by Mary Daheim
Judith tried to hide her chagrin. “I thought Wayne might be able to give us some helpful information. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any.”
“Oh, well.” Renie was determined to enjoy herself. “We’ve got our discount for The Bells and Motley tonight. Why don’t we grocery-shop now, eat breakfast in for the rest of our stay, and have a steak dinner Wednesday night?”
The plan sounded good to Judith. Somewhat oddly, at least to her mind, Bugler had only one supermarket. Predictably, it was crowded. The cousins stocked up on necessary items, knowing they would have to take any leftovers home. They were in the lengthy checkout queue when Tessa Kreager got in line behind them.
Judith couldn’t hide her surprise. Tessa hardly struck her as a typical grocery shopper. Yet the cart she clutched was well filled, including some of the same basic products the cousins had selected. In addition, Judith noted she had a dozen cans of chicken broth, a large jar of what looked like concentrate for a hot beef drink, two packages of the Canadian cure-all 222, various doggie treats, flea powder, and some sort of pesticide for termites.
“How’s Dagmar?” Judith asked after the three women had exchanged somewhat stilted greetings.
Tessa’s fine features were definitely out of sorts. “She’s taken to her bed.” Tessa’s slim hand waved over the grocery cart, as if casting a spell. “She won’t go out and she refuses to eat properly. Almost all of this is for her or that wretched Rover. I’m going to be mixing up beef broth in a mug, for heaven’s sake! Good God, in New York I cook only for company! And then I hire help. Why did Agnes have to get herself killed? Nobody ever told me that an executive editor could turn into a dogsbody!”
Judith was about to commiserate, but Tessa raged on. “I mean that literally. I also have to walk the damned dog! I’ve got him tied up outside right now.” She nodded toward the entrance. Sure enough, Rover was sitting on his haunches, panting and looking expectant.
“Let him loose,” Renie muttered. “Maybe a moose will eat him.” Luckily, Tessa didn’t hear her. The cousins and the executive editor moved up a space.
“Dagmar is absolutely racked with grief,” Tessa went on, now lowering her voice and once more allowing the Southern drawl to creep into the nuances. “Karl wants to call a doctor, but I don’t think that would help. I’ve worked with high-strung authors before. They have to get a grip on themselves. I refuse to pamper my writers, no matter how much money they bring into the publishing house.”
“It’s shock,” Judith remarked. “And loss, of course. Personal as well as professional. Dagmar was obviously very dependent on Agnes.”
Tessa snorted. “Dagmar treated Agnes like dirt. The same way she’s trying to treat me. But, of course, I won’t permit it. A lot of good it did Agnes, letting Dagmar push her around!” Tessa now seemed genuinely angry. The three women moved up another notch; Tessa almost banged into the cousins with her aggressive grip on the grocery cart. “Being a subservient little mouse got Agnes murdered, that’s what happened!” Tessa’s voice now rang out across the checkout stands. Heads turned; scanning stopped; all eyes seemed riveted on Tessa Kreager.
Tessa blushed and hung her fair head. “Sorry. I lost control. But it’s not privileged information,” she added in a defensive tone. “Rhys Penreddy told us this morning that Agnes was murdered. Her head was bashed in. The police are looking for her killer, and whoever it may be, he or she is probably right here in Bugler. They’ve put up a roadblock on the highway.”
Judith couldn’t recall when grocery shopping had proved so interesting. Granted, at Falstaff’s Market on Heraldsgate Hill, there was often a piece of intriguing gossip to be picked up in the produce section or a fascinating tidbit about her checkers’ personal lives as she passed through the cashier’s stand. But learning that the autopsy of Agnes Shay had proved her death to be a homicide diverted Judith from the pain of a sixty-eight-dollar grocery tab. She was even willing to wait for Tessa to emerge from the supermarket.
Renie, however, proved less patient. “We have an eleven o’clock appointment with the condo realtors,” she reminded Judith. “It’s almost ten now. We’ve got to go up to Clarges Court, put this stuff away, then come back down to the promotion office.”
But Judith was obdurate. “We’ve got tons of time,” she assured Renie. “I’ve got some questions for Tessa.”
