Murder, My Suite

by Mary Daheim

  Judith paused in the act of pulling a striped tank top over her head. “The same way I’m going to find out where the Kreagers were. And Dagmar.” Her head emerged and she gave Renie an ironic look. “You didn’t hear what Dagmar told Penreddy.”

  Renie sat on the bed while Judith finished changing and recounting the interview. “So,” Judith concluded, brushing her damp hair, “if Karl was allegedly in the men’s room and Tessa was allegedly at the bar, then Dagmar was alone. None of them has an alibi. I imagine Penreddy is sharp enough to realize that.”

  “Dagmar would have been seen sitting in the lounge,” Renie objected.

  Judith gazed at Renie’s image in the mirror. “She wouldn’t have if she wasn’t there. Nobody paid any attention to them—that’s why they couldn’t get service. Penreddy will have to check with the other patrons to see if Dagmar left and came back We’ll leave that part to him.” Judith turned around, stepped into a dry pair of Keds, and straightened her shoulders.

  Renie recognized that her cousin was ready to resume action. She slipped off the bed and sighed with resignation. “Meanwhile, we do—what?”

  Judith smiled, displaying more mischief than mirth. “First, we check up on Freddy.”

  “How?” Renie trailed off down the hall after Judith.

  “We start with the bar at Crest House. Isn’t that his alibi?”

  Again Renie gritted her teeth as she mounted the chairlift. Wayne Stafford wasn’t on duty. His replacement was a strapping young woman with curly black hair. She didn’t bother to glance up when the cousins reached the lift.

  The bar at Crest House had a sports motif, dominated by old hockey uniforms, sticks, skates, helmets, and at least ten photographs of Wayne Gretzky. Other athletic endeavors were represented, however, especially baseball. Sweatshirts, caps, autographed balls, fielders’ mitts, and a half-dozen bats showed Canada’s pride in its Bluejays and Expos.

  Business wasn’t particularly brisk in the middle of a sunny Tuesday afternoon. Too late, it dawned on Judith that the evening staff probably didn’t come on duty until the dinner service. The bartender greeted the cousins with a gap-toothed smile and a French accent.

  “We’re looking for someone who was working here last night,” Judith began, after she and Renie had placed their drink orders. “Who tends bar in the evenings?”

  “I do,” the genial man responded, placing a scotch in front of Judith and a rye before Renie. “Today, I substitute. Hilde is having the root canal.” He tapped one of his own teeth. “Last night, we are so busy and she assists me, but has the terrible agony, all the way to her toes. She drops a tray of wineglasses, and I think she is going to faint, but no, she takes the 222 tablets for the pain, and I send her home. I manage, I am efficient.” His voice was matter-of-fact.

  Judith lifted her glass, as if to toast him. “Great. I mean, that you’re here,” she added hastily. “You’re…?”

  “Charles,” the bartender replied, making the name sound like one soft caress of a single syllable. “Charles de Paul. Not to be confused with Charles de Gaulle.” He chuckled richly at his own humor.

  Judith chuckled back; Renie sipped her rye. “I’m trying to track down my cousin,” Judith said, ignoring the faint choking sound from Renie. “I got here yesterday and heard he was at Bugler, too. Someone told me he’d been spotted in the bar here last night.”

  Charles de Paul busied himself with a glass coffeepot. “This cousin—he looks like you?” The gap-toothed smile was flattering, without Freddy Whobrey’s lechery.

  “Not in the least,” Judith answered, trying not to sound aghast. She described Freddy, working hard to keep from making him seem like a hideous little weasel. “He used to be a jockey,” she added, lest Charles figure Freddy for a deranged midget.

  “Ah!” Charles’s broad face brightened. But before he could continue, a young man with a shaved head brought an order for another round of white wine. Judith glanced into the farthest corner, where a middle-aged couple huddled together in apparent misery. Either they were a tryst gone wrong, Judith decided, or else they had been lured into buying a time-share condo.

  “This jockey,” Charles said after the waiter had gone off with the glasses of wine, “is American? He wears the smart suit, just a little too smart?”

  Judith nodded. “That would be Freddy.” She recalled his dapper attire from the dinner party in the restaurant. “He was here, then?”

