Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1 (6 page)

“Witnesses. The bastard has all those
witnesses.”

“Exactly,” Ben stood up. “And now they become
our witnesses, too.”

The captain piloted the boat to our dock,
hurriedly tying up the boat. No doubt Philippe had paid him well,
because I noticed that two fire extinguishers were quickly
produced, and four men rushed towards the fire, prepared to put it
out.

“He wants to discover the body,” I exclaimed.
“He’s going to blame it on us!”

“He can’t, not without admitting he’s our
guest. Okay. Are you prepared to be hysterical? Remember, we don’t
know there’s a body.”

“Right.”

“Let’s just backtrack a bit, so we look like
we saw smoke and came hurrying down here to see what the problem
was.” He gripped the binoculars as if he had used them to observe
the black plume rising in the air. We crawled along the bushes back
to the Subaru, stood up as if we had just climbed out of the car,
and started running. When we got to the incline, we started
hollering.

“Hey! What are you doing! Stop that this
instant!” Ben was waving his arms like a lunatic. “Are you
crazy?”

“The cabana’s on fire! They’re burning our
cabana down!” I yelled as I ran downhill after him. “I’ll call
911.”

And that’s exactly what I did. I talked to
the emergency operator, who transferred me to the fire department,
made up of local volunteers. Bud Solange, the man in charge,
assured me they would be there as soon as possible, but it would
take a good ten minutes. I promised to call Uncle Edward to direct
traffic when the fire engine arrived. The chief informed me that
Lyle Tretorn had a boat and lived just a couple of miles away, so
he’d probably be the first to respond. Lyle could tie up to our
dock and start fighting that fire.

Meanwhile, the excited tourists were now
flocked on our little beach, crowding around the smoking cabana. A
couple of little old ladies were smart enough to park themselves in
the Adirondack chairs for the show. Lyle was on the scene soon
after the 911 call, bringing a firefighting buddy and equipment
with him, and they got busy right away. Eventually, the flames were
extinguished by the pair, assisted by two members of the boat crew.
The body was now the center of attention. Philippe Grapon had a lot
of ‘splainin’ to do and there was no Lucy Ricardo to pin it on.

“Oh, please!” I could hear Ben scoff. “You
just happen to be our house guest, you just happen to spot a fire
from a distance,
and
you just happen to find a dead body on
our property? That’s ridiculous!”

“I’m not the one who killed this girl and put
her in here!” Philippe pointed to the body of the girl now leaning
against the wall of the cabana, the charred, melted mess of
mattress pad and shower curtain liner still tucked around her feet.
“I was on that boat!”

“He did ask the captain if we could swing
over here,” said a very helpful gentleman in a pink golf shirt and
khaki shorts, his arm draped by a cute young thing in a tight
little shift and very kicking pair of strappy sandals I would have
given my eye teeth to own.

“That’s right!” an older gentleman in a Red
Sox cap agreed. “He insisted that he saw some kind of bird I never
even heard of before, and I’ve been a bird watcher for more than
thirty years!”

“And he was the first one to shout ‘fire’.”
That was the observation of a middle-aged woman with tortoise shell
eyeglasses and a full mouth outlined in dark red. “Rather
suspicious if you ask me!”

“It is, isn’t it!” The smell of acrid smoke
hovered over the assembled group. I wondered if the helpful folks
were on a surveillance detail, monitoring the wily Frenchman’s bad
behavior.

“But how do we know she was murdered?” That
came from one of the little old ladies in the Adirondack chairs.
“She’s naked and dead. I don’t see any wounds on her body. No
throat cut. No bullet hole. No strangulation bruises.”

“Maybe she was using the cabana without your
knowledge,” another audience member suggested helpfully from her
beach chair. “Maybe she’s one of those meth heads you hear so much
about. Could that have caused the fire?”

“I saw that on A&E last week. They had a
guy on who....”

Slowly, surely, the conversation turned
toward accidental death, a mysterious girl on the run, and the fire
caused by illicit drugs. By the time the rest of the fire
department arrived, the tourists were satisfied that nothing
unusual had happened at the cabana, other than a young girl lost
her life tragically to drugs. Convincing the coroner about that
might be a little harder.

