Deadly Summer Nights

by Vicki Delany

  “If I must,” Olivia said quietly. Then she spoke into it again. “Today I assigned a lady to the position of bartender. This is a first for Haggerman’s, and I need to see what she’s capable of. Drinks in the ballroom are on the house, but for the next thirty minutes only. Starting now. Elizabeth, set your watch.”

  Half the onlookers bolted. As for the other half, Olivia said, “Any staff member still here in one minute will be required to account for their presence to Mrs. Rostov.”

  Aunt Tatiana, housecoat thrown over her nightgown, bare feet thrust into fuzzy slippers, pink rollers in her hair, waved.

  The other half of the onlookers bolted. Luke scrambled to follow, lost his footing, tripped over a rock, and fell to his knees into the creek. No one stopped to help him up. He pushed himself to his feet and limped after them.

  A handful of nonstaff and nondrinkers remained. Aunt Tatiana and Eddie, the security guard, began politely suggesting people return to the hotel, and gradually, reluctantly, they did so.

  “Nicely done,” I said to my mother.

  “I know,” she replied, handing the bullhorn to Deputy Dave.

  “Can you check on Velvet, please?” I asked. “She had a bad fall, and she doesn’t look too good.”

  My friend had sunk to the ground, eyes closed, head thrown back against a tree trunk. The man in the white dinner jacket crouched next to her.

  “That gentleman’s a doctor. I’ll take her to our house and ask him if she should go to the hospital.” My mother smiled at me. “Also nicely done.”

  I turned at the splash of oars and the sound of something thumping against the dock as Randy’s boat pulled up. Bradley and Norm Monahan came next, followed by Richard Kennelwood in his canoe, and last the rowboat with the waiter.

  Deputy Dave stretched out his arm to Norm Monahan and helped him climb out of the rowboat. And then, one at a time, the others clambered onto the dock and tied up their boats. Winston presented his branch to each of them, but no one took him up on his request to play.

  Monahan’s head was down, his shoulders slumped.

  “Let’s go, Norm,” the deputy said. “We can sort this all out in the morning.”

  “Yeah,” Monahan mumbled.

  “You can’t just walk away as though nothing happened,” I protested.

  “We all need to take some time to calm down,” Dave said.

  “Calm down! I’m not calming down! I am calm. He—”

  At that moment we heard a shout from the direction of the public path. “Over here!” The deputy shouted back, and two men stepped gingerly over the creek and walked to the bottom of the dock. They were both bulky, with square heads and thick necks, dressed in cheap suits and dusty hats. I guessed they were not Haggerman’s guests.

  “Better late than never,” the deputy said.

  “Got lost on the road,” one of the new arrivals said. “It’s dark out there.”

  “Why don’t you take Chief Monahan into town? I’ll follow.”

  One of the men grabbed Monahan’s arm. “Let’s go, buddy.” He led the chief away. All the fight had gone out of Monahan, but I had no doubt it would be back tomorrow with a vengeance. I turned on the deputy. Randy, Richard, Jim, Bradley, the young waiter, and the second of the new arrivals watched us.

  “You can’t pretend nothing happened,” I said. “He fired his gun at us. He killed Harold Westenham.”

  “I know,” the deputy said.

  “You have to believe me. You— You know?”

  “I don’t know exactly what went on here tonight, but it looks as though you interfered in police matters, Mrs. Grady. For once, I’ll overlook that. Please don’t let it happen again.”

  “I—”

  “That was Detective Stanford and this is Detective Flynn from the New York State Police. They were intending to question Norm tomorrow morning in the matter of the death of Mr. Harold Westenham. When I realized what was going on here tonight, I had one of your employees call them and let them know things had to be moved up, but they got lost on the way out of town.”

  “Sorry about that,” Detective Flynn said.

  “They’ll want to talk to you in the morning, Mrs. Grady,” Dave said. “As will I.” He and Flynn started to walk away.

  “Wait!” I said. “You can’t just leave like that. You say you knew. How?”

