by Mary Daheim
“So? Maybe it fell in Boo’s lap and the medics carried it off with him. Maybe he’d finished it. Maybe you’re wacky.”
But Judith was still looking pleased with herself. “None of the above, coz—I’m willing to bet on it. Boo had come in here to smoke his cigar, which means he didn’t light up until after nine-oh-one. How long does it take to smoke one of those big long things? Forever, it seems to me, and I ought to know, because Joe likes to make Hillside Manor smell like a saloon every weekend. Remember all those ashes? They were on the floor, on the desk, even in Uncle Boo’s brandy snifter. Why?” She sat back in the chair and gave Renie a knowing look. “Because the cigar blew up, that’s why. And now we know what made the other noise.”
Still smarting from Judith’s theory about the exploding cigar, Renie impatiently jiggled her foot as she waited for the outcome of her cousin’s latest experiment. Judith was miming a fall forward on the desk. First she fell headlong, facedown on the blotter. Then she turned slightly in the chair and landed on her cheek.
“What do you think?” she asked Renie.
“I think,” Renie said, glancing at her watch, “it’s almost three-thirty. Oatmeal cookies don’t fill me up and I’m starved.”
“Nothing fills you up,” Judith replied, her enthusiasm dampened by Renie’s skepticism. “This is important. If I were shot in the back of the head, I’d collapse face-forward. But if I turned, I’d land on the side of my head, like Uncle Boo did. Now why would I move in the chair?”
“Gosh, I don’t know,” Renie responded in mock stupidity. “As far as I could tell, Uncle Boo didn’t move, ever. Maybe somebody put a bomb under him. Or an exploding cigar.”
“Coz, you’re being a dork,” Judith said, her exasperation mounting. “First my husband, then my mother, now you. Stop bugging me. I’m trying to be logical about this, and I think I’ve finally hit on the answer.”
Heedless of the desk’s well-kept finish, Renie put her feet up. “Fine, okay, let’s have it.” Her round face was resigned.
Judith pretended Renie wasn’t being a pill. “Something made Boo turn his head. Otherwise he wouldn’t have fallen on the desk the way he did. That’s bothered me all along. I kept picturing him as we found him, then I listened to how Buck Doerflinger described the alleged shooting by Weed Wakefield, and it didn’t quite jell. The angle was all wrong. Why would Weed come around to the side of the desk and shoot Boo? Why not straight on, standing across from the desk? And even if Weed did do what Buck said, Boo would have turned to look at a man with a gun in his hand.”
Judith stopped and swiveled around in the chair. “We got misled by that Will Rogers book. Yes, it contained one of the wills, but that wasn’t why it was on the floor.” She paused to remove the volume from the middle shelf. “It fell on the floor because it was pushed there by the killer.”
Renie was still wearing a leery expression. “Pushed, or tossed?”
“Pushed.” Judith was very firm. Renie’s face showed a trifle more interest, especially when Judith got out of the chair and began to pull out more books. Seconds later, she uttered a cry of glee: “I thought so! There’s a hole in the back of the bookcase!”
At last Renie succumbed to her cousin’s excitement. Swinging her legs onto the floor, she jumped out of the chair and raced around the desk to join Judith. “You mean…” Shoulder to shoulder, the cousins peered into the four-inch hole. Judith reached through the wall, touching brick a foot or more away.
“You see?” she breathed, her black eyes sparkling with the thrill of logical deduction. “There’s no inner wall. It’s been removed for the masonry work. I realized that after the fact. Weed had complained about rewiring the downstairs stove. He said it was hard to do because of the insulation in the wall between the galley and the saloon. I forget exactly how he put it, but the implication dawned on me later. The inner wall was a problem compared to—what? The outer wall, of course.”
Having bought into Judith’s mental machinations, Renie tried to make sense out of them. “The walls between the exterior brick and the actual rooms had to be pulled for the masonry work, right?” She saw Judith give an eager nod. “The insulation goes, too, which explains why this house is so blasted cold.”
