by JOAN HESSS
“Of course not, honey. Harmon—well, Harmon was Harmon. When he insisted, we had to let him go ahead with the crazy idea. After all, he was …”
“What happens now?” Mimi wavered. “Now that he’s dead, does that mean that the … ?”
“We’ll have to consult a lawyer, but …”
“Do you think that we can … ?”
Neither seemed capable of completing a sentence. I had to restrain myself from shoving open the door to demand a satisfactory amount of closure, since it might have been misconstrued as snooping. Eavesdroppers have limited rights. I was frantic to know what the obscure references were about, although Harmon’s death seemed the focal point. Something legal, clearly, and under question in light of the current (postmortem) situation.
I realized that the disjointed conversation was over, and that I was apt to be caught in my undignified position if I lingered to brood. I tapped on the door and went in.
“Mimi?” I chirped brightly.
Eric stood in front of the oversized freezer. Despite his attempt to look unconcerned, his eyes flickered with a yellowish fever behind his thick lenses. Across the room, Mimi clutched the edge of the sink, her shoulders hunched and trembling as she gave me a smile intended to convey pleasure at my untimely entrance.
“Claire, I thought you were with Bella. Is there something she needs? Perhaps a pot of tea, or something to eat?”
I told her that Bella was, I hoped, napping for the moment and agreed to take a tray later in the afternoon. After a moment of silence, Eric mumbled something about the guests and abandoned the ship with ratlike haste.
Mimi took a deep breath. “Is there something else, Claire? I was about to see to the dinner menu, and the kitchen help will be here in a minute or two. It seems that murder does not preclude hunger.”
She reminded me of a little girl dressed in her mother’s clothes, although she was hardly tottering on high heels. The violet eyes were wary under the curtain of bangs, and the mouth was set in a stubborn line. I opted for a cautious approach.
“Have you finished with Peter, then? Did he offer any hope that this mess would be settled quickly?”
“No,” she said, “he implied that we were in for a long investigation. He seems to think that the murderer is one of the people staying at the inn, since the padlock on the gate is adequate to keep out trespassers and tourists during the night. Our security is too good, if such a thing is possible. But why would anyone … ?”
“Then you can’t think of any motive for someone to murder Harmon? Surely he’s been in a few business deals that have left bad feelings, or stepped on someone’s toes along the way.”
“Harmon was a wonderful man. He kept the theater going despite all sorts of financial woes, and was even talking about securing a mortgage on a new building for us. And, of course, he was a saint to take the option last fall so that we could buy the inn.”
“There really was an option? I thought that was simply a bit of the script.”
Mimi looked dismayed by the inadvertent candidness of her character reference. “Well, it wasn’t common knowledge,” she said sulkily. “Harmon decided to utilize it in the script to provide a few motives, but he assured us months ago he had no intention of ever exercising it. He said he wasn’t interested in doing any more developments. In fact, he said he would let Suzetta burn the actual paper when she found it in his room.”
“Did she?”
“I suppose so. If there’s nothing else, I need to see about dinner, Claire. The staff are as upset as the rest of us, and I must calm them down so that we can deal with necessities.”
“Yes, actually there is something else,” I said. “Bella told me that Harmon had the master script. Since the game is over, I’d like to see it in order to find out how I did as a sleuth. Do you know where it is?”
“We were using my office as a war room, so I would guess it’s in there somewhere,” she said with a shrug. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t look at it. Now I really must get organized so that the staff can begin dinner.”
I wandered out of the kitchen obediently, but I did not dash to the office to search for the master script. Not with Peter behind the desk. Later, I told myself, as I went through the vacant drawing room to the porch to see if Caron had survived the interrogation without any permanent damage to her fragile psyche.
