Dead at Breakfast (16 page)

When her son's school sent the eighth-graders to Ecuador to see the cloud forests and the Galápagos, they always had a clothing drive so they could take suitcases full of castoffs to donate when they got there. All over Quito you could see children playing in the street wearing blazers with school crests, and on their way to the mountains Jeremy had caught sight of a farmer plowing on his tractor, wearing a tuxedo. But what was the chance they could use clothes as big as this?

The funeral people, with their ritual pomp, made death seem so dignified. She realized that she should have told Manuela that she and Freddy could take the truck and carry all those flowers to their church, where armies of ladies would pull out all the living blooms and reassemble them for the altar, or to take to shut-ins.

She roused herself and hobbled back to the kitchen, but it was too late. Manuela had already obediently carried the masses of bouquets out the back door and left them in piles beside trash barrels. And up on the road, outside the gates, photographers with long lenses were taking pictures of them.

O
n Sunday morning
Earl Niner found Gloria Poole's suitcase. He put his pitchfork into the pile out behind the stables where he dumped the dirty straw and horse apples after he mucked out the stalls, and deep in the middle of it, he hit something solid. He dug it out and carried it, still smeared with dung and a few tendrils of rotting salad, to the basement door of the hotel and left it in the dank room where the gardening tools were kept. Then he went to tell Mr. Gurrell. Gabe called Shep Gordon at the barracks and was patched through to him at home. Shep was off-duty and just about to take his stepson to the shooting range. He told Gabe to call Buster, since he was right down the road.

Buster arrived with all speed, blue light silently revolving. He had forgone the siren. Gabe Gurrell met him at the front steps.

Gabe said, “I thought it was best to keep him in my office, on his own, before everyone in the back of the house has a chance to ask him things and tell him their theories.” Buster agreed that that had been a good plan, and followed Gabe upstairs.

Earl was sitting rigid in an overstuffed armchair covered in mint brocade, staring at his mucky boots and dirty fingernails, and fidgeting. Buster had planned to question him in Gabe's office, but he felt a visceral sympathy when he saw how itchy Earl looked. He'd get nothing but monosyllables from him in here.

“Why don't you show me where you found it,” he said. Earl got out of his chair more crisply than Buster would have thought possible and bolted for the door.

Earl led the way down a staircase that let them out on the side of the building. He scuttled along with more freedom of movement than he ever displayed in the public parts of the hotel. Buster knew the feeling. This was a man at home with solitude and animals and with judging the weather by smelling the wind, not with carpets and fancy upholstery. Buster wondered why he lived inside instead of out in the barns and sheds somewhere; surely there was a stableman's apartment. But he realized he knew the answer. His animals needed constant temperatures, especially the parrot, and protection from drafts. Nineteenth-century workman's quarters probably didn't have the latest in creature comforts.

They trudged silently out past the kitchen garden, across the stable yard with its well-worn mounting block, and entered the big stone stable. The front entrance was an immense sliding door, big enough to admit a truck with a fully stacked hayrick. Earl had to hold the handle with both hands and hurl his weight sideways to get the door rolling.

Inside, in the fragrant dimness, Buster saw rows of box stalls, now mostly empty. There were brass plates on the doors with the names of long-dead occupants.
FROLIC. BLUE RIDGE. SAFETY
. Safety was a good name for a saddle horse. There were five animals left, two ponies, two sleepy old geldings, and a mare. The dim air was full of dust motes from the hay and straw stored in the lofts above, and smelled of the loamy sweat of the horses. They stood, heads down, drowsing through the morning, except for the mare, a pretty chestnut named Kitty, who stretched her neck over the top of her stall door, and watched them come through. Buster stopped to stroke her velvety nose and she nuzzled at his pockets to see if he had any treats for her. Earl had to stop and wait for
the deputy to remember where they were supposed to be going.

They clattered across the bay where the horses would be cross-tied to be washed down and groomed after exercise. Earl had his brushes and curry combs and hoof picks all carefully cleaned and hung on a Peg-Board. The concrete floor slanted toward a central drain, and a bucket and sponges stood by the tap. Buster's attention snagged here too; he loved special equipment, especially when it had to do with animals. He looked at the lunge lines coiled and hung on hooks. The halters, the leather supple and glossy. The lead lines, for beginning riders. Earl almost lost him again at the tack room, with its rows of English saddles on triangle-shaped brackets that projected from the dark wainscot wall, the stirrups neatly tucked up at the top of their leathers, and rows of bridles on hooks, with all kinds of bits. Snaffles, curbs, and one draconian one of a type Buster had never seen before. He would have liked to nip in and have a better look at it, but Earl was rolling back the door that led outside behind the barn. The broad slant of sunlight cutting a sudden path across the floor recalled him, and he followed Earl out into the weak autumn warmth.

