by Josh Lanyon
Who was in better position to do so? He had argued with Peaches the night before she was killed, and he declined to say why. He was clearly leading a sexual double life. Krass had taunted him in the bar.
Well, maybe he hadn’t specifically taunted J.X., but he had been taunting the murderer, hadn’t he? And then he’d wound up dead too. And J.X. certainly had the insider’s track on the Murderer’s Things to Do List. And he’d been quick to shut me up every time I tried to defend myself—he’d got me isolated out here—
Now I was scaring myself. If J.X. was the killer, I did not want to be discovered standing here watching the evidence against him going up in smoke.
I headed for the door, checking on the stoop and making sure the coast was clear. The row of cabins stood silver gray in the night, and the world smelled of mud and rain and woodsmoke. The rain had dwindled to a misty drizzle. I squelched hastily back to my own cabin and let myself inside. I locked the door behind me and went to the window where I stood watching the darkness, wondering what I was waiting for.
I was still waiting when morning came.
Chapter Twenty-One
They were not happy to see me at the lodge.
Velma—Debbie, that is—would probably have slammed the door on me, but I got my boot through the opening between door and frame when she cautiously looked out. I grabbed the edge of the door and thrust it back, and she staggered a few steps. Her eyes were enormous behind the glasses.
“I need to talk to your dad,” I told her. “I’ll wait here, but go get him now.”
“What the hell is going on now?” Rita appeared with a stack of much-laundered towels in her arms.
“He got in,” Debbie quavered, making it sound like one of the undead had slipped past the garlic wreath on the door. Come to think of it, I felt like one of the undead. Lack of sleep and a permanent state of chills was beginning to affect my normally sweet disposition.
“Is J.X. here?” I demanded of Rita.
“The cop? I think he had breakfast, didn’t he?” She looked at Debbie who shrugged. “Or maybe that was yesterday. Why?” Her gaze fairly crackled with suspicion and hostility.
“Is he here or not?” I yelled, and they both jumped.
I could hear doors banging open from upstairs and voices rising as the hens woke up to the fact the fox was inside the fence.
Edgar strode down the hallway toward us. “Something wrong?” He looked around as though expecting to see J.X. on my heels.
I said, “I think something’s happened to J.X. He’s not in his cabin.”
Edgar turned to Rita. She retorted, “How the hell should I know? He was in and out all day yesterday, poking around places he had no business poking.”
“What makes you think something happened to him?” Edgar was frowning, but there was none of the alarmed distrust of his womenfolk.
See, real mystery writers would rather die than ever use the words I have a bad feeling, so I launched right into my reasoning: the unlocked cabin, the bed that hadn’t been slept in, the jacket and flashlight left behind, the burned murder weapon.
The three of them listened dumbfounded as I concluded, “I checked his cabin again on the way up here this morning, and he’s still not there.”
“How’d you get out of your cabin?” Rita inquired.
“He left the key with me last night.”
“Why would he do that?”
Edgar glanced at her and nodded, considering. “Sounds like maybe he was planning to disappear and left the key so you could get out if you needed to.” Adding, in case I’d missed the point, “Since he wouldn’t be around.”
I hadn’t thought of that, and it did give me pause. I shook my head. “I don’t think so. Why wouldn’t he take his jacket and flashlight?”
“Maybe he had another jacket and flashlight,” Edgar said.
“How many people bring two jackets to a writing conference? And the flashlight would be one of your own. Did you give him another flashlight?”
Edgar shook his head slowly.
“Why should we listen to you?” Debbie said shrilly. “You killed Peaches and Mr. Krass.”
Her mother shushed her, her harsh face softening fleetingly. That kid was certainly the apple of Rita’s eye. I wondered briefly how far Rita would go to protect her baby. But protect her from what?
“I did not kill anyone,” I said, snapping out each word for the benefit of the ladies lining up on the staircase to gawk down at us. By then I was all out of patience. “If I had, I wouldn’t be up here now pointing out that J.X. is missing.”
Rita said, “You might. Maybe you overpowered him last night and killed him too. We have only your word for it that he gave you that key.”
“If I’d killed him, why would I—”
“To try and fix yourself an alibi,” a male voice interrupted loudly. The four of us looked toward the crowded staircase as George Lacey made his way down the steps. “To try and throw us off the track,” he continued, reaching the bottom and joining us. He was still fastening his belt, in his great hurry to drop the noose over my head.
“You weren’t on the track,” I said. “You’re not even on the field. Hell, you’re not even in the goddamned ballpark.” I turned back to Edgar. “If I had anything to do with this, why would I tell you all that the murder weapon has been burned? I’d have replaced the real thing with a log from the pile out back. Only four of us knew about the branch that was used to kill Peaches—you, me, J.X. and the murderer.”
Edgar gave me a long, thoughtful look.
“I’m telling you, something has happened to him. And the longer we wait—” To my amazement, I couldn’t finish it. Couldn’t put it into words. Could barely stand to think it. “We’re wasting time,” I pleaded.
