by Parnell Hall
“Until it started to rain.”
“And what time was that?”
“Around nine-thirty.”
“An hour later. That figures. That’s how slow ball games are these days. At which point you went back to your room.”
“That’s right.”
“You got back to your room some time around nine-thirty?”
“Say nine-thirty, nine-thirty-five.”
“And what did you do?”
“I got in bed and read a book.”
“Until your wife came home with Johnny Mclnnerny?”
“That’s right.”
“And during the time you were reading, did you hear anything, anything at all?”
“Not a peep.”
“Is it possible that the murder happened then, during that time while you were reading—that someone came up the stairs, knocked on the door, stabbed Mrs. Mclnnerny dead?”
“Not at all. The walls are paper-thin. I would have heard the footsteps, I would have heard the knock on the door, I would have heard the body fall.”
“So that pins it down. The murder had to happen between eight-fifteen and nine-thirty. Which is probably better than the doctor can do. Fine. Thanks for your help.”
Pinehurst turned, strode away.
I was puzzled by Pinehurst. Not only did he seem peculiarly annoyed, somehow he had become practically animated. Unlike his ponderous questionings in the Christine Cobb affair, his interrogations now were far less formal. As I watched, he descended on the clump of people clustered outside East Pond, buttonholed Randy, and led him away from the group, very much in the manner of a sheep dog, singling out a lamb from the flock.
As I walked back to the others, Louise came rushing up.
“What did you tell him? What have you done? Now he’s after my boy.”
“It’s all right. He’s only concerned with the time element.”
“What?”
“Mrs. Mclnnerny saw Randy tonight. In his room.”
Her eyes widened. “You told him that?”
“Relax. He’s not a suspect. The fact is Mrs. Mclnnerny was snooping around. She’d heard your boy was involved with Christine Cobb. She wanted to know if it was true.”
Louise looked even more distressed. “That sounds like a motive.”
“Not at all. It’s old news. Trust me, all Pinehurst wants to know is when she left.”
Louise didn’t look convinced, but at that moment Pinehurst left Randy and headed back our way. He veered off, however, to intercept Sad Sack, who was coming back from the direction of the main house. Sad Sack spread his arms, shook his head. “Still no luck,” he said.
Pinehurst frowned, turned, surveyed the group.
Lars Heinrick was standing off to one side, alone as usual. He appeared absorbed in his thoughts. Pinehurst swooped down on him, attracted his attention, led him aside.
“See,” I said. “There’s your real suspect. No one really thinks it’s your boy.”
“No one did,” Louise said. “They arrested that woman. And everything was all right. I know that’s a terrible thing to say, but that’s how I saw it.” She spread her arms. “And then this. It’s awful. They know she didn’t do it now.”
Of course. Louise had just put into words what I myself had known, but hadn’t quite processed. No wonder Pinehurst was so upset. His whole theory of the case had just blown up in his face.
Florence was in jail. Florence hadn’t killed Mrs. Mclnnerny. And unless these were separate crimes committed by two separate murderers—the probability of which I figured somewhere around a million to one—Florence hadn’t killed Christine Cobb.
So Pinehurst’s bad mood was suddenly quite understandable indeed.
The medical examiner came out of East Pond. Pinehurst went to meet him, and the two of them conversed in low tones.
Louise swooped down on Randy. He brushed her off, walked away. I wondered if Sad Sack would let him go, or head him off and herd him back to the group. However, Randy stopped of his own accord, circled away from his mother, and hung out on the edge of the crowd.
I felt a hand on my shoulder, looked around to find Alice. She didn’t look pleased.
“So,” Alice said, “what was so important you couldn’t talk about it in front of me?”
“Not you,” I said. “Jean and Joan. We haven’t told them everything, and I’m going nuts keeping straight who knows what. All I was telling him about was Mrs. Mclnnerny calling on Randy. But other stuff came up. About the cocaine. That I didn’t want to go into in front of them.”
“Fine. But you cut me out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“And I have something to say.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“About the movie. He was asking if Johnny left the movie. Which he didn’t. Or if I left it. Or Jean and Joan. Which we didn’t.”
“So?”
“Someone else did.”
I looked at her in surprise. “Who?”
“Lucy.”
“Lucy?”
“I know,” Alice said. “I don’t suspect her for a moment. But she’s a waitress. She did have access to the kitchen phone. And she left in the middle of the movie.”
“You mean she went home?”
“She’s here now. Didn’t you see her?”
“Yes, I did. So what do you mean?”
“She went out and came back. She left the movie in the middle, came back and saw the end.”
“Maybe she went to the bathroom.”
“Not for that long,” Alice said. “She was gone long enough that I assumed she’d gone home. It was a surprise when she came back.”
“You should tell Pinehurst.”
“I was about to when you led him away.”
“I’m sorry. How was I to know?”
“Not that I suspect Lucy, you understand. I don’t for a minute think she did this. But we do have to report the facts. The police are never going to get anywhere without the facts.”
It occurred to me Chief Pinehurst was unlikely to get anywhere, even with the facts. So far all he’d managed to do was arrest an innocent woman.
