Whirligigs
Montgomery Seaforth was a man who had spent his life going along with the crowd, always doing what his peers did, not necessarily what he wanted to do himself. In high school, he joined the football team, not because he liked the sport but because his friends did. After graduation, he went to college and, like his buddies, he entered the emerging computer industry. Although he was no Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, he did well for himself. He was a multimillionaire by thirty and a billionaire by thirty-five.
Then, after more than half a century of following a leader like a lemming, he suddenly went against the grain. With the encouragement of Danielle, his second wife—all his friends had divorced their spouses and gotten trophy wives, so he followed suit—he sold his company and retired. However, the much younger Mrs. Seaforth had imagined they would spend their leisure time traveling the world. Instead, Montgomery purchased a nineteenth-century farmhouse in Vermont, the previous owner of which, a furnituremaker, had converted the barn into a woodshop.
"Vermont?" Danielle cried in horror when she learned what her husband had done. "Whatever made you do something so stupid?"
"Would you rather we move to Florida like all the other senior citizens?"
"Good God, no! I'm not a senior citizen."
"Well, I am. I spent the last thirty-five years of my life building up my company, and now that I'm officially retired, I intend to enjoy myself."
"Which is why we ought to travel. Think of how much fun we can have in Paris or on a tropical island."
Montgomery shook his head. For the first time in his life, he was not going to be swayed by other people's desires and opinions.
"I've found a house I like, and I plan on staying there."
"Give me one good reason why you would want to live in an area miles away from civilization," Danielle asked, resorting to exaggeration in her frustration.
"Honestly? Because this hi-tech world is moving too fast for me. I want to take a step back and go at a slower pace. I no longer want to live in a world where everything I do is dependent upon a cell phone or some other smart device."
"And exactly what is it you plan on doing in Vermont? Are you going to milk cows or plant vegetables?"
"I thought I'd make use of that woodshop."
"What do you know about making furniture?"
"Nothing. But perhaps I can learn. It might be fun to work with my hands for a change. Maybe you should try it sometime. Once we've moved into our new house, you can take up knitting or quilting."
Danielle Seaforth, who relied on paid, live-in staff to do everything from making the beds to cooking the meals, blanched at her husband's suggestion.
"Me? Knit? You can't be serious!"
Montgomery laughed at the mental image he had of his wife sitting in a rocking chair and knitting a sweater.
"I suppose not," he teased. "You're more the crocheting type."
"No. I'm the buy-it-already-made type. I was never one for arts and crafts, I'm afraid."
All his joking aside, as she supervised the unpacking of their belongings and told the men from the moving company where to place the furniture, her husband felt a sense of dread. What would she do in Vermont? Sure, she could handle a long weekend of antique shopping in the autumn or a skiing trip in the winter, but to live there year-round?
"I'll bet I get cabin fever in less than a month," she confided to her hair stylist on her last visit to the beauty salon before leaving New York.
"Give it a chance," the stylist advised. "You might like it."
"I doubt it. In my opinion, if Dante were to add a tenth circle of hell in his Inferno, it would most likely be Vermont."
* * *
The first thing Montgomery did when he walked into his woodshop was to take an inventory of the equipment. The power tools included a compound miter saw, circular saw, table saw, band saw, drill press, router and several others he could not identify. Covering an entire wall was a pegboard with a large assortment of hand tools: saws, hammers, wrenches, screwdrivers, pliers and chisels. On the opposite wall, there was a massive storage unit with more than two hundred small drawers that held nails, screws, washers, nuts, bolts and drill bits. There was also a selection of paint brushes, sandpapers and spools of wire.
I can build an entire house with what I've got here, he thought with childlike delight. I suppose I can find instructions on how to use the power tools online, maybe a video on YouTube. I'll also need to purchase some plans and patterns, but first I need to decide what I want to make.
