Dead at Breakfast (11 page)

“Nothing to do with you. I hoped I'd find him.” When Buster didn't say anything, Earl said, apparently addressing the floor, “You found him, ain't you?”

“We have,” said Buster, hoping it was all right to divulge this.

“Don't suppose he's all right?” Earl asked.

“No, he isn't.”

Earl sat down heavily on his cot.

Guests at the inn who had been fingerprinted and questioned were permitted after lunch to leave the building, though they were strongly requested not to leave the village and to be back by sundown. Martin Maynard immediately took off for a twelve-mile run, but most others headed for Just Barb's, or the Bergen Library, where there was wi-fi. This caused a crisis in the press corps, which didn't know whether to follow them and hound them with questions or to stay and await a statement from the police.

Maggie and Hope settled themselves in the corner booth at Barb's, and Sandra brought them coffee and a plate of her mother-in-law's famous ginger cookies. “On the house,” she said. Both women thanked her warmly before sinking back into their computers. Maggie was wading through e-mails from friends and acquaintances who wanted to know what was going on, was she all right, were they all under arrest, and so forth. These were sparsely interleaved with dry notes and queries from the school evaluation
team she was leading in Buffalo in two weeks, god willing. Hope meanwhile was diligently downloading astrological information and pondering the charts of her new friends.

“Here's a note from Jorge,” Maggie reported.

“What's he say?”

“He sounds jealous. He promised to come help if they arrest either of us. Are you finding interesting things in the stars?”

“Oh you have no idea,” said Hope. “It's indecent, really, it's so interesting.”

“Why didn't you ever tell me that you do this?”

“I knew you'd think it was silly.”

“I didn't know I was so intolerant.”

“Oh you're not, you're just a Libra.”

“What does that mean?”

“You believe in what works for you.”

“Doesn't everybody?”

“Yes and no.”

“Thanks.”

“Look,” said Hope, “it's a tool. If you're good at using it, you'll see the point of it. If not, not.”

Maggie was about to answer when something caught her attention. After a pause, she said to Hope, “That young woman talking to Sandra. She's Buster's girlfriend.”

“Buster doesn't have a girlfriend,” said Hope. She angled herself sideways in the booth so she could see the front counter.

“Yeah, he does,” said Maggie. The young woman was plump and strongly built. She had long dark hair caught in a knot at the back of her head, and a tattoo on her neck that disappeared into her collar. She was wearing a pink uniform dress and white sneakers. Sandra noticed them both looking their way, so Maggie gestured with her hand, as if they wanted something, and Hope turned around so as not to stare at the girl.

“You ladies need something else?” Sandra asked cheerfully.

“I'd love more coffee,” said Maggie, “and I have a question. Who is that pretty girl you were talking with?”

“That's Brianna, Buster's girlfriend,” said Sandra.

“I thought so,” said Maggie. “We'd love to meet her, if she isn't in a rush.”

“All rightie, I'll see if she's got a minute.”

“How the hell did you do that,” Hope said as Sandra whisked away. “You couldn't hear what they were saying.”

“Of course not. I'm much deafer than you even think I am. I read lips.”

“Now you're being competitive,” said Hope.

“Yes, I probably am. Sorry.”

“I forgive you because I know from your chart you can't help it.”

The Oquossoc cocktail hour came early that evening. Taking a leaf from the airlines' playbook for what to do when enraged passengers have been stranded on a runway for entirely too long, Gabe decided to open the bar and declare all spirits and the house wine were on him. Teddy Bledsoe announced that in that case, he would donate his talents as mixologist. Maggie and Hope were sampling his Negronis and enjoying the last of the evening sun on the glassed-in porch, where Maggie had made surprising progress with the frame of her puzzle, when Hope said, “Hello? What's this?”

A sleek silver Mercedes drove into the parking lot, led and followed by state trooper cruisers. Maggie turned to see what Hope was seeing.

“That's the Kleinkramers' car,” said Hope.

They watched as the press crew woke up, turned in a pack, and began running toward the cars, like hounds on a treed fox. To no avail, though. The Kleinkramers emerged from their car, and flanked by four troopers, they were whisked into the building by a
side door, leaving the press corps baying and more or less flinging themselves against the closed door in frustration.