“So you think I should tell him about Lucy?” Alice said.
“In good time. I don’t think it’s particularly urgent. The woman’s here, he can question her if he likes.”
When I said that I naturally looked over to where Lucy was standing.
And she wasn’t there. Right where she’d been a moment before. It was like a magic trick. As if talking about her had made her disappear.
I glanced around, spotted Lucy heading in the direction of the inn.
I turned back to Alice. “There goes Lucy now. I wanna see where she’s going. If you get a chance, tell Pinehurst. I should be right back.”
I walked hurriedly across the lawn after Lucy. She was already in the driveway, heading for the front door of the main house. I hung back, not wanting her to hear my feet crunch in the gravel. I circled around in the grass, waiting for her to go up on the porch. As she did, I was across the driveway on little cat feet, heading up the steps the minute she went through the front door.
The lights were on in the building. Through the glass door I could see her pass by the front desk heading for the dining room. I waited a few seconds, slipped in the door. Tiptoed swiftly past the front desk. Reached the door to the dining room.
The room was dark, but the light in the kitchen was still on. It was flickering through the swinging kitchen door. I crept to the door, pushed it open a crack, peered in.
Sure enough, Lucy was headed for the phone.
I tried to tell myself it didn’t have to mean anything. It was late, and she was calling her husband, her brother, her mother, her friend, or whatever to say she’d been detained.
Nonetheless, I couldn’t help feeling excited. I had caught her sneaking off to the phone.
Only she wasn’t. She stopped right next to the phone and opened a cabinet in the cupboard beside it. She reached in,
took something down, brought it over to the kitchen table, right next to the butcher block where Max had done his Stupid Pet Trick. When she brought it into the light, I could see what it was.
It was a file. A brown cardboard accordion file. The type with alphabetical divisions. The type you might use to file important papers if you didn’t have an actual file cabinet.
Lucy set the file on the table. Then opened her purse and proceeded to rummage through it. It was a large, drawstring purse, wide enough that she was able to take out a stack of unfolded sheets of paper.
Lucy took one page from the top of the stack and set it aside. She took the rest of the stack, straightened the edges, fished a paper clip from the bottom of the file folder, and clipped them together. She then took the stack of papers, riffled through the file for the right alphabetical listing, and inserted them into the file folder.
From the same space in the file folder she extracted a single sheet of paper, looked at it, put it down on the table. She rummaged through her purse, found a pen, marked something on the paper, and returned the paper to the file. She put the pen back in her purse, closed the file, and returned the file to the cabinet.
And headed for the door.
I had a moment of panic. There was no way I could get out the dining room door before she came through the kitchen one. She was going to catch me spying on her.
I was not standing there thinking this. Futile or not, I was fleeing as quick as I could.
Halfway across the room I was seized by inspiration. Prompted largely by the kitchen door starting to swing open. Quick like a bunny, I slipped into the booth.
And suddenly, there I sat, heart pounding fiercely, right in the seat where Christine Cobb had died.
From where I sat I could not see the kitchen door, which was good, because it meant Lucy couldn’t see me. But I could see the dining room door. I could see when she went out.
Which she did.
Without seeing me.
I heaved a sigh of relief, then waited in the booth until I heard the outside door bang. Even so, I went to the door of the dining room to look out to make sure she was gone.
She was. There was no one there.
As soon as I had assured myself of that fact, I went back to the kitchen. I went straight to the cabinet and took out the file.
It was too dark in the alcove by the phone to examine it. Like Lucy, I found myself bringing it over to the butcher block. Where I would have no way to hide it if someone came in. Well, it couldn’t be helped. This was a murder investigation.
The file was tied shut with string. I untied it, pulled the file open.
It was, as I’d assumed, an alphabetical file, with compartments for each letter.
I tried to judge which compartment Lucy had used. It seemed to me it was about two-thirds of the way through.
I tried the compartment marked R. Pulled out a stack of papers.
The one on top was a chart of some kind. In the form of a grid. Like an accountant might use.
Down the left side was what proved to be a vaguely alphabetical listing. Reading down the row I found such entries as “Raisin Cake,” “Raspberry Tart,” “Ratatouille,” “Relish—Antoine’s,” “ Relish—Carl’s,” “ Relish—Victor’s.”
Across the top of the grid were the months of the year. There was a total column after each month. Under the months, and after the names, were check marks, which were then totaled up. For instance, in January, under “Relish—Victor’s,” were four check marks. In the total column was the figure $40. “Ratatouille” had two check marks for twenty dollars. The “Raspberry Tart” had seven for seventy.
I pulled the top sheet off the pile. Underneath was a recipe for ratatouille. At the top of the recipe was a paper clip. Taking the paper off the stack, I saw that the paper clip held three of four pages together. I flipped through them. They were all Xerox copies of the same recipe for ratatouille.
Beneath them, attached together by a paper clip, were a number of copies of the recipe for the raspberry tart.
I riffled through the rest of the stack, found nothing but Xerox copies of recipes.
I took the stack of papers, squared it up, and started to put it back in the proper slot in the file. To do so, I spread the slot open with my left hand.
