Murder on the Mullet Express

by Gwen Mayo

  “Susie seemed surprised at my order,” Teddy said as they reentered the hotel, fortified with breakfast. “Is there something wrong with pecan pancakes and a side of ham?”

  “Not at all. She just expected your usual order of an ice bag and toast. That’s been your daily breakfast since you started attending Chago’s parties.”

  “Nonsense! I’ve ordered other things.”

  “Not recently, dear.” Cornelia knocked on Helen’s door, and Kathleen answered.

  “Teddy! Miss Pettijohn. How are you?”

  “We’re well, thank you. Is your aunt here?”

  “Of course. Aunt Helen, the nurses are here. Teddy and her friend.”

  The woman with salt-and-pepper hair came to the door. Her eyes were eager; news about Uncle Percival must have traveled fast—or was it glee at a successful frame?

  “Greetings, ladies. What can I do for you today?”

  Cornelia fixed her with a stare. “Mrs. Minyard. You and I need to talk. Perhaps Teddy could take your niece sightseeing for a bit.”

  “But I want to stay!” Teddy protested. “I could help grill her.”

  Panic flickered in Helen Minyard’s eyes.

  “No, Teddy, I would prefer to speak to her privately. Besides, Kathleen shouldn’t be wandering around alone. There are predators here. Mrs. Minyard—?”

  “Yes,” Helen sighed. “Please go with her, dear. This may be tiresome for you.”

  Teddy's expression was sullen as she left with Kathleen.

  Cornelia was relieved that she relented, though she knew from their long history together that she was going to pay for excluding Teddy later.

  Once the pair was out of earshot, Cornelia closed the door and sat in one of the chairs.

  Helen paced the floor. “I have an idea of what has happened recently, Miss Pettijohn. Please accept my condolences and my wish that your uncle is soon free of trouble.”

  “My thanks. Those are also my wishes, and one of the reasons I’m calling on you so early. Recently, I was on the second floor of the Homosassa Hotel looking for a person… a person I needed information from. While I was there, I saw you coming out of Raymond Janzen’s room.”

  “Really, Miss Pettijohn!” Mrs. Minyard clutched her long strand of beads. “I understand your concern, but casting suspicion on others will do you no good. We have been cleared to leave by Sheriff Bowden, and we will be departing on the train Monday.”

  “It’s more than merely casting suspicion,” Cornelia pressed. “I know it was you, and I know very well which room you were visiting, since I was there when the man died. If I were to tell Sheriff Bowden what I saw, I’m sure he would at least look into it. If he does, will he find no connection between you?”

  Helen seemed to deflate as she sank into the other chair. “I didn’t kill him.”

  “I never said that you did.”

  “But you would find it very helpful if I had, wouldn’t you? I went to his room because—” she looked out her window for witnesses, “—because he had something very dear to me. I wanted it back.”

  “What was it?”

  She entreated Cornelia with her eyes. “You were in the War. You know how many young men were lost.”

  Cornelia’s voice softened. “Yes, I know. Too many good boys.”

  “My son was one of them. Albert Junior. He didn’t even fall in battle. He died in an infirmary of the Spanish Flu.”

  “That is doubly tragic.” To travel and risk so much, to die of something he could have died from at home. “My own father passed away from the Spanish Influenza.”

  “Then you understand our grief. After we received the cable about his death, Raymond Janzen came to call. He brought a letter from our son—the last letter he wrote, when he was in the hospital and realized that he was dying. Such a bittersweet gift.”

  “Yes,” the old nurse whispered, remembering how many such letters she had delivered to grieving families from so many wars, too many. San Juan, the Philippines, Mexico, France… when would it end?

  “That letter was the last thing we received from our son. But there was Raymond, his good friend. He took an apartment in Wilmington near ours, visited us. I asked him one day, ‘Shouldn’t you be with your own family?’ and he told me that he had none left.”

  Unpleasant thoughts began forming in Cornelia’s mind. “So he adopted you as his parents.”

  “Yes, and we saw him as a connection to the son we lost.” Her face was dark with remembered pain.

