A Timely Vision

I copied his address and phone number since I knew the original would go to the police. Gramps looked at him sternly before he left. I wished I could clean up the music box and listen to it play for a while.

But Gramps wrapped it up in some newspaper and set it to the side. “Maybe it shows that Johnny was here to see Lizzie. Maybe he thought they could make up after all those years. I guess we’ll never know.”

“But surely it doesn’t prove Miss Elizabeth killed Johnny either,” I argued. “It seems more like something he didn’t have a chance to give her.”

“You have a good heart, darlin’.” He kissed my forehead. “But sometimes good people do bad things. It’s the nature of man. Or woman. I’m going to take this down to Chief Michaels. I’ll make sure he knows you’d like it back.”

The overcast skies gave a gloomy feel to the rest of the day. Of course, it didn’t help that I spent much of my time thinking about Miss Mildred being tested to see if she was competent to stand trial for something she didn’t do. I didn’t care what Gramps said about good people going bad. That wasn’t what had happened here.

Once it started raining at about three P.M., foot traffic disappeared from the boardwalk. Shayla, Trudy and I had coffee before I went back to Missing Pieces. Anne Maxwell and her daughter were waiting for me. We stepped in out of the rain, and I showed her the racks of clothes I needed her to go through. I left her alone with them while I showed Ginny the toys in back where she could play.

Kevin came in around five, his Windbreaker soaked. The wind and rain accompanied him in the front door, creating a puddle on the floor, but I was still glad to see him. “Not much going on out here,” he observed. “Too bad it’s so wet. We can’t do any painting today either.”

I was virtually stuffed full of information and bursting to share what I’d learned since I’d seen him last. We sat on the tall stools behind the counter and watched the seagulls playing tag in the rain while I told him about my visit to Miss Mildred and the discovery of the music box.

“I heard from the chief that they released Brian McDonald around lunchtime,” he told me. “They knew he didn’t steal Miss Elizabeth’s purse, and he had an alibi for the medical examiner’s time of death. It was from his girlfriend, so it wouldn’t have stood up if they’d found him with the purse. The chief told him to get out of town.”

“He’s not prosecuting him for stealing all those purses?”

“I guess not. You didn’t press charges. None of the other women did either.”

“What about Miss Mildred?”

He nodded. “I think they had a judge and the DA up there talking to her today. Luke Helms was there with her. They’ll probably bring in a psychiatrist and a few other doctors to make the final assessment. But from what you’ve told me, they’ll find her incompetent and she’ll be institutionalized. The only good thing about that is that it spares her jail time.”

“Because she won’t back down from saying she saw Miss Elizabeth’s ghost, right?”

“Yeah. Even in the Outer Banks, it’s one thing to believe in folklore but another thing when a ghost turns up with evidence that places you at a murder scene.”

“Have you heard anything about the testing they’re doing on the murder weapon?”

“The chief gave me back the derringer we found at the inn. It wasn’t the weapon used to kill Johnny. I haven’t heard anything about the weapon they think killed Miss Elizabeth. But ballistics is faster than DNA. It’ll probably be a while before we know for sure about that.”

“The only thing I could squeeze out of Tim was that the shovel they think was the murder weapon was not a regular garden shovel.” It wasn’t much, but I wanted to add what I could to our investigation.

The news we shared did nothing to alleviate the dark day. We sat for a long time not talking as the evening came down prematurely on Duck. Anne and Ginny finished up the clothes. They waved as they walked out the door. I took a look at the job Anne had done and admired her work. If I could ever afford to hire someone, I’d certainly give her a call. In the meantime, at least both of them had some new-to-them clothes to wear.

I closed the shop about five. It was early, but no one had come in for hours. The rain was still a steady downpour. My mind kept working on helping Miss Mildred, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do.

Between that, the rain and no customers, I was completely depressed. Even Kevin’s offer to cook dinner in exchange for eating at my house the night before didn’t pick my mood up. But knowing Gramps would be out that night playing pinochle, I agreed to go to the inn with him. Better to be depressed with someone else than by yourself.

Shayla and Trudy stopped us as we walked toward town hall so I could check my messages. We stood under the bright blue canopy on the boardwalk, which thankfully kept most of the rain off of us. “Don’t you two look chummy?” Trudy giggled and nudged Shayla.