Major Vices
Page 14
“Goodness,” moaned Vivvie, “that policeman seems awfully excited! Do you really think he knows who the killer is?”
Unable to believe in Buck Doerflinger, Judith shrugged. “He may,” she allowed. “At least he could be on the right track.”
Vivvie Rush led the way into the garage. Judith and Renie dutifully followed, with Jill bringing up the rear.
“There,” said Vivvie, pointing a stubby finger at the old calendar. “The safe’s under that.”
Briefly, Judith wished she hadn’t offered her safecracking services. It had been quite different to open Dan’s safe at the restaurant. She’d known his so-called lucky numbers and had rightly figured he would use them as a combination. The only trick had been to determine the order. That, and a lot of patience. She approached Uncle Boo’s safe with considerable trepidation.
“You know,” she said in an apologetic tone, “I shouldn’t make promises. This might be harder than you’d think. We could start with Uncle Boo’s birthday, since we know the date.”
“Yes, yes,” enthused Vivvie. “What a good idea!”
Judith didn’t agree, but was honor-bound to give it a try. Resignedly, she removed the calendar from the rusty nail that held it in place. With her ear to the safe, she touched the dial. The steel door swung free.
The safe was already open, and the Major jewels were gone.
Holly bent over her mother-in-law’s inert form and pulled the stopper from a bottle of smelling salts. Vivvie twitched, shuddered, and choked.
“Oh! That’s nasty!” she cried, waving away the offending restorative.
“You fainted!” Holly exclaimed, her own hands now shaking and her legs unsteady. “What happened? Jill ran to tell me you passed out from shock!”
Judith and Renie were struggling to get Vivvie on her feet. The older woman had collapsed between the wall and the running board of the Rolls-Royce. Lifting her was like coping with a lead-filled Kewpie doll, but the cousins managed to prop her up against the car. Judith explained what had caused Vivvie to keel over.
A flush crossed Holly’s delicate features. “Oh, no! A jewel thief! And a murderer! It’s impossible!”
Jill had returned to the garage, too, with her father and Buck Doerflinger in tow. Jill was white around the lips; Buck was trying to disguise his dismay.
Derek Rush, however, showed concern only for his mother. “Are you all right? Should we call a doctor?”
Vivvie shook her head. “It’s…all so…upsetting! First poor Boo! Now the jewels! What next?” With her plump shoulders resting on the Rolls’s gleaming exterior, she cast a blue-eyed challenge at Buck. “How could you let a robbery occur while you were in this very house? Someone should write a letter to the Mayor!”
Moving gingerly so as to avoid further blemishes on his white suit, Buck Doerflinger went to examine the safe. A hush fell over the garage as he took his time.
“Picked clean. Anybody touch this?” he asked, jerking a thumb in the direction of the open safe.
Weakly, Judith lifted a hand. “I did. Barely.”
Buck faced Judith, feet splayed, fists on hips. His white eyebrows quivered; the barrel chest seemed to vibrate under the now-limp dress shirt. “Why?” The single word echoed off the garage walls.
She offered him her most innocent expression. “I was trying to open it, at Aunt Vivvie’s request.”
He continued to try to stare her down. “You answer a lot of requests, lady. What are you, a troubleshooter—or just plain trouble?”
Judith’s innocence was replaced by impatience. “Look, I had three other people with me. They’ll all tell you that the safe was already open. I probably wouldn’t have managed it on my own, but I felt an obligation to give it a try.”
Buck’s sneer wasn’t reassuring. He stepped to the inside door of the garage and called to Officer Rigby for reinforcements. “Get out of here,” he ordered the onlookers, waving his arms to shoo them away. “We’ve got work to do. We may have apprehended the murderer, but that doesn’t make him a thief, too.”
Derek and Holly supported Vivvie between them; an unusually somber Jill followed her family out of the garage. Renie followed Jill, but Judith trailed. She couldn’t resist asking Buck Doerflinger a pointed question:
“On what evidence are you arresting Weed Wakefield?”
Buck bristled. “How do you know we’re arresting him?”
Judith tried not to gnash her teeth. “That’s what it sounds like, from what you said in the den a few minutes ago. You also said that the TV carton was evidence. How can that be?”
