Written into the Grave

“No wonder.” The doctor looked even more grim. “Archibald Goodridge was an extremely unlikable type. The way he did business.” He shook his head. “You might not know too much about it, Cash, as you’ve been away from town, but that man was a predator. He used people. He’s even guilty of …” He fell silent.

Cash looked him over. “Yes?”

“Nothing. I shouldn’t judge someone who’s now dead.” The doc stepped away. “Let the autopsy fill you in on all the details.”

“Well, the autopsy won’t tell me what he was supposedly guilty of,” Cash said to Vicky as the doc hurried off. “I wish people wouldn’t drop hints, then retreat.”

“I guess he spoke half in shock, then realized he might say the wrong thing. Once it’s a murder investigation, you have to be careful.”

“Once it’s a murder investigation,” Cash repeated with a grimace. “Again, Vicky, again. I can’t believe it.”

“Who is this Archibald Goodridge anyway?” Vicky asked. “You might as well tell me. It’ll be all over town soon. I met Ms. Templeton on the beach and she was warning everybody who walked there with their dogs that something had happened at the cliffs and it could be a gruesome sight. Once somebody starts to call around about it, the town will be buzzing with rumors.”

Cash shrugged. “I hardly know Archibald Goodridge. He’s an investment banker who has a second house here.”

Vicky frowned. “I never met him, but I did meet his wife Gunhild. She makes lovely sculptures. In fact, I was thinking of getting Mom one for the garden, for her birthday.”

Cash seemed to perk up. “You know Goodridge’s wife? You’ve been to her place?’

Vicky made a dismissive gesture. “Only once, with Marge, to ask Gunhild Goodridge if she wanted to donate a sculpture for our auction. For the old lighthouse, the renovations?”

Cash waved it off and said in an eager tone, “The occasion isn’t important. You know her, that counts. You’re coming with me to give her the bad news.”

Vicky was stunned by the suggestion. “What? Why? I hardly know her. You’re in an official capacity. I can’t just tag along.”

Cash looked her over with a hitched brow. “You’re always tagging along, never caring for my so-called official capacity. Now you can do me a favor and help me solve a very sensitive issue. I have to tell that woman that her husband’s dead, will never come home again. Not just fallen down the cliffs by accident, but murdered. How do you think she’ll take it?”

“Well …” Vicky considered it, going back over her brief encounter with the woman. “She struck me as a very composed, rational person.”

“Nonsense, she’s an artist so she’s bound to go all hysterical on me. She might even faint. I have no idea how to handle such a thing. You’ve got to help me.”

“What about the dogs? I can hardly take them along to Gunhild Goodridge.”

“My deputy can take them back to your mother’s when he’s done here.”

Vicky sighed. She wasn’t keen on her mother hearing she was en route with Cash for an investigation. Claire had never liked her sleuthing and pressed her several times to stay away from anything potentially dangerous.

But Cash had merely asked her to help him convey the news of Goodridge’s death to his widow. There wasn’t any danger in that.

Of course Vicky didn’t like being the bearer of bad news, but she did know Gunhild a little and could try to soften the blow. Cash wasn’t known for his subtle touch with people and he had obviously already formed an opinion of Gunhild as prone to hysterics, which would make him even more awkward around her.

Besides, Vicky hadn’t told Cash yet about the odd bit in the newspaper this morning. The striking similarities between Trevor Jenkins’ contribution to Seaside Secrets and the murder here at the cliffs.

Cash needed to know that before he met the newly minted widow.

Just in case.

So after Cash had instructed the deputy what to do on the scene and to deliver Mr. Pug and Coco safely to Claire’s cottage, Vicky got into the police car with Cash, and they set out for the home of the Goodridges.

Chapter Three (#ulink_53442db8-84c0-50f6-b7de-da7940f34ce8)

As they were driving, Vicky asked, “Did you read the Glen Cove Gazette this morning?”

Cash shook his head. “Didn’t have the time. Besides, those newspaper delivery boys take a different route every day and half the time they don’t even get to my house before I leave for work. What about it? Shocking headline?”

