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dark to put it in Tish and
Manny’s dumpster.”
    “Did the Souzas mind him doing that?”
    “I would, I’ll tell you that. It’s the
principle of the thing. However, Manny just said, ‘Not worth
dealing with the nutcase. Got better things to do,’ so the old bat
never even got a slap on the wrist. Chief Henderson knows by heart
the complaints Edwin has made over the years. He and Chief Garrett
from Truro meet for lunch once a month at Beasley’s just to compare
notes and more often than not it is something that old madman did
or said that gets them riled.”
    “You see, the Snow mansion is not actually in
Provincetown but in North Truro. However, it’s closer to us than
the tiny center of Truro. Not much of a center as it consists of a
small library and a poky little general store. So, whenever Edwin
had a complaint, he took it to Chief Henderson.”
    “How annoying for our chief to have to deal
with the man whose property taxes were paid to different town.”
    “Get this. Our charming Edwin had a
long-standing dispute going with the neighbor to his east who’s a
lobsterman. Edwin was forever complaining that he could smell the
lobster traps and demanding the man get rid of them. Right, just go
out of the business that had supported his grandfather and father
before him! Imagine the nerve of the man. The nut even took his
neighbor’s dog hostage, once. Claimed he wouldn’t return the poor
pup until the traps were moved. Chief could find no laws regarding
dog-napping so they settled the issue by covering the traps with
tarpaulins and poor old Skippy the hound was returned.”
    “Sounds like a truly crazy man, alright. I
sort of feel sorry for him though, don’t you, Daph?
    “Not really. Get this. Other neighbors were
harassed, as well. Oh, you are going to just love this one, Liz.
Edwin complained that another neighbor’s cat trespassed on his
property with malicious intent! Chief Henderson hooted over that
one, I can tell you.”
    We laughed heartily about Edwin Snow’s
irritable character and seemingly driving need to cause conflict.
Simultaneously, however, I was experiencing a growing need myself.
To bring the old curmudgeon a measure of justice. Posthumously.
    My amateur sleuth meter was racing. I was
intrigued by all that I’d heard about Edwin Snow III. But did I
dare jump, possibly right up to my neck, into something I had no
business getting involved in? In the village where I was a virtual
newcomer? Food for thought.
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    Paying no heed to my own misgivings, I found
myself surreptitiously asking a few questions about the old man
around the village. Simple curiosity in the wake of his death. At
least, I hoped no one would suspect my real motives. “What a
tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
    From a lovely old woman, Gertrude Nickerson
who ran the Needling Around Yarn Shop, I found out that Edwin Snow,
a few years ahead of her in school, had been a “whiner and
sniveler.”
    “Edwin got himself a fine education at Yale.
He was a pre-med student and yet, after graduation he came home to
his father’s house and never left.” Gertrude told me as she sat
knitting without ever moving her eyes from my face to her wildly
moving knitting needles.
    “He never went off to make a life for
himself?” I asked.
    Gertrude put down her knitting, briefly. She
smiled slyly and I waited, knowing she was about to share something
either cute or shocking.
    “As Edwin did absolutely nothing to
discourage the opinion by all that he was the spitting image of his
nasty father, a similar apple fallen off of the tree, he inherited
old Ned’s reputation and the accompanying venom of the townspeople.
It was assumed that such a father could only have spawned a horned,
cloven-hoofed, flesh-eating, devil-vermin.”
    I sat shocked to hear the tiny, white-haired
grandmotherly woman speaking like the television narrator of a
program on werewolves and Big Foot. We laughed together