A Simple Country Tragedy Page 8

  I approached the counter, the heels of my shoes echoing across the tile floor. My steps drew the gaze of a few other officers who were walking between offices.

  She looked up at me, her eyes narrowing. “Is this an emergency?” she asked in an icy voice.

  “I need to speak with Inspector Graves,” I said, knowing the best way to speak to this woman was directly. All she ever did was dance around my requests anyway.

  She blinked slowly up at me, not conveying any interest in moving. “…And?” she asked.

  I glared at her. “It’s quite important,” I said.

  “Inspector Graves is a busy man,” the receptionist said, her cigarette very nearly falling out from between her lips.

  “Yes, I realize that,” I said. “Is he in a meeting? Or could I go back and see him for a minute to – ”

  “Paige, get a load of this,” the receptionist said, leaning back in her chair. “Little Miss Love Bird comes in and thinks she can just go back and see Graves whenever she wants.”

  A woman with hair as blonde as Irene’s peered out from another office door behind the receptionists, chewing gum smacking between her teeth like a cow chewing cud. “Does she now?” she asked, her eyes moving very deliberately up to me. She leaned against her door frame, crossing her arms. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but just because you are the Inspector’s new lady friend, it doesn’t mean you can come in here whenever you – ”

  “Excuse me?” I asked, my eyes narrowing as I glared between the two. “I am not the Inspector’s – ”

  The receptionist snorted, turning around and smirking at the woman named Paige. “She might be his longest romance, though,” she said, cutting me off. “What’s it going on now? A few months, right?”

  Paige laughed. “She’s certainly trying to sneak in to see him as much as she can, isn’t she?”

  “I am not,” I said, my face flooding with color. “And I will not stand for these sorts of rumors. If I say nothing is happening between the Inspector and I, then – ”

  “Then you ought to listen to her, ladies,” said Sam’s voice, which had suddenly appeared around the corner from down the hall.

  He strolled out in front of the receptionist’s counter, a somewhat bemused expression on his strong face.

  The receptionist and her friend Paige both stared out at him.

  “I’m sorry, sir, we were just teasing,” said the receptionist, snuffing out her cigarette on the ash tray near her elbow, joining the several others that had been extinguished before. The expression on her face, though, with her arched brows and her darting gaze, showed that she held no remorse for how she was speaking to me. “It won’t happen again,” she said.

  Paige disappeared back into her office without saying another word.

  I, however, was fuming, staring down at the receptionist.

  “What is it that you needed to speak to me about?” Sam asked, nodding back toward his office.

  I fell into step beside him, the blood still pumping rapidly through my body. “I have never been treated so poorly,” I said, knowing full well that he could see the blush in my cheeks. “To be so utterly rude as they were, I – ”

  “I know,” he said. “The gossip that happens to get around this office can be…well, frustrating to say the least – ”

  “It’s just not true,” I said. “And for those women to be so bluntly confrontational…”

  He nodded. “I realize that. But Rachel is known as a talker around here. That proves useful, on occasion. Other times, however…she just doesn’t know when to stop.”

  “Clearly,” I said.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “She’s more bark than bite.”

  “But did you hear what these people are saying about me? About us?” I asked. “Everyone seems to think that you and I are some sort of – ”

  “Couple, yes…” Sam said, rubbing the back of his neck nervously.

  We stopped just outside his office, and he gestured for me to step inside.

  I did so, my heels snapping against the floor as I made my way to a leather chair across from his desk.

  He closed the door with a definitive click, and slowly made his way around the desk, taking his seat in front of the windows, the blinds drawn. The sunlight was still trying to peek its way through the slats.

  “Listen, I’m sorry that I put you in this sort of situation,” he said. “I should have been more aware of what people around here might be saying.”

  I folded my arms. “It isn’t your fault,” I said, the color in my cheeks deepening. My heart squirmed in my chest. Had their words bothered me so much because I wanted them to be true? Or because I didn’t?

  “I will make sure to address their actions,” he said. “This is the third time this month that someone has complained about Rachel’s behavior.”

  “Third time?” I asked. “What else has she been saying?”

  “Nothing about you or I,” he said. “But I can say for certain that she is the reason why there is so much infighting between the departments lately. And it makes perfect sense, when I heard that she and her husband are having trouble in their marriage…I think she means to make everyone else miserable, as well.”

  I sighed, deciding it was best to let go of my anger. “Well…I suppose that does make sense.”

  Sam gave me a pointed look across the desk, but it was gentle, despite his intimidating demeanor.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I did not mean to make such a scene.”

  “No, it’s quite all right,” he said. “Sometimes she needs to be reminded that she can’t bully everyone around the way that she does.”

  Even so, I still felt guilty. Looking over at him, it made me wonder how he truly felt about everything that had been going on between us. For one, I had been very nearly convinced that it was a romantic invitation when he had asked me out for lunch. I turned out to be wrong, though…and he’d wanted to talk about the murder of Wilson Baxter instead.

  On the other hand, I’d caught him behaving rather flustered around me, especially whenever the topic of his feelings toward me had been addressed.

