Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 106, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 648 & 649, October 1995

The Flowerprint Murder by Janwillem van de Wetering

© 1995 by Janwillem van de Wetering

The start of a new series from Janwillem van de Wetering this month, featuring Deputy Sheriff Christof Champlain. Mr. van de Wetering plans to alternate stories about his spiritually enlightened recluse Jannie (see EQMM 2/95 and 5/95) with this new Champlain series, set in his own neck of the woods in Maine. The author settled in Maine in the late seventies and has developed a keen understanding of the place and its people.

Deputy Sheriff Champlain sat back on the deck he’d built off his trailer and watched the sunrise. The first of the chickadees began to flit between Champlain’s feeders, some set on posts, some hanging from nearby trees. The birds’ cheerful, simple little songs counterpointed the memory of cacophonies that drove Champlain from a comfortable bed to exposure beneath cold, fading stars. Gunfire had been in the dream, and the ground around him erupting from incoming grenades. There were the screams of platoon mates as they fell around him. And all the while medic Champlain walked calmly, upright, unscathed beneath his Red Cross helmet, to return safely while his buddies died. The dream was based on real, random survival. Champlain should not be alive now. The Viet Cong liked to aim at medics first.

Other birds joined the friendly chickadees. Purple finches, a small tribe of juncos, a pair of song sparrows chased by blue jays kept returning. The cries of the jays mixed with the smaller birds’ chirping created a not unpleasing medley that lulled the deputy into a doze that lasted a good two hours, then was shattered when his phone rang inside the trailer.

He got up from his hard cane couch, stretched, went inside. “Yeah?”

“Rise and shine, Champ.”

It was Sheriff Sipock. Champlain was supposed to be on early duty that spring day, to relieve Sipock, who would be off to breakfast in the kitchen adjoining his office.

“You up, Champ?”

“Aimlessly afloat in an empty universe,” Champlain said. “Sorry.” His eyes scanned the spotless interior of the trailer. Even his unmade bed, the sheets folded back with mathematical precision, looked neat. It was hard to reconcile his orderly bachelor lodgings with the recurring dream’s violent chaos. “Anything up?”

“You ain’t missed much so far,” said Sipock. “You think you might be coming now, Old Buddy? Not feeling bad again?”

“Dreams,” Champlain said. “But I’m up and about now.”

“Share an omelet?” the sheriff asked. “Like the one you cook? With spinach? Kiwis and cream to follow?”

“Kiwis?” Champlain held the phone at some distance.

“Don’t rightly know what kiwis might be,” Sipock admitted. He chuckled. “Live and learn. There was a New Yorker cartoon in Dentist Cary’s office showing a sign in a restaurant window that said: ‘Will not serve kiwis.’ A fruit of some sort?”

“Pippy and sour,” Champlain said. “Acquired taste. Join you in a minute. Betty isn’t home for the weekend?”

“Betty,” Sipock said. “Would that be some sort of woman?”

“On my way,” Champlain said. He was dressing as he talked. He and Sipock went back a few years now, helping to maintain harmony along the wild coast and within the wetlands of Woodcock County, Maine. Betty Sipock, the sheriffs wayward wife, no longer cared for “the desolation.” Betty would go off to work in her Bostonian sister’s Fusion Dance Studio and attend spiritual workshops where she met men who shared. Betty wasn’t home too often now.

Champlain knew Sipock’s tone of voice, and its subtle fluctuations. Listening to his superior’s grating, wheezy words, he reckoned something had happened, nothing serious though. Sheriff Sipock wouldn’t normally call his deputy if the latter was late.

“Nothing is up?” Champlain asked. “It’s too early, right? Too Sunday?”

“Just Preacher Pooter on the blower,” Sipock said. “Old buzzard has been doing his rounds, as always on Lordy days, waving the Holy Book, and Christina LaCroix won’t open the door of her cabin on Neck Road. Pooter has been hollering and kicking and whistling. No go. Mind checking with Christina on your way up? Pooter sounded kinda worried. Hard to get him off the phone. I would go, but Tom hasn’t showed yet.”

Tom was Woodcock County’s part-time dispatcher, part-time homesteader, not too punctual an official either.

“Old Miss LaCroix?” Champlain asked, putting on his gunbelt. “Isn’t she one of the believers? Why wouldn’t she let Preacher Pooter in?”

