by Josh Lanyon
Zero comprehension on his face.
I stumbled on, “But when I got to the lodge the lights were all out and the doors were locked. So…you have to understand. I’d had a lot to drink after you left.”
There at last was a flash of acknowledgment.
“You drink too much.”
“I know.” I made a face. “Anyway, I wasn’t thinking too clearly. I thought maybe I could get in the back way. I didn’t realize they locked the place down at night.”
He snapped out, one word at a time, “There is a killer on the loose here, Christopher. Of course they locked the goddamn place down. Are you telling me you don’t remember I told you to lock yourself in last night and not open the door to anyone? What did you think I meant? Don’t open to Girl Scouts selling cookies? Don’t open to the Jehovah Witnesses? Don’t open to trick-or-treaters?”
“I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
I watched him courageously struggle to overcome the desire to say, I told you so! “Go on,” he managed between clenched teeth.
“Before I got to the back patio I heard…maybe a chair being dragged or a table being dragged across the cement. Anyway, it was weird enough that I stopped to listen.” I swallowed dryly, remembering the sour taste of my fear. “I…something about it…I can’t explain it, but I suddenly lost my nerve.”
He was watching me closely, his eyes narrowed as though trying to determine if I was telling the truth or not.
“I ducked into the arbor. I waited there, and then I heard footsteps. Someone—I couldn’t see who—came to the mouth of the arbor and stood there waiting and listening. Then he went away. When I was sure he really was gone, I ran back to my cabin.”
Whatever he saw in my face must have convinced him I wasn’t fabricating this.
He said quietly, “Jesus. Do you realize how close you came to dying last night?”
I nodded sheepishly.
We were nearly to my cabin now. J.X. sighed.
I tried to read his expression, but it was a closed-casket viewing.
At last he said, “Look, I believe you. I don’t think you killed Peaches or Steven, but…”
“But what?”
“That’s my own personal belief. There’s enough circumstantial evidence to arrest you right now.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I am serious.” He looked serious, true enough. “And a number of people are already asking that you be locked up until the sheriffs can get through.”
I stopped walking.
“What? Who? Whom?”
“It doesn’t matter. People are scared, and right now you look like the most obvious suspect.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not.” He met my gaze and repeated steadily, “No, it’s not. You had history with both victims, you discovered both bodies, you were heard threatening one of the victims, you were observed on the scene at the time of the murder, and your earring was found at one of the crime scenes.”
I regret to say that I lost all semblance of dignity. I quavered, “Am I going to be arrested?”
“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I think there’s a good chance of it. In the meantime, I’ve promised to lock you in your cabin.”
I couldn’t even get my mouth under control to form the words. I stared at him.
“I’m sorry,” J.X. said. “I meant what I said. I don’t believe you killed anyone, but I have to do what’s best for everyone, and if isolating you out here makes everyone feel safer, that’s what I need to do.”
For one frightening instant I thought I might start crying. Thankfully, anger kicked in and saved the shredded tatters of my pride. “Wait a minute. First of all, who the heck is this witness who supposedly saw me running around last night? Maybe that person is the murderer?”
“I don’t think it’s very likely, but I’m keeping an eye on him.”
“Him. Him who?”
He hesitated.
I said with great, if wobbly, dignity, “You’re locking me up on this person’s say-so. You at least owe me the courtesy of telling me his name. I mean, what happened to my legal right to face my accuser?”
“I’m not shipping you to Alcatraz, Kit,” he said patiently. “It’s just till the storm clears tomorrow. We’ll bring you meals, and I see you’ve got books to read.”
We both stared at my armload of pink and red book covers. I looked away, clenched my jaw hard, sniffed harder.
“Hell,” J.X. muttered. “George Lacey saw you.”
“What was he doing up at that time of night?”
“He and Mindy have one of the front bedrooms. He said he heard you pounding on the door with a poker, but by the time he got downstairs you had gone.”
“So for all he knows I went back to my cabin.”
Still patient, J.X. said, “He didn’t say he saw you kill Steven. He said he saw you running around at what was the approximate time of the murder.”
“Well, for that matter,” I said tartly, “you were running around at the approximate time of the murder too.”
He went very still. “What are you talking about?”
“After I left the arbor, I went to your cabin, where I whaled away with my trusty poker—to no avail.”
To my unease, he couldn’t seem to come up with an answer. I hadn’t really suspected him of killing Krass or anyone else, but the way he stood there looking sort of blank and discomfited threw me.
“Where were you?” I asked.
He seemed to snap out of whatever was mesmerizing him. “I did leave my cabin,” he admitted. “I went down to the icehouse to check on Peaches.”
“Why?” It seemed like such a gruesome thing to do. Brave, but gruesome. And rather unnecessary because it wasn’t like Peaches was trying to escape.
“I don’t know.” It was his turn to look sheepish. “I had an uneasy feeling. This is a weird setup.”
“Again, the keen eye of the Master Detective,” I said bitterly, and I marched on to my cabin.
As we reached my door, he said, “May I have your key?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
“It’s in my back pocket.”
