Dead at Breakfast (10 page)

After a beat, Detective Gordon spoke for all when he said: “What the
fuck
is that?”

Crushed into the mottled flesh on the dead man's backside was the flattened, partly coiled body of a good-size gleaming black snake.

“I'd say it was a timber rattler,” Buster said. “Some kind of pit viper anyway.”

Shep turned to stare at him. “What are you, a fucking herpetologist?”

Buster shrugged. “I had a thing for snakes at one time,” he said. Obsession was more like it, as his mother could have told them all, and no doubt soon would. His boyhood bedroom had been lined with poster-size pinups of photogenic reptiles from
National Geographic
and the like, and his bookshelves were filled with books on snakes of the world collected from used bookstores and library sales with what was left of his paltry allowance, after it had been docked because he couldn't sit still or hadn't done his homework. The most upsetting set-to Buster ever had with his mother had occurred when he turned ten and she refused to consider getting him a boa constrictor for his birthday. “They're really not dangerous until they get to ten feet long!” he'd insisted tearfully, unable to understand how anyone could resist this argument.

After staring at him for a beat longer, Shep said “We don't have any fucking rattlesnakes in Maine.”

“Yeah, we do, sir. Or we did. They're supposed to be extinct in the state, but nobody knows for sure.”

One of the crime techs said, “I'd say that was a less interesting question than how the hell did this one get into the guy's bed.”

There was no way to keep a thing like a three-foot rattlesnake embedded in a dead man secret for long, so they'd have to move on this quickly. Standing in the sodden, blackened bedroom after the corpse was removed, Detective Gordon had listened to Deputy Babbin on the subject of
Crotalus horridus
long enough to decide to cede all snake-related investigating to Buster for fear that otherwise he'd still be standing here at dinnertime, and Buster would still be talking. Buster thought a necropsy on the snake would be interesting, and urged them to preserve it in the same conditions as they kept human bodies awaiting autopsy. Shep thought it wouldn't but in self-defense he agreed to convey that request to the M.E.'s office.

Freed at last from Buster's viper disquisition, Shep went out to his car to tell the M.E.'s office what they had found, and to point out that they needed to know which of the exciting possibilities, multiplying by the minute, it seemed, would prove to be the cause of death. Buster was to help keep the civilians in the inn out of the way as Morrison and the others maneuvered the gurney with its overflowing cargo through darkened hallways to the undamaged part of the hotel and into the back elevator. There was no way they could safely carry a load that heavy and fragile down the stairs, and there would be hell to pay if they dropped it.

The press swarmed Shep when he stepped into the Mountain Inn parking lot. Was the autopsy finished? Did he have a statement? What was the cause of death? Was the victim alive when the fire
started? Did they have a suspect? Had he heard that the funeral for Artemis had been postponed in light of the second tragedy? Had he been in touch with the victim's children?

“No comment,” said Shep as he waded through the throng. Had he been in touch with the victim's children? What? How the hell would he know how to be in touch with the victim's children?

Meanwhile, downstairs at the front of the Inn, Buster found various kinds of chaos erupting. In the dining room, the tables had been moved to the walls and a woman called Bonnie was leading an aerobics class. In the lounge, people were playing cards, cribbage, or Boggle. On the glassed-in porch overlooking the mountains and the parking lot, Mrs. Detweiler and his mother had laid out a two-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle they had found in the bench of a window seat.

Mrs. Detweiler looked up from where she was pecking through the underbrush looking for edge pieces and said happily, “I love puzzles.”

“What's it going to be a picture of?” Buster asked in spite of himself, although he was looking for Mr. Gurrell and determined not to be distracted.

“
Ship of Fools,
” said Maggie. “Hieronymus Bosch. Fantastically appropriate, we thought.” Buster had an idea who Bosch was because his mother was always dragging him and Lauren to the museum on the weekends, when he wanted to go to the zoo and visit the snake house. He always got Bosch confused with Breughel, however you spelled that other one, but he thought that Bosch was the one most likely to give center stage to various serpents.

“Buster, could I just tell you something?”

