Amy Patricia Meade - Marjorie McClelland 02 - Ghost of a Chance (4 page)

Marjorie stabbed at the air with her index finger and motioned
violently toward the opposite end of the fairgrounds. “Over there,
by the Ferris wheel. It’s Mrs. Schutt. Come on!” She grabbed her
companion by the hand and yanked his arm in the direction of the
disturbance.

Creighton dug his heels into the ground and stood firm. Louise
Schutt was the last person he wanted to see. “I’m sure it’s nothing.
Sharon probably has a hangnail or something.”

“Oh come on. Mrs. Schutt doesn’t scream like that over nothing-especially in public. You know how she is-trying to be a ‘lady’
at all times.” With a spirited gleam in her eye, she gave his arm another tug. “Let’s find out what it is.”

Creighton recognized that look. It was the one that had drawn
him to her-that look of curiosity and sheer determination. With
a slight grin, he unlocked his knees and allowed her to drag him
across the fairgrounds and through the throng of onlookers. They
arrived at the front of the crowd to find a distraught Mrs. Schutt, a
man’s lifeless body lying face-up at her feet.

Marjorie gasped. “What happened?”

“I-I don’t know,” Mrs. Schutt cried. “I opened the door and
he fell out of the car. I-I think he’s dead.”

Creighton took the gold calling card case from his jacket pocket,
knelt down, and held it before the man’s open mouth. The case retained its bright yellow gleam. “He’s dead.”

The words sent a shockwave through the crowd.

“Someone call Detective Jameson,” Marjorie ordered.

“I’ll go,” came a voice from the crowd. It was the fifteen-yearold soda jerk at the local drugstore. “I’ll go, Miss McClelland!”

“Thank you, Freddie,” Marjorie shouted as the boy was swallowed up by the huddled mass of bodies.

He was replaced by the spherical figure of Sharon Schutt.
“Mother!” she wailed as she waddled to her mother’s side. “Mother,
how horrible!”

The Schutt women embraced in a fit of tears as the tiny, birdlike figure of Mrs. Patterson appeared from amid the sea of worried
onlookers. Like the fairgoers surrounding her, she wore an expression of concern. Her concern, however, was of a different nature.
Waving her hands in the air, she flagged Creighton’s attention and
silently mouthed the question: “Did you tell her?”

Meanwhile, Sharon, through muffled sobs, sought to learn of her
mother’s condition. “You’re not hurt, are you, Mother?”

The Englishman shook his head in response to Mrs. Patterson
as the elder Schutt replied in a tone of feigned weakness: “No, dear,
I wasn’t hurt.”

“Darn it!” The frail voice of Emily Patterson, oblivious to all but
Creighton’s failure, rose above the mutterings of the crowd,

The onlookers stared. Marjorie bit her lip to stifle her giggles.

“Oh!” Mrs. Patterson swiftly drew her hand to her mouth. “Oh!
I am sorry! I didn’t mean…” Flustered, she cleared her throat and
called to Creighton. “Mr. Ashcroft, may I have a word with you?”

“Certainly.” Under the careful scrutiny of the fairgoers, he joined
the elderly woman near the now-vacated kissing booth.

“What’s Plan B?” she asked.

“Plan B? Simple, there isn’t any.”

“What do you mean `There isn’t any’ Creighton? There’s no time
to lose. Detective Jameson will be here any minute.”

(( ”
So?

“So, you must tell her now.”

“Mrs. Patterson,” he laughed, “Marjorie’s not going to listen to
me now, not while there’s a dead body sprawled at her feet. You
know how she gets when there’s a potential mystery afoot.” He gestured at Marjorie, who was examining the ground surrounding the
fallen man. “Just look at her. She’s gone completely googly-eyed.”
“

“Well, you’d better come up with something. If not today, then
soon.

I will. I’m formulating a scheme as we speak.” There was no
plan, but it would keep Mrs. Patterson at bay for the moment.

“I knew you’d come up with something. After all, this should
be easy for someone of your intelligence.”

“Oh yes, very easy.” He added, sotto voce: “Like saddling a wild
horse”

MARJORIE WATCHED INTENTLY As two uniformed interns lifted
the corpse from the ground in front of the Ferris wheel and onto
a stretcher.

Why she found herself fascinated by such grisly matters, she
could not explain. She only knew that her love of the macabre, like
her ardor for the English language, was a passion she could never
quell. Nothing else set her pulse racing like the thought of a new
mystery or the lyricism of a well-turned phrase. Not even Detective Robert Jameson.

She cared for Robert, to be certain, but beyond his police badge
and matinee idol looks, he was a dull, ordinary fellow. Not that
ordinary was necessarily bad, she reminded her ever-practical self.
Marriage, after all, was supposed to be reliable and stable, not passionate and exciting.

Even if she were sometimes left with the feeling that there should
be more to their relationship, that feeling was still a sight better than
the complete exasperation she felt when with Creighton Ashcroft. Despite his wit and charm, Creighton could be quite maddening.
Initiating verbal tug-of-wars, complimenting her appearance one
moment and teasing her the next, proofreading her manuscripts
and actually making corrections, it was as if he presumed to know
more about her than she did herself. But what was worse was that he
very often did.

Yes, Jameson was the right choice for her. No surprises, no staying awake at night wondering what he was thinking about, no being on guard that your next word may be used against you. Just
security, stability, and quiet time in which to write.

Thwap! The interns snapped the sheet open before lowering it
over the body.

“Heart attack, most likely,” the coroner declared, “but I still
have to do the full workup.”

“If you could look into it as soon as possible, Dr. Heller, I’d appreciate it,” Jameson appealed.

