The Conan Flagg Mysteries: Bundle #3

by M. K. Wren

  Both Demara’s and Lucas’s suitcases were open on the floor. Lucas’s was empty except for a pair of black silk pajamas. The matching pajamas were in Demara’s suitcase, along with various pieces of diminutive lingerie.

  And in a side pocket, a blue velvet ring box.

  Conan opened the box and smiled. A diamond solitaire, probably a full carat, and a gold wedding band. Inside the band, he found an inscription: LJK & DW FOREVER, followed by .a date.

  Lucas King and Demara Wilder had been married on September 10. Forever had been of short duration for them, or so it seemed.

  He replaced the ring box, then straightened, and it was at that moment that he heard a sound.

  Behind him. At the door.

  Chapter 18

  Conan’s breath came out in a long, shivering sigh. It was Lise standing in the doorway.

  “I wondered what you were up to,” she said.

  “Well, now you know how PIs entertain themselves.” He went to the door and took her arm, urging her out into the hall, then closed the door. “Everyone’s finished with lunch?”

  “Yes, but there are still plenty of sandwiches if you get hungry. Kim, Will, Mark, and Tiff have started a pinochle game, Demara’s playing solitaire, Loanh’s reading a book—Michener’s autobiography—and Tuttle is sitting on the couch with a beer being thoroughly ignored. It doesn’t seem to bother him. I get the feeling he thinks it’s funny in some perverse way. Is there any firewood left in your room?”

  “Thanks for the report. Yes, I think there’s still a little wood.”

  “Come on. I’ll get a fire going. You’re going to re-freeze yourself.”

  Conan followed her into his room without asking why he should warm himself there rather than downstairs by the living-room fire. He wasn’t surprised that she closed the door. He went to the armchair by the fireplace and waited while she laid a small fire.

  When it was burning well, she sat down in the straight chair and asked coolly, “Was it Tuttle who shot Heather?”

  Conan almost laughed. Obviously Lise hadn’t been convinced by Will’s story that Heather had cut her leg on some unknown sharp object.

  “No, Lise, Tuttle didn’t shoot her. But you’re right, she was shot. Will extracted a bullet. Small caliber. Tuttle didn’t have a gun of any caliber when he arrived. Of course, he could have disposed of one by simply throwing it into the snow, but there was a lapse of about an hour between the time she was shot and the time Tuttle appeared at the door. I doubt he was wandering around in the storm all that time.”

  “Then who did shoot her? And why?”

  “I don’t know, but it had to be someone here in the lodge.”

  “Oh, God. The nightmare just gets worse, doesn’t it?” For a moment, something fragile, ready to shatter, revealed itself in her gray eyes, then they turned opaque with the sheen of steel.

  Conan asked, “What about the guns in the display case downstairs? Who has a key to the case?”

  “Dad always keeps…kept that key on his key ring. But none of those guns can be fired. No firing pins. They’re just for display.”

  “Do you know if he kept any working guns here?”

  “The only working gun around is the .38 revolver Dad gave me two years ago. He was worried about my being here alone so much.”

  “Where is it?”

  “In the studio.”

  The studio. Conan felt a sharp adrenaline surge. He hadn’t included the studio in the scenarios of murder he had constructed last night. Yet if either Al or Lucas had left camp just before the explosion, the blizzard might have intensified enough so that he couldn’t reach the highway and his getaway vehicle, and in that case, he might have sought shelter in the studio. There he would have food, a woodstove, and running water. All the comforts of home. And a gun.

  It wasn’t the .22 with which Heather had been shot, but under the circumstances, any unaccounted-for weapon as potentially lethal as a .38 made Conan distinctly nervous.

  “Lise, did you go up to the studio Saturday night?”

  She was watching him intently. “Yes. After we got the generator started and realized this might be a serious storm, Will went to the studio with me to get some of my things.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Oh…right before eight-thirty. We didn’t stay long. I just had to pick up some clothes and drawing pads and a few things for Heather. I doubt we were in the studio more than ten minutes. Why, Conan? What are you thinking?”

