Deadly Summer Nights

by Vicki Delany

  “A bulldog.” Jim said. “A handsome one, too, probably a purebred. I’m not surprised his name’s Winston. He looks like Churchill. Where’d you get him?”

  “He’s my aunt Tatiana’s dog, and I’ve no idea where he came from. He arrived when she did.” I climbed the steps to the porch. “Do you know much about dogs?”

  Jim held out his hand for Winston to sniff. Clearly he met with the dog’s approval, as Winston then permitted Jim to scratch the top of his head. “My parents are dog lovers. We always had a mutt or two running around when I was a kid. I miss having a dog, but a Greenwich Village walk-up’s no place for one, particularly not with the schedule I keep.” He straightened and leaned against the railing. Winston sniffed his shoes and trouser legs. “Dare I hope you’re here to see me?”

  “I am. Thank you very much for the flowers, they’re gorgeous, but you had nothing to apologize for. Instead, I should be apologizing to you. I let Jerome Kennelwood and his son get under my skin, and that wasn’t fair to you.”

  “Apology accepted,” he said.

  Winston wandered around the porch, sniffing in every corner. With all the people coming and going in this building, he must have a lot of wonderful new scents to catch up on. Too bad he couldn’t tell me who he’d smelled down at the dock on Wednesday night.

  “Have you heard anything more about your uncle’s case?” I asked.

  “No. It’s gone very quiet. I was planning on going into town after lunch to try to talk to the chief. I need to know when I can take my uncle’s body to White Plains. No one in the family lives there anymore, but that’s where my grandparents are buried, so I guess . . .” His voice drifted off. “My parents are driving up from Florida, and they’ll want to have a funeral.”

  I told him about the arson at Shady Pines and what that would do to the resources of our town’s tiny police department. “I find it odd that the FBI haven’t been back. I’d have thought they’d have questions. But nothing, as far as I know.”

  “That is odd,” he agreed. “They’ve not bothered to contact me again, either.”

  “I need to know when I can open that cabin, and you’ll want to get the last of your uncle’s things. Can you ask the chief when you talk to him? He was here earlier, and I didn’t think about it at the time.”

  “He was here? So he is still investigating?”

  “He came on a personal matter, and he came alone. Can I ask a favor of you, if you have the time?”

  “Shoot.”

  “You have resources, at the paper I mean. I’d like to know what Francis Monahan did in the army that got him jail time and a dishonorable discharge. I’ve heard vague rumors, but no details. He’s my employee and . . . I like to think I’m a good judge of character.” I pushed aside a thought of Ronald Grady. “I’ve learned to be. The hard way.”

  “There’s a story there,” Jim said.

  “One you’ll never hear. Everyone probably thinks they’re a good judge of character. I like Francis Monahan; he’s polite and shy, and I don’t sense any trouble in him. Maybe the army didn’t, either. Until trouble happened.”

  “I can do that. Won’t take more than one or two phone calls.”

  I was about to ask Jim to also find out what he could about Richard Kennelwood and his dealings in the New York hotel world, but I bit my tongue. One favor was more than enough.

  “Thanks. Come on, Winston, let’s get you home. I’m supposed to be talking to Olivia about something, but I can’t remember what.”

  “It’ll come to you,” Jim said.

  “Probably too late to do anyone any good.” I called the dog again. He lifted his head from a close examination of the overflowing ashtray on the low, wobbly wooden table. “Will you let me know what you find out?” I asked.

  “Sure,” Jim said.

  Winston trotted happily at my heels as we took the staff shortcut through the woods. Olivia wouldn’t want to babysit Winston, but she’d have to until I could find Aunt Tatiana. I didn’t have a key for her rooms.

  “Winston was running wild through the woods,” I said as I walked into our house. “He can’t be doing that.”

  My mother was waving her hands in the air, a bottle of red nail polish open on the table in front of her. “Tell Tatiana, not me.”

