Muffin to Fear, page 16
This was a sticky situation. However . . . it was murder on my property yet again, and one of those people in my library had done it. She was probably right; Urquhart was never going to be able to get these videos. If we figured out who killed Dirk Phillipe and told the police, maybe they could find some way of proving it.
“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do,” I said, and set her on another task, asking her to wait until I had taken food to the group in the library before she did it, because I wanted to be sure she would not be discovered.
I did a swift job of throwing together a cold luncheon. Nothing relaxes people like food and drink, in my experience. Funerals and wakes make people hungry. This was neither, but it was close, so I put together sandwiches, cheese, a relish tray, fruit tray, coffee, tea, and a selection of cold meats. It was lucky I had done that gigantic shopping trip to Batavia.
I thought back to Dirk Philippe’s charming behavior and thoughtfulness while he helped me carry stuff when no one else offered. If only he had always been like that! And I remembered Hugh pleading to call Dirk’s brother to tell him personally what had happened. The man had a family, a life outside of Haunt Hunt. That was always the thing I remembered in murder cases; every person is more than his or her worst behavior. I made Lizzie help me tote things to the library, then sent her away while I guarded the Haunt Hunt cast and crew.
Felice had joined the others in the library, but was sitting alone in a club chair by the window overlooking the drive. Serina and Todd had rejoined the group, but a couple others were missing. Arnie was gone, and so was Rishelle. Drat! No one knew where either was when I asked, so I lined up trays on the library table on the far side of the room and stacked paper plates, napkins, mugs, and other necessities nearby, then set out to look for the two missing lambs. I went outside and circled the castle, but didn’t find them. I saw Lizzie while I was out there, and she saw me, but she was busy.
I stopped for a moment and watched the garage area; the police were still there and had the whole area taped off, with one deputy standing guard. Or sitting guard, actually, on a chair with a laptop on his lap, ignoring everything else, fortunately for Lizzie. Another uniformed officer emerged from the garage with a paper evidence bag. She headed straight to a car and drove away. I knew that at the sheriff’s department they would be doing research and investigating the backgrounds of each and every member of the Haunt Hunt cast and crew.
I returned inside by the back door to the butler’s pantry and through my empty kitchen. Where could Rishelle and Arnie be? I trotted upstairs, checked a couple of bedrooms—what a mess!—and then moved back out to the middle of the gallery.
And heard a muffled thump and a moan.
From the cleaning closet.
My stomach dropped; was someone else in trouble? I whipped open the door and there was Arnie with his arms wrapped around Rishelle, who looked dazed at the sudden light, her cheeks and lips whisker-burned. Both blinked at me, expressions of dismay on their faces.
“Lunch is served in the library. I expect you down there in thirty seconds,” I said, and slammed shut the door. I returned to the library and slumped own on the sofa, my mind again racing, this time because of this new information. Not Stu, but Arnie, the one Todd turned to, to complain about his wife. And . . . my eyes widened in sudden realization. That explained Rishelle’s look of longing; she was not looking at her husband, but at Arnie, her lover.
“What a delightful spread you’ve produced in such remarkably short order,” Hugh said, taking a seat beside me on the sofa.
Snapped out of my wandering thoughts, I smiled at him. He had a plate full of Genoa salami, Westphalia ham, double cream Brie with fig preserves, kalamata olives, grapes, and a roll from Binny’s Bakery. “I’m happy to see that you’re feeling better. Did Sheriff Urquhart say you could call Dirk’s brother yet?”
He shook his head, a somber expression on his face. He set his plate down on a side table, barely touched. I was sorry I had spoken of it when it seemed he was getting his appetite back.
“No, the sheriff hasn’t come back. But I think I’ll call anyway. I believe that Dirk’s brother has a right to know what has happened, and has a right to come here and find out for himself what investigation, if any, is going on.”