He slid his hand in my back pocket and felt around for the key.
“Other pocket,” I said tightly.
“Sorry.”
He retrieved the key with a minimum of caressing my ass, and unlocked the door. I went past him and threw the stack of paperbacks on the neatly made bed, turning to face him.
“When are my mealtimes, or do I rattle my water glass against the prison bars when I’m hungry?”
He sighed. “Your meals are the regular mealtimes. Look, I’m not enjoying this any more than you are.”
“That’s very easy to say on the other side of the bars.”
“You know, you really are a bit of a drama queen, Kit.”
“And you really are a bit of an insensitive, unimaginative, arrogant, fascist prick.”
His mouth compressed, his eyes darkened.
I added, “And I hope I broke your heart all those years ago.”
“You did,” he said evenly. And with that he stepped outside the cabin and shut the door.
I was still standing there with my mouth open as I heard the key turn in the lock.
Chapter Sixteen
The funny part was, I had been on my way back to my cabin when I discovered Steven Krass’s body, so why was I now prowling the interior of the log cabin, muttering to myself, and returning to the front window every few steps to gaze across the empty field at the rooftop of the lodge?
It was all about freedom of choice. And I currently had none. Also no TV, internet, or telephone. What was I supposed to do to amuse myself for the rest of my stay here at Bates Motel? Wait for the power and heat to go off? Wait for the lynch mob to show up?
When I had worn myself out pacing—which didn’t take long given how out of shape I was—I flung myself on the bed and picked up one of the c
andy-coated novels Rachel had thrust upon me. A short time later I wondered if it was reasonable to consider suicide half an hour after incarceration.
Oh, the books weren’t that bad. Really. But once again it was borne in on me why my beloved Miss Butterwith was getting so severely dissed by the handful of mystery fans still reading print. There were no elderly botanists in this pastel selection of crime fiction. No, the sleuths were wedding planners, fashion reporters, hairdressers, yoga instructors, and chicks with no visible means of support at all. They were young and mouthy and inordinately concerned with fashion and their love lives. You’ve come a long way, baby? Full circle in fact.
I could only take so much of it before I decided I’d prefer to read the instructions on the back of my multitude of grooming products. And, in fact, I was figuring out how to use something called “Shea Butter Ultra Rich Hair Cream” when someone scared me out of a week’s worth of growth by rapping sharply on the cabin window.
I yanked back the plaid curtains and returned the favor as I was wearing some kind of dark blue facial mud mask in addition to the pale blue hair mask. Mindy Newburgh’s eyes went enormous behind the rhinestone glasses, and she fell off the milk crate she was standing on to peer in my window.
“Are you all right?” I called, trying to squint down past the sill.
She picked herself up and climbed back on the milk crate. “Christopher Holmes, what on earth are you doing in there?”
Other than the Peeping Tom thing, she was starting to remind me more and more of my own grandmother. Or perhaps Miss Butterwith.
“I’m killing time,” I replied through the glass. “And, for the record, that’s the only thing I’ve killed since I got here.”
Wasted would be a better word for it.
“You look like you belong in that Blue Man Group.”
“Maybe I can find work with them after I get out of prison.”
She made a tsking sound. “That’s actually why I came down here. I wanted to apologize for Georgie. He’d told J.X. about your midnight escapade before I had a chance to stop him.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I know that, silly. You couldn’t hurt a fly.”
Actually I was pretty good at pinging flies right out of the air, but I tried to look appropriately harmless. “Someone’s trying to frame me.”
“It’s not George.” Mindy wobbled on the milk crate. “He felt that it was his duty to tell what he saw. It’s nothing personal, kiddo. George doesn’t have a lot of imagination.”
I was about to take issue with that statement, when she added, “Anyway, if you did whack Steven, you did us all a favor.”
“I appreciate the support, but I didn’t kill him.”
“I suppose not. You couldn’t have killed Peaches, and it’s obvious the two murders are connected.”
“What’s the connection, though?”
“I think Steven saw whoever killed Peaches.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Remember last night in the bar when we were all at the Wheaton & Woodhouse table…?” She trailed off awkwardly as it occurred to her why I had been at the Wheaton & Woodhouse table last night.
“Vaguely,” I replied.
“Steven was an asshole,” Mindy said. “For the record.” Her breath steamed the glass between us.
“For the record, thank you. What did you see last night?”
“It’s not that I saw anything exactly, but didn’t you think Steven was challenging someone when he was talking about anyone who had information about Peaches’ murder needed to come forward?”
“He was challenging J.X.”
Mindy nodded solemnly.
If I’d been standing on a milk crate, I’d probably have tumbled off it. “You don’t think J.X.…?”
“If Steven was killed because he knew something about Peaches’ death, well, I happened to overhear J.X. and Peaches arguing the night before she was found murdered.”
“About what?”
“I didn’t hear it all. But she called him queer.”
“Isn’t”—I caught myself in time—“that something?” I managed.
