Tickled to Death (7 page)

“Hello,” I called as I approached him. He was as intimidating as a swarthy bandito, and the last thing I wanted to do was startle him. If he felt remorse for his recent kill, he was disguising it well. “I’m Claire Malloy, Caron’s mother.”

“What those girls need,” he said without looking at me, “is a dose of boot camp. Six weeks in a sweltering wasteland would stop all their whining and complaining. They’d be damn grateful for a glass of tomato juice.” On that charitable note, he walked around the edge of the concertina wire, muttering under his breath, and continued to the edge of the woods. He squatted next to a hole near a log, found a stick, and began to jab at the opening. “Crawled off to die, did you?”

I could think of no reason to prolong the encounter, and was about to get into my car when he stood up and said, “You’re the woman who’s investigating the boat accident, aren’t you?”

“I brought Caron and Inez up here yesterday,” I said, “and I’m on my way home right now. I apologize if they’ve failed to express their gratitude for your hospitality. It’s a symptom of their age, I’m afraid.” I reached once again for the car door handle.

“Wait,” he commanded in a voice that must
have unnerved many a boot camp trainee. He threw down the stick and strode across the parking lot, his face still shadowed by the hat and his eyes nearly invisible. Cigar ashes wafted behind him like light snow. “I heard you were asking questions down at the marina earlier this morning. Did that scum Limpkin tell you anything?”

“He refused to discuss the accident. He told me to scram, but that’s about all.”

Wharton halted on the opposite side of my car. “What about Gannet? What’d he have to say?”

“Pretty much the same thing,” I said. “Is there something one of them should have told me?”

He cackled unpleasantly. “I suppose Bubo could have told you that the accident was caused by his negligence, but he’s not the type to accept responsibility. As for Gannet, he reminds me of a sergeant I knew over in Korea. I was a lieutenant fresh out of OTC, and he was a grizzled twenty-year man who’d finally figured out that he wasn’t going to make general before he retired. He took it hard.”

“And?” I murmured, wondering if I was to hear something significant.

“And he went for a walk in a minefield.” He cackled more loudly. Flecks of spittle sizzled on the roof of my car. “Gannet needs to watch his step. The Dunling Foundation means everything to my wife. Ten years ago she inherited a lot of money from some uncle out in California. Neither of us cares about fancy possessions, and we
sure as hell had our fill of travel, courtesy of the United States Army. Instead of saving it so it could go to distant cousins, Livia decided to fund a foundation that will have a lasting impact on the environment. Anyone who attacks its reputation is going to deal with me first.”

“Gannet seems to think this was the finale of a marital dispute. Nobody’s implied that the Dunling Foundation’s reputation is involved.”

“The boat belonged to the foundation, and some sleazy lawyer might take it into his head to persuade one of the gal’s relatives to file a lawsuit. Dick’s a good man, and he’s assured me he won’t, but lawyers can smell a potential suit like a hyena can a hunk of rotting flesh. We carry some liability insurance because of the barge excursions. It’s not enough to cover a million-dollar judgment against us.” He fitted a shell into the shotgun and pointed it at the groundhog’s burrow. “Considering how fond Gannet is of poking around, it’s a damn shame he can’t poke out his head.”

I decided it was time to leave before he realized that I’d been invited to prove the accident was the fault of none other than the Dunling Foundation. As Agatha Anne had said, it would not be wise to wiggle my nose and whistle at the moment. She’d been joking, but Wharton Dunling was hardly smiling.

I glanced in the rearview mirror as I started up the driveway. Livia Wharton stood in the doorway, watching me. She looked no more congenial
than her husband, and there was no vagueness in her frown.

After I’d consulted the map and memorized the necessary turns, I headed for the highway, doing my best to concentrate on the immediate goal of making it back to Farberville without further delays. And went slower and slower, and finally pulled to the side of the road and stopped to consider what I’d heard from various people. There were incongruities and inconsistencies. The only point of convergence seemed to be Becca’s perfection, and I was beginning to wonder about that.

