Crypt Suzette

by Maya Corrigan

  She arrived at the Bugeye Tavern fifteen minutes before Casper was due to show up, and approached the redheaded bartender. “Hi, Keenan.”

  He finished filling a glass of beer from the tap, delivered it to a man at the other end of the bar, and came over to Val. “I showed the photo of your friend to the servers who were here on Saturday night. One of them remembered waiting on her and the caped man. She’ll be coming in at six if you want to talk to her.”

  “Great. I’m going to have a drink with the man who might have been with my friend that night. Would you and the server let me know if he’s the one?”

  “Okay. If you want to jog her memory, sit where your friend sat. It’s the middle table by the window.”

  “Good. I’ll grab it. Later, I’m going to have dinner with another guy who wore a cape on Saturday. If you don’t recognize the first one, I’d appreciate it if you and the server let me know if the second one looks familiar.”

  “Your suspect lineup is good for business. How many more of them do you have?”

  “I’m getting to the bottom of the barrel. Would you pour me a glass of white wine?”

  “Sure thing.”

  Val paid for the wine and took it to the window table that looked out on Main Street.

  She had a few minutes to work on her cover story for Casper. She pulled out her phone and searched online for a Loch Ness Monster cookie cutter. She was delighted to find one with a fairly simple shape.

  The server, a robust middle-aged woman, stopped by the table. “I’ll let you know if the guy who joins you is the one who was with your friend Saturday night.”

  “That would be great. Did you catch any of their conversation?”

  “No, but I could tell it was intense. They didn’t raise their voices, but they looked furious at each other. She didn’t stay long, barely touched her ginger ale.”

  “Did he follow her out?”

  The server shook her head. “He finished his drink. Southern Comfort. Didn’t seem to give him much comfort. He asked for the check. When I brought it, he reamed me out for taking so long and left a measly tip. I’ll know him when I see him again. I sure hope you’re not drinking with him tonight. Nasty piece of work.” She left to wait on other customers.

  Casper arrived, wearing his MIT jacket again, along with office-casual khakis and a collared shirt.

  He greeted Val, sat down, and glanced at his watch. “Made it on time, but you wanted to meet me half an hour ago. You must have gotten off work early today.”

  “I start early. On weekdays I’m there by seven thirty at the latest.”

  He frowned. “At the bookshop?”

  She shook her head. “My regular job is running the café at the Bayport Racket and Fitness Club. I cater as a sideline in the evening.”

  The server came to the table, stared at Casper, and asked what he wanted to drink.

  “Scotch on the rocks.”

  “What kind of scotch?”

  He looked flummoxed. “Whatever you’ve got.”

  Val wondered if he’d ever drunk scotch before.

  When the server brought his drink, she made eye contact with Val and shook her head. So Casper wasn’t Suzette’s companion here on Saturday night. Cross one caped man off the list.

  She showed Casper the Loch Ness cookie cutter on her phone. “Do you think I can use this shape for my Chessie monster cookies?”

  His mouth turned down. “Absolutely not. Chessie is a sea serpent, long and skinny. That has too many angles.” He pointed to the image on her phone.

  “Long and skinny is good. Instead of using a cookie cutter, I can roll the dough into a rope. Then I’ll mold it into the serpent’s head, a long neck, and one body curve. I’ll assume the rest of him is underwater. Have you seen Chessie?”

  “Not personally.” Casper lifted his highball glass and sniffed it. “We know what Chessie looks like because the Enigma Project has evidence of encounters with it.”

  Though anxious to shift the conversation from Chessie to Suzette, Val gave in to her curiosity. “What’s the Enigma Project?”

  He swallowed some scotch, looked stunned, and appeared to choke. When he recovered, he said, “The Enigma Project is a Baltimore-based group of science and technology researchers. They investigate and document reports of unexplained phenomena—mysterious lights, UFOs, sightings of unknown animals.”

