As I walked up the hallway, I listened for voices. Not an easy task with a hearing loss. Luckily, the door to the library was open. I peeked in and saw that everyone except Nate was inside. Of course, what other place would everyone gather in a murder mystery but the library? If this was a game of Clue, our murder victim wasn’t killed with a knife, wrench, candlestick, revolver, or lead pipe but a makeshift rope—aka a white extension cord.
Before stepping inside, I glanced down at my phone and stopped dead in my tracks. I’d almost forgotten that Cole had been found safe and alive. Hallelujah! There hadn’t been a moment to process the good news because of Roland. I typed Cole’s name into my phone’s search bar. Up popped a photo of Cole in an embrace with a woman. No, it was more than an embrace—Cole was playing tonsil hockey with a stunning dark-haired female. They were standing in front of a whirring helicopter. The caption under the photo by The East Hampton Star read, Hometown boy and captain of the Reliance, Cole Spenser, along with his chief mate, Billie Taylor, celebrate their rescue after being shipwrecked on a scrub island off the coast of Lisbon, Portugal.
My phone dropped with a clatter and bounced off the hardwood floor. I wished I had killed it. I left it there for a minute, happy it had landed facedown. Though the images in the photo were burned into my memory forevermore. Then, taking a deep breath, I picked up the phone and stowed it in my pocket.
C’est la vie.
So much for Cole Spenser.
Chapter 13
I had to suck in my breath at the finished staging of Enderly’s library for the showhouse. Jenna had done an amazing job. Not only was there Southern pine tongue-and-groove paneling but also ten-foot-tall built-in bookshelves made from the same pine. Most of the shelves were filled with antique leather books. On a few of the shelves Jenna had added things she’d brought down from Enderly’s attic: an ivory bust of Aristotle, an old-world globe, blue-and-white china, carved jade Asian figurines, and similar unusual pieces. Everything melded well in the eclectic room. Exactly what Stanford White might have had in his own library.
Vicki was standing next to the massive fireplace. The clunky chimney piece above the mantel showed a pagan frieze, possibly inspired by Dante’s Inferno. It might be a good idea for Jenna to keep adolescents from viewing the raunchy scene until they at least reached adulthood. Even then, it would be hard to take in without feeling your face heat, as mine had. I glanced over at Jenna, who sat in a tufted leather chair behind a wide bamboo desk, her elbows on the glass top. Her hands were in the air, still covered in dried blood and a sprinkling of sand. Someone must have wisely advised her not to wash her hands until the police arrived. I wondered who.
Kuri and Freya sat on opposite ends of a sofa with pale pastel silk embroidery in a chinoiserie design that featured exotic birds and butterflies. A couple months ago, Jenna and I had taken the Long Island Rail Road from Montauk to Penn Station to visit an exclusive fabric and upholstery shop where they specialized in recreating fabric designs based on old samples. Jenna had brought with her the biggest swatch that the moths in the attic hadn’t gotten to. What I wouldn’t have given to have seen the attic before Jenna went through it. But that was before she came up with the idea for the showhouse and invited me to be one of the participants.
I stopped myself from my décor musings when it hit me that not only was Jenna’s husband dead—murdered—but soon the cocktail invitees would be clamoring at the gates. Elle! She was due any minute. Hurrying to Jenna’s side, I bent and gave her shoulders a hard squeeze.
Jenna looked up at me through teary eyes. “Do you believe this?” she asked, holding her blood-splattered hands toward me. All I could do was nod my head in the negative. She looked so forlorn and alone sitting behind the huge desk. No parents or grandparents. No brothers or sisters. No husband. But she had friends. Elle and I would get her through it.
And then, just as my mind pondered if Nate Klein should be added to Jenna’s list of friends—or lovers?—he walked through the library’s open doorway.
Following, more like lumbering behind Nate, was Chief Pell, dragging a man with him. The chief’s large mitt had a vise-like grip around the man’s wrist. Once inside the room, Pell jerked the man forward, then let go of his arm. The man stumbled, the toe of his black sneaker catching the corner of the Persian rug, and he tumbled to his knees. He kept his head down as if doing penance for a sin.
