Fear of Frying (20 page)

“Okay," Taylor said. "Tell me about leaving the site."

“Sam Claypool had been singing — he had a great voice — and there was a big crack of lightning and a sudden downpour," Shelley said. "The young menwho were helping with the dinner put their instruments away and started helping the Tituses pack up. It was frantic. Jane and I offered to help, but they insisted we were guests and shooed us away."

“Were you the first to leave?"

“I think maybe we were," Jane said. "I don't remember anybody in front of us. I do remember hearing Eileen behind us, complaining about getting her slipper wet.”

Taylor refused to be sidetracked with slippers. "And when did you come back to look for your watch?”

Jane thought for a minute. "Not long at all. Maybe ten minutes?"

“More like fifteen, I think," Shelley said.

“Didn't give somebody much time, did it?" Taylor said, more to himself than them. "On the other hand, it didn't require much of an alibi time.

“Now, describe exactly what you saw when you found the— What is it?" he said to the deputy who'd come striding over and was waiting impatiently.

The deputy leaned down, whispering to Taylor.

Taylor walked away with him for a minute.

“Jane, will you stop that scratching?" Shelley said irritably.

“Sorry, it's like yawning. I see someone yawn and it makes me yawn.”

Taylor came back and sat down at the table drumming his fingers for a few seconds, then waved the deputy off, saying, "I'll be right there."

“Something's wrong, isn't it?" Jane said.

“Yes, you could say that," Taylor said mournfully. "They've found Henry McCoy. Dead.”

Jane and Shelley watched the sheriff leave with the deputy.

“I want to go home right now. This minute," Jane said quietly through gritted teeth.

“Try telling that to the law," Shelley said. "What a mess this is! Who in the world would want to kill this Henry person?"

“Somebody who meant to kill him in the first place?" Jane said. "Shelley, maybe that's it! Maybe Henry McCoy was the intended victim in the first place and somebody mistook Sam for him. Could we have been looking at this backwards?"

“But nobody knew about Henry."

“Nobody
admits
to knowing about Henry. There's a whopping big difference," Jane said.

“That pretty well leaves us with John Claypool or Marge. And John, who might have had a good financial motive, just destroyed it by admitting he's only an employee of the car dealership," Shelley reminded her. "He didn't stand to gain anything from Sam's death."

“He could have other motives," Jane said halfheartedly.

“Like what?" Shelley said. "I'll admit I've tried to think of some and can't. If John Claypool had a gripe with his brother, I think he'd broadcast it far and wide. But Marge is looking like a better suspect every minute. If she and Henry plotted to bump off Sam, and then she decided the partnership wasn't such a good idea—"

“She's got a good alibi," Jane said. "Having been under police guard most of the day."

“But not all day. Remember when Eileen said she was looking for John and stopped at Marge's cabin and found her in her robe in the middle of the day? She was alone then."

“Had Henry, still masquerading as Sam, gone missing by that time?" Jane asked.

“I have no idea, but I'll bet the sheriff is drawing up a time line.”

Al and Liz had come back from their errand of mercy and were filling their own plates. Bob Rycraft was eating with John Claypool. They'd given up any pretense of conversation. Bob was looking like he might nod off right into his food, and John was staring into space and taking an occasional bite of food. Benson and Edna were talking with one of the kitchen kids, and Allison was "circulating," visiting with the guests. It didn't look like anybody else knew about the latest body, and without even discussing it, Jane and Shelley were in agreement that they weren't going to mention it.

“I wish Sheriff Taylor luck with a time line," Jane said. "I'm glad it's his problem, not ours, and I'm going to eat dinner before some new catastrophe catches up with this place.”

They both tried to force themselves to concentrate on food instead of murder. Tonight's dinner was "home style." Pork chops, meat loaf, fried potatoes, scalloped cauliflower, Boston lettuce with choice of bottled dressings, cucumber sticks, Jell-O salad. Good food, but plain.

As they sat down, the sheriff came back into the dining room with Marge and Eileen in tow. Marge was sobbing; Eileen was trying to comfort her sister-in-law and shooting looks of pure loathing at Sheriff Taylor at the same time. Taylor was ignoring her.

“I'm eating my dinner, no matter what!" Jane said quietly to Shelley.

Taylor came to the middle of the room and rapped sharply on an empty table for attention. This was unnecessary as everyone but Jane and Shelley was already staring at him.

“You should all know," he announced, "that the body of Henry McCoy, who was passing himself off as Sam Claypool, has been found in the woods. He was stabbed to death.”

Somebody gasped.

Marge let out a low, shuddering wail of grief. Eileen said, "This is barbaric!"

“Yes," Taylor said. "It is. And we're going to get to the bottom of it. Nobody is leaving this room until I say so. My deputy is going to give you pencils and paper and you're all going to account for your day. I want times, places, who was with you, who else you saw, what you did.”

He glared around at the owners, employees, and guests. "When was the last time anybody saw Henry McCoy alive?”

Nobody said anything, and Jane reluctantly raised her hand. "Shelley and I saw him here, after the lunch crowd had left.”

Taylor looked around. "Anybody else see him later? What was that time, Mrs. Jeffry?"

“One-thirty maybe? We didn't know it was going to matter."

“All right. So I want a detailed account of everyone's movements from noon until now," Taylor said. The man was in control, but obviously furious. "Everybody at separate tables, please. No consulting with each other.”

Liz opened her mouth, glanced at Al, and snapped it back shut.

They sat obediently at their separate tables, writing, thinking, crossing out items, inserting others. John was idly scratching his shin. Al was tapping a pencil against his teeth. Edna was doodling around the margins of the page. Liz asked for a second sheet of paper for her opus.