  He was thinking that Al or Lucas might at this moment be hiding in the studio waiting for the storm to abate, but that possibility Conan wouldn’t discuss with Lise until he was sure. She’d be chagrined enough if Al was the mastermind behind the murders, but she’d be devastated if it was Lucas, the twin she loved so unequivocally. “Lise, I’m thinking so many things, nothing makes much sense. I wonder if you could do something for me. A portrait.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “A portrait? Of whom?”

  “Jerry Tuttle. But sans beard and mustache.”

  “All right. I assume you don’t want him to know about it?”

  “Nor anyone else.”

  “Why, Conan? I mean, why do you want his portrait?”

  “Possibly to jog someone’s memory or simply for shock value. I don’t think Tuttle is a perfect stranger to everyone here. One thing I’m sure of, he’s not a hunter. He said he’d been tracking a buck yesterday. But deer season is over. It’s elk season now, and any hunter would know that and would certainly know that male elk are called bulls. He also described this apocryphal buck as having the biggest rack of horns he’d ever seen.”

  “Horns?” Lise gave that a curt laugh.

  “And there’s more. Remember, he said he saw the sign on the gate and figured he could make it half a mile to the lodge. All the sign says is ‘King.’ To a stranger, that might suggest a house up the road, but it doesn’t say how far away the house might be, and this house is not visible from the highway even on a clear day because of the curve in the road. So how did he know he only had half a mile to go?”

  She asked in a husky whisper, “You think he’s the killer?”

  “He might be an accomplice. The other accomplice—or perhaps the mastermind, for all I know—is the person who tried to kill me last night, and that certainly wasn’t Tuttle. It was someone who was here in the lodge last night, someone who was on hand to filch the Nitrostat from Will’s case in the confusion while he was thawing me out.”

  She pushed shaking hands through her hair. “But, Conan, you can’t be sure about the Nitrostat. I mean, that it was in the toddy.”

  “No, but I can be sure that someone came to my door at two in the morning. If that had been an innocent visit, why didn’t this shadow person stay when Heather started barking?”

  Now Lise’s whole body was shaking, and in her eyes the steel sheen dissolved. “I can’t—I can’t handle this, not with Dad and Al and…oh, Lucas—”

  “Yes, you can handle it.” Conan leaned forward and took her hands. “Lise, where’s your rage? Hold on to it, for God’s sake!”

  She held on to his hands for now, and he tolerated the pain she didn’t know she was inflicting. Finally the shaking stopped, and she said in a voice so coldly harsh he hardly recognized it, “I guess rage is all I’ve got, and if I find out who murdered my father and my brothers, maybe your problem then will be to stop me from killing the killer.”

  “I’ll stop you, Lise, if it comes to that.”

  She took two deep breaths, let each out slowly, and he could feel her hands go still as her eyes again reflected the steel sheen. Then she looked down and pulled her hands away. “Oh, Conan, I’m sorry. Your fingers must be sore enough without my crushing them.”

  “Are you all right now?”

  “Yes. It’s just…once in a while I lose my grip. Maybe it’s a good thing you have Will if I fall apart.” She mustered a smile as she added, “You know, he’s an uncommon man. A man of courage. He spends ha
lf his working life in that storefront clinic, and a lot of his patients there are crazy and quite capable of killing him, yet he calls them his friends—and means it. And today when I begged him to save Heather, I didn’t think what a terrible burden I was putting on him if he couldn’t save her. But he accepted that burden without a second thought.”

  Conan, who had witnessed Will’s many second thoughts on that burden, only smiled and said, “He loves you, Lise.”

  “What?” Then she shook her head. “Oh, Conan, what Will needs is a woman who’ll be a proper wife and a mother for his children. I couldn’t be that kind of woman, even if I wanted to.”

  “I doubt Will would be a good husband for that kind of woman. He’s too absorbed in his work. That will always come first for him.”

  She seemed to need to think about that, and Conan rose, putting his back to the fire. “Meanwhile, I have a problem other than trying to figure out who masterminded these murders. If Tuttle is involved, I have to worry now about two people trying to dispose of me.”

