Death at King Arthur's Court (15 page)

‘Can you help us, Mrs Wentworth? Garth has just stormed out of the house carrying the .45 pistol that he brought back from the army.'

‘Where's he going?'

‘The last thing he said to me was, “I'm going to blow that Hemingway poseur to hell.” I took that to mean that he intends to shoot Ernest Harnell—several times.'

‘Tell me exactly what happened, Leslie.'

‘Less than half an hour ago the dean of students telephoned. Garth said that it began as a perfectly ordinary conversation, but it soon became obvious that the dean was fishing for information. As the conversation continued, the dean's remarks shifted toward behavioral standards for the new department head. Then the comments began to get more pointed and personal. Garth finally asked where it was all leading and was told that an anonymous source had accused him of pedophilia.'

Bea covered the phone's mouthpiece and mouthed, ‘Oh, my God.' When she resumed the conversation, she forced her voice into an optimistic lilt. ‘The accusation may not be as serious as you think, Leslie. The school is not going to take any action based on undocumented accusations. The days of witch hunts are over.' She covered the mouthpiece again. ‘Maybe,' she mumbled to Lyon.

‘Those of us in the gay community know that the gay bashers are still active.'

‘If the dean didn't identify the accuser, why does Garth want to kill Ernest?'

‘Who else could it be? I watched him load the gun and saw the look on his face. There's not the slightest doubt that he's serious about this,' Leslie said. ‘I thought you seemed sympathetic, and since you and your husband know them both and are connected to the university, perhaps something discreet could be done.'

‘We'll do what we can,' Bea said. She ended the conversation and impatiently punched in a phone number. The police dispatcher told her that Rocco was out on a prolonged domestic-violence call, but that Jamie Martin was available. Bea rang off. ‘Rocco's off on a call. We don't want Jamie on this, do we?' she asked Lyon.

‘I think not.'

‘Then what? If we call the state police, Norbie will probably unleash a SWAT team.'

‘We get dressed and do it,' Lyon said as they hurried into the house.

Ernest Harnell lived in an eighteenth-century merchant's house that squatted directly at the sidewalk on the edge of the Murphysville town green. Similar to a dozen other homes in the neighborhood, on the corner of the second story was a historical plaque designating the original owner and date of construction. The gleaming white facade with black trim was broken by long leaded windows and a wide front door dominated by a large brass knocker. Lyon raised the lion-head hammer and let it fall three times in rapid succession.

The door was opened by a short woman with a no-nonsense scowl designed to discourage casual callers. She squinted at them a moment until recognition dredged up a wispy smile. ‘Why, hello, Beatrice. So nice to see you. Do come in.' She swooped open the door and beckoned them inside.

‘Your home is beautiful as always,' Bea said to Ernest's sister as she glanced into the immaculate front parlor filled with museum-quality early American antiques. ‘Are you going to open the house for the Garden Club tour this year?'

‘Oh, yes. I always do, no matter how much Ernest objects. I don't pay a bit of attention to his carrying on. When it's house-tour time, I make him go down to Key West to play Hemingway for a week.'

‘Can we see him right away?' Lyon said. ‘It's rather important.'

The diminutive woman sighed. ‘Everything is always urgent when it comes to Ernest. He's in the extension cleaning his guns again.' They followed her down the wide main hall that bisected the original structure. It turned into a narrow corridor when it entered the new wing at the rear of the building. The door to a large sitting room was open. Heavy leather furnishings were surrounded by gun cabinets and mounted animal heads. The decor was of a Teddy Roosevelt rather than early New England era.

Ernest sat Indian fashion on a wide leather ottoman in front of the largest cabinet. He was carefully polishing the intricately carved stock of a large-caliber rifle with a soft cloth. He looked up as they entered, worked the bolt and thumbed off the safety. He aimed the rifle at Lyon.

‘Elephant gun,' he said as he squeezed the trigger. The firing pin clicked against an empty chamber. ‘This baby will bring down the biggest they grow.'

‘Don't you ever point a rifle at me again,' Lyon said in a voice tinged with anger. The last time Bea recalled that tone was the night he lectured the zoning commission after their approval of the neighboring condominium.

