“Tolliver. Long time no see, buddy!” I looked up to see a uniformed police officer approaching. Kenny bolted to his feet.
“Tom, my man!”
The next five minutes turned into a mini-man fest as the two old buddies did their catching up a mere hundred feet from where the now-frozen corpse lay. It was pretty obvious they were talking careers and family while I sat on the bench, cooling my heels. What was wrong with those two? Didn’t they care about what happened on White Oak Hill? They seemed more interested in each other than in the dead woman lying in the snow. Shivering, I turned my mind to the bigger questions, even as I heard hearty male laughter echo in the fading light of the late winter afternoon.
Where had Gretchen gone when she left the inn? Where was her car now? Had she planned to meet her killer or had he snuck up on her?
I watched Tommy, in his uniform, walk towards the stiff remains. He was officially working the case. He stopped a good distance away, hunched down, and pulled out a digital camera. Snapping away, he took multiple shots from several different angles without going any closer. Kenny hung just behind his right shoulder, carrying on a conversation I strained to hear.
“No defensive wounds....in the back...rigor mortis....”
The dogs were getting nervous as the long minutes ticked by and the men continued to confer. Huck pawed at my leg, wanting to be picked up. I obliged. When Huck pushed himself closer to me, I realized his winter jacket wasn’t keeping out the chill. Hugging him tight, I welcomed his body warmth. January scratched my leg, wanting to join us. I scooped her up and sat her beside the little Yorkie on my too-crowded lap.
“I should call home,” I decided aloud. Laurel would start to worry soon. And the rising cacophony of police sirens would cause her to panic, especially if the cops parked in the driveway of the Four Acorns Inn.
“Miz Scarlet,” Kenny hailed me. “Can you hold on a second?”
“Sure.”
My mental fog was beginning to lift. I watched him trot over to the bench where I sat. He was a good twenty pounds heavier than he had been in high school, no longer the long, lean toothpick, but still a good-looking guy. Too bad about that wedding ring, though.
“Listen, I’m going to walk you back down to the inn. We can talk on the way.” I felt a hand on my arm and a moment later, Huck and January scrambled to get out of the way as I was hoisted to my feet.
“Hey!” I protested. “What’s the rush?”
“Nothing. I’m just trying to get us back to the inn before the sun goes down.”
Liar. We had at least another fifteen minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon. He was up to something. I wasn’t sure what, but he was definitely playing me. That came as a surprise to me. All those years ago, I thought Kenny was the boy-next-door type, a regular Boy Scout. Maybe it was his years at Princeton, but this was not the guy I remembered. I could smell a big lie in the air and that was disappointing.
“You think I’m an idiot? I don’t know a snow job when I hear one?”I chastised him.
“Sorry. We’ve got to hurry. I talked to Tommy. The state police are on their way. They’re going to want to talk to you after they do their preliminary investigation. It’s probably best not to say anything about the Jordans at this point in time. After all, we don’t know that there’s any connection.”
“How can there not be?” I asked. First the threatening note, and now the dead body in the woods. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots.
“Uh, Scarlet....”
“Ah, Kenny!” I shot back, undeterred. “A woman has been murdered. What on God’s green earth would ever convince you that it’s a good idea to hold back information on the missing Jordan family, or not to inform the state cops you’re working on the case?”
“Because if this does have something to do with the Jordans, I don’t want the killer to take them out because the cops are moving in!” he argued. “I need some time to take a look up at Wallace’s house. If the cops find out Jim might be connected, they’ll just rush in.”
“But isn’t the killer expecting the body to be found?”
“Why do you say that?”
“He left it out in the open. He didn’t try to cover it up.”
“You might have a point. He killed her and left her body on the trail.”
“Pretty blatant, if you ask me, Kenny.
“Scarlet, where were you when we had that conversation, about the email?”
“In the library. Why?”
“Where was Gretchen?”
“Long gone. I think she had a date, because she was dressed to kill.” As soon as those words passed my lips, I cringed. “Correction. She was dressed to be killed.”