  Lise winced. “And I can’t offer Heather as a guard dog now. Maybe…maybe that’s why she was shot.”

  “That occurred to me,” Conan said grimly. “At any rate, I don’t think I can continue teasing information out of the family without revealing why I want it. I don’t have time for that. I’m going to have to tell them the truth.”

  “Well, that should throw everyone into a state—especially Tiff.”

  “Probably. Come on, we’d better go downstairs.” He started for the door, then stopped. “I almost forgot. I found a telephone number this morning, and I was wondering if you recognized it: 503-1212.”

  “That’s Al and Loanh’s home phone. Where did you find it?”

  When he told her, she didn’t comment, but she was frowning as they left his room and crossed the hall to the stairway. They paused there. Jerry Tuttle was coming up the stairs, booted feet thumping on the treads. He stopped when he saw Conan and Lise.

  “Just headin’ up to my room,” he said, his voice raspier than usual as he inspected Lise, head to toe, with a slow, challenging grin. “Thought I’d sack out for a while. Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  Conan said, “You’ll probably have to stoke up the fire.”

  “Yeah, I know.” His grin stretched into a complacent smirk. “Seein’ as how I don’t have nobody to warm up the bed for me.” With that, he thumped on up the stairs and down the hall.

  Lise said irritably, “Typical case of testosterone glut. Someday medical science will come up with a cure for that.” Then she added with an oblique smile, “When there are more female medical scientists.”

  Conan only laughed as they descended the stairs. He was wondering if sleepiness was the real reason for Tuttle’s retreat to his bedroom. But then perhaps he might find it less chilling than the atmosphere in the living room.

  And with Tuttle absent, Conan knew he must take advantage of this opportunity for a family conference. He wasn’t looking forward to it.

  Chapter 19

  Conan stopped under the arched entry into the living room. As Lise had reported, Kim, Will, Mark, and Tiff were engaged in a pinochle game at the card table set up between the bar and the fireplace. Tiff, he noted, had a rocks glass, half full of Scotch, at her side. Loanh was curled up at the east end of the couch with an afghan and a book, and Demara was at the dining table dealing out a game of solitaire. Mark, frowning at the fan of his cards, offered a starting bid of two-fifty.

  While Lise went on into the living room, Conan caught Will’s eye and signaled for him to come out into the atrium. Will made a show of studying his cards, then put them down and said, “I’ll pass. It’s up to you, Kim.” The players watched him as he departed.

  Conan retreated to the foot of the stairs to wait for him and kept his voice low when he spoke. “Will, I’m going to have to tell the family what really happened at the camp, and I’d better do it now while Tuttle’s upstairs. I just want to be sure he doesn’t decide to eavesdrop. Would you mind standing watch at the top of the stairs?”

  “Sure.” Will glanced into the living room. “Is Lise okay?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  Will hesitated a moment, then nodded and started up the stairs.

  Conan went into the living room and crossed to the fireplace, where Lise was sitting on the hearth ledge by Heather’s basket. The sheltie was asleep, and she didn’t wake. He found everyone in the room staring at him, the card game suspended. Finally he said, “I have something to tell you, if you’ll gather around.”

  They gathered, silently. Tiff carried her glass to her usual chair, pulled her crocheted creation out of the sewing bag beside the chair, and began knotting a strand of purple yarn with fidgety flourishes of her needle. Kim took the other armchair, and Mark swung over to the couch and sat down near his wife, while Demara stood behind the couch, arms folded, hooded eyes flashing with impatience. Loanh slipped a place marker into her book and put it aside. Her silky black hair hung about her shoulders like a mourning veil.

  Conan began, “For what seemed compelling reasons at the time, I’ve been less than honest with you. I didn’t tell you the whole truth about what happened last night at Loblolly Creek.”

  Kim raised an eyebrow. “You mean about the rock slide?”

  “I mean about what caused the rock slide. It was not a natural phenomenon. It was preceded by an explosion. In other words, it was triggered by dynamite or some other explosive.”

  Predictably that pronouncement was followed by a long silence, and in every face the doubt and shock seemed genuine. Then everyone began talking at once, except for Tiff, whose commentary took the shape of incoherent wails. Only Loanh had nothing to say.

