Muffin to Fear, page 14
Urquhart nodded. “That’s what I thought.”
One of the three of them could have found a way to turn it off remotely, possibly, intending to come back and alter the prank to ensure its lethal outcome. “Or even all three,” I said. “They could have set it up to look like they had intended a prank and someone else altered it, while all along it was the three of them.”
He nodded, his gaze steady on the castle, a thoughtful expression on his face. “I suppose that’s the most likely explanation, that the three of them planned it that way from the start.” He shook his head and sighed. “I know I’m supposed to follow the evidence and not hypothesize at this point, but I don’t think they’re in on this together. If one of them did it, he or she probably did it alone. Their stories match up, other than a few details that could be misremembering, like whose idea it was. That’s likely Miss Vayne’s flightiness.”
“I’m not sure she’s as flighty as she appears.”
We were both silent for a time, and I thought it all over. I turned and eyed the sheriff. He’s a good-looking fellow with a hard jaw and high cheekbones, probably late twenties, young to be sheriff, but Virgil has faith in him. I, on the other hand, have had a contentious, at best, relationship with him. “So what do you want from me?” I wasn’t being difficult, though I know it sounds that way. I was asking a genuine question.
He blinked and stared out the window toward the castle. “What is your impression of these people? We can do all the investigation we want, and we may hit something—I hope we do—but I feel like I’ll have a head start if I have some insider information. I’m not asking for your opinion on who did it, Merry, I want to know how they interact. Any information you can offer will help.”
I was warmed by him finally calling me by my first name, then alarmed that such a simple gesture could make me warm up to him. Was that his intent? How much could I trust him, given that we’d had an adversarial relationship for quite some time? But I wanted this solved, and he was now the sheriff. Cooperation was my best shot at a solution, especially since he seemed willing to enlist my help.
“I wasn’t pleased when I came home and found this lot here. It wasn’t my idea,” I confessed. “I gather Pish was talked into it. He had called someone at HHN network, Chuck Sandberg, who put him in touch with Hugh Langley, the producer, and he put Pish in touch with Todd Halsey, to ask questions about the strange things that were supposedly happening in the castle. Somehow wires were crossed and they thought he was volunteering the castle as an investigation site. When they called to finalize the agreement and wanted to come right away, he figured it was harmless enough, so why not? In his professional life he is matter-of-fact and businesslike, but in his day-to-day life he’s kind of a pushover.”
“Okay, got that.” Urquhart stirred restlessly. “Mr. Lincoln already told me all of that. Let’s talk about the people individually.”
I went over what I had learned and observed of the cast and crew of Haunt Hunt while Urquhart made notes. Occasionally, one or another of the people inside my castle would come to the door, look out, regard me for a moment, then disappear back inside. Todd bolted out the door and stood, glaring across the open expanse at us. He looked worried. Hugh came out, grabbed him by the shoulder, and they had an intense conversation. Finally, Hugh got him calmed down, put his arm over his shoulders, and led him inside. Pish, too, popped out once, and Lizzie, who bolted out of the castle, looked our way, then strode off, head down, Becket behind her, toward the woods. As long as none of the cast and crew followed, I was okay with that.
I told the sheriff about Felice Broadbent, who was complaining about not getting enough scenes because of Rishelle. I mentioned that Dirk Phillipe had humiliated Millicent Vayne, not for the first time, while Chi, who had a thing for Millicent, had also been humiliated by Phillipe. I also made note that while Rishelle had at first seemed adversarial toward Millicent, the two appeared buddy-buddy in the last two days.
“Is that why the three were behind the prank against the vic?” Urquhart asked.
“They wanted to humiliate him.”
He nodded and tapped something on his laptop keyboard. “Okay.”
I didn’t like how this back-and-forth was going so far, since it all seemed to be me being forthcoming and him not giving me anything back. “You don’t think they were working together to kill Dirk?” I wanted some kind of definitive idea of what theory he was leaning toward.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” he said, evasively.
I sighed and glared out the window toward the woods while I thought.
“Anything else?” he said.
I narrowed my eyes and examined him. “Not so fast. You’re still considering Millicent, Rishelle, and Chi suspects. I see your point; one or all could have used the ‘prank’ as a bluff, while one or two, or all three planned a real murder.” He looked at me, no expression. “And while it’s true that one of them could have snuck back in and changed things up, that would be awfully risky, don’t you think? I mean, the other two—if it was one of them—would know, and in any case . . .” I trailed off and sighed. I was tired and this was too taxing.
“Go on,” Urquhart said.
I was beginning to remember all the reasons I dislike Sheriff Urquhart. Virgil as sheriff I had been able to work with, but this guy . . . “Okay. Possibility one is that they intended this as a bluff and that their intent all along was to kill Dirk, then claim later that someone must have co-opted their prank, turning it deadly.”
He nodded and tapped away at his keyboard. I wasn’t sure if that meant he had thought of that, too, or if he was madly typing my number one theory.
“Possibility two is that one or two of them snuck back to change the prank to be deadly, without the other or others knowing, thus possibly putting the blame on the innocent party.”
He nodded, still madly typing.
