Somebody Killed His Editor

by Josh Lanyon

  I considered the disabling of the emergency generator. Come to think of it, what had been the point of that? Someone wanted us without power…why? We already couldn’t get out. Contact with the world beyond the lodge was sketchy at best. Someone wanted us to eat cold food and drink cold coffee? Someone wanted us to go without heat? Someone wanted the lights off at night? Bingo. Someone wanted the cover of darkness. Because something had been planned for last night. J.X.’s disappearance. But was it voluntary or involuntary?

  I believed it was involuntary, but…was that because that was what I wished to believe?

  I leaned against the rough wood face of the building, huddling deeper into my coat. It was Northern California, not Alaska, for God’s sake. Why the hell was it so cold? And so quiet…

  I tuned out my uneasiness. So…Edgar. He had the means and probably the opportunity, but it was very hard to see Edgar in the role of ruthless murderer. For one thing he seemed too calm, too practical. This kind of murder was a crime of desperation, surely?

  I mulled that over. Actually there were three—two—different murders to consider. There was Peaches’ murder, which seemed to have been the best planned out. Meaning, whoever had killed her had time to cart her body off to the woods and hide her. Her belongings had been packed, creating the illusion that she had left voluntarily. And if the bridge hadn’t washed out, and I hadn’t come stumbling along, that facade probably would have held up for at least a few days—maybe even a few weeks. Long enough to better conceal the body and belongings.

  One thing was for sure, whoever killed Peaches was pretty coolheaded. They’d have to be, to calmly pack up her belongings and then cart body and suitcases off to the woods.

  That meant having access to Peaches’ room. Granted, he—or she—would have that after they’d killed her. They’d also need access to one of the lodge vehicles—but I’d already noticed that the truck and van keys were kept in a key box behind the front desk. If I’d noticed, safe to assume plenty of other people had too. The killer would need to know about the shrine in the woods, right? But the shrine in the woods was mentioned in the lodge brochure as a hiking destination.

  So…not necessarily someone from the lodge. Not by any means. Besides…what would the motive be? Debbie had clearly adored Peaches. Rita had loathed her, but loathing was still a long way from removing someone from the face of the planet. Edgar…it was hard to read Edgar. He mostly seemed to view Peaches as a pain in the ass.

  Motive. That was the hard part because aside from Debbie, the only person who seemed to feel much affection for Peaches had been Krass.

  Man, it was taking a long time for Edgar to show up. I rubbed my hands up and down my wool-covered shoulders and walked the length of the icehouse a couple of times to try and keep warm.

  Krass. His murder seemed much more like a matter of expediency. He had seen something that made him suspicious—he couldn’t have known for sure who killed Peaches because he’d surely not have been stupid enough to meet that person alone behind the lodge that night. Assuming that was what had happened. Whoever killed Krass, in my opinion, had killed him out of fear of exposure. So the key to the murderer still lay with figuring out who had a strong enough grudge against Peaches to risk killing her this weekend.

  Because that was the other key consideration—timing. Why this weekend? If it was someone who knew and loathed Peaches, why now? Why not wait? Killing her at Blue Heron Lodge guaranteed a small pool of suspects, which upped the chance of getting caught.

  There must have been some urgency for getting rid of her now. Why?

  I turned my collar up and considered the time-honored tropes of mystery fiction. Pregnancy. Peaches was pregnant with someone’s baby. That let Edgar out, but what about George and J.X.? J.X. had apparently been seeing Peaches socially, so it was a possibility. Mindy kept George on a pretty tight leash, but that didn’t mean he never slipped his collar, and he’d certainly been quick to try and get me lynched for the murders.

  Or what about this…what if Peaches was actually Debbie’s biological mother and she had come to claim her this weekend? Even if she hadn’t come to claim her…I could see Rita wiping Peaches out without thinking twice to protect Debbie.

  Yeah. I liked that. I liked it a lot better than the notion that Peaches and J.X. were having an affair.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the squishy thud of approaching footsteps. I waited, eyes searching the swirling brume.

