A Carol for a Corpse

by Claudia Bishop

  Lydia finished it for her. “Than collecting a couple of million dollars from your insurance company.” Lydia’s smile was wry. “Of course it would.” She slumped a little. “I know it may not seem like it, but I had a real respect for Zeke. And a real affection, too. I know that a marriage like ours, to someone like you, may seem arid. More of a business arrangement than a love match. You know, of course, that I knew about Zeke and LaToya.”

  “You did?” Quill said. She was startled. Then, as she thought about it, she said, “I guess that doesn’t surprise me as much as it should.”

  “I think you’re beginning to see how it was for us. People like you marry for love, Quill. People like me marry for position, for money, for power. But it’s enough. Don’t you see? It’s more than enough. It’s a huge part of why I loved Zeke. And because all that’s gone now, I am genuinely sorry. And if you want my help in looking into this accident, you have it.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. Quill silently handed her a tissue. Lydia carefully dabbed it under her eyes. “I don’t understand the look on your face,” she snapped.

  “I’m feeling just . . . tremendously sorry,” Quill said. What she didn’t add was, for your incredibly awful sense of what relationships are all about. But she wanted to. Instead, she said aloud, “You and Zeke did confide in each other?”

  “Of course.” Lydia folded the tissue into a neat square. “Zeke said I had an excellent brain for business. He trusted me with a lot of information. Bounced a lot of ideas off me. He didn’t have many close friends, you know. And he always had a lot of—contempt, I suppose you could call it—for his business advisors. He was sure he knew most of the answers himself. And,” Lydia said with simple directness, “he usually did.”

  “So if you were to make a list of people with a reason to harm him, who would be at the top?”

  “A list like that would stretch from here to Kenosha, Wisconsin. As many people hated Zeke as admired him. Or envied him.”

  “We can narrow the list down quite a bit,” Quill said with a faint smile. “We’re fairly sure that the log was moved into position before the snow stopped falling at ten thirty. And Mike left the site just before dark, about five forty-five. And then the murderer showed up again, very early in the morning, to run a wire across the ski trail. No one thought to check the area surrounding that site for footprints until after he fell. But that morning—other than those left by Mike’s snowmobile—the EMTs and the police vehicles and I made the only visible tracks. And those all came from the Inn.”

  “So you’re saying it had to be someone staying here?”

  “It’s highly probable, don’t you think?”

  Lydia made a flippant gesture with her hand. “Maybe your guy Mike sabotaged the trail?”

  “If he had a grudge against Zeke, I suppose so. He certainly had the most opportunity. But what kind of motive would he have?”

  “True. I doubt Zeke noticed his existence. Well, Ajit, the Bs, and LaToya can all alibi each other. Your little Melissa, too. They were shooting the dancing elves all evening, while I was in Syracuse with Zeke.”

  “But the shoot started at six. What about the hour or so before that?”

  Lydia rubbed her forehead thoughtfully. “LaToya and I were piddling around the kitchen getting the lighting angles straight. I think the Bs and Ajit were in the Tavern Lounge.”

  “Ajit was,” Quill said. “He was drinking vodka with my sister.”

  “Well, Benny and Bernie were around somewhere. You’ll have to ask them.”

  “Can you think of any grudges any of them might be carrying?”

  “Not the Good Taste crew, no. But there’s one person at the Inn you should take a good hard look at if you think it’s murder.” Lydia dropped her voice and leaned forward. “Zeke got involved with a big condo project in Syracuse two years ago. The funding fell apart, and a few of the investors were left holding the bag.” She shrugged indifferently. “It happens. Zeke was always too smart to put his own cash into those things—you know the rule—the producer never puts money in the show—but there was one fellow who was pretty upset.”

  “And he lives here in Hemlock Falls?”

  “You hired him as a consultant. It’s Bert McWhirter.”

  Quill remembered the hostile exchange between the two men the day that Zeke checked in. McWhirter had claimed to be working in her office yesterday afternoon. What if Melissa had seen him crossing the fields just after dark? Was that why she’d run? So that she didn’t have to identify her father as a murderer?

