Nobody moved until they heard an upstairs door slam. Even then they looked away from Aaron, their faces either sorry or confused or disgusted.
Aaron made a show of innocence. “I seem to have hit a nerve. Only making it up, of course. Too bad the poor thing’s such a miserable sport. No clue any of it was true.”
He went to his chair, waving a hand behind him. “I’ll sit the rest of your game out.”
It was Anthony who smirked now, moving them on. “No one willing to take a shot at me? I’m surprised. I thought, of course, I’d be first. I’ve seen the looks on your faces.” He turned from person to person “Prudes and prisses.”
“Oh, I’ll take you on, Anthony Gliese,” Mary Reid said. “Let me think a minute—I’m sure I’ll come up with something.”
Anthony’s laugh this time wasn’t as self-assured.
Mary rose from her chair and walked toward Anthony. His face reddened as she got closer. “I see a long line of young women. So easy to take advantage, isn’t it? And then so pleased with yourself, except maybe the one you talked into leaving her husband and three-year-old daughter. Did you think she believed you would publish her book? That you’d make her a literary sensation? So easy to take advantage of a woman’s dreams. Nothing asked but a few rolls in the hay. But you had no intention of publishing a third-rate writer, did you? Wasn’t that what you told someone in your vaunted publishing house? Who told someone else? And then the item hit a gossip column in New York. And the woman became a sensation, not literary, and then she went out the twenty-third window of a building.”
“Ridiculous,” Anthony, humor gone, snapped back. “I’ve never done such a thing. I never would.”
“This is a game, Anthony. You thought it up.” Mary turned abruptly and went back to her seat, leaving Anthony red-faced and, for the first time, angry. He reached a hand out toward Gewel, who wouldn’t take it.
“Now, Zoe. It’s your turn. Right up your alley, I imagine,” Emily said. “You write about the psychology of characters in novels, don’t you? Give us a good one.”
Zoe rose and turned to Anna Tow.
“Oh no, not me. I don’t think I want to.” She put up a hand to Zoe.
“I think …” Zoe began in a deep voice, “I see water.”
Anna’s hand went higher. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Water. And someone floating in the water.”
Anna pushed her chair back, directly into Anthony. “I don’t know what’s going on here but it’s just … cruel.”
She was gone.
Those left in the room were quiet. Finally, Anthony made a face at Zoe. “Looks like you were on to something.”
Zoe turned to face those still in the room. She smiled at each of them. “I’ve got a feeling she would have run no matter what I said.”
“Well …” Pileser swiped his hands together and stood. “A terrible waste of time and effort if you ask me. This isn’t the sort of thing one usually does at academic affairs. Why, I remember once, when I was at the Iceland Writers Retreat, someone brought up a bit of silliness like this, thinking it would be an icebreaker, and was summarily asked to leave.”
“Interesting. But don’t they expect ‘icebreakers’ in Iceland?” Aaron asked, then chuckled, folding his arms over his chest and waiting for the laughter.
Pileser left the room. The others soon followed.
* * *
Later, when Zoe couldn’t sleep, she lay in her bed, listening to the leaves in the wind. She heard creaking in the hall. Because she was curious and because the noise—probably footsteps—kept up, she opened her door and stuck her head out. Across the hall, Anthony, in a red silk robe, was going into Gewel’s room. She heard their low voices.
And then the door closed.
None of my business, she told herself again and again as she crawled back into bed. The girl was old enough to know better.
Zoe squeezed her eyes as tightly closed as she could. She didn’t want to hear anything more that night. She didn’t want to think of a gullible girl-woman—alive or dead.
Instead, she slept.
Part 5
Netherworld on Tuesday
Chapter 39
At three AM she sat straight up, pulled the chain to her lamp, and looked around as if something was about to jump on her.
“Where did I put it?” she said aloud, swinging her legs to the side of the bed, and sliding to the floor.
