The Marsh Madness

by Victoria Abbott

  “But he’s not here to back up your story, is he?”

  “I don’t understand what needs backing up.”

  “How about your reason to be in an exclusive neighborhood where a body is found?”

  I paused and calmed myself. “But I’m telling you. The butler saw us leave. Miss Troy said good-bye. They know we left.”

  She leaned forward and flicked an invisible mote of dust from her cognac boots. Behind her Bad Cat watched and planned.

  “Would it surprise you, Miss Bingham, to learn that there is no butler at Summerlea?”

  She got me there.

  “What?”

  She shook her head, amused at the game. “No butler.”

  “But there was a butler. We all saw him.”

  “We have only your word for that.”

  “Well, you have Vera’s.”

  “She didn’t mention a butler.”

  Of course she hadn’t. It was Vera. All she cared about was the books. “There was one. His name was Thomas. Miss Van Alst, as you may have observed, is not really a people person. She probably didn’t notice him. He’d be part of the background to her. But she must have mentioned Miss Troy.”

  The dark eyes gleamed. “Miss Troy also didn’t rate a mention.”

  “Vera probably didn’t mention the laws of gravity, but I’m pretty sure those still exist.”

  “Good one,” she said with a throaty chuckle. “But obviously not good enough.”

  “Vera must have told you about Chadwick Kauffman.”

  “She did.”

  “At least. That’s good.”

  “Is it? It puts you and Miss Van Alst and the mysteriously absent Mr. Kelly in the presence of the victim without a single witness. Do you really think that’s good?”

  “What do you mean ‘victim’? Wasn’t it an accident?”

  “It appears not.”

  “Well, there were witnesses. Two of them. Maybe Thomas didn’t bill himself as a butler. Maybe he was a valet or . . . some kind of personal assistant, but he was definitely there. Please get in touch with Miss Troy. She’ll confirm what I’m saying.”

  She watched me with pleasant anticipation, her beautifully groomed eyebrows raised just a touch.

  I sputtered, “All you need to do is ask her.”

  “Well, I would, of course, but there’s only one problem with that.”

  I slumped in my seat. Why was this so unsettling? “What problem?”

  “There is no Miss Troy.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course there is. We saw her. We spoke to her. We shook her hand. She was nice, kind. Well organized.” I heard my voice trail off.

  “The housekeeper and the staff of Mr. Kauffman’s business all confirm: no butler, no one named Thomas. No Miss Troy.”

  I stared at her.

  “They were there,” I said in a small voice. “She was very pretty.”

  “Instead,” she went on, as if I’d said nothing, “you three were seen fleeing the property where Mr. Chadwick Kauffman was, apparently alone, right before his death.”

  “Fleeing from what? We were not fleeing. That’s just the way, um, Mr. Kelly drives.”

  “How about this: You were fleeing because Mr. Kauffman did not die from a fall. It appears he was killed by a blow to the head before he went down the stairs.”

  “A blow to the head? Did he hit his head on something and then—?”

  “Not much chance of that, is there?”

  “I don’t know. But otherwise it means . . .”

  “That’s right, Miss Bingham.”

  I hadn’t finished. I couldn’t quite bring myself to say he’d been murdered.

  She added, “And that means someone killed him.”

  I shivered. “There must be a mistake.”

  “No mistake.”

  “Maybe he hit his head on a post and—”

  “He didn’t.”

  “But—”

  “We have the weapon, and it wasn’t the staircase.”

  I held up my hand. My stomach lurched. Murder? Murder and the people we believed were entertaining us turned out to be not real. Except they had been real. They’d been flesh and blood. They’d talked; they’d shaken hands. They had definitely been there.

  “Murder?”

  “Yes. Someone hit him hard enough to crack his skull.”

  “His skull was cracked?”

  “That was enough to kill him.”

  “Well, we didn’t do that.”

  “I believe I will find out otherwise.”

