Swan for the Money (16 page)

Chapter 29

Rob was standing in the doorway. Apparently he’d arrived at the house too late to hear who the newest arrival was, but in time to see the chief escorting him off for questioning.

“Is someone else minding the gate?” I asked him, as he shed his raincoat.

“One of the deputies,” he said. “Chief’s orders. Okay, if you’re not going to tell me who it is, I’ll make a guess. He’s a reporter, right?”

“No, he’s Mrs. Winkleson’s nephew,” I said.

“Probably tried to knock her off to inherit, then,” Rob said, nodding with satisfaction as he snagged a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

“He’s hoping to inherit all right, but he only just got here,” I said. “Apparently as soon as he heard the news of the murder, he drove down here from Warrenton, no doubt salivating all the way. He took the news of her non-death hard.”

“He didn’t just get here,” Rob said. “He was hanging about earlier.”

“How much earlier?”

Rob took a meditative sip of his drink before answering.

“Just after I took over at the gate. Remember I told you about this guy who cruised by, slowed down, and then drove on past?”

“The stalker,” I said. “I remember.”

“That’s why I thought he was a reporter, nosing around. I figured maybe he heard something on the police radio and showed up to snoop. I even called Sammy and Horace to warn them, like you said, in case the guy was just going to drive out of sight and sneak in over the fence.”

“You’re positive it’s the same guy?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Who could forget that nose?”

“But you didn’t let him in?” I asked.

“If I’d let him in, I’d know who he was, because I’d have asked him. The deputy must have let him in after— wait a minute. I just drove up from the gate. If he came to the gate after the chief replaced me, how’d he beat me here?”

I strode over to the door of the chief’s interrogation room and knocked.

After a few moments, the chief peeked out.

“I’m busy,” he said.

“I know,” I said, sticking my toe in the door so he couldn’t shut it. “But Rob just told me something you might like to hear as soon as possible.”

The chief stepped out into the foyer and Rob began stammering out his story. I hoped the chief realized that the air of guilt Rob always wore when talking to law enforcement was a relic of his wayward past, and not a sign of present guilt.

I heard a small commotion in the living room, so I left them to it and went to see what was happening.

Everything was just as I’d left it, except that Mrs. Winkleson was supervising as Marston and two black-clad male staff wheeled in a new tchotchke and were putting it up for display in a previously empty niche, complete with a pedestal and several spotlights. Or could you still call something a tchotchke if it was more than a yard tall and probably cost several thousand dollars?

The item in question was a swan made entirely of black glass. Beautifully made, I had to admit that. I knew the glass-maker who’d made it. In fact, I’d recommended him to Mrs. Winkleson some months ago, though I had no idea back then why she’d asked for the recommendation. Now, of course, I realized that she had been intent on commissioning a special objet d’art to serve as the Winkleson trophy.

I’d have found the glass swan completely unobjectionable— almost appealing— if not for its size. At six or eight inches tall, it would have been delicate and charming. But at three and a half feet its sheer bulk made it a little overwhelming in spite of the glassmaker’s skill. The two burly servants were visibly straining to hoist the thing into its place of honor in the niche. Unless my memory was worse than usual, the niche was a new feature in the room, specially built to contain the glass swan.

All the other rose exhibitors were busily pretending to be oblivious of the trophy, while stealing covetous glances at it when they thought no one was looking.

From the proprietary gleam in Mrs. Winkleson’s eye as she gazed on the glass swan, she obviously expected it to leave her living room for only a brief stay in the show barn before returning in triumph to that specially built niche.

I began making my way through the crowd toward her. I knew, not just from the conversation I’d overheard at the party, but also from snippets of conversation down at the barns, that several other rose growers had also gotten calls from her claiming that the rose show was going to be for white and black roses only. Mother had been so incensed when she heard of Mrs. Winkleson’s attempt to subvert the show that she’d recruited two visiting cousins to call all the potential exhibitors to warn them, so odds were Mrs. Winkleson’s scheme wouldn’t cause too much heartache. But still, someone should confront her about it. I intended to be that someone.

