Murder With Peacocks

by Murder

  And spent most of the rest of the party avoiding Samantha while racking my brain for some explanation that would satisfy her. By the time she finally cornered me, much later in the evening, we'd both had rather a lot of champagne, and I managed to spin a convincing yarn about Reverend Pugh's mysterious illness, and how Dad had said a positive mental attitude was important and of course it would keep his spirits up to look forward to the wedding, but that we'd round up a substitute and have Dad order bed rest at the last minute. It sounded highly convincing to me, though it could have been the champagne. Either she bought it or she allowed me to believe she had, after issuing the stern warning that I had better find the substitute ASAP.

  I had changed my mind; it was going to be an interminable summer.

  Tuesday, May 31

  Although I hadn't exactly made a wild night of it, I had stayed up rather late at the picnic, plotting pranks against Mrs. Grover, averting disasters, and drinking a few glasses of wine and champagne. All right, more than a few. I was not at all happy when one of the bridesmaids showed up at the house shortly after dawn. The caterer was acting up and Samantha wanted my help.

  "I'm sure Meg will be able to take care of it," Mother said soothingly as she adjusted her hat in the hall mirror. "Jake and I are following your orders today, dear. We're going down to get him a new suit for the wedding, and then we're going to run a whole lot of little errands."

  "What sort of little errands?" I asked. Perhaps it was paranoid of me, but I couldn't help suspecting that, as usual, some of Mother's errands would later turn out to involve major amounts of work on my part.

  "Oh, this and that," Mother said, vaguely. "Some things for the house. I don't have a list yet. We're going to make a list over a nice breakfast, and then see how much we can get done by lunch."

  "Wonderful," I said, insincerely. Mother turned loose on the unsuspecting county. I much preferred her indolent.

  "There's Jake now, dear," she said, and floated out toward the front door just as Dad came in the back.

  "Meg," he said. "Have you seen Mrs. Grover this morning? She was supposed to meet me here at six A.m. to go bird-watching. She's half an hour late."

  "She probably decided to be sensible and sleep in. That certainly was what I had in mind this morning," I said, looking pointedly at the bridesmaid.

  "Probably so. Well, if she shows up, or if anyone needs me, I'll be in the side yard." I nodded; my mouth was filled with one of Pam's blueberry muffins.

  "Okay," I told the bridesmaid, as I finished filling my traveling coffee mug. "Let's go get Samantha and bring the caterer to heel."

  The neighbors two houses down had recently put up an eight-foot fence to keep in their Labradors. When we started down the street, I saw Michael trying to pull a small furry dog away from that very fence. The little dog was barking almost hysterically and leaping repeatedly at the fence. We heard an occasional bored bark from one of the Labs. Michael finally succeeded in dragging his dog away, and they headed in our direction. When the dog caught sight of us he quickened his pace.

  "Oh, what a cute little dog," the bridesmaid cooed as we came near them.

  "If you say so," Michael said. "I consider him--don't!" he shouted, as she bent down to pet the dog. "He'll take your nose off," he explained, as the dog went into a frenzy of snarling and snapping. "Bad dog, Spike," he said rather mechanically, as if he had to say it rather often.

  "Oh, his name's Spike," she said inanely.

  "No, actually Mother calls him Sweetie-cakes, or Cutesy-poo, or something like that," Michael said, with disgust. "I don't think even a nasty little dog like him deserves that, so I've decided to call him Spike. After a bully I knew in grade school." As if he understood what Michael was saying, Spike glanced up at him balefully and curled his lip.

  "Charming," I said. Spike was a small dustmop of black and white fur with a petulant, pushed-in face. I prefer cats and collies, myself.

  "Mom rescued him from an animal shelter where she was doing some volunteer work."

  "Oh, that's so nice," the bridesmaid said.

  "She is fond of remarking that he must have been mistreated," Michael said, "and will mellow when he learns to expect food and kindness instead of ill treatment."

  "Oh, then she hasn't had him long," I said.

  "Only seven years. At this rate, I think he'll go senile before he mellows."