And whom had Bubo Limpkin called? It had been around nine o’clock when I’d left the marina office, walked out on the dock, and returned to eavesdrop. Gannet had been outside seconds later, so he was not the recipient. Anders had said he didn’t have a phone. Supposedly Agatha Anne was blazing a trail through the woods with two surly campers wagging their tails behind her, but I didn’t know what time they’d left Dunling Lodge. I didn’t know where Georgiana, Sid, Wharton, and Livia had been—or, for that matter, Dick, Luanne, and Jillian. It was logical to assume that some of the above could provide alibis for others of the above. For all I knew, they all could have been attending a lecture on my previous cases.

And it could have been someone whom I’d not yet met, which wasn’t at all sporting. Or I could have misunderstood Bubo, who was far from the epitome of articulateness. I’d assumed he was
making a blackmail demand, but he could have been talking to his stockbroker. If he’d seen me walking toward the office, he could have been talking to a dial tone simply to entertain himself at my expense. Why he would find it entertaining was a little hard to explain, but so was more and more of what was happening at Turnstone Lake.

Reminding myself that only a few hours earlier I’d been grousing about the impossibility of proving Becca’s death had been accidental, I ordered myself to resume driving. Yes, Luanne was my best friend and her happiness was important to me. Yes, Gannet had aroused in me what might be best described as a mildly competitive spirit. Proving him wrong would be satisfying.

The obvious thing to do was to tell him about Bubo’s mysterious phone call, then return home and perhaps even call Peter Rosen to inquire politely about his itinerary. I reminded myself of my selfless gesture made on his behalf. Becca Cissel was not the only candidate for sainthood. My sacrifice was not the sort one could crow from the roof of the portico, obviously, and I would never acknowledge my momentary indecision to anyone, including Luanne.

I pulled into the gravel lot of a convenience store and filled my tank with what must have been a vastly superior brand of gasoline, considering its exorbitant price. No one with a house at the lake fretted over nickels and dimes; this was the burden of the middle class. My theory
was reinforced as I went inside and noted the prices of staples such as bread and milk. Hoping the pay telephone in the corner did not require a gold card, I offered a fistful of dollars for the gas and accepted a handful of change.

I was looking up the number of the sheriff’s department when a man came into the store. He related what must have been an off-color joke to the proprietress, who blushed and said, “Scottie Gordon, when are you gonna grow up? I swear, my ten-year-old grandson tells the same jokes and laughs as hard as you do.”

The name was familiar. I looked over the edge of the telephone directory at the man, who was tall and mildly heavy, with a neatly trimmed beard and the amiable demeanor of a teddy bear. He turned to study the shelf of chips with the seriousness of a battlefield general. Scottie and Marilyn Gordon were the couple who had introduced Becca into the group. Had they met her at Mother Teresa’s house while she was hanging halos out to dry?

I decided to ask, although not with that precise phrasing. Scottie was gnawing his lip and sighing as I came down the aisle. “I’m Claire Malloy, a friend of Dick Cissel’s,” I began timidly.

“Hey, I’ve heard of you,” he said, or rather, boomed. “Agatha Anne was telling Marilyn and me all about your successful investigations. So, how’s the case coming? Found any Maltese ducks among the mallards?”

I solemnly vowed that if by some inexplicable and unimaginable twist of fate I became a legitimate celebrity, I would swim out to sea until I encountered a shark with an attitude. “Not yet,” I said. “There’s something I’d like to ask you, though. It’s not all that important, but if you have a minute…?”

“Sure, if you’ll come back to the house with me. Marilyn would kill me if she found out I met you and she didn’t get the chance. It’s not more than a mile from here. You can follow me, and then interrogate us on the deck over a Bloody Mary.”

Or I could get in my car and follow the highway home in time to open the store for the waning hours of the afternoon. “Okay,” I said.

The Gordons’ house looked familiar, which meant only that I’d driven past it in one of my haphazard attempts to find something else. I was ushered inside and introduced to Marilyn Gordon, who did not appear to harbor any latent tendencies for spousecide. She was attractive in an anemic way, with soft brown hair and sad eyes. We went to the deck and settled on redwood chairs. Moments later, Scottie appeared with a pitcher and glasses.

“I wanted to ask you about Becca,” I said before he could demand the details of my earlier involvements. “I understand that she first came to Turnstone Lake to visit you. Was she an old friend?”

“That bitch?” gasped Marilyn. She clapped her hand to her mouth and stared at me as the word hung in the air.

I sat back and smiled, confident that I’d finally come to the right place.