It took around twenty minutes for everyone to finish the assignment. Taylor collected the papers, then addressed the group again. "We have people trying to get a temporary bridge in place so that police vehicles can get in and out. But nobody is leaving until I give permission. If you need to let anyone know why you are delayed, you may call from the front desk. Make yourselves comfortable here, because this is where you're staying for a while. The more cooperative and helpful everyone is, the shorter that timewill be. I have my people posted at all the exits from this building.”

Taylor took his pile of papers and left the room.

For a long moment everyone was silent, then several people rose from their isolated positions. Liz rejoined Al, Shelley came back to Jane's table, and Eileen rushed to comfort Marge, who looked like she was on the verge of a complete breakdown. Marge was so pale, Jane feared she was going to pass out. Allison was looking bad, too. She, Edna, and Benson were talking quietly. Benson patted her shoulder, then came to the middle of the room.

“Although my family isn't responsible for what's happened here, I'd like to express our most sincere regrets to all of you," he said. "This has turned into the Weekend from Hell for all of us. I just want you to know that I feel certain of what your decision will be about sending your students here for summer camp and that we don't blame you a bit.”

He glanced at his wife, who smiled wanly and nodded.

“That's all, I guess. I'm sorry," he added, and sat down.

Jane went back to eating her now cold dinner.

The sheriff started calling people out of the room, one at a time. First Marge, who stumbled out like a disoriented ghost, then Eileen. John Claypool was next.

“At this rate, we're really going to be here all night," Jane said. "I've never been so homesick. If I start whimpering out loud, slap me out of it, will you?"

“Gladly," Shelley said. "Shouldn't we say something polite to Marge?"

“Like what? 'Sorry your husband died — again and by the way, did you kill him'?"

“That might be a little tactless. But if she didn't do it, we're sure going to feel bad later.”

Jane let herself be dragged over to the table where Marge and Eileen were sitting. "Marge, we're awfully sorry," Shelley said ambiguously.

“I've been widowed twice in one day," Marge said in a shaky voice.

They were spared having to respond by Eileen saying, "When this is sorted out, I'm going to make sure that damned sheriff is taken apart. This is horrible, making Marge sit here this way. She should be in bed. She should be under a doctor's care. The man is a savage.”

She sputtered along in this vein for some minutes. Jane tuned her out. Eileen was right, of course, but Taylor had a bunch of strangers on his patch who were murdering each other. Because he hadn't believed her and Shelley the first time (not that he could be blamed for that), he was naturally determined to get all the facts he could now without any possible conspirators having the opportunity to consult with each other. She could sympathize with him for being angry — probably with himself, certainly with all of the guests.

Bored, and not wanting to talk to anyone else, Jane and Shelley went into the lobby where Benson had mentioned that there was a small library. They selected a couple of illustrated nature books and pretended great interest in them for the next hour.

Everybody was nervous and irritable. There was a lot of aimless pacing, very little conversation, and when a door slammed somewhere in the building, everybody jumped as if it had been a gunshot.

Jane and Shelley were the last ones to be called for their interview — and the only ones to be called in together. Taylor was in a small office near the kitchen that they hadn't seen on their tour. It was apparently where Benson did his bookkeeping and kept office supplies and guest ledgers. The desk was covered with the yellow legal-pad sheets they'd filled out earlier.

“Ladies, I'm going to make a leap of faith with you," Taylor said. "I got a call from a" — he rummaged through his notes—"a Detective Mel Van-Dyne, who is apparently a friend of yours you told about finding the first body. He was checking on your welfare, being unable to reach you by phone, and assures me that neither of you could be involved in this. I'm going to have to take his word for that."

“Thank you — I think," Jane said.

“Sorry, but I'm past good manners," Taylor said. "Now I'd like for you ladies to look over these other accounts and see if there are errors that you know of. Somebody who said they were somewhere you don't believe they were.”

Most of the accounts were brief and vague. Apparently during questioning, Taylor had pinned a few of them down on times a little better because there were notations in the margins.

Not surprisingly, Al Flowers's was the skimpiest. Fie was a man of few words. He'd eaten lunch early, taken a nap, gone for a walk and, true to Liz's con- stant predictions, gotten thoroughly lost, but finally found himself at the far side of the Conference Center. He'd seen his wife walking hard on her heels toward the lodge and deliberately dawdled so he wouldn't catch up with her. He didn't wear a watch and had no idea what time it was then. Maybe two or three. Maybe later. Didn't see or hear anyone else.

Liz, in contrast, had detailed every moment. She recounted her mysterious brush with the person in the falcon costume, her return to the lodge, and eventually finding Al sitting in a rocker on the porch. She dragged him along on a hit-and-run investigation of the last session of classes.

Bob Rycraft said he'd attended a volleyball class right after lunch, then retold his version of losing track of Liz on their walk, getting lost, falling in the creek, returning to his cabin briefly, and coming back to the lodge to find Liz, after which he went back to his cabin and soaked in the bathtub until dinnertime.

“This person in the falcon costume is important, isn't it?" Jane asked the sheriff.

“I think so. Keep reading.”

Eileen had lunch and went to the class session on beadwork, thinking she might learn something valuable to her business. Shelley confirmed this. Then Eileen said she went back to the cabin, thoroughly chilled, took a long, hot bath, visited briefly with Marge (who was in her bathrobe), and went to the lodge looking for John. Didn't find him there, didn't want to roam around the woods, so went back to their cabin, where he was reading the paper. Moments later, a sheriff's deputy arrived to ask John to come identify his brother's body. Eileen and Johnhad gone to comfort Marge, been rebuffed by the police, fretted for half an hour, and returned to Marge's cabin, demanding to see her. She'd spent the rest of the day with Marge.