  Charles nodded as he wiped beer schooners with a towel. “He was here for a long time. Too long, perhaps.” His pleasant face grew doleful. “You comprehend? Your cousin, he celebrates a grand event?”

  “Yes.” Judith nodded some more. “Yes, he was celebrating, actually. He’d been with friends. Was still with friends,” she added, hoping the statement didn’t come across as the question that it was.

  Charles gave a Gallic shrug. “A friend.” His soulful eyes regarded Judith with sympathy. “This friend is not another cousin, I pray to the bon Dieu?”

  “Uh…no. In fact, I can’t think who it might be.” At a loss, Judith cast about for a likely prospect. Freddy had said something about meeting an old chum, a man. She glanced at Renie for support.

  Renie clasped Judith’s shoulder but fixed her eyes on Charles. “Mme. Flynn here has some really strange relatives, especially her cousins. Did this guy have four ears and a hand growing out of the top of his head?”

  It took Charles a few seconds before he realized that Renie was joking. He laughed. Judith didn’t. “Ah, mais non! He had the red nose, the big mustache, the balding head, the hand that shakes. He also has—alas!—the pockets that are empty. Usually,” the bartender added as if granting a concession.

  “Then you know my cousin’s friend?” Judith asked eagerly.

  Charles nodded in a sorrowful manner. “Too well, madame. M. MacPherson comes most regularly. Especially if one of his friends pays the bill.”

  “Where does he live? What’s his first name? Will he be back tonight? What time does he come in?” Judith’s enthusiasm bubbled over.

  Charles laughed in his hearty manner. “His Christian name is Esme. Intriguing, that. Where he lives I don’t know. But yes, he will probably come by if he thinks a friend may show up. Perhaps your cousin, eh, madame?”

  “Yes, right, great.” Judith nodded vigorously and beamed at Charles. She didn’t care to encounter Freddy along with Esme MacPherson. “What time does Mr. MacPherson usually arrive?”

  Charles cocked his head and screwed up his broad face. “Eight? Nine? He is unpredictable, this M. MacPherson. I suspect we are not the only bar he frequents.”

  Judith became thoughtful. She didn’t want to spend the evening hanging out in a bar, waiting for a man who might not show up. Perhaps the telephone directory would solve her problem. If Esme MacPherson was a regular, he must live in Bugler. She couldn’t imagine anyone in the affluent resort town who wouldn’t have a telephone.

  Just as Judith was about to ask the bartender if he had a phone book handy, he uttered another rich chuckle. “Ah, madame!” Charles nodded toward the entrance of the bar. “There he is! The cousin you seek! Your troubles, they are over!”

  Judith turned on the stool and saw Freddy Whobrey ambling across the room. One look at his leering face, and she knew her troubles had just begun. Again.

  There was only one thing to do, and that was to flee. “The surprise is on hold,” Judith gasped at Charles. She slapped what she thought was a ten-dollar bill down on the bar, grabbed Renie, and ran out the rear entrance. The cousins found themselves smack up against the flanks of Fiddler Mountain.

  “You idiot!” shrieked Renie. “How could you do that?”

  Judith glared at her cousin. “How could I not do it? I wasn’t about to save face by embracing Freddy and letting him slobber all over me!”

  Renie leaned against an outcropping of rich brown rock. “I didn’t mean that. I meant the fifty bucks you left for Charles. Who do you think you are, some high-priced PI from an
old movie?”

  Judith gaped at Renie. “Fifty bucks? That was a fifty? I thought it was a ten!”

  Renie started walking along the trail that ran between Crest House and the mountain. “Tens are purple, fifties are red. You really ought to start memorizing your Canadian currency by color. You sure as hell can’t seem to read the denominations.” Her temper no longer out of control, Renie seemed to have become a bit whimsical. “Maybe I can write this off somehow. If not a business expense, then mental health. Mine will be gone by the time we get home.”

  “Fifty bucks.” Judith was still muttering to herself. “Shoot,” she exclaimed as they reached the corner of the restaurant, “I wonder what Charles thinks. What do you suppose he said to Freddy?”

  Renie held out a hand to stay Judith. “I don’t know, but you could ask him. Freddy’s out front, looking every which way.”

  Her shoulders sagging, Judith swore under her breath. “Swell. What do we do now? Hide on the mountain until dark?”

