Swan for the Money (17 page)

Chapter 31

Bringing the chief up to speed on my last few hours took a while. I made sure he knew about Dr. Smoot’s run-in with the swan and my fear that the acting medical examiner might be less than impartial when it came to determining the manner and means of death. And I shared the various bits of information I’d overhead during the party, including what Mr. Darby had revealed about Sandy Sechrest’s frequent presence on the farm in the weeks leading up to the rose show. Though I didn’t reveal Mr. Darby as the source; I just lumped the information in with everything else I’d heard while eavesdropping.

“Thank you,” he said at last. “You can leave if you like.”

“After I get you that list of witnesses,” I said. “After all, this wretched rose show is my responsibility. I don’t feel comfortable leaving until I’m sure things are going well.”

Back in the kitchen, Mother had found eight volunteers willing to play charades. Or maybe some of them were draftees. One of them, the lady in pink, was sashaying up and down, clutching an invisible garment around her. Her teammate was Rob— definitely a draftee. Rob loathed charades, no doubt because he was strangely inept at them.

“Model?” Rob said. “Catwalk? Designer?”

The pink lady stopped in front of Rob and stroked the wrist of her invisible sleeve.

“Furry,” I murmured.

“Cufflink?” Rob guessed. “Wristwatch?”

The pink lady stroked the whole sleeve.

“Carpal tunnel syndrome?”

I took out my notebook and began making my list of witnesses.

I deliberately started at the far back corner, where Theobald Winkleson was sitting. I couldn’t ask him any of the questions I was really curious about, like where he had gone after the chief had questioned him and why he was here in the first place, but I got a chance to study him at close range and form a highly unfavorable opinion. He hardly bothered to meet my eyes, so busy was he inventorying the contents of the kitchen, tightening his lips and narrowing his eyes whenever he spotted anything particularly extravagant or outrageous.

By the time I finished with Theobald, Rob’s time to guess the pink lady’s charade was almost up.

“The sound and the furry,” he was saying, over and over again. “The sound and the furry. The sound and the furry.”

“Time!” Mother called at last.

“Fury, you . . . you . . . oh!” exclaimed the lady in pink, doing a very authentic interpretation of the word, now that her time was up. “The Sound and the
Fury
!”

“Oh, of course,” Rob said. “Sorry.”

Another charades team took the floor. I went on with my name and address gathering.

As I suspected, the catering staff consisted mainly of starving grad students. Most of Mrs. Winkleson’s house hold staff did not speak English well— if at all— and I was only able to get their information thanks to translating help from Marston, who apparently spoke Spanish, French, and some form of pigeon Chinese in addition to his native Russian. His real name was Vladislav Konstantinovich Rozhdestvensky, which probably explained why Mrs. Winkleson preferred to call him Marston.

I finished my list and tried to think of something else to keep me busy, lest Mother recruit me to replace Rob on charade duty, but in the nick of time the chief sent Horace in to begin processing the kitchen and Sammy to move us out into the already processed living room. Chief Burke began interviewing witnesses, and apparently he decided my suggestion was a wise one. He started with the rose growers, while the rest of us were told to stay in the living room and wait our turns.

To my relief, Mother did not suggest resuming the game of charades. Instead, she and Marston put their heads together, and then, after they had a short conference with the chief, Marston brought back vacuums, dust racks, and other cleaning supplies and the maids began cleaning the room.

Fine by me. I was relieved that the noise of the vacuums discouraged general conversation.

The caterers pitched in, gathering their dishes and equipment.

“If anyone would like a doggie bag, we’d be happy to pack one,” the catering supervisor said. Curiously, no one was particularly interested, not even in leftover crab croquettes, so her staff begged some black plastic garbage bags from Marston and began disposing of the suspect victuals.

A few guests pitched in to help with the cleanup effort, but most arranged themselves on the uncomfortable chairs and sofas and waited.

Three of the rose growers approached me.

“Do you think she’s going to make it?” one of them asked.

Did I look like a doctor? Or a fortune teller?

“I think she has a good chance,” I said aloud. “Dad seemed quite optimistic when they left.”

“Oh,” one woman said. They all looked at each other and sighed.

“I suppose we should keep working on the programs, then,” a second woman said. “You’ll let us know if you hear anything to the contrary?”

The three of them pulled up chairs next to a small gilt table at one side of the room, pulled stacks of programs and black pens out of their purses and tote bags, and resumed inking blots to cover up the printer’s error. After a while they filched an unopened bottle of champagne from the bar, and by the time they’d finished it, they seemed to be enjoying their task a great deal more, though I doubted we’d be able to use much of their handiwork.

“Meg?” It was my cousin Rose Noire, resplendent in a dress that looked like several hundred black chiffon scarves thrown randomly over her body and then sprayed with silver glitter. “I have a question. Do you think it would be okay for me to substitute for Mrs. Sechrest?”

