by Mary Bowers
The last couple of times I’d seen him, it had been under similarly ridiculous circumstances: explaining how my fortune-tellers had gotten mixed up during a fundraiser, and while attending one of Ed’s paranormal conventions, where one of the world’s leading crackpots had taken a liking to me. Now I was conducting a paranormal experiment. I just couldn’t wait to tell him that.
“How did it happen?” I asked Ed, shocked. I hadn’t gotten into pajamas the night before, so I just sat up on the edge of my bed inside the rumpled mess of yesterday’s ghost-hunting get-up: cotton capris and a plain white tee shirt.
Bless his heart, Ed had brought me a mug of coffee from the kitchen. It was cold, of course. He’d taken the staircase from the staff dining room, so the trip wasn’t quite so long, but long enough. It was still caffeinated, though, and being cold just made it easier to drink it down quickly.
I offered him the vanity chair, but he couldn’t sit down. He paced the room as he explained how Charlotte had found Fawn.
“Ryan is being a rock,” he said. “Oliver and young Horace are very solemn. Other than them, this place is stacked with females, and they’re all pretty badly shaken up.”
“The women are banding together?”
“Uh, well, I didn’t say that.”
“Did she . . . fall?”
He looked at me levelly. “That is the question. Julie says emphatically that she must have thrown herself over. She says she’s been afraid this was going to happen for a long time now, that Fawn has always been depressed. And the nights were the worst, according to Julie. She always had trouble sleeping. At that time of the morning, it’s unlikely she would have had anybody with her. It had been a bad day; I gather the birthday party is something they all dread. I don’t know why they keep doing it, but they do. Families seem to lock themselves into these things, and then they can’t stop.”
He began to muse on the unaccountable rituals of family groups, but the elephant in the room kept on getting bigger. Finally, I said, “Her husband just died.”
Ed stopped maundering and locked eyes with me.
“Was it a good marriage?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Even a bad marriage is a way of life. Sudden, shocking changes can knock a person right off their feet, and Fawn didn’t strike me as a strong person.”
“Both her children have failed marriages,” I said, toting up the score.
“Her brother Oliver is no comfort, and Maxine is an actual menace. Wasn’t her husband something important in Washington?”
“I’m sure he thought so. He was in the House. It doesn’t look like the rest of his family is interested in politics, though.”
“While we were all saluting the memories of important family members, you’d have thought she, or one of her children, would have brought him up. But she sat there talking to everybody, and she never even mentioned his name.”
“She was really trying, wasn’t she? And nobody paid any attention to her,” I said guiltily. “She tried to strike up a conversation with me – desperately – and I let Oliver cut her off. I could have thought of something to converse with her about. The weather, anything.” Suddenly, I sat up. “Didn’t she say at breakfast that she had something important she was going to tell everybody at dinner?”
Ed stopped, thought about it, then said, “Actually, she did. Somehow, one didn’t pay much attention to anything she said. Her very tone of voice implied that nothing she had to say was going to be interesting. I forgot all about it.”
“So did she, apparently. She was trying as hard as she could to get a friendly conversation going, and yet she never told us whatever her hot news was. And nobody asked.”
“Maybe Oliver talked her out of it, or poured cold water on it. She said she was going to tell him first, remember?”
“Yes. She might have told her sister, too. Remember? Maxine called her up from the breakfast table. They probably both told her nobody would care.”
We looked at one another sadly. “If they did, they were probably right. One more reason to . . . end it all.”
Ed walked hesitantly to the window. “The walls are too thick,” he said, looking out. “You can’t see down. If you could . . . .”
“Thank God you can’t. You’d better go. I have to shower up and get myself pretty for my old friend Marty. Have you had your interview already?”
“No. He wanted to talk to the family members first, once he realized he couldn’t pin a murder on me. I’m hoping he’ll decide he doesn’t have to talk to me at all. I don’t think he likes me.”
“It’s just his charming personality, and those sparkling eyes.”
Ed actually shivered. “I’ve seen warmer eyes on a snake.”
“Now, Ed. Snakes have lovely onyx eyes; just don’t get close enough to see them. Frane’s eyes are more like a dead fish’s.”
“Only colorless. Still, not to worry. This time, we have alibis.”
As he passed me on the way to the door, he gave my shoulder a little pat. Then, as he was about to leave, he turned around in the doorway and said, “You know what surprises me the most about all this?”
“What?”
“That it’s Fawn.”
I nodded slowly. “You’re right. Death isn’t so surprising around here. It’s who died that’s surprising.”
“Therefore, I believe it had to be suicide. If it were a murder, it would have been Oliver.”
It was a strange way of putting it, but I agreed.
* * * * *
It occurred to me as I was dressing that I might as well pack. The ghost-hunting party would be off now, with grim reality intruding upon us like this. Before I made myself available to Detective Frane, I decided I was going to relieve my mind about that, and so I went looking for Oliver Moon to get it settled.
I took the southwest spiral down one floor. Knowing that Oliver’s was the nearest family bedroom to those stairs, I took a chance and knocked on his door. He was there, and without a word, he motioned me inside and shut the door behind me.