  “I’m telling you both. I’m also telling you he’ll have to stay here until she can come and get him.”

  “Why don’t you look after him?” She blew on her nails.

  “Because it’s past noon, and I have a full day’s work still to do, and I am not walking through the lobby with him tagging along behind me.”

  “Very well. Winston and I will have a pleasant afternoon. Won’t we, Winston?”

  He woofed in agreement.

  I began to leave, but I stopped. I was supposed to ask Olivia to do something. The acrid scent of the nail polish remover and the freshly applied polish reminded me. “Oh, right. Velvet thinks it would be better if you judge the beauty pageant this afternoon, rather than her.”

  My mother eyed me. “Better for who?”

  “For whom. Better for our guests, better for the reputation of our hotel.”

  “I detest those things. No matter what happens, the end result is one preening girl and a pack of humiliated, tearful ones who consider themselves to have been insulted.”

  “It’s adult women. Ages eighteen to twenty-nine.”

  “One preening adult woman, then.” She sighed heavily. “If I must.”

  “You must.”

  “What time?”

  “Four o’clock on the dock. Randy will be the other judge.”

  Once again, when I arrived at my office I found the clerks giggling and watching me out of the corners of their eyes.

  “What is it this time?” I said.

  More giggles. My office door was open, which it shouldn’t have been, and I went tentatively in. To my considerable surprise I found Aunt Tatiana arranging a glass bowl of freshly cut flowers.

  More flowers?

  “Where did those come from?” I asked her.

  My aunt turned to me with a smile. “You are popular today, lastachka. Which is as it should be. A young woman should have admirers. When we were courting, Rudolph would often present me with flowers. Or give them to my mother, which is the same. He had no money for such frivolities, so he’d pick a wildflower out of a crack in the pavement. I sometimes suspected he raided the public gardens as well.” She smiled fondly at the memory.

  “That’s lovely,” I said, “but no one’s courting me.” Unlike the perfect long-stemmed red roses of earlier, these ones were a brilliantly colored varied assortment of what was available right now in our flower beds.

  “Where did those come from?”

  “Kennelwood,” Aunt Tatiana said. “I was once again called to the front desk to accept them for you. These appear to have been picked by the gentleman himself or his gardener. No bows and fancy ribbons. Just flowers in a vase.” She handed me an envelope, and I opened it.

  The message was handwritten in blue ink on stiff white card stock with the logo of Kennelwood Hotel stamped in gold on the top.

  Please accept my apologies for last night. I hope to see you here again and soon. Richard

  I looked up to see Aunt Tatiana smiling at me.

  I threw the card onto my desk. “He’s just trying to get on my good side.”

  “Is it working?”

  “No.”

  “Let it work, lastachka. There are good men in the world. My Rudolph was a good man. Your father is a good man.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you? I wonder. You deserve happiness.”

  “I’ll be happy in September,” I said, “when I have the time.”

  My aunt shook her head and took her leave.

  Everything at Haggerman’s runs b
y the clock. Everything except my job, most of which can be done whenever I get around to it. For the occasional time when promptness is important, I keep a small wind-up alarm on my desk. At quarter to four, it buzzed. I wasn’t the least bit interested in watching the beauty pageant, but Olivia had a bad habit of “forgetting” to do things she didn’t particularly want to do.

  When she first told me she’d inherited a resort in the Catskills and wanted me to manage it for her, I imagined spending my days wandering through the grounds, dressed in a beautiful fresh summer frock and huge beribboned sun hat, perhaps with an icy drink in hand, pointing out to obsequious staff which flowers needed deadheading, visiting the kitchen to suggest roast chicken for dinner one evening, or assuring gracious, well-heeled guests I’d see that someone attended to their needs immediately.

  I hadn’t foreseen myself stuck behind a desk in a hot stuffy office all day, every day, juggling temperamental staff; bidding on hard-to-come-by or overly expensive resources; negotiating between competing department heads; putting out the myriad fires, large and small, that were continually popping up.

