Murder of a Hermit, page 12
‘The cornbread didn’t burn,’ he reported with relief. ‘Only a few crumbs singed along one edge.’
Everyone agreed that it was good news.
Using a pastry brush and a ready bowl, Morris began to spread a layer of melted butter on the crown of the bread. ‘The key to a superior cornbread,’ he informed them, ‘is a heavy-bottomed pan.’
‘If you slather any more butter on that bread, Morris,’ Gram said, ‘I will become heavy-bottomed.
‘Fiddle-faddle.’ He went on slathering. ‘Your bottom is perfect, Olivia. Nothing could ever alter that fact.’
The sisters and Megan exchanged a grin.
‘They’re giggling at my expense, Olivia. I can hear it.’
‘Don’t mind them, dear.’ Gram winked at the trio. ‘They’re just envious that we – at our advanced age – have more of a love life than they currently do.’
The trio laughed, but they also sighed a little – and felt somewhat sorry for themselves – because it was the truth. None of them could claim to have any sort of a steady relationship, let alone the deep connection that Morris and Gram shared.
Megan’s sigh must have been more pronounced than that of the others, because looking at her, Gram’s own laughter faded and was replaced by the same worried expression that Morris had shown earlier.
‘You’re pale, Megan. Much too pale. You’ve pushed yourself too hard. Come over here and sit down.’ Gram led her and her crutches to the waiting lounger. When she had gotten Megan comfortably settled and had properly adjusted the plethora of cushions around her leg and under her cast, she turned to Morris. ‘Stop fussing with the cornbread, dear. I’m sure that it’s perfect already, and we’ll greatly enjoy it later. What Megan needs now is a liquid bolster for her spirits.’
‘Well, of course. Without question! Why didn’t anyone say so sooner?’ Morris promptly set down the pastry brush and stepped toward the beverage cooler that was incorporated into the wet bar.
‘Wow. That is a swanky new wine refrigerator you have,’ Summer complimented him. ‘How many bottles does it hold?’
‘Sixty,’ Morris answered proudly. ‘It has dual zone temperature control with beechwood shelves and UV protectant glass. But I haven’t filled it completely yet.’
Summer smiled. ‘So there’s room for Miranda to bring over a few things from her place during the freezer crisis?’
Hope chuckled with her sister.
Morris frowned, not understanding the joke or the question.
‘Never mind. It isn’t important.’ Summer returned to the matter at hand. ‘What are our wine options for the evening?’
Gram’s response was dry. ‘There are no options. You’re looking at four dozen identical bottles.’
‘Huh?’
‘Four dozen,’ Gram repeated with emphasis.
‘It isn’t four dozen any more,’ Morris corrected her. ‘We already drank two of the bottles, and then we gave one to the Fraziers after they so kindly offered to water the begonias for us when—’
Gram stopped him. ‘An exact accounting isn’t necessary, dear. The relevant point is that there aren’t any choices in the cooler. It’s either the white Bordeaux or nothing.’
‘White Bordeaux?’ Summer asked. ‘I didn’t know they made a white Bordeaux. I thought it was all red.’
She and Hope turned to Megan. After hosting countless wine-and-cheeses as part of her duties at the hotel, Megan was their go-to informational source for wine.
Megan shook her head. ‘I’m not familiar with it. The only thing I can tell you is that it must be reasonably good and relatively pricey, because the hotel only provides inexpensive and mediocre selections for the four o’clock assemblage.’
‘There is nothing at all mediocre about this white Bordeaux. It’s outstanding!’ Morris declared.
The dryness returned to Gram’s tone. ‘You only think that, dear, because you didn’t have to pay for it.’
‘Fiddle-faddle.’ Morris withdrew one of the bottles from the cooler and started the process of opening it. ‘We’ll let the girls judge for themselves. I wager that they’ll agree with me as to the quality of the wine.’
‘And our agreement,’ Gram reminded him,’ was that there would be no further wagering, since that’s how we ended up with so many bottles in the first place.’