“All right,” Edgar said at last. “You’ve convinced me. Give us a chance to get organized here, and we’ll split up in groups and see if we can find him.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” a new voice chimed in triumphantly. We all turned back to the staircase to see Mindy Newburgh wrestling her way through the pink flock. It had to be sleep deprivation, but I began to feel like I had wandered into the last half of Murder by Death. Not a film I ever cared for.
“What?” the Crofts and George asked on cue.
Mindy reached the bottom slightly breathless and slightly disheveled. “All of this makes perfect sense if…J.X. is the murderer.” She paused as though waiting for the accolade. The others exchanged dubious glances.
I said, “Yeah, but he’s not, so let’s not waste any more time. We’re not playing Clue here. People are dying.”
“You don’t know he’s not the killer—unless you’re the killer yourself,” George announced triumphantly.
“Exactly,” Mindy purred.
“Elementary, my dear dingleberry. Not.” If only I’d had those laser contact lenses installed, the pair of them would have vanished in a blaze of cinders. I focused on Mindy, who really should have known better. “You know what, Min? Not only are you off your rocker—literally—can I say for the record that I can’t—and never could—stand your work? And you know why? Putting aside the fact that you write the lamest male characters ever to swagger through a mystery novel—and if Buzz Salyer is supposed to be heterosexual, I’m a prima ballerina—you have zero understanding of human nature and the way the world works.”
She spluttered. “Well, you’re a fine one to talk. I don’t think you’ve ever met a genuine old lady, let alone managed to write a convincing one.”
“Folks,” Edgar interrupted, “I think we’re getting lost here.” He nodded at me. “I agree with Christopher. I don’t think it’s very likely that J.X. killed anybody, and there does seem to be something strange about his disappearance. So let’s all get dressed, and we’ll start having a look around.”
Some of my tension eased. At least I would have some help now. This place was too big and too spread out for me to try and search on my own.
Rita said
reluctantly, “There’s coffee and pastries being served in the dining room.”
I nodded and made my way down the hall while a couple of the ladies on the staircase voiced their doubts about letting a dangerous character such as myself roam freely.
Espie joined me not long after I’d sat down with a cup of lukewarm coffee to stare moodily out at the foggy landscape.
“You must think he’s dead,” she said cheerfully. “I could hear you screaming all the way upstairs.” She laughed gloatingly. “Man, I loved what you told Dork and Mindy. Dingleberry. I didn’t think you had it in you.”
“He’s not dead.”
“Oh ho,” Espie said after a pause. “So that’s the way it is?”
I looked at her. “He’s not dead, that’s all. If he was dead, the killer would have left him where he killed him. There would be no reason to hide his body.”
“You don’t know where he was killed.”
I said fiercely, “He wasn’t killed.”
“Okay, esse. Okay.” She was still grinning, but her gaze was measuring. “So what do you think happened to him?”
“I think he opened his cabin door to someone he knew—or thought he knew—and that person overpowered him—”
“Which means another guy.”
“—or forced him to leave at gunpoint.”
She considered that. “I guess it’s possible. Nobody has been shot so far, though.”
“Or knifepoint or axepoint or pitchforkpoint. I don’t know. But forced him to walk away without his coat and flashlight.”
“It could be, but where is someone going to stash a full-grown dangerous dude like J.X.?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
“It would be easier to kill him.”
I gave her a long look, and she shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“Well don’t.”
She laughed. “This is a different side of you, Christopher. I like it.” She proceeded to attack the mountain of food on her plate, and I drank my coffee and stared out at the fog-enveloped world.
The room slowly filled, the tables a safe distance from my own being the most popular choice in real estate. This morning everyone was keeping their voices down, possibly in an effort not to further agitate me. I could feel a lot of curious glances shooting my way. I didn’t care.
“Where do you know Rachel from?” I asked finally, as Espie shoveled down the mountain of food to a molehill.
“She’s my agent,” she said thickly.
“No kidding. So you’ve known each other a long time?” I was sure they did. I wanted to hear her answer.
“Sure.” After a hesitation, “I was her first client.”
“I thought Peaches was?”
“No. Me, then Peaches. Then Sylvie Archer.”
“Archer committed suicide, didn’t she?”
Espie lifted a negligent shoulder. So much for Archer. “Then she took you on.” She shook her head.
“What?”
“Just the money you both made on that old lady and her cat.”
“Hey. I loved writing that series.”
“Yeah, but Granny Goose was right. That Miss Buttercup was not like any senior citizen I ever met. I liked the cat, though. And the police inspector—although I gotta tell you, Christopher, that guy was flaming.”
I scowled at her over the rim of my coffee cup, but she was unperturbed. “You should just come right out and write a gay mystery series.”
“When did Rachel first sign you? If you were her first client that must have been…fifteen, twenty years ago?”
“Sixteen. What’s with all the questions?”
“I’m just curious.”
“You see where your boy J.X.’s curiosity got him.”
Edgar walked into the dining room and called for everyone’s attention. He gave an abbreviated version of what was going on, approaching it from the unlikely angle that J.X. might have fallen and broken a leg while wandering around the night before. He said we were going to start combing the property and checking out the outlying buildings in groups of four, and he asked for volunteers.
