Midsummer Murder (31 page)

“There’s always . . .”

“Don’t even get started.”

“Is that why you’re spending so much time with Marguerite? Are you avoiding Jeremy?”

“I’m not avoiding him. Just staying away until he pulls himself together. This time if he wants my support, he’s going to have to ask for it.”

They dressed for dinner and met Annie in the restaurant. It was obvious that she was trying to work her way back into her mother’s good graces. She was animated and enthusiastic about the camp. Did odes to Dr. Van Zandt. Questioned them about the investigation, and showed concern for Robert and the missing Connie. But she left them as soon as the last forkful of dessert passed her lips.

“Hot date?” asked Biddy.

“Certainly looks like it.”

The two of them lingered over coffee, catching up on the things they had missed in their three days apart. After dinner they wandered into the bar where the company members had settled down to cards and board games. Biddy left to finish her book. Lindy hunkered down to a serious game of Scrabble with Rose, Peter, and Mieko.

It was almost midnight when Mieko went out on the word
quicker
.

Lindy said good night and went back to the main house.

She was just going upstairs when Marguerite came out of the drawing room. She was wearing a rose sateen dressing gown that shimmered in the light cast by the chandelier. But the color only accentuated the pallor of her face, and the clinging fabric hung about her frame, making her seem frail and old.

“Oh, Lindy, good evening. I couldn’t sleep. I came to look for my book.”

Nothing like a good romance to chase away the cares of the day, thought Lindy.

Marguerite’s hands were empty.

“Didn’t find it?”

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Shelley Freydont

“No, maybe I left it in the library.” Marguerite began to go down the hallway.

“I’ll help you look,” said Lindy. With a pang of regret, she realized that she didn’t trust Marguerite to climb the stairs safely by herself.

They had just come to the door of the library when they heard voices. The door was ajar. They stepped inside. Stu, Ellis, and Jeremy stood at the opposite end of the room, their backs to the door. Ellis attempted to put his hand on Jeremy’s shoulder, but Jeremy jerked away.

Instinctively, Lindy tried to pull Marguerite back into the hallway.

This was not a scene they should be eavesdropping on. Marguerite held her ground.

“What is the matter?” asked Ellis. “You used to always tell me everything.”

“Get away from me.” Jeremy’s voice was so strident that Marguerite jumped. Lindy put an arm around her, more intent than ever to get her away. Whatever was going on, she didn’t need to hear it. Lindy was sure of that.

Stu’s voice broke into the tension between the two men. “Jeremy, Ellis has always been good to you. Why on earth are you treating him this way?”

“I think Ellis knows.”

Ellis only looked confused. Lindy could see his profile: his cheek, flushed pink in the light, his mouth turned down in an expression of befuddlement.

“I don’t,” he said quietly. “What have I done?”

Jeremy took a step backward; ran his hand over his eyes. “I think you killed Larry Cleveland.”

Ellis dropped into the chair. Marguerite swayed in Lindy’s arm.

Horror overtook her and she tried once more to pull Marguerite away.

But Marguerite was rooted to the spot.

“That’s preposterous,” said Stu.

“Is it? Tell him, Ellis.”

Ellis only looked up at Jeremy with sad eyes.

“Tell him,” Jeremy repeated, his voice growing quieter and colder.

“Tell him what? I don’t know what I’m supposed to say.”

Stu took a step forward as if to protect Ellis. “Tell me what?” He directed the question to Jeremy.

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Jeremy ignored him. Lindy watched his shoulders tighten, and prepared herself for the worst. “Did Larry threaten to tell, Ellis? Is that what happened?”

Ellis glanced up at Stu. Stu touched Ellis’s hair. Then his head snapped toward Jeremy. “I think you’ve lost your mind, Jeremy. If anyone killed Larry Cleveland it must have been Robert. How could you accuse Ellis of something so utterly despicable?”

“Because he buggers little boys.”

Ellis buried his face in his hands and a sob burst through his fingers.

A shudder rolled through Marguerite. Her hand gripped Lindy’s where it was holding her around the waist. Lindy tried to drag her away and then gave up. It was too late to spare her now; they might as well hear the rest of it.

