I didn’t mention that cats are natural hunters and that this one looked like it could easily find prey. Instead, I said, “I’ll call Artie Sack later. He’s the gardener who lives on the estate. I’m sure he’ll be glad to care for the cat. He’s always over here pruning and watering the rose bushes. In fact, he’s right over there.” I pointed to where Jeremy, followed by Artie, trotted back from the Marshall mansion.
“Good, Jessica,” Joan said. “I would have worried.”
Jeremy Scott went straight to Mort. “I had some trouble getting through,” he panted, out of breath. “The line was full of static. Artie here found me a phone that worked. They’re on their way.”
Artie blushed at what he perceived as a compliment. He looked down and shuffled his feet, then saw the body and cringed. A moan escaped his lips. He squeezed his eyes shut and began rocking back and forth, hugging his shoulders and making mewling sounds. Mort put his arm around him and turned him away from the body. “It’s okay, Artie,” he said, “nothing to do with you. Go on home. You’ve already helped enough.”
A few minutes later, flashing lights were seen in the circular driveway of the Marshall home, and we were joined by two of Mort’s uniformed deputies, one with a camera dangling around his neck and carrying a heavy box, the other holding a small black bag from which he pulled a roll of yellow crime scene tape. They were followed by a pair of white-coated EMS technicians toting a stretcher, and the county’s medical examiner, Alfred Gillo, who’d been appointed to that post only six months earlier.
“Where’s Harold?” Mort shouted at one of the deputies.
“I got hold of him, Sheriff, and filled him in. He should be here soon.”
“Where was he?”
“Down the quarry road, helping a motorist with a flat. You know how rough that road is.”
“What about the state guys, Jerry? We’re gonna need security help overnight, and crime scene personnel.”
“Called them, too. Should be a couple ’a cars here soon.”
Jerry put down his heavy load, which, it turned out, contained a battery pack and lights. He set up the lights and plugged in the cords, then pressed a switch. A brilliant white light instantly flooded the scene, demarcating everything in its path from pebbles in the mud to the now-crusting blood in Matilda’s hair, and casting deep shadows where its illumination failed to reach. The front of the Rose Cottage lit up like the scrim for a fashion magazine photo shoot.
“Don’t think we need to tent the scene, Sheriff,” Jerry said. “Not fixing to rain again tonight.”
Squinting against the sudden brightness, Mort nodded and started barking instructions, ordering our group to move farther away from the lighted area so the officers had room to work.
“Jerry, take your photos so these guys can continue doin’ their job,” he said, pointing to the EMS crew.
“Right, Sheriff.”
“Wendell, get out the spray paint so you can mark the position of the body when Jerry’s finished takin’ pictures.”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir. I mean, as soon as Jerry’s done, sir.”
Wendell Watson was a rookie who’d recently joined the force. He’d whet his appetite for police work after serving as my security escort when I was in New York City for the opening of a play on Broadway, Knock ’Em Dead, based upon one of my books. Following some unsettling incidents there, including the murder of the play’s producer, Mort insisted I have a body-guard and sent Wendell to protect me. He was persistent, if not exactly skilled, and I’m still not sure who protected whom, but everything turned out all right. Wendell returned to Cabot Cove full of enthusiasm for life as a peace officer and enrolled in the next available class at the Maine Police Academy. Once he became one of Mort’s deputies, he was paired with Jerry, an experienced officer, to ensure that he could continue to learn his chosen profession—and not make too many mistakes in the process.
“Jerry, I want photos of the cottage, too, inside and out. Did you get the body and all around here?”
“I did, Sheriff, although there’s already been a lot of tramplin’ on the scene.”
“Couldn’t be helped.” Mort turned to Wendell. “Wendell, stop pacin’ like that. You’re just addin’ your footprints to the others.”
“Yes, sir.”
Wendell gave the can of spray paint a vigorous shake and carefully traced the outline of Matilda’s body, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he swallowed compulsively when his arm neared her bloody head. When he’d completed the task, he stepped away, and the EMS crew and medical examiner took over.