  Spike trotted over to the neighbors' mailbox and lifted his leg. However, he lifted the wrong leg, and instead of watering the post came perilously close to spraying the bridesmaid and me.

  "We'd better go," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Samantha will be getting impatient."

  "The caterer is showing signs of rebellion," I said. "We're gathering a posse to deal with him."

  "Good luck. Are you bringing your friend Eileen in later today?"

  "If she shows up," I said. "Mother took a garbled message from her yesterday. Something about her and Steven running away to the beach."

  "Perhaps they're eloping."

  "Don't get my hopes up."

  We dealt with the caterer by phone, and then spent what seemed like hours in earnest discussion over whether or not there should be finger bowls, and if so, whether they should have flowers or paper-thin lemon slices floating in them. Left to my own devices, I could have settled this in thirty seconds.

  When this weighty issue had been decided and I had my marching orders, Samantha and her bridesmaid went off to meet yet another bridesmaid for lunch. Probably going to split a lettuce leaf between the three of them, I thought, guiltily remembering the muffin with which I'd already undermined my day's calorie count.

  I went home, fixed myself an early and depressingly meager lunch, and spent the next few hours on the back porch swing with the phone, racking up long distance charges. One of Eileen's bridesmaids, from Tennessee, had provided two completely contradictory shoe sizes, and I had to elicit the truth.

  One of Mother's more elusive cousins had to be tracked down--as it turned out, to a commune in California. After failing miserably to find out through any other means the phone number of the Cape May bed and breakfast where Eileen and Steven were reputed to be hiding, I called Barry at Professor Donleavy's and managed to extract the information without actually promising to go out with him. And finally, I reached Eileen and Steven and made Eileen promise to come home within a day or two to decide on her dress and ours.

  Having reached the end of my patience, I retired to the hammock and addressed envelopes for a few hours. When Mother hadn't shown up by six o'clock, I began fixing some dinner. When she hadn't shown up by seven-thirty, I ate it. Jake finally dropped her off after nine, tired but happy and laden with parcels.

  Not a wildly exciting or productive afternoon, but trivial as my activities were to the progress of the weddings, they loomed large in the light of subsequent events.

  Wednesday, June 1

  Subsequent events began happening the next morning at breakfast.

  "Meg, have you seen Mrs. Grover?" Mother asked while waiting for me to finish fixing her a fresh fruit salad.

  "Yes," I said. "I met her at the party, remember? At both parties."

  "Yes, but have you seen her since? Jake called a little while ago to say she didn't come home last night. He wanted to report her missing to the sheriff, but for some silly reason you can't do much until she's been gone for twenty-four hours."

  "Does he think something could have happened to her?" I asked. Trying hard not to sound too hopeful.

  "Goodness, I hope not," Mother said. "I think perhaps he's worried that she may have gotten a little vexed at his leaving her alone all day yesterday. While he and I did all our little errands."

  "Maybe he's right. She is supposed to be his houseguest."

  "Yes, but good heavens, half the neighbors had invited her to visit them or offered to take her places. Your father even came out early to take her bird-watching and she never showed up."

  "Well, let's call some of the neighbo
rs and see if anyone has seen her."

  We called all the neighbors. No one had seen Mrs. Grover. I went over and searched Jake's yard and the small woods in back of it, in case she'd fallen, broken her hip, and been unable to move, as had happened to an elderly neighbor the previous year. No Mrs. Grover. We braved the dust of the attic and the damp of the cellar to see if she might have been overcome by illness while indulging in a bit of household snooping. Still no Mrs. Grover. There were dishes in the sink and half a cup of cold coffee on the bedside table in her room that Jake didn't think had been there when he left yesterday morning, but he couldn't be sure. She had left three suitcases and quite a lot of clothes, but there was no way we could tell if anything was missing. I was quietly amused by the number of small but valuable household items that seemed to have found their way into her suitcases. Things she considered part of her rightful inheritance from the late Emma Wendell, I supposed.

  Having met the woman, I could easily believe that she would storm off and leave Jake to have fits worrying about her. But that didn't mean she couldn't have gotten ill or had an accident. And I privately doubted that she would have gone off, even temporarily, and left all her loot behind where Jake could reclaim it.

