By The Howling Read online

  Charlotte swung away from that, and her attention dropped immediately into the bickering Joyce and Todd were doing.

  “. . . and if you hadn’t had your eyes on the river,” Joyce was saying, “you’d have seen the silver walk off.”

  “Walk off, nothing,” Todd responded. “You’ve just put it away somewhere and forgot that you did so or where it is. You did the same with that pearl necklace last week, and we still haven’t found—”

  “I did not misplace it, Todd Vale.”

  “Funny you should mention that,” Grady chimed in, talking more to the fireplace than to anyone else in the room—and as easily ignored by all assembled. “I went to look for my stamp collection the other day, and it wasn’t where I thought I’d left it. I always keep it right there on the top right corner of my desk in the study, right next to the statue of Newton I found in a dusty hole-in-the-wall antique store near Covent Garden. Of course I’ve always thought I spent a bit too much for that statue. Very interesting—and rare now—interwar stamps from Germany. I found one just like it in Cape May in the summer of ’87 for a lot—”

  “I wish,” Joyce’s voice rose over Grady’s and she puffed her ample bosom up. “I’d never let you buy that retirement magazine that—”

  “You are missing some silver . . . and some jewelry?” Charlotte asked, suddenly all ears and focused attention.

  Rachel stopped midsentence in whatever she was discussing with Jane and whipped her head around, intent on what Charlotte had asked.

  “Yes, disappeared right from on top of the buffet, silver chest and all,” Joyce said. “It’s getting so we’ll have to lock our doors here. I’ve reported it to David out at the sheriff’s office, and he said he’d come over with another deputy and—”

  “We don’t need the sheriff’s office nosing around in Hopewell,” Rachel said sharply. “We can—”

  “Where’s Susan? Are we going to start the discussion without Susan?” Jane cut in with a soft, thin voice that, nonetheless had the ability to brush aside everything else and command attention. It was times like this that Charlotte could actually believe that Jane had been a successful singer. Her voice had a “listen to me” quality to it.

  “She’s already over at the arts center,” Joyce said, at least momentarily devoid of her concern about being murdered in her sleep. “She’s having some art brought in from Philadelphia—some museum-quality pieces. She said she thought it would be good to include with the works in the art show so that folks could see how well our art stands up to the real stuff—of course she’ll put your paintings between those and the others in the show, so no one is shocked by the transition from something Todd paints and something Monet paints.”

  Todd gave his wife a sour look, but she just returned a beatific smile, and Charlotte had the sense of a “one for Joyce” mark being slashed on her parlor wall.

  “Charlotte,” Grady said, “What’s that you are pouring the tea from? Why it looks like a plastic Aunt Jemima pancake syrup microwavable jug.”

  Charlotte opened her mouth to speak, but a howl came out instead. Or, rather, in the place where she would have said something if and when she’d thought of something to say, a dog’s howl rose up instead from the front lawn.

  “Sam,” Charlotte thought. “That husky could wake the dead with that howl.”

  The howl drew Jane to the parlor window.

  “There’s a police car over at your house, Joyce,” she said. “I think your cavalry has arrived.”

  And with that, the weekly meeting of the book group broke up—having failed, not for the first time, to even identify, let alone open, whatever book they were supposed to be reading that week.

  Chapter Three

  The sighting of Officer David Burch’s police cruiser on River Street, pretty much the only street in Hopewell, if you didn’t count the stubby cross streets of Spring and the obligatory Penn, named after the founder of Maryland, cleared Charlotte’s parlor out. Joyce and Todd were the first to go, because the police car was parked in front of their B&B. Jane and Grady followed on behind, because Hopewell was the sort of town where everyone was in everyone else’s business.

  Charlotte stood at the door and watched them file out suspect lineup style, and Sam squatted next to her front walk and watched them parade by.

  After the exodus, Charlotte turned her attention on Sam. “What are you doing out and just sitting there for, Sam?” she said. “You know the leash ordinances here and yet you sit with a police cruiser nudged up to the curve just down the block.”

