by Trevor Scott
Suddenly, the lights flickered for a second and then went out. Now, they sat only in the light of the fire. Max shoved his cell phone into his pocket.
“This shit happens all the time around here,” Pasquale said. “New England has the worst power grid in a supposed first-world country. They should have a back-up generator here. It’ll kick in within thirty seconds.”
But it didn’t. Max checked his watch. A minute or two had already passed. Just as the lights went out, Max thought for sure he had heard a scream from somewhere in the estate. But his ears might have been deceiving him as much as his eyes earlier in the evening.
“Have you ever experienced strange things happening here?” Max asked.
Pasquale took a long drink of his beer. Then he said, “You mean like seeing ghosts? Damn near everyone has seen them in this place. Some say it’s the ghost of a former owner who was murdered on the third floor back in the twenties.”
“What do you think?” Max asked.
“If you believe in that sort of thing, the ghost could be from anywhere. It could be a former guest who stayed here and doesn’t want to leave. The former owner wasn’t the only person to die here over the years.”
There was a commotion at the entrance to the foyer, and Max saw his sister rush into the room with her cell phone light leading the way.
“What’s going on?” Max asked.
“Someone is hurt,” Robin said as calmly as she could.
Max rushed after his sister, down the hallway on the first floor toward the kitchen, and to the manager’s residence on the left. Standing at the doorway was Christina. Max slipped past his sister and saw Martha laying on the floor on a Persian rug, with Dr. Kamala Sen checking her out.
“What is it?” Max asked.
“Redness and swelling around the mouth,” Kamala said. “Constricted airway. Loss of consciousness.”
“Anaphylaxis,” Max said. “A seizure or allergic reaction.”
“Very good,” the doctor said.
“I’ll check for an EpiPen,” Max said, and then went through her small room looking for an epinephrine autoinjector. He found her purse and dug through her things until he found what he was looking for, which he quickly handed to the doctor.
Kamala pulled the EpiPen from the plastic carry sleeve and quickly jabbed the injector into Martha’s left thigh. Then she sat back for a moment to check for reaction, holding onto Martha’s wrist to monitor her pulse.
Within seconds, Martha started to show improvement. Her breathing became more normal and her eyes opened.
“What are you allergic to?” Kamala asked Martha.
Martha’s eyes wandered around the room, and Max tried to see who or what she was trying to see. By now, more people had gathered outside the room.
“Nuts,” Martha finally said. “I told the chef.”
“Let’s get her up to her bed,” Kamala said. “The EpiPen is only a stopgap. She needs to get to the hospital. How far is Southwestern? It’s part of our Dartmouth-Hitchcock system.”
Christina, still at the door, said, “In Bennington. About a half-hour drive. Maybe longer in this weather.”
Robin came farther into the room and helped Max lift Martha to her bed.
Pulling his phone from his pocket, Max was a bit confused. His cell phone said he had no service. “Anybody else have service?”
Everyone checked their phones, but all Max got was disturbed stares and shaking heads.
Frank leaned into the room and said, “There’s only one cell tower down this way. If the power is out, that tower could be down.”
Max said, “Most cell towers have backup power now. The front desk has a landline. Could someone try using that to call 911?”
Christina rushed out of the room to make the call.
By now, Martha was looking a little better. The doctor was checking her over.
Max came to the side of her bed and asked, “Is it mostly peanuts?”
“All nuts,” Martha said with a strained voice.
“I don’t recall any nuts in anything we ate tonight,” Max said.
“Some people are sensitive to the dust on peanuts,” Kamala said. “You carry a back-up EpiPen. You must be really sensitive.”
“I am,” Martha said.
“I’ll go talk with the chef,” Max said. “If you told him about your allergy, I need to know how this happened.”
Max started for the door, when Christina rushed in and said, “The landline is dead also.”
“That’s impossible,” Frank said.
“Doesn’t this place have a backup generator?” Max asked.
Bobby said, “Yes, it does. I’ll go check on it.”
“I’m the electrician,” Frank said.
“Go together,” Max demanded.
The two men hurried off.
“Are there candles somewhere on the estate?” Max asked.
Martha tried to talk, but the words wouldn’t come.
“I’ll go look,” Christina said.
Max shifted his eyes toward Robin, who went with her cousin on the hunt.
Still trying to understand his cell phone, Max paced the small room. He had used a cell jammer in the military when they closed in on a target and didn’t want the enemy to set off IEDs with their cell phones. Or call for help. This seemed like a similar situation, but he sure as hell wasn’t about to bring this up to the group.
Alone now with the doctor, Kamala said to Max, “Where did you learn about anaphylaxis?”
“In special ops we have to go in prepared for nearly everything,” Max said. “We get some emergency first aid training. And we were required to carry an EpiPen and Atropine injectors for nerve agent exposure.”
“I’m impressed,” Kamala said.
“It’s no big thing.”
The sudden scream from nearby startled both Martha and Kamala. Max rushed out the door toward the shriek. Standing by the kitchen door was his sister Robin.