She was wrong.

“I don’t, I don’t.” Ellis’s denial came out muffled from behind his hands.

“What about me?”

Marguerite gasped. Lindy was afraid she would collapse but somehow she remained on her feet. The men in the room were too intent on each other to hear her.

Ellis slowly raised his head. The glow from the library lamp caught the tears that ran down his cheek and held them crystallized in its light.

He shook his head slowly. “I don’t. You were the only one.” He breathed in sharply. “Because I loved you.”

“You disgust me.” Jeremy spun around and came face to face with Marguerite. Lindy could only guess at Marguerite’s reaction, but she knew she would live with the memory of Jeremy’s shocked eyes for a long time to come. And she knew in that moment, that he would never forgive her for what she had heard.

Jeremy’s mouth opened as if to speak, then he crashed past them and out of the library. A few seconds later, Lindy heard the front door bang shut.

Marguerite was dead weight in her arms. Stu looked at Lindy, pursed his lips and turned to comfort Ellis.

Lindy dragged Marguerite upstairs and rang for Sandiman.

By the time Adele arrived, hastily dressed, Lindy was furious.

Furious with Jeremy, with Ellis, with Bill, with the world.

211

Shelley Freydont

* * *

“You knew!” she screamed. “You knew and you didn’t tell me. How the hell do you think
this
is going to affect the family, the camp? Talk about your damned repercussions—how the hell are you going to get them out of this?”

Bill looked slightly dazed. The bed behind him was rumpled. His hair was disheveled. He was wearing a navy-blue bathrobe. He had been asleep. She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry or run.

Bill tightened the sash of his robe.

Terry cloth, she noted. She took a step backward. If she crept away now, would he remember this in the morning?

“Oh no you don’t.” His hand closed around her arm and he pulled her into the room. “Now, that you’ve got my attention, I would like to know what you think you know.”

“Jeremy—Ellis—They—”

Bill dropped his hand. Lindy’s anger died and was replaced by sadness. At what Ellis had done. For the trust he had betrayed. For what he had done to a young boy. But most of all because Jeremy had not trusted his friends enough to tell one of them. “Why didn’t he—”

She had to stop to swallow the quaver in her voice.

“Why didn’t Jeremy tell you? Or Biddy? Lindy, sometimes there are things in a man’s life better left unsaid.”

Like your son, she thought. But he had told her. Jeremy hadn’t. “But he told you.”

“Trust isn’t a contest, Lindy.” He stopped to let his statement sink in.

“He accused Ellis of killing Larry Cleveland. Marguerite and I overheard them; I couldn’t get her to leave.” To her dismay, she felt a tear slip out from the corner of her left eye. She stared past Bill, willing it to stop, while she felt it trickle down her cheek and roll beneath her chin.

Bill wiped it away with a brush of his finger.

“Is it true?”

He stepped past her and sat down at a table by the window. Not Queen Anne like the one in her room, but a Sheridan tea table with 212

Midsummer Murder

fluted legs. She followed him and sat down in the chair opposite. The surface of the table separated them, and Lindy wondered if Bill had chosen to sit here to create a distance between them. Surely, after what she had learned, he wouldn’t try to keep her uninvolved. She waited.

“I don’t know if it’s true,” said Bill. “But when Robert apparently attempted to commit suicide—”

She started to protest. Bill stopped her with a glance.

“Apparently, not necessarily
did
—Jeremy realized something was terribly wrong.”

“So he called you.”

Bill nodded.

“And you dropped everything and came to the rescue.”

Irritation flickered in Bill’s eyes. At least, Lindy thought it was irritation. She was glad to see any emotion. It meant that he hadn’t shut her out yet.

“I wasn’t that busy.”

“Poor Marguerite. Just imagine what she must be feeling.”

“I’d rather not.” Bill leaned back in the chair and Lindy realized how tense he had been only a second before. “She and Jeremy both suffer from rampant over-responsibility. Jeremy already thinks he’s responsible for what has happened.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“For those of us with a little rational thought left.” He flashed her a quick amused smile. “But you understand how it goes. ‘If only—

if only—’”

Lindy nodded. She did understand. If Jeremy hadn’t let Ellis seduce him all those years ago. If he had told. If he had arrived at the retreat a day earlier. It was absurd, of course. It was just like Jeremy.

