Dead and Breakfast

by David Crossman

  “No, poor man,” said Amber, still staring at the fire. “I wish he were. He seems very nice.”

  “You had no way of knowing,” Caitlin commiserated, fighting desperately against the impulse to throw her arms around the girl and infuse her with love and comfort.

  Amber said nothing.

  Still, Caitlin could not reconcile the notion of Mrs. Wagner as the mastermind behind events with her impression of the woman. Heather, too, failed scrutiny. Somewhere in the background was a shadow, as yet unnamed.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine–Resurrection

  Caitlin turned to Piper. “And when doyou come into the picture?”

  “I was hired by Mr. Capshaw, to protect . . . ” He glanced at Amber, who nodded reassuringly, “to protect Joanna . . . and Amber.”

  “From?” Caitlin urged, her appetite for information only increasing with each little revelation.

  “From Gayla,” said Amber.

  Piper explained. “Gayla’s behavior had been worrying the family for some time.”

  “It began after mother . . . after Nancy, died. That was about a year after Gayla and I met Mrs. Wagner,” said Amber.

  “To be sure,” Piper continued. “Though of course, the rest of the family didn’t know – about the reunion – at the time.

  “After Nancy’s death, Gayla’s behavior, I understand, was . . . well, erratic and unpredictable. With a tendency toward the macabre. Capshaw was afraid she posed a threat to herself and . . . ” He raised an eyebrow in Amber’s direction, “others.”

  Caitlin nodded.

  “Of course, he attributed her mental state to her having lost Nancy, and didn’t want to run the risk of compounding her feelings of abandonment and bereavement by having her put under professional care. I guess he thought her bizarre behavior was just her adolescent grief working itself out.

  “However,” he sighed deeply and looked unabashedly at Amber, “a little while later there was another accident.”

  Amber took up the story. “The train accident I mentioned. Gayla and I had gone to Boston for the day. She’d arranged to have lunch with Mrs. Wagner. I hadn’t been invited, so I went shopping.

  “We met at South Station to catch the three o’clock train home.

  “The platform was very crowded. It was Friday afternoon and a snow storm was forecast, so the city was emptying out. “The train was . . . the train . . . ” She battled back a burst of emotion.

  Piper squeezed her hand, but said nothing.

  She nodded, sniffed, and nodded again. “The train was pulling in when I was pushed from behind. I’d have fallen in front of it, had a man beside me not grabbed me at the last second.”

  “Did Gayla push you?” Caitlin asked, having allowed time for Amber to compose herself.

  “It never occurred to me at the time,” said Amber. “She seemed not to have noticed and was shocked at the idea. She told me it was my imagination; that someone had simply bumped me in the press of the crowd.

  “However, when I mentioned it to father, he was very concerned. Apparently he’d had suspicions, which he kept to himself.”

  “He hired me the next day,” said Piper, “to see that no harm came to Amber. We decided I’d stay in the shadows myself and have him hire my partner, Leo Dosty, as the girl’s chauffeur.”

  “No more trains to Boston?” Caitlin surmised.

  “Exactly. Chauffeurs are an anonymous breed, and they go everywhere.”

  “Things returned to normal,” Amber resumed, “or seemed to. Gayla stopped seeing so much of Mrs. Wagner, I thought. Her attention seemed mostly focused on getting into Dartmouth and all that entailed. Time went on. Father renewed his acquaintance with Joanna . . . who had been his nurse after the automobile accident . . . and she really helped him get over his grief. Within the year, they were married. Then he . . . ”

  “Just prior to his death, Mr. Capshaw had told me he felt Gayla was better, and that she posed no danger to anyone. He gave me four week’s notice,” said Piper. “I was just wrapping things up when . . . ”

  “Chauffeurs don’t go canoeing,” said Amber.

  Piper hung his head. “No.”

