by Joan Hess
Instead of mentioning the murder, I said, “Don’t let me keep you from your guests.”
“No, that’s okay. So why didn’t you come home yesterday morning? Did Caron and Inez get carried away by an eagle?”
“I believe it was a great horned owl. I’ll tell you about the rest of it when I get back.” I hung up the receiver and ordered myself not to envision Peter’s teammates, one of whom surely looked like a distaff version of Anders—right down to the little bitty shorts. It was possible Peter and I had been fantasizing about the same thing at the same time.
I bought a can of soda and was sitting in my car, staring bleakly at the windshield, when Sid Gallinago pulled up beside me.
“Hey, Claire,” he said, “what’re you doing?”
I doubted he wanted to hear the ugly truth, so rather than announce that I was in the throes of petulance, I said, “I came to get a soda.”
“I heard about your adventures last night. If Agatha Anne had been the one to find the body, she’d still be squealing like a stuck pig. She can play rough when it comes to protecting her damn birds, but she sure as hell couldn’t have handled that.”
It occurred to me that Agatha Anne was at the Dunling Foundation office and I was in the presence of the person who best knew Dick Cissel. I smiled modestly. “We do what we must. I’m surprised you’re not on the golf course today, Sid. Sunday afternoon, not too hot, blue sky.”
“I played eighteen this morning,” he said, mimicking my modest smile. “You want to come over and have a drink?”
“What a wonderful idea,” I said.
His smile vanished and he gave me a somber look. “Thanks, Claire. There’s something I want to discuss with you. I’m really worried about Dick, but not the same way Agatha Anne and the others are. I’m starting to wonder if he really is implicated in Becca’s death.”
9
The Gallinagos’ house, like the Gordons’, was familiar, but only because I’d driven down the road on several occasions. The house was built with the same materials as most of the others: native rock, redwood, and glass. I parked and followed Sid inside. The living-room decor was a profusive jumble of corals and fuchsias and other subtle designer colors with exotic names. It was the perfect roost for Agatha Anne, who undoubtedly had a closet filled with clothes chosen to coordinate with the upholstery.
I opted for iced tea. Sid supplied it, as well as a beer for himself, then sat across from me. “I’ve known Dick for thirty years. We were roommates at the Kappa Sig house all through school. Opening a practice together seemed natural, even though Dick had to twist my arm to get me to specialize in pedodontics. We got married the same year, bought houses in the same neighborhood, and joined the same country club when the practice began to thrive.”
“And later bought lake houses only a few miles apart. Do your boats match?”
“We don’t go around town holding hands,” he said, giving me a narrow look. “Dick plays a lot of tennis and racquetball; I play golf every spare moment. Agatha Anne and Jan were friendly, but Jan was a little too shy to keep up with the country club matrons and their incessant golf and tennis tournaments, charity affairs, luncheons, and so on. She always looked uncomfortable at cocktail parties. We used to tease her about the number of times she called home to speak to the babysitter.” He put down his drink and rose. “Let me see if I can find something,” he said as he left the room. A minute later he returned with a framed photograph and handed it to me. “This is of the four of us on a vacation in St. Croix about ten years ago.”
They were standing in front of a row of bright flowers, with palm trees towering behind them. Jan was attractive in a puppyish way, with cropped dark hair, a large and noticeably sunburned nose, and a strained smile. Her sundress emphasized her thick waist and freckled arms. Sunglasses hid her eyes, but I had an idea they would have been lowered. Sid wore a gaudy shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sandals. He held up a drink festooned with fruit and a pink paper umbrella; his grin was lopsided and his eyes unfocused. Dick and Agatha Anne could have graced the cover of People magazine, all tanned and sleek, toasting the camera with glasses of champagne. He wore white shorts and a shirt emblazoned with an animal. Agatha Anne’s starchy white tennis dress brushed the top of her thighs, and a fuzzy yellow sweater hung around her shoulders. Her wristbands and socks were yellow. I wouldn’t have been astounded to see a yellow tennis racquet in the background.
