Thanks for Muffin, page 20
I sighed. “I could have done without it.”
“Are the police any closer to knowing who did it? I hope they are. This is nerve-racking.”
“It has to be someone among us,” I said, watching his expression.
His eyes widened. “How can you be sure? Couldn’t it have been someone else he knew, someone local?”
“It’s possible,” I said. “May I ask, did you get up at all that night, the night of the gala? Someone heard people coming and going, and I was just wondering if anyone who came downstairs for any reason saw anything.”
“I came down once. Margot swore up and down that she’d left her clutch in the ballroom and needed her prescription pain meds. She hurt her back before we came here and walking around in that outlandish dress and in those ridiculous heels made it worse, I’m afraid.”
“Weren’t you afraid of giving her prescription pain meds when she’d had so much booze?”
“That’s the thing . . . I hid her clutch for that reason,” he confessed sheepishly. “I won’t risk her health. If she’s going to drink then she simply cannot have her prescription pain pills, that’s all there is to it. It hurts my heart to see her in pain, but I can’t give in on that.”
“But you didn’t want to say that to her, so you hid her clutch and pretended you couldn’t find it.”
He nodded, his expression clearing. “She can be . . . difficult when crossed. Don’t get me wrong; I love her, completely. She’s been through a lot and yet she’s strong and kind. But she’s her own worst enemy sometimes.”
“You did the right thing. Sometimes we need to tell a little white lie to protect people. What time was that? And did you see anyone or hear anything when you were pretending to search for the clutch?”
“I’m not sure of the time. We had been upstairs for at least an hour or more.” He frowned in concentration. “I wasn’t looking for the clutch, so I moseyed around the kitchen, admiring the appliances. We’re redoing our kitchen, and I’ll be ordering professional-grade appliances like yours. When I decided enough time had passed, I was coming out of the kitchen when I heard someone on the staircase. I didn’t want to have to explain what I was doing, so I waited until they were gone.”
“Gone. Where did they go?”
“Out the front door.”
“But you don’t know who it was?”
“It was a woman, or more than one woman. I smelled perfume when I started up the stairs. I don’t know more than that, I’m sorry.”
Perfume. “What did the scent smell like?”
He smiled, the dimple winking again. “I am no perfume expert, I’m sorry. It was a sweet scent, not musky, that’s all I can say.”
I opened my mouth to respond but my phone chimed. I apologized, looked at the screen, and saw that it was Hannah. I excused myself and went out to the great hall. “Hannah, hey, what’s up?”
“I have a lot for you. Can we video chat?”
“Sure. I’ll use my laptop. I’ll go upstairs and give you a dingle.”
• • •
I sat in Pish’s office. I made sure Hannah was okay after the awful attack. We had a long conversation, and after it was over I did more online searching using her suggestions. I also perused newspaper clippings she sent me and watched videos from the party. I made notes of things I overheard and saw: Brenda, Sandy and Sooner arguing, as Glengarry stood feet away, his back to them. Maybe that was when Sooner confessed his culpability in Lukas’s death, and when Brenda and he spoke of his attempt at blackmailing her over her illicit sexual escapades. Was the Broadway director-producer close enough to overhear? If his hearing was good, and he was adept at separating conversation from chatter, I rather thought he was.
In almost every clip I saw, Margot drifted through, snatching champagne flutes and martini glasses from the pretty young server’s tray, guzzling each and every glass, and wavering ever so slightly more. Price was at her side always, watching in perplexed worry. We all knew how that ended.
I saw the shoving match between Sooner and George, after Dan had mauled the rap artist’s cousin. Luxe stood to one side, arms crossed. I could see the anger on her pretty face, but her angry stare was not at Sooner, but at her cousin. I understood her irritation. She had it under control and did not need his protection. Frankly, in her place I would be happy for Virgil to step in, but Luxe and I were different women. Of course, George was her cousin, not her husband, and she had likely dealt with worse boors than Sooner. Also, George was in a fight with a local; it could end poorly for her cousin, and Luxe knew that. There were numerous reasons she had to be upset. But one thing that was true was, George had a tendency to step into quarrels that were not his. Had he done so that night and killed Sooner?