  It was Amber’s turn to offer consolation. She put her hand on Piper’s and left it there. “After I crawled out of the rushes, I lay on the bank for quite a while, catching my breath, trying to sort out what had happened. I knew someone had tried to kill me. I suspected it was Gayla. I even entertained the notion that Joanna might have been in on some kind of conspiracy against me. I had no idea what to do next . . . except to find Dosty. I felt I could trust him.

  “I took the path through the woods to the boathouse and crawled up in the loft there, and waited.

  “The search and rescue team was called out, of course. I found out later that Joanna had been sedated, so it was Gayla’s job to lead them to the scene of the accident. Needless to say, she had them looking half a mile away. As far as she knew, I was still tied to a log at the bottom by the dam,” she shivered visibly, “and she made sure they wouldn’t find me.

  “The search continued ‘til well after dark. I crawled out of hiding and called Dosty from the boathouse phone.”

  “She told him everything,” said Piper. “He took her a change of clothes, then he called me and I met them there. We talked for a long while about what to do next.”

  Amber took up the narrative. “I’ll never forget how strange it was that night, looking out at all that furious activity on the lake, the flashing lights, voices shouting back and forth in the darkness . . . calling my name. All those people searching so desperately for what none of them wanted to find.

  “And there I was the whole time, watching them.”

  “Strangest night of my life,” said Piper, reflectively. Eventually, he shook off the visceral effect of the memory. “The first notion was to go to the police, of course, but in the end it would be her word against her sister’s, with Mrs. Capshaw a witness that it had just been an accident as far as she could tell.

  “Of course, with Gayla now passing herself off as Amber, it wasn’t hard to imagine what she was up to . . . ”

  “I couldn’t believe it at the time,” said Amber.

  Piper continued. “And the only thing standing in the way was her stepmother. I decided we needed to convince Gayla that her attempt had succeeded, so that she’d feel comfortable enough to proceed with her plan, and we could catch her in the act.”

  “Without telling Joanna?” said Caitlin, aghast at the thought.

  “It wouldn’t have done any good,” Piper argued, no doubt voicing the same argument he’d had with himself at the time. “Besides, at the time, we couldn’t be sure she wasn’t involved somehow. As it turned out, in her state, she’d have been useless trying to play along anyway, and that was the only way to force the whole thing out into the open. In retrospect it was a cold -blooded thing to have done to her, I admit, but . . . ”

  “How did you convince everyone that Amber . . . ‘Gayla’ . . . was dead?”

  “Dosty’s a jogger. As chauffeur to the Capshaws, he’d typically run early in the morning, before anyone was likely to have need of him. When they were in New Hampshire, it was his custom to run around the lake.”

  Caitlin leapt ahead. “So he found her the next morning?”

  Amber nodded. “Before dawn I went back to the rushes, I took a quick swim in my clothes, to look convincing, and waited for Dosty to show up with the rowboat. I lay in the bow; by the time we got back to the dock Joanna and Gayla were up and had rejoined the search. They came running, but stopped at the top of the ramp when he lifted me out of the boat and laid me on the dock.”

  “He told them he’d found her on the far side of the dam . . . and that she’d been pretty badly beaten up in the fall. Neither of them needed much convincing not to view the remains. In fact, Joanna fainted, and Gayla took her back to the house, which is what Amber would have done. Dosty volunteered to do what was necessary with the body. He took her to the morgue a
t the hospital.

  “Meanwhile, I had made arrangements with the medical examiner to forego the usual preliminaries and provide the necessary paperwork to certify that Gayla Capshaw, duly identified by her two closest relatives, had accidentally drowned.”

  “How did you do that?”

  Piper smiled. “The man is overworked, paying alimony to two ex-wives, and putting a son and daughter through very expensive colleges.”

  “You’ve heard it said that everyone has their price. Well, that may or may not be true, but after very little haggling, Mr. Piper found one sufficient to silence his scruples,” said Amber. “The story of the drowning was front page news in all the papers by that night, and within three days, as far as anyone was concerned, Gayla was cremated.”

  “The next thing was to get our girl here safely out of the way. I sent her to live with my sister in New Jersey, while Dosty kept his ears open at the house to find out what Gayla was up to.

