The Readaholics and the Gothic Gala (26 page)

He made an inarticulate strangling sound and tried to slide the briefcase behind his legs. “This is my private property. You have no right to look in it. I demand to be allowed to call my lawyer immediately.” His voice was squeakier than usual.

I managed not to give a celebratory fist pump, convinced by his reaction that I was right. Thank goodness!

“We'll see about your phone call and a warrant when we get you to the station,” Hart said from over my shoulder. I looked around, and he met my eye, giving me the slightest hint of a congratulatory wink.

“I may have to put you on the payroll as an honorary deputy,” he whispered while Officer Hardaway led Cosmo toward the patrol car and stuffed him into the back.

“Ooh, would I get a badge?” I asked.

“Not a chance.”

His smile was as good as a kiss—okay, almost—and I looked after him with a goofy grin as he strode to the Tahoe and got in, giving a brief toot of the horn as he took off after the patrol car. When he was out of sight, I took a deep breath and joined Kerry where she was being harangued by the irate pilot and the landowner.

M
onday night the Readaholics gathered as planned at Brooke's place to watch the 1940 Alfred Hitchcock version of
Rebecca
. Brooke and Troy had recently converted one room of their spacious basement into a theater room, complete with raked seating (deep leather chairs with cup holders), a huge screen, and surround sound. The soundproofed walls were decorated with murals of scenes from famous movies done in gray tones. A popcorn machine in the back of the room let out a buttery aroma, and the wet bar was convenient for drinks. Holding a Diet Pepsi, I settled into a comfy chair between Maud and Lola.

“This is better than going to the movies,” Kerry announced from the row behind me.

Brooke seemed semi-embarrassed by the luxury of it. “Troy's been wanting a theater room for ages,” she said, seating herself next to Kerry. “I don't know why when he's not that into movies. He likes playing his video games in here, though.” She pushed a button on her remote to dim the lights, and the opening sequence filled the screen. We watched mostly in silence as Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine worked their magic.

After the scene where Mrs. Danvers tries to trick the
nameless heroine into committing suicide, Brooke declared it was time for a potty break and brought the lights up. Brooke and Kerry left, but Lola and Maud remained. Lola shifted in her wide chair to face me, bringing one leg up so it rested on the chair's broad arm. Behind her glasses, her brown eyes betrayed a hint of anxiety. “Mabel Appleman told my gran that the police arrested Cosmo Zeller for the murder. Is it true?”

I nodded. “Yep. Hart stopped by last night and filled me in.” I felt my face warm as I dwelled on what had followed our conversation. “He said Cosmo crumbled as soon as they were able to search his briefcase and found the manuscript, still wrapped in plastic and with duct tape stuck to it. He tried to put all the blame on Francesca, but Hart says they don't have any concrete evidence against her, so there won't be any charges, even though she might have put Cosmo up to it, one way or another.”

“It was a conspiracy,” Maud said darkly from my other side. She leaned forward to see past me to Lola. “They were both in on it.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” I said. “The police found the costume Cosmo wore to the party—it was in the B and B's Dumpster—and examined it. It tested positive for blood and Hart's convinced it will turn out to be Van Allen's. When he confronted Cosmo with that info, he tried to say it was an accident, that he'd gone to reason with Van Allen in Francesca's place about the blackmail, and Van Allen attacked him. He happened to be holding Lola's stake, which he'd picked up, planning to turn it in to the Club's lost and found—”

“Yeah, right,” Maud said, rolling her eyes.

“—and he killed Van Allen in self-defense.”

Lola's expression turned somber. “So that poor man might still be alive if I hadn't brought that stake to the party.”

I put a hand on her arm. “I don't think so, Lo. The police also found a gun in Cosmo's luggage, and traces of some sort of cleaning oil from the gun in the pocket of his costume. He had the gun with him Saturday night, which Hart says speaks to premeditation. He was planning to kill Van Allen one way or another. He also tried to kill Cletis Perry by running him down, after Francesca showed him the manuscript she bought at the auction, the one that said ‘by Frank Bugg' on it, the copy Van Allen slipped onto the selling table to up the pressure on her to pay up. Cosmo saw Cletis as a potential threat, and tried to silence him. Luckily, he missed. The dent and Cletis's blood on his rental car may help convict him of attempted murder, though, or at least aggravated assault, Hart says. He was clearly willing to use any weapon that came to hand—guns, cars, metal stakes. Probably any handy blunt object would have done, as well—golf trophies, whatever.” I desperately wanted to alleviate Lola's sense of guilt.