“I'm kind of busy, Mom,” said Buster. “Arson? Murder? Ring a bell?”

“Please don't be fresh. I really think you should know that Margaux Kleinkramer is not who she says she is.”

In spite of himself, he said “How do you know?”

“Because she claims she's an Aquarius and she couldn't be.”

Buster groaned, “Oh Jeez, Ma . . .”

“Was Mr. Antippas murdered?” Maggie asked, briefly suspending her search for straight edges.

“I'm not at liberty to say,” said Buster, which Maggie took for a yes. In spite of herself, she felt an unseemly thrill. Now she
really
wished Jorge were here.

Buster found Gabriel Gurrell in his office drinking a large glass of something that looked like pond slime. “Sorry,” he said, looking embarrassed. “Lunch. Would you like . . . ?”

“That's all right. Really,” said Buster. “What
is
that?”

“Chef makes it for me. Mostly kale, I think. I'm trying to reduce,” he added, gesturing briefly at the pear-shaped girth that curved out over his belt buckle. “Can I order something for you? A sandwich? Coffee?”

Buster thought a sandwich and coffee sounded wonderful, but he didn't think he should take free food from someone he might be investigating. A slap of his backside told him that when he'd pulled on his pants in the dark in the middle of the night, he'd omitted to put his wallet back in his pocket. He could see it in his mind's eye, lying on top of the dresser they'd ordered from IKEA when Brianna moved in. He'd spent a day and a half trying to put that frigging thing together and finally had to ask Brianna's father to come over and do it. That was humiliating, but really, the directions made no sense. Roy Weaver was one of those guys who can build or fix anything without looking at directions. Had Roy responded to the fire this morning? He must have, he almost never missed, but Buster hadn't seen him.

“How can I help you,” Gabe Gurrell was asking him, possibly for the second time. Oh, right. Timber snake. He noticed he was
jiggling his legs and stopped that, then reported what they'd found when they turned the deceased over.

He expected amazement. He expected denial. After all, as anyone knew, a timber rattlesnake was practically unheard of in the state and if in the wild would be at the end of its normal cycle of activity anyway, preparing to hibernate, not slinking into inhabited buildings. And besides timbers preferred the deep woods, being naturally shy of people, although not of other snakes. In fact they often hibernated in dens with other species, copperheads in warmer climates and in Vermont . . . or Maine . . . oops. Legs jiggling again.

But Mr. Gurrell had his head in his hands and he wasn't peppering Buster with expressions of shock or denial. He wasn't claiming the thing must have come in through the pipes, or anything else a person who knew nothing about snakes might say.

“Gabe,” said Buster. “You know something about this?”

Gabe raised his head and looked at him. His naturally rather droopy features now looked deeply sad. “I hope I don't, but I might.” He stood, putting aside his glass. Which is what Buster would have done with it too, if someone gave him a kale milk shake. “I think we better go have a talk with Earl.”

Buster knew he was having trouble staying on track. This happened to him all the time, but it was worse when he was tired.

“Earl,” he said.

“Earl Niner. He lives here, he came with the place.”

“The Niners who farm over in West Bergen?”

“That's his brother. Earl had a landscape business outside town until his accident. His people wouldn't take him in after what happened, as I understand it, so Howard LaBoutillier, who had the inn before me, gave him a room here. He takes care of the horses and works in the garden. He earns his keep.”

Buster had not thought to suggest that Earl did not, but Gabe
seemed intent on making this point. He was following Gabe down the stairs and outside, this being the quickest way at present to get around the burn site and reach the wing where Earl lived.

“The children at the Consolidated School once dedicated their yearbook to Earl. They all called him Ertsy-Dirts,” Gabe rattled on defensively as they walked. “I'm told he used to grow huge pumpkins for them to carve at Halloween. Dozens of them. And he ran a sort of petting zoo, too. The kids took field trips to his place every spring to see the baby lambs, and piglets and some stranger things. I heard he had a capybara.”

They reentered the inn by a side door and climbed the stairs to the second floor. You could smell smoke here more strongly. Gabe led the way to the end of the corridor.

“Earl,” he called as he rapped on a door. “Earl!”

