Brutal Brûlée (Lexy Baker Cozy Mystery Series Book 11) (6 page)

T
he five of
them walked out the expansive, double oak doors at the front of the mansion.

“Where do you think Ruth has gotten off to?” Nans asked.

“Probably the garden,” Ida answered.

They stopped at the top of the limestone steps. “Well, I guess we’ll go that way to look for her.” Nans pointed to the right, then turned to Lexy. “Which way are you going?”

“I think over toward the—”

“
Hiss!
”

“
Woof!
”

Houdini had appeared on the steps and Sprinkles lunged for the cat, who humped his back, took a swipe at Sprinkles and then ran inside the mansion just as the front door swung shut. Sprinkles ripped the leash out of Lexy’s hand but, since the door was now closed, her efforts to follow the cat inside were thwarted. She raced down the steps in a blur of white fur and ran in a big circle on the front lawn, her leash trailing behind her.

“Sprinkles!” Lexy took off after the dog.

Sprinkles didn’t want to be caught. She looked back over her shoulder at Lexy while she picked up speed and darted around the side of the house. Lexy ran after her with Jack close behind. Nans, Ida and Helen followed them, keeping pace with a speed that belied their age.

Lexy followed Sprinkles to the remote garden that she and Jack had visited earlier in the day. This time, there was another visitor there—Ruth. She was bent over, examining the bright pink roses that covered the garden.

Sprinkles stopped short next to Ruth, who bent down to pet the dog.

“
Hiss!
” Houdini’s black paw shot out from behind a rosebush, leaving two bloody lines across Sprinkles’ nose.

“
Yipe!
” Sprinkles backed off and crouched under another bush, whimpering.

Lexy’s heart crunched at the sound of her dog in pain. “Aww, Sprinkles, I told you not to chase that cat.”

Lexy bent down to inspect the damage. Her arm scraped against the thorny rose bush. “Ouch!” She drew back, looking at the half-dozen scratches on her arm.

Ruth looked over her shoulder. “You’re lucky none of those are bleeding. These roses have very sharp thorns.”

“Hey, wait just a minute there,” Ida said. “How did that darn cat get down here? I distinctly saw him run into the house and the front door shut behind him. It’s almost like there’re two of the darn things.”

Nans looked at Ida sharply. “That’s a good point.” She bent to inspect the rosebushes, moving through them to the side of the building.

“Now be careful, Mona,” Ruth said. “These roses are very thorny. I’ve just discovered this is an incredibly rare variety and I think—“

Nans snapped her fingers, interrupting Ruth. “I’ve got it!”

She pressed her palm against the mansion, looking upward at the expanse of large granite stones. A smile played across her lips as her hand traced the stones of the building. She nodded her head. “Yes, indeed.”

She snapped her head around and looked at Jack. “Call Inspector Garrity and have him gather everyone in the conservatory in one hour. I know who the killer is, how they did it and why.”

N
ans paced back
and forth in front of the stone fireplace, playing it up for the audience in the conservatory, which consisted of everyone involved with the documentary, Violet, Lexy, Jack, Ruth, Ida and Helen. Even Danny Manning was there, having been question by Garrity and then released after Ruth proved the videos were not doctored. Garrity seemed to have a lot of faith in the ladies’ detecting skills and Lexy figured that was largely due to Jack’s vouching for them.

Lexy stood next to a prehistoric-looking potted plant with gigantic leaves. A smile played across her lips as she watched her grandmother pacing back and forth. Lexy figured this was more for effect than anything. Nans, who looked deep in thought, was probably thinking about how to best lay out the clues to her ‘audience’.

The room was full of anxious silence. Everyone was on the edge of their seat waiting to hear what Nans had to say. Lexy studied the people in the room. One of them was a killer, but which one? If the guilty person was present, she couldn’t tell by the look on his face.

Across the room, she noticed Gustav standing awfully close to Ruth. She hoped he wasn’t the killer because it was obvious Ruth had taken a liking to him.

Garrity came in and the crowd stirred.

“Hi, everybody.” He leaned against the wall next to Jack, then turned to Nans. “Okay, Columbo, tell us what you got.”

Nans clapped her hands together and everyone riveted their attention on her. “Thank you all for coming. As you know, there was a murder here last night. A very cleverly planned murder. A murder made to look like suicide. But the killer screwed up a few details ... and that killer is in this room with us right now.”

A nervous murmur rippled through the crowd.

Garrity rolled his eyes and whispered to Jack, “Is she always this dramatic?”

Nans fixed him with a glare. “Quiet, please.”

“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Pendrake spoke up. “I thought Danny Manning was the killer.” She pointed to Danny who was standing over by the glass doors that led to the garden. “He had the pills in his room and he had a motive.”

“Ahh.” Nans held her index finger up. “That’s what the killer
wanted
you to think. Those pills were obviously planted. I knew right away Danny couldn’t be the killer because no one would be so stupid as to keep the pills in their room to be found as evidence later on. He would have simply flushed them down the toilet.”

“What about Karen? Didn’t she make the drink that killed him?” Joy asked.

