Well-Offed In Vermont Part 3

"Helps us figure out the time of death. From that, we can work out where everyone was at the time."

"Where everyone was at the time?" Stella repeated as she envisioned her and Nick behind bars. "You mean like an alibi? I thought this was an accident. I thought Weston fell down the well."

"Oh, he fell down the well, all right. He fell down 'cause he was shot."

Nick stepped forward. "Someone shot him? You mean this is murder?"

"Can't say just yet. Could be an accident. Black bear season just started."

"Black bear season?"

"Turkey and deer too, but that's just bow and arrow hunting for now."

"Yeah, I work for the US Forest Service. I know when the seasons take place," Nick said impatiently. "What I'm saying is, how does someone mistake a guy in a red flannel shirt for a bear?"

"Shooter didn't have to see him. When a hunter misses what he's aiming at, just where do you suppose those bullets go?"

"I guess you're right. It could have been a stray bullet that got him."

"A stray bullet, sure, but Sheriff Mills said bullets," Stella spoke up. "How many times was Weston shot?"

"You can find out in the paper tomorrah," Mills replied quietly. "Until then, why don't you tell me how you happened to find Weston's body."

Nick and Stella described the b.l.o.o.d.y tap water and their subsequent actions.

"I thought an animal had gotten into the well," Nick explained. "I've seen racc.o.o.ns climb into chimneys and storm drains to escape predators, so I figured a wounded racc.o.o.n or woodchuck crawled into the well to hide and then bled out."

"Realizing that the only way an animal could have gotten into our well is if the cap had been left off," Stella reasoned, "I called Alice to get the number of the well company to complain, but she had already left for the day."

"So," Nick picked up where Stella left off, "I got a flashlight from the glove compartment of our car and went out to take a look."

"I was right behind him," Stella inserted.

"Yes, you were, honey. You were stuck to my arm like Krazy Glue," Nick noted with a raise of his eyebrow. "I flashed the light into the well expecting to see a dead fox, but instead I saw a man dressed in a red flannel shirt."

"Buffalo check," Stella offered.

"That's the first thing I noticed about him-that bright red shirt. He was stuck about two-thirds of the way down, and he was obviously dead."

"What do you mean 'obviously'?" Mills inquired.

"He was blue."

"Blue?"

"Well, bluish gray," Stella amended as she placed a hand on her husband's shoulder. "At least his lips and his face were. Probably from lack of circulation. Rigor mortis. Cyanosis. All those things you see on CSI."

Mills knitted his eyebrows together and scratched his head so intensely that his hat lowered over his eyes. "CSI ?"

"Yeah, you know, the crime scene investigation show? Blood that glows in the dark and all that stuff."

Before Mills could explain that he did not own a television, a woman appeared in the doorway of the living room. Tall and slender, she looked as if she had just stepped from the cover of Country Living magazine. A ruffled plaid shirt topped by a brown leather blazer draped her delicate torso, and her narrow waist and long legs were hugged by a pair of dark-wash jeans. A pair of flat brown boots finished the look on the bottom, and on top, her long, dark hair had been gathered into a tight braid.

Stella watched as Sheriff Mills sucked in his considerable gut.

"What's going on here?" the woman demanded.

"Ms. Deville, how did you get in?" Mills countered, his heretofore unflappable demeanor now somewhat less composed.

"Simple. I walked up the driveway and opened the front door."

"No one tried to stop you?"

"No. Why should they? They know who I am."

Mills sighed in exasperation. "Why are you here?"

Ms. Deville raised her left arm to display a finely woven basket, the contents of which were obscured by a red-and-white-checked napkin. "I came to welcome this young couple with a few sandwiches and cookies. That's my famous seven-grain bread and my prize-winning oatmeal raisins," she whispered to Stella with a smile and a wink. "But I can see that the sheriff's office has already sent out the welcome wagon."

"Can't discuss it, Ms. Deville. Official police business," Mills replied in an overly gruff tone.

"Stop calling me Ms. Deville, Charlie. We've known each other since we were in diapers. It's Alma," she stretched a hand to Nick. "Alma Deville. I own the Sweet Shop in town. You'll find a coupon in that basket too-good for 10 percent off any baked good."

"Nick-Nick Buckley, and this is my wife, Stella. Thanks for the food ... and the coupon."

