by JOAN HESSS
It was time to bell the cat, or at least inquire about its alibi. I turned to leave, but was suddenly aware of a prickly sensation between my shoulder blades, as though I were being tickled with a live wire. The birds had been twittering mindlessly during my visit; now they were quiet. A dry stick cracked like a finger snapping, but I could not pinpoint the direction of the sound. The sense of furtive scrutiny grew stronger and stronger, until the clearing seemed claustrophobic, the tangled undergrowth ominous.
I stared around, undoubtedly looking like a caged beast. Bella had been in the garden; had she crept up to spy on me? Or had someone followed me from the boathouse, someone who remained hidden and watchful? Unlike hardy heroines of fiction, I did not feel a swoon coming on, nor did I toy with the idea of a whining demand to know who was there.
I squared my shoulders, assumed a disdainful expression, and headed for the path through the garden. Like a sprinter with her shorts on fire, I might add.
SIX
At the edge of the garden next to the lawn, I stumbled to a halt and took a minute to catch my breath. My hair flopped over my forehead; sweat dribbled down my back in salty tears. As I patted myself into shape, I ruefully decided that my semihysterical flight had been just that: semihysterical. In retrospect, and within sight of the house, it seemed foolish at best. Gothic. Dumb, as Caron would undoubtedly giggle if she ever heard about it. The invisible watcher most likely had fur and a bushy tail, or a beak and feathers. On the other hand, talk is cheap after the fact.
Peter was beside the croquet court, watching the snail-like progress of a practice game. I tried to walk past without being noticed, but had no luck. He gave me a smile and said, “Would you like to play? I’ll share my mallet with you.”
“I’m busy,” I snorted, continuing toward the porch.
“Still puzzled by the clues?”
“One or two of them, but I’ll be ready with my solution at dinnertime,” I said. I did slow down, though, and finally stopped to look back at him. “I suppose the great detective from the Farberville CID has solved the murder? Supercop strikes again and all?”
“I have a theory,” he admitted with a self-deprecatory shrug that fooled me not one iota. “Why don’t you practice your form—on the croquet court, of course. The tournament starts at two o’clock.”
“Maybe after lunch, Peter. It takes us mortals longer to solve crimes, and I have a few people to question.” I went on to the dining room to find Bruce.
He was behind the bar, cutting lemons into wedges. His hands worked so quickly that the lemons seemed to disintegrate under a flash of silver. His T-shirt did little to hide the rippling muscles of his back and upper arms, nor his jeans to disguise his gender. The boy oozed virility, sunshine, and, to my regret, youth.
When the bowl was filled, he looked up and said, “How about a Bloody Mary before lunch, Mrs. Malloy? The tabasco sauce is guaranteed to sharpen your wits.”
“Then it had better be pure magic,” I muttered. When the drink was prepared, I sat down at a table near the bar. “Eric said earlier that you’re a temporary employee. What do you do when you’re not juggling olives or making wonderful Bloody Marys?”
“I’m a grad student at Farber College. I’ve been in the Book Depot a few times, but we never spoke,” he said, sounding as if his life were empty because of our ill-fated failure to communicate.
“What’s your major?”
“Theater. I hope to combine my theatrical experience with my magic, and come up with some sort of act that will rival David Copperfield. Until my day comes, I work part-time as almost anything, including party clown, janitor, and bartender. I also chase women, although they’re harder to juggle.” He gave me a broad wink, the meaning of which eluded me.
He was enjoying himself too much and—I suspected—at my expense. I decided to try the blunt ploy. “Had you ever met Miss Price before this weekend, Bruce?”
He picked up the knife and began to slice limes. “No, I saw her yesterday for the first time. What a shame for a woman like that to be hooked up with a slobbering old sot with a penchant for pinches. I saddled my white horse to rescue her from a horrible fate.”
“So you were merely trying to make a pass at her?” I prodded sympathetically. “Sergeant Merrick seemed to accept your story of your actions last night with a grain of disbelief.”
