“Those items disappeared from the library when Rick Usher was teaching at the University of Virginia. According to his wife, he spent a lot of time in the library.” Val told Gunnar about Emmett’s chronology of Usher’s life. “Emmett came up with possible reasons why Usher left the university in 1974. Failure to get tenure. An affair with a student. And the library job. I think he suspected Usher of stealing that first edition or buying it from the thief.”
“He projected his own rottenness onto other people. What evidence could he have that Usher stole anything?”
“Emmett was trying to get the evidence. Madison said he wanted her to look for it on the bookshelves in the study.”
Gunnar said nothing for a moment. “Maybe she saw it, stole it, and then killed Emmett because he accused her of theft.”
Val doubted it. Gunnar was letting his anger at her lies cloud his judgment. “She wouldn’t have told me about the book if she’d stolen it and killed Emmett because of it. But she might have murdered him for another reason. I caught her lying a couple of times.”
“Please tell me you didn’t confront her about her lies.”
Val couldn’t say that without lying herself. “I pointed out contradictions.”
He groaned. “Rule of thumb, Val—when stuck in a house with murder suspects, talk about the weather. Speaking of that, I’ll let you know as soon as the roads are safe.”
“Okay. Love you.”
“Love you too. Good night and be careful.”
Val went inside and hung up her coat. She peeked into the living room.
Rosana motioned for her to join them. “Your grandfather has been telling us about your parents and your brother and his children.”
“I’ll be back. Clancy said he’d lend me a book. I was just going to pick it up.”
She turned around, went up the spiral staircase in the foyer, and called his name.
He met her at the top of the stairs, carrying a hurricane lamp with a candle in it. “Perfect timing. I’m ready to knock off for the night.” He showed her into a long narrow room about eight feet wide and twice as long. “This is my work and living area. The door over there leads to my bedroom and bath.”
The space had probably been intended as a loft overlooking the living room below, but a solid wall now closed it off from the lower floor. His living area consisted of a love seat, an armchair, a lamp table, and a coffee table.
Clancy put the hurricane lamp on his cluttered computer desk. The shelves in the hutch above his desk held books stacked horizontally. “I know you came for the book, Val, but I hope you’ll stay and keep me company. I just poured some cognac. Would you like some?”
She glanced at the coffee table, where a bottle and two brandy snifters rested, one empty and the other half filled. “No cognac for me, thank you, but I’ll keep you company for a while.” She sat in the armchair and put her flashlight on the lamp table with its beam pointing at the ceiling. “What have you been working on this evening? An Usher book or one of your own?”
Clancy sat on the love seat. “I was doing research for Rick’s next Gaston Vulpin book. Rick uses Poe’s ‘The Mystery of Marie Roget’ as a model for his French detective series. Poe started with a real crime that occurred in this country and shifted the setting to Paris. Rick does the same.”
“How does he choose his ripped-from-the-headlines crimes?”
“I do the initial research online and identify intriguing cases he might use. After he picks one, I research it in detail and come up with plot variations.” Clancy swirled the cognac in his glass. “Rick decides which variation to use. Then I do the first draft.”
Madison had implied Clancy did hack work, but he’d just described his role in every stage of a book’s creation. At the book club, Simone had noted that the writing style and the emphasis on food in The Murders in the Rue Cler suggested Usher’s protégé had authored much of the novel. Even so, Rick Usher made all the decisions about the books. Val would hate to cook only the recipes a master chef dictated. Uh-oh. She cringed inwardly. She was acting like that chef, asking Irene to stifle her creativity, just as Usher stifled Clancy’s creativity. She made up her mind to give Irene leeway to develop an evening menu herself. Well, maybe half of it.
Val remembered the chief’s questions about how Clancy was paid. “I didn’t realize your work included researching, brainstorming, and writing. Do you get a cut of the royalties?”
Clancy snickered. “I get a fixed amount for each book. It’s at the low end of the ghostwriter pay scale. But steady employment, and my name on the cover with Rick Usher’s are worth more than another ten or twenty thousand per project.”