She held her head high, like Sidney Carton on his way to the guillotine.

“Substitute for her how?” I asked.

“I understand she had all her miniature roses ready to bring over for the show,” Rose Noire said. “I could groom them. Your mother and a couple of the other exhibitors are willing to coach me. Then we could enter them in the show in her name. So she could compete one last time in the shows she loved. And it would be sort of a . . . a ‘take that!’ to the murderer.”

Not Sidney Carton. More like Joan of Arc on her way to the bonfire.

“It’s fine with me,” I said. “But I have no idea if it’s against the ARS rules. Why don’t you ask one of the more knowledgeable rose growers? Try her.”

I pointed out Molly Weston, and Rose Noire sailed over to confer with her, leaving a small trail of glitter in her wake.

I gathered from Molly’s expression that she also thought it a very good idea for Rose Noire to fill in for Mrs. Sechrest. I left them to it.

I found myself keeping an eye on Theobald. He was roaming around the room, inspecting the décor and finding it no more to his liking than the kitchen was, if his frowns and grimaces were anything to go by. I could see his point. However perfectly adapted the house was to Mrs. Winkleson’s tastes, if I were one of her heirs, I’d be less than enchanted at the thought of inheriting such a white elephant. Or should that be black elephant? Auctioning off the furniture would be possible, though I doubted it would bring in anything near what she’d spent on it, but the house itself, with its black marble floors and fireplaces and black-painted woodwork, was going to be a huge liability. They’d need to spend thousands of dollars to make the décor more normal before they could hope to put it on the market.

Of course, if Theobald turned out to be the one who’d killed Mrs. Sechrest and fed his aunt the cyanide, selling the house would probably become brother Reginald’s problem.

I watched as Theobald turned over a silver tureen to see what was marked on the bottom. I decided I could live with the idea of Theobald as a murderer.

Chapter 32

The chief was being relatively quick with his witness interviews. By nine, all of the rose growers were on their way home, except for Mother.

“Oh, don’t worry about me,” she said, whenever the chief asked if she’d like to go next. “I have to stay here anyway, to help Meg with the cleanup. I’m sure there are others who would appreciate getting out sooner.”

The chief didn’t press, so I assumed he didn’t consider her a prime suspect. And once Horace had finished work on the kitchen and the chief gave his approval, it was a lot easier to have her around to charm and cajole the catering staff and Mrs. Winkleson’s maids into working harder and more cheerfully than they would have for me.

Actually, the maids didn’t need much cajoling. One of them burst into tears the first time Mother uttered the word “please.”

The caterers were relatively enthusiastic, too. But as I looked out over the dozen assorted people busily tidying, mopping, and scrubbing the huge kitchen, I had to wonder if any of them had an ulterior motive for working so hard. If I’d done the poisoning, maybe I’d welcome a chance to help eradicate any trace evidence that might incriminate me. Assuming Horace hadn’t already found it, of course. My money was on Horace.

I found a moment to speak privately with Mother.

“You seem to be getting along very well with Mrs. Winkle-son’s staff,” I said to Mother. “Any chance you could ask them if they’ve seen this thing before?”

I held up the Baggie containing the doe urine bottle. Mother wrinkled her nose slightly.

“Of course, dear,” she said. In spite of her obvious distaste, she took the Baggie, checked to see that the top was securely zipped, and then tucked it into her tiny black purse.

“And give it to Horace when you’re finished,” I added. “He’s going to analyze it.”

Mother nodded. She looked tired and a little sad.

“I’m sorry I didn’t find the secateurs in time to keep them from being used as a murder weapon,” I said. “If it’s any consolation, the chief will probably be finding out who stole them in the course of his investigation.”

“Mrs. Winkleson stole them,” Mother said. “I’m almost positive. I realized it when I saw her to night. Remember when you were arguing with her?”

“How could I forget it?” I said. “For a few minutes, I thought I’d killed her. Not intentionally, of course, but by making her so mad she had a heart attack or a stroke or something.”

“It was nice of you to be concerned,” Mother said. “Though if losing her temper was apt to be fatal, the world would have killed her off long before to night. I think she was enjoying herself.”

“I hope so,” I said. “If she doesn’t make it, I’ll never be able to forget that I was the one yelling at her in her last conscious moments.”

“Anyway, watching her argue with you jogged my memory. She was standing there, clutching her drink, and she had a look of such . . . such . . . truculent glee. It was the same look she had when she was holding my secateurs at the garden club meeting. I realize that now. I suspect she was holding them, and waiting for her chance to pocket them, and thinking about how much I’d mind when I discovered they were gone. I don’t remember seeing anyone holding them after that. She took them. Then the killer found them here, on her property, and tried to use them on
her
.”