  Sam just looked at Charlotte and turned his head this way and that, completely nonplused at his criminal activity and how close the long arm of the law was. He did hang his tongue out, though, and started panting.

  “Is that it, boy?” Charlotte asked as she descended the steps at her front door, walked out into the yard, and knelt beside the husky. “You’re thirsty? That Susan doesn’t take very good care of you, does she?”

  Sam whined in agreement.

  “Well, come on, boy, we’ll see where your water bowl has gotten to.”

  Returning from finding the bowl, turning it over and running water in it from the spigot, and putting it down by the Wells’ backdoor, where their caretaker, Susan, hopefully would find it and where Sam would be out of David Burch’s sight, Charlotte returned to her front door and did a double take when she reentered her cottage.

  “Rachel,” she exclaimed. “You’re still here.” And Rachel, indeed, was still there and rocking gently in the Boston rocker.

  “The deputy still over at Joyce’s?” Rachel asked.

  Charlotte turned and scanned the street. “It seems so. I’m surprised you aren’t out there gawking with the rest of the town.”

  “I’m sure I’ll get the complete scoop from Joyce later,” Rachel said. “I told her not to bother the police on her silver—I’m with Todd on it probably just having been moved when she dusted and her mind hasn’t caught up with her on what she did with it. Joyce can be a bit scatterbrained.”

  “Yes, well,” Charlotte said as she sat down in the wing chair and poured herself a cup of now-tepid tea from the plastic syrup jug. She would have gone on to say something else, but she didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t put her in the same stead with Rachel as the lightly dismissed Joyce. Picking the plastic jug up had reminded her that her own porcelain tea set was missing as well—and most probably because she had moved it herself without thinking about it. This was something she’d never have done in the department. This was a bad habit creeping up on her in retirement.

  “What is it, Charlotte? You look concerned.”

  “Oh, nothing, really. I think I’m just becoming absentminded, I think. Losing my edge—and not yet out to pasture for a year.”

  Joyce was looking at Charlotte sharply. “Do you miss your work tremendously? Still keep a hand in it, do you? Go up to Annapolis now and again and check in the caseloads at the department?”

  “Oh, no. Yes, I miss some aspects of the work, of course. Not the aggravation and the frustration of not finding solutions, of course, and not always being able to close the books. But I was ready for retirement; it’s just a matter of rebuilding my interests.”

  Rachel relaxed visibly. “Well, you certainly have thrown yourself into those. Sailing. I cannot imagine what has possessed you to take that up so late in life.”

  “I’ve always wanted to sail,” Charlotte said somewhat defensively. “But there was never time.”

  “Ah, the universal answer of the workaholic no longer in a demanding job. Sailing’s a sport to start young if you want to be able to do it into retirement, though. And that’s your local doctor’s advice.”

  “And very good advice it is, I’m sure,” Charlotte responded. “But it’s different with doctors, like you, isn’t it, Rachel? Never can retire can you? You just move to progressively smaller towns with fewer patients to make demands on you.”

  “Yes, I suppose,” Rachel said. She had ris
en from the wing chair, though, and was standing at the window and talking more to the street than to Charlotte.

  “I would think that the transition was quite difficult for you,” Rachel continued. “Leaving a demanding job that many would think was both exciting and gut wrenching and moving to a small hideout like Hopewell, and, on top of that, losing your husband at the same time—all of the normal props being kicked out from underneath you at one time. It would be normal for you to feel off balance—lonely and a bit vulnerable. Was your split with your husband painful?”