  Mark’s voice carried over the others’ with what seemed to be the consensus: “That’s crazy! You’re talking about murder!”

  “Yes, I am,” Conan said quietly.

  “Why would anyone want to murder Dad and Al and Lucas, for God’s sake? And you? But of course you got away without a scratch, didn’t you? And we’ve only got your word for what really happened.”

  “Mark, don’t be silly,” Lise said. “Why would he lie about it?”

  Demara said bitterly, “God, we should never have come here!”

  “Oh, I knew it,” Tiff wailed. “I knew somethin’ awful would happen. I mean, when Lucas showed up, and Al was such a bastard—”

  Loanh cut in, “Tiff, you must not say such things!”

  Before Tiff could reply, Conan said, “There’s one obvious reason why someone might want to kill A. C.: a forty-million-dollar reason.”

  That elicited more noise, mostly in the form of denials, and Conan cut through it with, “But A. C. wasn’t the only victim, and I don’t even know if he was the intended victim. One thing I’m sure of: The person who masterminded these deaths knew your family traditions and knew A. C. and his sons would be camping at Loblolly Creek last night.”

  The clamor ceased while they looked at each other with sudden suspicion. It was Kim who asked, “What about Tuttle? Maybe he wasn’t out hunting. Maybe he was parked by the bridge because he set the explosives.”

  Tiff shrilled, “Didn’t I tell you? That man has an aura, an aura of evil, and now we’re trapped here with him, and who knows how long this storm’ll last. Oh, we’re all gonna die!”

  While Mark patted his wife’s hand, Conan managed to make himself heard over her sobs. “Kim, you could be right about Tuttle, but what motive would a stranger have to kill A. C. or Al or Lucas? Does anyone know Tuttle? Did any of you recognize him?”

  Tiff’s hiccuping sobs stopped, and there was another exchange of wary glances. Conan asked, “What about you, Tiff? For a second when Tuttle first arrived, I got the feeling you’d seen him before.”

  “Me?” She sprang out of her chair, the crocheting dropping in a heap of spectrum colors at her feet. “I never saw him before in my life, and why’re you asking me? Oh, this is just too much!” She began stu
ffing the yarn into the sewing bag. “I’m gonna go up to our room. It may be cold, but at least I won’t have to listen to this—this crap!”

  Conan sighed. “You needn’t bother, Tiff. I’m going to the kitchen for some lunch.” He leaned down and said into Lise’s ear, “You can tell Will he’s off duty.”

  She nodded, and Conan headed for the kitchen. Silence followed him all the way, but as he closed the door, he heard an erupting babble of voices. At least he’d given them something to think about.

  With any luck, something to talk to him about privately.

  He went to the table and filled a glass with milk, then put a sandwich on a plate and sat down at the end of the banquette. He was a little surprised that he was so hungry, but then it was after two o’clock. And Kim made an excellent tuna salad sandwich, with thick brown bread, plenty of mayonnaise, and a subtle mix of spices. He had started on a second sandwich when the door opened. It was Mark. He pushed the door shut behind him and limped to the table.

  Mark limped simply because the cast and walking shoe put him off balance. He was not using his crutches.

  He slumped into one of the straight chairs, his tight mouth giving him an expression verging on a pout. Conan waited, chewing at his sandwich. At length Mark announced, “I’ve got something to tell you.”

  “No doubt something about your miraculous recovery? It must’ve been amazing. Did you throw your crutches aside and shout, ‘Praise the Lord, I can walk!’”

  “Will said you’d figure it out.” Mark sighed and added, “There’s a perfectly good reason for it, but I realize…well, it looks bad.”

  “In view of what happened on the hike you missed because of that supposedly broken ankle—yes, it looks bad, Mark.”

  “I know, I know. But I just didn’t want to go on that hike. I didn’t want to spend a whole day and night playing buddies with Dad!”

  “Why not?”

  Mark averted his eyes, fixed them on the plate of sandwiches, and after a moment reached for a half. “That’s private.”