Swan Song (20 page)

“This maid that Duane has become friendly with, the one on the early morning shift?”

“Yes, he got that far. Was she on duty during the mysteries convention last weekend?”

“She was, and better yet, she was working on Lizabeth Mulgrew’s floor, so she had a front row seat for all the drama in the wee hours.”

“Wow, lucky,” I breathed, suddenly more alert. “What did she have to say?”

May sat forward. “She told Duane that a couple of hours after she began her shift, around 5:30 a.m., she was sorting towels in the maids’ room, which is at the same end of the fourth floor as Lizzie’s room was. She was startled half out of her wits when a hotel guest tapped her on the shoulder and said she’d left her purse in a cab. Then she asked the girl to let her into Lizzie’s room with her passkey so she wouldn’t have to wake up, get this, ‘her roommate.’”

I gasped. “Lizabeth didn’t have a roommate! What did this woman look like?”

May smiled. “Skirt too short for her age and a pink streak in her hair. Ring any bells?”

I struggled to take in this new information. “So Renata Parsons was actually in Lizabeth’s room around five-thirty Friday morning?”

“According to this maid, she was,” May confirmed. “She told Duane the woman was wearing a coat but wasn’t carrying a purse, so her story sounded plausible, but she was forbidden to let her into another guest’s room, so she said sorry, no. She said the woman just shrugged and said she’d have to wake her roommate up, then, and she began knocking loudly on Lizabeth’s door. The maid remembered all this because she felt bad about having to say no.”

“Wow, little did she know how bad she would have felt if she’d said yes,” I sympathized. “At least this way, if Renata is responsible for Lizabeth’s death, the maid has nothing to reproach herself with.”

We were quiet for a few minutes, mulling over the implications of this new information.

“Martin said he was called when the room service waiter didn’t get an answer at 6:30 a.m., but we know that’s not true, because he’s not on staff at the hotel. He also said a maid found Lizabeth’s letter under her pillow and handed it over to him, also one hundred percent not true. So how did he get the letter? And why did he bring it to you?” I mused out loud, doubtless echoing May’s own thoughts. As she listened, she narrowed her eyes and stroked Gracie, who had made herself comfortable between us on the couch.

“He must have been there,” she said finally, “only not in the role he pretended to have when he talked with us. He must have seen Renata go into Lizzie’s room or known she was there some other way. Maybe Renata called him on a cell phone. Either way, I’m almost positive it was Renata who found the letter after something happened to trigger Lizzie’s death, and it was she who delivered it to Martin Schenk. Why she did that is the question I can’t answer.”

“Yes,” I agreed slowly. “If they had all the information they needed to find the manuscript, even though Lizabeth’s message was encrypted to a certain extent, you would think they would have kept it to themselves. You never would have known about Lizzie’s proposed game of Find the Flash Drive unless Martin showed you that letter. It doesn’t make any sense.”

After another long moment of thoughtful silence, I added, “And another thing. If it was Martin who trailed us to the Hubbard Library, and all indications are that he was the mystery man in the SUV, he knows we were there looking for the flash drive. So why would Renata assume that you already had it and be trashing your house to find it? They must have been aware of each other’s activities.”

“Were they?” was all May had to say to insert yet another confusing element into the events of the past week.

We both let out long, frustrated sighs. Our heads sagged against the back of the couch. We decided the best thing we could do at this point was sleep on it, and after bidding Gracie goodnight and locking up the house, we trudged up the stairs and veered off to our respective bedrooms to do precisely that.

I awoke Sunday morning without the urging of alarm clock or hungry cat, a rare luxury, and snuggled more deeply under my down comforter. So enjoyable was the sensation that it took a few minutes for me to, one, remember I had a houseguest who could probably use some hot coffee and, two, wonder why Grace wasn’t purring loudly into my ear and patting my nose with one paw to encourage me to give her breakfast.

Reluctantly, I dragged myself from my cocoon, pulled on a sweatshirt over my nightgown and performed minimal ablutions before descending to the kitchen. There my guilt was assuaged by the sight of May, neatly combed and robed, enjoying a mug of coffee she had very capably managed to brew for herself. Gracie crunched contentedly on her breakfast, also provided by May.