“Possibility three is someone else learned or knew about their plan and, with or without one of the prankster’s knowledge, went and made it deadly.”
He almost smiled, but kept it to a nod. “That’s what I was thinking.”
It’s all take, take, take with you, I thought. That, of course, is when he surprised me by giving something.
“We’ve examined it from every angle. It doesn’t seem logical to me that the three set up the prank, then reset it to be lethal, or at least, not together. We’ve investigated their backgrounds and there is nothing to indicate they are anything but coworkers.”
Something pinged in my head, some previous connection among cast or crew members . . . I’d have to think of that later, because I didn’t remember who it was offhand, nor did I know if it mattered.
The sheriff continued. “Also, as far as we can tell, the crew who stayed at the motel are out of it. We’ve already had Sheriff Baxter in Ridley Ridge review security cam footage that shows that none of the crew left the motel until this morning, just before they arrived here. So only one of those who stayed in the castle could have known about the prank and had the opportunity to alter it,” he said. “What do you think happened?”
“Of those three possibilities I outlined?”
He nodded.
I pondered, then shook my head. “You know what? Any one of them seems just as likely as the other. However, I can think of one way to try to narrow the list. Yesterday, I gave Hugh Langley my only spare key to the padlock. When I left the garage last night I personally snapped the padlock shut. I have two questions: One, how did the trio unlock the padlock? And two, did Hugh give them the key, or does he still have it?”
“I’ll tell you what they told me about that,” he said. “Langley told me he gave it to Todd Halsey, who says he passed it on to cameraman Arnie Ball to use for the shoot.”
“And?”
He shrugged. “Ball says he doesn’t know where it went—he seems to be generally unreliable and forgetful, according to his staff, about stuff like that—but agrees the padlock was snapped shut after the shoot. Says he saw you do it.”
“So how did the pranksters open the padlock?”
“Chi-Won Zhu claims he went prepared to pick it, but it wasn’t necessary. It was unlocked.”
I was taken aback. Was Chi lying? Why would he? “So we have two people saying exactly the opposite. Isn’t that typical?”
I got out and Urquhart drove away, after telling me that the garage was off-limits for the foreseeable future. There would be a deputy stationed there at all hours. They had taken some things from individual Haunt Hunt cast and crew rooms and had issued receipts, and he would now be dealing with Hugh Langley’s legal obstinacy about the DVR cameras.
He implied that if I wanted to spy, he wouldn’t hold it against me. Or maybe I was just imagining that part. I wanted to know who had done such a dirty deed, and in so many words told Urquhart I’d keep my eyes and ears open.
As I lingered on my fieldstone terrace, reluctant to go in to the hubbub inside, I watched Lizzie come stomping back from her walk, looking cross and much put-upon, with Becket close behind looking just as tangled and bad-tempered.
“Oh, good heavens! You’re both covered in burrs. I thought one of you had better sense than to get so mired in the burdock.”
“Hey, don’t talk to me about it; it was Becket who went first.”
“He’s the one I was talking to,” I said, and led them both back through the castle, sending baleful looks up at the occasional camera on a high tripod. I led them both to the kitchen so I could deburr them. In autumn everything is dried up, and nothing sticks to clothes, hair, and fur better than dried burrs. The burdock plant, responsible for most of the burrs, grows rampant along the edge of my forest. It was time to get the boys, Zeke and Gordy, out to do more work. If I ever got rid of the Haunt Hunt cast and crew, that is.
“Sit,” I said, pushing Lizzie down into a chair. Becket was about to slink away but I went and closed the door. “You, too, mister. You wait your turn.”
I got my comb out of my purse and began tugging at knots. To the accompaniment of her “ouch, ow, hey!” cries, we talked. “Did Sheriff Urquhart talk to you?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you tell him?”
She shrugged, then screeched as I ripped out a burr. Becket started skulking toward the door again, but I said, “Stop!” and he stopped, stuck his hind leg in the air, and licked his butt. “Lizzie, if you want this done with less pain, I’d suggest you keep me happy by telling me what the sheriff asked and what you told him. He’s asked for my help, but he hasn’t exactly been forthcoming.”
She snorted. “Typical.”
“Lizzie, stop it. I know you don’t like the man, but Virgil does, and I respect my husband’s opinion. After all, Virgil was right about you, wasn’t he? Now, what did Sheriff Urquhart ask and what did you tell him?”
“If you like him so much, ask him,” she grumbled.
I yanked a burr out of her wild hair, and she settled down.
“He asked about Rishelle, Millicent, and Chi,” she said as I more gently tugged burrs from her hair, hoping I wouldn’t have to cut any out. “He asked if while I was helping, I noticed anything.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him what I know, that Todd hates Stu, Felice hates Rishelle, and everyone hated Dirk.”
Todd feared that Stu and Rishelle were having an affair, but I wasn’t going to share that with Lizzie. Felice’s dislike of Rishelle was partly professional jealousy. “You’ve spent some time with them working. What do you think of them from that?”
She was silent for a moment. I worked on a mass of burrs and successfully got them out of her slightly frizzy hair. I gave a whoop of success and handed her the clusters, bristly with her hair.
