Death of an English Muffin (15 page)

I took a deep breath and faced the niece. “Lauda, did you put up with her meanness to you because of the will?”

The woman froze in place, swallowed, and frowned. “None of you would understand. She may have been mean, but she was my aunt, my only blood relative since my mom died. Who else did I have?”

That gave me pause, and I considered her words. “Actually, Lauda, I
do
understand. I don’t have any family, either,
but . . .” I looked over to Pish. “I’ve created a family with my friends. I’m lucky, I guess; they’ve always been there for me.” When I looked over at Lauda, my heart constricted. There were tears welling in her eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

“No, no, it’s okay,” she said, waving her hands. She looked like she was about to say something, but then shook her head.

My heart constricted; for all the pain I’ve suffered in my life, I’ve never truly been alone except for a brief time after my grandmother and mom died. I got work, made friends, and soon the pain eased, though I carried a hole in my heart until Miguel filled it with his love. When he died I had Pish and Shilo to lean on, and though I was bereft, I was never alone. But Lauda didn’t seem the sort to easily make friends. Maybe Cleta was all she had to cling to.

“Let’s just say it,” Patsy said, glancing around the table. “Cleta was a bully, and none of us said anything to her because when we did, she just made our lives miserable.”

“How did she do that?” I asked.

“She had her ways,” Barbara said darkly. She set herself to the task of eating, though, electing not to say anything more.

And that was all I could pry out of anyone. Everyone agreed she was a bully, and no one knew why. Everyone agreed that confronting her just made her worse, but no one would say why they didn’t just unfriend her, to use social network parlance. They retired to the parlor after dinner, as always, and I cleared with Pish’s help.

Emerald was off to Rusty Turner’s with Lizzie, though I
had
caught them before they left the castle to get Lizzie’s camera. Rusty was a gruff fellow, but he seemed to be softening some now that he had a granddaughter in his life. Juniper had gone into Autumn Vale to help Binny with her massive weekly cleanup of the bakery.

I left the ladies to their own devices while Pish and I did
dishes. There was a dishwasher, but I couldn’t use it for the china, silver, and crystal, so in other words I (or someone in the house) needed to hand-wash just about everything, especially after dinner for the ladies.

“I don’t get it, Pish,” I said, carefully washing a Royal Doulton Juliet plate and handing it to him. “Why did they stay friends with Cleta?”

He dried it and stacked it carefully in the cabinet with a paper towel between plates. “I’ve had friends like that. At first the joke is always about someone not immediately in your circle, someone you find annoying or tedious. Joking about them seems okay somehow. By the time the joke is on you, it’s hard to disentangle.”

I got what he was saying.

“I think that’s what happened with Cleta and the other ladies. Women of their generation have trouble cutting ties.”

I handed him another plate. “It makes me grateful that the ones who I ended up being friends forever with are you and Shilo.”

As we worked through the silverware I asked Pish who he thought could have done it, and who the police would be considering.

“You, my dear, talked openly about kicking her out and, in a move that made me love you even more, forced her to apologize to dearest Hannah.”

“Where Hannah is concerned, I will tolerate no insult.” I realized that far from only having Pish and Shilo in my life, a few folks in Autumn Vale had been added to my family, among them Hannah Moore and Gogi Grace. “Do you think I’m considered a suspect?”

“Unlikely,” he said with a shoulder bump, as he was drying a handful of butter knives at that moment. He then ruined the familial moment by adding, “You were in plain sight the whole time; no one can dispute that.”

I laughed. “Actually, you are completely incorrect, darling
Pish. I was gone from the room during much of the salient time, looking for Cleta.”

“We’ll put you on the list, then. Along with . . . who among the Legion?”

“It comes down to who was missing at the right time, doesn’t it? I wish I knew more about their background. Someone said something about old friends staying together because they know each other’s secrets.”

He frowned and turned away to put the silver in the felt-lined silver chest. “To be completely frank, darling Lushie has an old beef against Cleta, one she never talks about. But I remember something about it from when I was a child.”

He sounded troubled. Alerted by his tone, I dried my hands and helped him with the silverware, then shut the mahogany chest. “What was it about?”