After a silence, a surly voice said, “Who is it?”

“It's Gabe Gurrell, Earl. Could you open the door? I need to talk to you.”

After another silence, Buster heard footfalls approaching the door, then a chain lock being slid back. The door opened. The man within was so bent over that he had to crane his neck up at a painful-looking angle to look into the eyes of a person standing upright.

“Earl, this is Deputy Babbin. Buster, this is Earl Niner. May we come in?”

Earl looked from one to the other with a stony expression, then opened the door wide enough for them to enter.

The room was unlike anything Buster had seen outside a zoo. More an avian habitat than a man's bedroom, there was a jungle gym of tree limbs in a huge cage in the corner with different kinds of pegs and rope perches from shoulder height to ceiling. As they entered
the room a large—in this room it looked very large—green parrot began shrieking and flapping until Earl walked over and opened the cage door so it could hop onto his shoulder.

The floor of the room was lined with newspaper, extremely clean, and littered with toys of various kinds. Pictures of the singer Artemis looked up at Buster from several panels of newsprint near what he took to be the door to the bathroom. The bird too looked clean and glossy, but there were patches where he'd been picking at himself, Buster saw, and some fluffy underfeathers drifted near the narrow camp bed where Earl apparently slept. A small chest of drawers against the room's inside wall completed the human equipment.

“Walter's upset,” Earl said. “Yapping scares him.” As if on cue, the parrot began to howl in exactly the pitch and timbre of the Antippas's poodle, a sound all inhabitants of the inn had come to know. Buster had to admit, this did not look like a happy bird. But that was not his prime area of interest at the moment. What had riveted his attention, from the moment he entered the room, was a very large glass terrarium, you might say, nearly five feet high, built against the wall beside the little chest of drawers. Like the larger space of the room, it held a tree branch. Its floor was carpeted in rocks and leaves. There was a lamp, infrared Buster guessed, for heat, though the lamp was off at present. A framed piece of heavy mesh was fitted to the top of the case, hinged to the frame and fastened with metal hooks and eyes.

“This cage is not for Walter,” Buster said to Earl. Walter, looking now at the cage, began to make the noise of a smoke alarm, a horrible piercing whine.

“Say ‘Hello,' Walter,” said Earl to him soothingly.

“hahaha,” said the bird, which stopped the smoke alarm. He shook himself as a dog does after being in the water.

“Earl?” said Gabe.

“This is a snake habitat,” said Buster.

“Yes,” said Earl.

“And it's empty,” said Buster.

Earl didn't speak. He reached up to stroke Walter, who cuddled against his head.

“What kind of a snake, Mr. Niner?”

Earl didn't answer.

“Mr. Niner?”

“His name is Grommet,” said Earl. His old eyes were pink-edged and sad.

“And he is a timber rattler?” Buster asked gently, and Earl nodded.

Gabe was staring at the floor. Buster studied the cage with the eye of an aficionado.

“You're aware that the timber snake is a protected species?”

After a pause, Earl nodded briefly.

“And it's illegal to keep a protected animal as a pet?”

“He was a rescue snake,” said Earl.

After a pause, Buster echoed him. “A rescue snake.”

“Fellow down in Ellsworth had a tourist trap on the road to Bar Harbor. He had wolves in cages, and a buffalo. A bobcat. When the ASPCA shut 'im down, no one wanted Grommet.”

“Why didn't you just let him go?”

“Wasn't right,” said Earl. “He'd never lived in the wild. He's real sweet.”

Buster looked at Gabe, who was now looking out the window.

“And do you know where he is now, Mr. Niner?”

Earl shook his head. “Came up to my room after supper, and his cage was empty.”

“When was this?”

“Last night.”

“So he was there at . . . ?”

“Six-thirty. Thereabouts.”

“And you came back to your room at what time?”

Earl looked at Gabe but found no help there.

“Don't wear a watch,” he said, showing Buster his wrist.

“Approximately.”

“Maybe . . . seven-thirty. Seven-forty, something in there.”

“And were you going to mention this to me? Or the other officers? You're aware there's an investigation going on?”