Crypt Suzette

by Maya Corrigan

  Halfway across the room, she stopped dead. She pointed at the table. “Why are there six chairs?” Her eyes lit up. “Was it mistaken identity? Is Suzette alive?”

  Chapter 14

  A tense and embarrassed silence followed Morgan’s exclamation. Who would set her straight about Suzette? Not Val. She’d leave that task to someone who knew Morgan better.

  Ruth took charge. “Suzette will always be alive in our hearts.” She put her hand over her heart as if saying the Pledge of Allegiance.

  Val gave Ruth an A for effort and a D for results as Morgan’s eyes filled with tears.

  Gillian put her arm around Morgan’s shoulders. “The extra chair is for Val. I thought she should join us at the table because our dinner is in honor of Suzette, and they were housemates.”

  Morgan wiped her eyes. “Sorry. I can’t get used to the idea that she’s gone.”

  Val sympathized. She’d had a similar reaction, asking the chief if he was certain of the victim’s identity.

  “Come and sit down.” Ruth took Morgan by the elbow, steered her toward a chair on the side of the table, and took the seat at the end next to her.

  Val went over to the table. “How about something to drink, Morgan? Warm cider, wine, or tea?”

  Morgan took a moment to decide. “I’ll have tea later. Cider for now, please.”

  As Val delivered the cider, Wilson brought wine bottles to the table, poured wine for his aunt, and sat down across from Morgan.

  Casper sat in the chair next to her. Val wondered if those two might become closer with the lovely Suzette out of the picture.

  Gillian moved the appetizers to the table, sat down at the other end from Ruth, and took a sheaf of papers from her briefcase. “Let’s start the meeting. Val will join us when the rest of the meal is ready. Later in the meeting, we’ll talk about Suzette and her writing.” Gillian leafed through the pages in front of her and handed a clipped set to Casper on her right. “You’re up first, Casper. Please read the last three pages of your chapter aloud.”

  He read in a low monotone as the others at the table passed the appetizers around. Meanwhile, Val assembled the finger sandwiches, cut each into four triangles, and kept an eye on the mini quiches heating in the countertop oven. Though Val tuned out most of what Casper read and the discussion that followed, she grasped the gist of the story. His main character, a mild-mannered techie, morphed into a man of action when the woman who worked in the cubicle next to his disappeared. Val could predict the ending from the setup. Casper had created the character he wanted to be, a man who’d risk his life to rescue a beautiful colleague and win her heart. The cliché worked in Hollywood. Why shouldn’t it work for Casper?

  Gillian asked for comments on his chapter. Ruth made positive comments about the plot and advised Casper to give the woman who disappeared more traits than beauty. Morgan said his protagonist needed to transform sooner from dweeb to hero. Wilson suggested Casper start from scratch with a less boring character.

  The Fictionistas certainly didn’t mince words. Val glanced at Casper. Judging by his pinched face, he wasn’t pleased, but he said nothing. Stoic silence must be the norm in the group.

  Gillian then gave pointers on how to add depth to fictional characters and called on Morgan to read next. With the dinner platters now on the table, Val sat in the empty chair between Gillian and Wilson.

  Morgan began reading her excerpt. It boiled down to thirtyish females sipping tea and plotting vengeance on a man who’d harassed a woman and abused a dog. Despite all the talk, the scene ended without a workable plan.

  Casper proposed a convoluted scheme for the women to exact vigilante justice. Morgan took notes. Then Gillian suggested ways for Morgan to improve the interactions between the characters. Ruth commended Morgan for subtle yet emotionally charged dialogue and advised a change of setting, any place other than a tea table. Wilson agreed that more action would increase reader interest.

  The Fictionistas were less hard on her than on Casper. Morgan thanked them for their help and left the table to refill her mug with cider.

  Wilson leaned toward Val and whispered, “The last time we asked Morgan for more action, she wrote a scene in which the teapot tipped over.”

  Val hid her smile by biting into an apple-and-brie mini quiche. Laughing at his snarky comments wouldn’t win her friends at the table. She passed the quiche platter to Morgan when she returned to the table.