Next to them, Rover strained at his leash. Annoyed, Renie juggled her share of the groceries. “Ask her when we get back to Clarges Court. She’s headed there, too.”
“I want to talk to her alone,” Judith insisted. Fortunately, Tessa was now exiting the store. She didn’t seem too pleased to see the cousins lingering near Rover.
Judith’s manner was diffident. “Mrs. Kreager, I hate to intrude, but—”
Tessa wasn’t about to allow Judith an opening. “I’m known professionally by my maiden name, Tessa Van Heusen. Excuse me, I must get Rover and go back to the condo. Dagmar needs her zwieback.” Tessa’s tone was sarcastic, her manner cold.
Judith refused to surrender. “But I was wondering if you knew that Dagmar had been receiving…”
Tessa’s attention was focused on Rover. She unfastened the leash and led him away. Judith was left with her words of inquiry fading on her lips.
“Bitch,” Judith muttered. “And I don’t mean Rover.” Angrily, she also began to stride down the covered mall toward the parking lot.
“Coz,” Renie said in a pleading tone as she hurried to catch up with Judith’s long legs, “give it a rest. The police don’t need you, Tessa doesn’t want you, and probably Dagmar would ask you to butt out, too.”
“Listen!” Judith stopped so abruptly that Renie ran into her. “You don’t get it, coz! It doesn’t matter what the police and Tessa and Dagmar and the rest of them think! Agnes Shay has been killed, right under my nose, and I feel a personal obligation to help find out who murdered her. I don’t give a rat’s ass if everybody in this whole fancy, ritzy, glitzy, world-class resort looks at me like I’m some dopey freeloader from Heraldsgate Hill. A woman has been murdered, there’s a killer out there, and I’m going to do my damnedest to find out who it is! You got it?”
“I think so.” Renie’s voice was unnaturally meek.
“Good.” Judith started down the three steps that led from the mall to the parking area. Her arms were filled, so she gestured with her head. “You see those mountains?” Renie replied that she certainly did. Judith gave her cousin a tight little smile. “I’m like those climbers. Why do I have to solve the mystery? Because it’s there. That’s why.”
Renie waited for Judith to turn her back. Only then did she dare roll her eyes.
SEVEN
THE GROCERIES WERE put away, the door to the balcony had been opened to let in the fresh mountain air, and the beds had been made. The one flaw in the condo stay was the absence of maid service. But the cousins weren’t accustomed to letting others do their work. Judith had a cleaning woman, but Phyliss Rackley’s duties were restricted to the rooms used by guests. Judith did the rest of the house herself.
Succumbing to the spate of domesticity, Judith went into the courtyard to pick wildflowers for the dining room table. There were red and lavender poppies, white oxeye daisies, and purple valerian. She was pleased with her bouquet, and startled when an eager voice called her name.
“Mrs. Flynn! Yo! It’s me, your favorite ex-jockey! Want to ride the horsie?”
Freddy Whobrey was standing in front of the condo that Judith had seen him enter the previous night. She considered fleeing inside her own unit, then steeled herself. She had made a vow, and Freddy might be part of the means to keep it.
Smiling feebly, she stood her ground and let him approach. His step was sprightly, though his eyes were blood-shot.
“That’s wild about Agnes, huh?” Freddy said in a confidential manner. “Hey, pretty flowers! You going to get naked and wallow in them on your bed of pleasure?”
Judith tried not to gnash her teeth. “No, Freddy,
I’m going to stick them…in a vase. How is Dagmar? We ran into Tessa at the grocery store, and she said Dagmar was miserable.”
Freddy shrugged. “Dagmar’s always miserable. It’s part of being Dagmar.” He plucked a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his plaid sport shirt. “Whooey! That sun’s bright! How did it get to be morning so early?”
Judith ignored the rhetorical question. “Have the police got any leads?” She felt foolish asking Freddy, but wanted to avoid anything that might lead to more personal matters.
Placing the sunglasses on his nose, Freddy now lighted a cigarette and inhaled appreciatively. “Leads! How bright do you think the cops are in an out-of-the-way place like this? Foreigners, too. But then, cops anywhere aren’t exactly brainy, are they?”
Judith bristled. “That’s unfair. If you knew any real policemen, you’d know how hard they work and how many obstacles are put in their way and how much of a risk they take every day.”