‘You won them in a bet?’ Hope couldn’t conceal her surprise. ‘I never thought that you were a betting man, Morris.’
Gram chortled. ‘Tell them what the bet was, dear.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Having successfully removed the cork, Morris began to fill a line of waiting glasses. ‘It was rather interesting – and lucky for me. There’s a colleague of mine who is an otolaryngologist specializing in the ear, nose, and throat…’
It was evidently a lengthy story that she had already heard on more than one previous occasion, because Gram wasted no time in seating herself. Keeping a motherly eye on Megan, she took the chair closest to the lounger. Gram gestured encouragingly for Hope and Summer to sit down, as well.
‘He heads an international research committee that focuses on sinusitis…’
Summer chose a chair near the firepit. Hope settled herself in the rocking settee.
‘Ordinarily, a pair of studies on the deviated septum wouldn’t attract that much attention, but in this instance…’
The glasses were distributed to the group.
‘The committee was convinced that the paper would never be accepted in such a prestigious peer-reviewed journal. I wagered with them that it would be. Perhaps it was unfair of me not to have mentioned at the time that I happened to know the managing editor of the journal from my days at the…’
Swirling the wine, Summer inhaled its bouquet. ‘Peaches and lemon,’ she murmured. ‘With a hint of hazelnut.’
‘And it was published in the latest edition! With a special mention to follow in the annual compendium! The committee was thrilled. Not only did they pay up immediately, but they quadrupled our original wager on their own generous initiative. Four cases of white Bordeaux were delivered to the house last week.’
‘Well done, Morris. A superb accomplishment all around.’ Hope took a drink from her glass. ‘And you’re right. There isn’t anything at all mediocre about it, gratis or not. It’s a very nice wine.’
Megan nodded. ‘I like that it’s crisp and not overly sweet.’
‘It’s been too long of a day for a sweet wine,’ Summer agreed. ‘This is refreshing and hits the spot.’
Visibly pleased with their praises, Morris took a seat himself, not far away from Gram. ‘When you go back home tomorrow or later on in the week, you can take as many bottles with you as you want.’
‘As many as you want,’ Gram confirmed with a smile. ‘It’s not as though we’re about to run out and need to ration them for an emergency.’ After a pause, she added more earnestly, ‘And now that we’ve all gotten comfortable and have a full glass, why don’t you tell us what happened at the brownstone today?’
It was Hope and Summer’s turn to pause. They looked at each other, unsure where to begin.
‘Well,’ Hope said at last, ‘the whole thing started yesterday morning when Megan saw a man at the front window of the boutique—’
She was interrupted by an unexpected voice.
‘Ah, so this is where the homewrecker disappeared to.’
THIRTEEN
Hope’s stomach sank with dread. How did Austin Berg find them at Morris’s house? And why would he come there that evening instead of waiting until the next morning at the boutique if he wanted to harangue her – and in all likelihood Summer – again?
‘Homewrecker?’ Morris echoed with a mixture of surprise and disapprobation. ‘What an unseemly thing to say, Dylan.’
Dylan? Hope turned in her seat toward the figure that had appeared in the back garden. He was tall and lean, standing at the edge of the flagstone path in the encroaching darkness. It was indeed Dylan and not Austin. Hope breathed a sigh of relief. She didn’t have the energy for another confrontation with Austin that day. Her fatigue must have been why she didn’t properly identify the voice and instead jumped to a faulty conclusion.
Either Dylan saw the weariness in her face, or he didn’t want to risk further censure from his father, because he made little effort to defend himself.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I meant it as a joke, but it is unseemly. Forgive me.’
Although Morris accepted the apology with a nod, he wasn’t entirely satisfied. ‘I don’t understand how you could have intended the remark to be humorous.’
Dylan looked at Hope questioningly. She shook her head.
Gram – who had an observant eye – must have noticed the exchange and correctly guessed that it related to whether she and Morris had been apprised of the day’s events, because she said, ‘Pour yourself a drink, Dylan, and sit down with us. Hope was just beginning to tell your father and me about what happened at the brownstone.’
