“Security discovered him this morning and called Meagan directly before notifying the police,” Stella replied. “She’s in the White Room, lying down. I asked Ms. B. and Chef Durand to keep an eye on her.”
“I’m glad she’s not alone. Poor thing… the old man’s death alone should have been enough to put her down, but this? What in the devil’s name is going on?”
“I don’t know, but we’re going to try and find out.”
“We?”
“Yes, Meagan asked me to look into your step-father’s death and Bauersfeld’s murder, just to see if there’s any connection.”
Rousseau shook his head as if to clear the cobwebs from his brain. “Why you? What am I missing here?”
“I’m an amateur detective... of sorts,” Stella blushed.
“Meagan had read about how Stella and I – well, mostly Stella,” Nick explained, “solved a murder in our new hometown, so Meagan asked Stella if she would consult on this case.”
“Okay. Again, why?” Rousseau questioned. “I mean the police have been called, haven’t they? Let them do their job.”
“I most certainly intend to do so,” Stella assured. “But, as they do their work, I’ll be keeping my eyes open for any possible clues that might link the two deaths together.”
“Thanks, but I really don’t see the need for that. Between the tent slashing and the murder, it’s clear that someone had it out for Arthur Bauersfeld. My step-father had a heart condition. You’re comparing apples with oranges. Clearly, the excitement of the event was too much for him. The fact that he died on the same day as Arthur Bauersfeld is sheer coincidence. We don’t need an amateur sleuth checking behind closed doors to tell us that.”
Stella pulled a face.
Noticing her frown, Rousseau apologized. “Please don’t take what I said personally, Mrs. Buckley. I have no doubt that you’re quite good at what you do, but you could be Angela Lansbury herself and my reaction would still be the same: we don’t need a consulting detective on this case.”
“What is it with the Angela Lansbury comparisons?” Stella complained. “Do I look like the type to wear twinsets and blazers with shoulder pads and drink tea? Why doesn’t anyone ever mention Cybill Shepherd? Or Stephanie Zimbalist?”
“Hey, that would make me Remington Steele,” Nick declared before blowing on his fingernails and polishing them on his coat lapel.
“Ummm… there’s that Agatha Raisin actress too,” Stella suggested. “Blonde. Cute. Awkward.”
“Look, Lansbury, Zimabalist, Shepherd, it doesn’t matter. We don’t need a consulting detective,” Rousseau said sternly.
“And perhaps you don’t,” Stella conceded. “But I promised Meagan I would check things out and I have no intention of disappointing her. I think we can both agree that she needs all the comfort and reassurance she can get right now.”
Rousseau grudgingly consented and the trio made their way outdoors and across the muddy fairgrounds to the Bauersfelds’ tent. There, at the police cordon, they encountered the familiar face of Officer Ramsey, shielded from the rain by the wide brim of his department-issued gray hat. Behind him, through the opening of the tent, they could see a uniformed female officer, another male officer, and a man in plain clothes snapping photographs and bagging evidence.
“Mr. Rousseau,” Ramsey received them somberly. “These folks with you?”
“Yes, Nick and Stella Buckley. They are part of the Cavalcade.”
“Oh, yeah, I thought I recognized them from the house earlier.” Ramsey lifted the bright yellow caution tape to allow the trio admittance. “Sheriff Wilkins is in charge of the investigation.”
Rousseau thanked the officer and he, Stella, and Nick entered the tent. After a few moments of adjustment, Stella’s eyes picked out the figure of a man slouched into a Zero Gravity chair. His eyes and mouth were open, his complexion bore a grayish blue cast, and his arms, which hung lifelessly at the sides of the chair, ended in clenched fists. In the center of his chest, close to the heart, had been lodged a copper colored knife, the handle of which was bedecked with all manner of wires, watch faces, and gears. An irregularly shaped circle of dried blood, approximately four inches in diameter, surrounded the wound, staining Bauersfeld’s tan fleece pullover a deep reddish brown.
“This is a crime scene, not a parade ground,” the female officer shouted.
“Sorry,” Rousseau apologized. “I’m looking for Sheriff Wilkins.”
