by Gregory Ashe
No response came from Hazard.
“You sure you’re all right? You’re looking at me funny.”
“I’m fine.”
“Good.”
“I’m fine for someone who was drugged by his partner.”
“Jesus.”
“Jesus had nothing to do with it.”
“You needed to sleep, all right? And there aren’t any prescription painkillers in here,” Somers shook the tote bag at Hazard, “so I did what I could.”
“You took advantage of me.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
Hazard’s eyes narrowed, but there was a flicker of uncertainty now. “I’m not responsible for what I said or did while I was drugged.”
“You didn’t do anything. What kind of person do you think I am?”
“I don’t need you making decisions for me. I’m fully capable of making those decisions myself.”
“Yeah? You seemed real capable last night when you couldn’t get your broken ass off the floor.”
“I don’t want to fight.”
“Then you’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
Somers didn’t wait for his partner to reply. He shoved the sideboard away from the door and pushed his way out into the hall. The door to Benny’s room stood open, as did the door to Ran’s room. The doors to Columbia’s, Leza’s, and Meryl’s rooms were closed—and, Somers was willing to bet, locked.
In Ran’s room, Somers rifled the suitcases again, digging out a heavy sweater and two long-sleeved t-shirts. He layered the clothes and then pulled on Ran’s down jacket—too long in the sleeves, but better than nothing. To Somer’s surprise, he found Hazard standing in the doorway when he turned to go.
“We should stay in sight,” Hazard said in the damnably cool tone. “Until we’re out of this.”
“That would have been a good idea last night.”
“What’s our plan?”
“I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”
“We should go to the stables. We can use the apartment for shelter. It will be easier to warm a smaller space, especially with the wood stove. It will also be easier to protect ourselves. Someone obviously wants to kill us—all of us—and for all we know, he’ll try again.”
“Well, I think that’s a shitty idea,” Somers said.
“Why?”
“Because it’s yours.” He pushed past Hazard and began hammering on the closed doors with his fist.
“You’re acting like a child,” Hazard said, still in the expressionless tone.
“Screw you.”
It didn’t make any sense. What had happened to the Hazard from last night? The big guy who wanted to snuggle and say sweet things—where had he gone? Somers didn’t know, and he’d be damned if he was going to try to find out. Hazard wanted to act like an asshole. Fine, let him. Hazard wanted to pretend last night never happened. Fine, Somers thought, still hammering on the door, let him.
“For God’s sake,” Columbia said, yanking open the door. Are you trying to break this down?”
“I wasn’t sure you could hear me.”
“They heard you in the next county.” Columbia drew herself up, her angular face hard with irritation. “Now, can we get dressed? Or are you determined to barge in here?”
She didn’t wait for a response and slammed the door.
“Well done,” Hazard said.
Somers gave him the finger.
It was almost a half an hour later before the survivors gathered in the kitchen. Everyone was bundled in winter gear, and their breaths steamed in the freezing air. Snow, driven through the broken windows by the storm, had spilled through half of the house, visible from where Somers stood in the kitchen doorway. Overnight, Windsor had gone from a place of warmth and refuge to an uninhabitable ruin.
“This is insane,” Adaline said, huddling closer to Columbia. The two women stood apart from Leza and Meryl, forming their own unit. “You’re saying someone tried to blow us up?”
Hazard nodded. “Someone would have blown us up.”
“If you hadn’t saved us,” Columbia said added. “Strange, though. There’s no body. No one except you saw this intruder.”
“What are you trying to say, Columbia?” Leza snapped.
“Nothing. It’s just strange. Nobody was there when Ran died. Nobody was there—” Columbia paused, swallowing, “when Benny died. Nobody except these two.”
“We’ve already been through this,” Meryl said. “They’re detectives. We called in their badges, and we know they’re detectives.”
“So?” Columbia said.
“So why would they try to kill us?”
Columbia didn’t answer, but her dark eyes remained fixed on Hazard.