  Renie was surveying the trail. “We could walk, although I’m not sure where this goes. Hopefully, down.”

  Judith came to stand beside her cousin, careful not to expose herself to Freddy’s view. “I see people,” she said, nudging Renie. “Look, about a hundred yards over there.”

  Renie, whose long-distance vision was much better than Judith’s, squinted against the sun. “You’re right. Salvation is at hand. It’s the police. Let’s trot down and see what’s happening.”

  Trotting wasn’t quite the method of taking to the trail. Though the cousins guessed that it was probably used for hiking and possibly horseback riding, the route had been gouged out of the mountain with little margin for error. While it was gradual and well maintained, there were scattered rocks and even a few muddy patches. An occasional guardrail marked the sheerest drop-offs. Judith looked down from one of them and gasped.

  “I feel halfway to heaven,” she said in an awed voice. “Look! The town is so tiny! It’s like being in an airplane!”

  “Don’t talk.” Renie’s voice was tight. “I hate airplanes. You know that. I’ll fly only if the airline promises to hold the plane up with a long stick and run along underneath it.”

  Concentrating on her footing, Judith ignored Renie. Once or twice she dared to look back over her shoulder to make sure Freddy wasn’t following them. There was no one in sight.

  Overhead, a blue-and-white helicopter soared to an altitude above Fiddler Mountain. Skiers heading for the snowfields near the summit, Judith guessed, or backpackers being transported to distant Alpine trails.

  Back on the ground, the trio of policemen met them halfway. They nodded and smiled, albeit in a tight-lipped fashion. They also waited for the cousins to step aside so that they could proceed up the trail. Judith didn’t budge.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked, taking an educated guess as to what the policemen had been doing.

  “Sorry,” replied the older of the three, a rawboned blond in his thirties who was sweating profusely under the summer sun. His official name tag read: VAN DE GRAFF, DEAN. “We aren’t allowed to discuss our activities.” Dean Van de Graff made an attempt to get around Judith.

  “Chief Penreddy and Officer O’Connor are with Ms. Chatsworth,” Judith confided, lowering her voice despite the fact that no one else could have heard her. “I’m not sure the interview has produced any results, except the holes in Dagmar’s and the Kreagers’ alibis.”

  All three men looked startled. “Excuse me?” Van de Graff stared at Judith. “Who are you?”

  She waved a hand in a self-deprecating manner. “We’re just witnesses. We were behind the deceased on the lift. We knew the Chatsworth party from a visit to my home. We were with Dagmar when Chief Penreddy and Devin O’Connor showed up. We’re nobody. Not really.”

  Judith congratulated herself, having actually told the truth. Renie was gazing at her cousin with a mixture of wonder and admiration. The policemen all looked just plain puzzled.

  Judith didn’t give them to probe further. “You were searching for the weapon, right? That must be an almost impossible task.” She lifted a hand, indicating the craggy face of the mountainside. “This is such a vast stretch of territory. For all we know, the killer might have used a rock.”

  Judging from the bleak expression that Van de Graff gave her, the idea had already occurred to him. “It’s possible,” he said in a grumbling tone, “but the forensic people think otherwise.”

  Judith put on her most sympathetic face. “Not the sort of blow a rock would make, I suppose? No dirt particles? No granular matter?”

  Van de Graff’s perspiring face took on a suspicious cast. “Pardon me, but we can’t discuss the investigation with you, witnesses or not. If you’ve got any comments, put them in writing, eh?” Van de Graff all but pushed Judith and Renie out of the way as he led the other policemen up the trail.

  Watching their retreat with thoughtful eyes, Judith nodded. “I was right. They haven’t found the weapon. I’ll bet they never will.” She turned to gaze again at the valley below. The view was virtually the same as the one the cousins had had the previous evening from Liaison Ledge. In broad daylight, Judith thought she could see even farther into the distance. The lakes looked larger, their cobalt-blue calm disturbed only by the bright hues of sailboats and the occasional wake of a pleasure craft. She envisioned the vast panorama of trees, hills, and village under a heavy winter snow. No doubt it would be breathtaking, a sight she would enjoy sharing with Joe. But for now the summer splendor of Bugler was sullied by murder. Judith began trudging down the trail. “Agnes could have been killed with a tree branch. If the murderer pitched it off a cliff, how could it ever be discovered?”

