Dead at Breakfast (23 page)

“Do you think the front desk would let us in?”

“She shouldn't, but it's worth a try.”

On their way toward the front of the house, they heard a peal of female laughter from the kitchen, then a low chuckle from a male voice. The door was slightly ajar, and Hope, ever curious, stopped and pushed it open.

In the sink nearest the industrial dishwasher, which was rumbling, was Chef Sarah, holding a long wooden spoon with Walter the parrot perched on the handle. Beside her, Earl Niner was wielding the dish sprayer over the bird, who cooed and chuckled, a portrait of happiness. As the women came in, Walter hopped off the spoon handle into the sink and grabbed the spoon with his beak, which made Sarah laugh again. “You like that, don't you, Wally?” The spray rained over him. Clearly Wally did.

Sarah looked up and said, “Don't call the health department, will you? He's a very clean bird.”

“I can see that,” said Hope. “I never thought of birds liking water.”

“He's from the rain forest. He loves it,” she said. Earl turned
the water off, and Walter hopped back onto the spoon handle and stretched his wings out like a frustrated god, demanding more water tribute. When none came, he shook himself and began to puff his plumage. He was wet enough to look a little like a plucked chicken. He turned his head so he could fix Earl with one bright orange-rimmed eye. Sarah lifted him, and he stepped off his handle perch onto Earl's shoulder.

“It's very bad of us, but he enjoys it so much.” She reached over to scratch Walter's pin feathers, and he leaned in toward her in pleasure and puffed his plumage. He shook himself again, and Earl's shirt began to darken with wet.

“I better get him upstairs and dry him off,” said Earl.

“Bye-bye, Walter,” Sarah cooed at him. “Say bye-bye?”

Walter uttered a sardonic hahaha sound. It made Hope and Maggie laugh. Earl turned and went out, with Walter chirruping on his shoulder.

“They don't really talk,” said Sarah. “African Grays are the talkers. He just goes hahaha when you tell him to say something. He also does a very good smoke alarm.”

“What kind is he?” Maggie asked.

“Amazon orange wing. How can I help you ladies? Were you looking for me?”

“No,” said Hope. “We were on our way to the front desk when we heard you laughing. We came in because we hate to miss anything.”

“You really love animals,” said Maggie to Sarah.

“I do. They're so much safer than people.”

After a slight pause, Maggie said, “Maybe you
can
help us . . . we wanted to get that new desk girl to break us into Mr. Gurrell's office. I don't suppose you have a key?”

“I think I might. What do you need there?”

“The Internet. We want to find out what
kukla
means.”

“Oh!” said Sarah. “I can tell you that.”

Maggie, who had been waiting for Sarah to say
Kukla, Fran and Ollie,
said, “You can?”

“Yes.
Koukla
means ‘pretty doll,' in Greek.”

“Really!”

“What an amazing woman you are,” Hope added. “You speak Greek?”

Sarah said, “Not really. I spent a summer on Crete, once.”

“I've been to Crete,” said Maggie. “I was on the trail of the Minoans.”

“You'd just read
The King Must Die
?” Sarah asked.

“Exactly!” cried Maggie. “You too?”

“Fascinating book,” said Sarah, smiling.

“Were you studying on Crete?”

Sarah turned and began washing out the sink. “No . . . You know. Just bumming around with a friend.”

“Ah. Well thank you very much, that solves one mystery.

“Good night,” said Hope.

“Good night,” said Sarah, when they were at the door.

I
t hadn't taken
Jorge long
to find out where the Richard Sherrills sent their kids to school. The private school grapevine in New York City could give the CIA intelligence envy. The Sherrill boy, Lucas, who was twelve, was at the Buckley School. The younger daughter, Sally, was at Chapin. Jorge, dressed like a banker, was waiting across from Chapin Thursday morning as the lower school girls were delivered to the school doors by parents and nannies. He knew what Selena Sherrill looked like from Google Images, and from the grapevine that Richard worked on Wall Street, while Selena was a stay-at-home mom. He figured the odds were good that she did the drop-off.

His plan had been to fall into conversation with Selena if he could, but chance provided a better plan. Selena greeted a friend whose daughter had just run inside, and they left school together, walking west. Jorge followed discreetly. They paused on the corner of Park and Eighty-fourth Street and talked for some time, although it was a crisp morning and a chill breeze had come up. When they parted, Selena to go south, the other woman on toward Central Park, Jorge let Selena go and followed the friend. At the corner of Madison, he caught up with her.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but wasn't that Selena Sherrill you were just talking to?”

The woman looked at him, surprised. She'd fished a red earphone wire from her pocket and had been just about to pop in her earbuds.

“George Baker,” said Jorge. “I saw you together in front of the school. I was dropping off my granddaughter. I wasn't sure, I haven't seen Selena for years. Which way are you going?”

“Across the park,” said the woman, not putting the earphones away.

“I'll walk with you,” said Jorge. “I was a friend of Albie Clark, Selena's father. Did you know him?”

“I did,” said the woman. Jorge stuck out his hand and said “George,” again, and this gave her little choice but to either snub him, or accept the introduction. She did the latter, a touch reluctantly, and said “Jean Chant.”