“This is woman’s work,” he muttered, “and all the women downstairs are having hysterics. Go talk to the boy. I can’t seem to say the right thing.”
Sunken into the thick crimson padding of a window seat directly across the room, Horace the younger sat hugging a heavily pleated red throw pillow. Its mate was out of order on the left side of the seat, and on the floor below him were several others in hunter green. Next to him was a sturdy-looking mahogany table with a glass of orange juice on it.
Oliver’s room was about the size of mine, with the same rock walls, but his décor was new Victorian, heavy, expensive, and tasteful. My bedroom looked like a monk’s chamber by comparison. The floor was thickly carpeted from wall to wall in dark green with small, repetitive light green figures running across it.
Oliver gestured helplessly toward the window, and I walked across to Horace.
“Hey, ‘Daniel.’ How are you, kiddo?” I said quietly.
He smiled, but didn’t look at me.
“I’m sorry about your grandmother. She was a nice lady.”
He nodded.
I had taken a seat in a wing-back chair, sitting on the edge of it and concentrating on the boy. Speaking gently and in a low voice, I tried to draw him out.
“You know, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to it, and I really think you should reconsider Davy. You could tell people your name was Davy, but they have to call you David. I think that makes a much stronger point than saying I’m Daniel, don’t call me Danny.”
There was a little smile, but he still wouldn’t look at me. Bigger problems, deeper hurt. Bad timing, I guess.
“Listen, Horace, is there anything –?”
“I want to go home now.”
I resisted the urge to touch him. “Okay. Sure. Of course you do. I’m sure your mother will take you home.”
“Everybody here is all screwed up. And my Mom didn’t have anything to do Grandma’s death.”
I lo
oked at Oliver, but he looked just as surprised as I was. “Nobody said she did.”
“It was Julie,” he said, looking at me out of the corner of his eye. “I’m going to tell the cops to arrest her. Julie’s the only one who wanted Grandma dead.”
“Nobody wanted your grandmother dead,” I said.
“Why did you say that?” Oliver asked him sharply.
Horace gave him a sideways look, almost sly. “Grandma told her she couldn’t have Ryan. She said she didn’t want to fire her, but after what happened the other night in Uncle Ryan’s room, she wanted to know what was going on, and whatever it was, it had to stop.”
“Were you eavesdropping again?” I asked.
“Of course he was,” Oliver said. He sat down in a matching wing-chair so we had the boy surrounded. “Go on, Horace. What did they say? For once in her life, did Fawn read that tramp the riot act?”
“Ed and I saw them talking yesterday,” I told Oliver, “on the landing, when we were coming down to see you.”
“Well, you know damned well that secretary isn’t going to tell the police what my sister said to her, especially if she was threatening to fire her,” he said. Then he turned back to the boy. “Go on, Horace. What exactly did your grandmother say?”
“It isn’t what Grandma said,” he told us, seeming unsure of himself. “It’s what Julie said. She said, ‘You can’t fire me. Let’s not kid ourselves, I know too much.’”
He stopped.
“Who did she mean by that?” Oliver asked.
I put my hand on Oliver’s arm because his tone was too strong. He backed off a little, but still waited for an answer. We both did.
“She didn’t say. It was just like, they both knew. But in the end, Grandma didn’t fire her. She just told her to watch it, and not to have any delusions of grandeur.”
“Delusions of grandeur?” I repeated. Horace was 13, but still, kids don’t talk like that these days. It had to be something he heard.
He seemed to break then. He put his head down and said, “That’s all I know. And she says Uncle Ryan is in love with her. She says he’s going to marry her.”
“Julie thinks Ryan is going to marry her?” I asked. I shook my head. He had to have it wrong.
“I dunno. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Oliver set himself to keep going and I pressed his arm again. It wasn’t right to harass the boy, and I didn’t think he knew anything else. I wasn’t even sure how he could have heard all he claimed to have heard, but the ‘delusion of grandeur’ part was pure Fawn. He had to be quoting that, so he had to have overheard something.
There was a tap at the door, and after throwing a furious look over his shoulder, Oliver got up and opened the door a crack. Ed’s glasses appeared underneath Oliver’s blocking arm, and I heard him say, “There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.” Oliver stood aside and Ed took a step into the room, still addressing me. “Detective Frane is ready for you. Downstairs. They’re letting him use Mr. Moon’s office.”
“I took real pleasure in shutting those two cops away in that little rathole,” Oliver said. “I bet they expected something glorious when I told them they could use my office. Something huge, with windows. Something that smelled good . . . .”
I edged around him and left the room, colliding in the doorway with Elizabeth, who was looking for her son. I waited for her to get Horace down the hall to her own bedroom, then turned to look significantly at both Ed and Oliver.
“You guys wait here. This isn’t going to take long; I don’t know anything about Fawn’s death. But the three of us are going to have a serious talk. I want to know exactly why you brought us here, and this time, Mr. Moon, I don’t want any b.s., understand?”
The old man stared, but didn’t reply. Ed shied back. He always does when I get masterful.