“I was thirteen or so. She was crying a lot then and would come over for tea with my father.” He leaned against the counter, arms folded over his chest. He wore an old jean shirt, open at the throat, and the soft folds of tanned neck skin were one of the few signs of his age, somewhere in his mid-sixties. “My dad was her older brother. I remember auntie saying Cleta’s name—it was unusual and stuck in my mind—and how she had ruined her life . . . Cleta had ruined Lush’s life, I mean.”

“Sounds serious, but that was, what, fifty years ago? Doesn’t have anything to do with today.”

“You’re right, of course, but I remember the devastation in her voice as she said,
If it takes me forever, I’ll get her for this!
Then she wept.”

I was silent for a moment but then tentatively said, “Maybe you should ask Lush about it. It can’t have anything to do with this, but you’ll feel better for getting it off your chest.”

He nodded. I remained tactfully quiet after that. We finished the dishes in silence, washing the crystal wineglasses and water goblets in fresh water, rinsing them carefully in hot clear water, and drying with a clean soft tea towel. When
we were done I hugged him hard. “Pish, you know darned well Lush didn’t have anything to do with this, and I just can’t imagine Patsy, Vanessa, or Barbara doing such a deed, either. There
must
be another explanation.”

I held him away from me, examining his lightly lined, tanned face. Pish maintains a youthful figure and appearance by eating light and caring for his skin and body like an athlete, though he calls himself indolent. Pish styles himself as a vain, effete poseur, but in truth he is good and honest and caring, more so than anyone I’ve ever met. I love him with all of my heart. I cupped his cheek and stared into his eyes. “Talk to her if it will make you feel better, but talk to her, too, about the others. See if you can find out anything else hidden in their past. I can’t imagine we’ll unearth anything, but we need to figure this out.”

“You’re right. And you, my beauty, have a date with the delicious Virgil Grace.”

“Hardly a date,” I said, smiling at him and patting his cheek. “Don’t make this more than it is. He’s coming over to talk about the investigation.”

He kissed my cheek and danced away from me toward the door. “He’s mad about you, you know. He’s not admitting it to himself yet, but he is. Absolutely gaga.”

“He manages to control himself admirably.”

Pish promised to talk to Lush later and went upstairs to work on his book while listening to music, trying to decide on his next operatic choice for the Autumn Vale Community Players. Yes, after the fiasco that was
The Magic Flute
, he
still
intended there to be a next performance.

I went up to get ready. When I was done with my shower and had dried my hair, I robed myself in a longish Kiyonna dress they called Wrapped in Romance, in Teal We Meet Again color. It goes well with my dark hair and medium complexion, as well as complementing my full figure. It was
certainly too dressy for just the sheriff, but comfortable. I did some careful makeup but left my hair long and unbound.

I regarded myself in the mirror and seriously considered changing into yoga pants and a sweater. Virgil seemed to like me better in extremely casual clothes, and it was quite possible that my wearing a dress would alarm him. But no, I dress nicely for
myself
. He’d just have to get over it.

I descended with Lizzie’s camera in hand and set it on the table by the fire in the kitchen, then went to check on the parlor. The ladies had all ascended to their rooms, so I removed the tray with the teapot, empty sweets plate, and teacups. I took the tray to the kitchen just as the phone rang. It was Hannah.

“Hey, sweetie, how are you?” I said, sitting down in one of the wing chairs by the fireplace.

“I’m just fine,” she said. “Have you looked at Lizzie’s photos yet?”

“No, haven’t had a chance. Virgil is coming over and I’m going to look through them with him. Have you?”

“Not yet.”

“So what’s up?”

“You asked me to look into the Legion ladies’ pasts,” she said, a gurgle of excitement in her tone.

“Don’t tell me you’ve found something shady?”

“Okay, I won’t tell you,” she said, giggling.

“That means you
have
found something.”

“What would you say if I told you that one of the ladies’ husbands was murdered, and she was a
suspect
?”

“You’re not serious!” I exclaimed, staring at the fireplace. “Which one? Vanessa?” I don’t know why I said that, but she was the most glamorous of them, and an actress. Somehow in my mind that made her more viable as a murderess. Dumb, right?

“Not even close. This was back in the sixties, during the U.S. government’s mob investigations. Roberto Beccarelli
was a lieutenant in the mob and turned federal witness, apparently even meeting with Robert Kennedy himself.”