  Or was there a more sinister reason Melissa had fled?

  Quill touched the bump on her forehead.

  “Was that any help?”

  “I think so.” Out of the corner of her eye, Quill saw Dina in the archway. She gestured frantically. Quill signaled “one minute” with her forefinger and got up from the table. “Thank you for that lead. And you’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do for you? Will you be all right for the rest of the day?”

  “I’m taking the troupe down to the Resort for massages and facials. You really ought to think about adding that service to the Inn, you know. Anyhow, we’re at a temporary standstill and it seemed the least I could do for LaToya and the others. Little Melissa’s defection’s caused a bit of upset. We’re short an elf, which puts the kibosh on laying down more tape until we find someone else.” She ran an eye over Quill’s figure. “I don’t suppose that you’d be willing to lend us a hand? Or a foot, as it were?”

  “Sorry. But I’ll see what I can do. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve work piled up.”

  Quill crossed the short distance from the dining room to the reception area. Dina clutched at her arm as she came through the archway and whispered, “You’re not going to believe what Marge has found out! And I’ve got something to show you, too.” She peered over Quill’s shoulder at Lydia. “How’s she holding up?”

  Quill rubbed the bump on her forehead and sighed. “Who knows? She’s this weird mixture of self-awareness and selfishness. I don’t know what I think about her. But she’s given me some important information about McWhirter. Come into the office and I’ll tell you what I’ve found out.”

  Dina settled excitedly at the little Queen Anne-style conference table in the office. “First, let me show you the pictures I took of the tree and the post.” She reached over and pulled a stack of sheets from the color printer. “I downloaded them onto my laptop. Blew them up and printed them out. Look at the edges of the cut in the tree.”

  Quill picked up the photograph of the tree trunk. “It’s wire for certain.” The enlarged image showed that the thin scar across the trunk of the mountain ash was saw-toothed.

  “I think so, too. And I measured the diameter; the width of the cut is three millimeters. The depth, of course, doesn’t matter. Although you can see here that the wire cut more deeply into the tree trunk on the west side. The vic was headed east, you see, and when he hit the wire, blam! The force of the blow drove the wire deeper into the tree.”

  “The vic?” Quill said in a bemused way.

  “Cop talk,” Dina said tersely. “But that’s not all. I talked to Mike. And I said, have we got any wire that’s three millimeters across with spiral twist to it, and look at this!” Dina laid a one-quart zippered plastic bag on the tabletop. It contained a short piece of cable.

  “Oh my gosh,” Quill said. “Did you find that at the site?”

  “No. We keep a roll of this cable in the toolshed. Mike cut a piece off for me so I could see if it fit into the groove of the tree and the post. And, Quill. It does!” Dina laid another picture down. The cable fit the groove in the tree precisely. “It looks as if the murderer got what he needed right from us!”

  “Oh, my.” Quill sat back. “Dina, this is excellent work.”

  “Thank you,” she said modestly.

  “We really need to turn this over to the police.”

  “I did,” Dina admitted. “Well, in a way. I showed all of this to Davy before I came
into work.”

  “Let me guess. He said it was all circumstantial.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that the wire could have been wrapped around the tree at any time in the past couple of days, for any reason.”

  “No.” “No.”

  “No?”

  “It’s a fresh cut,” Dina said. “I put a call into a friend of a friend who’s an arborist at Cornell. I’ve got him coming out this afternoon to see if he can tell us when the cut was made. He’s pretty sure he can help.”

  “I am really impressed,” Quill said, and she was. “Will he be able to give us a narrow span of time, as you can with bodies?”

  Dina’s face fell a little. “Well, no. But he can give expert evidence that the cut occurred within the last few days or so.”

  “It’s still a terrific boost to the investigation.” Quill traced the line of the scar with her thumb. “Do you suppose we can find the wire itself? If you think that it actually struck Kingsfield and spun him into the fence, there might be trace evidence on it. From his ski pants, perhaps.”