Finally I watched one blurry video uploaded by an anonymous videographer and hash-tagged “Wynter Castle.” I gasped at what I could see, in the background, beyond the chattering, laughing crowd: Glengarry Polk with the lapels of Dan Sooner’s ugly jacket in his fists. They were face-to-face arguing, but finally the Broadway director shoved him away hard and shouted something at him.
I sat back, mouth open in astonishment. How very interesting. Polk was supposedly even-tempered, but as the video went blurry, then cleared, I watched his face turn blotchy and red, his hair ruffled, his actions menacing. The video ended before I saw a resolution. It could only mean that Polk had indeed overheard Sooner’s revelation about Brenda’s past indiscretions. Either Brenda didn’t understand her husband, or . . .
She knew what he was like and was trying to deflect my attention.
Maybe she knew her husband had killed Sooner.
Or maybe she helped him.
• • •
Pish and I threw together a buffet grazing dinner, with cold salads, crudités, meats, cheeses and various oddments. I told my friend all I had learned as we worked. He was troubled, as was I. How would I figure out whodunnit? This one might have to be solved by good old-fashioned police work and forensics, which occasionally took time to accomplish. Everyone had been fingerprinted. Rooms had been searched. Even if they all went home, the police work would continue until they figured it out.
Cam finally gave up his interviews for the night and promised to finish them in the morning. He only had a few to go. I fell asleep in my castle room examining the room chart from the night of the gala. My sleep was not easy, but it was surprisingly productive as dreams showed me what I had missed and helped me make a connection that may—or may not—hold significance.
Twenty-two
After an uneasy sleep I was up at five thirty. In the spacious kitchen I put on a pot of coffee and started baking muffins and scones, including a batch of a new recipe, buckwheat and cheddar scones. Virgil came in looking exhausted, with purple smudges under his eyes. Standing in the glow from the pendant lights over the sinks, I pulled him into my arms and rocked him. “My poor weary darling. You didn’t join me last night. Did you get any sleep at all?”
“I didn’t want to wake you up. I grabbed a nap in the library,” he muttered into my neck. “Dewayne took Patricia home last night and stayed there. I don’t think Cam has slept at all. I told him to go home and shower and take a nap.”
“How does Cam deal without you?”
“This is a complicated case, Merry. We have a massive gala, multiple sites, a huge property to search, hundreds of hours of video, and on top of it all, low staffing levels.”
It was Sunday. My guests were snarky and restive. Several had been on the phone with lawyers, and others said they were going home whether the sheriff allowed it or not. The only thing that would rescue this weekend was a solution to the murder, so that if and when the press took notice on Cyber Monday, it would be a neatly packaged crime and solution story all in one.
I had an idea about how to disprove an alibi, but I needed to make a phone call or two before I could be sure. And I couldn’t do that at five thirty in the morning.
“I’ll make you breakfast,” I said.
“I’d appreciate it,” my husband said.
“I’m sorry, I was speaking to Becket,” I said, laughing, as my cat wandered in and threaded through my feet. Virgil groaned as my cat leaped up onto the counter. I opened a tin for Becket and he wolfed down his meal.
On the counter. Clearly I had given up. I’d have to shoo him outside and sanitize again before continuing.
“Don’t worry, hubby dearest, I’ll make your breakfast too.”
Virgil stretched wearily and shook his head. “I’d better not. I’m going home to shower and change. I might sleep for an hour or so. Dewayne and Cam are meeting me there in three hours so we can hash out what we’ve got so far.”
“Have you figured anything out yet?” I poured him a cup of coffee anyway, just to jump-start his day.
“You know I can’t tell you much.”