“I should have known you’d be the perfect houseguest,” I applauded her as I headed for the coffee maker to pour myself a mug. What are you reading?”

May looked a little startled and turned back to the cover of the magazine she was holding. “Beats me,” she replied. “I found it on your hall table. It says it’s
Celebrity Magazine
, but it surely doesn’t resemble the
Celebrity
I remember. I used to enjoy their thoughtful, in-depth interviews, but now it looks like every other overpriced rag in the supermarket racks … a mishmash of photos of anorexic teenagers and some two-sentence recaps of major events in their lives. When did everyone under the age of thirty begin to look alike, do you suppose?”

“Probably when we got to be over fifty,” I chuckled as I joined her at the table, “but I know what you mean. My daughter and I both used to enjoy that magazine and give in to the temptation to buy a copy now and then, but when the cover price hit five dollars, I decided we would both save money if we split the cost of a subscription. Unfortunately, that was about the same time the publisher changed the format, so now it’s all ads and superficial pap. Heaven forbid that anything should require an attention span greater than the average houseplant’s to digest. That’s one subscription I won’t be renewing.”

May nodded in agreement and turned the magazine face down. “I appreciate the hospitality, dearie, but I’m feeling rather anxious about my poor, torn up house. I’ve been in touch with the fellow who plows out my drive, and he says it’s all clear now, so as soon as you feel mobile, you can get me out of your hair. I know Armando is flying in this evening, and you must have things to do. I’ve taken up quite enough of your time and Margo’s, not to mention Duane’s and Becky’s.”

An hour later we were on the road in the dazzling, post-storm sunshine. Everywhere we looked, clumps of snow were sliding off tree branches and pitched roofs, accompanied by the steady dripping of melting ice. True to her handyman’s word, May’s driveway had been cleared right down to the pavement. We pulled in, and she pressed the garage door opener in her handbag. The door slid up smoothly to reveal her little sedan.

“I’ll just sweep up the glass from that broken window and pick up my mail,” May said, but she didn’t move from the passenger seat. Although as composed as always, her face revealed the strain of recent events. She could not have been looking forward to another look at her trashed house. “What could possibly be worth all this?” she wondered aloud.

I reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’s hard for a decent, kindhearted person like you to understand, I know, but John Harkness could tell you a few stories about what money—even the promise of a windfall—can do to people. Just say the word, and we can call this whole wild goose chase off. Lizabeth’s little joke may have been well intentioned, but it’s simply not fun anymore. Come to think of it, it never was. What do you say we just throw in the towel and let Renata and Martin find the flash drive, if they can, and enjoy their ill-gotten gains?”

May raised her eyebrows and seemed to be giving that option serious consideration, but then she sighed and shrugged. “No can do, I’m afraid. For one thing, I’m sure Lizzie’s lawyer, wherever he may be, will see to it that Renata and Martin never prosper from the publication of Trague’s last manuscript, even if they do manage to get their hands on it before we do. I’ve got an original, signed letter in Lizzie’s own handwriting stating her intention that I should publish it, and come hell or high water, I shall.” She turned to me, her expression resolved. “I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with the proceeds, if there are any. Remember, Trague could have been completely gaga by the time he wrote it. Either way, you can bet your booties that manuscript will wind up in my care, just like Lizabeth wanted.”

I grinned, pleased with the stiffening of May’s backbone. She was sounding more like herself by the minute. “I never doubted it. Now I’ll go get your mail out of the box, and then we can clean up that broken glass. Do you need to go inside to check on anything? Pick up more clothes?”

Briefly, her expression turned bleak again. “No, I’m not going inside this morning. To tell you the truth, I’m not at all sure when I’ll be able to face going into that house again. A couple of years ago, when those hooligans were harassing me … well, that was bad enough, but this is worse somehow. This is a willful violation of my personal space for monetary gain. It’s as if this place has a dark cloud hanging over it. I don’t know if I’ll ever feel the same way about my little house again.”

