Murder At Murder At the Mimosa Inn, The (12 page)

Read Murder At Murder At the Mimosa Inn, The Online

Authors: Joan Hess

It was nearly six o’clock by now, and the sunlight had shifted to a curious, golden glow that made the woods resemble a movie set, a place where lions sang and hirsute people swung on vines. The birds had gone home, but the insects were very much in attendance. Two hours until sunset, I told myself with the confidence of someone who might be able to find the cove and be back on the road before darkness set in.
With a deep breath, I forged into the wilderness.
Ten minutes later, I began to sense the extent of my folly. The logging trail dwindled to an unkempt path that threatened to quit at any moment. Although the lake lay to my left, the trail wandered up the side of the mountain, joined a rocky stream bed for what seemed like a mile, and only then began a gradual descent. In the meantime, I had an entourage of nasty little gnats that hovered about my face in a carnivorous cloud. My arms were covered with scratches, my face with bug bites, and the rest of me with sweat. All so I could possibly find a cove that had already been examined by professionals for the most minute of clues.
I made a few comments to Mother Nature about her lack of hospitality, and a few more to the sun that was diving earthward with unnecessary haste. By now I suspected I had no more than an hour to get back to the road, unless I wanted to rely on my Daniel Boone instincts—that fell somewhere between nil and nonexistent.
Abruptly, I found the lake, which was no great feat but at least let me glimpse civilization in the distance. The Mimosa Inn looked as welcoming as a stiff drink after a session in the salt mines, and the scattered boats on the lake as comforting as a fellow tourist in Katmandu. But I was on a mission, no matter how foolish it now seemed. I wrenched my eyes back to business.
The path clung to the edge of the lake, and the foliage thinned out enough for me to walk at a reasonable pace. Where the hell was the cove?
Coves are pretty much the same after you’ve studied a few of them. Mud, swarms of insects, slippery moss, and the aroma of dead fish. Beached tadpoles, baked to shriveled silver ribbons. Unseen things that plopped away, or rustled in the leaves. Occasional footprints in the mud, where the Audubons had halted to search for grebes. The omnipresent rusty beer cans that both Edmund Hillary and Admiral Byrd had undoubtedly found at the ends of their respective trips.
I promised myself one final cove before giving up. The path, now a dear and trusted friend, twisted inland briefly and then abruptly spewed me out into a cleared area. The Cove, my personal grail. How could I be sure? It was no problem at all, because Peter Rosen was sitting on a log beside the water—smiling at me. A motorboat bobbed a few feet from the muddy shore.
He politely stood up as I slipped across the mud. “Did you have a nice hike, Claire?”
“I had a lovely hike, thank you. I must have seen a dozen grebes, not to mention other specimens of nature,” I said, grinding my teeth into a semblance of a smile. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to watch the sunset. Will you join me? I’m afraid the sofa is a bit dirty, but the view will be spectacular.”
“Have you been here long?” I asked as I accepted the inevitability of the situation and sat down beside him.
“A few minutes. I happened to notice Caron staggering up the road, and she offered the information that you felt some desire to commune with nature. She did not feel the same desire, apparently, and was more interested in making a telephone call.”
“A loquacious child. I never should have encouraged her to learn to talk. What other information was she compelled to offer?”
“She did mention something about your destination.”
I hoped Caron was enjoying her final telephone conversation. It would have to suffice until high-school graduation. I took off my shoe to examine a blister, studied the ring of bites around my ankle, and eased the shoe back on with a faint groan.
“May I hitch a ride back with you in the boat? I don’t think I can walk more than three steps.”
Peter gave me the benefit of his choirboy smile. “It would be almost impossible to follow the trail in the dark, wouldn’t it? A person might sprain an ankle, or trip over some invisible rock and break a leg. It might be better to wait until morning—except for the bears. They mate in the early summer—and I understand they have foul tempers. The courtship process, I believe.”
“There are no bears in the woods.” After the last hour in the woods, I felt as knowledgeable as Ranger Rick.
“Probably not,” he agreed graciously. “The skunks keep them away. There are skunks all over the woods.”
“There are skunks around here; I can smell something in the air. I would appreciate a ride back in the boat. However, if you are going to sit here and play silly, infantile games, then I am quite capable of hiking back to the road.”