I studied Jan’s expression for a minute, then handed back the photograph. “You look as though you were having fun,” I said.
“Yeah, there’s a great golf course down there, as long as you don’t mind playing around the cows in the middle of the fairways. And watching your step.”
I wasn’t interested in the golf course or its pedestrian perils. “You said you wanted to talk about Dick, Sid. I can’t stay too long. Captain Gannet may show up, and he won’t be pleased to find me here.”
“Because of what happened to Bubo Limpkin last night?”
I nodded. “Gannet’s interested in everyone’s whereabouts last night between sunset and midnight. I’m afraid it may be a formality. He seems to be concentrating on Dick—as usual.” I paused delicately, but Sid failed to volunteer the pertinent information. “Someone mentioned that Agatha Anne and Georgiana were at the foundation office. Did they work all night?”
“I don’t know what time they quit. I made myself dinner, watched a couple of videocassettes, and went to bed at eleven or so. My golf date was at seven this morning. I wanted to be at my best so I could get back some of the money I lost last week. I ended up three over par, and it would have been two if I hadn’t screwed up on seventeen. That damn putt cost me fifty dollars.”
“About Dick?” I persisted.
Sid pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. Looking unhappy, he said, “I don’t know what Dick’s told you, but there’s a reason why Gannet keeps pestering Dick about Becca’s accident. I keep telling Dick to be straight with Gannet. He won’t do it, and sooner or later Gannet’s going to find some hard evidence and Dick will find himself facing a jury. You’ve dealt with this before, Claire. Lying to the police makes you look guilty as sin.”
“Is that all Dick’s guilty of—lying to the police?”
He went from unhappy to utterly miserable. “I wish I knew. He’s so damn stubborn that he won’t even tell me what went on that night. Gannet claims that Dick’s Rover was parked near the marina, which means Dick could have gone down to the boat and loosened a fitting to create a slow leak. Dick insists he wasn’t there, that he and his Rover were in Farberville.”
“Gannet said he had a witness,” I admitted. “He wouldn’t say who it was, though.”
“He hasn’t told Dick, either. What I haven’t told anyone until now is that I was worried about Dick after he stormed out of the party, announcing to one and all that he was returning to Farberville. He’d had several drinks and he stumbled over the mat as he left. When Agatha Anne and I got back here maybe an hour and a half later, I called to make sure he’d gotten home okay. Nobody answered. I tried again an hour later, and there was still no answer. I was damn glad to hear his voice the next morning.”
“Did you ask him where he’d been the night before?”
“He said he was asleep and didn’t hear the phone. Kind of hard to believe that, isn’t it?”
“There are a lot of things that are hard to believe,” I said under my breath, then added, “You saw Dick every day at the office and out here on weekends. Did you get the idea he and Becca were having marital problems?”
He went into the kitchen and returned with another beer. Resuming his seat, he said, “No, Dick never said anything to me. He’s a great guy and my best friend, but we’ve never confided in each other the way women do. He’s always been reserved, even back when we were chugging beer at the frat house and telling lies about the sorority girls. He was on scholarship. I used to wonder if that made him uncomfortable.”
“What did you think ab
out Becca?”
“She was a great gal,” he said. “I dated a few lookers in my day, and most of them were pretty damn snooty. Becca was a knockout, but she was more interested in the people around her than she was in checking her lipstick in the mirror. The first year they were married, she’d come by the office a couple of times a week with freshly baked cookies. She made sure all our staff received flowers on their birthdays. When our grandson was born, she sent him an antique silver christening cup and a teddy bear three times bigger than he was. When Agatha Anne’s father passed away unexpectedly, Becca took charge of the telephone and flower deliveries and stuff like that. Afterward she helped Agatha Anne sort through her father’s things and decide how to dispose of them.”
I warned myself to keep a civil tongue, but a wee bit of irritation may have crept into my voice. “I’ve already heard how relentlessly perfect she was, Sid—but no one ever is. She was a mortal, just like the rest of us. The night before she died she was slinging quiche, for pity’s sake. I’d make a lot more progress if one person would give me a realistic assessment of Becca. Do you know why she came to Turnstone Lake with the Gordons?”
