Miz Scarlet and the Imposing Imposter

by Sara M. Barton

  “Shoot!” groaned Max. “Oh, damn it all to hell.”

  “Scarlet, can you describe the missing guest for us?” She turned and faced me, trying to block my view. A horrible thought descended on me as I stood there. What if it’s Lacey?

  “Let me see,” I insisted, stepping forward.

  “That might not really be a good idea.” Larry took one look at me and must have realized I wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  Lonnie’s face was a ghastly shade of grey. Her head was tilted back, mouth open, dentures loose. The garish marks on her wrinkled neck told the story of her death. She had been garroted.

  “Oh, my God!” I gasped as I peered into the closet. The female detective was right behind me.

  “Nasty!” said Larry. “What kind of animal kills an old lady like that?”

  “We found a body.” Max was already on the phone, calling his colleagues. A moment later, the front door burst open and the young detective came in, followed by his partner.

  “Man!” It was the black-loafer-wearing Roselli. “Man, oh man.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty cold. Why would you tie up an old lady like that?” asked Bryce. We all looked closer. Sure enough, Lonnie was restrained by a pair of knee hi stockings at the ankles. Another pair bound her hands.

  “Why would you tie up a stroke victim?” I sighed. It seemed the height of cruelty. “It’s not like she could walk on her own.”

  “Unless she was faking it.” Max suggested.

  “How so?” Larry demanded. “She’s in a wheelchair that requires a push.”

  “Bottoms of her shoes are scuffed.”

  “Maybe the shoes are old, from before the stroke,” said Bryce. “They look pretty beat up, like she’s had them a long time.”

  “If Lonnie’s dead, where are Lacey and Paul?” I looked at the others.

  “Who?” Bryce looked confused.

  “My mother’s cousin and another guest of the inn. He’s supposed to have heart surgery in a couple of days.”

  “Roselli and Bryce, you check the basement again. Make sure I didn’t miss anything. And while you’re at it, notify the medical examiner’s office. Then call the barracks and get some uniforms up here,” said Max before he turned to me. “Is there any place we didn’t look yet? Maybe a third floor attic? Outbuildings?”

  “My suite is on the top floor, along with storage rooms,” I said. Larry started for the stairs, and I saw Max grimace. Definitely knee problems. “Elevator. Come on.”

  It was tight inside the narrow confines. I could hear the soft whir of the motor as we rose to the second floor.

  “Now we climb,” I told them, leading the way to the attic door. At least the stairs here were narrower, and Max had a handrail on each side to help him hoist himself up.

  “Lacey! Lacey, it’s me. Are you up here?” I took a look in the large cedar closet where we store the winter clothes out of season, but saw nothing out of place. I looked into the unheated attic space, where boxes of Googins and Wilson possessions sat stacked neatly in rows. Still no sign of the elderly pair.

  “My sitting room,” I announced, opening the door to my personal apartment. Nothing looked like it had been disturbed. No signs of a struggle. No trail of blood staining my carpet. “Lacey! Are you up here?”

  There it was. A muffled sound came from my bedroom. We crossed the threshold. Nothing. I checked my bathroom, even though I could see no sign of the pair. And then I looked towards my closet. It was the only place left to look. Max had his gun out.

  “Wait,” I whispered. “Paul has a heart condition. You’ll scare the bejesus out of him!”

  Carefully holding onto the weapon, Max put it behind his back. Larry stepped to the side, just out of sight, before she gestured for me to open the door.

  “Lacey,Paul, it’s me. Are you okay? We found Lonnie downstairs.” I made as much noise as I could, just to reassure them. “I’m here to help you.”

  The sound of a sob slipped out as I pulled the knob and found the elderly couple sitting on their fannies in my walk-in closet. The terror was still written all over their faces. Paul looked like he was in the middle of a cardiac arrest.

  “Get an ambulance,” Max told Larry. “Scarlet, let’s get him onto that sofa in the other room. Paul, is it? I’ve got you, sir. Let’s take this slowly. One step at a time. Don’t exert yourself.”

