The Marsh Madness (14 page)

“Maybe. But there’s no sign that Kauffman had any. We’ve pretty much ruled inheritance out as a motive. We’re sticking to our main theory: You and your uncle, who, unlike Vera, do have a history of criminal behavior—”

“Your theory is wrong.”

“We’re closing in. Everyone else we’ve had any reason
to think about has an airtight alibi, from the housekeeper and her family to the staff at that country club. But you were there. The evidence connects you, and it sure looks like the murder was planned and premeditated. It’s only a matter of time until the noose tightens, as they say.”

I rubbed my neck. We no longer execute people by hanging in this country, and no one has been executed in New York State since the sixties, but it was still a very scary moment. “What evidence do you think you have?”

Castellano shot me one of her incandescent smiles. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

Sammy arrived while they were still mucking around outside. Then we got “no comment,” all right. Castellano was furious, but Sammy pointed out she’d better charge me or let me go about my business. I wasn’t crazy about him playing chicken with her again.

She signaled to Smiley, gave me a poisonous look and headed back into the house.

I wasn’t entirely sure why they let me go back inside, but they did. I noticed she didn’t wipe her boots as she entered the back hallway. This sent the signora into a fit of mopping.
No more coffee and cookies for you,
Lootenent
, I thought. But the visit wasn’t a good thing. Castellano demanded to see Vera. Vera didn’t have a lawyer yet.

Vera was in the library, the signora finally admitted, looking Italianate daggers at Castellano. I wondered how the detective would ward off that evil eye.

“You stay here,” the lieutenant said to me.

“But—”

“‘But’ all you want. Stay here.”

Sammy stepped forward. She shot him a glance. “Do you represent them both, Counselor?”

“No.”

“Then you can stay here too.”

Smiley looked pale as he followed Castellano’s clicking heels along the endless corridor to the study. He was lugging
two boxes, taped with evidence tape. “VAN ALST” was written in black marker. Stoddard stood inside, lazily observing us. I barely stopped myself from asking him to help the signora clean up after his colleague, if he had nothing to do but lounge around. But she’d already done the mopping.

My iPhone pinged. A text from Tiff.

Haven’t seen the sun since we left Aruba. I am the only nurse, and I’m pretty sure we are about to have a norovirus outbreak. :( Ship satellite keeps going out. I think I’ve made a huge mistake. :( :( :(

Here I was imagining Tiff enjoying herself on the high seas, but it was more like
Clutch of Constables
, only with less murder and even more irritated Americans than Ngaio Marsh had included. I think Tiff and I were both wishing she was back in Harrison Falls right now.

Five minutes later, Smiley returned, still carrying the two boxes. Vera wheeled after him, her face contorted. “Spitting mad” came to mind.

“Miss Bingham,” she said when he’d left. “That young man took my Marsh books. Every single one of them. I think you’re right about that lawyer. Let me know when you get him lined up.”

I stood outside and watched while Castellano and Stoddard left, Stoddard at the wheel of a black Chevy Tahoe. Smiley brought up the rear in his clearly marked cruiser, following the other officers in theirs.

Our regular guy stayed behind, to keep an eye, I guess.

When I came back in, Vera had rolled off in a rage. I didn’t blame her.

Would they be back to sift through every molecule of our possessions again or arrest us?

I asked Sammy, “What will they do with the books?”

“Forensics will check them for . . . evidence.”

“Why did they wait until now to collect them?”

“Who knows? Maybe they have a plan to rattle you one by one.”

“This has definitely rattled Vera. But what should we do?”

“You have to wait and see what they come up with. Don’t go running off.”

“That would never have occurred to me,” I fibbed.

“You didn’t make any statements about the stuff they found? Did you stick to ‘no comment’?”

“I may have said a few things. This stuff was obviously planted. It was in such a stupid place. No self-respecting thief would leave it there. I’m sure they would sell or melt it down, not leave it under a bush.”

Sammy huffed. “Tell me you didn’t say ‘melt it down.’”

“I didn’t.”

He said, “I should have been here. You call me the first sight of them the next time. ‘No comment.’ That’s what you say. It’s easy. And that way you don’t say something you can’t unsay. It’s too late for this time, but remember from now on, because they’ll be trying to trip you up.”