Once the girl in the cabana was exposed to
public view, I had started the ball spinning by calling 911 to
report her death. We needed to establish that the body was
discovered in front of the assembled crowd. I sure didn’t want a
bunch of forensic snoops dusting the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast for
prints.

The local sheriff’s department arrived on the
heels of the fire brigade. Sheriff Thompson was a no-nonsense piece
of “I’ll kick your sorry excuse for an ass!” if I ever saw one. His
deputy chewed on a Stim-U-Dent toothpick, trying to look cool
behind a pair of eighties mirrored sunglasses. The pair did a lot
of ‘hrumphing” around, full of bluster and self-importance, telling
everyone to stand back from the crime scene and then contaminating
the hell out of it by trampling through.

“Ah, should you be doing that?” I boldly
asked. “You already know the girl is dead. Wouldn’t the prudent
thing be to wait for the forensics team?”

“Are you one of those armchair detectives,
Miss?’

“Miz,” I corrected him. “And no, I’m not. But
I am aware that you just put your hands on all the surfaces that
either the girl or the killer touched. If it’s not a crime scene,
you probably obscured her fingerprints. If it is a crime scene, you
may have just let a killer off the hook.”

“So, you’re a full-blown expert on crime, are
you?” the sheriff snarled, his face inches from mine.

“Well, now that we’ve established that I
understand more about forensic procedures than you do, why don’t we
have you step away?”

“Who the hell do you think you are, telling
me how to do my job?” I could feel the little flecks of spit hit my
cheeks as the sheriff got up close and personal in the doorway of
the small structure.

You might think that Ben would have stepped
in by now, to calm me down, to talk reason with the sheriff, but
instead, my husband had disappeared behind the cabana. That was my
signal to keep the distraction going as long as I could, and I put
forth a valiant effort.

“How many murder scenes have you
investigated? Suicide scenes? Accidental deaths?” One of the
reasons Uncle Edward had picked this place was because the town was
barely touched by crime, so I felt pretty safe in suggesting that
the Buford Pusser wannabe hadn’t handled more than a handful of
deaths from natural or other causes. “I want to know how and why
she died, so you just get out of there this instant and let the
professionals handle the forensics!”

I huffed and I puffed every bit as hard as
the sheriff, despite his threats to throw me in jail and toss away
the key. In fact, our shouting match took over as the main event,
and the tour boat captain had trouble finding passengers ready to
depart. Bud made sure no one else entered the cabana, stationing a
couple of his people on all four corners of the cabana, ostensibly
to treat any smoldering embers. The sheriff was about to grab me
when Bud Solange stepped between us. He put a solid hand on the
irate law enforcement man’s shoulder, holding him back.

“She’s right, Lou. Arson investigators want
the scene left undisturbed, body or no body, and that means I’ve
got to secure the cabana properly. I’m afraid I’m going to have to
insist that we go by the book on this.”

“You want to back her up, Bud?” The sheriff’s
eyes got very tiny in his beefy face, and I knew he planned on
extracting revenge for his public humiliation. His large frame
filled the doorway as he glared menacingly. Since this was quickly
spiraling out of control, I decided it was a case of in for a
penny, in for a pound. I dove right back in.

“Do not make me call the Vermont Attorney
General, Sheriff,” I warned him. “I will report your bad law
enforcement conduct and your contamination of the scene of a death.
I suggest you follow proper procedures for handling this scene or
by the time I’m done, your office will be shut down while you are
investigated for obstructing justice!”

“You don’t even know who the Attorney General
is for Vermont,” he hissed, “let alone anyone in that office!”

“David Symthe. S-y-m-t-h-e. For your
information, I hike with Amy Lickinbach, his assistant for criminal
prosecutions. She’s also a national skeet shooting champion, so you
probably will find she’s not going to take any crap from you
either.”

“You rich people think you can just move to
Vermont and take over, don’t you? You come barging in here, with
your big fancy cars and your fat wallets, pushing the little guys
right off of the road. Well, you think again, Missy! This is
my
jurisdiction and we will do things
my
way!”