“Benny’s dead,” Adaline whispered into Columbia’s shoulder. “It doesn’t seem real. Who would want to kill us? I mean, Thomas was rich and important. Why do the rest of us matter?”
“That’s a very good question,” Somers said. “What is your connection to the Argus Improvement Foundation, Miss Argus?”
“What?”
“The Argus Improvement Foundation. Mr. Strong left several thousand shares to a charitable trust with that name.”
“I don’t know,” Adaline said, her eyes lowered, her cheeks coloring.
“That seems highly unlikely. A trust with your name, and you don’t know anything about it? And conveniently upon Mr. Strong’s death, several thousand valuable shares are willed to that trust? That’s too much of a coincidence.”
“I don’t,” Adaline said, her eyes filling with tears as she dashed them away. “I don’t know anything about it. Oh, Thomas. He didn’t—he shouldn’t have—” She burst into sobs.
“Are you happy?” Columbia asked, pulling Adaline against her. “A few thousand shares? That’s what you’re worried about? Jesus Christ, that’s not enough money to kill over. Look at her—she didn’t even know she’d get it.”
No one spoke, and the only sound was Adaline’s weeping.
“All right,” Somers said. “Who else would have an interest in eliminating everyone from Strong, Matley, Gross?”
Columbia’s eyes flicked towards Meryl. Meryl flushed, and she dropped her eyes.
“Well?” Somers said.
“No one,” Meryl said.
“Then what was all that business about? Why were you two looking at each other?”
Columbia answered in her throaty voice, “She gave you your answer, Detective. We can’t think of a soul.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Somers caught a glimpse of Leza’s face. The older woman’s expression was a mixture of fury and frustration—she knew something, Somers guess, or she suspected it, but not enough to prove it.
“If you want to keep your secrets,” Hazard said, “then keep them. You might very well die for keeping them. Either way, though, it doesn’t change the facts: there is someone else at Windsor, and that person is trying to kill us. He’s based at the stables. Detective Somerset and I found evidence that someone has been staying there for the last few days. I suggest that we start our search there, together. If we find him, we can eliminate this threat. If he’s gone, the stables will still provide the best shelter until the weather clears and we can be rescued.”
Meryl made a noise in her throat, and when Somers glanced at her, he was surprised to see she was crying. Leza took a step towards her, but Meryl waved her away.
“Please, you can’t kill him. He didn’t do this. I swear.”
“What?” Columbia said huskily. “Who? What are you talking about?”
“You knew,” Adaline whispered. “You knew he was here.”
“He wouldn’t do this,” Meryl said, tears shining on her face. “He wouldn’t. You can talk to him. You’ll see. He never would have shot her for real. He was only trying to impress me.”
“What are you talking about?” Somers said.
Confusion interrupted Meryl’s crying, and she blinked up at Somers. “Gene. Gene Bequette.”
“
AND WHO IS GENE BEQUETTE?” Somers asked, trying to keep his voice calm and confident. As he spoke, though, his mind was racing. He had heard that name before. He knew it—and it triggered an unpleasant flip of his stomach. Something was not right; his subconscious knew it, and his brain was trying to catch up.
“The car,” Hazard said. “In the snow.”
Somers’s mind flashed back to their drive almost two days before, when they had left Wahredua to visit Batsy Ferrell. On the way, there had been a car—stuck in the snow, Somers remembered. And they had helped get the car back on the road. Or rather, Hazard had helped—he had done most of the heavy lifting.
“That guy?” Somers said. “You’re kidding.”
“What are you talking about?” Meryl said. “You know Gene?”
In answer, Hazard drew the black vinyl citation book from inside his jacket. He flipped it open and passed it towards Somers, displaying a yellow carbon copy of the most recent citation. It was for Gene Bequette, for careless and imprudent driving. Somers swore and handed back the book. He was aware that Meryl and the other women were waiting for an answer, but his attention was fixed on Hazard.