“Anyone know this guy? Found him crawling through the bushes.” Chief Pell glanced around the room, his eyes stopping on me.
I sheepishly raised by hand.
“Why am I not surprised, Ms. Barrett.” His voice was deep and loud. My hearing aids had no problem picking up his exasperated tone. Having a hearing loss since the age of twelve, I’d made a point of looking for visual clues to a person’s countenance, locked jaw, gritted teeth, pulsing vein at the temple—Chief Pell had them all.
“His name is Frank,” I answered. “He’s part of the paranormal investigating team that’s been hanging around Enderly Hall.”
“I see. Well, we didn’t see any team out there. Only him. I need to go to the scene and meet the CSIs.” He reached into his trench coat, which must have been purchased at a big and tall menswear store, withdrew a small steno pad and flipped through it. “I’d like him to stay here, just in case this death turns out to be suspicious. The same goes for everyone in this room. Including you, Nate.”
So, Chief Pell and Nate Klein were on a first-name basis. Good, that might help Jenna, because as I was watching the chief in action, knowing Roland had died by strangulation, not an innocent fall from a cliff, I gleaned that the dead man’s widow, the one with blood on her hands, would be Suffolk County’s top suspect.
Jenna might have cowered when Pell walked in, but Vicki wasn’t put off by the hulking chief. “For God’s sake!” she said in disgust at Frank’s appearance, “don’t let him sit on any of the furniture in here.” She pointed across the room. “There. Have him sit on those library steps.”
The chief scowled down at Frank, who was still sitting on the floor. “You heard her.”
Keeping his head to the floor, the ghosthunter crawled over to the wooden steps on wheels and sat on the top step. All he needed was a dunce hat. I felt sorry for his degradation. Chief Pell was playing the bully card, something he was an expert at.
Looking down at a notepad, the chief asked, “Is there a Mrs. Cahill here? Jenna Cahill?”
Jenna jumped up so fast her desk chair flew back. It landed with a thud that made her yelp. I put my arm around her shoulder, knowing that Chief Pell was the type of man who could easily intimidate her. But not me. I said firmly, “Jenna goes by her maiden name, Eastman.”
The chief strode over to the desk, his gaze zeroing in on Jenna’s hands. “Ms. Barrett, step away from Ms. Eastman immediately.” I obeyed his command and skulked back to the sofa. After I sat between Freya and Kuri, we all watched Chief Pell withdraw a couple of plastic bags and twist ties from his jacket pocket and place them on the desk in front of Jenna. He instructed her to hold out her hands, then he bagged and tied them at the wrist. He answered her raw sobs with, “My apologies. We must preserve any evidence until we know what we’re dealing with.”
Jenna opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Tears fell freely over her high cheekbones and landed on the desk’s glass top.
“Is that really necessary?” I called out, giving the chief my best evil eye.
“Yes, Ms. Barrett, it is. I thought your father was on the job. You’d think he’d have taught you a thing or two.”
Now he’d done it. Nobody disses my father. “While you’re at it,” I said, “why don’t you collect Jenna’s tears for a DNA sample? Can’t you call in someone to process her now? Give her the dignity of letting her wash her hands?”
The chief glared back, trumping me with his razor-sharp, almost black penetrating eyes and blinkless stare. I stared back. Due to his size, I let him win.
For now.
“Ms
. Eastman,” Chief Pell said in a slightly softer voice as he loomed over her, “I have here that you’re the one who found your husband’s body?”
I had to give it one more try. “I’m sure she’ll show you where, as long as I can come along with her for support?”
“Not happening, Ms. Barrett.” He glanced around the room, nodding his head in what I thought was appreciation for his surroundings. “Too bad fancy-pants Detective Shoner can’t work this case. It’s right up his alley. Him and his designer suits would fit right in.”
I came to Detective Shoner’s defense. “I heard from his fiancée that Arthur’s been hanging out with the top brass at City Hall. I suppose, if ever you needed a good hand-tailored suit, it would be to wear to those nonstop upper-echelon events he goes to.” Then I made a point of looking down at his scuffed shoes and pants that made it look like he was waiting for the next hurricane to flood Main Street.
