Summerkill

by Maryann Weber

  Reaching the south gate, I fished in my jeans pocket for my key ring and let myself in, making plenty of noise so she wouldn’t feel that I’d sneaked up on her.

  “Mariah,” I called, locking the gate behind me. No response. The new plantings were looking all right, I remember thinking. The macleayas were wilting, but they always did—in two or three days they should straighten right up. “Mariah?”

  As I climbed the steps to the spa patio, the first thing jarringly out of place was a long orange heavy-duty connecting cord extending from a wall socket across the tiles toward the spa. Another step higher, and I could see that it stopped short of the spa, where it was joined to another cord. Closer still, I saw that this second cord belonged to a large, blunt-shaped hair dryer, which was suspended maybe a foot beneath the surface of the water. Mariah was sprawled on her favorite seat, head tipped back toward me, only half out of the water.

  I lurched to the phone behind the bar and dialed 911. A woman in her spa, a hair dryer had fallen in with her, I sputtered. She wasn’t moving, I couldn’t see any breathing. She looked dead but I wasn’t sure. Should I try to pull her out? “God, no!” the dispatcher told me in alarm. “Don’t touch her. Just give me the address and the rescue squad will be right over.”

  After hanging up I made myself return to the spa and check again, willing there to be some sign of movement. Mariah’s left hand gripped the stem and jagged remaining top of a martini glass; it must’ve broken against the wall of the spa. Unlike Ryan, she didn’t show major injury, though there were reddish marks on both shoulders. Also unlike him, her facial expression was anything but blank. You could interpret it as startled. Or terrified.

  I went back to the phone and called Baxter’s office. He was on his way home, I was told. When they offered to relay a message I made it “Come to Mariah’s right away.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to stay there with Mariah’s body, unable to do anything for her. I stumbled back down the steps and into the garden, my mind a jumble of things, careening together, bouncing off one another. Finding Ryan’s body had left me close to throwing up. I didn’t feel like that at all now; I didn’t seem to feel much of anything. Except awful. It was a much stronger reaction than I’d experienced finding Ryan, but also curiously less powerful. Nothing came through at full strength.

  I waited out front so the ambulance crew would know where to go. It couldn’t have been even ten minutes from the time of my phone call until I heard the siren out on Mariah’s road. Baxter got there only a couple of minutes later, in time to see us heading around the side of the wall. He followed, looking hard but saying little until they’d determined that Mariah could not be revived. At that point he ordered everyone off the patio before anything else got disturbed and, unholstering his cellular phone, began calling people in.

  I was more or less just standing there, not getting in the way, when he came over and said, “Val, why don’t you go out and wait in my car?”

  “I can’t just sit. Baxter, that wasn’t an accident. Somebody killed her! There was this message on my machine when I got home—”

  “I’ll want to hear about that later,” he said with a brusqueness that startled me. “Right now, please wait in my car.”

  Was my finding two bodies a little much for him? Maybe he bore more resemblance to Columbo that I’d thought. Maybe what he’d been doing dropping by all the time was trying to get me to cross myself up. I stalked out through the gate with every intention of jumping in my Bronco and getting the hell out of there. When he got around to talking to me he could damn well do it on my turf. But rounding the side of the enclosure, I saw that unless the Bronco sprouted stilts that was not going to be workable. The ambulance had pulled up on one side, Baxter on the other, and two vehicles had filled in behind. Well, shit, I wasn’t about to sit in any sheriff’s car and twiddle my thumbs while everybody coming and going wondered what the hell … Not as long as my legs worked.

  I strode out the long driveway and onto the road, heading the opposite direction from which the still-accumulating death scene traffic was coming. I couldn’t make it very much past the point where Mariah’s property was out of sight; something compelled me to turn around and go back. But I couldn’t stay there, either. After maybe half a dozen similar circuits I saw the ambulance loading up and heading off, this time without sirens. For a while there continued to be more vehicles arriving than departing. Then the flow of traffic reversed. After that, for a long, fatiguing time, whatever was left that might move didn’t. Finally Baxter and several of his deputies came around the house. He looked at his empty car, at the Bronco, then started to scan, spotting me midway along the driveway on a return loop. He waited.