“You could be right,” I said. “And if the killer’s someone who knows about the secateurs, he or she might have thought it was a neat trick, using them to kill her. Killed with a weapon she’d stolen herself.”

“A pity,” Mother said, and then she pursed her lips together as if stopping herself from saying something she shouldn’t.

“That the killer got the wrong person?” I suggested.

“That the killer got anyone at all is more like it,” Mother said. “And that they used your ironwork as a weapon.”

“I’ll make you another pair just like them,” I said. “Not like the ones I’m making to sell to the garden club. With the delicate handles to fit your hands.”

“Thank you, dear,” Mother said.

From time to time over the next several hours, I saw her talking in a corner to one or another of the maids. The amber bottle would appear, and the maids would study it and shake their heads. Then Mother would talk some more, and the maids would smile and nod happily. I overheard enough of one conversation to know that she was enlisting the maids not only to keep their eyes out for more doe urine bottles but to search actively for them. From the looks on the maids’ faces, I felt confident that if any other little amber bottles were or had been concealed in the Winkleson mansion, we’d hear about it eventually. I only hoped none of them had any idea where they could find more little bottles to plant them on their unloved employer.

I found myself wishing I dared ask Mother to query the staff about the dognapping while she was at it. Poor little Mimi’s fate had been rather forgotten in the wake of the two attempts on Mrs. Winkleson’s life. But I had the feeling the chief would not take it well if I tried to interfere with his investigation of the dognapping— especially if the dognapping turned out to be related to the murder attempts. What were the odds of two unrelated crimes happening at the same place in so short a time?

I tried to remember what Mrs. Winkleson had said earlier about the threatening letters she’d received. “Cancel the rose show or else,” was all I could remember her saying. And “or else” were the only words left of the note I’d found in Mrs. Sechrest’s hand.

Probably a bad idea to point out this coincidence to the chief. He’d probably already noticed it. And in case he hadn’t, I’d talk to Horace later.

By midnight, the whole downstairs was in impeccable shape again, and there were only a handful of potential witnesses left. Rob and I were dozing on two of the white brocade couches, along with the caterer and three of her staff. Mother was sitting in one of the ghastly leather chairs, methodically stitching a crewelwork picture of a vase of roses. The brilliant reds, electric greens, and other bright colors of her embroidery thread were the only splash of color in the huge room.

I wondered if she was really being self-sacrificing in waiting her turn, or if she had some reason for delaying her interview. Using the time to work out her story. Waiting to see what really happened to Mrs. Winkleson.

Nonsense. Mother wasn’t a poisoner.

But what if she had some inside knowledge of who was? Knowledge she hadn’t yet decided whether to share with the chief. . . .

“Tired, dear?” Mother said, glancing over her embroidery glasses at me.

I nodded.

“It looks as if it won’t be long now,” she said, returning to her fabric. “Oh, and here’s your father. What news from the hospital?”

“Mrs. Winkleson is a lucky woman,” Dad said, as he sat down heavily in another uncomfortable leather chair. “She’ll make it.”

“Very lucky,” I said. “If I’m ever poisoned, I hope I’ll have two doctors standing by, not to mention an ambulance with two well-trained EMTs.”

“It also helps to be poisoned with something that’s easy to identify,” Dad said. “It didn’t hurt that both Smoot and I have the genetic ability to smell the characteristic bitter almond odor of cyanide. Not everyone can, you know.”

“And how fortunate for her that she was poisoned with something treatable,” Mother said. Was I only imagining the slight emphasis on “for her,” as if to imply that Mrs. Winkleson’s good fortune wasn’t all that satisfactory to the rest of us?

“And how fortunate that Chief Burke was on hand,” I said aloud. “To investigate the crime from the minute it happened.”

“Though it didn’t turn out to be murder,” Mother said. At least she didn’t add “More’s the pity.”

“I’m sure he’s relieved about that,” I said. “And it’s still attempted murder.”

“Plus it’s a good bet whoever tried to poison Mrs. Winkleson is the one who killed Sandy Sechrest,” Rob said. “So this gives him a whole new bunch of evidence to help solve that crime.”

“I suppose,” Dad said. “There’s no actual proof the two are connected. And the complete change in methods is a little odd.”

“I suspect it’s only in books that serial murderers have an obsessive need to commit each crime in precisely the same way,” I said. “Although I can certainly see that Mrs. Winkleson might have more than one mortal enemy.”

“Still rather a lot of people here,” Dad said, frowning. “I hope that doesn’t unsettle Mrs. Winkleson.”

“Unsettle her?” I repeated. “She’s in the hospital, isn’t she? How would she know how many people are still here, much less be upset by it?”

“She’s coming back,” Dad said.