Murder's No Votive Confidence

by Christin Brecher

  “How?” said Joe. “There’s a dead body.”

  Jessica and her mother began to cry again.

  “Frank,” said Andy to the manager without flinching, “can you open up this room over here?” He motioned to a set of window-paned French doors off the Game Room. “Folks, let’s go onto this porch.”

  “Sun Room,” said Frank.

  “Sun Room,” said Andy graciously. His nose flared a little, so I knew he wasn’t feeling as kindly as he sounded. “We’ll close the blinds on the doors to the Game Room, and sit and talk while my chief and our team come to dust for fingerprints, and collect evidence.”

  “Your chief isn’t here?” said Joe with a little “you, local yokel” kind of insinuation that made me feel less guilty about my critical reaction to him.

  “Luckily, I was handling a FIGAWI situation nearby, and was close to the inn. Others are on their way. In a case like this, however, we don’t want to waste a minute, so let’s talk while the facts are still fresh in your minds.”

  As he spoke, the group walked as if in a daze to the Sun Room off of the Game Room. I, however, felt my senses come alive as we found seats on the soft quilted cushions of wicker furniture. In contrast to the Game Room’s rich colors and wood-paneled walls, we were now surrounded by potted ferns and blue checks that were more suited to the summer. It would have been a pleasant room except for the sirens blaring down the road in the background.

  “Let me explain what is going to happen,” Andy continued as if he did this every day. “While we’re talking, the police, detectives, and a medical examiner will arrive. By the time we’re finished talking, the body will have been examined and removed. You’ll no longer have to see it.”

  “Thank you,” said Joe, looking both relieved and concerned about the Sterling women. I noticed he’d at least flattened down his hair.

  “Let’s start simply,” said Andy, joining us on a wicker sofa and pulling out a pad of paper and a pen from his jacket pocket. “Does anyone know the deceased? And if so, what can you tell me about him?”

  Chapter 4

  “The man is Uncle Simon,” said Jessica, wiping her tears.

  Andy pulled a packet of tissues out of his pocket.

  “Thanks.” Jessica blew shamelessly. “I’m supposed to be getting married this weekend. He, the deceased, was going to walk me down the aisle. Mom said not to invite him. When my father was sick, Uncle Simon refused to help him with a business matter.”

  “It was much worse than that,” said Mrs. Sterling, her eyes ablaze. “My husband wanted to sell property in Italy that he and his brother had jointly inherited from their parents, years ago. At the last minute, Simon backed out. The stress of the deal, compounded by Simon’s obstinance, well . . . Poor Henry.” She sniffed and stopped speaking, but I thought her implication was pretty obvious. She believed that Simon had pushed his brother over the edge.

  “Who was the first to find the body?” Andy continued. Whether or not he had come to the same conclusion I had, he spoke gently. Even though we were talking about a horrible and recent experience, his calm was contagious. We all looked at each other for a moment, collectively trying to remember the chain of events.

  “Mrs. Sterling and I were in search of a candle, the unity candle for the wedding,” said Frank.

  Andy shot a look at me that implied he had not forgotten that I had already tampered with said candle. I was a little irritated that everyone got his warm bedside manner except for me. Little did he know it, but the police would soon realize how poorly we’d all handled finding Simon’s body. In our panic and shock, we’d all been touching the candle, the body, things in the room. I think they called it contaminate evidence on one of the detective shows I watch. The only thing we’d probably left untouched were doorknobs, thanks to Maude.

  “In the middle of our search,” the manager continued, “we heard the cat screaming in front of the Game Room. We went to see what was bothering him. I opened the door and . . . we saw the body.”

  “I screamed,” said Mrs. Sterling, her hand rising to her mouth.

  “Is this a resident cat?” said Andy.

  “No,” said Frank.

  At the mention of the cat, we all started to look around the room. The creature was not there. I hoped it was not sniffing around Simon. Andy probably had the same thought. He went to the door and opened it. Others had arrived in the next room and he took the opportunity to update them about the animal.