The guests were milling about like a herd of sheep attended by a lupine, undernourished shepherd. Several uniformed officers were trying to seem unobtrusive as they hovered. Bruce was doing a steady business behind the portable bar, and from a corner Mrs. Robison-Dewitt watched me with an icy frown, no doubt eager for some symptom of madness to surface so that she could point an accusatory finger at me. I left her with her dreams and joined Caron on the top step. She seemed intact, or at least superficially so.
“Did Peter have to resort to torture?” I asked. The only response I received was a croak.
Beyond the sloping lawn, the lake rippled in a soft breeze, as serene as a puddle after a summer storm. A deceptive tranquility, I decided, as I searched the far shore for a sign of police activity. Somewhere across the brown-gray surface, a rowboat had been abandoned in a cove, its sole passenger unable to complain about the finality of the one-way trip. I wondered if the selection of the cove might have some significance.
I gave Caron a poke. “Let’s take a hike before dinner,” I suggested in the hearty voice of a scout leader.
“As in walk? You must be kidding, Mother. For one thing, I am exhausted by the session in the star chamber, and for another, I see no reason to voluntarily expose myself to chiggers, snakes, ticks, spiders, mosquitoes—”
“On your feet. The exercise will do wonders for your diet, and the change of scenery will do wonders for my frame of mind. If you will not come with me, I will have Eric remove the telephone from our room and you can spend the remainder of the weekend swimming—in the lake.”
The envisioned horror was adequate to force her to her feet. We strolled across the lawn and down the road toward the gate. Caron lagged behind, emitting low noises, but refrained from vocalizing herself into a cordless, fish-filled existence.
Once we were a fair distance from the Inn, I began to study the brush for some sort of path that would take us around the far side of the lake, where I might find some clue to the location of the crime scene. Caron had no problem unraveling my intent, and her face took on a hostile glaze.
“I am not about to walk in the woods,” she said, hugging her shoulders as if the spiders were already choosing the best freckles for dinner. “I am allergic.”
“You are not allergic to anything,” I said firmly. I glared her back into step, then cautiously pushed through a clump of weeds to examine a cleared patch of ground. “Is this an old logging trail? Look, there are tire marks in the dust and a cigarette butt.”
“Fascinating. If we’re lucky, we may see dead leaves and rocks, too. Mother, let’s go back before some creepy something comes out from under a log.”
“This is the only break in the brush, so it must be the trail the Audubon people used. If I’m right, it’ll lead us to the cove where they found the rowboat. I don’t know if we’ll be able to tell where they stopped, but if we—”
“Take the telephone!”
Before I could respond, she marched back up the road to the Mimosa Inn, her lower lip pointing the way more precisely than a highway sign. Puffs of dust rose from her heels.
I swore under my breath as I watched her disappear around a curve in the road. I waited a few seconds on the off chance she might return, then resolutely turned back to the overgrown road that disappeared into the woods.
It was nearly six o’clock by now, and the sunlight had shifted to a curious, golden glow that made the woods resemble a movie set, a place where lions sang and hirsute people swung on vines. The birds had gone home, but the insects were very much in attendance. Two hours until sunset, I told myself with the confidence of someone who mig
ht be able to find the cove and be back on the road before darkness set in.
With a deep breath, I forged into the wilderness.
Ten minutes later, I began to sense the extent of my folly. The logging trail dwindled to an unkempt path that threatened to quit at any moment. Although the lake lay to my left, the trail wandered up the side of the mountain, joined a rocky stream bed for what seemed like a mile, and only then began a gradual descent. In the meantime, I had an entourage of nasty little gnats that hovered about my face in a carnivorous cloud. My arms were covered with scratches, my face with bug bites, and the rest of me with sweat. All so I could possibly find a cove that had already been examined by professionals for the most minute of clues.
I made a few comments to Mother Nature about her lack of hospitality, and a few more to the sun that was diving earthward with unnecessary haste. By now I suspected I had no more than an hour to get back to the road, unless I wanted to rely on my Daniel Boone instincts—that fell somewhere between nil and nonexistent.