Maggie looked at Hope, who said, “You are going to owe me such a lunch.”

“I think we better see what's going on.” They abandoned their cocktails and joined the other guests in the lounge. Even Glory and Lisa were downstairs. All watched as Homer and Margaux were escorted to the elevator. When the doors closed behind them, the room started to buzz.

One of the troopers let slip to Bonnie McCue, who had plied him with cookies, that the license numbers of all the guests were on a watch list, which had seemed to the state police like overkill until this couple were stopped trying to cross the border into Quebec. Several minutes later they saw Buster beetling into the inn and up the stairs.

“That does it,” said Hope. “We're not leaving this room until Buster comes back. We're going to make him tell us everything.”

It took an hour. Around them, the room hummed with speculation and gossip. Lisa began to cry, and Glory and Bonnie surrounded her, and after a while she consented to a Bloody Mary and a dish of Cajun pecans, and looked as if she felt better. Gabe had brought her the Polo Lounge phone and left it permanently at her table as she talked with her children, her lawyer, her step-daughter's PR rep, and her children again. When the phone rang, Glory answered, screening calls to protect her sister from the press and from Artemis's manager, who wanted to plan a double funeral and needed to know when Alexander's body would be released.

Buster came down the stairs at about seven and was mentally halfway home to bed, when he saw his mother beckoning. He paused and exchanged a look with the uniformed officer who was now sta
tioned at the front door. Then he turned back and went to stand, hat in hand, before his mother and Mrs. Detweiler.

“I have to go,” he said. “I've been up since two this morning.”

“You mean you haven't even had a nap?”

“Mom—I'm working. What is it you wanted?”

“Let's go back to the puzzle,” said Maggie.

Buster followed them, feeling once again that he was being called to the principal's office. He was so tired he felt drunk.

The remains of their cocktails were still there, watered down and sweating on their coasters.

“Here, have a Negroni,” said Hope.

“I'm driving,” said Buster, wondering why he wasn't in his car at this minute.

“Oh take it, you'll feel better,” said his mother. He took her glass and polished it off.

“Now. What happened with the Kleinkramers?”

“I can't tell you.”

“Of course you can.”

“We won't tell anyone else,” said Maggie.

“We have a big bet riding on it,” said Hope, as if this trumped all.

And Buster thought he was going to weep if he didn't get home and get some sleep, so he told them.

In Berkeley, California, in 1970, a college student named Melanie Gray was murdered in her off-campus apartment. The killing appeared to be part of a ritual of some kind. The face and hands had been marked with red paint, and candles burned down to stubs encircled the corpse. The body was almost completely desanguinated owing to a slash wound in the throat so deep her head was nearly off. Hope was impressed that Buster had said “desanguinated” and even pronounced it right.

“I remember that case,” Maggie said. “I was in college in the East but I had friends at Berkeley.”

“I remember too,” said Hope. “There were footprints in the blood . . . ?”

“Two footprints in the blood, and the murder weapon was never found. Nothing had been stolen. The assumption was that she knew her killer, or killers, and may even have participated willingly. Am I remembering this right?” Maggie asked.

“There was some theory about bad LSD, and a boyfriend . . . no, wait, it was peyote buttons and the boyfriend was an anthropologist. Very involved with Stone Age religious rites.”

“No one was ever charged.”

“Yes, the boyfriend was charged and so was Melanie's roommate, but they were never tried.”

“Buster?”

Buster was drumming his fingers on the table to keep himself awake.

“What was the roommate's name?” Hope asked.

Maggie offered, “Eileen Bachman? Bookman? Beekman?”

“Bachman,” said Buster.

“And when they ran all our prints, they hit a match with Eileen,” said Hope.

“Margaux Kleinkramer,” said Maggie.

“Can I go now?”

“Drive carefully. Thank you, honeybunch.”

Buster was so annoyed at being addressed as honeybunch while he was in uniform, that he forgot he was stepping outside into a swarm of news bugs, god they were like deerflies or chiggers or something, buzzing and biting. Carnivorous insects, there was a concept.