From deep in his throat, Buck chuckled richly. “Police work is pretty complicated, Mrs. McMonigle. You probably watch a lot of movies and television where detectives go around matching lipstick on cigarette butts and finding pads of paper with impressions of telephone numbers written on a sheet of paper that’s been torn off. Let me tell you, in real life it doesn’t work that way. We homicide detectives have to take those bits and pieces for what they are, and then use our God-given ingenuity. That’s what makes for an airtight conviction and gets cops like me commendations from City Hall.”
Judith appeared to be mesmerized by Buck’s little speech. “Gosh, that’s fascinating!” She stepped aside as Officer Rigby appeared. “You solved this case with a cardboard box! I’m…amazed!”
Briefly, Buck looked as though he doubted Judith’s sincerity. But his oversized ego finally conquered his common sense, and he bestowed a patronizing smile on her. “It wasn’t that hard. You got a locked room, you got a dead body, you got a big box. How did the killer do it? Easy. You ask a lot of questions. You find out who was where when. Which of the suspects was the only one not to show up at the door to the den? That Wakefield clown, that’s who. So what happened? He locks himself inside the den with the victim, shoots him, and hides in the carton. Nobody thinks to look, and he scoots out while everybody’s waiting in the living room for the police to show up. Clever, huh? But not clever enough for Buck Doerflinger!”
The detective seemed to swell before Judith’s eyes. He savored the moment of triumph, then scowled. “Now run along, lady. You’ve had your lesson in detection today from the master!”
With a murmur of appreciation, Judith wandered into the entry hall, looking for Renie, who had disappeared with the others. The door to the den was still closed. Presumably Officer Foster was keeping Weed Wakefield under lock and key. Judith heard voices in the living room, but a quick glance told her Renie had not joined the others.
A hissing sound emanated from the opposite direction. Through the dining room, Judith saw her cousin’s head poke around the kitchen door.
“Pssst!” Renie gestured with a finger.
Judith hurried to join her. “What’s up?”
“Me, officially.” Renie pointed to the teapot-shaped clock above the sink. “It’s ten o’clock. I came out to get more coffee.”
Judith gave her cousin a sickly smile. Renie hated rising early, and usually her brain didn’t function very well before ten. But this morning, at Major Manor, she had come alive as soon as her feet hit the floor. Renie claimed that if the weather was fogged in, her brain was not.
“Ordinarily,” she further elucidated, pouring coffee for Judith and herself, “I love fog. It obliterates everything else, and gets my creative juices going. Bill says it’s because fog is like an eraser—it wipes the canvas clean, visually and psychologically. He says there are no distractions; thus I’m able to—” Noting Judith’s glum expression, Renie broke off. “Hey, what’s wrong, coz? You look crappy.”
“It’s Buck,” Judith said flatly. She explained the detective’s solution of the case.
Renie gaped. “That’s crazy,” she said.
Judith arched her eyebrows at Renie. “Is it?” She heaved a gusty sigh. “Sure, it sounds crazy. But it is possible. There’s even a certain logic to it. The problem is that I can’t figure out a better solution. I’m afraid Buck Doerflinger may be right. Damn! Joe will pitch a fit!”
“Boo’s mother must have been quite a seamstress,” Judith remarked, still sounding disheartened. “I suppose it was her hobby.”
“The old girl had to do something,” Renie replied, more interested in the emerging view than the attic’s contents. “You know, if they finished the attic off, they could see all over the place, just like when the house was built. Look, there’s the bay! We may get out of here in an hour or two.”
Judith glanced halfheartedly through the mullioned window, then resumed leaning against the tongue-and-groove hemlock paneling. “Maybe. Just because the fog lifts doesn’t mean the ice will melt. The outside thermometer still registered under thirty degrees just before we sneaked up here.”
“The sun’s burning the fog off,” Renie countered. “It’ll warm up everything. Hey, coz,” she went on in a coaxing voice, “cheer up. It’s not your fault Buck Doerflinger did his job. Joe can’t blame you for being here, either. The murderer is caught, everybody’s safe, and we can go home. Relax!”
