Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

Return to Sender by Val Davis

Husband and wife writing team Robert and Angie Irvine pair up here for a classical mystery. More often, they use their joint pseudonym, Val Davis, for thriller novels such as Track of the Scorpion and Flight of the Serpent. Both Robert and Angie, who each also write separately, made their fiction debuts in EQMM’s Department of First, in 1973 and 1992, respectively.

The pigeonhole was stuffed. Bunny eyed the pigeon, her private name for postal boxes, with disfavor. It was cram-med so full that there was hardly room for the “box full” notice that she painfully managed to slip between a copy of Arts and Antiques and a catalogue from The Sharper Image. The pigeon’s owner, Don Rogers, was a collector of almost anything and everything, from crystal chandeliers to real estate, and often neglected his box, to the inconvenience of postal workers like Bunny Booker, who would have to search out his excess mail when he came calling at his leisure.

She moved on to the next box and stopped. She ran a finger lovingly over the empty pigeonhole. It was her way of saying goodbye to an old friend. Reverently she sealed the pigeon. It would remain empty until a new resident applied for mail service in town.

Bunny sighed. In the nearly thirty years that she had worked for the post office in Carmel-by-the-Sea, each pigeonhole had become something like a friend. True, some she knew better than others. Some she knew not at all. But over the years she’d come to know hundreds of people, if not thousands. All because she diligently examined each piece of mail.

Because there were no street numbers in the town, the post office had more than seven thousand pigeonholes, each one representing a resident of Carmel and its environs, each protected by an ornate brass door, three inches by six, with a double-dial combination lock, as old as its old-fashioned look. Outsiders had boxes, too. Outsiders, by Bunny’s reckoning, were all those people who could prove some association with the coveted 93921 ZIP code, either by owning property or a place of business. They might claim the address, but they didn’t actually live in the one square mile that defined the town.

The sealed pigeon, number 7412, had belonged to the widowed Winnetta Belnap, whom Bunny had known since Sunset Grade School. Winnie, or Pooh, as Bunny had lovingly called her, had opened her pigeon door promptly at ten each morning, six days a week. Last week, when she’d missed two days in a row, Bunny went calling. When her knock at the front door went unanswered, Bunny headed for the police station and called on Chief Del Bennett, who at the sight of her got one of his long-suffering, spaniel looks.

“What is it this time, Elmira, another Peeping Tom?”

Del Bennet was the only person in town who still called her Elmira, her given name, which he had yelled every time he’d pulled her pigtails in grammar school. He’d been two grades behind her, but big for his age and something of a bully. Everyone else called her Bunny, since she started collecting stuffed bunnies as a teenager.

“I was right the last time, wasn’t I?”

He sighed, progressing from spaniel to hound eyes. “How did you sneak into my office without an appointment?”

“How long have you known me, Delbert?” she said, her tone rebuking. “You don’t think that young buck of a desk sergeant you’ve got out there could stop me.”

“Just get to the point.”

“It’s Winnetta Belnap,” Bunny said firmly. “She hasn’t picked up her mail and she didn’t answer when I knocked on her door not five minutes ago.”

The chief perked up. Winnetta Belnap, like Bunny Booker, was no spring chicken.

“I’ll take a look while you go home and get some rest.”

He said the same thing in the squad car, and again when they arrived at Winnie’s, and all the way to the front door. When he forced his way inside, he told her to say behind, but Bunny, deaf when it suited her purposes, stayed beside him step for step. They both saw Pooh hanging there, from one of the open beams in her Comstock cottage.

That had been five days ago. Today’s paper had run Pooh’s obituary. She was a grandmother many times over, survived by four daughters, all scattered across the country. No one of modest means who hadn’t lived in Carmel for decades could afford to live there now, since coastal real estate in California was more attractive than the 1849 gold rush. Cause of death was not mentioned. But then, suicide seldom was, that being the chief’s unofficial verdict, despite Bunny’s protestations.

“How did she climb up there?” Bunny had asked.

“See this chair?” The police chief pointed to a small, armless Victorian chair that lay overturned near the body. “She climbed up on that. Everybody knows you have to use a chair to hang yourself.”

“Delbert, I’ve sat in that chair more times than I care to think of, and it’s the lowest chair in the house. Winnie was a little bitty thing. There’s no way that she could reach the rafters on that.”

“Let’s see,” the chief said, righting the chair and standing on it. The chair promptly collapsed under his weight. “Dang it, Elmira, look what you went and made me do. Now you’ve gone and made me destroy evidence. It was suicide, I tell you. Case closed.”