“Right,” Judith replied. “I finally stumbled onto that when Jill mentioned the present brickwork and the future roof repair. She said she’d wait on the roof—the house was cold enough already because the insulation had been removed for the masonry work on the outer walls.” Judith’s excitement was mounting. “If we go outside, we’ll find that there are a few bricks which can be removed, too. That’s how Uncle Boo was killed in a locked room. He was shot from outside, not inside. Oh, coz, isn’t that better than a box?”
“Not for Uncle Boo,” Renie replied dryly. But she clapped Judith on the arm. “Forgive me. I’ve been a fool.” Her face was wreathed in mock chagrin.
“Come on,” said Judith, still exhilarated by her discovery. “Let’s go check those bricks.”
But in the hallway, they were both suddenly aware of how empty the house felt. “Where’s Jill?” asked Judith. “She’s been gone a long time. She should be back by now.”
They called for Jill all over the main floor; they ran upstairs and looked for her there; they went to the servants’ quarters, but found the basement deserted. Judith and Renie both felt uneasy. Too much had happened at Major Manor to take Jill’s tardy return lightly.
“Maybe,” Renie suggested, “that old crone up the street refused to let her use the phone. She might have gone searching for another neighbor.”
Judith had already checked her watch. It was almost a quarter to four. Jill had been gone for at least forty minutes. Nor was there any sign of the police.
“Let’s go look for her,” Judith urged. “We’d better get the keys. I don’t want to leave this place unlocked.”
Taking the ring from the peg in the kitchen, the cousins hurried out the back door. They practically ran across the street and up the block to the brick rambler. The severe-faced woman who answered the door looked as if the cousins had brought plague to her threshold.
“I’ve lived here for thirty-two years,” she declared. “I’ve never had a bit of trouble until today. If I have one more of you troublesome people ring my bell, I’m getting a restraining order. It’s harassment, and that’s not allowed on The Bluff.”
Judith had intended to try tact, but Renie didn’t give her the opportunity. “Look, kiddo,” she said, putting a foot in the door, “we’re dealing with life and death here, and we’ve already had two of the latter and not much fun out of the former. Have you seen Mrs. Major in the last half hour?”
Briefly, the woman looked startled, then resumed her formidable air. “She called herself that, but I knew Mrs. Major and she’s been dead for three years. I don’t know who that young trollop is, but I did the right thing and called the police for her, and then I summoned a taxi, too. She’s been gone for at least a quarter of an hour. I say good riddance, and the same to you!” Giving Renie a firm shove, she slammed the door.
Staggering against Judith, Renie swore. “Butt-face! She could have broken my toe!”
“Well, she didn’t,” Judith replied absently. “Damn! Now Jill’s run out on us! Not that I blame her—she’s still a kid in a lot of ways.”
“She’s a kid with a billion bucks,” Renie muttered, examining her shoes. “She can afford taxis and changes of clothes and medical care. I’ve got a dent in my Dexters.”
Judith glanced at Renie’s feet. “They look okay to me. Come on, let’s go.”
“Right,” said Renie. “The tow truck should be along in a few minutes.”
“We’ll just have time to check that outer wall,” Judith noted as they started back down the street. “Am I dreaming, or do we have a reason for the masons getting fired?”
Renie almost stumbled in her reaction to Judith’s query. “You mean…Toadie? That’s too good to be true. Besides, didn’t we figure she was t
rying to finagle a contract for Trixie’s fiancé?”
“Toadie denies it. But since when did she always tell the truth?” Judith arched her eyebrows.
Renie’s smile was almost blissful. “That would be perfect. Aunt Toadie in the dock. Aunt Toadie in chains. Aunt Toadie doing life while breaking up large concrete boulders.” Renie’s smile evaporated. “Poor Uncle Corky! Poor family! Poor us! I keep forgetting we’re related.”
Judith didn’t seem perturbed. “Uncle Corky might like it. He’d only have to see her on visiting days. It’d be cheaper than having to go off on safari or sign up for Arctic explorations or fly to the moon. Too bad we can’t figure out a way to nail Trixie, too. If she’s not in prison, she might still show up for Christmas Eve.”
They had reached Judith’s car. Across the street, Major Manor looked lonely in the late afternoon sun. Above the crenellations of the triple garage, the leaded-glass bedroom windows on the second story wore a forsaken air.
