A Groom With a View jj-11

by Jill Churchill

  “Yeah, right. If we all survive until tomorrow night," Jane muttered, polishing a water spot off a sherry glass with the tail of her blouse.

  Fifteen

  The bachelor party sputtered into action. The group consisted of Dwayne, his brother, his groomsmen, Jack Thatcher, and a couple of the older man's business associates. Uncle Joe wasn't there. Jane hadn't handled the invitations, so she didn't know if Joe's absence was because Jack didn't want him there or Joe had refused to come. The young men, determined to impress their important elders, were awkward and gauche in their efforts to behave. The older men were bored senseless. Jane peeked in the door a couple times and on each occasion the two groups were keeping their distance.

  Jane and Shelley took over a pair of chairs just outside the room, in case Jane were to be needed. "What loads of fun they seem to be having," Shelley said sarcastically.

  “Poor things," Jane said.

  “Which ones?"

  “All of them. There's nothing worse than an obligatory festivity."

  “I don't know — I think you're forgetting childbirth, tax audits, frozen pipes, flat tires downtown during rush hour, college tuition…" Jane put up her hand. "Okay, okay.”

  Several of the women were also sitting around in the main room, but keeping their distance from Jane and Shelley. Whether by design or accident was questionable. The aunts were fiddling with the tuner on the old upright radio in the far corner. Possibly, Jane thought, to get a weather report. There were faint rumbles of thunder in the distance and Jane devoutly hoped there wouldn't be a repeat of the previous night's storms. There was still the possibility of having to hold the wedding in the dark.

  Eden had commandeered the best lamp and had a vast array of fingernail cosmetics on a table. There were half a dozen files and buffers, a kaleidoscope of bottles of colored polishes, and a selection of bottles of mysterious liquids. Kitty and Layla were finishing up yet another jigsaw puzzle on a big, hoof-footed coffee table by the fireplace.

  Mrs. Hessling wasn't among them. She'd come back with everybody else on the minibus, but had pleaded weariness and Errol had taken her back to the motel. Nor was Livvy anywhere in sight. Jane had no idea where the bride might have gone, but kept reminding herself that she was the wedding planner, not the girl's mother, and it was none of her business where Livvy spent the evening before her Big Day.

  A few minutes after Jane and Shelley settled in, Mel reappeared, rested but a bit bleary. "What's going on?" he asked.

  “Not much," Jane said. "A floundering bachelor party. So tell us what you learned this evening.”

  Mel briefly reviewed his dinner with John Smith and Gus Ambler, hitting all the high points. The monks, the drunken hunting parties, the ascent (or descent, depending on how you looked at it) into domesticity, and Uncle Joe's arrival and Gus's perception of him as a wild boy who went off to war and came back vaguely damaged. He repeated what Gus had said about O. W. being so tightfisted all his life and pretty dotty at the end.

  “But he gave Joe full credit for taking good care of his father as long as he could. Not with much good grace, however."

  “Did you mention the treasure rumor?" Jane asked.

  “I did, and to my surprise, he didn't fall down laughing at a city slicker suggesting it."

  “So he thinks there was one?"

  “He didn't go that far. Only allowed as how it was barely possible." Mel went on to explain about the renovations done at the end of O. W.'s life and his secrecy about just what was being done to the house and why.

  “So he could have slipped in a secret passage or hidden something in a wall?" Jane asked.

  Mel looked highly skeptical. "You've been reading old gothic novels again, haven't you?"

  “I'm serious, Mel. Why would anybody have new walls put in and hire an out-of-area firm to do it unless there was a secret room he didn't want the locals to know about?"

  “Maybe there weren't local carpenters he thought were any good," Mel said. "And maybe he was just getting a bit paranoid. He was elderly and might have already been having little strokes that didn't make a physical difference, but altered his mental attitude.”

  Shelley said, "I don't see how any of this could possibly have to do with Mrs. Crossthwait's death. Unless she discovered something in the lodge that Uncle Joe didn't want her to talk about.”

  Jane shook her head. "Mrs. Crossthwait didn't strike me as a very observant person. And I can't see her roaming around looking the place over. How would she have even suspected there was a treasure?"

