Cindy muttered to Uri, “Michelle would never let an employee get away with something like this.”
“I can make pancakes,” Mrs. Steffan volunteered. “I haven’t done it for years, but I’m sure I still know how.”
Stan Steffan glanced at his wife as if she’d just suggested a platter of roadkill. “I say we all get in the limo and go out to the casino for their breakfast buffet.” He looked at me as if his breakfast-less condition were somehow my fault, and I’d better get my limo around here and correct it.
I asked what seemed the obvious question. “Where’s Shirley?”
“I don’t know,” Pam said. “I knocked several times and finally looked in her room. Her bed either wasn’t slept in, or she got up early and made it.”
My earlier thought that Shirley may have had her fill of spooky guests and murder bounced back. She’d also made that comment about looking for another job. Could she have just picked up and taken off?
A more ominous thought hit me. Could she have found something that frightened her into leaving? “Is her car here?”
“Shirley doesn’t have a car,” Pam said, a fact I hadn’t realized. “Most of the groceries are delivered, although once in a while Michelle let her use the BMW. Sometimes she walks up to the main road and catches the County Transportation System bus.”
“Could she have taken a walk on the beach or down the road? Did you see her when you went running this morning?” I asked Cindy.
Today Cindy and Uri were in burgundy sweats with the inevitable logo of a world slashed with a lightning bolt on the back.
“We didn’t go this morning. Uri stepped on a rock and bruised his foot yesterday.” Cindy turned to Pam. “You really ought to let that woman go. This is inexcusable, with a houseful of guests.”
I had an uneasy feeling. Shirley had said she was going to do more "cleaning." I slipped away and ran up the stairs. Michelle’s door was shut. I shoved it open, halfway expecting to see Shirley sprawled across the bed.
But the room looked exactly the same as it had yesterday. A hint of the delicately heady fragrance lingered in spite of the still open window. I peered warily in the bathroom and the walk-in closet. Empty. The cabinet door, from where I’d removed the display case of knives, was still open.
I went back to the kitchen. Phyllis hadn’t exactly taken charge. She wasn’t a take-charge kind of person. But she’d gotten out the toaster and bread, and was now cracking eggs into a bowl. Pam had given up on the coffeemaker, and I went over and got it started. How much coffee to put in? Plenty, I decided, and tossed in a couple of extra scoops. I figured we all needed a jolt of caffeine.
“Don’t you think this is rather peculiar?” Joe said to Pam. “Maybe you should call that detective.”
“The Case of the Vanishing Cook?” Cindy asked, her tone laden with sarcasm. “Right. Let’s call out the FBI and CIA too. Maybe she absconded with all the pistachios and caviar. Personally, I’ll bet she’s tucked away in some hidey-hole, sleeping it off.”
“Sleeping it off?” I repeated, puzzled.
Cindy gave me a what-planet-are-you-from glance.
Mrs. Steffan said, “Shirley drinks?” She sounded horrified, and I was startled.
“Michelle said once that wine vanished around here faster than donuts at a cop convention,” Cindy replied.
That struck Stan Steffan as funny, and he guffawed like some overalls-clad hayseed on Hee Haw. It was a bit disconcerting, like seeing a circling shark suddenly start giggling.
Pam glanced at her watch. “Detective Molino said he’d be here about nine-thirty. If Shirley hasn’t shown up by then, I’ll mention it to him. Has anyone seen Phreddie?”
“You should keep him out of the kitchen,” Cindy said. “Cats don’t belong around food.”
We ate, some standing, some sitting at the kitchen table, some gathered around the dining room table. Phyllis’s scrambled eggs were nicely fluffy, the toast richly buttered. My coffee was strong enough to eat holes in bedrock, but it had a marvelous aroma. And enough caffeine to lift off a rocket. Stan Steffan wanted me to take him to the casino immediately, but Pam nixed that with the reminder that Detective Molino wanted everyone available for further interviewing.
“Maybe he’ll bring a script from CSI so he’ll know how to do it,” Stan muttered. “These small-town cops don’t know—”
I “accidentally” slopped coffee on his arm. “Sorry,” I said sweetly.
