Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  He cocked his head to one side. “If you need anything, I’m right across the road.”

  “Thanks,” Claire said. Her brain seemed to be working in slow motion, and she felt confused. Her body, though, was responding; she felt her face flush, and warmth crept up her neck. She met his eyes, and at that moment she could see that he knew she responded to him. He raised his hand again, and she hoped, feared, that he would touch her face. He stopped just short of it, though, and she exhaled in relief.

  He smiled. “All right, then, good night.” His voice was low and rich, and the hall light glinted off his honey-colored hair.

  “Good night.”

  “Wow,” Meredith said as Claire closed the door. “He’s hot.”

  Claire looked at her, simultaneously resentful and relieved that she was there. Her presence made it impossible for anything to happen.

  “Time for bed,” Claire said automatically, but she was thinking about the light reflecting off James Pewter’s hair.

  Chapter 7

  Claire awoke from crowded dreams to the sound of engines grinding. Disoriented, at first she had the impression she was on a jet about to land, but then she opened her eyes. The flowered burgundy border of the wallpaper reminded her where she was, and she rubbed her eyes, trying to recapture her dream as she drifted back into consciousness, but the sound of engines increased in volume, rendering her efforts futile. Lying there, she had the feeling that something about the quality of light in the room was different, and then she realized what it was: pure yellow sunlight streamed through the curtains, which meant it was no longer snowing. Almost at the same instant she knew also what had awakened her: the loud noise outside her window was the sound of snowplows.

  Throwing off the covers, Claire reached for her robe, and saw that Meredith’s cot was empty. The clock on the bureau said that it was just after eleven; was it possible that she had slept that long? She wondered what Meredith was up to, and was about to throw on some clothes to go look for her, when the door opened and there she stood.

  “Good morning, sleepyhead,” Meredith said, a term she had picked up from Claire. Claire smiled—Meredith was obviously enjoying her chance to play the adult for once. Claire had never seen anyone in such a hurry to grow up. If only the girl could slow down and appreciate childhood while it lasted, she thought, but that wasn’t in Meredith’s nature. She wanted to be everywhere and do everything all at once, and patience was not her long suit.

  Meredith flopped down onto her stomach on the cot, resting her chin in her hands. “Do you hear the plows outside? They’re digging us out!”

  “So I see. When did you get up?”

  Meredith shrugged. “Oh, about an hour ago, I guess.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Nothing much.”

  Claire knew from her tone that Meredith was hiding something. The girl was a lousy liar—thank god, Claire thought.

  “All right, what did you do?”

  Meredith rolled over onto her back. “Promise you won’t be angry?”

  “I can’t promise how I’ll feel,” Claire replied carefully, “but I want you to tell the truth, so I promise I won’t yell at you. How’s that?”

  “Okay.”

  “So—what did you do?”

  “I went down and saw the body.”

  “Meredith!”

  Meredith shoved her pillow over her face. “You promised you wouldn’t yell at me!”

  “But you know it was off-limits. Why did you do that?”

  “I was curious.” She said this as though the answer was obvious even to an idiot.

  Claire sighed. “All right. Did anybody see you?”

  Meredith lifted the pillow from her face and shook her head. “Negative. They were all out talking with the snowplow guys, so that’s when I saw my chance and took it.” She propped herself up on her elbows, resting her chin on the pillow. “Do you know she was stabbed in the stomach?”

  Claire was intrigued in spite of herself. It was never possible to be annoyed at Meredith for very long, she had found; try as she might to sustain her anger, it usually withered and dried up within minutes. “Really? In the stomach?”

  “Oh yeah. Very sexual, if you ask me. Shades of Carmen and all that.”

  Claire shook her head. What Meredith knew about sex she certainly had not learned firsthand, that was for sure; her intellect so far outstripped her social skills that the girl was hardly a boy magnet—fortunately. Claire prayed that she would not be forced into an early maturity like so many young people these days.

  “I don’t think this murder was carefully planned,” Meredith added.