  “Narcissus knew," Mel said.

  “You mean Larkspur," Jane said. "That's true. And he had no connection with this place until the wedding was planned."

  “Could that be why she was so slow with the dresses?" Shelley speculated. "So she would be invited out here? I don't think the dressmaker is normally invited to the wedding.”

  Jane's eyes widened. "You could be onto something there. Livvy picked her because she heard Mrs. Crossthwait had an excellent reputation, but that couldn't have been true unless she got the dresses for other people done in a timely manner.

  If Larkspur had heard the rumor of something valuable hidden here, Mrs. Crossthwait could have just as well heard it, too."

  “But I don't think, even if this is all true, that Uncle Joe is the only suspect," Shelley said. "Suppose… suppose the treasure, if it exists, is something big and obvious?"

  “Like what?" Jane asked.

  “I don't know. But just as an example, maybe one of these big pieces of furniture is incredibly valuable. Made by someone terribly famous, or with a long exotic history of being in the room where the tsar and his family were assassinated. Don't roll your eyes that way, Jane. I'm just making up examples."

  “Go on," Jane said, stifling a smile.

  “Okay, so if it's something that would be obvious if it went missing, anybody in the family might know, but couldn't just tuck it under their arm and trot off with it. They'd want to wait until Uncle Joe was out of here and the place was about to be torn down, then they'd run up here with a pickup truck and two strong moving men and snaffle the thing.”

  Since neither Jane nor Mel was openly laughing at her yet, Shelley went on. "So we know very little about Mrs. Crossthwait's background, but people sometimes have weird little pockets of knowledge. Like you, Jane, and that particular skill of yours." Shelley made a gesture of wiggling a seam ripper in a lock.

  “What's that?" Mel asked.

  “Shelley's just kidding, Mel," Jane said a bit too forcefully.

  “So Mrs. Crossthwait says to someone in the family, 'My goodness, that wagon in the yard outside looks just like the tumbril that took Marie Antoinette to the guillotine.' And if that person has been waiting quietly for years to make off with the wagon, knowing the same thing, Mrs. Crossthwait is suddenly, and stupidly, a big threat to them."

  “That surely eliminates the aunts, doesn't it?" Jane asked. "It seems that they're still trying to find out what and where the treasure is.”

  Shelley nodded. "But only if we're right that they were the ones roaming around last night stealing pictures and taking them apart."

  “The most likely person to know, next to Uncle Joe, is Jack Thatcher," Jane said. "He's spent the most time here."

  “Or Livvy herself," Shelley said. "She's probably had an excellent education. Even if all she wanted to study was business, I'm sure Jack expected her to have all the social graces. Know about history and art and such.”

  Mel had been listening to this conversation without contributing. Now he did. "Ladies, this is all nuts. You're letting your imaginations run away with you. And it's not your problem or even mine. Just as long as you're careful to keep yourselves safe for another few hours, it's up to John Smith to figure it all out. And it might not have even been murder, come to that."

  “But what about the 'push' marks on Mrs. Crossthwait?" Jane said.

  Mel shrugged. "Good point, but maybe when she tumbled down the stairs, s
he fell on something that made that sort of marks."

  “Mel, your imagination is as vivid as ours are," Jane said. "What else could have made them? Falling against the outstretched hand of a marble statue? There aren't any of those around.”

  Mel looked embarrassed. "Okay, okay. But maybe someone else was roaming around in the dark, ran into her, and just out of fright and alarm, gave her a shove? Not even knowing who she was."

  “It won't play, Mel," Jane said. "First of all, she wouldn't have been anywhere near the stairs in the dark without having been deliberately lured out of her room. She was already afraid of going up and down those stairs in full daylight."

  “I learned a couple things from John Smith, too," Mel said. "Apparently she made Marguerite Rowe's wedding dress sometime back in the Dark Ages."

  “She claimed that, and Marguerite brushed her off," Jane said.

  “She also has an accountant in common with Eden's father."

  “What could that mean?" Jane asked.

