by Joan Hess
I got up and went around the desk to refill my coffee cup while I considered what he’d told me. “But you must have noticed Salvador wasn’t at the banquet, Edward. Why did you sing the ballad?”
“I noticed,” he said in a low voice. “I suppose it occurred to me that he might have taken off again, the same way he did when my mother told him she was pregnant. Then I realized that I was being paranoid. I mean, earlier in the afternoon I went down to the archery range and he was there. A bunch of little girls were squealing at him and fighting over the bows, so he and I just smiled at each other for a second. If he were going to split, he wouldn’t have shown up at the Ren Fair. He would have been halfway to New York or on a flight to Paris. When I didn’t see him at the banquet, I assumed he was around somewhere. Maybe I shouldn’t have sung the ballad, but I wanted everyone to know that Salvador was my father. The people at the head table, anyway.”
“They do now. Not of all them were enchanted by the idea, though.”
“Like Fiona, for instance?” Edward went to the doorway and looked at the dimly lit rows of racks, as if he thought she might be lurking with the intent of renewing her assault. “Did Caron and her friend tell you what happened? We were just standing there in the pasture. I was so bewildered that I didn’t even know how to process what I’d heard. I couldn’t decide if I should be crying or laughing at the ultimate irony. This man I’d been searching for since I turned eighteen—my father—I finally found him and confronted him. He didn’t call me a lying bastard and throw me out of his house. Even after the DNA test came back, he could have refused to have anything to do with me. But no, he was happy. You have to believe me, Claire. Salvador wanted me as his son. He told me so. And the next day he’s dead—murdered. Can’t you see the irony?” His voice rose. “It took me four years to find him, but only one day to lose him again—forever.”
“Sit down, Edward,” I said in my sternest maternal tone. “You need to collect yourself. I understand that you’re bewildered and in pain. Anyone in your situation would feel the same way.” Not that I could imagine anyone ever finding himself in that situation. It was the second act in a poorly plotted, overwrought melodrama from the Victorian era. Shakespeare would have treated it as a comedy fraught with mistaken identities and a happy ending, in which nobody had died and all the characters were properly sorted out by gender and wedded. Dickens would have at least allowed the son to inherit a great fortune and a title.
Edward sniveled for a few minutes, then wiped his face. “Okay, so now what? Have the police caught the person who did it?”
“If they have, they haven’t shared it with me. Why do you assume they’re looking for you? You talked to them last night, didn’t you?”
“I couldn’t handle it, so I stayed away from the Royal Pavilion. I’d left my street clothes at Lanya and Anderson’s house, but there was a cop on the porch and maybe more inside. I finally found an unlocked hatchback in the pasture and hid behind the backseat. A comely lady of the realm and her two dimpled damsels gave me a lift back to town.”
“You escaped in my car?” I said, appalled. “You had no business involving us in your premature departure! How could you do such a thing, Edward? You might have had the courtesy to announce your presence instead of eavesdropping like that.”
“Nobody said much of anything,” he said, trying to smile. “And if I’d asked for a ride, you would have said no. After the three of you
went upstairs, I went down that side street and along the railroad tracks. I didn’t have anyplace else to go, and I was hoping you and I could have a private conversation this morning. Would you like me to make another pot of coffee?”
Before I could tell him that I most certainly did not, the door opened and Sergeant Jorgeson came inside. “Ms. Malloy,” he began, then spotted Edward. “My goodness, look who’s here. We’ve been trying to locate Mr. Cobbinwood since last night. I trust, Ms. Malloy, that you can explain this.”
Chapter Twelve
Jorgeson declined the offer of a cup of coffee, and summoned an officer to escort Edward to a vehicle. I waited silently, not at all sure how much trouble I might be in. Albeit without my complicity, I had helped Edward flee before he could be questioned—and I’d provided a sanctuary for the night. Ignorance seemed like a perfectly reasonable excuse for those transgressions. Although I do have my moments, I am not omniscient.
