris’s.”

The sheriff turned in his chair and punched a button on a swiveling fan, making the piles of paper rustle from one side of the office to the other, demonstrating his need for a lot of bricks.

“So I’m guessing William died sometime before two o’clock on Monday. Ms. Nolan can’t tell me what the appointment was about, but I already know from William that he was petitioning for guardianship of Iris. Did he mention any of this to you?”

“No, sir. What does it mean?”

“He was going to file a request with the courts that he be put in charge of Iris — of everything pretty much — her finances and health care. Basically, the petition says that the other person is incapable of taking care of herself, mentally and otherwise. It’s as much power over a person as the law can give, and Iris was fighting it all the way.”

That explains her anger, I thought; she is assuming that Uncle Will secretly invited me to be an ally against her.

And maybe he had.

“Now, I doubt that’s any kind of motive for Iris,” the sheriff continued, breaking his doughnut in half, dipping an end in his coffee. “If anything, she’s psychic, not—” He gave a little shrug.

“Psychotic?” I suggested.

“But I need to figure this out soon as possible,” he went on. “I don’t want outsiders questioning things — you know, folks who aren’t used to Iris and might read into things just because she’s a little peculiar.

“Sure you don’t want a doughnut?” he asked. “Won’t find any better than Jamie’s. I get the day-old. Half price, just as good, great with coffee.”

“No thanks.”

He broke the second cruller in half and dunked. “We searched the house and property and William’s boat, which was found empty and adrift a mile or so up the creek. The crime lab’s got the boat, looking for stuff the eye can’t see, but so far we have no idea where the murder occurred. Do you know of any place your uncle liked to go?”

“No. When I was little, he fished with me off the dock. I didn’t go in the boat with him.”

“Do you know of any conflicts in his life, any people he didn’t get along with?”

Other than Aunt Iris? I thought. “No.”

“Maybe you’ll think of something and let me know.” He looked at me expectantly.

“Zack, from next door, said you were investigating some kids.”

“Zack Fleming told you that?”

“Zack Whoever from next door,” I replied. “He said there’ve been three previous arsons, which the police haven’t solved.”

“And?”

“And that’s it. I was hoping you could tell me more.”

“Like what?”

“Well, like why you think it was kids.”

He nodded. “This site and the others have an amateurish look. And there are always beer bottles, which usually mean high school or college kids partying it up. They like to throw them into the fire.”

I flinched. In my first dream an object had whistled close to my ears and exploded, sounding like glass against metal.

“What?” he asked.

“Nothing. It just seems. . hard to imagine,” I said lamely.

“Where’s Tilby’s farm? Can you give me directions?”

“There’s nothing much to see there,” he said, then tore a sheet from his notebook. “But I guess I’d want a look too.”

He drew a map, which I tucked in my pocket.

“William ever talk to you about his relationship with local kids?”

I shook my head. “No. Not really.”

He chewed a doughnut and swallowed. “Aside from those

‘not really’ times, what did he say?”

“Well, he thinks — thought — that most kids today are spoiled, that they’re given everything and don’t value anything. That’s pretty much it.”