Murder Knows No Season

by Cathy Ace

  My room was small, but adequately and pleasantly furnished. It was somewhat unusual in that it had three doors: the one I’d entered through, from the upstairs landing-cum-balcony that ran around three sides of the house; one that opened onto my own little bathroom, which was very ‘countrified’ with bead-board, wainscoting, and a wonderful old claw-footed tub; the third door was locked – I discovered later that it led to another bathroom on the other side of my room. The house had been designed that way – bedroom, bathroom, bedroom, bathroom, with connecting doors throughout to allow for maximum flexibility of set-up. I thought how unusual that must have been in its day, but I liked the arrangement.

  That said, I made sure the key in the door between my bathroom and the next bedroom along was turned and sitting in the lock in such a way that no one could mistakenly enter my bathroom from their bedroom. I squinted into the lock mechanism in the door between my bedroom and ‘next door’s’ bathroom; I could see the key in the lock there too, which was good, because I didn’t want anyone coming into my bedroom via their bathroom. I hoped the sound-proofing provided by all the doors was effective, because – well, you know . . . bathrooms and connecting doors can be tricky.

  Having checked out my immediate surroundings, I decided I should make my way down to the Great Room, where we’d all agreed we’d meet as soon as we were sorted. Years of living in London means I naturally lock doors, so I made sure the key to my room was in the pocket of my comfy, stretchy, black cord pants, and I headed down the wide, fir-plank staircase that led to the entryway.

  The Great Room was just that – huge and rather cavernous; it occupied one entire side of the lodge. It was cheerily, if predictably, decorated; the obligatory stuffed moose, elk and deer heads stared down at us, forlornly, from above a great stone fireplace – the unmistakable focal point of the room. There was even one of those antler chandeliers, so beloved of Canadiana interior decorators, which I suspected had been an original fixture. Around the roaring fire was a collection of comfy-looking armchairs and sofas, replete with plaid upholstery and Hudson’s Bay blanket throws.

  Meg ran down the wide staircase just after we’d all meandered in; a fantastic entrance, if ever there was one. We all stopped making the small-talk we’d been forcing, and turned to see the woman who’d invited us for her birthday weekend. She looked amazing – a closely-fitted amethyst sweater atop a pair of brown slacks doesn’t sound like much, but it worked. Her dark, sleek hair was pulled back in a neat French twist; pearl earrings complemented her deep tan; she was perfectly made-up to look as though she was wearing no make-up at all, and was carrying what looked like a gin and tonic in her hand – classy and sassy at the same time.

  I immediately felt frumpy, even more overweight than I really am (which is quite an amount anyway) and craved a G & T. I loved her and hated her, in equal measure. There she was; Meg – my Meg – all grown up and looking like a million dollars.

  ‘My darlings!’ she exclaimed to the room in general. ‘Thank you all so much for coming to my little party. How wonderful to see you all.’ Her accent was a strange mixture of Welsh inflection and Mid-Atlantic pronunciation.

  There was a slight pause; I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was wondering who she’d greet first. It was like the school playground – who would be picked first, who’d be left till last?

  ‘My darling,’ called Luis, and he was on Meg in an instant, kissing her cheek and stroking her arm, as if to signify ownership. ‘You are looking wonderful, as usual. But where have you been? You were not in your room, I looked.’

  Luis’s had a strange way of speaking that I’d never noticed when he was on TV; he didn’t so much speak, as declaim. And he looked shorter, and more compact, than I’d thought he’d be; muscular, but quite petite. In fact, Meg was my height, about five-four, and he was just the same height as her. TV’s a funny thing – they say it puts twenty pounds on you, and I reckon it must put a good ten inches on your height too.

  Having been greeted, in the appropriate manner, by her fiancé, Meg turned her attention to me – yes, me.

  ‘Cait – darling Cait . . . you haven’t changed a bit,’ she said, lying. Even I know I’ve gained at least fifty pounds since I was eighteen, and at forty-eight my skin tone isn’t what it used to be, nor is my hair color – which I staunchly refuse to amend with chemicals . . . but I silently blessed her mendacity and moved to enjoy the hug she was coming toward me to deliver. But, as she came closer, I could see something in her eyes I’d never seen in the old Meg – an iciness lurked there. I was surprised.