  Time to bring up another enigma. Val tucked her phone in her bag. “Speaking of unexplained things, several different explanations for Suzette’s death came up last night. You had two of them. You blamed Wilson first and then Morgan. Which do you favor today?”

  “Wilson. He thought Suzette was his for the asking. She turned him down and that enraged him.”

  Val wasn’t impressed with Casper’s argument. He hadn’t added any facts to the accusation he’d leveled the night before, but maybe he could supply some about Gillian. “You told me you’d known Suzette longer than the other Fictionistas. Longer than Gillian too?”

  He shook his head. “Gillian knew her before I did. Suzette took a weekend class from her early this year. When she heard Gillian was offering another one in the summer, Suzette talked it up at the Eastern Shore Writers Association. She said she was signing up for it because Gillian had helped her a lot with her writing.”

  “Suzette took the same class twice?”

  “No, our class is fiction writing. The one Suzette took earlier was memoir writing. She said she was by far the youngest person in the class.”

  “I’ll bet.” Val would stake money that Suzette had revised the chapters in her memoir during or after that class last winter. If Gillian had read those chapters, why hadn’t she mentioned it? Maybe she thought sharing the details of a memoir was a violation of Suzette’s privacy. “Did Gillian read what everyone wrote in the weekend class the way she does with the Fictionistas?”

  “The class was too big for that. She lectured in the morning, and they had breakout meetings of five or six people in the afternoon. They each read a few pages aloud that they’d brought with them, and the small group discussed them. Gillian popped in long enough to hear what one person in each group was reading and give suggestions.”

  “Was it just a one-day class?”

  “Two days. Suzette said they met for six hours on Saturday and Sunday.”

  Val calculated the odds that Gillian had listened to Suzette read her memoir. Less than fifty-fifty. But Suzette could have been among the lucky few to get personal advice from the teacher. After listening to even a few pages of Suzette’s memoir, Gillian might have taken Suzette aside and requested more pages.

  Casper interrupted Val’s speculations by asking how she’d ended up catering in the bookshop. Eventually, the costume contest came up.

  “I got a chance to see most of it,” Val said, “but when it was over, I had to go back and serve snacks at the CAT Corner. Did you stick around the shop after the contest?”

  “For a while.”

  “Did you happen to notice Suzette talking to someone dressed like a vampire?”

  “There were two or three vampires.” Casper rubbed his forehead as if massaging his brain. “Hmm, I think I did see Suzette talking to one of them.”

  Had she talked to Nick, who Bram had said had been there, or to a different vampire? As Casper brought up the subject of the Chessie monster again, Val gazed out the window. Twilight had turned to darkness while they’d sat in the tavern. Streetlamps and the shop windows decorated for Halloween provided the only light on a cloudy night. Val glimpsed a woman across the street who resembled the elusive Maria. Maybe the Harbor Inn maid would be more talkative now than she’d been two nights ago.

  Val jumped out of her seat. “Sorry, Casper, I have to run. Thanks for your information about Chessie.” Leaving half a glass of wine, she grabbed her windbreaker and rushed out of the tavern.

  By the time she waited for a break in the traffic and crossed the street, Maria had disappeared from view. Val walked three blocks,
checking the side streets, but didn’t see the maid. Heading back to the tavern, she went into all the shops still open along the way and peered around. Maria wasn’t in any of them. It was nearly seven when Val went back to the tavern. Through the front windows, she saw a middle-aged couple occupying the table where she and Casper had sat. Whew. She was relieved that her six-o’clock date and her seven-o’clock date wouldn’t come face-to-face. Awkward to say goodbye to one and hello to the other.

  Her phone chimed. She fished it from her purse. Bethany was calling her, but she didn’t sound like herself.

  “I have a bad cold.” Her voice was hoarse, her tone nasal. “Can’t go to the haunted house tomorrow night. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. Let me know if you need anything. I make a mean chicken soup.”

  “Thank you,” Bethany croaked. “But I stocked up on Sunday because of my soup diet. I made enough to last all week.”

  “Okay. Take care of yourself and get some rest.”