He did not want to tackle anything as large as a piece of furniture, not as his first DIY endeavor. After searching the Internet for easy woodworking projects, he made a shortlist of possibilities: a three-legged stool, a birdhouse, a birdfeeder, a cutting board and a curio shelf. He then went to Amazon, his favorite one-stop shop, and purchased several how-to manuals, including Woodworking for Dummies. When the books arrived, he sat in his recliner in front of the bay window and skimmed through the pages of instructions.
Danielle, who, out of sheer boredom, purchased a laptop to keep up with her New York friends on social media, looked over at her husband with envy. It did not seem fair that he was content and happy while she was miserable.
"Why don't you build a chicken coop? We can always use the eggs," she suggested sarcastically.
"Oh? Are you thinking of learning how to cook? What a nice surprise!" Montgomery countered, no slouch himself when it came to the art of charientism.
Unable to think of a biting comeback, Danielle returned her attention to Facebook, and her husband continued turning pages, looking for a project to undertake. He stopped on a page illustrating a simple mantel clock.
That shouldn't be too difficult, and I'm sure Amazon sells the movements.
He turned five more pages and abruptly changed his mind about the clock when he saw an assortment of whirligig patterns.
"Aren't these cute!" he exclaimed.
"Aren't what cute?" Danielle asked when she was done commenting on a friend's post.
"These whirligigs."
"What on earth is a whirligig?"
"They're jointed wooden figures that are connected to a propeller, similar to a pinwheel. When the wind blows, the figures move."
"And what do you do with these whirlybirds?"
"Whirligigs," he corrected her. "You mount them on a post in a garden or on a fence in your yard."
"Seems like a complete waste of time, if you ask me."
"I'm retired," he laughed. "I've got plenty of time to waste."
"Amen to that," Danielle said under her breath and continued typing on her laptop.
They're all so nice. I don't know which one to buy.
Since money was no object to him, he ordered several patterns, including a golfer swinging a club, a lumberjack sawing wood, a woman churning butter and a man sitting in a rocking chair. The following day, he drove to Home Depot in Rutland and purchased several sheets of pressure-treated plywood, dowels, wood glue and paints.
Now, all he had to do was wait for the plans to arrive.
* * *
For the next two weeks, Montgomery spent long days in the woodshop, sawing, hammering, gluing, sanding and finally painting. Once his initial foray into the art of woodworking was over, he wanted to show off the completed whirligig, so he invited his wife into what had become his private domain, his sanctuary.
"How do you like it?" he asked proudly.
Danielle briefly watched the wooden fisherman reel in a fish as her husband rotated the propeller with his finger.
"And that's what you want to do with your life?" she asked, clearly not impressed with his efforts.
"Why not? I had fun making this."
"At least one of us isn't going stir-crazy."
Briefly, while he was bursting with pride at having made something with his own two hands, the former tech company CEO took pity on his wife.
"There must be something that interests you, something you can do that will give you a sense of fulfillment. I know you don't care for needlework, but why not try your hand at writing poetry, painting or photography?"
Danielle could not imagine herself standing in front of an easel with a brush and palette, trying to paint a covered bridge or a steepled church surrounded by autumn foliage. The very idea made her shudder.
"Don't worry about me," she said defiantly. "I'll get by—somehow."
"I'm sure you will," Montgomery replied, his compassion quickly evaporating, replaced by contempt. "You always do."
Why are we still together? he wondered as he watched his wife walk back to the house. We don't love each other anymore. In all honesty, I doubt Danielle ever loved me. She married me for my money.
Truth be told, he never loved her either. The young, beautiful, aspiring fashion model had been no more than a symbol of his status, much like his collection of expensive cars, private plane, house in the Hamptons and penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park. Their marriage was the product of herd mentality, a simple matter of his doing what his peers did.
Montgomery's eyes went to the whirligig, and he smiled.
For the first time in my entire life, I did something without being influenced by other people. You may be nothing but a simple wooden lawn ornament, but to me, you're my personal declaration of independence.
Meanwhile, as Danielle stared at the living room walls, she felt the level of her desperation rising.
"Poetry!" she cried, her voice echoing in the empty room. "Who does he think I am? Sylvia Plath? Maybe I ought to take a page from her book and stick my head in the oven. Little good it would do me, though. The appliances in this house run on electricity, not gas. Besides, I'm not the suicidal type."