After much shrugging and exchanging of looks—and a few pertinent questions—we got a pretty decent show of hands. In fairness, most of these women had not come dressed to do anything but talk in civilized surroundings, and they had neither the outerwear nor the shoes for a serious manhunt. Or at least not the kind Edgar was proposing.
But he did get over half of them willing to look for J.X., which further proved how popular J.X. was given the fact that a lot of expensive footwear was going to be sacrificed on his behalf.
“What about maps?” one woman asked.
“There’s no point handing out a bunch of maps,” Edgar replied. “You can’t see five feet in front of you. Keep one of your group on the road or the path you’re using at all times.” He gave a few more directions about where to go and what to do if they found J.X., and then everyone trotted off to change into warmer gear.
Joining me and Espie at the table, Edgar said apologetically, “I can’t let them go very far in this fog. We’re liable to have more people lost.”
“I know.” The main reason I wanted them all out there was because if J.X. was still alive—and I refused to think otherwise—the murderer was not going to risk going near him with all these chickadees wandering around. “Were you able to radio the sheriffs?”
He shook his head. “It’s an old set. We were lucky to get through the first time. I’ll try again later.”
“Am I still under house arrest, or can I join in the search?”
Edgar wiped a big hand across his face. “I can’t see any point in not letting you help look for him. I don’t think anyone’s going to want to team up with you, though.”
“I’ll keep you company.” Espie reached across and patted my hand. She had strong hands.
“Then can you go get changed?” I requested. “We’re wasting time.”
Her brows lifted, but she rose. As she left the room, Edgar said, “The more I think about it, I’m wondering if he did leave of his own free will.”
“What do you mean?”
His expression was uncomfortable. “He seemed like a pretty tough hombre to me. Savvy. I don’t think it would be so easy to take him unawares. It’s possible that he deliberately left his jacket and flashlight behind to make it look like he was attacked.”
I rejected this theory immediately, but—that was emotion, not logic. I forced myself to consider dispassionately what Edgar was saying. “He wouldn’t get far without a coat or a light in this weather. It was like a hurricane out there last night. He’d risk dying of exposure.”
“Maybe he’d rather risk that than prison. Ex-cops don’t do well in prison from what I hear.”
Again, I had to sit on my angry rebuttal. “Could he make it out on foot?”
“No.” Edgar’s eyes met mine. “But he might not believe that. He’s not local. He might think he could make it.”
I nodded, mulling it over. “Do you know what J.X. and Peaches argued over the night before she died? I heard they had a pretty loud difference of opinion.”
“I don’t have any idea.”
“Did he come back up to the house last night?”
Edgar had to think before he answered. “I don’t remember seeing him. He said he was coming back…but things were a little hectic.”
That was one word for it. It certainly described what had been going on in my cabin.
And remembering that, I said, “I didn’t get the feeling last night that he was planning on going anywhere.”
Edgar didn’t twitch a muscle. “Appearances can be deceiving.” He added, “Maybe you saw exactly what J.X. wanted you to see.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
As Espie seemed to be taking her sweet time getting ready, I left the dining room and went upstairs to knock on Rachel’s door.
“Enter,” her voice commanded distantly.
“Sorry to disturb you
, Your Majesty,” I said, shutting the door behind me. “I wondered if you’d reconsidered your decision to let me hang in the wind.”
She jumped about a foot—and so did I, never having seen her without makeup before. The thin Sailor Moon T-shirt wasn’t doing either of us any favors.
“What are you doing out?” she demanded.
I seemed to get that a lot lately.
“I’m on parole. Time off for good behavior.”
“That’s hard to imagine,” she said, recovering a little of her old charm. “Why are you here?”
“You’re my agent. I thought maybe you could give me some advice on what to write while I’m in prison. You know, what’s hot, what’s not—no pun intended.”
“You’re not going to prison.”
“You’re right about that because you’re going to tell me why you killed Peaches and what the hell you did with my earring.”
“I told you what I did with that bloody earring,” she roared. Personally I thought it was a little odd that she focused on the second half of my comment, but clearing myself was my main concern. Well, second main concern.
“The kid swears up and down that the glass on your dresser was empty.”
“She’s lying!”
“Why would she?”
“Why would I?”
“Because you’re trying to frame me.” I said it quite reasonably since we’d been over it before.
She refuted my hypothesis quite loudly, reminding me more of Yoko Ono with every screech. She concluded the opera with, “And I already told J.X. I’d had the bloody thing, but it was lost. Ask him. Ask him.”
“I can’t ask him. He’s missing.”
“He’s missing what?”
“Everything as far as I can make out.” I stared at her suspiciously. “How did you not hear that piece of news? The entire lodge knows. Where were you when everyone else was trying to crowd into the lobby?”
She whipped away to the nightstand and held up a black sleep mask and earplugs. “I didn’t sleep last night.”
“Not a good time to admit that,” I told her. “Someone made off with J.X. in the middle of the night.”