There was a paddock out here, for letting the horses out in the fresh air. In the distance Buster saw a riding ring, well made, if in need of a coat of paint.

“Do you give riding lessons?” Buster asked.

“Not me,” said Earl. “Girl from Bergen Falls boards her horses here. She gives lessons and takes the guests on trail rides. This is where I found her.” He gestured at a wide square compost heap, held in place by a low wall of logs. “I turn the pile a couple or three times a week. Stuck my pitchfork in and hit something. Cleared a hole and there she was.”

By the end of this speech, Buster had understood that “she” referred to the suitcase, which was a relief. He took out his pad and pencil.

“What time was this?”

“Don't wear a watch.”

“Do your best.”

Earl thought about it. “Must have been about nine-fifteen, nine-thirty. Mr. Rexroth was just going out on his way to church, and he has to drive a ways.” Earl gestured in the direction of the front driveway, where you could just see the inn's big stone gateposts from where they stood.

“And this is the compost heap for the whole operation?”

“Yuh.”

“Garden waste, kitchen scraps, the whole nine yards?”

“Yuh. We dump it all right here.”

“I thought you had to have some kind of closed-up bin to get it to cook right.”

“You see the steam coming off it?” Earl asked.

“I do.”

“She just cooks away no matter what we do to her. We got all the right things, going in. Even earthworms. When this pile gets up over the rails, we start a new one, and in a couple of weeks, this one is ready for the gardens.”

Buster scribbled. “So the kitchen dumps out here, and the garden crew?”

“Yuh. Housekeeping too. They all got their own wheelbarrows. Have to, otherwise, someone's always complaining that someone else took their wheelbarrow and never brought it back.”

“Housekeeping? What do they put in?”

“Shredded paper. Ash from the fireplaces.”

Buster was losing the thread a little, thinking of the compost bin he had built for Brianna, with instructions from the Internet. They were doing something wrong; the stuff they put in there didn't so much cook as it rotted. And not very fast at that. He wondered if fireplace ashes would help. Maybe Earl would come over and give
him some advice. Unconsciously, as he did when he was trying to sort something out, he had started to pace. Earl sat down on a straw bale and watched him with interest. The silence stretched.

“I've been trying to work out when was the last time I turned it,” he offered helpfully.

Buster remembered what he was supposed to be doing.

“That would be important to know,” he said, turning to a new sheet in his notebook.

“I think it must have been Wednesday morning.”

“You haven't turned it since the fire?”

“Been busy. That's what makes me think Wednesday morning. Unless it was Tuesday.”

Buster made notes.

“And when you found the suitcase, what did you do?”

“I took it in to the tool room and went to find Mr. Gurrell.”

“You didn't try to open it?”

“It's not
my
suitcase.”

“You must have been curious.”

“Curious about a lot of things. Doesn't make 'em my business.”

“And were you wearing gloves at the time?”

Earl pulled out and waved the work gloves that had been stuffed into his back pocket. “You don't want to pitch manure without your gloves. Give ya blisters.”

Buster started back to his vehicle for an evidence bag, by which he meant a trash bag in this case, in which to put Earl's interesting discovery. (Most country people had trash bags in their cars in case of roadkill, unexpected dump runs, or needing somewhere to put wet bathing suits.) As he passed the door to the kitchen he stopped to note the wheelbarrow standing by the steps. He took in the scene. Technically, he should have taken a picture or made a sketch of it,
standing right there, but he didn't need to. For all the things he couldn't do that were easy for other people, he had his own unusual skills. One of them was that he could take in a huge amount of visual data and map it later, to scale.

The kitchen door opened, and Mrs. Weaver came out with a large bucket full of vegetable trimmings, fruit peels and cores, and what looked like dozens of egg shells and a couple of pounds of coffee grounds. He watched her empty them into the wheelbarrow. She straightened, turned, and gave him a long look. Reading faces was one of the things he wasn't so good at; was that disgust, or sorrow, or accusation? Whatever it was, she gave him a good dose of it, then turned and climbed the steps.

