“I’m not here to watch you, I’m here to talk with you. I was hoping that, together, we could figure out exactly what C.J. knows that made him so dangerous.”
“But that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve been thinking and thinking, and I don’t have any idea.”
“Look, you might not know. You haven’t been with C.J. every moment since he got to Yellowstone, have you?”
“No. He spent last night with his family … but don’t you think it has to be something that happened right before his grandfather died?”
“Why?”
“Well, if he knows who the murderer is—”
“But he may not, Chad.” Susan was unable to resist interrupting. “He might know who put the effigy in the pool or who killed Randy—or it might not even be that direct. He might have seen someone buying suspenders at the ski shack.…”
“You’re kidding me! What does that have to do with anything?”
Susan explained her reference to suspenders before continuing. “There’s also the possibility that he heard Randy make plans to meet someone after the ski lesson, or that he saw someone in his family ski up ahead of the group who later didn’t admit to doing so—and those are just the obvious things that might incriminate someone. It’s probably something completely different. I just wish we could talk with C.J.”
“But we can.”
“No, his mother wants him to be left alone to rest. The poor kid probably needs it. I don’t know how badly he was hurt, but—”
“He’s got a bump on his head—it’s not even as big as mine when I got clobbered in gym last month—but he’s bored to death and dying to talk about this,” Chad insisted.
“When did you see him? I thought he was in his mother’s room with a guard outside the door.”
“He is, but I went to visit him a few minutes ago.”
“Chad …”
“It’s easy. Especially with the deep snow. It actually makes it less slippery.”
“Makes what less slippery?”
“The roof. You can get to C.J. by walking on the roof. C.J. and I have been traveling that way ever since we got here. It’s fun!”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“Wow. It’s really been blowing, hasn’t it? The snow’s almost filled this corner. It wasn’t like that before.”
“Before?” Susan repeated, following her son across the roof that jutted out above the first floor. “How often do you do this?” She had just noticed that Chad was wearing his running shoes instead of boots. If she could ignore the floor of his room, she could ignore this, she reminded herself, cringing as he leapt into a drift up to his knees. She did have more important things to worry about.
“C.J. discovered it the first night we were here—it’s okay, Mom,” he explained, hearing the concern in her voice. “We don’t look in windows or anything. It’s just a shortcut. The window in the laundry room is sometimes open—it gets pretty hot in there, I guess—so we go through there to the candy machine. Careful,” he warned, “these people always have bottles of champagne and stuff out here—they want it cool, I guess.”
“I was worried that one of you would fall off,” his mother explained, glancing at the fifteen-foot drop.
“Don’t worry. The snow gives you traction. And if you fell, you’d land in a nice, soft drift. Here we are.” He knocked on a window. The curtains in the room were closed, but Susan was not surprised to see C.J.’s smiling face peer out the gap where the two panels of fabric met.
“What … ?” The head disappeared, and with a swish, the curtains were flung to opposite sides of the window to reveal C.J. energetically turning the crank that opened the glass.
“Careful,” he warned. “The radiator is hot. My mother thinks boiling me alive will cure me,” he added, helping Susan clear the sill and the appliance beneath it.
Chad, experienced, leapt the obstacles with ease.
“I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you,” C.J. continued. “I’d rather die in a snowdrift than from boredom. Say, you haven’t figured this thing out yet, have you?” he asked Susan hopefully.
“I’m afraid not. I was hoping you could help me,” Susan explained, sitting on an unoccupied bed.
“Chad insists that I know who the murderer is,” C.J. answered, sitting next to her while Chad, once again, perched on the desk provided. “And I’ve been thinking and thinking, but if I know something, I don’t know that I know it. Say, did I say what I thought I said?”
Susan smiled. “I think so. But you don’t mind if I ask some questions, do you? Your mother thinks you should be allowed to rest, and she might be right. I don’t want you to get sick.”
“I’m fine,” C.J. insisted. “My mother’s just …” He stopped, probably remembering that he was speaking with another adult.
“Mothers are like that.” Susan agreed with what he didn’t say. “So if you start feeling the least bit uncomfortable, you are to let me know immediately.”
“Okay.”
“I suppose everyone has asked if you can identify the person who hit you.”
“Yes, but no. I mean,” he elaborated, “that everyone has asked, but that I don’t have any idea who it was. I think the person was big, though, great big.”
Susan tried not to smile. The poor kid probably couldn’t accept that he had been felled by an ordinary mortal. “Male or female?”
“I don’t know. I was walking along—”
“Where were you going?”
“To the warming hut. I wanted to see Uncle Darcy. I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I just wanted to talk to him. I don’t think he killed Grandfather, Mrs. Henshaw. I mean, I know he said that he did it, but I don’t think he did.…”
Susan smiled at him. “I know what you mean. In fact, I agree with you.”
“That’s what Chad said.” C.J. sounded relieved. “And my grandmother says you can help him—I hope so.”
“So do I,” she said sincerely.
“Well, I didn’t even hear anyone nearby,” C.J. continued. “I guess I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on. I just felt something hit me in the head. And the next thing I knew, my mother was standing beside my bed asking me if I was warm enough, and I had this stupid, lousy headache. This isn’t going to help you, I know—but I’ve been thinking and thinking, and that’s all I can remember.”