“Great name,” said Jorge. “Did you know him from the Hamptons?” He was guessing, but guessing well.

“Yes. That's really how I know Selena. Our husbands were summer friends out there as children.” She resumed walking. “I'm going to be late for work,” she added, picking up her pace, “if I don't keep moving.”

“I don't mind,” said Jorge as she took long quick strides down the block. Moving right along with her, he added, “I'd like to pay my respects to her but I wasn't sure it would be welcome.”

“Yes,” said Jean Chant. “It's complicated.”

“Do you think she'd mind a visit from an old friend of her father's? Selena? I'd like to—you know, sit shivah with her or something like that. Sit and remember him. We'd lost touch in later years, and it bothers me.”

Jean looked at him without slowing her pace as they hit the Walk light and crossed Fifth.

“I think if I were you I'd write a note,” she said dryly.

“They weren't close? I'd gotten that impression, but Albie was private,” said Jorge.

“Mr. Baker, I doubt you and Selena have the same view of her father. He was a shit to her mother. There were always other women, and he wasn't such a red hot father, either,” said Jean. She said it as if it was something she'd wanted to tell the world for some time.

After a moment to digest this, Jorge said, “You shock me.”

“Yes, well. Are you sure you're going this way?”

“It's fine. I'll grab a cab on Central Park West. I never saw that side of him.”

“A lot of people are different behind closed doors,” said Jean. “He was a very angry man.”

“I did know he was very annoyed with some neighbors in the Hamptons.”

“Those Greeks? Everyone was angry about
them
. That's not what I meant. Look, I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but Mr. Clark is not a person I feel neutral about.”

“I understand. Sorry, I know I'm imposing. I'm just, I guess, puzzled. When Ruth got sick he seemed so stricken.”

“Conscious-stricken is more like it.”

They were deep in the park now and Jorge was practically running to keep up with her.

“Does Selena's brother feel the same way about him?”

“You better ask him,” said Jean Chant. Then she looked at her watch, muttered, “Sorry,” and took off race-walking, putting her earbuds into her ears as she went.

Toby Osborne, late of the
Boston Globe,
reached the Oquossoc Mountain Inn on Thursday in time for elevenses. Hope had reserved a room for him in the wing where Earl Niner and Mr. Rexroth lived, partly so he could sniff around there without attracting notice, and partly because Zeke and some boys from the village were starting the cleanup in the wing that had burned and she wanted to protect him from the noise.

Toby was a gorgeous shambling mess, with white hair and a bald spot on the crown of his head, and eyebrows that made every woman he met contemplate pruning shears. Hope saw him drive past the front door and into the parking lot, and she and Maggie watched from the sunporch as he got out of his car and fetched his duffle bag from the backseat. He stood looking up at the site of the fire for a good while.

They were waiting for him in the lobby when he came in the side door with his bag on his shoulder, walking with a cane.

“What are you hobbling about?” Hope asked as she went to greet him.

“Hip,” he said. “They say put off a replacement, as long as you can. I may have overdone it. It's not as bad as it looks though, and the cane comes in handy for hailing cabs. What happened to your hair?”

“I'm undercover,” said Hope.

They got him checked in and settled, and met at a table in the corner of the dining room to explain where things stood. When they were done, the table was covered with crumbs and empty coffee cups, and drawings of the hallways charting what rooms people were in the night of the fire. Toby said, “Let's review the bidding. Margaux Kleinkramer. Eileen Bachman. I covered the Druid Murder. My first big murder case. I've got my notes somewhere.”

“Margaux had no more motive than anyone else on the corridor,” said Hope.

“No. But no less, either. And maybe a dicier past than anyone knows. And Albie Clark.”

“Motives. Animus. Opportunity if he got hold of a master key.”

“And the suicide could be a confession of sorts.”

“You'd think they'd at least be looking at that, wouldn't you?” Toby asked.

“We would.”

“I did some checking on your key players before I left home.
Carson Bailey. Judge Hennebery. They say that Hennebery was made a judge too young, and resents all those years on the bench making civil servant pay, while his old law firm colleagues got rich dragging out divorces among the yacht club set. Pro prosecution, gets impatient if cops don't give the testimony the DA wants. Big ego, foul temper, and he falls asleep during testimony.”

Hope and Maggie looked at each other.

“And he likes to gossip about cases.”

“To reporters?”

Toby smiled. “Sometimes. Especially if he doesn't know they're reporters.” He flipped to a new page on his legal pad and said, “Rexroth.”

“He has less motive than Albie, but more opportunity. He's lived here for years and surely knows how to get a key if he wants one. And he's pretty squirrelly,” said Maggie. “You could say he got off scot-free after handing his wife a poisonous snake. Who's to say he wouldn't try it again, if someone really pushed his buttons.”

After a beat, Toby put a question mark beside Rexroth's name.

“Earl Niner is not exactly mainstream either,” said Hope.

“I don't see Earl in this,” Maggie said. “He certainly wouldn't have used his own pet as the murder weapon.”

Toby raised his vast eyebrows. “I'm still having trouble with the concept of a pet rattlesnake. It goes to character.”