Hope and Maggie told no one what they had learned, but there was small chance that the press corps would fail to worm it out of
someone, and indeed, by the end of dinner, the news was on the airwaves.

Eileen Bachman, one-time suspect in the still-unsolved Berkeley murder that the press at the time had called the Druid Slaying, was staying at the Oquossoc Mountain Inn under an assumed name at the time that Artemis's father was killed there. Local police were not yet saying that Antippas's death was suspicious, but the press wasn't in a mood to split hairs about that.
Esquire
magazine had published a long feature on the Berkeley murder at the time, with pictures of Melanie Gray, her then boyfriend, her grieving parents, her roommate Eileen, and the murder scene. Fifteen years after the murder,
Vanity Fair
had revived the whole story when it was learned that the other suspect, the victim's boyfriend, had killed himself. Both articles, with pictures, were getting substantial play again in online news and gossip sites and spilling onto the TV news, in spite of the fact that no one had suggested that Margaux had motive or opportunity or was in any way involved in what happened to Alexander Antippas.

The Kleinkramers had kept to their room and dinner had been sent up to them, but around nine o'clock, the elevator doors opened and there they were. Margaux was carefully made up, and Homer was composed and wearing a cheerful smile.

In the lounge, all heads had turned; all eyes were on them. A preview of what Margaux would face everywhere she went for the rest of her life.

“Hello, everybody,” said Margaux brightly. She scanned the room, hesitated a moment, then headed for Hope and Maggie's table by the window where they were playing honeymoon bridge.

“May we join you?”

“By all means,” said Hope. “What are you drinking?” One of the waiters from the dining room had zipped to their sides as the Kleinkramers settled themselves.

“Gin martini with a twist,” said Homer.

“I believe I'll have sparkling water with a dash of bitters,” said Margaux. Maggie saw that she was already stoned to the gills. Pills? Marijuana? Whatever it was, it was getting the job done. Her eyes were glassy and she exuded a beatific calm.

“Canasta?” said Hope.

“Lovely,” said the Kleinkramers.

Buster was asleep with his boots on when Brianna got home from her shift at the nursing home. He was facedown on their bed in the tiny bedroom with the lights on. She knew that if he was wakened suddenly he might come up fighting or dive for his gun, so she rattled around in the kitchen, put the kettle on, and then washed the dishes left in the sink while she waited for the water to boil.

Buster wandered out of the bedroom, looking dazed. Half of his hair was standing straight up.

“Hey, sweet thing,” said Brianna. She went into the bedroom, took off her pink uniform, and came back out in the fancy terry cloth robe Hope had sent to Buster for Christmas the year before. As if he ever put on anything after his shower besides his boxers and a wife beater. The kettle whistled.

“Want some tea?”

Buster shook his head. He was still coming back from whatever dream he'd been in.

“Did you have any dinner?”

Buster shook his head again. “I was going to heat a can of chili, but I never got to it.”

Brianna took a frozen pizza out of their tiny freezer and popped it into the toaster oven. This was pretty much the sum of her culinary repertoire, but it was fine with Buster. He loved pizza.

“Sandra down at Barb's told me what happened at the inn last night.”

“How'd she know about it?”

Brianna gave him a look that meant, is that a serious question? “So how's it going?”

Buster sighed. He looked at the telephone, and saw that the answering machine was blinking. He must have missed some calls when he was sleeping.

“The vic was a huge fat guy, bigger than Shep Gordon. Pretty badly burnt. You know when you leave hot dogs on the grill too long and the skin starts to—”

“Yes,” said Brianna, cutting him off.

“Not a pretty sight.” Involuntarily he recalled the face with the lips burned away and the teeth grinning.

“So the fire killed him? Was it arson?”

“I guess Sandra didn't hear about what we found stuck on the guy's back.” He told her, and she screamed. Brianna had seen a lot and she was hard to shock, but she really hated snakes. He started to tell her about the particular traits of the timber rattler, but she said, “Buster, stop.” He did, or switched tracks.