Abruptly, I found the lake, which was no great feat but at least let me glimpse civilization in the distance. The Mimosa Inn looked as welcoming as a stiff drink after a session in the salt mines, and the scattered boats on the lake as comforting as a fellow tourist in Katmandu. But I was on a mission, no matter how foolish it now seemed. I wrenched my eyes back to business.
The path clung to the edge of the lake, and the foliage thinned out enough for me to walk at a reasonable pace. Where the hell was the cove?
Coves are pretty much the same after you’ve studied a few of them. Mud, swarms of insects, slippery moss, and the aroma of dead fish. Beached tadpoles, baked to shriveled silver ribbons. Unseen things that plopped away, or rustled in the leaves. Occasional footprints in the mud, where the Audubons had halted to search for grebes. The omnipresent rusty beer cans that both Edmund Hillary and Admiral Byrd had undoubtedly found at the ends of their respective trips.
I promised myself one final cove before giving up. The path, now a dear and trusted friend, twisted inland briefly and then abruptly spewed me out into a cleared area. The Cove, my personal grail. How could I be sure? It was no problem at all, because Peter Rosen was sitting on a log beside the water—smiling at me. A motorboat bobbed a few feet from the muddy shore.
He politely stood up as I slipped across the mud. “Did you have a nice hike, Claire?”
“I had a lovely hike, thank you. I must have seen a dozen grebes, not to mention other specimens of nature,” I said, grinding my teeth into a semblance of a smile. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to watch the sunset. Will you join me? I’m afraid the sofa is a bit dirty, but the view will be spectacular.”
“Have you been here long?” I asked as I accepted the inevitability of the situation and sat down beside him.
“A few minutes. I happened to notice Caron staggering up the road, and she offered the information that you felt some desire to commune with nature. She did not feel the same desire, apparently, and was more interested in making a telephone call.”
“A loquacious child. I never should have encouraged her to learn to talk. What other information was she compelled to offer?”
“She did mention something about your destination.”
I hoped Caron was enjoying her final telephone conversation. It would have to suffice until high-school graduation. I took off my shoe to examine a blister, studied the ring of bites around my ankle, and eased the shoe back on with a faint groan.
“May I hitch a ride back with you in the boat? I don’t think I can walk more than three steps.”
Peter gave me the benefit of his choirboy smile. “It would be almost impossible to follow the trail in the dark, wouldn’t it? A person might sprain an ankle, or trip over some invisible rock and break a leg. It might be better to wait until morning—except for the bears. They mate in the early summer—and I understand they have foul tempers. The courtship process, I believe.”
“There are no bears in the woods.” After the last hour in the woods, I felt as knowledgeable as Ranger Rick.
“Probably not,” he agreed graciously. “The skunks keep them away. There are skunks all over the woods.”
“There are skunks around here; I can smell something in the air. I would appreciate a ride back in the boat. However, if you are going to sit here and play silly, infantile games, then I am quite capable of hiking back to the road.”
The bantering tone was gone as he said, “You promised to stay out of the investigation, Claire. There is no longer an actor with a clever script—there is a cold-blooded murderer who might kill again if cornered. I thought I could trust you this time, but I was wrong.”
He would have made a dandy elementary-school principal. Pain in his voice, coupled with a basset-houndish look of disappointment. Little Claire, on the carpet, given one last chance to save herself from disgrace. I preferred my chances with the skunks.
“I just wanted to see the scene of the crime,” I said in a low apologetic voice. “But if you’re going to fuss, I won’t even look around. As soon as I’m in the boat, I’ll close my eyes and not peek until we’re across the lake.”
“Claire.” It came out in a whoosh of discouragement.
“If you insist, I’ll close my eyes right now and feel my way to the boat.”
“This is not a game, dammit! I wish you’d realize that and stop trying to out-sleuth me. Just let me do my job so that we can all go home before next winter.”