The bantering tone was gone as he said, “You promised to stay out of the investigation, Claire. There is no longer an actor with a clever script—there is a cold-blooded murderer who might kill again if cornered. I thought I could trust you this time, but I was wrong.”
He would have made a dandy elementary-school principal. Pain in his voice, coupled with a basset-houndish look of disappointment. Little Claire, on the carpet, given one last chance to save herself from disgrace. I preferred my chances with the skunks.
“I just wanted to see the scene of the crime,” I said in a low apologetic voice. “But if you’re going to fuss, I won’t
even look around. As soon as I’m in the boat, I’ll close my eyes and not peek until we’re across the lake.”
“Claire.” It came out in a whoosh of discouragement.
“If you insist, I’ll close my eyes right now and feel my way to the boat.”
“This is not a game, dammit! I wish you’d realize that and stop trying to out-sleuth me. Just let me do my job so that we can all go home before next winter.”
“If I let you do your job, we might be here to count the daffodils!” I snapped. “I do not enjoy being treated as if I were some sort of egotistical busybody, Peter Rosen. I happen to know quite a bit of information that could be helpful, but you won’t even listen to me, much less treat me like an adult!” A wonderful display of self-control and maturity.
“What do you know that might be helpful?”
“I’m not going to tell you!”
It was insane. We glowered at each other, hands clenched, faces red, eyes flickering like sparklers. At that moment, I would have cheerfully shoved him over backwards, hopped in the boat, and left him to hike back to the road—with the bears, skunks, snakes, and anything else silly enough to tackle him. The next moment we were wrapped around each other and behaving in a very adult manner.
It lasted a long while, and was quite pleasant despite my inner state of shock. Peter seemed adept at what he was doing. I seemed adept at what I was doing. We made a cooperative team. Finally, when I was beginning to need a breath, I unwrapped myself and eased away.
“Oh, dear,” I said, flicking a gnat off my knee.
Peter raised an eyebrow. “Oh, dear? Is that all you can say?”
“What should I say in this situation—thank you?”
“I suppose not,” he said. He, too, found a gnat to send away in a terminal arc.
I will not go into my personal feelings, beyond a mild comparison to those experienced by the heroine of a gothic novel who has discovered that the wretched man is not an embezzler or her first cousin or whatever she inevitably discovers in Chapter Nine-and-a-half, so that the graphic grappling can follow in Chapter Ten. On the other hand, I was hardly a nineteen-year-old orphaned virgin adrift in a heartless world. Caron is not so easily ignored.
We sat in silence for a few minutes. I toyed with a few sentences, but rejected them for triteness, gushiness, and various adolescent tinges. The only thing to do was to ignore it, I decided at last.
Watching him out of the corner of my eye, I said, “I might fill in a few omissions in my statement, if you’re willing to reciprocate.”
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to discuss the case, but I want a sincere promise that you won’t pull any stunts. You have a dinner to cook—for me, remember?”
“Oh, really? Then you had already solved the mock murder? Or did you find the master script in the office and happen to glance over it out of idle curiosity?”
“There was no script in the office; I searched every inch of it. But, yes, I had arrived at a solution by noon today. All those years of stodgy police work, perhaps. How did you do?”
“I do have a solution for the mock murder, but I thought we were going to discuss the real one. Is this the cove where the rowboat was found? I don’t suppose there were any telltale footsteps in the mud, or fingerprints in the oars?”
“The bird-watchers trampled out any footsteps,” Peter said with a grimace, “and oars do not take fingerprints. The boat has been taken in for examination, but I doubt we’ll learn anything useful. Someone went to a lot of trouble to bring the body all the way across the lake. He or she wouldn’t be so polite as to leave a business card in the bottom of the boat.”
“He or she? You don’t honestly believe a woman could be involved, do you?”
Peter studied the mud. “The sheriff is pushing for an arrest before evening. He seems to think that we have a fairly good case, although much of it is circumstantial.”
“A fairly good case?” I echoed, surprised. I realized that he was avoiding my eyes. “Who?”
“Mimi Vanderhan,” he admitted in a low voice. “She freely admitted that she met Harmon in the boathouse, as scheduled. According to her story, they talked for a few minutes about how successful the weekend was, and then she went to her room before returning to catch the last few minutes of the movie. However, Eric was supposed to have confronted Harmon immediately after she left—and he swears that Harmon wasn’t there.”
