Jane had known it when she’d seen Rick Moore lying facedown in that stream. He was in his stocking feet, or one stocking foot, at least, and that was enough for her. She had heard Murkel or one of the other police officers say that Rick’s lack of shoes showed how desperate he was to get out of the barn and how disoriented, but that isn’t what Jane saw. If Rick had been working around all those toxic chemicals and varnishes and finishes that everyone talked about, he would be wearing shoes. Any master carpenter—and god knows, they were all masters around here—knew that you didn’t set foot in a workshop without shoes and socks on. Shoes and socks? At least. Steel-toed work boots more likely.
Besides, the mirror said so. Mirrors don’t lie. They are the unforgiving reflection of your age, your joys and your sorrows, and they even have been known to mouth off about who is the fairest in the land. Even if it wasn’t written here in exactly black and white, it was printed in a decisive silver and red—murder! Claire Oh was somewhere on these grounds trying to clear herself of Horace Cutler’s murder because it must be linked to Rick Moore’s death, and she was asking for Jane’s help. Jane wished that Claire had used her own lipstick, since Belinda St. Germain’s packing tips didn’t allow for a spare tube and Jane’s Angel Red was now a stump of its former self, but she was delighted to get the message. She felt she had known all along.
The real reason that Jane agreed with the sentiments in the mirror were simple. She and Tim had come to Campbell and LaSalle to solve the murder of Horace Cutler. Nobody had thought his death was an accident. No one had suspected that he had broken into the antique mall and fallen against the silver dagger, which had jumped out of the display case. And Horace’s murder likely had something to do with the Westman chest, and the Westman chest had a lot to do with Campbell and LaSalle. So if she and Tim were there to investigate a murder and someone else was found dead…?
Didn’t anyone watch television? Didn’t anyone read mysteries?
Rick Moore was a master carpenter, a sycophantic student of Blake Campbell. Surely he would have known about or even worked on the Westman chest. Jane had to get into the barn workshop and do a little research herself. It would be easier if she could find Claire Oh and talk to her. She had a feeling that now that the stakes were raised, now that Rick had ended up facedown in the stream, that some of Claire’s cool, calm superiority might disappear. Murder, suspicion of murder, and fear of murder all had the effect of making someone not quite so tall.
Dinner was in full swing at the lodge. Conversation had passed from “So sad about Rick” to “Are you consulting on the Bleakman vanity?” as smoothly as the soup course had flowed into the salad course. Jane slid into the seat next to Tim, realizing that it wouldn’t be so easy to bring up Rick or ask about what he had been working on.
“What?” Jane asked, as Tim looked her over and shook his head.
“You were gone long enough, so I naturally assumed…,” Tim said and ended with a shrug.
“What?”
“Honey, a simple comb through and a little lipstick wouldn’t have been the end of the world,” said Tim. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Damn right, that’s all,” said Jane.
“Is Nancy on the trail of someone?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
Jane smiled and reached for the bread basket. “You have salad dressing under your eye,” she whispered.
Blake Campbell was sitting alone in an armchair with a pleasant if vacant look at the group assembled in the great hall of the lodge. The dinner table was still filled with people, but a few were standing, stretching, and beginning the after-dinner mingle.
Jane sat down next to him, trying to keep her wits about her. She was never her best around extraordinarily handsome men. She didn’t feel particularly attracted to them, but she did feel something. So many actors and models had come her way when she was producing television commercials that she had begun to see a common need, a similar longing in the beauties, both male and female. Like the very rich who never knew if people wanted them for themselves or their money, she supposed they never knew if someone wanted them for themselves or their incredible looks. And here was Blake, so full of the right stuff—the looks, the money, and by all accounts, the talent and intelligence. He had it all, including that needy, lonely look she’d seen in so many pairs of eyes all wanting her to hire them.
Jane offered her hand and reminded Blake that they had been briefly introduced during the frantic events of the afternoon.
