Wound Up In Murder

by Betty Hechtman

  I was relieved to be outside in the darkness and walked down the driveway quickly. Lieutenant Borgnine was behind me and seemed to be taking his time.

  My heart dropped when he hesitated by the former garage. “This was converted into a guest house, wasn’t it?” He stopped by the door. “I’ve been thinking of converting my garage into living space. Maybe I could get some ideas from your place. Mind if I look around?”

  I knew I had every right to say no, but also knew that was tantamount to saying I had something to hide, which I actually did. Sammy. The lieutenant had quickly lost interest in looking around the house when I’d said it was fine. I was hoping that giving him carte blanche would work again. I was wishing Julius had come with us and given the lieutenant more of the hostile staring with the tail thumps as insurance.

  “Great, sure, have a look inside,” I said, trying to pump up the enthusiasm like I meant it. I waited, expecting a similar reaction to what I’d gotten in the house.

  “Okay,” he said, nodding toward the door, “unlock the door.”

  I froze. It wasn’t supposed to go like this. He was supposed to not want to look around now.

  “On second thought,” I said. It was no act to sound dismayed because I was. “My retreat people are waiting for me. How about I give you a rain check on that?” To punctuate it, I took a step down the driveway.

  “I’m here now. It’ll just take a few minutes,” he said, not moving away from the door.

  “It’s probably kind of messy. I was making up the tote bags in there.”

  “No problem.”

  “It’s just kind of embarrassing,” I said.

  “I won’t pass judgment on your housekeeping,” he said. “Go on, open the door. We’re wasting time discussing it.”

  There was just a hint of it being an order. I knew I could refuse, but I also knew that he could come back alone and claim he thought he heard someone scream inside, which gave him probable cause to break down the door.

  Saying a silent “I’m sorry” to Sammy, I put the key in the lock.

  I wondered if the cop could hear my heartbeat. I could certainly feel it thudding against my chest. I glanced around, hoping a meteor might drop out of the sky and distract him, but there was nothing.

  I finally opened the door to the dark interior. I took my time in the doorway, but Lieutenant Borgnine pushed past me and walked inside. “Hey, how about we get some lights,” he said.

  I reached for the light by the door, but when I turned it on, I was actually relieved when nothing happened. “It must be burned out,” I said.

  Now that he was inside, the lieutenant seemed to have forgotten his ruse for why he wanted to look. No more casual “I want to get some ideas for my place.”

  “There must be some other light.” He sounded impatient.

  “There’s an overhead fixture.”

  “Well,” he said when I continued to just stand there. “Go ahead and turn it on.” I felt my way along the wall until my hand touched the plastic plate. I couldn’t stall anymore and reached over for the light switch. As my finger pushed it up, I looked away, wanting to avoid the confrontation. I waited to hear something, but after a few moments, the cop was silent. I turned my gaze into the center of the room and I was shocked. The bed had been folded into the wall and the doors with the shelves slid over it. Everything looked orderly as if no one had been there.

  “Well, there you have it,” I said, trying to keep the relief out of my voice. The cop grunted with displeasure and started to tour the room.

  As I expected, he eyed the shelves against the wall suspiciously. “That’s one of those wall beds, isn’t it?” He stepped closer. “You don’t mind if I see how it works?”

  Was there a chance that Sammy had crushed his tall hulky frame against the bed and was folded up with it? At the very least, the bed would probably look slept in, but I gave him the okay.

  He slid the two bookcases back and then pulled down the bed. No Sammy came popping out and surprisingly the bed was not only made, but so tightly, I was sure you could bounce a quarter on it. It certainly didn’t look like anybody had slept in it recently.

  The cop didn’t look happy. I saw him glancing at the two doors in the place. I rushed ahead and opened the door to the bathroom. It felt warm and moist, like someone had showered recently. Before Borgnine could step inside the small room, I whipped back the shower curtain and turned on the water to cover it up. “See, a full-functioning bathroom,” I said. I turned the faucet on and off and flushed the toilet.

  “I see that it all works,” he said, taking a step backward to get out of the close damp space. Good, my efforts had worked.

  Back in the main room, he stared at the other door in the place. “It’s just a closet,” I said, trying to keep my voice light. It was the most likely hiding place and I felt my heart thud as the lieutenant’s mouth curved in an expectant smile. He stepped up to the door.

  “Let’s just see what’s in there,” he said, putting his hand on the doorknob.

  I have to admit, I held my breath as he turned the handle and pulled the door open. Then I waited, expecting something to happen, like Sammy to pop out. But there was only silence as the bulldog-shaped cop stepped inside. A few clothing items were still hanging on the rod and he batted them aside impatiently. I don’t think he meant to let out the groan when all he saw was the back wall of the small enclosure. He shut the door with an annoyed swat.

  After that he moved to the kitchen area and opened every cabinet as if he thought he’d find Sammy folded up in one of them. Did he really think that six-foot-one Sammy could fit in that small a space? I started breathing again and wondered where Sammy was.

  “I hope you’ve found what you were looking for,” I said, doing my best to keep the relief out of my voice.

  He just glowered at me. I guess not.

