by Susan Lyttek
“Let me guess, Margo. The storm delayed things a little too much.”
She reached up with her left hand to gingerly touch the bandaged wound. “They could do plastic surgery on it. If I wanted. She said, actually, that it was healing well and that you all followed instructions. But in order to heal cleanly and avoid the scarring, yes, they would have had to have seen me earlier.”
“So has she finished treating you?”
“Not yet. She did the first part. She gave me some medicine for the pain that works a bit better than ibuprofen. She cleaned the wound thoroughly—that hurt. She told me she’ll look it over again in a couple of hours before she puts in the special web gauze and a couple of stitches. First, she wants to make sure I have no sign of infection.’
That made sense.
“Who would guess I would spend Christmas celebrating on a couch?” she went on. “Some hostess I’ve been for you and your family!”
While I could tell it bothered her, and I certainly wouldn’t wish her injured and suffering, in some ways it seemed better. “Please don’t feel bad on our account, Margo. I didn’t wish the hurt you’re going through on anyone, but as far as a way to get to know you, it’s worked. You’ve been kind of our captive audience.”
She smiled at that. But I could tell my words didn’t make her happy. Perhaps, she thought that we would be her captive audience.
I heard a clicking sound and then Margo said “Ooh!” Her eyes lit up. “That father of yours is a genius.”
Just then, I heard the crooning of Nat King Cole. I looked over my shoulder to see the tree in its full glory. That was a pleasant sight.
The two younger guys came in ostensibly congratulating themselves and accepting all the praise from those present.
I could tell, though, that James, especially, was not thrilled about something. I excused myself from Margo and went over to find out what was up.
James pulled me off to the side. “Before you say anything, your Dad’s watching the kids. Neither they nor Jelly were ready to come back in yet.” He leaned into me. “Things are not right here. I wish I knew what was going on.” I could see the worry etched on his face. “Would you believe that we could have had power any time? We hadn’t even guessed that possibility. The storm did not blow out the generator. It probably made it flicker, but someone took advantage of the wind interrupting the power and cut a main wire. All we did was replace the wire and seal it all with some electrical tape. That’s why it went so quickly.”
“But who? Why?” It didn’t make sense. Whoever did that put themselves in the dark and cold for the duration of the storm, too.
“That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”
At that moment, Charlie came up and said it was my turn to answer some questions.
****
I thought they had been taking everyone to the William room and I was quite grateful to discover that instead they were using the study of the former Mr. Banet, Margo’s husband. It was on the east wing, too, but on the right hand of the hall instead of the left.
I hadn’t remembered seeing that room when we had the grand tour. Large, like most of the rooms in the house, it still managed to have a small room feel. There were maps and globes everywhere. He had obviously enjoyed supervising the trading enterprise that the Banet family operated until recently. The walls had wood paneling and the carpet matched the brown tones but accented them with red. It felt wealthy, but calming, too. It also had a good amount of light from the large bay window and several comfortable chairs.
“Have a seat, Mrs. Talbott. I’m Lieutenant Owen.” He was a tall, but slender man with dark skin, hair, and nearly black eyes. He shook my hand and indicated my chair.
“Thank you.” I sat. The leather chair was comfortable, but so big I felt swallowed.
“Relax,” he said.
Funny how authorities always tell you to relax when it’s absolutely impossible. It’s like when the doctor prepares to swab your throat for strep and tells you to relax and say ‘ah’. I’ve yet to know anyone at all who can relax in such a situation.
“Thank you,” I said again. I didn’t know what else he wanted me to say at this point. And like I’ve always said, my mother did raise me to be polite if nothing else.
“We were told you found the body.”
I nodded.
“Can you tell me about it?”
I told him how the kids and I had taken Jelly for a walk and that coming back, I saw something blue in the bushes. “It didn’t look as if it belonged there, so I went in closer to look.”
“Your husband said you kept the kids back. Why would you do that if you didn’t know it was a body?”
Inside, I gave a huge sigh. I should have seen this coming. Outside, I took a breath and explained. “Lieutenant, until a year and a half ago, I wouldn’t have. But I’ve been stuck with two dead bodies before this. Something just didn’t look right, so I didn’t want to take a chance and have my kids see something horrid that they’d never forget. Also, this isn’t my house or island or anything. I don’t have any authority here so I wanted someone with some clout to assess things for me.”
He seemed to accept that. Then he went on to ask about when we had noticed William missing. He had me name everyone on the island currently. He asked me to explain about the storm and how we coped. He seemed particularly interested that Mrs. Schmidt had gas under the stove to use for cooking. I hoped that information wasn’t going to cause her trouble.
At that point, he said he wanted me to show him the spot where I found the body. He asked that I also introduce him to Justin and Josie so he could question them as well. He wanted to keep them outside to talk to him where they’d be more comfortable.
“Please stay nearby and keep whichever child I’m not questioning close enough to see, but too far to hear what the other is saying. And keep him or her busy, too.”