  “Interesting that you would refer to Hopewell as a hideout, but I suppose it’s a bit of that for me. I just couldn’t stay where I was and disengage from my life. And I needed to. And the split from Sydney? No, not painful, I don’t think—at least not for me. He always said I was more married to my job than to him. And as gruesome as my job could get, I don’t naysay what he said—of the two, I preferred the job. I can clearly see that. And the divorce? I dare say that’s more painful for that secretary he ran off with, Delores, now than it is for either me or Sydney. I doubt that Sydney focuses on her all that much—just a younger, sleeker model. He bought one of the fancy eye-candy sports cars at the same time, you know. I think it was a Dodge Viper or something like that. It will spend as much time in the service garage as Delores spends in the beauty parlor, and neither one of them is likely to give Sydney good service. No, I think he has gotten what he deserved. And as a husband, he deserved more from me, I’ll admit—so I don’t bear any grudges against him.”

  For a moment silence reigned in the parlor, with Rachel still looking at the street through the window and Charlotte’s eyes now scanning the room, inexplicably checking to see if she’d brought the Japanese tea service in here, or if something else in here was amiss—something in her brain was telling her that something was amiss, an occupational hazard of hers she hadn’t grown out of yet. But having found nothing she could put her thumb on, she continued. “Well, I don’t begrudge him much. An experiment gone wrong. But what about you? Have you tried marriage?”

  Rachel had looked relaxed right up to that point, but when Charlotte asked that question she seemed to freeze stiff. And she didn’t answer immediately. When she did speak, she said, “No, I’ve known all my life that men weren’t for me. And the medical profession is demanding much in the same way as your career was.”

  “You hesitated,” Charlotte said, but as soon as she’d said it she wanted to bite her lip and take it back. This career-developed nosiness and interrogation mode was another bad habit she needed to slough off in retirement, and she saw that saying that had had a negative effect on Rachel’s stance. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like that. But you didn’t answer directly, and I am afraid I might have struck a nerve. Are there some painful misses in your past life, perhaps?”

  “No, no near misses. Just a subject I’d rather not talk about.”

  “Fair enough. There certainly don’t seem to be any threats along those lines here in Hopewell,” Charlotte said, trying to make her voice light to bring the conversation back onto a comfortable level.

  Rachel turned and looked at her and visibly relaxed. “There’s always our good professor, Grady. He seems to have his sights on you.”

  “Lord love a duck,” Charlotte said, with a laugh that perhaps had just a twinge of nerves to it. “I wouldn’t have Grady Tarbell on a Christmas tree. You can bet I checked the male population out before I got here. The only eligible man I’ve seen here is Deputy Burch, and he’s young enough to be my son.”

  At the mention of the police deputy’s name, Rachel seemed to tense up again, and she turned back to the window and looked out. Charlotte heard her sigh, and then she moved the curtain back in place that she’d held aside to look out at the street and turned and looked at Charlotte and abruptly changed the subject. “Well, if I’m going to get lunch before we have to be at the arts center for the judges’ meeting, I guess I’d best shove off.”

  “Would you like to join me here for lunch?”

  “No, thank you, Charlotte. I have some medical notes to look at while I’m eating. But thanks for the invitation.”

  The demur didn’t sound all that convincing to Charlotte. But she didn’t blame Rachel. Her lack of cooking skills had been learned quickly and well in the town. In fact, a recent survey of the residents for classes at the arts center had focused on cooking classes, and Charlotte strongly suspected this sudden interest was entirely for her benefit.

  As she stood at the door to see Rachel off down the two blocks to her own house just beyond the old elementary school that had been turned into an arts center when all of the families with children had flocked off to the cities, Charlotte noticed that the police cruiser was no longer parked in front of Joyce and Todd’s B&B, just one door beyond Rachel’s house.

  Charlotte sensed the excitement that everyone else did upon seeing David Burch’s cruiser on River Street. Police cars were so prevalent in Annapolis where she’d come from that they had been almost invisible to her, but here David, the Talbot County sheriff’s deputy responsible for this section of the county, was assigned to such a wide swatch of territory that he rarely came to their sleepy “artists’ colony” of urban dwellers trying to make the most of their silver years.

  And Charlotte hadn’t wanted to crowd David in his work, so, although it was impossible not to come in contact with him occasionally in her position as the town’s mayor, she thus far had worked hard to stay clear of him.