No fool like an old fool, Bunny had thought. Delbert had never been the brightest bulb in the firmament, not even in kindergarten.

At work, Bunny clipped Pooh’s obit and slipped it into an envelope for safekeeping. Later, she’d add it to her ever-growing scrapbook of departed friends.

How many were left now? she mused during lunch at the Little Swiss Cafe, one of the few local establishments left in the tourist-driven town. Mentally, she ticked off her childhood friends. The count was down to the fingers on one hand. The same fingers that ached most of the time. The same ailment had plagued Pooh. So how in the name of police stupidity had an arthritic old lady managed to reach up to an eight-foot-high beam and anchor a rope around it while standing on that low Victorian bridal chair?

Leaving her lunch half eaten, Bunny hurried back to the post office. There, once her work was done, she hovered near Chief Bennett’s pigeonhole, 7277, waiting for him to make his daily pickup. The moment his pigeon door opened, she leaned close and blurted, “Winnie could never have reached that beam.”

“Dammit, Elmira, you startled me.”

“She was murdered,” Bunny persisted.

“Thanks to you, we’ll never know, will we? The only piece of evidence was destroyed.”

Bunny sighed. Delbert had always blamed others for his mistakes. What annoyed Bunny so much was that sometimes he got away with it.

“Besides, nothing was touched, nothing was taken. Nobody has a motive,” the police chief continued.

“Something has to be missing.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, but I sense it. Besides, at today’s prices, her house is worth a fortune.”

“Are you saying her children did it?”

“Did you hear me say that?” Perhaps some real-estate speculator, she thought, someone like Don Rogers.

“Face it, Bunny. It’s time you retired and stopped sticking your nose into other people’s business.”

Bunny bristled, since Del was only a few years younger than she. The truth was that she loved her job and couldn’t imagine ever retiring. She would have worked for nothing if need be, which would have suited Jeff Evans, the postmaster. In fact, her total absence would have suited him even better, but Bunny was an institution in Carmel. Mess with her and people would protest, form committees, circulate petitions, and make Jeff’s life miserable. She was untouchable, a sacred cow. To get rid of her would chip away at Carmel’s quaint, villagelike character. It would be the equivalent of adding ugly parking meters, neon lights, and glaring traffic signals, all no-no’s. Keep things neighborly in Carmel, that was the ticket. Leave well enough alone. She said so herself every time Jeff got uppity.

Bunny left work fuming. What was needed was old-fashioned diligence, not that Delbert was even aware of the word. She’d wait until dark. No one, if there were any full-time residents left in the neighborhood, would remark on her flashlight. There were no streetlights in the village, and its inhabitants habitually walked with flashlights at night in order to avoid breakng their necks.

Things actually did go bump in the night, Bunny realized as she tried to jimmy one of Winnie’s rear windows. Then it occurred to her that she was acting like a silly old fool. Pooh always left her back door open so neighbors could drop in for tea. True to form, Delbert had forgotten to check it.

Once inside, Bunny crept into the living room where Pooh’s body had hung. Her flashlight was only good for avoiding tree roots when walking, so she switched on the lights. Even if someone called the police, she knew all the officers by name. The worst that could happen was another scolding from the chief. Even a night in jail might prove interesting. After all, she was a member of the Ladies Club, and they sponsored a law-enforcement support group. Their annual tea was a highlight of the year, for both the ladies and the police benefit fund.

Bunny started with the desk. The papers strewn over the desktop looked like Chief Bennett had been there before her. Bunny sighed. As she looked around something tugged at her memory. Getting old was a curse, she thought, and studied the room intently.

You’re getting senile, she told herself. Nothing looked out of place. Everything was neat and tidy except the desk and Winnie’s prolific art collection.

Bunny quickly examined the rest of the cottage. The proliferation of pictures continued through every room. Pictures on easels, some just propped against furniture, others stacked against one another. Goodness, she thought, Pooh was even more of a collector than I am.

Like Bunny, Pooh had favored the local artists they’d both known personally. With Pooh gone, and Kitty Evans before her, only two of their all-girl gang remained. Since high school they’d called themselves the Gang of Four. Its members were Bunny, Pooh, Kitty Evans, and Muffy Moyle. They’d thought of themselves as budding writers and artists. But the closest they’d come to the creative life was falling in love with any number of the young, handsome painters who lived locally. Most were long gone and forgotten now.

