Dead at Breakfast (12 page)

“We still don't know what killed him. If he was alive when the fire got going, why did he just lie there? So we're waiting on the M.E.”

“I had a surprise today too,” said Brianna.

“Rumble at the bingo game?”

Brianna was working in the Memory Neighborhood this month, with the dementia patients. Many were sweet, even if they kept asking the same question over and over, but a few were angry or unpredictable. She had a couple of big strong patients who took some handling.

“No, I met your mother.”

She popped the pizza out of the toaster, slid it onto a plate, and set it down in front of Buster. He was eating before she had time
to hand him a knife and fork. After tearing into most of a wedge, chewing the way you do when your mouth is too full and the food is too hot, he said, “I thought you just said you met my mother.”

“I did. She was at Barb's with her friend Maggie. They asked me over to their table and we all had pie. I thought she was very nice.”

Buster stared at her. “Wrinkly old number about this tall? About a hundred and thirty pounds, blond hair that looks like a wig?”

“She is not wrinkly and I thought she was very pretty and very nice. She asked about my job, and all about how we met, and she said they hoped they'd see me again. I thought we might meet them in town for supper before they go.”

Buster was nonplussed. His plan for how to let his mother know he had a girlfriend was to send her an announcement when their first child was born.

The phone rang. They both startled at the sound; a call this late had to be bad news of some kind. Brianna lost the game of chicken they were silently playing as to who was going to answer.

Buster could hear the speaker talking loud and fast and then Brianna screamed. There was some confused howling then, from both Brianna and the caller. Brianna hung up the phone and shouted at Buster, “Shep Gordon just came to the house and took Cherry away! He took her away to Ainsley!”

Shep Gordon had been on the phone with the M.E.'s office, trying to get some hard information about cause of death. The M.E. wanted to do the autopsy herself, this being a high-profile case and a complex one, but had eaten a bad tuna sandwich for lunch and gone home with food poisoning. The assistant M.E. had looked over the body and reported that the front half of the vic was cooked pretty good and it was disgusting to watch, how the flesh fell away from the bones if you fooled with it. They had to wait for the toxicology
report to know for sure about drugs and poisons in his system, but it looked as if the snake had struck at least twice before meeting its own end. There were puncture holes on the upper back and on the back of one huge thigh. The way they reconstructed it, the snake must have been deep under the covers at the foot of the bed when Antippas got into it. It must have rattled, or tried to, but would that have been heard? Deprived of its chance to scare an enemy off, the snake had struck. The thigh first, they figured, then it slithered up, maybe trying to find the way out of the bed. Whatever happened next—the vic sat up? Threw back the covers? Rolled over looking for what had stuck him? The snake had gotten its fangs in again, deep, and wound up under the body when the guy felt the effect of the first bite and fell back. While they waited for the M.E. to come back, the office was doing research on what kind of venom this snake was packing and how it would affect a guy this enormous. They'd get back to them on this. But just spitballing, it looked like what Alexander Antippas died of was smoke and carbon monoxide from the fire. The airways, what was left of the nose, looked to them as if he'd been breathing as the fire heated up and engulfed the room.

Not a nice way to go. Not at all. The guy must have been fucking terrified, knowing what was happening, and unable to help himself.

Shep drove back to Ainsley in a contemplative mood. He thought he'd take his stepson shooting at the rifle range on Sunday. Kid drove him nuts, but Shep could be nicer to him; a little bit went a long way with this kid, who hadn't had much luck in the father department. It would please the wife too, which might work out well for Shep also. Nothing like the thought of finding a big poisonous snake in your bed to make a guy appreciate the homely pleasures.

Back at the barracks, Shep had talked to the fire marshal's office. He asked to see all the photos from fire scenes in the area in the
last two years. There hadn't been that many, and few of them had been at all suspicious. One guy in West Bergen had tried to burn his barn down to collect the insurance, and he'd done a piss-poor job of it. Mostly it was wiring, chewed through by squirrels or just overloaded, that started things. A lot of times, especially in old farmhouses, there weren't many outlets because there wasn't that much to plug in when the electricity had come in. Now though, you had your computers and hair dryers and a bunch of other hair things he didn't understand, his wife had this thing that heated her curlers. And TVs and toasters and microwaves and then, oh god, Christmas lights and all that. People would get extension cords and have all this stuff running from one plug and then be surprised when the house burned down.