“Pun intended?” Kenny asked me, a little amused curl playing on his lips.
“Actually, no.”
“About the conversation,” he returned to probe the subject, “what do you remember?”
“Not much.” I thought about it. “Her mother was sound asleep, possibly under the influence of tranquilizers. That leaves my mother as the only possible eavesdropper, and I think we can rule her out.”
“Let’s try a different direction. Was there anything odd about Gretchen’s behavior in the last twenty four hours?”
“Where do I begin?” I shook my head. “The list is long. It starts with the fact she insisted on staying an extra night, claiming the funeral had been postponed. Who postpones a burial? It was all because her mother wasn’t feeling well. I offered to call Willow for nursing assistance, but Gretchen said it wasn’t necessary. Then she had to go out, leaving her sick mother alone in their room. All she wanted was for me to look in on Lonnie throughout the day. But Gretchen refused to give me contact information, in case we had an emergency with her mother. Rather strange if you ask me. She seemed to have a very important rendezvous.”
“Okay. What else?” Kenny was about a foot and a half ahead of me, his stride wider and quicker than my own. I pushed myself to keep up, even as we descended down the icy slope. Please don’t let me fall, Lord.
“Keep talking,” he encouraged.
“She used the computer last night to send some emails. Does that help?”
“It depends. Maybe we can find out who she contacted.”
“What I don’t understand is why she didn’t just use her own Smartphone to send them. She pulled the same stunt the other night, wanting directions from me on our old Mac.”
“Not exactly incriminating, Scar.”
“But there’s more,” I insisted. “She kept unlocking the latch after I locked up the inn for the night. And when I stepped out on the porch to make sure the door to the backyard was locked, I thought I smelled smoke.”
“What kind of smoke?” Kenny wanted to know.
“Cigarette.”
“That’s easy enough to check. If she was a smoker, we’ll know soon enough. And if she had an accomplice, we’ll know that, too.”
“I didn’t see her purse. It wasn’t by the body.” I lost my footing, sliding five feet down the path before Kenny grabbed my arm and kept me upright.
“Thanks.” That tingle went through me as I felt his strong hand grip me like a vice.
“You’re welcome.” His voice seemed to stumble over the words before they slipped out of his mouth, and he looked away the moment our eyes met. With a shrug, I went on with the conversation.
“What woman goes off and doesn’t take her purse?” I demanded. “And where’s her car?”
“Maybe the killer stole it. Or maybe she left it behind when she ran away.” Kenny seemed to have recovered himself sufficiently.
“Dressed up, left her mother doped up in bed....”
“Speculation,” he replied as we came into the bird garden.
“I smell a man in the picture,” I decided. “Gretchen was a predator.”
“You’re guessing, Scarlet. ’Captain Peacock in the conservatory with the candlestick.’”
I had to smile at the old reference to “Clue
”. In our younger days, we chose our own versions of the players and everyone wound up with a nickname. That’s how Kenny came to be known as Captain Peacock. It came from the PBS series, “Are You Being Served?”. Bur would do his impression of the prissy Grace Brothers floorwalker listening to Mrs. Slocombe insist that she had to go home and take care of her pussy. We thought that titillating reference was hilarious, and my brother thought the moniker fit Kenny.
Over time, we got creative. When Louie Gagnon got a summer job at the country club, he became Mr. Green Jeans. Elizabeth Dolcette became known as Betty White, and Tommy down the street, whose father owned Moriarty Motors, became Professor Moriarty. That’s when Bur came to be known as Colonel Grey Poupon. Later on, we shortened it to the Colonel, and on some rare occasions, when he was being a real stinker, we just called him Poup. I was originally known as Miss Scarlet, until one day I corrected the gang. “That’s Miz Scarlet to you!”
“I may be guessing, but I know I’m right. She must have known the guy, too. She didn’t strike me as a woman who just picked up anything with testosterone. She was a plotter, a planner....”