  “Boot print. Norm needs a new pair of boots. He’s been going on for weeks about it, but he hates shopping, particularly when the summer visitors are in town. The sole of his left boot is almost worn through on the left side. It leaves a distinctive print. I saw that print in the mud next to Westenham’s body, where you and your friends had pulled it onto the shore. That meant nothing, as Norm got to the body before me. Norm had a quick look at the body, and then he went up to the man’s cabin to search it. After he’d gone, I saw that print again, on the hill, under a tree, on the far side of the body. Where Norm didn’t go.”

  “That’s all you have?” Jim said. “Not much.”

  “I thought I was imagining things. Offhand, I could think of absolutely no reason Norm would kill a total stranger. I took a picture of the print anyway, in case it proved to be important. Yesterday morning, I dropped by his house on another matter. Francis was home, but Norm was in the shower. While I waited, I had a brief chat with Francis. He’s an emotional boy—man, I should say. Makes it easy for some guys to bait him. He was sad, he told me, because the man who’d been his commanding officer in the war had died at Haggerman’s. He didn’t say any more, but it got me thinking. I know the story, and I know Norm blames that man for everything that happened to Francis since. What Francis told me was enough for me to call in the state police. Enough to get an investigation started. I asked Francis for a glass of water, and while he was doing that, I grabbed Norm’s work boot from the mat by the door and took a photo of the sole. It matches the one at the scene.”

  “He told me he did it,” Richard said. “Out on the lake. He was about to jump, and then Dave reminded him of his son.”

  Chapter 20

  “I have to be going,” Deputy Dave said. “We’ll be back tomorrow to take everyone’s statements.”

  Once again, he began to walk away, but then Randy remembered something and called him back. “Forgot I had this.” He stuck his hand into his waistband and brought out a gun. “Chief Monahan dropped this.”

  When Dave Dawson and Detective Flynn had disappeared into the trees, I turned to the men around me. “I have to get up to my house and see how Velvet’s doing. You two”—I indicated Bradley and the waiter—“please come to my office in the morning.” They’d leapt in to help, and I intended to reward them for that.

  “Yes, ma’am,” they said.

  The men trailed along behind me. When I turned up the path toward my house, Jim, Randy, and Winston followed. Richard, I couldn’t help but notice, came with them. He caught my eye and gave me a soft smile. I ducked my head and hurried up the trail.

  Velvet, Olivia, and Aunt Tatiana, the latter still in her nightwear, were in the living room. Velvet sat on the couch in a cloud of pink tulle. She had a thick blanket thrown across her shoulders, her hair had come out of its pins and tumbled in a golden river over her shoulders. A patch of hair was wet, and the makeup on one side of her face had been scrubbed off. She clutched a cup of hot tea in both hands. Winston ran across the room and rested his muzzle on her lap. She smiled at him and gave him a pat. Olivia and Aunt Tatiana were not drinking tea but what looked to be champagne. I plucked the bottle out of the ice bucket. Yup, champagne. And not the cheap stuff, either.

  I raised one eyebrow in question.

  “A successful conclusion to a difficult week,” Olivia said. “The culprit apprehended, no one harmed.”

  “Except me,” Velvet said. “My head hurts.”

  “Which is why you do not get champagne,” Aunt Tatiana said
.

  I swung my right arm in the air, testing my shoulder. It hurt, but not too much. Not enough to stop me having a glass of champagne.

  “Are you sure you don’t need to go to the hospital?” Randy dropped onto the couch next to Velvet, crunching the fabric of her skirt. “Here, let me see.”

  She turned her head and let him separate strands of her hair. “Bleeding’s stopped,” he said. “You’ve got a heck of a lump there, though. Going to be a lot worse tomorrow.”

  “A doctor was in the ballroom,” Olivia said, “when some idiot of a guest came running in to yell that we were all about to be murdered. He came with me and tended to Velvet. He left a moment ago. He said she’ll be fine, provided she rests.”

  “Which she will,” I said. “I’ll get someone to lead Velvet’s classes tomorrow.”

  “But—” Velvet began.

  “No buts,” I said. Even if I had to take the classes myself. Perish the thought. I tested my shoulder again.