“Aren’t you worried about the fact that the killer has to be one of your group?” I murmured, glancing around at the crowd. Rishelle sauntered in, a new smear of concealer on her chin and cheeks, and headed for the food. Arnie did not accompany her and wouldn’t for another ten minutes or so, I guessed, based on my observation of past affairs I had witnessed.
“I don’t see why you think that is true.”
Hugh had not seen the murder scene. Maybe he hadn’t even grasped the prank setup, and how someone had altered it to kill Dirk. I wasn’t about to enlighten him. “I’d hold off on notifying his brother, Hugh. I know it seems arbitrary to you, but the sheriff probably has a good reason for asking, and it is the police who will inform the next of kin.”
Just then my very own former local sheriff sauntered in looking terrific, in jeans and a white shirt open at the throat. Virgil always looked good to me, and I could tell by the way Rishelle’s eyes widened that she thought so, too. She stopped chewing, swallowed hastily, and tugged down her top.
Virgil crossed the room, I stood, and he hugged me, whispering, “Any news yet?”
I shook my head. “Not that I know of. I didn’t expect anything. Can we talk?”
He nodded. I took his arm and we left the room. I had real food set aside for him in the kitchen, so I led him there, had him sit down by the hearth, now cleared of extraneous cameras, and let him eat in peace. I had made him roast beef on a kaiser roll with Dijon and horseradish, as he likes it, along with his favorite coffee and a bowl of salad to try to balance all the protein and carbs.
“Did you get some sleep?” I asked.
“A little.” He stabbed at the salad and wolfed it down, then ate the roast beef sandwich.
I waited until he finished eating. He’s always more reasonable after food. I had to talk to someone about the videos. I knew what Lizzie and I had done was wrong but not how to fix it, or whether to confess it to the sheriff.
He sat back in the wing chair and put his feet up, taking my hand in his and stroking my palm with his thumb. I wanted to surrender to the enjoyment of being with him, but dang . . . there was once again a murderer on the loose, and I couldn’t relax knowing I had likely just served him or her lunch in the library.
“Virgil, I have a confession to make.”
He looked over, a slight smile on his clean-shaven face. His hair was still damp from his shower, and he smelled so good. In a moment his eyes would turn cloudy and he’d be exasperated at me and maybe at Lizzie, too, though it was all my fault. I know the girl, and know that if you give her an inch she takes sixty-three thousand, three hundred and fifty-nine more.
I explained the theory about the digital cameras on mounts in the great hall, and how I had wondered if they were set up to start by motion detection. If they were, they might show who snuck out in the night, thereby telling us who might be guilty of altering the prank, killing Dirk. His expression became wary, and he watched my eyes.
“Hugh is never going to give Urquhart permission to take those cameras,” I said. “He might be able to get a court order to seize them, but that’ll take time, and HHN’s lawyers will block it every way they know how.”
“Okay.”
I was about to explain, gently and with great diplomacy, about how Lizzie had misunderstood my request that she find out if the cameras were set on motion detector mode during the night when the girl herself stomped in, declaring, “I got it all loaded on your laptop and the memory cards back in all the cameras and—oh yeah, I wiped my fingerprints off everything.”
Virgil, who had turned at her intrusion, now whirled back to glare at me, his dark thick brows raised. “Am I missing something?”
This was going to be a tedious explanation, with many husbandly recriminations. Actually, it didn’t go as badly as I expected.
The first question he asked was of Lizzie. “Did Hugh Langley or the others ever specify what your duties were as an unpaid intern?”
“It was kind of informal, you know?” She shrugged. “Do what I was told and stay out of trouble, that’s all I got.”
Virgil nodded. “So, what did you end up doing?”
“At first I fetched water and coffee for the crew and cast. But after a while I was holding wires for them, and then I was holding cameras between shots. They take stills, too, sometimes for lots of reasons. Arnie especially. He likes to see a still image of the lighting of a spot so he can adjust angles. They use infrared cameras a lot, of course, but he likes stills with the light on, too, for later in production so other staffers at the studio can see what the room is like.”