  “I bet you’re right. The cut measures three and a half feet from the floor of the forest. How tall do you think Kingsfield was?”

  “Golly. Six-four, at least. He was a big man.”

  “Then this would have snagged him right in the shins, about here.” Dina wore a pair of wool trousers; she grasped her leg just below the knee. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll bet you a dollar to a doughnut there’s some bruising on the body. Even if it’s really really faint. He wore this superexpensive ski suit, didn’t he?”

  “Bright red and silver, yes.”

  “It would be so cool if we found the wire. The impact had to drive those fibers into the twisted part.”

  “Dumpsters,” Quill said. “You said you were going to check the town Dumpsters.”

  “Davy’s doing that, at least. Sort of officially unofficial, if you know what I mean. He says the ME’s office is going for the accident angle so his hands are kind of tied.”

  “Figures.” Quill yawned. “Sorry. I can’t believe I’m going to fall asleep in the middle of a murder investigation. Some detective I am.”

  “I can’t think of any other detectives who have a baby to worry about,” Dina said. “The little guy is so cute. You must have had a lot of fun last night.”

  “Yes,” Quill said with some surprise. “I did. You said Davy’s checked the Dumpsters?”

  “Not personally. He called the guys at P and P Waste and Disposal and asked them to keep an eye out. I told him he needs to find a coil of wire cable with a radius of about four feet and a weight of about thirty pounds.”

  “You figured all that out from that little piece of wire?”

  “It’s just basic algebra. What? What’s so funny?”

  “Sometimes I forget that you’re a doctoral candidate at one of the most prestigious schools in the country.”

  Dina wriggled her eyebrows. “I engage in a lot of protective coloration.”

  Somebody rapped on the office door and pushed it open.

  “Marge!” Quill said. “Come in.”

  “Glad to see you two whooping it up.” Marge sat down on the couch with a grunt. Quill knew this morning’s pair of chinos were different from the ones she’d worn yesterday because the transparent plastic strip reading “size 14s 14s 14s 14s 14s” was still on the right leg. She leaned forward and pulled it free.

  “D’ja get my message?” she demanded.

  “I was just about to call you. Marge, look what Dina’s discovered about the trip wire.” Quill passed the photographs over. Marge went through them slowly. Then she turned the plastic bag over and over in her fingers as Dina explained the meaning of the evidence. “I’ll be. Tell you what, Dina. When I get my insurance agency back from Charley Comstock, I want to hire you as an adjuster. This is damn good work.”

  “Thank you, Marge,” Dina said demurely.

  Marge tossed the package onto the tabletop. “Kind of wire you can pick up at any good hardware store in the county,” she said. “That’s a kick in the knee. On the other hand, it’s a pretty good-sized reel to just toss in the nearest Dumpster.”

  “Davy’s on the lookout for it,” Dina said.

  “It’s the only piece of real evidence we’ve got,” Quill said in frustration. “Or rather, that we haven’t got.” Something Marge said struck her, and she said, “Hey! You’re going to buy your insurance agency back from Charley Comstock?”

  “I’m not going to buy it back,” Marge said with a certain grim satisfaction. “I’m going to get it back for free when he defaults on his payments to me.”

  Dina and Quill both leaned forward. “And he’s going to default because?” Dina prompted.

  “Because we’re going to get him arrested for the murder of Zeke Kingsfield,” Marge smacked her knees with both hands. “I did a little digging after I left our case conference yesterday . . .”

  “Case conference?” Quill said.

  “That’s PI talk,” Dina said.

  “As opposed to cop talk,” Quill said. “Got it. And what did you dig up, Marge?”

  “It looks like our Charley is the front man for BFD. And danged if he wasn’t going to be the one left holding the bag if the whole thing went and collapsed.”

  “You’re kidding!” Quill said.

  “Am I not?” Marge said. “He’s the one that put up the four hundred grand.”

  “You mean he’s the mysterious depositor?”

  Marge looked blank.