  “Oh?”

  Meredith nodded and popped a lemon vitamin-C drop into her mouth. “Disorganized and poorly planned, that’s what I’d call this murder,” she said as Claire made her bed. With the snow so high, there was no telling when the hotel maid would make it out there—certainly not for a day or two, Claire thought.

  “Disorganized? How so?” Claire said, tucking in the sheets and smoothing over the quilt.

  “Oh, from the look of the crime scene, I’d say this was a last-minute decision, a spur-of-the-moment killing, probably set off by some incident that caused the killer to snap.”

  “I see.”

  “And the stabbing, though effective, was clumsily done. I don’t think this is an experienced criminal; quite the contrary.”

  “Hmm . . . I guess that leaves just about everybody as a possible suspect.”

  “Yup. It also means the least likely person could be the killer.”

  Claire stopped to think about the residents of the inn. With the possible exception of poor, demented Jack Callahan, she had little trouble imagining any of them as a murderer. Perhaps her imagination was taking a morbid turn, but it seemed to her that any of them, sufficiently provoked, was capable of murder, even Richard, cultivated and refined as he was; she could imagine him hiding a well of passion beneath that elegant exterior. As for Chris Callahan, his laconic speech and lazy manner could hide just about anything; who knew what resentment toward his sister might be simmering beneath his sleepy surface? There was simply no way of telling . . . not yet, at any rate.

  There was a knock on the door. Claire opened it, and standing there in the hallway, a pile of towels in his arms, was Henry Wilson.

  “Would you like some fresh towels?” he said. The words sounded carefully rehearsed, and his voice shook a little as he spoke, a thin adolescent tremolo. Claire immediately felt sorry for him—he looked so frail standing there, his arms piled up with towels—and she had an impulse to hug him. The boy had his father’s eyes, large and round and rimmed with dark lashes, almost as though he were wearing eyeliner, but he had his mother’s tight little mouth, thin-lipped, dour, turned down at the corners. Claire didn’t think she had seen the boy smile once since they arrived. She wondered what was going on in that serious little head of his; she thought it was sad for a boy of his age to be so contained within his own lonely world.

  “Why, thank you,” she said, taking two towels off the top of the pile. He nodded nervously, a few strands of brown hair falling over his forehead. He began to move off down the hall, but Claire, wanting to engage him in conversation, called after him.

  “So I see your parents have put you to work.”

  He turned back to look at her, twisting around awkwardly, and nodded. His movements were jerky, even clumsy, though whether from nervousness or lack of coordination Claire couldn’t tell. It was as though the different parts of his body had their own agendas and were only reluctantly giving up control to his brain.

  “There’s no maid b-because of the snow,” he said, “so they asked me to g-go around with towels. I’ve d-done it before,” he added, hanging his head and staring at his feet. “It’s not so bad.”

  Meredith appeared at the door of her room, sucking loudly on a vitamin-C drop. Seeing her, Henry’s pale face whitened even more, his eyes dropped lower, and his stammer increased.


  “I g-g-gotta go f-finish. S-s-see you later.”

  He turned and stumbled on down the hall.

  “Wow,” Meredith said, shaking her head. “That’s one messed-up kid.”

  “I think he likes you,” Claire observed.

  “Oh, please!”

  “No, really. He gets even more tongue-tied when you’re around.”

  “Well, I’m no shrink, but that’s one screwy kid, if you ask me.”

  Claire had to agree; the boy radiated emotional distress, and evoked in her a strong instinct to look after him. She thought of his mother, Paula, whose nervous mannerisms he reflected. The boy was so unlike his father, big, hearty Frank Wilson, with his bluff and outgoing manner.

  “Weird kids don’t just get that way on their own, you know,” Meredith remarked as she closed the door behind her. “There’s usually a reason . . . makes you wonder about his family, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah . . . poor kid.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a lot of them out there,” Meredith replied, plopping down onto her back on her cot, her kinky orange hair spreading out on the pillow, springy as tree moss. Claire knew Meredith’s family life was not easy, but she didn’t want to press the girl into talking about it. There was a fiercely private side to Meredith, and she had to respect that.