I gave Jorgeson an accusatory look. “I thought you said one o’clock.”
“I seem to recall saying something like that, Ms. Malloy, but I did not interpret it as an appointment. I assumed you might be eager to share your insights as soon as possible.”
“I am, but at the moment I’d prefer to open the store and read the newspaper. Is there anything else?”
Fifteen minutes later I was ushered into Lieutenant Peter Rosen’s office and left to wait. The air was stale, so I opened a window. I resisted an urge to straighten up his desk, which was covered with piles of folders, bulletins, and interdepartmental communiques involving such portentous matters as the softball team schedule and dirty dishes in the break room. The view from his window was of a chain-link fence, an alley, and the back of a building. The FBI facility in Quântico may well have seemed like a summer camp.
“Have a seat, Claire,” Peter said in a stony voice as he came into the office.
“Is that your idea of a warm welcome?”
He put a cup on the corner of his desk. “I brought you some coffee. I’d like to review your story before you make an official statement. Shall we get started?”
“In that case,” I said as I dusted off a chair seat and sat down, “I should call a lawyer. I’d hate to be in a prison cell on my wedding day. Perhaps my fellow inmates can make me a bouquet out of tissue paper, and the warden can be your best man. Will we be allowed a conjugal visit afterward?”
He made a few uncouth remarks under his breath, then took his sweet time reading through notes on a legal pad. He was in a grumpy mood, I decided, so I busied myself pouring the coffee out the window and watching men share a cigarette on the loading dock of the building. Peter continue to shuffle papers. I tried to remember if I had any change to buy a soda from the vending machine in the hall. There were no magazines in the office, only catalogs for cop paraphernalia. There wasn’t a feather duster, either, or I might have tidied up his collection of plaques and awards.
“Please stop sniffing around and sit down,” Peter said. After I’d obliged, he continued. “I was gone for three weeks, not three months. Even though you promised not to get involved in any more potential crimes, you managed to meet these screwy people, allowed them to perform in front of your store, thereby snarling up traffic in a six-block radius, went to their meetings, heard their woes, reported the fire that killed one of them-”
“I’m sorry to interrupt, but the fire did not kill one of the them. The victim appears to be a woman who’d been under the supervision of the DHS. The officers who were at the scene earlier this morning told me-”
"—helped sponsor this Renaissance Fair, participated by calling yourself some silly name and wearing a costume-”
“It wasn’t a costume,” I said. “It was garb. You saw it yourself last night when I got home. You were on my sofa, and unless I’m confused, in a much nicer mood. Stop barking at me, Peter. We’re supposedly getting married in two months. Right now I’m more inclined to go to the animal shelter and find a nice, quiet mutt.”
“I apologize,” he said. Before I could reply, however, he snatched up the sheaf of papers and pecked at it with his finger. “Your name is mentioned in almost every paragraph. You’re getting better coverage than a doped-up Hollywood celebrity who can’t stay married for fifteen minutes. Why couldn’t you just stay home and read bridal magazines?”
“As that celebrity would say, I’m out of here.” I picked up my purse and started for the door. “If you have anything further to say, I’ll be at the airport, waiting for the next flight to Camelot. Fare thee well, mil
ord.”
“Claire,” he said, then stopped.
I turned around. Despite his week in Newport, no doubt occupied by sailing and playing tennis with his ex-wife, he looked dreadfully wan and exhausted. He’d found time to shave and put on a jacket and tie, but his eyes were bloodshot. I resumed my seat, took a breath, and said, “I didn’t tell Jorgeson quite everything.”
“Surprise, surprise.”
“Don’t push your luck, Peter. Do you want the generic version, or the true one?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Door number two.”
Although I knew I would sound like an idiot, I related the conversations I’d had with Edward concerning his biological father. “I didn’t just jump to a conclusion,” I added. “I flung myself at it. I was convinced Carlton was his father, and therefore Caron was his half sister. I was worried sick about how to handle it. I didn’t know if I should welcome Edward into the family or tell him he was out of luck as far as finding his father.” To my dismay, my voice began to quiver as if I were a hapless heroine. “He’s just a kid, but so is Caron.”
