Weekends Can Be Murder, page 8
Fingers figuratively crossed, Selena went to the sink and tried the spigots. Clear water gushed from the tap. Liz took a taste of it and nodded her head. “It’s the same stuff we were drinking at dinner,” she said. “In any case, we’re about to boil the dickens out of it, so, not to worry.”
Together, the two women set up the urn to percolate and plugged it into the power bar. Liz pressed the I/O switch. It lit up. Then they took a step back and waited to see what else would happen.
Thirty seconds later, Selena cleared her throat. “You know what they say about a watched pot,” she began.
“Ssh!” said Liz. “I’m hearing something.”
Selena listened carefully, letting her gaze wander to the source of the sound. “It’s coming from up there,” she murmured, pointing.
The two women crept silently to the top of the stairs and put their ears to the door. A tense discussion was apparently taking place on the other side. There were two separate voices, but they were talking in lowered tones, and Selena could only make out what one of them was saying. The other one was muffled and may as well have been speaking Urdu.
“(something, something).”
“It was a fluke. A temporary setback. Who knew he would have a head like a freakin’ cannonball?”
“(mutter, mutter)?”
“Of course I’ll finish the job. And when I’m done, nothing will lead back to you. You’ll have your fall guy, as promised.”
“(grumble, grumble)!”
“Hey, I’m not some amateur. You’ll get your money’s worth.”
As the voices moved away from the door, Selena let out the breath she’d been holding and exchanged wide-eyed stares with Liz. Then, as quietly as they could, the women returned downstairs. The coffee urn was burbling away, but the Ready light hadn’t yet come on.
“Did you recognize either of them?” Selena said, fearful of raising her own voice above a tense whisper.
“No,” Liz murmured, her brows knitting. “The one I could understand sounded like a man, but—Did you?”
“No. I don’t suppose that was part of a script…?”
Liz pursed her lips and gave her head a vigorous shake. “I suspect he was being literal when he promised the other one their money’s worth.”
“And whatever he’s being paid to do, he still hasn’t finished the job, which apparently involves framing some innocent third party. At least, that’s what I think I just heard.”
“It’s what I heard too. Head like a cannonball? That surely sounds like attempted murder to me,” Liz concluded grimly. “So, if our suspicions are correct, someone on this island is a hired killer, and someone else is unknowingly walking around with a target on their back. And we don’t know who either of them is.”
She’d kept her voice low. Still, hearing the words spoken aloud, even in a whisper, seemed to thicken the air. “Liz, no matter whether we’re right or wrong about this, we mustn’t keep it to ourselves.”
The other woman turned to face her, laying steadying hands on both of her shoulders. “I agree, luv. As soon as Hugh and the others get back, we’ll brief the Crime Club. No one else can be trusted right now. Once the police arrive, we’ll inform them as well.”
“Okay.” She drew and expelled a calming breath. “Okay. I think I’ll write everything down while it’s still fresh in my mind. And you should do the same, to make sure nothing is left out.”
“Good idea. In the meanwhile,” she added, gesturing toward the coffee urn, “the serving light just came on. If you’ll remove the filter basket and locate about a dozen cups to start, I’ll find the dumbwaiter.”
“You’ll find the—who?”
Liz laughed. “The dumbwaiter isn’t a who, it’s a what. Every Victorian home had one. It’s a small elevator set into a wall, for moving things from the basement kitchen up to the dining room. Or would you prefer we carry the coffee urn and all the cups up those stairs ourselves?”
Selena flashed her a smile and replied, “Point taken. We’ll let the little elevator do it for us.”
* * *
Even with silvery moonbeams glancing off the water, much of the island was in darkness. Fortunately, the immediate environs of Rafferty House were not. The veranda was equipped with overhead lighting, and floodlights mounted under the eaves dropped rose-tinted pools of illumination all around the rest of the building.