“So Harmon left the boathouse. That’s not too impossible to accept, is it? Maybe someone else came by and lured him away,” I pointed out with unassailable logic.
“In the space of two or three minutes? Eric was already on the porch, and he would have seen Harmon and this fancied visitor leaving together. The sheriff has a good argument, Claire. Harmon was in the boathouse with Mimi at ten-thirty, and was not there at ten-thirty-five when Eric arrived.”
“Does the sheriff think that Mimi carried Harmon away on her back, or merely waved a magic wand and turned him into a spider?”
“The sheriff thinks that Mimi clouted him with something so that his body fell into a boat. She then tossed a tarp over it, left the boathouse as scheduled, and later returned to transport the gruesome cargo over here.”
“But why?” I protested, wincing as I remembered Eric’s childlike devotion to his wife. “She doesn’t have a motive, Peter. Earlier this afternoon, she told me that Harmon was the patron saint of the Farberville Community Theater. He was going to purchase a new building for the theater.”
Peter shook his head. “Bella Crundall gave me a rather different version of the relationship. She said that Harmon had an option on about three hundred acres next to the inn, and that Mimi and Eric had been frantic to buy it back from him. But he was interested in putting in a vast development called, if you can stomach it, Harmony Hills. The inn would be a joke, sitting beside suburbia.”
“Mimi said that Harmon wasn’t going to exercise the option, that he planned to allow it to expire quietly. In fact, he told Mimi that it would be a prop in the scenario and would end up a charred pile of ashes. One corner of it was presented in a Baggie this morning.”
“No, Suzetta Price said that the paper she burned was a blank contract. Bella was adamant about the fact that Harmon intended to exercise the option despite the Vanderhans’ pleas. It was a very lucrative deal for him. Several hundred thousand dollars, minimum.”
“Well, I refuse to believe that Mimi would murder anyone, much less Harmon! Your sheriff has the mind of a gnat. Mimi is a nice person, and she wouldn’t bash Harmon.”
“I don’t like it, either,” Peter said, offering a hand to pull me to my feet. “But Mimi may be in custody by the time we get across the lake, so you’d better be prepared.”
“I’ll be prepared,” I vowed in a cold voice as the mud sucked at the bottoms of my shoes. “But the sheriff had better be prepared, too!”
T
he sheriff was waiting for us on the grassy beach in front of the inn. Behind him, Eric stood unmoving, his demeanor as lively as that of a cigar-store Indian. On the porch the guests had gathered to watch the latest scene.
“Ah, Rosen, I need to discuss something with you,” the sheriff murmured. They moved away to talk in terse whispers. Peter shook his head several times, but the sheriff continued steadily until at last they seemed to reach an agreement, albeit tentative on one side.
I hurried across the grass to shake Eric’s arm. “Where’s Mimi?” I demanded in my own terse whisper.
“They—they put her in a police car. Claire, they seem to think that she—that she was the one who … Mimi didn’t murder Harmon. She wouldn’t hurt anyone, and she thought Harmon was a wonderful man. I suppose I ought to do something, but I—”
He clamped his lips together and blinked several times. His Adam’s apple rippled in his throat as if it were on a elastic string. “I was the one who damned her. If I had known, I would have said that Harmon was still in the
boathouse when I went inside, but Mimi and I thought we had nothing to hide.”
I tightened my grip. “I know that Mimi didn’t do it, Eric. I don’t think Peter is convinced either, but the sheriff does have the authority to order an arrest.”
The ripples started again. I pulled him away from the ears of the law, and once we were at a safe distance, added, “Listen, Eric, we know that Mimi is innocent. That means that someone else is guilty, and all we have to do is figure out who it is.”
“Is that all?” Eric said woodenly.
He was clearly useless as a nominee for my Baker Street Irregulars, or even a bungling Watson. I gave him a brief lecture about self-control and efficiency in the face of disaster, then sent him away to worry about dinner. Peter caught me before I could perfect a scheme to incriminate Mrs. Robison-Dewitt by planting some vile bit of evidence on her person.
“Technically, Mimi is not under arrest yet,” he told me as we started toward the porch. “Sheriff Lafleur wants to take her in for an official statement and further questioning, but he admits that the case is basically weak. No weapon so far, and a motive based on conflicting stories.”
“Well, Eric’s on the edge of a collapse. I hope Sheriff Lafleur—are you sure about that name?”