“It never occurred to you that he might be looking for me?”
“No,” I said firmly. “I misjudged Carlton. We were grad students, caught up in our cleverness as we ruthlessly shredded authors for their shallow insights and lack of literary merit. It was a departmental pastime to deconstruct books and disparage them for such trivial concepts as plot. We fueled ourselves with cheap red wine and moldy cheese. When our friends started getting married, so did we. Once we landed here in Farberville, isolated and forced to rely on each other, we began to see the folly of it. I got pregnant, and Carlton looked for adulation from his students. Gratuities for grades, so to speak.” I stood up and went to the window to breathe in some fresh air. “What I just said was not an excuse. I knew what I was doing, although even at the time I was already having misgivings.” I gave myself a minute to recover from admitting frailty, which is not among my favorite activities, and to think how best to continue. “To contemplate for even one second that you might be Edward’s father would mean that I am totally incapable of judging character.”
“So basically it was about you, not me or Edward or Caron or any of the other players?” Peter said.
“I did not wish to precipitate the decline of civilization as we know it,” I said. “If we can’t trust a bookseller to carry forward the beacon of enlightenment, we might as well rely on cable reality shows.” I waited to see if he wished to argue the point, but he seemed to be at a loss how best to refute my remark. “Now that we’ve cleared that up, you can understand why I was reluctant to discuss it with Jorgeson. We really should look into the timing of all this. I’m not sure how Edward’s paternity issue fits in, but it’s hard to dismiss it as coincidental. He was singing his ballad when Salvador’s body was discovered. Very peculiar, don’t you agree?”
“ We won’t look into anything. All you need to do is give a detailed and precise statement that includes all these tidbits you failed to mention. One of the officers will meet you in the interview room and keep you supplied with sharpened pencils. After you’re done, someone will take you back to the bookstore so that you can snatch up the beacon and carry it forward. I have an appointment with the captain in ten minutes, and I need to organize these reports.”
“Shall I cancel our dinner reservations?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll call you later.”
I went around the desk and reaffirmed my faith in his character, then trooped down the hall to the interview room. The next two hours were tedious and unworthy of further description.
The officer who drove me back to the store had agreed to a small detour by the newsstand, and I was working on the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle when Anderson Peru came inside. He was carrying a purse, which I found rather unnerving until I recognized it as mine. As he dropped it on the counter, I glanced up and said, “Do you know a seven-letter word for a medieval scourge?”
“See if ‘Clarissa’ fits,” he said sourly.
“That’s eight letters. Should I be honored by your unexpected visit, or alarmed?”
Anderson grimaced. “Neither. All I want to know is what the hell is going on. The police made it clear that Salvador was killed yesterday afternoon. How could that happen when all those people were wandering around the site? The archery range was away from the tents and stalls because of safety concerns, but it wasn’t in a remote corner of the pasture. Salvador knew what he was doing— he’d done it dozens of times. We all have.”
“He wasn’t shot with an arrow,” I said.
“No, he wasn’t.” Anderson looked around the store. “Is there somewhere we can sit down? I didn’t get any sleep last night. The police questioned everybody at the house, and then had me give them a tour of the fairgrounds. It looked like a video game version of a ghost town. I kept thinking Benny was going to spring out from behind a stall and attack me with his sword. By the time I was allowed to go back to the house, I was too freaked out to try to sleep. You seem to have some sort of connection with the detectives, Claire. What happened? Who killed Salvador?”
Anderson looked worse than Peter. His hair was unkempt and he hadn’t shaved. His regal finery had been replaced with torn jeans and an unironed shirt. It was obvious, even from a distance, that he’d unwound with whiskey into the early hours of the morning. The Duke of Glenbarrens was less than impressive.