  “I told you I couldn’t just sit there,” I said accusingly.

  “No problem. Get in—I’ll drive you home. Calvin can follow in the Bronco.”

  Having watched Calvin drive bulldozers, I wasn’t having any of that. “I can perfectly well drive my own damn vehicle once it’s unblocked.”

  “I’d rather we do it my way. Calvin will promise not to go faster than thirty-five.”

  “I’m fine to drive.”

  “That’s not how you look. Val, humor your friendly county sheriff on this, okay?”

  How did I look? Judging from the faces watching me, “weird” ought to cover things. It probably wouldn’t make me feel better to verify. Digging once again into my jeans pocket, I extracted my key ring and flipped it to Calvin.

  “Why didn’t I wear my hiking boots?” I heard myself complaining, once we were under way.

  “Val, reach in the glove compartment. There’s a half pint of brandy. Open it and take a good swig.”

  “No.”

  “You’re in shock, I think. It’ll help.”

  I turned toward him—or was it on? “I’d love to drain your little bottle, wouldn’t take me more than five minutes. And then I’d insist you stop at a liquor store for more. For about half an hour the world would be a warm and cozy place—until it turned to crud. I cannot handle hard liquor.”

  “It’s good to understand things like that about yourself,” he said calmly, eyes on the road. “My Uncle Max never did catch on. We had to call for the Jaws of Life to pry his body out of the car.”

  Swinging around abruptly, I stared out my side window. Just then I didn’t give a shit for other people’s tragedies. It was full dark, only occasional house lights showing along the country road. An ambience I like, usually. The part of Albany in which Vicky and I spent our childhoods was not known as a good place to be out in after dark. Vicky never took that seriously. I wasn’t slowed down, but I was uneasy darting from one lighted haven to another. Birchwood is on the fringe of a small town, in an area not much more built up than this one. From the first, I felt totally safe being out and about there, whatever the hour. As I always had here. Could I still?

  “Is beer off-limits tonight too?” Baxter asked.

  I shook my head, and a few minutes later, as we approached Stewarts, he signaled a turn and pulled into the lot. Calvin pulled in behind us. “Back in a minute,” Baxter said, getting out.

  The small lot was pretty well filled, there not being many places around this area where you can sit and have a late-evening hot dog or sandwich. As Ryan had done, only a week ago. It seemed longer, or it could have been yesterday. My sense of time was scrambled, along with my sense of place. I felt removed, as if I had patched together some sort of shield against chaos, which was pressing in from all sides. I guess that’s what shock is: a temporary shield. Something very similar to what I was experiencing now had set in after I stabbed Jon Keegan—not necessarily to my benefit, as things turned out. An elderly man emerged from the store, and then a couple of teenage girls. All three glanced my way … curious, speculating. What’s she done? Add a “now” to that question and it became the one my mother grew weary of posing.

  Baxter came next, a twelve-pack of Molson’s Export under one arm, a big bag of pretzels in the other. Hi
s and Calvin’s make-do supper? I tried to think what I had on hand to offer. Even that level of thinking wasn’t working right. If this was shock, I’d had about enough of it.

  The rest of the way home I worked at clearing my head. The stop for food had helped, somehow, a reminder that all life’s little details hum right along, no matter what you’ve found in somebody’s spa. Not what, who: Mariah. Yet that body and Mariah were not the same thing. That body was what had happened to Mariah. What somebody had done to Mariah. Two somebodies, at least—she wouldn’t loll there sipping her martini while a lone visitor plugged in a clunker of a hair dryer and dropped it into the spa. The same ones as with Ryan? This time they were not going to remain faceless.

  Baxter seemed content to let me silently pull my act together. Or fine-tune my cover story. I mean, the man hadn’t known me from Adam until last Thursday, and now I’d brought him two corpses. Sheriffs don’t make a living being trusting. Was he giving me the chance to self-destruct?