“If I let you do your job, we might be here to count the daffodils!” I snapped. “I do not enjoy being treated as if I were some sort of egotistical busybody, Peter Rosen. I happen to know quite a bit of information that could be helpful, but you won’t even listen to me, much less treat me like an adult!” A wonderful display of self-control and maturity.
“What do you know that might be helpful?”
“I’m not going to tell you!”
It was insane. We glowered at each other, hands clenched, faces red, eyes flickering like sparklers. At that moment, I would have cheerfully shoved him over backwards, hopped in the boat, and left him to hike back to the road—with the bears, skunks, snakes, and anything else silly enough to tackle him. The next moment we were wrapped around each other and behaving in a very adult manner.
It lasted a long while, and was quite pleasant despite my inner state of shock. Peter seemed adept at what he was doing. I seemed adept at what I was doing. We made a cooperative team. Finally, when I was beginning to need a breath, I unwrapped myself and eased away.
“Oh, dear,” I said, flicking a gnat off my knee.
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Oh, dear? Is that all you can say?”
“What should I say in this situation—thank you?”
“I suppose not,” he said. He, too, found a gnat to send away in a terminal arc.
I will not go into my personal feelings, beyond a mild comparison to those experienced by the heroine of a gothic novel who has discovered that the wretched man is not an embezzler or her first cousin or whatever she inevitably discovers in Chapter Nine-and-a-half, so that the graphic grappling can follow in Chapter Ten. On the other hand, I was hardly a nineteen-year-old orphaned virgin adrift in a heartless world. Caron is not so easily ignored.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I toyed with a few sentences, but rejected them for triteness, gushiness, and various adolescent tinges. The only thing to do was to ignore it, I decided at last.
Watching him out of the corner of my eye, I said, “I might fill in a few omissions in my statement, if you’re willing to reciprocate.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to discuss the case, but I want a sincere promise that you won’t pull any stunts. You have a dinner to cook—for me, remember?”
“Oh, really? Then you had already solved the mock murder? Or did you find the master script in the office and happen to glance over it out of idle curiosity?”
“There was no script in the office; I searched every
inch of it. But, yes, I had arrived at a solution by noon today. All those years of stodgy police work, perhaps. How did you do?”
“I do have a solution for the mock murder, but I thought we were going to discuss the real one. Is this the cove where the rowboat was found? I don’t suppose there were any telltale footsteps in the mud, or fingerprints in the oars?”
“The bird-watchers trampled out any footsteps,” Peter said with a grimace, “and oars do not take fingerprints. The boat has been taken in for examination, but I doubt we’ll learn anything useful. Someone went to a lot of trouble to bring the body all the way across the lake. He or she wouldn’t be so polite as to leave a business card in the bottom of the boat.”
“He or she? You don’t honestly believe a woman could be involved, do you?”
Peter studied the mud. “The sheriff is pushing for an arrest before evening. He seems to think that we have a fairly good case, although much of it is circumstantial.”
“A fairly good case?” I echoed, surprised. I realized that he was avoiding my eyes. “Who?”
“Mimi Vanderhan,” he admitted in a low voice. “She freely admitted that she met Harmon in the boathouse, as scheduled. According to her story, they talked for a few minutes about how successful the weekend was, and then she went to her room before returning to catch the last few minutes of the movie. However, Eric was supposed to have confronted Harmon immediately after she left—and he swears that Harmon wasn’t there.”
“So Harmon left the boathouse. That’s not too impossible to accept, is it? Maybe someone else came by and lured him away,” I pointed out with unassailable logic.
“In the space of two or three minutes? Eric was already on the porch, and he would have seen Harmon and this fancied visitor leaving together. The sheriff has a good argument, Claire. Harmon was in the boathouse with Mimi at ten-thirty, and was not there at ten-thirty-five when Eric arrived.”
“Does the sheriff think that Mimi carried Harmon away on her back, or merely waved a magic wand and turned him into a spider?”