  “Almost certainly nothing," Mel said. "And she once had a sewing class that a Mrs. Hessling attended."· "You're just a wealth of information," Jane said. "But how does any of it help?"

  “I'm not claiming it helps. Just reporting.”

  “What about Dwayne? Did they find out anything about him?" Jane asked.

  Mel decided the teenaged shoplifting charge wasn't something he should discuss. "Not much. His boss was pretty closed-mouth about him. Whether he was concealing something the company didn't want talked about or he simply doesn't like the kid very well wasn't clear. He said Dwayne was going to work for Livvy's father and didn't express any regret at losing him.”

  Shelley suddenly gasped.

  “What's wrong?" Jane asked.

  “The seam binding! We forgot to tell Mel about the seam binding!”

  Jane nearly slapped her own forehead. "How could we forget!" She explained to him about the fresh, non-dusty seam binding they'd found in the attic while he was out to dinner and their theory that it had been tied across the stairway to make quite certain Mrs. Crossthwait would take a serious tumble.

  “Where is it now?" he asked in a low voice. "I think we left it in the attic," Shelley said. "You haven't mentioned this to anyone else, have you?" Mel asked.

  “Of course not," Jane said.

  “Then don't. Stay here. I'm going to call Smith and have him take a look.”

  He got up and strolled away with seeming casualness.

  “He's taking us seriously for once," Jane said with surprise.

  “What are you two plotting?" Eden Matthews said from behind Jane. Neither she nor Shelley had seen her approach and Jane wondered if she'd overheard any of their conversation.

  “Nothing much," Jane said. "Just chatting about the plans for tomorrow.”

  Eden took the chair Mel had been sitting in. She was still in her dinner dress, a slinky black number with a plunging neckline and what looked like a real diamond brooch to draw the eye to the extent of the plunge. She really was a gorgeous, voluptuous woman. "Your boyfriend is very good-looking," she said to Jane.

  “I think so, too," Jane said.

  “Where's he gone?"

  “I'm not sure. He didn't say." Jane wondered fleetingly whether Eden was really asking if he'd gone to bed and intended to pursue him there. Rather than let herself follow this line of thought, she asked, "How was the rehearsal dinner?"

  “Wonderful. Excellent food. Nice surroundings, but not the best of company, I have to admit. Dwayne was in a bit of a rage about his room being messed up. He couldn't quit complaining about it. Didn't make for scintillating conversation."

  “That's too bad," Shelley said. "Was he blaming anyone in particular?"

  “Oh, just about everybody in turn. Not blatantly enough for anyone to justify taking offense — quite. But he was very annoying. Set everyone's teeth on edge."

  “What does he do for a living?" Shelley asked.

  “I have the impression he's been a very insignificant clerk in a very large mortgage company. Researches deeds or something boring like that. But he's coming into the family firm when he and Livvy get back from their honeymoon. I can't imagine what he can contribute."

  “Besides sons for Livvy?" Shelley said.

  Eden grinned. "It probably is just a ploy to keep him close at hand and under Jack's control. I never thought about it that way, but you're probably right. Keeps him under Jack's watchful eye and prevents him from advancing elsewhere and having a job if he even thinks about getting out of the marriage eventually. That's very perceptive of you."

  “Who do you think messed up his room?" Jane asked, inadvertently cutting short Shelley's appreciation of the compliment.

  “I'd have done it if I'd thought of it, just to provide an irritant," Eden said with a wicked smile. "But I didn't. I don't know. His own chums are the best possibility. They're all a tad low-rent, don't you think? And it's such a male thing."

  “Actually, I'd guess they're all pretty ambitious," Shelley replied. "They're obviously in awe of Jack Thatcher and his successful friends. I think some of them harbor the illusion that one of these rich businessmen will recognize their sterling qualities and pluck them out of the abyss of lower management.”

  Eden stared at Shelley for a moment with a look of surprise. "Yes. Yes, I can see that. But who would that leave? Not me. Not you two. You don't want anything messing up the wedding."

  “The aunts?" Jane suggested.