Wearing latex gloves, both to protect themselves and to keep from contaminating evidence, the two technicians first confirmed what had been evident, that Matilda was dead. They then placed plastic bags over her hands and secured the bags with rubber bands to keep them from falling off. Mort knelt beside them to check her clothing for pockets. His mouth a grim line, he gingerly rocked the body from one side to the other, searching for evidence. He removed items from her person and dropped them into separate clear plastic bags, which he handed to Wendell. Directed by the medical examiner, the EMS crew laid out a black body bag alongside the corpse and gently lifted Matilda’s body into the rubber cocoon. One tucked in her skirt and collar while the other zipped the bag closed. It never failed to impress me, the respectful way emergency technicians deal with the dead. Matilda was certainly unknown to them, yet they treated her remains as if she were a cherished friend or family member. I hoped she was someone’s cherished family member, and didn’t envy Mort the responsibility of imparting the sad news.
When the ambulance drove off, the group that had stayed after the party began to get restless.
“How long are you going to keep us here, Sheriff?” Paul asked. “My guests are falling asleep on their feet.”
“I know you’re all tired, Mr. Marshall, but if you’ll bear with us a few more minutes, we’ll get everyone’s name and where you were all evening, then let you go home.”
I drew Mort aside and spoke quietly into his ear. “Mort, why not let Paul bring everyone back to the house so they can at least sit down? We can wait there until you finish your preliminary work and can join us.”
“Good idea, Mrs. F.” To Wendell he said, “Escort these folks up to Mr. Marshall’s house and stay with them. I’ll be there as soon as Jerry and I finish up down here.”
Wendell hesitated, a look of disappointment on his freckled young face. He obviously wanted to stay at Mort’s side at the crime scene.
“Go on, Wendell, start by takin’ names, addresses and phone numbers,” Mort said while helping Jerry unroll a long ribbon of yellow plastic with CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS repeated every foot along its length.
Wendell immediately brightened. He hitched up his belt and turned to the weary revelers. “C’mon, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll walk back to the house now. Stay close together, please. I don’t want to lose anybody.”
Joan cleared her throat. “Officer,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I think you might already have lost one.”
“What do you mean, ma’am?”
“Well, there were six moose when we first got here. Now there are five.”
“You sure about that, Mrs. Lerner?” Mort asked.
“Yes, very sure. I counted them right after we came down here. Why, I don’t know, but I did.”
“She’s right,” I added. “There were six moose when we first arrived on the scene. I counted them, too.”
Everyone’s attention turned to the brown, furry forms and silently counted. Present and accounted for were Paul and Erica Marshall, Warren Wilson, Jeremy Scott and Robert Wandowski.
Mort, who’d begun securing the tape to a branch of one of the multiple rose bushes lining the drive, looked up at the house as another squad car came to a screeching halt, its headlights bouncing off the residence’s brick walls. The distraction caused him to catch a thorn on the back of his finger. He mumbled and
dropped the spool of yellow tape to the ground, jamming the bleeding knuckle into his mouth. He waited as another of his deputies, Harold Jenkins, came down the path in our direction. He wasn’t alone. A figure walked in front of him. As they approached, I saw that the person with Harold was wearing a moose costume identical to those worn by the others. Handcuffs securing the new arrival’s hands in front made it clear that this was a moose in custody.
“What’ve we got here?” Mort asked.
Harold grinned. “Ran across this moose on my way here, Sheriff. Found him climbing over that fence at the end of the property, up by the quarry road.”
Our sixth moose, I thought. Who was inside that heavy, furry costume, and why had he run from the scene? I assumed it was a man because the person in the costume was fairly tall.
Mort approached the newcomer and said, “Take off that head.” When he didn’t comply, Mort ordered him to lean forward. With a push from Harold, the moose bent from the waist but kept his head stiff. Mort grabbed the two antlers and pulled. The hair on the bowed head was long and drawn back into a ponytail. He straightened, his posture erect, his eyes challenging.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” a smiling Lucas Tremaine said.