“This is your jurisdiction and you will do
things according to state and federal laws, or you will no longer
be sheriff!”

“Just who the hell do you think you’re
talking to, young lady?”

“I think I’m talking to the guy who had
better get the hell out of
my
cabana!” As if to emphasize
the point, a two-by-four brace, burned to a crisp, dropped down
from the ceiling and smacked the sheriff in the shoulder before
hitting the ground. The stunned man stood there, looking down at
the offending piece of wood, until Bud Solange grabbed him and
physically pulled him out of the little hut. By the time a state
police investigator arrived a short time later, Ben still hadn’t
returned.

“Matthew Perkins,” announced a young man in a
green golf shirt and jeans, flashing his credentials. “Who’s in
charge here?”

“I am,” said the sheriff.

“Anybody touch anything?” At that, the whole
crowd groaned.

“My people put out the fire, but didn’t touch
anything,” said Bud, fire helmet in hand. “Two went in with
extinguishers, the others worked from the outside. A couple of guys
from Captain Joe’s helped out.”

“Okay. My people should be here any minute.
We’re going to set up a perimeter, so let’s get people moved back.
We can start getting some information, Sheriff. I’ll need the
names, addresses, and photo identification of everyone present on
the scene when the fire was discovered. Once we’ve got everyone
processed, people can leave.”

“Photo identification?” The sheriff looked at
Matthew Perkins like he dropped in from the planet Romulus.

“Check their driver’s licenses,” the state
investigator told him. “Write down the number of each.”

“That’s a lot of work,” was the reply.

“Then you’d better get started, before
there’s a mutiny.”

I glanced around, wondering where my other
half had gone, but he was still nowhere to be found. The tour boat
captain was getting itchy as he waited on our dock to be cleared
for the return trip. The little old ladies had moved their
Adirondack chairs further away from the burned ruins of the cabana,
still chattering as if it were Intermission. A couple of Vermont
state troopers hoofed it to the little beach on foot, lugging their
equipment down the path. They were accompanied by Ben. As I took in
all the details of the scene, I realized one of the lead actors had
vanished. How long would it take for the police to realize Philippe
Grapon had exited the stage?

“Have I missed anyone?” asked a tall,
uniformed man with an Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down as he
spoke. “Captain, where’s your last passenger?”

“He was here just a short time ago,” said the
man in charge of the group of tourists. A buzz went around as the
passengers searched for Philippe.

“Maybe he had to, um...go fix the flag, so to
speak,” suggested an older man in a bucket hat, a seersucker shirt,
and white slacks.

“Is that another way of saying he had to use
the can?” asked a thirty-something woman with a pre-teen by her
side.

“He went up the hill, that way,” said the
older gent with the Red Sox cap.

“He hasn’t come back,” offered the
middle-aged woman with the dark glasses and red lips.

“And you know this because?” the young
investigator with the big badge slung around his neck inquired.

“He suggested we get together for a drink
when we get back to the marina. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t
skipping out on me.”

“He’s a guest of our establishment,” Ben
announced, stepping forward to offer his hand to Matthew Perkins
and explain.

“Maybe he went up to the house,” I suggested.
“We can call Uncle Edward and ask him.”

Uncle Edward answered on the second ring,
listened carefully, and promised to call us back as soon as he
searched the main floor and the guest room for the missing man. He
was as good as his word. There was no sign of the wayward
wanderer.

“How long is Philippe Grapon scheduled to
stay at your inn?” Matthew Perkins asked.

“Bed and breakfast,” I corrected him. “Just
for the weekend.”

“Call me if he shows up. Here’s my card.”

“Will do,” I replied, thinking about how once
again Philippe pulled a fast one on us. This time, it didn’t look
like Ben was going to take it in stride. “Any chance we can take
off now? We’re expected to pick up a guest at the airport.”

“Sure. Just one more question. Who is the
dead woman in your cabana?”

Chapter Seven --

“I’ve never set eyes on her before today,” I
was able to admit with total honesty. I left out the part about
finding her under the bed in the Ephesus Suite. “Such a shame. What
will happen if you can’t identify her?”