What he was interested in now was what he could see in the background of the fire pictures. Who was there watching. People liked to watch fires; you couldn't blame them. He liked to have a bonfire at New Year's himself. If there was snow, and it was safe. He and his buds would pile up old tires, and trash wood you couldn't burn in the woodstove without gumming up the flue, and they'd have this huge pyre going all day, with people standing around drinking coffee and hot chocolate, the kids with marshmallows and the grown-ups with rum in theirs, cooking hot dogs on sticks and just enjoying the color and the life in the flames, the sparks going up into the blue dome above them.

But people who set fires, they enjoyed fires in a different way. For some it was sexual. You looked for guys wearing big loose overcoats, having at themselves insides their clothes. God, some people. If the fire broke out at night, you looked for people who were fully dressed, instead of rousted out in their jammies, like they knew ahead of time what was going to happen.

He went carefully through the pictures Deputy Babbin had taken. He'd been first on the scene at Oquossoc. There was Gabe
Gurrell looking panicked, with a coat on over his nightshirt, and his skinny shanks stuck into puffy sheepskin slippers. Like bunny slippers. Nightshirt? He supposed that made it easier to clear the decks for action than pajama pants. Was Gabe getting any action? Where'd you get a thing like that, a nightshirt, he wondered. Shep bought most of his clothes at Manganero's, where you could also get gas for your car or diesel for your truck, buy a head of lettuce, get your work clothes and boots, your fishing and hunting gear including a good selection of rifles and shotguns, or rent a wedding dress.

Once the fire trucks arrived, the pictures were busier. Some of the guests from the inn were in the parking lot, gaping upward at the fire as the men did their work, putting up ladders, hauling hoses, attacking the flames. The guests were all half dressed or in nightclothes, wrapped in blankets or bathrobes. Buster had done a good job, shooting away from the fire, recording the background. Who was there who shouldn't be? Whose cars were those? He enlarged the pictures on his screen as much as he could without losing detail; made a list of license plates, including partials; took note of the watchers. In addition to the firefighters, there were only two people completely dressed. One was a skinny bent-over guy, wearing a barn jacket and dungarees. Shep couldn't see the face. He'd seen people bent over like that with rheumatoid arthritis. Mrs. Carter, who went to his wife's church, when you talked to her she seemed to be talking to her shoes, but she was an old sweetheart, sharp too, and she bore the pain wonderful. He couldn't see the face on this guy, but he had a hunch it was that fellow Niner, who'd had the accident that time. Shep had been a deputy patrol officer back then, and he remembered talking to men who responded to the scene. A wonder the guy could walk at all, a wonder he was still breathing.

Out among the cars, it looked as if there was another figure, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. Skinny and small, could even be a woman. Shep couldn't get any detail at all on the face. He was out in the dark of the parking lot, well away from the rest of the people. Or she.

Shep went to the photos taken by the real photographer, the crime scene guy. You could tell by the light from the flames and the number of cars and people in the shots that this was later, closer to morning. In a lot of them, police vehicles were lighting the scene with their headlights. There was the bent-over guy, facing the fire. His face was in bright light and Shep was now sure it was Niner. Now where was Mr. Hoodie?

There he was. He'd come in closer to the scene, and was standing near one of the fire trucks. He was keeping in the shadows, but there was one shot that showed the face clearly. The hood was pulled tight so just the features showed, no hair, no neck. He still couldn't tell if it was a man or a woman but it was small and young. Youngish, anyway. He looked carefully at the cars in the parking lot, making note of which ones had been there from the beginning and were still there, this late in the scene.

He went out to the bullpen and asked, “Anyone here from the Bergen area? Bergen, West Bergen?”

“Dorothy. She's from Bergen Falls. I think her mom still lives there.”

“Get her, will you?”

Dorothy lumbered into Shep's office. Shep gave her a seat, and pulled up the pictures of the fire that included Mr. Hoodie. She looked carefully at the pictures as he scrolled through them. When he got to the one with the face showing, he stopped. Dorothy leaned into the screen.

“Can you make it bigger?”

He did his best, and Dorothy said suddenly, “Oh sure, I got her now. That's Cherry Weaver. I know her mom. Cherry used to work at the Upper Cuts shop here in Ainsley. She did my perm once.”