Chapter Seven
The Marshall manor house was in the process of being put back to its usual elegant decor when the remnants of the party guests trudged in and collapsed on silk brocade chairs and sofas arranged in conversation groups around the living room. The furniture that had been removed for the party was again in place, but the cobwebs, cauldrons, faux stone walls and many decorations that had given the mansion its eerie Halloween atmosphere had yet to be removed. It seemed as if we’d stumbled into a movie studio where the set for a horror film was being cleared to make room for a Regency drama. A diligent crew loaded tables and chairs into huge moving trucks outside; the caterer had departed earlier, taking trays of leftovers, I later learned, to drop off at a shelter for teenage runaways down the coast. Apart from the trucks and patrol cars, the few vehicles remaining in the driveway belonged to those of us still at the house.
Harold Jenkins led Lucas Tremaine to the center of the room and pressed him into an empty fan-back chair.
“I want these handcuffs removed,” Tremaine demanded.
Harold appeared unsure of what to do.
“I haven’t broken any laws,” Tremaine said. “You have no right to shackle me like some common criminal. Take them off!”
“Mr. Tremaine, if I remove your handcuffs, do I have your word you’ll stay right here till the sheriff says you can go?”
Tremaine cocked his head, a smirk on his lips. “You have my word as a gentleman. I am at your service, Officer. Actually, I rather like this house. I’ll stay until—” He looked to where Paul Marshall sat and added, “Until our gracious host asks me to leave.”
That brought Paul out of his chair. He charged across the room and stood directly in front of Tremaine, looking down at him. “I want to know what you’re doing here. How did you get one of my moose costumes and crash the party?”
Harold inserted himself between the men. “Let’s just take it easy, Mr. Marshall,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll find out all about that once the sheriff gets back. Please sit down.”
As Marshall returned to his seat and Harold unlocked Tremaine’s cuffs, Ed Lerner said to Peter Walters, “That’s the crackpot who’s always giving speeches in the village about ghosts and goblins. Joan and I told the sheriff just the other day about overhearing folks threatening to chase him out of town.”
“He’s the one,” Walters agreed. “Do you know why he was cuffed? Is he the prime suspect in the murder?”
“I don’t know.”
“I should get to the radio station,” Walters said. “This is a big story. I need a pad and pen. Better yet, a tape recorder.”
Walters’s wife, Roberta, turned to her husband. “Peter,” she said, “you’re molting all over the floor.” Half the feathers from his elbows and knees had fallen off his bird costume to the carpet.
“Do you think they’ll let me use the phone?” Walters asked no one in particular as he stood and started to cross the large room. Harold politely asked him to remain seated until Mort arrived.
“Look,” Walters told the deputy, “you know me. I own the radio station. People will start hearing rumors about this and go off half-cocked. I’m a journalist. It’s always the best thing to report a story as fast as possible and get the facts out.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Walters, I know who you are, but—”
Walters exhibited a rare anger. “Ever hear of the First Amendment?” he snapped.
“Yes, sir,” Harold replied, “but it seems to me murder is a little more important right about now. Please, Mr. Walters, don’t make my job any tougher.”
Walters sighed and returned to his seat next to his wife, who, it seemed to me, was struggling to stay awake, a condition many of us shared.
When we’d raced to the Rose Cottage in response to Erica Marshall’s screams and found Matilda Swift’s body, the air had been charged with energy. The shock of the murder had adrenaline pouring into our veins, reversing the normal lassitude after an evening of eating, drinking and dancing. But now that the initial excitement had ebbed, a pervasive fatigue set in. I looked around the room and hoped Mort would return quickly. His witnesses, at least those of us still there, were fading fast.
People were slumped in their chairs, staring at one another with blank expressions. Seth had found the same wing chair in front of the fireplace he’d occupied earlier and fought to keep his chin from lowering to his chest. Marilou Decker rested her head on her husband’s shoulder. Joan Lerner, in her cheerleader uniform, and Mort’s wife, Maureen, dressed up like Cher, resembled oddly mismatched bookends, camped out as they were on either end of a blue moiré sofa, each woman leaning back, head angled toward an upholstered arm. It had been a long night, and it surely wasn’t over.