  While we were searching, the sheriff turned up at Jake's house. It was rather unsettling; the sheriff was a cousin, and dropped by quite a lot, but usually his conversations with Mother revolved around family gossip, not police procedures.

  "We're going to list her as officially missing first thing in the morning," he announced.

  "Anything could happen between now and then," Jake said.

  "Frankly, I decided not to wait to start checking around," the sheriff assured him. "She's not in any of the local hospitals or morgues, and there are no Jane Does remotely fitting her description. She can't have taken a plane or train or bus; none of them have a credit card transaction in her name and these days the ticket agents tend to remember anyone who pays in cash. I got in touch with the police department down in Fort Lauderdale, and they'll let me know if she shows up at home. We could try to get some dogs in here to try to track her in case she's ... wandered off and lying ill someplace."

  "I'd appreciate that," Jake said. "I only hope I'm not putting you to all this trouble for nothing. I mean, I'd feel terrible if she just showed up tomorrow and we find out that she forgot to tell me she was going to visit some friend who lives down here. It just has to be some kind of silly mix-up like that, doesn't it?"

  He looked hopefully up at the sheriff. "That's very probable, Mr. Wendell, but I'd feel terrible if we didn't do everything we could to make sure she's all right," the sheriff replied in the earnest tones he usually reserves for the election season. "If you hear from her, you let us know straight away, you hear? And we'll call you the minute we find out something."

  I spent most of the rest of the day trying to do a few wedding-related chores in between fielding phone calls about Mrs. Grover, helping coordinate the search for Mrs. Grover, and reassuring an increasingly anxious Jake that I was sure nothing serious had happened to Mrs. Grover.

  "I certainly hope she really is all right," I told Dad as we sat on the porch after dinner. "She's totally wrecked my week's schedule and probably taken ten years off Jake's life, the way he's worrying, but I will feel guilty about resenting it all until I know she's all right."

  "Yes," he said. "I feel mildly guilty for all the little pranks I was planning to play on her."

  "Let's resolve to be especially nice to her when she shows up again," I said.

  "Agreed," said Dad. "No more little pranks."

  Thursday, June 2

  I woke up early, couldn't get back to sleep for wondering if anyone had heard from Mrs. Grover, and finally gave up and came down for breakfast.

  "Any news of Mrs. Grover?" I asked.

  "No, but Eileen called," Mother said.

  "Make my day; tell me she's coming home to pick out a dress."

  "No, she and Steven are staying over at Cape May," Mother said. "Such a nice place for a honeymoon."

  "Yes, but they're not honeymooning yet. Or ever will be, if she doesn't get down here to pick out a dress."

  "There's still time, dear. Why don't you fix us a nice omelet?"

  We heard a knock and saw Michael's face at the back door.

  "Have you seen Spike?" he asked, slightly breathless. "You know, Mom's dog?"

  "No," I said. "Damn, we don't need any more disappearances."

  "If you see him running around loose, just give him a wide berth and call me," Michael said. "He's not really vicious, just terminally irritable."

  "You might try going down to the beach," I said, following him out. "Dogs always seem to like that. Lots of smelly seaweed and dead fish to wallow in."

  "Your nephew and your father suggested that," he said. "Searching the beach for Spike, that is, not wallowing there. They went down to look."

  "Or wallow, knowing Dad and Eric." Just then we saw Eric running toward us.

  "Maybe you're in luck," I said.

  "Meg!" Eric called, running up to us. "We found something down on the beach! I think it's a dead animal. Grandpa's down looking at it!" He ran over to the edge of the bluff and teetered there, pointing down.

  "Stay away from the edge!" I shouted, grabbing for him. "You know it's not safe. It could cave in."

  "Come see, Meg!" Eric pleaded.

  "We'd better go," I told Michael. "We may have to carry Dad up the ladder."

  "Ladder?" Michael said.