“I know.” I told him what I’d been thinking though, all the conversations I’d had, who I suspected. Even my dream. I could see him nodding and thinking it all over as he stared out the back window, drinking a cup of coffee.
“Do you think I’m on to something?” I asked.
“Maybe. Your information has been noted.” He turned and smiled at me. “But I can’t say more. You know the rules for official investigations.” He leaned over and kissed me.
“I know the rules,” I mumbled against his mouth. “But don’t think you’ll distract me with kisses.”
He released me. “I’ll give you this; we have promising leads—”
“Including what I’ve told you.”
He nodded as he straddled a chair and sipped coffee. “But as we tell the press, nothing concrete. There’s information to sift through and fingerprint comparisons to make. Video to examine. A lot of video. DNA will take a while. Toxicology. Autopsy results, which we won’t have until tomorrow. I can tell you one thing: we have the data from the Bartholomews’ security system, and unless there was a way to hack it, it appears that it was not shut off or breached between two nineteen and nine seventeen a.m.”
“So the Bartholomew party, including Unwin, are out as suspects?”
“As far as we can tell.”
“That’s too bad in a way.”
“I thought you’d be happy about that.”
“Oh, I am, I am!” I followed Becket down the back hall and let the cat out into the blackness of a country morning then came back, sitting by my husband with my own mug. “It’s just that Unwin MacGregor seemed an easy solution, given her behavior.”
“Nonetheless, she is out. Adrienne Harris confirmed that they were together in their shared room when George Bartholomew set the house alarm.”
I thought about it and reluctantly nodded. “The MO wouldn’t have been the same anyway, right? The two crimes were so different.”
“You mean Unwin’s assault on the hairdresser and Sooner’s murder.”
“Sure. Unwin’s crime was an impulse, according to her. This is a well-planned and plotted murder.”
“You’re right.”
“And I never did figure a motive for Unwin to kill Sooner.” He was weary, and I was going to take advantage of that, because his guard is down when he’s tired. “Have you established anything else you’re sure of?”
“One of the golf carts was used, probably to move Sooner’s body to the Bartholomews’ garbage can,” he muttered.
As I had suspected, that had been the noise like a lawn mower Luxe had reported and Heather had confirmed. Virgil shifted his chair around to sit close to me and pulled me in, kissing my ear. I tried to focus on anything but his warm breath. “And we know the approximate time of that, about three to three fifteen for moving the body.”
“The ME has at least confirmed between three and four as the likely time of death,” he murmured.
So his body was moved immediately after he was killed. That was not the action of someone who had impulsively killed him. It felt planned. I said as much to Virgil, trying to reason past the kisses, which were breaking down my thought processes.
“This was a murder of opportunity in one way, though,” he said. “The killer picked up a stick from the ground to make Sooner’s bow tie into a garrote. He may have been knocked unconscious beforehand.”
My eyes widened. I’ve heard that the true meaning of the Spanish word garrote is just that, the stick used to tighten the ligature. So, if I understood, someone had picked a stick up from the ground, inserted it into the loosened tie and twisted. If the victim was incapacitated, as in knocked out, anyone could strangle him with that kind of garrote. However . . . “Sooner was a chunky guy. It would have taken someone pretty strong to heft his body into that garbage bin, don’t you think?”
“One very strong person, two moderately strong people, or a whole group of weaklings,” he said, straightening and smiling over at me. His expression told me he knew what I was doing and was amused by it. He’d tell me exactly as much as he felt he could without endangering the investigation.
“A group of weaklings would have been noisy.”
“True.” He gulped the rest of his coffee and stood, stretching. “I’m gonna go to the house. I’ll get something to eat there.” He pulled me up and in for an embrace, then kissed me in a swoonworthy way.
A wolf whistle from the door made us scramble apart.
“Don’t mind me,” Luxe said, smiling. “I feel like I’m always catching you guys making out.”
Virgil, looking red-faced and irritated, waved and left.