“Some believe opposite,” Sipock said. “Maybe Preach gets a little too pushy?”

Keith Jarrett’s Cologne Concert sounded from the cruiser’s tapeplayer as Champlain, driving south on Narberry Neck Road, followed the county’s spectacular shore. The deputy, lips pursed, head slightly to the side, enjoyed the music as he glanced at white breakers rolling along a purple granite ledge. He passed several small coves where winter ducks still dived for mussels before turning the cruiser into Christina LaCroix’s driveway. The driveway was marked with low walls of fieldstones, partly overgrown with dry silver moss. He parked behind the old lady’s rustbucket Oldsmobile. He smiled. He could imagine the indignant rage it would kindle in Pooter to be ignored by rightful prey. Champlain had been treated to Pooter’s visitations too, once while he was renovating his trailer, just after he bought it, when it still showed signs of psychopathic occupation. After fixing the outside, he’d tom out all partitions and was burning scrap when the white-bearded man with long stringy hair approached from the fire’s off-side. Pooter could pass for an Old Testament apparition, certainly that time. One vengeful prophet, framed by flames.

“Saw the fumes and knew it must be one of God’s lost lambs smoking,” Pooter hollered, holding up a large tattered Bible and shaking a poplar branch.

Champlain, from his days in New York’s Greenwich Village, had some experience in dealing with the savior fringe. He threw out his arms. “I’ve been waiting.” He pointed at glowing coals. “Step right up, step right UP.”

Pooter, shaken from his routine by Champlain dancing toward him, changed modes. Coastal cynicism overcame Puritan ideals. “Maryjane?” Pooter asked pleasantly. “Any good grass to spare, me lad?”

“The weed,” Champlain said, “no longer works for me.”

Pooter stuck his staff in the ground, skipped around the fire, and peered into Champlain’s face. “Ain’t you Pete Champlain’s boy?” He prodded the deputy’s chest. “Yes, I see the likeness. You must be what became of little Christof.” He shook his Bible in Champlain’s face. “Weren’t you the one who played with cutout dolls as a kid? Got your father all worried?” Pooter caressed his beard, shaking his head. “Sorry to hear what happened to the old ones.” Pooter scowled. “I dunno, me lad, even if ye’re both real old, even if ye’re both real sick, faith will prevail.” He dropped his voice. “A handgun, was it?”

Champlain shrugged.

Pooter preached then, after stepping behind flames again. “Let us purify ourselves, leave the Sodom of our minds.”

Champlain, using a long-stemmed spade, stirred the fire. He thought of Vietnamese Buddhist monks pouring gasoline on their heads, then burning while they sat, their legs locked in the lotus position.

Pooter prayed, then lifted his torn straw hat.

“Blessings, dear.” He smiled kindly. “You back for good? Had enough of city sin?”

“Yes,” Champlain said sincerely. There was some contact between them then, kept up through the years by wobbled eyebrows when their cars met on the road between Sorry and Rotworth. As Sheriff Sipock said: “No reason to be rude. We’re all mad anyway.”

As he walked to the cabin’s front door, Champlain looked to see if there was smoke coming out of Christina’s brick chimney. There wasn’t any, but on a nice spring morning like this the old lady might well have let the fire die. He knocked. While waiting, he admired forsythia bushes flanking the front door. The yellow flowers were bright and cheery. He knocked again, calling Christina’s name, identifying himself so she’d know he wasn’t the dreaded Pooter. “Sheriffs office. How are you doing, Miz LaCroix?”

The cabin just sat there. The deputy, neatly uniformed, boots and gunbelt creaking, his Stetson set at the prescribed police-school angle, walked around the building to where Christina was starting her vegetable garden for the season. Nothing to be alarmed about, he thought. Friends probably picked the old thing up for church, Humanitarian Chapel most likely. The ladies might be planning to have lunch afterward, at the Lighthouse Inn, looking across the channel toward Ropeshoe Island. Hope to see a finback whale cruise by. Drink decaf from pink porcelain cups. Eat blueberry pancakes. The Sunday outing.

Champlain wondered what Pooter could be upset about. Was this an instance of the prophet’s uncanny insight?

