by Karen Pullen
“How far would she take that?” Anselmo asked. “Any incidents or threats?”
Mike frowned. “When Justine and I were first dating, Gia got a little crazy. She followed us to Justine’s apartment and tried to break in. I stopped her, and after that she left Justine alone, far as I know.” He paused and looked away. “I have a request. Find the person who did this. Then step aside.” He smacked his thick fist into his other hand.
Anselmo and I shared a glance. His eyes were flecked with green, not as black as I’d first thought. “That’s all we need right now. If you think of anything?” He handed Mike his business card.
Mike left through the French doors that led onto the patio and sank onto a chair. His mother leaned down to him, her hand on his shoulder, her big brown hat hiding their faces.
I turned back to Anselmo. “Was he telling the truth?”
“A good actor, if he wasn’t.”
There were seven inn guests still to question. Anselmo told the Embers—the couple with the little girl in a wheelchair—that they could leave, and they’d be interviewed another time. Tricia and Scoop Scott, Mike’s mother and her husband, were also allowed to depart as they had to prepare for a conference in Colorado where Tricia was speaking. They agreed to be accessible by phone, and to be interviewed as soon as they returned on Thursday.
The evidence team wanted time with Anselmo, so I left them and sat down in the parlor to talk with Mike’s step-uncle and his wife. Webster and Delia Scott came into the parlor, Delia all a-wobble, glass in hand, Webster gripping her upper arm firmly. They fell back onto a black and blue plaid loveseat.
Web Scott was about six feet tall, like his brother Scoop, but better looking. For one thing, Web had no hair, which sounds like a negative until you saw Scoop’s comb-over. Web’s head appeared to be shaved, and he wore a high-maintenance goatee, a precision stripe of beard that outlined his chin. Delia had the physical symptoms of a lush—a pretty face spoiled by puffiness and dry reddish skin, swollen liver pushing out above her waistline, a tic-like pursing of her lips.
I asked Delia how well she knew the bride. She leaned close and grabbed my arm. “Well enough, my dear.” Her breath was richly foul. She leaned further and I held her up. “Did you know, I nearly killed her once?”
Before I could ask how, when, and why, Webster eased her back into the sofa. “Please excuse Delia, she overdoes it a little now and then,” he said, showing me a mouth full of big shiny white teeth. “How do you do, I’m Webster Scott, the groom’s uncle. I hear you’re a famous investigator.” He took my outstretched hand in both of his and leaned so close I could smell him. He smelled like gin.
I twisted free of his grasp and flashed my ID at him. “Not famous. Actually I’m an SBI Agent, out of the Raleigh Field Office.”
“Any openings for financial officers?” He laughed as if he were joking.
“We’re unemployed,” said Delia. She upended her glass and drained it, then shook it, tinkling the ice cubes. “Booted out. Golden parachute and all that.” Webster gave his wife a look but she wasn’t noticing. She went on, “We live in Southport now. S’okay, we play a lot of golf.”
“And we love it there, Agent Lavender,” Webster said, absorbed in a study of my sweetheart neckline.
Not to be dragged off-topic, I asked, “Mrs. Scott, you said you nearly killed her once?”
“A bad moment,” Delia said. “Never mind me.” She met my gaze with bleary eyes. She shook her head in a conspiratorial way. Web continued to shine his teeth at me in a way that must have made his face hurt. I had the impression Delia would prefer to speak to me privately.
I asked them to tell me about Mike and Justine’s relationship.
Webster’s smile dimmed by a few lumens. “That boy was sure smitten! You couldn’t get him off her with a crowbar. He was obsessed. She had this little purry whisper . . .” He shook his head, seeming to express sadness at the loss of her purr.
Delia slowly leaned back and turned her head to look at her husband. “ ‘Bewitching’ is the word you used, darlin’.” She put her glass down and nodded. “S’empty.”
The ball was in Webster’s court. His smile vanished. “Charming young lady. Such a tragedy.What else can we help you with?”
Hmmm. I couldn’t wait to get Delia alone. Maybe I could buy her a drink, soon. I dismissed them, and asked Wyatt to bring me the best man, Gregor McMahon.