  14

  It was a relief to get to the Blue Door. Baking the desserts and the muffins for the coffee spots was my last to-do task of the day. I was glad the restaurant was empty and there were no diners lingering over their coffee. Tag was precise about most things, but somehow he relented when it came to the restaurant and would let people sit as long as they wanted, sometimes well after the restaurant had closed.

  But even the cook had left when I got there. Tag was doing the last-minute setup so that the tables would be ready for the morning.

  I was still recovering from the run-in with Lieutenant Borgnine. It was amazing how he seemed to have forgotten his gallant offer to escort me back across the street once he’d had his look around the guest house. I’d barely put the key in the lock and he was gone. Not that I minded at all. Though I knew it wasn’t over. I was sure he thought I knew where Sammy was—which was funny because for the moment I didn’t. I tried calling Sammy’s cell phone and it went to voice mail right away. Either he had shut it off or it was dead.

  I had made a quick stop back at Vista Del Mar. Everything seemed fine and it seemed most everyone was heading toward Hummingbird Hall to see the movie. Madeleine had returned. I saw her walking with Lucinda. Good, she wasn’t alone.

  Tag looked up from folding the cloth napkins. For a man in his late fifties, he had a lot of hair. When I’d first met him, I’d thought all that thick brown hair had to be a wig or a toupee. But it was all his—he’d certainly lucked out in the hair genes. When he saw I was alone, he looked disappointed. “Lucinda didn’t come with you, huh,” he said.

  The possibility of her coming with me was only in his imagination. She was having a wonderful time being away from all this, and even him.

  “I’m glad that Lucinda likes your retreats so much, but I miss her.” I went on into the kitchen to drop off the bags of supplies for the muffins and he came in behind me. “You know that we knew each other in high school.” I nodded. Not only did I know the story, but it was on the menu back written
in fairy-tale fashion—how they’d known each other in high school and then reconnected all these years later and found their happily ever after. There were a few flies in the ointment that the flowery story didn’t mention. Mainly that Tag had gotten more and more fussy as he’d gotten older and bordered on OCD. Mostly Lucinda dealt with it with good humor, but I think that was partly because she got these yarn weekends off, even if it was just a five-minute drive away.

  “When I heard that someone died on the grounds, I wanted to go over to Vista Del Mar and talk her into coming home. Are you sure she’s okay? There are rumors flying around town. You don’t think I should go over there and check on her?”

  “There’s no need for you to worry. The person who died wasn’t part of our retreat and Cadbury’s finest Lieutenant Borgnine is telling everyone that he believes it was personal to the woman who died and that there’s no need to worry about a crazed killer on the loose.”

  He seemed slightly reassured about that anyway. “Lucinda told me you have some information about the Delacorte secret heir. I wish you’d leave that alone. You really should think twice before you stir things up.”

  “What have you heard?” I asked. Tag was not the kind of person to say something like that without a reason.

  “The Delacorte sisters were in here for dinner a few nights ago. That Cora’s voice carries more than she realizes. I think she was trying to whisper, but I heard it all. She told Madeleine she believes their brother had a love child. That he ‘got about,’ as she put it. Then she told Madeleine she was glad nobody knew who it was and that the whole thing had been dropped.” Tag swallowed as if what he was going to say next made him uncomfortable. “Then she said that they might have to take measures if somebody brought it up again. It seemed like she was thinking of someone in particular when she said ‘somebody.’” He left it at that, but I knew Tag thought Cora meant me.

  I had a dark thought. I’d gotten the impression that Madeleine might be okay with me finding her brother’s heir, but maybe she was just trying to get information to pass it to her sister. And “take measures”? What did that mean?

  I started to lay out the ingredients for the desserts and Tag finally bade me a good night.

  I turned on some soft jazz and put all thoughts on the back burner. Baking was like meditation for me. I got lost in the flow of wonderful smells, sifting, mixing, pouring—lost in the process of turning a bunch of ingredients into something delicious.

  A noise interfered with my concentration. Was it a knock on the door? I was ready to chalk it up to my imagination, but I heard it again and this time I was sure it was real. I went to check the door and all I saw was a fist aimed at the glass portion of the entrance. Even when I got closer, it looked like a fist floating in space before it connected with the glass again and made a knocking sound.

  “Hello, is someone there?” I asked, trying to sound tough. I was all alone in the place.

  “Open the door,” a whispery voice commanded.

  “Not until you identify yourself.” I considered grabbing something to use as a weapon. What? The best I could do was to pull an umbrella out of the holder by the door. It had been left by someone months ago and it looked like the ribs were broken. I held it out and waited.

  “Case, it’s me.” There was only one person who called me that.

  “Sammy?” I lowered the umbrella and opened the door. He was crouched on the ground with only one arm sticking up. Because of the dark clothing, the fist he’d used to knock with had appeared to be floating in space. He began to unfold himself and, when he got to standing, looked around quickly.

  “Can I come in?” he asked.

  I stepped aside and waved him in. He was still wearing the tuxedo, but it looked the worse for wear. The cummerbund was long gone, the white shirt was wrinkled and open at the collar, and the satiny lapels of the jacket looked scuffed. He looked haggard, but partly because he needed a shave. Stubble was sexy on some men, but not on Sammy.