  “What about you, Elizabeth?” Richard asked. “The doctor tended to Velvet. He should have stayed to have a look at you.”

  “I’m fine. Really, I am. I’ll probably wake up in the night and realize I had a close call, but nothing more than that.” I refrained from obviously moving my sore shoulder.

  “May I offer you gentlemen a drink?” Olivia asked. Without waiting for an answer, she said, “Elizabeth, fetch more glasses, and bring another bottle. It’s in the fridge.”

  I went into the kitchen as instructed and got glasses out of the cupboard. As I turned around, I caught a glimpse of myself reflected in the dark windows. My hands flew to my hair. My lovely poodle cut was now more of a sheepdog, several scratches crossed my right cheek, and traces of dried blood marked the skin. A deep gash ran through my right sleeve. I scrubbed furiously at the blood on my face and plucked a twig out of the curly depths of my hair. I kicked off my ruined shoes, pulled up my dress, unclipped my stockings, shredded into rags, and yanked them off. I tossed them into the kitchen trash. As long as I looked this bad, I might as well go all the way and be comfortable. I wiggled out of my girdle and hid it in a drawer, in case one of our visitors wandered into the kitchen in search of a glass of water. I then put champagne glasses and the bottle on a tray and carried it out.

  “While Tatiana brought Velvet here and the doctor tended to her, I followed our guests to the ballroom,” Olivia was saying. “I rightly suspected that Rosemary wouldn’t believe it if they told her I’d opened the bar. For the second time in a week. While I was there, I took the opportunity to select a couple of nice bottles for expected guests.” She lifted her glass in a toast.

  “Because I know Rosemary’s fully capable of serving the thirsty hordes you let loose on her, I’ll take it as done that she can tend bar from now on, shall I?” I said as I wrestled with the cork on the bottle.

  “Along with her other duties,” Olivia said.

  “With a commensurate increase in pay.”

  My mother looked at me.

  The cork popped, the champagne fizzed, and I served the drinks.

  When everyone, including me and excluding Velvet, had a glass of champagne, I turned to Jim. “What happened to you? You were supposed to be in the woods listening. I set the trap so carefully and timed the whole thing so we’d all be in place at five after ten.”

  “When I called Monahan with my supposed information,” Velvet said, “I told him I couldn’t get away until ten so he was to meet me then. Which he did.”

  Jim had the grace to look embarrassed. “All I can say is I’m sorry. Why didn’t you tell me what you needed me for?”

  “I wanted you to be an impartial witness,” I said.

  “Sorry,” he said again. “I got an anonymous tip that a mob hit man was about to be arrested over the Shady Pines arson, so I went to check it out. Turns out, nothing was happening. Nothing at all. Dawson was there, too—”

  “Who?”

  “Deputy Dawson.”

  “Oh, Deputy Dave. I forgot he has a last name. Go on.”

  “We got to talking. Looks like we’d both been fed a line, and we started wondering who would have done that, and why. I remembered what you’d asked me to do, so we came here, to find out what was going on. We arrived in the nick of time.”

  “Arrived almost too late, you mean,” Velvet mumbled.

  “While we were waiting for the rest of you,” Olivia said, “Velvet told me what happened at cabin nineteen. Really, Elizabeth, don’t you have enough to do around here without doing the police’s job for them?”

  “That’s the thing,” I said. “I thought I had to do the police’s job for them. I never thought Deputy Dave, I mean Deputy Dawson, had the initiative to start an investigation of his own.”

  “We talked about that,” Jim said. “He’s new here, and at first he thought Monahan was being a typical small-town, old-time cop. Son of the previous chief, friends with all the important people in town, still doing things the old way. Then he started to think it might amount to more than that. That Monahan was”—he glanced at Richard Kennelwood, who’d scarcely said a word all night—“in the pockets of the big-hotel owners.”

