Dead at Breakfast

by Beth Gutcheon

  Also Buster was handy. He had got his trailer up on cement blocks, and set about building a thing he called a studio onto the back of his house, and it was handsome. Had a high ceiling with a skylight in it, and a big wood-burning stove to heat it, and he’d put in a well and septic, all improvements to the property. The studio was where Buster would paint his watercolors in the evening. He was real good, the neighbors thought. When you looked at Buster’s pictures, you could tell right away what it was a picture of. Also he had a dish on his roof that gave him TV from Bangor, and an Internet signal. He didn’t put a password on it either, so when their children came to visit they could sit in their cars outside Buster’s house and pick up their e-mail, which was a big improvement over hearing them bitch about having to drive into town to use the library wi-fi, or up to the Subway shop in the Tradewinds Market in Bergen Falls.

  Buster was contracted to the town—well to the three towns, Bergen, West Bergen, and Bergen Falls—from the sheriff’s department in Ainsley. He was a peace officer more than anything, parking his cruiser near the high school when school let out, or when there was a game, driving around in the evenings to watch for DUIs, responding to domestic disputes and animal control calls. He’d joined the Bergen Grange and the Oddfellows, and was well liked in the village. He was real good with the teenagers, who tended to get into trouble just out of being balked and bored. Mostly minor scrapes but you didn’t want them becoming major. Kids with no place to go would break into hunting camps to party and leave a mess. They’d make off with peoples’ outboard motorboats in the summer and zoom around the lake at night. Sometimes crash somewhere, but mostly just run it out of gas and leave it full of beer cans. The kids in town tended to tell Deputy Babbin the truth, even when they’d screwed up and knew there was punishment coming. It didn’t hurt that everyone knew he’d been a bad boy himself at one time.

  There were a couple of hard cases in the neighborhood, guys who’d gone to Iraq or Afghanistan and come back wrecked, who stockpiled guns, and beat up their wives and children, and knew they were driving away the people who loved them but couldn’t stop. One guy had disappeared into the woods where he was probably cooking meth, and another one flew the American flag upside down outside his house, marine in trouble, and man, was he ever. His wife had taken the children and moved back in with her parents in Totten, and he would get a snootful and drive to their house and stand on the lawn roaring that if she didn’t come back he would kill all of them. When he was sober he could understand what was wrong with that strategy, but he was rarely sober. More than once Buster had talked him down, locked up his guns, and let him sleep in his studio until he sobered up because he knew that most of all, the guy shouldn’t be alone.

  There had been only one capital crime in Buster’s bailiwick since he got the job: two summers ago, after a night of drinking, a young woman had pushed her boyfriend out of the car and run over him on purpose. Twice. She rolled over him going forward and then she put it in reverse and gunned it backward until she’d made two sets of tracks across his T-shirt, right below where it read DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING PEOPLE PERSON? Buster caught that call.

  This call, from the Oquossoc Mountain Inn at 2:14 in the morning of Thursday, October 10, was not for police, but for the fire department. Buster’s radio crackled to life on the kitchen table. His girlfriend Brianna, who was a light sleeper, heard it first. She pulled up her sleep mask, peered at the clock, then gave Buster a poke. She resettled the mask and felt for the yellow earplugs that lay beside the clock. Buster made an awful lot of noise crashing around the tiny room getting dressed in a hurry in the dark.

  He was in the cruiser heading up the hill when the Bergen fire truck passed him. He already knew it was a structure fire up at the inn. When the fire truck from Bergen Falls caught up with him and sped past, sirens screaming, he knew it was no paint fire in the garden shed.

  DAY FIVE, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10

  It was 2:18 in the morning when Maggie was roused by a pounding on her door.

  “Fire!” shouted a panicky voice she thought was Mr. Gurrell’s. “Leave everything, close the door behind you, and come down the stairs at the end of the hall.” She’d been wakened from a strange but vivid dream about a fire drill in her school in Washington thirty years ago. Somewhere a smoke alarm was shrilling.

  She shouted to tell him she was on her feet, and she heard him move down the hall, banging and shouting. “Shut your door behind you! Don’t use the elevator! Hurry!”

