Grand Prize: Murder!. Vivian Conroy

cottage, not so much to protect her own person but rather the wrapped object placed before the door of her Country Gift Shop.

      A plain white sheet covered the object that looked much like a square with a triangle on top. The appearance was misleading as the object that the whole gathering was about stood on an easel, giving it a height it didn’t have. Vicky had seen the easel being put into place by the mayor’s secretary, but that same secretary had asked Vicky to stay in the back room of the shop as the object was placed on it so she wouldn’t catch even the smallest glimpse of it.

      Now Vicky stared at the sheet, hard, as if her eyes could bore right through it, and her heart was full of the same giddy expectation as when she had been a kid on Christmas morning scanning the presents under the tree and hoping they held the exact things she had written to Santa about.

      But for present-day Vicky, regardless of what was under the sheet, the thing she had wished for was already in front of her eyes. The community of Glen Cove, having left shop, bakery, garage, community center or library desk, to celebrate her moment of glory. To support her Country Gift Shop, which was a recent addition to the town.

      Even the Joneses of the long-established Jones General Store, who considered every initiative as competition to their business, were in the front row. Mr. Jones still had his pencil for telephoned orders stuck behind his ear.

      “We are gathered here today,” the town father continued in his warm baritone, “on a very special occasion. As you all know, the town of Glen Cove has for many years been the site of an unsolved mystery.”

      He took a deep breath, looking around past the expectant faces. There was a momentary tightness, a drawn brow here and there, a pinch around the lips as they thought back upon what could best be called the black page in Glen Cove’s history. As a friendly little town it didn’t have much in its past that made people uncomfortable or embarrassed. But this one thing had weighed on the inhabitants for many years.

      In the tense silence the mayor gestured to a stylishly dressed woman by his side. Her soft blonde hair moved in the ocean breeze that breathed through the street and provided the salty tang on the air.

      The town father said, “Ms. Diane Dobbs here is the sister of a girl who went missing twenty-three years ago. Vanished from our streets, taken from our midst, never to be heard of again. The search for Celine touched us all back then and has occupied many of our thoughts in the years since. The mention of her name never failed to move us and to bring back the memories of those days when we all wanted to bring her back to us; but we failed to do so.”

      The ocean breeze caressing Vicky’s face suddenly felt cold, and she resisted the urge to wrap her arms around her shoulders and rub the gooseflesh away from her bare arms.

      She had been a college student at the time, intimately involved in the matter as she had known the Dobbs twins and had watched in horror as the whole disappearance case began to unfold.

      The uncertainty, the suspicions, the speculations in the media turning into outright accusations as time went by and frustration grew that no tangible progress was made.

      The mayor said solemnly, “We have been unable to find answers for the Dobbs family for too long a time.”

      In the front row a man wearing a straw hat moved uncomfortably—retired Sheriff Perkins, in charge of the disappearance case at the time, the man who had not been able to find the conclusive lead to crack the case.

      Nobody had really blamed him for it as the disappearance had been a far more gruesome crime than a sheriff in a small town like Glen Cove ever had to handle. But for Perkins himself it had stayed a dark page, a stain on what was otherwise a perfect performance as head of local law enforcement.

      The mayor said, “When Celine’s disappearance couldn’t be solved, the Dobbs family left the area, and Diane even went far away to Europe, where she built a successful life for herself, graduating, finding a job and starting a family.”

      Diane glanced to the tall dark man by her side, her French husband Alain, who smiled back at her. The little wrinkles round his dark eyes only made his suntanned face more pronounced and handsome. Around town he was called ‘the French movie star’.

      Behind his back of course.

      The mayor said, “After so many years abroad, Diane felt it was time to return to Glen Cove and face the questions about her sister’s disappearance. Her arrival in early summer caused a stir here in town, as many memories were brought back and old sentiments, believed to be long buried, flared up again. People started to watch each other, with doubts in their minds. We were all reminded that an unsolved case is like an unhealed wound that will continue to ache.”

      The town father was known for his bombastic word choice whenever he got a chance to address a crowd, but Vicky felt like his words were apt here. At least what she herself had experienced had been an ache; if not in herself, then in the others she had met: Diane and the deputy sheriff who had even given up law enforcement because he couldn’t live with the sense of failure over this particular case.

      And Michael Danning, Celine’s boyfriend of old, a personal friend of Vicky’s, who had never been able to discover what had happened to the woman he had loved and intended to marry. For him the uncertainty had hung over his life like a constant shadow, following him around the world wherever he had traveled to write up award-winning undercover articles for major newspapers.

      Like Diane, Michael had felt the need to return to Glen Cove and face the past. But not everybody had been happy to see Michael back in town. As he had been Celine’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance, he had also been a suspect. And to some he had always stayed a suspect, even a killer who had walked away because he could not be convicted without a body being found.

      The mayor said, “At first this reminder of old hurt was unpleasant to us, and many of us felt like the past might better be just that: past. Something we had dealt with already, even though we knew that many questions had remained unanswered. We were comfortable in the lives we had built after the tragedy and not immediately open to have another look at those painful events. That was wrong, shortsighted, and as your representative I’d like to take this special occasion to apologize for any feeling Diane might have had that she was not welcome here—that we resented her quest for answers.”

      The mayor gestured widely. “The truth is that we all needed those answers as much as she did. We are grateful for Diane’s courage to return here and for the courage of others who upon her arrival involved themselves actively in a search for the truth about Celine Dobbs’ fate.”

      The mayor looked around, nodding weightily, before he continued, “It is a pity that Michael Danning, the new—and may I say extremely successful—editor in chief of our Glen Cove Gazette, cannot be here with us today. We had hoped his assignment in Copenhagen would have ended just in time to find him among us so we could thank him in person for his resourceful use of the newspaper at his disposal. We can safely say that his interview with Diane, asking for a reopening of the old disappearance case was the first step toward the eventual resolution.

      “After Michael Danning’s revealing interview in the Gazette, several other citizens took an interest in the case and with joint efforts managed to bring it to a successful conclusion. Looking at the acts of violence they encountered on the way, in which personal property and even a life of one of our own was lost, we can only recommend them for their courage and their tenacity.”

      Vicky took a deep breath. If anybody had asked her in advance if she’d ever confront a killer, she would have thought she would not dare. But when it happened, you had to act and help others. That was not even courage. It was just what you had to do. You couldn’t turn a blind eye when somebody was in mortal danger.

      The mayor said, “We are here today to honor those courageous citizens in the presence of Diane Dobbs and her family.”

      Diane smiled uncomfortably, moving a little closer to her husband, who took her hand in his. Behind them were their three teen children, the boys forcing a cool appearance, the daughter looking so much like her mother: a little unsure at the attention on them,