  “If there was no one at Summerlea—and Thomas and Lisa Troy were definitely there . . . Wait a minute, how did you even find out that we were at the house?” I said.

  “The neighbors, a group of elderly women, were almost plowed down by your Mr. Kelly. They gave a description of your distinctive vehicle, although the plates weren’t readable, and they had the presence of mind to jot down the license plate of the Cadillac.”

  Damn Uncle Kev and his love of Grand Theft Auto. Also, why wasn’t that license plate covered in dust like every other one that the Kellys drove? It was early spring in upstate New York. Plenty of mud everywhere. Even the Aston Martin and the Mercedes parked in front of Summerlea had muddy plates.

  I sighed. “Kevin Kelly’s not much of a driver, but that doesn’t mean he’s a killer. He’s very gentle.”

  “There’s more, of course.”

  “More? Chadwick was murdered. You say that there is no Miss Lisa Troy in his life. You say he didn’t have a butler. What else? Is the earth suddenly flat?” My heart was racing. Everything was so hard to grasp. So inexplicable. And so likely to get us charged with murder.

  She pounced verbally. “Fingerprints.”

  Was that all?

  I relaxed. “Oh well, we all have fingerprints and we were in the house. So that’s not surprising.” Nothing much to worry about there, as we hadn’t done anything. Fingers crossed for Kev, of course.

  Her dark eyes glittered. “Unusual as it may seem for visitors to such a grand home, your prints, of course, were in the system as a result of earlier interactions with the police.”

  “But not because I was accused of a crime! I’ve been a witness. My prints have been taken for purposes of elimination and, um, other reasons. I’ve never committed a crime. Never,” I squeaked. So much for cool and calm. Get it together, Jordan.

  She didn’t even appear to notice. And my statement wasn’t entirely true, but any mild transgressions had always been in the interests of justice and keeping people alive. About that, the less said, the better.

  “And Mr. Kelly’s too, of course.”

  “Um, Kevin was with me all the time. He’d never hurt anyone. He’s gentle and . . .” Best not to mention unintentionally dangerous.

  “Even Miss Van Alst’s were there.”

  “Well, you can hardly believe that Vera would kill anyone. She’s only interested in her collections, and there was no threat to any of them.” I added hurriedly, “And if there had been, she would take action with a lawyer, not a weapon. A dead opponent would be no use to Vera.”

  Again with the throaty chuckle. “She told me that about herself. She only cares about books.”

  “I don’t understand how Chadwick’s death has anything to do with us or the books.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “Vera’s the one with the passion for the books, and even if there had been some issue, which there wasn’t, she couldn’t hit a man with a blunt object hard enough to kill him let alone haul him up the staircase afterward.”

  “What about the elevator?”

  “What elevator?”

  “The one in Summerlea.”

  I stared. Elevator? “So what if there was? Vera didn’t take the elevator. She
was never out of my sight.”

  She tilted her head to one side and met my eyes. “So you say. And yet you and Mr. Kelly both left to ‘freshen up,’ as you put it.”

  I goggled. “Yes. We did. Before lunch. But Chadwick was alive and well. We were all there.”

  “Did you go to the same powder room as Mr. Kelly?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Right.”

  “And you were out of sight of Miss Van Alst and Chadwick.”

  “The other two as well. Lisa and Thomas.”

  “I guess you’re sticking to that story. It makes me wonder if you’re all in it together.”

  All in it together? Had she been reading Vera’s vintage mysteries? “You mean you think we conspired to kill Chadwick?”

  She smiled and nodded.

  “Why? Why would we do such a thing?”

  “Theft is my guess.”

  My jaw dropped. “Theft? We are not thieves.” Most of us weren’t, anyway. Oh, Kev, Kev, Kev.

  This woman was good. I knew that none of us had killed Chadwick. Absolutely knew it. I knew that Miss Troy and Thomas the butler had been there and that Chadwick had been alive and smirking when we left. Why then was she able to make me so very nervous?

