“Well,” said Detective Hornblower, “I’d better be going.”
“What about that lady who was here?” said Meredith.
“You mean Ms. White, from the DA’s office? She left a while ago.”
“What was she doing here?”
“Standard procedure in a murder investigation. Well, I’ll see you folks later.” He stood up. “Thanks for the coffee,” he said to Philippe, who was at the bar washing glasses.
“Anytime,” the young man replied.
Wally offered to walk him as far as the front door, and Claire could hear the sound of their voices as they stood in the hall talking, presumably about the case.
Philippe wiped off the bar and then brought a mug of hot cider over to Claire and Meredith’s table.
“So, do you have a boyfriend?” he said to Meredith.
She looked at him with disgust. “Yeah—right,” she muttered.
“No?” he said.
“I’m not really interested in boys my own age all that much.”
“You like older men, then?” Philippe said as he placed a cinnamon stick in the mug, wiping the sides clean with a linen napkin.
“Yeah, but like much older,” Meredith replied disdainfully, with a toss of her head in case he didn’t get the message.
“Like Detective Hornblower?” Claire offered.
Meredith’s face reddened. “Maybe. Someone like him—I like that type.”
“Oh, I see.” The waiter nodded, exchanging a glance with Claire.
“Were you Mona’s boyfriend?” Meredith suddenly asked Philippe.
“Meredith—” Claire began, but the waiter shook his head.
“It’s all right,” he said softly. “I was for a while, then something happened. I’m not sure what, but something came between us. I always thought it was someone else, but Mona would never talk about it.”
“Did you love her?” asked Meredith.
“Look, Meredith,” said Claire, but Philippe just smiled sadly.
“Yes,” he said after a moment. “Yes, I think I did. The problem was—”
But at that moment Otis came into the bar, and Philippe stopped midsentence and turned away.
“What?” said Meredith, but Claire pinched her elbow and nodded toward Otis.
“Oh,” Meredith said.
“Do you have any lemons in here?” Otis said to Philippe in a flat voice, but Claire could hear the buried rage beneath it. “Max needs some in the kitchen.”
“Yeah, there are some in the fridge,” Philippe replied without looking at Otis, instead busying himself wiping off the tables.
Otis bent down to look in the small bar refrigerator, and Meredith exchanged a glance with Claire. The animosity between the two men filled the room, thicker than the smoke rising from the fireplace.
Otis found what he was looking for and left without a word, and Philippe returned to his post behind the bar. Meredith looked as if she was dying to say something, but Claire cautioned her with a stern look, and she remained silent.
Philippe came out from behind the bar and approached their table. “Want to see something?”
“Sure,” said Meredith.
He reached behind his ear, and when he withdrew his hand there was a quarter in it. He let the coin fall into Meredith’s outstretched hand.
“Hey,” she said, examining the quarter. “Where’d you learn to do that?”
Philippe shrugged. “From my father. He was a circus clown and a magician.”
“Wow.” Meredith twirled the quarter on the tablecloth. “That must have been so cool when you were a kid. My father’s a lawyer,” she added with disgust.
Philippe sighed. “We traveled a lot, so I never got to keep one set of friends. It’s kind of hard when you’re a kid.”
“I’ll bet,” said Claire. Philippe was good-looking and intelligent, but there was something solemn about him—solemn and almost sad.
“What other tricks can you do?” Meredith asked. “Can you juggle?”
“Some. I’m a little out of practice. My dad could juggle six balls at once, though—and the most anyone’s ever done is seven.”
“Wow,” said Meredith. “Awesome.”
Suddenly the lights in the room flickered once and then went out, leaving them in darkness except for the still-glowing embers in the fireplace.
“All right!” Meredith cried. “Blackout!”
“Shit,” Philippe muttered, then added, “Sorry.”