Cindy looked at the clock on the stove. “We need to get over to the health club. Something’s wrong with the hot water system.”
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to hang around until Detective Molino gets here.”
Everyone, with various disgruntled noises, wandered away. I gathered plates and silverware from where they were scattered in both rooms. After Stan Steffan stumbled over Pam’s skateboard in the doorway, she moved it out to the front closet.
“Did Shirley say anything to you about quitting?” Pam asked as I arranged plates in the dishwasher.
“She mentioned she might have to look for another job, but I didn’t get the impression she was in any big rush.”
“It just doesn’t seem like Shirley to take off and leave us in a lurch like this. She’s always been so dependable. I don’t know how I’m going to feed all these people if she doesn’t show up.”
“Do what the Stan Man suggested. Haul ’em out to the casino and let ’em stampede the buffet. Or stop feeding them, and maybe they’ll all go home.”
“I should be so lucky,” she muttered.
Though that scenario wasn’t likely, I decided. The Uri and Cindy would stay until the wiring at the cottage was fixed, and, if they had some ulterior motive for being here, I wouldn’t put it past them to do some electrical sabotaging to extend their stay. The Forsythes weren’t leaving until Sterling’s grasp on the inheritance was secure. The Steffans—
I didn’t get to the Steffans because a scream started from somewhere beyond the kitchen. A scream that rose to megablast proportions. Like a psycho locked in a cage, fourteen teenage girls watching a horror movie, a ghostophobic opera singer trapped in a cemetery.
I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. Everywhere! Rising from the floor, spewing out of the woodwork, exploding from the light fixtures.
“What is that?” I cried.
Pam pinpointed the source and ran. “Downstairs!”
I pounded after her as she raced along the hall, then tore down the steps to the Fitness Room. I almost slammed into her when she stopped short at the door.
Phyllis was hunched on the floor by the hot tub, waif-like in a blue swimsuit with a demure little skirt. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her hands over her ears, and there was nothing whispery or timid about the howl emanating from her open mouth.
She was outshrieking even that girl at the wedding, and that took some doing.
Joe shoved us aside as he charged through the door and across the room to his wife. “Phyl, what is it? Are you hurt?”
She took one hand away from an ear and pointed at the rumbling hot tub. Pam and I ran to it. The water churned. Something rose and fell in it.
An amorphous blob. No . . . an arm. A leg. A face.
“Shirley!” I gasped.
The churning water gave the body an eerie semblance of life, as if Shirley were playfully enjoying some dolphin game, twisting and turning, flinging one body part forward and then another. Pam dashed around the tub and pounded the control to shut off the churning. As the water calmed, Shirley, in a fuchsia bathing suit, bobbed facedown in it.
Phyllis still shrieked. “I got in there with her! I didn’t know, and I got in with her!”
Joe, kneeling, wrapped his arms around his wife and pulled her face against his shoulder, muffling but not stopping the amazing volume of sound coming from her.
I finally snapped out of my momentary paralysis. “We’ve got to get her out of there!” I climbed on the steps and leaned over the edge of the tub. “Maybe she’s
still alive!”
Pam and I were trying to pull Shirley out of the tub when stronger arms took over. Uri lifted her over the edge. I grabbed a towel Phyllis had dropped and spread it on the floor.
“Stand back,” Uri said after he set her on the towel. “We know CPR.”
I hoped they could help her. Her body had felt warm. Maybe that meant she was still alive. But as Uri and Cindy worked frantically to revive her, compressing her chest and pinching her nose and breathing into her mouth, the hope sank. The warmth I’d felt was only from the heat of the water, not a lingering flicker of life. Her body looked a little bloated, but the skin was wrinkled and blotchy.
Nausea roiled my stomach. Shirley hadn’t been sleeping in her room when I tapped on her door at one-thirty this morning. I was certain of that now. Was there a knife wound in her back?
Oh, Shirley, Shirley . . . last night alive and curious and a bit mischievous with her “cleaning.” And now . . .