Looking across junipers growing along Christina’s property line, he noticed a small bright-green car sitting behind the house of Christina’s neighbor. The deputy recalled Mr. Bollinger was a live-alone too. He briefly visualized the image of Clarence Bollinger, a small, dainty man who owned the health food store in nearby Sorry. Champlain had met Bollinger at Sorry Post Office, where the store owner, talking about the deficit with the postmaster and fellow clients, claimed to be a buy-American man. Earlier on, when Champlain came back from Viet Nam in a bemedaled uniform, Clarence had stepped forward on Main Street and doffed his hat. “We’re proud of you, young man. I want you to know that.”

Must be lightening up a bit, thought Champlain. The little green car was a Subaru, a “tin roller skate,” as Bollinger had called Japanese imports. Champlain didn’t recall ever having seen Bollinger drive the compact. As far as he knew, Clarence drove a Dodge full-size pickup.

Champlain drove to work, after stopping at the Sorry General Store.

“Morning,” Sheriff Sipock said. He smiled at a paper bag filled with omelet ingredients that Champlain carried in. Sipock, firmly stuck to his swivel chair, rolled across to the coffee machine in the near corner of his kitchen. “Don’t strain yourself, Champ. I need the exercise. Java Mocha. Got it for you out of a catalogue. Kinda like it myself.”

Champlain chuckled. The sheriff was the county’s fat man. Sipock, locally known as Sixpack, managed his jurisdiction with less attention to law than to the remote area’s peculiar sense of harmony and justice. For revenue Sipock preferred to use the summer people. “Caught myself three Volvos and a Mercedes speeding this week, now you bag us a bunch of BMWs, Champ.” Winter was best spent sitting around the Franklin stove, sucking Cuban cigars donated by a Colombian skipper stuck on Hangman’s Rock while watching ten tons of imports float off into the Atlantic.

Sipock mostly cared for Betty’s goats, which Betty herself had long ago lost interest in. Sipock liked to milk the wily creatures. He sold the milk profitably to a Portland firm canning the product as part of an anti-allergy diet.

“I delegate crime, therefore I milk,” he would tell Number One Goat Margarita. Crime detection was the deputy’s realm. Crime, according to the sheriff, was city-inspired, best taken care of by experts. Champlain, after Viet Nam, had spent ten years in New York. “Besides,” Sipock told Margarita, “being usefully engaged helps the young feller handle those interesting dreams.

“Besides,” Sipock whispered into Margarita’s downy ear, “why work if you don’t have to?”

The sheriff now slid along on squeaky ball bearings and passed a steaming mug to Champlain. “You bring any frozen crew-sants?”

Champlain had brought oven-fresh biscuits.

“How crude,” Sipock said. “Here I’m trying to get educated. You talk to old lady LaCroix on the way?”

Champlain worked on the omelet. “Her car was there but she wasn’t. I figure she got picked up by her sewing circle. Church time, you know.”

Sipock interrupted his noisy swallowing, caused by watching the omelet rise. “Not holed up in her attic hiding from the hollering prophet?”

“I hollered too,” Champlain said. “Not a sign of Christina. Preacher Pooter being cantankerous again? Causing trouble?”

Sipock tried to look away from the stove where Champlain’s special mixture of vegetables and mushrooms simmered in a separate pot. “Maybe we ought to lean on Pooter a bit. Been driving that old pickup without a sticker for how long now? And his deer-chasing mutt without a tag? Growing maryjane behind his chapel?”

The phone rang. Champlain, having served the omelets, took the call. It was Clarence Bollinger wondering if the deputy sheriff was aware of any trouble at the LaCroix residence.

“Saw me, did you?” Champlain asked. “Christina didn’t come to the door. You have any cause to worry, sir?” He pressed the phone’s speaker button. Sipock, able to listen in now, grunted thanks.

Clarence Bollinger was, being a good neighbor, concerned about Christina not answering her door when he came over that morning after he saw the deputy leave. Bollinger explained that ever since former bank-teller Christina retired, he kept an eye on the old spinster. The day before, Saturday, on the phone, Christina mentioned not feeling too well. He had brought her some groceries. Her car was right there. He had phoned but she didn’t pick up.

“Church?” Champlain asked. “Someone picked her up?”

