Joe Morelli responded to Heather’s call on Friday morning. Moments after his arrival, more responders showed up, including some from the coroner’s office. When they removed the body from under the bushes and placed it on the gurney, Heather blurted, “She worked at the library!”
Joe walked from the other responders to Chris and Heather, who stood about ten feet away, watching. Hunny stood between the two. Chris had leashed her not long after Heather’s call to the police. With tail wagging at Joe’s approach, the dog leaned forward, desperately wanting to greet the officer.
Once Joe reached Chris and Heather, he absently scratched under Hunny’s right ear and said, “Yes. It’s Betty Kelty. She’s a local librarian. She lived across the street from Eden and Shannon Langdon.”
“I can’t believe someone killed her. On our street!” Heather said.
Joe cocked a brow at Heather. “This sort of thing isn’t all that uncommon for Beach Drive.”
“I guess you’re relieved Pearl’s trustee didn’t accept your offer on Pearl’s House,” Chris snarked.
Joe shrugged. “I was never thrilled with the idea. Kelly wanted to live close to her brother. But a lot happens on this street. Doesn’t it ever bother you?”
Heather frowned. “Well, yeah. Of course. Finding a dead body is never the high point of my day.”
“What does the coroner say so far?” Chris asked.
Joe glanced to the van where they had just loaded the body. He looked back at Chris. “It looks like she was standing on the sidewalk when someone stabbed her. When she fell, it appears her killer shoved her body back and down between two bushes, out of sight, giving the killer a chance to escape. If we’re lucky, they left some DNA on her body.”
“Find the woman she was with, and I imagine you’ll find her killer,” Heather said.
“Did you find the murder weapon?” Chris asked.
Joe shook his head. “No, not yet.”
“Perhaps the killer took it with her,” Heather suggested.
Someone called out to Joe. He paused, looked back, and then turned to Chris and Heather and said, “I was hoping you would go to the station and give your statements. We have more questions, but there are things I need to wrap up here.”
Thirty minutes later, Chris and Heather walked into the interrogation room with Brian Henderson. Also with them was Hunny, who, after greeting Brian, curled up under the table to take a nap.
“How’s your tooth?” Heather asked Brian after giving him a quick kiss and taking a seat at the table.
Chris rolled his eyes but did not comment on the affectionate gesture. Silently, he sat next to Heather.
“It wasn’t bad.” Brian reached up and rubbed his jaw before taking a seat across from the pair. He let out a sigh, looked at Heather and said, “So, you tripped over another dead body?”
“Technically, this one is Chris’s. He found her first.”
“Not really. You noticed her feet before I did,” Chris reminded.
“I’m assuming you didn’t run into her… umm… her ghost?” Brian asked.
Before answering, Heather glanced at the one-way mirror. She looked back to Brian and said, “You’d better hope Joe didn’t get back and is in there watching us… and listening.”
Brian grinned. “No. I just talked to him. He was at Pearl’s, checking out her house. It’s all locked up. Doesn’t look like anyone broke in. They called Adam, and according to him, they didn’t let anyone into the house. Now, about my questions…”
Heather shook her head. “No. We didn’t see her ghost. And the entire thing is so bizarre. I saw her about an hour before we found her body. And about twenty minutes after I initially saw her, I was walking down Beach Drive, in her direction. I didn’t see her anywhere. Certainly not standing on the sidewalk a few houses from Chris’s place.”
“Are you sure she was alive when she left Pearl’s yard? Perhaps it was her ghost,” Brian suggested.
“No. That first time, she didn’t have a bloody hole in her body.”
“Tell me more about the woman with her,” Brian asked.
Heather let out a sigh, slumped back in the chair and said, “The first thing that comes to mind, Cruella de Vil.”
Brian frowned. “Cruella de Vil?”
“Yeah, like from One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” Heather told him.
“You’re telling me a cartoon character was with our murder victim?” Brian asked.
“No, of course not. But she made me think of her. About a third of her hair was white, and the rest jet black. Like Cruella de Vil. It was shoulder length and kind of curly. She was tall, my guess around five nine, at least. Thin. Umm, I’d say she was in her late forties or fifties. Or who knows, maybe a well-preserved sixty. She wore this interesting quilt jacket. More Etsy than Amazon.”
“What does that even mean?” Brian asked.
Chris laughed and then said, “I think she means it looks like a handcrafted jacket, like something you’d more likely find at Etsy.”
Brian shook his head and muttered, “I don’t even know what Etsy is.”
“Also, she has dark brown eyes. She looked right at me, and I got a good look at her face.” Heather paused a moment and added, “Oh crap. She knows I saw her with Betty before she killed her, and she knows where I live.”
“With that timeline, I’d be surprised if Cruella wasn’t the killer,” Chris said. “And if you saw them together coming out from Pearl’s front yard, they obviously were acquaintances. I’d say friends, but what kind of friend stabs you?”
“Why were they at Pearl’s?” Heather asked.
Brian leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms across his chest. “Good question. Like I told you, Joe already checked out Pearl’s place, and nothing seems to have been disturbed. All the doors were locked, and according to Adam, no one was supposed to be over there.”
