She phoned him. He said he’d be home for the next hour and then leave for a rehearsal. She promised to be there within half an hour. Before she did anything else, she had to create the flyer announcing the café’s lunch delivery and e-mail it to the printer. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be ready for Jeremy to distribute tomorrow.
Half an hour later, with that job done, she jumped into the car and drove to Gunnar’s house.
As she turned onto Maple Street, she spotted a sheriff’s department car parked in front of Gunnar’s place. Uh-oh. Deputy Holtzman again? Probably.
She drove past Gunnar’s Miata, the deputy’s car in front of it, and the SUV belonging to Gunnar’s neighbor before she parked her Saturn. She pulled out the ignition key and sat in the car, unsure what to do. Her presence might not help Gunnar. She brought out the worst in Holtzman. She and the deputy had rubbed each other the wrong way the first time they met. After she’d complained about his unprofessional behavior to his boss, the tension between them had never let up. If she hadn’t gone over his head, he might have been less hostile to her in their later encounters.
Nah. Hostility coursed through his veins. He’d badgered her and Granddad. Before Gunnar left his government job, he’d worked undercover with Federal investigators. That experience would probably make him less susceptible to badgering. Still, he might want her beside him for moral support. She’d leave it up to him.
She got out of the car, marched to the tiny, one-story brick house he rented, and tapped the knocker on the front door lightly. Normally, she would follow that up by letting herself in and calling out to him. Today she waited.
Gunnar opened the storm door, anxiety apparent in his rigid jaw. “Come in.”
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
He nodded and held the door open for her. “Don’t react to him,” he said in her ear as she went past him.
Gunnar had set up the living room as an office, with his desk, a file cabinet, and a table that doubled as a small conference table. The only other furniture in the room was a loveseat and a chair near the window. She exchanged nods with Holtzman and sat across the table from him next to Gunnar. The deputy showed no surprise at seeing her. Gunnar must have told him he was expecting her.
Holtzman tapped a ballpoint pen on his spiral notebook. “I’d like to get some background information, Mr. Swensen. You were living in Washington until you quit your government job six months ago and moved here to start an accounting business.” At Gunnar’s nod, Holtzman continued, “At that time you’d just come into some money. Who gave that to you?”
Val had expected Deputy Holtzman to ask about more recent events. The deputy didn’t make small talk. Apparently, he thought Gunnar’s background had a bearing on the Emmett Flint case.
“I inherited money from my great-aunt,” Gunnar said with no inflection or emotion, like an actor trying hard not to get a part.
“When did she die?” Holtzman said.
“Last April.”
“When was the last time you saw her alive?”
“The day before she died. I was visiting my mother in Indiana. We took my aunt some soup.”
“Huh. You visited your aunt shortly before she died.” The deputy leaned forward at the edge of his chair, like an audience member at the climax of a play. “What did your aunt die of?”
Val cringed inwardly, convinced that the deputy already knew the cause of death and had planned this chain of questions. She couldn’t tell anything from Gunnar’s poker face, but his hands gave him away.
His knuckles whitened as he gripped the seat of his folding chair. “Heart failure. She had a history of heart ailments.”
“Was she treated for high blood pressure?”
Gunnar shrugged. “Possibly. It runs in that side of the family.”
“Who cleared out the place where she lived after she died?”
“I helped my mother do it.”
A shudder passed through Val. Emmett’s assault complaint and threat to sue gave Gunnar a motive for murder. He’d also had access to Emmett’s burrito and, apparently in Holtzman’s eyes, to the meds the actor had OD’d on.
The deputy stood up. “That will be all for now. I’ll let myself out.”
He was finished for now. Would he return to ask more questions or did he already have sufficient reason to charge Gunnar with Emmett’s murder?
When the door closed behind Holtzman, Gunnar shot out of his chair and paced the room. “He’s not going after me only for Emmett’s murder. He insinuated I murdered my aunt for her money.”
“It’s just a ploy to rattle you. That’s how he works.” Val tried to sound calmer than she felt. She walked to the window, peered between the slats of the blinds, and watched the deputy drive away. “He can’t possibly think you killed your aunt.”