He nodded and got out his phone. I had forced him to get an up-to-date phone so we could not only call, but text and video chat. He had quickly seen the applications for his new business venture as a private detective and had turned his first phone in for one that was bigger for his big hands. It had all kinds of apps, like GPS trackers, maps, and assorted other doohickeys, the technical term for whatever I don’t understand.
“What else did you do?”
“Arnie got me to fetch things all the time, and when he figured out I knew what I was doing he let me change out memory cards when one was full. He’s a lazy guy.”
Bingo. I saw what Virgil was getting at. It was shaky, but could save us. I sighed and leaned my head on his shoulder as he tapped at his phone screen. His cell phone is big enough that he can use it like a tablet. I looked over his shoulder and there it was, right there; a website explaining the duties of a TV intern, among the standard fetch and carry jobs, lots of technical tasks, like helping with lighting, camerawork, logging . . . oh!
“Logging!” I said, pointing at it in the description. “What is that?” Though I had a pretty good idea, having worked in TV.
“That’s reviewing all the video and writing down exactly where it was taken, how long the piece is, and stuff like that,” Lizzie answered.
I sighed in relief and Virgil nodded.
“Okay. Do you still have all those memory cards, Lizzie?”
“Duh, no. I told you, I put them all back into the cameras because Merry had a freakin’ fit.”
“Go and get them out again, exactly the same as you did last time,” Virgil said. “Labeled and everything.”
“What?” she shrieked. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding. You are, after all, an overzealous and hardworking intern doing what your duties are as described on numerous websites about TV internships.”
She looked dumbstruck for a moment, then a sly smile twitched at her lips. “Hey, you guys are pretty smart. And then what?”
“Then you’ll come and tell me what you did, and hand them over to me,” Virgil said. “I’ll be surprised but understanding, and talk to Urquhart on your behalf. I hope this works. Just forget everything about Merry telling you to do anything, and about putting them back in the cameras and wiping your prints.”
She nodded. “Oh, I can lie. I’m pretty good at that.”
I rolled my eyes. “Good lord, don’t tell your grandmother any of this or she’ll never let me near you again. And she’ll probably take you to church to get you exorcised.”
“So what are you going to say, if asked?” Virgil said.
“What, me?” she asked, and blinked, the very picture of innocent teenagedom. “Well, like, of course, as soon as I realized the shoot was over, I, like, took all the memory cards out and labeled them because, like, I was hoping I’d get a chance to start logging them. For experience. Because that’s what TV interns do. Isn’t it?”
I smothered a laugh. “I think she’s got this,” I said to my husband. “Except lose the ‘like’ part, Lizzie; everyone knows you don’t talk like that.”
It was Virgil’s turn to sigh. “What the hell have you done to this child?”
“Hey, don’t look at me. She started out this way,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ve always been awesome,” Lizzie said. She trotted off to do what Virgil had asked, and came back with everything labeled perfectly, handing over the cards. “Now . . . can we look at the footage?”
Chapter Seventeen
“WHAT’S THIS ‘WE’ stuff?” I said as Virgil snorted in laughter. “No one said you were going to look at it.”
She rolled her eyes and stomped to the fridge, hauled out a bunch of food, and started to make herself a sandwich.
“Don’t you think you should be home with your mother?”
“She’s the one who dropped me off this morning.”
“Shouldn’t you have called her cell and told her about the murder when you found out about it this morning?”
“Do you think I’m nuts? Of course not. Anyway, she was heading to Buffalo to stay with a girlfriend overnight. If I’d told her, she would have come back and made me go to Buffalo with her. Tomorrow morning she’s visiting colleges that offer massage therapy courses,” Lizzie said, over her shoulder. “She says she’ll look at colleges for both of us.” She cut lopsided hunks of bread and piled meat and cheese on one, along with sliced pickles and a slab of tomato, then jammed it all together and cut it in half.