Lola was silent for a moment, and then her lips curved into a small smile. “I guess that makes me feel a little bit better. You better believe that the next time I'm invited to a costume party, though, I'm going as Baymax from
Big Hero Six
or Casper the Friendly Ghost—something soft and cuddly. Definitely no weapons!”

We laughed as Kerry and Brooke returned. “What's so funny?” Kerry asked.

“That photo of you in the paper this morning,” Maud said with a malicious grin. “Going nose to nose with the airstrip guy, Brummel, and giving him that line about ‘I'm the mayor.'”

Looking slightly self-conscious, Kerry said, “Well, he was talking all sorts of nonsense about making the town pay to replace his whole airstrip, which was flat-out ridiculous since there were just a couple of ruts that Roman and two of his buddies could have filled in and smoothed out in forty-five minutes. He was looking to take advantage, so I let him know that as mayor I had some say in zoning and construction approvals, and he backed right down. I could shoot that photographer from the paper, though,” she grumbled. “He must have deliberately picked the least flattering photo—I don't really have five chins.”

“Everyone does when they turtle their neck back like that.” Maud demonstrated, pulling her chin toward her chest. We all tried it, and ended up laughing.

“I saw in the paper this morning that the police caught up with Francesca at the Denver airport,” Lola said. “Was she trying to run away? The police weren't planning to arrest her, were they? I didn't think there was any evidence of her involvement.”

“Flavia Dunbarton interviewed me for that
Gabbler
article,” Kerry said, “and she had already talked to Francesca at the Columbine. I'm not sure how she got to her so quickly.” A line appeared between her brows as
she pondered. “Anyway, Francesca told her she was trying to get home to Illinois, to visit her father in the pen and fill him in on everything, so they could get their ducks in a row. She agreed to come back here when the police asked her to, to ‘help them with their inquiries.' Doesn't that sound like something straight out of one of Ngaio Marsh's Roderick Alleyn mysteries?”

“Hart never said anything like that in his life,” I said, trying on the phrase with a British accent. Everyone chuckled.

“That's probably just Francesca, trying to make herself sound important,” Kerry agreed. “Anyway, Flavia said Francesca was booked on a flight out of Denver this afternoon. She's headed to New York, though, not Illinois, to do the rounds of the morning talk shows.” Kerry shook her head, disgusted. “From something Flavia said, it sounded like big-time publishers have been approaching Francesca and her father about doing a tell-all memoir. There's even talk of a TV movie, Flavia said.”

“That's one book I won't be nominating for us to read,” Maud said.

“Amen,” Lola said softly.

“It'll probably make more money than all her novels combined,” I said. “Who was it that said you can't underestimate the taste of the American public, or something like that?”

Brooke helped herself to sparkling water from the minifridge, and took a swallow. “It's funny how it turned out to be all about identity, isn't it, like we were talking about with
Rebecca
?” She used the green bottle
to gesture at the screen, where Olivier and Fontaine were frozen. “Francesca Bugle doesn't really exist—she's just a persona that Patty Bugg put on to sell books. She invented a name and a history. Maybe what du Maurier's saying is that not having a name is the most honest way to be, that it forces us to be our true selves.”

“It would sure make it awkward to communicate, though,” Kerry put in, always focusing on the practical.

“I think it's interesting how knowing that the author is a perv changes readers' experience with the text,” I said, harking back to my English major days. “I mean, Francesca Bugle's books are still word for word what they always were, but knowing that a sex offender wrote those sex scenes makes them unreadable.”

“They were always unreadable,” Maud snorted.

We all laughed at that and Brooke pointed the remote so the lights dimmed and the movie resumed. We watched in silence until the flames consumed Manderley. When Brooke brought the lights up again, I blinked several times, and stretched my arms over my head.

“I think the fire was Maxim de Winter's punishment,” Lola said, taking off her glasses and polishing the lenses with the hem of her shirt. Her eyes without the glasses seemed bigger, her curly lashes longer. “He did commit murder after all, and even if Rebecca was evil and goaded him to it, it's not right that he would walk away scot-free.”