“So we have two women taking a walk. They decide to poke around a house that has a for-sale sign out front. They then continue walking, this time up the street. And within the next twenty minutes, they get into some argument. One stabs the other, shoves her into the bushes, and then runs off. Is that about right?” Chris asked.
Still leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, Brian shrugged in response.
With Joe and Brian busy in the field, investigating the murder, the chief sat in his office, waiting for Josephine Barker, the head librarian and Betty’s supervisor, to arrive. She had called him. After hearing about Betty’s death through the Frederickport rumor mill, she had called the chief to find out if it was true, and to tell him Betty had been at her house early that morning. She offered to come right over from the library.
Before Josephine arrived, Brian called to tell him they found Betty’s car parked in her own driveway. It was unlocked, and they found what they believed was Betty’s cellphone between the driver’s seat and console, as if it had slipped down out of sight. Either Betty hadn’t realized where it had fallen, or she chose to retrieve it later. While the car was not locked, her house was.
Ten minutes later, he greeted Josephine in his office and motioned for her to take a seat in a chair facing the desk. As she made her way to the chair, he noted she clutched a tissue in one hand and a purse in the other. Perched on the tip of her nose, she wore gold-rim glasses, secured to a beaded eyeglass strap.
He took a seat behind his desk, and when he looked over the desktop at her, it reminded him how much she looked like Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls. She wore her hair the same style and hair color, without a touch of gray. He hadn’t been the first one to notice the resemblance. It had been his son Eddy, who, when watching a Golden Girls rerun at his aunt Sissy’s house for the first time, pointed at the television and blurted, “That’s the librarian!”
Later, when the chief had picked his sons up at his sister’s house, she had told him what Eddy had said. They both laughed and, after considering the observation, wondered how they hadn’t noticed the resemblance before. Now he could no longer unsee the doppelgänger comparison.
Setting the silly observation aside, the chief focused on the more serious matter at hand. “Thank you for coming in.”
“I couldn’t believe it and had to call you. I thought, it can’t be true.” She sniffled and dabbed her nose with the tissue.
“You say she was with you this morning?”
Josephine nodded. “Yes. She came over to my house.”
“Why don’t you tell me everything you remember about this morning?”
Josephine gave a nod, let out a sigh, and sat back in the chair. “I don’t have a car, but I have a garage. When the library committee initially discussed the need to look for a storage facility to rent, I suggested my garage. I rented the space much lower than a storage unit. As I’m sure you’ve heard, I’m retiring in a few weeks, and while I’m going to continue renting them the space, I thought it best if the new head librarian inventoried what’s in storage. Betty came over this morning early to start the inventory.”
“That’s right, Betty was going to be the new head librarian,” the chief muttered.
Josephine nodded. “Yes. She was so excited.”
“Tell me everything that happened this morning.”
“Well, Betty arrived early. Before six. After she arrived, we had coffee together. And then I remembered there was a box I meant to bring over from my office in the library. It needed to go into storage, and I wanted it included in the inventory. Since Betty was busy, I offered to get it. She let me use her car. In fact, you can ask Darren Newsome about it.”
“Who?”
“He’s the current janitor, replaced Kenny. He’s only been with us for a couple of weeks. But he’s in Bend, visiting family. He’s supposed to be back Thursday. Anyway, he had left something at the library and was picking it up when I borrowed Betty’s car to pick up the box for storage. I think it was about six. But you might want to check with Darren on the time. Anyway, when I got back from the library, Betty told me she got a call. It was an emergency, and she needed to leave.”
“Did she say what kind of emergency? Or who called?”
“She just told me she would be back this afternoon if that was alright with me. I said of course.” Josephine sniffled and blew her nose.
“About an hour before they found her body, she was seen with a woman. They described the woman as white, tall, thin, with hair that was black on one side and white on the other. Do you have any idea who that might be?”
Josephine frowned. “No. I don’t. But that sounds a little like our new librarian. The one replacing Betty. But of course, I’ve never seen her in person, just during our video chats for the interview. And she’s never met Betty, and she’s not arriving until Monday. She lives in California.”
“Do you have any idea why Betty might have been over on Beach Drive?”
“Her best friend lives on Beach Drive. Becca Hammond. She works at the grocery store, and her husband, Dave, works for the city. Have you contacted Betty’s family yet?”
“I was hoping to get her family’s contact information from you. If you have it. I don’t want them to learn about this from someone on the street, and after your call to me today, it’s obvious the news is already out there.”
“Her family lives in Astoria, so I doubt they’re aware anything happened. But I have her contact information back at the library.”
“Are you aware of anything that might have been bothering Betty?”
“No. Not really. She seemed very excited about her promotion.”
“Did anyone have a problem with her?”
“Certainly not. Betty was a sweet girl. She got along with everyone. No one would want to hurt her. This has to be some random incident. I don’t understand what’s happening to the world. On the news, we’re always hearing about a stranger shooting up a bunch of innocent people. What is the world coming to?”