Shep leaned in and studied the intent little face peering out of the closed circle of the hood. It looked like something medieval.

“Roy Weaver's kid? What's she doing at the inn, you have any idea?”

“I think I heard she was working there, but don't take my word for it.”

“No I won't. Thanks much.”

Dorothy went back to her desk, and Shep printed the pictures that showed his two persons of interest, then went back to the bullpen.

“Harris? Wheatly? Will you guys get back over to the inn and talk to Gabe Gurrell? Find out what Earl Niner has to do with the inn, why he's here in these pictures with all his clothes on. Then find out everything you can about this girl, Cherry Weaver. What was she doing there last night. And find out if either of them knew Antippas, had any reason to harm him.”

His detectives took off, back to Oquossoc, and Shep settled in to look at the rest of his pictures of local fire scenes.

I
t was three-thirty
in the morning
when Brianna was allowed to see Cherry. It might have gone faster if Buster had come with her, but Brianna didn't think so and wouldn't let him. A local deputy sheriff didn't swing much weight in these leagues and besides he'd been up for like twenty-two hours straight and needed the sleep. Plus, she sort of didn't like picturing Buster telling his mother that he'd spent the night getting Brianna's sister out of jail.

Cherry was not under arrest, but no one would tell Brianna if she was there as a witness or a suspect. Brianna sat in the unhealthy fluorescence of the police barracks waiting room, watching peace officers go in and out with purposeful demeanors. Now and then she would try to ask someone a question, and always she'd be told to wait for Shep.

When Cherry came out at last she was alone; she took one look at her sister and burst into tears. Cherry's mouth went into a strange oblong shape when she cried. Brianna clamped an arm around her and marched her out of the station, while with the other hand she called her mother to say she was taking Cherry home with her. The call went to the answering machine, of course. Beryl wasn't one to lose a lot of sleep over other people's messes.

Cherry had had about an hour of sleep in Buster's Barcalounger before her sister woke her that morning, though she was trying to be quiet about getting Buster's breakfast. Brianna had a double shift at the nursing home that day, filling in for a colleague called to jury duty. She'd taken it on because she wanted the money; she hadn't counted on getting zero sleep between midnight and eight, but she had to go, and there was the question of what to do with Cherry. Cherry was a mess; they couldn't leave her alone. She might talk to people she shouldn't; she might panic and take off.

“I'll take her up to the inn to stay with your mother,” said Buster.

“I don't want to go to the fucking inn,” said Cherry. “I wish the whole thing had burned to the ground.”

“Hey!” Brianna said sharply. “Don't you say that! Don't say anything like that, ever again. To anybody!”

“Don't have a cow, man. They hate me and I hate them. I can say that if I want to.”

“No you can't! Jesus, Cherry, don't you know what's going on here?”

“Yes. Everyone always blames me. I didn't
do
anything! I was just standing there!”

Brianna had heard this litany in the car last night. It was as if the shock of being suspected had caused Cherry to revert to the strategy of a much younger person, insisting that she never went near the birthday cake even though she had chocolate icing in her hair. As if no one could prove a thing if you just kept denying it.
Had
she done something?

“You have to talk to Mom, and get yourself a lawyer and until you do that, you can't talk to anyone. You have to be with people who can look out for you.”

“Can I go to Dad's?”

Brianna was scrambling eggs. She hadn't thought of that as an
option. No one would, really, think of Roy Weaver as a port in a storm, except, apparently, Cherry. “If you can find him,” she said.

Cherry dug in her pockets for her ancient clamshell phone, and punched in her father's number. Brianna watched her. Cherry's face was defiant as she clapped the clamshell shut.

“Probably still asleep,” she said. “You can just drop me there, I'll be fine.”

“Listen. You have to make decisions. You need good advice and you need help. You need to talk to Mom.”

“She always blames me.”

“That's because you're such a fuck-up!”

“Thanks, a lot!” She began to cry tears of self-pity.

“Jesus. Stop it. I know you didn't do anything, and so does Buster, but you . . . Oh, hell, I have to go.” She kissed Buster on the cheek, took a piece of dry toast from the toaster, went to get her coat from a peg and her purse and her car keys. She got the toast stuck in the sleeve of her coat as she put it on, then she was out the door, which slammed behind her.