  I thought, well, I’ll outwait him. We were barely into the kitchen when I burst out with “You don’t really think that was an accident, back there? Do you think I killed her?”

  “In order, no”—he looked at me curiously—“and no.” He carried the beer and pretzels straight to the dining table, leaving me to follow with the cold cuts, pickles, and mustard I scrounged from the refrigerator. The new, unopened loaf of rye bread and a cold can of diet Coke I thrust at Calvin, who had parked my Bronco in an approximation of its accustomed spot. He trailed along, Roxy sniffing at his pants legs.

  Baxter sat, opening the twelve-pack and extracting two bottles. He twisted off the caps, handing me one. “It was not an accident because while Mariah may have been eccentric she wasn’t stupid. She would not try to use a hair dryer in a spa.”

  “She wouldn’t have that particular hair dryer on the premises. It’s the sort of monster machine only men go for. Megapower, off brand, wonderful sale at some discount store. Mariah bought top of the line. Check out her others, you’ll see the difference.”

  “Thanks. Also, the cord was a replacement—to defeat that safety plug the newer ones come with.” He started making himself a ham sandwich. “Another reason it wasn’t an accident is, you don’t plug in an electric cord without leaving fingerprints unless you’re wearing gloves. She wasn’t. We didn’t find a glove anywhere around.”

  Calvin opened the soda and poured himself a glass. “Those marks on her shoulders.” He looked angry. “She was trying to get out of that spa. It looks to me like somebody held her down while somebody else dropped the hair dryer in the water.”

  “That’s likely how it happened,” Baxter said evenly. “Val, why don’t you tell us about this tape?”

  “I’ll play it for you. Won’t take me a minute to fetch the answering machine and plug it in out here.”

  “I got your message at seven-thirty-five,” he called after me. “You’d been there maybe five minutes?”

  “More like ten. I tried the front-gate buzzer twice before I went around to the south gate and used my key. And first I called the rescue squad.”

  I returned to the kitchen with the machine, plugged it in. “It’s ten minutes after four,” the familiar voice began, as my eyes teared, “and as usual you’re not home. Something we were talking about—”

  If I’d just been here … “I got back from Platteville around six-thirty,” I said after the tape beeped off, trying to keep my voice level. “Grocery-shopped, came home, changed clothes, drove on over. I wasn’t rushing. Why wasn’t I rushing?”

  Baxter reached over and covered my right hand with his. “Val, it wouldn’t have mattered. What were you talking about, that set her off on this research?”

  Somehow, the physical contact helped me to focus. “I walked God knows how many miles back and forth, waiting for you, trying to zero in on that. The last time we talked was yesterday morning, briefly—she was on her way to Albany. Tuesday night she called to tell me Etlingers’ had dumped the remaining items for her gardening project out front when she wasn’t home. She’d been in Albany then, too, so I think she was already into this research she mentioned. Most likely it was something that came out of Monday night—Willem and I were over there for several hours. But I can’t tell you what, specifically.”

  “Somebody’s take on Ryan Jessup’s murder?” Calvin asked. “You guys must’ve discussed that.”

  “Only to declare the topic off limits. We talked about my four years with the Garden Center, mostly. And some about Hudson Heights. If there was a theme, I’d say it was innocent deceptions—stuff like how we got a client not to rip out a wonderful old oak tree by inventing some dire consequences. Or the way Thurman Haynes pretended to be making expert guesses as to the outlines of those dumpsites when he’d spent hours and hours before that weekend discovery party establishing where they were. If a lightbulb went off, I didn’t see it.” I stared at my surprisingly empty Molson’s bottle. “But why the hell didn’t I head straight over there when I heard her message?”

  “You’d have been too late,” Calvin tried to reassure me. “They think she must’ve been killed not long after she called you.”

  “The message.” Baxter also stared at his beer bottle; it was still mostly full. “Let’s go from the assumption that whatever she got curious enough about to research yielded pertinent information. Not necessarily the name of either of Ryan’s killers—”

  “Something he could have used as blackmail material,” Calvin suggested.

