Gone Gull

by Donna Andrews

  Okay, and maybe just a little curious. So I snagged a poker from the great room’s big fireplace, tiptoed across to the door to the studio wing, and yanked it open.

  The first thing I saw was broken pottery. One of Gillian’s enormous cobalt blue glazed planters lay in pieces on the floor in the doorway to her studio. I stopped short—there were shards scattered all up and down the corridor, some of them a foot long, and I was wearing flip-flops. I had no desire to lacerate my feet. I could see plenty from my end of the hall.

  And then, as I scanned the ceramic debris field, I realized that the base of the pot was still in one big piece. Protruding from it was a body—a body whose head would be resting beneath the planter base.

  My heart raced, and I felt a distinctly queasy sensation in my stomach, so I closed my eyes for a few moments and took deep breaths. And then I opened my eyes again and forced myself to focus on practicalities. Should I go fetch Officer Keech? No, calling 911 was a better idea. Dispatch could probably rouse her faster than I could, and I wouldn’t have to leave the crime scene unguarded. And after 911 I should call Dad, even though whoever was under the pot was clearly past his help. Having a plan—better still, a to-do list—always helps me, even in the direst crisis. I could feel my pulse slowing and my stomach steadying.

  I had already pulled out my phone by the time I noticed that the body had a cast on its arm. A fairly new, clean cast, decorated with get-well messages in a variety of bright colors, including one in lavender from Rose Noire.

  Victor the Klutz.

  Chapter 17

  “And you don’t know what woke you?”

  Luckily by the time Chief Heedles had arrived I’d recovered from the shock of finding Victor’s body—at least, sufficiently recovered that I’d been able to give her the condensed version of my middle-of-the night adventures while escorting her to the door of the studio wing. Then I’d dragged a chair in from the great room and sat just inside the door to make sure no one followed her except Horace and Dad and Officer Keech and eventually the other three Riverton police officers. Michael texted me that he had joined Eric and the boys in the caravan, and that they were fast asleep. I felt better, knowing he was with them, and managed—after a fashion—to shove my anxiety over them aside and focus on what the chief was doing.

  And right now she was asking for details I wasn’t sure I could provide. Particularly not when I knew that I had only to turn my head to see poor Victor’s body, still awaiting the medical examiner. The proximity didn’t help my focus.

  “Meg?” the chief said.

  “What woke me? No idea. I thought I heard a noise. Now I figure maybe it was the pot falling on Victor. At the time I had no idea.”

  Over my left shoulder I could tell that Horace and Officer Keech were clearly enjoying themselves—not in any inappropriately gleeful manner, of course, but you could see they were getting a lot of professional satisfaction out of processing what I gathered was an interesting crime scene. For the last quarter of an hour they’d been taking turns sketching in Lesley Keech’s notebook, trying to figure out precisely how the killer had rigged the pot so it would fall on whomever entered the door. I wasn’t sure knowing the precise mechanical details of how the booby trap worked would bring us any closer to finding who’d done it, but I didn’t want to rain on their parade. From the chief’s carefully patient expression when she checked on their progress, I suspect she felt the same way.

  “Do you think whoever killed Prine also killed Victor?” I asked.

  “Too early to tell yet. Did any of the acts of vandalism involve similar mechanical contraptions?”

  “Not that I could see,” I said. “They all seemed distinctly low-tech. Using materials at hand—slugs from the yard, soy sauce from the dining hall. Some of them seemed pretty spur-of-the-moment—opening windows, twisting the dial on a kiln. Not like this. Someone had to do at least a little planning to pull this off, right? Then again, if Horace and Officer Keech hadn’t been here, would we really have figured out there was a booby trap? I mean, they’re experts, and they’re still trying to figure out how it worked. It’s possible we might have assumed Victor’s death was a terrible accident, and that those little bits of wood and string were just rubbish that happened to be lying around.”