“That ass-hat? What does he have to do with any of this?”
“It sounds like he took a shot at Batsy Ferrell,” Hazard said, pocketing the citation book. “Unless he was shooting at someone else.”
“He wasn’t,” Meryl said. “He didn’t even shoot at Mrs. Ferrell. Not really, I mean. It was just—”
“Oh God,” Columbia said, dropping her head into her hands. “Him?”
“The . . . the colonel?” Leza asked. “That guy?”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” Somers said.
Meryl’s cheeks were red, and tears gathered in her eyes, but they didn’t spill. They stayed there, like two shining reservoirs, no matter how much she blinked. “He was very charming at the beginning.”
“You slept with him?” Leza said.
“Ms. Weaver,” Somers said, “please.”
“I did,” Meryl said with a helpless little laugh. “I did sleep with him. He’s young and handsome and not like most of the men I meet. All those corporate types with their polished shoes and their hundred-dollar haircuts. Against all that, Gene just seemed . . . real. He’s very passionate, too.” Her blush deepened, and she hurried to say, “Not like that, I mean. About causes. He told me that the woman who owned the land next to Windsor was trying to have them shut down. He told me she was insane, that she wanted to ruin Windsor so that she wouldn’t be bothered by the noise.”
“Let’s go back even further,” Somers said. “Gene Bequette is who?”
“He’s an actor,” Meryl said. “He’s really quite good. He’s living here for now because he had this wonderful idea, you know, for the reenactments at Windsor, but—”
“He’s a sniveling sleazeball,” Columbia said. “He’s no actor.”
“He is a very good actor,” Meryl said. “You wouldn’t know anything about him. You hardly even spoke to him, Columbia.”
Columbia huffed, and she struggled visibly to remain silent, and then words broke out. “He tried to pad the bill, and he insisted that the deposit wouldn’t be returned. He tried to crawl up every skirt that he saw.”
“Don’t be dramatic,” Leza said. “He hasn’t even given us a bill yet, and I already talked him into lowering the rate he quoted us. As for the skirts—” A smile slashed Leza’s face. “You wouldn’t know, would you?”
“You self-important little—”
“That’s enough, ladies,” Somers managed to get in. “Or I’ll have Detective Hazard keep you company while I talk to Ms. Headlee.”
Columbia managed to swallow the rest of her words, but her face had darkened, and she threw furious glances at Leza. Leza, for her part, reclined against the counter, picking pilling from her sweater and smirking.
“Go on,” Somers said to Meryl. “He’s the owner of this place?”
“The manager, I think. And he’s very good at what he does.”
“And he took a shot at Mrs. Ferrell’s house?”
“She’s the woman who lives across the river?”
Somers nodded.
For a moment, Meryl hesitated. “Yes. But he never meant to actually harm her. He’s . . . he’s got this French soul, all that passion, like a revolutionary. But he never would have hurt her.”
“He did fire a gun at her, though?”
“At her house.” Meryl’s eyes darted to the floor and then back to Somers. “I—I heard glass break.”
The broken window in Batsy Ferrell’s house, Somers thought. If Gene Bequette really hadn’t meant any harm, he had managed to come damn close to killing her anyway.
“For Christ’s sake,” Leza said, throwing her hands up in the air. “Why are you talking about this? Maybe Gene is the killer; maybe he isn’t. Either way, the detectives need to find him.”
“Slow down,” Somers said. “We want to hear everything.”
“Of course,” Leza said. “And while you do, we’ll just sit here. If we don’t freeze to death, someone will shoot our faces off, just like they did to Benny.” The last words, shrill enough to raise the hair on Somers’s neck, made the other women shift and turn their gazes away.
Somers waited a moment and asked, “But when you heard about what happened last night, you immediately assumed that he was involved?”