“What’s up?” Max asked.
Christina came from inside the kitchen and went directly into Robin’s waiting arms.
“The chef,” Robin said, shifting her head toward the kitchen.
“I stepped in it,” Christina said. “It’s on my shoes.”
Max went into the kitchen and used his phone to direct his vision. Laying under a large stainless-steel table with dirty dishes stacked on top, was the chef. What had been pure white clothes from top to bottom, was now covered in blood from a number of sources. He checked the man’s pulse out of habit, knowing there was no way the man was still alive. Not with that much blood loss. Blood pooled from the man’s torso and had run to a drain in the floor. Based on his observation, the man couldn’t have been stabbed too long ago. But the pooling of blood was starting to coagulate already, so he must have been killed right after dinner sometime.
“Where’s the young man who was working with the chef?” Max asked. But he turned and saw that his sister had pulled Christina away from the scene.
Alone now, Max moved about the kitchen, trying to preserve the scene, but also wanting to make sure the place was safe and no killer lurked in the shadows.
Finally, he found a rechargeable flashlight hanging on the wall near the walk-in freezer. He clicked on the light and swept the kitchen properly.
But he found nothing. Not in the pantry. Not in the walk-in freezer. Nowhere. Whoever killed the chef was gone. Who did it, and why?
15
Max wandered back to Martha’s room with his new flashlight, finding Robin and Kamala watching over Martha, who seemed to be sleeping.
“Did you brief Kamala?” he asked Robin.
“Not yet,” Robin said.
Max nodded his head and the doctor went with him to the hallway. Once there, he turned off the flashlight to save the battery.
“The chef is dead,” Max said softly.
“Are you sure?”
“I know dead when I see dead,” Max said. “But I also checked his pulse. He had multi
ple stab wounds and lost about half the blood in his body.”
“Who killed him, and why?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Max said honestly.
Christina came from the foyer and said, “I found a bunch of candles in a closet.”
“Where’s your father and mother?” Max asked. “And the others.”
“Papa is in the living room calming down my mom and his sister.”
“Do they know about the cook?” he asked.
“Yes,” Christina said. “My Aunt Anna is the one who found him.”
“I thought you did.”
“I saw her run out of the kitchen frightened,” Christina said. “She ran through the dining area, the library and into the back entrance to the parlor. Then I went in with your sister to find the man had been stabbed.”
Could his aunt have killed the chef? It was possible. But the timing seemed off. “What was Aunt Anna doing in the kitchen?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to ask her.”
Before he got a chance, Frank and Bobby came back through the front door. They were wet and Frank was dirty.
Max asked, “Obviously, not good news or we’d have light.”
“The main power was cut,” Frank said. “And not just the breaker. Someone must have cut the power lines.”
Bobby broke in. “And the generator has been trashed.”
“I got in there to see what it would take to fix it,” Frank said, “but it will take me hours to rewire it. Same with the main power line, assuming we can find the actual break.”
“What about the phone landline?” Max asked.
“I couldn’t see where that was cut,” Frank said. “If whoever did this was smart, they would have cut the line down the road where it comes into the estate.”
“That’s right,” Bobby said. “Because the other buildings each have a landline that run through the main junction box.”
“But the junction box is intact,” Frank said.
“The power line and the telephone lines run down to the main highway,” Max said.
“I don’t get why the cell phones aren’t working,” Frank said.
“Someone is jamming the signal,” Max surmised.
Kamala moved into the conversation. “Why would someone do this?”
That wasn’t Max’s concern right now. Instead, he asked, “Has anyone seen the young man working with the chef?”
Bobby said, “That’s John. I hired him to help the chef, but he could only stay for the prep and the serving. He had to get back to town for his job at a local brewpub.”
“Could he have killed the chef?” Max asked.
“Wait,” Bobby said. “The chef is dead?”
“Yes,” Max said. “Someone stabbed him. Did you know him well?”
Bobby shook his head. “He was a backup for the guy I wanted. My guy was out of town this weekend. I got this guy’s name from Martha.”
“How does she know the chef?” Max asked.
“You’ll have to ask her,” Bobby said.
Max turned to Kamala and asked, “How important is it that Martha gets to the hospital?”
The doctor shrugged. “She could recover fine on her own. We have a second EpiPen, but it can be dangerous to use that again without some time passing.”
“What about the dead guy?” Frank asked.
“He’s right,” Max said. “We should get the local sheriff out here to investigate.”
Christina said, “The county sheriff is in Bennington also. We should bring Martha to the hospital there and then get the sheriff to come out.”
“I’ll take her,” Frank said. “I’ll bring my truck to the front.” Frank hurried out the front door into the onslaught of the pounding rain.
“You should probably go with him,” Max said to the doctor.
“Okay,” Kamala said. “I’ll bring the extra EpiPen.”
“I’ll start putting out some candles,” Christina said.
Max leaned into the manager’s room and saw his sister sitting next to the bed holding Martha’s hand.
“What is it?” Robin asked.
“We’re going to take Martha to the hospital and bring the sheriff back. Could you help Christina with the candles?”