  "It's a shortcut down to the beach," I explained over my shoulder as Eric tugged me along by the hand to the next-door neighbors' yard. "Most people go down to the Donleavys' house. They have an easy path down to the beach. But Dad likes to go down this rather precarious series of ladders our neighbor built straight down the side of the bluff to his dock.

  "Dad!" I called as we reached the top of the ladder. "Do you need us for anything?"

  "You keep the kids back, Meg," Dad called up.

  "There's only Eric."

  "Just keep him back, you hear?" Dad repeated, sounding anxious.

  "Go on back to the house and see if your grandmother has the cookies ready," I told Eric, who trotted off eagerly.

  "Is she baking cookies?" Michael asked, with interest.

  "Mother? It's extremely unlikely. But by the time she convinces Eric of that, he'll have forgotten all about whatever it is Dad doesn't want him to see. It's very odd; I wonder why he's so worried about keeping the grandkids away."

  "Surely he wouldn't want them to see a dead animal."

  "I don't see why not. He was always dragging Pam and Rob and me to see dead animals and using them for little impromptu biology lessons. He does it all the time with the grandkids. Unless it's one of their animals, of course; even Dad has more sense than to do that. Oh, I hope it's not Duck; he wasn't following Eric."

  "Or Spike," Michael said. "Mom would have a fit."

  "Meg," Dad shouted up. "Who else is that with you?"

  "Michael," I shouted back. "We sent Eric back to the house."

  "Good!" said Dad. "Michael, would you mind climbing down here for a minute?" Michael shrugged and started down the ladder. A little too quickly.

  "Take it slow!" I said. "That's an old ladder; there are a few rungs missing, and a few more will be very soon if you aren't careful."

  "Right," he said, and continued at an excessively cautious pace. I stood at the top of the ladder peering down, rather idiotically, since the bushes were too thick for me to see anything. I could hear Dad and Michael talking in hushed tones.

  "Meg," Dad called up. "We've found Mrs. Grover. Go call the sheriff."

  "The sheriff," I repeated. "Right. And an ambulance?"

  "Yes, not that they need to rush or anything," Michael said.

  "And tell him to come prepared," Dad added. "There are some rather suspicious circumstances."

  "Oh, dear," Mother said, after eavesdropping shamelessly on my conversation with the sheriff.
"Poor Mrs. Grover. And here we all were so irritated because we thought she'd disappeared on purpose to annoy us. I suppose it should be a lesson to us."

  I felt rather guilty about the uncharitable thoughts I'd had about Mrs. Grover--now, presumably, the late Mrs. Grover. But while I felt very sorry indeed for her, I couldn't help thinking that if she was going to die under suspicious circumstances, she couldn't have picked a better place to do it.

  Of course, having met her, I felt sure that she'd have made every effort to die elsewhere if she'd had any idea of the deep personal and professional satisfaction a mystery buff like Dad would feel at the prospect of helping investigate her death.

  Dad examined the body, both on the scene and again at the morgue, once the coroner had arrived from the county seat. He kept trying to discuss the findings at the dinner table and was sternly and repeatedly repressed. I could understand it in Jake's case; he wasn't used to Dad, and it was, after all, his sister-in-law. But I found it hard to see how Mother and Rob could still be so squeamish after years of living with Dad.

  Rob and Jake fled after dinner, and Pam and Eric joined us for dessert, and Dad was at last able to discuss what Mother was already referring to as "your father's case."

  "And just what is that in English?" Pam queried, after Dad had given a detailed, polysyllabic description of Mrs. Grover's injuries.

  "There was no water in her lungs, so she didn't drown," I translated. "She had a fracture on the left rear side of the top of her skull, apparently from a rounded object; she died within minutes of the fracture; and the way the blood settled in her limbs indicated she may have been moved after death. Right?" I asked.

  "Very good, Meg," Dad said. "Of course, the moving may have been due to being washed about in the water; hard to tell yet whether it's significant. And they'll have to do more tests to determine the precise interval between the fracture and her death; that's just my estimate. Incidentally, I estimate the time of death as sometime during the day on Tuesday, but, again, the medical examiner's office will be able to tell more accurately. An examination of the contents of the stomach and the digestive tract as well as--"