“It’s not the way I’d like to see anyone introduced to Campbell and LaSalle,” Blake said with a sigh, “but you seem to have weathered the shock.” He hesitated, then turned up his smile a notch brighter and two degrees warmer. “Quite beautifully,” he added.
Another problem with the chronically handsome—they were so good at acting charming that it was hard to tell when they were simply being charming. Jane decided that she should not be a detective at this moment, analyzing every smile and sigh. She would find out more playing the picker-in-training-to-be-a-dealer role.
“I’m wondering if I’ll still be able to begin my assignment tomorrow?” Jane asked.
“Assignment?”
“Tim is training me to leave behind my junker ways and become a dealer. He not only wanted to show me around here and introduce me to the best restorers and furniture experts, he gave me a little homework. He wanted me to research a piece of furniture,” said Jane.
“Final exam?” Blake asked, clearly intrigued.
He likes tests, Jane thought. He’s bored out of his skull.
“Sort of,” said Jane. “I have a small drawer from what might be a traveling desk or maybe even from some type of game table, and I’m supposed to find out everything I can about it. Tim said that between the library you keep and the experts I would find here, I should be able to give him a detailed description of the piece, age, maker, a few of its adventures, even the specifications to have it rebuilt if I wanted.”
“Lowry thinks very highly of us here at…” Blake let himself trail off.
“He said if he was a sick boy he’d go to the Mayo Clinic, but if he were a sick highboy, he’d ask to come to Campbell and LaSalle,” said Jane.
Blake grimaced and groaned, but he was clearly flattered. “As far as I know, Rick’s accident doesn’t affect access to any part of the facility. I don’t want anybody experimenting with the ammonia tent without my supervision, of course. You can use the library in the barn and talk to anyone who has the time and inclination, except during quiet time, of course.”
“Getting to know my prize pupil?” Tim asked, handing Jane a glassful of what she assumed was vodka. The olives were a tip-off. She hadn’t noticed his approach, but it seemed that he had been keeping an eye on her. Maybe he was afraid she would fall under the Blake Campbell spell.
“An excellent student, I think,” said Blake, standing. “I’ll be at your disposal all day tomorrow.”
“Except during quiet time,” Jane said.
Jane and Tim watched Blake walk to the back of the room, touch Roxanne briefly on the shoulder, nod, then leave by the huge double doors.
“You get along with him, don’t you, Tim?” Jane asked. When he nodded, she added, “because he sure left fast enough when you came up.”
“He’s not running from me,” Tim said. “I was talking to Scott, who said that Mickey’s been chasing him all over the place trying to get put on all the projects that Rick left. You know, now he wants to be the apple of Daddy’s eye.”
“It’s funny. Everybody talks about how close Rick was to Blake, how he followed him around and all, but Blake doesn’t seem particularly broken up,” Jane said. “No one seems very sad.”
“Is that what you were doing with Blake? Gauging the mourning level? Looked more to me like you were establishing the old teacher-student-flirtation strategy,” said Tim, taking a large swallow of his drink. “Very clever.”
Jane nodded and took a large drink herself, nearly choking.
>
“Water? With olives in it? What the…?”
“I thought of it myself. Make you look like you’re drinking and relaxed and all, but really you’re as sharp as a tack and gathering clues,” said Tim.
“As far as sidekicks go, my friend,” said Jane, wiping her mouth with a C & L hand-embroidered cocktail napkin, “you are on thin ice.”
Tim hung his long arm around Jane’s shoulder and gave her a brotherly hug. “You can’t fire someone you never hired, babe. Besides, you’ll see that I’m right. This is a hard-drinking, high-living crowd. You watch old Silver and Martine knock ’em back. If you look like Miss Priss, they won’t trust you.”
“Now smile and eat your olives like you mean it,” Tim added.
Jane laughed and fished out her cocktail pick, which had three bleu cheese olives speared on it. She ate them all—better them than drinking the olive-flavored water—and sashayed out with Tim. She had to get back to her cabin and get prepared for her long day of study at Campbell and LaSalle. At the door, Scott stood sentinel.