At the northwest corner of the guest quarters sat a plain slab of wooden door. As Hugh opened it onto a dark and narrow landing, a lump rose at the back of Larry’s throat. Hugh shone a beam directly ahead and showed him an equally dark and narrow flight of stairs leading to the basement. Wonderful. There would be no grilles or vents to provide wisps of light down here. One could only hope to find a working light bulb or two suspended from the ceiling beams.
Larry swallowed hard. The lump refused to budge.
“You’ve checked this area out?” he asked, playing for time.
“Not all of it, just enough to know that what we’ll need is probably down here,” came Hugh’s response. “Be careful on the stairs, by the way. There’s a railing near the bottom, but I wouldn’t lean on it.”
They were standing between the inside and outside walls of the house. Larry filled his lungs, accepted a flashlight from Hugh, and led the way. A right turn at the bottom of the stairs put them at the head of what was apparently destined to be a corridor. To Larry’s relief, there were overhead light fixtures installed at intervals along the length of this future hallway, and their pull-chain switches were operational. Illumination filled the basement, revealing a Mondrian-like arrangement of studs and panels as framed-in rooms became visible on both sides. At the far end, a large open space had collected a regiment of paint cans, decks of wallboard, and randomly piled pieces of lumber, among other things.
Hugh walked to the middle of this area and stared up at the ceiling. “We’re directly under the foyer. This is where a staircase to the main part of the house ought to be, but it’s been floored over. Why do that, only to have to tear it up again when the basement rooms are finished?”
Larry knew the answer. However, Arthur Pyke’s financial troubles were now a dead issue, just like Pyke himself.
“I guess we’ll never know what he had in mind,” Larry replied with a shrug. Then, addressing the entire team, he continued, “Look for anything we can use to build a litter. Wylde is a large man, so it will have to be strong. We’ll need a length of rope. And a block and tackle would come in handy as well, although I wouldn’t get my hopes up.”
“I saw something when we were down here before,” Norman remarked, pivoting and going back the way they’d come. He darted into one of the alcoves and returned a moment later carrying a folded neon green bundle.
Larry had once used one of these. He recognized it immediately. “A collapsible dumpster. That’s perfect!”
“We can stiffen the bottom with some wallboard to provide back support,” Blaise offered.
“Good idea,” said Larry. “Now what about the rope?”
“I see a spool of something behind the paint cans over there,” Hugh said, pointing.
Larry took a closer look. “Heavy duty electrical cabling. That’ll do, if there’s enough of it. I guess we’ll find out. We’ll need something to cut it with. I don’t suppose anyone happened to spot a tool kit lying around.”
Hugh shook his head. “The construction crew took theirs with them, I’m afraid. I own a wire cutter, but it’s in my car back at Windsong. Perhaps one of us could fetch a sharp knife from the kitchen…?”
“I’ll go,” said Norman, already heading for the stairs.
“Meanwhile, we can begin measuring this stuff off,” Larry decided. “Does anyone know the distance from the edge of the bluff to the beach?”
“Liz and I got a look at it earlier,” said Hugh. “I would estimate the vertical drop at about six metres.”
“And we’ll need three or four times that to work with,” said Larry, “so let’s call it twenty-five metres in total, or about eighty feet.”
“I’m six feet tall exactly,” Warfield told him. “You can use me as a measuring stick. Just don’t ask me to lie down on this floor.”
Before Larry could reply, he was startled by the slamming of the door at the top of the stairs.
“Guys!” Norman called to them from the landing. “You are not going to believe this.”
“Believe what?” Hugh called back.
“Gareth Wylde just walked through the front door of the house, hollering for a medic. Half his face was covered in blood, and he was mad as hell.”
For a long, silent moment, the members of the rescue team traded astonished looks. Finally, Larry cleared his throat and announced, “I guess our mission is aborted, gentlemen. Let’s return everything to the way we found it and go back inside.”
“Mr. Holmes,” Hugh said quietly, “I think you should know, Wylde could not have fallen from the bluff and then simply gotten up and walked away. There’s a strip of sandy beach beside the water, and some wooden stairs leading down to it, but right at the foot of the bluff it’s all rocks and shale. Liz and I saw it in daylight and, trust me, anyone who landed down there would almost certainly have sustained life-threatening injuries. Walking up those stairs and then crossing the grounds to the front of the house would have been out of the question for him.”