  Lacey was almost beside herself, fluttering around Paul, talking a mile a minute about their ordeal. He seemed more frail than normal, but he answered Max’s questions in a calm voice. When he gripped the offered hand, I could see him trembling.

  “Two masked men, Scarlet. It was horrible. They burst into the house, ran upstairs, and dragged Lonnie into the elevator. Paul and I were having tea. We hid behind the sofa, and when they came down in the elevator, we went up the back staircase. And then we came up here, because we figured they wouldn’t expect us to do that.”

  “Why didn’t you just run outside, go to a neighbor’s house?” I wanted to know.

  “There was a dark grey van in the driveway and another man was behind the wheel. Two more men went to Bur’s door, but he and your mother had gone to the store.”

  What did that mean? Five men. Two in the house, one in the van, two at Bur’s apartment. Even as I heard the details of their horrible experience, something floated up through the fog in my brain. “They were looking for Bur?”

  Chapter Fourteen --

  “I think so.”

  “But why?”

  “I have no idea. Paul very wisely suggested we get the hell out of there, and I concurred.”

  In all the years I had known Cousin Lacey, I had never known her to swear much. This was the shock talking. For all her bravado, she wasn’t quite as tough as she pretended.

  Paul sat back on the sofa, taking a slow deep breath. He reached into his breast pocket and took out a small bottle. Nitroglycerine. Slipping one under his tongue, he waited for it to take effect.

  “ETA on the ambulance is five minutes,” said Larry, stepping back into the room. She had rounded up her fellow investigators. “Let’s get some of this furniture out of the way, so they can bring the stretcher in.”

  Even as the three of them moved my armchair and the oversized ottoman on wheels, I grabbed a glass in my bathroom cabinet and filled it with cool water. I offered it to Paul, who took a quick sip. “Mmm. Thanks. I don’t need an ambulance. I’m fine.”

  “Just a precaution, sir. We have to follow protocol in a case like this.”

  “No need.” He was adamant, but I thought some of that was due to the fact that he didn’t really want to admit how scared he was by the events.

  “Is Lonnie okay?” Lacey wanted to know. I looked at Larry and she gave me a quick nod, even as we heard the feet on the stairs below.

  “I’ll go lead the way,” she told us. I could hear the paramedics talking about the stiff in the closet and wondering where the rest of us were. The talking stopped a moment later. After that, there were the sounds of boots on stair steps and the occasional bang on the wall as the stretcher made its way up to the third floor.

  “What do we got?” said an overly-cheerful uniformed first responder as he entered the room, followed by the rest of his team. He knelt down beside Paul and started taking measurements. “How you doin’, sir? Feelin’ okay?”

  I explained that our guest was due to have heart surgery soon and we were concerned that he was at risk because of the terrible event he witnessed. Once the wheels started turning on that train, it left the station and there was no turning back. I took Paul’s cell phone and called his cardiologist, to get instructions on what to do and where to take him. The paramedic spoke to the doctor, filling her in on all the details of the heart patient’s current situation. Lacey wanted to ride with him in the ambulance, but the crew suggested we follow them, just in case.

  “In case what?” she wanted to know. I pulled her aside as they loaded him onto the stretcher. He was beyond pale now an
d his breath seemed to come in short huffs. Not good. From the looks on their faces, it was pretty clear they didn’t think the patient would survive the ambulance ride.

  “The paramedics need the extra room for all their equipment. Don’t worry, Lacey. I’ll go with you to the hospital,” I promised gently.

  “Which hospital?” asked Larry. She was on the phone, making arrangements with someone from her office. When she finished conveying the information, she took Lacey’s hand and led her back to the sofa. “We’re going to let those guys take care of the patient, and when we hear the siren and we know they’re on their way, I’ll drive you to the hospital myself. Okay? In the meantime, while we wait for them to carry him down and out to the ambulance, do you think you can answer some questions for me?”

  Lacey nodded. Her eyes were tense and tear-filled. Paul had already become a friend in the short time he had been with us.

