Murder of a Hermit, page 24
Summer looked at Nate expectantly, and he didn’t disappoint.
‘Austin Berg, Jill Berg and Gina Zaffer,’ Nate said, ‘I am advising you that you will be taken to the police station for a formal interview.’
Jill and Austin exchanged a glance, debating how to respond. Gina was evidently better able to understand the difference between being potentially charged with fraud and being potentially charged with murder, because she didn’t vacillate with the Bergs.
‘I’ll come to the station,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll answer all of your questions. But I am not going to take the blame for what happened to Carter. I had nothing whatsoever to do with his death. That’s on them.’ It was Gina’s turn to glare at Jill and Austin.
‘Us?’ Jill cried, aghast.
‘How dare you!’ Austin hollered at Gina.
‘How dare you!’ Gina rejoined with equal vehemence.
Austin sprang to his feet, bellowing furiously. In an attempt to keep the situation from escalating out of control, Nate and Dylan rose, too. As Hope also started to stand, there was a sudden gust of wind. It was unexpected, because up to that point, there hadn’t been even the slightest breeze. A second gust followed, and with it, the temperature of the air dropped precipitously.
‘Did you feel that?’ Summer asked her sister quietly through the ongoing shouts and recriminations.
Hope nodded.
There was a third gust. It was the strongest of the three, and the flames in the firepit sparked for an instant with a dazzling brilliance. A moment later, the fire returned to its previous state, except there was now a thin plume of smoke rising from the front that hadn’t been there before.
‘Do you see that?’ Summer said in the same low tone.
Hope nodded again.
The plume of smoke began to dance. It first jumped forward and then darted backwards. It hopped to the left and skipped to the right. Hope and Summer watched it intently, ignoring the surrounding din.
Shivering, Rosemarie approached the sisters. ‘Hasn’t it gotten terribly cold? It must have dropped twenty degrees in the blink of an eye. How can there be such a chill when it should be scorching hot by the fire…’ The sentence trailed away with an apparent dawning realization, and her next words were barely audible. ‘Doesn’t a cold spot usually mean…’
‘Yes,’ Summer answered her.
Rosemarie gulped. She looked at Hope and Summer, and when she saw that they were looking at the plume of smoke, she looked at it, too. ‘Is that…’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ Summer answered again.
The plume twisted and curled, drawing gradually closer to them, until it suddenly halted. It flickered in place for a moment, as though deliberating, and then it took a sharp turn to the right.
‘Where are you going?’ Hope mused.
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ Dylan said, moving next to her. ‘Everybody has calmed down enough that a brawl no longer appears to be imminent. But Nate has called for backup just in case. He and his colleagues are going to have their hands full with those three…’ It was Dylan’s turn to leave a sentence unfinished as he perceived that no one was listening to him. ‘What are we staring at?’ he asked.
Still whispering, Rosemarie replied, ‘The smoke.’
‘The smoke?’ Dylan frowned. ‘When a fire smokes, it’s usually because the wood is damp or too fresh.’
‘Not the regular smoke,’ Rosemarie explained. ‘That smoke.’
As she pointed at the plume, it abruptly switched directions and headed back to the left.
Dylan’s frown deepened. ‘What the hell is that?’
‘Careful of your words,’ Summer cautioned him.
‘My words? How would—’
Hope didn’t let him continue. ‘It seems confused,’ she said to her sister, ‘as though it’s searching for something and can’t find it.’
Summer nodded in agreement. ‘It can’t be searching for a person, because we’re all right here in front of it. None of us are hidden or—’
Without warning, the plume veered upward. It climbed swiftly and steeply, and then like a raptor hurling itself into an attack, it plummeted down to the ground. It landed soundlessly but with a great gust of wind on the tote bag that Miranda had left lying on the pebbles. An instant later, the plume of smoke was gone, and the air had warmed to its former temperature.
Rosemarie promptly launched into a string of questions, but Hope and Summer didn’t respond to any of them. Nor did they pay attention to Dylan as he hastened toward the firepit, no doubt to satisfy his own curiosity regarding the disappearing plume. The sisters’ sole focus was on the tote bag.
‘Why direct us to the bag?’
‘Why care about a cookbook?’
‘Unless,’ Hope said slowly, beginning to fit the pieces together, ‘it isn’t actually a cookbook.’
Summer’s eyes widened as she followed the direction of her sister’s thoughts. ‘Gina told us that she wasn’t interested in the book. We assumed that she was talking about the cookbook. What if she was talking about our book instead?’
‘Then that would mean we were wrong. Gina never had our book.’
‘And that would mean Miranda…’
They turned to Miranda questioningly. But the moment that they met her belligerent gaze, all of their remaining doubts vanished. Miranda didn’t hesitate. She leapt from her chair and raced toward the tote bag. Before Hope and Summer could make any attempt to stop her, Miranda scooped up the bag from the pebbles and threw it into the firepit. There was a rush of flames around it.
