A Crossworder's Holiday (6 page)

“And so this is all a tragic accident?”

Belle nodded, her eyes serious. “Rosco, I just can't imagine one of these people snuck out of bed in the middle of the night, crept along the corridor, and slunk into this room.”

“Slunk?”

“You'd prefer slank? Slinked? Anyway, he—or she—would have to have been aware that Marcia was curled up downstairs … Besides, this is an old building; nearly every floorboard and step creaks. Someone would have heard something …” A chill ran up Belle's spine. “If Jaffe
was
murdered, that means the killer is still in the house, sipping cocoa and Cosby's Coffee, and pretending—”

“What about Marcia?”

“Rosco, the woman's a basket case.” Belle added a soft, “I would be, too …”

Rosco nodded. “I understand what you're saying, and I sincerely hope you're right … But a voice in my brain keeps insisting we're looking at homicide.” He picked up the overturned glass, stared at it, then sniffed it. “I'm not detecting anything unusual, but a poison could present as a violent reaction—like heart failure or a food allergy … It wouldn't take much.”

“The perfidious pudding.”

“Don't joke, Belle. We all ate it.”

“I know.”

I
T
was on the stair landing that Belle paused to look out the window. The snow had ceased and morning had officially arrived, but the sky remained leaden and threatening. She gazed at the drifts so freshly formed, at the evergreens shrouded in white, at the inn's drive and car park, which had disappeared save for the guests' and owners' vehicles looking like so many ice cream boats topped with whipped cream. As the window began to steam up, she wiped it with her sleeve, then suddenly gasped.

“What is it?”

“Snowshoe tracks.”

Rosco followed her glance. “Entering the rear of the inn … no, entering one of the attached outbuildings … walking
in
—not
out.
”

Both craned their necks to see further.

“Unless the person used another exit, we've got ourselves a visitor,” Rosco said.

“Y
OU
mean a visitor in addition to you and our other guests? There's another person here?” Frank Finney stared at Rosco in utter bewilderment. They were removed from the rest of the party, and talking in hushed, tense tones in the service pantry.

“Belle and I examined every view from the second-floor windows. The snowshoe tracks come toward the inn; they don't walk away.”

“But who would come up here during a storm?”

Rosco decided it was time to take Finney into his confidence. “I have reason to suspect that Jaffe may not have died from natural circumstances.”

The inn's host didn't speak for several long minutes. Rosco could see his shoulders droop, and his carefully groomed mustache twitch with an effort at courage and resolution before sagging into nervous dejection. “I can't afford that kind of publicity. It's bad enough if a guest dies under normal conditions …” He looked at Rosco again, his once ruddy cheeks pale and slack, his princely demeanor crushed. “Are you suggesting a murderer found his way up here, and is hiding somewhere among us?”

Rosco didn't supply an answer to the question. There was no need. Instead he said, “Do you know if Jaffe had enemies who wanted to see him dead?”

“You'd have to ask his wife or his friends. I only knew Gene as an affable guest—a once-a-year guest. I gather last night's festivities witnessed some unpleasantness pertaining to a joint business venture. I believe Gene was planning to sell out to the Moon-Bean chain, but that's as much as I know.”

“If someone entered surreptitiously, are there places to hide?”

Finney gave a defeated groan. “In an old building like this—with the barn attached to the house, with the root cellar attached to that? There are places even I haven't fully explored yet.” He shook his head slowly. “This is a nightmare.”

Rosco thought. “Do these particular guests always opt for the same accommodations during their visits?”

“You mean, would an outsider be able to learn which room the Jaffes use?”

Rosco nodded while Finney's brooding silence gave Rosco the information he did—and didn't—want.

“Yes,” Finney finally admitted. “They always take the same room—as the guest register indicates.”

It now seemed logical that the killer had entered one of the attached outbuildings, crept into the residence, found the Jaffes' room, then retreated to his hiding place. How this person had intended to avoid Marcia, Rosco didn't know. Unless the party's first evening at the inn was always an overly bibulous one; and well oiled with wines and cordials, the group was notorious for sleeping through anything.