  “He found out about her arrangements for this trip, under the pretext that it was for Joanna’s benefit. Joanna didn’t want to come, but Gayla didn’t give her much choice. Besides, she had the family doctor pressing the issue, as well.

  “I decided to tag along.”

  “When I found out,” said Amber, “I insisted on going as well. That was impossible, for obvious reasons . . . ”

  “That’s when we concocted Miss Tichyara.”

  Caitlin drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You were very convincing.”

  “Not convincing enough, apparently,” said Amber. “You found me out.”

  Caitlin thought of the fire drill. “Only under extraordinary circumstances,” she said, with a wry smile. “I don’t think you have to worry about anyone else.”

  “What circumstances?”

  Couched in Caitlin’s response, was the answer. “Night before last, when the fire alarm went off, “ she said, addressing Piper, “after everyone had gone, you went into Miss Tichyara’s, Amber’s room to get something. What was it?”

  Piper was taken by the short hairs. “How did you know?”

  “She was watching,” Amber deduced. It was evident that she knew, now, how Caitlin had identified her. “You recognized similarities that no amount of hair dye or dark glasses could hide, didn’t you?”

  “I’m a photographer,” said Caitlin, allowing the statement to serve as an explanation. “What did you take from her room?”

  “Gayla’s passport,” Amber volunteered. “There was no time to get a passport under Ella Tichyara’s name, so we had to improvise. Dosty knew Gayla would be traveling with mine, so he found hers. That’s what was in my room. Hardly the kind of thing you’d want turning up in a fire investigation.”

  “But, if you’re using your own passport, how did you get through customs looking like that?”

  “I didn’t become Miss Tichyara until after we landed at Orly.”

  “Which brings us to the moment,” Piper announced. “How did you come to find out about Mrs. Wagner, and about Heather and Delilah, for that matter?”

  “A lawyer friend of mine, in Boston, did some digging for me.” In a few short sentences Caitlin recapitulated her conversations with Lavida.

  Amber shuddered visibly. “It was a lawyer in Boston who helped me find Mrs. Wagner. I wish I’d never made that call.”

  Piper changed the subject. “So, we’re up against four of them. No wonder things keep getting out of hand.”

  Caitlin wasn’t sure. “I don’t know about Delilah. She may just be along for the ride.”

  “But she helped Heather conceal that murderer,” Amber objected.

  “I didn’t say she was smart. She just doesn’t strike me as cold-blooded. I don’t know. It’s just a feeling . . . not that my feelings have been very helpful.”

  “Three, then,” Piper amended. “The question is: what’s next? This is the last night. Their last chance to accomplish whatever they’ve got in mind. How do we keep it from happening?”

  Caitlin decided to keep the scoop on Jeremy Farthing to herself for the time-being. “Do you think she’s in physical danger?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Amber. “That would be too many bodies.”

  “I don’t agree,” Piper snapped impatiently. Apparently, this was an argument they’d had before. “You’ve got three dead already, including yourself. All tragic accidents. What’s one more? Look at the Kennedys. One disaster after another, but no one’s cried conspiracy.”

  “Mr. Piper believes they were behind the deaths of my mother and father, as well,” Amber explained.

  “Sure as taxes,” Piper declared with an exclamatory slap at the table.

  “I confess, I couldn’t believe it at first, but now . . . ”

  “They’re capable of anything.” Piper leaned across the table and fixed Caitlin’s eyes with alarming intensity. “I’ll tell you this,” he raised his finger and shook it for emphasis, “they’re up against it. Their plans to finesse this thing – to drive Joanna over the edge one way or the other – have failed. I wouldn’t be surprised if they returned to the method that’s served ‘em so well in the past.

  “I expect if we leave things ‘til morning, we’ll wake to the news that Joanna has been the victim of a bizarre accident – hair drier in the bathtub, viper on the pull chain – something too far out of the ordinary to be credited as anything but an accident.