  “You get a lot of fifty-pound pots falling from the ceilings around here?” the chief asked.

  “No, but if we were still focused on the vandalism, maybe we’d have jumped to the conclusion that Victor was the vandal, and had accidentally done himself in while trying to pull off his latest prank.”

  “It’s a thought,” she said. “Did you suspect Victor of the vandalism?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Although no more than at least a dozen other people.”

  Just then the door popped open. We both turned to see Gillian standing in the open doorway. She had frozen in place upon spotting her broken pot and Victor’s apparently headless body.

  “Oh,” she said in a sort of stunned half whimper. Then her eyes rolled up, and before either of us could jump to catch her, she keeled over backward, hitting her head on the floor with a thud that made both of us wince.

  The chief rushed to Gillian’s side. I pulled out my cell phone and punched the button to call Dad. “You have a live patient here at the crime scene,” I said.

  “On my way.”

  “Odd that he’s not here fussing over the body,” I remarked to Chief Heedles.

  “Not that odd.” She was checking Gillian’s pulse. “I asked him to stay on the front porch, to lead the medical examiner here as soon as she comes, and in the meantime to report any suspicious behavior on the part of any of the guests.”

  “You do realize that when there’s a murder involved, he’s all too ready to see suspicious behavior even when no one’s asking him to look for it,” I said. “You could be in for a long debriefing with him.”

  “And maybe he’ll bring me something useful, and in the meantime, he’s out of my hair,” she said. “On the surface these two murders appear quite dissimilar—one carefully planned, the other quite possibly committed on the spur of the moment with a weapon that happened to be available.”

  “Was Prine in the habit of keeping a kitchen knife in his studio, then? I can’t say that I’d noticed it, but then I was avoiding him as far as I could.”

  “Turns out it wasn’t a kitchen knife but something called a palette knife,” she said. “Apparently some painters use them either to mix paint or actually to paint with. I’m not at all sure how that works.”

  “Ask Frankie,” I suggested. “The replacement painting teacher. She could explain it to you—or even demonstrate.”

  “Good idea—not that I expect it to have any relevance to the murder investigation, but I’m curious. And you never know where you’ll find a vital clue.”

  Something didn’t sound right about this scenario.

  “Was the palette knife sharp?” I asked.

  “Reasonably so.” Her face clearly showed that she didn’t find this a particularly incisive question. “It would have been extremely difficult to stab Prine in the back with a blunt implement.”

  “Then you might also want to ask Frankie if palette knives are usually all that sharp,” I suggested. “I was under the impression that they had fairly dull edges. You want to mix and spread paint with them, not gouge holes in your canvas or your palette.”

  The chief, who had been studying Gillian, looked up sharply.

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Not absolutely. All of the palette knives I’ve ever seen were dull, but I’m not a painter. Maybe some of them have a use for sharpened palette knives.”

  She nodded. She focused her eyes back on Gillian, but her attention seemed focused inward. No doubt she was also thinking that if the palette knife had been sharpened beforehand, the two murders might have a lot more in common than we’d thought.

  Dad burst in, medical bag in hand, interrupting our ruminations.

  “Puls
e?” he asked.

  “Slow, but steady,” the chief said. “About sixty-five. She hit her head going down.”

  Dad nodded, and began gently examining Gillian’s head. I decided it was time to put some distance between me and my former student’s body.

  “I’ll guard the door from the other side.” I grabbed my chair and dragged it back into the great room.

  I sat down and pulled out my phone to check the time—4:46. Dawn was still an hour or so away, but it was already getting lighter outside. And inside, thanks to all those French doors leading out onto the terrace.

  I heard a rattling noise from the direction of the dining room. Marty, doing some kind of pre-breakfast preparation? More likely one of his kitchen staff. Though if Marty wasn’t up already, he would be soon, since breakfast service started at six. Maybe that was why he’d been so cranky with Grandfather and me. We’d probably interrupted his last hour of sleep before the start of another fourteen-hour day. Then again, cranky seemed to be his default mode.