I didn’t realize until I led him toward the front door that I hadn’t stepped outside yet today. Opening the door to the outside was like biting into a chocolate bar. It was perfect. Yes, the debris was still everywhere. But the air bathed me in tropical breezes, the sun shone on my face, and the aromas from the flowers and the sea made my nose dance. I wanted to pirouette and rejoice in front of my God. But I held it inside and simply said, “My, it’s lovely today.”
The agreement from Lieutenant Owen was less than stellar. Obviously, he did not have his mind on the weather.
I felt like skipping down the path, but one look at the serious face next to me made me walk slowly and carefully.
I showed him the bushes down the path from the front door which had so effectively hidden William’s form as we left the house, but didn’t completely conceal it upon our return. There had been too much rain to preserve the indentations where he had lain, so I showed Lieutenant Owen as best I could. I must have showed him the same spot that James did, because he seemed satisfied. He made some notes, and then took a couple pictures of his own.
“OK, let’s head onto the kids. First, I’d like to assure you, I will always stay in visual range of you, Mrs. Talbott, when I interact with your kids.”
I assured him that I believed he wouldn’t take a single step into the realm of impropriety. I followed him over to where they played with Jelly.
After being cooped up inside for the better part of two days, my kids and my dog definitely did have the weather in mind. They appeared, though, to have worn out my father who watched them, half asleep, on the bench nearby.
I walked up to him, shook his shoulder and smiled. “You’re relieved from duty, Dad. Lieutenant Owen and I are out here now, so between us and Jelly, the kids should be safe.”
He mumbled something that I couldn’t quite tell if it was “thanks” or “sorry” or a combination of the two. Then he gave me a half-hug around the shoulders and drowsily stumbled back to the house.
“Hi, you two,” I said to get their attention. Then I let them know that they were up next on the interviewing
process.
The lieutenant told them they could choose between themselves who would talk to him first.
Normally, my kids enjoy talking to adults, sharing what they know, and in general, showing off. But time to answer questions for Lieutenant Owen meant not playing at that exact moment. Their play had been seriously restricted for the last two days. They ended up tossing a coin and Justin lost.
Josie ran around with Jelly while Justin spoke to the Coast Guard official.
I noticed that most of his answers were only one or two words. The questioning didn’t take long.
The kids switched places and Justin was joyfully racing Jelly over branches and around trees and Josie was talking.
To her credit, she did actually talk to the man. The more she spoke, the more incredulous he looked. After he finished his list of questions with her, he came over to me.
“You coached her, didn’t you ma’am?”
I knew why he thought this and if I’d been thinking and had two cups of coffee instead of just one, I would have remembered to warn him about my girl’s abilities. “No sir. She has a photographic memory. She also loves Nancy Drew mysteries so she’s good about noticing details and looking for clues. If you want to test her on it, take her somewhere she hasn’t been, give her five minutes to look everything over and then quiz her. She’ll answer almost any question you can think of.”
He looked at me just the tiniest smidgeon less doubtfully. “I may do that, ma’am. In the meantime, your children, like everyone else on this island are free to move about and do as they please. However, neither you nor they can leave. Is that clear?”
I agreed that it was.
The officer went back inside. I didn’t follow him. The weather just demanded that I stay in its embrace.
Near where the kids were playing, were a couple of well-placed benches. I took the one more in the sun and sat. Only two things—more coffee and my husband’s presence—could make this better. I was enjoying watching my kids play on a perfect day.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder and then extended a mug in front of my face. “I thought you could use your second cup of coffee,” James said.
I sighed deeply. “And do I get you, too?”
He came around and sat next to me. “Anytime, sweetheart. Anytime.”
He asked me about my interview as well as those of the kids. He groaned when I told him about the reaction to Josie. “Oh, well. God will make it work out,” he said. “It just would have been easier if we had some way to prove what her abilities were without a test.”
“We could always give them Dan’s phone number,” I suggested. “She’s certainly proved it to him time and time again.”
His assent was less than stellar. “Yes, but since he’s a friend now they might not give it much credence. But we’ll cross that line if and when we come to it.”
“Yes,” I said, sliding closer to him, while being careful not to spill a single drop of the lovingly prepared cup of sustenance. “Right now, let’s enjoy this gift of perfect weather and a family together.”
He didn’t say anything, but his arm around me tightened.
****
We had been resting in the sun for about a half an hour when Aimee came walking up the path. As far as I could tell, she was coming from the wading beach area.
She was carrying her shoes and her feet were still wet. At first, she looked puzzled to see us outside. Or maybe it’s where we were sitting outside.
I don’t know exactly.
“Have you seen Frank? I thought he was going to meet me for a walk.”
We told her that he was inside waiting for her. We also told her that he had no idea where she was.
“But he did get the electricity running,” I cheered to build up my brother in the eyes of his future spouse.
“He did?” Was it my imagination or did she actually look disappointed? “So everything’s working inside now?”
I agreed that it was. With that, we said our awkward “see-you-later’s” and she went into the manor.
I couldn’t help wondering why she had been at the beach. Maybe she had just gone for a walk along the water. But alone? And in jeans? It didn’t seem like she’d planned that part. What was Aimee up to? I liked the girl. She was sweet, she knew her Bible, and she’d stood up to her aunt. But we didn’t know a lot about her. And with everything that was going on with the Banet family, it was that unknown that worried me.