The famous author could afford to pay better. Val would demand a raise if she were Clancy. “You spend all your time working on books Rick Usher wants to publish. If you were writing your own books, would they take off from Poe’s stories, like Usher’s books?”
“No!” Clancy banged the brandy snifter down on the coffee table, the first time he’d let go of it. “I want to tell my brother’s story. What it’s like to be in the military fighting in the Middle East. What it’s like to come home with physical and psychological wounds.”
Channeling his brother might give him more satisfaction than channeling Poe, but it would also take an emotional toll on Clancy. “I look forward to reading your book.”
“With a cheerleader like you next to me, I might actually write it.” He sat forward on the love seat and perched his head on one side. “Are you seeing anyone?”
A strategic lie might make him more willing to answer questions and share information, but it wouldn’t be fair to either him or Gunnar. “Yes, I am.”
Clancy’s face fell. “Too bad. I hope you’ll let me know if your romance fizzles.”
“I don’t expect that to happen, but no one ever does.” Val couldn’t resist the chance to bring up Emmett Flint, though Gunnar had advised talking only about the weather. “The man I’m seeing has a role in The Glass Mendacity with Madison. He was Emmett Flint’s understudy for the part of Big Daddy.”
“So your boyfriend’s an older guy?” Clancy sounded more cheerful.
“No. Stage makeup can add years to an actor.” Would he pick up on her cue and mention Emmett’s ability to age himself? Clancy said nothing. Val would have to adopt a more direct approach to get answers out of him. “How did you know Emmett?”
Clancy swallowed some cognac. “He struck up a conversation with me at Irene’s tea shop. I told him I was a writer working with Rick Usher. I never expected to see Emmett again. He contacted me a few months later through my Web site.”
Val hesitated a moment before deciding to push for more. “About what?”
“He wanted to pitch an idea for a show based on Rick’s life and writing. Emmett had a one-man Poe show. He had something similar in mind for an Usher show.”
Probably the two-person show Emmett’s sister had mentioned. “Did he ever get a chance to pitch his idea to Rick?”
“He asked me to give Rick his résumé. I was surprised when Rick agreed to meet with him. Emmett impressed him with how much he knew about Poe. But Rick didn’t want his books reworked into a show.”
That must have been the meeting Rick mentioned to Granddad, when he assessed and rejected Emmett as a literary executor. “I’m surprised Rick turned down the idea. A show would help him sell more books.”
“Not if a second-rate playwright and actor put it on.” Clancy held up the cognac bottle. “This is almost empty. Wouldn’t you like to help me finish it off?”
She’d just watched him pour his own drink from that bottle. The cognac probably wouldn’t kill her. The more he drank, the more he might tell her, so she might as well stick around. “Just a taste, please.”
He poured an inch of cognac in the brandy snifter for her and two inches for himself. Val watched him sip his drink with his eyes closed, as if his sense of sight might interfere with his sense of taste. She tried the cognac. Smooth. Intense. Sh
e liked it more than she’d expected. “So Emmett gave up on the idea of a Rick Usher show.”
“Not at all. When I ran into him in Bayport a few months later, he said he’d done more research on Rick and was working on a scene to present to him. He was sure his writing and acting ability would convince Rick to change his mind.”
“Did he want you to arrange another meeting with Rick?”
“No, he was still working on his audition, and since he’d already met Rick, he didn’t need me in the middle . . . for that. He wanted me in the middle of something else. He asked me to check Rick’s shelves for an old copy of Tamerlane and Other Poems. Emmett said he’d make it worth my while to look for that book.” Clancy drank more cognac. “Emmett convinced himself that Rick had a stolen a rare edition of that book, Poe’s first publication. Can you believe that?”
Val not only believed it, she’d guessed as much. But it surprised her that Clancy, who’d kept Emmett’s impersonation of Rick Usher a secret from her, was now telling her so much about the actor. Maybe Clancy, like Madison, was using the book story to distract Val from asking about other subjects. “Why did Emmett think Rick had stolen the book?”