"Oh, don't thank me for that. I feel terrible using a social call to drum up business, but these days, a girl has to market herself when she can. Sometimes she even has to be a bit of a b.i.t.c.h." She took Stella's hand. "Now tell me, why is the sheriff here bothering you? You seem like nice people to me."

"Alma," Mills warned.

"Charlie, you know gossip in these parts travels faster than a tick to the hindquarters of a dog. Once those men of yours get home and tell their wives and girlfriends, the news will have spread from here to the Northeast Kingdom. Not much sense in keeping me in the dark."

With a weary sigh, Mills capitulated. "All right."

"There's a dead man in our well," Stella blurted.

"What? You're pulling my leg."

Nick shook his head.

"Do you know who it is?" Alma turned to Mills.

"Allen Weston," the sheriff replied.

The color drained from Alma's face. "Allen Weston?"

"Yup. You, uh, knew him from the shop, didn't you?"

"Y-yes. He-he had been in a few times and he, um, he emptied my septic tank last summer."

"Oh?"

"Well, he didn't, but his crew did. Weston never handled the field work. Not that he couldn't, mind you," she added quickly, "but he was more focused on the business end of things. Speedy Septic didn't live up to the speedy name by any means, but they got the job done. Hank Reid, however, had all sorts of trouble. They tried to empty his septic tank in the middle of mud season, and the dang thing floated up out of the ground. Poor Hank called in Jake Brunelle to replace all the pipes. Cost him thousands, which Hank doesn't have-or at least he'd like us to think he doesn't have it, what with the way he keeps that house of his."

"A regular trip down memory lane," Mills remarked. "He must get a decent pension from the school, though. He worked there as a janitor all his life."

"Mmm," Alma agreed. "So what happened? Did Allen fall into the well and break his neck?"

"He was shot," Nick stated.

"Shot? You mean he was murdered?"

"Could have been an accident," Mills once again a.s.serted.

"Not if someone didn't report it. You remember that case in Jacksonville a few years back? The kid was tried for second-degree murder because he left the man wounded and crying for help."

Mills raised an admiring smile at both Alma's memory and her understanding of the legal system. Smiled, that is, until he recalled that her knowledge stemmed from personal loss. "He sure was."

"And, despite all the guns out there, fatal hunting accidents don't happen as often as you'd think. So either way, this is gonna wind up as a murder investigation," Alma announced and then folded her arms across her chest triumphantly. "So you still gonna claim you're looking into an accident?"

"Nope. I'm gonna ask you all to leave."

"Leave? But this is our home," Stella argued.

"You can come back once we do what we need to do. Until then, you'll have to stay elsewhere."

"But Weston was shot outside, by the well," Nick spoke up. "Why do we have to leave the house?"

"Weston's body might have been found out in your yard, but we don't know for certain he was shot there. That open back door gave Weston, or his shooter, full run of the place. Heck, if it was premeditated, the shooter could have been waiting in your kitchen. Now look," Mills's face softened. "I know you folks are eager to move into your new home, but I can't let you trample over potential evidence. I promise we'll try to wrap things up quick. Until then, Alma can help you find a motel-"

"Motel?" Alma interrupted. "Why, Charlie Mills, it's nearly Columbus Day-you know the whole state's overrun with leaf-peeping flatlanders!"

"Flatlanders?" Stella asked.

"Oh, all the people who come here from New York and New Jersey and Connecticut and think they own the place."

Stella flashed Nick a worried glance.

Alma drew a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I am sorry! I didn't mean the two of you! I mean the folks who come up here and block up the roads with their SUVs, expect traffic to wait for them when they walk into the middle of the road, and pollute the place with noise and trash. By the end of the season, you'll be sick of 'em too. My point was that inn and motel rooms are as scarce as hen's teeth right now. But don't you two worry; I can put you up, at least until deer season starts."

"I thought it already had."

"No, that's bow and arrow deer season," Mills explained. "Alma's talking about deer rifle season, which is the second week of November."

Stella couldn't envision shooting deer with anything other than a camera, but she kept her opinions to herself. "It's very sweet of you to put us up at your place, Alma. Thank you so much. I promise we won't inconvenience you for long. As soon as we can get a room elsewhere, we'll be out of your hair. Right, Nick?"