“Now, Marilyn,” Scottie said as he came over to squeeze her hand, his forehead creased and his voice reproachful, “the poor girl’s dead. There’s no reason to carry a grudge for what happened a long time ago, and we may have misunderstood her motives.”

She wiped her eyes on a cocktail napkin, tossed back her drink much as Anders had done with the vodka, and made a face as the black pepper and Tabasco caught up with her. “I apologize,” she said to me. “I shouldn’t have said what I did. Everyone else adored her, and it’s inappropriate for me to speak ill of her. This is my third Bloody Mary of the morning; otherwise I wouldn’t have been so vulgar.”

I was not interested in postmortem proprieties, but I decided to tiptoe around the subject for the time being. “When Becca first came to Turnstone Lake, she was visiting you, wasn’t she? But she wasn’t an old friend?”

“Hardly,” said Marilyn, making a similar face for what I presumed was an entirely different reason. “Three years ago I went to Miami to move my mother into a nursing home. It was stressful for both of us, and I was thoroughly numb and exhausted when I arrived at the airport. My suitcases were so heavy that I could barely drag them to the counter, then all of a sudden this beautiful young woman was carrying them for me and making sure they were properly tagged. It turned out we were on the same flight. Once I’d checked my luggage, she invited me to join her for coffee. I noticed some bruises on her face that she’d tried to cover with makeup. She admitted that two weeks earlier she’d been brutally mugged and had ended up with bruises, broken ribs, a staggering hospital bill, and no job. I tried to buy her dinner, but she refused. After a great deal of protesting, she agreed to accept a hundred-dollar loan. Only later did I realize how gullible I’d been, but it was too late.”

“You were being kind,” Scottie said in a tone that implied he’d said the same thing many times. “She took advantage of you, that’s all.”

“Oh?” I said, trying not to salivate too openly.

Marilyn sighed. “She did it well, too. When our flight was called, Becca helped me with my carry-on bag, found me a pillow and a blanket, and persuaded the woman in the seat beside me to trade with her. She asked about my mother, and listened with great sympathy as I described the
ordeal. She absolutely insisted that I have several drinks to calm my nerves and bought them herself despite my misgivings.”

“You were weaving when you came off the plane,” Scottie said with a grin, “and hiccuping most enchantingly.”

She managed a rueful laugh, but then gave him a penetrating look that made it obvious she did not share his nostalgia. “Becca had to carry my things and steer me to the gate. Once she’d handed me over to Scottie, she asked if we could recommend an inexpensive motel. I found myself insisting that she stay with us, and after a display of reluctance, she agreed. She was an ideal houseguest, although I was a less than ideal hostess. I was so drained from the week in Florida that I could barely find the energy to get dressed in the morning or get through the afternoon without a nap. I seemed to misplace my reading glasses and car keys every time I set them down, and on two occasions I forgot to turn off a burner on the stove. Becca was terribly sweet and understanding. She cooked and cleaned, walked the dog, retreated to her room every evening to allow us privacy, and bought me little gifts to cheer me up. She even sent cute cards to my mother. It seemed rude to ask her when she was leaving.”

“Did she say why she was coming to Farberville?” I asked.

Scottie shook his head. “Not really, just that she was afraid to live in Miami any longer. She
was adept at steering the conversation away from herself. Frankly, it was flattering to be met at the door with a martini and breathless demands to hear about my day at the accounting firm. When our daughter was that age, she was too preoccupied with her own social life to do any more than wave as she sailed out the door.”

“When our daughter was that age, she was married with a baby and a full-time job,” Marilyn corrected him tartly. “Becca may have looked and behaved like a college girl, but she was closer to thirty than twenty. The dresser in the guest room was littered with bottles of skin lotion, cleansers, mud packs, and the like, and it took her an hour to put on makeup in the morning. You were too busy sucking in your stomach to look carefully at her.”

I did not want the illuminating conversation to degenerate into marital mayhem. “She never made contact with anyone in Farberville?”

Marilyn stopped glaring at Scottie long enough to say, “I don’t think so, Claire. I never heard her talking to anyone on the telephone, and the only times she left the house alone were to run errands for me or to walk the dog.”

“I asked her almost daily if she was bored,” added Scottie, “but she just referred sadly to her emotional trauma. She wasn’t exactly receptive to hints.”