‘Thank you, Olivia,’ Dylan replied gratefully. He gestured at the glasses that they were all holding. ‘What is tonight’s feature?’
‘You’ll find the cooking sherry and some plastic cups on the lower shelf beside the oven,’ Morris said.
Hope and Gram exchanged a glance. If Morris was offering the cooking sherry rather than the bonded bourbon or single-malt whiskey to his son, then he really wasn’t pleased with him.
‘Don’t be nonsensical, dear,’ Gram reproved Morris gently. She turned to Dylan. ‘We’re having wine. There is an open bottle on the table. The crystal tumblers and liquor bottles are in the bar cabinet next to it. Please help yourself to whatever you’d prefer.’ And before either Dylan or Morris could respond, she addressed Hope. ‘Now go on with your story. You have my complete attention.’
After taking a substantial drink of her wine, Hope gave an account as best as she could. Summer and Megan chimed in occasionally with supplemental details and relevant observations. When the narrative had been concluded, they sat in silence for a long moment, each perusing their own thoughts. Then Dylan – who had remained standing – spoke.
‘Carter Dalton drowned.’
‘Drowned?’ Morris leaned forward in his chair with interest, any lingering disapproval of his son’s earlier remark vanishing. Morris invariably showed a high regard for Dylan’s medical knowledge and opinions. ‘You’re certain?’
Dylan inclined his head in the affirmative. ‘I am. There will be an autopsy, of course. It will determine definitively – and legally, for Nate’s purposes – whether there is in fact water in his lungs. But my examination left little doubt. I’ve seen drowning victims before, and Carter exhibited all of the classic signs. The manner in which his body was submerged. The immersion of the face, covering both the nose and the mouth. The larynx had plainly relaxed, indicating that water had been allowed to enter the lungs, which wouldn’t have occurred if there had been a different cause of death.’
There was another silence. This time it was Summer who broke it.
‘Could it have been an accident?’ she asked Dylan. ‘Could Carter have accidentally drowned in the retentional pool, even when it’s so shallow that Percy was able to splash around in it without any difficulty?’
‘In theory, yes,’ he answered. ‘I was once called to a camping ground in California where a man had drowned in a stream that barely reached my knees. He was on a group canoeing trip without any prior experience or proper instruction. Another person in the canoe apparently became nervous and tried to stand up when they hit some rough water. The balance of the boat shifted, and the man fell out. The current pulled him under the canoe. He couldn’t swim well, panicked, and quickly became disoriented in the cold water, and no one was able to reach him in time. It was a tragedy and an accident.’
Gram clucked her tongue. ‘How awful.’
‘But that isn’t what happened to Carter,’ Dylan continued. ‘His drowning wasn’t an accident.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Hope questioned.
‘Because of the bruising on his upper body. Carter was trapped beneath the drainage hoses. They were holding him down.’
Summer frowned. ‘But why didn’t he move the hoses, or move out from under them? Was he unconscious, or had he been hit in the head and was dazed?’
‘I saw no indication of a significant head wound,’ Dylan told her. ‘And based on the numerous abrasions across his fingers and palms, Carter undoubtedly tried with every ounce of his strength and energy to move the hoses. You seem to think that it would have been easy for him to simply climb out of the pool at his leisure, but when those drainage hoses are filled, they’re tremendously heavy and difficult to lift or shift. You saw how hard Austin had to work to turn Carter over, and even with all his effort, he still couldn’t get him completely out of the water.’
Gram clucked her tongue again. ‘Awful.’
‘Now imagine,’ Dylan went on, ‘that you are Carter Dalton, and for whatever reason, you’re standing by the retention pool. Somebody – with or without warning – pushes you into it. You land in the water and immediately become entangled in the hoses. No one needs to fight you and hold you under to kill you. All they have to do is put a firm hand or foot on one or two of the hoses, and those hoses will do the work for them. The hoses will keep you weighted down until you tire and can no longer struggle. That’s when you drown. The hoses become a murder weapon.’