  Ten minutes later, I piled into the back seat of the state police sedan and buckled myself in. From where I sat, it looked like it was going to be a very long night.

  Admitted through the gate by a uniformed security guard, Larry parked in the emergency room lot at the hospital before making a quick phone call. She got through to the cardiologist’s answering service, gave her name, and then relayed the message from Dr. Wellborn. Paul was already being prepped in the OR. The cardiothoracic surgeon who was on call was coordinating the effort.

  “Oh, dear. Is he going to die?” Lacey was beside herself.

  “You know he’s got some great doctors,” I reminded her. “He came here to get treatment. It looks like he’s just going to get it a little sooner than expected.”

  We spent the next hour and a half in one of the conference rooms down the hall from the operating theater. Larry carefully probed the details of Lacey and Paul’s ordeal. When the elderly woman asked about Lonnie for the third time, the homicide detective broke the news.

  “Oh.” Lacey was crestfallen. “I can’t believe it.”

  “It’s unfortunate,” Larry agreed.

  “I can still hear her screaming!” said the distraught witness.

  “Could you hear what she said to the men who took her?”

  “Wait a minute,” I piped in. “Lonnie was screaming?”

  According to Gretchen, her mother had had a stroke and was unable to communicate. So, how could she have screamed, unless Gretchen and Lonnie deceived us?

  “It was horrible! She kept saying, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I know it’s you, Eddie! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “She called him Eddie?” Larry leaned forward in her seat, her hands gripping the pen. “Did you get a look at him? Could you see his face?”

  “No. He was wearing one of those ski masks, with the cutouts for eyes and mouth.”

  “Black?”

  “No, Caucasian.”

  “I meant the ski mask.” She refrained from rolling her eyes, but I understood the inclination. I stifled a smile.

  “No, that was blue.”

  “Good. This is really helpful, ma’am.”

  “Why did they kill her? I don’t understand.”

  “While all that was going on,” I broke in, “I was up at the summit, Lacey. I came across Gretchen’s body.”

  “They killed Gretchen, too?” Now those troubled eyes turned their agony in my direction. I could see she was utterly baffled by the terrible turn of events. Why had two of our guests been murdered? What had happened to the peaceful little village of Cheswick? I didn’t have an answer for her.

  “Did Eddie say anything to Lonnie? Did he acknowledge that he knew her?”

  “He said, ‘Don’t worry, Janice. This won’t hurt a bit.’ After that, she didn’t scream anymore, so I thought...I thought....”

  “Scarlet, do you think maybe you could find your auntie a cup of tea?”

  “Cousin.”

  “What?” Larry had a comforting hand on Lacey’s arm as they sat next to each other.

  “She’s my mother’s cousin.”

  “Oh.”

  “And yes, I’ll go scrounge up a cup of tea. You want something”?

  “You don’t have to....”

  “I offered because I want to do it. So, yes or no?”

  Larry’s eyes softened a bit. She was clearly not used to people doing things for her, but I am in the hospitality business after all. It’s my job to take care of people. “Coffee would be nice. Cream and sweetener. Thanks.”

  “My pleasure. The usual, Lace?”

  “Please, dear.” She gave me a very tentative nod, as if she couldn’t quite grasp what was happening, hoping she was dreaming her way through this nightmare, and soon she would wake up to find she imagined it all.

  “I’ll be back.” I made my way through the warren of hospital corridors all the way down to the basement cafeteria. It looked like it would be a long night. I was already on the phone and connected to Bur by the time I crossed into the stainless-steel lined self-serve food area.

  “What’s going on there?” I asked my brother. I could hear a lot of unfamiliar voices in the background.

  “This is un-freaking-believable, Scar. We’ve got fifteen police cars in the driveway. They haven’t brought Gretchen down yet from the summit. Lonnie’s still propped up in her wheelchair in the closet. I’ve got Mom over here at my place. She’s lying down in my bedroom with a splitting headache. Oh, and Kenny says to tell you they found the purse and there’s nothing of interest in it, whatever that means.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What should I tell Laurel?” he wanted to know. I filled him in what had happened to drive the two friends to hide in my walk-in closet, leading up to Paul Duchamps’s sudden need for heart surgery. When I finished my soliloquy, he turned the phone over to Kenny.