The suddenness with which life could end dizzied me. We rush along, making our plans, complaining about this, worrying about that. And it all comes down to a moment like this. God time.
Stan Steffan didn’t come close, but he actually lifted the dark glasses to peer at the body from a distance. “Someone better call 911.”
We were all in the Fitness Room now, crowded together . . . except for Stan . . . as if for protection against some unseen danger, everyone looking concerned and bewildered and horrified.
Except that one of those concerned expressions was phony. One of these people had killed Shirley. Murder in the Hot Tub.
Another thought jolted me. If I hadn’t gone to meet Fitz last night, if I’d stayed here to help Shirley, would I now be floating facedown in the hot tub too?
Pam went upstairs to call 911, but she returned only a couple of minutes later with Detective Molino. He couldn’t have gotten in past the locked gate on his own, so apparently he’d buzzed the electronic signal and Pam had let him in.
Uri and Cindy stepped back. Detective Molino knelt by the body and put his fingers to Shirley’s throat, then his ear to her chest. He rolled back an eyelid.
He didn’t announce it, but the fact was obvious now. Dead.
“This is the housekeeper?” He looked at Pam. “Shirley—?”
“Shirley Berkhoff. Housekeeper and cook.”
Uri wiped his hands on the legs of his wet sweatpants. Cindy’s outfit showed big wet blotches too. She looked pale, even a little greenish. She was holding her stomach, as if she might have to run for the bathroom any minute.
They’d worked very hard trying to save Shirley.
Which didn’t necessarily mean one or both of them hadn’t earlier worked equally hard to kill her. A cynical thought, but what better camouflage for murder than this noble endeavor to save the victim?
“But I was talking to her just last night!” Mrs. Steffan protested, as if that meant there must be some mistake about Shirley being dead.
Detective Molino jumped on that. “You were the last one to see her?”
“Well, I-I don’t know about that. It was about ten o’clock, I guess. I ran into her in the upstairs hall and asked if I could bother her for a cup of tea. Which she made for me. A nice tea called Sleepytime.”
The upstairs hall. Because Shirley had been in Michelle’s room?
“Did she say anything about coming down to the hot tub?” he asked Mrs. Steffan.
“Not that I recall.”
“I’ll have to get the medical examiner out here.”
“For an accident?” Stan Steffan demanded.
Like spectators at a tennis match, every head swiveled toward his arrogant tone.
“Well, it’s obvious. She came down for a late soak, slipped when she was getting in the hot tub, hit her head, and drowned.”
It was a plausible scenario. Shirley had told me herself that she liked to come down for a solo, late-night soak. I didn’t like to think it, but maybe she had overdone it on the wine. Alcohol and hot tubs are a notorious no-no, especially solo. Was that what had happened here? Not one of my scenarios of murder, but a simple situation of alcohol-impaired balance or judgment?
Yes, it could be a tragic accident. Just because there’d been one murder didn’t mean this was another. Shirley wasn’t young. Even sober, slips and falls were a danger at our age.
Yet wasn’t the Stan Man pushing the accident explanation a little too much, like a used car salesman hyping an old Buick? Why the objection to the medical examiner?
And what had Shirley been doing before that soak? Had she found something in Michelle’s room that incriminated one of these oh-so-concerned guests? Someone who followed her down here and stuck that missing knife in her back, or maybe just shoved her in the tub and held her head under?
Yet it could have been a simple accident, and Detective Molino’s expression revealed nothing. Not even when he looked at me and said, “How come I’m not surprised to see you here?”
***
Detective Molino cleared everyone out of the Fitness Room and sent us all to the living room. A newly arrived deputy put up yellow crime-scene tape that barred anyone from going farther back in the house than the living room. Which, as an interesting complication, also cut off the bathrooms. An assistant medical examiner and more deputies arrived. We couldn’t see what was going on down in the Fitness Room, but people in various garb . . . uniformed, white-coated, and plainclothes . . . came and went. There were cameras, both digital and video, radios squawking outside, cell phones in use inside, evidence bags, latex gloves, tape measures, and various pieces of equipment I couldn’t identify.