Unfortunately, by the time I reached the trophy niche, she was gone.

The chief reappeared. After a few minutes, I saw Theobald, the nephew, stick his head into the room. He frowned, looked at his watch, and then his head disappeared back into the foyer. Either he was leaving or he’d decided to wait for his aunt in a more private part of the house.

I returned to my previous occupation of floating through the room, greeting the other guests, and mentally assessing each one’s potential for wielding the fatal secateurs.

I saw Dr. Smoot sitting in one of the uncomfortable black leather chairs. He was sporting a sling made out of black material and nursing a champagne flute. Not a good idea if he was on pain meds and expecting to undergo some kind of medical treatment for the arm before the night was out. But not my problem. Dad was standing at his side, and they were arguing quietly.

Dr. Smoot appeared to be yielding to Dad’s persuasion. He drained the last of his champagne, and then stood up, with some assistance from Dad.

“I won’t have it!” bellowed a voice. Mrs. Winkleson. I glanced over to see two garden club ladies hovering nearby. Trying to placate her, I assumed, from their deferential manner. She flicked her hand at them in dismissal, a gesture that reminded me of a bull shooing flies from his rump with his tail while pawing the ground and preparing to charge the matador. I looked around to see who had triggered her bovine ire. Probably the mild-mannered rose grower who’d had the bad luck to show up wearing a candy-pink suit.

Mrs. Winkleson was, of course, fully in compliance with her own dress code, wearing a black brocade suit with a white rose as a corsage, and a lot of sparkly jet jewelry. In one hand she held a plate with a couple of crab puffs on it, and in the other an old-fashioned glass containing her usual black Russian. As I watched, she glanced down at her plate with an expression of slight annoyance on her face. Perhaps she regretted not demanding that the caterers dye the crab puffs black. Or perhaps she wished she had a hand free to smite the lady in pink.

I strolled over toward her. The lady in pink was clearly shrinking from confrontation, and I was in the mood for it.

“Mrs. Winkleson,” I said.

She turned around and frowned at me. The lady in pink glanced at me and began backing away from us. Was it my tone of voice? The look on my face? The look on Mrs. Winkleson’s?

“I can see you two have a lot to talk about,” the lady in pink said. “Oh, look! More crab puffs!” She scuttled away.

“What is it?” Mrs. Winkleson asked.

“I found out you were calling some of the exhibitors and telling them that the show was for black and white roses only.”

“Well, it should have been,” she said. “And it would have been if a few more of the committee had been sensible enough to vote with me.”

“A few more? The vote was forty-seven to one,” I said. “You were the only person who wanted to restrict the show to black and white.”

“Lower your tone!” she said. “How dare you raise your voice to me!”

My temper flared at that. I hadn’t raised my voice. I’d been careful to keep my tone conversational. She, on the other hand, was practically shouting. Conversations around the room had died down abruptly, and people had begun turning around to watch our clash.

“I haven’t raised my voice,” I said, still at my normal volume. “I’d be happy to show you what a raised voice sounds like, though, if you don’t stop shouting at me.”

“How dare you! You have no right to—”

“How dare
I
? How dare
you
try to sabotage the other competitors by calling them up and lying to them—”

“I wasn’t lying—”

“Telling them that the rose show was restricted to only black and white roses when either that hadn’t yet been voted on or, worse, had already been voted down by the committee? I call that lying, and I think some of the competitors affected would be within their rights to file a protest in any category where they weren’t able to exhibit a rose because of your calls!”

“It’s my house,” she said. “And my barns—”

“But it’s not your rose show,” I said. Okay, by now I was raising my voice. Quite a lot. From hanging around with Michael, I’d picked up a few things he tried to teach his drama students, like pointers about speaking from the diaphragm to project my voice without straining or sounding shrill. Everyone in the room was unabashedly staring, and if I tried a little harder, people in the next county would be able to hear. Mrs. Winkleson flinched. Clearly she wasn’t used to people responding in kind when she shouted at them. She looked as if she wanted to back away, but she stood her ground and bit savagely into a crab puff instead.