  I’ve never worked in the hotel industry before, but still, I should have known better. I’m a bookkeeper by training, and I’ve balanced some very large accounts. I was working at a Midtown department store as head of female staff when Olivia inherited Haggerman’s. A department store’s also an extremely demanding environment, but at least it closes at a reasonable time every day and I got actual days off.

  Haggerman’s never closes, and I am never off.

  Then again, I reminded myself, it was only for a couple of months of the year. The autumn and winter up here are so quiet and beautiful they make every mad summer’s day worthwhile.

  In the outer office, Randy was picking up the microphone that led to the loudspeakers dotted around the property. “Attention, everyone! Only ten more minutes until the Miss or Mrs. Haggerman’s pageant begins down by the dock. You won’t want to miss this, gentlemen.”

  “Mrs. Haggerman’s?” I said.

  “Not enough single women, so we had to expand to invite the married ladies.” He had the pink-and-blue sash that was the prize tossed over one shoulder.

  “Better take that off,” I said. “Or people will think you won.”

  “I’ll vote for you, Randy,” one of the clerks called.

  “Not me,” someone else said. “Luke the waiter has my vote.”

  The women burst out laughing. Luke’s reputation was getting around.

  Randy grabbed the portable bullhorn, and we left the office. I almost bumped into Jim Westenham coming in.

  “Are you busy, Elizabeth?” he asked.

  “Sort of. The beauty pageant is about to start, but I don’t need to be there if it’s important.”

  “Important enough.”

  “Let’s walk, and you can tell me what you learned. Randy, go on ahead, please. If my mother’s not there, send someone to the house to get her. Do you have another judge? There should be three.”

  “I have someone in mind. I’ll make a big show of picking him out of the crowd. They always like that.” He gave me a nod and hurried away shouting, “Beauty pageant is about to start, everyone. Down by the dock.”

  Guests streamed out of the lobby, and Jim and I walked slowly among them.

  On the porch, staff were setting up small square tables for the regular four o’clock bridge game and throwing a white cloth over the long table on which afternoon tea would be laid out for the players. A gray Chrysler New Yorker and a bright red Buick Roadmaster were parked in the circle, while a flurry of bellhops unloaded piles of trunks and suitcases for the new arrivals.

  “The chief wasn’t in when I stopped at the police station,” Jim said, “but I had a talk with the deputy.”

  “He speaks?”

  “When the chief’s not around, anyway. He didn’t have a lot to tell me. He’s been in touch with the police in Newburgh, where Uncle Harold’s been living the last couple of years, and they said he’s never been in any trouble. I could have told him that, saved him some time. He asked me if Uncle Harold had ever been known to gamble, and I said no. He lived modestly on his writing income and his savings from when he taught college. I think Deputy Dawson was hoping this somehow tied into that arson case, so the police could wrap up two cases in one bow, but that’s not on, either.”

  “Did he say anything about when they’ll release your uncle’s remains?”

  “Not up to him, Dawson said. I have to talk to the chief. I left a message for Monahan to call me here at the hotel, but I don’t have high hopes of him bothering to do that. I’ll have to keep trying to chase him down.”

  “I hate to sound mercenary, Jim, but I don’t want to keep that cabin closed off if the police don’t need it anymore.”

  “That cabin contributes to your livelihood, Elizabeth. Don’t apologize for wanting to use it.”

  We walked among the excited crowd heading to the beach. Rows of chairs had been set up for the audience, and a handful of rowboats and paddleboats bobbed on the clear, placid waters of the lake, waiting for the show to start.

  “I asked Dawson what was happening with the FBI investigation,” Jim said, “and he can’t say.”

  “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. He hasn’t heard anything from them since that first day, when they came here. Monahan says the FBI are still interested in what Uncle Harold had been up to and have asked them to keep an eye out for any contacts he might have made while he was here. Dawson told me I’d have to speak to Chief Monahan for more details, as the chief hasn’t confided in him on what he calls matters of national security.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “Your chief of police is overly fond of grandstanding, and I get the feeling the deputy’s tired of it. He asked me if I had any contacts in the NYPD he could tap into.”