“No, it wasn’t on the front page.” Vicky waited a moment. “Did you know Marge’s writing group has a serial in the paper? All participants deliver an installment following their own creative ideas for the story.”

“I never read fiction,” Cash said with his eyes on the road.

Vicky sighed. “Well, sometimes fiction can take on a rather ominous real-life dimension. I happened to read today’s installment in the Seaside Secrets serial before I started out on my morning walk with the dogs. I was at Mom’s and grabbed her paper there and read the serial’s installment to her. It was a story from first-person point of view about someone going out to the cliffs in the fog to wait for someone. For a jogger.”

Cash’s expression had been neutral, even a bit bored, until Vicky mentioned the latter. He glanced at her. “A jogger?”

“Yes. The I in the story is waiting until he sees the jogger and then goes to him. The jogger hears the sound of a footfall on a bit of loose stone and turns around. The point-of-view character wants to see shock and confusion in the face of his … victim I might as well call it. For the story then related how the perpetrator takes a gun out of his pocket and shoots the victim. Two shots. Two bullets in the chest. And the jogger in the story is dressed in a shirt with yellow stripes. Your deputy happened to mention to me that the victim was dressed in such a shirt.”

Cash nodded. “But I don’t get any of this. How can this story be in the newspaper when the accident at the cliffs wasn’t even known yet?”

Vicky exhaled. “That’s the whole point. I read the story, and half of Glen Cove probably did, when the murder had just happened at the cliffs in the same manner as described in the story. What the writer described matched the killing of Archibald Goodridge.”

“So …” Cash glanced at her again. “What you’re saying is that our killer wrote up a story to be put in the paper to advertise his murder while he was committing it?”

Put like that, it did sound totally unbelievable.

Vicky shrugged. “All I’m saying is that the story is a pretty accurate description of what actually happened. Whatever it means is up to you to discover.”

Cash whistled. “So if I figure out who sent this story to the paper I might have my killer?”

Vicky pursed her lips. “It’s not hard. The name was over it. I just told you it’s part of a serial from the local writing group. Today’s installment was written by Trevor Jenkins.”

Cash let it sink in a moment. “So I can go and arrest Trevor Jenkins because he admitted to all of Glen Cove in the local paper that he’s the murderer of Archibald Goodridge?”

Vicky took a deep breath. “It seems so. I mean, I assume that Trevor Jenkins delivered the story to the paper, or the paper would have suspected it wasn’t his. It’s quite a morbid little piece if you’re sensitive to it, so they must have double-checked.”

“Are you sure about that? Danning has these summer aides, students and all, who help him with stuff. Maybe one of them simply put the item in place, not even checking what it was or who wrote it.”

Vicky shrugged. “That’ll be easy enough to find out.” She waved ahead. “We might hit the offices of the Glen Cove Gazette first, before we see Mrs. Goodridge.”

“No, no, no.” Cash shook his head. “You aren’t getting away from this unpleasant chore, Vicky. I need your help with this, and you’ll give it to me. After that we can decide what to do.”

“But what are you going to tell Gunhild? That you suspect Trevor Jenkins of killing her husband while you don’t even know a thing for sure?”

“Of course not. I’ll tell her that he’s dead. Period. I’m not telling anything about the investigation, about what we know or whom we suspect. And neither are you.”

“I’m not saying anything.” Vicky lifted two hands in a gesture to ward off his suggestion. “You asked me to step in, and I’m only doing this as a favor to a friend. It’ll be awkward enough as she really doesn’t know me well.”

Cash steered the car down a long lane that led to a villa. To the left was a dark shed with blossoming roses in front. Further into the neat garden sat a construction of a conical slated roof on six pillars. The wind could breathe freely through it, and rain and sleet had changed the pillars’ original white color into a smudged green. In it was a giant sculpture of a running horse. A woman stood at it, a tool in her right hand. She circled the sculpture as if looking for the right spot to apply some finishing touches.

“That’s her.” Cash parked the car and rubbed his hands. He was clearly nervous about this, and Vicky gave his arm a reassuring pat. “We’ll manage together. Come on.”