The attic smelled of camphor and, more faintly, of decay. Treading quietly as well as cautiously, Judith started down the narrow stairs. “Yeah, right, sure,” she answered somewhat testily. “But I don’t feel right about any of this. Maybe I’m mad at Joe because he didn’t take the trouble to fix breakfast for my guests. Maybe I’m mad at Buck because he’s more brilliant than I thought. Maybe I’m mad at me because I missed…the obvious.”
The cousins had come out at the far end of the second floor, across the hall from the door to the kitchen back stairs and next to the bedroom that had been occupied by Holly and Derek Rush. Pausing, Judith gently pushed the door open. As she had guessed, the room was empty.
“Isn’t Buck famous for taking the obvious route?” Renie inquired as the cousins gazed around the bedroom with its maple-wood furniture and jonquil wallpaper. There was virtually no sign of the Rushes. Apparently the dutiful Holly had made the bed and done whatever tidying up had been required.
Judith nodded. “That’s right. And sometimes it backfires on him. He’s lucky, though. Joe says Buck often blunders his way to success. I’m afraid this may be one of those times.”
Quietly, Judith closed the door. On a whim, she peeked into the opposite room, where Jill Rush had slept. “That’s odd,” she remarked.
Craning her neck around Judith’s shoulder, Renie also peered into the bedroom. The furniture was pine; the walls sported lacy green leaves. “Jill didn’t make her bed,” Renie noted. “But isn’t that Zoe’s job?”
“That’s not what I mean,” Judith responded, moving aside so Renie could get a better look. “Clothes. Didn’t you notice that Jill had changed this morning? Oh, Aunt Toadie had brought along her party dress for last night, but none of the rest of us had extra outfits. So why was Jill prepared to spend the night?”
Sure enough, Renie saw Jill’s outfit of the previous evening hanging in the closet. So were two pairs of slacks, three blouses, a couple of tailored shirts, a slim wool skirt, and a terry-cloth robe. Judith pointed to the empty box by the side of the bed.
“Isn’t that the box Holly carried in last night?”
Renie stared. “Could be. Seen one box, seen ’em all. Unless,” she added swiftly, “there’s a murderer hiding inside.”
Judith gave her cousin a dirty look. “Very funny.” Stifling her annoyance, she went to the bed and looked inside the box. Two pairs of shoes lay there, along with a long gold chain. “No wonder that box was so heavy,” Judith mused. “Jill brought along enough stuff for a week’s stay. I wonder why.”
“She’s really a meteorologist and knew we’d get stuck?” Seeing Judith’s annoyance resurface, Renie put up her hands. “Okay, okay—I don’t know. Let me guess. One, Jill intended to stay, for reasons we can’t fathom. Two, Jill was planning to spend the night somewhere else. Or three, Jill expected Trixie to steal the clothes off her back.”
Judith shook her head. “Not just the night. She brought enough clothes for several days.”
Renie shrugged. “So what? The case is closed. Maybe Jill was going to move in on Uncle Boo and suck up. You know, to keep him from leaving everything to Toadie and Trixie. An end run, as it were.”
“That’s more like it,” Judith replied, her spirits perking up. “Come on, let’s talk to Jill.”
Renie hurried along behind Judith, outdistanced as usual by her cousin’s longer strides. “Hey, wait, coz! I just said this case is closed. Didn’t you hear me?”
At the top of the main staircase, Judith turned, a smug expression on her oval face. “I heard you—twice. I also heard Buck Doerflinger. You’re both wrong. This case is still wide open.”
Judith raced down the stairs. Renie followed, looking baffled. At that moment a helicopter landed on the lawn of Major Manor.
Everyone seemed to have crowded into the kitchen. The back door was open, and the whirr of the helicopter stopped as the cousins joined the others. In answer to Judith’s question about what was going on, Jill shrugged.
“It’s one of those flying ambulances. Somebody must have called them by mistake.” She went over to the sink and poured herself a glass of water.
It was not, however, a mistake. A moment later, Trixie was heard squealing with pleasure: “Mason! He’s here! Oh, how divine!”