  I saw his cowboy hat first, and then Edgar appeared out of the fog. Belatedly, it occurred to me that if Edgar was the killer, I had placed myself in an extremely vulnerable position—although if Edgar was the murderer, even he must be getting uneasy about the unsightly body buildup.

  His greeting was prosaic enough as he held up a key ring. “Your friends told me you think the cop might have been dumped in the icehouse.”

  “I know it’s a long shot.”

  “Son, it’s no shot at all. You saw the chain on the door. I locked that padlock myself yesterday morning after we put your editor in there. Nobody could get inside.”

  “Where do you keep that key ring?”

  He hesitated. “In the front desk drawer.”

  “Someone could have taken them, then.”

  He stared at me. I couldn’t tell if he was mostly exasperated or confounded. “All right,” he said at last, in the tone of one humoring an unreasonable but loyal customer. “Let’s have a look.” He picked up the chain and inserted the key in the padlock.

  I realized I was shaking with nerves and cold as I waited for him to twist the key, wriggle loose the shank, and pull the chain free. It slid clanking to the ground, and Edgar hauled open the heavy door. The hinges groaned.

  “Watch where you step,” Edgar warned me. “There’s a wooden walkway around the spring. It’s not in great shape these days.” He ducked inside the door, and I followed him cautiously.

  Edgar switched his flashlight on. The wan beam swept across the still, ink-black water and poked into the cobwebbed corners. Two long motionless tarps lay side by side on the ground beside the walk. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.

  The smell of death mingled with dank water. My stomach roiled unhappily. I was glad I hadn’t had anything to eat for breakfast.

  “Seen enough?” Edgar asked somberly.

  “How deep is the spring?”

  I felt his stare. “You’ve got quite an imagination,” he said. “It’s about twelve feet deep.”

  My footsteps echoed hollowly as I picked my way down the wooden ties that formed the walkway. Kneeling, I peered into the pool. It was black, fathomless. I couldn’t see anything in those jet waters. I dipped my hand in. Ice cold. I pushed the water aside, trying to see through the murky wet. Yeah. Nice try.

  I rose painfully, my back protesting all this unaccustomed physical activity. If I managed to survive this weekend, I was going to make getting back in shape a priority. I said, “Can you shine the light over here? I want to check who’s wrapped in these tarps.”

  The silence that followed was one of the loudest I’ve ever heard.

  At last Edgar said, “You think the killer tossed one of the bodies in the pond and wrapped Moriarity in a tarp? Why not throw Moriarity in the pond?”

  “Because maybe he’s not dead.” I cautiously approached the first mound of tarp. I’m not going to pretend I was filled with anything but dread. Thanks to too many scary movies, I wouldn’t have been surprised if a hand had suddenly shot out of the wrappings and grabbed my ankle. Well, maybe I would have been surprised, but mostly I’d have been too busy shrieking.

  I said with a steadiness I didn’t feel, “Maybe the killer is keeping him alive for some reason.”

  “What reason?”

  Edgar’s footsteps came down the wooden walkway. The flashlight beam spotlighted the top of the nearest tarp.

  “I don’t know.” I said, “Maybe J.X. has some information he needs. Or maybe the killer is leery of killing a cop. Or an ex-
cop. I’d be. Cop killers don’t do so well. Or…maybe I have to believe that he’s still alive.”

  “I didn’t think you two got along,” Edgar said after a pause.

  “We don’t.”

  When I didn’t say anything more or make another move, Edgar said grimly, “Be my guest.”

  I bent over the long tarp and pulled back one dusty edge. Steven Krass. Steven Krass with an expression straight out of a horror movie. I swallowed hard and covered his face again.

  I stood up feeling weirdly lightheaded.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I got out. I walked around Krass to the other neatly wrapped mound. I bent and jerked back the flap. Wrong end. But maybe that was a blessing. Her feet looked like wax in the dingy light. The toe ring glinted dully. I tossed the tarp back over her and straightened, hand pressed to the small of my back.

  “Seen enough?” Edgar asked politely.