“You’ve found her. Who are you?”
“I’m Mark Rousseau, CFO of the Creator’s Cavalcade.”
Sheriff Wilkins was a tall, busty brunette in her early to late fifties with pretty, yet somewhat hardened, features. “So, are you in charge of this fair?”
As Rousseau and the Sheriff got their facts straight, Stella watched as rain poured in through a large tear in the top of the tent, soaking the heavy blanket draped over the dead man’s legs. Positioned approximately five feet behind the Zero Gravity chair was a fully inflated queen size air mattress, which had been fully made up with pillows, blankets, and a lavender sleep mask. To the right of this mattress resided a bedside reading lamp, which was illuminated, a bottle of French Chenin Blanc still three quarters full, and a partially empty wine glass whose pattern matched that of the glasses used at dinner the previous evening.
“Since my step-father’s passing this morning, um, yes. Yes, I suppose I am in charge,” Rousseau answered in a tone that was less than commanding.
“Good. If I have any questions, I know to look for you. And these people? Who are they?”
“Nick Buckley with the U.S. Forest Service and his wife, Stella, our consulting detective. They are both part of the Creator’s Cavalcade this weekend.”
“A consulting detective, huh? Do you have a private investigator’s license?”
“No, but I’m not a private investigator. I’m more of a um, amateur sleuth.”
Wilkins’ eyes narrowed.
“I helped the Windsor County Police with a murder case last month when a dead body was discovered in the well on our property,” Stella continued. “Ms. McArdle, who, with Mr. Rousseau, is also in charge of the Creator’s Cavalcade, had read about that case in the papers and asked if I wouldn’t mind helping on this one.”
“Windsor County? Then you must have worked with Sheriff Charlie Mills.”
“Yes I did. Great man. Good friend. Do you know him?”
“I did,” Wilkins emphasized the past tense form of her statement. “Be warned, Mrs. Buckley, that I run a much tighter ship than that buttercup Mills does. I’m not sure what ‘help’ Ms. McArdle thought you might be able to provide to me and my officers, but we are entirely capable of handling this investigation on our own.” With that, Wilkins commanded Officer Ramsey to remove Stella, Nick, and Rousseau from the crime scene and to ensure that the entire estate was on lockdown.
“Lockdown?” Rousseau nearly shrieked. “Some of our guests have already been admitted to the Cavalcade. Others are waiting at the gates. We can’t keep people here against their will. And we can’t lock them out either; they may never come back!”
Sheriff Wilkins was unmoved. “And I can’t have sticky-fingered kids and their parents traipsing through my crime scene and destroying potential evidence. I’m sorry, Mr. Rousseau, but this is the way it has to be. Once my men have spoken with everyone here and have collected every footprint, fiber, gum wrapper, and whats-it that could belong to the killer, we’ll open the gates again. In the meantime, your guests are just going to have to find ways to occupy themselves.”
As Rousseau did his best to dissuade the Sheriff, Stella led Nick in the direction of the U.S. Forest Service tent.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” Nick stated forlornly.
“You guess what’s what?” Stella asked.
“Your investigation just tanked, didn’t it? Sheriff Wilkins isn’t about to share the details of Bauersfeld’s death with you.”
Stella shrugged. “I may not be a
ble to access the forensic evidence when it comes in, but I think I have enough to get me started.”
“You do? How?”
“Well, you saw the crime scene too, honey. You must have noticed some things.”
“I did. That knife, I mean the murder weapon, was very Steampunk in design.”
“Uh huh,” Stella agreed. “Anything else?”
“The bedside light was on, meaning Bauersfeld was killed before sunrise,” Nick ventured.
“So before, what, seven a.m.?”
“Right now, at the end of October, it’s more like seven thirty.”
“Really?” Stella offered in a surprised tone. “Well, as you know, I’m only a morning person on one day of the year: December twenty-fifth.”
“And even then, you need to finish your first cup of coffee before attempting to open a gift.”
“True that,” she allowed. “So, when you noticed Bauersfeld’s bedside lamp, did you also notice the bottle of wine and the glass beside it?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Mm hmm. The glass was half-full and designed in the same pattern as those we used during dinner last night.”