“Yes, I had my sights on Karen, too. But video surveillance proved she did not doctor the drink. Though our investigation did turn up the fact that she’s not quite who she seems to be.”

“What does that mean?” someone asked.

“Although Karen isn’t the killer, she
was
sent here for a specific purpose: to ferret out another questionable person—the mole.”

One of the guys from the production crew screwed his face up. “Mole? What mole?”

“There's a mole in this group. Someone who is spying on the project so that they could bring the information to a rival production company. Karen was hired by your corporate headquarters to find out who that person was.”

People shifted in their seats and looked at each other suspiciously.

“And that person killed Leo?” someone asked.

“At one point I thought so, but I think you’ll see as I lay out the clues that the mole and the killer were two separate people.”

“Just get on with that, lady.
Who
is the killer?”

Nans gave the heckler a sharp look. “I will reveal the killer in due time. But first, I want to lay out exactly what led to their discovery.”

Nans glanced over at Garrity who made a circular ‘move-it-along’ motion with his hand.

She continued. “At first I was quite perplexed as to how someone could have gotten into Leonard’s room. We thought the video had been altered. Any one of you would have the skill set to do that.” Nans paused and looked over the production crew who were, again, glancing around at each other.

“But, my colleague, Ruth,” Nans gestured toward Ruth, “is somewhat of a computer expert and she deemed the files had not been tampered with. So we knew some trickery must be going on.”

“I think it was him!” Joy stabbed a finger in the direction of Gustav Schilling, who seemed nonplussed by her accusation.

Nans nodded. “At first, I suspected him, as well. He was even seen on the surveillance tape mysteriously going outside in the middle of the night. When we questioned him, he tried to cast suspicion on someone else, claiming to have seen them outside, but when we questioned that person, they denied being out there.”

“So we knew one of them was lying,” Ida chimed in, earning a ‘look’ from Nans. Apparently, Nans didn’t like sharing the limelight with anyone, not even Ida.

“Yes, someone was lying. But who?” Nans paused for effect then turned sharply in the direction of Mrs. Pendrake.

“Mrs. Pendrake, you said you went right to bed after dinner, but I think that was a lie. It was you out in the garden that Gustav saw, wasn’t it?”

Mrs. Pendrake’s hands fluttered at her neck as her cheeks turned red. “Well, I never. Are you calling me a liar?”

Ida twisted in her seat to look at Mrs. Pendrake. “Yes.”

Mrs. Pendrake scowled at Ida.

“I know you
did
lie and I can prove it,” Nans said. “And I know why, too.”

Mrs. Pendrake bristled. “Really? I don’t see how.”

Nans pointed to Mrs. Pendrake's shoes. “You have red mud stains on your shoes. That red mud is only located by the Koi pond.”

“So? I went to the Koi pond. So what?”

“Yes, but
when
did you go to the Koi pond? That is the question. You couldn’t have gone this morning because you told us that you were shopping and you’d seen Darlene in town. When we saw you in the breakfast room, the mud was dry, so, given that you were shopping in the morning and the mud wouldn’t have had time to dry if you’d been to the pond after that, you must have visited it before the crack of dawn. My bet is that it was much earlier, like in the middle of the night. Mr. Schilling told the truth. He did see you. You
were
out there last night and you
did
lie to us about that earlier, didn’t you?

“This is outrageous! Surely you don’t think that I’m the killer?” Mrs. Pendrake’s eyes darted from Garrity to Nans.

Nans held her palm up. “No, actually I don’t think that you’re the killer.
But
I think you
saw
someone when you were out there and you couldn’t tell us because you couldn’t admit that you were outside in the middle of the night.”

Mrs. Pendrake became indignant. “Honestly, these accusations are getting tedious. Why would I not tell you about being outside at night?”

“Because you were outside in a secret rendezvous, passing along information ... Mrs. Pendrake,
you
are the mole!”

The crowd gasped and everyone twisted to look at a crimson-cheeked Mrs. Pendrake.

“Fine. I might have entered into an agreement with a rival company but I didn’t mean anyone any harm. And I certainly didn’t kill Mr. Bottaccio. I’m just a naturally curious person and I knew I could find something out. These sorts of things keep me from being bored. At my age, one has to find things to do,” she shrugged then her eyes widened. “Wait a minute. I did see someone when I was out there. Do you mean that the killer is—“

“Wait!” Nans cut her off. “Let me continue and see if we have the facts right lest we condemn an innocent person.”

Nans' gaze drifted over the room. “I had the hardest time figuring out the motive and it was actually you, Mrs Pendrake who helped me with that.”

“Me?” Lexy noticed Mrs. Pendrake was edging toward the door. The angry glares of the production crew must have been getting to her and she was probably trying to secure her departure ahead of an angry mob.

“Yes. When we saw you going through the production crew’s things in the breakfast room, the pamphlet you had gave me the clue as to the motive. But I still didn’t know how the killer pulled off having the door locked from the inside ... until later that day.”

“
Meow!
” Houdini appeared at Nans’ feet. He wound figure eights around her ankles, purring loudly.

Nans looked down at him and smiled. “In the end, it was Houdini who actually cracked the case.”

