Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  In the middle of the night, Claire awoke from scattered dreams to the sound of a dog howling. It was a mournful, hollow sound, as if the animal was lonely and was calling out for company. The sound rose to a high, plaintive note, then died down to a low, sad moan before dissipating into the silence of the night. Claire sat up and looked over at Meredith to see if the howling had awakened her, but the girl lay sprawled on her back, the covers twisted around her thin body. Claire lay back down again and pulled her own blankets up to her chin. She had an impulse to untangle Meredith from her bedclothes, but she knew from experience that even if she did this, the girl would still awaken in the morning in the same twisted tangle of blankets.

  That night Claire dreamed of floating above the woods in a long white dress, over fields and streams—floating, flying, hovering like a cloud over the stark chaste landscape of a Massachusetts winter.

  Chapter 4

  The snow fell all through the night and was still falling when Claire awoke shortly after dawn. She looked out at the thick cloud of white, the maple tree outside her window a dark, blurry outline, like an Impressionist painting. She looked over at Meredith, asleep on her cot, her blankets in such disarray that it seemed as though she had fought a wrestling match with them.

  Claire tried to remember what summer days were like, the kind of sweltering August afternoon in New York when people wandered out into the street and headed straight for any patch of shade. She tried to imagine that feeling, but her memory failed her, and she couldn’t think of anything other than the snow falling so insistently outside her window.

  Claire got out of bed and slipped on her navy-blue cotton sweater. The sweater was old and tattered, with rips in the shoulder, but that only made her love it more. It was one of the last things her mother gave her before the car crash that claimed her life.

  She tiptoed downstairs to the dining room, in hopes of finding coffee. No one else in the building was stirring, and the creak of the ancient floorboards under her feet sounded pretematurally loud.

  The main dining room was deserted, and there were no sounds coming from anywhere else in the inn. The coffee station stood gleaming in the corner, its polished stainless steel surface reflecting the falling flakes. Claire opened the drawer of the cabinet beneath the coffeemaker and found a box of Maxwell House coffee. She extracted a shiny blue packet, poured the contents into the top of the coffeemaker, added water, and sat down to wait. The machine hissed and sputtered, and the smell of brewing coffee filled the room as Claire sat watching the snow fall inexorably all around, burying the building in a thick shroud of white.

  The floorboards creaked and she looked up to see Chris and Jack Callahan standing at the dining-room door. “Hello,” she said.

  “Hello,” Chris answered in his deep, sleepy baritone. Jack gave her a vague little smile. “Look, Papa, it’s Claire,” Chris said, propelling his father in the direction of her table. For a moment Claire thought they were going to sit with her, but they passed her and settled at the table behind her.

  “I thought we were the first ones up,” said Chris. “What brings you down here so early?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I just couldn’t sleep anymore.”

  “I know what you mean. Sometimes I just have to get up—right, Papa?” Jack nodded obediently, smiling his wan little smile.

  “I made some coffee, if you’d like some,” Claire said.

  “Great, thanks.” Chris arranged his father’s chair so he could look out the window. “Pretty amazing, huh?” he said, indicating the falling snow.

  “Yes, it really is.”

  “I heard some of the staff ended up having to spend the night,” he commented as Claire poured them both coffee. “Do you want some coffee, Papa?”

  The old man looked at his son and nodded. “Good to the last drop,” he mumbled.

  “It’s interesting you should say that, Jack,” said Claire, setting a cup in front of him. “It just so happens this is Maxwell House coffee.”

  “Jingles seem to stick in his mind,” Chris remarked as he placed the cup between his father’s stiffened fingers. “It’s funny, but it’s as though there’s another person living in my father’s body . . . like the old Jack is gone, you know, but a new one has come to take his place.” He sighed and wiped a drop of coffee from his father’s chin.

  “It must be hard,” said Claire.

  “Have you—have you been through something like this with a parent?”