“You knew when you agreed to let the garden club hold the show here that people would be bringing flowers that didn’t fit your silly black and white color scheme,” I said. “If you couldn’t live with that, you should have told the garden club to find some other venue.”

“I still could,” she said, through the remnants of the crab puff. She raised her glass and took a healthy slug of its contents to wash the hors d’oeuvre down. “And what’s more—”

Her eyes suddenly bugged out, and she dropped her plate and glass to clutch at her throat.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Does she need the Heimlich maneuver?” someone asked.

“Ois!” Mrs. Winkleson gasped, just before she fell to the floor and began writhing in agony.

“What does she mean, ‘Ois’?” someone asked.

“She means poison,” I said. “Dad!”

Chapter 30

I turned around to find Dad, but he was already falling onto his knees beside Mrs. Winkleson.

“Call an ambulance,” he said.

“We have one already,” I said. “For Dr. Smoot. Rob! Go fetch the EMTs! Last time I looked they were out front, stuffing themselves on hors d’oeuvres.”

Rob, who had turned a delicate shade of green while watching Mrs. Winkleson’s collapse, hurried out.

“And my bag,” Dad called. “It’s in my car.”

“I’ll get it,” Mother said.

“Let me help,” Dr. Smoot said. He threw aside his black cape and joined Dad. I wasn’t sure how much help he could be with only one working arm, but he got points for trying.

Mrs. Winkleson vomited. People began backing away, widening the circle that had formed around her. Chief Burke stepped out of the crowd, notebook already in hand.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Poisoning’s my guess,” Dad said.

“Is Horace here?” Chief Burke asked.

“Right here, chief.” Horace appeared at the chief’s side, already pulling on gloves. Like Dad and his medical bag, Horace was seldom without the tools of his trade as a crime scene technician.

“Bag her glass,” the chief said, pointing to Mrs. Winkleson’s fallen old fashioned glass. “And the food, too.”

“Can do, chief,” Horace said.

I backed away to let the experts do their job. Both sets. Dad and Dr. Smoot were soon joined by the two EMTs, one of them hastily stuffing a last crab croquette into his mouth. Chief Burke, assisted by Horace and Sammy, bagged the food, glass, and plate Mrs. Winkleson had dropped and cordoned off the bar. A few people protested about the bar closing until they heard the sound of Mrs. Winkleson vomiting again, and then one by one people began peering at their glasses and sidling over to tables and sideboards to put them down.

“Looks like she ate quite a few of those crab puffs,” Horace remarked. Since the only way he could have known that was if the crab puffs were once again visible, I deduced he was bagging the vomit for evidence. Better him than me.

Chief Burke came over to me.

“Can you stop the food service?” he asked. “And stay in the kitchen to keep the caterers and staff there till I can get some more officers here to help process the scene?”

“Roger,” I said. I gathered I wasn’t quite the prime suspect. I looked around for help.

“No thank you, dear,” Mother was saying to one of the waiters. “They were lovely, but I think I’ve had enough.”

“Yes,” I said, strolling over to them. “I think everyone’s had enough crab puffs for now. Chief Burke wants them and all the wait staff in the kitchen. Can you help?”

“Of course, dear,” she said. She sailed off to gather the rest of the waiters. It wasn’t hard to spot them. People were beginning to back away from the hors d’oeuvre trays as if they were radioactive. I led the puzzled waiter toward the kitchen. Our path went by the fallen Mrs. Winkleson, and I caught bits of the conversation between Dad, Dr. Smoot, and the EMTs.

“—the telltale bitter almond scent,” Dr. Smoot was saying.

“I don’t have the gene to smell it,” one of the EMTs said. “But if you have—”

“Yes, definitely,” Dad said. “Margaret, you weren’t serving crab almondine, were you?”

“No, dear,” Mother said. “If you smell almonds, don’t blame my poor crab croquettes.”

“It’s very strong,” Dr. Smoot said.

“I’ll take your word for it. Oxygen, then?”

“Stat.”

“Cyanide,” I said, nodding.

