An Old Faithful Murder

by Valerie Wolzien

  “And that’s really all there is to the story,” she ended, looking around the tiny room.

  “Well, it certainly clears up a few things.” Marnie spoke up first.

  “Yes,” Kathleen agreed.

  “There are some other things you might be able to help us with,” Susan persisted, unwilling to end this conversation until she had heard all there was to hear.

  “Of course. Anything I can do, you know that.”

  “I’ve been wondering if you or any members of your family knew either Dr. Irving Cockburn or Chloe Desparde before coming to Yellowstone.”

  “I don’t even know anyone named Chloe Desparde,” Phyllis insisted.

  “I don’t think we have to worry about Chloe anymore,” Kathleen announced, looking at Susan. “I’ll tell you about her later.”

  “I …” Susan didn’t finish her sentence.

  “However, you do know who Dr. Cockburn is,” Marnie said, giving Kathleen a puzzled look.

  “But I did not know him before coming here. He has been very helpful to our family, I must admit. Although perhaps he is not exactly the person we would have wished in these circumstances—I’m sure he has helped out to the best of his somewhat limited abilities. He is, of course, a psychiatrist, not an internist or something more practical in this situation.”

  “But you asked him to speak to me—as a psychiatrist,” Susan reminded her.

  “Yes, but to be frank, that was more to get him off my back than anything else. He is a perfect bore, isn’t he?” Phyllis sat back in the chair.

  “You weren’t trying to set up some sort of psychiatric defense for Darcy?”

  Phyllis seemed startled by Susan’s question. “I … It’s true that I think that’s probably a good idea. Especially if he persists in confessing to these terrible murders …”

  “He has not confessed to killing Randy,” Marnie corrected her.

  “No … and I do not believe that he killed anybody,” Phyllis added more determinedly. “I believe absolutely in my son’s innocence. Absolutely. And I think that I should get back to him. Now that he has spent so much time alone, he may have reconsidered this ill-conceived confession.”

  “I thought he refused to see you,” Susan said as Phyllis stood up, covering her fluffy curls with a wool hat.

  “He’s terribly hurt and ashamed. I understand that,” she said, her hand on the doorknob. “You have been good to try to help our family, Mrs. Henshaw, but I think it is probably time for your investigation to end.”

  “I don’t think you’re winning friends and influencing people,” Marnie commented as the door closed behind Phyllis Ericksen.

  “True.” Susan shook her head and turned her attention to Kathleen. “So what’s the story about Chloe?”

  “It’s a stupid story. And I don’t think it has anything to do with the murders.”

  “So?”

  “Chloe wants someone to sponsor her so she can stay in this country—it seems that her contact at the embassy can’t help her with this one. And being a beautiful young girl, she decided that the male half of the population might be more likely to feel that the country would be a better place if she stayed here.”

  “That’s all?” Susan asked.

  Kathleen nodded. “That’s it. At least it explains why she’s been flirting with every man in sight. I was beginning to think we were leaving Bananas with a nymphomaniac. Actually, it may explain why she’s been such a wonderful employee.

  “I have to admit,” Kathleen continued, “that Jerry thought there was something a little strange about her from the first. Her flirting made him uncomfortable.”

  “Well, at least we have two things settled,” Susan said. “We know what Chloe has been up to, and we know that Randy put the effigy in the pool. It’s nice to have a few answers.”

  “We also have a lot of questions,” Marnie reminded her. “Anyone want dessert?”

  FORTY-TWO

  “You seem to know where you’re going,” Kathleen said, following Susan outside.

  “If I can find it in this storm, I’m heading to the warming hut. I need to talk with Darcy. He holds the key to all of this. I think he’s the only person who knows exactly what has been going on all along. I should have seen it, too, but I was so wrapped up in peripherals, so distracted.…”

  “What? Slow down, I can’t hear you!” Kathleen skied after her friend.

