Inside, the cabin had a predictably pleasant, woodsy aroma—like pinecone-scented freshener, only the real deal—and was roomier than it had appeared from the outside. To my left was a cozy area with fireplace and overstuffed brown couch, along with a matching recliner; to the right, a four-chair round oak table shared space with a small china hutch. A hallway led to a few other rooms—bed, bath, and beyond. The place had a nicely masculine feel.
Tony hung his sport coat on one of several wooden pegs in the entryway, exposing a shoulder holster on his white short-sleeve shirt with blue tie. He undid the apparatus and slung it over another of the pegs. When he turned and realized I’d been watching the procedure, somewhat awed frankly by the whole shoulder-holster gun rigamarole, he twitched a smile, loosened his tie, and motioned me over to the sofa.
I sat and watched silently as he bent before the fireplace, putting a match to crumpled papers beneath the logs and flames danced upward, bringing a soft yellow glow to the room, and chasing the chill away. This homey side of city-boy Tony was brand-new to me.
He straightened and pointed. “Stay put.”
Again, I wasn’t sure if the command was for me, or Rocky, who had plopped down with a world-weary sigh near my feet. Maybe he meant both of us.
Then the chief disappeared into a side room, where soon came sounds of pans banging, and utensils clanking, as if he were ransacking his own kitchen.
Now what?
Oh, well, like Rocky, I’d had my orders—mine was not to reason why, mine was but to…stay put.
I began to make mental notes about my surroundings, knowing that Mother would grill me over every single detail of my visit to the chief’s secret hideaway. Tony might want me to protect his privacy, and the whereabouts of the cabin were safe with me, but Mother’s questions would no doubt wear me down. She’d seen me ride off with the chief, and I didn’t have the imagination to create a fake scene for her about being grilled at the station, or believably come up with a story about the chief taking me out dancing or dining or whatever.
And, I have to admit, part of my curiosity was personal. I longed to learn more about the mysterious chief of police, who had come from the East three years ago to take over the top cop job.
Since then, a myriad of stories had circulated around town about his untold history, ranging from the scurrilous (he had been a bent cop in New York and got relegated to the boonies) to the ridiculous (he was in the witness protection plan after ratting on the mob, and used to look like a young Cary Grant before surgery). I was pretty sure Mother spread most of the stories, attempting (without success) to flush out the truth.
My eyes traveled to a pair of antique rifles hanging above the fireplace, then to an assortment of fishing gear piled in one corner (creels, poles, hip boots, nets), to a collection of snowshoes (arranged haphazardly on one wall), and to framed photos displayed here and there, of fishermen and hunters, sepia shots of days long gone by.
My shrewd Nancy Drew-like detective’s mind quickly deduced that a) the chief was a man’s man, b) he used to live somewhere where the snow got even deeper than around here, and c) he preferred fake, sepia memories to real ones.
A crash came from the kitchen—a plate dropping, possibly shattering—followed by cursing.
“Everything okay?” I called.
“I’m on it!” Tony called back, gruffly.
Rocky’s shrewd Rin Tin Tin—like detective’s mind quickly deduced an opportunity for fallen food, and he abandoned his warm place by the fire to investigate.
Yummy smells were emanating from the kitchen—freshly baked bread, and apple pie….
Now I went to investigate.
“Okay, what is this?” I asked from the kitchen doorway.
The chief, looking no more frazzled than he might have after running down a bank robber (on foot), stood at the stove, swathed in steam, stirring the contents of a saucepan. The only thing that would have made him look more comic was a zany backyard chef’s apron.
“Out,” he said, gesturing with the ladle, sending an arc of orange across the floor.
Rocky, finished with whatever had been on the broken plate, pounced on the new spill.
I grinned at my host. “Are you sure you don’t need help? I’m pretty good at accident scenes. Or is this a crime scene?”
“Go!”
“Anywhere special?”
“Sit at the table.”
“Yes, sir.”
And I gave him a crisp salute.
Retreating to the outer room, I pulled out a chair at the table, only now noticing (some detective!) the two place settings.
Maybe he had taken me out dining….
A few minutes later the chief—or was that chef?—emerged from the kitchen like a harried waiter, carrying two steaming bowls of soup, then hurried back, returning with freshly baked bread on a wooden platter, which he placed in the center of the table.
He pulled out the chair across from me, making a fingernails-on-blackboard screech, sat, picked up a spoon, and dipped it into his soup.
When I didn’t move, he looked up.
“It is a little hot. You may want to blow on it.”
I just stared at him.
“Oh…sorry—did you, uh, want to say grace or something?”
I laughed.
“What’s funny?”
He’d reminded me of when I was a little tyke, when Mother would help me put my hands together, and do her best to teach me the Danish table prayer she’d said as a child.
Vlesign vort maltid, Herre kaer
Velsign os alle haver isaer
Og lad din ve og vel os finde
At du har lyst din fred herinde.
But I’d mangled the words so badly, Mother had in desperation taught me the simplest of prayers.
Lord, bless this food
Which now we take
And make us thine
For Jesus’ sake.