“Could be,” Bollinger said. “Yes, perhaps. There has been a lady calling on her lately, she said. Didn’t see the lady myself. Could be. I’ll see if she comes back.”

“Let us know if she doesn’t,” Champlain said. “Thank you for reporting this, sir.”

“Much afuss about nuffink,” Sipock said when the deputy broke the connection. Sheriff Sipock wasn’t worried enough not to eat his omelet. He persuaded Champlain to sit down and join him. “What are the mushrooms?”

“You like them?” Champlain said, his fork raised.

Sipock looked dubious.

“Grew them in the trailer,” Champlain said. “Dried them myself. I wanted to try them out on you. So they are good?”

Sipock shuddered.

Champlain laughed. “They’re okay. Shitaki. A staple in Japan. Japanese are fussy eaters.” He put mushrooms into his mouth, chewed, swallowed. “See?”

“Maybe,” Sipock said, “Christina had cabin fever.” He gestured as if warding off bad spirits. “What with the weather we been having? This morning it was nice for the first time in a week. Christina skipped church and went for a walk instead? On the beach? Walks sort of bent over, because of her bad backbone? She slipped off a boulder? You want to check that sometime, Champ?”

Champlain, half his omelet left and swallowed by Sipock the minute the cruiser’s engine started up, returned to Neck Road. He noticed crows flying up and circling near the Neck’s pebble beach. There was an eagle too, white tail and head clearly visible. “Seal,” Champlain thought. He had seen a few lately. Dying or dead seals attract crows and eagles. He drove for another minute, then U-turned abruptly, drove back. During the war scavenger birds had often led him to missing soldiers. Champlain wasn’t surprised now when he saw the grave, or what passed for a grave. The shallow hole might have been dug by hand, in a desperate hurry. Pebbles and small rocks were pushed across the body. Christina’s arms stuck out. Her hands seemed to be beckoning the crows that hopped and fluttered close by. One shoulder was already exposed by digging birds. The flowerprint pattern on the dress, white and red roses on a yellow background, was stained with dried blood.

Champlain walked back to the cruiser and raised Sipock. Sipock raised the state police. A detective helicoptered in within hours and immediately fenced off the area with metal rods and yellow tape. Later a photographer arrived, a medical young lady from the capital’s coroner’s office, more state police, the county hearse, three reporters who, with other curious folks, were kept at a distance by Sipock and Champlain until volunteer constables from Sorry and Rotworth came to replace the sheriffs.

Preacher Pooter’s beat-up white jeep, decorated with hand-painted black crosses, was spotted late that afternoon, almost in the next county, from the state-police helicopter, with Champlain pointing down. The chopper landed. “I’m doing Lordy work,” Pooter said. “You can’t bother me now.”

The state detective was polite. “Just some questions, Mr. Pooter, sir. You called this morning; we’re curious — the lady you called about is dead, you see, murdered.”

Pooter denied all knowledge of beating Christina about the head with her own baseball bat (signed by Ted Williams; Christina claimed the signature was real, but it was printed, of course) kept behind her door for the last thirty years. The bat, blood-spattered, was found in the house. The handle had been wiped clean.

“You weren’t in the house?”

“Never,” Pooter said.

Christina’s skull was broken in several places. The medical young lady thought the violence had been committed that very morning, early, daybreak maybe.

“Can we print your shoes?” the detective asked.

Pooter would not take off his shoes. He claimed an amendment. He became more and more upset.

“In that case, you’ll have to come with me,” the detective said gently.

“In that machine?” Pooter asked, aghast.

The old man was whisked off into the sky. Champlain drove the jeep back to Sorry.

Sipock was tending his goats when Champlain came back. The sheriff walked to the office. While coffee perked, Sipock theorized. “Got ourselves a killer?” He constructed a hypothesis while the deputy listened, making sure known facts fitted. “Look,” Sipock said. “We know Pooter preys on the innocents Sundays and can get mighty obstreperous when thwarted. State detective ascertained that Pooter’s shoeprints matched the prints left around victim’s house. Suspect’s guilty conscience made him nervous when you guys stopped him. Wouldn’t have his shoes printed. Wasn’t that suspicious? Fugitive was almost out of the county by the time officers tracked him down. Pooter is known for temper. Christina was wearing this newfangled non-Christian flowerprint dress. Pooter didn’t like that. You should have heard him holler.”

