The Greene County Murders - PROCEDURAL

Beulah, a factual person, (she was not intuitive or impulsive either) went to her library, in Cairo, New York, to research how mysteries were solved. Although there were no non-fiction books on the subject (How to Solve a Murder Mystery seemed like an obvious self-help title that didn’t exist. She knew she wouldn’t write it either.)

The library was a Greene County miracle. For years it had been a small room housed in the Town Hall on Main Street but the gifted librarian, a local woman named Jill with many talents, read that the state’s secretary of agriculture, grew up on a small farm in upstate New York. He said in a press interview that his local library changed his life. Jill wrote to him explaining that her town needed life-changing too. Many people had problems with money and resources, and laptops were in short supply. He drove down from Albany to meet with Jill and moved by what he saw, he found money in the state budget to build a good-sized library, complete with computers for the community, and a large children’s room full of books. Beulah had actually gone to the ribbon-cutting ceremony, with a local band, and a moving speech by the Labor Secretary himself. The whole town showed up.

She went to the library to see if she could learn more about murders. Of course there wasn’t a how to detective book, but she took out many classic mysteries: Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, Louise Penny, Sherlock Holmes – and she began the process of deduction.

Reading a while, she figured out that in mystery books, and probably in real life too, detectives typically solve cases by meticulously gathering and analyzing clues. Clues were what she needed most. At the same time, questioning suspects was equally important. What she had to do was gather information, then piece it together to identify the culprit (what a word!!!) and to determine their motive.

Who killed Delores? She’d have to return to the crime scene first, and just look around.

The Crime Scene

Delores was murdered in her own house, a house she loved. Not everyone was as happy about the place where they lived as Delores. She loved her home, and worked hard to make it a warm and welcoming place. She had always had food and drinks for everyone who walked in her door and many people always did. Delores was beloved, not just by her own big family, but by her legions of friends. Hard to imagine that anyone would ever want to kill her, especially in a place where there were so many others who’d be more appropriate victims.

In a funny way, Beulah believed that Delores, if she had to be murdered at all, would prefer to have been murdered right there in her light yellow fifties ranch along 145, hidden from the road by a big row of maple trees. In back of her house was a gorgeous field of wild flowers, and Delores’s pride and joy, a wonderful vegetable garden. All her vegetables – cucumbers, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, garlic, looked like memorable paintings.

Every day for a week, Beulah drove over to the crime scene hoping something there would provide her with clues. She called each of the four children, two daughters and two sons, and asked them all to meet her there. Every single day, she wrote down what they said in the red Delores notebook. Mostly what they said is how much they loved and missed her. None of them seemed like a viable suspect but maybe that was always true.

Esther Cohen is at esthercohen.com