“Meaning either Arthur Bauersfeld went up to the house last night to get himself a glass of wine –”
“Which, given the bottle in question retails for approximately thirty dollars and Oona’s description of her husband’s simple tastes, is highly doubtful,” Stella inserted.
“– or someone staying in the house last night brought the wine down to Bauersfeld. Only question is, which of them drank the wine – Bauersfeld or his guest? Or, was there a second glass that went missing?”
“It doesn’t much matter, does it? Whoever drank from that glass was seated on the bed, which implies a rather intimate relationship.”
“Oona,” Nick specified.
“She’s the most likely candidate. Unless, of course, Arthur Bauersfeld was involved with someone else. But for now, let’s assume the most obvious solution is the correct one.”
“But I saw Oona right before bed. She had just gotten out of the shower and was…”
“Naked,” Stella filled in the blank. “You can say the word. We’re both grown-ups, you know.”
“I know. I just didn’t want to relive the memory.”
They had reached their tent, the flaps of which had been secured in preparation for the previous night’s storm. Nick proceeded to remove the elastic ties that bound the entranceway. “As I was saying, when I last saw Oona, she had just gotten out of a hot shower and didn’t look like she wanted to go back out into the cold any time soon.”
“Yes, but that was at eleven o’clock at night. Who knows what she was thinking or feeling as the night went on. She may have gone to bed and had trouble sleeping. She may have wanted to check in on her husband to make sure he was okay. Or she might have gotten lonely, and decided to pay her husband a visit.” Stella drew quotes in the air to emphasize this last word.
“Ew,” Nick grimaced.
“Really?” she challenged. “What’s so ‘ew’ about that?”
“He’s dead and she’s the type of woman who thinks it’s okay to walk around someone else’s house wearing only a towel and strike up conversations with the guests.” He looked up from the tent flap he had just liberated. “Ew – on both counts.”
“Okay, you may have a point there,” Stella wrinkled up her nose. “Aesthetic issues aside, however, you must admit that everything I’ve said so far is plausible.”
“Yeah, except for maybe Oona getting dressed again to go outside. When she arrived at the dining room, her clothes were drenched.”
“If Oona visited her husband later in the night, closer to dawn, her clothes would have had sufficient time to dry. Then again, a woman intent on killing her husband wouldn’t care about the state of her clothes.”
Nick bolted upright. “You think Oona killed her husband? How did you happen to come up with that?”
“I didn’t. I’m just thinking out loud. In any murder case, the spouse is the first suspect, but I don’t know how that would fit with Morehouse’s death or if I should even be trying to connect the two,” she sighed. “Right now, there are more questions than answers – the Allen key, the wine glass, the Steampunk knife, and more importantly, why was Arthur Bauersfeld found sitting in the rain when he had a warm, dry bed less than five feet behind him?”
Nick opened his mouth to answer, but before he could speak a word, a frenzied Mark Rousseau appeared tent-side. “That sheriff is the most unreasonable, insufferable woman on the planet!”
“I take it we’re still locked down,” Stella presumed.
“Tighter than spandex on a fat man. They’ve even bolted all the porta-potties shut, in case someone tries to flush evidence. Can you believe it? There are thirty to forty families with small children stuck out here in the rain and they have no bathroom to use!”
“In other words, we should do our best to avoid stepping in puddles,” Nick quipped.
Rousseau didn’t crack a smile. “In other words, it’s damage control time. Do whatever you can to keep the families here this morning entertained. And tell them that their admission is free tomorrow. I don’t know how else to keep them coming back – especially if the rain and toilet situation turn this place into a modern-day Woodstock.”
“Minus the mind-altering drugs,” Nick interjected. “And music.”
“Speaking of music,” Rousseau’s eyes slid to the tent next door. “Have you seen Dan?”
“No,” Stella replied. “But he must have been here at some point this morning. His tent was open when we arrived.”
“Well, when you see him, pass along the word about tomorrow’s admission. I’ve got to run along and tell the others.”