By the time I’d dropped May off at Margo’s house, I was already thinking about the tasks I needed to accomplish before retrieving Armando from the airport that evening. To my relief, the list was short. Other than feeding the birds, making a trip to the supermarket and putting out clean towels in his bathroom, I had very little to do. The laundry was up to date, and I’d made a run through the downstairs with the vacuum cleaner a couple of days ago. It was surprising how easy the house was to keep without a man in it, I realized with a touch of resentment, especially one as oblivious to disorder as my husband was. It continually amazed me how such a personally fastidious man could appear in the kitchen each morning, perfectly turned out for the day, while leaving a trail of total destruction behind him. I groaned inwardly, realizing my vacation from housekeeping was over. Still, it would be good to have Armando home, safe and sound, and I knew for certain that Gracie would be overjoyed to see her favorite person again.

As I turned onto Spring Street and caught my first glimpse of the pond, I was pleased to see that, despite the impressive snowfall, the ice toward the back of the pond was beginning to break up. Rising temperatures would create open water there very soon, I knew, and I rejoiced for the geese and ducks who had endured most of the winter in the marsh, awaiting this very day. As I parked the Jetta at the side of the street, I saw a dozen or more geese slipping and sliding over the ice, eyes fixed on the opening in the ice. For once, they were almost oblivious to me and my pitchers of cracked corn. The ducks, however, were not, and I hurried to pour out my offerings.

After I’d refilled the pitchers with birdseed for my next stop at the overpass, a patch of white caught my attention, and I shaded my eyes with one hand for a better look. Sure enough, one of the big, goofy swans was swimming in a strip of open water at the rear of the pond. The opening was so narrow, I could only infer its existence by the swan’s movements. Was he alone, I wondered, or was his pal with him? And was the companion swan a mate or just a buddy? I remembered a couple of years ago when the swans then resident had produced a record-breaking seven cygnets and, snapping turtles notwithstanding, managed to raise all of them to maturity. As is the custom with swans, sometime in November the young swans started leaving the pond in twos and threes—all except one, who’d been slow to mature. As his siblings’ feathers turned to white, his remained mostly brown, and he stayed at the pond for weeks after even George and Laura had departed for their winter quarters. At least, we assumed that he was a male. The sex of a swan is very hard to determine at a distance, so we were never certain. After that summer, it was he, we assumed, who made a rest stop at Spring Street Pond during his semi-annual migrations, coming and going. Until now, though, he’d never stayed for the entire season. If he had found a mate, I hoped they would decide to make our pond their summer residence. It would be a treat to have a swan family to watch once again.

At the overpass I picked my way carefully over the melting ice on the sidewalk. There was a particularly treacherous patch about halfway to the feeding point, deceptively dry looking but often dangerously slick. I knew it well, having lost my footing and fallen on my backside the previous winter. Fortunately, only my ego had been seriously bruised, and the birds were only too happy to clean up the spilled seed; but I wasn’t getting any younger, and I didn’t relish the idea of having a titanium hip any sooner than absolutely necessary.

On my way to the local Stop & Shop, I turned May’s final words over in my mind and wondered if I should have alerted Margo to the way her aunt was feeling. Although I refused to believe in nonsensical things like curses and bad mojo, May had certainly experienced more than her share of trouble in her new home. After moving north from Atlanta, she had spared no expense to update and decorate her little house, suffering harassment during the process for no discernible reason. Still, she had persevered and become something of a grandmother to the neighborhood kids, many of whom flocked to her home on Wednesday afternoons in good weather for sessions on everything from baking to building bat houses.

This latest bout of trouble, while totally unrelated, seemed particularly unfair when May had already endured so much. No matter how I looked at the situation, I couldn’t see any way that she’d done anything to prompt this current mess except perhaps to be a bit too trusting of a man she’d just met. Even that thought I squelched firmly. May was a lovely, open person, but she was no fool. Her only crime here was her loyalty to a cranky, embittered publishing colleague and her determination to carry out her final wishes. Talk about no good deed going unpunished.