  As a criminologist specializing in psychology and victimology, I have worked for years to train myself to notice, and understand the implications of, all those details about people most others miss; their body language, micro-expressions, the minutiae of their appearance, their interactions with people, and their surroundings – those unspoken signals that belie their words, and sometimes even their conscious actions. And, despite her glossy shell, I could tell that Meg Jones was an unhappy, bitter woman, with an anger burning her up. I wondered what it could be.

  These thoughts took just a second, so I was able to respond to her welcome wholeheartedly; we hugged as though we were eight years old.

  ‘Everyone – this is Cait, Caitlin Morgan, my Very Best Friend. We met as we were walked through the school gates by our mothers on our very first day at school . . . so she’s someone who knows the real Meg Jones, and someone I’m sure you’ll all grow to love and admire as much as I do. She’s very clever, doesn’t suffer fools at all, and is a wicked chess player . . . you have been warned.’ People smiled politely. ‘On top of that,’ continued Meg, ‘she’s a criminology professor, which is going to be interesting . . . considering what all of you have lurking in your closets.’

  Meg was smiling with her mouth, but her eyes were glinting with hate. It was a bizarre welcome, and it stunned everyone in the room. Puzzled looks were exchanged between people who’d met for the first time on the minibus. It was as though Meg had thrown down a challenge, and she was waiting to see who’d pick it up.

  ‘Listen to you, talking about “closets”; what’s wrong with calling them “wardrobes”, like you always used to? Very American you’ve become.’ It was Meg’s mother, Jean. Her tone was biting, disdainful; as soon as she spoke I vividly remembered her from my childhood – she’d always been pleasant to me, but I’d heard her talking to Meg just like that when she was a little girl, when she’d thought I couldn’t overhear.

  ‘Hello, Mam,’ said Meg heavily. I knew Meg and her mother hadn’t been in touch much for the last thirty years, but, nevertheless Meg had invited her; now she sounded as though she wished she hadn’t.

  ‘Hello, Meg – no hug for your mother then?’ Jean continued in her broad Welsh Valleys accent; I hadn’t heard an accent like that since I’d left the UK.

  ‘Of course,’ replied Meg, flatly. Everything about her demeanor was screaming ‘keep away from me’, but Meg hugged her mother, briefly and weakly, then she turned and announced, ‘This is my mother. She’s come all the way from Wales, and I’m sure she’s tired, hence her snappish comments, which are so unusual for her.’ Meg was clearly mocking her mother. ‘You too, Adrian, I bet you could do with an early night, given that trip all the way from Seville.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ replied the mysteriously familiar ‘Adrian’, who now, without his hat or sunglasses, looked a bit like a much older version of a rock star I’d doted on years earlier; you’re not really allowed to have crushes when you’re over sixteen, so my adoration of Dax O’Malley had always, publicly, been based upon his musicianship, not his rakish good looks, wicked charm, and bad boy image.

  ‘You always could just keep going, and going,’ was Meg’s bitter reply. ‘Say hello to Adrian O’Malley, folks, husband number two. Though maybe you know him better by his stage name Dax, if you’ve heard of him at all, that is.’

  The Grays were looking mystified, but my heart was beating a lot fa
ster than it had been a moment earlier. It was Dax O’Malley. No wonder he’d looked familiar . . . but, good grief, the life of a rock star had taken its toll on him. I was trying to come to terms with the fact that Meg had been married to Dax O’Malley; why the hell hadn’t she told me that? Had it been such a terrible experience that she couldn’t talk about it, or even write an email about it?

  People were nodding politely at my erstwhile heartthrob, who was standing right next to Luis Lopez, one of my current ones . . . and it was all getting to be a bit much for me. Why wasn’t anyone offering me a drink? I could really do with one.

  ‘And this is the great Professor Dan James, husband number three,’ added Meg, still in bitter tones; she made his title sound like an insult as she hissed it at us and flung an arm toward the man in the checked suit. Dan James was tall, and wide, and seemed to dominate the room; even his smile was big, and his rosy cheeks were the sort that should have been above a Father Christmas beard . . . in fact, with the right costume he’d have made an excellent Santa, even his voice was perfect – a cross between the man in the famous red suit and the Jolly Green Giant.