Something yellow near the bottom caught my eye. I reached in, pulled it out.
It was a small, crumpled piece of paper. I unfolded it, smoothed it out. It was a yellow Post-it, the type people use to write short messages on.
There was a message on this one, scrawled in pen. It was almost illegible. I held it up to the light, tried to make it out. It began L—, which made sense, since I assumed it was a note to Lucy.
I squinted at the note.
Blinked.
The first word appeared to be cop.
Cop?
What had I stumbled on?
What cop?
The next word was hard to make out. I deciphered it as restart.
The next two words were easy. Check others.
It was signed C—.
That made the whole message: L—Cop restart check others C—.
Obviously a note to Lucy from the cook, who signed it C either for cook, chef, or because his name began with C. Alice had told me his name. Charlie. Which clinched it. Clearly a note to Lucy from the chef.
Cop restart check others? What sort of warning was that?
I peered closer. Discerned a squiggle after cop. And a slight break in restart. I also realized what I had thought was an e was really an a.
Which allowed me to revise my translation of the message to: L—Copy ras. tart Check others C—.
Undoubtedly instructions from the chef to have Lucy Xerox more copies of the raspberry tart recipe and check the other recipes to see if anything else needed duplicating.
So I had not indeed cracked the murder. Instead, I had learned the chef was not at all reluctant to give out his recipes, he just wasn’t giving them out for free.
I wondered how Alice would take that news.
I folded up the file and put it back in the cabinet. It occurred to me, every investigation I’d undertaken in this case had led to a dead end. Or at least a lesser crime. First I’d unmasked a cocaine dealer. Now I’d penetrated a phony black market recipe ring.
I wondered if Pinehurst had to hear about this. I realized if Alice had told him about Lucy leaving the movie he probably would.
I was not a happy camper as I left the main house. From up on the porch I could see the people gathered around East Pond. I had no real wish to return to them. In particular, I was not eager to report my findings to Alice. Not that she wouldn’t find it fascinating, it was just there was no way I was going to be able to tell her without seeming to gloat.
I felt like I needed to clear my head. Just relax and not talk to anyone for a few minutes. So instead of joining the group around East Pond, I walked down to the road.
It was dark. The moon was behind some clouds, and the street light was burned out. I could barely see the outline of the fence around the swimming pool.
I stood there a few moments, letting my eyes grow accustomed to the dark. Shapes became slightly more distinct. I walked down to the pool, unhooked the gate, went inside, and sat in one of the chairs.
I had to think it out. Somehow or other, I had to think it out. Because, as Louise said, with Florence out of it, the cops would pick on someone else. And while Lars seemed the likely suspect, Randy wasn’t a bad guess. But, aside from him and Lars, who else was there?
Of course, one name loomed larger than the rest. Johnny Mclnnerny. The husband is always the prime suspect in a case like this. Only Alice said he never left the movie. And Alice was surely right. So Johnny Mclnnerny could not have done it. He had an ironclad alibi.
So did Florence. That was the other given. Florence was off the hook, because Florence was in jail.
So who could have done it? Lars. Randy. Louise. The chef. Lucy. The other waitress, who wasn�
��t there, and had presumably gone home.
And . ..
The man from Champney Falls.
What if that was it? What if it had been about drugs all along? Granted, the man from Champney Falls hadn’t been here tonight. But that was just as far as I knew. All I really knew was that no one had seen him. But if everyone was in the movie, no one would have seen him. He could have driven up, approached Mrs. Mclnnerny.
Why?
Small stumbling block there. Somehow putting Mrs. Mclnnerny together with a drug dealer just didn’t compute.
Except for the phone call. If she’d overheard the phone call, it could work just fine.
Had it?
I had no idea.
Across the road in the distance, I could see the activity around East Pond. Not clearly, just indistinct shapes milling around in the light flickering through the windows.
As I watched, two of the shapes detached themselves from the general mess, and headed in the direction of the main house. As they drew nearer, I could see it was Louise and Sad Sack. I wondered what they were after. It occurred to me, most likely coffee. They came up on the porch and went in the front door.
I could have used a cup of coffee just then. I wondered if they were making it for everyone, or just for the cops. I had to laugh at myself. There was no reason at all to assume they were making coffee. In all likelihood, they weren’t. I just thought they were because I wanted some.
I heaved a sigh and got to my feet. It was time to take the bull by the horns and go back and join the group. I was also curious as to what was going on. Though, with Pinehurst in charge, that was very likely nothing. It occurred to me this was the only murder investigation I could imagine that, with the police on the scene and the body not yet removed, I could take ten minutes out to sit down, kick back, and collect my thoughts.
That thought amused me. Made me decide, perversely, to give it one more minute. I lay back down in the deck chair, gazed up at the stars. Which I couldn’t see for the clouds. Which didn’t mean they weren’t there. Just like the solution to this crime.
How profound.
Maybe I’ll solve this yet.
A door banged. I looked up to see Sad Sack and Louise come out on the porch. They looked animated, and Sad Sack had something in his hand. They came down the steps, hurried off in the direction of East Pond.