Marilyn rolled her eyes. “I did everything short of packing her suitcase, but I was reared to
be a gracious hostess to the bitter end. Finally, Scottie and I told her we were going to spend six weeks here at the lake, and that she would find the group much older and their conversations tedious. We’ve stopped going to the parties ourselves because we simply do not share their enthusiasm for birds.”

She shrugged at her husband, who picked up the narrative. “Becca was sitting in the backseat of the car before I’d finished loading it. She’d bought some bird books at a used-bookstore and was studying them as if she anticipated a final exam. She also asked about everyone in the Blackburn Creek area until I felt as if I’d been through a session with the IRS.” He took our empty glasses and went inside.

Marilyn waited until the door was closed. “I was too embarrassed to admit how foolishly I’d behaved, so I merely introduced her as a friend from Miami. The men immediately fell all over her, but she refused to flirt with any of them. I’d hoped that she and Anders would hit it off, but she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in a romance with anyone—single or married. She never said or did one thing that warranted criticism. Scottie and I finally threw up our hands and resigned ourselves to the situation. Pathetic, isn’t it? We’re in our fifties and we reared two children. Scottie has managed a large office for nearly thirty years, while I taught math to bored teenagers, some of whom are in prison by now.
And neither one of us could figure out how to rid ourselves of one young woman.”

I said nothing, remembering the times I’d allowed people to take advantage of me. Caron was at the top of the list (with Luanne a close second), but I’d been seriously inconvenienced by a significant percentage of the population of Farberville. I could easily understand Marilyn’s predicament. It came from the curse of being mild-mannered and amiable. Attila the Hun did not have this problem.

Scottie returned with replenished drinks and bowls of chips and peanuts. “The last time Marilyn drank on an empty stomach, we ended up with a houseguest for six months—and I did notice a suitcase in your car.”

“Six months?” I said.

Marilyn nodded. “But only in a technical sense. At the end of July, we went back to Farberville. Becca asked if she could stay here. We readily agreed and were halfway home before we dared breathe—or look in the backseat to make sure she wasn’t crouched on the floor. I felt obligated to call her every now and then, but she assured me that she wasn’t the least bit lonely. I understood why when we received the marriage announcement in December.”

I realized the afternoon was dwindling away as we gossiped, but it was refreshing to hear about the darker side of Miss Congeniality. I appeased my growling stomach with a few peanuts, then
said, “Agatha Anne mentioned that Becca and Jan Cissel became close friends before the accident at the end of the summer.”

“What a terrible thing that was,” Marilyn said as she used a fresh napkin to wipe the corner of her eye. She went to the railing of the deck and bent her head for a moment, then turned around and tried to smile. “Jan was one of my dearest friends. She was involved with the bird group, but she loved to read biographies, and we’d sit out here and talk about them for hours. I think she was a little perplexed by Becca’s attentions, but also flattered. Becca persuaded her to buy a new wardrobe and have her hair styled at a pricy salon. They went into Farberville several mornings a week for aerobics, lunch, and shopping.”

Scottie made a noise not unlike that which came from my stomach. “You should have heard Dick when the credit card bills started coming. He grew up poor, and he and Jan scrimped for years while he was in dental school and training in his specialty. Once he and Sid got the practice established, he started doing well, but I’ve done his taxes for twenty years and he’s had some lean times. He’s not a miser, but he feels more comfortable knowing he has a safety net. Jan was ripping substantial holes in it.”

I made a mental note to suggest to Luanne that she ask for an audit before she opted to become the third Mrs. Dick Cissel. I would have suggested autopsies, too, had they been possible.
He’d been devoted to his first wife, but also angry at her extravagance. He may not have been enchanted with Becca’s extravagance either. Neither woman was shopping now.

“Has Captain Gannet talked to you?” I asked.

“Briefly,” Marilyn said, “but as I mentioned, we rarely socialize anymore, and after the marriage, we had very few casual encounters with Becca and Dick. When did we last see them, Scottie?”

“At a Christmas party in town. Dick was looking miserable in a tuxedo, but so were most of the men. Becca had on a skimpy black dress. One of the waiters was trying so hard to peer into her cleavage that he fell in the fountain.” He paused, and his cheeks began to glow as Santa’s purportedly did when he chanced upon cookies and milk. “I play golf with Dick every once in a while. The last time we played was in the fall, and he asked me some questions about Becca’s past. I felt like a real idiot when I didn’t have any answers.”