Paul sat at the end of a line of moose. He looked shell-shocked. His exhausted daughter was flanked by two scowling young men, Jeremy and Warren, whose animosity toward each other was palpable. Aside from Harold, who was hovering over Lucas Tremaine, and Wendell, who was standing next to the patio doors, only an agitated Robert Wandowski was still on his feet, pacing back and forth in a corner, reminding me more of a caged Colorado mountain lion than a docile Maine moose.
Mort entered the room and rapped his knuckles on a French writing table to draw everyone’s attention. He’d taken off his Davy Crockett hat but was still clad in the buckskin shirt and pants. “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re all tired, I know,” he said, “but Wendell here is going to take down some information while I finish up at the Rose Cottage. After I talk to each of you briefly, you’ll be free to go home. I caution you not to leave town. We’ll probably be interviewing all of you again in the next couple ’a days.”
It struck me as I sat in a chair near Seth that those gathered in the room were the most unlikely of suspects in a murder, but I also knew that Mort had a job to do and would go by the book.
“Sheriff, Mr. Marshall and I were scheduled to be away a few days on business,” Warren said, shooting Jeremy a smug look.
“Sorry, gentlemen, but I’m afraid you’ll have to postpone that trip for a while.”
Jeremy sat back and smiled. Warren, face scarlet, busied himself polishing the lenses of his glasses on his furry sleeve.
“This is just ridiculous,” Marshall grumbled. “Go question those cleaning people outside. My guests are not murderers, except maybe that one, who by the way certainly was not invited into this house.” He pointed at Tremaine. “I can’t put my business on hold, Sheriff, while you play cops-and-robbers. Why don’t you get some experts in here who know how to conduct a murder investigation?”
“Daddy, please, you’re not helping things,” Erica said.
“Don’t you talk to me in that tone, young lady. I’ll—”
“Mr. Marshall,” Mort interrupted sm
oothly, ignoring the insulting comment, “I’ll need your guest list. Do you have a copy handy?”
“No. Alice, my secretary, handled the invitations. She went home an hour ago.”
“Well, I’d be real appreciative if you’d give her a call and have her run that list over to the office first thing tomorrow morning. And maybe Miss Marshall would be kind enough to make some coffee, if it wouldn’t be too much bother.”
“It’s no bother at all, Sheriff.” Erica stood, obviously relieved to get away from her unpleasant companions.
“I’ll be just another fifteen minutes or so,” Mort said. “Wendell, start taking down IDs.” He swung open the patio doors and disappeared past them.
“Erica,” I said, “I’ll give you a hand with the coffee.”
“I’ll help you, Erica,” Warren said, jumping to his feet. Jeremy grabbed his sleeve. “Mrs. Fletcher is already helping her,” he said. “They don’t need you.”
“Who do you thinking you’re talking to, Scott? I’m not one of your marketing flunkies.” He wrenched his arm from Jeremy’s grasp.
“No, you just think you can get ahead by romancing the boss’s daughter.”
“Cut it out, both of you!” Paul ordered.
Erica and I walked down a hall to the rear of the house. “Everyone’s tired,” I said, trying not to sound as though I was, too. “Jeremy and Warren will get over it once they’ve gotten some sleep.”
“I doubt that, Mrs. Fletcher. They hate each other. Ever since Jeremy learned that Warren and I have been dating, he’s been very cold to me.”
“Jealous?”
“If he is, it’s only because he’s ambitious, too. They don’t care about me, either of them. It’s all business. Jeremy came here from California to make sure no one steals his father’s formula. He wants the patent and the royalties.”
The cold, matter-of-fact way in which she delivered her analysis of the situation took me aback for a moment. Surely, I thought, the motives of both Jeremy and Warren couldn’t be that calculating. Had this pretty young woman become so jaded, so cynical, that she was incapable of accepting affection from men who were interested in her? If that was the case, had her relationship with her father been so strained that it had led her to this hardened view of life? It was clear from things she’d said earlier that she and her father did not enjoy the most cordial of parent-sibling relationships. What was behind that? I wondered. Was Paul Marshall so domineering that he’d stripped his daughter of her ability to love? I hoped not.
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