  “I will. Good-bye.” Bethany coughed and hung up.

  When Val went inside the tavern, Keenan beckoned to her. “Your next suspect has arrived. He wanted a quiet table. I suggested a booth.” Keenan cocked his head toward a room off to the side that had been part of the original tavern.

  “What makes you think he’s my suspect? Did he come in dressed like a vampire?”

  “No. He said he was expecting to meet a woman here. He described your hair.”

  Her most distinctive feature. Val finger-combed her unruly waves. “How bad is it?”

  Keenan grinned. “Looks the same as usual. Anyway, he’s not the guy who was here with your friend.”

  She was happy to hear it. “Thanks, Keenan.”

  “Enjoy your dinner.”

  Val went into a narrow brick-walled room with six wooden booths on each side. When she moved to Bayport less than two years ago, this part of the tavern had looked as if it hadn’t changed in a cen- tury, with bare wood benches, an odor of stale beer, and nautical touches like fish nets hanging on the walls and ceiling. Now, the mirrors mounted on the ceiling, Tiffany lamps over the tables, and plush red cushions on the seats gave it the look of an old-fashioned bordello.

  Bram smiled as she approached the last booth in the row where he sat. He stood up and helped her off with her windbreaker. “I’m glad you made it.”

  Did he assume she’d be a no-show because she was five minutes late? “I’m glad you made it too.” She slid into the booth and eyed the sweating glass of amber liquid in front of him. “That ale looks like the perfect drink for this tavern.”

  “You want one or would you rather stick with white wine?”

  Val was too startled to answer. How would he know what she’d been drinking? The server came to the table, a younger woman than the one who’d waited on her and Casper earlier.

  After ordering white wine, Val studied Bram as he looked at the menu. “You read my mind about the drink?”

  “Deduction works better than mind reading.” He brushed back a forelock of his wavy hair.

  It wouldn’t stay back for long, Val predicted. His hair, like hers, had an unruly streak. “Tell me your methods, Sherlock. What tipped you off about the white wine?”

  “You drank it at the wine bar the night before last and here tonight when you were sitting by the window.”

  Had he seen her before or after Casper arrived? Maybe Bram thought she’d be a no-show because she was going to stand him up for another man.

  She opened her menu. “If you like shellfish and haven’t tried our local crab yet, you should do it before you go back to California. Chesapeake Bay blue crab tastes a lot different from the Dungeness crab you get on the West Coast.”

  “I’m not planning on going back right away.”

  Val was surprised. He must have decided his mother needed his help a little longer. “You might want to try the crab anyway because the season is almost over, and they do make good crab cakes here.”

  He took her up on the suggestion. She ordered the catch of the day, rockfish.

  After the server left, Bram brought up the topic she’d expected, last night’s meeting in the CAT Corner.

  “When Gillian reserved the CAT Corner for her writing group, I didn’t expect a fight to break out,” he said. “I was even more surprised to hear a bunch of would-be writers accuse each other of killing the woman I’d found dead. Did you instigate that discussion?”

  “Not me. Gillian’s guilty of that. They were talking about the murder mystery Suzette had been writing. The crime scene in it resembled Suzette’s accident scene. Gillian asked the others to speculate on which character in the book might turn out to be the killer.”

  “Your grandfather said you and he have solved a few murders that seemed like deaths by accident or natural causes. My mother was very impressed. I did some research and found out he wasn’t spinning a yarn.” He took a long swig of ale. “You think someone in Suzette’s writing group killed her?”

  “I know of people with more compelling motives to harm her than the petty jealousies that came out last night.”

  “You’re pursuing other leads?” When she nodded, he leaned forward as if he couldn’t see her clearly across the table. “Why? What motivates you to delve into someone’s death?”

  She squirmed. “You make me sound like a ghoul.”

  “I didn’t intend it that way. You have an unusual hobby.”