  I nodded. Words were beyond me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The first person I ran into when we got back to the lodge was Mindy Newburgh. She saw me and sniffed, heading for the staircase.

  I went after her and said, “Mindy, I owe you an apology. I was rattled this morning, and I said some things I didn’t mean.” Not the things I’d said to her, but no point rubbing salt in the wound.

  She paused on the lower steps and looked me up and down disapprovingly. “You were hysterical this morning.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. Murder accusations before I’ve had my coffee make me cranky.”

  She said patiently, “I wasn’t accusing you of murder. I was accusing J.X. of murder.”

  “I don’t like that a lot better, to tell you the truth.”

  “Well, if I’d realized at the time that you had one of those unrequited things for him, I’d have…I suppose I’d have tried to be more sensitive. Really, I don’t know what I’d have done, Christopher, because it’s perfectly obvious J.X. is the culprit and now he’s made his escape.”

  “He hasn’t made his escape. He’s the killer’s latest victim.”

  “Nonsense. There’s absolutely no sign of him, and we all spent the morning searching the grounds.”

  How quick everyone was to turn the minute one of the herd showed weakness. Was the pack mentality programmed in? I protested, “But what would his motive be?”

  “It’s perfectly obvious that he and Peaches were having an affair. I think he wanted to break it off, and she threatened to tell his wife.”

  Could that possibly be grounds for murder in this day and age? True, I’d used it a few times in books, but I’d also used the blackmailed-for-being-homosexual and, except in the case of politicians and public figures, that motive had pretty much rusted to a standstill.

  “Do you have any proof he was having an affair with her?”

  “When you get to be my age, you have a sense for these things.”

  Was that like the sixty-seventh sense? Given the tripe Mindy wrote, I found it hard to believe she had the faintest notion of how people actually related to each other in the real world. Unless I was missing my—admittedly cynical—guess, she was holding the luscious George in thrall by the purse strings. Which reminded me.

  “You said Peaches came on to George. Was that here at the lodge?”

  Her eyes were very hard and very bright behind the pink rhinestone spectacles. “Yes, it was here. But don’t try to drag Georgie into this mess. He told her to stuff it.”

  It took supreme effort, but I let that last comment go. Instead, I said, “Did he tell you about it, or did you happen to overhear them?”

  “He came straight to me and told me all about it,” Mindy said. “And I gave that little bitch a piece of my mind then and there.”

  “Then and there where?”

  “I went right to her room and told her what I thought of her behavior.”

  “And what did she say?”

  Mindy’s cheeks grew pink. “She pretended to laugh it off, but I know those words struck home.”

  I don’t think even Mindy believed that charming fantasy, but I nodded politely.

  “She had somebody with her, though,” Mindy said suddenly, frowning. “There was a man in there with her. I just thought of it. She was holding the door half-shut so that I couldn’t see past her, but I saw a pair of men’s boots by the foot of the bed when she first opened the door.”

  “Did you recognize the boots?”

  Mindy made a tsking sound that reminded me strongly of Miss Butterwith. “I don’t look at men’s feet.” She made it sound slightly lurid.

  “What kind of boots were they? Cowboy boots?”

  “I don’t…I don’t remember. I didn’t really notice. I only glimpsed them.”

  Wouldn’t cowboy boots stick in her memory? They were pretty visual. “What night was this?”

  “Thursday.” Her eyes were narrowed, thinking back. “It wasn’t Georgie, obviously. And it wasn’t Steven because he was still in the bar.”

  “What time was it?”

  “Late. After eleven.”

  Only here in Westworld would eleven be considered late. I had to admit that this was an interesting development. There was no proof that the man with Peaches had killed her, but at the same time no one had rushed forward with the information he’d been boinking the deceased the night of her death.

  “So you see,” Mindy said. “Everything indicates J.X.”

  “Or Edgar.” For that matter, Rita wore rugged work boots. Not that I thought for one instant that Rita and Peaches had put aside their differences for some sizzling sheet time. And frankly I wasn’t discounting Gorgeous George merely because Mindy alibied him.