  “Maybe.” I frowned. “It sounded to me like she didn’t quite know what she had. ‘I’m not sure how it all fits in …’”

  “Fits in with what?” Baxter asked.

  “With what’s been going on, obviously. The overall situation that led to Ryan’s murder. And now hers.” And why the hell hadn’t I taken the initiative and discussed the first murder with her? Maybe, pooling our resources, we’d have come up with something that could have prevented hers.

  He took his hand away. “Why don’t you have a go at defining this overall situation?” I wondered at the sudden frost in his tone. “Make yourself a specific focal point to spin off from. Say Willem Etlinger?”

  “Fine—Willem.” Calvin’s eye movements indicated he’d spotted the start of a less than friendly Ping-Pong game. “The three of us were very close, and of course Willem has strong ties to both the Garden Center and Hudson Heights. I’m not sure what kind of spinning you suppose I can do.”

  “I find it remarkable that you chose, Monday night, not to discuss a very recent murder involving a victim you all knew. Or maybe that makes sense, after all. It seems to me from what you’ve said, and some responses I got out of Mariah, that neither of you gave a damn about Ryan Jessup’s murder per se—only as it might involve Willem.”

  “If you’re implying we were afraid he did it, that would be a strong ‘no.’ If you’re suggesting we both suspected some people he cares about might be involved, well, of course we did. Neither of us was eager to start tossing names around, certainly not in his presence. I’m over that. I loved Mariah.”

  While she was alive, I’d never have thought to put it that way. And like most such basic declarations, it was discomfiting to both males at the table. I let their silence ride.

  “Let’s talk names, then,” Baxter said finally. “Rodney, Eleanor, Kate, and Willem Etlinger; Clete and Kyle Donnelly; let’s throw in Matt Conroy, maybe Thurman Haynes. Any additions?”

  “How about Johnny Armitage as your second person? He wouldn’t have done the planning, but he’s got the brawn and the attitude to lend a hand.”

  “Okay. Naturally, everyone claims to have been somewhere else when Ryan was murdered. None of them was able to provide substantiation that didn’t involve someone else in the group, but I can’t prove anyone’s lying. For Mariah’s murder it’s still a totally open field, until we check on their whereabouts late this afternoon. I got the impression she was not on good terms with most of our cast.”

>   “The senior Etlingers cut her, back when she was trying to torpedo Hudson Heights. She and Kyle got along, though he wasn’t always happy about her influence on his son. She didn’t pay much attention to Kate, and vice versa. They were hardly each other’s favorite people, but it wasn’t open warfare. Officially, she and Clete couldn’t stand each other, but I suspect they both kind of enjoyed their squabbles.”

  “So at least some of the lot she would be reluctant to let into her house?”

  “Mariah wouldn’t have turned any of them away if they came by and wanted to talk.”

  “Even when she had newfound reason to suppose they might be behind a murder?”

  “You have to understand the mystique. Mariah loves—” I swallowed and started again. “She loved to twit the local aristocracy, but she was very much part of it. These were all her people—even Clete, almost. They argued a lot, but they would not consider it appropriate to kill one another.”

  “Only nobodies like Ryan Jessup once in a while, if they get in the way?”

  “You’ll have to poll them on that one—it’s not my group. I was trying to make you understand why she might have been incautious. Or maybe the killers sneaked in somehow. Hell, I don’t know.”

  “Sorry. I assume the Hudson Heights hierarchy would go as her people too?”

  “Certainly Thurman—they’ve been friends for ages. And she and Matt used to joke around a lot at the hearings. You might want to throw Phil Thomson into the pot, too, if you’re looking for Hudson Heights ties. According to my new client he got together an investment group that put up ten percent of the capital.”

  “I’ve been trying to track down that rumor. The individual names aren’t listed in the filing. It would help explain—”

  “And also add a few complications to your life,” Calvin interjected.

  “It’s already done that. Phil is more nervous than he should be about the first murder. Not that I’d seriously nominate him as one of the killers.”

  “You damn well ought to be nominating somebody!” I burst out.