“Flowerprint dress?” Champlain asked. “You showed him the corpse just now?”

“That flowerprint dress made Pooter extraordinarily anxious,” Sipock said. “Called it a ‘sinful outfit.’ ”

Sipock acted out the possible murder scene. Here is Preacher Pooter being let in by his sister in the faith, Christina LaCroix, on Neck Road, a woman he has known all his life, whom he went through school with. Pooter means well at first. Christina does believe, but not too rightly yet. There need to be some improvements, and Pooter is qualified to administer same, but now what happens? Christina claims that her mealy-mouthed, watered-down, slippery excuse for true faith is essentially superior to Pooter’s fire and brimstone. Preacher Pooter is aghast. He grabs this flowerprinted sinner and yells there are neither eithers nor ors. Only Pooter’s brand is guaranteed. Christina loses her temper, tries to shove the spiritual bully to the door. The baseball bat happens to be around. She picks it up. Pooter wrestles the weapon away from her.

“Right?” Sipock stopped in front of his deputy. Champlain noticed that the sheriff was sweating, trembling, panting. “Right, Champ?” Sipock bellowed.

Champlain pushed out his lower lip and waved his right hand, palm up. Sipock refused to acknowledge the mimed objection. Sipock moved his bulk around Champlain’s chair, swinging the invisible murder weapon. “Bam bam BAM!”

The sheriff was panting. “Yes?”

“Nah,” Champlain said.

The sheriff, out of breath, fell into his swivel chair.

“That’s what the detective said.” Sipock pointed at Champlain’s seat. “He had Pooter right there, then let him go. No bail. Dropped Pooter off even, in a state cruiser. Promised you would return the jeep pronto.” Sipock’s heavy eyebrows curved lower. “You figure why the suspect was let go, Champ?”

“Pooter denies guilt,” Champlain said. “No reason not to believe him. The footprints around the house mean nothing. Pooter said he walked around the cabin, when he phoned you. Remember? Can’t hold a fellow citizen for not liking to take his shoes off.”

“If you say so,” Sipock said, shaking his head. “If you say so.”

Champlain took pity on the sweating fat man. “What else happened, Sip?”

“Not much.” Sipock shrugged. “More about that flowerprint dress. Hell and damnation. I thought Pooter would lose it. Man was frothing.”

“Pooter was never too stable,” Champlain said.

Sipock snorted. “Mad as a rabid coon.” He looked up. “You tired? Mind sniffing Pooter again? You got to return his jeep anyway. Give me a call when you’re done sniffing. Provided Tom is back from feeding his chickens, I’ll come pick you up.”

“Sniffing Pooter for what?” Champlain asked.

Sheriff Sipock looked unhappy. “It’s that flowerprint dress Christina wore that riles me. Riles Pooter too. There’s something there. I know it.”

Champlain found Pooter at the little chapel the preacher had built himself on the Neck Road. There was a sign: PREACHER POOTER’S NONDENOMINATIONAL CHURCH, and, in smaller letters, all Protestants welcome. The deputy found Pooter at the top of a ladder, prying a rotten board off the roof. The preacher threatened Champlain with his hammer. “Can’t have my shoes again. You git. You hear?”

“Just returning your jeep,” Champlain said. He pointed at the chapel’s lopsided spire. “Nice design, you’re truly artistic, Preach. Bless the Lord.”

Pooter, mollified, holstered his hammer before climbing down.

“Wonder what Christina was doing on the beach today?” Champlain asked. “Collecting treasures?”

Pooter laughed grimly. “Water scared Chrissie silly. Could never get her skinny dipping when we was kids.”

“What?” Champlain asked. “Naked, you mean? You and Christina? You suggested she take her clothes off?”

“Kids.” Pooter held a hand a foot off the ground to indicate his and Christina’s early sizes. “Before we knew no better.”

“And she wouldn’t go near water?”

“Hated the shore,” Pooter said. “Scared her. Only lived there because she got the house off her folks.” He scowled. “Must have dragged her there, Sheriff.”

“Who, Preach?”

“Mr. Devil.” Pooter almost reached for his hammer but seemed restrained by Champlain’s uniform and gunbelt. “She surrendered herself.” Pooter bent forward and whispered meaningfully, “Thou shalt not worship false gods, or in unbecoming attire.”