A vain, self-absorbed, opportunistic woman at heart, she found homicide more to her liking.
That's it! she thought, her mood suddenly brightening. Montgomery has repeatedly told me to find something to occupy my time. What better way than to plan the perfect murder?
* * *
In the six months after moving to Vermont, Montgomery Seaforth made more than a dozen whirligigs. Once spring arrived and the ground thawed, he purchased metal posts at the Rutland Home Depot on which to display his handiwork. The wooden figures now dotted the front yard. When the wind kicked up, you could hear the sounds of their movements inside the house. To drown out the annoying noise, Danielle put on earbuds and listened to music.
At least she seems content now, Montgomery thought as he briefly watched his wife curled up on the sofa with the iPad he bought her for Christmas.
He had no idea what she found so fascinating online—and, frankly, he did not care. Maybe she was still keeping in touch with old friends on Facebook. Perhaps she was watching cat videos on YouTube (although his wife had never been much of an animal lover). It was conceivable she was engaged in a long-distance Internet romance with another man. Oddly enough, that possibility did not bother him. On the contrary, he hoped that was the case.
Maybe she'll leave me for him. That's one way to get rid of her. God knows she'll never walk away from my money for any other reason.
True, there was nothing to stop him from divorcing her. Although there was no proof that she had ever been unfaithful to him, no doubt a good lawyer would find suitable grounds to free him from what had become an intolerable marriage. Yet he never pursued this course of action. In some perverse way, he thought he deserved the unhappy union. Hadn't he divorced his first wife, a good woman who had truly loved him? He had broken her heart, and for what? A piece of eye candy he could show off to his friends and business associates.
And now I'm stuck with her! It serves me right.
Danielle paid no attention to her husband as he passed by her on the way out the door. She was too engrossed in reading about common fruits whose pits and seeds could be poisonous when consumed.
"Death by peach pit," she laughed once her husband was out of earshot. "Why didn't I ever think of that?"
For the past few months, while her husband was busy turning their front lawn into a poor man's Disneyland of woodchopping, butter-churning, chair-rocking, seesawing and cow-milking wooden people, she had been researching ways to rid herself of him. She wanted no hint of blame to be attached to her, however, so she needed a foolproof plan. After all, she did not want to exchange a figurative prison for an actual one.
There were drugs that would do the job nicely if she had access to them. But she couldn't very well go to Amazon and order succinylcholine. The weapon that was to dispense Montgomery to that great woodshop in the sky must be one that was readily available.
"Maybe poison isn't the way to go. What if I were to push him down the stairs?"
Unfortunately, such a method was not reliable. He might not die if she did. Hell, he might not even get injured. Some people fall down the stairs, get up and walk away without so much as a single broken bone or contusion. She had briefly considered drowning him in the bathtub. It would be hard to prove such a death was a homicide and not an accident. However, despite being so much younger than her husband, she lacked the physical strength to keep his head under the water. If she failed, she would face possible imprisonment for attempted murder.
"Perhaps I can hire someone to do the job for me."
Where would she look for a hitman, though? Take out an ad on Craigslist? Post a job opening on Indeed, ZipRecruiter or Monster?
Danielle sighed. Murder was not nearly as easy as it appeared to be on television and in the movies.
"But I'll keep at it," she promised herself as she plugged her iPad into the electric socket to be charged. "Eventually, I'll come up with a good plan."
* * *
Throughout the summer, Montgomery added to his growing cache of whirligigs. His "family" now included a cowboy riding a bucking bronco, a woman baking a pie, a young boy saluting the flag and an assortment of propeller-less birds, ducks and geese whose wings whirled about in the wind.
The one problem with his being so prolific in his chosen hobby was that it had become increasingly more difficult to find new patterns. He already bought all that were available at Amazon, Lowe's and Home Depot, and what he found on eBay were those same books and plans sold by the other retailers.