“No problemo,” Meredith replied. “I’ve heard much worse. My evil stepmother—”
But Philippe wasn’t listening; he was rummaging around behind the bar. “Now where does Otis keep those damn candles?” he muttered. Claire heard the sound of cupboards being opened and closed again, of cluttered drawers being rifled through. She could see the outline of Philippe’s body as he ducked behind the counter to search the cupboards there.
“Ah, here we go,” he said at last, and she heard the scraping of a match. There was a flare of blue light under Philippe’s face, which looked ghoulish lit from below, like a monster in a cheap horror film. She heard the sound of heavy footsteps in the hallways outside, then the door to the bar opened.
A moment later Max’s hulking figure appeared in the doorway, silhouetted against a thin blue slice of moonlight, his bald head shiny in the pale light.
“Who’s in here?” he called. “Is everyone all right?”
“Yes—I’ve found some candles,” Philippe replied.
A second figure appeared in the doorway next to Max, and Claire recognized the outline of Wally’s broad, sloping shoulders. His head looked almost square next to Max’s bullet-shaped pate.
“Looks like we have a blackout,” he observed, walking carefully into the room.
“Probably the snow on the power lines,” Max remarked. “That’s my guess, anyway—that they collapsed under the weight of all that snow.”
“Did Detective Hornblower leave?” Meredith inquired.
“Yes, he went home,” Wally replied. “Can I give you a hand with those?” he asked Philippe, who was rummaging around behind the bar for more candles.
“Sure, thanks.”
“Me, too!” Meredith chirped. “Let me help!”
“So you’re all under control in here, it looks like,” said Max.
“Yeah, we’re fine,” Philippe replied as he dug through drawers for some more supplies.
With a grunt, the big chef lumbered off down the hall. Claire could hear the sound of doors opening and closing throughout the building, the patter of hurried footsteps, and the murmur of voices as people attempted to cope with the blackout.
Suddenly she felt something cold and wet being shoved into the palm of her right hand. She jerked her hand away instinctively, but realized at the same instant that the cold, wet object was in fact Shatzy’s nose. With a laugh, she felt for the dog’s head and stroked his ears. He responded by pressing his warm body against her leg. Meanwhile, Philippe had managed to find a dozen or so candles, and Wally and Meredith were hunting around the room for more candlesticks.
“We have some emergency lanterns in the basement,” Philippe remarked, “but I’m not going down there.”
Just then Frank Wilson appeared at the back entrance to the bar, carrying a kerosene lantern, which he held aloft as he opened the Dutch door separating the bar from the dining room.
“Everyone okay?” he asked, handing the lantern to Philippe.
“Fine, thanks,” Wally replied.
“I guess he didn’t mind going into the basement,” Meredith whispered to Claire. “Isn’t that illegal? I mean, isn’t it roped off?”
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Claire whispered back.
The room glowed from the light of half a dozen candles, and now, with the addition of the kerosene lamp, it was quite cozy. Claire got up and put another log on the fire, which had died down to glowing embers. The fire sputtered and sparks shot out from behind the log.
“What can
I do to help?” said Wally, lighting another candle.
“I think we’re okay for now,” the innkeeper answered. “I’m sending a lantern around to each room. Otis is bringing some more up from the basement right now. I’ll give you one for your room.”
Claire was a little surprised that Otis was willing to go down into that dark place of death, especially given the way he felt about Mona, but she said nothing.
“How long do you think the power will be off?” Wally asked.
“Don’t know—depends on how widespread it is, and how bad the damage is,” Wilson replied. “And Boston Edison will have to drag people away from their Thanksgiving dinner to fix the problem. That won’t be any fun.”
Thanksgiving. Claire realized for the first time that it was Thanksgiving—out in the world, at least, but here at the inn, where time seemed to have stopped, it could have been any day at all.
Chapter 9
“Do I have to?” Meredith lay on her back on the bed, shoes unlaced, pulling at the loose laces.
Claire put down her book, In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat; Meredith’s recent interest in quantum physics had rubbed off on her. “It’s Thanksgiving. Don’t you think your father will be hurt if you don’t call?”
