The rest of the weekend, the second since Amelia Marsh’s death, passed uneventfully. The hours spent puttering around my home, in my back yard, and hiking down country roads, could have bored someone else to tears. I was content. To top off my euphoria the telephone stayed completely silent until Anne Carey’s call on Sunday night. Six o’clock on the dot.
The lady was shameless, and I told her so. By using her age as an excuse for lapse of memory, she had gotten the directory assistance operator to go down the entire list of Barclays in the Athens, Texas area so she could “remember” the one she had forgotten. It had been her day. There was a listing for Ross and Elaine Barclay. When she called the number, bingo.
“I must confess I thought it would be more difficult,” she chirped happily. “You know, so many people have unlisted numbers these days.”
“I’m surprised, too,” I allowed. “I thought we might have to find some obscure files somewhere. This is great. Who did you talk to, and what did you say?”
Miss Carey started to tell me, but then on impulse it seemed more appropriate we have the conversation face to face, and I interrupted her with an invitation to come over. She immediately agreed. It was still light outdoors, after all.
We had both eaten but ten minutes later, over refreshments, my guest started again. Both Barclays had been at home for the afternoon. Ross answered the phone and put his wife on the line readily enough. Elaine had been astonished to learn who her caller was and the nature of her business.
“She was very pleasant,” Anne said fairly, “and very surprised to hear about Amelia’s death. I knew I might be the one breaking the news, of course, and that’s what happened. Without that missing appointment address book to refer to, how would anyone know to contact her?” How indeed? “She was so appreciative that someone took the trouble to let her know, and I must say, Sally, I felt a little guilty since my motive for calling was not entirely what she thought it was.”
I nodded sympathetically. “What did she have to say?” I pressed, human nature being what it is.
“Well not very much, at least not yet,” my cohort said cautiously. “We rather got side tracked after I broke the news. Her mother’s close friend dying was one thing, but hearing Amelia had been killed rattled her pretty badly.
“I can see where that might have thrown her,” I allowed.
Anne nodded. “She went around in circles a bit, finding it hard to believe. I apologized for having to tell her so long after the fact, and explained we had to do some hunting to find out where she lived. Ross must have been in close proximity because he asked what was upsetting her, so for a while we were holding a three-way conversation. It all took some time.”
“They were both fond of Mrs. Marsh,” I guessed. “I wonder how long it’s been since they heard from her.”
“They were definitely fond of her. They haven’t been in touch all summer, which Elaine regretted. She reminisced about her childhood in New Jersey and how Amelia and Leonard were like an aunt and uncle to her. She said, ‘Mely was so good to me. She’s gone now, too,’ and was crying a little, I think.” Miss Carey looked about ready to do the same. I urged her to take some tea, and a brownie.
Waiting a few discreet moments before continuing I said, “From what you’re saying, Elaine sounds like the person we need to fill in some of the blanks for us.”
“She probably is,” Miss Carey agreed, after a vigorous nose blowing and a few sips of the tea. “It did not seem like the time to ask too many questions. Now that I think about it, she and Ross were asking most of the questions. I told them everything I could,” and here she gave me a little smile, “but I did not tell them we are doing some investigating of our own.”
“That was probably wise. At least for now.” I leaned back on the couch—we were in my living room this time—and sipped my own tea contemplatively. “But somehow we have to talk to Elaine Barclay some more.”
“Oh, I think we can work that out,” my partner said optimistically, “I gave her my phone number and told her to call me when she was up to it. I think she will.”
I wasn’t so sure. But there was nothing to be done about it now. If the Barclays didn’t get in touch with Anne Carey, we would have to think of an excuse to call them again. And perhaps honesty would be the best policy. What would Elaine Barclay think if one of us just point blank asked her to tell us everything she remembered about Amelia Marsh?
When my guest was ready to leave it was getting dark so I escorted her and Yippy home. She protested at first since there was no one to walk me back to my own door, but I produced a whistle and hung it around my neck before we started out. And since the evening was mild, there were several people still out of doors savoring the last moments of the weekend.
Home again, I called George and asked him if it was possible to do an Internet search and find out if there were any Tuckers living in Staffordshire, England. He said he would try. I told him to take his time.
Two weeks went by. I finished a book by C.S. Lewis. It was a small volume I found among the books from Mrs. Marsh. There was no signature, no indication where she got it from or why it interested her. Another mystery. But my days did not keep me in a constant state of reminiscence about Amelia Marsh. Miss Carey went to Milwaukee. One of her sisters was having surgery. I worked my hospital shifts uneventfully, spoke weekly to my grandson, enjoyed the brilliance of a colorful fall, and otherwise occupied myself in a manner that would not be of interest to anyone else.