Freddy had the grace to look embarrassed. “Sorry. I forgot your old man is a cop. I thought he just liked to go around shooting people.” The ex-jockey sidled up to Judith. “You see, the security guys who work the tracks aren’t always the swiftest nags in the starting gate, if you get my meaning.”
Judith did. She also got a whiff of Freddy’s cigarette. It was a Canadian brand, and very strong. She pretended she didn’t regret giving up smoking. She also pretended she could tolerate Freddy’s nearness. Indeed, she had to pretend to tolerate Freddy, period.
“Have the police questioned Dagmar or the Kreagers? Or you?” Judith asked, trying to edge a few steps away.
Freddy was gazing at Judith’s bustline, which wasn’t much below his eye level. “Huh? Oh, the cops. Yeah, right, they talked to the Kreagers this morning. And me. I don’t know doo-dah. I’d headed for the bar.” He winked at Judith. “I ran into an old chum. Too bad it was a guy. I walked him home about midnight.”
Across the courtyard, Judith saw Renie in the doorway of their condo, apparently wondering what was taking her cousin so long.
“And Dagmar?” Judith pressed on. “Did the police talk to her?”
“Naw.” Freddy dropped his cigarette, but didn’t bother to extinguish it. “She was too overcome, or whatever you call it. They’re coming back this afternoon.”
Judith stepped on Freddy’s cigarette and ground it out on the pavement. The weather was too warm and the surroundings too dry to allow a cigarette to go unattended. Gingerly, Judith kicked the butt into the flower bed. She ignored Renie’s beckoning hand.
“Has anyone asked why Agnes was wearing Dagmar’s turban and scarf?” Judith inquired.
Freddy also noticed Renie. He waved in an exaggerated manner. Renie made a disparaging gesture. “Is that your chaperone?” Freddy looked bemused. “She’s little, but I’ll bet she’s tough. Some of those smaller fillies can really put out at five and a half furlongs.”
As if to prove the point, Renie charged into the courtyard. “Get a move on, coz,” she shouted, not bothering to acknowledge Freddy. “We’re due at the condo office in fifteen minutes.”
Caught between the peremptory Renie and the uncooperative Freddy, Judith surrendered. She murmured a farewell and hurried to join her cousin. Freddy wandered off in the direction of the hot tub. Judith figured he was looking for unsuspecting teenaged girls. She hoped they would be savvy enough to turn him over to Rhys Penreddy and the Bugler police force.
“Jerk,” Judith muttered, arranging her wildflowers in a mauve ceramic vase. “He’s completely unhelpful. I wanted to know why Agnes was wearing Dagmar’s turban.”
Renie admired Judith’s bouquet. “Isn’t it obvious? She went back to get the turban and scarf from the washroom, where Dagmar had left them.”
But Judith shook her head in a decisive manner. “No, no, no. Agnes fetched Dagmar’s things from the washroom, yes. But she would have carried them, not worn them. Only a puckish sort would have put on Dagmar’s turban. Agnes wasn’t the type.”
Renie wasn’t entirely convinced. “We didn’t really know Agnes,” she pointed out. “We saw her as docile and eager to please. Maybe she had a mischievous streak we never noticed.”
It was Judith’s turn to be skeptical. “I doubt it. There was nothing playful about Agnes. And I certainly don’t see her joking around with Dagmar. Wearing her employer’s turban is almost a sign of disrespect, a sort of mocking gesture. Unless…” Judith paused in the act of picking up her handbag and preparing to leave the condo. “Agnes might have wanted to free up her hands to get on the chairlift. She probably had to carry her purse, and who knows what else Dagmar was bringing down from Crest House?”
The cousins descended the carpeted stairs to the garage. At the far end, a family of four was loading windsurfing equipment onto the top of a van. For the first time, Judith studied the other cars that were parked underground. There were no more than a dozen at this late hour of the morning. Some were obviously rentals, and the rest were fairly modest.
“I wonder how Dagmar and her group got here,” Judith mused as Renie waited for the automatic gate to go up. “A limo, maybe?”