  By the time Maggie got outside there was an orange light in the sky from the mountain side of the building. Mr. Gurrell, with Clarence the bloodhound on a leash, stood looking at the dancing light above the roofline of his hotel. Maggie wondered where Mr. Rexroth was. Hope, who had come out right behind her, was wearing her own flimsy blue velour dressing gown, while Maggie was in the terry cloth bathrobe provided by the hotel. Quite a few evacuees were wearing these white bathrobes, which made the lawn look like an odd convention of nurses or nuns.

  “The fire seems to be on the other side,” said Hope. “Do you think we can go back in and get warmer clothes? I’m freezing.”

  “I doubt it,” said Maggie, who had supervised about a million fire drills in her time.

  The night was chilly and the moon about to set. The only illumination they had came from the porch lights and a lamp beside the side door. As her eyes adjusted, Maggie discerned Mr. Rexroth emerging from the fire stairs half-carrying Lisa Antippas. Lisa was weeping, either from pain or resentment of Mr. Rexroth. Glory was right behind them, carrying the little dog and her sister’s jewelry case. Behind her came that gardener man, Earl, who was, oddly, fully dressed and had a parrot peeking out from inside his jacket. He seemed to be crying too. His gait was painful to see. Maggie watched him hurry in his bobbing way around the end of the lakeside wing toward the wing of the building where the blaze was.

  After a cold stretch that felt like an hour but was probably about fifteen minutes, Hope spotted Chef Sarah wearing blue jeans and a parka. She was carrying a stack of blankets she must have taken from the housekeeping room.

  “Thank God,” said Hope. “Someone thought of something useful. It’s all I can do to keep from tackling her and taking them all.”

  When Sarah got to Hope and Maggie, Maggie said, “How come you get to wear a parka and we’re all wearing our stupid bathrobes?”

  “You forget, I live here,” said Sarah. “Winter clothes always at the ready. Blanket? Can you share?”

  They accepted a blanket, and Hope said, “I’ll give you a million dollars for those gloves. Look at my fingers.” She turned on the flashlight in her cell phone, and Maggie and Sarah could see that the fingertips were pinched-looking and white with a greenish tinge. “I have Tourneau’s syndrome.”

  “Raynaud’s,” said Maggie. “Tourneau is where you bought your watch.”

  Sarah said, “Make it two million.”

  “Done,” said Hope. Sarah gave her the gloves.

  “I’m putting you in my will,” said Hope. “How’s the migraine?”

  “Horrible,” said Sarah. Hope and Maggie wrapped themselves together and watched Sarah move on, offering blankets.

  “She’s a class act,” said Maggie.

  “I’m in love with these gloves,” said Hope. “I hope she never wants them back.”

  “How are your feet?”

  “I have no idea, I’ve gone completely numb below the ankles.”

  “Well, I think we’re all accounted for, here,” said Maggie having checked the group on the lawn for the rest of the cooking class. “I’d like to go see the fire.” They could hear sirens now, in the distance but approaching fast.

  “Let’s do it,” said Hope. It took them a minute to figure out how to walk together without wrenching the blanket from each other. “A little like a three-legged sack race,” said Maggie, who had also presided over about a million of those. They made their way around to the mountain side, arriving just in time to see the fire
truck from Bergen race into the parking lot, sirens screaming, followed by Buster in his patrol car, who bathed the scene in lurid blue light from his revolving roof lamp. He skidded to a stop, and his siren died with a disappointed sigh. Hope and Maggie watched Buster rush to the volunteer fire chief and commence a powwow. They were pointing up at the second-floor windows as the fire hoses began to shoot mighty streams toward the blaze.

  Maggie counted windows, left to right. The place where the flames were best established was not hard to spot.

  “I bet it’s Mr. Antippas’s room,” said Maggie. She and Hope looked at each other. They knew they hadn’t seen him in the group at the other side of the building. “Those disgusting cigars,” said Hope.

  They watched in silence as more and more of the group from the lake side of the building came around to see the damage. Lisa (Maggie learned later) had been wrapped warmly and installed in one of the Adirondack chairs on the lawn, but Glory appeared in the parking lot. Maggie had been watching for her, and observed her carefully as she looked at the site of the blaze. Her expression was oddly blank, Maggie noted.