‘Hell and damnation, Mr W, it's not loaded.'

‘All weapons are always loaded,' Lyon snapped.

‘We'd like you to check into a hotel in Hartford for several days,' Bea said.

Ernest smirked. ‘That's a terrific idea, Bea.'

‘Don't be snide,' Bea said. ‘Garth is on his way over here to kill you. I believe you know the reason why.'

Ernest laughed. ‘I am truly frightened. I'm sitting here with an elephant gun on my lap. There's probably a thousand rounds of ammunition within arm's reach, and I'm supposed to cower because Garthy Poo is on his way over to slap me with a wet noodle?'

‘Actually, the weapon of the day is a .45 caliber automatic,' Lyon said.

‘I know, the only handgun he owns. It hasn't been fired in twenty years and the ammunition is probably rusted in the barrel.' He slapped the stock of the rifle on his lap. ‘Not like my baby here. This sucker is loaded for bear and primed for elephants.'

‘You can't hunt those anymore, Ernest,' Lyon said. ‘There's an embargo on ivory. In Kenya they shoot people they find poaching.'

Ernest went to the room's largest gun cabinet next to a bookcase filled with a collection of Hemingway first editions. He opened a long drawer at its base that was filled with cartons of ammunition. He grabbed a handful of shells and crammed several into the rifle's magazine. ‘I have African friends who can get around those technicalities.'

‘You mount another trophy in here and I am going to be ill,' Bea said.

‘Man is a predatory beast destined to hunt wild creatures,' Ernest said. ‘God, I miss the green hills of Africa.'

‘You're going to miss the rest of your life if you don't leave until Garth calms down,' Lyon said.

‘Garth has no intention of calming down,' a voice said from the doorway. Garth slowly entered the room with a large automatic extended in front of him. He activated the slide to chamber a round with a clack that sounded louder than it actually was. He pointed the handgun directly at Ernest's forehead. ‘It's death in the afternoon, Bwana.'

Ernest faced his adversary with the rifle at his waist and his finger on the trigger. ‘I'm loaded for big game, Tinkerbell.'

‘You sniveling son-of-a-bitch!' Garth snapped. ‘Why in the hell did you tell the dean that I was involved with children!'

‘I happen to know that you were arrested in Mississippi on a sex offense,' Ernest said.

‘How the hell did you know that? Morgan was the only person in this state who had that information.'

‘I have my sources.'

‘All right, so I was. They charged me with lewd behavior, but it should have been stupidity. I was in a bar in Biloxi, Mississippi, which was mistake one. I made a date with a crew-cut guy, which was stupid mistake two. He turned out to be a deputy. At least he was thirty-eight years old, for Christ's sake! What I did wasn't nearly as criminal as your deal with what's her name? Darlene, wasn't it?'

‘That girl had a woman's full equipment,' Ernest said proudly.

‘Except that it was sixteen-year-old equipment. Morgan had one hell of a time getting you out of that one.'

‘It was a natural mistake. I picked her up in a dimly lit bar where she wasn't legally supposed to be.'

‘You should have known she was underage by the Barbie doll she was carrying.'

‘She lied to me.'

In an unspoken agreement, Lyon moved clockwise and Bea counterclockwise around the perimeter of the room. They had selected their objectives without words. Lyon would disarm Ernest while Bea went for Garth's pistol. The two antagonists seemed unaware of the Wentworths' movement.

‘You two are being very childish,' Bea said.

‘Stay out of the line of fire,' Ernest replied. ‘Tinkerbell is going to Never Never Land.'

‘Good God, Ernest! Can't you be more original than that?' Garth snorted.

‘I'll polish my eulogy for you.'

When they were in position a few feet on either side of the two men with the weapons, Lyon nodded at Bea, who acknowledged the signal.

They stepped toward their targets. Bea grabbed Garth's wrist with both hands and pushed his arm toward the ceiling. Lyon deflected the stock of Ernest's rifle toward the floor as he wrenched it from the other man's grasp.