  He cleared his throat, and I wondered about the silence that had fallen between us. What was he thinking about all of this?

  “Now that we’ve put that behind us,” Sam said, leaning forward on his desk. “What was it you wanted to see me about?”

  It was as if the confrontation with Rachel had completely wiped away the memory of why I had come here in the first place. It took me a moment to recall why I had rushed over. “Mr. Hodgins,” I said, my stomach plummeting. “I was just over at the Driscoll’s when their son arrived home, telling us that Mr. Hodgins had been taken away by the police. In my mind, given the current state of the village, the only thing I could think was that he was being taken in for questioning about the Wilson Baxter murder.”

  Sam’s face split into an amused grin. “Leave it to you to learn about that. Yes, we did bring him in. We dug up a piece of interesting information from some of the townsfolk. We learned that the butcher and the deceased had a long-standing friendship.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, I suppose you could say that they used to be friends. According to Hodgins, they –” he hesitated, glancing over my head at the door behind me.

  “You aren’t going to tell me?” I asked.

  He sat there for a moment, his eyes fixed on the door. “There are few who know this yet,” he said. “But Mr. Hodgins and Mr. Baxter had been friends for many years. They grew up together, apparently. Both hard working men with gruff personalities. It seems that Baxter even lent Hodgins some unpaid help to build the expansion he had built onto his house after his third son was born.”

  “I’m guessing something went amiss in their friendship for him to be taken in for questioning?” I asked.

  Sam nodded. “According to Hodgins, who was quite willing to discuss the matter, the two men had a falling out some years ago. Apparently,
Baxter had been making passes at Hodgins’ wife, and Hodgins wasn’t taking too kindly to that.”

  “Nor would I,” I said.

  “So Hodgins cut Baxter out of his life. This was nearly five years ago, though, from what it sounds like. And according to Hodgins, they hadn’t spoken since. He was insistent about that, and said that he knew others would back it up,” Sam said. He leaned back in his chair. “I’m inclined to believe him, especially given the fact that Baxter apparently swindled the butcher.”

  My heart skipped. “How so?”

  “It was something to do with a recent investment Hodgins made into a small mining company that has been trying to start up for some time. Baxter was apparently part of the deal as well, and had gone in with the man behind the operation. It seems that Baxter somehow convinced them to steal the money Hodgins invested, and claim that the investment had been lost to encourage him to invest even more.”

  “That’s terrible,” I said. “Just to get back at Mr. Hodgins?”

  Sam nodded.

  “He had no right,” I said. “He was the one who was in the wrong.”

  “And he likely knew that. But his guilt was likely buried under years of fear and anger, and sometimes it is too difficult to bring that to the surface. It’s just easier to ignore it,” Sam said.

  “I suppose…” I said. “But that doesn’t make it right.”

  “It certainly doesn’t,” Sam agreed.

  “So I take it that whole situation ended poorly,” I said.

  “According to Mr. Hodgins, it came to blows. The two men had to be wrenched apart one night. Thankfully they were in a public space when they ran into each other. I’m afraid we would have been investigating this murder case much earlier otherwise.”

  “You think it was Mr. Hodgins, then?” I asked.

  Sam scratched his face thoughtfully. “Well, he certainly has the motive, doesn’t he? Not once, but twice. Wilson Baxter seemed to have a personal vendetta against Mr. Hodgins, and it was obvious enough that he was willing to go so far as to harm him in order to get back at him.”

  “But Mr. Hodgins doesn’t strike me as the type of person to retaliate in that situation,” I said. “He may be a bit stern, but to go so far as to kill Baxter?”

  “What if their fight broke out again?” Sam asked.

  “Is that what he said happened?” I asked.

  Sam shook his head. “No. As I said, he claims they haven’t spoken in a long time. But he could very well be lying.”

  “You weren’t in the room when they interviewed him?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, I wasn’t.”

  “I see,” I said. I regarded him with a firm look. “I thought you were so certain it was Sidney Mason, when last we spoke.”

  “I am certainly still not writing him off, given their fight the night of Baxter’s death,” Sam said.

  “This just gets murkier and murkier…” I muttered.

  Then I remembered something. “You know, I gave Sidney another chance to mention Baxter’s death to me, even tried to prompt him by asking about his week while I was away.”

  “And?” Sam asked. “He made no mention of it, did he?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “Though he certainly was acting rather…”

  “…Rather what?” Sam asked.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, pushing aside the thoughts of Sidney’s bizarre flirtations that seemed more over the top than usual. His charm had almost morphed into a sort of pushiness that was unsettling. “I’m just beginning to believe that he very well may be hiding something.”

  “I’m not entirely surprised,” Sam said. “If he was innocent, then it’s likely the whole matter slipped his mind. If he’s guilty, however…wouldn’t you act the same, doing your best to cover up whatever might have been perceived as happening?”

  “I suppose,” I said. “Even still, this whole thing is uncomfortable. The butcher? Sidney Mason? It just makes me think I’m living in a dark nightmare.”

  “I wish I could agree,” he said. “My good grace is hard to win, as I have found it incredibly hard to trust anyone anymore. All people are capable of dark deeds, if pushed far enough.”