  “Well, you were the one that told me how odd it was of Charley to betray bank confidentiality. He didn’t really break it. Just sort of bent it a little.” She sat back. “Wow. Yesterday we were fishing around for one good motive. Now we’ve got three. I haven’t had a chance to tell you what Lydia said.” She briefed the other two on Lydia’s revelation about Albert McWhirter.

  “I’ll tell you what we have to do now,” Marge said. “We’ve got to find out where each one of those buggers was last night. And they’ve got to be able to prove it!”

  “What if they can’t?” Dina asked. “We still won’t be able to pin the murder on them. We don’t have any hard evidence.”

  “She’s right, Marge. We still don’t have anything that connects a perpetrator—any perpetrator—to the scene of the crime.”

  “Let’s worry about that when we’ve narrowed the suspect pool down to one.” Marge got up with the air of General Pat-ton about to pay a duty visit to the MASH unit. “First one we tackle is my favorite. We’re going to track down Charley Comstock and hang him up by his heels to find out where he was last night.”

  Dina looked somber. “Good luck, Quill. And you, too, Marge.”

  It wasn’t hard to track Charley Comstock down at all. Unlike Marge, who relied on her cell phone and her answering machines for customer service, Charley had a live and chatty secretary.

  “You walked right past him when you came in here,” Arlene said. Charley had moved the offices of Marge Schmidt Casualty and Surety to a one-room office directly opposite Nickerson’s Hardware. “He’s over to the Croh Bar.” Arlene took her eyeglasses off, breathed on them, and wiped the lenses clean with a tissue. “I know it’s your place and all, Marge, but I wish you’d drag him on out of there. It’s barely eleven in the morning and he’s probably drunk as a skunk.”

  “Does he make a habit of going in to drink this early?” Quill asked.

  Marge shook her head. “I would have heard about it by now. My guess is this started right about the time Zeke Kingsfield swanked into town.” She darted a shrewd look at Arlene.

  “You’d be right,” Arlene agreed.

  “If he’s at the Croh Bar, at least it that makes it easy to find him,” Quill said. “Thanks, Arlene. We’ll walk right over.”

  As unprepossessing as it was, the Croh Bar was extremely profitable for Marge and her restaurant partner, Betty Hall. They’d picked it up when the original owner, Orville Croh, packed up and moved to a tr
ailer park in north Florida. Although the place was now scrupulously clean, Marge had wisely left the original furnishings in place. A scarred and battered pine bar occupied the front third and met patrons as soon as they walked in. The remainder of the space consisted of booths with peeling red Naugahyde and a few battered tables and an odd assortment of chairs. Marge had replaced the red Mediterranean-style indoor-outdoor carpeting with a pattern as much like the old one as possible.

  Charley wasn’t hard to find. He sat on a barstool at the darkest end of the bar. He had a highball glass in front of him. As Marge and Quill walked in, he rapped the glass on the counter. The sound brought Betty Hall bustling in from the kitchen in the back. She was as gaunt as Marge was round, and as silent as Marge was loquacious. She was also the best diner-style cook in the whole of New York, or so Meg claimed. She raised her hand in greeting and poured Charley a good three inches from the bottle of bar Scotch. He didn’t look up. Quill was certain he hadn’t even registered their presence.

  Betty screwed the cap back on the Scotch and replaced it beneath the bar. “I got my chili on for the lunch special,” she said to Quill. “You want a cup?”

  “Are you having some, Marge?”

  “I’ve been up since five,” Marge said. “And it’s been a long time since breakfast. You bring us a coupla bowls, Bet.”

  Quill lingered a moment by the front door, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. “I’ve got a plan,” she whispered. “We’ll sit on either side of him, and then I’ll sort of ease into asking Charley how well he knew Kingsfield, what a loss this will be to the real estate community, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “Mm-hm.” Marge stamped to the end of the bar, hoisted herself onto the barstool to Charlie’s right, and said, “Hey, Charley. I understand you got in way over your head with Zeke Kingsfield.” She tapped his glass of Scotch. “Doesn’t seem to me to be the best way to settle the problems you’ve got.”

  Charley lifted his head and regarded her with a listless eye. “Suits me down to the ground.”