“What’s that?” the waiter asked.

“She was probably poisoned with cyanide,” I explained. “It smells like almonds. I gather they suspect the hors d’oeuvres.”

The waiter looked askance at his tray, and held it a little farther from his body.

I held the kitchen door open for him, and then stepped into the room myself. I blinked in surprise for a moment. The room was about the size of my high school auditorium, and looked about the way the auditorium had looked when decorated for a Halloween dance. Of course Mrs. Winkleson would continue her color scheme into the kitchen, but since it permitted white as well as black, why on earth had she felt it necessary to have black painted walls, black tile floors, black cabinets with black granite tops, and gleaming black appliances? I more than half expected to see Grandma Addams stirring a bubbling cauldron in the corner while Morticia looked on approvingly.

But now was not the time to gape at the latest evidence of Mrs. Winkleson’s lunacy.

“Everyone stop what you’re doing, and take a seat,” I said, projecting from the diaphragm again. “Police orders.”

“What do you mean, stop what we’re doing?” A woman in a Caerphilly Catering uniform strode over and planted herself in my path, hands on hips. “If we don’t keep the hors d’oeuvres moving—”

“There’s been a poisoning,” I said.

“Oh, my.” Her mouth dropped open and she pressed her hands to either side of it, in a fair imitation of Edvard Munch’s
The Scream
.

Silence fell over the whole room— at least until someone at the far end of the kitchen dropped a tray full of champagne glasses. The noise seemed to snap the head caterer out of her shock.

“You’re not accusing us of doing it,” she said. “I won’t stand for—”

“Don’t worry,” Mother said, appearing in the doorway. “I’m sure no one here has any such idea.”

“And I know Chief Burke wants to do everything by the book to make sure no one who’s innocent falls under suspicion,” I said. “So everyone please stop doing whatever you’re doing and wait until he gets here.”

Marston appeared in the doorway with a folding chair under each arm.

“Splendid,” Mother said. “Just put them there in the middle of the floor, away from the food preparation areas.”

“Of course, madam.”

Marston was followed by the pair of male servants I’d seen hauling the glass swan to its display niche, each carrying a pair of folding chairs. They set their chairs in a row in the huge open area in the middle of the kitchen. A couple of the waiters plopped down there. Marston and his staff continued to haul in folding chairs from some unseen stash and set them up in rows, and the caterers and house hold staff took seats as each batch of chairs arrived. Then the guests began streaming in from the living room. Marston and his crew continued to fetch chairs until we were all seated, facing the door to the foyer, like the audience waiting for a play to begin in a somewhat unconventional theater.

Marston and the two manservants took seats in the front row. I joined them. Mother stood looking over the group with a look of distress on her face. Everybody looked anxious, uncomfortable, or downright scared. This was not supposed to happen at parties for which Mother was responsible.

“Now then,” she said, in her most cheerful tone. “Who’s up for charades?”

It was going to be a long night.

I slipped out to have a word with the chief. He was standing in the archway, watching whatever was going on in the living room.

“We’ll get to you as soon as we can,” he said. “We’re short staffed.”

“No problem,” I said. “I just wanted to suggest, since you’re short staffed, that maybe I could make myself useful. Make you a list of all the witnesses sitting around in the kitchen, get their names and addresses.”

“And interrogate them a little while you’re at it?”

“In front of all the other witnesses?” I said. “That would be pretty stupid.”

He thought about it for a moment.

“Do it, then,” he said.

“One other suggestion,” I said. “The rose growers all have to get up before dawn to prep their roses, as I’m sure Minerva would remind you if she were here. Maybe if you interviewed them first?”

He frowned.

“I’m sure the fact that so many of the rose growers are prominent citizens with a tendency to whine at the town council when offended carries no weight with you. But keep in mind, the caterers will get paid overtime for the time they spend waiting.”

“Mrs. Winkleson’s staff ought to as well,” he said. “Though I doubt if they know that. Good idea; I’ll get rid of the rose growers first. Right now, why don’t you bring me up to speed on what you’ve been doing in the last few hours.”