I hated the idea of “next time” and “after this.” “I did call you as soon as they said they found something.”

“You call me when they get here or when you know they’re coming.”

“Lesson learned, but we knew the police were getting warrants. Why would any one of us leave that stuff there? How could they believe that?”

“I deal with stupid criminals all the time, Jordan. You’re not stupid and you’re not a criminal, so I know you wouldn’t. But they will have seen stranger and more self-incriminating things. Trust me.”

“But if they have so much evidence and they’re convinced we’re guilty, why haven’t they arrested any of us?”

“They probably like Kevin for it. They’ve got his prints on the weapon. They’re waiting until one of you can’t take it anymore and makes contact with him, in person or on the
phone. That’s probably why you’re at home instead of in an interrogation room. They always have a reason.”

“We have no idea where he is. Or why.”

“Keep it that way.”

I snorted. “We don’t have much choice. Kev’s in the wind.”

“They’ll be hunting for him everywhere.”

“Someone is aware of that, Sammy. Someone who knows us and knows about us is behind it.”

“You have to forget about that. Concentrate on living normally.”

“Are you serious?”

“Eat your meals. Go about your daily tasks.”

“We’re worried.”

“So be worried. I don’t blame you. But keep your mouth shut and steer clear of Kevin.”

“You think they’ll have our phones under surveillance?”

“Is the grass green?”

“But what can I do? I can try to find out more about Chadwick or—”

“You”—Sammy poked my arms with his stubby finger—“do nothing. I’m the one who has to look into this guy Chadwick.”

“And are you looking into him?”

“For sure. What? You think I’m at the track all day?”

That hadn’t occurred to me until that very moment. “Have you found anything?”

Sammy’s information confirmed Castellano’s. “No girlfriends that anyone knows about. No close friends. No relatives. Nobody that anyone knows of.”

“But the people at the spa really liked him.”

“Employees. Yup. They were paid to like him, and I hear they all got along fine.”

“I believe that, um, I heard somewhere that his assistant, Lisa Hatton, had a crush on him.”

“Yes. We learned that too. She had it bad according to some of the other staff.”

“And he—?”

“Was kind to her, from what I heard. He needed her to keep things running.”

“Poor Lisa. You have to admit she’d make a great suspect.”

“For sure. Too bad she didn’t do it.”

I squeaked, “How do you know that?”

“She was representing the Country Club and Spa at the Community Service Awards Luncheon.

“She wasn’t at Summerlea, but that doesn’t mean she wasn’t involved in some way.”

Sammy squinted at me. “Let it be. You have to stay here, looking like everything’s normal. Remember? No chasing around trying to find out who’s setting you up. No looking into Lisa Hatton.”

“No comment.”

*   *   *

AS PART OF the pretense of being normal, Vera and I ate a distracted dinner in the dining room. Vera could barely manage a grunt. I wondered if she’d ever get over what she called “the theft of my books.” The signora was feeling the stress too. The muddy floor was probably part of it. She forgot to bring Parmesan cheese for the pasta and was really rattled when I offered to get it.

“Let things be,” Vera growled, the only words she spoke all through dinner.

That should have prepared me for the discovery that the signora had forgotten to make the tiramisu.

Things went from bad to worse. Good Cat and Bad Cat prowled, both restless and unpredictable. Bad Cat managed to nick one of my knees. And I may have even heard a muffled ouch from Vera.

Walter was the only cheerful one of the bunch. Unlike us, he wasn’t waiting for the police to show up and arrest Vera and me. He was waiting for tidbits to fall in his vicinity.

In the meantime, in case we weren’t planning to stay
home and forget about everything, Castellano hadn’t taken any chances.

There was a fresh new officer in a parked cruiser outside the front of Van Alst House. They’d stopped trying to fool us with unmarked police vehicles. I didn’t know this guy, and as I’d spent altogether too much time with the police, I wasn’t crazy about getting to know him, but I was pressed into service. The signora—once she decided that he was only a victim of circumstance—had sent me on several forays with thermoses of very good coffee, buckets of almond cookies and, on my last errand, a large and very smelly sandwich of Genoa salami and Asiago cheese on ciabatta. I knew she’d be wringing her hands and dancing her little dance while she waited for me at the back door. She seemed to have a mandate to feed the world.