“Probably because that’s all that happened. There’s no way you’re going to remember things you never knew.”
“Unless he has amnesia,” Chad suggested. “We read this story in English class about a man who lost a whole year of his life after an automobile accident. He didn’t even remember his name—”
“C.J. remembers his name, Chad,” his mother interrupted, worried that Joyce might return and cut short this interview before she had gotten any new information. Her son scowled at her. “I’ve been wondering about a lot of things,” Susan continued. “To save time, could I ask you some questions, and would you answer without asking me why I’m asking?”
“Sure. Fire away.”
“Why did you and Heather lie to me about the order in which your family arrived to see your grandfather’s body?”
“Mom!” Chad cried out, apparently indignant that she would accuse his friend of duplicity.
“It’s okay, Chad. She’s right,” C.J. admitted, picking at the blanket. He didn’t answer immediately, though. Finally he looked up at Susan and sighed. “Heather is going to kill me, but I may as well go ahead and tell you. We were afraid that you would think one of my parents killed Grandfather. That is, Heather was worried about it. I didn’t believe it for one minute,” he assured her.
“But it was a legitimate worry,” Susan said. “After all, I’m afraid that everyone in your family is under suspicion. And it would be natural for you—or Heather—to try to protect the people who are closest to you.”
“But my parents aren’t …” C.J. began, and then stopped. “At least, I don’t think my parents would kill
anyone.…” He shook his head. “But Heather said that it didn’t matter what we thought. She wanted to convince everyone else that they were innocent. And she said that all we had to do was make sure you knew that they couldn’t possibly have been near when the murder occurred. So she drew up that stupid list and insisted that we find you and tell you. It really was stupid,” he repeated. “Why would you or anyone else think that my parents would want to kill Grandfather? My father was thrilled to see Grandfather—the second night we were here, he was drinking, kidding, and joking around. I’d never seen him like that. He certainly wasn’t planning to kill anybody.”
Susan realized that the difference in Heather’s perception of the situation and her brother’s was probably that the girl knew, or had some inkling, of her father’s drinking problem. Chad apparently was entirely unconscious of the fact—and she certainly wasn’t going to be the person who told him. “What did Heather think about your mother? Did she worry about protecting her, too?”
“She worried about both of them. She didn’t separate them. Say, Mrs. Henshaw, you don’t think my parents did this, do you? I mean, I’ve thought about it,” he continued earnestly, “I really have. And I don’t see why either of them would want to. And it’s not like they’re maniacal killers. As far as I can tell, they’re the most sane people in this family. I suppose that’s because we lived in France for so long.
“I mean,” he continued, “Jane and Charlotte don’t act their age. They worry about clothing and makeup and boys—or, in their case, men—all the time. They remind me more of teenagers than adults. And, of course, Darcy is gay—which is fine with me, but it isn’t exactly average, is it? And Jon …” He stopped for a moment. “I guess Jon is pretty normal, too.” He stopped, looking nervously at the door before continuing.
“But what’s really wrong with this family is that everyone had to be so damn nice to Grandfather!” The words almost exploded out of the boy. “It’s been awful! Ever since we got here, someone has been saying we have to do this or that—or even say this or that—just because no one wants to upset Grandfather! The very first words my grandmother said to me, when we arrived at the lodge, were that it would please my grandfather a lot if I learned to ski well.” His voice grew louder. “Well, I was going to learn to ski! I was looking forward to learning to ski! And then, all of a sudden, I had to do it to please someone else. It ruined everything! I know it doesn’t make any sense … but it’s different to do something for yourself instead of for someone else. You know?”
“I know,” Susan agreed.
“And we all had to be so damn good all the time, and I don’t know why! It was like there was some sort of awful explosion waiting to happen. We didn’t know what would cause it, but we sure knew that it was going to happen because of something we did.…”
“Is that what you and your grandfather fought over?” Susan asked gently, seeing the tears in the boy’s eyes. Chad was silent, a grim look on his face.
“Yes. I guess I just blew up. He and Darcy had that fight, and Randy was missing, and my mother was looking more and more worried and telling me not to worry about it, that everything was okay, when, of course, it wasn’t. She never looks like that unless someone has a fatal disease or something.… And then, just as I was getting up from breakfast, my grandfather came over and asked to talk to me. He looked awful. Chad was there, he can tell you.”
Chad just nodded at his mother, and C.J. returned to his story.
“I said fine. After all, I liked my grandfather. What reason would I have to not want to talk to him? But … but he laid into me about how I was spending too much time with Chad and not enough time with my own family, how this was a reunion of the Ericksens, and I was being inconsiderate and ruining it for my grandmother.… For my grandmother,” he repeated angrily. “She was always saying that she was happy I had found someone my own age to be with, that it would be boring for me to be around adults all the time!”
“And you got mad.” Susan nodded, understanding.
“Yes.” C.J. was suddenly silent. “And I said something about it being my own life and I could be with my friends if I wanted to.… That was the last time I saw him alive,” he added, almost inaudibly. “That was the last thing I said to him.”