Because my mother was an activist and obsessed with the Kennedy family as a whole, I knew some about their history. Robert Kennedy, President John Kennedy’s younger brother, was attorney general of the U.S. and targeted the mafia to try to break organized crime. “What does this have to do with the Legion ladies?”

“Be patient, Merry,” she said, the little martinet.

I sighed. “Go on.” I sat back and curled up as Becket strolled into the kitchen. He jumped up in the other wing chair, turned two times, and put his tail over his eyes to sleep.

“Beccarelli was murdered in his sleep on June 4, 1963. Was it a mob hit, or was his young, gorgeous wife to blame?” She was on a roll now, and her voice lowered, her tone conspiratorial. “Or was it
both
, with the wife enlisted by the mob to kill him for snitching? No one knows to this day. No one was
ever
convicted.” She fell silent.

I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. Impatiently, I asked, “So, as my grandma would say, what does that have to do with the price of butter?”

There was glee in her tone as she answered. “The wife’s name was Barbara, and she changed her last name to evade the notoriety of her husband’s role in the mob.”

Barbara. Oh! I gasped, then said, “She changed her last name to
Beakman
.”

“B
INGO!”

“Wow. I’m not sure if that has anything to do with this, but still . . . wow.”

“I know!”

“How did the husband die? If you tell me he was smothered and died from a heart attack I’ll scream.”

“Is that what happened to Miss Sanson? How awful! No, it was poison. It nearly wasn’t considered a murder. He was older and had a heart condition.”

What a big mouth I had! I was angry at myself and vowed that was the last time that I let slip details about the case. “Hannah, please don’t tell
anyone
that I told you how it happened . . . not a
soul
!” I took a deep breath and settled myself back in the chair. I knew she’d stay mum, but it didn’t forgive what I’d said. I’d have to do better. “Poison . . . what kind?”

“Arsenic.”

“They say that poison is a woman’s method of killing,” I mused.

“Who is
they
? Who says that?” she asked.

“Mystery writers,” I said, and grinned as she giggled. “I have to go. Virgil is coming out to look at Lizzie’s photos on the camera.”

Hannah signed off by saying, “Oh,
Virgil
!” and making kissy noises.

I smiled in spite of a spurt of irritation. She was by turns a little old lady, twenty-something young woman, and naughty little girl.

The knocker echoed through the house, signaling the sheriff had arrived. I swept through the great hall and opened the door. He wasn’t in uniform and had chosen blue jeans and a knit sweater with the sleeves pushed up to expose muscular forearms clothed in a thick mat of sable hair. He looked down at me and smiled, his gaze inevitably traveling to my cleavage. It was the first thing he had done the moment we met: talk to my décolletage. I didn’t mind then and I don’t mind now. If it weren’t all right, I wouldn’t wear tops that showed the girls to advantage.

His flirtatiousness from that first meeting only rarely surfaced, and in that moment, despite what seemed like an impulse to flirt, he was determined to be businesslike. “I hope this is a good time?”

“I’m sitting in the kitchen and I have Lizzie’s camera. I haven’t looked at the pictures yet. Lock the door behind you,” I said over my shoulder.

I made a pot of coffee and got some of my peanut butter and bacon muffins, warming them in the oven then putting them in a basket. I knew what he liked by now, even though we’d spent little time alone. I brought the tray over and set it down on the table between the two chairs, shooing Becket from the other wing chair and sitting down, with a swish of my Kiyonna dress.

It was a curiously domestic scene, ma and pa in their chairs by the blazing fire, a disgruntled, displaced
marmalade cat washing his paw on the hearth. Pish had Beethoven on the sound system—
Eroica
, I think—but it was muted and quiet. I didn’t say a word as I fixed Virgil his coffee, black, two sugars. I passed him the basket and he took two muffins, breaking one open and devouring it, crumbs catching in the stubble of his unshaven chin. I hid a smile. Once he was done with the first muffin he would eat the other a little more slowly.

That might seem like a lot of carbs, but the man is active. He’s sheriff, which in his case means much more than driving around all day. He also coaches Little League ball in summer and boys’ hockey in winter. He runs a leadership program he had initiated from the sheriff’s department, taking at-risk youth—yes, there are those in Abenaki County—and doing orienteering, rock climbing, and other activities with them.