“The full moon, the lusty song of the bullfrogs, the whisper of the breeze in the treetops,” he mused with a grin. “I was drawn by the call of the wild, Mrs. Malloy. Although Miss Price failed to join me, an animal instinct hypnotized me and led me deep into the mysterious forest.”
I lifted my glass in salute to his facile response. “But weren’t you dreadfully scratched by nature’s mysterious thorns, Bruce? There isn’t a path beyond the bungalows; I looked earlier this morning.”
He put his elbows on the bar and cupped his chin in his hands to give me an impish pout. “There isn’t?” When I shook my head, he added, “I must have been confused by the moonlight. I came back past the croquet court and ambled down the road to the gate.”
“Alone?”
“Depressing picture, isn’t it?”
“What time did nature release its hypnotic hold on you?” I asked.
“When the stars lost their sparkle, I went back to my lonely bed above the stables and cried myself to sleep. Must have been about midnight.”
We studied each other for a few minutes, then Bruce went back to his preprandial preparations and I went upstairs to see what Caron was doing, if anything. To my amazement, she was not only awake, but also dressed and sitting tailor-fashion on the bed. As I came in, she waved a piece of paper at me.
“Another clue, Mother. It was pushed under the door this morning while I was asleep. These people have an odd way of communicating, don’t they?”
“Let me see it,” I said, desperate for anything, no matter how small or insignificant. On the paper was typed: “Do we have to pay? you wonder aloud as you seek the answer.” I scowled at the nonsensical words. “What does it mean? Come on, dear, you’re a whiz with the crosswords; figure it out for me, please.”
“How should I know?” She took back the paper to glance it for a second before she let it drift to the floor. “It doesn’t really matter, anyway. It’s no big deal.”
I caught her arm before she could drift away, too. “Listen, Caron, I realize that you have no interest in solving the murder, but it’s important to me.” A vision of Peter’s smile came into my mind, and my fingers involuntarily tightened until Caron winced. I guiltily released her and turned on the deference. “Sorry, dear, but this is vital. Won’t you please study these clues? I’ve never done any of those cryptic crossword puzzles, and I haven’t any idea how to decipher these meaningless sentences.”
Caron studied her reflection in the mirror. “How much?”
This was the weekend we were going to reestablish our relationship? I caught her watching me in the mirror and narrowed my eyes. “Five dollars a clue.”
“Ten—or I’ll take a nap.”
“Seven-fifty or you’ll take a hike, a twenty-mile hike back to Farberville. I’ll personally put in an order for a thunderstorm.”
“Do we include the clue I’ve already solved about the hobo and the boathouse?”
The girl had career potential as a union negotiator for musclebound dockworkers. The diplomatic corps was out of the question; she could provoke World War III in fifteen minutes flat. I gave her a curt nod and my notebook.
Before opening it, she assumed an air of studied casualness and said, “I may have seen something important last night, while you were watching that old movie with everyone.”
“What?” I said, mentally rubbing my hands together in glee.
“I don’t know if it was anything or not, but Peter Rosen seemed excited when I told him.”
“You actually told that man before you told me, your own biological mother, who fed you homemade chicken soup when you had the measles and sat
up all night with you when you found your first pimple? How could you do that—and why him?” Oh, the treachery!
“He asked what I did last night. He was very polite for a policeman, so I told him.”
“And what precisely did you tell this paragon of civility?”
“Well,” she said, lying back on the pillow with her hands entwined behind her neck, “as you know, our room overlooks the lawn and croquet court, not to mention that slime-infested fish pond.”
“I am aware of the window and the pond.”
“Well … I saw someone go across the lawn to the boathouse.”
Bouncing on the bed like a chimpanzee, I shrieked, “Who?”
“It was very dark, Mother. All I saw was blond hair, but I couldn’t see what color clothes or anything like that. The light from the porch just flashed on the hair for a second.”
“You saw a blond-haired person leave the inn during the movie? Heading for the boathouse?”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Mother.”