  “Well,” said Meredith, “are you ready to go downstairs?”

  “Just about,” Claire replied, pulling on a cream-colored cable-knit sweater.

  They arrived downstairs just in time to see the entrance of the police on the scene.

  The tall police detective stamped his feet loudly on the mat as he entered the hotel. Claire thought the action was deliberate, his way of taking control of the situation, letting everyone know that he was in charge. She was beginning to understand the ways of New Englanders; they were not as direct as the New Yorkers she was used to, who were always in a hurry and had neither the time nor the temperament to dissemble. But here in New England it was different: people could talk around a subject for hours, homing in on it gradually, like a hunter stalking a deer; sooner or later they would go in for the kill, but until then there was time to enjoy the process.

  The detective removed his hat and looked around. He was tall and lanky, with the profile of a hawk: sharp, clean features with a long, thin patrician nose that dropped like a hook at the end, the tip of it shading his upper lip. It was impossible to guess his age: he might have been forty or sixty. His skin, though weathered, was stretched tightly over his high cheekbones; he reminded Claire of Jack Palance, his face as rugged and timeless as a canyon. What made his face really unusual, though, was the merest wisp of a beard on the very end of his chin, a white patch of hair so small that it looked as though it had been left behind inadvertently by a lazy swipe of the razor. At first Claire thought it was a piece of tape or a white Band-Aid stuck on to cover a shaving accident, but then she realized it was hair.

  “I’m Claire Rawlings,” she said, shaking his hand.

  “’Lo,” he replied in a classic New England accent. “I’m Detective Hornblower. Clyde Owens said you sent for me? ’Lo, Frank,” he said as the innkeeper entered the hall.

  “Thanks for coming so quickly, Rufus,” Wilson replied, shaking his hand. The two men stood talking quietly, their voices lowered, heads close together. If Frank Wilson’s face was typically Irish, Detective Hornblower’s was a map of Scotland: craggy, jagged, and as intimidating as the hills of the Highlands.

  “Who’s Clyde Owens?” Meredith asked.

  “Drives one of the town plows that dug you out,” said the detective. “He radioed me to come on over.”

  “Cool,” said Meredith.

  “All right, Rufus, I’ll help round everyone up,” Frank Wilson said, running a hand through his hair, which looked uncombed.

  “You want me to help get everyone together?” Meredith asked. “I’m Meredith Lawrence, by the way,” she added, extending a hand.

  “Rufus Hornblower, at your service.” Here was a man who liked children, Claire thought as she watched him shake Meredith’s hand.

  “Cool name!” Meredith said.

  The sherriff smiled. “I wouldn’t have agreed when I was your age.”

  Meredith nodded and sighed. “They made fun of you, huh? Well, kids make fun of everyone . . . teenagers pretty much suck, if you ask me.”

  He laughed, a dry, thin sound like the cracking of a log being split by an ax. “Are you including yourself in that description?”

  Meredith removed the lollipop she had in her mouth with a loud sucking sound. “Well, I’m actually thirteen, so I’m just barely a teenager.”

  “I see. You’re very tall for your age.”

  Meredith sighed. “I’m very tall for any age. I’m five seven and three-quarters—way bigger than most of the boys in my class. And if you don’t think that doesn’t suck—”

  “Meredith, the detective has work to do,” Claire interrupted. “Sorry,” she said to him, “she does get going sometimes.”

  “But only when I like someone,” Meredith interjected, smiling almost flirtatiously.

  Claire and Meredith followed Detective Hornblower into the dining room, where Max was serving brunch to the hotel guests. Claire and Meredith seated themselves, but the sound of the front door opening again brought Meredith running back into the front hall. A moment later she came back into the dining room.

  “There’s something you’d better see,” she said to Claire.