  Ruth read her piece next. She was writing a historical saga, a Romeo-and-Juliet retread set in Gilded Age Newport. The old money Vandersnoots and the nouveau riche Wilkersons, with neighboring mansions in Newport, snubbed each other in public. Meanwhile, the Vandersnoot son and the Wilkerson daughter canoodled, as Ruth put it, in the bushes between the properties. In the scene Ruth read, the families were apparently using dueling décors as weapons in their feud. She described the furniture, mirrors, and paintings in the Vandersnoots’ salon in excruciating detail.

  Gillian interrupted her as the scene switched to the Wilkersons’ home décor. “Any comments on Ruth’s scene?”

  Morgan spoke up immediately. “Nice details about the stuff in the house, Ruth, but get rid of the Tiffany lamps. Your book is set in the 1880s, and Tiffany didn’t make those lamps until the 1890s.”

  Wilson turned to Val and muttered, “The walking Wikipedia strikes again.”

  Morgan leaned across the table. “I missed what you said, Wilson. Would you repeat it, please?”

  He cleared his throat. “I said you were a fact-checker by trade and talent. No error, however small, escapes you.”

  She smiled, apparently assuming he was praising her.

  “You have a job as a fact-checker, Morgan?” Val said. “Nice to know someone pays money for facts. Where do you work?”

  “Where? I work at home, telecommuting, most of the time. If you meant for whom do I work, I have contracts with trade magazines and a couple of e-zines.”

  Pedantic and annoying, Morgan reminded Val of someone she’d recently met, but who? It came to her in a flash. She’d met the fact-checker’s clone, not in person, but on a page. The governess in Suzette’s book had the same traits and mannerisms as Morgan. Did she recognize herself as the model for the governess?

  Morgan turned to Ruth. “You have another historical anomaly in your chapter.”

  As she explained the problem, Ruth stared steely-eyed at her, reminding Val of another character in Suzette’s book, the businessman’s wife whose fierce looks reduced those around her to cowering. Come to think of it, the matriarch in the book used broad gestures like Ruth’s. Had Suzette modeled all her characters on the Fictionistas?

  Val stole a glance at Wilson in the seat next to hers. He could have been the inspiration for the rogue son in her story. And the chauffeur, socially inept but mechanically brilliant, had traces of Casper in him.

  When Morgan finished nitpicking, Gillian praised Ruth’s vivid descriptions, but prodded her to focus more on character and less on setting. Casper seconded that.

  Wilson found no fault in his aunt’s writing. Understandable, given that she provided the roof over his head. His chapter would have been the next under discussion if he’d written one.

  He fingered the edge of the table, his eyes downcast. “I’m giving up on my legal thriller. Too many scenes in offices and courts. Not enough action. Instead, I’m working on a spy thriller. I need to hammer down the plot before I begin the first chapter.” He looked up. “Anybody else ready for dessert? I sure am.”

  Val cleared the table with help from Casper, made coffee, and boiled water for tea. Morgan reached into her large tapestry bag. She took out a tea ball and a baggie of leaf tea. She flipped the ball open and filled it with tea leaves.

  Val said, “What kind of tea are you brewing?”

  “Black tea, the brand that’s made from the two tender top leaves of the plant. Those leaves give you a superior tea.”

  Val resigned herself to drinking an inferior brew, made
from a teabag filled with who-knew-which leaves of the plant. She set the madeleines and chocolate chunk cookies on the table.

  When they were all seated, Gillian raised her mug of steaming coffee. “A toast to Suzette. We all wish you were here with us.”

  Did they? Val lifted her mug. Morgan lifted hers higher. The others raised their wineglasses.

  Gillian sipped her coffee. “I’m going to read the last few pages of Suzette’s chapter aloud. Then we’ll talk about her plot.”

  Casper frowned. “Why would we do that? She can’t benefit from our comments.”

  Morgan sighed. “Suzette’s book will never be finished.” With her downturned mouth and round face, she resembled a sad smiley. “What’s the point?”