Gregor McMahon was furry. He had thick black hair, a mustache, and a mat of hair covering his hands. Eyebrows crawled like caterpillars across his brow, tufts sprouted from his ears, and a few stray wisps grew on the bridge of his nose. He wore a thick white cervical collar, yet still his head was tilted, his shoulders rigid.
Gregor McMahon, unlike Webster Scott, made no effort to be charming. He was stern and officious, reminding me of my eleventh-grade chemistry teacher. In a blink I was smelling chalk dust. On a hunch, I asked, “Are you a teacher, Mr. McMahon?”
He nodded by jerking his torso up and down. “I teach part-time at Gardner University,” he said. “I’m an economic analyst.”
“What does an economic analyst do?” I knew the words but not the meaning. To me, “economic analysis” meant figuring how much I could afford to pay each month on my credit card bill. Never enough, on a state salary.
He pursed his lips and frowned at me as if assessing my intelligence. A tsunami of high school déjà vu swept over me. “Cost benefit, risk analysis, decision support,” he said. “Aren’t we here to talk about Justine?”
“How long have you known her?”
“I met her only once, six months ago, on the worst day of my life.” His face grew somber and he closed his eyes. “The day my wife died.”
His wife died on the day he met Justine? A coincidence? I don’t believe in them. Though it was nearly six o’clock, and I was famished, I leaned back. I had plenty of time to hear about his dead wife.
“It was a fraternity alum get-together at Lake Crabtree. Emma didn’t really want to go. She had severe allergies and needed to avoid bug bites and even too much sun. Well, to make it short, something—an insect bite or sting—triggered a deadly attack. Her throat closed up and she suffocated within minutes.” He sounded matter-of-fact but his face was blotchy-red and his hands gripped the chair arms so hard his fingers were white. “It was my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“She always carried epinephrine in the car. But the car was locked and I couldn’t find my keys. I should have broken into the car faster but I didn’t know she was so ill. The reaction was so severe, so quick.”
Gregor’s face was stony, his voice strangled and flat. I almost forgave him for his fur and arrogance. This man was hurting, now and forever.
“I never met Justine again, until last night. Mike tried to get us together but I haven’t been very social since Emma died. What actually happened to Justine, do you know?” He raised his woolly eyebrows. “You’re a cop, right? You wouldn’t be talking to me if she died of natural causes.”
“I don’t know. The medical examiner will have to tell us.”
“Do you have a suspect? Be sure you look at Mike’s step-dad.” Gregor didn’t even smile. “He wants you to think he’s so righteous.”
My turn to raise eyebrows.
He shrugged. “Hearsay. I’m just saying . . . I know how you people work. It’s a suggestion.You can follow up.”
I wanted to snarl back at him, “you people?” I wrote down his contact information and let him go. In spite of the sympathy I felt, the pompous man grated on me. He was wound tighter than a Slinky. He harbored secrets, I’d bet my dog on it.
By eight o’clock, the evidence team and most of the guests were gone. A few diehards remained under the dining tent, prolonging the drama. Kate urged us to eat, so Anselmo, Hogan, and I each put together a plate of leftovers from the buffet. Hogan’s was piled with salad, Anselmo’s with beef and pasta. I had a bit of everything. Carefully I carried my heaping plate to the inn
’s dining room where the three of us were going to meet.
“Hungry, Stella?” Hogan said. He was an obsessively cautious eater, a food-label reader, a fat-gram counter. I, on the other hand, considered dieting only when I couldn’t zip my jeans. Since I dumped him (as I prefer to think of our breakup) he hadn’t been cooking for me anymore, and yes, I’d put on a few pounds. Nothing you would notice unless you saw me trying to zip up.
I dipped half a spring roll into a sweet-and-sour sauce. As we munched in silence, I thought about Anselmo’s investigation. As soon as the toxicologist and medical examiner gave him something to work with, he could start. Until then, we could only surmise. Between bites, I asked, “Why kill a bride just before the wedding?”
“An ex-boyfriend,” said Anselmo.
“Or girlfriend,” I said, thinking of Gia in the straw hat.
“But someone else might want to stop it,” said Hogan. “A family member.”
“There would be plenty of time to do that, long before the wedding day,” Anselmo said.
I tore a piece of rosemary focaccia and dipped it into olive oil. “Unless the killer didn’t have an opportunity. Maybe he or she was from out of town.”