The second Monday of October, all of that changed. I got a phone call from Mr. Bedeman. He had been trying to locate Miss Carey; I was his second choice. His question stunned me as much as his call had. Did I have any idea how to locate a Mrs. Ross Barclay?
“I don’t have the phone number, but as a matter of fact I do,” I replied, and told him where she resided.
“You have saved us a lot of trouble,” he said courteously. “Mrs. Barclay is the person named as the recipient of most of Amelia Marsh’s jewelry.”
Here was another surprise. Not that Mrs. Marsh had willed her jewelry to Elaine, that seemed totally in character, but I was surprised the lawyer would volunteer that information to me.
“I’m glad I could help you out, Mr. Bedeman.” I added, “Has a date been set for the estate sale?”
It had been set for the third Saturday in October. The lady’s possessions would be part of a large sale, which included two other estates as well.
“We are in the final stages of settling Mrs. Marsh’s affairs, Mrs. Nimitz,” Mr. Bedeman continued. “Mrs. Barclay was the one individual we still needed to contact.” He supplied me with the address in Springfield where the sale would be held; even giving me the time it would start. I scribbled them down.
“When Miss Carey returns I’ll make sure she gets this information,” I told him. “She may want to attend.”
“I have left word with her sister in Hanley to have her get in touch with us when she returns,” my caller replied, “but please do tell her.”
As it happened, the following morning I was backing my car out of the drive when I spotted Anne Carey walking her dog.
“Just got back last night!” she chirped. “Janie’s doing fine, can manage on her own now.” She peered in at me through the car window.
I made polite inquires into the nature of Janie’s surgery. Knee replacement. Janie is far too heavy, the reedy Miss Carey stated reproachfully, and would probably need the other knee done in the spring. But, it was hard to change your habits at seventy-eight. As long as Janie has such a healthy appetite there was little chance she would lose any significant weight.
At this point I brought up my phone call from attorney Bedeman.
“How nice for Elaine!” Miss Carey beamed. “I’ll call him back today.”
“Do you think you might want to go to that estate sale?” I ventured.
“She paused. “Oh, I don’t know, dear. I’m not sure it would be any fun to see other people buying Amelia’s things.”
“I wouldn’t want you to go if it would be upsetting,” I said sincerely.
“You want to see about those boot hooks, don’t you?”
“Yes, I think I would. But you must remember I was not as close to her as you were. In your place, I doubt I would want to go.”
“Let me think about it,” she said.
Yippy gave a few yaps of impatience and we went our separate ways.
I enjoyed my breakfast that morning at a bagel nook downtown, and walked the few blocks from there to Shear Success for my haircut appointment with Betty. The shop was in an old neighborhood lined with oak and maple trees. The hair salon and a travel agency were the only business establishments on an otherwise residential street.
It had been necessary to schedule my haircut into October, because I didn’t need one when I had the bright idea to talk to Betty. My fine hair does not grow quickly. I hoped my own regular stylist would forgive me for deserting her this one time. In blatant deceit, I let Betty think I needed her services because my own hairdresser was unavailable. If Betty didn’t know how to cut fine hair I would be paying for this excuse to chat with her with more than just her fee. Amelia Marsh’s hair always looked wonderful but she had more texture and natural curl to her locks than I did.
“Sally?” Betty greeted me with a bright professional smile as I entered the shop. Only one other stylist was in and she was completely occupied giving a middle-aged brunette a permanent. Betty was sitting in her chair waiting for me. She wore a turquoise smock over her blue jeans, and turquoise socks to match in worn white sneakers. Her bleached blonde hair was tied back in a simple ponytail.
I smiled back, removed my light coat, and took her place in the chair. Betty offered to give me a shampoo first and I agreed. I had to prolong this as long as possible without getting anything drastic done.
Betty ran her fingers expertly through my short do. “We should be able to shape this up without too much trouble. Your hair is fine, isn’t it, but thick, which is good. You don’t mind the gray? It does blend in well with your shade of brown, and just lightens up the color. You’re smart not to tamper with it too much, yet.”
As she lowered my head back over the washbasin I thought I might as well start right in, keeping Betty’s reputation for curiosity in mind. It wasn’t that long since Anne Carey had contacted her wanting information related to Amelia. She might find it strange that two different individuals she didn’t know wanted information about her former client. Both of our reasons for bringing up Mrs. Marsh should be plausible.