However, what to do with this theory was unclear. Should Rosco share his concerns with the other guests and risk pandemonium? Say nothing and risk the possibility that the criminal might reappear?

“Is it possible to seal off the outbuildings so that no one can come in or out?”

“There are entrances on each floor—including the cellar.”

“Do the doors have locks?”

“Old-fashioned brass ones.”

“Let's hope they still work.” As a seeming afterthought, Rosco added a cheerful, “By the way, is there any of that terrific Hunter's Pudding left over?”

Finney looked chagrined. “Sorry, no … I finished the last of the crumbs when I was cleaning up last night.”

“But we each have a copy of the recipe, right? I mean, if we wanted to recreate the experience?”

“That's right. I followed it to a tee.”

R
ETURNING
to the parlor, Rosco found the group even edgier and more hostile toward one another, and Sara's placid puzzle solving seemed to only exacerbate the situation. “Look at this,” she said brightly to Belle. “Here's a reference to COSBY at 50-Across … and SACKS—why, that must be Charlotte and Chuck—at 26-Across.”

“Let me see that.” Charlotte barreled across the room, the feathers of her dressing gown flying into her open mouth and sticking to her lips until she was forced to spit them out. “Where's my name?”

“Oh, and here's LAVORO at 48-Down,” was Sara's calm reply.

Charlotte grabbed the crossword. “Where does that so-and-so get off putting
my
name in a puzzle?”

“You
and
your husband, dear.”

“And what's this stuff about COSBY?” Charlotte wheeled on Marcia while throwing the word game to the floor. “Did the Lavoros know in advance what that creep husband of yours was planning to do? Were the four of you aiming to cheat us?”

“Hon …” Chuck Sacks cautioned although he began eying Marcia Jaffe intently.

“Gene thought you'd all be thrilled with his idea!” Marcia finally offered, her voice a wisp. “Your stock value would have been—”

“Tell me another funny story!” Charlotte snorted as she reached down and grabbed Marcia's arm. “Is that why Tad and Stacy canceled out at the last minute …'cause they were waiting for you to drop this bombshell?”

“I don't know why they canceled,” Marcia fought back. “And I don't care, either.”

“Why, look at that,” interrupted Sara at the window. “Snowshoe tracks walking toward the inn. What a perfect winter's scene.”

Belle winced; Rosco winced while the feuding Tylers, Sackses, and the forlorn Marcia Jaffe all hurried to the old lady's side.

“Who made 'em?” Naturally, it was Chuck Sacks who spoke first.

“I would imagine our host or our hostess,” offered Sara, “checking to ascertain potential damage during the—”

“How come they're just walking toward the inn and not around it?” Sacks argued.

“You probably need to ask Mr. or Mrs. Finney.”

But at that moment a collective and frightening insight seemed to dawn. “Someone coming in and not going out …” Bobbi Tyler said in the barest of whispers, then suddenly turned around to face Rosco. “What if Gene was murdered?”

Rosco was ill-prepared for the question, but Belle replied with a reasonable: “Sometimes a violent allergic reaction can present an appearance of asphyxiation—or if, as Mrs. Jaffe suggests, her husband had coronary—”

“Gene was strangled?” Marcia yelped.

“I didn't say that—” Belle began, but Charlotte cut her short with a ghoulish:

“And that ‘someone' is still here …”

“Oh, my God!” Marcia screamed, then flailed her arms, snagging Rosco's shoulder. “Get the police! Get them up here! Get them up here
now
!”

“We tried that already, Marcia,” Frank Finney said as he walked into the room. “Remember? There's been an accident near the bridge.”

“But … but—” was her near-hysterical response while Chuck Sacks barked a sharp:

“Let's calm down, everyone. Let's pull ourselves together … We don't need an outside private eye making a difficult situation worse. Maybe Gene died of an acute allergic reaction as has been suggested … or maybe it was heart failure like Marcia said … but it wasn't homicide, I guarantee you that. And we can't let ourselves get into a lather imagining we've got some crazed killer lurking among us.” He turned his attention to Belle, obviously deciding she was more reasonable than her husband.