Muffy once confessed to being in love with every last one of them. Bunny had loved only one. Billy Boy, as she thought of him secretly, but he’d been married. No doubt he’d realized how she felt, because he gave her one of his seascapes, along with a kiss, the day she’d visited his castle down the coast in the Carmel Highlands. That seascape was still her most treasured possession and hung in a place of honor over her mantel. Pooh and Muffy each had one of Billy Boy’s seascapes too, but they’d had to pay. Although, if memory served, Billy had discounted the price to the point where they were almost a gift.

Since the Gang of Four had collected when local art was a bargain, their walls were covered with paintings and sketches. Not a blank space in sight. Just like Bunny’s living room, or Kitty’s — God rest her — and Muffy’s. Bunny didn’t have a vacant wall even in her bathroom. Of course, she’d been saddled with a couple of her favorite nephew’s paintings, abstracts which she would have liked to have hidden away. But his unannounced visits, as infrequent as they were, made that impossible.

“Fool,” Bunny muttered. “You’re nothing but an old lady imagining things. Bumps in the night, for heaven’s sake.”

She took one last look. Soon, Pooh’s children would descend, squabble over the best pieces of furniture, send the rest off to Goodwill, and put the cottage on the market. Then it would be gobbled up by a contractor, torn down, developed into an oversized house on the tiny Carmel lot, and sold to outsiders, who’d use it as a multimillion-dollar weekender, neighbors to nobody. Of course, they would be shunned by the Old Guard, as Bunny thought of those who’d been born and raised locally, like herself and Muffy Moyle.

Bunny left the same way she’d come in, by the back door. Sergeant Herb Watson, second in command of Carmel’s police department, was waiting for her out front.

“We got a call that someone was inside,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

Bunny’s heart swelled. At least there were still some concerned neighbors in residence. She straightened her back and said, “Herbert, how long have I known you?”

Too long, he thought, and said, “Since middle school.”

“Since you were this high.” She held her hand at the three-year-old level.

He ground his teeth.

“She couldn’t have hanged herself,” she said. “You know that as well as I do.”

“I know what the chief tells me,” he said, hoping to deflect her condemning stare, which had been intimidating him for years.

“What about Kitty Evans?” Bunny went on. “I’ve been thinking on her this past month, ever since she died. In light of what happened to Winnie, I’m thinking Kitty’s death was suspicious too.”

“It was natural causes. A heart attack. Read the police report if you don’t believe me.”

“There was no autopsy?”

“You’ve been watching too much TV, Bunny. Now get in the car and I’ll drive you home.”

“As long as you obey the speed limit. I’ve seen how you drive when you’re in a hurry.”

The sergeant grimaced. When he got back to the station he collared the chief. “Next time,” the sergeant said, “you deal with Bunny. She scares the hell out of me.”

The chief grunted. “She’s got the mind of a criminal.”

“What does that mean?”

“To start with, she knows just about everybody in this town, and everybody’s business.”

“With that kind of knowledge she’s the one who could get away with murder.”

“Yeah, it makes you think, don’t it,” the chief said, mangling his grammar just to annoy Bunny, who wasn’t even there.

The next day Bunny caught Mattie Breen peering forlornly through her pigeonhole, number 6850.

“Sorry, dear,” Bunny said, “nothing but bills today.”

Mattie had been waiting months for a special letter. “Probably it will come certified,” Mattie had confided on a number of occasions. Her Nob Hill aunt up in San Francisco had died awhile back, promising Mattie an inheritance.

Bunny always nodded sympathetically.

“You’re a wonder,” Mattie said. “And I’m not the only one to think that. You’re everyone’s Bunny, that’s for sure.”

Bunny smiled. She’d been listening to people’s troubles for so long, they confided in her as if she were their confessor. Old-timers and shut-ins baked her cakes and cookies, which she shared with her post-office cohorts. To do otherwise wouldn’t have been right. Their confidences she kept as safely as if she really were a priest.

Twenty years ago Mattie had come to town as a young woman right out of library school. She’d been working at the library ever since. All that time she’d been renting, because an unmarried librarian without a husband’s second salary couldn’t afford to buy in Carmel. Worse, her salary hadn’t kept pace with inflation over the years. Beyond worse, there’d been cutbacks at the library and stingy raises for half a decade. The town council preferred to lavish money on the Chamber of Commerce in hopes of luring more tourists for fleecing.