“And yet he seems to have done it. So either someone lied to Baker, or Baker lied to us,” Larry summed up.
“Or maybe Baker’s theory of the murder is worth considering,” Warfield offered.
“Which is what?” Blaise demanded, frowning.
“Which is that Arthur Pyke was stabbed, and Wylde may have been absent from the meeting because he was disposing of the murder weapon at the time. At least, that’s what I heard Baker mutter to himself after he’d examined the body.”
“Baker is a medical examiner now in addition to being Mrs. Pyke’s assistant?” Hugh wondered aloud.
“He did say he had many skills,” Blaise reminded them. He followed the others to the stairs, turning off the lights as he went.
“If Wylde was the murderer, what would his motive have been?” Hugh said.
It was a good question. Larry added it to the list he was mentally compiling.
Once the basement door was closed behind them, Blaise remarked, “You know, Wylde could already have been at the foot of the bluff when he fell, hitting his head on a rock and knocking himself out.”
“And if he did,” Warfield chimed in, “he could have come to while we were foraging down there. Then Lois and Georgina could have helped him up the stairs and around to the front of the house.”
“Where he ditched them and proceeded to barrel through the door like a runaway tank?” said Norman. A pause, then, “Yeah, that sounds like Wylde.”
“Even if all that were true, why would he have been climbing around on the rocks in the first place?” Larry asked. “And there were two men in that search party, as I recall. Why wouldn’t they have helped him up the stairs?”
“Harald and Farley? We’ll have to ask them,” Hugh replied.
“Who’s Farley?” said Larry.
“One of the servers,” Norman explained. “The new guy. The one who broke character at the meeting and called Vaile ‘Tony’. The other male server is named Will.”
“The other actor, you mean,” Larry grated. “I am really getting tired of this. Next we’ll be finding out that Arthur’s death was a special effect.”
Warfield let out an audible breath. “Not that any of us here present was actually wishing for it, but you can take it from me, Arthur’s murder was real. Selena will back me up. She discovered the body, and I checked for a pulse. Baker closed off the crime scene and wouldn’t let anyone else see it, but it was messy. There was blood everywhere. And urine on the floor. And feces.”
“That means there’s a murderer on this island,” Hugh told them. “And a real-life crime to solve, if we’re up to it.”
“We? Baker won’t be happy about a bunch of amateurs poking their noses into what ought to be a police investigation,” Warfield reminded him. “The PPS won’t look fondly on us either.”
Larry cut in, “Hey, one thing at a time, please. First, there are some people I need to talk to in my capacity as a first responder, beginning with the resilient Mr. Wylde. Then we’ll see what else we can do.”
As the words left his mouth, Larry realized with a jolt: I’ve taken point. And they’re all letting me do it. Damn!
Eight
Adrenalin was a wonderful thing. Triggered by stress, it activated a fight-or-flight response, sharpening the senses and banishing sleep. Liz and Selena had gone to the kitchen and brewed a generous amount of coffee, but the caffeine was proving unnecessary. It had to be past midnight by now, and not a soul in the house was even thinking of going to bed, including the walking wounded.
Tony/Vaile had moved to the drawing room, probably to put some distance between himself and Gareth Wylde. Meanwhile, in the time it had taken the rescue party to return through the front door of the house, the author had been cleaned up and provided with an ice pack and a pillow. He now sat on a loveseat in the parlour, looking like a grumpy, oversized toad on a log.
Larry dropped with a sigh onto the adjacent club chair. Clearly, it would take more than a knock to the head to blunt the sharp edges of Wylde’s personality.
“I hear you had a little accident,” Larry began.
Wylde shot him a disdainful look.
“Are you hurting anywhere besides your head?”
“I just fell down a flight of stairs, genius. What do you think?” the other man snarled.