“A first edition of it disappeared from the archives at the University of Virginia library while Rick was teaching there. Rick was obsessed with Poe and left the university shortly after the theft was discovered. Ergo, he must have stolen it or known the person who did. I pointed out the flaws in this reasoning, but logic didn’t enter into Emmett’s calculations.”
“Was he going to steal the book and sell it?” The perfect theft: stealing from a thief who couldn’t report the loss without incriminating himself.
“I suspected that. I researched the book and learned it’s worthless. The library copy has unique inscriptions, visible under ultraviolet light. Anyone trying to sell it to a collector would be charged with possession of stolen property. I e-mailed Emmett and told him that.”
And yet, as Val had heard from Madison, Emmett still had that book on his mind. The possibility of stealing the book might have tempted Clancy, too, until he found out no reputable collector would buy it.
Val reminded herself to talk about something other than Emmett. “I’ve never heard of a person or place named Tamerlane. What is that poem about?”
“Tamerlane is a Mongol ruler, nearing the end of his life. He regrets the choices he’s made. He lost the love of his life because of his quest for fame and power. Some biographers have said ‘Tamerlane’ reflects Poe’s feelings about a woman he loved and lost.”
Did it also reflect Rick Usher’s regrets about his lost love Simone? Val heard a faint but insistent jingling sound. “What’s that?”
“Rosana’s favorite dinner bell. She wants one or both of us downstairs.”
“Madison couldn’t possibly hear that bell in her apartment over the garage. Is there a gong to tell her when to descend?”
“It’s called a cell phone. Rosana summons me the old-fashioned way.”
Val didn’t detect any annoyance in his tone, but how could it not bother him? She stood up. “Do you have the book you were going to lend me?”
The bell from downstairs jingled again as Clancy took Poe Revisited from a bookcase and the hurricane lamp with a chunky candle from his desk. “Bell, book, and candle.” He grinned.
Val couldn’t help liking him though she didn’t trust him. She was sure he wouldn’t have told her Emmett had eaten lunch here if Madison hadn’t forced him to confirm it.
When they went downstairs, Val noticed that Rick Usher, Granddad, and Rosana were sitting closer to the fire than they had earlier. The large living room was colder than Clancy’s cozy space upstairs.
Rosana stood up. “We talked about staying close to the fireplace tonight, but with the big windows and high ceiling, this room is chilly even with the fire. We’d be better off in the bedrooms, in warm clothes, under blankets. I’ve put extra blankets in the rooms on this floor. If you have what you need, Clancy, I’ll show Val and her grandfather to their rooms.”
“I’ll be warm enough, thank you. Good night, everyone.” He retraced his steps to the staircase.
Rosana led them toward the other side of the house from the Usher wing and Clancy’s quarters. She trained her flashlight into a room with a sofa and a huge desk. “I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa in the office here, Val. Your grandfather will be in the guestroom next to you.”
“That’s fine.” Val would have preferred everyone together in front of the fireplace, instead of her and Granddad isolated in one corner of the big house. “We’re going to leave early, assuming the roads aren’t icy. If I don’t see you in the morning, thank you for your hospitality.”
“We enjoyed your dinner. I forgot to tell you that you can skip cooking dinner for us tomorrow night. I’ll expect you back on Friday.”
“That’s fine.” Val already knew something out of the ordinary was happening tomorrow night, requiring Madison’s presence. The change in dinner plans suggested everyone in the Usher household would be involved.
Five minutes after Rosana left her, Val knocked on the guestroom door. “It’s me, Granddad.”
He opened the door. “I was about to go get you. I don’t want you in that room by yourself.” His voice was barely above a whisper.
She trained her flashlight around the guest room until the beam lit up a recliner in the corner. “I’ll take the chair. You take the bed.”
“Nope. Other way around. I sleep in a chair like that all the time when I’m watching TV. I’m used to it.”
