Dead at Breakfast

by Beth Gutcheon

  Mrs. Detweiler looked up from where she was pecking through the underbrush looking for edge pieces and said happily, “I love puzzles.”

  “What’s it going to be a picture of?” Buster asked in spite of himself, although he was looking for Mr. Gurrell and determined not to be distracted.

  “Ship of Fools,” said Maggie. “Hieronymus Bosch. Fantastically appropriate, we thought.” Buster had an idea who Bosch was because his mother was always dragging him and Lauren to the museum on the weekends, when he wanted to go to the zoo and visit the snake house. He always got Bosch confused with Breughel, however you spelled that other one, but he thought that Bosch was the one most likely to give center stage to various serpents.

  “Buster, could I just tell you something?”

  “I’m kind of busy, Mom,” said Buster. “Arson? Murder? Ring a bell?”

  “Please don’t be fresh. I really think you should know that Margaux Kleinkramer is not who she says she is.”

  In spite of himself, he said “How do you know?”

  “Because she claims she’s an Aquarius and she couldn’t be.”

  Buster groaned, “Oh Jeez, Ma . . .”

  “Was Mr. Antippas murdered?” Maggie asked, briefly suspending her search for straight edges.

  “I’m not at liberty to say,” said Buster, which Maggie took for a yes. In spite of herself, she felt an unseemly thrill. Now she really wished Jorge were here.

  Buster found Gabriel Gurrell in his office drinking a large glass of something that looked like pond slime. “Sorry,” he said, looking embarrassed. “Lunch. Would you like . . . ?”

  “That’s all right. Really,” said Buster. “What is that?”

  “Chef makes it for me. Mostly kale, I think. I’m trying to reduce,” he added, gesturing briefly at the pear-shaped girth that curved out over his belt buckle. “Can I order something for you? A sandwich? Coffee?”

  Buster thought a sandwich and coffee sounded wonderful, but he didn’t think he should take free food from someone he might be investigating. A slap of his backside told him that when he’d pulled on his pants in the dark in the middle of the night, he’d omitted to put his wallet back in his pocket. He could see it in his mind’s eye, lying on top of the dresser they’d ordered from IKEA when Brianna moved in. He’d spent a day and a half trying to put that frigging thing together and finally had to ask Brianna’s father to come over and do it. That was humiliating, but really, the directions made no sense. Roy Weaver was one of those guys who can build or fix anything without looking at directions. Had Roy responded to the fire this morning? He must have, he almost never missed, but Buster hadn’t seen him.

  “How can I help you,” Gabe Gurrell was asking him, possibly for the second time. Oh, right. Timber snake. He noticed he was jiggling his legs and stopped that, then reported what they’d found when they turned the deceased over.

  He expected amazement. He expected denial. After all, as anyone knew, a timber rattlesnake was practically unheard of in the state and if in the wild would be at the end of its normal cycle of activity anyway, preparing to hibernate, not slinking into inhabited buildings. And besides timbers preferred the deep woods, being naturally shy of people, although not of other snakes. In fact they often hibernated in dens with other species, copperheads in warmer climates and in Vermont . . . or Maine . . . oops. Legs jiggling again.

  But Mr. Gurrell had his head in his hands and he wasn’t peppering Buster with expressions of shock or denial. He wasn’t claiming the thing must have come in through the pipes, or anything else a person who knew nothing about snakes might say.

  “Gabe,” said Buster. “You know something about this?”

  Gabe raised his head and looked at him. His naturally rather droopy features now looked deeply sad. “I hope I don’t, but I might.” He stood, putting aside his glass. Which is what Buster would have done with it too, if someone gave him a kale milk shake. “I think we better go have a talk with Earl.”

  Buster knew he was having trouble staying on track. This happened to him all the time, but it was worse when he was tired.

  “Earl,” he said.

  “Earl Niner. He lives here, he came with the place.”

  “The Niners who farm over in West Bergen?”

  “That’s his brother. Earl had a landscape business outside town until his accident. His people wouldn’t take him in after what happened, as I understand it, so Howard LaBoutillier, who had the inn before me, gave him a room here. He takes care of the horses and works in the garden. He earns his keep.”