  “Scar, how are you getting back here?”

  “I assume the detective will drive us. Why?”

  “I’ll come get you. That way, if Lacey wants to stay until Paul wakes up in recovery, she can.”

  “Oh, okay. That’s great.” Great? Seriously? Two dead bodies back in Cheswick, one dying patient under the surgeon’s scalpel, and I was getting a rush from talking to my high school crush. Did I really sound as lame as I thought I did? A part of me wanted to feel that euphoria. After all, I had waited a lifetime for Kenny to be my knight in shining armor again, to swoop in once more and rescue me. This isn’t about you, Miz Scarlet. Kenny’s just being Kenny. He’s doing this for Lacey’s sake.

  When Lacey finished answering all of the homicide detective’s questions, she wanted to sit in the waiting room. It was obvious she was exhausted. Larry and I left her there and walked back down the hall. I spent the next two and a half hours in the conference room, while Larry pressed question after question upon me. She started with Gretchen and Lonnie’s arrival at the Four Acorns Inn and ended with what I saw up on White Oak Hill.

  When Kenny arrived in the middle of the detective’s interview, he offered to make a food run. He went down to the cafeteria and picked up some sandwiches before joining us at the table. Lacey, lured by the food, finally wandered back in and took a seat. For her sake, we kept the conversation light, steering away from the gruesome details.

  The homicide detective was curious about the family history. We told her about the pressboard business and its impact on the area. We explained about White Oak Hill and how the park came to be. We even discussed the fire at the old Toms mansion and how Steve Kim came to own the remaining house.

  At nine, Larry told us she had the information she needed. With a short stack of business cards in hand, she presented each of us with her contact numbers, told us that there was a local cop assigned to keep watch at the inn overnight, and promised that she’d stop by tomorrow, once she had a chance to read the medical examiner’s preliminary report.

  Kenny and I walked her to the hallway elevator, bidding her good night. Once she disappeared from view, we found our way to the waiting room, where Lacey held her lonely vigil f
or Paul. The three of us settled into the chairs along the wall to wait.

  Even though Lacey had mentally prepared for him to undergo the procedure in due time, the two murders only seemed to make Paul’s prognosis more poignant. It was bad enough he had heart disease, she told us. Why did this horrible thing have to happen now, just when he was about to get a new lease on life?

  At ten thirteen, the thoracic surgeon came walking through the swinging doors, removed his face mask, and gave us a half-smile.

  “Well, I have spoken to Paul’s daughter and she gave me permission to update you on his condition. She’s flying in first thing tomorrow, by the way. At the moment, Paul is doing well in the recovery room. We completed the bypass procedures, so he’s resting comfortably, but there was significantly more damage than we expected to the heart muscle. It will take some time before he’s back on his feet.”

  “Can we see him?” Lacey wanted to know. The surgeon shook his head.

  “I’m sorry. He’s not awake.”

  “Please?” I could hear the desperation in her voice, so I stepped up to the plate.

  “Doctor, I don’t know if you’re aware of it or not, but there was a double-murder at our home. It’s been a nightmare of a day. Can you please make an exception?”

  He locked eyes with me and returned my gaze with a determined steadiness, but I held my ground. He finally shrugged and averted his eyes.

  “The best I can do is offer you a peek through the window. When he wakes up, he’ll be moved to the ICU.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll go get the car and meet you out front,” Kenny told us.

  “We won’t overstay our welcome,” I promised. So true. How long can one stand and stare through the glass at an unconscious man? With an arm around Lacey’s shoulder, I walked with her to the recovery room window. In the harsh glare of overhead lights, Paul was a white figure on a white bed, covered with white blankets. His head was elevated, and there were tubes and wires all over his body, but from where I stood, I saw a vast improvement in his skin color over the blue hue he had up in my sitting room.