“They said she was an old friend,” he said uneasily, as if I’d dropped a labyrinthine essay question into the middle of a true-false test. “I seem to recall Agatha Anne saying that Marilyn was depressed about her mother’s mental deterioration and was having a hard time coping, so Becca volunteered to stay and help out.”
That was one interpretation, and certainly a popular one. Then again, Sid remained uneasy, which suited me fine. I sipped my drink and let him stew for a long moment, then said, “But you didn’t believe she was quite so perfect, did you?”
“I’m a pedodontist, not a psychologist—but no, I didn’t. She never once flirted with any of the men, or even gazed suggestively. As far as I know, Agatha Anne’s faithful, but she can’t control herself when she looks at the golf pro or even our own Anders. Georgiana’s the same way. She can be sobbing about Barry one minute and panting over some virile young man the next. Becca acted like a virgin who’d been raised in a convent—voluntarily.”
“So what did you think that indicated?”
“I never could decide if she was genuinely uninterested or if she was putting on an act. She must have known that all she had to do was wink and she could have had any man in the room.”
“She didn’t waste much time after Jan died,” I pointed out politely. “She and Dick were married within a few months, weren’t they?”
He started to speak, then closed his mouth and mulled over what amounted to an accusation. I suspected he’d been more intrigued with Becca’s physical demeanor than with her behavior in matters that did not directly involve particular areas of his anatomy. Testosterone can have that impact on the male brain.
“Well,” he said at last, clearly struggling for the right words, “that just kind of happened, you know? Dick and Jillian were both zombies. Becca made an effort to do everything she could for them, but she didn’t intrude like you’re implying. She’d drop by with food and discreetly clean the house while they ate. After a month, she coerced Jillian into driving into town a couple of times a week to shop and have lunch. Every now and then she called me to suggest I invite Dick to play golf. She wasn’t stalking him; she was just being thoughtful.”
And I was a strong contender for the Republican nomination for the presidency. “But four months, Sid? That’s hardly enough time to work through grief, especially if he was as overwhelmed as you’ve said he was. Then again, he bounced right back after Becca’s death, didn’t he? Three months later he was picking up women at the bank. He’s either as resilient as a new tennis ball or is putting on his own little act.”
Sid stood up. “I think you’d better leave.” Rather than angered, he seemed shaken and deeply disturbed. He went to the window to stare at the lake, his hands clenched behind his back, his neck muscles tensed, his jaw quivering.
I let myself out and drove back toward Dick’s house and Dunling Lodge, trying to filter out the facts from Sid’s romanticized version of the story. Very little of what I’d heard from him—or from anyone else—was based on facts. Everyone seemed determined to live in a gilded fairy tale in which all motives were pure, all actions uncalculated. Becca, I thought with a sigh, must have felt as though she were conning a kindergarten class. First Marilyn at the airport, visibly in need of a firm hand and a sympathetic ear. Scottie, as easily flattered as a beauty contestant. Jan, timidly hovering at the edge of the social circle. Agatha Anne and Georgiana, eager to add recruits to the cause—especially when the recruit met their fashion criterion. Jillian, dumpy and plain, dazzled by that same criterion. Dick, immobilized with grief. Anders, an enthusiastic womanizer who lived in a conveniently remote area.
I stopped in the middle of the road as I replayed Anders’s remarks about the day of the accident. I’d asked ever so casually if Becca had been at his trailer. He’d replied that he couldn’t remember, but had added with preciseness that Agatha Anne and Georgiana had been there and stayed until dark, discussing the release date of a red-tailed hawk. He had a curiously selective memory. Surely Gannet had questioned everyone remotely connected with the deceased woman, tracking her movements prior to the accident, demanding details. He would have done so the next morning, if not that same evening, and he would not have accepted such a casual answer.