“Of course,” Robin said.
Martha seemed a bit more coherent now. She said, “That’s not necessary. I’ll be fine.”
Kamala had entered the room after Max. The doctor said, “You should be checked out anyway.”
“Did you tell her about the chef?” Max asked Robin.
“Yes, I did.”
Max turned to Martha and asked, “How well did you know the chef?”
“Not well,” Martha said. “He had catered a number of events here over the years. Mostly weddings. But he also did our last murder mystery weekend. He was a nice man.”
There was a disturbance again in the foyer, which migrated eventually to Martha’s room.
Frank came in shaking his head. “Some asshole slashed the tires.”
“We can take my truck,” Max said.
“No, you don’t get it,” Frank said. “They slashed every tire on every vehicle in the lot.”
Dr. Kamala Sen paced the room and finally said, “My BMW has run-flat tires. Could we still use that?”
“That would work,” Max said. “We could even run a vehicle on its rims to the closest house and use their phone.”
“The closest place is a mile away,” Bobby said.
“Candles,” Max said to Robin, who rounded up Christina and the two of them went to disperse the candles.
Kamala pulled her keys from her pocket and stretched her hand out to the men in the room. “Could someone go get the car for me? I should stay with Martha.”
Frank grabbed the keys and said, “I’ve always wanted to drive one of those. But not with flat tires.”
Frank left and Bobby went with him, leaving Max and Kamala alone with Martha.
“I have a thought,” Max said, shifting his eyes toward the door to the doctor.
She followed Max to the hallway, far enough away so Martha could not hear them.
“What are you thinking?” Kamala asked.
“Something strange is going on here,” he said.
“You mean like possible attempted murder, actual murder, and our total isolation?” Kamala said with a hint of irony in her voice.
“How well do you know these people?” he asked.
“I just met them tonight. With the exception of Anna Aldo, whom I have served with on the hospital board for more than a year. Why?”
“Anna was seen running out of the kitchen before Christina went in to discover the body.”
“There’s no way that Anna could have done that to the chef. She’s your aunt.”
“I know,” Max said. “It seems unlikely. Besides, there’s no way she had time to slash all the tires on the vehicles. Unless.”
“Unless what?”
“Unless she had an accomplice. Like her son. Frank has the knowledge to cut the main power and the generator. Plus, he could have just slashed the tires when he went out to get his truck.”
“Frank? I don’t think so.”
Max had to agree with the doctor. What motive would he have to kill the chef? “Truthfully, I have no suspects for the murder. Everyone in this estate seemed to be occupied elsewhere.”
“What about your Uncle Pasquale?” the doctor asked.
“No. He was with me from the time we ate until the lights went out. We went directly to the living room. I worked on the fire while he drank a beer.”
“That leaves your cousin Bobby,” Kamala said.
“He would have known about Martha’s nut allergy,” Max said. “And he was missing for a while earlier in the evening. He could have slashed the tires before we sat down to dinner.”
“He also hired the chef and his helper,” Kamala reasoned.
She had a point, he knew. But, having dealt with cold-blooded killers in the past, Max knew that Bo
bby just didn’t fit the image of someone that calculating. He was more of a happy-go-lucky guy who smoked pot and made honey and maple syrup.
“Not likely,” Max concluded. “Same with my cousin Christina and her mother.”
“That’s everyone,” Kamala said, “except for you and your sister.”
Max shook his head. “True. But I was with my uncle and Robin was upstairs.”
Kamala smiled. “She was with me in my room.”
“Doing what?” he asked.
“I was picking her brain about her twin,” the doctor said. “You intrigue me.”
Now Max had to smile. “Knowing my sister, she was picking your brain on my behalf.”
“She seems like a good sister.”
“She’s a great sister.”
Frank and Bobby rushed in through the front door, both of them slightly out of breath.
Frank said, “Your BMW won’t start. Someone messed with the engine.”
“My car was locked,” Kamala said. “How would they open the hood?”
“It can be done,” Frank said. “They’d just need to pull a few wires to keep it from turning over. Now what?”
What indeed, Max thought. He turned to his cousin Bobby and asked, “Do you know any of the neighbors down the road?”
“A couple,” Bobby said. “You want me to walk down and see if I can use their phone?”
“That would be great. Call the sheriff, tell him about the dead man, and have them send an ambulance for Martha.”
“I can do that,” Bobby said. “But it might take a while in this weather. And they might have only a cell phone.”
“Give it a try,” Max said. “Maybe Frank should go with you.”
Frank shook his head. “It might be better if I stay here and work on the power. I have a headlamp and a cover to keep the rain off me.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
His two cousins went back out into the harsh rainy night.
“I need to go talk with my uncle and aunts,” Max said. “Let them know what’s going on.”
“Good idea,” Kamala said. “I’ll stay with Martha.”
When Max got to the living room, his sister was sitting with Aunt Anna, holding her hand. Christina and her mother seemed to be in deep conversation. And the atmosphere had changed with the new candles lending light to the large space.