Meredith sighed and rolled onto her stomach. “I guess.”
“Then why don’t you want to call?”
“Well, it’s just that I never know when she’ll answer the phone.”
“Meredith, your stepmother can’t hurt you up here.”
The girl rolled her eyes. “I know. I just can’t stand her. Oh, well”—she heaved herself up from the bed—“better get it over with.”
When Meredith was gone the room was very quiet, and Claire buried herself in her book until the girl returned—which wasn’t long. Meredith threw herself on the bed without a word, but with a big sigh that expressed her dissatisfaction.
“There,” Claire said cheerfully. “Don’t you feel better?”
“Yeah, I guess.” There was silence while she tied the two laces together, then looped them over her fingers to form a cat’s cradle. Then, rolling onto her stomach once again, she sighed again.
“Yes?” said Claire.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay.” Another silence.
Claire put her book down once again. “Okay, Meredith, what’s on your mind?”
“I don’t know . . . did you, I mean, could you—well, talk to your parents about . . . stuff?”
Claire thought a moment before answering. “Yes. Yes, I could. I could usually talk to my mother. My father didn’t always listen, but I could talk to him sometimes, too.”
Another sigh. “My dad . . . I don’t know. I feel like he just wants everything to be okay all the time, but it just isn’t. And then if there’s a problem, he doesn’t want to talk about it—like he thinks if he ignores stuff it’ll just go away, you know?”
Claire nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I do know. I had some of that in my family, too.”
Meredith’s face brightened. “Really?”
“Really.”
“What happened?”
“I moved to New York and found a good therapist.”
Meredith laughed, and the sound made Claire feel better; it cleared the air, like a sudden shower.
“Wow,” she said. “I can’t imagine how my dad would flip if I went to a therapist. It would be like—like he’d failed as a parent or something.”
“That’s too bad. Therapy still has so much shame attached to it in this country. No one feels ashamed of having heart disease or diabetes, but—well, I think there would be a lot fewer heart attacks if everyone had a good therapist.”
Meredith’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“Oh, that can’t be news to you. Even the AMA is recognizing the mind-body connection.”
“Yeah, but my dad . . . he even feels guilty about getting a cold.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. You know, I once had a cardiologist boyfriend who told me—”
“When was that?” Meredith put her chin on her elbows.
“Before I met you. Anyway, he used to say—”
“A cardiologist. That’s so cool!”
“Can I finish?”
“Sorry.”
“He used to say that even heart attacks were often literally the result of broken hearts.”
“Wow . . . you mean, because people were sad and stuff?”
“Right.”
“Jilted lovers, things like that?”
“Sometimes, yes.”
“That’s amazing. It’s sad, too, if you think about it.” Meredith’s face was solemn, her blue eyes darker than usual.
“Yes, it is.”
They were interrupted by the arrival of Wally, who had been downstairs helping Frank Wilson shovel snow from the eaves.
“Hiya,” he said, closing the door behind him. His cheeks were ruddy and a light dusting of snow lay on his red-checkered wool cap.
“Do you know Claire used to date a cardiologist?” Meredith answered
“No, I didn’t. But then, there’s a lot about her I don’t know.”
“Well”—Claire felt her face reddening—“a little mystery is a good thing.”
“A little, yes,” he agreed, sitting next to her, “but not too much.”
“I’m starving,” Meredith proclaimed suddenly. “When’s dinner?”
“I think Max is working on something now,” Wally said, removing his coat. “Shall we go down?”
Meredith hopped off the bed. “Sure! Let’s go.”
Even though there was no electricity, the stove in the kitchen used natural gas, so Max was able to heat up a pot of soup for everyone’s dinner. Meredith insisted on helping, and soon the aroma of beef barley soup floated up through the halls of the inn.