  “He is,” Richard said. “Or I should say he was. My dad and I had our disagreements about his way of running the hotel and doing business in the community, but what finally had me packing up and leaving was one incident in particular. Five years ago, a guest drowned in the lake. She’d gone out for a paddle late at night with an off-duty staff member. They’d both had far too much to drink, the boat capsized, and the guest drowned although the staffer made it to shore. We could have been sued, and the publicity would have done us no good, so Dad and Monahan covered it up. The police report said the guest took the boat out by herself. Not long after that Monahan bought himself a nice new car, and I went to the city. When I came back I told Monahan, although not in so many words, the arrangement he had with my father would not continue.”

  “How did he take that?” I asked.

  “He pretended not to know what I was talking about. He also told me I had a few things to learn about how things work in a town like Summervale.”

  “Dave Dawson was starting to have his suspicions about Monahan’s involvement in my uncle’s murder,” Jim said. “When he found out the FBI said the communism angle had no merit but Monahan hadn’t bothered to tell him, that cinched it. He realized Monahan was deliberately trying to muddy the waters, instead of clearing things up, and what he heard from Francis the other night told him why. He called the state police and told them what was what. You did him a big favor, Elizabeth.”

  I harrumphed. “I put my life in danger, and the lives of my friends.” I smiled at Randy and Velvet. Randy, I noticed, hadn’t moved from Velvet’s side since checking the state of her head, She hadn’t shifted over, either. “Not to mention Winston’s.”

  “Winston!” Aunt Tatiana said. “What happened to Winston?”

  The dog, who’d been snoozing happily at Velvet’s feet, woke with a bark.

  “Monahan shot at him,” I said. “He missed because Velvet clobbered him with an ashtray and spoiled his aim.”

  “Heroine that I am,” Velvet said modestly.

  Randy smiled at her. “When Elizabeth took off after Monahan, I had a tough decision to make. To follow her or to help Velvet. Velvet had been knocked down and momentarily lost consciousness. I knew Elizabeth was capable of taking care of herself.”

  I harrumphed again. “How did I do Deputy Dave any favors?” I asked Jim.

  “He didn’t have enough to charge Monahan. He hoped the state police would be able to dig up more evidence, but that was only a hope. If they’d arrived, started investigating Monahan, and left without finding anything, Dave’s career would have been finished. Instead, you got Monahan to confess.”

  “He’ll deny it tomorrow,” I said.

  “Pro
bably,” Richard said. “But I can, and will, testify he told me out there that he killed Westenham in revenge for Westenham having Francis arrested in forty-four. That, plus what Dave’s come up with, will probably be enough.”

  “There’ll be more, Elizabeth,” Jim said. “Once the investigation gets going. And now it will, because you set it in motion.”

  “All of that’s well and good,” Olivia said. “I want to see an article in the newspaper retracting that ridiculous claim that Haggerman’s is a communist hot spot.”

  Jim laughed. “I suspect you’ll get it. Martin McEnery at the paper and Monahan are mighty close. ‘You scratch my back; I’ll scratch yours’ sort of thing. McEnery won’t be able to backtrack fast enough once he hears Monahan’s being disgraced. That’s provided the editor at the Gazette doesn’t throw him overboard first for writing a spurious story that had not one shred of merit.”

  “So all that communist stuff was made up out of whole cloth?” Olivia said.

  “Yes, and I should have recognized it for what it was,” Jim said. “I was there, with Elizabeth, when Monahan walked into Uncle Harold’s writing room. He was absolutely delighted when he saw that book on the desk. What a great excuse it gave him to divert attention from what was just a sordid little personal murder and try to make it look like a big deal. Unfortunately for him, the FBI dismissed his communist talk as soon as they had a proper look into Uncle Harold’s papers.”

  “If he ruined the reputation of Haggerman’s in order to save his, too bad,” I said.

  Velvet had fallen asleep, her head on Randy’s shoulder. Randy made no attempt to move it.

  A knock sounded at the door, and Olivia called, “Come in.”

  Rosemary and Charlie Simmonds did so.

  “What the heck has been going on?” Charlie said. “There I was, onstage, top of my form, telling my best jokes, and not one person was paying any attention. Never mind the sudden line at the bar and people coming running from all directions, with something they absolutely had to tell everyone at their table in their loudest possible voice.”