“There is that.” Toby made some notes.

“The Angelinos?”

“The wife had a screaming fight with her husband that morning. But she was doped up after her accident, and looked pretty lame—I don't see how she could have risen from her bed of pain to incinerate him.”

“She would have had a key to his room, though. And the rest could have been an act. The hospital didn't even keep her overnight.”

“Do you see her with the snake?” Maggie asked Hope.

“I'm keeping an open mind. All we really have to do is plant reasonable doubt.”

“'Atta girl,” said Toby. “What about the sister?”

They agreed that Gloria had more mobility but less motive, as far as they knew. Although in families, there could always be motives that didn't show on the outside. They talked through the other members of the cooking class, but couldn't work up much enthusiasm for any of them as suspects. Then they went through who in the hotel might have a grudge against Mr. Gurrell, and not mind if the place burned down, but that, regrettably, led them only to Cherry.

“All right,” said Toby, “make the prosecution's case.”

Maggie did the honors. “She had recently been fired. She blamed Antippas and was furious with Mr. Gurrell. She has a juvenile record for shoplifting a fire accelerant. She shows up in the photographs of fire scenes when there's no reason for her to be there, typical behavior of an arsonist. And as the desk clerk, she knew how to program the room keys. She's got a dead end life and a pretty impressive chip on her shoulder.”

“As front desk clerk she could make a key to any room in the house?”

“Presumably.”

Toby digested this. “I gotta admit, I see why they arrested her. Now give me the other side.”

Hope said, “There are no fingerprints at the fire scene except the housekeeper's and Mr. and Mrs. Antippas's and Miss Poole's. No fingerprints in Niner's room except his, and Chef Sarah's, but we know she goes there to visit the parrot.”

“Cherry would have worn gloves,” said Toby. “I would if I were stealing a rattlesnake.”

“Her sister says she goes to fires to see her father. He's a volunteer
firefighter. Cherry says she was at her mother's watching TV that evening until she heard about the fire on the police scanner. She can tell you exactly what she watched.”

Toby seemed unsurprised about the police scanner. He probably had his own. “But she was alone?” he asked.

“Well. Yes. But her sister may become the mother of my grandchildren,” said Hope. “Brianna says Cherry is innocent and I believe her.”

“How does Cherry get around. She have her own car?”

“Some ancient Subaru you could total by losing the keys,” said Maggie.

“Got a plate number?”

“Sorry, no. I can tell you where to go see for yourself.”

After a thoughtful pause, Toby leaned back in his chair, tapped his legal pad, and said, “Okay. I like a challenge.”

Buster pulled his cruiser into the yard of a trailer on blocks at the north end of Beaver Creek Road. He saw the shadow of a figure cross the kitchen window inside as he got out. There had been a light frost that morning and the stumps of long dead geraniums in the planter box on the concrete steps were brown and sad-looking. Buster stood in the weak sun and stretched, then wandered around the side of the house toward the shed in back that served as a garage. When he had seen what there was to see there, he strolled back to the front yard, where a dog on a chain was lying in the dirt, a huge golden-something mix with a gray muzzle, who raised his head and thumped his tail at Buster, but did not otherwise stir himself. Buster walked over to have a look at the dog, and decided to risk scratching its ears. The dog, completely in favor of this development, rolled onto his back.

“Hey, Jasper. You're a good old guy, aren't you?” Buster said as he scratched, and wondered if that was mange in the coat, and how
long it had been since this beast had had a bath. At the edge of his vision, he could see a tiny movement of blinds in the back of the trailer, two slats slightly flexed, then closed again.

Buster straightened, looked at the sky, gave a tug at his pants to be sure his pistol could be seen beneath his jacket, and went to the door of the trailer. The morning sun was brighter than it was warm but he was glad to be outdoors.

He rapped at the trailer door, and waited. Silence from within. Outside, he heard a hermit thrush in the woods, and from the road the tocktocktock of a woodpecker assaulting a Bangor Hydro pole. He waited. He looked at the discarded truck tires lying at the side of the house and a broken child's swing, hanging from one length of rope from a maple someone had planted decades ago. The seat of the swing hung vertical. Useless.

He rapped at the door again. “Roy, I know you're in there. I saw you. Open the door.”

Again nothing happened. Buster took his time.

The third time he knocked longer and harder, and then he called, “Roy, unless you want to have a talk about that deer hide curing in your shed, you better open this door. I don't want to talk about it, but I will if you make me break your door down.”

Then he waited some more, and at last heard movement. The door opened, and Roy said, “I hit it with my car. Jumped right in front of me. You can look and see where it bent the fender.”

“I know, Roy. And it shot itself in the chest before it died too.”

“I thought you didn't want to talk about it.”

“I don't. Will you come out, or will I come in?”

There was a standoff, during which Roy neither moved nor blinked. Buster found this deeply unnerving but he stood as still as he could.

“Hold on,” said Roy. “Find my shoes.” He had come to the door wearing ancient socks of a gray-beige color that could not be
achieved with dye. When he came back, he was wearing his hunting boots. He came out onto the concrete stoop, forcing Buster to step down into the yard, and shut the door behind him.