  “Even if he agrees to see me, he may not allow you in. Would you go back to the lodge and check on Chad? There was a ranger left outside his doorway, but he may not be in his room. He’s probably with C. J., and C.J. is in his parents’ room.…”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll find him. But first I’m going to make sure you find the warming hut—”

  “No problem. Here we are.”

  “—and that someone can help me find my way back to the lodge,” Kathleen continued.

  “I can do that, ma’am. I’m going that way myself,” offered the ranger who opened the door to them. “In a way, you’ve saved me a trip. I was just going to find you.” He nodded at Susan. “And then I would have had to escort you back here from wherever you were. As it is, I can head back to my room after dropping you off. I’ll be able to get to bed much earlier than I expected.”

  “Why were you coming to look for me?”

  “He wants to see you.” The ranger pointed over his shoulder into the hut. “He’s been asking for you for the last half hour or so, but I couldn’t leave to find you until I had been relieved. There’s another guard in there with him now.”

  “So why don’t you two ski back while I talk with Darcy?” Susan suggested, entering the shack. A second later she was back outside. “Maybe you could get the entire family together in one place? I think it may be time for a talk when I’m done here.”

  “Great. And even if you don’t come up with some answers, it would be nice to get everyone in one place where I can keep an eye on them,” Kathleen agreed.

  “Good thought.” Susan said, reentering the hut.

  “You came.”

  “I understand you want to talk to me. I wanted to talk to you, too,” Susan explained.

  Darcy was sitting in front of the stove, where she had interviewed him before. But something was different, something more than the presence of a ranger. The young man looked less distraught, more in control of himself.

  “They tell me you’re not eating very much.”

  “I had some stew for dinner,” he answered, almost smiling. “It’s not as though I’m burning a lot of calories sitting here.…”

  “But at least he has something to do now.” The ranger spoke up.

  Susan looked at the two men curiously.

  “Someone sent over my sketchbook and charcoal,” Darcy explained. “I’ve been doing some drawings. At least it passes the time.” He nodded depreciatingly at the notebook on the bench beside him.

  “I know a lot of artists don’t like to show their work before it’s finished …” Susan began.

  “Go ahead. It doesn’t bother me at all.” He even handed it to her.

  Susan spent some time looking carefully at the work before speaking. “I don’t know why I’m surprised that you’re so good. Everyone has said so. I especially like your drawings of the park, of the geysers and the ice-covered trees. It’s amazing the sparkle you manage to get out of black and white.” She purposely didn’t mention the last sketches he had done—of Randy.

  “Thanks. I have a pretty good view of Old Faithful,” he added, motioning toward the small window at the rear of the hut.

  Susan returned the notebook to its place at Darcy’s side. “I hope you’re going to lose that view before long. I have some questions to ask you. Some things are starting to make sense, but I need more information. Information that only you can give me.”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “Did you know that Randy dumped the effigy into the hot spring?”

  “Yes. He told me about it. Right before the sk
i lesson, in fact. I was amazed. But we never had a chance to talk about it. Carlton and Joyce appeared, and your family.… Well, we just weren’t alone after that. But he seemed to think it was some wonderful joke that he was going to play,” Darcy admitted. “But I can’t for the life of me imagine why. Randy was a warm and wonderful person. Why would he do something that would upset my father so much?”

  “What would you say if I told you that the whole thing was planned by your father?”

  “Impossible. Absolutely impossible. Why would he do that?”

  “As a joke?” Susan suggested.

  “No way. My father was one of the straightest people I’ve ever known. I doubt if he ever played a practical joke in his life. And this one wasn’t even funny. And it risked damaging the environment. My father would never have done it.”

  “But think for just one minute about Randy, not your father. What if your fa—someone came to Randy and said that pulling a prank like this would please the family, make him more accepted. Is it possible that Randy would have believe that?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Randy could be a little naïve sometimes. I suppose it’s possible. But Randy really would never have done it if he thought it was going to hurt anyone. And I truly cannot imagine why my father would suggest such a thing to him.” Darcy stared off into space. “You must have gotten your information wrong.”