Lyon slung the rifle over his shoulder and went to help Bea take the pistol from Garth. It occurred to him that possibly they had allowed themselves to be disarmed as a solution to the impasse.

‘I am astonished at you two,' Bea said. ‘Is that pistol registered, Garth?'

‘It's a war souvenir.'

‘It still has to be licensed. Both of you are guilty of assault, but of course you know that. You are also guilty of weapons charges. If you were arrested on either charge it would end the question of who chairs what very quickly.'

‘You both knew about the charges against each other,' Lyon said. ‘How come? Which one of you has Morgan's stolen file?'

They shook their heads in denial.

‘Morgan was at Xanadu for dinner around the first of the year,' Garth said. ‘He began to laugh about Ernest's claim to be the great white hunter, since his eyesight was so bad. He chortled and said a man who couldn't spot an underage girl was going to have difficulty in the bush. That's when he told us about the Darlene incident.'

Ernest looked stunned. ‘My sister and I had him over for dinner last winter. When he started to talk about the Biloxi incident, I thought it was too much wine …'

‘Too much sadism,' Bea said. ‘It all sounds pretty calculated to me.'

‘If he wasn't already dead …' Garth started to say.

‘We could do it together,' Ernest finished.

Lyon and Bea looked at each other with a glance that wondered if perhaps there was more truth to Ernest's facetious remark than intended. It might be possible that these arch enemies were far more cooperative than previously believed.

Rina Dickensen's Exercise Place was an isolated brick building located on Route 154 near its intersection with Hilltop Road. Lyon pulled into the wide parking lot and parked behind Rina's van. He sipped the last of lukewarm coffee in its Styrofoam container. It was nearly ten a.m. and the health club's answering service had told him that Rina would have free time after her nine o'clock class.

Rina and Skee had refurbished the building, which had a varied history before their occupancy. It had originally been a movie theater with an adjacent ice-cream parlor. For two decades it had been a popular dating place for the young, but had closed after the mall opened a multiplex cinema with six movie screens. A dinner theater replaced the movie theatre. Poor talent and worse food quickly forced bankruptcy. The next owners, who seemed to have murky Providence mob connections, opened a topless nightclub with overly ambitious barmaids. It took Rocco's constant patrols and Bea's intervention with the state liquor commission nearly nine months to hound them out of existence. The building had been vacant for nearly two years until leased by Rina and remodeled into her Exercise Place, with an adjoining health-food store.

Lyon wondered if there was a parable of our times in the building's history.

The Exercise Place layout channeled customers through the health food in order to reach the workout rooms and gym area in the rear.

Lyon walked down an aisle surrounded by shelves of beta carotene and antioxidants. Massive exercise equipment loomed at the rear of the store. Every item seemed to critique his sedentary lifestyle. Their diet at Nutmeg Hill had a high protein concentration, with liberal servings of breads, pastas and sauces. His work at the computer screen kept him nearly motionless for hours. This combination probably foretold massive health problems lurking around some distant corner.
Well, at least I don't smoke
, he thought.

Music overwhelmed him the instant he pushed through the double doors into the club's reception area. Speakers mounted on either side of the observation window that overlooked the aerobic exercise area blared a loud rendition of Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. The crescendo accompanied by cannon fire meant that Moscow had been captured, but the Russians were counterattacking. He stood at the window watching a dozen bodies attempting to sync with the rather bizarre exercise music. Rina, in a tight black leotard, led the exercises from a low platform.

The women's violent thrashing increased as the music swelled to a climax. Clenched hands and strained faces indicated maximum exertion. Rina's face was impassive as she reached out to exhort the others to increased effort. The pace of their movements increased as the music reached its final notes.

Many of the participants sank to the floor in exhaustion when the music faded, while others bent over to grasp their knees and gasp for breath. Rina left the platform and immediately went through a door at the rear.

The women slowly recovered and began to file silently through the reception area toward the dressing rooms. Some glared at him with suspicion, while others seemed disinterested to the point of disorientation.

On the far side of the workout room was a hallway which led to the rear area that had swallowed Rina. He walked down the hall to a door marked
office
. He heard a shower running as he knocked.