  In the meantime, Deputy Babbin was taking pictures.

  The flames were declared extinguished by 3:30 A.M. The firefighters had been through the building and pronounced it safe, all except the section where the fire had started, where there was smoke and water damage and the roof was compromised. The ruin was confined to a fairly narrow area, and Mr. Gurrell was begging the firemen to let him send his guests back inside to their rooms in the other wings.

  “Come on,” said Hope, and she started the sack-race process with Maggie toward where the deputy sheriff now stood with the fire chief and a number of the firemen.

  “Buster, what’s going on?” she asked, then turned to the firefighters. “You all did a magnificent job, thank you so much. Can we go back to bed now?”

  The fire chief looked at Buster, unsure how to respond.

  “I’m Hope Babbin, Buster’s mother,” said Hope, extending her hand. “Pardon my glove,” she added. He shook it and said, “Denny Robertson.” Since things were suddenly taking on the aspect of a debutante tea, Maggie extended her hand from under the blanket and said “Maggie Detweiler.” Chief Robertson shook her hand too.

  “Please let us go. My feet are blocks of ice.”

  The two men looked at each other.

  By this time most of the onlookers had gathered around the two who seemed most likely to be able to make a decision.

  Buster turned to Mr. Gurrell. “Gabe, is there a place where we can meet inside? No need to keep these people out in the cold any longer.”

  “The dining room has the most chairs,” said Gabe. He looked to Chef Sarah, who nodded her agreement. She was looking ashen and ill. Migraines are no fun, thought Maggie.

  “Do you want just the guests in there?”

  “No, everyone on the premises.” Deputy Babbin went to his car for his portable megaphone.

  “Attention,” he said through the megaphone, which broadcast at earsplitting volume. “Attention everyone. This is Deputy Sheriff Babbin speaking. It is safe to reenter the lake view wing of the building. Please proceed directly to the dining room. Please use the—” He stopped and asked Mr. Gurrell how to get to the dining room without going through the halls of the affected area of the building.

  “Please proceed to the door over there, and Mr. Gurrell will direct you inside.”

  “Can I just go back to my room and put on a pair of pants?” asked Margaux Kleinkramer, making herself perfectly audible by raising her voice.

  “Please do not go back to your rooms first,” said Buster through his bullhorn. “Please proceed directly to the dining room,” but in spite of his magnified authority, at least a dozen people had already left the group and were hurrying into the hotel.

  “Poor Buster,” said Hope, as she and Maggie moved toward the building. It was a good half hour before the guests were all reassembled in the dining room, almost all of them in more dignified garb than their bathrobes. The dining room was warm and bright, and Oliver was serving coffee and hot boullion and had put out plates of petits fours and macaroons.

  After confirming with Mr. Gurrell that everyone was present, Buster called the meeting to order. Maggie and Hope took seats toward the back so as not to distract Buster in his moment of glory. Also Maggie automatically liked to be where she could see the whole room, just to keep track of who was passing notes or making spitballs or texting when they shouldn’t be; it was instinctive. There were a couple of staff people present whom she didn’t recognize, who must be on duty through the night in case of housekeeping or other emergencies. The cooking class she knew of course, and Mr. Rexroth and Earl, Mr. Gurrell. There were two young couples who had arrived the afternoon before to spend the night on their way to Montreal. Glory and her sister were missing, and there was a boy/man she’d never seen before sitting near them, taking feverish notes. That would be a member of the fourth estate, she guessed. Either the Ainsley weekly paper had a stringer in town, or this was a high school kid hoping to get lucky and sell his first bylined story.

  Buster introduced himself.

  “You’ve all had a long night, I know, and I’m sorry to have to detain you further, but there was a casualty this evening. The fire started in the bedroom of Mr.”—he consulted a piece of paper—“Alexander Antippas and I’m sorry to tell you, the gentleman did not survive.”

  There was an electrified stir and murmur at this news, although many had expected it, having seen for themselves where the fire had been, and noted that he was not among them.

  “Chief Robertson and I have examined the site, and we have no choice but to designate it a crime scene. There’s a forensic crew on its way from Augusta, and no unauthorized persons will be allowed into that part of the building until the Major Crimes Unit has done its work. Until we can tell if there’s been foul play or not, we must ask you all to remain in the hotel.”