  Claire shook her head. “No, I haven’t.” After her parents’ car accident, she couldn’t imagine a tragedy more horrible, but now, looking at Jack sitting there staring blankly at his son, she knew that seeing either of her parents like that would be worse. They had both been so energetic and active—though like Claire herself, her father also had a more contemplative side.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were getting up?”

  Claire looked up to see Meredith standing in the doorway, her thin arms folded in front of her chest. Her left pajama leg was pulled up over her knee, exposing a skinny white shin, dotted with bruises. Meredith bruised like a banana, and her body was a road map of her encounters with inanimate objects.

  “I thought I’d let you sleep,” Claire replied as Meredith walked over to her table and plopped down on a chair across from her. “I woke up and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I came down here.”

  “But you know I don’t want to miss anything,” the girl replied plaintively, running her fingers along the edge of the tablecloth, where the cloth met the wood at the table’s edge. “Hi,” she said to Chris.

  “Good morning.”

  “What are you doing with no slippers on?” Claire indicated the girl’s bare feet

  Meredith heaved a deep sigh and rolled her eyes. “What do you think? I don’t have any.”

  “Well, we’ll have to get you some. It’s cold outside.”

  “I hate slippers.”

  “Then at least put on some socks. We don’t want you to get sick.”

  Another sigh. Meredith picked up a spoon and tapped the tabletop. “For your information, people don’t get sick from cold feet; they get sick from viruses.”

  “That may be, but go back upstairs right now and put on some socks.”

  “Okay!” Meredith swung herself down from the chair and sauntered out of the room, expressing disdain in the swing of her shoulders.

  When she was gone, Chris laughed softly, a sound curiously like the low nicker of a horse. “You handled that like an expert.”

  Claire smiled and shook her head. “Well, thanks, but . . . sometimes I wonder.”

  “What is she, twelve?”

  “Thirteen—going on thirty-five.”

  Chris laughed again. “Do you have any of your own?”

  Claire shook her head. “You?”

  “Four boys.”

  “Yikes.”

  “You said it. At least she’s a girl.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if she’s human.” This was perfectly true: Meredith was such an odd child that she seemed outside not only the realm of gender but of humanity itself.

  “Hey,” Chris said, “have you looked in the drawers of your bedside table yet?”

  “Oh, you mean the letters?”

  “Yeah—what’s that all about? Mona didn’t mention it to me.”

  “I’ve never seen it before either. Pretty interesting, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. I stayed up half the night reading them. There was this one that mentioned something about a fire in the hotel some years ago.”

  “Oh, we heard about that last night. What did it say?”

  Chris leaned his elbows on his knees and lowered his voice, though no one else was around to overhear him. “Well, it’s funny. The letter is unsigned, but whoever wrote it seemed to imply they knew something about who started the fire.”

  “Wow, that’s interesting. I’d like to see it.”

  “Sure, no problem,” Chris answered, standing up. “In the meantime, would yo
u be willing to keep an eye on my father while I go to the bathroom?”

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  “Thanks.” He loped off, with the long-legged, loose-jointed stride of a cowboy.

  Jack Callahan watched his son go, then turned to look out the window. Claire followed his gaze and saw the furiously falling flakes outside. What struck her most was how quiet everything was; insulated by the snow, the only sounds she could hear were those within the inn itself: the occasional clank of a heating pipe, or the creak of a floorboard. But outdoors all was stillness. Claire felt as though she could stare at those flakes forever, mesmerized. She looked at her watch: it was six-thirty. Though the sun was obscured by the snow and grey cloud cover, a gradual brightening of the sky told her that it was well after dawn. Across the street, through a blur of snowflakes, she thought she saw a light go on in the Wilson house. When she looked again, it had gone off.

  “Well, I hope you’re satisfied.” Meredith was back, a heavy pair of grey woolen socks on her feet.

  Claire glanced at her, determined not to make too much of this incident. “Yes, I am. Thank you.”