  Buster had not thought to suggest that Earl did not, but Gabe seemed intent on making this point. He was following Gabe down the stairs and outside, this being the quickest way at present to get around the burn site and reach the wing where Earl lived.

  “The children at the Consolidated School once dedicated their yearbook to Earl. They all called him Ertsy-Dirts,” Gabe rattled on defensively as they walked. “I’m told he used to grow huge pumpkins for them to carve at Halloween. Dozens of them. And he ran a sort of petting zoo, too. The kids took field trips to his place every spring to see the baby lambs, and piglets and some stranger things. I heard he had a capybara.”

  They reentered the inn by a side door and climbed the stairs to the second floor. You could smell smoke here more strongly. Gabe led the way to the end of the corridor.

  “Earl,” he called as he rapped on a door. “Earl!”

  After a silence, a surly voice said, “Who is it?”

  “It’s Gabe Gurrell, Earl. Could you open the door? I need to talk to you.”

  After another silence, Buster heard footfalls approaching the door, then a chain lock being slid back. The door opened. The man within was so bent over that he had to crane his neck up at a painful-looking angle to look into the eyes of a person standing upright.

  “Earl, this is Deputy Babbin. Buster, this is Earl Niner. May we come in?”

  Earl looked from one to the other with a stony expression, then opened the door wide enough for them to enter.

  The room was unlike anything Buster had seen outside a zoo. More an avian habitat than a man’s bedroom, there was a jungle gym of tree limbs in a huge cage in the corner with different kinds of pegs and rope perches from shoulder height to ceiling. As they entered the room a large—in this room it looked very large—green parrot began shrieking and flapping until Earl walked over and opened the cage door so it could hop onto his shoulder.

  The floor of the room was lined with newspaper, extremely clean, and littered with toys of various kinds. Pictures of the singer Artemis looked up at Buster from several panels of newsprint near what he took to be the door to the bathroom. The bird too looked clean and glossy, but there were patches where he’d been picking at himself, Buster saw, and some fluffy underfeathers drifted near the narrow camp bed where Earl apparently slept. A small chest of drawers against the room’s inside wall completed the human equipment.

  “Walter’s upset,” Earl said. “Yapping scares him.” As if on cue, the parrot began to howl in exactly the pitch and timbre of the Antippas’s poodle, a sound all inhabitants of the inn had come to know. Buster had to admit, this did not look like a happy bird. But that was not his prime area of interest at the moment. What had riveted his attention, from the moment he entered the room, was a very large glass terrarium, you might say, nearly five feet high, built against the wall beside the little chest of drawers. Like the larger space of the room, it held a tree branch. Its floor was carpeted in rocks and leaves. There was a lamp, infrared Buster guessed, for heat, though the lamp was off at present. A framed piece of heavy mesh was fitted to the top of the case, hinged to the frame and fastened with metal hooks and eyes.

  “This cage is not for Walter,” Buster said to Earl. Walter, looking now at the cage, began to make the noise of a smoke alarm, a horrible piercing whine.

  “Say ‘Hello,’ Walter,” said Earl to him soothingly.

  “hahaha,” said the bird, which stop
ped the smoke alarm. He shook himself as a dog does after being in the water.

  “Earl?” said Gabe.

  “This is a snake habitat,” said Buster.

  “Yes,” said Earl.

  “And it’s empty,” said Buster.

  Earl didn’t speak. He reached up to stroke Walter, who cuddled against his head.

  “What kind of a snake, Mr. Niner?”

  Earl didn’t answer.

  “Mr. Niner?”

  “His name is Grommet,” said Earl. His old eyes were pink-edged and sad.

  “And he is a timber rattler?” Buster asked gently, and Earl nodded.

  Gabe was staring at the floor. Buster studied the cage with the eye of an aficionado.

  “You’re aware that the timber snake is a protected species?”

  After a pause, Earl nodded briefly.

  “And it’s illegal to keep a protected animal as a pet?”

