Death of an English Muffin (24 page)

He growled; I’m not making that up. He made a low, rumbling noise in his throat, then said, “
Damn
, I wish you’d listen to me once in a while.”

“I
do
listen, Virgil, but what can I do? I can’t clear them all out. Who knows which one did it? Look, I won’t interrogate anyone purposefully or take any risks. I won’t ask too
many
questions, but if I happen to hear anything I promise I’ll tell you right away.”

He was torn, I could see it on his face, and he didn’t say a word. But what could he do, forbid me from talking to my guests? There were undoubtedly legal sanctions he could slap on me, but he was loath to do it. I let him get back to work, and I did the same. From one of the upstairs windows I saw him drive away from the castle a few minutes later.

Juniper had done a stack of laundry the day before, so I distributed fresh towels to the ladies’ rooms, chatting briefly to each of them, comforting where I could, all the while thinking of Patsy and Pattycakes, and hoping the little lady was going to be okay. Pish was sitting with Lush as she tried to nap. He had called the hospital and talked to Pattycakes, who told him she was staying with her mother until she knew more. They were doing scans and X-rays. Patsy was in ICU, where no visitors other than family were allowed, so there was no point in anyone else coming to the hospital just yet.

I spoke to Hannah, briefly, then while Emerald served breakfast to my guests, I got down to some work. While I’m thinking I have a tendency to tidy and sort. It makes my thought process more orderly. I shut myself into the storage closet that used to be my uncle’s office and rearranged the shelves, then tried to improve the storage system. Toilet paper, cleansers, towels, paper towels, rags, glass cleaner: each now had a regimented home, lined up like little rows of cleaning soldiers. I disposed of wrappers, dusted, and stacked lists and some papers together along with receipts from the closest big-box store, where I had stocked up the month before on toiletries and cleaning products.

Who killed Cleta Sanson? I had learned from Hannah—Virgil didn’t have the decency to tell me—that Minnie vehemently denied using her little postal truck to spy on the castle that day, but one of her roomers who was a library client said that the postal worker was careless with her keys. Anyone could have lifted them, made a copy, and taken the truck whenever she was busy or sleeping or working. So Lauda was not out of the mix, and she was still the one who benefited most from Cleta’s death, as far as I knew. But why attack Patsy, if Patsy was indeed pushed and didn’t simply fall? Patsy may have known something. I still needed to talk to Barbara and see if I could get her to reveal what Patsy meant when she said to her that she wouldn’t keep quiet any longer.

I’d have to be careful; Barbara was a suspect, after all. Going to the kitchen for more food that afternoon was a great cover-up for being in the right place to smother Cleta. If she was particularly cold-blooded she could have done the deed, filled her plate, and come back to her table. The same with Vanessa, who was in and out of the dining room at least once or twice. Her past as a movie star left ample room for speculation as to her “secrets.”

Did she have any weird fans or obsessed men? As a noir star surely she attracted a slightly offbeat following.

I hopped out of the tiny room and grabbed my cell phone, then retreated back to the airless closet and called Hannah again.

“Hey, sweetie, how are you?” I asked when she picked up.

I had already told her about the awful events of the night, but she asked if I had heard any more about Patsy’s well-being. I had nothing to tell her. I then asked her, my favorite researcher, if she could find out about Vanessa’s film career and if it intersected much with her personal life. I wanted to know specifically about any scandals in her past, other than the ones she’d shared with me. It had to be something juicy, but something of which she was either not suspected or there was no proof she was involved. She said she’d call me back. I fetched a wet rag and began to wipe down the vacuum cleaner and carpet shampooer, which I liked to look clean when they were being used in the ladies’ rooms. I wasn’t running a hotel, but I still wanted everything shipshape. I pondered the problem of Lush. Had Pish found out what was behind her past trouble with Cleta? I hadn’t thought to follow up on that. I just could not picture sweet, dithery Lush smothering Cleta and pushing Patsy down the stairs.

All that had taken a few hours. I finished up, showered, dressed and descended to the kitchen. Lunch was coming up, and I had no idea what to feed a houseful of folks who were scared, worried, and—at least one of them—guilty. Soup.
Homemade soup cures all ills, I’m convinced. As I cooked, Hannah called me back. “So, find anything?” I asked.