“Before you arrived, he asked to use the bathroom. I’ll bet he wanted to look in the medicine cabinet.” Gunnar ran his hand through his hair. “Not giving me much credit. If I’d murdered someone with pills, I wouldn’t keep the rest of them around.”
“He was looking for the kind of pills that killed Emmett.” Val was sure the deputy hadn’t found anything incriminating in the medicine cabinet, unless Gunnar had medical problems he hadn’t mentioned to her. “You don’t have high blood pressure, do you?”
Gunnar winced. “No, but I have my aunt’s meds.”
Chapter 14
Val tugged Gunnar toward the loveseat under the window. He’d better have a good explanation for holding on to his aunt’s medicine, and she better not have died from an overdose of them. “Why do you have your aunt’s meds?”
“I took them to dispose of them safely. I never got around to it when I was clearing out my apartment in Washington. I threw the pills in a footlocker with a bunch of other things I didn’t have time to sort through.”
“Where’s the footlocker now?”
“In the storage unit with all the stuff I won’t need until I move to an unfurnished place.”
The rent was so reasonable on this fully equipped house that he could afford to store his own furniture until his lease was up. Val knew the deputy would find out before long where Gunnar had stored things. “You could get your aunt’s medicines from the unit and dispose of them.”
“If I’m caught, I’ll look more guilty than I do now.”
True. “We need to figure out who killed Emmett before Holtzman gets a search warrant for your storage unit. Did you find out if any cast members saw Emmett after Saturday’s rehearsal?”
He nodded. “One of them noticed him leaving around twelve with his hair and beard grayed.”
“Three hours later he collapsed in the mall parking lot. He stopped there on his way to visit his sister.” Val told Gunnar what she’d read in Emmett’s notebook and heard from his sister. “I think he was creating a show based on Rick Usher’s books and dressed as him to perform a scene for his sister.”
“So he was writing a play and not impersonating Rick Usher?”
“He might have done both. I’m going to visit the woman who said she saw an Usher impersonator. I’ll show her a photo lineup of men resembling him and see if she picks out Emmett as the impersonator.” Val fished her phone from her shoulder bag. “May I take your picture?”
“Is it for a mug shot?”
Val could tell from Gunnar’s lopsided smile that he wasn’t serious. Even when he was worried, he could make a joke, a trait she found endearing.
She kissed him and explained her plan for Monique to age Emmett’s photo. “She’ll age your photo, Emmett’s, and one other man’s for the lineup.”
“Don’t show me my picture after Monique ages me. I’d rather not know how I’ll look when I’m paroled after forty years.”
Val framed his face in the camera display. He looked grim. “Aim for the Mona Lisa look. Attractive and enigmatic.” That got a laugh out of him. She waited until he looked more serious and then snapped half a dozen photos. She tucked her phone away. “Do you happ
en to have a picture of Maddie?”
“I might. When I was watching the early rehearsals, I took photos of Emmett’s scenes, in case I had to take over for him as Big Daddy. She should be in a few of them.” Gunnar scrolled through the pictures on his phone. “Here’s one where she’s facing the camera.”
The photo confirmed Val’s assumption. “Her full name is Madison Fox-Norton. She works for the Ushers and lives in their house.”
“So she’s another thread between the Ushers and Emmett. Don’t pull too hard on that thread. Just tell Chief Yardley about it.” He squeezed her hand. “Now I’m kicking you out. I need time alone to get into Big Daddy’s head for the rehearsal.”
* * *
As Val went into the house, Granddad was talking on the hall phone. She waved to him on her way to the study. He went through the same motions as he had the night before when he didn’t want her to know about his cadaver-dog scheme. He turned away and covered his mouth. What was he up to now?
She threw her jacket on the sofa in the study, sat at her computer, and jiggled the mouse.
Granddad poked his head into the room. “I’ve got to go out for a bit. I’ll be back before six.”
