Addressed to Kill

  RETURN TO SENDER . . .

  I got ready for bed, turned on the television in my bedroom, and caught the late-night local news. I listened intently as a well-groomed young woman stood in front of an oversize map of North Ashcot and gave her report.

  “A series of home invasions turned deadly today in North Ashcot when an instructor at the community college was found shot to death in his home. Apparently, Dr. Dennis Somerville”—the background shifted to include an image of Dennis in a jacket and tie, undoubtedly a staff photo—“came home to find a burglary in progress.”

  Finally, another detail. Dennis was shot. No surprise that reporters had their ways of getting questions answered when, ahem, best friends of the chief couldn’t.

  The somber voice continued. “Police say that the forty-seven-year-old physics professor surprised the burglars and . . .”

  I turned the set off. How do you know? I asked it, and waited for sleep.

  Prime Crime Titles by Jean Flowers

  DEATH TAKES PRIORITY

  CANCELLED BY MURDER

  ADDRESSED TO KILL

  BERKLEY PRIME CRIME

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2017 by Camille Minichino

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark and BERKLEY PRIME CRIME and the B colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698185197

  First Edition: August 2017

  Cover art by Teresa Fasolino

  Cover design by George Long

  Interior map by Richard P. Rufer

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For my cousin and best friend,

  Jean Florentino Stokowski (1931–2015)

  CONTENTS

  RETURN TO SENDER...

  PRIME CRIME TITLES BY JEAN FLOWERS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MAP

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  POST OFFICE STORIES

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks as always to my critique partners: Nannette Rundle Carroll, Margaret Hamilton, Jonnie Jacobs, Rita Lakin, Margaret Lucke, and Sue Stephenson. They are ideally knowledgeable, thorough, and supportive.

  Special thanks to Linda Plyler, retired postmaster with a thirty-year career in the postal service. I received the full benefit of her professional experience as a training and development specialist in a large city and as a postmaster in a one-woman office in a small town. Linda is also an award-winning quilter whose “zip code quilt” received national recognition and media coverage.

  Thanks also to the extraordinary Inspector Chris Lux for continued advice on police procedure, and to the many other writers and friends who offered critiques, information, brainstorming, and inspiration; in particular: Gail and David Abbate, Sara Bly, Mary Donovan, Ann Parker, and Karen and Mark Streich.

  A special word of thanks to writer and musician Betty Moffett of Grinnell, Iowa, for her generous assistance with the music of the Ashcots! Any wrong note is my fault entirely.

  My deepest gratitude goes to my husband, Dick Rufer. I can’t imagine working without his support. He’s my dedicated Webmaster (www.minichino.com), layout specialist, and on-call IT department.

  Thanks to Bethany Blair and Jen Monroe for their expert attention, and to the copy editors, artists, and staff at Berkley Prime Crime for all their work on my behalf.

  Finally, my gratitude to my go-to friend and editor, Michelle Vega, who puts it all together. Michelle has been a bright light in my life, personally supportive as well as superb at seeing the whole picture without missing the tiniest detail. Thanks, Michelle!

  1

  Winter weather is hard on flags and the poles that display them. It had taken me a while to bring my predecessor around to this reality and convince him that the North Ashcot Post Office needed to upgrade its image and its equipment. Finally, on this freezing February morning, I was able to hoist a strong new double-ply polyester Old Glory to the top of a pole with a smooth, wire-centered rope and the latest in pulley assemblies.

  For the past few months, discussions on this topic between old Ben Gentry and me had been frequent, and of the same format.

  “The American flag is not equipment, like computers or a piece of machinery, Cassie,” Ben would say, his lanky form making itself comfortable at my desk. “It doesn’t need updating.”

  “Yes, it does,” I’d respond. “The pole has cables and a rotating top that are old and worn, and the banner itself is made of a flimsy fabric that has been abused for years by New England weather. It all needs to be kept in working order.”

  “It’s an unchanging symbol of identity and national pride,” Ben would counter, in a glowing non sequitur. “And it reminds people that we’re here to serve, no matter what winds of change are blowing around us.”

  He might as well have lifted his chin, held his hand to his heart, and sung the national anthem. Maybe he’d been humming it to himself and I’d missed it.

  In the end, I’d appealed to his sense of patriotism and invoked the name of John Paul Jones, Revolutionary War hero. Jones was famous for his alleged cry of “Surrender? I have not yet begun to fight,” and for many firsts involving our flag. He’s said to have hoisted our first national flag, the first time it was ever flown, on board the first ship of the Continental Navy. That was a lot of firsts, and the way to Ben’s heart. “What would John Paul Jones do?” had worked to bring Ben around to a new flag, if for no other reason than I’d shown some appreciation for history.