I turned my back on them and headed for the stairs, fuming.
* * * * *
I was right. It didn’t take long.
In the damp gloom of Oliver’s office, Detective Frane actually looked as if he had eyes. Under bright light, his eyes turn transparent, and either look kind of gray, like the faint mottling on the underbelly of a dead fish, or kind of green, like the first hint of mold on dry bread. In a darkened room, Frane’s eyes looked dark. Somehow, it made him less creepy.
He stood as I entered, and so did Bill Weyer, his younger, handsomer, quieter partner.
I admit, I was already stirred up, and not at them. I was mad at Oliver for getting us into this under false pretenses, because I had finally tipped over from suspicion to certainty. Oliver had been lying to us.
“We meet again,” Marty Frane said as we all got seated, if not comfortable.
“Trust me, I’m not following you around,” I said.
“And I’m not following you around. You just keep,” he lifted his hands artfully, “popping up. Still, you’ve been helpful in the past. Got anything for us this time?”
“No. As you already know, I was down in the dungeon the whole time, fondling croquet balls and making mystic passes over tintypes. You know, doing my act.” I glared.
He pressed settling hands in my direction. “I’ve never called you a phony. Somehow, you always get results. By the way, how’s the cat?”
If he’d meant to endear himself, he’d said the wrong thing. “Who knows? I sure don’t. She’s spent the whole time we’ve been here following somebody’s secretary around. I don’t think she loves me anymore.”
They both looked surprised. “She was with you the entire time you did your thing down in the dungeon last night,” Frane said, sort of sticking up for Bastet.
“She was? The whole time?”
I was surprised, they looked surprised, and then Frane said, “You haven’t seen the video.”
“No. Why?”
“Let’s just say she was there for you in your bad moments.”
That threw me, and as much to misdirect them as anything else, I said, “You’ve watched five hours of video already?”
“No, of course not. Your friend Edson played us the relevant parts. The recording is time-stamped. And it goes on and on.”
“And on,” Weyer said. They smiled at me together.
“And on, I’m sure. I don’t plan on seeing it myself. Now,” I said, getting down to business, “the last time I saw Fawn Moon Hixon . . . .”
I described the family birthday dinner, which they’d already heard about six or seven times, but never as colorfully as I described it.
“And she never did tell us what her big announcement was,” I said, getting ready to go.
“You don’t have any ideas about that?”
“No, but she said she’d report to the head of the family before making a general announcement, out of respect or something.”
“Meaning?”
“She was going to talk to Oliver Moon about it ahead of time. You should ask him what it was.”
“We will.” They stood as I stood. “If you see him, send him along here, will you?”
“Sure thing.”
I didn’t mention that I was going straight to see him at that moment, and that I intended to ask him that very same question, along with a lot of others, before I let the cops have him.
Chapter 15
I got back to Oliver’s bedroom door and opened it, walking in without knocking. Oliver and Ed were in the wing-back chairs, and jumped and looked across at me as if I’d burst in wildly, which I hadn’t. They had been leaning toward one another intently, as if they were up to something. I pushed between them and took the place on the window seat that young Horace had been in before.
“Well, boys?” I said, wondering if they’d cleared the air at all after I’d left them.
Ed was shaking his head, knowing what I wanted. “We haven’t been discussing . . . it.”
“Or anything else. How did it go with the cops?”
“I know how to handle them. Don’t worry about that. Now, Oliver Moon, just what
the hell is this all about? Nobody is haunting this castle, and nobody is trying to kill you, so why did you hire us for this wild goose chase?”
“You’re wrong on both counts, though last evening I would have said only one.”
“What do you mean by that?”
He paused, staring at me.
“Come on, Oliver,” I said. “You’ve had enough time to think this over. What gives?”
“You’re right. I didn’t hire you for the reasons I originally gave you.”
I lifted an eyebrow at Ed, expecting him to share my frustration, but he was looking down at his hands in a disheartened way. Embarrassed that his vetting process had failed, probably. I looked back at Oliver and asked, “Care to explain why, now that it’s become a police matter?”
His eyes got a little wild. “Somebody is trying to kill me. I just can’t figure out how he managed to kill Fawn instead. Or why.”
“’He?’”
“Ryan! My grand-nephew and heir. No, the more I think about it, I have to believe that Fawn has simply killed herself. After all, her husband just died, and she never could get by on her own. She’s helpless. It’s just a coincidence, her dying like this at the same time somebody is trying to kill me.”
“Ryan,” I said, refusing to be convinced.
“Ryan,” he said firmly. “He tried to push me over the gallery railing outside my bedroom in the middle of the night, last Christmas, the last time the family was all together here.”
“Are you sure it was him?” Ed asked. Even though this wasn’t a ghost-hunt, he reached down into his satchel and got his voice recorder out. Force of habit, I guess.
“Of course I’m sure it was Ryan. I was looking right at him. I’d turned the lights on.”
“Wait – this was in the middle of the night?” I asked. “What were you two doing out in the gallery in the middle of the night? Looking for Santa Claus?”