“No. No, that’s not what happened. I knew you’d go looking, and I knew you’d find him. I was afraid you might, I don’t know, shoot him on accident because you thought he was a threat. He’s staying in the stables. He was supposed to leave Windsor—he did leave Windsor, in fact—but he came back. We—we decided to have a little fun, and anyway, Thomas had been awful to both of us, and I thought if I had to spend my holiday here, I might as well enjoy it.”
“He’s the one staying in the stables?” Hazard repeated for confirmation.
“Yes.”
“And there’s no one else?”
“No. I went to see him two nights ago, and I came back the next morning. I didn’t know anything had happened to Thomas; I just got back in bed and tried to sleep a little.”
That, Somers thought, was one explanation for the mud on her shoes that morning, as well as his sense that she had been lying.
“And then, yesterday, when you went out to see the grounds, I knew you might find Gene and think the wrong thing, so I went to warn him.” Meryl hesitated. “I didn’t find him, though. He wasn’t in the stables, and I didn’t dare wait too long, so I came back to the house before you caught me.”
And that, Somers thought, explained one of the figures that he had seen in the snowstorm.
“Did Gene ever come here?” Somers asked. “To the house, I mean.”
“On the first day,” Meryl said. “To give us our character packets.”
“No, I mean after Thomas’s death.”
Meryl shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Would he have come to the house discreetly to visit you?”
“Maybe. He’s so . . . so alive. It’s so forceful. He very well could do something like that, especially if he got bored, or if he was worried about how we were doing in the storm. He wouldn’t want to ruin the game for everyone, but he might want to see how we were doing.”
“Not we,” Leza said lightly, but the words were too sharp. “You.”
Meryl didn’t answer, but she tucked her chin.
“He wasn’t at the stable when you went to find him yesterday,” Somers said. “So you haven’t seen him since the night before?”
“That’s right.”
“So for all you know, he might have been the man who attacked the house last night? For that matter, he might have been the one who shot Ran at the range.”
“He wasn’t,” Meryl said. “He never would have done something like that.”
“He fired a shot at Batsy Ferrell, and he almost killed her. I wouldn’t put much past him.”
No on
e had any response for that.
“Somers,” Hazard said, tilting his head at the door.
“Ladies, please stay here. We’ll be back in a bit.”
None of the women answered; none looked like they had enough spit in their mouths to lick an envelope.
Hazard led Somers to the dining room and shut the door. Cradling his wounded hand, he nodded back at the way they had come. “One of them.”
“What?”
“One of them is the killer.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. A man attacked you last night, and Columbia is the closest thing to that. Unless she gained a few hundred pounds of muscle overnight—”
“No. The man, whoever he was, is also involved, but that’s not what I mean.”
“Go on.”
As Hazard spoke, some of the coldness he had exhibited melted, and his face took on the tight animation that Somers had come to expect from his partner—it was as close as Hazard usually came to looking excited. “I don’t know; the pieces aren’t fitting into place, not yet. But someone killed Thomas in his office, while we were all in the house, without a struggle and without alerting anyone. Someone killed Benny the same way. The simplest answer is usually the right one, and the simplest answer is that the killer was already in the house.”
“You think it was Meryl?”
“Not necessarily, although it will be hard to corroborate her story, especially if Gene has disappeared.”
“It wasn’t Meryl.”
Hazard raised an eyebrow. “Why? Because you feel sorry for her? Because she’s smart and kind? Because you’re attracted to her?”
“You’re a dick today.”
“Is this your intuition again?”
“I was right, wasn’t I? Meryl was lying about where she had spent the night, and she was lying about her shoes. And I’m telling you, it wasn’t Meryl.”
Hazard dismissed the comment with a wave of his good hand. “We have three murders now. We need to triangulate our killer. Someone wanted Thomas, Ran, and Benny dead. While Benny was alive, he made a good suspect. Meryl might have a motive for wanting Thomas dead, but no reason, as far as we can tell, for wanting Ran and Benny out of the way. The same is true of Leza.”
“But Adaline and Columbia do? What, Hazard? What’s their motive for killing Ran and Benny?”