“So what are”—she paused, then took the plunge—“we going to do about it?”

“We are going to try to figure out what really happened.”

“We are?”

“Yep.” Bill leaned forward again. “I’m afraid this will take all of us. I came here to help Jeremy find out if Ellis was a viable suspect before his sexual history came out. If there were more boys than just Jeremy . . . Well, you can imagine. A history of sexual abuse in one of the most prestigious art camps in America? It would be devastating.”

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Shelley Freydont

It would be more than devastating. How many boys could have been seduced? The thought horrified her. And pity for the children and disgust at Ellis consumed her for a second. She pushed it aside.

“He said Jeremy was the only one.”

“He did?”

“Because he loved him.” The sound of that mournful plea still burned in Lindy’s ears.

Bill stood up and walked to the closet. “A thirty-year-old man has no right to love a fourteen-year-old boy—that way.” Bill had spoken into the closet, but his voice filled the room.

Lindy shuddered.

He returned with his little black book, but Bill used this black book for taking notes. He wrapped the flaps of his robe more closely around him and sat down.

He pulled a pen from inside the notebook and clicked the point out.

“Okay,” he said barely above a whisper. “Take me through everything that has happened. Point by point with every”—he smiled,—“roving thought you’ve had about them.”

For an hour, Lindy talked. Bill wrote. He only interrupted her for clarification of something she said, though he did stop writing when she told him about the fight with Rebo and what it was about. She didn’t want to; she felt bad enough about it without telling Bill. She wondered if that was why Jeremy had gone to Bill and not her. Had he been in doubt of her loyalty? Bill had to bring her back to the point, but she saw in his eyes that he understood where she had gone in her few moments of silence.

She didn’t tell him about Annie’s accusations. That had nothing to do with anything.

Finally, she leaned back in her chair, exhausted. “I just can’t believe that Ellis would kill anybody.”

“Not very objective, but it does you credit.” Bill closed the notebook.

“For what it’s worth, I’m not convinced that he did, either.”

“You’re not?”

“Why now? If this has been going on for years, why lose control now?”

“Ellis seems, I don’t know, confused sometimes. I thought maybe he was getting senile.”

“Senility doesn’t create murderers.”

“If he were being blackmailed?”

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Midsummer Murder

“With his money? Try again.”

“What if he loved Larry Cleveland?” She had forgotten to tell him about Rose’s riddle. Larry, Jeremy, and Stu. She told him now.

Bill pressed two fingers to his temple. “I just feel that there’s a larger issue here.” He laughed softly. “I know. Feelings are pretty lame investigatory tools. I must have picked it up from you.”

It was an insulting thing to say. So why did it make her feel warm inside? “Yeesh,” she said, as much at her thoughts as for the situation.

“Aptly put.” He glanced at his watch. Glen never slept with his watch on, she noted. She felt herself blush. Shit.

“But it’s going on two o’clock. Unless you’re planning to stay, I suggest you go back to your room and get some sleep. We both have a busy day ahead of us.”

She fled to the door. Bill was still sitting in the chair when it closed behind her.

215

Nineteen

Lindy taught company class the next morning. She had walked through the Easton house earlier, accompanied only by her own footsteps. There was no other sign of life, not even Sandiman. She let herself outside. The day was overcast with a chill in the air.
To
match my feelings,
thought Lindy.

She grabbed a cup of coffee in the student dining hall. Everyone was preparing for class and she had the room to herself.

And now she stood on the stage, leading the company through their exercises at the
barre
, correcting placement with a touch rather than voiced encouragement. She felt turned in on herself, impatient to be away and looking for a murderer, instead of watching
rond de jambes
and
grand battements
.

She cut them loose for lunch. In the afternoon, Victor Slaton and the other teachers would begin rehearsing for the next student showcase.

It would be performed in a few weeks when another professional company would be in residence. Would the camp still be operating in a few weeks? She could only pray that it would be. On Sunday, the Ash company would return to the city. That gave them only four days—three and a half—to find out the truth.