“Flowerprint dress?” Champlain asked.

“Flowerprint dress,” Pooter affirmed solemnly. “I told her what to do often enough. ‘Don’t cut your hair, go barefoot, wear long dark cloth. Repent. Bless your Sundays.’ ” He took a deep breath. “But NOOOOO!” Pooter’s eyes bulged as he stared at Champlain. “So then what happens?”

Champlain stepped back. “You told her that, eh?”

“Again and again. Right in her own home. I’d come calling. Doing Lordy work. Talking my teeth down to the gums. Reclaiming the lost ones.” The preacher glowered. “Doing my best, right until Mr. Devil claims her.”

“But you didn’t see her today?”

“Christina wasn’t home,” Pooter said. “Her car was. Strange, don’t you think?” Pooter suddenly seemed quite normal. He offered the deputy cashew nuts from a can that he fetched from its hiding place behind the pulpit. He called in Nehemiah, a scarred pitbull terrier that sat up and grinned after touching Champlain’s right hand respectfully with her paw. The two men discussed bird feeding and Pooter mentioned unusual birds that were coming round that spring. A cardinal. An oriole. Pooter and Champlain practiced birdcalls together.

“Amazing,” Sheriff Sipock said, after picking Champlain up. “You have a gift there, Champ. You should try it on my goats sometime. Fancy getting Pooter to talk normal to you.”

“Like Pooter has a second personality?” the young state detective asked after hearing Champlain’s report next day. The detective had spent Sunday night and Monday morning checking the crime site and the grave. He had invited sheriff and deputy for dinner in the inn where he was staying. He addressed Sipock. “You grew up with Pooter. What was he like at school? Any bullying, beating up, displays of sadism?”

Sipock, slicing an oversize steak, shook his head.

“Pooter wasn’t on the beach,” the detective said. “Unless he was wearing female shoes, high-heeled, half his size. We did find tracks of those. Just a few, where the body was dragged off the ledge into gravel, where it was buried later on.”

“Multiple personalities,” Sipock said, while waiting for more fries. “We all have them. Some better, some worse. Odd little things seem to trigger them off. You should meet Betty.” The sheriff grimaced. “My wife. One of her lesser personalities, that doesn’t get triggered off too often, is quite pleasant.”

“Flowerprint,” Champlain said, “triggers off Pooter’s bad side?”

Sheriff Sipock stopped eating. “Flowerprint, absolutely. Now there’s a trigger. I have been dreaming of blood-spattered flowerprinted dresses all night. Sexy. Forbidding.” Sipock was sweating, gesturing with his steak knife. “Frightening. Fascinating.”

“Don’t get it,” the detective said. “The phenomenon sure gets you guys going. Pooter.” He looked at the sheriff. “You too.” He looked at Champlain. “Something local maybe? It excites you too?”

Champlain shook his head. “What’s so sexy about flowerprint dresses? Seem rather stodgy to me. Frumpish even.”

“You tell us,” the detective asked Sipock. “You say you dreamed all night? Nightmares? Flowery visions?”

“By the way,” Sipock said. “You mentioned Christina had been robbed as well. Her pocketbook was empty?”

The state detective said the theft might not mean much. Killing and theft often go together. Once the victim is down, possessions are taken. He didn’t think theft was a special motivation here. “Flowerprint,” the detective said. “Mind answering my question, Sheriff? What’s with the flowerprint dress? Why does that make you and Pooter sweat and stammer?”

Sipock was sweating again. He said he didn’t know.

“Help me, Sheriff.”

“I’m trying, Detective.”

Champlain finally scored first. Sheriff and preacher, Champlain pointed out, were the same age. When the two were in puberty, times were sexually restricted. “Repressed,” the detective said. “Sexual hang-ups,” Champlain said. “We still have them here somewhat.”

Sipock laughed. “Somewhat a lot, especially with folks my age. You’re right there, Champ. You think there’s a sexual connotation? Flowerprint — hanky-panky?”

“Keep going,” the state detective said.

“Okay,” Sipock nodded. “I understand my dream better now. For me and Preacher Pooter the flowerprint fashion arrives second time around. The first time it hit harder.”