“You women!” he scoffed. “What is it with you? You’re sure she was meeting a guy because she wore a dress and high-heeled boots?”
“Yes, Kenny. I really do think that. She was also wearing enough lipstick to make Miss Piggy pretty, gold bangles all the way up and down her arms, and the amount of White Diamonds on her pulse points could have revived Liz Taylor from the grave. And let’s not forget that she didn’t want me to be able to get in touch with her. You can say ‘Speculation!’ all you want, but at the end of the day, I’m still going to be right. Women don’t go to all that trouble for another woman.”
“Unless she’s a lesbian.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I shook my head. “She was definitely laying a man trap.”
“Where’s your evidence? Where’s your proof?”
“You saw how much trouble I had staying upright, and I’ve got good treads on quality snow boots. No woman in her right mind goes up there in high heels. Those were dress boots!”
“Either that, or she came from the other direction,” he pointed out helpfully. “From the Toms’ mansion.”
Chapter Twelve --
“Now who’s speculating?” I retorted, tossing in an amused laugh. Even as I said that, I realized it made sense. What if Gretchen had been at Steve Kim’s place? Could he have been the man she came to town to meet? He was an insurance executive with a boatload of money. I had no idea what his marital status was or whether he was a kinky, fetish-loving guy, but from the few times I had seen him drive by in his limo and from the occasional photo in Courant’s Java column at this charity event or that, I knew he wasn’t a total gargoyle. Mid-forties, dark, curly hair and bulging eyes, slightly off-kilter smile -- a lot of women were probably lined up to move into his mansion. Some probably even had their interior decorators ready to give estimates on the master bedroom redo. Gretchen Powick, or whatever her real name was, seemed like the kind of woman who might want to land herself a rich sugar daddy. But why bring her mother with her -- or, rather, a woman she claimed was her mother? Was it part of the plan to hook her land shark, or did Lonnie just come along for the ride because her daughter had nowhere else to stick her for safekeeping? “Maybe Gretchen was a high-priced hooker.”
“Okay, Miss Marple...or should I say Miz Maple, given your family’s roots?” Kenny snickered at his own tree humor, fingers steering me towards the back door, even as January raced ahead and beat us all up the steps. “Let’s not get carried away. Here’s what we do. We wait for the cops to come to see us. We show them to Gretchen’s room, let them look through her stuff, check out her billing information. Most likely, they’ll ask us to come down to the station later and give them formal statements. We should expect the press to pop in at some point. In the meantime, let’s find out how Lonnie is doing and check that computer.”
“What do we tell the Googins girls?” I wondered. Kenny flexed his rather bushy eyebrows in consideration as he studied his feet. “You just know they’re going to jump all over this.”
“What about the press? What do we say to them?” he wondered. “They’ll start calling soon.”
“And there are other guests. Two more,” I added helpfully. “Should we move them to another inn?”
“Not a priority right now.”
“No?”
“We’ll assess that issue later. Right now we need to have our stories straight, without giving up unnecessary information.”
“Oh.” Spoken like a guy who had to cover a university’s derriere for decades, who answered to the administration and the alumni. “We don’t just tell them everything?”
“Hell, no!”
“But they need to know....”
“Not so fast, Miz Scarlet. Let’s not rush into any rash decisions. We have to think this through. Our best course of action is to stick to the facts. You went for a walk in the woods. You saw a dead body and screamed. I was out hiking and came to your rescue.” He was right. That was what actually happened without all the behind-the-scenes drama. I suppose there was no reason why Mary Anne Turley and Paul Duchamps needed to know that Kenny was an old friend, although Tommy Furlong knew, which probably meant that all the cops would know and tip off the local reporters. “We’ll tell the inn guests that I’m a friend of Bur’s here for a visit.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Why not? It’s true. We were going to keep it a secret, but that was before Gretchen went and got herself murdered by a person or persons unknown. Better folks should know I’m a security expert, Scarlet, as a deterrent. That way, they might think twice about trying anything.”