I'm a man of above-average intelligence, he thought. I ought to be able to come up with my own original ideas.
The most difficult part of creating his own designs was drawing the image since he was not artistically inclined. Then he got the idea of using a child's coloring book as a guideline. His first attempt was a jolly Santa Claus who, when the propeller turned, reached over to give a candy cane to an elf. It was simple enough to trace the outline of Santa and the elf onto the wood, cutting the arm with the candy cane out separately and attaching them with the mechanical mechanism. Once the piece was assembled and painted, the whirligig looked and worked as well as the ones he made from the purchased patterns.
Given the number of coloring books available for both children and adults, the possibilities for future projects are practically limitless.
Eager to design another whirligig, Montgomery rose early the next morning and drove to Burlington, where he shopped at Michael's craft store on Williston Road, Barnes & Noble on Dorset Street and Dollar Tree on Shelburne Road. Lastly, he stopped at a Walmart on his way home. He was roughly five miles from his house when it began to rain. It was pouring when he pulled into his driveway, so he quickly ran with the plastic bags, which contained more than three dozen coloring books, directly into his woodshop. After laying a Peanuts Gang book on his drafting table, he put the rest on a shelf. Then he sat down on the high stool and thumbed through the pages.
Several good ideas came to him, and he decided to do a whirligig of each of Charles Schulz's iconic cartoon characters: Charlie Brown putting an ornament on his tiny Christmas tree, Lucy snatching the football from the ground, Schroeder playing his piano, Linus waving a "Welcome Great Pumpkin" sign and Sally writing her Christmas list. His first attempt would be of Snoopy decorating his doghouse.
Although the afternoon was waning and it was almost time for dinner, Montgomery placed a piece of plywood on his workbench and, using a sheet of carbon transfer paper, copied the image of Snoopy, a separate one of the paw holding a Christmas star and, lastly, the doghouse. He then used his handheld jigsaw to cut the figures out. He was nearly finished when he saw a flash of lightning in the skylight above him. Moments later, the power went out and his saw stopped working. He waited several minutes for it to resume. Then, realizing it might be hours before the electric company corrected the problem, he ran through the rain to his house.
Danielle was in the living room, sitting beside a propane lantern.
"Where were you all day?" she asked.
"I went to Burlington to do some shopping. Why? Did you want to go with me?"
"What on earth could I possibly want to buy in Burlington?"
Montgomery did not reply. He was hungry and wet and in no mood to get into a verbal sparring match with his wife. Once out of his soaked clothes, he went to the kitchen where he made a roast beef sandwich, without bothering to ask Danielle if she wanted to eat.
This is what our marriage has evolved into, he mused as he sat alone at the kitchen table. A cold war with no hope of détente.
While her husband ate his sandwich, Danielle stared into the flame of the Coleman lantern. Her life in Vermont was unbearable! If she did not find a way to get rid of him soon, she might truly go insane.
"Why don't I just walk out the door and never come back?" she asked herself.
The answer was obvious. According to the prenuptial agreement she had signed, she would get only a small settlement if she left her husband. On the other hand, if their separation was mutually agreed upon, she would get a full one-half of his assets.
"Half isn't enough to make up for the unhappiness I've had to endure. I want it all! I deserve it all!"
There was another flash of lightning, followed by a deafening clap of thunder.
"If only a bolt of lightning could strike Montgomery where he sits," she mumbled broodingly.
Just the thought of her husband being fried like a death row inmate in Old Sparky brought a smile to her face. It was ironic that at the same moment the power came back on in the house, a figurative lightbulb turned on in Danielle's head.
Electrocution! she mused. Of course! Police probably would not find it suspicious when a man who works with power tools all day gets electrocuted. And who knows what condition the wires of those tools are in? They came with the house. Montgomery didn't purchase them new.
Before the storm finally died down, she had formulated a tentative plan. Believing the end of her misery was in sight, her mood improved to the point that she made friendly overtures to her husband.
"Good night, sweetheart," she called when she heard him climb the stairs to his bedroom.
"Good night," he replied, surprised by and wary of her sudden shift in temperament.