Pam stood at the yellow crime-scene tape and called for Phreddie several times, but he never showed up. I figured if he hadn’t already been hiding somewhere, Phyllis’s shriek and all this police activity had surely sent him into cat seclusion.
Nerves among the living room contingent escalated and clashed. Except for Phyllis, who, shrieking completed, now huddled in a corner of the love seat and appeared to be in an unblinking coma. The others bickered and squabbled. Cindy snapped at Uri about the health club showers. Mrs. Steffan jumped on Joe for not taking proper care of his wife, that he should be demanding medical attention for her. Someone turned on the TV and treated us to a game show in which several hyperactive women squealed about a vacation in Cancun.
Pam called Michelle’s lawyer’s office to cancel her appointment. Then she nervously knocked over an expensive crystal sculpture of an orca, which hit an abstract of welded iron, and crystal shrapnel exploded.
Stan Steffan prowled the room like a lion on No-Doze.
I, in no better frame of mind that anyone else, said to him, tartly I must admit, “How does Shirley’s death fit in with your blackjack epiphany about Michelle’s killer?”
“It’s irrelevant. She slipped and fell.” He glared at me as if I should go and do likewise.
Eventually a bathroom became top priority. Pam remembered one in the garage. Deputy Molino gave permission to use it. We were not, in fact, required to stay on the property, since no one was under arrest, but his tone suggested we’d better not run off. We took turns trooping out to the garage bathroom, but no one left. I wondered if we each figured we needed to keep a wary eye on everyone else.
Noon came, and Pam ordered sandwiches delivered from a sub shop in town. Phyllis wouldn’t eat. Stan Steffan complained that the ham wasn’t real ham, it was that “imitation turkey stuff.” Uri and Cindy discarded the bread and ate only the meat and vegetables. I felt like shoving everyone into the limo and dumping them out in the woods far from civilization.
The body was eventually removed in a body bag. I followed Deputy Molino out to the porch and touched his arm when he was returning from escorting the body to the van.
“Volunteering to be first in line for questioning?” he asked.
“The tape says crime scene. Is that what this is?”
“We don’t have tape that says, ‘This is none of your business,
folks, just keep out.’ Whether it’s truly a crime scene depends on what the autopsy shows. Where’s your sidekick, ol’ Fitz? Shouldn’t he be here sticking his nose into things too?”
“Fitz left on the Miss Nora this morning. Three-day trip.”
“We should all be so lucky. I happened to catch a couple of reruns of his old TV detective show on satellite a few nights ago.” Sounding a little grudging, he added, “It was kind of dated, like all those old shows, but not bad. Not a lot of unrealistic high-tech stuff like the current shows have, and real cops only wish they did. And Fitz was good.”
“I’ll tell him you said that. He’ll be pleased.”
Okay, enough of Mr. Chatty Nice Guy, Detective Molino apparently decided, because now he asked suspiciously, “How come you and the limo are still here?”
“Pam decided she needed my services a little longer. Will you be getting a search warrant for the house?”
“Maybe. You want me to keep an eye out for lost pantyhose or something for you?”
Oh, Detective Molino was in fine form today. I ignored the facetious question. “There’s something you might add to your list of items for the search warrant.” I knew from past experience that they couldn’t just do a wholesale search in hopes of turning up something interesting; they had to name specific items before a judge would authorize a search warrant. “If you have time to look at something now in—” I started to say Michelle’s office, but changed the wording. “In Pam’s office?”
“We’re public servants. At your service.”
I led Detective Molino to the office. It was also blocked off with yellow tape, but he held up the tape and we both ducked under. I showed him the display case of knives and pointed to the tiny holes that suggested two were missing.
“I’m thinking the knife that killed Michelle may have come from this case. I saw it, you know. Not the same kind of knife as these, but also very fancily decorated, with jewels on the handles.”
He looked up sharply. “Have you discussed this with anyone?”
“Only Fitz. He said my description, with the double handles, sounded like a butterfly knife.”
Here Comes the Ride Page 22
