He winked. “Smart girl.”
After a long pause, she said, “So where are the Cartwrights, Leonard?”
He sighed. “They’re still on St. Napoli.”
“In a safe place?
“In a safe-deposit box. They’ll remain there as long as I pay the necessary fees.” He frowned. “We may not be able to touch them for a while. What do you think Tibor and Frankes will do?”
She shrugged. “They’ll probably flag down a passing boat or make a raft to get to the mainland.” She appeared to reconsider: “I’d guess they’d make a raft. Frankes is good about that sort of thing. Then who knows? They aren’t exactly good at looking after themselves.”
He had to agree. He liked what she was saying. Tibor had lived off him for years; then, when he was vulnerable, bullied him. “So where have you been?”
“You don’t want to know, Leonard.”
“Then what have you been doing all this time?”
“Arranging things.” She paused. “I’m pretty good, you know. I even managed to pull the wool over the eyes of a police detective.”
“Impressive.”
“He was on vacation. So he wasn’t as sharp as he normally is, I suppose. Or maybe he’s just a sucker for a pretty face. I play the cute act pretty well.”
“You do that.”
“Stick with me, Leonard, and you’ll be fine.”
“I’m sorry about one thing, though.”
“Yes?”
“You said you wrecked all of the boats at the cottage.”
“Afraid so.”
“We’ll have to reimburse Hiram in some way. He was a good friend to my father.”
“We may not be able to. It would leave a trail.” Cerise brightened. “Besides, there’s always insurance.”
“I suppose.” Leonard moved his foot and winced. “I’ve got quite a bad sore.”
“We’ll get that looked after as soon as we get to Montreal.”
“Why did you come back for Luther and me?”
“I couldn’t leave Luther with those jackals.” She put her arms around him. “And what would I do without you, Leonard? It’d be awfully lonely. Besides, all I would have had was the money from the necklace. You have your annuities. And your hidden stash.”
He smiled. “That’s my girl.”
Sherlock received the report as he was about to leave the office for Dr. Jim’s. According to an expert at the university, debris ground into the fabric of the wetsuit was coral. The DNA analysis showed that the tissue on the fabric did not match the tissue found under Chief Longbow’s nails. Nor did either match the chief’s DNA or that of anyone at the Pleasant.
“Someone didn’t clean their wetsuit very well,” Dr. Jim commented when Sherlock arrived. “Although I’m not sure how useful that information is to you.”
“It suggests that the person the wetsuit belongs to spent time in warmer waters.”
“That’s true, although you would be surprised to know how many people around here have spent time in warmer waters.”
“Well, it’s something.” Sherlock frowned.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why someone who dropped in on the boathouse on the odd chance he might be able to lift a boat would be wearing a wetsuit. And you’re wondering if there’s a chance that piece of fabric left behind predated the murder.”
“It wasn’t there that long,” said Sherlock. “You said the blood on it wasn’t degraded.”
“I did say that. And I said I know Mr. Rudley and he’s absolutely a fanatic about the condition of his property. Not to mention that Lloyd the handyman is also fussy about such things.”
“The fabric was left by someone who’d recently gone to the boathouse. And he was wearing a wetsuit because he didn’t want to swim around in the lake at night when the water is cool. Besides, who wants to be caught in a bathing suit doing something criminal?”
Dr. Jim smiled. “I’m glad you’re willing to play along with me. I don’t often get a chance to play detective, not in that way.
“He was wearing something dark because he didn’t want to be seen,” Dr. Jim continued.
“He was being a commando.”
“At least he wanted to act like he was being a commando.”
Sherlock frowned. “The big question is what was he doing there, at the boathouse?”
Dr. Jim removed his glasses and leaned over his desk. “Normally, when such things happen, one would look for the simple answer. You know, when you hear hoofbeats think horses, not zebras. But” — he shot Sherlock a meaningful glance — “this is the Pleasant.
“When incidents of this nature have happened at the Pleasant before, sometimes it’s been an inside job, or an outside job where the victim was targeted. There has almost always been a motive, and when innocent people get knocked off, it’s usually because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“So if history is our guide,” Sherlock interjected, “the killer was after someone else.” He considered this possibility. “But no one else got knocked off. I can see that he’d want to hide the body if he were planning to skulk around for a while. Why would the murderer go to all the trouble of stuffing the chief into a box if he wasn’t prepared to proceed with his plan? Why didn’t he just leave?”
“Maybe he was planning to proceed, but he couldn’t get at the intended target. Maybe he was just scouting things out.” Dr. Jim leaned back in his chair. “I don’t know. But I’ll bet the answer to this is right in front of your nose. That’s not a criticism,” Dr. Jim added amiably. “It’s not easy to see things that are right in front of your nose. They’re kind of blurry and often double.”
Sherlock chewed at his moustache.