I flopped down on the other pillow and tried to absorb the new data. Suzetta, on her way to a date with Harmon Crundall, the inn’s most newsworthy corpse. He must have arranged to meet her there, although I had no good explanation why they would choose that place for a romantic interlude—or anything else. I’m a firm believer in comfort over moonlight and redolent breezes. Bedrooms are boring, but also unpopulated by animal life. Adjoining bedrooms are a snap.
From her supine position, Caron opened the notebook and held it above her nose. “The one about the abbreviated problem is obvious. Whoever this blond person may be, he or she is also a private investigator. Personal identity, abbreviated, is ‘P.I.’ Very obvious, Mother.”
Aha, I told myself with a flutter of insight. Suzetta was not a dippy secretary; she was a private investigator hired by—hired by Mimi and Eric! Bella was conducting her own investigation; if she had hired Suzetta, there would be no reason to follow Harmon to the Mimosa Inn. Ergo, Suzetta had taken the job (and the role) in order to thwart Harmon’s scheme to buy the acreage adjoining the Mimosa Inn. She must have been instructed to get the option, at any cost. But why the boathouse?
When I reiterated this to Caron, she was unimpressed. She rescued the paper from the floor, motivated by the thought of hard cash, and read, “‘Do we have to pay? you wonder aloud,’ blah, blah … This one’s simple if you follow the directions, Mother.”
I snatched the paper from her. “What directions?”
“You’re supposed to wonder aloud. Say ‘to pay.’”
I did as ordered, and the third time it came out ‘toupee.’ I whooped and said, “That explains the yellow threads from the scene of the crime. Someone was wearing a toupee, which is the same thing as a wig. That means that the blonde you saw wasn’t Suzetta after all!”
Caron eyed me as though I had sprouted wings and were flopping around the ceiling. “It’s all quite fascinating, Mother, but you’re beginning to foam about the mouth. I’m going downstairs for lunch; you might consider the wisdom of an ice pack or a tranquillizer.”
“Wait a minute—what about this clue?” I demanded, scrambling through the pages to find the one that mentioned the rickety building. “What does this mean?”
Caron read it, then flashed me a sly look. “I have no idea. I’ll think about it over a salad and a diet soda, however. It may come to me.”
While she combed her hair and changed clothes, I pondered my theory. Someone who was not Suzetta (she would have worn a dark wig) slipped away from the drawing room to meet Harmon in the boathouse, and subsequently bashed him on the head with a blunt instrument that was not a canoe paddle.
I found the list of evidence and tried to fit each one into my theory. The burnt paper was Harmon’s option, now a charred pile of ashes that had probably been flushed into eternity. The glass with lipstick on the rim meant that someone had had a drink with Harmon, and neither Eric nor Bruce was indicated. Mimi had gone back upstairs, I remembered, confirming it on my timetable. She had probably convinced Harmon to meet her for an illicit rendezvous, and warned him that they must be out of sight of the inn. Then she had disguised herself with a blond wig and gone to murder him.
Ooh, I loved it! Hugging myself smugly, I moved on to the clump of mud from the bedroom floor. It didn’t fit in as well, so I dismissed it as a red herring. That left the matchbook found in the boathouse. I tried to imagine Mimi asking Harmon to strike a match so that she could take a careful aim in the dark, but that seemed less than credible.
Caron put down her brush and examined herself once more in the mirror. “Are you planning to lie there and gurgle the rest of the afternoon? I’m hungry, Mother.”
“I thought you were on a diet.”
“I need carbohydrates to think. You don’t want me to waste away before I’ve finished with the clues, do you?”
I decided to take a break before returning to my brilliant solution. We went to the dining room, and once again I found myself sitting with Peter and the Oriental Hercule, who was apt to be Dr. Chong Li. To my further dismay, Mrs. Robison-Dewitt joined us minutes later. She snorted under her breath but managed to produce a chilly smile.
While everyone studied the menu, I raised an eyebrow at Peter. “So you made up a little theory about the murder? Do you think it will stand up under scrutiny, or is it just meant to amuse?”