  Gillian took the last set of papers from her folder. “We all learn something from reading and discussing what others have written, even works in progress.”

  “I have a confession to make,” Ruth said. “I always read everyone’s chapter the afternoon before we meet, so it’s fresh in my mind. I didn’t read Suzette’s pages today, knowing she wouldn’t attend.”

  Wilson nodded. “Same here. We should share our memories of Suzette. That would have more meaning than talking about what she wrote.”

  Gillian folded her arms. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk about our memories after we discuss Suzette’s writing. Since half of you haven’t read the chapter, would someone who has read it please give us a summary?”

  “I can’t do that,” Casper said. “I read it when Suzette sent it, almost a week ago. The details are fuzzy.”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “That’s why you should take notes. I always do.” She flipped back the pages of the legal pad in front of her. “Here it is. Most of the chapter is what the teenage niece overhears while hiding behind curtains and listening at keyholes upstairs and downstairs. The conversations are about the liaison between the businessman’s son and a pert maid. His mother demands he break it off or he’ll be disinherited. The governess who hoped to marry him rants about the maid. The chauffeur jilted by the maid bottles up his rage and spies on her.” Morgan looked up from her notes. “That’s the essence of it.”

  Gillian then read the last few pages of Suzette’s chapter, starting with the discovery of the maid’s body at the side of the road and ending with the businessman’s family awaiting the arrival of the police and speculating on what had happened to the maid. The family pondered why she’d gone out of the house at night, whether she’d lost her footing or a car had run into her, causing her to fall and hit her head on a rock. The nosy niece suggested someone had bashed the maid or deliberately run her over.

  Val wondered who would bring up the similarity between the victim’s death in the story and Suzette’s. Then she remembered that the police had not revealed that Suzette had suffered a head injury. Val had told Gillian, not realizing the police would keep that detail under wraps, but the others might not know that detail.

  Gillian read the final sentence of Suzette’s chapter, announcing the arrival of the police. She then took off her reading glasses. “We know Suzette was writing a murder mystery, so the maid’s death will turn out to be murder. Let’s try to figure out where she was going with this plot and brainstorm about how to wrap it up.”

  Morgan’s pale blue eyes brightened. “We could vote on the best solution. Then we can finish her book, each of us writing a few chapters. We’ll publish it as a tribute to her.”

  No one at the table rushed to second her proposal.

  Ruth frowned. “You realize that Suzette wrote about a young woman who might have been hit by a car and then the same thing happened to her. What an amazing coincidence!”

  Morgan piped up. “It’s not a huge coincidence. Motor vehicle fatalities are a leading cause of death in young people, right behind drug overdoses. Also we don’t know that the maid in the story was hit by a car. The way it’s set up, it sounds more like she was bashed.”

  Casper had sat silent for the last few minutes, shifting his gaze from one member of the group to another. Now it rested unblinkingly on Wilson.

  Val glanced at Gillian. They might not be the only ones at the table who suspected Suzette’s death wasn’t an accident. Gillian had hinted that a member of this group might have killed Suzette. Each of them had a counterpart in Suzette’s story, a murder suspect with a motive to kill a young woman.

  How would a murderer react when asked to solve a fictional crime similar to the one he or she had committed?

  Gillian pointed at the bottles of wine on the counter. “We have more wine, so fill your glasses and we’ll get started. Who killed the maid, how, and why?”

  Chapter 15

  Val passed on the wine, but no one else in the writing group did. Would the alcohol dull their minds, release their inhibitions, or both?

  “I know who the murderer will turn out to be,” Ruth said with authority. “The businessman’s wife. She disapproved of her son’s entanglement with the maid. He must have told her he intended to marry the maid, who’d make a thoroughly unsuitable wife.”

  Val tried to hide her surprise. Ruth had named as a culprit the character she most resembled. Possibly, she’d looked down on Suzette for her lowly job at a hotel and viewed her as an unsuitable mate for aspiring lawyer Wilson. Based on what Gillian had said, he was more enamored of Suzette than she was of him, so Ruth had little to fear. She also struck Val as clever enough to achieve her goals without violence. Finally, if Ruth were guilty, she’d have made a case against a fictional character with a different motive than the one she herself had for getting rid of a young woman.