“If Jill remarried and had a family,” Judith remarked, “this place could—”
The sound of a siren interrupted her speculations. The cousins hurried across the street to the front of the house. A patrol car was pulling up. Judith and Renie waited until the officer emerged.
Githa Lagerquist was very large, very tall, and very blond. She swaggered up the brick stairs, eyeing the cousins with suspicion.
“Which one of you is Mrs. Major?” she demanded in a husky voice.
“Neither,” answered Judith in a strange squeak. “Mrs. Major left.”
Officer Lagerquist first scrutinized Judith and Renie, then surveyed the house. “Where’s the body?” she demanded.
Wordlessly, the cousins led her to the lily pond. The corpse still bobbed among the greenery. The policewoman stood at the edge of the pond for a full minute, studying the scene.
“You know him?” she asked.
Judith and Renie said they didn’t. Lagerquist nodded abruptly, then marched up the flagstone steps. At the top, she whirled on the cousins. “I think I do. You two go in the house. This is a job for Homicide. I’m calling Detective Joe Flynn.”
SIXTEEN
THE COUSINS FOUND the liquor. Judith poured herself a scotch and handed a Canadian whiskey to Renie. By the time Githa Lagerquist returned from her patrol car, they were seated in the living room, looking decorous and feeling awful.
“I should explain—” Judith began, but Lagerquist cut her short.
“Later. I’ll wait outside for Flynn and the ambulance. I just wanted to make sure you two weren’t going anywhere.”
“But—” Judith started anew.
“Later, I said.” Lagerquist gazed around the long living room. “Nice place. Rich people. Trouble. Flynn’ll like this. He knows how to handle your kind.” The policewoman swaggered from the living room and, presumably, out of the house.
Judith leaned back against the sofa pillows. “Drat! I’m about to be interrogated by my own husband! What next, they hire Bill as their consulting psychologist to see if we’re crazy?”
Renie brightened. “Not a bad idea. He could use the retainer fee. When all this is over, we’ll talk.”
Judith checked the time. “It is over. It’s five after four, and my guests will be arriving at any minute—if they aren’t there already. Mother won’t let them in, but if she does, she’ll frisk them for drugs and weapons. She’ll serve them green baloney for hors d’oeuvres and Milk of Magnesia cocktails. Sweetums will puke on their luggage. I’ll lose my rating in the guidebooks. Hillside Manor will be closed by the Health Department or the bed-and-breakfast state association or the CIA, whichever catches on to me first. I’ll end up selling the furniture in a garage sale where people come and haggle over whether or not they want to pay four dollars for Grandma Grover’s handmade comforters. And Aunt Toadie will show up and say that Grandma used the pink elephant motif on the kids’ quilts because she was a dipso and that’s all she ever saw—”
“Stop!” yelled Renie. “When Joe gets here, have him call back to headquarters to alert the Porters or the Steins or the Ericsons. They can get the key from your mother and let the guests in. Heck, Corinne Dooley might be back from the ski trip by now. Stop fussing.”
But Judith couldn’t help it. Her earlier triumph of figuring out how the murder had been committed was obliterated by her concern for Hillside Manor. Unlike her husband, Judith wasn’t a detective. She was in the hostelry business, and her dereliction from duty plagued her.
To divert Judith, Renie asked a simple question: “How come Joe’s been called in?”
Judith, who had been taking a long pull on her scotch, eyed Renie quizzically. “How come? Well, he works Homicide.”
“But we don’t know this is a homicide,” Renie answered in a reasonable tone. “Haven’t we—Jill included—tossed around the idea of an accident connected with the lousy weather?”
Judith set her glass down on the uncluttered ebony coffee table. Unlike the cherry-wood model which sat between the matching sofas in the living room of Hillside Manor, it held no stacks of magazines, newspapers, travel brochures, ashtrays, or candy dishes. The sole adornment was a polar bear carved from cream-colored ivory. Judith figured it had come from Alaska, courtesy of Dunlop Major.
“You’re right,” she said in wonder. “Why Joe? Why Homicide? Hmmmm.”