She must want something, he decided. And if she's willing to be nice to me, it's probably expensive.
* * *
Patience. Some people claim it is a virtue. The dictionary defines it as "the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble or suffering without getting angry or upset." It was a quality Danielle Seaforth never had, but one she reluctantly acquired for the sole purpose of carrying out her plan to kill her husband.
"You can't rush murder," she repeatedly warned herself. "One small slip can make the difference between success and failure. And failure could mean going to prison."
Fictional detectives often cite three key factors in a homicide: motive, means and opportunity. The motive was already implanted in her mind: she wanted out of her marriage without giving up the financial advantages it provided. Although she had a general idea concerning the means of her crime—she would electrocute Montgomery with one of his power tools—she had to know exactly which one to use.
Hoping to choose the most appropriate weapon, she made a great pretense of being curious about his handiwork. Flattered by her sudden interest, he obliged her by inviting her into his woodshop and showing her how he traced a pattern onto a sheet of plywood and then cut it out with his DeWalt corded jigsaw.
"For intricate designs, I use that saw over there," he explained, pointing to the Excalibur scroll saw. "But most of the time I prefer this handheld jigsaw because it's portable, and it's great for making plunge cuts."
"What are those?"
"See this space here between Schroeder's foot and his piano? You have to plunge the blade into that area to cut it out. It's a lot like carving the features of a jack-o-lantern."
Having gotten the information she wanted, Danielle was then eager to leave the woodshop. She used the flying sawdust as an excuse.
"What a mess you're making!" she cried and returned to the house with an unaccustomed smile on her face.
Motive and means were taken care of; now all she needed was the opportunity. Regrettably, Montgomery spent most of his waking hours in the woodshop. He only left it to eat his meals in the house or to go to Home Depot for wood, paint and other supplies. Because of the uncertainty of the weather in winter, he tended to buy what he needed in larger quantities, making trips to Rutland less frequent. Whereas he normally went every week during the rest of the year, he was lucky to get there twice a month in the winter season.
On one of those rare occasions when she saw him drive away in his Subaru, Danielle donned her coat and ran out to the woodshop. She knew her husband would be back in roughly ninety minutes, so she had to move quickly. Once inside, she went straight to the jigsaw. Holding the power cord firmly in both hands, she repeatedly rubbed it on the edge of the workbench. Despite the soreness of her arm muscles, she kept at it for more than an hour.
"Damn it! I barely scuffed the surface. Maybe I ought to use sandpaper."
Would a forensics team examine the cord and detect minute particles of abrasives? Possibly. It was better to be safe than sorry, she reminded herself.
She continued her efforts for another ten minutes before putting the cord down, turning off the lights and returning to the house. Five minutes later, Montgomery's Forester pulled into the driveway.
* * *
March came in like the proverbial lion, adding seven inches of fresh snow to the five inches that remained on the ground from the previous snowfall.
"Why anyone in their right mind would want to live in this godforsaken place is beyond me!" Danielle cried as she watched the propellers of her husband's many whirligigs furiously spinning in the snowstorm.
The patience she had miraculously acquired when she hatched her plan to kill her husband was diminishing since he had not gone to Rutland in almost four weeks. On her last visit to the woodshop, she got a glimpse of copper wire through the PVC-covered cord. She was fairly certain one more hour of rubbing would be enough to fully expose it.
"Surely, he's running out of something by now. Maybe once the roads and driveway are plowed, he'll go to Home Depot. I've waited this long; I can wait a few days longer."
Danielle's spirits sank even lower when a delivery truck pulled into the driveway the following day, and the driver unloaded a supply of plywood—not the two-by-four sheets her husband normally bought and put in the back of his Subaru but large four-by-eight ones.
"Why's he buying such big pieces of wood when he's making small lawn ornaments?" she wondered.
There could only be one answer. Montgomery was finally tired of making whirligigs and had decided to move on to bigger, more practical DIY projects.
"Too bad you're not going to live to finish what you start."