  Claire went out into the foyer. There, standing in the front hall, was Wally Jackson.

  Seeing him was always a surprise; Claire was never quite prepared for the little jolt of electricity that shot through her when she saw his curly grey hair, always a little shaggy at the edges, and his heavy-lidded eyes. He stood there on the threshold in a forest-green parka, his cheeks ruddy from the cold, his breath coming in little white puffs. When he saw her he smiled, and Claire wanted to run up and fold her body into his and just stay like that. But there were other people around, so she resisted the impulse and stepped up to kiss him on the cheek. He startled her by drawing her close to him and kissing her fervently. To her surprise, his hands were trembling.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” he said, holding her close. “I saw the cars outside and didn’t know what to think.”

  “Oh, you mean the police cars.”

  “Yes. What’s going on? Where’s Meredith?”

  “Here I am,” she answered, appearing in the doorway to the main dining room.

  “What’s been going on?” Wally asked.

  “There’s been a murder,” Meredith replied, swinging back and forth on the handle of the door.

  Wally looked at Claire. “Is that true?”

  “I’m afraid it is. That’s why all the police cars are outside.”

  Just then Detective Hornblower entered the front hall. “Hello,” he said, his gaunt face expressing neither surprise nor interest. “I’m Detective Hornblower.”

  “Detective Wallace Jackson, Ninth Precinct, Manhattan,” Wally said, extending a hand.

  “Pleased to meet you, Detective Jackson,” he replied cordially, shaking Wally’s hand. “You’re a friend of Ms. Rawlings?”

  “That’s right. Is it true you’re here—”

  “Investigating a probable homicide, yes.”

  “Can I be of any help?”

  “I don’t see why not. I always say two heads are better than one.”

  “What about three?” Meredith chirped from where she stood, still hanging on to the doorknob.

  Hornblower regarded her curiously. “Well, there’s also the saying that too many cooks spoil the broth.”

  “I won’t spoil anything, I promise!” She let go of the door and approached the men. “I’ve already made one or two interesting observations, you know.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yup. For instance, I noticed that the killer was—”

  “Meredith, if the detective needs any help, I’m sure
he’ll let you know,” Claire intervened.

  “Tell him about the murders I’ve already helped solve!”

  “Really?” Hornblower said to Wally, who nodded.

  “It’s true, actually; she—”

  But they were interrupted by the sound of shouting coming from the kitchen.

  “Sounds like a fight!” Meredith cried, darting past them toward the direction of the shouts.

  Wally, Claire, and Detective Hornblower hurried after her, arriving in the kitchen just in time to see Otis and Philippe scuffling, their arms locked like wrestlers. They grunted and strained, pushing against each other, and Claire was reminded of two rams in a field, locking horns over a ewe. Otis was the bigger of the two; he had about twenty pounds as well as a couple of inches over Philippe, who was wiry but slighter of build.

  Pots and pans shook on their metal hooks, a metallic rattling like the ripple of a snare drum. Before anyone could say anything, Max stormed into the kitchen, grabbed each of them by the shoulder, and pulled them off each other easily, as though they were children. Bulky as he was, Claire hadn’t realized the full extent of Max’s strength until then.

  “Stop it right now!” the chef bellowed, addressing both of the young men, who stood glowering at each other as Max held them apart. “I will not tolerate this kind of thing in my kitchen, do you understand?”

  They did not respond, but continued to glare at each other, until Max shook them as you might shake out a dust rag.

  “Answer me when I speak to you!” he roared. “Do you understand?”

  “Yeah,” Otis muttered, and Philippe looked away and nodded.

  Max brought his big pink face close to the waiter’s. “Do you understand?”

  “All right,” Philippe muttered.

  “Good, I’m glad we cleared that up,” Max remarked, releasing his hold on them.

  “Wow,” Meredith muttered under her breath, and Claire had to agree that Max’s display of strength was impressive. She couldn’t help thinking how easily such a man could slide a knife into a woman’s body.