  “There are no pets allowed in the hotel,” said Frank when Andy rejoined us.

  “It was Simon’s cat,” said Jessica. “I guess he snuck it in. Stella and I heard it when we were searching for my uncle, and when we opened the door to his room the cat sped out and I guess it ran right to the body.”

  “When did you all last see Simon?” said Andy, moving on from the illicit cat.

  “Dinner last night,” said Mrs. Sterling. “At least I did. I’ve been feeling a little under the weather, so I went upstairs after our meal.”

  “After dinner”—Joe cleared his throat—“Tony and I played cards with Simon in the Game Room, before heading to bed. Mr. Duffy was with us, too.”

  Maude stepped away from Bill and squinted her eyes at her husband. They were a good couple, but Maude was a tough cookie.

  “I didn’t gamble with them,” said Bill indignantly. “I was working overtime. The guys wanted the drinks to keep coming.”

  Now it was Jessica’s turn to cast a disparaging look at her man. Joe motioned indelicately with his eyes at Tony, to suggest that his friend had been behind the libations. Tony took the look in stride and nodded. He really was the best man. At least at the moment.

  “So, Tony, Joe, and Simon Sterling were in the Game Room playing cards, while Bill served drinks,” said Andy.

  “In the drawing room, with the candlestick,” said Tony with a chuckle that did not go over well.

  “Did you turn in at the same time?”

  The men nodded.

  “We left Simon at about two,” said Tony. “I don’t know what time he went upstairs.”

  “Nine minutes later,” said Bill, who had been on the clock. “I got home by three.”

  Maude nodded. “He was snoring by three fifteen, I can tell you that much.”

  “Frank,” said Andy. “Did anyone leave or enter the inn after Bill left?”

  “We don’t have a security camera for the sake of our guests’ privacy,” said Frank. “But we have an alarm for the windows and doors. It automatically turns on at midnight, when the inn closes for the night. If anyone wants to get in after midnight, they use their room’s key card. It’s programmed to let guests in and out of the front door, without setting off the alarm. If someone who is not staying at the inn would like to get in, they ring the bell, I disable the alarm, and open the door for them. No one rang the bell last night.”

  “Did you hear anything in the Game Room?” said Andy.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t,” said Frank. “I sleep like a log.”

  “Did anyone else see Simon Sterling after two o’clock this morning?” said Andy.

  We all looked at each other. No one said anything. Maybe realizing he had been the last person to see Simon Sterling alive, Bill bit his thumbnail.

  “How’d you get the bruise on your hand, Bill?” said Andy.

  He was right. There was a bright red and blue mark on Bill’s right knuckle.

  Bill looked at his hand.

  “This?” he said. “I was fixing the kitchen sink and dropped the wrench on it funny. I’m fine though, thanks.”

  “What about the murder weapon?” said Jessica. “Mr. Duffy, did you bring the candle back to the wedding’s staging room as you promised?”

  “I’m sorry,” said Bill, looking at the floor. “I didn’t.”

  “Why not?” said Andy.

  “I wish you had,” said Joe, tenderly holding his fiancée’s hand and twirling her ring.

  “It was late,” said Bill. “I was tired
. I’d already tidied up the room. I can’t think how I forgot to return it, but I did.”

  I couldn’t either. The Bill I knew was one of the most reliable people I’d ever met.

  “Thanks for your honesty, Bill,” said Andy. He closed his notebook. “Who won the card game?”

  “Simon,” said Joe glumly.

  The others nodded their heads in agreement, Bill Duffy included. Something about their expressions seemed to say that they did not truly believe Simon had won fair and square, but that there was no way to prove it. The man’s character kept getting worse and worse. Not only had Simon allegedly sped up his brother’s demise, but perhaps he had swindled his niece’s groom and best man the night before their wedding.

  “How much did you play?” said Andy.

  Tony shook his head.

  “I’d say we both lost about, what? Eight hundred bucks?” said Joe.

  “About that,” said Tony. “But when we started the game, Simon pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Way more than we needed for the game. He kept them sitting beside us. It was like he wanted to break us, because we’d see he had unlimited funds.”