  Each time this and other issues of postal management came up, I was able to hold my tongue and refrain from reminding Ben that he’d retired, that the nameplate on the counter read CASSIE MILLER, POSTMASTER, NORTH ASHCOT MA POST OFFICE, and that I had no obligation to listen to him.

  But Ben was also a friend and the first to step up when I needed help or a temporary replacement in what was ostensibly a one-woman postal service to more than three thousand citizens in the beautiful, woodsy Berkshires of Massachusetts. I had no doubt that I’d be calling on him soon, as we were approaching the busy time of Valentine’s Day, second only to Christmas in the volu
me of mail that passed through our small Colonial building. Even Mother’s Day took a backseat to Cupid’s arrow.

  One more breath of twenty-degree air, and I cast a last upward glance at our new flag, my gaze reaching the top, higher even than the arrow on our weather vane, and hurried out of the cold to enter the post office building through its side door. I was greeted by the sounds of music coming from the community room, which ran the length of the east side of the building, one thin wall away from me and my place of business. A group of local musicians, loosely organized, had been bumped from their usual rehearsal place in the school auditorium as the crumbling North Ashcot Elementary underwent much-needed repairs.

  After some negotiation, the Ashcots, as they were known, had won access to the community room for an hour or so in the morning, before I opened the doors to post office customers, and for a couple of hours in the evening, as needed, after the post office closed. The reason for the stepped-up rehearsal schedule was the upcoming Valentine’s Day dinner dance at the senior center that served both South and North Ashcot, located a few blocks away from my post office, on Fifth Street.

  This morning, I heard the soft notes of a folk tune dominated by the guitars and an instrument that reminded me of a flute. The latter was actually a tin whistle, according to Quinn Martindale, whom I sometimes called my boyfriend, depending on who was listening. I’d gotten to know the players through Quinn, our local antiques dealer when he wasn’t strumming his own dobro (more than a guitar, he claimed) with the group. After normal retail hours, which was paperwork time for me, I was likely to hear the Ashcots’ louder, more upbeat strains.

  I checked my watch and saw that I had enough time for a morning Skype session with my best long-distance friend, Linda Daniels, who still managed a human resources program at Boston’s main postal facility. In the days when we worked together, people often mistook us for sisters—the two tallest women in the building, five-nine and marathon fit, distinguishable only by our hairstyles: hers short, blond, and neat; mine long, dark, and too curly to ever label neat. Linda and I had met in college and traveled the same career path until mine brought me back to the town where I’d grown up.

  Because I’m a slow learner, I thought I could share my Stars and Stripes excitement with Linda.

  “Why would you wait for Ben’s permission for a new flag setup in the first place?” she asked. “You’ve been the official postmaster out there in the boonies for nearly two years.” She was off by six months and spoke the words as if it was about time I moved back to the city, where we could once again share our morning lattes and scones in person.

  I chose to ignore her “boonies” characterization—Linda felt deprived when she couldn’t get to New York for a weekend of shows, shunning even Boston’s considerable theater scene. Reminding her that North Ashcot was closer to New York than Boston was a waste of time. She’d strike back with something like “Albany doesn’t count.”

  The longer I stuck it out in North Ashcot, the less bad-mouthing I suffered from her, but this morning for some reason Linda was not happy and I bore the brunt of her displeasure. As usual, she was dressed in a power suit and I felt like an adolescent in my regulation blue-striped shirt and small scarf. She sat with her back to her window, the better to remind me of her great view of Boston’s financial district.

  I could never make it clear to Linda how small towns worked, how the chain of command and way of life were different from the protocols in the state capital. But I tried once more this morning to explain that as postmaster for more than twenty years, Ben deserved a certain degree of respect. “He’s from an era when things were supposed to last forever,” I said. “Including flags, along with clothes and shoes.”

  Linda broke down and smiled. “I guess he wouldn’t be familiar with the built-in obsolescence of televisions and cell phones?”

  Linda was the poster girl for state-of-the-art electronics. For years, I’d been the beneficiary of her obsessive need to upgrade. My latest acquisition was a new tablet and stylus that I was still getting used to.

  “Ben is suspicious of my tablet,” I said, “just as he was when I bought a microwave. He’s afraid the electrical pulses are going to mess up our postage meters.”

  Linda laughed, as I hoped she would so I could take advantage of a light moment. “Something wrong today, Linda?” I was ready for something as serious as a breakup or as frivolous as missing a sale at her favorite shoe store.

