Well-Offed in Vermont: A Pret’ Near Perfect Mystery Read online

  “Yup. First rain we’ve had in, what, two weeks?”

  “ ’Bout that.”

  “How long you figure he’s been down there?”

  “Well, I figure he’s been dead four, five, maybe six hours, but he didn’t die right away. Too much blood. The concrete well cover’s been lifted off and the pump’s been shut off, leaving just the surface groundwater.”

  “Weston was probably servicing it,” Mills interjected.

  “Yup. New owners claimed they had blood coming through the line, and there’s still a fair amount down there. If I had to guess—and it is a guess—I’d say he was there at least a couple hours before he died.”

  “So then he was shot, say, seven to nine hours ago?”

  “Yup. Sounds ’bout right,” Byron replied. “But again—”

  “You’ll know more when you can take a good look at him,” Mills completed the sentence. “I know, Lou. I know. This ain’t exactly our first rodeo.”

  “Sure as hell right about that, Charlie. Say, when are you gonna retire anyway?” Byron teased.

  “You first, Lou,” Mills volleyed before heading into the farm-

  house.

  Chapter

  3

  FULLY DRESSED, STELLA sat on the air mattress, her chin resting upon her hands, and watched as Nick poked the dying embers of the fireplace. “I can’t believe it. You and I have lived in the New York City area our entire lives. That’s over seventy years of urban living between the two of us, and not once in that time did we even come close to encountering a dead body. We’re in Vermont for less than a day—in a town where, supposedly, no one even locks their doors—and suddenly we have bloody water in the sink and a dead body in our well.”

  “I believe that’s what’s known as irony,” Nick theorized.

  Between the call from Shelburne and the discovery of the body in the well, Stella couldn’t help but wonder if someone or something wasn’t sending them a warning. “Is it irony or is it just a bad omen? I know you’ve been looking forward to this move, but what if this isn’t the right time to be moving? What if this isn’t the right house?” she asked as tears streamed down her face.

  Nick leaned the poker against the brick of the fireplace and sat down beside his wife. “Hey, come on, now. I admit that when we first found that guy’s body, I wondered if maybe this place wasn’t jinxed. But then I pulled myself together and realized that his death was just an accident. An unfortunate accident.”

  “An accident that took place the same day we moved in.”

  “The timing sucks, I know, but I’m sure this sort of thing has happened elsewhere before. Working on a well as old as ours must come with its fair share of risks. One false move and—”

  “But nothing has gone right today, Nick,” she sobbed.

  He slid an arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. “Come on, now, that’s not true. The move, the trip here, and the closing all went without a hitch. It even waited until we got here to rain. If anything, I’d say we’ve been pretty lucky.”

  “Lucky?”

  “Yeah. We’re alive, and we have each other. That’s more than the dead man and his family have right now.”

  Stella suddenly felt like a selfish fool. “You know, as much as I love the way you make me laugh, there’s something to be said for your more serious moments. Sometimes you really know how to put things in perspective.”

  “Thanks.” He hugged her and kissed the top of her head. “My only wish is that we knew about the body earlier.”

  “So we could have saved him?”

  “That, or we might have been able to shave a few bucks off the price of the house.”

  Stella freed herself from his embrace and punched him playfully in the arm. “Or—here’s a thought—we could have bought a house that didn’t come with a dead body?”

  “Is that a search option on those real-estate websites? ‘Corpses not included?’” he smirked.

  “It should be. It seems just as important as an eat-in kitchen or an en suite bathroom.”

  “At the moment, I’d say it’s more important.”

  Stella and Nick’s musings were interrupted by the appearance of a man in the living room doorway. Short and stocky, his reddish beard was flecked with white whiskers, and his eyes, although a cold blue in color, conveyed a gentle wisdom. Beneath his open raincoat, the buttons of his uniform strained slightly against his middle-aged paunch.

  “Sheriff Charles Mills, Windsor County Sheriff’s Office,” he introduced himself. “You’re Mr. and Mrs. Buckley?”

  “That’s right,” Nick confirmed as he rose to his feet. “I’m Nick, and this is my wife, Stella.”

  Mills shuffled through the forms on his clipboard. “Nick? Says here your first name’s Graham.”

  Be it her good-girl suburban upbringing or her love of the film My Cousin Vinny, there was something about being questioned by a small-town police officer that made Stella feel uneasy. Charm was her only defense. “Nick is his nickname. Get it? Nick name?” she laughed nervously.

  Mills failed to crack a smile.

  “Thanks, honey. I haven’t heard that one since sixth grade,” Nick quipped to his wife before answering the sheriff’s question. “The name Graham will get you beaten up pretty quick in a New Jersey schoolyard, so I started going by my middle name, Nicholas—Nick for short.”

  “That where you two are from? Jersey?”

  “No, Stella grew up on Long Island, and we lived in the city seven years before moving here.”

  Mills’s eyes slid to the air mattress and its snarl of mismatched blankets. “You got into town yesterday?”