“You're the crossword expert, right? So, I take it you figured out the recipe for last night's pudding?”

Belle nodded.

“Well?” Sacks demanded. “Anything unusual in it? I mean any ingredient that might provoke a fatal reaction?”

“I'm not an allergist, Mr. Sacks. I'm a crossword puzzle editor … Offhand, though, I'd say that none of the ingredients seemed life-threatening—unless Mr. Jaffe had developed a sensitivity to nuts; in which case the presence of essence of almonds—”

“Gene wasn't allergic to anything,” Marcia insisted. “Not nuts or anything!”

Belle turned her attention to Frank Finney. “You made the recipe according to Mrs. Lavoro's instructions?”

“Precisely.”

“And there wasn't any additional substance you—?”

“I used only what Mrs. Lavoro called for.” The inn's host had grown defensive and stiff. “It's not in my best interest to make my guests ill, let alone kill them.”

“But if the mixture was left sitting on the kitchen table, someone else could have inserted another ingredient?”

“Obviously, Miss Graham. But in that case, I would imagine we'd all be facing Mr. Jaffe's fate.”

Sara didn't speak although she distinctly recalled her discomfort the previous night. Unconciously she gripped her stomach.

“What about the brandy sauce?” Belle continued.

“Are you suggesting I poisoned a guest, Miss Graham? Because if that's the case—”

“No one's suggesting you did anything,” Rosco interjected while Sara, still at the window, added a pensive: “Those snowshoe tracks look decidedly odd … The weight doesn't appear to be on the toe portion as it should be. It appears to be on the heel. Do you think …?”

The tense band of friends paid no heed to her remarks; instead they began scrutinizing Marcia afresh, recalling in increasingly vivid detail the dead man's convulsed body, the overturned water glass, the wife who claimed she'd been absent when her husband had been stricken.

“Don't look at me like that!” the widow ordered. “None of you know what was going on between Gene and me.”

Belle studied Marcia, then thoughtfully picked up the crossword again. Suddenly her eye caught a message no one had noticed. It ran across the diagonal, left to right, bottom to top. She stared at Gene's wife. “Why would Stacy put this in her puzzle?” Belle pointed to the hidden words.

For a long moment, Marcia's sole response was a frozen, almost vacant stare. Then her immobility turned dervishlike. “It's not fair! She can't even let me alone now! And how am I supposed to feel—with her writing trash like that?” She jabbed at the crossword. “That's all it is—just trash!”

“And Stacy's husband, Tad?”

“What about him?”

“What does he know about this?”

“Who cares what he knows or doesn't? Besides, why do you think those two didn't bother to show?” Marcia all but shouted while Chuck Sacks broke in with an irritable:

“What's going on here?”

But further explanation was curtailed by a harsh mechanical noise coming up the inn's drive.

“A snowplow,” Sara observed. “Followed by a state police car.”

“I didn't kill my husband!” Marcia Jaffe screamed. “I didn't.”

“Then who did?” Rosco asked.

T
HE
police officer's report dealt the group another blow. The vehicle involved in the accident near the covered bridge had been driven by none other than Tad Lavoro—who'd survived, but was in critical condition. At the scene he'd been hallucinatory, ranting incoherently as the fire department raced to extricate him from the mangled car.

“He seemed to be in one heck of a hurry,” the state trooper added. “Never a good idea in this weather—and in the dark.”

He went on to explain that, as a paramedic had worked an IV into the back of Tad's hand, she'd heard what she believed to be a mumbled confession; of Tad suffocating a man who had stolen his wife. A pair of old-fashioned snowshoes had been found on his car's rear seat.

“He must have used the pair I kept in the shed,” the inn's host concluded. “They belonged to my grandfather—”

While Sara interrupted with a decisive: “I
thought
those tracks looked peculiar … Tad must have come to the inn early, before the snow grew heavy. By the time Gene was in bed, the snow had become impassable, so our murderer strapped those contraptions on his feet backwards … thus walking
out
while appearing to walk
toward
the inn … Well, well … Wasn't it Jung who said, ‘The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living …'?”