“Calling it a night so soon?” he asked.
“I have a full day planned tomorrow,” said Jane. “What time does everybody get up around here?”
“We at Campbell and LaSalle,” said Scott, in a deep announcer’s voice, “work as hard as we play. The workshops and studios start opening up around seven. There’s a breakfast buffet laid out from five-thirty to eight. Busy little bees here at blah, blah, blah.”
“See you in the morning then,” said Jane.
When she reached the porch steps, she turned back to wave good-bye to Tim, who had decided to have yet another nightcap with Scott. The two of them had already disappeared inside.
Martine now stood there, watching Jane leave. She flashed her a smile that Jane decided could be interpreted as either playful or wicked. Then Martine reached over her left shoulder and picked up her fat, long braid with her right hand and waved it at Jane.
Wicked.
10
If you save it because you think, someday, you’ll wear it, use it, donate it, repair it, mend it, mount and frame it, paint it, reshape it, or make it into a lamp, stop lying to yourself. Toss it.
—BELINDA ST. GERMAIN, Overstuffed
Back in her cabin, Jane tried to wait up for Claire. She reorganized her makeup case, not that there was all that much in it. She emptied out her purse and searched for items she could discard, but found herself actually looking desperately around the cabin for things to add. There was a lovely notebook, an old-fashioned light blue parchment cover, college-ruled, in the nightstand drawer, and she slipped it into the outside pocket of her bag. She would need it for note taking tomorrow. Besides, you can’t have too many notepads, no matter what Belinda St. Germain says. She also took a pen and highlighter she found in the bottom drawer of the chest.
She washed her face and, studying herself in the bathroom mirror, wondered if after thirty-odd years of avoiding the issue, it might be time to do something about her eyebrows. She flossed. Twice. She found a package of emery boards in the bathroom cupboard and filed her already short, rounded nails.
She paced. Finally, she closed her eyes, just for a minute, to rest.
When she opened her eyes again, something almost like light was peeking in through the shuttered front window of her cabin. It was very early morning light, but it irrevocably signaled the break of day, and she knew she had missed her chance to meet with Claire Oh.
Claire would not come out of hiding during the day, would not risk being seen at Campbell and LaSalle. For all their talk about isolation and creative space and private workspaces, Jane had seen copies of the major newspapers in the library in the lodge. She had overheard Annie ask at the dinner table if anyone else had heard more about Horace Cutler, the dealer who had been murdered in Chicago. And, she had added, hadn’t he had work done at Campbell and LaSalle?
If anyone had read the papers, they had to have seen Claire’s name mentioned. Jane was pretty certain that she wasn’t supposed to be leaving town, let alone crossing state lines to sneak around and use up lipsticks to write secret messages. Jane hadn’t been a detective long, but she was quite certain that Claire’s behavior, if made public, would be frowned upon by law-enforcement officers.
It was only 5:30 A.M., but she would be able to get a bite to eat and check out the library in the barn. She pulled on the same dark jeans she had worn the day before, knowing Tim would mention it, but she was at the mercy of her six-item packing challenge. She was beginning to have some doubts about some of Belinda’s manifestos, but she owed it to Nick to try and discipline herself into a decluttered world. She also owed Nick and Charley a phone call, but it was too early. She’d try to get them before Charley’s speech or panel or symposium or whatever he was at the museum for—she really should know this stuff. And, she promised herself, after she finished her business here, she would.
Too early to call Bruce Oh, too, since it was an hour earlier in Illinois. She would phone him right after breakfast, though. Perhaps Claire had driven the two and a half hours to Michigan last night to leave Jane the message, then returned home. Actually, with no traffic and what would most likely be Claire’s disdain for speed limits—after all, a moving violation paled with being a suspect in a murder case—she could have made it to Campbell and LaSalle and back in less than four hours. She also could have told Jane over the phone in less than four minutes that she believed Rick Moore had been murdered. What was Claire’s reason for contacting Jane via lipstick and mirror? Because she didn’t want to alarm her husband? She was already a suspect in another murder, plus he was the least alarmable person Jane knew. More likely she didn’t want to inform her husband.