All this had come in confidence, of course, with Bunny crossing her heart over tea at the Tuck Box. A few months back, Mattie had disclosed the worst. The cottage she was renting was soon to go on the market. Her option to buy, as good a deal as it was, required a hefty down payment, and that depended on her aunt’s legacy.

“I’ve marked your pigeonhole with your home number,” Bunny assured her. “I’ll call you the moment anything arrives.”

There were similar markers over dozens of pigeonholes, reminders of confidences given and promises made.

“Thank you,” Mattie had murmured.

Now Bunny thought she spotted tears in Mattie’s eyes, though it was hard to be certain through the tunnel-like pigeonholes. As the door was closing, Bunny called out, “Could you meet me at the parcel-pickup window?”

“Of course.”

Bunny knew this was Mattie’s day on the reference desk, so she asked if she would be kind enough to set aside any available news clippings on Kitty Evans’s passing.

“I’d like copies for my scrapbook,” Bunny clarified, although she already had clippings from the Pine Cone and the Herald. But she might have missed something.

Mattie fished a notebook from her bag and jotted down a reminder.

“You wouldn’t have access to any other kind of records, would you?” Bunny asked.

“Like what?”

“These days, what with the Internet, everybody’s life is an open book.”

Mattie shook her head ever so slightly, almost a reproof. “I’d ask what you’re up to, but you keep secrets like a Swiss banker.”

Bunny liked that. She liked it that people knew she’d keep their secrets. As for her own, she kept those to herself too, along with her secret fears.

One of them came true the following week. She became the sole surviving member of the Gang of Four when she found Muffy Moyle’s body in the bathtub. Like Pooh, she hadn’t picked up her mail in days.

“She’s been murdered,” she told the dispatcher when she called the police.

When he arrived, Chief Bennett’s verdict differed. “She just drowned,” he said, “and there was no one around to help.”

“Water was splashed all around the floor, there are places where it’s still damp. Go see for yourself.” Bunny pointed down the hall to the bathroom where the emergency personnel were removing the body.

“She probably felt faint or fell asleep. If any water was splashed, that was probably an automatic reaction.”

“Del, you never did have any imagination. You’ve always been a...” Bunny found no adequate description for her feelings of rage and frustration. It seemed to her that all her friends, her whole life, was slowly being stripped from her.

“If there was foul play,” the chief said, “you’re the one on the spot. If we checked for fingerprints, I’m willing to bet we’d find yours. So if you have something to confess, Elmira, now’s the time.”

But Bunny wasn’t listening. Unlike Pooh, Muffy had kept her collecting urges somewhat in control. Billy Boy’s seascape, which had held pride of place over the fireplace mantelpiece, was nowhere to be seen. A photograph of Muffy’s daughter had taken its place.

“Do you mind if I go through the house?” she asked.

“It’s better than you breaking in again, but I’m sticking to you like gum while you’re here.”

The spare bedroom was just big enough to hold a bed, a small chest of drawers, and a nightstand. The walls were hung with a hodgepodge of local artists.

“She never had much taste in art,” Bunny said, shaking her head at the questionable collection. “Good-looking artists were another matter. One crush after another, I remember. But then, we all did. There was one man especially.” Bunny sighed at the memory of Billy Boy kissing her hand when he presented her with her prized painting.

“Who was that?”

“It was too long ago to remember,” Bunny said, keeping the cherished image to herself. “My memory isn’t what it used to be,” she lied.

“That’ll be the day. Sharp as a razor and I’m usually the one doing the bleeding.”

Bunny opened the closet and checked inside. She did the same with every storage area, but all of Muffy’s paintings were on the wall, not hidden away.

Bunny made a note to herself to hide away Billy’s seascape as soon as she got home. After that, she’d break into Kitty’s cottage, and maybe Pooh’s again if necessary. She was about to ask the chief to accompany her, but then decided against it. If someone spotted her, she could always do with another ride home with Sergeant Watson.

At home, Bunny searched high and low but could find no suitable hiding place for Billy Boy’s seascape. Her cottage was too small, had open-beam ceilings, so there wasn’t even an attic. Her one and only closet was too obvious. Suddenly, Bunny smiled. Hide it in plain sight. That was the ticket.

That done, she went to the library, where Mattie Breen handed her an envelope with the news clippings Bunny had requested.

“You’re a dear,” Bunny said. “But right now I want you to show me how to use the Internet. The computers at the post office aren’t good for much beyond ZIP codes.”