His cheeks reddened, then he turned and strode abruptly toward the exit just as newbie Officer Morgana Moss came hurrying in holding two plastic Ziploc bags. One held the fifty-foot white extension cord and the other a cell phone. Roland’s, I assumed.
Lucky for me, Morgana was a friend, the sister-in-law of my Realtor and buddy, Barb Moss.
Morgana gave me a wink and small smile. Then she got on her tiptoes and whispered in the chief’s ear, “The victim was strangled with this cord, then pushed down the steps. The ME said the last text he made from his phone was to his wife.” Morgana knew about my hearing loss and my detecting superpower of reading lips, and she’d positioned herself so that I was in full view of her mouth. Thank you, Officer Moss!
“Change of plans,” Chief Pell said to the room. He placed his hands on his hips, then looked first at Frank the ghosthunter, then me, Vicki, Nate, Jenna and Freya. His sharp hawklike eyes rested on Kuri. “It seems we have a suspicious death on our hands.”
After one collective gasp by everyone but me, he held up one of the bags. It was as if a live, poisonous albino snake was inside. “Does anyone recognize this extension cord?”
This time, I waited a couple of beats, then reluctantly raised my hand. “It looks like the one I used at the pavilion for the fairy lights.”
He lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “Fairy lights?”
I searched my mind for the right words that wouldn’t give me away for being at the crime scene only minutes before. “I’m only guessing it’s the same, because a little while ago when glancing toward the pavilion, I saw the lights on the potted trees weren’t lit. It’s hard to find an outdoor cord in white that’s fifty feet long. I had to special order it from Hank’s Hardware. I’m sure I have the receipt somewhere.” I exhaled, then sunk back into the sofa, nestled between Kuri and Freya.
Chief Pell rolled his muddy brown eyes, then moved toward the door leading to the main hallway. “Okay, Ms. Barrett, I give. Enough prattling. Officer Moss, please keep everyone inside this room. I want a statement from each one of them, a recorded statement.” He narrowed his eyes at me and added, “Starting with Ms. Barrett.”
He paused for a moment under the threshold to the open doorway, his six-foot-five frame filling the space. I didn’t realize that I’d been grinning at the thought of him having to duck his way around Shepherds Cottage, perhaps bumping his thick head a few times on a low beam or two.
My smile faded when the chief said, “What’s so funny, Ms. Barrett? I don’t think Mrs. Cahill, I mean Eastman, thinks this is a laughing matter. Maybe you better go back to her side, she looks like she’s about to faint.”
I glanced over at Jenna and felt pinpricks of heat from the Barrett blotches as they traveled their way up my neck to my cheeks. The first time I’d met Chief Pell, he’d been professional and caring. As time went on, something changed. Perhaps the fact that since he’d been made chief, there’d been a few too many murders in the Hamptons, all solved under the auspices of Elle’s fiancé, Detective Arthur Shoner, Pell’s archnemesis.
Waiting until the chief exited, I went over to Jenna. She looked at me, her eyes wide and filled with fear, as if finally registering what had just happened. “Does he think I killed Roland?” she asked with a whimper.
I didn’t want to lie, but before I could form my words, Jenna crumpled to the rug. Nate bounded toward us, elbowed me out of the way, then got on his knees and cradled her in his arms.
That answered the question about Nate and Jenna’s relationship.
Chapter 14
Lucky me. I was the first one to be interviewed by Morgana. Unlike Chief Pell, there was real empathy in her eyes as she talked in a soothing, neutral tone. Her questions were the same ones my father might have asked in a murder investigation.
One by one, the rest of the room went to sit in a chair next to Morgana by the fireplace, where a crackling fire illuminated the room in a cozy glow. Outside the mullioned windows, twilight descended. We could have been recreating a scene from a Dicken’s novel. Too bad another scene came to mind—the one of Roland Cahill’s corpse and the bloody rocks beneath his head.
I wasn’t sure if the position of the chair Morgana had placed next to her was planned or serendipitous. Either way, it made it easy for me to read the lips of everyone being questioned. I was also able to gauge everyone’s body movements, searching for a tell that might show me they were lying. Looking for visual clues was something that came easy. Once again, thanks to my hearing loss.