“About Vanessa, not much,” she said. “There were a few notable scandals, but she’s been pretty open about them. When she was just a teenager a woman she was staying with died on vacation. A few years later a man who was obsessed with her threatened her life, and when he was arrested he committed suicide in jail. His family claims she led him on.”

“Sounds like something a family of a dangerous person would want to think, rather than that he was seriously ill and needed help.”

“That’s what I thought. Vanessa released a statement at the time saying she felt bad for the family. She paid for his funeral.”

“Anything else?” I stirred the soup, tasted, and added some pepper.

“There was an accidental death on the set of one of her films, but according to reports at the time, she wasn’t even there that day.”

“That’s probably the one she told us about. Still, that’s a few deaths near her.”

“You have a few, too, don’t forget, and
you
weren’t responsible!” she said.

“You’re right.” I thought for a moment, but none of those past scandals felt connected. Though I could be wrong. “You said about Vanessa, not much. Does that mean you found something out about someone else?”

“I did a little random digging and found something interesting. It probably doesn’t mean anything, though. Did you know that Patsy Schwartz declared
bankruptcy?”

I
WAS STUNNED.
“
Our
Patsy Schwartz?”

“One and the same,” Hannah said with satisfaction. “She filed just over a year ago. I have a hunch she tried Chapter Eleven first,” she said, then explained that meant a reorganization of debts. “But she was forced into a Chapter Seven, which is liquidation. She even lost her New York condo and moved to a rental. When I found out about the bankruptcy, I hope you don’t mind but I called one of the people I met at your Halloween party, that real estate agent Melanie Pritchard, and asked if she knew anything about it. She knew about the condo sale and why, and she told me everything, since I already knew about the bankruptcy.”

I sat down and thought about our conversations; it was starting to make sense, the contradictions in the woman’s life. All Patsy’s lavish spending was in the past. Even the expensive cosmetics she favored and still used were now sparingly applied and thinned, as I had heard. Then I thought of the two thousand dollars in cash Cleta Sanson
had taken out of the bank but which we had never found. Cleta was the wealthiest of the bunch, with a banking and investment background. Was it intended as a loan to Patsy? Or a payment for some reason?

“Okay, that’s given me a lot to think about.” I wondered if Pish knew about Patsy’s bankruptcy; as a financial advisor he might, and not think it was anyone’s business.

“But there’s more,” Hannah said.

“Oh?”

“Mrs. Schwartz was apparently accused of check kiting, though she settled the problem without going to court over it.”

I knew what check kiting was; Leatrice Pugeot, the model for whom I once worked, had a little problem with that when she was short of funds. An example of check kiting is writing a check on one account for more than the amount you actually have in it, depositing it to a second account at a different bank, then using the money, even though it is nonexistent. It only works if you have the ability to draw on a check you deposit right away. In Leatrice’s case she could be sweet as sugar and talk her second bank into letting her cash a check immediately. She honestly didn’t think she had done anything wrong, and it took her lawyer a while to sort it out and help her avoid prosecution.

I told Hannah about it, and she agreed that the likely answer was that Patsy either didn’t realize she was out of funds or simply didn’t think what she was doing was wrong.
Or
she was desperate and thought that somehow she’d be getting money to deposit to make good on the check before it was sent to her main bank. At the very least it indicated a person who wasn’t above bending the rules.

“That’s all very interesting, but it’s usually the blackmailer who dies, not the victim. If Patsy was blackmailing Cleta for something and the two thousand was a payoff . . .” I got lost in my thoughts, stirring the pot.

“Blackmailers usually have more than one victim,
though, don’t they?” she asked, cutting into my musings. “And Merry, who is to say Cleta didn’t threaten Patsy somehow, and so Patsy killed Cleta? You can’t rule out Mrs. Schwartz just because she fell down the stairs.”

“Dang. You’re right. I had kind of eliminated Patsy as a suspect because of the fall, but it could still have been an accident. Thank you very much; I’m now right back where I started, with everyone as a possible murder suspect.”

“Sorry about that,” she said, with a chuckle.

“You’re not sorry at all. I do have one more question,” I said. “If you’ve got the Internet up right now, maybe you can find out for me.” I asked what I wanted to know, and she set the phone down. I could hear the
tap-tap-tap
of her keyboard and a slight gasp.