“Could be.” Renie cautiously negotiated the winding driveway. “I figure that most of the people staying at Clarges Court are freeloaders like us. The actual owners probably come for the ski season. Karl and Tessa may be the exception to the rule. But living in New York, they’re probably glad to get away to the West Coast during the summer.”
Renie’s rationale made sense to Judith. But the parking situation at the village was quite different from that of Clarges Court. The cousins couldn’t find a space in the big outdoor lot, and after much driving around narrow one-way streets that were under construction, they ended up in a vast underground garage. Confused as to where they were in terms of the village square, they finally emerged near the grocery store and had to backtrack to the real estate office. They were three minutes late for their eleven o’clock appointment.
Marin Glenn accepted their apologies with a toss of her punk-rocker coiffure. She was not much younger than the cousins, but her flared miniskirt, poet’s shirt, and Roman sandals winding halfway up her calves indicated that she was fighting middle age every inch of the way. The attire should have looked absurd, but somehow Marin had sufficient aplomb to carry it off. Judith, in her tan slacks and navy pocket-T, felt a pang of envy.
Marin led them into a big, open area with partitioned offices on one side. She offered coffee, which the cousins accepted, then sat them down at a square table not quite in the center of the room. There were at least six other tables with potential customers going over rate sheets and catalogs with cheerful, canny salespeople as their guides.
Flipping open an imitation charcoal leather binder, Marin smiled brilliantly at Judith and Renie. “I’m the Clarges Court rep. Our company owns ten condos in the area. We’re building two more. But that’s not the best part. We have holdings all over the world—surf, turf, sun, ski. You name it, we’ve got it. Are you interested in time-share or buying outright?”
Shifting uneasily in her chair, Judith hedged. “At this point, we’re just getting the feel of the place. I’ve never been here before, and in fact, this is my first experience staying in a condo like—”
Impatiently, Renie waved a hand. “Cut to the chase. Mrs. Flynn is married to a city cop; my husband’s a college prof. We haven’t saved money since the war-bond drive in grade school. Neither of us can afford to pay for staying in a birdbath on a regular basis. You might as well save your breath, Ms. Glenn.”
Horrified by Renie’s candor, Judith tensed in her chair. She expected Marin Glenn to react with dismay, embarrassment, or even anger. Instead the realtor’s smile widened, and she shut her binder with a satisfied air.
“Terrific,” she declared. “I love it when people are frank. Now,” she continued, leaning toward the cousins and lowering her voice, “tell me everything about the woman from Clarges Court who was murdered. I’ve been cooped up in this office all mor
ning and haven’t heard a word.”
Startled as well as relieved, Judith recited the bare bones of the case. Marin was enthralled to learn that not only were the cousins sharing the same condo building with the victim and her companions, but that they had actually been on the lift when Agnes’s body had come down the mountain.
“Amazing!” Marin ran a hand through her spiky hair. “Eyewitnesses, as it were. I don’t suppose the police know who did it yet?”
Judith shook her head. “We haven’t heard anything. But that doesn’t mean much. After all, we’re basically tourists.” She hadn’t mentioned her own ill-fated attempt to help with the investigation.
Marin’s demeanor grew more serious. “It’s an awful thing. I’ve been working for this company nearly eight years, though Clarges Court was completed only last summer. I’d hate to see a murder scare off buyers.” Apparently Marin noticed Judith flinch and Renie blanch at her words. “Excuse me, I don’t mean to sound callous. But Bugler is a relatively new venture, and those of us who’ve been here a while take not only a proprietary but a very personal view of what goes on.” She grimaced slightly. “You know what I mean—how would you feel if you owned an inn or a motel and some poor guest got killed?”
Judith felt the color rise in her cheeks. She recalled how upset she’d been almost four years earlier when a fortune-teller had been poisoned at her dining room table. Hillside Manor was barely on its shaky yearling’s legs when disaster had struck. Judith had been sure that the adverse publicity would ruin business. But somehow, it hadn’t. She, who was credited with a deep understanding of people, was the first to admit that she couldn’t always predict their behavior.
To make amends for her rash judgment of Marin, Judith put on her most sympathetic face. “It’s true, the full-time residents must be very proud of what’s been achieved here. And it’s really first-rate. Believe me, if we could afford to buy in, we’d love to!”