  “But does the crime fit the character, Ruth?” Gillian said. “A pampered middle-aged woman sneaks out of her palatial home to beat up a maid.”

  “She could have run her over, not beaten her up,” Ruth said. “But you make a good point. The businessman’s wife would have paid someone to take care of the problem.” Ruth looked at her tablemates as intently as if they were in a lineup. Then she rested her chin on her fist, elbow on the table, and stared at Morgan. “The governess had no such resources. The man she intended to snag fell for a more lovely and lively woman. His preference for an uneducated maid grated on the governess. She decided to clear the field of her rival rather than lose her only hope of marrying up.”

  Morgan removed her glasses, reached down into her handbag for a small cloth, and cleaned the lenses with it. Val watched her and thought about the parallel between the scorned woman’s situation in the novel and Morgan’s. According to Gillian, Casper had shown an interest in Morgan and then switched to Suzette. Wilson probably hadn’t even glanced at Morgan after seeing Suzette. As long as the beauty was around, Morgan couldn’t compete. But were either of those men worth murdering for?

  Morgan put her glasses back on. “In the Victorian era, governesses had few opportunities to advance. That’s why they were obsessed with marrying. But this book is set in the 1920s. A governess could find other employment then, as a teacher or a secretary. She could get along on her own.”

  Gillian took a madeleine from the dessert plate. “A working woman at that time might earn enough to pay for a roof over her head, but not much more. She’d live in a dingy rooming house instead of in the comfort of a millionaire’s mansion.”

  Morgan shrugged. “Possibly true, but there’s another reason to reject both the wife and the governess as the killer. At the risk of sounding sexist, I have to say that attacking someone on a road at night is not a woman’s crime. Arsenic in the tea is. Gastric distress followed by death.”

  Val shuddered, remembering the arsenic killer she’d encountered last year. To poison someone, you needed access to the victim’s food or drink, whether at the table or in the kitchen. “How would the millionaire’s wife or the governess get anywhere near the maid’s tea?”

  Morgan rolled her eyes. “The maid wasn’t poisoned, so I don’t have to work out the details. I was merely explaining why you can eliminate half of the suspects. But as
long as you asked, here’s a scenario that would work. The killer sneaks into the maid’s quarters and leaves a heart-shaped bonbon sprinkled with powdered sugar on her night table. She assumes the man she loves has left it there, eats the chocolate and the white powder, arsenic, and is found dead the next morning.”

  Val couldn’t resist pointing out a flaw in Morgan’s plot idea. “Then the police would know that the killer is in the house. With a murder outdoors, they are more likely to chalk it up as an accident and blame a stranger.” Just as Chief Yardley was predisposed to view the hit-and-run that killed Suzette as unintentional. Val reminded herself that he could be right. She noticed Morgan staring stonily at her, possibly viewing her as an outsider with no right to take part in the discussion.

  Gillian folded her hands. “We’ve heard from the women at the table. Do the men have any idea who Suzette’s murderer is?” Everyone at the table froze in shock. Gillian hastily added, “I mean, who murdered the maid in Suzette’s book?”

  Val doubted that was a slip of the tongue. Gillian had planted the idea that Suzette’s death wasn’t accidental.

  “I know who the culprit is.” Wilson trained a laser look on Casper. “The chauffeur. The maid tossed him over. She never cared for him, only felt sorry for him. He spied on her. His resentment festered. If he couldn’t have her, then no one could.” Wilson downed the wine in his glass.

  While he was talking, Val watched Casper transform before her eyes. His body stiffened, his pale face turned pink, and his hands fisted.

  “No way,” he snarled. “The pampered son did it. The maid was infatuated with him until the housekeeper told her what happened to another maid he’d seduced. Forced to leave without a reference, she couldn’t find a job and took to the streets.” Casper raised his chin and looked defiantly at Wilson. “The clever maid heeded the warning. She told the creep to leave her alone. He thought he was entitled to anything he wanted and killed her in a rage.”