She came back on the phone and read a news piece out to me that confirmed what I had wondered about, a tiny detail that had snagged me when I’d seen it but hadn’t really jibed with anything until I’d heard all of Hannah’s information. “How awful,” I said sadly. “I think I really do take people too much at face value. Okay, go back to your books, librarian, and don’t you worry about any of this.” I didn’t need to warn her not to say a word about our conversation to anyone.

I finished making the soup, but everyone had, according to Emerald, retreated to their rooms after breakfast and had not yet emerged. Pish was closeted with a weepy Lush. I made a mental note to ask him about Lush’s past dealing with Cleta. I couldn’t imagine her as the culprit, however . . . I didn’t want to rule anyone out just because I liked them. It was a jumbled kind of day. I’d wait on serving lunch until everyone felt up to it.

I went back to the storage room to empty the garbage and sorted through the receipts and other papers I’d collected. One appeared to be a note on a stained and crumpled piece of paper. I unfolded it.

It was an old letter written in a sloping cursive script, slanting down the page.

Cleta,

Please don’t judge for what I said last night . . . very drunk . . . very upset. I did what I did and I’m ashamed, but no going back, no point in confessing now, right, my friend? Please don’t say anything to the others. Couldn’t bear the looks. I’ve paid, God, how I’ve paid. You don’t know. Let’s just forget everything I said. I was drunk and it’s over now anyway.

I sat down on the floor and stared at the handwriting. I’d seen it before and had a feeling I knew to whom it belonged. This felt like a confession of sorts, to Cleta, of all people. Or more like acknowledging a confession and asking for silence. But how did the paper get in my storage closet?

I thought I knew why the note was hidden in the storage room, and I had an idea of what had happened to Patsy and, finally, who’d killed Cleta. Hannah’s information had given me the last piece, the
why
of the whole thing. There was only one secret worth killing for. One fact that Virgil may already have was all I needed.

I hustled out, got my cell phone, and raced outside to call Virgil, not wanting to be heard by anyone in the house. I walked him through my deductions and read him the note. I told him who I thought had written it, and who’d put it in the storage room and why, and how it had all led inevitably to the troubles. Then I asked him one question. “You asked me some questions about lipstick, and I remembered seeing a smudge on Cleta’s glasses. I could picture the killer holding on to her, smothering her, bending over to keep hold and maybe even smudging her lips accidentally against Cleta’s
glasses. I know you took items from each of the ladies’ rooms. Have you identified whose lipstick it is?”

He said he had. I made a guess at whose lipstick it was, and he reluctantly confirmed my deduction. “It’s not enough to arrest her,” he said, flatly, of the murderer. “It’s all too vague and circumstantial. I appreciate the info, and I think we’re probably right, but I can’t make an arrest. I’ll do some more investigating and see if we can build a case, but it’ll take a while.”

Arms crossed, cell phone up to my ear, I was silent for a long moment, staring out at the woods. Spring was fully sprung and the trees glowed with new life, a green froth crowning the browns and grays of the Wynter forest. I had fought such a hard battle over the last months to make enough money to let me stay at Wynter Castle for long enough to fix it up, bringing back its faded and tarnished glory so it would glow again like the jewel it was.

“Merry? You there?”

“I have an idea,” I said and told him what it was. He didn’t like it, but I said I was going ahead anyway, and he could participate or not. He threatened me, but I pleaded, “Virgil, please, just hear me out. I can’t go on like this, living with a murderer under my roof. I’ll send them all back to the city. Just
try
making a case against her if she’s not even here.”

I can be very persuasive when I want. By the time I clicked my phone off I had planned a dinner, with Virgil and Gogi as guests. We were going to stage an impromptu re-creation of the tea party, and use the witness statements and the ladies’ recollections as to where everyone was, but I was not to intimate or imply I knew who had done it. If I was correct, the right person would lie about where they were and what they were doing. If one of us could poke holes in her story, the killer would be stuck and maybe admit it.

Or it could all go to hell in a handbag, as my grandmother
often said, and we’d be in the same position as we had been, except the murderer would now be alerted and lawyer up. I stuck my head into Lush’s room. Pish was sitting reading and Lush appeared to be sleeping. I motioned him to follow me and led him to my room, also known as The Wreck. With the peeling wallpaper, mismatched paint splotches on the walls, and uncarpeted floor, I felt like I was living in a run-down tenement flat. It just wasn’t easy trying to fix it up while living in it. I sat down on the bed and drew up my knee. First things first. “Did you talk to Lush about what happened when you were a kid between her and Cleta?”