  “Listen to me,” Piper continued, his attitude leaving no doubt that he was utterly convinced of what he was about to say, “don’t make the mistake of attributing even a whiff of humanity or compassion to those women. I don’t know which one is the mastermind, but they all dance for the same devil.”

  “It must be Heather,” said Amber. “Gayla can’t organize her underwear drawer. And Mrs. Wagner has no imagination whatever. It must be Heather.”

  Heather? Everything the girl had done struck Caitlin as impetuous and reactive rather than proactive. She was a life force that thrived in the excitement of the moment, with no moral conscience, surely no thought of the consequences of her actions, to herself or others. Planner? Mastermind? Not unless the whole projected persona was an act, which Caitlin couldn’t bring herself to believe.

  “No matter,” said Piper, his hoarse whisper intruding abruptly on her thoughts. “The question is: What can we do to see to it that no harm comes to Joanna?”

  “Switches,” said Caitlin. The word led the thought.

  “Pardon?”

  “One last game of Switches.”

  Over the next few minutes, she outlined the plan as it occurred to her, and lively discussion followed as, one-by-one, Piper’s objections were overcome, and the details were hammered out.

  When the conspiratorial troika finally fell silent, the latch on the tower door was lowered noiselessly into place by an unseen hand.

  Nobody was meant to notice.

  Nobody did.

  Chapter Thirty–A Game of Switches

  No shadowy nemesis had greater claim on Caitlin’s wits as night wore on than the simple battle to stay awake. She was exhausted to the point that her thoughts – the practical, the fanciful, and the ridiculous – kept bumping into one another, until they devolved into a hodgepodge of feelings and emotions.

  Ensconced in the hiding place that had served so well, the linen closet, she applied a bleary eye to the crack between the door and the jamb and watched the reverse image of the hallway reflected in the full-length mirror on the opposite wall.

  She has passed the point where blinks become impromptu naps and several times had dozed off only to be jarred awake by a near tumble from the uncomfortable stool on which she’d positioned herself. The few seconds it took for her senses to absorb the adrenaline thus pumped into her system, moments of surprisingly intense lucidity were quickly numbed by sleep’s relentless assault.

  She wondered if Jill and Piper, posted at the door of Piper’s room, were fairing any better. She had no difficulty, in the immense, shriveling silence of the
chateau, imagining them both sound asleep on the oversized bed, leaving her alone to rid the night of its demons.

  Likewise, she was plagued by a growing doubt that the mirror on the opposite wall could be trusted to reliably reflect reality. As hours passed, it was becoming increasingly easier to believe things were going on in the hall that the mirror was concealing from her. More than once, with great effort, she stopped herself on the verge of stepping from hiding for a quick inspection to satisfy her senses.

  Two o’clock had come and gone. Had they misread their tea leaves? Was Joanna really in any danger? Was anything going to happen after all? Sleep was the thing. Just half an hour. Just five precious minutes.

  Something moved in the mirror, and she sat up abruptly. A door opened. Mentally reversing the image and counting back from the balcony, she saw that it was the Wagner’s door.

  Exhaustion was banished.

  Suddenly Caitlin was a mass of tingling nerve-ends, holding her breath as the final act began to unfold.

  Mrs. Wagner poked her head out of her room and quickly surveyed the hall. Satisfied that it was empty, she stepped out and pulled the door softly shut behind her. She was carrying a candle, which supplemented the meager light of the electric sconces that lined the corridor.

  For a substantial woman, she moved with surprising fluidity, seeming to float across the hall to the door of Amber’s room, which she opened without knocking. With a final, furtive glance up and down the hall, she went in. The door closed quietly behind her.

  “Are you awake?” Mrs. Wagner whispered harshly in the darkness.

  “Yes,” said Amber. Wrapped in a blanket, she was sitting in a chair by the window, vaguely silhouetted by the light of a billion stars. “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  “I thought you’d never come. I nearly fell asleep.”

  Mrs. Wagner scuffed across the stone floor in her slippers, one hand shielding her candle against the breath of the night. “Wouldn’t matter if you had. I told you I’d wake you up when I decided what to do . . . ”