“I think J.X. probably is…” Mindy wobbled her hand indicating AC/DC—and nearly fell off her pedestal again. “He and Peaches definitely had a thang goin’ on.”
I can’t tell you how disturbing it is to hear an apple-cheeked granny utter the words “thang goin’ on.”
“Definitely? I thought he was married?”
“What’s that these days?”
Well, she was talking to the right person now. I concurred bitterly, and Mindy said, “Peaches was not above telling J.X.’s wife out of spite. She was a very spiteful person.”
“How do you know?”
“I know,” she said, “because she came on to Georgie, and that was simply to prove to me that she could get anyone she wanted. Of course Georgie wasn’t having any of it.”
My mud-coated face was starting to crack. “Of course not.”
“She also tried to convince Steven to let her try her hand at writing a new series of thrillers about a divorced Jewish female assassin.”
“I thought you already—”
“Exactly.”
“And was Krass entertaining that idea?”
Mindy’s expression changed. I think it belatedly dawned on her that she was building a nice motive for murder for herself. “Of course not. It gives you an idea of the kind of person Peaches Sadler was. Absolutely ruthless. She and Steven were two of a kind.”
I thought this over slowly as the wind shook the window in its frame. “So you think Krass was killed by J.X.?”
Mindy shrugged. “I don’t know, but who’s better placed to hide evidence and control the investigation? And he did lock you up, which really wasn’t necessary in my opinion.”
“I appreciate that.”
She had a point, although I couldn’t really see J.X. losing control to the extent that he would resort to murder. Not that I really knew that much about him—nor did he rank high on my People I’d Like to Know Better list.
The rain was coming down harder now. Mindy’s nose was as pink as her cheeks. She looked skyward and then peered at me through the glass. “Is there anything you need?”
“Paper, pens, ice, another blanket, coffee…”
The top of her head disappeared from sight while I was still talking.
I spent another very long hour washing off all the gunk I had applied, pacing the room and listening to the rain, and trying to outline my ideas for a Regency P.I. novel with a pencil and the single sheet of stationery supplied by the lodge. The lack of paper wasn’t a problem because I was out of ideas not long after I wrote the words London 1815.
When someone pounded on my cabin door shortly before lunch, I jumped to my feet in the hope that the killer had finally arrived to put me out of my misery. The key scraped in the lock, and the door swung open. A tall figure filled the frame. At first I thought it was J.X., and I was very irritated at the way my startled heart sped up.
“I thought you might be getting chilly down here,” Edgar said, holding out a carrier of wood.
I was pretty damn cold by then, so I did appreciate the thought.
“You do know how to light a fire?” Edgar asked.
“Well…I’m used to the gas kind, to tell the truth.”
I appreciated the fact that he didn’t so much as roll his eyes. I sat on the bed so he could see how non-threatening and harmless I was, and he carried the wood in and laid the fire. By the time he stood up again, it was crackling merrily and already starting to throw off a little heat.
“Rita’s getting your lunch ready to bring down now.”
“Thanks.”
“There are candles and matches in the desk drawer if the power goes out.”
“Please tell me the power isn’t going out.”
“We’ve had a couple of flickers today.”
“Great.”
He nodded, polite but
distant, and headed for the door. He paused on the step as though about to say something. Or maybe he was waiting for me to say something, but I had no idea what to say. I didn’t do it! They all said that, right?
Edgar went out and locked the door, and I did a couple more turns around the room. I felt increasingly trapped and desperate. It was silly because I was doing exactly what I’d have done by choice. It was the knowledge that I didn’t have a choice. That I couldn’t leave—and that my peers believed I had killed another person.
It was incredibly depressing.
There was a rattling sound outside the door and another thump.
“It’s open,” I called, to be funny.
The key turned over, and once again the door swung open. This time to reveal Rita, holding a rolled blanket beneath her arm, stooping down to pick up a lunch tray.
I said, “I’d offer to get that for you, but I don’t want you to mistake my enthusiasm for lunch for a jailbreak.”
She gave a dry cackle, which I was grateful for. “That old lady friend of yours gave me a list of things you need.” She lugged the tray over to the desk and deposited it there.
It was a very nice tray. She had loaded it up with sandwiches and cookies and chips and pieces of fruit. There was an ice bucket and a yellow legal pad and a couple of pens.
“Somebody’s going to bring you down an old coffee maker if we can find one,” she informed me.
“Thanks,” I said, and I really was touched. “What’s going on up at the lodge?”
“What do you think?” she asked dryly. “They’re talking. That’s all those folks do.”
“Has J.X. questioned everyone?”
She snorted. I couldn’t tell if that meant he hadn’t bothered now that I was incarcerated or that it had proved a total waste of time.
I sat down at the desk and unwrapped a corned beef on rye bread sandwich. All at once I was starving. Nerves. What I actually needed was sleep, and I was too wound up to close my eyes.
Rita tossed the extra blanket on the foot of the bed.
“I can’t say either of that pair was any loss,” she said. “Whoever did away with ’em did a community service in my opinion.”
“Krass was pretty rude last night,” I agreed around half a sandwich.