“But won’t they think you’re some how connected to the murder?”
“No, we’ll tell the press Bur and Boynton hired me to handle the money missing from the family trust funds.”
“Okay.” A sense of relief crept into my conscious mind. I hadn’t even realized how worried I was. Security expert. That’s how Kenny described himself. He sounded pretty confident. Maybe he really did have a trick or two up his sleeve. But if the killer slipped into the Four Acorns Inn in the middle of the night, would the retired Princeton assistant public safety director be able to get his derriere out of bed fast enough to save us? For a fleeting moment, I wondered what he would look like bolting up from a sound sleep, and my mind flashed on the image. Boxers or briefs? Naked as a jaybird or wearing flannel pajamas? Silk smoking jacket or ratty old tee shirt? Debonair Dave or Derelict Doug? What in the world was wrong with me? Kenny still had that gold band on his ring finger, and that didn’t bode well for romance. It was a constant reminder that his heart was somewhere else. So why was I still in denial when the evidence was so clear? Wishful thinking on my part, after all the years of dreaming? I shook myself awake with a cold dose of reality, forcing the memory of Gretchen’s face in death once more into my conscious mind. Our guest was really, really dead. Not just a little. Completely. Beyond a shadow of a doubt deceased. What did the Four Acorns Inn have to do with her murder? Even as I took that track and started the journey, my companion derailed my thought train.
“Well, that didn’t take long,” he announced. I followed Kenny’s raised arm all the way to the extended index finger now pointing to two unmarked police cars as they pulled into the driveway of the inn, headed to the parking area, and stopped.
“Damn. We didn’t even get a chance to snoop!” I sighed as three men and a woman in plain clothes emerged from the matched set of dark grey Ford sedans. Until I said those words, I hadn’t even realized how much I wanted to search Gretchen’s room. “Should we say anything about the tranquilizers, or let the cops figure it out when they see Lonnie for themselves?”
“Definitely tell them if they miss it. Otherwise, we keep quiet. Cops don’t like amateurs butting in.”
“You’re not exactly an amateur, are you?”
“No, but you are.
” He squeezed my shoulders with his big, comforting hands. “I never realized what a nosy Parker you were.”
“Me?” I was aghast.
“Did you or did you not just express disappointment that you didn’t get to snoop?”
“Oh, that. Well, it’s only because I don’t like guests being weird,” I told him. “I knew she was hiding something sordid. I just didn’t get to find out what yet.”
“Nice try.” The ends of that sexy mouth curled up into a slight smile as he gazed down at me with the patronizing air of a professional investigator. Still, I was positive that I wasn’t totally off-track on the case, and I was legitimately invested in finding out who killed Gretchen Powick. What if the killer planned to strike again?
What did I know for sure? Gretchen was a scheming vixen. I was about to tell him that when he greeted the team of detectives.
“We’re looking for Scarlet Wilson,” said a thirty-something man with a crew cut and a black leather bomber jacket. His shiny black loafers looked like they had never been subjected to snow, ice, or the especially troubling road salt, and the creases in his grey slacks were impeccable. Bachelor clothes horse with an eye for the ladies, I decided.
“That’s me,” I informed the foursome. “This is Kenny...Ken Tolliver, a family friend. He just arrived.”
“State homicide investigations team. Is there somewhere we can talk?” asked the only female. She was wearing a black pantsuit topped by a black wool car coat, her feet in sensible black leather boots with a small chunky heel. Maybe it was that she had a couple of years on her male colleague, but I thought her apparel suggested she was a little less flash and a little more substance. Her skin was the color of coffee, her jet black hair pulled back into an upswept ponytail of cascading ringlets. Her intense eyes were emphasized by black liner and long black lashes, but that seemed to be the only makeup she wore. When those eyes lit on me, I felt a little chill go through me. This was a woman who set goals and achieved them, making her one very formidable foe if you were playing for the wrong team. She was already hunting for Gretchen’s killer.
Miz Scarlet and the Imposing Imposter Page 10