  “He was a rescue snake,” said Earl.

  After a pause, Buster echoed him. “A rescue snake.”

  “Fellow down in Ellsworth had a tourist trap on the road to Bar Harbor. He had wolves in cages, and a buffalo. A bobcat. When the ASPCA shut ’im down, no one wanted Grommet.”

  “Why didn’t you just let him go?”

  “Wasn’t right,” said Earl. “He’d never lived in the wild. He’s real sweet.”

  Buster looked at Gabe, who was now looking out the window.

  “And do you know where he is now, Mr. Niner?”

  Earl shook his head. “Came up to my room after supper, and his cage was empty.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night.”

  “So he was there at . . . ?”

  “Six-thirty. Thereabouts.”

  “And you came back to your room at what time?”

  Earl looked at Gabe but found no help there.

  “Don’t wear a watch,” he said, showing Buster his wrist.

  “Approximately.”

  “Maybe . . . seven-thirty. Seven-forty, something in there.”

  “And were you going to mention this to me? Or the other officers? You’re aware there’s an investigation going on?”

  “Nothing to do with you. I hoped I’d find him.” When Buster didn’t say anything, Earl said, apparently addressing the floor, “You found him, ain’t you?”

  “We have,” said Buster, hoping it was all right to divulge this.

  “Don’t suppose he’s all right?” Earl asked.

  “No, he isn’t.”

  Earl sat down heavily on his cot.

  Guests at the inn who had been fingerprinted and questioned were permitted after lunch to leave the building, though they were strongly requested not to leave the village and to be back by sundown. Martin Maynard immediately took off for a twelve-mile run, but most others headed for Just Barb’s, or the Bergen Library, where there was wi-fi. This caused a crisis in the press corps, which didn’t know whether to follow them and hound them with questions or to stay and await a statement from the police.

  Maggie and Hope settled themselves in the corner booth at Barb’s, and Sandra brought them coffee and a plate of her mother-in-law’s famous ginger cookies. “On the house,” she said. Both women thanked her warmly before sinking back into their computers. Maggie was wading through e-mails from friends and acquaintances who wanted to know what was going on, was she all right, were they all under arrest, and so forth. These were sparsely interleaved with dry notes and queries from the school evaluation team she was leading in Buffalo in two weeks, god willing. Hope meanwhile was diligently downloading astrological information and pondering the charts of her new friends.

  “Here’s a note from Jorge,” Maggie reported.

  “What’s he say?”

  “He sounds jealous. He promised to come help if they arrest either of us. Are you finding interesting things in the stars?”

  “Oh you have no idea,” said Hope. “It’s indecent, really, it’s so interesting.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me that you do this?”

  “I knew you’d think it was silly.”

  “I didn’t know I was so intolerant.”

  “Oh you’re not, you’re just a Libra.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You believe in what works for you.”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Yes and no.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Look,” said Hope, “it’s a tool. If you’re good at using it, you’ll see the point of it. If not, not.”

  Maggie was about to answer when something caught her attention. After a pause, she said to Hope, “That young woman talking to Sandra. She’s Buster’s girlfriend.”

  “Buster doesn’t have a girlfriend,” said Hope. She angled herself sideways in the booth so she could see the front counter.

  “Yeah, he does,” said Maggie. The young woman was plump and strongly built. She had long dark hair caught in a knot at the back of her head, and a tattoo on her neck that disappeared into her collar. She was wearing a pink uniform dress and white sneakers. Sandra noticed them both looking their way, so Maggie gestured with her hand, as if they wanted something, and Hope turned around so as not to stare at the girl.

  “You ladies need something else?” Sandra asked cheerfully.

  “I’d love more coffee,” said Maggie, “and I have a question. Who is that pretty girl you were talking with?”

  “That’s Brianna, Buster’s girlfriend,” said Sandra.

  “I thought so,” said Maggie. “We’d love to meet her, if she isn’t in a rush.”

  “All rightie, I’ll see if she’s got a minute.”

  “How the hell did you do that,” Hope said as Sandra whisked away. “You couldn’t hear what they were saying.”