  As she watched Rachel walk up the street, she felt a warm silkiness brush against her hand and looked down to see Sam’s yearning eyes looking up into hers. She leaned down and scratched his ear. “Yes, I miss the Wellses too, Sam. They are good neighbors—and certainly more attentive to you than Susan is. They’ll be back as soon as they’ve dug up Turkey, though. And, if you’re good, maybe they’ll bring you a mastodon bone.”

  Chapter Four

  Charlotte, Rachel, and Jane all approached the arts center from their different directions—Rachel and Jane from their homes flanking each side of the old school building and Charlotte from farther down the street—almost like they were a precision team of marchers. This was one aspect of retirement to the river that had not yet ceased to amuse Charlotte. Everyone was still so obsessed with schedules and otherwise footloose that they arrived precisely on time for all of the activities they manufactured to make them feel useful and creative and busy.

  The movement of the three was so well synchronized that they almost ran into each other where the sidewalk met the concrete walk up to the front entrance of the old school. They hadn’t been looking at each other or where each of them was going. The attention of all three was focused on the old brick Manse across the street from the school—the most imposing and largest house in the village—which had sat empty, but well maintained, since long before Charlotte moved to town. It wasn’t empty now. There was a moving van in front of it, which occasioned a flurry of activity and the movement of some quite elegant, and obviously very expensive furniture.

  Charlotte thought that this must be some sort of festival day in Hopewell. First the visitation by Deputy Burch’s police cruiser and now this. And not just this either. As she had walked up the street, Charlotte had passed a blue sedan parked on the side of the street—as discretely as any unfamiliar car could be in a town this small and out of the way. A single occupant—a dark-haired woman—was sitting in the car, and if Charlotte knew anything about surveillance work—and she had every reason to be familiar with it—this woman wasn’t lost or waiting to pick up someone in the house she was sitting in front of. She was here watching someone or looking for something.

  “What’s that all about?” Rachel asked Charlotte, indicating the moving van.

  “Why ask me?”

  “You are the mayor, aren’t you? Aren’t you supposed to know everything new that’s happening in this town?” Rachel laughed, though, to take the edge off the accusation.

  “H
ell, I don’t even know what the woman is doing sitting in that car up the street,” Charlotte said. And she too laughed. “She certainly isn’t anyone from the village.”

  Rachel turned her eyes up the street, and a little scowl formed on her face and she seemed to withdraw upon herself.

  “I think she must be moving in at last,” Jane said.

  Both Charlotte and Rachel turned their attention to her.

  “Brenda Brandon.”

  “Yes, what about her?” Charlotte asked. The name was certainly familiar. That was the name of one of the leading ladies of the movies, having been one of few who had made the successful transition from bombshell to respected leading lady actress to box office mature roles. But what did this have to do with her, Charlotte wondered.

  “Brenda Brandon the movie star,” Jane repeated just to make sure the other two women were following her. “She owns that house, but no one has lived there for years. Now, I guess she’s finally leaving Hollywood and moving in with us.”

  Rachel started to say something, but Jane signaled her surreptitiously—or at least it would be surreptitiously if Charlotte’s powers of observation hadn’t been superb—and Rachel held whatever she was going to say.

  “And the woman in the car?” Charlotte asked, believing now that Jane was the font of all information, and filing the little exchange she’d seen between Jane and Rachel in the back of her mind.

  “Beats me,” Jane answered. “Maybe the great diva has bodyguards?”

  “Doubtful,” Charlotte said. “If she’s still there when our meeting’s over, I’ll just walk up to her window and ask her what’s she up to. I guess that comes under the heading of Hopewell mayoral duties.”

  They found Susan Purcell at the back of the gallery room, opening heavy wooden art frame boxes and removing paintings. She was such a small, slight figure of a woman that some of the cases seemed to dwarf her, but she was handling them deftly enough.