“Pubertal guilt feelings aroused by flowerprint dresses in males in their late fifties,” the detective said. “I’ll write a paper on that, should help out with my graduate studies. I thank you, Sheriff.”

“Details?” Champlain asked.

Sipock had grown up with several adult sisters, and youngish aunts. They wore flowerprint dresses when he became sexually conscious, fifty years ago. He desired those women, in the way they looked then.

“Did you want to wear flowerprint dresses yourself?” Champlain asked.

“Please,” Sipock said. “Isn’t desiring my sisters bad enough? That’s incestuous. That’s why I couldn’t come up with an immediate answer.” Sipock blushed.

“Seems to me we’re looking for a perverted perpetrator here,” the state detective said. “Someone male presumably, seeing that the corpse got carried quite some distance. Not Pooter, who wears size fourteen. A male with small feet who likes to dress up as a female and wear high-heeled shoes. Maybe likes to wear flowerprint dresses too. A transvestite who is homicidal when wearing a flowerprint dress, especially when his opponent, presumed opponent, wears another?”

“Switch of character,” Sipock said. “Like the postmaster here. He’s okay when he drives his mini-van, but he goes nuts when he rides his Harley.”

Champlain almost jumped. “Japanese compact versus a full-size, all-American pickup? Okay one way, not at all okay the other? Or the other way around?”

“Right,” the detective said. “You have a suspect now?”

“Let me do a little work here.” Champlain got up. “Thanks for a great dinner. See you at your office, Sheriff. I might come up with something. I’ll phone you here at the inn, Detective.”

Clarence Bollinger looked relieved when he saw Champlain on his porch. “Come in, Deputy, such doings! Poor Christina. That helicopter was certainly busy. All of you were, weren’t you?”

The two men sat in Bollinger’s living room, with a wide view of Bunker Bay; beautiful, Champlain thought — four brown sails of the first tourist schooner of the season under wispy sunset-tinted clouds. He was comfortable in a large overstuffed easy chair upholstered with clean linen. He liked Bollinger’s flower arrangements. He praised an enormous painting above the fireplace that showed a semi-nude woman on a couch. The woman could be forty. She was biting into an apple. There was a dog in the painting too, a large Labrador with its mouth open. Its long narrow pink tongue hung out. The woman’s large but firm breasts, exposed by a flowerprint dress (red and white roses on a yellow background) sliding off pink shoulders, had different sizes. The woman seemed happy, unaware she was having her portrait painted.

The dog had its paws on the woman’s lap and was pulling down her dress.

“Aunt Louisa and Christina the dog,” Clarence Bollinger said. “Those two raised me. In New York. I was born here in Rotworth but my parents died in an accident, so Aunt Louisa took me over. She died last month, in her late seventies. The attorney sent me the painting. It’s only been up a few weeks. You like it?”

Champlain tried to smile. He didn’t like the painting so much now. It seemed indecent to him, sadistic. Both woman and dog smirked. Christina? Same name as the dead neighbor?

Clarence Bollinger, questioned by the deputy, seemed genuinely hurt by neighbor Christina’s murder.

Was, Champlain asked, the little car outside Aunt Louisa’s?

Bollinger was all smiles. Very helpful. Yes, he had inherited Aunt Louisa’s car too, the green Subaru that he had just gotten Maine plates for, and Aunt’s clothes, yes, everything. The dog Christina was long dead, of course. Talking of Christina, would the deputy mind filling Bollinger in re Christina LaCroix’s murder?

So Christina was killed with a baseball bat. Awful. And her purse was emptied of money. Horrifying. A thief? Bollinger kept shaking his head, clasping and unclasping his hands. His eyes were wet.

The man must be working out, Champlain thought, remembering having seen weights in the corridor and a fitness machine. Bollinger might be small, but he was athletic. Close to sixty but in great shape. Close to sixty, same age as Pooter and Sheriff Sipock.

The deputy asked Clarence whether he, the caring, ever-aware neighbor, had noticed anything out of the ordinary lately? In Christina’s murder there seemed to have been a woman involved. “Know of any lady visitors, Clarence?”

Bollinger desperately studied Champlain’s face. “I guess you’ve seen plenty of this sort of thing, Deputy. Between Viet Nam and New York. Blood and gore. Was it police work you were doing in the Big Apple?”