  “Of course not. I’m much deafer than you even think I am. I read lips.”

  “Now you’re being competitive,” said Hope.

  “Yes, I probably am. Sorry.”

  “I forgive you because I know from your chart you can’t help it.”

  The Oquossoc cocktail hour came early that evening. Taking a leaf from the airlines’ playbook for what to do when enraged passengers have been stranded on a runway for entirely too long, Gabe decided to open the bar and declare all spirits and the house wine were on him. Teddy Bledsoe announced that in that case, he would donate his talents as mixologist. Maggie and Hope were sampling his Negronis and enjoying the last of the evening sun on the glassed-in porch, where Maggie had made surprising progress with the frame of her puzzle, when Hope said, “Hello? What’s this?”

  A sleek silver Mercedes drove into the parking lot, led and followed by state trooper cruisers. Maggie turned to see what Hope was seeing.

  “That’s the Kleinkramers’ car,” said Hope.

  They watched as the press crew woke up, turned in a pack, and began running toward the cars, like hounds on a treed fox. To no avail, though. The Kleinkramers emerged from their car, and flanked by four troopers, they were whisked into the building by a side door, leaving the press corps baying and more or less flinging themselves against the closed door in frustration.

  Maggie looked at Hope, who said, “You are going to owe me such a lunch.”

  “I think we better see what’s going on.” They abandoned their cocktails and joined the other guests in the lounge. Even Glory and Lisa were downstairs. All watched as Homer and Margaux were escorted to the elevator. When the doors closed behind them, the room started to buzz.

  One of the troopers let slip to Bonnie McCue, who had plied him with cookies, that the license numbers of all the guests were on a watch list, which had seemed to the state police like overkill until this couple were stopped trying to cross the border into Quebec. Several minutes later they saw Buster beetling into the inn and up the stairs.

  “That does it,” said Hope. “We’re not leaving this room until Buster comes back. We’re going to make him tell us everything.”

  It took an hour. Around them, th
e room hummed with speculation and gossip. Lisa began to cry, and Glory and Bonnie surrounded her, and after a while she consented to a Bloody Mary and a dish of Cajun pecans, and looked as if she felt better. Gabe had brought her the Polo Lounge phone and left it permanently at her table as she talked with her children, her lawyer, her step-daughter’s PR rep, and her children again. When the phone rang, Glory answered, screening calls to protect her sister from the press and from Artemis’s manager, who wanted to plan a double funeral and needed to know when Alexander’s body would be released.

  Buster came down the stairs at about seven and was mentally halfway home to bed, when he saw his mother beckoning. He paused and exchanged a look with the uniformed officer who was now stationed at the front door. Then he turned back and went to stand, hat in hand, before his mother and Mrs. Detweiler.

  “I have to go,” he said. “I’ve been up since two this morning.”

  “You mean you haven’t even had a nap?”

  “Mom—I’m working. What is it you wanted?”

  “Let’s go back to the puzzle,” said Maggie.

  Buster followed them, feeling once again that he was being called to the principal’s office. He was so tired he felt drunk.

  The remains of their cocktails were still there, watered down and sweating on their coasters.

  “Here, have a Negroni,” said Hope.

  “I’m driving,” said Buster, wondering why he wasn’t in his car at this minute.

  “Oh take it, you’ll feel better,” said his mother. He took her glass and polished it off.

  “Now. What happened with the Kleinkramers?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Of course you can.”

  “We won’t tell anyone else,” said Maggie.

  “We have a big bet riding on it,” said Hope, as if this trumped all.

  And Buster thought he was going to weep if he didn’t get home and get some sleep, so he told them.

  In Berkeley, California, in 1970, a college student named Melanie Gray was murdered in her off-campus apartment. The killing appeared to be part of a ritual of some kind. The face and hands had been marked with red paint, and candles burned down to stubs encircled the corpse. The body was almost completely desanguinated owing to a slash wound in the throat so deep her head was nearly off. Hope was impressed that Buster had said “desanguinated” and even pronounced it right.