  Eden shook her head. "No, they live for tidiness. Both of them have three-times-a-week cleaning ladies. And besides, why would they want to make him miserable?"

  “Maybe just because they don't approve of him marrying Livvy," Jane said, thinking this was pretty thin reasoning, but unable to come up with anything else.

  Eden stirred in her chair and yawned. "I guess we'll never know. I'm giving it up for the night. Have to get my beauty sleep.”

  Jane and Shelley sat silently watching her leave. Then Shelley said, "It's odd. Nobody seems to have much affection for Dwayne. Not even his own mother. And if Livvy is passionate about him, she certainly doesn't show it."

  “And at least one person seems to actively dislike him. The one who wrecked his belongings," Jane said. After another few minutes of thought, she added, "And it's very possible that someone in this wedding party is capable of murder. If I were Dwayne, I'd be worried. In fact, I am worried.”

  Sixteen

  uncle Joe turned up about ten minutes before the bachelor party ended. He wandered into the side room where it was being held and wandered back out a moment later with a cold beer in one hand and a fistful of pretzels in the other. Jane wondered if he'd appeared just to show he was entitled to attend, but chose not to participate. Or had he just wanted a free beer? He sat down near Shelley and Jane, but not close enough to encourage conversation. Jane nodded at him politely and he nodded back.

  Aunt Iva and Aunt Marguerite had been seated at the far end of the room, sipping sherry and holding an animated, but whispered chat, and now rose and approached Jane and Shelley. "What is the schedule for tomorrow?" Iva asked.

  “Breakfast from seven to eight. A light lunch at twelve and the wedding itself at two," Jane said. She'd prepared and handed out this information, nicely printed out on pink card stock, to all the family members as they arrived, but apparently Iva and Marguerite had lost theirs or simply ignored them.

  “We think we'll just stay on here for a bit after the wedding," Marguerite said, poking ineffectually at her snowy white wig, which seemed to be slipping off center again. "After all, the lodge will be gone soon and this is our last chance to stay here.”

  Jane didn't know why they were telling her this or how she was expected to respond. They were free to stay until the bulldozers came up the driveway as far as Jane was concerned. She settled for a simple, "I see."

  “We spent a lot of time here as girls, you see," Iva explained. "And we think we'd like some time to relive a few memories.”

 
And search more thoroughly without interference, Jane thought.

  “Take some nice walks in the fine weather…" Marguerite added.

  Maybe they were just rehearsing their explanation to Jack, Jane speculated, and wondered if he was going to buy their story or pitch them out so he could have a last look around the place.

  “That will be pleasant for you," Jane said mildly.

  Uncle Joe had finished his beer and pretzels. He left the empty beer can on a side table and walked away.

  “Well… good night," Iva said. She seemed dissatisfied with Jane's reaction to their plan.

  “I think they expected you to argue with them," Shelley said when the elderly, bewigged pair had gone.

  “I had that feeling, too. But why would I care? We'll be leaving after the wedding and the whole family can stay on if they want. I think they were practicing their story to tell Jack."

  “It appears they haven't found what they're looking for yet," Shelley said.

  “And they think they can really tear into the place when everyone else leaves," Jane agreed. "I wish them luck, I guess.”

  The bachelor party was breaking up. Jack and his friends were moving through the room to the front door and saying their good nights. Dwayne and his friends followed respectfully. Jane spotted one of the young men wiping his hand across his forehead in a "Whew! Thank God that's over!" gesture. Errol saw it, too, and laughed.

  As the crowd was about to surge out the front door, Officer Smith came in. In full uniform. A silence fell on the whole group.

  Smith smiled disarmingly and said, "Just checking on some loose ends, gentlemen." Mel emerged from the hallway to the small bedrooms and greeted Smith amiably. The two of them moved against the tide of departing guests, chatting casually. "Awfully late, isn't it?" Mel said.

  “Just thought I'd stop by on my way home," Smith said, as though it were perfectly natural for him to be on his way home well after midnight.

  But Jack Thatcher was furious. He glared at the two representatives of the law, then said to his coterie of friends, "Sightseers!" with a sarcastic laugh.