  “No, today,” Stella stated flatly. “Just a few hours ago.”

  Mills glanced, in turn, at the air mattress, the champagne bottle, Nick, Stella, his wristwatch, and again at the air mattress. “So about four o’clock,” he suggested, the color rising slightly in his cheeks.

  “Yeah, around then,” Nick grinned.

  “And did you notice anything strange when you arrived?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Did you notice anything, honey?”

  “Hard to say, since I’m not sure what normal is around here. Oh! Not to say that you people aren’t normal—um, Vermonters, I mean”—Mills raised an eyebrow—“but, um, if you mean normal as in did the place look the same way it did the last time we saw it? Then yes. Yes, it was normal.”

  “The body in the well belongs to Allen Weston, owner of Weston Wells and Pumps.”

  “That’s the company that was supposed to install the new well pump,” Nick stated.

  “Then you knew Allen Weston?”

  “Never met the guy.”

  “Did you speak to him over the phone?”

  “We had been advised to have the old well filled in and drill a new one,” Stella jumped in. “But what with the closing and moving fees, we honestly couldn’t afford to do it. So the seller agreed to pay for a pump upgrade just so that we’d pass inspection. He’s the one who hired Weston—actually, since he lives out of state, he got the real-estate agent to handle everything on his behalf.”

  Mills looked around appreciatively. “That’s right. This is the old Colton place, isn’t it? How is good old Barry anyway?”

  “No idea,” Nick answered. “We didn’t meet him either.”

  “Huh? Well, I guess the lawyers take care of everything now, don’t they? Yup … last I heard of Barry, he was living in California, working at some highfalutin’ computer place. He still there?”

  “Our closing documents list him as living in Colorado,” Stella said.

  “Colorado. Is that right? Guess our mountains were too small for him … hmph.” Mills scratched the back of his head and tried to regain his train of thought. “So, you never met Allen Weston, but you knew that he was going to be here today.”

  “We knew someone from his company would be here, yes,” Nick corrected. “We didn’t know it would be Weston himself until yesterday.”

  �
�Oh?”

  “The pump was originally going to be replaced yesterday afternoon, but I got a call from the real-estate agent—”

  “What’s his name, by the way? This real-estate agent?” Mills interrupted.

  “Her name,” Stella corrected, “is Alice Broadman. She’s with Vermont Valley Real Estate.”

  “Go ahead,” Mills instructed Nick, with a nod of the head.

  “Anyway, Alice called me yesterday to say that the appointment had been moved to this morning, and that due to the last-minute cancellation and the urgency of the situation—we were closing this afternoon—Mr. Weston would be installing the pump himself.”

  “Did she tell you why the appointment had been changed?”

  “No. She just assured me that the new pump would be installed and tested before the end of closing.”

  “Tested,” Mills pondered aloud. “Weston would have needed to run the taps inside in order to test the new pump. Was Alice Broadman going to meet him here to let him in?”

  “No. She was busy with the closing and some errands I had asked her to run for me. She asked if it was okay for her to stop by here first thing in the morning, unlock the door for Weston, and then have him lock up when he was finished with the work.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  Nick shrugged. “The house was empty. I didn’t see a problem with it.”

  “Was the house locked when you got here?”

  “Ye—” Nick started to answer but then recalled his visit with Maggie Lawson. “Wait—the front door was, but the back door wasn’t.”

  “It wasn’t?” Stella asked from her spot by the fire.

  “No. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but it was definitely unlocked.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. I clearly remember opening the door to talk to Maggie, and all I did was turn the knob.”

  “Maggie?” Mills questioned. “Maggie Lawson?”

  “Yeah, she lives up on the main road. She’s our nearest neighbor. She came by to introduce herself.”

  “Yep, that’s Crazy Maggie. When I first got the call I thought it was trouble at her place. Didn’t think it was here.”

  “Crazy Maggie?” Stella echoed.

  “Yup, that’s what we call her. She’s a strange ’un.”

  “Strange how?”

  “Just plain ol’ strange—no other way to say it. She’s pretty harmless, though, so long as you don’t get her riled up.”

  “What happens when you rile her up?”

  “Well, she pret’ near came at Mrs. Colton with a shotgun once. And Ray Johnson says she poisoned his dog.”

  “Poison? She gave us cupcakes. I licked the icing off my fingers when I found out I couldn’t wash my hands!”

  “Idn’t give much thought to that. If Maggie’s mad at you, she’ll let you know about it, and she sure as heck wouldn’t be bringing you cupcakes.”

  “That’s comforting,” Stella said sarcastically as she stood up and moved beside her husband.

  “So the back door being left open,” Nick returned to the business at hand. “Why is that important?”

  “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 bloody tap water and their subsequent actions.

  “I thought an animal had gotten into the well,” Nick explained. “I’ve seen raccoons climb into chimneys and storm drains to escape predators, so I figured a wounded raccoon 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 bitch.” 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.