Morgana didn’t ask anyone, including me, if they had an alibi. She wisely knew we would have to wait until the ME came back with the time of death.
There was one thing I’d learned from reading Jenna’s and Vicki’s lips. They lied about their current relationship with Roland, making it sound like they were on the best of terms. Freya was a conundrum, being a consummate television interviewer on her Hamptons Home and Garden show. I was surprised by the tremor in her left knee. A nervous tic? I would bet she was hiding something. Nate’s interview was short. He even took it upon himself to get up from his chair while Morgana was in midsentence. Kuri was the only straight shooter; she told Morgana exactly what she thought of Roland Cahill. And I admired her for it.
The last person to be interviewed was Frank the PI—not as in private eye, as in paranormal investigator. I didn’t need to read Frank’s lips because he’d spoken in a loud voice, saying he was going to sue the police department for harassment, apparently taking out on Morgana what he couldn’t on Chief Pell, even leaning in with fists clenched and a large vein bulging from his temple that looked ready to burst. “How many times do I have to tell you!” he growled. “I was looking for my phone. I dropped it yesterday. Call Mac Zagan, he’ll tell you what happened.”
Morgana was new at the cop thing, and I saw her experience a fleeting loss of control as she pulled back from Frank. I got up from the sofa and went over to them. In a low voice I said, “I can vouch for him. He was here yesterday. He dropped something near the interior fencing. But wasn’t it an EVP machine you dropped?”
“Yeah. Yeah, the BVP, that too.” He looked at me. “Did you see my phone?”
“Uh, no.”
Frank turned to Morgana. “Told you. She was there. She’s my witness as to why I’m here. Plus, we’re allowed to be on the grounds. I had a talk with the owner. He said we could be here. She”—he pointed up at me—“and the rest of these hoity-toity people in this room will also be a witness to the police brutality I just endured by that bully chief of yours. I’ll be calling my lawyer.”
I wasn’t about to give the ghosthunter an alibi. I just wanted to let Morgana know that he had been on the grounds. “Just because I said you had a reason to be here doesn’t put you in the clear. I’d be careful of what you are threatening, Mr. uh . . .”
“Holden,” he answered in a more subdued tone.
“What’s a BVP or EVP?” Morgana asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Electronic Voice Phenomena machine,” I offered. “It catches spirits’ voices.”
“E-V-P,” she r
epeated with a smile on her lips, then jotted down the information.
Like me, it seemed Officer Morgana Moss was a nonbeliever. I went back to the sofa. Just as I was about to sit, I felt the phone in my dress pocket vibrate, telling me I had a text. I doubted it was from Cole, and even if it was, I’d never read it. I felt my cheeks heat and told myself I wouldn’t even go there. I slipped the phone out of the pocket of my dress, then sat back on the sofa, quickly glancing down at the text. It was from Elle. Arthur just called. Said someone died. Jenna? Did he kill her? I’m outside the gates with Patrick and Ashley. They won’t let us in!
I texted back, Roland C murdered. Will call when home. Then I put my phone away.
“What are we supposed to do now, Officer?” Vicki asked, looking into a small compact mirror as she applied another layer of pink lipstick to her already pink lips. After smacking them together a few times, then blotting them with a tissue from her small evening bag, she continued, “Can we go? Will we still be able to open the showhouse in the morning? I know Roland would want us to continue with our plans. Not the cocktail party, of course. I suppose that wouldn’t be advisable and would be a tad uncouth.”
Jenna, who up until now had been in an almost catatonic state, shouted, “Victoria Fortune! Didn’t you hear Chief Pell? How can you be so callous? Of course we won’t be open tomorrow. Your former stepfather is dead. Murdered. Have some decency.”
Go, Jenna, I thought.
Nate went to Jenna’s side.
I watched Vicki follow him with her eyes, then she burst into tears. Crocodile tears. “You’re so right, Jenna-a-a. It never crossed my mind that he was murdered. I thought maybe he hung himself with that extension cord because of the argument you had with him last night.” Fake sob. Fake sob. “What a loss.”
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