  “Well, maybe.” Susan wasn’t going to spend the time arguing. She had more questions to ask. “Could you tell me about the job that your mother found for Randy?”

  “I … sure.” In the moment that he had paused, Susan thought that Darcy had decided to trust her—and her judgment. “Randy had a job at an advertising agency. It’s a lousy job. He was a pretty talented artist, but he was just doing hack work for the agency—churning out storyboards and quick sketches for in-house presentations. My mother came to visit us once in a while, and on one of her trips East, she happened to be there when Randy was complaining about his work. About two weeks after she left, Randy got a call from a different ad agency. They said they were looking for someone to do design work and that they were interested in seeing his portfolio. Well, Randy sent in his work, and word came back that they were interested in meeting him. Randy was so happy,” he added wistfully. “And then he was offered the job.

  “We really agonized over that one, I can tell you. The agency was a small one, but they had some great accounts and they were very involved in gay issues—did freebie work for various causes and groups fighting to get funding for AIDS vaccine research. And the job was exactly what Randy wanted. He was a knockout designer, and the job he had certainly didn’t play to his strengths. But finally he decided to stay put.…”

  “But why?”

  “Well, I was pretty much committed to spending the rest of the year in New York, and we didn’t say it aloud, but I think that both of us knew that our relationship wouldn’t survive a separation so soon.…”

  “What?”

  “Oh, didn’t you know? The job was in the San Francisco office of the agency. I thought you knew that. Mother was terribly upset. She had arranged the whole thing. The head of the agency was an old college friend. She had called on him and shown him Randy’s work, and that started the ball rolling, but no one told her that the job wasn’t in New York, and naturally she assumed that it was.…”

  “Naturally,” Susan said dryly.

  “You know, my mother is having a difficult time these days.…” Darcy started to excuse her.

  Susan wasn’t having any of it. She was tired of this son’s sympathy for his mother, thinking it more than a little displaced, but it wasn’t her job to sit in judgment here. “She did seem a little unhappy one of the first times I spoke with her,” she admitted grudgingly.

  “She did? What about?”

  “Oh, you going off to Europe. I think she was going to miss you.…” she suggested, thinking quickly.

  Darcy laughed wryly. “I don’t think you’re right about that one. If she was sad, it wasn’t about that. She was planning on spending a lot of time with me. She had her reservations on the ship to Hamburg the day after I decided to go.”

  “Oh.” Susan was so surprised that she almost forgot to ask her last question. “When …” She paused for a minute. “This is going to sound stupid, but when did you start nursery school?”

  “When did I what?” He looked at her wonderingly.

  “How old were you when you started nursery school?”

  He shrugged. “I went for one year before I went to kindergarten. I went to kindergarten at the normal time.… I guess I was five.”

  “So you were four.”

  “Yes, I guess so.”

  Susan turned to the ranger siting in the corner. “Is there any way that you can reach Marnie Mackay? I’d like to talk with her right away.”

  “No problem, ma’am.” He looked at his watch. “She’ll be here any minute. We were planning to move the pris—him to the Visitor’s Center after the talk tonight. And that should be ending about now.”

  “Maybe, since we have a little extra time, you could tell me how you knew that my father didn’t kill Randy?”

  Susan sighed, remembering the words on the note she had written the first time she wanted to see him. Of course, things were different now. Because now she knew who the murderer was.

  FORTY-THREE

  “They’re all together. It’s through there.” Marnie pointed Susan and Darcy toward a door off the lobby that Susan hadn’t noticed before. “That’s where the hotel laundry is done. It’s private and we won’t disturb the other guests.”

  “Why don’t you go on in,” Susan suggested to Darcy. “That is, if you don’t mind,” she added to the ranger.

  “Not a bit. Go ahead. It will do your family good to see you, I’m sure.… And you can tell me what’s going on,” she ended in a whisper to Susan as the young man left. “Do you know who the murderer is?”