  The door behind me opened and Dad walked out, escorting Gillian.

  “There you are!” Dad exclaimed. “Gillian’s going to be just fine.” The degree of cheerfulness in his voice made me suspect that he’d been worried for a while. “But she’s still a little shaky. Can you keep an eye on her for a little while?”

  I couldn’t tell whether she needed watching for purely medical reasons or if he was hinting that the chief wanted to make sure she didn’t disappear. Either way, I could watch her.

  “Sure,” I said.

  He escorted her over to one of the deep-cushioned sofas and hovered while she sat down. I took the armchair next to her sofa.

  “Can you send the medical examiner in when she arrives?” he said.

  “Roger.”

  Gillian sat with her eyes closed. I debated whether to try to talk to her or just leave her alone. Given the early hour, leaving her alone seemed wise.

  Though come to think of it, what was she doing here at such an early hour?

  A door opened, and I glanced in to see Marty peering out of the doorway to the dining room.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s had a shock.”

  He disappeared without a word. But just as I was writing him off as an insensitive jerk, he reappeared with a small tray that held a steaming mug of coffee and a flaky croissant on a paper napkin.

  “You need this.” He shoved the mug into her hands and set the napkin with the croissant on the sofa beside her. “Drink.”

  She lifted the cup and sipped. Then a small smile lit her face, and she took another, larger sip.

  “Just right,” she said. “Thanks.”

  “Make her eat.” He frowned at me as if I were to blame for Gillian’s state. I decided I’d been wrong about Marty’s reasons for cosseting the vegetarians. It wasn’t Rose Noire he was besotted with—it was Gillian. I wondered if she’d even noticed. “I have to see to breakfast,” Marty went on. “But call me if she needs more.”

  I nodded, and he disappeared back into the dining room, presumably on his way to the kitchen. Gillian sat holding the coffee cup, and staring into it. She looked as if whatever good the sips of coffee had done was wearing off.

  “Don’t make me nag you,” I said—but gently. “Drink.”

  “It was meant for me.” Her face was ashen, and she gripped the mug with both hands as if it was the only thing keeping her from falling off the edge of a cliff.

  “The falling pot?”

  “Yes. Since we’re locking the studios outside of class hours, I should have been the first one through that door this morning. Why was he there? And in the middle of the night? Who is he, anyway, this Victor Kurtz?”

  “Victor Winter,” I said.

  “I thought someone said his name was Kurtz.”

  “Most of the other students call him Victor the Klutz,” I said. “Some of them may not know his real name. But it’s Winter.”

  “I see.” She buried her nose in the mug for a moment. “But it wasn’t his klutziness that killed him. Someone set a trap for me, and he was unlucky enough to fall into it instead.”

  “Why would someone want to kill you?”

  “You don’t believe me.” Her voice was calm on the surface, but with a thin edge of budding hysteria underneath.

  “I don’t disbelieve you,” I said. “But I have no idea who could possibly hate you enough to want to kill you. If you do, tell the chief.”

  “If I knew, I would.” She shook her head wearily. “Some crazed person is trying to kill me and I have no idea why.”

  “They might not be trying to kill you,” I said. “Maybe Victor was the vandal. Maybe he was only trying to cause damage and it backfired on him. What if he tried to pick up that pot to throw it on the floor not realizing how heavy it was, and ended up getting smashed under it?”

  “That would be a pretty stupid thing to do,” she said.

  “He was no rocket scientist.”

  “That would be good, wouldn’t it?” she said slowly. “If Victor was the vandal. It would mean no more vandalism. Though I’m not sure what that would have to do with Edward’s murder.”

  “Possibly everything, if Prine caught him messing with the art studio. Victor could have killed him in the struggle. Or deliberately, to avoid being exposed.”

  “I like this theory of yours. I hope it’s true.”