  “Or tempt us,” said Joe.

  “We’ll need to have an officer search the victim’s room,” Andy said to Frank. Then he poked his head into the Game Room, which had become much noisier by this point. Looking satisfied, he turned to us. “I’m going to let you all go, for now. No one is allowed to leave the inn, however, until I’ve spoken with each of you separately.”

  “I’m going to be in my room resting,” said Mrs. Sterling. “You can find me there.”

  Everyone else grumbled. No one wanted to be at the inn right now, especially me. I had a candle class to teach in less than an hour, and I had no intention of sticking around. Andy could take it up with me later if he wanted to. It’s not like I could add anything to his investigation. I had never even met the man.

  As promised, when we left the Sun Room, there was no longer a body in the Game Room. All signs of Simon, down to his pipe, had been removed. There were police taking pictures, dusting, and doing pretty much everything I see in the detective TV shows I love to watch. I looked for Nantucket’s Chief of Police, but he was nowhere in sight.

  “Move along,” a stout man, about twenty years my senior, said to us. His most fascinating feature was a bald spot among his sparse brown hair that was off-center. It was the strangest sight.

  “Who’re you?” said Joe.

  I was wondering the same thing.

  “Who’re you?” said the man.

  “This is Joe Handler,” said Andy, intervening. “He’s the groom at this weekend’s wedding here at the inn. Everyone, this is Chief Bellamy. He comes to us from the Cape. Chief Bellamy was on the island for a meeting this morning, since his department is supplying mutual assistance to help with FIGAWI this weekend. He was on his way back to the Cape when the news came. We’re fortunate that Chief Bellamy has experience in handling this kind of crime, and that he’s agreed to stay and help us.”

  “It’s lovely to meet you, Chief,” said Mrs. Sterling, her hand outstretched. “I’m Mrs. Sterling, the bride’s mother. We’re so grateful that you can help us with our family’s shocking loss. This is all new to us, as I’m sure you can understand.”

  “Not to worry, madam,” said Bellamy with a gracious bow. “We’ll get this unsettling mess in order as quickly as we can. It’s my goal to have the murderer under arrest immediately.”

  “Do you have any leads?” asked Jessica.

  “I will soon,” he said with a puffed chest. “I have a reputation for quick arrests. Given that Nantucket has a huge sailing event, and a beautiful wedding about to take place, it is imperative that we move quickly. You have my word.”

  “What about our own Chief of Police?” I said.

  Bellamy looked me up and down. Rather than answer, he returned to the investigation. Andy also ignored my looks of protest at this stranger’s arrival, and herded us into the lobby.

  I could play that game, too. I opened a BuzzFeed quiz on my phone about picking a favorite pizza topping to learn who your perfect superhero boyfriend is. I’ve noticed that when a person stares hard at their phone people give them a pass at any other social interaction, which was just what I needed to dodge a long interview right now. It was a good plan, too. No one looked at me as I passed Jessica and Joe, who were huddled in the lobby, consoling each other, while Frank was attempting to explain the situation to the inn’s other guests.

  “We have to catch a ferry back to the mainland in an hour,” I heard a harried-looking man say to Frank as I clicked “pepperoni” on my quiz.

  I watched Andy intervene, and tell the man and the elderly couple, who had stuck around for the excitement, that they would be interviewed first so that they could make their journeys home. We’re a service-oriented island, and even in the middle of a murder, I was happy to see one of our own still trying to be accommodating.

  I tried to size up the guests from Andy’s perspective as I skirted across the lobby. Both the elderly man and woman looked as if it would be impossible to pick up my unity candle, forget about using it as a murder weapon. They’d have probably killed themselves in the process. As for the younger man, he stood next to his wife, who held a coughing toddler. From their look of fatigue, I guessed they’d spent their vacation helping the baby through the croup. I helped my cousin Chris with his little one two years ago, when he was alone with the kids. I still haven’t gotten over it. Emily, who is expecting her first in less than a month, read a book that says that the adrenaline kicks in and you can do anything as a parent. So, in fact, parents are actually superhuman. No need for Spider-Man, my perfect superhero match according to my quiz. At any rate, I knew enough to know that there was no way you could take a break from the croup to kill a guy.