Around age ten, I finally realized that it wasn’t “food-wich” (apparently a kind of sandwich), and that I need not fear a food-stealing creature called “Snoughy” (now we take), or that we weren’t meant to “make a sign” (make us thine)…for Jesus’ sake!
I said to Tony, “You brought me out here to…feed me?”
“Well, it’s not a kidnapping.”
“Now he tells me.”
He shrugged a shoulder. “Your mother said that if you didn’t start gaining weight, you were going to the hospital.”
Mother’s meddling knew no bounds.
“You have been talking to my mother?”
“Not because I want to,” he assured me. The chief’s steely eyes softened with concern. “Well? Do you have a weight problem?”
The kind of weight problem every girl dreams of—not weighing enough….
Now I shrugged. “Hey, it’s not that serious.”
Yet.
He frowned just a little; he seemed to be searching for words. “Carrot soup helped my wife when she was pregnant with our daughter.”
This was the first I’d heard about a wife.
Or child.
“You’re married?” The question carried certain unspoken baggage—the cabin seemed clearly his alone, with no sign of either a female or an offspring.
“I was.”
“Divorced then?”
He shook his head.
“Your wife…?”
It was a moment before he answered. “Gone.”
I wanted to ask if he meant she had died, or maybe were they just separated, and what about that child he’d mentioned? But I was afraid to push it.
So I did my best to match my host’s graciousness (weird graciousness maybe, but graciousness) and tried the carrot soup. It was delicious—rich and creamy with just a hint of spice.
“This is wonderful,” I said.
“It’s a nice recipe, isn’t it?”
One of his wife’s? I wondered.
Despite the unspoken and unanswered questions hanging in the pinecone-
scented air, we ate in comfortable silence. Which was strange for me, because I’d been around talkers all of my life—first Mother, then my ex, Roger. The table was a raucous place in my life; but not here. Not that I minded.
After the soup and bread and some cold cuts for sandwich-making (keeping a sharp eye out for the evil Snoughy), we had warm apple pie à la mode. I had two pieces. How wonderful to be asked to pack on the pounds! And my stomach, perhaps as happy as I was to be out on a sort of date, cooperated just fine.
After dinner, Tony refused my offer to help with the dishes (I did clear the table), so I returned to the fireplace, threw another log on, and plopped down on the couch.
Eventually Tony joined me, drawing up a small ottoman, which he positioned under my feet. I kicked off my shoes and, sans socks, wiggled my Technicolor toes.
He smirked. “What’s the deal, Brandy? Couldn’t decide on a nail polish?”
“Nope. Tried them all—mostly to see if they were usable. Didn’t realize I might be showing them off to a man tonight.”
“You shouldn’t take anything for granted.”
“I think I like the neon green. What’s your favorite?”
But Tony was studying me quizzically.
“What?”
He shook his head. “You’re so different from when I first knew you.”
That had been three years ago, back when I was married, living in an upscale suburb of Chicago, wearing tailored clothing, and acting mature and responsible….
I had returned to Serenity to attend to Mother after she went off her medication and landed in the county jail. After the crisis, with Mother once again stabilized, I had a meeting with Serenity’s new chief of police, one Tony Cassato, whom you’ve met.
I argued that mentally ill prisoners should not be incarcerated with the rest of the inmates, but should have their own segregated section—pods—to keep them away from the hardened criminals (and vice versa). I’d been pushing hard, reading the chief’s silence and apparently glowering expression as an unspoken counterargument. But Tony had surprised me, and agreed wholeheartedly, and over the next six months, we worked together to accomplish what became a mutual goal.
I said, “Hate to disappoint you, but that wasn’t the real me. That time in my life? I was trying to please my husband, who was much older than I, a successful businessman….” I stretched my toes toward the warmth of the fire. “It just didn’t work.”
“What didn’t work?”
“Me pretending to be that together. Also, my marriage. My fault.”
He didn’t pry further.
Anyone else would have asked how it was my fault, but he gave me space.
Still, it had been my fault. At my ten-year high school reunion, I’d done something really stupid involving too much wine, an old boyfriend, and a condom. The perfect storm to break up a marriage.
“So what’s the real you?” Tony asked.
I watched the fire dance, graceful but mocking. “Still trying to figure that out, I’m afraid. Unfortunately, the real me would seem to be an irresponsible, self-absorbed dope, who can’t learn a lesson, and is easily influenced by her cuckoo mother.”
Tony smiled one-sidedly. “Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?” His eyes drifted to my stomach. “I can think of one selfless thing you’ve done, at least.”
“Maybe I don’t completely suck. Not sure.”
“I’m sure.”
“I notice you didn’t say I was being too hard on my mother.”
“No, she’s cuckoo, all right.”
We both laughed a little.
The log snapped and cracked, and we fell silent, watching red-hot embers drift upward.
After a while I ventured, “You’re gonna have to give me something.”
“Something more than soup and sandwiches and pie?”
“Something that will appease Mother.”
He frowned. “Can’t we leave your mother out of this?”
“She saw me go off with you. She’ll want to know what I pried out of you.”
“Tell her you didn’t pry anything out of me.”
“No. That’s not how you keep Mother at bay.”