Once the lumber was taken into the woodshop, the delivery truck left. Danielle was relieved. That meant her husband would still have to go to Home Depot soon for other supplies. She bided her time and waited. And waited. And waited. It was nearly two weeks before she saw the Subaru back down the driveway.
"Thank god!" she cried, putting on her coat and boots. "I thought he'd never leave."
Intent on finishing what she had started months earlier, she paid no attention to her husband's most recent project, which was in the corner of the woodshop, covered by a large blue tarp. There were far more important things on her mind.
"Maybe when I go to bed tonight, I'll be a widow!"
Forty-five minutes later, the job was done. The copper was shining through the black insulating material like a gleaming gold nugget in a pile of rubble. When she returned to the house, she made her final preparations. In a plain, brown shopping bag at the far end of her closet were a pair of chest-high fisherman's waders and shoulder-length rubber gloves. To avoid a paper trail, she had purchased the waders with cash at Dick's Sporting Goods back in September and bought the gloves at a flea market in October. Properly dressed, she took a plastic cup from the kitchen and filled it with snow from the backyard, rather than water from the tap. (Again, she feared those clever forensic people might be able to tell the difference.)
"Now, all I have to do is wait for Montgomery to return and listen for the sound of the saw."
Her heartbeat quickened when she heard the crunch of snow beneath the Subaru's tires. Moments later, she watched her husband carrying a gallon of primer and several bags with the Home Depot logo into the woodshop. She tiptoed down the stairs and opened the door a crack, straining to hear the hum of the electric power tool.
"This is it!" she cried with anticipation when she heard the jigsaw being turned on.
Danielle sprinted across the yard, threw open the door and crossed the room to the workbench.
"What are you ...?"
Ignoring his question, she startled him by suddenly picking up the slack of the saw's cord, placing the exposed copper wire on the back of his hand and spilling the cup of melted snow on them both. Seeing her husband's muscles contort was not a pretty sight, and the smell of burning flesh was sickening. However, she was determined to stay the course until the job was done. Thankfully, she did not have long to wait. Ventricular fibrillation brought about sudden cardiac arrest.
"It's over!" she triumphantly exclaimed.
She moved his boots from beside the door to beneath the workbench, making it appear as though the puddle on the floor was caused by melted snow from the Wellingtons. Then she returned to the house, obliterating her footprints as she made her way to the back door. After removing the waders and gloves, she put them in a Hefty bag and stuffed them in the trash can.
"The garbage men are due to come tomorrow, and I doubt the police are going to show up at my door with a search warrant before then—if ever."
All that was left for her to do was wait.
"Around seven o'clock, I'll go out to the woodshop, where supposedly I'll be mortified to find my husband's body, and I'll call 911."
She was confident of her success. Even if the police were to become suspicious, she could not see how a prosecutor could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Montgomery was a victim of foul play.
* * *
Far from being upset by her evil deed, Danielle was exhilarated. As she waited for the curtain to rise on the final act (the discovery of the body), she sipped a glass of wine, sitting in an aromatherapy-scented bubble bath.
"I don't want to drink too much," she told herself, putting the empty glass down. "Not yet. I can celebrate later."
As she luxuriated in the warm, scented water, she made a preliminary plan of what she would do in the days ahead. First, she would call her friends and tearfully notify them of Montgomery's tragic passing. Second, she would arrange for the funeral. Third, after a week or so, she would contact a realtor in New York and begin the search for a suitable apartment. At the same time, she would call one in Vermont and put the house on the market.
"It will probably be easier to sell the place if those damned whirligigs are gone. Perhaps I can donate them to one of those gift stores on Route 4. If they don't want them, then I'll have a giant bonfire in the backyard."
Once the water grew cold, she climbed out of the tub, toweled off and got dressed. She walked down the stairs and glanced at the clock. It was only 5:30.
"I wish it were over already!"
Having spent so many months planning her husband's murder, she did not want to risk everything by jumping the gun now. When the clock chimed at 5:45, Danielle was nervously pacing the floor. At 6:00, she was sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, strumming her fingers on the table. At 6:15, she was back to pacing the floor. It was not until 6:30 that she realized there was a small flaw in her plan.