Dylan grabbed a poker from beside the firepit and immediately started to dig in the blaze for the bag.
‘Oh, don’t burn yourself, Dylan!’ Rosemarie cried in alarm.
Echoing Rosemarie’s concern, Hope was about to tell him that no book was worth the possibility of a severe injury, when Dylan succeeded in pulling the bag out of the fire and dropping it on to the ground. He had been so quick that the fabric hadn’t yet fully ignited, and with a combination of the poker and his shoe, he managed to extinguish the burning patches, leaving the bag only mildly charred.
After checking that it was cool enough to touch, Dylan picked up the bag and looked inside. To Hope’s surprise, he didn’t take anything out. Instead, he walked over to her and handed her the bag.
‘I believe,’ he said, ‘that Volume II belongs to you and your sister.’
Summer didn’t wait for Hope to express their gratitude.
‘Why?’ she yelled at Miranda. ‘Why did you have our book?’
Miranda gave her a scornful look, as though the answer should have been obvious. ‘So I didn’t have to live in that damn brownstone any longer.’
It was the first time that Hope had ever heard Miranda’s voice not squeak.
Paul’s mouth opened, but not a sound – squeak or otherwise – came out. He was still standing at the table and appeared to be utterly bewildered by what was happening.
Miranda’s scornful look moved to him. ‘Don’t act as though this is news to you, Paul. I’ve told you for months on end that I couldn’t remain in that infernal place, with its leaking cellar and endless repairs and nothing ever working as it should. I wanted to be here on the mountain. I wanted a place like this.’ She motioned toward Gina’s house.
An indecipherable syllable now emerged from Paul.
‘Yes, yes, I know.’ The scornful look became a scornful laugh. ‘We don’t have the money for a place like this. But we would have had the money if I had been able to sell those books.’ She turned to Hope. ‘Do you have any comprehension what that book you’re holding is worth?’
‘It can’t be sold,’ Hope said.
‘Of course it can be sold,’ Miranda rejoined. ‘Everything can be sold. Everything has a price. I told that to Carter. I told him that I had seen the shelves full of old books in your library, and if he took what looked like the oldest and rarest one for me, then I would convince you to hold a séance for him. That’s all Carter wanted: a stupid séance! He was too frightened to ask you himself, probably because they’ – she inclined her head in the direction of Gina and the Bergs – ‘had taken advantage of him previously.’
Summer was livid. ‘And you decided to take advantage of him, too!’
Miranda disagreed. ‘I didn’t take advantage of him. Carter and I struck a deal. The problem came when he gave me the book and said there was another one to match it. I said he had to get it also. He didn’t like the idea, but in the end, he took the second book as he had the first. Except then he wouldn’t give it to me. He said that his wife wouldn’t be happy about the thefts. I said that his wife didn’t know and didn’t care, because she was dead! Naturally, that made him angry. I got angry, too. And we argued about it by the retention pool.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘Now Carter is with his wife.’
Paul gaped at her in horror. ‘Good God, Miranda! Do you understand what you’ve done?’
She offered no apology to him or anybody else, and in her eyes, there was not the slightest sign of remorse. ‘I understand that I’ll never have to go back to that damn brownstone. Maybe in prison, I’ll start a séance group. It was a lot of fun pretending this evening, seeing you all make fools of yourself.’
‘You may not find séances quite so much fun,’ Summer replied, ‘after you’ve had time to realize that this séance is what led to you being in prison.’
A shadow passed across Miranda’s face, as though the truth of Summer’s words was already beginning to hit her. A moment later, the patio was flooded with police. Nate’s backup had arrived, and after issuing a brief set of instructions, Nate let his colleagues take charge of Miranda, Gina and the Bergs. Watching Nate turn his full attention to Summer, Hope smiled to herself. They were already on the mountain, and the weather was clear. It was a good night for stars and fireflies.
‘Rosemarie has decided to stay here for a while instead of driving back to the city with us,’ Dylan said.
Not having noticed his approach in the waning light of the fire, Hope looked at him in surprise.
‘She’s worried about Paul,’ he continued, ‘and doesn’t want him to be alone as he comes to grips with what’s occurred.’
Hope nodded. ‘That’s very kind of Rosemarie, as always.’
There was a pause. Dylan took a step closer to her. His eyes mirrored the fading gold of the embers.
‘I haven’t thanked you yet for saving the book,’ Hope said.
‘Yes, you do owe me for that.’ A smile tugged at the corner of Dylan’s mouth. ‘And as I recall, you still owe me a kiss from several days ago.’
She laughed. ‘You’ll have to start keeping a list of my debts.’
Carol Miller, Murder of a Hermit