“Arlo Lafleur,” Peter said gravely. “I checked his identification card.”
“I hope he knows what he’s doing,” I said tartly. “What about this other investigation that you claim brought you here? If there is a perfectly legitimate felon—”
“It had nothing to do with Harmon Crundall. Those people involved in the—ah—other matter had no reason to murder Harmon. If they were going to kill someone, I imagine it would be me. And I’m still here.”
“Then you won’t tell me anything about it?” I said in a wounded voice. We both knew what it meant; I can be
transparent, or at least translucent, when I take the trouble to do so.
He took my elbow to steer me away from the porch. When we were in the garden, he said, “I will tell you the essential details, but only so that I won’t have you prowling around with some crazy scheme. However, I want your solemn promise—”
“Cross my heart.” I swallowed a gloat.
He did not look terribly impressed by my avowed sincerity. After a moment of indecision, he relented and said, “We have seen a significant increase of drugs on the Farber campus in the last year. Not the so-called recreational drugs, but a colorful selection of amphetamines and barbiturates that are most popular around the end of the semester. Although we know where they’re coming from, we haven’t identified the campus distributor.”
“The source being our favorite pharmaceutical salesman, Nickie Merrick,” I said with a shrug. Too bad; I’d liked Nickie, and he was far better at playing detective than Peter. The oiled hair was an inspired touch. “Then he’s passing the drugs to a student?”
“So we assume. However, he travels a great deal, and is only in Farberville on the weekends. He has been watched for months; his only contact remotely related to the campus is the theater. Other than that, he stays home. He does not bar-hop, stroll around campus with a briefcase, or inadvertently leave packages on park benches. No contact with anyone in Farberville except grocery clerks and gas station attendants.”
“And the theater members who are also Farber students, such as Suzetta and Bruce?” I prompted.
“Those two, Eric Vanderhan, who teaches one class, and the three boys who were supposed to be Lieutenant Merrick’s squad from Scotland Yard.”
“Forget Eric. He is not a drug pusher. What do you know about the boys? They could very well be the ones you’re
after. They all have pasty complexions; maybe they’ve been in prison.”
Peter tactfully overlooked my emotional outburst. “They joined the theater within the last few months, and the drugs have been inundating the campus since the fall.” He narrowed his eyes at me. “It has nothing to do with Harmon’s death.”
“But he might have found out that his precious theater was being used to cover drug transactions. If he threatened to expose Nickie, then—”
“Harmon didn’t have any idea about the drugs; Bella was quite sure about that point. She said that his behavior was perfectly normal—no worries, no secretive conversations. He was not a subtle man, and she swears she would have been able to tell if he were concerned about something that might harm the theater.”
“What are you going to do about Nickie Merrick?” I said to change the subject. A conversation with Bella was called for, but I saw no need to discuss it with Peter.
“I have enough evidence to arrest him, but I want to take his campus contact at the same time. Merrick is still under observation. If he tries to make a deal, we’ll be nearby. But I don’t want him to sense anything that might deter him from his business, so forget this conversation—now.”
“Of course.” I told Peter that I wanted to check on Bella, in case she might be in the mood for a tray from the dining room or a bit of company. He raised an eyebrow, but finally left to return to the Mimosa Inn.
At the bungalow, I tapped on the door. Bella appeared from the bedroom, looking a good deal pinker.
“Claire, how nice of you to come by to check on me,” she said through the screen. “I’m feeling better now, and I really would prefer to be alone to think about what has happened.”
Her words caught me by surprise. I considered several options, including brute force, but finally said something
inane and went back through the garden. As a detective, I was not a noticeable success. It was time for another suspect. Minutes later, another suspect landed in my arms in a metaphorical sprawl.
“Claire, I’ve been looking for you,” Nickie Merrick called as I came out of the garden. He lowered his voice to a piercing stage whisper. “Do you think we might have a word in private?”
“By all means,” I said with a gracious nod. The lawn was thickly populated, as was the porch and probably the drawing room. I was not about to invite a drug pusher into my bedroom for an intimate chat. “How about the boathouse?”
“Where Harmon was murdered? I don’t think it’s—”
“The body only stayed there a few hours,” I said firmly, “and no one will disturb us. I didn’t think Scotland Yard’s finest would prove squeamish.”