“How about, give her an inch and she’ll take a mile?”
“Not Mother—it’s more like, deny her an inch and she’ll take the highway.”
He said nothing.
“Hey, we’re involved, Mother and me. She feels responsible for all of this.”
“How?”
“She put the auction in motion. It led to all those people getting sick, and poor Madam Petrova dying of food poisoning, and that Martinette character maybe getting murdered.”
He was staring at the fire. “No maybe about it.”
“It was murder?”
“Just about had to be. Coroner says the nature of the injuries is consistent with a fall from the platform above. With that railing, you would have to be shoved to go over.”
“He couldn’t have slipped?”
“Possibly. I suppose a stray banana peel might have found its way up there. Or he could have had a sudden urge to kill himself.”
“Neither likely.”
“Neither likely. And there was bruising on the arms, indicating the man had been grabbed, hard, before he’d been sent on his way.”
“So it’s a murder.” I felt a chill despite the fire. “With all that media there, you have video to look at, don’t you? That can show you who followed Martinette, after he grabbed the egg?”
He shrugged. “We’ve been going over the tapes, but so far they’re not proving useful. When the crowd fled, the cameras on tripods in the back got knocked over.”
“And the ones up front—the hand-helds?”
He shrugged. “Focused on the stampede.”
“Kind of a coincidence, isn’t it? Everybody getting sick right on cue? Covering up a murder?”
Another shrug. “Killing Martinette could have been spur of the moment. The food poisoning might just have given somebody an opportunity to get that egg.”
“And somebody followed Martinette up those stairs to that platform, and took the egg away from him. And shoved him over to cover it up.”
“Could be.”
He was going taciturn on me. The chief didn’t like being interrogated, particularly when the “transcript” might be shared with Vivian Borne.
“You don’t really think everyone getting sick was a coincidence, do you?”
Tony shook his head. “More like a diversion.”
“Really,” I said flatly. “Then someone deliberately poisoned the food.”
He nodded.
“What with?”
“Rat poison.”
“Good Lord.”
“Arsenic-based.”
I shuddered. “That’s evil. Which dish did they put it in?”
“The coroner tested the remains of every dish served—it was the stew.”
“Mrs. Mulligan’s stew?” I gaped at him. “But it can’t be!”
He gave me a quizzical look.
“Tony, that’s what I ate!”
He frowned, cocked his head like his mutt might have. “What, just a smidge of it?”
“No! Lots of it!”
“You ate with the others at the church?”
“Why…no. Pregnant women eat when they feel like it. I had my servings of stew about, oh, an hour and a half before lunch was served.”
I told him about sneaking into the kitchen through the secret passageway, and getting a preluncheon sample of Mrs. Mulligan’s stew. I’d of course heard the rumors that the stew had been the source of everyone’s sickness, but hadn’t thought much about the fact that I hadn’t gotten sick—not till I heard rat poison had been an added ingredient, anyway.
Tony’s brow furrowed. “Then the poison must have been added between ten-thirty and noon. That’s helpful to know. Thank you.”
I almost said, “The Borne Girls Detective Agency aims to please.” But instead I had the sense to just nod
.
“My Lord,” he said. His steely eyes had softened. “That might have been a close call for you. And your baby.”
“Yes, but there was only one fatality. Madam Petrova. Because she was elderly, I guess, and her system just couldn’t take it.”
“She was the oldest person there,” Tony said with a nod.
“Does Mrs. Mulligan know that someone doctored her stew? That she isn’t responsible for this tragedy?”
“Not yet. None of this is for public consumption.”
Sort of like stew with rat poison in it. “Look, you need to tell her. She probably feels terrible about it. The word is all around town that it was her stew that was tainted, you know.”
“Well, we haven’t released that info yet.”
“No, but Mother overheard the coroner speculating about the stew as the source at the scene. And if Mother knows, Serenity knows.”
Tony closed his eyes. “How can you stand it?”
“I love her. You don’t have to, but I do. Listen, something else about that stew—I don’t know if you’re aware, but none of those five out-of-town bidders ate at the church.”
“I do know—we interviewed them today. They ate at their hotel. How do you know? If this is more amateur detective nonsense—”
“Not guilty! I just ran into them at a restaurant—they were eating together again. Do you think one of them is your murderer?”
His eyes widened, then narrowed. “Possibly. We searched their hotel rooms and rental vehicles—they cooperated fully, no search warrants required—but an artifact as small as that egg could be easily hidden. Could even have been discreetly shipped somewhere by now.”
“And you’ve searched the church?”
“Top to bottom. Father O’Brien has been very helpful. We still have police stationed there. Considered a crime scene.” He sighed. “That’s how I got the media out of there so quickly, and we’ve been very lucky on that front, actually.”
“Yeah, we had all the Quad Cities stations represented. Which are all the networks, including Fox. I expected to see them hanging around.”
He waved as if batting an invisible fly. “They took off shortly after the auction went to hell. They’d come expecting a fun story about a Fabergé egg helping bail out a flood-wracked town, and instead got a church filled with people puking. But when this murder stuff hits the local papers, that might attract national attention.”
Antiques Bizarre Page 8