  ‘Good evening all,’ he boomed loud and low. ‘And thank you, dear Meg, for so graciously inviting me to this wonderful weekend of well-wishing in the wilderness.’ He seemed pleased about the alliteration. I cringed. Oh dear, a bombast. How sad.

  ‘Oh give it a rest, Dan. None of us are impressionable little students, sitting at your feet hoping for a pearl of wisdom to drop from those flaccid lips.’ Meg certainly wasn’t holding back – it didn’t sound as though she liked anyone she’d invited.

  ‘And husband number one, everyone; Peter Webber.’ Meg nodded toward the sandy-haired man with the piercing blue eyes. The strange emphasis she’d placed on his surname puzzled me – it wasn’t as though it was a particularly fancy name or anything. It was odd.

  What was also odd was how biting Meg was being. Her emails had always been upbeat – well, they’d read as upbeat anyway; but that’s the trouble with emails, of course, there’s no inflection, no sense of tone.

  ‘Hi folks, good to meet you all,’ said Peter Webber in a quiet voice. Totally American accent, none of the Welsh sing-song left at all. But his eyes . . . I remembered Peter at that moment; he’d been weedy and small when we were young, but with the most electric eyes – which was ironic, considering he’d become an electrician. He used to hang around the shop at the top of our street, but Meg had been right, I’d never really known him – just seen him about. He’d gone to St Joseph’s, the local catholic school. No wonder we hadn’t mixed – my Mum and Dad thought Roman Catholics were almost diabolical. I’d never understood that. Still didn’t.

  ‘This is my wife, Sally,’ he continued evenly. ‘I’m sure Meg will find it in her somewhere to be nice to her at least – they’ve never met before, and Sally was hoping to meet the delightful person Meg seems to be during all her TV interviews.’

  Wow, Peter had a spine. He might look pasty and nerdy, but at least he was standing up to Meg.

  ‘But, of course, Peter,’ cooed Meg, mocking him, ‘I’m sure I’ll be nice to Sally; Sally herself looks so . . . nice.’

  Meg had insulted the woman before they’d even exchanged a word. I was beginning to feel uncomfortable; where the hell was the Meg I’d been corresponding with for the last year, let alone the girl she’d been ‘back in the day’?

  ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,’ said Sally Webber hesitantly. I wondered for a moment if she was going to curtsey. But she didn’t; she contented herself with a bob of her head, but I suspected that if she’d had a forelock, she’d have pulled it for the World Famous Meg Jones.

  ‘The Grays – Joe and Martha,’ said Meg, nodding toward the couple who were standing with their backs to the fireplace. ‘Joe was my literary agent until recently, and Martha’s just along for the ride, as usual.’ Martha Gray opened her mouth as if to speak, but clamped it shut in disgust, pulling her husband closer with her fat little bejeweled hand.

  ‘Uncalled for, Meg,’ was all Joe Gray said, curtly.

  He spoke for us all. Me included. I wasn’t liking this Meg at all.

  ‘And that’s all folks,’ quipped Meg, acidly. ‘What a funny bunch we are; but, hey, thanks for coming. I guessed Joe would – he wants me back on his books, and Luis hasn’t got much choice, have you, baby? You have to be seen spending time with your loving fiancé, don’t you? But as for the rest of you? Well, I wonder why you all came. It’s not as though any of you want to see me, is it? So what do you all think you can get out of me? Why did you all come? That’s the million dollar question, right?’

  I felt I had to speak. The tension was almost unbearable. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

  ‘Oh, come on now, Meg,’ I said, as lightly as I could, ‘I know I’m delighted to see you . . . you’re looking great, and I’m so pleased at all the success you’re having. And look, three ex-husbands and a fourth-to-be, and there’s me with not even one. How lucky can a girl get?’

  ‘Oh dear, sweet Cait – you might be bright but you sure can be dumb,’ was Meg’s rather cutting reply. ‘If you had any idea what these three put me through . . . or what this one can be like –’ she gesticulated with her glass toward her exes, then Luis – ‘then you wouldn’t call me “lucky” at all. Smarten up, Cait – life’s short and then you die . . . all you can do is make the most of the ride, and mine’s been bloody bumpy, to say the least.’