  “I’m fairly sure that I do, but—”

  “Okay. I’ll trust your judgment. I just want to get this over with.”

  “So do I,” Susan agreed, remembering the peaceful vacation she had envisioned back in Connecticut while she followed Marnie into a large white room. The Ericksen family was sitting around a big Formica table; huge industrial washers and dryers lined the walls. In one corner, Dillon leaned against a tall pile of folded towels that was in great danger of toppling out of the hamper and onto the floor.

  Susan glanced around quickly. With the exception of C.J. and Heather, the entire family was present. Susan walked across the floor and sat down in the last empty chair. Kathleen smiled at her across the table; her son slept peacefully in her arms. Marnie joined Dillon, taking a moment to prop up the laundry. Everyone was here. It was time to begin.

  “I suppose it’s appropriate that we’re ending this in a laundry room since, in some ways, I first thought that things were not what they seemed while standing in the middle of a laundry room,” Susan began.

  “Randy’s clothing?” Darcy asked, catching on.

  “Exactly. I went into the laundry room the night your father was murdered, and there was a pile of laundry in one of the dryers. Since most of the guests in the lodge were asleep at that time, I thought it was rather unusual. Later it turned out to be pretty significant.” From the looks on the faces of Jane and Charlotte, she guessed that she was rapidly losing the interest of her audience. Only Kathleen seemed completely attentive. The Ericksen family was stirring restlessly. Dillon looked bored. Marnie was moving sheets again. Bananas burped in his sleep. No one seemed terribly interested in what a housewife had to say about laundry.

  Susan persisted. “The laundry was put there by someone who didn’t want us to know that Randy was dead, who wanted us to think he had packed up his belongings and left the park. But I’m not beginning at the beginning.” She took a deep breath.

  “The problem,” she began again, “is always finding out the truth. When someone is killed, of course the k
iller immediately starts telling lies—he or she is trying desperately to hide, to protect himself or herself. And sometimes other people lie—to protect the murderer, to keep their own involvement in the murder a secret, to protect secrets that have nothing to do with the murder, but that might surface in any murder investigation.”

  “And you think that’s what happened here?” Jane asked, barely able to keep the boredom out of her voice.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t think there are many people lying here—just the murderer. But the rest of you don’t know the truth. You don’t know the truth about the murders, you don’t know the truth about your family, and I suppose you don’t know the truth about yourselves.

  “You see …” Susan went on more forcefully. She had her audience’s attention now; from the expressions on their faces, she judged that the entire family was mad at her. “Every family has its myths. I think your family has more than most. Or maybe you just believe them more.…”

  “When I asked you to help my family, I never thought you were going to end up insulting us,” Phyllis spoke up.

  “No, you thought you were going to be able to hide behind my ineptness as I tried to discover what exactly was going on. Believe me, I know exactly who has been insulted here.” Susan’s eyes flashed. She had been waiting for this confrontation.…

  “We may not want the truth … but I think, now, that we need it,” Carlton said quietly. Joyce, sitting next to him, took his hand in hers, smiling encouragingly into his eyes.

  “I hope you feel like that when I’m done.” Susan licked her lips and continued.

  “One of the things that interested me from the beginning was how outsiders—in this case, Joyce and Beth—saw the family. Beth told me early that the Ericksen family was ‘almost too good to be true’—and, of course, that turned out to be an understatement. The family living in the midst of flowering trees turned out to be nothing like its superficial image.” She shrugged. “And maybe no family is. But this family is different. In the first place, it’s made up of small groups. The obvious one is Jane and Charlotte, of course. Everyone comments on it, and they even talk about it, admitting to dating the same person as well as taking annual vacations together and staying closely in touch, although they live on opposite sides of the continent. And then there’s Jon and Carlton. Although separated by almost fifteen years, they’re both scientists, both accepted by the family as similar people. Carlton’s old hobbies were inherited by Jon, and Jon carries on the tradition passed from George to Carlton to himself, of scholarship in a scientific field.