  “Such a hopeless view of the world…” I said.

  “And yet, it’s reality,” Sam said, a heaviness in his words.

  He sighed, getting to his feet and crossing to a filing cabinet beside the window.

  “Helen, you are one of those few people I trust, which is why I have allowed you to have insight into these situations. I would ask again, however, that you be careful. I know that even if I were to tell you to stay out of this whole situation, you wouldn’t. I know you’ll go digging up information in a way that only you seem to be able to. So please…just be careful, all right?”

  I laughed, a low, hollow sound. “To be honest, Inspector, I had every intention of sitting this one out. But it seems that the mysteries of Brookminster just have their way of entangling me in their webs.”

  He glanced at me over his shoulder. “I know,” he said in a low voice. “And that’s why I am warning you to watch your back.”

  10

  My heart was heavy as I left the police station, and my head swam with questions. Not about the murder, exactly…that all seemed rather cut and dry. But I nevertheless found myself thinking about Sam’s morose outlook on people. He said he found he couldn’t trust people, and that they were all capable of doing terrible things to others.

  As much as I wanted to rail against that in my own heart, to brush it aside, I couldn’t. Not only was our world torn asunder by a war that was entirely out of our control, but the sweet, quiet exterior of Brookminster was nothing but a lie, when underneath there was a miry, dark underbelly that housed all the depravity that I had witnessed these last few months.

  It was sad, really…and disheartening to think that the world was dark with only a few bright lights of hope shining in it, as opposed to a place full of promise and opportunity where everyone got along. But if the latter was the truth, then wouldn’t we all be able to exist in peace, and not murder one another?

  The world felt as if it weighed on me heavily, and I was not pleased as I headed home.

  The truth was, there were still no definite answers about who had killed Wilson Baxter. It seemed that it was either Sidney, Hodgins, or Irene’s brother.

  I stopped in my tracks, halfway back to my house.

  Irene’s brother. I had completely forgotten to say anything to Sam about him.

  And yet…did I need to?

  Guilt washed over me as I realized I had considered betraying Irene’s trust. What sort of friend did that make me?

  But what if he had been the one to kill Wilson? Would she go to Sam with it? Or would she want to do what she could to protect her brother?

  Did I even have a right to butt into the whole situation? It had to do with Irene’s family. Was it right for me to take the information she’d shared with me to Sam, even if her brother was possibly the one who had killed Wilson Baxter?

  I realized the best way for me to answer that was to ask Irene about it in the first place. She and I were adults, and she would have to realize that if he had been the one to commit the crime, sooner or later the truth would be revealed.

  I anxiously made my way back home, hoping to avoid anyone I might know as I did so. I didn’t want to stop and chat. I had one goal in mind, and that was to speak to Irene.

  I noticed Sidney walking around the side of his house, a bundle of dead branches in his hands.

  Ducking low behind the stone wall, my heart jumped into my throat.

  He was the last person I wanted to run into.

  I waited, hearing him whistling through his teeth as he worked in the side yard. I held my breath as the rustling of branches made me wonder if he intended to stay there for the rest of the afternoon.

  What if he’s waiting to talk to me? I thought. Does he know that I’m not home right now?

  The tightness in
my chest told me that I really didn’t want to run into him. Given his avoidance of the conversation about Wilson Baxter, and Sam’s suspicion of his involvement in his death…

  Could I even trust anything that Sidney said anymore? I hated to doubt a friend…

  But Sam’s words kept drifting back into my mind.

  My good grace is hard to win, as I have found it incredibly hard to trust anyone anymore. All people are capable of dark deeds, if pushed far enough.

  It was grim, indeed. But what had Sam seen to lead him to that conclusion? What hurts had he experienced to make him so afraid of other people, of trusting them?

  Sidney’s whistling faded, as did his footsteps.

  Now’s my chance, I thought.

  I hopped up and unlocked the gate, hurrying into my front garden.

  My hands trembled as I fumbled with my key in the lock in the front door.

  Sidney’s whistling grew louder as I twisted the key, throwing my weight against the door. I threw myself into the dark interior, and hurriedly closed the door behind me.

  I dropped down behind the window beside the front door, locking it behind me as quietly as I could.

  Peering outside, I saw Sidney kneeling down in his front garden. A wheelbarrow was sitting up against the garden wall between our homes.

  I saw him briefly glance upward, in the direction of my front door, but quickly return to his work, whistling once again.

  I breathed a sigh of relief. He would have surely come to visit if he’d known I’d just gotten home. And I was not ready to see him right now.

  I flipped the sign hanging just inside the window of my door, indicating that I was out for the afternoon and that the shop was closed.

  Even though it was well past closing time for my shop, I hoped that Sidney might see it and believe I was indeed out for the afternoon. Though if he suspected I’d just come home…

  He’d known I was lying the last few times we spoke. The look in his eyes had told me as much. The division between us was starting to grow, and it was making my skin itch just to think about it.

  After being certain that Sidney was going to stay put in his yard, I hurried up the stairs, closing all the doors behind me, and careful to keep my lights off, even in my kitchen.