  “Do you?”

  “Sure I do, and plenty of them. But I’m a newspaperman. I’m not going to start calling in favors to help a small-town cop get out from under the thumb of his overbearing chief. After I left the police station, I found a pay phone and called the FBI regional office. I didn’t expect to find anyone to talk to, but I wanted to leave a message to have them call me back. To my considerable surprise, one of the agents who’d been here, Kowalski, not only was in the office but was willing to talk to me.”

  “Five minutes!” Randy boomed. “Five minutes until the beautiful ladies of Haggerman’s Catskills Resort strut their stuff.”

  Jim and I stopped at the top of the small hill that leads down to the beach, the guest dock, and the lake. Francis Monahan had done a good job of weeding the flower beds. I wondered what Kennelwood’s gardeners had to say after someone plucked their best blooms. I pushed my thoughts away from Richard Kennelwood. Better not to go there. This summer, like last, had to be all about getting the hotel established under its new management and keeping it profitable. Next year, if all goes well, maybe I’ll be able to afford to hire an assistant manager to take some of the load off me. Next year, I might be able to think about flowers and romance. But not this year.

  “The FBI have closed their involvement in this case, saying it has no merit,” Jim said. “Kowalski told me I can come in anytime and pick up my uncle’s papers. They’ve examined the documents and discovered nothing that would indicate my uncle was doing anything other than writing a work of fiction. Essentially Kowalski implied the whole thing was a waste of their time.”

  That snapped me out of thoughts of handpicked flowers fast enough. “But the deputy told you they were still investigating.”

  “Might be the FBI never bothered to tell Chief Monahan otherwise, or if they did, the chief never bothered to inform his deputy. Telling people the FBI are involved gives your chief gravitas, in his eyes anyway. Regardless of the FBI’s interest, or lack thereof, the murder case is still open, don’t forg
et.”

  I waved my arms around me, encompassing the peaceful surroundings and the cheerful crowd gathering to watch the pageant. “I don’t see much investigating going on.”

  “A small-town police department doesn’t have a lot of resources, Elizabeth. Other things happen, and they move on.”

  “Aren’t you interested in finding out what happened?”

  He turned his head and looked at me. His eyes, the same lake blue as his uncle’s, were sad and serious. “I am. I’m very interested, but I don’t think it has anything to do with Haggerman’s. Someone wanted my uncle dead, for reasons I can’t begin to understand, and they followed him here. When I get back to the city, I’m going to start asking some questions. It’s also possible it was a case of mistaken identity. I had a look at that spot where it happened. It’s dark there, away from the bright lights of the hotel and paths. Did someone mistake Uncle Harold for another man? Stranger things have happened. Here comes your mother.”

  Olivia strolled down the footpath, practically screaming summer glamour in a dress of a check print of red, pink, and cream, with a bell skirt, a wide red belt, elbow-length sleeves, and a high collar turned up to frame the sharp bones of her face. Large sunglasses covered her eyes, and her hair was fastened into a chignon. Randy, bullhorn in hand, hurried to greet her. The pageant contestants were lined up along the shoreline, hands on hips, smiles in place, ready to be presented. All except one wore bathing suits of some sort and shoes with heels. Most of them had had their hair done in a variation of a flip, and their makeup carefully applied.

  I spotted Velvet, crouched down, balancing on her heels, while she chatted to two old men who’d snagged front-row-center seats.

  “You asked me to find out about Francis Monahan’s service record,” Jim said. “I put one of the girls in the newspaper office on it. She’ll call me when she has something to tell me.”

  “Thanks.”

  Jim nodded toward the crowd. “See that short guy in the cheap suit and dusty hat over there approaching your mother?”

  “Yes. Dressed like that, he doesn’t look like he’s a guest here.”