Well, that answered a couple of Larry’s questions. Purposely keeping his tone conversational, he replied, “I think someone your size taking a tumble like that could have any number of serious injuries. Tell me what you remember about your fall.”
“It was that moron’s fault. He should be shot,” Wylde grumbled. “I was sitting on the back porch, minding my own business. Then he walks by. ‘I’m on my way to rig the railing for your murder,’ he says. ‘Come see where your body is going to be found tomorrow morning.’”
“Which moron was this?”
Wylde gestured dismissively with his free hand. “One of the servers. I don’t bother with the names of people like that.”
People like that are the ones who buy your damned books, Larry wanted to point out. Instead, he asked, “Was it light enough for you to notice the colour of his hair, at least?”
“Perhaps, if he hadn’t been wearing a cap. And don’t ask me what colour the cap was, because the sun was already setting and everything was turning grey. He showed me how rocky it was below the bluff. Suggested I use the stairs and pick out a comfortable spot for myself while I could still see the way down.”
“And?”
“Around the fourth or fifth step I lost my footing somehow. Next thing I knew, it was pitch dark, I was lying on the ground with my head throbbing like a son of a bitch, and some stupid woman was making it worse by screaming, ‘Oh, my gawd!’ practically in my ear.”
“Wait a minute.” Larry leaned forward to ask, “You don’t remember actually falling?”
“No. But I was alone on the stairs at the time, so I probably just misstepped.”
Uh-huh. “And once you regained consciousness, what did you do?”
“After telling her to shut the fuck up, you mean? I got myself back to the house. She tried to help me up the stairs. Can you believe that? A well-meaning idiot who’s half my size, telling me to lean on her? We’d both have ended up at the bottom again.”
“Did you see who the idiot was?”
Wylde gave him a withering look. “I just told you, it was dark.”
“Okay. But she must have followed you back inside. And you heard her voice, right? Did you recognize it?”
“All I remember is that it was loud and painfully shrill. However…” Another dismissive wave of his hand. “I suppose it could have been Lois.”
Not Georgina? Interesting.
“You know, memory loss after a blow to the head means you’ve most likely got a concussion,” Larry advised him.
“Oh, you’re a doctor now as well as a firefighting detective?” he said with a sneer. “Or is it a crime-solving firefighter? I always get those two mixed up.”
“Are you having problems with your vision? Feeling any dizziness or nausea?” Larry persisted.
“Yes! All your clucking over me makes me want to vomit. Go away.” With that, he closed his eyes and carefully rested his head against the back of the loveseat.
Hugh had been listening in from a respectful distance. Now he stepped over, laid a hand on Larry’s shoulder, and said softly, “It appears you’ve won the book, Mr. Holmes. He was the intended victim after all.”
“Thanks, but I wouldn’t leap to any conclusions just yet,” Larry replied, getting to his feet. “Now I have some questions for our friend Andrew Baker.”
“Larry?” Selena had come up quietly beside him. “While you were talking to Gareth, Edyth Pyke chased Vaile out of the drawing room and poured herself a very stiff drink. She’s sitting in one of the leather chairs, all alone and staring into space. If you still want to find out more about the house, I think now is our best chance.”
Larry glanced in the direction of the murder scene. Baker could wait. He was on guard duty and wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.
“Okay,” he replied. “But I’d better check on Vaile first.”
“The moment he saw her come in, he grabbed a bottle of something and escaped into the dining room.”
The something was aged whisky, and the bottle was half empty, Larry noted as he approached. “How’s your headache, Mr. Vaile?” he asked softly, easing himself onto the adjacent chair while Selena hovered in the doorway. “Any blurring of vision? Drowsiness? Feelings of nausea or dizziness?”
Staring at the tabletop as though his gaze alone could bore a hole through it, the major domo replied with an English accent only slightly wilted by alcohol, “I’ve been better, but I believe I shall survive. And I’ve been waiting for you. I need to tell you something. Someone should know about it. Someone who will know the best thing to do.” He glanced up and said, “It’s reappeared in the drawer.”