Cherry looked up miserably at Buster, who put half the scrambled eggs on a plate and handed it to Cherry with a fork. She stared at it as if she wasn't sure what to do with it. Then she asked, in a small voice, “Is there any ketchup?”

Buster found the bottle in a cupboard and gave it to her. They ate in silence, Buster at the table and Cherry in the Barcalounger, still in the sweat clothes she'd been wearing when Shep Gordon carried her off so many hours before.

Judge Hennebery was no longer young, and since his wife had died, was not often completely sober. His daughter was after him to retire and move to Florida to a death camp; she never had had any sense, Ellen. What kind of grown-up woman would sign her name Elli, with a circle over the
i
?

He liked coming to work. He liked having a place to go, and the courthouse in Ainsley was a little anthill, humming with gossip and activity. He liked going out to lunch every day to the Chowder Bowl across State Street, where they knew exactly how he took his coffee and saved him the end pieces on meat loaf day. He liked watching boys he'd known when they were in Little League all grown up, in office, in uniform, taking themselves so seriously.

When Shep Gordon came in first thing on Friday the judge couldn't resist having a little fun with him.

“You back again, Shep? You look like a yard of chewed string, doesn't your wife let you get any sleep? Must be nice, she's a good-looking woman.”

“We're working on a homicide, Your Honor,” said Shep, politely. He wasn't sure if the judge remembered or not. Was he as dotty as he sometimes seemed, or did he just enjoy rattling people?

“Homicide now, is it?” said the judge. This was news. Hadn't had one of those lately. Yesterday it was a suspicious fire of unknown origin. “And what is it you want from me this morning?” Hennebery asked him.

“Arrest warrant, sir.”

“That was quick. You got your paperwork?”

Shep handed up the affidavit he had prepared, and Judge Hennebery read it slowly, humming. Then he slid his reading glasses down his nose and looked over the rims at Shep.

“You want me to sign this and risk getting mowed down flat by Beryl Weaver? I been crosswise with her before. It's quite an experience. That's a lot of pressure on a man not in the first blush of youth.”

“I'm sorry about that, but—”

“Oh I'm just joshing you, Shep. I'll sign it. But you better have done your homework.”

“Understood, sir. Thank you.”

The day had dawned sullen, with gray light that didn't seem to be half-trying, and dense, blue-gray cloud cover hanging over the lake, which the inmates of the Oquossoc Mountain Inn watched glumly from the dining room as they ate their breakfasts. Everyone knew the rain was coming, and when it began, moments after a crack of thunder that sounded like a cannon being fired on the roof, it rained down in straight sheets like the downpour created by machines on movie sets. Buster hustled Cherry from the parking lot in through the kitchen door and to the staff locker room. She was soaked and shivering, and thoroughly pissed when she went to hang up her sweatshirt and found her locker padlocked. She followed Buster into the kitchen, wet as she was, and stood for inspection by her mother, who had turned from the sink to look at her. Buster was hoping against hope that Beryl would stop what she was doing and come to wrap her arms around Cherry, who had, let's be honest, had a shitty night and was about to have a shittier day.

But Buster should have known better. “Look what the cat dragged in,” Beryl said to her younger daughter. To Buster she said, “Am I babysitting?”

“She needs to be with someone who can give her good advice. I don't know, but I think she's about to be arrested. Do you know a lawyer you can recommend?”

“I know a lawyer, but I can't recommend him,” said Beryl.

Buster saw Chef Sarah spot them from where she was supervising the hot line. Sarah wiped her hands on the dish towel she carried in her apron tie, and came to them.

“Cherry. Are you all right? Do you need some breakfast?”

Cherry shook her head. “I ate.”

“I'm sorry to hear what happened last night. Can I help in any way?”

Cherry shook her head dumbly, her eyes suddenly wet. Softness undid her.

“I'll tell you what. We're finishing the breakfast rush here, and then I'm teaching a butchering class. But when I'm done I'll find you and we'll go talk to Mr. Gurrell. I'm sure you didn't do anything wrong, Cherry. We'll figure this out. Try not to worry.”

Cherry took a moment to think about this unexpected kindness, but then looked up and met Sarah's gentle gaze. She nodded. Her mother, who had been watching from the sink, advanced on Cherry, holding a paper towel, and said, “Blow your nose.” Then Beryl went back to washing up.

By the time Shep got back to the barracks, Carson Bailey, assistant state attorney general, was waiting for him.