“Okay.” No point in asking where he was going. He wouldn’t tell her, but at least she could find out who had been on the other end of his phone call. Once he drove away, she went into the hall and pressed the phone’s redial button.
A man picked up. “Good afternoon. Althea Johnson Law Office. May I help you?”
It took Val a moment to get over her surprise. Her friend and tennis teammate, Althea, had a legal practice in Bayport with a focus on family law. Did Granddad need legal advice? “Good afternoon. This is Val Deniston. May I talk to Althea, please?”
“Please hold on. I’ll see if she’s busy.”
Althea wouldn’t break a client’s confidentiality and say whether Granddad was consulting her, but Val had other reasons to talk to her friend.
“Hi, Val. I can’t talk long because I have an appointment in a few minutes.”
An appointment with Granddad? “Just a quick question. Can you suggest a good criminal lawyer in Maryland?”
“The same attorneys I recommended to Monique last summer. I’ll e-mail you their contact information as soon as I can. You’re not in any kind of trouble, are you?”
“I’m not the one who needs the lawyer, if that’s what you mean.” Val didn’t want to tell anyone about Gunnar’s trouble without his permission, not even a good friend like Althea.
After they hung up, Val attached photos of Emmett Flint, her former fiancé, Gunnar, and Rick Usher to an e-mail message, identifying them only by number. She asked Monique to age the men in the first, second, and third photos, and then to superimpose the hat, glasses, and beard from the last photo onto the other three.
With that out of the way, Val pored over Emmett’s notes tracking Rick Usher’s life from birth to the present. The author was born eighty-two years ago as Richard Ugla—not far off from his Poe-related pen name. Rather than spend time reading about his early life, Val flipped to the last pages in the Usher bio and worked backward.
For the years since 2010, when the Ushers moved to the house where they now lived, Emmett had noted only titles and release dates of books. October 2009 was the date of Rick Usher’s last public appearance that Emmett recorded. He’d written a marginal note about it: Usher fled.
What did that mean?
Val turned to her computer and typed Rick Usher October 2009 in the Google search box. She clicked on a link titled “Writer Channels Poe” and read the first paragraph: Celebrating a birthday by holding a funeral makes sense if the ghost of honor is Edgar Allan Poe. In one of many events marking Poe’s two-hundredth birthday, hundreds gathered to attend a belated funeral service for him in Baltimore, where he died and was buried in 1849. Rick Usher, best-selling author of Poe-inspired novels, gave a lecture after the mock funeral.
According to the online article, the audience for the lecture included several men and one woman dressed to resemble Poe. They wore black jackets, some with a white shirt and dark cravat, others with a white scarf around their neck. The woman wore a fake mustache.
Rick Usher gave a eulogy punctuated with dramatic readings from Poe’s works. Then he began talking as if he were Poe, which he’d done at other presentations. The audience loved it, even the part in which Usher exhibited the paranoia that Poe had shown in the last year of his life.
The article then described an incident from the summer of 1849. Poe jumped off a train in Philadelphia because he’d overheard two passengers plotting to kill him. He ended up in a city jail, hallucinating and suspected of temporary insanity. After being identified as “that Raven guy,” he was released, whereupon he took refuge with a friend and described his lucky escape from death. He insisted on having his mustache shaved off, apparently to prevent his would-be killers from recognizing him. A few months later, Poe died in Baltimore under mysterious circumstances. To this day, the article said, no one knows what killed Poe but murder is a possible explanation.
The article went on to say that Rick Usher exhibited paranoia similar to Poe’s. At the end of his 2009 lecture, he pointed toward the audience, accused someone of stalking him, and shouted, I’m not ready to die. You can’t take me yet. He then ran to the exit at the back of the room, pursued by a boyish Poe look-alike seated in the front row. No one else in the audience left, apparently expecting the two men to reappear for applause, but neither returned.
The last paragraph in the online article read: Those who’ve attended other Rick Usher lectures know that he concludes them by speaking as if he were Poe and by basking in the applause of the audience. This time he didn’t return to the room for his ovation. Why not? It’s a mystery.