“Or,” said Anselmo, “something happened at the last minute.”
“What could that be?” I said. “No one’s mentioned anything unusual. Family dinner last night, this morning everyone’s getting ready.”
“Something from her past, maybe,” Hogan said. He’d finished every scrap of salad and eyed my two remaining spring rolls. I forked one onto his plate. “Thanks,” he said. “What about the inn staff? They’d have opportunity.”
“The innkeeper Wyatt was worried about sabotage,” I said. “He said this death was an attempt to close him down.”
“It could have been an accident,” said Anselmo. “Perhaps she was not the intended victim. We’ll know more in a day or two.”
I thought about the bitter-smelling tea in Justine’s mug. And the timing—right before the ceremony—seemed choreographed for maximum effect. But Anselmo was right, we didn’t know enough.
Hogan looked at his list. “So what’s next? Background? Work?
Old boyfriends?”
Anselmo looked at me. “I don’t know. We can’t say for sure it’s a homicide until we get the ME’s report. Probably Monday.”
“Any useful evidence?” I asked.
He shook his head. “They took a lot of fingerprints from her room. Stella, are you available? We’ll have to talk to quite a few people.”
I chased a bit of basilly pasta around my plate. “You’ll have to ask my boss. I’m a drug agent these days.” My requests to work homicides had been turned down by Ricardo. His reason—I was too valuable to undercover drug operations around the state. But I wanted to help Anselmo, wanted to be in on it. If Justine had been murdered, the killer was probably someone who’d come to the Castle B&B for her wedding. A finite pool of suspects, each with secret fears, secret desires, somehow tied to the dead bride or her grieving groom. It wouldn’t be easy to identify the killer in that well-dressed, welllawyered pool, but people talked. The tipsy Delia Scott and Mike Olmert’s ex-girlfriend, Gia Mabe—they would be at the top of my list.
I waited while Hogan removed and carefully folded his Porsche’s cover. He rolled down the gravel driveway slowly, so no stray pebble would ding its shiny red paint. When he pulled onto the highway, he was at seventy in a minute. “Mind if I hurry?” he said. “Got plans.”
No doubt he had a date with what’s-her-name and had to get rid of me quickly. A throbbing began behind my eyes and I pressed my lips together so no swear words would slip out. “Where is Candy, anyway?”
“She didn’t want to come. She doesn’t like to eat in front of other people.”
Weird. “You could’ve skipped the dinner.”
“She’s afraid of having her picture taken, and lots of people at weddings carry cameras.”
Oh wow. Candy was a quivering neurotic mess. Oddly, I felt a little better as I mentally took a step away from Hogan and his new gal. “Tell me about Mike Olmert.”
“He’s a Canes fan. An outdoors type—likes hiking, mountain climbing.”
Hogan wasn’t the most perceptive of men but I tried anyway. “Is he controlling? Is he critical or romantic or private? Can you trust him with a secret?”
“Whoa, Stella. One at a time. He’s not controlling. The opposite. He’s good at calming down a situation. Critical? Sometimes, in a subtle way. He’s very principled, did he tell you? He usually mentions it. He has high standards and most people disappoint him. What else?”
“Do you know Gia Mabe? She sat next to me while we were waiting for the wedding to begin.”
“Yeah. She’s a little—” he pointed at his head and twirled his finger.
“How so?”
“She and Mike dated for a year. They were always together, then he broke it off. She was too needy or something. I don’t really remember. Anyway, she just harassed the hell out of him for a while. It’s odd she was at the wedding.” He slipped the Porsche around a slow-moving truck loaded with pine tree trunks, casualties of the latest McMansion building spree, and we flew down the highway into Verwood.
I remembered what I had to ask Hogan. “Gregor McMahon was telling me about the day his wife died. Were you there? A picnic at Lake Crabtree, six months ago?”
“It was a nightmare. An insect sting, they thought. She went into shock so quickly.”
“And Justine, you met her too?”
“For the first time. Did he tell you Mike proposed to Justine that day? They went for a canoe ride and she came back with this huge rock on her hand. They were both over the top, until Emma died. Man, a day like that you can’t forget. Horrible day to get engaged.”
“What was Justine like?” I wanted to replace the image of a convulsed corpse with something more human.