The story she was prepared to tell the police was that she went into the woodshop to tell her husband that his dinner was getting cold. If they came into the house, which they probably would, they would see that there was no food on either the dining room or kitchen table.
"I'd better make something—quick!"
But Danielle had never cooked a meal in her life.
Now, time began passing too quickly. It was 6:45 before she decided to make spaghetti with jarred sauce. The finished dish, undercooked pasta swimming in too much sauce, was not in the least bit appetizing—but what the hell? It was nothing but a prop meant to fool the police, and they were hardly food critics.
At last, the grandfather clock chimed 7:00.
"It's showtime!"
She put on her coat and boots and went out the back door. As she crossed the snow-covered lawn, she braced herself for the ordeal of seeing her husband's dead body—it was not a pretty sight. When she stepped across the threshold of the woodshop, however, she was dumbfounded by what she saw—or rather, what she did not see. The body was not where she had left it.
"Where did he go?"
She quickly examined the snow outside the door. There was only one set of footprints: her own. Her eyes were then drawn to the large tarpaulin-covered object in the woodshop, her husband's latest DIY project. Maybe he had crawled beneath the tarp and died. She bent over, picked up the corner of the blue polyethylene material and lifted it.
"What the hell?"
Beneath the tarp was a giant whirligig with a six-foot-tall woodchopper. All that was missing were the propeller blades. She was so stunned by its size that she temporarily forgot about the missing body.
"Why on earth would he make something so large? What did he plan on doing with it?"
As though in answer to her questions, there was a loud creak, like the sound of someone stepping on a loose floorboard. Or like the sound the whirligigs made when the wind blew, only much louder.
Creak.
The arms of the woodchopper rose, hoisting his axe up in the air. As Danielle followed the upward arc of the weapon with her eyes, she saw the wooden face for the first time.
"Montgomery!"
Her husband's painted eyes seemed to turn in her direction to glare accusingly at the woman who had murdered him.
"No! It can't be! It ...."
As though moved by a sudden gust of wind, the figure on the whirligig shifted position. The axe was no longer aimed at the chopping block but at Danielle's head.
Creak.
* * *
When the Seaforths' mail piled up in the mailbox, their letter carrier notified the police, and a patrol car was sent to the house to perform a welfare check. Officer Hubie Niebold found the door to the house unlocked, and when he received no reply to his greeting, he entered and searched both floors of the old farmhouse.
"No one's there," he notified the dispatcher. "But I found uneaten food on the table. It looks like they left before they could eat their dinner."
"What about their vehicle? I understand there is only one, a Subaru Forester that belongs to Mr. Seaforth. Apparently, the wife is a city girl who doesn't like to drive much."
"I'll check the garage next. And there's some sort of workshop on the property. I'll check that, too."
Ten minutes later, Hubie phoned the station again.
"I found her, Mrs. Seaforth," he announced with an agitated voice. "She's dead. Murdered."
As a law enforcement officer in a small Vermont village, he had never encountered a homicide before. The most serious crime in the past decade was a case of shoplifting at the local grocery store.
"Any sign of her husband?" the dispatcher inquired.
"No."
"I'll put out an APB on him. I've already sent a backup out to you, so sit tight. They ought to be there in a few minutes."
As Officer Niebold waited for his fellow officers to arrive, he visually examined the crime scene, careful not to touch anything and disturb possible forensic clues. It was a grisly sight. Danielle was lying on the floor with an axe buried in her skull, and the tarp she was lying on was stained with both blood and brain matter. Beside her was an unfinished whirligig of a woodchopper.
"Her husband must have been working on that when he killed her," he surmised.
There were no propellers, and no axe in the woodchopper's hand. Evidently, all that Montgomery Seaforth had time to make before committing homicide was the eleven-inch-tall woodsman and the two-inch-high chopping block.
A friend once made whirligigs of me and Salem. Salem was happy with his, but I didn't care much for the green skin he gave me!