“How come even when adults get everything they want in life, they still aren’t satisfied?” Lizzie asked, turning the cluster of burrs over and over, pulling at the strands of her own hair caught in the bristles. “These guys all work on a kinda cool, popular show. I mean, I think it’s a bunch of crap, but it’s fun anyway. And yet all they do is talk smack about each other and gossip.”
I let her vent while I got another mass of burrs out. “This is it,” I said, and handed her the last bunch. Then I brushed her hair out and French braided it, holding on to the end of the braid while I stretched to a junk drawer, got an elastic band, and fastened it on. “Next time you decide to climb through burdock, let me do this to your hair first,” I said, and handed her a mirror from my purse.
She looked at herself, rolled her eyes, crossed them, and said, “This is how my mom wants me to look.”
“You should humor your mom once in a while. Help me with Becket,” I said. We put him up on the counter, all seventeen chunky pounds of him, and I got a ratting comb from the junk drawer. Thank heavens for junk drawers. I tugged at a knot of burrs in Becket’s soft orange fur and he squawked, hissed, and growled. I turned him around, looked him straight in the eye, and said, “No more of that, mister! You behave or you’ll stay inside ’til winter.” He didn’t hiss again once while we evicted the burrs.
“Okay, you’ve been around these people a lot and know them as well as me. Let’s solve a murder.” When I glanced at Lizzie, she was smiling. “What are you grinning about?”
“I knew you were going to investigate.”
“Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone else.”
Chapter Fifteen
I SAID IT easily, but I was struck with doubts immediately. I did know one thing I wanted, but hesitated, since it was something I’d have to delegate to Lizzie. Was it right to drag her into it? Well, she was almost an adult; I’d leave it up to her. So I told her what I needed done.
“Is that something you can do without drawing attention and without being alone with any one of that band of weirdos?”
She stared at me with disgust. “You’d think I was my mother!”
“What do you mean?”
“Being a cocktail waitress and all the other crap she’s gotten herself into, you’d think my mom would have learned, but I swear she meets a person, and bam! She thinks the best of them.”
“Whereas you . . . ?”
“My art teacher said he’s never met anyone else who was born with a nihilist attitude.”
“Do you know what he means?”
“I looked it up. He may be right.”
I laughed but shook my head. “He’s not, kiddo. I took a philosophy course and if I recall, a nihilist believes all things, values, people, are worthless. It’s impossible for an artist to be a nihilist, or they wouldn’t create art. You believe in your art, and you believe in us: Pish, your mom, your aunt Binny . . . me. Right?”
She nodded, with a crooked smile.
“Then you’re no nihilist.”
“Okay, I guess. But Merry, I got this. I can do it. Trust me.”
And so I did. I then called Hannah. She had recently upgraded her cell phone and used it for everything, so I no longer had to go through her parents’ line.
We chatted briefly, then she told me she had heard what happened. Everyone in Autumn Vale was, of course, gossiping about it. She had gone with her parents to Golden Acres for Sunday service in the sitting room, then she headed alone to the library to catch up on some work, but everyone accosted her along the way. Knowing how close we are, they thought she’d know more than she did.
“But now you’re going to tell me what’s going on. And I hope you’ve called me so I can help.”
She, like most librarians, is one helluva researcher, and I had called to ask for help. I gave her the cast list and asked her to find what she could on all of their backgrounds. I’d do it myself, but she’s so much better at it than I am. She had already done research on my well water situation, zoning regulations, solving numerous problems I have with my plans, and so many other things I’m afraid to tote up all that I owe her. In return I try to put her in touch with people who can help her, influential people in public life who know how to ask for favors and how to get things done, even for a small-town librarian in western New York State. Through Pish I have connections.
As we talked, I heard her tapping away on her computer.
“Well, this is interesting,” she said. “Did you say Millicent Vayne downplayed what she had done in TV up to this point?”
“Sure. She said she worked on some kind of kid’s program once, but that was about it.”
“There’s more to it than that,” Hannah said. “She started on Kid’s World of Science in 2001, but then she got her own short-lived show, Mandy Monday’s Science Rocks. She was Mandy Monday, the presenter, but she’s listed in another place in the credits as Millie Vayne.”
“For what?” I said, not sure what she meant.
“She was in charge of special effects. Looks like it was a low-budget show, and she may have had no qualifications, but still . . .”
I gave a low whistle. Hannah promised to find anything she could on the other members of the crew, and I hung up, thinking about the implications of what she had told me. Millicent was not as ditzy as she seemed, she was older than she was pretending to be, and her involvement in both science and TV was much deeper than she had told me. None of that might matter, but one thing stood out to me—given her past in special effects it was quite possible that she had rigged the booby trap that had killed Dirk. She could have used Chi to set the initial prank, knowing how he felt about her, so that he would take the blame when something went “wrong,” meaning, once she had gone back and rerigged it to be lethal.
If any of that was true, she was diabolical. However, it didn’t completely make sense. If she was capable of doing it on her own, then why drag anyone else into it at all? Why not go ahead and do it herself? True, their joint prank made her involvement look more innocent, and she had placed the blame for thinking of the prank in the first place on Rishelle.