  “I don’t do it for pleasure. I looked into a couple of deaths because the police were investigating someone close to me. This time they aren’t investigating at all. I hope they’re right that Suzette died by accident, but the more I uncover about her, the more I question that.” And the more Val felt a kinship with Suzette. “She didn’t turn a blind eye to injustice. If she noticed any unfairness or wrongdoing, she tried to put an end to it. She deserves justice for herself.”

  Bram’s hair had crept over his forehead again, but he didn’t push it back. “Rooting out injustice can be dangerous.”

  “It might have been for Suzette, who went after it with a vengeance. No half measures for her. But I’m more timid. I poke around, gather bits of information, and run to the police with them.” Val realized that Bram could supply one nugget no one else had. “You were at the scene of the accident. I think fog dampens sound, and I wonder if it could have made it hard for her to hear a car coming. Were there any cars on the road? And could you hear them coming?”

  “There was almost no traffic at that hour. No cars came up behind me while I was pedaling away from town. But a minute before I saw Suzette, a car emerged from the fog, heading toward town. I don’t know if the fog muffled sound, but it certainly kept me from seeing the car until it was only yards away.”

  “What did you notice about it? Was it dark or light? Did it have any unusual features?”

  Bram closed his eyes for a few seconds and then shook his head. “I can’t remember anything special. A red or white car would have stuck in my mind. It must have been a less noticeable color. You think it was the car that ran her over?”

  Val shrugged. “She was jogging away from town. The car that hit her was going in the same direction. It would have to turn around and go back.”

  “Unless the driver lived farther along the peninsula. I’ve biked through a small community there.”

  Val took the server’s arrival with their food as a signal to switch to a less disturbing topic than a fatal hit-and-run. She asked Bram about his work in California. He talked briefly about the tech businesses he’d started and eventually sold. Then he asked what Val had done before moving to Bayport.

  She told him about her career in New York as a cookbook publicist and its abrupt end after she clashed with a celebrity chef. Prompted by questions from Bram, she described what she missed about the city, what she loved about Bayport, and how she and Granddad had adjusted to living together.

  Before she knew it, her plate was clean and the table cleared. The server returned to take the
ir order for dessert and coffee. Val passed on both. Bram ordered coffee.

  She remembered what Granddad had said about photos Bram had taken at the bookshop’s grand opening. “You took pictures after the costume contest Saturday night. If you have them with you, I’d like to look at them.”

  He fished his phone out of his shirt pocket and tapped the screen a few times. “Anything in particular you want to see?”

  “A picture of Suzette.” And the vampire she talked to.

  “I took some shots of the crowd. You might find her in them.” He passed the phone to Val.

  She swiped through the photos until she found the right one—Suzette in conversation with a man in a black cape. Val enlarged the photo and zoomed in on the man. Nick.

  Val showed Bram the zoomed image. “Here’s Suzette with a vampire.”

  “That’s the guy you were with at the wine bar. I told you he was at the bookshop.”

  “And he denied it.” He must have had a reason to lie, maybe to hide the fact that he’d talked to Suzette and possibly even arranged to meet her the night before she died. Val stood up. “Could I borrow your phone for a minute?”

  Not waiting for an answer, she left the room for the bar. She showed Keenan the zoomed image of Nick the vampire. “Is this the man who was here with my friend on Saturday night?”

  Keenan squinted at the picture. “He might be.”

  Not good enough. “Can we check with the server who waited on my friend?”

  Keenan called the woman over. She stared at the photo. “That’s him. I’m sure of it.”

  Val was thrilled. One mystery person identified—the caped man in the tavern. Two to go—the burglar and the harasser. Three, if you count the killer. Or perhaps she was looking for only one person.

  Chapter 20

  Val tamped down her excitement as she returned to the room with the booths. Talking or even arguing with Suzette on Saturday night didn’t mean Nick had killed her on Sunday morning or that he’d broken in to steal her computer. But he might have.

  She returned to the booth where Bram sat drinking coffee. She expected him to ask why she’d run off with his phone. That could take a while to explain. She reached for her water glass.