She didn’t plan to sleep. Staying awake would be easier in the chair than in the bed. “How about if we take shifts? I’ll go first in the chair. We’ll switch places halfway through the night.” But only if he woke up on his own before morning. She wouldn’t wake him.
“Okay.” He beckoned her toward the guest bathroom and opened the taps in the sink. “In case the guest quarters are bugged, the splashing water will make it hard to record us. When Rosana left the living room to find blankets, Rick told me he wasn’t ready to see a lawyer after all.”
“Second thoughts about what he planned to do, I guess.” The snoop who bugged Rick Usher’s study might have overheard him ask Granddad to find him a lawyer. Maybe the bug planter then talked Rick out of seeing a lawyer.
“Did you catch what Rick said at dinner about his dog dying after a guest visited?” When she nodded, Granddad continued. “I know when that happened. Cicero died Saturday afternoon. He took a nap and never woke up.”
Emmett had died the same afternoon. Val doubted that was a coincidence. She moved closer to Granddad and spoke into his ear. “According to Clancy, Emmett ate lunch here on Saturday. Cicero might have eaten scraps from Emmett’s plate.”
“That lets Rick out as a suspect. Even if he somehow managed to put meds in Emmett’s food, Rick would have made darn sure the dog didn’t eat the same thing. We’re left with Madison, Clancy, and Rosana as suspects.”
“Madison said she skipped Saturday lunch here. She’s in the clear, but only if the dog and Emmett OD’d on the same meds. To prove that, Granddad, we’ll have to convince the police to exhume Cicero and do a doggie autopsy.” The Ushers might oppose digging up the dog. Then the police would need a strong case against someone to get a court order for digging up Cicero. Val would tackle that problem tomorrow. “First, we have to make it through the night under the same roof as a murderer.”
Chapter 25
Val huddled beneath two blankets in the recliner and opened Poe Revisited to “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Though she’d read Poe’s story in a high school English class, she remembered nothing about it except the ending. Now, reading it by candlelight in an isolated house with a murderer, fear crept over her. Poe told the tale of a perfect crime, a motiveless murder, which would have remained unsolved except for the culprit’s guilt-induced confession. Emmett’s murderer might have committed a perfect crime and probably wouldn’t confess because of a guilty c
onscience.
Her phone chimed. She read Gunnar’s text: Roads still icy. Let you know when safe to drive. Love, G.
She texted him her thanks. Then she sent another, lengthier text to tell him that Usher’s dog died about the time Emmett Flint did and that they both might have eaten food laced with meds at the Usher house.
Gunnar responded immediately. Stop snooping, dangerous.
She promised she would give up snooping. An easy promise. No one in this house of secrets and lies would tell her what she wanted to know.
She picked up Poe Revisited again and turned to Rick Usher’s “The Tall-Tale Heart.” In his modern version of Poe’s story, an organ recipient received a heart that beat erratically when he didn’t tell the truth. It fluttered when he told social fibs and pounded when he lied for personal gain. Val anticipated the ending. The man would be tempted to tell a big lie that would doom him. The slow-moving story and Granddad’s rhythmic snoring combined to lull her to sleep.
She awoke with a start when her phone chimed at six fifteen. Hard to believe she’d slept all night in the chair. She read the text Gunnar had just sent. The roads, though wet, were clear of ice. He was parked outside the Usher house. He would caravan with her and Granddad back to town whenever they were ready to leave. She texted back that they’d be out in ten minutes.
She shook Granddad awake. “Sorry to get you up so early. The roads are good. If I go straight to the café, I can open on time.”
“I can’t wait to go home to my own bed. I didn’t sleep a wink all night.”
She coughed to cover a laugh. While he stripped the bed, she called Irene to let her know she didn’t need her to open the café. Then Val crept into the laundry room and changed into her now dry clothes, leaving Madison’s cashmere outfit neatly folded on the washing machine.
The Tell-Tale Tarte Page 20