A mystery Val would like to solve. What motivated Usher’s dramatic departure—the performance, his own paranoia, or real peril? Fleeing the room as Poe had fled the train made an apt climax to a program in which Poe’s fear of being murdered played a role. Usher’s retreat from the public eye after that evening suggested he might have had similar fears. Val couldn’t rule out that he’d had a reason for those fears. Not long after that lecture, the Ushers moved away from Baltimore and eventually hired an impersonator, possibly because Rick Usher still feared for his life.
Val’s stomach knotted. She’d better make sure Granddad never posed as the author again. Though he’d told her he wouldn’t do another impersonation, he might change his mind. He couldn’t do it, though, if she took his costume away.
Where had he put the tinted glasses? She dashed from the study to his bedroom. Not on the dresser or his night table. Not in his bathroom either. She checked the table in the hall and the one next to his chair in the living room. No glasses. She would have seen them in the kitchen if he’d left them there. Where else could they be?
He’d worn them Sunday night at the book club meeting, but when Val saw him later at home, he was wearing his bifocals. He might have left the tinted glasses in the car or the pocket of his new overcoat. She opened the hall closet, checked his coat pockets, and found them. She also confiscated the tweed driver’s cap from the shelf in the closet. Now for the black shirt. She found it in the hamper of his bathroom. She took the three items up to her room and put them among her own clothes in a suitcase under her bed.
Back downstairs, she read the article about Rick Usher’s lecture again. Could what happened that night explain Emmett’s murder? He might have been killed by someone who’d stalked and intended to kill Usher. Yes, she was leaping to a conclusion, but a tentative one. Solving a murder was like creating a new dish. You introduced ingredients one at a time, corrected the seasoning, and tasted it. If it didn’t work, you could add more to the pot or start from scratch. Arriving at the recipe that worked best could take several tries.
Her phone rang.
“I’m at the supermarket,” Granddad said. “Do you want me to pick up anything?”
“We’ll eat
the leftover beef from the book club dinner. We’re running low on salad greens, so please get some lettuce.” He could save her time by buying the food for tomorrow’s dinner too. If the Ushers had paid him today, she’d have to make dinner, not just for the two of them, but also for the four at the Usher house. “Did Rosana Usher pay you today?”
“Sure did. I deposited the money as soon as I got back in town. I didn’t want to carry around that much cash.”
A cash transaction meant no paper trail for the shady business of impersonation. Though Granddad had a contract, it might contain vague wording about his duties. Val had signed a contract that wasn’t at all vague. Now that Granddad had been paid, she had to cook. “I’m making dinner at the Usher house starting tomorrow.”
“I know. They invited me to stay for it.”
Val had already decided what to make for the first dinner there. “Would you please buy four Cornish hens?” She’d split them in half, leaving two extra portions in case anyone had a massive appetite or a guest showed up at the last minute. She gave Granddad the rest of her grocery list.
After hanging up, she continued searching for online sources that mentioned Rick Usher’s last stand in front of the public. None of them had any more information than the article she’d already read, but she found some photos people had posted on Facebook after the event. The pictures showed the author at the podium from various angles. In two of them he pointed to the audience, his face contorted with fear.
She also found photos of the audience taken from the front and sides. One showed a young dark-haired man with a mustache. His deep-set eyes, white scarf, and high-collared black jacket guaranteed he’d beat every other contestant in a Poe look-alike contest. No one else in the front row fit the description of the man who followed Usher out of the room.
Val picked up Emmett’s composition book and turned to his notes on Rick Usher as a young man, his graduation from high school and his military service in Korea after the armistice agreement. He had that in common with Granddad, who’d also been stationed in Korea in the 1950s. When Rick Usher came back from overseas, he went to college on the G.I. bill and taught in a high school while going to graduate school. He then won a teaching fellowship and a faculty appointment at the University of Virginia. In 1974 he married Rosana and left UVA. Emmett had written notes next to that section of the bio: Rosana UVA grad 1974.
The Tell-Tale Tarte Page 12