  This didn’t help the mood, and it seemed Luis Lopez was far from happy with the comments Meg had made about him. ‘You should not speak like this. It is not polite. These people have been important in your life. And I have done nothing to deserve your unkind words.’ He was declaiming again.

  ‘You’ve “done nothing to deserve my unkind words”, Luis?’ was Meg’s sharp, mocking retort. ‘You’ve driven me to this stuff for a start.’ She waved her glass, showering the hearth-rug with its contents.

  Maybe that was it; Meg didn’t look drunk, but maybe she was drinking so much, on a regular basis, that she was able to control her body, if not her words, or mood. I knew that was possible; I’d seen it before. Lived it. But that was all a long time ago, and far behind me; just believe me when I tell you that when you live with an alcoholic you can actually make yourself believe they’ve stopped drinking. You want it to be true, so you tell yourself it is true . . . until they snap, that is. Until they change before your eyes and their inner, booze-fueled demons come screaming out at you. But, yes, they can be very controlled, physically. Up to a point.

  ‘Back on the sauce then, Meg?’ It was Dax O’Malley. I told myself I had to think of him as ‘Adrian’; he wasn’t Dax anymore. His voice was gravelly, his accent no longer tied to his Boston roots, but floating somewhere in that international place that is the ‘Rock Star Universe’. His infamously straight-laced Spanish wife, who had encouraged him to give up his excessive lifestyle, then touring, then recording, and to procreate something approaching an entire soccer team, ruled his life with a rod of iron – at least, that’s what the newspapers said. I wondered if it were true, or whether he was just an average guy with an extraordinary drive, and bucket full of talent.

  ‘You never were interested in the booze, were you, Adrian? You preferred other forms of mood management, right?’ Meg was being cruel, and she knew it. ‘Did Jocasta, or Jacintha . . . or whatever that womb on legs you married after me is called . . . did she get you off it all? All?’

  ‘It’s Jovita, as you well know, Meg. Don’t be like this. You never used to be a bitch,’ replied Adrian, almost plaintively. ‘Where’s all this coming from? Is it all just gin-talk?’ He was echoing my own thoughts.

  ‘Gin-talk? Oh no, Adrian. You’ll all be delighted to know that I’ve been seeing a shrink – yeah, a shrink. Luis’s idea, wasn’t it, darling? When I bought that house in LA, he was the one who got me started with it. And I’ve stuck with it; three times a week for six months now. Very LA – very “American�
��, Mum. Like closets.’ She looked at her mother with a cruel smile on her lips. ‘And do you know what the freshly-shrunk Meg knows that the un-shrunk Meg didn’t?’

  I knew I wasn’t the only one in the room who wanted to know the answer to that one.

  ‘I have a feeling you’re going to tell us, whether we want to know or not,’ boomed Dan James. ‘How very theatrical this all is.’

  ‘Ah, Dan – theatrics would be something you’d know all about; acting the part, that’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? You didn’t think I was the right leading lady for you to have on your arm when you entered Harvard’s hallowed halls, did you? So you were going to dump me. Eight years of my life, about to be flushed away. I knew it. So I jumped before you could push me. I escaped that humiliation, at least. But this isn’t theatrics – this is me. The “me” you’ve all created. That’s what Meg knows now; that she’s been made into the person you see today, by the people you see today. Are you all proud? You should be. I’m wealthy beyond belief, I sell more books than any romance writer, ever, and every screenplay I choose to attach my name to out-grosses even those special effects masterpieces they’re all so keen on these days. You Dan? You’re a pathetic, washed-up pseudo-professor, who, if he didn’t have tenure, would have been slung out on his ear years ago for fiddling with the sophomores and for not having written anything that’s sold more than a hundred copies in over a decade.’

  Meg was on a roll – we could all feel it, and, like me, everyone was wondering who would be next.

  Sally Webber – of all people – came to our rescue.

  ‘I wonder if there’s any chance of a drink?’ She spoke quietly; I wondered if she’d been taking anything in – then, noting her rather vacuous expression, it occurred to me that maybe she was just as dumb as a box of hair, and hadn’t picked up on the tone of the exchanges. ‘It was quite a journey from LA and I could do with something. A soda, maybe?’