Renie affected an innocent air. “Joe’s on a special assignment, right? Why haul him over here? I mean, doesn’t it seem sort of strange?”
Judith’s mouth widened into a smile of sorts. “Oh, coz, I think you’re onto something! Now I’m the one who’s being dense!” She leaped up from the sofa and began to pace. “That car! The one we saw being towed away earlier this afternoon—it belonged to the city! And the Mayor’s missing cousin was a building inspector! It all makes perfect sense!” She stopped smiling and turned grim. “Ugh, that means that the guy in the pond is…well, maybe not.”
“Does it mean you know who did it?” asked Renie hopefully.
Judith flopped back down on the sofa. “I never claimed I did. At the time, it seemed enough to know how it was done. I still haven’t any idea who…” Her voice trailed off as Githa Lagerquist came into the living room with Joe Flynn and a half-dozen other people.
“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” said Joe, coming over to the sofa and giving Judith a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. No gold flecks danced in his green eyes.
“Mush,” said Judith, ignoring the warning signs in Joe’s manner. “Mother served them mush and it’s all your fault.”
“What’s wrong with mush?” he asked, stung by her reception.
“What next, milk toast?” She sounded testy. “Mother’s idea of hors d’oeuvres is a bowl of gummy bears. As for you, lending a hand is a big burden.”
“So I tell the Mayor I can’t come to work because my little pigs aren’t sizzling yet?” He was keeping a tight rein on his temper, but the effort was causing him to hiss. “You married a barkeep the first time. Why didn’t you try for a chef on this go-around? Better yet, a bellboy who could run around Hillside Manor in one of those little caps and funny suits with all the brass buttons!”
Judith crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin. “Sounds good. I could put one of those suits on Sweetums. He’d be about as much help as you and Mother.”
Githa Lagerquist was aghast, but she tried not to show it. “Sir,” she said in her husky voice, “do you know the suspect?”
Joe gave Lagerquist an enigmatic smile. “Only in the biblical sense. Otherwise she’s a mystery to me.”
Judith bridled at the comment, then flushed. “Actually, Officer, Detective Flynn is my—”
But Githa Lagerquist raised a large, well-manicured hand. “Please. Spare me the seamy details. Sir,” she went on, addressing Joe, “the body is in the lily pond. I merely wanted to make sure the suspects hadn’t left the premises.”
Glancing at the highball glasses, Joe chuckled, a curiously mirthless sound. “
Don’t worry, they won’t leave until they’ve finished their drinks. If you feed the little one, she’ll follow you anywhere.” Dutifully, he let Lagerquist lead him and the others outside.
Renie sulked into her highball glass. “Joe makes me sound like a hog. I’ll bet he ate more than creamed chicken for lunch.”
Judith only half-heard her cousin’s comment. “He’s being a selfish jerk,” she asserted, then tried to put aside her pique. “Do you remember how long that building inspector’s been missing?”
Renie didn’t. “You’re the one who talked to Joe about his assignment. How would I know?”
“I thought he might have mentioned it this morning when you spoke to him on the phone.” Judith frowned, trying to recall Joe’s account of the Mayor’s missing cousin. “I think he must have disappeared Thursday. I seem to remember Joe saying something about usually waiting forty-eight hours to start looking for a missing person, but they started the search sooner because he was related to the Mayor.”
“We don’t know for sure that it’s the Mayor’s cousin out in the pond. Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?” Renie asked.
Judith wasn’t inclined to argue. “Maybe. You got any better ideas?”
Having already exhausted other possibilities, Renie didn’t. The cousins sat in silence for several minutes until Judith grew impatient. She got up and went to the long window that looked out over the front lawn. From that angle she could see nothing of the sunken garden or the lily pond. Nor was there any sign of Joe, Githa Lagerquist, or the other emergency personnel.
With a determined step, Judith crossed the room to the smaller window next to the marble fireplace. The AAA tow truck hadn’t arrived yet. It was almost four-twenty.
“Damn!” she cried. “Now I’m really screwed! I wish I’d never let Aunt Toadie talk me into doing this job in the first place! It’s been one disaster after another!”