“That is some man,” she said, sitting down at the table. She was gowned in an extraordinary purple and tangerine housecoat with a patterned, satin-lined head wrap in the same colors.
“He is that. Coffee?”
“Tea. I’ll make it, if you don’t mind me making myself at home?”
“Not at all. Help yourself.”
It was warm and comforting in the kitchen. I love being there when it’s pitch-dark outside the window. The room feels like a space away from worldly troubles. I scrubbed my counter again, made some dough and put a sheet pan of the buckwheat cheddar scones in the oven. We chatted as she made tea and I started breakfast, mainly for myself and Luxe this early. I wanted to confirm what Virgil had told me, so I said, “After the gala, when you all were settled down for what was left of the night, I know you heard noises. Did you get the idea that anyone in your house left the building?”
“Not possible,” she said promptly. “George has a state-of-the-art security system in place. He has expensive equipment in his studio, and pricey instruments. Auntie Lil has art and jewelry. The only way to leave the house is to turn off and reset the security. No one knows the codes.” She glanced over at me. “George told that sheriff all of this.”
I nodded. She confirmed that they all knew about the alarm system. “That eliminates anyone from your house being a suspect, but it means that whomever put Sooner’s body there was doing so to divert suspicion.”
“From the castle to our house.”
As we ate, Luxe caught up with her emails and texts on her phone. My mind drifted. I was convinced we were close to solving the murder of Dan Sooner and that I had the key, but I couldn’t be sure. I glanced at the clock; still hours before I could make the phone calls that may or may not confirm my hypothesis, which was the only thing I had not shared with Virgil. I might be completely wrong, and if so, I didn’t want to lead the investigation astray.
With so many in the castle holding decades-old grievances against Sooner, they all made sense to me. But I was torn among the most logical solutions, starting with a premise that it had to be two or more people to have killed him and moved his body. I suppose, as Virgil surmised, one strong person could have done it, but I didn’t think so. No one in the castle was strong enough to do it alone.
First, the home-grown solution, the outsider to our group: Heather Baker. Sooner was a jerk and had cheated on her multiple times. Wasn’t that an exceptional reason to kill a lover? I liked the notion because if ever there was a guy who deserved that particular fate, being murdered by a girlfriend, it was Dan Sooner. And she had already admitted that she was here at about the right time. She could have brought a friend; maybe Bob, the video editor. But as lame as it sounds, she didn’t fit my notion of what this killer would be like. It seemed like a crime of planning, cold and calculated. If her murderous anger was inspired by video of the lech coming on to women, it would have been a crime of passion, and how do you get a companion to your passion? Someone to help you kill the object of your jealousy?
You don’t. I didn’t think Heather was the killer.
Margot and Herman Ramsbottom. I now knew the whole truth, that Sooner had presumably murdered their son. Good reason to kill anyone, I thought. But Margot had apparently been so stoned she could hardly walk that night according to Price and my own eyes. Herman I was not so sure of, but as already stated, I didn’t think this was a crime for one person. They were in the mix, as awkward as the combination seemed. I mean, her husband from thirty years ago as her partner in crime? And yet, both were the parents of a beloved son.
I paused; could the solution simply be Margot’s first husband and her current husband working together? Herman and Price? That was crazy. But crazy things do sometimes happen. I set that aside to muse on later. However . . . it was unlikely, given that I couldn’t think of any reason Price would have to help in the killing. It didn’t make sense.
Then there were Brenda Polk and Sandy Paderewski. Both were relatively young and lithe, strong in the way women are who do yoga and Pilates every day. I liked them for it. But I also had to admit it could have been another combination, maybe Brenda and Glengarry, given the video I had seen of Glen and Dan Sooner almost coming to blows. Or Sandy and someone?
I paused for a moment and thought about the scent that Price had noticed on the stairs as he went back up; a sweet scent, he said. I had smelled something like that recently, and I remembered from whom, Brenda Polk. It was a signature scent. Huh. That supported one of my ideas.