Looking less than delighted, Nickie opened the door for me and we went inside. Inches past the threshold, I let out an explosive sneeze. The shadowy recesses fluttered for an uneasy moment before subsiding into watchfulness.
“There must be some sort of mold in here,” I said, wiping my eyes and blotting the end of my nose. “This is the only place that sets off this distasteful reaction.”
“You’re probably right, Claire. If the sneezing begins to interfere too much, let me know. I’ve got some samples of an antihistamine in my car. It’s a new product and it’s been quite effective with allergy sufferers. Very popular in the spring.” He moved across the room to stare at the empty slip, still disturbed by my inspired choice of conference rooms. “So poor Harmon started his last boat ride here …”
“Did you hear that Mimi’s been taken in for further questioning?” I sneezed emphatically to convey my disapproval.
“Bruce told me a few minutes ago. She seemed like such a nice girl; it’s a damn shame. But I suppose Harmon must have gotten carried away with his role and made a pass at her, and she was forced to defend herself with a paddle. If only she hadn’t tried to cover it up, she might have been able to claim self-defense.”
“Mimi did not”—
sneeze!
—“murder Harmon!”
“Maybe not,” he said, squatting to peer at a spider that had decided to relocate after what must have seemed a hurricane jolted his web. “Anyway, I hope the sheriff can get this over with before Monday morning. I have accounts to service and standing appointments that I can’t afford to break. Some doctors are impossible to see without—”
“What did you want to discuss, Nickie?” I asked. Despite the casualness of his tone, I could tell that he was as nervous as Eric had been earlier. Very interesting. Sneeze!
“You appear to be on friendly terms with the cop from Faberville. I was wondering if he had said anything about me.”
“Such as?”
“For one thing, was he satisfied with my statement? I wasn’t completely candid. In fact, I kept certain things back in order to protect an innocent party.”
“I have no idea whether Lieutenant Rosen was or was not satisfied with your statement, Nickie. It’s not particularly wise to keep things from an officer investigating a homicide, though. That I learned from personal experience. If this person that you think you’re protecting comes out with a different story, you’re apt to find yourself in the cell adjoining Mimi’s.”
“Tell me what you think, then. I did leave the drawing room during the movie last night, but only for a minute or two. I did not go anywhere near the boathouse, not did I see anyone while I was outside.”
“It sounds pretty frail,” I said with a sympathetic smile that ended with a particularly loud sneeze. “If you didn’t
see or hear anything, then why should you refuse to admit that you slipped out? Was it not in your script?”
“No, I was never supposed to be a suspect, so I had nothing to do until this morning when I glowered at everyone over coffee.” He stood up and straightened his tie with trembling hands. “I went outside to meet someone—but the person never came. It would have sounded bad, so I told Rosen that I didn’t leave the room during the movie.”
“Who never came?”
I knew it was his campus contact, but he didn’t know that I knew. I held my breath and assumed a look of mild curiosity, although a trio of sneezes rather destroyed the effect. My bedroom would have been safer; I was in danger of jarring my nose out of position—permanently.
“It doesn’t matter, Claire. The point is that I was outside for a few minutes, and I’m afraid it might be misconstrued if Rosen finds out about it later.”
He was lying. He was afraid that Peter might have-followed him, which was likely. However, and to my chagrin, I had no idea what Peter thought about Nickie’s statement. I repeated the latter sentiment to Nickie and suggested that he confess to the sin of omission.
It was growing dark outside, and I could barely see Nickie’s slow shake of his head. “Maybe later,” he said as he opened the door for me. I sneezed a farewell to the spider, and went across the now deserted lawn to the inn.
Dinner was being served to a solemn group of guests, none of whom even glanced up when I entered the room. Caron was not there, nor was Peter. I heard Eric’s voice in the kitchen; at last he was handling the mundane duties of innkeeper.
Nickie found two chairs in a corner table, and I allowed him to seat me. The gloomy miasma was impossible to resist; we ordered, ate, and exited to the drawing room as quickly as possible.
“At this point we were scheduled to unravel the mystery
and toast the winner with champagne,” Nickie said in a wry voice. “This group would be livelier on a sewage disposal tour.”
“Do you know who the mock murderer was to be?”
Nickie tugged on his moustache, his eyes on the closed office door. “Harmon wouldn’t tell me. He thought I might give something away by an inadvertent inflection or beaded stare. Some of the others might know, Claire. Ask one of them.”

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