  “It didn’t end well.” Cornelia stated. She’d heard this sort of story before.

  “Al—Albert Senior, my husband—hired him to work in our furniture store. His Army experience as a quartermaster served him well, and he was quickly promoted from floor manager to general manager. He oversaw the books.”

  “He stole from you.”

  Silent tears slid down her face. “Two sets of accounts. Raymond fooled us for over a year. He embezzled enough to ruin the business, and drained the separate account we used for taxes.”

  “Horrible.” There were no other words she could think of. Cornelia reached out and clasped Helen’s hand.

  “I haven’t told you the worst part,” Helen continued. “My husband was ruined, and the government wanted their due. I offered Albert what little money I had from my inheritance, but he refused. He said my funds wouldn’t cover the taxes, and he wanted me to be left with something. I found out later what he meant. While I was visiting the parson, he took out his father’s gun and… ended his life.”

  Cornelia nodded. “So you came here to find Raymond Janzen again.”

  “One of my friends received a publicity flyer for the Homosassa project. She recognized his picture and gave it to me.” Mrs. Minyard’s upper lip curled with the words.

  “And you brought your niece to help you kill him?”

  “No! Dear Lord, no. I brought Kathleen with me because she can’t stand her mother and I was afraid to travel alone. I would never ask her to participate in a crime.”

  “You followed him here. You broke into his room. Was it his money you wanted, then? As repayment?”

  “No. I wanted something far more dear to me.” Helen reached into her purse, brought out a folded handkerchief. She unwrapped the cotton cloth and showed Cornelia its contents.

  “Albert’s watch. It was a gift from his father. He intended to leave it to our son, but Albert Junior died. He gave it to Raymond instead. Before we knew who and what he really was.”

  Cornelia took the watch, studied it. The engraved inscription read: “Albert Minyard, 1860. Eruditio et Religio”. It must have been as precious to him as her nurse’s pin was to her. She remembered the trip on the Express then, the conversations she’d overheard.

  “You said you would get this back if you had to pry it from his cold dead fingers. When we were getting on board the train.”

  “Yes. That was more a figure of speech than anything else. I intended to confront him, preferably in a public place for safety, and demand the watch back. At first, I thought the binder boy’s claims of his illness were lies. I concluded he had seen me and wished to avoid the consequences of his actions. But then he died, and I only had one chance to get the watch back before it disappeared along with his belongings to the police, or was sold to help pay for his burial.”

  “How did you get into the room?”

  Helen bit her lower lip, the way a young girl would. “I waited for the maid to open the door, then approached her with a request to take a pair of sunglasses to my niece. That, and a nice tip.”

  Meanwhile, Teddy and Kathleen had decided not to sightsee. The young woman really didn’t know how to apply lipstick yet, so Teddy decided to give her lessons.

  “Now for the upper lip. You want to exaggerate the line a little to make that Cupid’s Bow.”

  “My lip doesn’t go up that pointy.”

  Teddy laughed. “I don’t think most people’s lips do. That’s part of the illusion. Wait—” She reached into he
r makeup bag. “I’ve got a cheat for you.”

  Kathleen stared at the rectangle of metal. “Is that a lip stencil? I wanted to get one, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it.”

  “Take it, then. What Mother doesn’t know won’t hurt you.”

  Kathleen giggled.

  After more fun with cosmetics, the girl became serious. “I don’t mean to be rude, but what did happen to your lungs?”

  Teddy thought before answering. “I was gassed near Verdun during the Grand Offensive. Really, I was very fortunate; it was only chlorine gas.”

  “How could chlorine gas be fortunate?”

  “The mustard gas was far worse. I could have been blinded, too, or burned all over my skin.”

  Kathleen’s brow puckered. “Didn’t… didn’t they keep the nurses away from the really dangerous places?”

  “They tried. Sometimes danger was unavoidable if you wanted to help the wounded. Cornelia and I overstepped our bounds a few times.”

  One too many times. The memories returned, unbidden and undeniable. The faces of the desperate men at Verdun.