Once Bunny got started, she was amazed at the prices Billy Ritschel commanded. Any one of the seascapes owned by the Gang of Four was worth killing for. Total the three of them, four with Bunny’s, and you’d have more than enough to buy a picturesque Carmel cottage, complete with single-wall construction, drafty every time the wind blew, old plumbing, and linoleum that hadn’t been made since the 1950s. All for a mere million or so dollars.

The Internet, she soon discovered, also listed home sales, but none recent enough to suit her purposes. She’d have to stalk her prey more directly.

When she got back to the post office, she informed Postmaster Evans that she was taking some personal time. His answering shrug said he knew better than to argue.

That settled, she perched on a stool in front of pigeon number 1653 and waited patiently. The “box full” notice that she’d inserted the day she sealed Pooh’s pigeon was still there. She hoped that meant that the miscreant would appear soon.

Bunny was in luck. Don Rogers opened his pigeon just before closing time. Bunny pulled his mail out of reach, forcing him to lean forward, eyeballing her through the narrow slot.

“Don,” she said, “it’s about time you got here.”

“I didn’t know I was late.”

“Come around to the pickup window.”

“If this is about my mail piling up, I’m a very busy man.”

“No,” Bunny replied. “It’s about real estate.”

An hour later, she called Chief Bennett at home, interrupting his dinner. “I know who did it,” Bunny told him.

“If you’re calling to confess, couldn’t it wait till morning?”

“Do you want my death on your conscience?” she said.

He sighed. “I’m listening.”

He sighed again when she stopped talking. “Okay, Elmira. But even if you’re right, there’s no proof.”

“We’ll arrange my murder. That’ll give you all the proof you need.”

“I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

Bunny smiled to herself. She loved collecting favors, even if she never cashed them in. “I’ll make the call as soon as it gets dark,” she said.

That evening she fixed herself a pot of strong coffee. Normally, Bunny drank warm milk in the evening, laced with sugar and vanilla, or a spoonful of brandy if she was feeling particularly adventuresome. But the last thing she wanted to do was to fall asleep when she was expecting a murderer to come calling.

The house creaked in the cold night, worse even than her old bones, but not enough to cover the sound of breaking glass at the back door. No doubt her death would be made to look like a robbery gone bad. One painting stolen and Bunny’s dead body left behind to tell the tale.

Bunny finished the last of her now cold coffee, shuddered at the taste, and folded her hands in her lap just as a flashlight beam caught her full in the face.

“There’s no need for melodrama,” Bunny said and pulled the chain on the old-fashioned floor lamp next to her chair. The faceted glass shade, quivering slightly from the pull, cast dancing slivers of light everywhere. Much to Bunny’s satisfaction, the light made the abstract painting over the fireplace look like a nervous nightmare.

Even then Mattie Breen’s eyes flashed with malice as she moved close, looming over Bunny. The librarian pointed a shaking finger at the painting over the mantel and hissed, “Where is it?”

“Where’s what?” Bunny asked innocently.

“Your seascape, the Ritschel. The one that’s been hanging there for years.”

Bunny spread her hands. “Tell me, dear, why is it so important?”

“You’re just like Winnie and Muffy. Too stubborn to save your own lives. Now tell me, where is it?”

“I’ve left it to the library in my will, didn’t you know that?”

“Since you’re not dead yet, where is it now?”

Bunny smiled. “Where you would never find it. You see, I knew you were coming.”

“The police don’t know about me, so how could you?”

“Box 1653.”

“Make sense, you old bat.”

“It belongs to a friend of mine,” Bunny went on, “a connoisseur of real estate. He told me you’ve already put a partial down payment on your cottage. How could that be, Mattie, since we both know your inheritance has yet to materialize? Or maybe you lied about that inheritance?”

“It’s real enough. Why would I lie?”

“Oh my dear girl, murderers always lie,” Bunny said.

“If that’s what you think of me I guess I’ll have to prove your point.”

Mattie picked up a pillow to press to Bunny’s face when Chief Bennett stepped out of the closet and grabbed the librarian from behind. Once he had her handcuffed, the chief eyed Bunny with renewed respect. “Put me out of my misery, Elmira, and tell me where you hid that damn painting.”

“I took it out of its frame and tucked it behind that god-awful painting of my nephew’s.”

“I’ve always said you have the mind of a criminal.”

The day Mattie was arraigned, a certified letter arrived for her from a law firm in San Francisco. Bunny, marveling at the impatience of young people, stamped it RETURN TO SENDER and hurried it on its way.

Copyright © 2009 Val Davis