Hope shivered, remembering when she had first walked from the boutique to the side lawn that day in search of Rosemarie and Percy; how the tangle of hoses encircling the pool had seemed like monstrous tentacles throttling its prey. She hadn’t known then that the prey was Carter.
‘Cold?’ Dylan asked her.
She looked up and found him standing directly in front of the settee.
‘No.’ Her voice wasn’t quite steady. ‘I was thinking back to this afternoon.’
Dylan’s gaze held hers for a moment, his eyes reflecting the orange and gold flames from the firepit. Then he turned and paced across the patio, drink in hand. Hope hadn’t seen which bottle he had ended up selecting from, but considering that it was a copper liquid in a crystal tumbler, it definitely wasn’t the white Bordeaux.
Summer shifted restlessly in her chair. ‘But why? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would somebody push Carter into the pool and then make sure that the hoses held him down? Yes, Carter may have looked a little peculiar or even suspicious in his big cloak. And yes, it’s possible that he broke into our cellar through the potato-coal chute. But those are reasons to call the police, just as Miranda and Paul thought about doing when they first noticed him lurking at the side of our brownstone. Those aren’t reasons to drown the man!’
Hope nodded. ‘I agree with you, except there doesn’t seem to be any real question that Carter was the one who broke into the cellar. It doesn’t justify killing him, of course,’ she added quickly.
‘Which is another thing that doesn’t make any sense,’ Summer responded with growing frustration. ‘We talked about it before, and we couldn’t see a reason behind it. And I still don’t see a reason behind it! What would Carter want in our cellar? There is absolutely nothing of value down there. According to Miranda and Austin, Carter had a house up on Bent Mountain, was a member of a book group, and might have been having an affair with Jill Berg. All of which means that he wasn’t a down-on-his-luck vagrant looking for a safe place to shelter. So why was he in the cellar?’
‘I may be able to answer that,’ Dylan said.
They looked at him in surprise.
‘It appears that Carter was in your cellar to get this.’ Dylan retrieved an item from the edge of the flagstone path, having apparently deposited it there unnoticed in the shadows when he had first arrived. He held the item up, so that the silver lights from the nearby arbor could illuminate it.
It was a bag. A large, clear plastic evidence bag. Inside the bag, there was a visibly old, leather-bound book. The book’s spine was nearly bare. Its corners were bent and scuffed. And its cover was so heavily worn that only a few patches of the original camel color remained. The book looked vaguely familiar to Hope, and then all of a sudden, she realized why.
‘Is that…’ Hope hesitated. ‘Is that from the brownstone’s library?’
Dylan’s lips curled with a trace of a smile. ‘I’m glad that you’re willing to admit it. Nate and I had a little debate as to whether you and your sister would claim the book or deny all knowledge instead.’
‘So Nate has seen it?’ Summer said, with an uneasiness that indicated she recognized the book also.
The smile grew. ‘Nate was the one who found it.’
‘Where?’ Hope asked.
‘Inside Carter’s cloak. It had been zippered into one of the many interior pockets, some of which are remarkably big. Other pockets contained a utility knife, two additional flashlights, and several helpful implements generally used in the art of breaking and entering. Fortunately, the waxed canvas is reasonably waterproof, and the book was on the side of the cloak that wasn’t fully immersed in the pool, so it got a little damp in spots but not saturated. The pages remain legible.’
Megan – who had no connection to the book and didn’t understand its import the same as Hope and Summer – focused on the cloak. ‘That’s probably why Carter chose the cloak. It’s only logical that if you’re intending to commit a burglary, you need a convenient way to hold your tools and, assuming that you’re ultimately successful, your loot.’
Hope responded with an absent nod. She was still looking at the book.
‘In addition to concealing what you’ve taken,’ Megan continued, ‘the cloak also conceals you. That could be another reason Carter wore it. He might have believed that it would help to hide or distort his identity. And it worked in that regard. When I first saw him in front of the boutique window, I thought that his beard was much longer than it actually was, and I mistook his large flashlight for a lantern. Plus, Miranda personally knows Carter, and instead of recognizing him yesterday, she only noticed his cloak.’