At first she tried to visualize where the thing could be. Since this wasn’t her house and not her own bedroom, there were no normal places to hide something or to put it away for a future time.
First her purse. It wasn’t there, though she emptied the purse on the bed and shook it until the last paperclip fell out.
The top of the chest: nothing in her growing pile of welcome notes and schedules and menus. Nothing under the dirty underwear she’d thrown there that morning.
Standing at the center of the room, rotating slowly, was the best she could do: a chair with a pair of jeans thrown across the back; her suitcase, open at the bottom of the bed. There was the window chair—empty. There was the small stack of shirts and pants she’d slung down on a towel laid on the floor of the closet because she couldn’t reach the shelf, which never mattered to her since she didn’t wear fussy things anyway. Everything was wash-and-wear and no-wrinkle, and if they wrinkled, she just wouldn’t look down her body.
Anyway, there was nothing tucked among them.
She turned around again in the middle of the room, whirling as if to catch something behind her. Open closet. Window chair. Suitcase. The other chair with a pair of —
The jeans. Yesterday’s.
The business card was in a back pocket. She dug it out to smooth between her fingers: Harley Lamb, Attorney at Law.
And Mary Lamb, the actress.
Angela Lamb, the …
An illegible address. A worn away phone number.
Harley Lamb. An attorney in Calumet. She could call him again, leave a message, let him know she was on to what he and his wife were doing.
Or she might say to Mary Reid: I’m on to you. You’re not at all what you claim to be.
She looked at the card again. The whole thing could be harmless—a trick to play at an Agatha Christie symposium: Won’t that be fun? Won’t these people remember us after that?
She smoothed the faded card again between her fingers. She would hand it to Mary, tell her she found it in her room, and watch her face.
* * *
She tried to sleep, to give her overactive mind a rest, but facts bounced behind her eyes like a dust storm. The storm growing, about to hit her directly.
Emily Zokela Winton and Mary Lamb leading a symposium on Agatha Christie. Why? Because they’d played Christie characters in a play? Because they knew Zoe was writing a book based on Christie?
Maybe this whole thing was an offshoot of The Mouse Trap.
A new drama, or farce, and everyone with a role.
Maybe there were hidden cameras. Cinéma vérité.
She looked at the ceiling, following the molding from one wall to another. And then around the door. The windows. Under the lampshade. Headboard. Everywhere a camera might hide, she searched and found nothing.
The thought of being watched was chilling, like the constant, unchanging landscape out her window. A camera wouldn’t blink or tell a lie. And the group that would be at breakfast, unchanging, would be in their assigned places, looking up, on cue, when she walked in.
People whose real names she didn’t know and whom she didn’t trust.
She sat at the edge of the bed to think. First, she needed to know if Dr. Leon Armstrong was still in a hospital. Where? Which hospital? There’d been no updates. How could she even ask? But of course, she could. Wouldn’t any normal person ask?
Then Louise Joiner. A real professor. They’d kind of gotten to know each other, but Louise had never mentioned a daughter. Not even a husband. And no daughter existed.
She tried to put herself into the head of Louise: mid-thirties, established at a university. Unlikely she’d be involved in something shady, or silly, or … deadly.
Chapter 40
At breakfast, when she tried to hand the business card to Mary, she frowned down at Zoe and brushed her hand away.
She called “Susan” across the table to Emily, trying for her attention before the woman found a way to escape. Too late, and she was gone.
She asked the others if they’d heard whether Leon was all right. A few looked up from their plates and shook their heads.
Zoe fell back in her chair and swung her feet from side to side in frustration.
Aaron Kennedy leaned toward her, saying, “By the way, Zoe, her name is Emily. In case you don’t remember. Must be the stress of this place. Good thing we’ll all be gone soon.”
Across the table, Anthony lifted his glass of orange juice to the others, one by one. “Miracle of miracles—we’re all here this morning. Nobody with the plague, nobody fell out a window, nobody kidnapped during the night. I’d say that’s worth a toast.”