“Some cases just aren’t that easy to crack,” Dr. Jim continued. “People always think cases out here are going to be easier to solve because you don’t have as many suspects. And sometimes you assume the perpetrators aren’t very smart.” He shrugged. “What I’m saying is, around here, it pays to lay back and keep your ears open. You’d be surprised.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Creighton walked up the front steps of the Pleasant, paused and glanced back at Sherlock. The detective was sitting on a bench halfway down the lawn staring out over the lake and appeared not to have noticed him. Creighton shrugged and went on into the lobby.
Rudley was behind the front desk, sitting on a chair, his leg balanced on the wastepaper bin. He had removed the front of his bivalved cast and was scouring his leg with a piece of loofah.
Creighton gave the bell a sharp rap.
“Jesus Christ!” Rudley’s leg slid off the bin. He grabbed it before his heel crashed on the floor and glared at Creighton. “Are you trying to break my leg again?”
“Sorry,” said Creighton, who really wasn’t. “You’re going to dig a hole in your leg going at it like that. Could set you up for an infection.”
“I’ve never had an infection in my life.”
“I’ll bet you’ve never had a broken leg in your life, either.”
Rudley slapped the top of his cast back on, wound the elastic bandage around it, grabbed a paper clip from his pocket and secured the bandage haphazardly.
“Where are the clips that came with the bandage?” Creighton asked.
“How in hell should I know? They keep falling off. Wouldn’t you think the manufacturer could make something that would stay on for more than five minutes?”
“You’d think,” said Creighton.
“Why are you being so damn agreeable?”
“I’m on vacation.”
“Maybe you should go on vacation permanently,” Rudley grumbled. When Creighton did not take the bait, he added, “Did you come here just to bother me?”
“No, that’s a bonus,” Creighton laughed. “Is Sherry around?”
&nb
sp; “I don’t know.” Rudley ratcheted himself up off the chair, grabbing the edge of the desk for a final boost, and sifted the papers he had been sorting before the urge to scratch had intervened. “There was a note here.” He shuffled the pile. “It’s gone. Someone must have taken it.”
“Maybe Gregoire took it. Or Tim.”
“Go bother them then,” said Rudley, unamused by Creighton’s sarcasm. “You know where they are.”
After Creighton disappeared into the kitchen, Rudley flung his crutches aside, sat back on his chair and wondered why everyone thought he should know where everyone was at all times. He couldn’t understand Creighton’s attraction to Sherry anyway. He found her an aggressive, insolent little twit. Wherever she was, he wasn’t unhappy that she was gone.
Unfortunately, Sherlock wasn’t gone. Rudley craned his neck to see out the window. Yes, there he was, just as he had been the past two hours, sitting on the bench, staring into space. The man’s lost his spunk, he thought. The precise, arrogant edge had almost disappeared. He seemed morose, almost fatalistic. “He’s finally getting the knack of this place,” he told Albert, who was lying on the rug in front of the desk.
Albert gave him a dog smile, got up and padded behind the desk. He lifted himself on his hind legs in an attempt to see the desktop.
“Nothing for you to filch here,” Rudley said. He frowned. “You’ve got blood on your muzzle and” — he plucked something from the corner of Albert’s mouth — “two long yellow feathers between your teeth.”
Albert averted his gaze.
“Unless you have avian ancestry,” Rudley told the dog, “I think you’re in deep trouble.”
“Detective Sherlock has been sitting in the same spot all morning,” Tim remarked as he entered the kitchen.
“I have been in the same place all morning as well,” said Gregoire, “wondering where everyone who is supposed to be helping me has gone. Now I see they are just spying on the detective.”
“What do you want me to help you with?”
“I would like you to take those leftover pieces of fruit out to the bird feeder. I am at a delicate position with my soufflés and I could hear Betty squawking all the way into my kitchen.”
“Where’s Lloyd?”
“He has gone into town to get some things I need.”
“Where’s Tiffany?”
“She is with Margaret at the High Birches. They are measuring up for new wallpaper.”
“So what you really want is my company.”
“I do not want your company. I want you to be ready in case there is an emergency here.”
Tim laughed. “What kind of emergency could you have in the kitchen?”
“Anything could go wrong when I am making a soufflé,” Gregoire responded crossly. “I like to know there is someone here.”
“You’re afraid you’re missing out on the news,” said Tim. “I heard that the morgue is ready to release the body of Chief Longbow, but no one has claimed him.”
Gregoire looked up from his mixing bowl, alarmed. “Does Margaret know of this?”
“Not yet.”
Gregoire tightened his grip on the spatula. “She will insist upon having the funeral here, on the land he thought was his. She will want a reception with appropriate food. There is no appropriate food for a funeral.”
“How about angel food cake?”
“Angel food cake is for occasions that are light and happy. I think at a funeral one should fast. It is not a cause for celebration.”
“OK, we’ll have bread and water and wear sackcloth and ashes. I will have to be a pallbearer because I am one of the ones who knew him best.”
“Then I will have to be, too,” Gregoire sighed. “And Lloyd and Tiffany and Margaret and, perhaps, Mr. Simpson with Mr. Rudley as an honorary pallbearer.”