“The cat?” Navy Shirt looked over at Garrity. “Is she for real? That sounds crazy.”

Garrity smiled. “Let’s just give her a chance and see where she’s going with this.”

Nans nodded at Garrity. “You see, when Leonard made the announcement at dinner about revealing the secret of Wellington Manse, the killer must have been afraid that Leonard was going to spill the beans about something that would incriminate them. The killer knew Leonard had to be silenced and came up with a plan to make it look like Leonard had taken too many pills. We’d all seen the full pill bottle in his hand at dinner, right?”

Everyone nodded.

“The killer was very clever, setting it up so it looked like an open and shut case, hoping the police would think that it was suicide or maybe Leonard just got confused and had taken too many pills. With the door locked from the inside, how could they expect foul play?”

“I guess they didn’t count on us being here,” Ida said proudly.

“No, indeed,” Nans said. “Anyway, in order to pull it off, the killer needed to know something about this house. Something that even the new owner, Violet, herself didn’t know.”

Violet’s brows shot up in surprise. Apparently, she wasn’t privy to what Nans was about to reveal.

Nans continued, “It wasn’t until I saw Houdini in the rose garden that I realized what it was that the killer knew.”

“What is it? What does Houdini have to do with this?” Violet asked.

“Did you ever notice that Houdini seems to appear somewhere that he couldn’t possibly be?” Nans asked.

“Yes, I did notice that. It’s uncanny.”

“I thought there were two cats,” Joy said. “Is that it?”

Nans shook her head. “No. There is only one Houdini, but he knows a secret and so does the killer.”

Nans paused, letting the anticipation build as everyone inched forward in their seats, waiting.

“What is it?” someone finally asked.

“This house has secret passageways.” Nans smiled at the looks on the faces of her audience. “That’s how Houdini appears to be in two places at once and
that’s
how the killer got in and out of Leonard’s room without being seen.”

A murmur rippled through the crowd.

“Secret passageways? Where?” Violet wanted to know.

“I’ll show you after, though I don’t know all of them. But I do know the one the killer used. It leads right into the room Leonard was in.”

“Oh, dear,” Violet said. “That’s why we never saw anyone on the tape.”

“No one else knew about these passageways?” Navy Shirt turned to look at the rest of the crew, who all shook their heads.

“That’s right,” Nans said. “No one knew. Not even Violet. She bought the mansion from the bank, and no one at the bank had even been in the house for more than a cursory glance, so they didn’t know about them. The renovations haven’t gotten far enough to expose any of them, yet. This house has been vacant for twenty-five years, after the previous owner died mysteriously ... of course, now in light of what I’ve discovered the police might need to open an investigation into his death. Anyway, the only people left alive who would know about the passages are people who lived in or were associated with the house long ago.”

“I still don’t get it,” Joy said. “What was this secret and why was it worth killing over?”

“The killer committed a crime many years ago which has gone unsolved to this day,” Nans said.

“You mean the tiara robbery?”

“That’s right. The tiara was not stolen by any ghost. It was stolen by Leonard’s killer, who used the secret passages to pull off the crime. That person is someone who knows this house inside and out. Someone who spent a lot of time here. And there’s only one person here who grew up hanging around in this house.”

Nans looked directly at Gloria.

“Who, me? I don’t know anything.” She back stepped a little toward the French doors leading to the garden.

“I think you do. Last night at dinner, you said you spent a lot of time in this house when you were younger. And the clues prove it. Here’s what I think happened.” Nans resumed pacing, ticking off the items on her fingers. “After Leonard made the announcement, everyone went their separate ways. Most people went to bed as Leonard suggested. But you stayed in the conservatory and had Karen bring you a drink, thus providing you with an alibi of sorts.

“You didn’t stay in the conservatory to drink it, though. You poured the drink out in the plant so when Karen came back later to get the glass, it would look like you had been in here sipping it for quite some time.” Nans pointed to the dead peace lily that Ruth had fretted over earlier.

“That’s what killed the plant!” Ruth glared at Gloria. “A lovely, innocent plant like that. It’s a darn shame.”

Nans continued on, ignoring Ruth’s outburst, “Then you slipped outside to the lower garden where there's a secret entrance tunnel through the basement. I discovered it earlier today when Sprinkles had an altercation with Houdini.

“I couldn’t figure out how the cat could have gotten outside when he had clearly run inside and the door shut behind him minutes before. But when I looked at the stones, I noticed an interesting crack. It was too symmetrical to be the settling of the building and when I looked closer, I could feel air flowing through it. Later on, I went down and verified my suspicions. It was, indeed, an entrance into a secret passageway that runs throughout Wellington Manse.”

“So? So what if I put my drink in the plant. Maybe I didn’t like the drink anymore. You can’t prove I went outside.” Gloria’s stilettos made sharp little clacks as she shuffled backward toward the door.

“Oh, but I think I can. You left your shoes in the conservatory because you didn’t want the clack clack clacking of them to make noise in the passageway. People would have heard you behind the walls. Mrs. Pendrake saw your shoes in here. She told us so herself, didn’t you?” Everyone looked at Mrs. Pendrake, who nodded.