“Sure,” Nick agreed while Rousseau pulled the hood of his rain slicker over his head and dashed off to visit the next Cavalcade participant.
“Hmm,” Stella’s eyes narrowed as she stared at the Salvage Guy’s tent. “I wonder…”
“Uh oh,” Nick moaned.
“Settle down. I’m just going to see how that instrument rack is put together.”
“Since when do you care about construction techniques?”
“Since now,” she answered slyly. “Keep watch for me, will you?”
Nick ran a hand through his chestnut hair and heaved a loud sigh as he watched his wife slink into the adjacent tent. “You’re killing me. You know that don’t you?”
“Uh huh.” Stella approached the sculpture-like structure and looked past the random collection of saw blades, hubcaps, road signs, and cooking vessels to examine the network of aluminum pipes supporting the cacophonous compendium of objects. Spying a spot where a vertical conduit and a horizontal conduit met at a right angle, she reached into the pocket of her raincoat for the Allen key found in Morehouse’s bedroom.
Grasping the key in the facial tissue in which it had been wrapped, Stella inserted it into the head of the connecting bolt and turned it counterclockwise twice, thus loosening the connection to the point where the pipes might rattle against each other, but not so far as to allow the structure to entirely collapse.
Satisfied with her handiwork, Stella smiled, rewrapped the Allen key in the tissue, and moved to place it back into her pocket.
“Hello,” came a voice behind her.
With a gasp, Stella spun around, dropping the Allen key onto the grassy floor of the tent.
Two young boys, one sporting a blue Mohawk and a bright green rain slicker, the other a pair of glasses and a red slicker, stood approximately two feet away.
The boy with the glasses bent down and retrieved the Allen key from the ground and handed it to her. “Sorry if we scared you. My brother and I came to hear some music. Do you play all these things?”
Although the boys were the same height, it was clear from his facial features as well as his diction and mannerisms that the boy with the glasses was the older of the two. He was also very much an extrovert while his broth
er, who was busying himself by performing karate chops and kicks on the rack of junk, preferred to expend his energy on athletic endeavors.
“I’m afraid I don’t. This is the Salvage Guy’s stuff and he’s on a break right now, but I’m sure he’ll be back soon to play concerts and jam out with you guys. I’m actually part of the tent next door, which represents the U.S. Forest Service,” Stella explained.
“Like campgrounds and stuff?” the boy with the glasses asked.
“Yep. Campgrounds, forests, and wildlife,” Stella explained as Nick appeared in the Salvage Guy’s tent.
“And don’t forget historic sites, parks, canyons, craters, hiking trails, lakes and lots of other cool stuff,” Nick elaborated with a wink in Stella’s direction. “I’m Ranger Buckley.”
“I’m Lucah,” said the boy with glasses. “And this is my brother, Sawyer.”
“Nice to meet you both. Why don’t we head next door and I’ll show you guys some things you can do once the rain stops.”
As the boys followed Nick, a man with short-cropped reddish brown hair, a mustache and beard and a woman sporting a neatly trimmed brunette bob arrived at the Forest Service tent. Given Sawyer’s resemblance to the woman and Lucah’s likeness to the man, it was obvious the pair were the boys’ parents.
Stella carefully wrapped the Allen key in the facial tissue and returned it to her coat pocket, all the while listening to Nick explain to Lucah how to take rubbings of leaves, tree bark and various flora.
“Here’s a scavenger hunt list with pictures and a description of each plant. When the weather dries out, you can hike in the woods around here or even around your house and look for these plants. When you find something on the list, you put your piece of paper over it, taking care to align with the photo, and rub, gently with the piece of charcoal, like this,” he demonstrated. “Got it?”
Lucah nodded.
“And when you’ve collected rubbings for every plant, take a photo of your list and post it to the U.S. Forest Service website. Once you’ve uploaded it, we’ll send you a Junior Botanist badge for all your efforts.”
“Cool!”
“And Sawyer,” Nick started, “you strike me as being an athlete and adventurer. How would you like to hunt for hidden treasure?”
Short-Circuited in Charlotte: A Pret' Near Perfect Mystery Page 11