Anders had lied to me, and behind his dismissive “of that I am not sure” was deliberation. The only incentive for lying was to hide something, and the obvious something was an affair. Becca had a superficially virtuous reason for her trips to the trailer. With the windows open, she and Anders could hear a car or truck grinding down the hill several minutes before its arrival. Anyone approaching from the rear would set off an avian alarm system more effective than a siren.
I came to an unpleasant realization. If Dick suspected as much, he had yet another motive for murder. Anders lacked one. I’d caught him in a clench with Agatha Anne, who might have been jealous. Blowing up Becca and the boat seemed a bit extreme, however, and apt to discourage the resumption of an amorous relationship. And she’d dutifully reported the propane leak hours before the accident. As a would-be assassin, she had a lot to learn.
This not-all-that-improbable affair could explain a lot of minor mysteries. Said topic could have caused the fight at the cocktail party, if either Becca or Anders had done something indiscreet that confirmed Dick’s suspicions. I’d seen no symptoms that he was a violently possessive man, but I didn’t know him well and nothing to provoke such an emotion had taken place during my visits. Luanne sure as hell wasn’t going to pass along any insights. If Dick had snapped, he could have done exactly what Gannet had suggested: tamper with the propane line, fake the report, and later silence Bubo, who was a logical contender for the unidentified witness.
The tea in my stomach seemed to curdle as I considered how neatly it all fit together. The only puzzle that remained was the identity of the vile sneak who’d pushed me into the lake. Luanne had said that Dick called her at eleven-thirty. She may have been blinded by passion, but I doubted she was unable to tell time—or tell the truth. Turnstone Lake was a vast puddle of many thousand acres, and Dick would have needed time to take his boat to its far end and find a telephone.
A car sped around the corner, braked abruptly, lurched toward the ditch, and skidded to a stop inches from my bumper. Gannet’s face was visible for a moment before dust drifted down, coating both our windshields like a lacy brown blanket. A car door slammed, footsteps crunched the rocks, and my door was yanked open.
“I thought I told you to stay at Cissel’s house,” Gannet said with what I felt was inordinate exasperation.
“I was on my way back there, Captain Gannet. I needed to make a long-distance call, so I went to use the phone at the convenience store. You really shouldn’t drive so recklessly on these narrow roads. It’s bad for your blood pressure.”
He ignored my solicitude. “I need
you to follow me to the sheriff’s office. I’ve arrested Cissel for murder, and now it’s time for formal statements from all the witnesses. You, Mrs. Malloy, are at the top of the list. I hope you take that as a compliment.”
“Why did you arrest him?”
“Because he’s guilty. We went down to Horseshoe Bend Marina, where he left his boat last night. The engine had recovered miraculously and started right up. Unless the elves worked on it in the dark hours of the morning, there was never anything wrong with it. Cissel claimed to be baffled. He claims to be baffled about a lot of other things, too, like why his car was seen at Blackburn Creek and why there was a phone call made from his house in town to the lake house.”
“Was he home at the pertinent time?”
Gannet glowered down at me, huffing and puffing as though he’d like to blow my car into a tree. “I’m not in the mood to stand in the middle of the road and answer your questions. You can follow me voluntarily, or I can charge you as a material witness and give you a lift in the backseat of my car. You may not like it. A couple of days ago I took in an old geezer who vomited all over the floor. I haven’t had time to clean it up.”
I wasn’t finished. “Dick Cissel is not a stupid person. He must have known you’d examine the boat. Why would he lie about something so easy to disprove?”
Captain Gannet declined to answer my astute question and repeated the two options. He sounded belligerent enough to stuff me into his trunk as if I were a sack of laundry, so I agreed to follow him in my own car. He failed to express gratitude for my cooperation, but he was not in an appreciably courteous mood. Nor did he take my advice about his driving.
The sheriff’s office was located in a small town twenty or so miles away. Gannet had disappeared inside before I’d found a place to park among the official vehicles and the pickup trucks, all of which sported militant NRA bumper stickers. Landscaping consisted of eroded asphalt, beer cans, and weeds alongside the building. I had a foreboding feeling that it was not my kind of place.