I didn’t need to distract the police, but it seemed like a good idea to keep on this guy’s good side. It took a while to wear down his initial truculence—we were under surveillance, after all—but he mellowed as the evening wore on. I kind of felt sorry for him. We’d invited him to wait inside a couple of times. I suggested he’d have a better chance of making sure we didn’t leg it. But apparently protocol meant he had to freeze in his vehicle, even though nothing really prevented me from skulking out the back door, then dashing through the trees and over the fields. In the resulting confusion, Vera and the signora could have vanished in the Cadillac.

I paced around, restless. My special place still bore the signs of the invasion of the snoopy police. It took quite a while to get it back to normal, as much as anything could be normal. I decided I’d have to wash my police-tossed unmentionables and made a trip down to the first-floor utility area with my laundry basket. On my return I plunked on the love seat and put my feet on the Lucite table. I picked up and put down three separate Ngaio Marsh books. I couldn’t concentrate on any of them, no matter how many rambling and remote estates the author dangled in front of me. At the moment, our own circumstances were every bit as mysterious.

Inspector Alleyn wasn’t one to make lengthy notes about cases or even write that much down. He had Sergeant Fox for that. But I was on my own and Foxless. Notes always work for me. I found a sheet of paper and a pen and started to work things out, beginning with the heading. Paper and pen can help me think. I scrawled thoughts, words and ideas randomly on the page, making a “mind map.” In the end, sorting it all out, pulling things together, I ended up with this.

THE CRIME: What do we know?

First I wrote:
Setup—elaborate!

Under that:
Targeted

Knew Chadwick

Knew Summerlea

There was so much that bothered me. The setup. The whole charade of the luncheon. The food, the place settings, the invitation itself. It had all been so very intricate, so perfectly staged. Elaborate also meant
premeditated.
The scam had been premeditated. Had the murder been premeditated as well? Was it intended all along that Chadwick be killed and that we would take the fall for it? Or had he turned up at the wrong time, in the middle of the scam, and been killed?

That led me to my next observation:

Targeted

Knew about Vera’s collection

Risky

We had definitely been identified and targeted. It would have taken time, planning and energy to reel Vera in to buy the Ngaio Marsh books. Whoever did it knew about Vera and her collection. And to what advantage? As Uncle Mick had pointed out, there were valuable paintings, silver and other goodies. Why go to the trouble to sell us the books, even if
there had been a transfer of ten thousand dollars? That wasn’t such a huge amount of money. Why not just simply clean out Summerlea, fence what was taken and be gone, without anyone seeing your face? That would have had a higher rate of return, with far less risk of being identified. Unless the purpose was really to kill Chadwick and frame us.

Naturally, I wrote:

Why us?

Certainly Vera was still the most hated woman in Harrison Falls and surrounding communities. No news there. But were lingering resentments against the lone survivor of the haughty Van Alsts and the daughter of the man who closed the Van Alst factory and brought the town to its knees enough to do something like this? I imagined Uncle Lucky saying, “Why not run her over?”

Why not indeed?

Was the motivation jealousy? Vera still had the home, the books, the antiques and her staff, a life of comfort and privilege. In this era of
Keeping Up with the Kardashians
, who kills a frumpy old lady because she has lots of old stuff?

It lacked something.

I turned my mind to the next question.

Why Chadwick?

There was no doubt in my mind that the perpetrators were familiar with Chadwick and Summerlea. They’d needed the code for that impressive security system. I was pretty sure the back and side doors and the windows would all have been alarmed. The housekeeper had noted that system wasn’t set. The police hadn’t mentioned a break-in, so it was likely our friends also had a key. If they had a key and the code, did they also have a motive for murder?

Finally, I wrote:
Who were they?

Even with the photo of “Lisa,” what were the chances that Vera, Kev or I would find a way to identify the other people at Summerlea? Still, with all those nosy neighbors, maybe one of them had seen our fake Chadwick and his team. They had taken a chance. But why?