  Meredith sat back down in her chair with a grunt. “Where’s Chris?”

  “Gone to the bathroom.”

  “Oh.”

  “Where’d he go?” Jack said sleepily. His voice was brittle and cracked, dry as kindling.

  “He went to the bathroom,” Claire answered, a little louder this time.

  Jack nodded, his eyelids drooping. “I know him,” he said in a confidential tone of voice.

  “Yes, I’m sure you do,” Claire replied.

  “He’s not what you’d think.”

  “Really? In what way?”

  Jack leaned in toward her, and she could smell his breath, sour like old shoe leather. His lips had a bluish tinge; they matched the liver spots on the backs of his hands. “He’s a spy,” he said softly, a little waddle of spit forming on his lower lip.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes. There’s a lot people don’t know about him.”

  “Who are you talking about, Papa?”

  Claire turned to see Chris standing in the doorway. Jack turned away as though he hadn’t heard his son.

  “Papa? What were you saying to Claire?”

  They were interrupted at that moment by the sound of heavy footsteps descending the front stairs. This was immediately followed by the appearance of Max von Schlegel, his large body filling the doorway.

  “Good morning,” he said cheerfully, his plump cheeks pink with good health.

  “Hello,” said Meredith. Claire wasn’t sure if the girl liked the big chef or not; her voice was neutral, but she was smiling.

  “You’re up early,” he remarked, directing his words to Claire.

  “She couldn’t sleep,” Meredith said.

  “Ah, yes—insomnia.” He nodded his big bullet-shaped head. “You know, I have some herbs I can give you for that.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” said Claire, “but I really don’t—”

  “Oh, it’s no trouble at all. You’d be surprised what herbs can be used for. People in this country are just beginning to realize—”

  Just then Jack broke in with a loud sort of bleating sound, like a sheep in distress.

  Chris took his father’s hand. “What is it, Papa?”

  Jack stared at him. “They try, but they can’t do it,” he said ominously.

  “What’s he mean by that?” Meredith asked.

  Chris shook his head. “Who knows? Sometimes what he says seems to refer to a subject people around him are discussing, but really he’s thinking about something else entirely. Sometimes there’s no way to tell what.”

  Meredith swung her legs back and forth under her chair. “Ooo, did you see that Star Trek episode where Captain Picard goes down to this planet to meet with an alien captain and the alien talks only in metaphors and Picard has to figure out what he means?”

  The words came tumbling out, rushing over each other in the girl’s eagerness to get them all out, and Claire had to smile.

  “No, I missed that one,” Chris replied seriously.

  “Well, maybe it’s like that with your dad,” Meredith continued. “I mean, maybe there’s a code, if only you could read it.”

  Jack grunted. “Wouldn’t it be pretty to think so?” he muttered.

  Claire recognized the quote from The Sun Also Rises. It figured that Jack would be a Hemingway sort of man, she thought—he and Chris had the rugged, weather-beaten looks of a Hemingway hero.

  “Well, I’d better be getting into the kitchen,” Max said, rubbing his plump hands together. He indicated the falling snow outside. “Do you know several of us had to stay here last night?”

  Meredith leaned her elbows on the back of her chair. “Really?” She tipped the front legs of the chair off the ground.

  “We couldn’t dig our cars out from under the drifts,” said Max.

  Meredith turned around and sat down again. “Wow,” she said, looking out at the snow. “It’s a good thing there were enough rooms for you!”

  Max nodded. “It’s odd; normally the inn would be booked this weekend.”

  “Maybe the threat of snow kept people from traveling,” Chris suggested.

  Claire thought about Wally, stuck in New York. She wondered when he would be able to get through the snow and make it out here.

  Max sighed and ran a hand over his smooth pate. “I guess I’ll go down to the wine cellar and choose a few bottles for tonight.”

  He turned and left the room, the old floorboards shaking under his heavy tread. Claire heard the creak of rusty hinges, then the thud of Max’s footsteps going downstairs.