  I reminded myself that the police can lie and mislead to get you to incriminate yourself. That had been drummed into me as a child.

  I said, “We aren’t. And no matter what you say, nothing can change the fact that what I’ve told you is true.” Okay, that was a bit of a circular argument, but I did feel panicky. “It’s like you’re out to get us.”

  “Or if the shoe fit and you ran away in it.”

  “We didn’t run away. And you can’t have any proof that any of us was upstairs and hit Chadwick—for whatever reason—and then pushed him. We weren’t there. Vera didn’t take the elevator. Kevin didn’t go upstairs. I didn’t.”

  “Did I say he was killed upstairs?”

  Was she just trying to rattle me? “But I assumed since he fell down after the blow—”

  “Maybe there was a dispute about the price of the books and then tempers flared. A statue was lifted and brought down hard and—”

  “What statue?” I cast my mind back to remember a statue. Nothing came to mind.

  “Oh, but there was.”

  I slumped. “Didn’t you say that Chadwick had been thrown or pushed down the stairs?”

  “Mmm. With some force.”

  “But, how would we have gotten him up there? I could hardly lift a man. Vera even less so. And Kevin—”

  “From what I hear, your Mr. Kelly is very fit and used to manual labor.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call moving a body manual labor. Anyway, Kev would throw up.”

  “I hardly think so.”

  “I know so and I also know he didn’t do it. And he never went upstairs.”

  “Evidence says otherwise.”

  My patience was fraying. “It couldn’t. You’re trying to rattle me, and you’re wasting your time. We didn’t do it. You don’t have any proof that we did, because there’s no proof to be had. Simple as that.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Yes. Really.” I usually resist the Kelly temper that is half my heritage, but this time it was hard to.

  “How then do you explain Mr. Kevin Kelly’s fingerprints on the statue found by the head of the stairs in Summerlea?”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “But I can’t explain it. Wait, there was a statue—marble, I think—on the small table outside the powder rooms. A nude kneeling figure. Is that the one? It’s possible that Mr. Kelly picked it up to admire it. But it was still on the table when we returned to the sitting room, where Chadwick was very much alive. It wasn’t very big. I can’t imagine that could be a murder weapon.”

  Even as the words came out, I knew how foolish they sounded. That thing was made of marble. Of course it could have cracked a skull.

  Castellano opened her mouth to speak, and I burst out, “And we were not separated, after that, until we left, when, as I’ve mentioned, Chadwick was not only alive but said good-bye to us.”

  “It was good-bye, all right. You’re going to have to tell the truth or you will find yourself charged as an accessory to murder. If not conspiracy to commit murder.”

  Sammy Vincovic’s face flashed through my mind. He was shouting, No comment.

  I swallowed. “I want to speak to an attorney.”

  “Sounds like guilty talk to me.”

  “You know that I am entitled to legal counsel.”

  “Your choice, of course. It doesn’t look good, you know, if you’re stalling us. An innocent person would cooperate with the police.”

  “You wouldn’t be denying me my right to an attorney, would you?”

  “Why? You don’t need one if you haven’t done anything.”

  I didn’t trust Castellano. “I want legal advice. I think you are trying to set us up.”

  She shrugged. “Why don’t I arrest you? We’ll head to the station and then you’ll be one hundred percent entitled to a lawyer.”

  I frowned. I wasn’t falling for the innocent person talk. There have been many, many innocent people filling jail cells and many, many guilty ones walking free. My uncles like to say, it’s all in the way you play your cards. I didn’t know what cards I had, let alone how to play them. I didn’t really have a lawyer either. I’m a researcher for a book collector. I’m saving to get back to grad school. It wasn’t like I needed legal counsel on retainer. Vera had lawyers, but they didn’t practice criminal law.