Why not? Champlain thought. Reaching out, getting personal, might help. He told Clarence Bollinger how he, Champlain, was the lone survivor in a Viet Nam battle, just before coming back. Eighteen men down, the bullets somehow missed medic Christof Champlain. How, back in Sorry, his parents worried about his lack of interest in girls. How he became a handyman in New York. How, with pals, he restored and sold a building in Tribeca.

“Pals,” Bollinger said. He bit the nail off his index finger. “In Tribeca?”

“They died,” Champlain said. “Three down. The virus somehow missed me.”

“Back to Sorry again,” Bollinger said, studying his ripped fingernail. “I know where you live now. Didn’t you restore that awful trailer and put up all those feeders, on Bayview Road? Cleaned up your woods? It looks lovely now, like a park. I like your cedar hedges.”

“Really?” Champlain looked pleased. “You noticed?”

“The landscaping cheers me up when I drive by,” Bollinger said. “Your bird feeders look like little pagodas. Picked that up in Viet Nam?”

Bollinger walked Champlain to the cruiser. The full moon, luminously golden yellow, topped a line of tall evergreens. Aunt Louisa’s Subaru reflected the moon’s rays.

“Hardly use that toy,” Bollinger said. “Much prefer the Dodge. Still going strong after a hundred thousand.”

Champlain drove the cruiser to the sheriffs office. On the way Wynona Judd sang “LUVVV” from a tape. Love is possessive, the deputy thought, often abusive. Clarence Bollinger was possessed by his nude aunt. Growing up with domineering human and canine females. A dog called Christina rips a dress off a lopsided mother/lover figure. A small frail boy watches.

The deputy remembered how Bollinger bit off a fingernail at the mention of Tribeca. ‘TRIangle BElow CAnal Street.’ Not a good area. He remembered “Transvestite Square,” where spectacular prostitutes postured in yellow lamplight.

“You two gentlemen apprehend Suspect,” the detective said after Champlain reported. “You both know him. You’re in uniform. It will be better that way. I’ll just make him nervous.”

“At his house?” Sipock asked.

“Not necessarily.” The detective shook his head. He looked out of the window. “Full moon tonight, that will be a factor. Suspect won’t be able to sleep. You might find him outside. In drag. In the compact.”

Sipock and Champlain checked the grave location first. There were raccoons on the ledge, partying on moonlit rocks, yapping and snarling.

The lights were on in the Bollinger cottage and the Dodge pickup truck was parked in the driveway.

“He is home,” Sipock said.

“She is not,” Champlain said. “Left in the Subaru, but where to? Might be anywhere by now.” He waved at the radio. “Put out an APB?” Sipock didn’t think so. The cruiser nosed along slowly, finding the Subaru a mile farther along, on a turn-out, scenic, created for tourists.

Champlain switched off the cruiser’s engine. He and Sipock watched Bollinger toss dollar bills out of the compact’s window. “Getting rid of the loot taken off Christina LaCroix,” Sipock said. “Bollinger doesn’t need the money. Can’t remember why he took it. Wants us to arrest him. It’s like throwing out party invitations.”

The figure in the car became still. Champlain walked over. “Evening, dear. Like to come with us now?”

Bollinger, dressed in Aunt Louisa’s flowerprint dress, and heavily made-up, took a small pistol from his lap. His hand trembled as he pointed it at his forehead.

“Better give that to me, dear,” Champlain said.

The pistol pointed at Champlain’s head now. The deputy put out his hand. Bollinger sighed, then handed over the gun.

“Thank you, dear.” Champlain opened the Subaru’s door. He walked, with Bollinger daintily stepping on high-heeled shoes and leaning on his arm, back to the cruiser.

“Aunt Louisa trained Christina to pull off that dress,” Bollinger said in a high but natural-sounding voice, “and then she’d sic the dog on me.”

“How are you feeling?” Champlain asked.

“I have felt better,” Bollinger said. “I’m very tired.”

“You drive, Sheriff, please,” Champlain said. “I’ll sit in the back with our friend. Clarence is tired.”

Bollinger smiled when Sipock reversed the cruiser from the turn-out. His hands were clasped in his lap. His head nodded forward. As soon as the cruiser began to follow the curves of Neck Road, Clarence Bollinger slept deeply.