  I heard Frank tell Andy that there was only one other guest, but that he had broken his foot badly yesterday on a hike and was currently in a wheelchair. I guessed Andy would want to talk to him to see if he’d heard anything, but I didn’t think a guy with a newly broken foot would have been able to wield my strong candle against someone’s head with enough force to kill him.

  With no one looking at me, I stepped outside the inn and breathed the fresh air. The bracing cold of early morning was better than a strong drink, which I also would have welcomed. I noticed Tony had slipped out with success, too. He stood at the end of the inn, smoking a cigarette. He was leaning against the building, looking up at the sky and I was surprised when I noticed him making smoke rings. I mean, who was I to judge how people handle their emotions, but smoke rings? They felt more like a victory lap than the sort of thing you do when your best friend finds a dead body at his wedding. I shuddered and realized I was thinking the worst. The truth of the matter, however, was that I might very well have been in a room with a murderer.

  Now that I was outside, the second half of my plan was to pull out quietly in my car, then hit the road and be home for my candle class. I slipped into my Beetle, which I had thankfully parked along the side of the road rather than in Ahab’s parking lot, where at least six police cars now congregated. The island has about a dozen cars, but as Andy had said, due to FIGAWI, we had extra police and volunteers from the mainland for the weekend, in addition to the less than charming Bellamy.

  Once I was convinced no one was looking at me, I started up the car and pulled out onto the first of two roads that would lead me back to town. I was cruising along the curvy road, checking my rearview mirror to make sure no one was following me, and trying to make sense of what had just happened, when the blast of a horn brought my eyes back to the road. My car swerved as a small blue Ford pulled out in front of me and sped ahead. A shock of blond hair peeked over the driver’s seat. As I yelled at the car, I realized my nerves were really shot.

  “One, two, three.” I breathed and chanted to myself. I wondered if Tony had been counting rings to calm his nerves after realizing a murderer was on the loose. If
so, maybe Mrs. Sterling, Jessica, or Joe were guilty. The Sterling women were certainly unhappy with Simon Sterling, but it seemed unlikely that they would invite him to give away Jessica and then kill him instead, especially by means of the candle Jessica loved so much.

  I thought of Emily. This would be a nightmare for her. I could not begin to imagine whether Jessica and Joe would want to move ahead with the weekend’s plans. The reception tent was far enough away from the inn that Jessica and Joe could conceivably still host their reception as planned, but I wondered if the inn itself would be shut down. The Melville was now a crime scene. That would mean guests would need to find other accommodations, which would be just about impossible at this late date and on such a busy weekend.

  With my heart resuming the heavy thud it had beat on my way to the inn this morning, I also realized that within the next hour or so, everyone on Nantucket would know the story of Simon Sterling’s murder. Assuming Maude or the concierge or even someone from the police department had called at least one person, the chain had already begun.

  I wished I was not driving. I really wanted to be the one to tell Emily. I checked my rearview mirror, and confirmed there was no one behind me. I pulled over to a small shoulder off the road and dialed Emily. Call Failed was the only answer I got. I love Nantucket, but for the life of me, I still can’t understand why cell service here is sometimes so spotty.

  I threw my phone onto the seat next to me, started up my car, and pressed my foot on the accelerator. I was willing to risk a speeding ticket.

  “Four, five, six.” I exhaled. I was almost to Milestone Road, which is the main road that would lead me back into town. I started to feel a lot better. Part of me was thinking, “Nah, that didn’t just happen. Emily’s biggest wedding of the season wasn’t just ruined. I didn’t see a dead guy. Andy didn’t look really impressive when he was interviewing potential suspects.”

  But my thoughts were interrupted as a cold chill suddenly crept down my spine that was more terrifying than Simon Sterling’s cracked skull.

  A finger tapped my right shoulder from the back seat of my empty car.