Nor did I. I did, however, have a final question of my own. “Did Becca borrow any more money from you during her stay?”

Marilyn looked at her husband, who shook his head emphatically. “Not a penny,” she said. “I wondered about that myself. When we left the lake that summer, there were essentials in the cabinets and a few things in the freezer, but certainly not enough to keep her going for what turned out to be nearly four months. I never quite found the nerve to ask her if she was receiving
regular checks from a trust fund or an annuity of some sort. I wish I had.”

Scottie had been glancing surreptitiously at his watch, and now he and his wife exchanged uneasy looks. I thanked them for the drink and went to my car, all the while trying to assimilate this new version of Becca as a parasite with more tenacity than mistletoe.

It was past three o’clock. By the time I drove to Farberville and threw open the doors of the Book Depot, the pedestrians would be home preparing for the interminable merriment of a Saturday night in a college town. This was not to imply that I could not telephone Gannet from the convenience store, go home, and spend a peaceful evening with the newspaper and a novel. The next morning I would hear of Bubo’s attempt at blackmail and the identity of his victim. If instead I was regaled with the details of Luanne’s untimely demise at the hands of her lover, I would spend the rest of my life ravaged by guilt. It was a most annoying dilemma.

I turned back toward the lake.

Assorted cars were parked at Dick’s house, including the Jaguar and the Range Rover. I knocked on the door, waited, and finally went inside. As I hesitated at the edge of the living room, Jillian came out of the kitchen with a tray of sandwiches.

“You’re back,” she said. “Luanne said you’d gone home.”

Her voice expressed neither pleasure nor disappointment, although I would have put my money on the latter. I opted to interpret it as a statement of fact. “Oh, but I didn’t. It’s so beautiful up here that I couldn’t drag myself away to Farberville. Is Luanne here?”

She gestured for me to follow her to the deck, where I found myself interrupting that which I dread worse than root canals and quarterly tax estimates—a meeting. Clues abounded. Agatha Anne had a clipboard in her lap. Georgiana Strix had a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other. Livia Wharton was peering doubtfully at an engraved invitation.

Only Luanne was unarmed, but she had the look of an animal with its leg in a steel trap. She jumped up and came to grab my arm before I could retreat. “I’m so glad you’re here, Claire! Let me get you some iced tea. Would you like me to fix you a plate of sandwiches and cookies?”

I lowered my voice to a snarl. “I would like you to unhand me. You know how I am about clipboards.”

Agatha Anne gave me a bright smile. “Please join us, Claire. We’re trying to finalize the details of the Rapturous Raptors Ball, and we’d truly appreciate your suggestions.”

Georgiana smiled wanly. “Please do.”

I was pushed firmly onto a settee beside Agatha Anne. “Where are the girls?” I asked her.

“Out on the barge, familiarizing themselves
with some of the islands and coves. They have a map.” She perused the top page on the clipboard and sighed. “Becca was in charge of the arrangements with the hotel, the caterer, the florist, and the band. I can’t tell what deposits have been made, but I can find out on Monday.”

“What if she didn’t make any?” asked Georgiana. “Last year the caterer wanted five thousand dollars in advance. What will we do?”

Livia put aside the invitation. “We’ll write them a check, of course. There should be plenty of money in the account to cover trivial amounts like that. We raised over two hundred thousand dollars last year. Surely some of it went into a reserve fund?”

“Well, yes.” Agatha Anne pretended to write something, but I caught a glimpse of a series of squiggles along the margin before she flipped the page. “But I hate to dip into the reserve. The claims adjuster says we should receive a settlement for the boat within a week. It might be better to use that.”

Livia clucked disapprovingly. “I don’t see why. The Dunling Foundation cannot risk its reputation. Our funding depends on the generosity of the community, and if we are perceived to be careless or even the tiniest bit irregular in our financial dealings, donations will dry up. If the caterer does not have a deposit, he should be sent one as soon as possible. The hotel will not keep the ballroom open indefinitely, and the orchestra
may well accept another engagement. Agatha Anne, will you please make the necessary calls Monday morning? If deposits are needed, Georgiana can put the checks in the mail immediately.”