The others said “Hip hip hooray,” but without enthusiasm.
“Well, I, for one, might have welcomed a good case of plague.” Nigel’s face was long and miserable. “I have to do a webinar this afternoon and, if truth be told, feel completely ill equipped for the job.”
Betty Bertram made fun of him, while Anna tried to sympathize as she passed a bowl of grits.
“Professor,” Zoe said, “you must have done a million such things in your career.”
“You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But I’ve always dodged these new technologies, or whatever you might call webinars. I’m not the greatest speaker in the world, as you might have noticed. Nor the prettiest.”
“Baloney,” Gewel said.
“A lie,” Anna said. “You seem content with who you are.”
“Balderdash,” somebody else said, then snickered.
“We’ll be there to help.” Zoe felt she should add something. “Surely you don’t mind giving your talk on … crap sakes, I’ve forgotten the name of your talk.”
“We settled on ‘The Lost People of Soldier Island,’ remember?” He said this to Emily, who’d just come back into the room, coffeepot in her hands. “I’m to compare a few of the scenes in And Then There Were None with those in Murder on the Orient Express.”
“Ah, yes,” Zoe said. “A fascinating topic. Both novels with a large cast of men and women. Both settings isolated. But completely different stories. One to kill off a lot of people who deserve it. The other to kill one man. If I didn’t know what our situation was here at Netherworld Lodge, I’d swear there was a pact to do what the characters did in both those books.”
She looked slowly around the table, watching the reactions.
“What a silly idea,” Anna Tow scoffed but kept her eyes down. “A pact. Between people who’ve never met before?”
“Two people suddenly missing?” Zoe said.
Nigel interrupted with his worries as the others ate their scrambled eggs and grits, and toast with thimbleberry jam from the monks in Eagle Harbor.
“The larder’s gettin’ a little slim,” Emily warned.
“Not as slim as ya might think.” Bella nodded as she handed the bowls and platters around. “Only some of the staples. If we had a house full o’ hens, we’d be just fine.”
Emily, coffeepot in hand, hurried behind Zoe, who was quick to ask for a refill.
“You forgot me, Aunt Susan.” Zoe smiled a warm smile as she held out her cup.
No one at the table seemed to notice.
Emily said nothing. She filled Zoe’s cup, then moved on quickly.
Chapter 41
With nothing to do until lunch, and still waiting for a call from Jenny, Zoe went to her room and gathered her research from the library and Harley’s business card.
“Did it happen yet?”
This was her proof that something was going on—too many lies, too many coincidences, too many odd things happening. Two speakers gone.
But none this morning.
* * *
In the kitchen, she found not only Mary but also Nigel, his arms crossed, a distant look in his washed-out eyes. The look of rabid condescension he always wore was gone. Instead, he watched steadily out the back door, where rain splashed on a little pad of cement, as he spoke in a low voice to Mary.
Both of them turned as she walked in. A few beats were missed during the look of surprise they exchanged. Nigel said her name.
“Well, Miss Zola!” Nigel called out. “You’ve caught me here, probably obstructing preparations for our lunch. All because my raincoat has mold on it.”
“May I do anything for you, Miss Zola?” Mary turned from the stove.
Zoe nodded. “When you have a minute.”
“No, don’t leave,” Nigel said. “I’ve been reassured I can simply wipe the mold off. That’s really all I came for.”
He gave a small laugh, bowed his head to Zoe, and was gone.
There was a long moment while Mary looked down at her hands and then over at Zoe.
“Would you like to sit down?” She motioned to the table, a nervous tic making her right eye quiver again and again.
Zoe climbed up on one of the wooden, spool-backed chairs, set the business card in front of her, and waited for the right words to come.
Mary didn’t ask what she wanted. She didn’t look at her. She was fascinated with her right thumb, which must have had leftover nail polish because she picked at it obsessively.
“I don’t know what’s going on here, and it’s beginning to scare the hell out of me,” Zoe said.