I sipped my own coffee and waited. When he sat back, hand on his stomach, I took the tray away and returned to my seat. It was May, but the nights were still chilly, especially in the castle, so the fire’s warmth was lovely. I curled up in the chair and turned the camera on.

“I’ve got a couple of questions, first,” he said, glancing over at me and then into the fire.

“Me, too,” I said.

He heaved a sigh, blowing air though pursed lips. “You know I likely won’t be able to answer them.”

“Try,” I said.

He gave me an exasperated look. “You can be a little pushy. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Actually, no. I was a push
over
most of my life, letting people boss me around.” I thought about it for a minute. “It’s like coming here I found my assertiveness. I’ve had to deal with folks who didn’t want me around, who made me feel unwelcome, and I’ve had to push back.”

He nodded. “Still, Merry, there is a lot I can’t and won’t tell you. I don’t mind some stuff—it did happen in your
place, after all, and you’re entitled to feel safe—but nothing that will compromise the investigation.”

“I get it. So what did you want to know?”

He sat back in the chair and put his feet up on an ottoman. Becket glared at him pointedly, viewing him as an interloper to our normally placid evening ritual of tea by the fire with a book, and then bed. Becket, since I had come to Autumn Vale, was the only male in my life besides darling Pish.

Virgil ignored him. “I’m trying to get a few things straight. It’s my understanding that Elwood Fitzhugh’s sister Eleanor attended and ended up upstairs at one point.”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“What room was she coming out of?”

“Patsy Schwartz’s.”

“We interviewed her, but she wasn’t sure whose room it was.” He pulled a small notebook out of his pants pocket, glared at a note, then looked over at me. “She had used the washroom in that suite, correct?”

“So she says.”

“What time was that? It was hard to pin her down.”

“I’m not sure of the time. I went up, found her coming out of Patsy’s suite, and asked her to go back downstairs. Oh . . . there was something else she said. . . . I think it was something like, there was another woman upstairs. She did say it was one of the New York women, but I don’t think it could have been Patsy, not if Eleanor was in her room. I’m sure I’d have heard about it in that case.” I paused, then asked, “Did she see something? Is that why you’re asking?”

He ignored that question. His forehead furrowed, he squinted at his notes. “This whole group confuses me.”

“Group? You mean the Legion of Horrible Ladies?”

He gave me a deadpan look. “If you say so. Every single one of them admits disliking Cleta, so why the heck did they invite her with them?” He knew the basic background,
how I hadn’t invited them but had relented and let them stay once they’d arrived.

“You’ve got me there. I’ve been dealing with them all for a month or so now, and I still can’t figure out who exactly told Cleta about their trip to Wynter Castle, and who invited her to accompany them.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange to you?”

“You met Cleta at the opera evening. Why would anyone admit they invited her along to make everyone’s life miserable?”

He nodded.

“Virgil, how much force would the smothering have needed?”

“You know I can’t comment on the specifics, Merry.”

“I’m just trying to figure out in general terms how strong someone would need to be.” I watched him, seeing the indecision on his face. He seemed tense, uptight. I knew how much this bothered him, the murder of an elderly woman. But I felt like there was something else going on, too.

“A lot depends on the victim’s strength, their relative positions, and other things.” He shifted restlessly. “The victim was seated. If the murderer was standing, it might not take a lot of strength, given that they were above her. Let’s look at the photos.”

“Are you looking to see if everyone’s statements match?”

“And other stuff.”

“Wait a sec . . . just before we start,” I said, cradling the camera, “I have one question myself. At
least
one question. Hannah has been doing a little research for me. She claims that Barbara Beakman was suspected of killing her husband back in the 1960s. Is that true?” If I expected an exclamation of surprise at the news, I didn’t get it.

“She was a suspect but was never arrested.”

“You knew that.”

“Of course.”

I wondered if that was one of the secrets the ladies had spoken of. What
else
were they hiding? I hadn’t really considered old secrets as a motive, but with Pish revealing Lush’s past conflict with Cleta, and Barbara being a murder suspect, it was something I had to consider. “Have you spoken to Stoddart?”