“My neighbor, Amelia Marsh, always spoke highly of you, Betty. I saw you at her funeral, didn’t I?”
“Lord, yes!” gasped Betty, “that poor woman!” She peered down at me as she turned on the water and sprayed my hair, my neck stretched back as far as it would go. “Is the water temperature alright?”
It was a bit warm but I could stand it. I told her it was fine. She expertly worked the shampoo into my hair, her hands more gentle than my own regular stylist. Any client would enjoy that touch, including Amelia.
“I still can’t believe she’s gone! She came in here every Thursday for over four years. I always did her hair, and once in awhile her nails, too. She was so sweet. I thought you looked familiar when you walked through the door. I saw you at the funeral, didn’t I? But you didn’t come to the reception after.”
“It was wonderful of you to come,” I complimented truthfully. “No, I didn’t. The service was enough for me.”
“Oh, I just had to go,” Betty addressed the first part of my remarks first. “Caroline came with me, she’s off today but she’s usually here on Thursdays and she felt terrible about her dying like that, just like I did. We just had to go. I didn’t want to drag my husband along. He’s a good guy, he would have gone, but he didn’t know her, and he hates funerals.” She whipped a towel around my wet head in an easy swoop and set me up straight in my chair again. “How short do you want to go with this?”
We discussed that for a moment.
“The reception was nice,” Betty continued on the previous vein. “Someone made the most delicious chicken salad finger sandwiches you ever tasted, and the sweets! Mrs. Marsh’s old lady friends must have put themselves out in her memory. I was so glad to see how many people came to the funeral. Without family, I was afraid there would be just a few of us. I should have known Amelia would have plenty of people to pay their last respects. How did you know her?”
“Be careful in the front, on the right,” I instructed, “I have a cowlick there, and if you cut straight across my bangs will be shorter on that side. We were neighbors.”
“She was a good neighbor, I’ll bet,” Betty opined.
“She was,” I affirmed, “I’ll miss her, too. It’s hard to believe almost four weeks have gone by since she died.”
“I think about her every Thursday morning,” Betty said sadly, “it’s hard to let anyone else take that time slot. I know she was old, but she was so spry, yet, I thought she’d live to be ninety. She probably would have,” Betty added bitterly, “if someone hadn’t knocked her off. Can you believe that? It doesn’t make any sense at all, someone walking into her house and bopping her over the head. What did she do to deserve that, such a nice old lady. They might never find out who did it.”
I agreed to all of the expressed. “You knew her longer than I did. We were neighbors for about a year and a half but we only connected about six months ago You know, I don’t recall that she ever mentioned what her husband did before he retired.”
“Kind of closed mouthed about herself wasn’t she?” the scissors snipped away, and I held my breath. Hair would grow and it was a small sacrifice in the search for information. “That’s unusual you know, because most people like to talk about themselves. But I really found her interesting, you know, being born in England and all. So I would ask her things and she didn’t seem to mind.” Betty laughed. “Now that I think about it, she had a way of changing the subject if she didn’t want to give me an answer. She was clever about it.”
“Very diplomatic,” I agreed again. “I noticed that, too.”
“But I do know what Mr. Marsh did,” Betty continued, bless her heart, “and it’s no wonder she was so good at talking to people. For a long time he was in some kind of government service, special forces type of thing. It all sounded very romantic to me but Mrs. Marsh said it could be tiresome. I’d give anything to travel around, see the world like they did, but I suppose all that moving could get to you. Plus he was gone sometimes for weeks leaving her alone and she wouldn’t know where he was. I wouldn’t go for that!”
Tread carefully here, Nimitz. “I’d be tempted to come home and visit my family if my husband was going to be away for a long time, wouldn’t you?”
“Oh, absolutely. She didn’t say she did that, though. I think she stayed put and made the best of things. Listening to Mrs. Marsh I realized no life is perfect or completely glamorous. But she and her husband did have a lot of good times, too.”
Betty went on to relate an amusing story passed on to her by her former client, one Amelia Marsh had shared with me also. When I heard the story I assumed the Marshes were on a holiday. Now I realized they had been living in Zurich at the time.
“She seemed to have good memories from their years in New Jersey,” I continued to feed the conversation.
“Umm,” Betty had moved to the back of my scalp and was scrutinizing my hairline as she snipped. “She said she had a good hairdresser there, too. It took her a year to find me. She was unusual, having such long hair at her age, and still thick. Her husband liked it long and after he died she said it was too late to change her ways, she was so used to wearing it like that.”
“I always meant to ask her what her husband died of,” I added more fuel, “but somehow I never did. I just assumed it was old age.”