“That fits. He’s an honorary innkeeper.”
“You will not want him to hear you say that.”
“Hey, guys.” Detective Creighton appeared in the doorway.
Gregoire held up a warning hand. “Walk softly. I have a soufflé in the oven.”
“Oh.” Creighton tiptoed across the floor and lowered himself slowly to a kitchen stool.
“What can we do for you, Detective?” Tim scooped up a handful of strawberries, to Gregoire’s annoyance.
“I was wondering if Sherry was around.”
Gregoire looked to Tim, who replied, “She said she was going to visit a friend.”
Creighton frowned. “Where was she going?”
“Ottawa.”
“How was she getting there?”
“I believe she said she was taking a bus.”
“Did she say when she would be back?”
“I think she said in a day or so,” said Gregoire.
“She said she would be staying with a friend,” added Tim.
“I would have driven her up.”
“She probably did not want to put you out like that,” Gregoire said.
“She’s never worried about that before,” Creighton muttered.
Gregoire took a peek at his soufflé though the oven window. “You know women can be very strange. It is one thing one time and another thing the next.”
“True,” said Creighton. “Still, it seems strange she didn’t ask for a ride.”
Gregoire shrugged. “Maybe she thought she was depending on you for too much and thought she should be independent on this one thing.”
“Did she leave a number where she could be reached?”
“No.”
Creighton chuckled. “She probably figures I’d know how to reach her through osmosis.” He got up off the stool. “Let me know if you hear from her.”
“We will do that,” said Gregoire.
Creighton left, frowning. As he passed the desk in the lobby, he waved at Rudley, who appeared to be intently studying some feathers spread out in front of him Probably something the Phipps-Walkers brought, he surmised, as he passed through the door onto the veranda. He noted Sherlock hadn’t moved an inch.
He was disappointed Sherry had left without letting him know. Not that such behaviour was out of character for her. He had to admit that, as charming and refreshing as she was, she had tendencies that reminded him of some of the con artists he had had occasion to deal with over the years. He enjoyed spending time with her, particularly that she kept him off balance. She was different, a breath of fresh air. He wished the other women he had known could have been as open. He chuckled. Maybe she had no trouble being open because everything she said was a fib.
His eyes travelled across the lake. He had no reason to doubt her story, at least the bare bones of it, although he suspected she had a tendency to embellish. He had fished her out of the lake, after all, with no vessel in sight. Given her character, her story made perfect sense.
He tilted his head. Except the part about not wanting to bother him by asking him to drive her to Ottawa. The Sherry he knew would not only have accepted a ride, she wouldn’t have even thanked him. In the city, she would have sent him to buy her various things — without giving him any money or suggesting she ever would. Somehow she would twist things to make it seem that he should feel privileged to answer her every need. She was very good at that.
He took a chair on the veranda and let his gaze drift from Sherlock, who had still not moved, to Mr. Bole, who was working on a finger puppet under the shade of the maples. Mr. Bole’s project this time, he understood, was The Count of Monte Cristo. He noted the Sawchucks were puddling around near shore in a rowboat and the Phipps-Walkers, their binoculars trained intently into the trees. He thought the birds at the Pleasant should start charging an entertainment fee.
His reverie was cut short by the appearance of Miss Miller and Simpson.
“You appear to be in a brown study,” Miss Miller said as she took a
seat on the wicker settee opposite him. Simpson sat beside her.
“Just woolgathering,” he said.
“Something’s bothering you,” she said.
He raised his brows. “Am I that transparent?”
“In this case,” she said.
He sighed. “All right, let me run this by you.”
He told them the story of his first encounter with Sherry.
“Exactly where did you find her?” Miss Miller asked when he had finished.
“She swam up to my boat in the lake.”
“Where did she swim from?”
“When I first saw her, I was fifty yards offshore. She was further out.”
“And she said she’d sunk her boat.”
“Yes.”
“When did she sink it?”
“She didn’t say exactly. I assumed it was shortly before.”
Miss Miller clucked her tongue. “You should never assume anything. Didn’t they teach you that in detective school?”
He smiled ruefully. “They did.”
“Think back, Detective, what else did you see?” When he wrinkled his brow and shook his head, she pressed him. “Any debris?”
“No.”
“Any gasoline slick from the motor?”
“No.” Creighton felt his face redden. “I don’t know if it was a motorboat. She didn’t say.”
“So all you saw was a big empty lake.”
“There were a couple of those little islands — you know, the kind that have one tree and not enough land to build an outhouse.”
“How far away?”
“Not too far. Maybe a hundred yards from where I was. It’s hard to tell on the water.” He frowned. “You think she came from one of the little islands?”
“Maybe.”
“But what difference does that make? Her boat sank. She swam to the nearest land and waited until she saw someone close enough to help.”
“Why didn’t she just keep swimming to shore?”
“Because I was there with my boat.”
“How long were you there before you spotted her?”
A Most Unpleasant Picture Page 20