He grinned. “Hot. Too gorgeous to be real. Like a super-model.”
I was taken aback. “Really?”
“Candy told me Justine was pretty fake. She’d had implants and fake nails and hair extensions. I guess women can spot that kind of thing. Me, I just thought ‘Wow.’ All the guys thought Mike was lucky.”
So. Justine was so fake that even Candy, Hogan’s uber-slut, recognized it, but he just didn’t care. This exchange did little to enhance my opinion of Hogan, so easily swayed by silicone and batting eyelashes.
He stopped his Porsche in front of my house. “Can I come in, say hello to the pup?” He wanted to visit Merle, a yellow hound of the mutt breed, subject of a bitter custody dispute. Hogan had finally settled for the forty-two-inch plasma-screen TV and the promise of visitation.
“Sure,” I said. “Just don’t take him with you. I need something warm at night.”
My neighbor Saffron looked up from her weeding and waved at the two of us. I waved back and scooted inside before she could trap me for another weepy episode of her divorce saga. Merle greeted us at the front door, tail a-wagging, whimpering ecstatically at the sight of Hogan.
I slipped my shoes off and went in my bedroom to change into running clothes. I had stripped to my underpants and was searching for a sports bra when my bedroom door opened and I heard Hogan say, “I’ve missed this view.” I turned around to see him leaning in the doorway watching me.
“You should knock.” I pulled on a tee-shirt. “What, Candy doesn’t have tits?”
“She’s, uh, more athletic.”
“You get to choose. Curves or muscles. Fat or flat.”
“You’re not fat, Stella.”
“I thought you had plans?” I was confused and more than a little angry. He should have known I was hurting. Did he want me back? Did I want him back? Did I want to dig around in his email trash and obsess over his Internet history?
“I’ll cancel them if you say so.”
He stepped toward me and slipped a hand under my tee-shirt, gently touching the small of my back. The heat of his hand started a m
eltdown. He kissed me and, surprised, I let him. When I came up for air, I removed his hands from my waist and looked into his eyes. “What’s this about?”
“The way you looked in that dress, Stella. I couldn’t help it. I’ve missed our chemistry.”
“How sweet. But you’re a serial cheater, remember? Next time, ask permission.”
“Let’s be polite for Merle’s sake. He shouldn’t see us fighting.”
I pushed him to the door. “Don’t call me,” I said. “I don’t want to hear from you tomorrow.”
“I’ll call if I feel like it.” He got into the Porsche.
I picked up Merle’s paw and waved it. “Say good-bye to Daddy.” Merle whimpered. The Porsche began a rumbly purr, carrying Hogan back to his life with Candy.
Well, that was interesting. He’d stirred up some feelings, surely, but the ripples would die down eventually. Better a placid serenity than the whirlpool he’d created when he left. I didn’t want to go through that again.
I knelt and let Merle slobber my face. “You’re much better than any old boyfriend,” I told him. “Trainable. Not afraid of commitment. Wanna go for a run?”
I loved my tiny house, a rented refuge where the neighbors were law-abiding. I wished I could afford to buy it but real estate values in Verwood had crept above the buying power of a state employee’s paycheck. The rooms were cozy—or cramped, depending on your point of view—and furnished with thrift-shop finds covered with sheets so Merle could sleep anywhere he wanted to. Fern’s paintings enlivened the sterile white walls. She painted what she loved—cows grazing, ducks on a pond, the roses climbing her front porch. Her paintings compensated for the dust bunny conclaves.There wasn’t much point in cleaning for myself, when myself was never there.
Not bothering to stretch, I grabbed my headphones and jogged a half-mile to the high school track. I huffed and I puffed, Merle ran circles around me, and we called it done after eight revolutions, ten songs starting with Hootie and the Blowfish and ending with Squirrel Nut Zippers.
Walking home, I took off the headphones and thought about the next few days. Either tomorrow or Monday, the coroner would autopsy Justine’s body and take samples from blood, urine, stomach, brain, liver, kidney, hair.The toxicologists would fire up their machines, prepare their solutions, add and subtract, dunk and extract. And give Anselmo Morales an answer. If he wanted my help, he’d call the SBI on Tuesday, perhaps. I’d have to wait two days, maybe three.