Heller nodded his reply and signaled to the interns to load the
corpse into the rear of the ambulance.

Heart attack? Marjorie reached into her purse and fingered the
discovery she had made while waiting for the police to arrive. “Robert,” she spoke up, “I want to show you something.”

“Not now, dear.” He strode off in the direction of his right-hand
man, Officer Patrick Noonan.

“But, it’s important,” she cried, trailing after him.

“So is this.” Coming upon Noonan he asked, “What did you find
out?”

The officer held up a manila envelope containing the man’s personal effects. “Driver’s license lists him as Alfred Nussbaum, age
forty-six, from Boston.”

“Boston, huh? What was he doing here?”

“Dunno, but I found a key in his pocket for a room at the Hideaway Hotel in Hartford.”

“Anything else of interest?”

Noonan shook his head. “I haven’t gone through everything,
but so far just the usual. What does the doctor say?”

“Heart attack. Do me a favor. Cordon off the area and tell Reverend Price that if Dr. Heller’s report is clean, he should be able to
have the Ferris wheel up and running again tomorrow.”

Noonan departed and Jameson hurried away to attend to his
next item of business. Marjorie tried in vain to get her fiance’s attention. “Robert. Robert!”

He ignored her and continued on his path toward Mrs. Schutt,
who was precariously perched upon a short wooden milking stool.
Sharon, juggling a cup of water, an embroidered pink handkerchief,
and a dimestore Chinese fan, stood in attendance.

“Mrs. Schutt,” Jameson addressed her with a slight bow. “You’ve
had a bad shock. How are you feeling?”

“Not well, Detective. Not well at all.” She closed her eyes and
placed the back of a large hand against her forehead in a mock
swoon. With the other hand, she gestured to her daughter.

Sharon obediently set the black, accordion-pleated fan in motion.

“Sorry to hear it. I hope I haven’t kept you waiting long.”

She recovered from her torpor long enough to glare at him. “As
a matter of fact, you have.”

Jameson cleared his throat. “Then, I’ll be brief. If it’s not too
much for you, Mrs. Schutt, I’d like you to tell me what happened.”

“By all means, Detective. I had just submitted my famous strawberry pie in the baking contest when Reverend Price informed me
that the man who was scheduled to operate the Ferris wheel called
to say he couldn’t make it and would I be willing to take his place.
Well, I say that if people have no intention of helping out, they
shouldn’t volunteer. It put us in a terrible position. Simply terrible.
I told Reverend Price that I didn’t know much about machinery
and that I thought running a Ferris wheel was more of a man’s job,
but if the church needed me, I would be more than happy to oblige.
That’s the kind of person I am, Detective. I’m always there when
people need me.”

“That’s very good of you, Mrs. Schutt.”

“Yes it is. Others wouldn’t have done, so mind you, but I did.
The Reverend showed me how to work all the switches and how to
lock and unlock the compartment doors so the passengers could get
on and off. It was all very straightforward-but then, I always have
been very clever-so I agreed to run the wheel until he could find
a gentleman replacement. Everything was going quite smoothly.
I gave three rides in succession without so much as a hiccup, and
then, it happened. Oh! I can’t bear to think of it!” She covered her
eyes with one hand; the other reached up to take the cup of water
from Sharon.

“Please, Mrs. Schutt,” Jameson urged, “do try.”

“If you insist, but it is so very difficult” Louise swallowed a sip
of water and followed it with a dramatically deep breath. “When the
fourth ride was over, I began to unload the passengers. No one was
waiting to board, so it wasn’t necessary to load any new passengers.”

“That man,” she gestured toward where the body had lain minutes earlier, “was the last passenger to be let off. I lowered the car to ground level and unlatched the door lock. I told him it was safe
for him to disembark, but there he sat, staring blankly into space. I
thought perhaps he had a hearing problem, so I repeated my words,
only louder. Again, he did nothing, so I opened the door myself, and
he came tumbling out of the car, landing on the ground exactly as
you found him. It was all quite distressing” She motioned to Sharon
to accelerate her fanning.

“I understand,” the detective sympathized. “Just one more question and I’ll be through.”

“Yes, yes,” the woman snapped impatiently. Sharon passed her
the pink handkerchief, which she used to daub her wide, creased
forehead.

“Did Mr. Nussbaum appear to be ill when he boarded the Ferris wheel?”

Mrs. Schutt stopped daubing. “Ill? No. I might have described
him as agitated, but I suppose if one were to fall ill in a strange place,
one would become anxious, wouldn’t one?”

Jameson smiled. “Yes, I suppose they would. Thanks, Mrs. Schutt.
That’ll be all.” He tipped his hat at Sharon. “So long.”

The younger Schutt woman blushed bright red and giggled idiotically.

The detective gave her a curious look before turning on one heel
to leave. Marjorie stood in his path: “Robert, I must speak to you.”

“Not now, Marjorie.”

“Please” She opened her eyes wide and tried on the most bewitching expression she could muster.

“Sweetheart, I’m very busy right now. I have to get back to the station and start on that paperwork. We can talk when my shift ends”

“But it can’t wait that long.”

“Then talk to Mrs. Patterson or Creighton. Whatever the problem is, I’m sure one of them can help you.” He gave her a chaste kiss
on the forehead and took off across the fairgrounds.

Marjorie, frowning, stared after him. Discuss it with Mrs. Patterson or Creighton. Creighton …

She raised an eyebrow as an idea took shape in her head. Yes,
talk to Creighton. That’s exactly what I’ll do!

CREIGHTON WAS STILL STANDING near the kissing booth with Mrs.
Patterson when he spotted Marjorie, running hell-for-leather in
their direction. “Uh oh!”