Sure enough, Mason Meade was returning to Major Manor. Exercising great care, the attendants lifted Mason’s litter out of the helicopter and carried him across the frosty grass to the back porch. Everyone but Trixie stepped aside to allow the patient’s passage through the narrow rear entrance. Slipping and sliding on the slick back porch, Trixie greeted Mason effusively. At last the litter was brought into the entry hall. Trixie was still cooing over her beloved, who appeared to be bandaged from head to toe.
“Where do ya want him?” one of the attendants asked.
Trixie tapped her front teeth with her finger. “Oh—the master bedroom, for now.” She shot Judith and Renie a swift, faintly malicious look. “You are leaving soon, aren’t you?”
“You bet we are,” Renie retorted, then turned to the attendants. “What’s it like out there in the rest of the world?”
“Tricky, at least around here,” the other attendant replied. “We lucked out with the fog. It’s cleared off at Bayview Hospital, but Heraldsgate Hill and The Bluff are still pretty bad. At first we thought we might have to land over at the playfield, four blocks down.”
Derek had moved to block the main staircase. “Just a moment, gentlemen. Why are you here at all?” His cold gaze lighted briefly on Trixie.
On the litter, Mason raised his bandaged head. “I hate hospitals. I insisted on being discharged.”
The explanation didn’t satisfy Derek Rush. “Then you should have been sent home, not here. This isn’t a convalescent center, it’s Major Manor, and,” he added with a touch of spite, “now that Uncle Boo is dead, it’s mine.”
Aunt Toadie, who had been standing near the coat closet, flew across the entry hall. “That’s a lie! You don’t own this house, Derek, you miserable egg-sucking leech! I do!”
Gazing down at Toadie’s irate form, Derek sneered. “You’re wrong, Aunt Toadie. Go get Uncle Boo’s will.”
Toadie, who was practically standing on Derek’s shoes, thrust her jaw up at him and snarled. “Go get it yourself! Meanwhile, if my daughter wants to put her fiancé in the master bedroom, that’s what she’s going to do! Get out of the way before I have the police move you bodily!”
Under the living room arch, Zoe let out a piercing laugh. All eyes turned to the maid, who assumed her typically languid pose.
“If you b
unch of crooks want to read the will, why don’t you go look for it?” With a feather duster, she gestured around the corner toward the den. “Of course, you’ll have to get the cops to release my parents first. They’re still holed up in there.”
As if on cue, the three Rushes, along with Toadie and Trixie, charged the den. The attendants from the helicopter exchanged glances, then began trundling Mason Meade into the living room.
“To hell with it,” the first attendant shouted. “We’re getting out of here while there’s still a weather window.” He and his companion dumped Mason on the sofa. Taking the litter with them, they made their exit. Mason Meade moaned pitiably.
Zoe ignored the patient, but Judith couldn’t help but be moved. She went into the living room and asked him if he needed anything.
“I could use a drink,” he said in a feeble voice.
Hedging, Judith asked Mason if he was on medication. He asserted that the only medicine that would do him any good was a slug of scotch. Meanwhile, Renie was going through the manila envelope that had been attached to the litter.
“I’m no nurse,” she said, “but it looks as if you’re on some heavy-duty painkillers. Percodan, for one. I’d skip the booze if I were you.”
Mason began to whine, but Renie turned her back on him. “I’ll make you a cup of tea,” she volunteered.
Since Zoe was still cleaning the living room, Mason wouldn’t be totally abandoned if Judith defected, too. Off the entry hall, the family members were stuffed into the little passageway that led to the den, still shouting, still pounding on the door. Officer Foster surrendered just as Judith was about to ask Jill what, if anything, was happening.
Harangued by Aunt Toadie and browbeaten by Derek, Foster finally gave in and agreed to vacate the den with his prisoner. Or, it appeared to Judith, prisoners, since Mrs. Wakefield was under escort along with her husband. While Weed looked unaffected by his detention, his wife took her stand in the entry hall.
“This is all ridiculous!” she declared, her chunky figure and pugnacious expression making her look not unlike an indignant bulldog. “If you people want lunch, you’ll have to spring me! And unless you want to freeze to death, Weed has to go check on the furnace.”