"Absolutely. Once the flatlanders are finished decimating the town, we'll check into whatever decent motel is still standing. Unless, of course, we're able to move in here by then."

"Oh, you're not gonna be in my hair at all," Alma said pleasantly. "Our place is barely big enough for me and my brother, Raymond. No way I could fit another person in it, let alone two. But Raymond has a hunting camp just a few miles from here. It's just one room, and it's not winterized, but it's not so cold at night that you two can't manage. What do you say?"

Stella and Nick once again exchanged worried glances before replying in unison, "Hunting camp?"

CHAPTER.

4.

DECIDING THAT IT was easier to leave the moving truck at the farmhouse than to attempt to steer it through the woods surrounding the hunting camp, Nick and Stella retrieved their suitcases from the truck's cab, flung them into the back of Alma's black Ford F-150 pickup, and followed her back through town in the Smart car.

Lined with a mix of two-story brick storefronts and white clapboard buildings, Teignmouth's Main Street was the quintessential New England thoroughfare. Marble sidewalks and granite curbs provided pedestrians with a safe path between the many shops and eateries. A center median separating the two lanes of traffic had been planted with rows of yellow and rust chrysanthemums.

Indeed, Teignmouth could easily stand in for the setting of one of Norman Rockwell's famous paintings. Stand in, that is, if the sparkling white sidewalks and the newly paved road weren't awash with rain, swarms of tourists, and close to one hundred idling automobiles.

The brake lights on the F-150 glowed red in the gathering twilight as Alma slowed behind the long queue of cars that clogged Main Street, all of which bore license plates from places other than Vermont. She thrust her head out of the driver's-side window and motioned to the Buckleys to do the same.

Nick rolled down his window.

"See what I mean? Two weeks every October. Two weeks! And Sheriff Mills thought you'd get a hotel room. Ha!" she shouted before pulling her head back inside the cab of the truck.

Nick closed his window and wiped the raindrops from his face. "She's right. This is like midtown during rush hour."

"Or any day the president is in town."

"Gridlock for the president, I understand," Nick complained. "But these people are here to look at leaves."

"I don't understand it either. The traffic wasn't this bad when we drove through this afternoon."

"Probably because it wasn't raining then. And it wasn't supper time."

"Ah, yes. Feeding time at the zoo," Stella noted sarcastically.

The two vehicles traveled at a snail's pace through the b.u.mper-to-b.u.mper traffic before finally turning onto a side road that led to a dark, empty section of Route 4. After driving fifteen miles, they turned left onto a narrow dirt road that cut across the nearly thirty acres of pristine woodlands that surrounded Raymond Johnson's hunting camp.

During daylight hours, the scene was undoubtedly breathtaking, but without the sun's glow or even a street lamp to illuminate their brilliant reds, yellows, and oranges, the local sugar maples, yellow birches, ashes, and elms blurred together, forming an inky black canopy against the starless evening sky.

"Where the heck is this place?" an eager Stella asked from the pa.s.senger seat. "It feels like we've been driving forever."

"It's a hunting camp, honey. You're not going to find it alongside a strip mall," Nick explained as his knees banged and sc.r.a.ped against the dashboard with every twist and b.u.mp in the road.

Nick seldom drove their car. Whereas Stella's job sometimes required her to travel to museums in the outlying boroughs, Nick's position at the US Forest Service's New York City Urban Field Station had been a short subway ride from his and Stella's Murray Hill apartment building. And, while most of Stella's friends had married and settled in the suburbs, Nick's buddies either lived locally or just over the bridge in New Jersey.

The decision to purchase an automobile was therefore entirely Stella's, and the moment she spotted the bright yellow coupe, she fell in love. Fuel-efficient, easy to park on crowded city streets, yet youthful and trendy in appearance, she thought it the ideal vehicle for an urban couple in their mid to late thirties. Nick, on the other hand, was left wanting more-of everything. Likening the experience to piloting an airplane from a coach seat, Nick was never comfortable driving the Fortwo. Indeed, even its bright yellow color had spurred him to dub the car "the pee-mobile." Yet, for the sake of marital harmony, he agreed to the purchase and silently suffered through taking Stella on the odd shopping trip or visit to his mother-in-law's.