  “I can’t imagine your friend overstepping bounds,” Kathleen said. She selected a shade of blush and began brushing it onto her cheek. “She seems so… proper.”

  “She’s principled,” Teddy managed. “Not quite the same thing.” She tried to focus on the present, but failed.

  The Germans pressed the Allies on all sides, and the nurses were forbidden to venture out. The risk of losing even more lives was too great.

  Cornelia wouldn’t stand for abandoning the wounded. With Teddy’s help at lock picking, they liberated the ambulance of a dead corpsman and headed for the front. Explosions and fire echoed around them as they crested the hills, leaving the road when the holes outpaced the pavement. They bore down on the trench of doughboys—boys they knew personally—and clambered over the dirt to reach the injured.

  One of the men had to be carried out by litter. Cornelia and the field medic were loading the patient into the vehicle when the gongs sounded, warning of a gas attack. A yellowish cloud filled the sky and descended on them. Teddy closed her eyes and kept holding the pressure bandage tight over the sergeant’s femoral artery. He wore her mask. Her throat, her lungs burned. A soldier draped a wet cloth over her head for protection once she was in the open-air vehicle, but she felt like a nun riding a sleigh into hell.

  “Are you all right?” Kathleen was shaking her shoulder. “Please say something.”

  Teddy came back to the present, to safety and clear air, and realized that she’d frightened the child. “I’m sorry, dear. Talking about it makes me remember. I try not to.”

  “I didn’t mean to do that,” the girl said. “I guess I was too nosy. I apologize.”

  “No need to apologize,” she replied. “It was a natural question.”

  Once Teddy returned, Cornelia shared what she had learned from Helen Minyard.

  “What did you decide to do, after she told you those things?” Teddy asked.

  “I gave her the watch back. I have no reason to disbelieve her at this time, and the watch does seem to support her story.”

  “No chance she could have poisoned Mr. Janzen?”

  “If you had defrauded a woman’s husband and absconded with a family heirloom, would you willingly eat or drink anything she provided?”

  “Not knowingly. But what if she slipped the poison into his food or drink?”

  “When would she have had the opportunity? They were staying at different hotels, eating in different places, and he showed symptoms before he left the train.”

  “What about before he got on the train?”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to Cornelia. “The part about ‘cold dead fingers’ would take on new meaning in that context. In that case, though, she had no reason to keep pestering his binder boy the following day. Once would have been enough to tell her whether the poison had worked or not.”

  Teddy tapped her cane on the floor. “I still can’t believe I didn’t know it was savin.”

  “Don’t torment yourself, dear. I’m inclined to believe Mrs. Minyard’s story. If she’d planned the crime, she would have fabricated a better excuse for breaking into the room.”

  “Ignorance provides the alibi.”

  “Ignorance is our problem. We don’t know enough about Mr. Janzen.”

  “He was definitely a bounder, as Mr. Hofstetter put it.”

  “Yes, but to a larger group of people than we originally thought. I doubt Mr. Vance could throw a baseball in Homosassa without hitting someone with a grudge against Mr. Janzen. Not that I want to test that theory. Janzen may have cheated baseball players, too.”

  “Whom do we grill next, if Mrs. Minyard is innocent?”

  Cornelia thought for a moment. “Peter Rowley, I should think. He was Deputy Davidson’s original prime suspect and, from the conversation we couldn’t help but overhear, had a reason to wish the man dead.”

  “Should we find him now?”

  “I don’t think we have time,” Cornelia said, checking the watch pinned to her chest. “The sheriff was going to call the sponge company as soon as it opened. We need to find out whether they're coming or not."

  Teddy was busy admiring the dive crew. For that matter, so was everyone else in Homosassa. Tourists and locals alike crowded the riverbank, vying for a spot with a better view of the muscular young men. A few of the women twittered about how handsome and exotic the Greek fishermen were with their thick black hair and large dark eyes.