He nodded. “Poor darling Lushie. It was a broken heart, that’s all. Scandalous at the time, but long forgotten now. She was in her thirties and having a romance with a younger man, in his twenties. Shocking, right?” He smiled, just the barest lift of the corner of his mouth. “Anyway, Cleta ‘let slip’ how old Lush really was. The young fellow skedaddled, as Lushie put it. Broke her heart, but looking back now, she says he was not right for her anyway. He was a drinker and took drugs; he was an acting hopeful trying to get closer to Vanessa, it is said, for her contacts in the industry. Vanessa was already involved with someone, or he would have tried to seduce her.”

“So he was using Lush?”

He shrugged. “She was a means to an end, or that’s what Cleta claimed. She was just protecting Lush, she said.”

“Cleta Sanson as an angel of mercy? I doubt it, but look, Pish, it’s all immaterial anyway. I think I know who killed Cleta and who pushed Patsy down the stairs.”

His eyes widened and he clutched my hand as I showed him the letter and told him what I thought happened, and how I knew who wrote it.

He was struck and saddened. “I always liked her,” he said. “When darling Lush would take me to the theater, we all went together, and she always sat next to me and helped me understand what was going on. She had a good eye for drama.”

“You have to be strong, Pish. We have to finish this, because she’s dangerous; Patsy is proof of that. This ends tonight. Virgil and Gogi are coming, and we’re going to stage a reenactment.”

He nodded. “I’ll help in any way I can.”

“If you want to spare Lush the scene, I’ll understand if you tell her to stay in her room and rest.”

“I won’t make her decisions for her. Can I tell her the truth?”

I shook my head. “No one knows but you, me, and Virgil. That’s the only way I can be sure this works out how it’s supposed to. You know Lush; she doesn’t have a poker face, and we are dealing with one crafty killer.”

“Can I tell her we’re going to get at the truth?”

“If you have to, but no more. She’d know that much anyway when we start the reenactment. And now,” I said, getting up and offering him my hand. “I need to start cooking. Dinner theater, if you will.”

Juniper was in the kitchen cleaning out the fridge, wiping every shelf with slightly bleachy water. She told me she planned to work upstairs with Binny all evening searching for the mythological Wynter fortune. I asked if they could stay out of the way and Juniper looked at me strange, but nodded. “I’m going to help Binny search, and then we’re going to talk. She wants to figure out what to do with the empty apartment upstairs from the bakery.” Binny’s father, Rusty Turner, owned the building that Binny’s Bakery was in. There were two apartment s above. One was tenanted by Zeke and Gordy, but the other was now empty, with Binny back living with her father in the family house and Juniper, who had resided there briefly, living at the castle.

I watched her for a long moment. “You know you can leave here anytime, right? You don’t owe me anything. I know this isn’t a great job, and you’re a very smart girl. I want you to be happy and do what you want.”

She nodded and cleared her throat. “I don’t know what
I want yet. But Binny says . . . she thinks I might be good at redecorating and shi . . . stuff like that.”

Redecorating? Okay, who was I to stomp on anyone’s dreams? “You take your time and figure it out. No hurry, okay?”

She nodded and came close to smiling, her gaze intent. Then she did something unexpected and hugged me. She finished up the fridge and skipped upstairs. I turned my attention to the meal, though my stomach was in turmoil and I just knew I wouldn’t be able to eat. We were going to confront a murderer and I had no idea how it would go. The most likely outcome was that the killer would
not
confess, we would be no further ahead, and I would have to kick her out of my house knowing that she knew that I knew, if that makes any sense at all. I would not sleep until she was out of my home.

*   *   *

The hour approached. Once Virgil and Gogi arrived I led them to the dining room and got them to help me move the tables around to make it more comfortable for just the eight of us at one large round table. I dressed it with fresh flowers and a white damask tablecloth from castle storage, then Gogi and I set that table with my Juliet china, best silver, and crystal as Virgil paced the room, staring out one of the arched windows into the gathering twilight. Gogi kept sending me little looks, and then glancing over at Virgil. I was sure she knew something was up, but I was too nervous to talk.