“What are you talking about? I thought everything was going very well.”
“Your name isn’t Mary Reid, is it?”
Mary’s face relaxed. She half-smiled. “Oh, you’ve heard I was in The Mouse Trap, here in Calumet. I hope that proves to you what a Christie fan I am.”
They exchanged cool smiles. “So, what is your real name?”
Mary lifted her chin and smiled. “Mary.”
“Lamb?”
She hesitated.
“And Emily is Susan Jokela Winton, your mother, I imagine. You do own Ulysses Bookstore, with your husband, Harley. Or Leon Armstrong.”
Emily’s smile slipped. She said nothing, waiting to hear what was coming next.
Zoe put the card on the table.
“What’s this?” Mary asked.
“A business card I found upstairs under the bed where Leon Armstrong slept. Harley Lamb.”
Mary gave a low laugh. “So, you caught us.”
“Doing what?”
She shrugged. “A game. Hyping the event. The Daily Mining Gazette promised they’d run any stories coming out of the webinars if they were of real interest.
“So, that’s what I decided we needed: hype and mystery. After all, this place is so far away, and we’ve tried hard to promote what we’re doing up here. I thought, if we make it really mystifying, and people get a little spooked … well, the stories might go nationwide, which is good for our Christie group. It’s a fundraiser for the arts council.”
“But why Emily Brent? Everyone must have recognized it. And Bella Webb too. What’s Bella’s part in this whole thing?
“And …” Zoe thought hard about what bothered her most. “Why was I the only one to get a black-trimmed invitation? What do you know about me?”
“Only that you’re almost famous. Known for solving some pretty difficult murders. That you are working on a book about Agatha Christie. Emily thought maybe you’d enjoy our event. I thought so too.”
“And the invitation?”
She shook her head. “I didn’t do that. I swear. I sent you a regular invitation. I can’t say what happened.”
She thought awhile. “Maybe it was a bad joke. One of the other invitees?
“What did we do, Mary? You knew us when we lived in Cheboygan. Our mothers were sist
ers. We’re cousins, the two of us.”
Mary’s head was down. She waved a hand in the air. “We were babies. I don’t remember …”
“Why was I asked here? Do you hate me? What’s going on? Or do you want to be friends—want to make up for how you all treated Evelyn?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Zoe waited a minute before asking, “To embarrass me? Was it to exact some kind of punishment? For what? Please tell me what I did? How did you find me?”
Mary looked around at Zoe, her tired face softer now. “It happens I know someone in Bear Falls.”
“Bear Falls?”
“A very nice older woman. We met at a political rally a while ago and stayed in touch. One day she mentioned this almost famous author who moved to town. She told me your name. Who else is named Zoe Zola?”
“Who is she?”
“Myra Cavendish.”
“My postman’s wife?” Zoe was incredulous.
“She said you’d solved some pretty difficult murders, and that she heard you were working on a book about Agatha Christie. Here we are, with this Agatha Christie webinar. It was my mother’s idea to invite you. She thought maybe you’d be intrigued.”
“By the black edging on the invitation?”
She shook her head, “I didn’t do that. I swear. Maybe Aunt Bella. She didn’t like the idea of going against their mother, Anas. But just before you got here, Aunt Bella said it might be a nice surprise for you, at the end.”
“After all these years? After all the cruelty?”
“There was no cruelty, Zoe. They lost touch is all.” Her smile was a happy one.
Zoe saw she believed what she was saying. “And where are Dr. Armstrong and Louise Joiner? Who are they? Is anyone here real?”
Mary sighed. “They had to leave. I might play games with my name, but I didn’t cause them to disappear.”
Zoe watched her face. A worn face, with more lines than she’d had before. The eyes trying to avoid hers were ringed with dark shadows. Zoe wanted to believe her, really wanted to like her, but there was too much in the way.
“What am I missing here?” Zoe asked.
And Then They Were Doomed Page 17