“How's it going, guy?” he asked, shaking Shep's hand. Carson was from inland, son of a chicken farmer who'd tried to compete with out-of-state agribusiness and failed dramatically. The huge chicken barn where once he'd presided over the opposite of whatever is meant by “free range,” in chicken husbandry, was now a vast indoor antiques and flea market, and Archie Bailey had died young in a “hunting accident.” He hadn't lived to see Carson graduate from law school and move to Augusta, the first in his family to work at a white-collar job. No one knew how Archie would have felt about it. Carson, named for Johnny (his mother was a fan of
The Tonight Show
), looked like a doofus, with his doughy face and puffy hair, but he was good in the courtroom.

Carson followed Shep to his office, where they closed the door so Shep could fill him in. “Fill me in,” was what he always said, as if a case were a page in a coloring book. First he got the outlines, then he went to work with the crayons.

“We had the girl here for a couple of hours last night—”

“You didn't charge her?” Carson interrupted. He had told Shep not to charge her until they could dot every
i
and cross every
t
. He wanted his cases to stick tight when he threw them at the wall. And he never met a metaphor he couldn't mix.

“And we made good progress,” said Shep, ignoring him.

“But you Mirandized her?”

The card with the Miranda warning on it that Cherry had signed was passed to Carson.

“She had plenty of grudge against the deceased, I'll tell you that. She is one very angry little item. Whole family is trash.”

“And she didn't ask for a lawyer?”

“No.”

“Okay. Well, fill me in.”

“She'd had a run-in with Antippas when he first arrived at the hotel. Antippas was rude, it wasn't her fault, yada yada, everyone hated him, it wasn't just her, but Antippas complained to Gabe Gurrell about her. Gurrell gave her her notice the next day. Gurrell swears it wasn't just about Antippas, but Cherry didn't believe it.”

“Make any threats against him? Antippas?”

“No, but she had a roaring blowup with Gurrell in the lobby the afternoon of the fire. Plenty of witnesses. Took off her uniform and threw it at him and marched out in her underpants.”

Carson whistled.

“So we've got motive. Revenge on Antippas
and
Gurrell. Opportunity?”

“Plenty. Her mother, Beryl Weaver, works in the kitchen. Got her the job. Cherry knows the layout, and has access to anywhere in the building.”

“Tell me about this firebug thing.”

Shep showed him the pictures of the night of the Oquossoc fire, then pictures from four other fires in the area in the last two years. In all of them, Cherry Weaver could be seen in the background, hanging around watching, always in her sweatshirt with the hood pulled up except for one taken against snow in which she wore a red-and-black-plaid peaked cap, with ear flaps. Carson whistled again.

“Any priors?”

“The usual. Twice swept up with some older kids who broke into camps off-season to party. Her older sister sowed some wild oats, and if their mother was working and Brianna was watching Cherry, she'd just take her along. Listen, I've got something else for you. When Cherry was fifteen, she was arrested for shoplifting at Renys in Ellsworth. First offense, suspended sentence, and of course, her juvenile record is sealed.”

“But you know a guy.”

“I do. Guess what she was trying to knick.”

“Fill me in.”

“A can of lighter fluid.”

Carson's doughy face split into a smile. “Was she really,” he said, as if he'd just learned Cherry had baked him a cake.

The two set to work. They wanted to search Beryl Weaver's house, Cherry's car, her locker in the staff room at the inn, and anything else they might think of. Even though Cherry had shrugged and said “Sure, I don't care,” when asked if it was all right with her if they looked around her room, they didn't want a bit of this questioned in court once their case was made.

Buster needed to get to work, and he still needed a place to park Cherry, since it didn't look as if her mother was going to pitch in. She couldn't stay with him; she couldn't be anywhere near an investigation when she was its prime suspect. He knew how this worked. The moment the police believed they had their man, or woman, the investigation went into a funnel. Prosecutors were no longer striving to find out what had happened, they were only looking for evidence that supported what they already believed. Other possibilities, other suspects, any evidence that pointed another way, was ignored. Shep and Carson Bailey were now building their case
against Cherry. Buster wanted to be there, to know what arrows were pointing in directions they were ignoring now, or suppressing.

He found Hope and Maggie on the glassed-in porch, drinking tea and working on their jigsaw puzzle.