“That just goes to show you again how she was,” Betty waved her comb to make her point. I was the only one catching it. The other beautician and her client were also deep in conversation, and they had a radio playing soft rock close at hand. “She was my customer for a long time before I asked her. Most widows let you know in three or four visits what made them that way.”
I laughed. “So, what did happen to him?”
“Nothing unusual. He had a stroke one night, not too serious, but a few weeks later had another that was bad. He died in the hospital a few days after that. So, I guess you were right guessing it was old age.”
My haircut was almost complete. Betty had supplied a few facts. Miss Carey’s theory about Leonard Marsh’s occupation seemed plausible. It was odd Betty would know this, and a good friend of Amelia’s did not, but the hairdresser asked, and Anne Carey never did.
“She was as thoughtful dying as she was living, Mrs. Marsh was,” Betty said, as she snipped a stray hair here and there. “I got a call Friday from her lawyer and found out she wanted me to have a set of dishes she had. English bone china! You could have knocked me over with a feather.”
“She must have known you would appreciate it.” I smiled up at her round, pleasant face.
“Oh, I will. It isn’t gonna come out much, though, until my kids grow up. I would die if they broke anything!”
Finally Betty brushed off my neck, took my apron off, and whirled me around to fully inspect her handiwork. Not too bad, I had to concede with relief. With my permission she pulled out a hair dryer, brushing and fluffing as she dried, with a pleasing effect over all.
As I paid for the cut and added a tip, I thanked her for fitting me in.
“Mondays aren’t too full,” she replied cheerfully, “sometimes I take half the day off. It is nice to meet you, and to meet someone else who knew Amelia.” She then added that another lady, an elderly one, had called recently to ask her for some information about Mrs. Marsh. Wasn’t that funny? Anne Carey, of course, asking about the whereabouts of Elaine Fisk. Very, I agreed.
I left with a casual parting comment about how odd she would have felt if she had known that last Thursday hair appointment to be her last time to see Mrs. Marsh. Betty’s reply was not at all what I expected to hear, and further justified my visit to her shop.
“I sure would have. But that sticks out in my mind, anyway, because the last time I saw her wasn’t Thursday. She cancelled that day because of a doctor’s appointment. I couldn’t fit her in over the weekend so she came for the last time on Monday, just two days before she died. She wasn’t herself, either. She didn’t feel like talking at all and I didn’t push her. You know, I wondered if she had some bad news when she went to see that doctor."
It was late afternoon when I spoke to detective White on the telephone. Before making that call I took one of my long country walks and did some hard thinking. There had been plenty of thinking and prayer walks lately, but many of them had been devoted to family matters, particularly Janelle. This day I was totally wrapped up in the life and death of Amelia Marsh.
“You are a puzzle, always willing to talk to me about this,” I remarked to the detective before asking him if he knew about my neighbor’s visit to a doctor. “It is obvious Amelia did not do away with herself in a fit of depression, but it seems significant. Did you talk to Betty, too?” I doubted it. She would have said so. Because of her keen curiosity Betty surprised me a little when she did not place me as the neighbor who discovered the body, but that didn’t seem terribly important.
“We traced all of Mrs. Marsh’s movements the days before she died. We did not talk to the hairdresser, but we did speak with the doctor. It’s debatable if it’s a breach of privacy at this point to tell you about that, and I’ll take the chance, but don’t broadcast it, alright?”
“My solemn word.”
“Okay. It’s not too interesting to me, but it may be for you in your profession. She was having some female problems. The doctor wanted her to have a, what do you call it, an operation to remove her womb.”
“A hysterectomy?”
“That’s it. I don’t have the report in front of me. No cancer, or anything life threatening, but the term was …” he paused in exasperation.
“Fibroids or perhaps prolapse?” I supplied helpfully.
“Prolapse. It was getting more uncomfortable. She needed the surgery and was thinking about it.
“Do you know off hand the name of the physician?”
“Yes. Dr. Blackwell.”
I knew Dr. Blackwell, a competent gynecologist.
“It’s possible Mrs. Marsh was in a somber mood at the hair dressers because she needed surgery,” I allowed, “and that may be what she wanted to consult me about.” I sighed glumly. “That answers those questions and still leaves the big one, who killed Mrs. Marsh, still wide open.”
“I’m afraid I have some more dead end news for you,” detective White said gently. “Going back to question all the local motel clerks on duty didn’t give us anything, either. None of them remembered a guest with a British accent, nor were there any guests listed in their computers with English addresses.”