“You didn’t say that earlier.” I didn’t think Emerald was necessarily a good person to choose Lizzie’s college, since her planning is sketchy and she tends to take stabs at life that often veer wildly off course. But that was another conversation for another day.
She shrugged. “I’m staying with you, and tomorrow is a professional development day, no school.”
I watched her through narrowed eyes. “Are you sure about that? Should I call someone and find out, since you’re such an awesome liar?”
“But I wouldn’t lie to you!”
I was skeptical about that. “Virgil and I will review the video when we have time. Meanwhile, you are going to do the homework I know you have. If you don’t have it here, I will take you to get it. I know you have it, though, right?”
She nodded, but the look in her eyes was like a puppy that’s been promised a treat, then put off.
Virgil was about to say something, but I stayed him with one hand. “Lizzie, come here.”
She came over, sat down on the hearth, and looked up at the two of us.
I composed my thoughts, then met her gaze. “I’m not chastising you, but I do want you to realize that this is not entertainment. If I’ve given any other impression, if I’ve spoken with too much levity, I’ve been wrong. A man died, and one of those people in the library probably arranged it. Someone is dangerous,” I said, and my voice quavered. “A man is dead, and it’s tragedy, not comedy. Someone loved him and will miss him. Okay?”
She nodded, a sober expression on her face. I saw that she was aware of my intentions and didn’t take offense. That’s what I love about the kid; she’s sometimes pouty or cross, and she can be snarky at times. But she does get the message if I take the time to tell her the truth in the right manner.
“Lizzie, I don’t want you going anywhere alone, I don’t want you talking to them, or asking questions, and I was dead wrong to rope you in to find out about the cameras. Understand?”
“Okay, all right. I got it,” she said, around her sandwich. She swallowed the bite she was chewing. “I am almost an adult myself. I can do stuff, and you know it. But I promise I won’t be stupid.”
While she slipped out to the great hall to get her knapsack that held her laptop and books, Virgil pulled me down into the chair with him, circled me in his arms, and we kissed. It felt so good. I love him so much it’s hard to remember a time when I didn’t.
“You’d be a good mom,” he said.
My stomach clenched. What did that mean? We had never had that talk, I realized with a thumping heart.
He looked up at me with a quizzical expression. “Hey, what’s going on? You jolted like you touched an electric fence.”
I took in a deep, long breath and avoided his gaze. “Virgil, we’ve never . . . I mean, I don’t know if . . .” I stole a look at his face, not able to finish.
He looked puzzled for a minute, then understanding dawned in his eyes. “Jeez, Merry, it was a comment, not a request!” he said, pulling me closer.
“Do you want kids?”
I love that he never answers reflexively, he always thinks things through. After a few minutes, he said, “I’ve never thought much about it. That’s why it’s taking me a minute to figure it out.”
I twisted to watch his expression. “But you coach every single kid’s team there is in Autumn Vale. And some in Ridley Ridge! You must love kids.”
“I like kids, I love sports.”
I laughed and relaxed. “I’ve never truly considered it, having kids, I mean. It’s never been a priority, but if you wanted, we could discuss it.”
“I have nieces and nephews, as you know from our wedding,” he said dryly.
Our wedding had been the first time I met his siblings and their children. It was noisy and messy, but I was okay with that.
“Merry, if having kids isn’t important to you, I’m good with us the way we are.”
I thought about it. People have always said to me, “You’d be such a good mother,” but I’ve never especially felt maternal. I like teenagers better than babies.
“Know what? I’m good,” I said, patting his leg. “I have everything I could want right here, right now.”
He kissed me just as Lizzie came back. She gave us a look and set up her homework on the long kitchen trestle table. Virgil departed to find Urquhart and tell his former deputy what we had done. I decided to sit down with Lizzie while she did her homework and write down on paper who I suspected and why. I like notebooks rather than computers for that; the physical act of writing helps me think.