  “So do I.” I decided it wouldn’t make her feel any better if I shared my other theory—that Victor had fallen prey to a booby trap meant for someone else—me. Because Gillian probably wouldn’t have been the first one in her classroom this morning. The way things were going, even if I’d gotten back to sleep after catching Grandfather in the act, I’d probably have awakened earlier than almost anyone else. I’d probably have made use of the time by checking out every corner of the main building for signs that the vandal had struck again. And it would have been me lying there in the doorway of Gillian’s studio.

  But what had Victor been doing prowling through the studio wing in the early morning? Maybe he was the vandal, getting back to his work after lying low all day yesterday because of the police presence. Or maybe he was an innocent but nosy bystander—maybe, like me, he had heard a noise in the night or seen a light and had gone prowling around the studio wing to investigate.

  It would help if we knew whether or not the vandal was also the killer. And whether the same person had committed both murders. Did we have one criminal, or two, or three?

  I didn’t envy Chief Heedles her job.

  “What were you doing here this early?” As soon as the words left my lips I realized that what I’d meant as an innocent question sound like an accusation. I hurried to add something to defuse that impression. “Because if the police woke you up just so they could show you a dead body in your studio, I’m going to speak sternly to them. Better yet, I’ll sic my grandmother on them.”

  “Not their fault.” She gave me the ghost of a smile. “The arrival of the police woke me, and then I could see that there were lights on in my studio. I thought it was the vandal again, and I wanted to see how much damage had been done. I didn’t expect…”

  Her voice trailed off, and she took another sip of the coffee.

  “Do you suppose your cook knows I like my coffee lightly sweetened?” she asked. “Or did he just assume a little sugar would be good for someone in danger of going into shock?”

  “I’m sure he knows,” I said. “Just as he knows exactly who the vegetarians are so he doesn’t offer them anything they can’t eat. And I bet he’s got a little mental list of everyone who commits the heinous sin of salting their food before tasting it.”

  She smiled slightly at that, and sat back on the sofa, closing her eyes.

  Rose Noire came tiptoeing in. I decided to turn sentry duty over to her. I pointed to Gillian, then at Rose Noire, and then at my eyes. She nodded, and when I got up, she took my place in the armchair.

  I knew
I should try to go back to sleep. But I didn’t want to wake Michael and the boys, depriving them of their last hour or so of rest. So I went out on the terrace, lay down in one of the recliners there, and closed my eyes. Even if I couldn’t actually fall asleep, I could rest.

  Chapter 18

  Wednesday

  “Meg?”

  I was on the hillside below the terrace, picking up cantaloupe rinds and potato peelings, but as fast as I picked them up, the person who had thrown them threw more, and I was starting to be pretty sure it was the vandal doing it. And now he was calling my name so I’d look up and the falling garbage would smack me in the face. I shielded my eyes with my hand and peered up, trying to make out his face, but the garbage kept raining down, and my black plastic garbage bag was nearly full. Forget the garbage, I told myself. Just look up and see—

  “Meg?”

  I opened my eyes to see Chief Heedles squatting in front of me. I was still on the recliner on the terrace. Not a cantaloupe rind in sight.

  “You okay?” she asked. “You were sort of thrashing and muttering.”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Except that I was on the trail of the vandal, and was just about to get a look at him or her when you woke me up.”

  “Damn.” She smiled slightly. “Wish I’d held off a few minutes so you could tell me.”

  “Did you need me for anything?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Just came out to get some peace and quiet to think. You might want to grab a bite to eat—classes start in twenty minutes.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “By the way, have you talked to Amanda since dinnertime?”

  “No. Should I have?”

  “Some of the ladies in the herb class are all a-twitter over the fact that one of their number, Jenni something-or-other, is sneaking out nights for a rendezvous with an unknown man.”

  “Do they know for sure it’s a man?” the chief asked. “Or did they just assume it was a man she was meeting?”