“Sure. He was upstairs at one point, but there was no one else up there that he knew of,” Virgil said.

“Okay, to the pictures.” I pressed the button and the screen flashed to life. It took me a minute to figure it out, but Virgil was patient. We leaned in together, and I felt his warm breath on my cheek, a curiously intimate sensation. I steeled myself to focus and brought up the pictures, scrolling backward through photos of the forest buildings, and finally got to the tea party. I scrolled back to the beginning of them so we could look at them in chronological order.

“Here we go; this is when we were setting up.” There was an unfortunate one of me, my butt to the camera, and I quickly flashed past it. He didn’t seem to notice. “This is when I had everyone seated, and we were starting to serve.”

He made notes as we went through, and we talked about the various folks and where they were sitting. He could have looked at the pictures alone, but doing so with me helped him see them in context and understand what went on between photos. The screen was so small that it was difficult to see any detail, so he would be taking the memory card with him to look through the photos at a larger size.

He was silent as I shut the camera off and fished out the memory card. I slipped the memory card into the little plastic holder Lizzie had given me, snapped it shut, and handed it to him. “How is the investigation
really
going?”

“This is a weird one.” He frowned and drank down the rest of his coffee. “It was hampered from the beginning because we thought it was death by natural causes for the
first day.” He cast a glance toward me, then back to the fire. “Urquhart actually is proving to be invaluable. He was the one who dug up some past history on your boarders.”

“You mean there’s more?”

“I’m sure Hannah will find it the same way Urquhart did,” he said dryly, with a quirk to his mouth.

“You’re not supposed to figure out how I found out about Barbara’s past.”

“Hannah tutored my cousin when they were teenagers. I’m aware how smart and inventive she is, and how well versed with archive searching on the Internet.”

“I’ll let you know if she finds anything else out.”

He ignored that shot. “I’ve got a couple of questions for you.”

All business, I thought but did not say. I curled up in my chair. “Shoot.”

“Who in your household smokes?”

“Why?”

He took in a deep breath, held it a moment, and let it out.

“I’m not trying to be obstructionist,” I said, sensing his irritation. “I’m just curious.”

“Answer first, then maybe I’ll tell you why.”

“Only Juniper.”

“She’s it?”

I shrugged. “Emerald quit. As far as I know, no one else smokes.”

“What about Lizzie? I know she’s tried cigarettes before.”

I shook my head. “That’s why Emerald quit. Lizzie got caught smoking at school last year and Em wanted to clean up her own act so she could bring down the boom on her daughter. She didn’t want to be a hypocrite. As far as I know, Lizzie hasn’t smoked since.” My memory pinged, but I wasn’t ready to give him more than I needed to just yet. “Why do you ask?”

He frowned down at his notes, then looked over at me. “We found a crushed cigarette butt among the spilled contents of the victim’s purse.”

“I didn’t see that!” I blurted out, my stomach clenching.

Juniper smoked and was one of the few who was close enough to Cleta to know much about her. She cleaned Cleta’s room, and had become in a sense her personal gofer. I knew little about Juniper but what she had told us. She had admitted some past legal problems, and I had witnessed an attack on another girl, albeit one who had been in on the plan to murder a fellow Juniper loved very much. I had thought that outburst an anomaly; honestly, if someone hurt someone I loved, what would I not be capable of? “What kind of cigarette was it?”

“Some exotic foreign brand . . . Treasurer, or something like that. Gold filter.”

I shook my head. “I’ve only ever seen Juniper with one brand, Lucky Strike. She wouldn’t be likely to have a foreign cigarette.”

He nodded. “Okay.”

“So it was
in
Cleta’s bag?”

He waggled his hand. “Hard to say. It was on top of some of the stuff that had spilled out of her bag. There were shreds of tobacco
in
her bag, though.”

“
In
her bag. Odd.”

“Look, if you have any insights, I’m all ears.”

It was an odd plea, and one I wasn’t accustomed to from the closemouthed sheriff. “I’ll think about it, but I’m not sure what to say right now.”

He drummed his fingers, then turned toward me. “Merry, there is some phase of the investigation that you are oddly positioned to help me with.”

Oddly? “Shoot.”

“I’ve noticed that you wear different shades of lipstick for different outfits.”