“Karma,” Brooke said.

“Cosmo Zeller won't get away with it,” Maud said. She stood and looked around at all of us. A smile crept over her lips. “Did you see the other photo in the
Heaven
Herald
? Not the front-page ones of Cosmo in handcuffs and our honorable mayor having it out with Brummel, but the one at the top of page three?”

“You mean the one of Mary Stewart in a clinch with her ‘brother,'” I said, putting air quotes around “brother.” The photo had clearly been taken from a tree outside the Columbine's dining room, and it showed Mary Stewart sitting on a table, her legs wrapped around Lucas's waist, kissing him like there was no tomorrow. Which there probably wouldn't be now for her writing career.

Maud's grin grew broader. “That's the one. Talk about karmic justice. What are the chances that Eloise Hufnagle missed that?”

“Slim and none,” Kerry said. She eyed Maud narrowly. “You wouldn't have had anything to do with that photo, would you?”

“Moi?”
Maud assumed an air of innocence. “Why would you think that? Just because my lover's a world-class photographer, and I thought Eloise was owed a little payback for the way the Stewarts treated her, and I knew they could barely keep their hands off each other . . . I tore my favorite shirt getting out of that dang tree. I just hope Hufnagle's lawyer can use the photo to win her case. It sure links Lucas and Mary in a way that will make it much harder for her to claim she had no connection to Eloise.” Her grin was pure Cheshire cat.

“What do you think will happen to Allyson?” Lola asked, plucking popcorn bits from her chair and dropping them into the metal bowl. They dinged as they hit bottom.

“I don't think the police here have any interest in
her,” I said. “I mean, no one from the Columbine pressed charges. I guess she'll go back to California with Merle and Constance.”

“I hope she'll get the help she needs,” Lola said.

“What she needs,” Maud said with asperity, “is to move away from Constance. I think Merle gets that now. Her condition is aggravated or activated by stress, and it's clear that being around her mother sends her stress levels through the stratosphere. Merle's going to help her get set up in an apartment in San Leandro, where she's got a job offer. She'll keep on with the counseling and meds, too.”

I studied her face, but saw no trace of melancholy or regret. Merle might have been important to her once upon a time, but no longer.

We all trooped upstairs, emerging into Brooke's gourmet kitchen in time to hear the garage door go up.

“Troy's back,” Brooke said with a smile.

“We haven't picked a book for next time,” Kerry reminded us. “Maud, it's your turn.”

“I'll e-mail you,” Maud said. “I'm thinking something with a little action, maybe a spy or two, some straightforward skulduggery after the lurking menace of Manderley and its inhabitants. I'm thinking something by Helen MacInnes or Alistair MacLean. I'll let you know.”

Brooke pulled open the front door. “Hey, it snowed.”

We crowded around the opening, looking out on a landscape made magical by a two-inch carpet of white snow. Big flakes were still falling, and they sparkled in the yellow glare from Brooke's porch light.

“First snow angel of the year,” I said with delight,
and dashed to the center of Brooke's snow-covered yard. Cold snow wedged its way down my collar as I lay on my back. I shivered. I began to fan my legs and arms. Snow scrunched between my legs and under my armpits. Brooke, Lola, and Maud joined me, while Kerry remained on the stoop, hands on her hips, shaking her head back and forth slowly.

“Not me,” she said. “I'm not an eight-year-old.”

“You don't outgrow snow angels,” I said, getting up and dusting snow off my backside.

“Oh, what the hell.” Kerry joined us, lowering herself stiffly to her knees, and then rolling onto her back. “Damn, it's cold. Roman will wonder what happened to me when I walk in soaking wet.”

“He's a teenage boy—he wouldn't notice if you walked in on fire,” Maud said.

“True,” Kerry laughed. “I'm going to make another one.” She shifted to a smooth patch of snow.

“Me, too.” I found an un-angeled spot and flopped down again. I let the cold embrace me and looked straight up, letting the snow sift gently onto my face, and wondered if Brooke was thinking about teaching her baby to make snow angels in a year or two, or if Hart had ever made a snow angel. He came from Georgia, so maybe not. With a smile, I thought what a joy it was to have friends to make snow angels with on the first snowfall of the season.