Indian Summer: An Edna Ferber Mystery by Ed Ifkovic

Author:Ed Ifkovic [Ifkovic, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ed Ifkovic
Published: 2020-04-04T11:00:00+00:00

Walking back to the Inn, the pathway now shadowy with failing light, we stopped, midway, the two of us, and stared through the creeping darkness at the Inn, Lupinski’s home, and the Wright house, all silhouetted against a charcoal-blue sky. Both of us knew this was the hour, more or less, of the murder. The houses now lay before us, Millicent’s silent and hulking, with a scant light emanating from a front room. Lupinski’s in total darkness—almost not there. In contrast, the Inn had lights on in the kitchen, in the front rooms, and in one of the upstairs rooms. Eerie almost, sinister, the houses lay under a dark opaque sky, with feathery pale blue clouds shielding every so often the orange harvest moon, hanging high in the sky like a disemboweled pumpkin.

“Well,” Stas said, “that was something else, Ferb.”

“Fascinating to watch a man pass through so many emotional states in so short a time—blistering anger to numbing fear.”

“Yep, that last revelation sort of tells me that he isn’t the murderer,” he added. “The look on his face, the fear . . .”

I interrupted. “Or,” I protested, “maybe something different. That panic when he realized he’d seen someone walking alongside Millicent’s yard might mean something entirely different.”

“And that is?”

“That he is, in fact, the murderer, and suddenly realized that there might be a witness out there who has yet to come forward. Someone passing by who saw him lingering by Millicent’s back door at the time Martha was killed.”

Stas shook his head. “Ferb, not bad. So we still have no answers except for one thing. Carlotta Small probably returned to the Inn by herself. If that was her in the window. Most likely. That she left you in town and headed back home. Which means she lied to me and she lied to you. And if she lied about that, I’d say there’s a possibility we might have to look at her as a murderer.”

I could barely distinguish his strong face in the darkness. But his words, coming at me now, stunned me. No! I thought, irrationally. No! Not possible! Not Carlotta Small, my friend. My God, we attended the opening of Marsden Jasoni’s The Rainbow Sisters just last spring. How we enjoyed that evening! The laughter, the chatter. The . . . No!

We resumed walking, but I stumbled in the darkness on a pebble. Instinctively, he reached out, his long arm steadying me. His muscular arm—I sensed the pull of toned farm-boy sinew and exacting grip—should have comforted me, but it had its opposite effect: in my mind there flashed the sudden and horrific image of Trooper Wolniak handcuffing a sobbing and guilty Carlotta Small.

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