  There was a roar of response. For How Long? Did he mean they couldn’t even go outside? People had other plans. They had travel arrangements. They had grandchildren coming to visit, doctor’s appointments, were called for jury duty. They had important jobs and busy lives. Gabriel Gurrell wondered, if people were prevented by the police from leaving the hotel, did they have to pay for their rooms and food while they were kept here? And was anyone going to settle Mr. Antippas’s enormous bill? Into the middle of this strode Glory, looking to be at the end of her rope.

  “My suitcase has been stolen!” she said loudly. “My sister is in pain and my suitcase is gone!”

  Knocked off script, Buster seemed to forget what he was doing.

  “Wait, Miss Poole, your suitcase was . . . where was the suitcase?”

  “In our room.”

  Buster took his pad from his back pocket and made a note. “And where exactly in your room? Was it in the closet or out in plain sight?”

  “In the closet.”

  “And were there items of value in the suitcase?”

  “My sister’s pain meds were in it.”

  “Excuse me, officer,” said Martin Maynard. “I have to be in Washington without fail by tomorrow evening. Could we get back to the point here?” And as others piled on with questions and claims about their schedules, the young man with the notepad reached Glory.

  “Excuse me, Miss Poole? Are you the sister of Mrs. Antippas?”

  Glory agreed that she was.

  “So Artemis was your niece?”

  With the dawn came the paparazzi. There were several print reporters from Portland, more from Boston, and even one enterprising photographer from New York. There were film crews from the major news channels doing stand-ups in the parking lot with the charred wall of the hotel in the background. A picture of Alex Antippas in happier times, younger, much slimmer, holding a six-year-old Jenny by the hand, was being featured on all the morning news shows. In the picture, both are in bathing suits and both are smiling. There is a turquoise swimming poo
l glittering behind them.

  “I took that picture,” Glory said bitterly. “It was in a frame on the piano in my sister’s house. Some vulture must have gotten in the door and stolen it. Unless the kids gave it out, but they wouldn’t be that stupid.” There was also a picture that flashed from time to time of Alex and Lisa, smiling and holding wineglasses at some charity event. In it, Lisa is hugely pregnant.

  The television in the bar area off the lounge, which usually played silently when there was a game on, was tuned to Fox News with the sound up. Every seat in the room was taken. Glory sat in the corner with Margaux Kleinkramer, drinking coffee. From time to time a man from the Major Crimes Unit would come down and summon someone to the bedroom where they were conducting interviews.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Maggie said, finding a spot near Glory after her own interrogation. “How is your sister?”

  “She’s sleeping now, finally,” said Glory. “Margaux gave her some Valium.”

  “Does she know what happened to her husband?”

  Glory nodded. “I gave her enough oxycodone to knock out a horse last night, so she was pretty out of it when the fire started. But she was in a terrible state this morning. Her memories of the night before were all crazy, but she understood. I don’t know what she’ll do. They were married for twenty-six years.”

  Shep Gordon, lead detective of the State Police Major Crimes Unit North, working out of Ainsley, didn’t like people from Away. He’d been in the navy. He’d been MP on a mammoth ship he used to patrol riding a brass bicycle (normal bikes rusted at sea). He’d served with all sorts, and he thought they were fine in their places, but not in his. He’d come back from his tour of duty and gone straight into the state police, like his dad. Shep Gordon was enormous. Off duty he rode a Harley and at all times kept his head shaved because if he didn’t he had a fluffy little peak of hair on the top of his skull that he thought gave the wrong impression. Back when he was a rookie he used to moonlight as a security guard out at the paper mill. Never had a lick of trouble; bad people did not like it when they saw 310 pounds in uniform coming at them. He’d raised six children and an unknown number of mongrel dogs and his policy with all of them, whether they pissed on the floor or used bad language in front of their mother, was “Hit ’em with a newspaper, throw ’em out the door.” Only one of the children had turned out very well, and the dogs wouldn’t hunt, but he saw no reason to rethink. His girl Marilyn was a corrections officer down in Warren. She was tough and mean and he was proud of her.