  “Edgar!” Mindy chuckled. “Edgar was the one man here absolutely impervious to that slut’s charms. I don’t think he even knew she existed.”

  I said, “I thought George was absolutely impervious to her charms?”

  Mindy’s smile faded. Her eyes were cold. “I was not including George, naturally.” She looked at the pink rhinestone watch on her wrist. “Look at the time. I wanted to get my seven pages in this morning.”

  She bustled up the staircase, and I headed for the main meeting room. The conference was now officially over, but since we were all stuck for the time being, the room was crowded with small groups of chatting women. I didn’t see anyone I wanted to talk to, and I backed out again.

  I tried the dining room next, but it was empty except for the couple of staff members setting up for lunch. I had better luck in the bar where I found Rachel and Espie drowning their sorrows over glasses of wine that looked large enough to be water tumblers.

  “Hoo boy, Christopher, you have got to hear this,” Espie greeted me when I poked my head through the doorway. She beckoned me over, and I slid into the booth beside Rachel.

  She nodded cordially to me and said on a little gust of wine breath, “Don’t give up, Christopher. Don’t ever give up.”

  Being the amazing master detective that I am, it took me about two seconds to deduce they were both drunk off their butts. At eleven thirty in the morning, no less. And people said I drank too much.

  “Go get a drink,” Espie commanded. “You gotta hear this.”

  “And it’ll go down better if I’m drunk?”

  They both giggled maniacally at that, and I slid out of the booth and went over to the bar where Rita was wiping glasses. She gave me a dry look—the only dry thing in the room at that point.

  Ordering a brandy, I carried it back to the table.

  They both watched solemnly as I took a swallow. Then Espie said to Rachel, “Tell him.”

  “You tell him,” Rachel said, recalcitrant all at once. In all the years of our association I’d never known her to be remotely tipsy. The weekend’s fallout had resulted in some stimulating moments.

  Espie leaned across the table and whispered, “There is a rumor going around…” She started laughing, unable to finish. Fascinated, I studied the crinkling tattoo tear by her eye as she soundl
essly giggled.

  “Holmes and Moriarty,” Rachel said, losing patience. “Christopher Holmes and Julian Xavier Moriarity. Someone finally noticed your last names, and the rumor going round is that this is all some kind of battle of wits between you and J.X.” She met Espie’s eyes, and they practically fell across the tabletop laughing.

  When I had recovered enough to respond, I said, “Can’t these morons spell? His name is M-o-r-i-a-r-i-t-y not M-o-r-i-a-r-t-y.”

  For some reason that struck them as even funnier.

  “Holmes and Moriarity sitting in a tree, K-I-L-L-I-N-G,” sing-songed Espie. Rachel bent over the table, her nose just missing the fogged surface as her head bounced with giggles.

  “Dear God,” I murmured.

  “Elementary, my dear Holmes,” gulped Espie.

  I swallowed the rest of my brandy and rose. “Is there any word from the sheriff’s department? When are they sending help? We’ve been cut off for three days.”

  “Two and a half,” Rita said from behind the bar.

  All at once I was very tired—and fresh out of ideas. I left Rachel and Espie cackling to themselves and wandered down to the reading room. The kid, Debbie, was in one of the overstuffed chairs reading furtively. She sat bolt upright when I walked in, and I saw the title of the paperback she held. Some Like it Haute by Peaches Sadler.

  She moved to make her escape. I said, “Can you not run away? I swear to you I had nothing to do with anyone’s death. I’m as scared as you are.”

  She sank back in her chair, eyeing me warily. “Then why does everyone think you did it?”

  “They don’t. Now they think J.X. did it.”

  I could see by her expression that she had heard that rumor. She scoffed. “No way. He’s not the type.”

  “Ouch. But you think I am?”

  She smiled reluctantly, although her gaze was still doubtful. “He got along with everyone. He was nice.”

  “Yeah, he was.” My throat closed up, and I had to look away. It had to be the lack of sleep, but for a second I couldn’t say anything.