  “Just a sec,” she said, leaving her computer. I heard the familiar sound of a door closing. She came back to the camera, breathing heavily, as if worn out by the trek to the doorway. “I guess you could call it a job crisis, since I hate to call it midlife before I’m even thirty-six years old. I may have hit the career ceiling here and I don’t know what’s next.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know. Wow. I guess you thought I was here for life, happily ever after.”

  “I did. Was it something in particular that brought this on, or—”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I see how things are going so well with you. You have no complaints—you’ve even won old Ben over—and here I am, dreading coming in to work every morning to an in-box full of same old, same old.” Linda shuffled papers on her desk and held them up, one at a time, with a summary statement. “Health benefits review. Changes to the handbook. ADA implementation. EEO compliance. A, B, C, D . . . The whole alphabet needs reworking.”

  I gulped. “I had no idea, Linda. And I’m so sorry. But in case you think it’s all sweetness and light here, the only reason I don’t tell you all my problems is to keep you from nagging me about returning to Boston.”

  “Do I do that?”

  “Yes, and I’m not that confident. I’m afraid I’ll give in. I’m not as settled here as I might make it seem.”

  “Wow,” she said, and we laughed at the symmetry.

  With all our defenses down, we made the most of the few minutes before my retail day began, airing our problems, offering quick advice, promising to deal with everything in more depth soon.

  Our litanies of dissatisfaction played out to background music from the Ashcots in the room next door. I recognized the voices of Mercedes Davis and Dennis Somerville singing about a chain gang, if I heard correctly, with heavy guitar accompaniment in the background. I’d heard the musicians often when they played at the coffeehouse and at special events and especially loved their original compositions. Which reminded me. There was a special event on Saturday.

  “Why don’t you come here for the weekend?” I said to Linda.

  She groaned. “You’re inviting me to a senior dinner dance on Valentine’s Day? Are you really trying to depress me?”

  “It’s not a senior dance. It’s for everyone, just in the senior center, which is our largest venue.”

  “Is there a sign outside that says ‘Senior Center’?” she asked.

  I laughed but didn’t acknowledge her point. “Quinn will be playing for the first part of the dance,” I said. “The guitar people are taking turns so no one is tied up for the whole evening. So you and I will have some time alone. Unless you have a hot date back there? Someone you’re keeping from me?”

  She chuckled, a wry sound. “Hardly. I’m between guys, as you know. My timing is always impeccable.” Linda looked up to where I knew the clock hung on her wall. “More later. I’m so lucky. I have a committee meeting now.” She put on a clearly false smile and we signed off.

  I felt sorry for Linda’s plight, and regretted my own lack of gratitude for things that were going well for me. I had two close friends in Quinn and the chief of police, of all people, and on most days I enjoyed my job. But the call hadn’t put me in the mood for a glass-half-full moment.

  My flag-waving cheerfulness had dissipated even before my retail day started.

  2

  I realized the music had stopped and a few of the musicians were filing past
my front doors on the way to their cars. I waved to Joyce Blake and Dennis Somerville, both in their forties, math and physics professors, respectively, who ignored my greeting, walking with angry faces angled toward each other, their mouths going simultaneously. I wondered if they were arguing about black holes or something equally well beyond the layman’s reach. More likely their syllabi, according to Quinn, who was privy to some of their squabbling, and who was among the missing this morning.

  Dennis must have arrived early for rehearsal, since he’d captured the best available parking spot, curbside. A big man, Dennis had no trouble maneuvering his bass guitar, stowing it in the trunk of his car. To my surprise, he walked toward my doors, perhaps to apologize for not acknowledging me. LOL, I thought, in the parlance of the day.

  Mercedes Davis and Shirley Peterson came within view. The women were, respectively, a history professor and a retired administrator from the same nearby community college where Joyce and Dennis taught. The two women lugged their guitar cases in silence and gave me cheerless nods. The youngest member of the ensemble, Brooke Jeffries, a financial officer in South Ashcot, whizzed by, head down, her penny whistle sticking out from her jacket pocket. Arthur Chaplin, next in view, carried his mandolin case over his shoulder, in the manner of kids and their backpacks. He headed into the post office, sporting as dour a look as I’d ever seen on a performer.

  Not even the musicians were joyful today.

  I was only five minutes from admitting the regular morning crowd to the lobby and, ultimately, to my counter. Or should I say, the onslaught was upon me? It was never a good sign for the week ahead when I was worn out before I opened the doors.

  * * *

  I finished preparations and did my best to welcome a long line of customers, many stomping their feet as if to shake off nonexistent snow. Or to blame me for the freezing weather.