“I see you’ve been talking to Caron,” he said cheerfully and with unnecessary loudness. “Did she tell you about the blonde walking across the croquet court last night during the movie?”
I tried to shush him, but his words had boomed across the room. Now heads were tilted the better to hear us, my dear, and ears were aquiver. Conversations broke off in midword; no menu fluttered, no fork clattered. Silence. I felt as though I were in a television commercial for a certain stock broker.
“I’ll have the chef’s salad and tea!” I trilled gaily. “And lemon mousse for dessert!”
Gradually and with pained reluctance, the people at the other tables returned to their previous occupations, and I gave Peter a frozen look.
“Why did you blurt that out?” I hissed under my breath.
“It slipped out, Claire.”
“It did not have to slip out at two hundred decibels.” I snatched up a menu and yanked it open. Paper-clipped to one corner was another of the damnable clues. I gaped at it, then noticed Peter watching me and forced myself to scan the rest of the menu with great disinterest.
When he grew tired of smiling and looked away, I pulled the paper free and slid it to my lap to open it. It read, “Necessary to serve batter-dipped portion of minced meat, sans time limits.” The daily special? A love letter from the chef? Caron could probably decipher it in half a second, but she was already giving her order to the waiter. I put it in my pocket for a later time.
Mrs. Robison-Dewitt gazed past me at Peter. “A blonde by the croquet court, you said? What time was that?”
Peter gulped as my toe connected with his shin. “I’m not sure,” he said in a strained voice that gave me some satisfaction.
“About ten-thirty,” Caron said absently. She turned to me and said, “Did you find a centipede in your menu, Mother? You almost jumped out of your skin.”
Now I had everyone’s attention again. I made a funny little noise that I hoped would pass for a laugh and said, “No, dear, I simply didn’t realize that spinach quiche was on the menu. Had I noticed earlier, I might have ordered that, rather than a salad.”
It went over like a three-day-old casserole. I smiled brightly until everyone at last admitted defeat and returned to their meals. Peter asked if those present were planning to play in the croquet tournament. Mrs. Robison-Dewitt leaned forward, endangering her cantilevered chest to bob her head in response. The drapery of flesh beneath her chin continued to tremble in the aftermath.
“I understand it is to be conducted with partners,” she said in a honeyed voice. “Have you signed up yet, Mr. Rosen?”
“Only when I know I’ll win,” I said from clenched teeth. Old girls are known for clenched teeth, real or ceramic.
When lunch was finished, Caron announced that the was going to lie out, which I presumed had nothing to do with passing out and let her go. I returned to the room and tried to fit together the various misshapen pieces of the puzzle, and arrived at a solution of sorts. Several pieces were swept under the mental carpet to await a later flash of intuitive brilliance.
Shortly before two o’clock I was feeling satisfied with what I had thus far, although I had made no progress with the message from the chef. I changed into a white sundress and a broad-brimmed straw hat (ambiance), put on my sunglasses (wrinkles), and went downstairs to knock Peter’s croquet ball through a wicket, metaphorically speaking.
Eric had posted the pairings on a wide sheet of paper and drawn a complicated and incomprehensible diagram to indicate who played whom at which round. In a white suit and a bow tie, he looked quite elegant as he gave my dress a wolfish grin.
“You’re dressed for the occasion, Claire. Very appropriate.”
I curtsied and went to find my name on the roster. As Peter had promised, we were destined to be partners, while Mrs. Robison-Dewitt would be forced to struggle with Dr. Chong Li, who was asking Eric to kindly explain the game.
The tournament was not yet under way, so I opted to slip inside for a moment to see if Mimi was about. I found her in the kitchen, sitting on a stool and staring despondently at the empty counter. Her complexion had a waxy cast that would have enchanted Madame Tussaud.
“Mimi?” I said softly from the door.
“Oh, Claire, please come in. I was just trying to decide whether to send Bruce into town again. No matter how many lists I make, I always forget something vital. This time it’s light bulbs and cucumbers.”
“It must be difficult to keep up with all the details.”