He was the police. Her daughter was in jail. Why should she be happy? On the other hand, Brianna . . .

Buster was about to move on toward the parking lot, when he heard a tap on the kitchen window. Chef Sarah was there. She smiled and held up a finger to him, meaning “wait a minute.”

He waited.

Sarah emerged with a sweater thrown on over her apron, and her bare feet stuffed into chef's clogs. She was carrying a paper bag.

“Sorry, I had to find something to put these in. I made chocolate croissants this morning and nobody ate them. They're no good the second day. Take them with you.”

Buster wasn't sure what to do. They weren't supposed to take presents, especially not at crime scenes. “I shouldn't,” he said, beginning to back away. He could smell them now. Chocolate and butter.

“Of course you should,” she said kindly. “You're missing your lunch.” She tucked the bag under his elbow. Embarrassed, he thanked her. She was hurrying back to the kitchen, which he was glad of, because that made it too late to give the bag back.

Hope and Maggie had been to church and enjoyed the service very much. The church itself was picture-postcard beautiful, a nineteenth-century monument to simplicity, white clapboard with a square sanctuary, and a short but shapely steeple. The windows were leaded, with ripply old hand-blown glass, but clear instead of stained, which made the interior particularly stark and peaceful. The hymns, played on a piano by a short round lady with a head a little too small for her body, were tub-thumpers, clearly played by ear. Maggie found that if you tried to sight-read the harmonies in the hymnal, you soon found yourself in conflict with the accompanist. That left the tiny choir a little at a loss, since they
were
reading the music, but the congregation joined in lustily. The preacher, an erect spindly man wearing ancient black robes, gave a simple homily for the children in the front rows, who afterward were led down to the Sunday school in the basement. Then he delivered a gentle sermon for the rest of the sinners. Maggie had the impression that everyone in the room had heard it before, but she felt that everyone enjoyed a lesson drawn from the wisdom of the
Peanuts
comic strip. At the close of the service they were urged to join the fellowship hour in the parish hall, where the preacher happened to know there would be some of Mrs. Missirlian's good banana bread. Hope and Maggie didn't have to be asked twice.

The parish hall underneath the sanctuary was lit with fluorescent fixtures that looked like overturned ice trays. There was green linoleum on the floor, and blackboards on wheels stood in the corner where Sunday school had been conducted. The children, now freed from Sunday strictures, were running in and out of the throng playing tag, their hands full of cookies. Maggie and Hope surveyed the scene, then chose their marks. Maggie headed for the piano lady, while Hope homed in on a beefy young man with a soul patch and a cross tattooed on his neck.

“Good morning,” Maggie said, offering her hand. “I just wanted to thank you, you played with such spirit. Maggie Detweiler.”

“Peg Nuttle,” said the piano lady, beaming. She had plump soft arms with dimples at the elbows, and a very sweet smile. “So nice of you to say that. I'm self-taught, I'm afraid. We had an organist, a beautiful musician, but he died. Is this your first Sunday with us?”

“It is, and we thought it was lovely. So you're not a professional?”

“Oh, no. We're pretty much all volunteers, here. I'm a kindergarten teacher.”

Maggie felt a little click of satisfaction. She had a kind of radar for school people and had a small bet with herself that this was one. “Well, how lucky I am to meet you. I'm a teacher too, or I was, and wherever I go I always want to know about the local school. Is it that pretty brick building up the street, with the big elm in front?”

“That's it. And I just live around the corner. Makes for a short commute. Not that we exactly have a rush hour here.”

“K through eight? K through twelve?” asked Maggie.

“Oh no, we only go up to six here in the village. It used to be that that's all the schooling the country children got, sixth grade and then they went to work. Nowadays they go in the bus over to Bergen Falls to the junior high. They got a real nice new building there now.”

“I'd love to see it.”

“Are you in town for a while? I think Mrs. Pell is in California visiting her daughter, she's the principal.”

“We're staying at the inn.”

“Oh. My,” said Peg. “The inn, they've had such goings-on. Were you there for the fire?”

“We've been here since last Sunday. My friend”—she indicated Hope across the room, deep in conversation with the soul patch man—“has family here.”