  The one time I’d really needed Sammy, my uncles had arranged it. They had footed the bill for his time without being asked. I couldn’t let that happen this time. I’d hoped never to see him again. Now I needed him and I didn’t even have his number. I had no idea how to reach him. My Uncle Mick, Uncle Lucky and Karen were in Manhattan (I thought) on some business that it was better I didn’t know about. Kev was on the run.

  “I need to make a phone call.”

  “All right, then,” Castellano said. “You are volunteering to answer questions. If you want your rights and your phone calls and your lawyer, then we’re going to have to head down to the station.”

  The office door squeaked open. Castellano turned and glared at the man who lumbered through it. Sammy Vincovic appeared, fastening the top button of his blue two-button suit jacket, which managed to be tight and rumpled at the same time. Had he slept in it? Still, at the sight of his blocklike body and wild black, wavy hair, I felt a huge surge of relief.

  “Who the hell are you?” Castellano snapped. “This is a police interview.”

  He smoothed his random waves. “Sammy Vincovic. I’m Miss Bingham’s lawyer, and I’ll be sitting in on this interview.”

  Castellano glared at Stoddard. The glare said, “You idiot. You let her contact a lawyer?” No words were necessary to convey this. For a second, Stoddard lost his studied cool. He shook his head, meaning, “Not on my watch.”

  How, then? I wondered.

  Castellano narrowed her eyes at Vincovic. She returned to her questions.

  “So you were about to explain how Kevin Kelly’s fingerprints ended up on the murder weapon.”

  I opened my mouth to repeat that they couldn’t have been.

  Sammy said, “My client has nothing to say.”

  She said, “Miss Bingham, you really should answer this question. Evading it could go badly for you.”

  “To repeat, my client has no comment. And I would like a word with her.”

  As I was not under arrest at that point, Castellano had no choice but to vacate the chair and leave the study. Stoddard slouched out, looking chastened. She cast an angry glance at him, and he shrugged languidly and shook his head. I heard him say, “She di
dn’t call anyone. We had coffee.”

  Kellys do not cry, and as I was a Kelly, I had to keep my eyes dry. I must say I felt like sobbing and wailing, but that was, of course, out of the question.

  As the door closed behind the two detectives, Sammy said, “Now you can fill me in.” He glanced at the door and touched both of his small, neat ears. I got the message. Say nothing I didn’t want them to hear. Say only what was on the record. I could do that. It took a while to get the whole story out. He wanted every detail about the invitation, the luncheon and our relationship with Chadwick Kauffman.

  “We didn’t have a relationship with him. We got the invitation out of the blue. It was purely business. A cash transaction,” I whispered with a glance at the door.

  “You never met him before?”

  “Not him and not them. He wanted to sell some books to Vera, who was willing to give him an excellent price for them. Everyone would be ahead. It was a good thing. There was no reason at all for anyone to hurt him.”

  “Okay, now tell me what she asked you.”

  I did my best to repeat all the questions. “She’s saying that Kevin’s fingerprints are on a statue and that the statue is the murder weapon.” I reached out and touched his beefy arm. “There’s no way that’s possible. Kevin wasn’t upstairs. None of us were. We could see the staircase clearly from the foyer and the sitting room and we had no way to know there was an elevator. So even if we were capable of murder—which we aren’t—I couldn’t have killed him. Vera and Kev couldn’t have either. Anyway, even if one of us had been upstairs—which we weren’t—Chadwick was alive and smirking when we left.”

  Sammy gazed at me, waiting.

  “You do know that the police don’t have to be truthful with you during interviews, don’t you?”

  Oh. Well. Of course I knew that. “I don’t think she was lying, but I knew she was wrong. Kev might have touched that little marble statue. But it was still there when we went back to the sitting room. The lieutenant seems like a decent person. Tough, but decent.”

  Sammy let out a booming belly laugh. “That’s cute, kid. You can’t go by what she looks like. She’s a detective investigating a murder. Her job is to break down your resistance and get the answers she needs to solve the case. This guy was a big shot, and the murder is in the news. She’ll be under pressure. But that’s not our problem.”