  Renie had no answer, and was too busy worrying about falling down even to make a guess. After another fifty yards, the trail turned a sharp corner and briefly became quite steep. At the next zigzag, it leveled out a bit. Small stands of evergreens grew along the bank, giving a semblance of security.

  They were almost to the village when they spotted a lone figure sitting on a smooth brown boulder in a clearing. Renie was the first to recognize Mia Prohowska. The cousins hastened their steps.

  “Astonishing view, isn’t it?” remarked Judith, and though it was, they were now virtually on top of the town. Judith could have hit the bare beams of new construction below them with a pebble.

  Mia Prohowska, however, didn’t seem to be enjoying Bugler’s beauty. She barely looked up at the cousins. “Umm,” she said.

  Apparently Renie felt duty-bound to shoulder some of the responsibility for snooping. “Well! I know you! How wonderful!” Her attempts at guile were always heavy-handed. “My daughter, Anne, saw you skate on your Pacific Northwest tour. She was absolutely thrilled.” Judith noted that although Renie was telling the truth, she sounded as if she were lying through her teeth. “When will the Ice Dreams company tour again? Anne can hardly wait.”

  It seemed to cost Mia Prohowska a great effort to respond. “In the west of your country, next spring,” she finally said in a hollow voice with its Eastern European accent. “God willing.” She glanced away, though her wide-set gray eyes didn’t seem quite focused.

  “Terrific,” exclaimed Renie. “My cousin and I will be there next time. We wouldn’t have missed it before, but she was in prison.”

  Judith sighed. She knew that when subtlety failed with Renie—as it inevitably did—her cousin fell back on blunder-buss tactics. They often worked, even if they were at the expense of someone else.

  Mia was no exception to Renie’s rules of outrage. Her head swiveled and she stared, first at Renie, then at Judith. A flicker of recognition seemed to spark in her eyes, then went out like dying ash. “Prison? For what? Oh, my!” She looked genuinely terrified.

  Judith started to say something, but Renie cut her off. “It’s a manner of speaking,” she said with a lame little laugh. “You know, American slang. She’s in the hostelry business, and couldn’t leave her guests. It’s
like being in prison, you see. Locked up. Cut off from the world. Incommunicado.”

  To Judith, the explanation was relatively smooth, but Mia didn’t appear assuaged. She trembled slightly as she got to her feet. Again Judith was surprised at how small the skater was compared with the lissome, lofty image she presented on the television screen.

  “You are very kind,” Mia said in a quavery voice. “I am always pleased to hear from admirers of my art. Skating is very hard, very demanding. The reward is to please the audience as well as oneself.” The words came out as if by rote. Mia’s movements were jerky, a far cry from the graceful ice queen. With a bob of her head, she started to move off down the trail.

  The cousins were at her heels. Renie gave Judith a dismal look, acknowledging the fact that she had flunked subterfuge. Judith’s expression commiserated. She, too, was at a temporary loss for words.

  At the bottom of the trail, which led onto a paved road, Judith finally recovered her power of speech. For once, she decided on candor.

  “Ms. Prohowska,” she said, not quite sure how to address an Olympic champion from Eastern Europe, “why did you let Dagmar Chatsworth spoil your dinner last night?”

  Mia halted at the very edge of the pavement. Now her gray eyes finally registered recognition. “Oh! You were at the restaurant! The table near us. Oh, yes, our dinner was most spoiled! The evening, it was a disaster!” It didn’t seem to occur to Mia that Judith’s inquiry was nobody’s business. Perhaps the mere presence of the cousins at Bugler automatically gave them a certain cachet.

  “She is evil, that Dagmar,” Mia went on, now walking slowly down the road, which went past the latest spurt of new construction. “In the West, you boast of freedom of the press. Now in my homeland, it is also considered a boon. What is it really, but a license to spread lies and scandal?”

  “It can be that,” Judith agreed. “There are libel laws, though. Has Dagmar written scurrilous articles about you?”

  Momentarily, Mia seemed puzzled, but she translated adequately. “She has, though not yet published. Or so she says. She will ruin all!” Mia seemed on the verge of tears.