  Meredith went to the coffeemaker and made herself a cup of tea. “These things are so cool,” she said, pushing down the red handle of the hot water spout on the side of the machine. “It’d be neat to own one.”

  “Yeah,” Claire replied, “if you had about fifty people over for dinner every day.”

  “Well, I’d like to have one,” Meredith said, but as she spoke they heard Max coming back up the basement stairs. What made them all stop to listen was the tempo of the footsteps. Max was running, not walking, up the stairs.

  A moment later he appeared in the doorway, red-faced and out of breath. His blue eyes were wide with horror.

  Claire rose from her chair. “What is it? What’s happened?”

  Max wiped the sweat dripping from his forehead and swallowed hard. “Somebody c-call the police,” he stammered. “There’s been a murder.”

  Chapter 5

  For a couple of seconds, nobody moved. It was as though the air had suddenly thickened; his words seemed to take longer than normal to travel through it. Then everybody spoke at once. Chris and Meredith both said the same thing, the thing people so often say when they are presented with such an incredible statement:

  “What?”

  Claire, however, just said softly, “Oh, my God.” She was disturbed to realize that the news, while upsetting, did not come to her entirely as a shock. Was it possible that she had dreamed this scene somehow, or was she finally becoming psychic, like her grandmother was reputed to have been?

  Meredith was halfway across the room before Claire could stop her. “Meredith, don’t—”

  “I won’t touch anything,” the girl replied. “I just want to see!”

  “Who is it?” Chris asked. At that moment Max’s legs failed him and he sank into the nearest chair. Even though the dining room was cold and drafty, sweat continued to gather on his forehead.

  “It’s your sister,” he replied in a low voice.

  Chris Callahan gasped, a rush of air followed by what sounded like a stifled sob. “Mona? Are you sure?”

  Max nodded, averting his eyes.

  “Are you sure she’s—”

  The big Austrian wrung his hands. “I have seen bodies before, Mr. Callahan. I know what death looks like.”

  “Well, I’m going to call the police,
if nobody else will!” Meredith declared, heading for the front desk.

  “I think Max should call,” said Claire.

  “All right,” said Meredith, plunking herself down in the nearest chair.

  Chris Callahan sat stone-faced, as though he were trying to comprehend something unfathomable. Jack stared into space, his long grizzled face blank. If he understood Max’s words, he gave no sign of it. Claire looked at Max, who was still sweating and wringing his hands.

  “Are you all right to call?” she said.

  He nodded. “I can do it. I just—I don’t understand who—why someone would . . . it doesn’t make sense.” He tottered unsteadily into the hall, only to return a moment later. “The phone line is dead,” he said blankly.

  “Must be the snowstorm,” Meredith observed calmly. At times like this, Claire did have to wonder if the girl was entirely human; she could be so matter-of-fact in the face of tragedy.

  “Now what?” said Max.

  “Well, I guess we wake the others,” Claire replied.

  They sat there for a moment contemplating the idea, none of them wanting to move. Then Jack broke the silence, his voice as rusty and dry as the hinges on the basement door.

  “It seems we can’t always know who is who.”

  Chris Callahan laid a hand on his father’s gnarled hand. “It’s all right, Papa. Never mind, everything’s going to be all right.”

  Claire thought it was a strange thing to say just after hearing that your sister has been murdered, but she said nothing.

  Meredith wanted to help awaken the others, so they split up the task among her and Claire and Max, while Chris remained with his father. It turned out that besides Max and Mona, Philippe the waiter and Otis Knox had also spent the night at the inn, sharing a room at the far end of the hall by Claire’s room.

  Meredith volunteered to go across the road to the Wilsons’ house, but Max shook his head. “No, it is better that I do it. Frank Wilson has been a good friend to me, and I will get him.”

  Claire watched as Max set out across the desert of white, his thick legs pumping as he plowed through the powdery drifts, which were already piling waist high.