“I keep telling him that his grandfather would understand,” Chad said. “It was just a terrible coincidence that his grandfather had to die right after that.”
“You’re right.” Susan nodded, then she turned to C.J. “Your grandfather’s death was a terrible tragedy, but you shouldn’t feel guilty about what happened right before it. Think of all the good times you had together.”
“That’s what my mother said. She was pretty furious when she heard what had happened that morning, but after he died, she said exactly what you said.”
Susan was silent for a moment, giving him time to calm down before asking another question. “Do you know if anyone in your family bought suspenders at the ski shack?”
The triviality of the question seemed to reassure C.J., and he answered quickly. “No. I mean, I don’t know if anyone did. No one except Grandfather wears—wore—suspenders, though.”
“Did you see Randy after the ski lesson we all took the second day we were here?”
C.J. thought for a moment. “No, I followed Chad to that practice trail and spent awhile going around it. I saw Randy leave the lesson, but I didn’t see him after that. He was killed that day, wasn’t he?”
“Hmmm. Yes.” Susan hurried on to her next question. She really did not like children being involved with murder. “Did you see anything that might lead you to guess who made the dummy and put it in the pool? Any extra clothing around? Anyone carrying anything that could be made into a body? Remember, this was the same day as the lesson—that afternoon.”
C.J. thought about his answer longer than he had the others. “No,” he finally answered. “The only place I’ve seen piles of clothing is in the laundry room. There are always huge piles there—besides on the floor of our room, of course,” he added, with a wicked grin at Chad.
Susan was glad the boy was cheering up. She stood, anxious to follow up on the clue he had just unwittingly offered her.
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Are you wondering about them, too? I keep thinking I’ll come in here and the whole mound will have disappeared.”
Susan stared at the pile of sweaters she had folded the day before yesterday. A woman she had noticed around the lodge, distinct in having a half dozen children under age ten following her around, was speaking. “I’ve thought of mentioning it to one of the rangers.… In fact, I did say something to one of the kids who works at the front desk, but he just answered that people were always leaving laundry behind when they leave the lodge. I suppose the staff divide up the goodies among themselves.… And those are beautiful sweaters, aren’t they? Especially that Fair Isles pattern on top. I knit myself, so I know what a difficult pattern that is.… My goodness, I didn’t know they were yours,” she added as Susan, decision made, swept up the garments into her arms.
“My son’s,” Susan called back over her shoulder, leaving the room. “I kept thinking he was going to get them himself.…” She left the statement unfinished. Another mother would understand perfectly.
Returning to her own room, she dumped the sweaters on her bed and reached for her ski equipment. There was only one thing to do.
And she did it. Not without the help of a stubborn ranger, however. Without Marnie Mackay’s permission, he explained, blocking the open doorway, no one was to speak to or see Darcy Ericksen. Susan, too anxious for a quick answer to search for official permission, talked the young man into showing Darcy the Fair Isles sweater that had been so admired in the laundry room. The answer came back almost immediately. The sweater had, indeed, belonged to Randy. In fact, it had been a Christmas present from Darcy to his murdered lover.
“And he’s very upset over seeing it again.” The ranger looked sternly at Susan as if suspecting her of int
entionally hurting the young man.
“Please tell him that I’m sorry, but that it just might be getting us a little closer to finding out who murdered Randy. And tell him …” Susan paused, searching her mind for a suitable message. “Tell him that I’m thinking of him and I am doing everything I can to help him.”
She thrust the sweater into the puzzled ranger’s hands. “It’s difficult for me to ski while carrying anything, so you take this.” She hurried off. If she was lucky, the ski shack might still be open.
It was almost impossible to see through the continuing storm. Susan skied slowly from lamppost to lamppost, hoping she was heading in the right direction. The ski shack was near the lodge, and luckily, the beams of light led her directly to it. She freed herself of her skis and hurried to the entrance. Light streamed from the building’s tiny windows, but the door was locked. Susan banged on the heavy wood door. The wind was shrieking around her. Maybe no one would hear. Maybe no one was in there.…
“Hey! We’re closed. Come back tomorrow!” A man peered through the door into the blizzard. “Hey, you’re Mrs. Henshaw, aren’t you? I remember you from your lesson. What’s wrong?” He opened the door all the way. “Come on in, but hurry. The snow is blowing straight inside.”
Susan scurried up the steps and into the bright room. Three young men were there, sitting near the warmth of the wood stove. A couple of mugs and an open thermos mixed the scent of strong coffee with that of smoldering pine.
“Would you like a cup?” one of the young men offered. Another scooted over on the bench where he sat, making room for her.
“There’s still a group out on the trail to Lone Star Geyser. We’re waiting around to see if they need rescuing,” came a voice from behind the store’s counter. Susan was surprised to see Dillon joining the group, an empty mug in his hand.
“But you’re not a ranger,” she said.
“When there’s an emergency, we all work together. And if this storm, two murders, and six tourists skiing along the Fire Hole River after dark isn’t an emergency …” He left the sentence unfinished. “But why are you here?”
An Old Faithful Murder Page 21