It was a strange and motley group that gathered for a rather pathetic Thanksgiving dinner—soup instead of roast turkey, bread and butter instead of mashed potatoes and gravy. No one really felt much like eating; the mood was anything but festive, and the little group gathered in the big dining room with the central fireplace was rather glum. Even Meredith was subdued, eating her soup quietly, folding her napkin carefully when she was through.
Claire had been looking forward to a few days of not having to answer to people, of getting away from the work of being around people, and now, ironically, here she was stuck with a group of strangers, all in the same boat, all having to deal unwillingly with each other. To counter the tension of the occasion, she ordered a bottle of wine with dinner.
Claire remembered how much her parents had enjoyed drinking, their lives so intertwined with alcohol, remembered cheerful parties full of hard-drinking friends, knocking back glass after glass of Scotch or gin or (for the more delicate) vodka and orange juice. She remembered her father, normally shy and distracted, full of bonhomie and good cheer, making his way through the crowd of people gathered in the living room, “freshening drinks.” She could still hear his party mantra: “Can I freshen your drink?” No one in those days, among her parents’ friends at least, considered drinking a “problem.” Even though AA had been around for decades at that point, no one she knew of was “in recovery.”
Well, something was gained, but then again . . . her parents never lived long enough to join “the program” or any other self-analyzing, self-examining movement. Claire tried to imagine her proud, reserved mother standing up in a room full of strangers saying, “My name is Elizabeth and I’m an alcoholic,” but such a scene was beyond her. She had heard her father dismiss psychiatrists as “professional navel gazers,” and her mother had turned denial into an art form; if she did drink too much, it was always, always controlled; with Claire’s mother, control was second nature, as effortless and natural as swimming is to an otter. She ducked and dove through the waves of reality, letting them wash over her like s
o much flotsam and jetsam. Claire had to admire her. She always had an admiration for people who thumbed their noses, even at reality itself; Claire had to tip her hat to such boldness.
A quote from Goethe came to her:
In boldness there is genius.
What you can do, or think you can, begin it.
She looked across the table at Wally, who sat quietly staring into the fire. What was it she was about to begin? Claire wondered; what was she beginning with Wally, or with Meredith? Together, the three of them formed a kind of surrogate family, even as the people in the hotel formed a surrogate family of sorts—albeit a sad little family, eating soup instead of roast turkey and cranberry sauce. Now that the roads were finally open, both Philippe and Otis had gone home, so Max was serving the soup, with the help of Frank Wilson’s son Henry.
Chris and Jack Callahan sat at the corner table; Jack seemed unaware that anything out of the ordinary had happened and was his usual placid self, a white linen napkin tucked under his chin, staring blankly into space, a little half smile on his lined face. His son showed no obvious signs of grief, though Claire thought he was moving even more slowly than usual.
Lyle and Sally arrived after all the others had already been served. Maybe it was the candlelight, always kinder than artificial lighting, but Claire thought the circles under Sally’s eyes looked a little less pronounced; she looked as though maybe she had a nap before dinner. She wore a loosely fitting black dress, and Claire thought that there was a touch of lipstick on her lips, a little rouge on her cheeks. Lyle wore a thick dark turtleneck, which served to accentuate the blond sheen of his hair. Sally’s thin, nervous hands shook a little as she reached for her napkin, but she looked calmer than she had before. That struck Claire as a little odd, since everyone else was understandably jumpier than usual.
Lyle and Sally sat very quietly, though, as Max brought them a basket of fresh scones. There had been no bread delivery because of the storm, so Max had whipped up a batch of scones that afternoon.
The fire crackled warmly, and the candles on each table cast their flickering shadows on the whitewashed ceiling of the dining room. It if weren’t for the circumstances, Claire thought, this would be a cozy, relaxed way to dine, just as people did in the eighteenth century when the inn was built—without the aid of artificial light, but by candlelight. The soft glow of the candles accentuated the heavy dark beams above them, sending ghostly patterns flickering and wavering over the walls. What dark and ancient secrets did these walls hold within them? Claire wondered. And now there was a new secret.
Who Killed Mona Lisa? Page 10