10
Once I finished my cup of coffee, and our lovable bulldog was out of breath from the kids’ exuberance, I decided it was time we go back into the manor, however briefly.
“We don’t have to stay there,” I told Justin when I saw the look on his face. “But Jelly needs to rest for a bit and have his breakfast, and I need to return this cup to the kitchen.” And, I thought, things just stayed safer when we remained together as a family rather than having us going different directions.
As we walked past the original crime scene, or more likely, the victim retrieval scene, I looked at the cup in my hand and something dawned on me. I stopped suddenly and Jelly bumped his head into the back of my legs. Oh, well. A slobbered heel was a small price to pay for getting answers.
“Honey, when you and Frank came out to get William, did you pick up my coffee cup?”
He looked at me confused for a moment.
“Don’t you remember? When I first stood over him, my mug was in the mud. I had dropped it out of surprise or fear or whatever that emotion is when you first find a corpse. I didn’t pick it up because I forgot about it at that moment. But it’s not there now. Someone picked it up.”
He looked at the ground and knelt down by the drying mud. “It was right here,” he said, pointing. “Right?”
I agreed.
“Now that you mentioned it, I remember seeing it when I came out at first and checked to see whether William was alive and hurt, or dead. But when Frank and I went back to carry in the body it wasn’t there. I guess I assumed you got it.”
I hadn’t. But obviously, someone had. “Why would someone come out and pick up my coffee cup?”
Something of the previous conversation I had overheard came back to me. “They had checked William for something he was supposed to have. Maybe they thought the coffee cup belonged to him? It was one of those fancy stay-hot cups with two layers separated by an air pocket. What if they thought he put something in between those layers?”
James stood up. “That, unfortunately, makes too much sense, my darling Mrs. Talbott. I’m definitely going to have to keep an eye on you.”
With that hanging over our heads, we entered the manor. Rather than stopping to talk to anyone, we took Jelly straight through to the kitchen. There, Juliana and Mrs. Schmidt were putting any leftovers worth keeping into the refrigerators and taking out anything that had not weathered the power outage.
We stationed Jelly in his designated corner with a food bowl filled in front of him, leaving his leash on and looped through a towel rack so that he wouldn’t get in their way.
“So, how did the kitchen survive?”
“Ach du lieben! Not well, Mrs. Talbott, not well. We had a rack of lamb in here for Christmas Day which is totally spoiled. Do you know how much one of those things costs? I’d have to save up for a month to afford a good one like what we had here. But Mrs. Banet can suffer the loss without undue strain on her budget. Still, it seems like such a shame to throw away good food…” She leaned into one of the two oversized refrigerators again. “These were full when you all arrived. Full!”
I almost wished the power hadn’t come back on until after we had left. “I am sorry, Frau Schmidt. I do hope us lodging Jelly here for a while won’t bother you and Juliana.”
At the mention of his name, the good Frau backed out of the refrigerator, shut it firmly behind her and leaned over to pet Jelly before I could remind her about the slobber. But she didn’t seem to mind.
“If I am ever put out or annoyed by such a good hund,
I should renounce my German roots and solely call myself Mrs. Smith forever and ever.” She chucked him under the chin. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone do that intentionally. Of course, after she got him wagging his tail with more enthusiasm than a kid has on Christmas Eve, she did walk over to the sink and give her hands a good thorough rub down with soap and water. “In fact,” she added. “He might be able to help me if you allow it. I’m told some bulldogs have an amazing nose. Is he one of those?”
I remembered Jelly following the deputy’s trail from above ground last year in September.
But James answered. “He’s well-trained, Mrs. Schmidt. What would you need him to do?”
“If he could sniff the meats in the refrigerator, so I know what to keep and what to throw? Would that be possible?”
I wasn’t certain, but my guys were. “The hardest part, Mrs. Schmidt,” Justin said, “would be keeping him from eating what would be OK. He likes people food way too much. But after he finishes his breakfast, he won’t be too hungry. That would probably be the best time.”
So my guys and Frau Schmidt arranged Jelly’s work schedule for the morning. Then they and Josie left the kitchen.
“I need to ask this wonderful woman something,” I told them. “Wait for me by the benches.”
The kids nodded.
James gave my hand a squeeze as he left.
“What did you want to know, Mrs. Talbott?” She busied herself in the refrigerator again, looking at Jelly occasionally to see if he had finished his kibble and water yet.
“Yesterday morning, before I found William, I had taken one of those thermal coffee cups with me. I wondered, did it make it back into the kitchen? I don’t know where it disappeared to.” I looked over on the counter, but didn’t see anything. “And remember, my name’s Jeanine.”
The woman turned over her shoulder to look for the girl who quietly and methodically worked in the other refrigerator. “Juliana, can you open that cupboard for Mrs. Talbott?”
The girl closed her set of metal doors and scurried to the other side of the kitchen. There, she opened the top cupboard. She had to stretch, and I didn’t think she would reach it.