  “What’s—” Before I could finish the sentence, he had slipped to the floor and was crawling past the windows.

  “I don’t know who’s out there watching,” he said as I followed him across the former living room floor. He crawled into the bathroom off the second small dining room. Like the other rooms, the restroom’s window faced Grand Street, but the glass was frosted so no one could see in. He stood up and leaned against the flowery wallpaper. Then he let out a heavy sigh, and I got to finish my sentence.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’m sorry, Case, but I’m not cut out to be a bad boy. I thought all this running and hiding would be exciting, but it’s really just tiring. I was going to try to sneak into my room and get some clean clothes, but when I got to the B and B, I saw that Lieutenant Borgnine was in the parlor.”

  Sammy was still renting a room in a bed-and-breakfast just down the street from the Blue Door restaurant. Part of the charm of the place for travelers was they had a gathering in the parlor every night. Sammy’s room was on the first floor in the back, and the only way in was going past the front room and the lieutenant.

  “He figured out the silk piece was my streamer, didn’t he?” Sammy said, and I nodded. “That’s what I figured when I saw him come to your place.”

  “So you were there? But where? The place looked so neat. And the way the bed was made, it looked like nobody had slept in it.”

  Sammy’s face brightened. “Case, I’m not the kind of guy who throws his socks on the floor. And I’m used to precision. You forget that I’m not just any old doctor of urology. I’m a surgeon, too. I don’t just make rabbits appear out of hats. I can create a bladder out of other body parts. You have to be precise when you do that. I just used the same logic and applied it to making the bed and cleaning up the place.”

  Sammy almost never talked about his medical knowledge, and other than occasionally seeing him in his white coat, I mostly forgot about it.

  “Okay, but how was it we didn’t see you?” I said.

  He let out a tired laugh. “I’m not sure I should divulge that. You know, it’s like the magician code—you don’t reveal how you do a trick.”

  “C’mon, Sammy,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “I was just teasing. What I did hardly counts as anything much.” He stopped and laughed to himself. “It’s a funny thing about human nature. We tend to follow patterns, so a slight deviation from an initial impulse is all you need.” I didn’t understand exactly what he meant and he gave me an example.

  “Say you’re walking under a fire escape that starts to fall. Your impulse would be to run forward. And you’d probably get smacked in the head before you were clear of it. But all you’d have to do is to take a few steps to the side and you’d miss getting hit by it completely. I like to think that’s what I did. I heard the lieutenant and figured it was only a matter of time before he would want to look inside the guest house. I loosened the bulb on the lamp by the door so it wouldn’t go on. I knew it would make you both walk farther inside before you turned the lights on, and I figured you’d leave the door open until you got them on. Instead of trying to hide somewhere, I stepped behind the door. Then when you opened it, I simply slipped out while you were both distracted.”

  “Then what?”

  “I went around to the side of your place. There’s that bathroom that has the door to the outside. I know you leave a spare set of keys in the potted plant next to the door.”

  He was right about that. I started doing it after I locked myself out once when I took the litter box outside to clean it.

  “I was pretty sure the lieutenant wouldn’t want to look in the house again, but just in case, I hid in the closet full of yarn.” He pulled out a ball of blue yarn that had gotten stuck in his jacket and handed it to me. “Your aunt sure left you a lot of it.”

  “Why don’t you go back to the guest house? Lieutenant Bor
gnine isn’t going to be looking for you there now.”

  “Case, I knew I could depend on you.” He hugged me and another ball of yarn fell out of his jacket.

  It was the least I could do. Here he was so grateful to me and I don’t think it occurred to him for one second that he would have been thousands of miles away from this mess if I hadn’t moved here. I told him about the dinner in the fridge and said I’d bring him some muffins.

  “I’ve been thinking it over a lot and I know I can’t remember what happened, but these are healing hands,” he said, holding them out to me. “Not hands that would strangle someone. I just want you to know that.” A car went by on the street making a loud noise and Sammy jumped, then he shook his head wearily. “Please find out who killed that woman as quickly as possible. I’m not cut out for life as a fugitive.” He pressed a key into my hand. “And Case, maybe you can sneak into my room and get me some clean clothes.” He hugged me again before slipping back to the floor and crawling across the restaurant to the door, and then he slipped out into the night.

  A little while later my cell phone rang and Sammy let me know he was safely ensconced in the guest house. He had parked his car blocks away and he’d made sure that no light was coming from the guest house windows. The only problem he’d had was with Julius. The cat tried to keep him from coming into the house to retrieve the food from the refrigerator.

  “But it’s okay now. We’re good buddies,” Sammy said. “It’s amazing what a little stink fish will do.” Leave it to Sammy to win over my cat.

  It was a relief to get back to baking. I had the batter for the carrot cakes whipped up in no time. As they baked, the kitchen filled with a sweet fragrance of cinnamon and I began on the muffins. Banana nut this time, or as I called them, Gone Bananas. I heard a knock at the door. It wasn’t tentative like before and I recognized the sound right away. Had Sammy gotten into more trouble?