  Each man knew his job without any direction. Two young Greek men tested the compressor, said something Cornelia could not understand, and made some adjustments. The others unloaded the heavy diving equipment and spread it out on the grass. One yelled “Alexandros” followed by a string of words Cornelia presumed were Greek.

  The diver nodded and came over. Together, the three-man team dressed him in his airtight suit, checking and rechecking every article. Then they reeled out a long rope and laced it through the collar of his suit, between his legs, back up the other side of his suit, and repeated the process on the back. To Cornelia, the way the ropes were configured resembled the harness of a plow mule.

  Once the suit was in place, the diver walked to the water’s edge and sat down. He took off his shoes and said something to the crew that made them all laugh as they put the heavy dive boots on him and laced them tight. Then they brought the helmet over, put it on him, and bolted it in place.

  “Alexandros,” Teddy said, “just like in the Iliad, but in different armor.”

  Deputy Davidson stayed close to his prisoner, his chest puffed out, and his hand on the hilt of his revolver. Not that the posturing did him any good. The visitors and the locals were all watching the dive crew. Those with cameras posed for pictures as close to the diver as they dared.

  Cornelia saw that it was the equipment that held the professor’s attention. The portable compressor in its fine-grained wooden case, the polished brass fittings attaching the gauges were too attractive for him to resist. He marveled audibly over the great rubber suit with iron-weighted rubber boots and a helmet of iron and brass. To a man as fascinated by mechanical devices as the professor, filming the helmet being bolted onto the diver was not to be missed. He caught every moment of the airline being attached, the men helping Alexandros to his feet, and the strange suit inflating.

  Deputy Davidson was oblivious to the history being made. He kept eyeing the elderly man as if he were a bank robber hoping to stage an escape on the diver’s back.

  Cornelia wasn’t sure which was worse: the mob of onlookers Sheriff Bowden was trying to control, or her uncle positioning himself perilously close to the air compressor flywheel to get a better angle for his camera.

  She overheard one of the deputies saying that the fishermen had come early to feed the alligators so they wouldn’t bother the diver, but gawking locals in their johnboats were another matter. The water was so thick with them, she didn’t see how the diver wo
uld be able to keep his line from being fouled.

  Sheriff Bowden must have had the same fears. He shouted through a megaphone to be heard above the din of noise, but eventually he managed to get the boatmen to clear the area where Alexandros needed to dive. Once that was done, the diver picked up his equipment and walked slowly into the water until he disappeared under the surface, leaving only a trail of air bubbles to mark his progress.

  On the riverbank, the crowd grew quiet. The minutes ticked by. Sweat trickled down the back of Cornelia’s neck. She watched the river, barely breathing, as though taking in too much air would deprive the man walking below the water of his share. Around her, the crush of bodies became oppressive. She was annoyed by buzzing insects. The scent of stale sweat, fish, even the usual damp earthy smell of the river made her stomach churn. Her hands clenched and unclenched as she waited, worried that the film would not be found, or that the film canisters were not as watertight as her uncle believed.

  There was a tug on the rope tether, and a crewman fed out another twenty feet of rope.

  Cornelia stood on tiptoe to see over the head of a pushy farmer who trampled her feet until she was forced to make room for him. On the riverbank, she could see one of the men pulling the rope out of the water. There was a cheer from the crowd as the diver’s net bag was pulled ashore and Uncle Percival’s ruined film case was opened.

  The sheriff and a couple of his men came over to claim the bag. After that, it was impossible for Cornelia to see anything but the backside of police uniforms until she spotted Deputy Davidson making his way through the crowd, carrying the film. A moment later he got in his car, cranked the siren to clear a path, and sped away from the river.

  “They took all my film,” the professor grumbled. “Sheriff Bowden wouldn’t even let me have the unopened ones still in the box.”

  “You should be happy the sheriff let you out of jail long enough to see this,” Cornelia said. “After all the trouble you’ve caused, it would have been more logical to keep you there.”

  “But I used the last of the reel in my camera filming the dive. There is no place to buy more. We’ll probably have to go all the way to Saint Petersburg or Tampa to find a camera shop that carries moving picture film.”