I suggested coffee in my office. As he settled himself with a groan, I said, “What about the battle-ax? Was it Salvador’s?”
“Benny’s,” he muttered. “He had it earlier, but he stashed it in the prop box at the Royal Pavilion when he went took off his armor after the preliminary rounds. He doesn’t remember seeing the ax when he retrieved his armor for the final battle. That’s understandable, since the box had all of the jester’s toys, as well as my armor and oddments of garb, and, as always, the Threets’ lunch basket.”
“William and Glynnis don’t partake of the turkey legs and ale?”
“They prefer chicken salad sandwiches and martinis,” Anderson said, rolling his eyes in the same way Caron did when particularly vexed. “Anyway, I didn’t notice the ax when I took out my armor just before four o’clock, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was ... I guess you’d say I was distracted. The box is supposed to be padlocked to prevent theft. It wasn’t, though, because all of us needed access throughout the day. Benny admits it was a dumb mistake not to take the ax to the house, but he said he was tired of lugging it around with him. Mine cost more than a hundred dollars, and I keep it locked in a closet most of the time. If my kids ever got their hands on it, they’d hack up all the furniture and make a bonfire.”
“He must be feeling pretty bad about leaving the ax where anyone could take it.”
Anderson accepted a mug of coffee and leaned back in the chair. “I can assure you that he’s feeling bad. As soon as we got to the house, he headed for the liquor cabinet. The detectives were not pleased when they arrived to question us and found Benny sprawled on the sofa, watching a movie on the VCR and doing a steady critique of the dialogue and characters. It was one of the kids’ movies, animated. Benny found it as fascinating as a documentary by Jacques Cousteau.”
“Oh, dear,” I said as I sat down. “He has a serious drinking problem, doesn’t he? Has he acknowledged it?”
“It’s not as bad as it appears. When he’s away on a project, he’s a fantastic engineer, and in a crisis, he’s the first person they call. He’s so intelligent that it’s frightening. When he gets home, he indulges himself to the extreme. He really is a Viking at heart, even when he’s wearing a hard hat and supervising the construction of a bridge or an oil rig in the Middle East.”
“A lusty Viking, from what I’ve seen,” I said tactfully.
“If you’re referring to his purported affair with Lanya, you can forget about it. You’ve seen her. She has the sex appeal of a turnip— make that an organic turnip from her garden. Ben
ny chases college girls, and has remarkable success. Did Salvador say something to you about it?”
I almost choked on a swallow of coffee. “Obliquely. I am not unobservant, Anderson. There’s more to your fiefdom than devotion to the study of the Renaissance.”
“You have an active imagination, Lady Clarissa. You really should send in an application to the central office and get a membership card. You might enjoy making tapestries of lovesick virgins and valiant knights astride stallions.”
“I’ll put that on my to-do list, right below self-flagellation. Benny himself told me about his relationship with Lanya when the three of you were in college. Was he lying?”
Anderson’s forehead creased with annoyance. “That was twenty years ago. After we graduated, Benny went on for another degree and Lanya and I lived in a couple of places before settling here. Benny’s company is headquartered in Chicago. He didn’t like the weather, so he moved here. When he’s not overseeing a project, he uses his computer to communicate with his department. They’re content to keep him several hundred miles away from the men in suits. As for Lanya, she was delighted when Benny decided to live here. He flatters her with his avowals of undying adoration and pretends she’s still sexy and desirable. They’re not having an affair, though. Benny’s not that desperate.”
I wasn’t as convinced as he was, but I couldn’t see what it had to do with Salvador’s murder so I let it go. “Were you surprised by Edward’s ballad?”
“In a way,” said Anderson, relaxing. “Salvador seemed adept at avoiding sticky relationships. For some reason, women found him attractive. I thought he looked like he’d just recovered from a life-threatening disease. If I were a woman, I’d be afraid I’d catch something from him. But he’d always show up at parties and ARSE events with a new one gazing at him like he was friggin’ Zeus.”