Of course, Jane thought as she investigated the breakfast buffet, delighted to see that she had the huge great room all to herself, she was assuming that it was Claire who had sent her the message. Her lipstick had been functional when she’d left the cabin, and when she and Tim had arrived in the great hall, they were the last residents of Campbell and LaSalle to show up. The first thing Jane had done when they entered was take roll. Now, after helping herself to slabs of multigrain toast that she smeared with freshly ground nut butter and homemade strawberry jam, she walked over to the table and re-created last night’s gathering.
Glen LaSalle and Blake Campbell had been up front talking to Martine before the service began. Roxanne was part of that group, too. She and Tim met Scott near the door. Mickey was fixing a drink and had gone to sit by Annie after talking to Blake. Geoff and Jake were already seated by the time Tim and Jane had sat down in the last row. Everyone had been in front of them except Scott, who was off to the side. No one had left before Jane went out to make her phone call and wander the grounds.
Jane was sitting in a high-backed chair with her back to the buffet table and the kitchen door. She heard someone come out and add a platter to the table, but did not turn. Kitchen staff? She would have to find out how many people worked in service here. She had seen Cheryl, the head chef, and she thought she had heard two other names mentioned as kitchen apprentices. The appetizers and dinner had followed so quickly after the memorial, though, it would be hard to believe that anyone cooking or serving could have taken a break from the kitchen during the Martine extravaganza.
Jane brought her plate back to the dish cart and placed it on the lower shelf as a small, hand-printed card instructed. She helped herself to coffee and took her seat, settling in just as she heard two people enter through the side door that led to Roxanne’s office.
“Ask anyone anything, Sergeant. Don’t be surprised if no one saw Rick during those afternoon hours, though. Most people are in their cabins or studios during the afternoon. And no one’s cabin looks out at the parking lot. In fact…” Roxanne broke off her sentence, and although Jane couldn’t see Murkel, she assumed he nodded at her to continue, because she cleared her throat and went on.
“Rick Moore had a pickup truck that he parked on an old access road in th
e woods about a quarter mile from his cabin. He didn’t even use the parking area or the main driveway in and out of here. Not only would no one have seen him leave, no one would have even heard him if he’d left for Chicago during quiet hours.”
Jane wasn’t sure how long it would be before they realized she was sitting there, and when they did, she didn’t want to appear like she was eavesdropping. Out of habit she had picked up a newspaper by the front door and carried it with her to the table. Neither she nor Charley liked to speak before several cups of coffee, and neither found it rude to read at the breakfast table. Jane lowered her head and lost herself in the classifieds of the South Haven Daily. Not a great ruse, but the best she could do. She quickly circled a few of the garage sale ads so it would look like she had been studying the paper for some time.
“So Moore could have left between three and four, made it to Chicago, and returned sometime that night? No one missed him at dinner?”
“Rick wasn’t very sociable. He often ate in his cabin or worked through dinner.”
“We have a positive ID on him and his truck, and we’ll get the rest of the crime-scene test results later this afternoon. Puts a different light on what happened here yesterday, that’s for sure,” said Murkel.
“I don’t really see that,” said Roxanne. “And I’m sorry, but you’ll need a warrant to go through his things. We’re a retreat, ofsorts, and…” Jane couldn’t hear the end of Roxanne’s sentence.
Murkel said something as he walked toward the front door, but Jane couldn’t hear him either. Geoff and Jake must have walked in as he walked out. Jane heard Roxanne greet them and say she’d be back in a minute. That gave Jane the break she needed to stand and refill her coffee. She nodded to the two men filling their plates with fritattas and slices of bacon, not knowing from the night before who was who. They had been introduced as Geoff and Jake, and both had nodded at exactly the same time. Jane hadn’t had time to ask the sorting-out questions before Martine had begun chanting.
The Wrong Stuff Page 10