Rum and Razors

by Jessica Fletcher

  Was it likely that the murderer had tossed the weapon into the clear water of the lagoon? It would have made sense, I suppose, especially if it had been a sudden, impetuous act without premeditation. There are two basic types of murders—those that erupt in a moment of extreme passion, and those planned ahead and carried out with a modicum of precision. If someone had planned to kill Walter, I would have put my money on the weapon being carried away for disposal elsewhere, far from the crime scene.

  I watched a few more minutes, then settled in my chair and reviewed my growing list of notes and observations before adding to them.

  I’d been remiss in following up on some things.

  > > Laurie having filed for divorce.

  Having made that notation prompted me to go to the bedroom to retrieve the divorce papers from beneath my clothing in the dresser drawer.

  They were gone. Maybe I’d moved them. I searched everywhere, in every drawer. Nothing. Someone had taken them from the villa.

  I carefully inspected the room for a sign of someone having rummaged around in search of the papers. Everything seemed in order. Whoever had taken them had been very neat, or knew ahead of time exactly where they were. But who could that be? The chambermaid? She wouldn’t have any interest in those papers—unless she’d been instructed by someone to look for them. It was possible that Laurie had eventually learned that I’d accepted the papers from the process server. If so, why not simply confront me? She gave no hint during our brief kitchen meeting that she knew, or was upset. But then again Laurie was proving to be a cool customer in the face of myriad adversity.

  > > Find out who took papers from my room.

  I jotted down what I remembered of the papers. I hadn’t read them thoroughly, had only skimmed them. But I remembered the action for divorce had been filed in Miami, and recalled the attorney’ s name—two names actually, a law firm—Karczmit and Bonner. I wasn’t certain of the spelling of the first name but it was close enough. An unusual name, I’d thought when first seeing it. And I remembered Bonner because of the double n. I notice things like that. Don’t ask me why.

  I naturally wondered to what extent Walter’s extramarital affairs had contributed to Laurie’s decision to divorce him. And, of course, there was the question of whether Laurie had become involved with someone else. If so, had that precipitated her decision to end the marriage—and who was it? Chris Webb? Wouldn’t be the first time the wife of one partner had ended up with the other. Chris Webb came to mind only because of his involvement with the Marschalks, and because I’d met him.

  But if there had been another man in Laurie’s life, it could have been anyone. Unlikely I’d ever find out, but I’d keep my eyes and ears open.

  > > The doctor Jacob Austin had called the night of the murder regarding his sick child.

  His name was Silber. Dr. Silber. Luther Z. Jackson said he would contact him to confirm this potentially lifesaving alibi for Jacob.

  > > Check on whether he did. If not, call Silber myself.

  > > Accusation by Bobby Jensen that pol spear-heading investigation in the Senate on Diamond Reefs payroll. Follow up discreetly at dinner tonight.

  One of my previous notes had to do with the murder of a man named Caleb Mesreau, who, according to the newspaper, had refused to sell his tiny tract of land that took in a portion of Lover’s Lagoon. I wrote: Check newspaper’s “morgue” for background on Mesreau murder.

  I recalled Walter’s comment that first night at dinner that one of the guests in the dining room was, in reality, a “spy” for Diamond Reef Resort. That was the last I’d seen of him, nor had he been mentioned again. If he was, in fact, a spy for the competition, he should have been considered a suspect. Did the police even know about him? Probably not.

  > > Ask Laurie at lunch about the spy.

  There were so many things I wanted to ask Laurie. About the divorce papers. About Walter not having accompanied her to Miami as had been originally planned. She’d said something about his not feeling well, and canceling at the last minute. Probably nothing more to it than that. As it turned out, his “illness” proved fatal.

  Laurie Marschalk was an enigma to me. Her get-on-with-business-as-usual reaction to her husband’s grisly murder was, on the one hand, admirable. At the same time, there was something unnerving about it. She was too capable of handling it.

  Of course, that represented a judgment on my part, something I had neither the right nor privilege of indulging in. Each of us handles adversity in our own unique way. I remember vividly the days following my husband’s death. Assuming that I needed company to fill the lonely days and nights, friends and family insisted upon “taking turns” staying with me. I wanted nothing more than to be alone, but I never expressed it to them. Instead, I dutifully played hostess while tending to the unpleasant chores of making funeral arrangements, and initiating the frustrating, time-consuming business of settling his estate. Did my friends raise an occasional eyebrow at how well I’d “handled it?” Some, perhaps. No matter. I did what I felt I must, and no one else in this world would do it quite the same.

  Still, a vision of Laurie preparing gourmet meals for lunch and dinner, and planning a dinner party caused me a pinch of uneasiness. I’d have to get over it.

  Chapter 15

  My assumption as I headed for the main house was that I would be joining Laurie and remnants of Lover’s Lagoon Inn’s staff for lunch. But the moment I stepped into the dining room, Laurie came to my side, took my elbow, and led me from the room. “I thought you and I would have lunch alone in the office,” she said. “There are a few things I’d like to discuss with you in private.”

  Thomas was in the process of setting up a rolling table for us—heavy white, starched tablecloth, exquisite silver, cut-glass water tumblers, and, of course, the ubiquitous vase holding an artfully arranged grouping of flaming red Chinese hibiscus. The muted, soothing sounds of Vivaldi came from speakers built into the room’s corners.

  Thomas had placed two leafy green salads on the table. A bottle of California Fume Blanc chilled in a bucket on a stand. The crab cakes, I assumed, were being kept warm beneath a domed silver service cart large enough to contain a small body.

  It was picture-perfect for lunch. But there was something else on the table that clashed with the genteel beauty of the setting. The divorce papers!

  “Where did you get that?” Laurie asked after closing the door and indicating I was to sit in a chair, in front of which the divorce papers were placed. She was referring to the Lover’s Lagoon gold pendant I’d purchased in Charlotte Amalie my first full day on St. Thomas.

  I pulled the pendant away from my blouse and held it up for closer inspection. While her eyes focused upon it, mine were fixed upon the legal papers at my place setting. “I bought it in town,” I said.

  “It’s lovely. I haven’t seen it before. It’s in the shape of the lagoon, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” It was the first time I’d worn it. Until this moment, I’d wondered whether wearing a gold display of the location of Walter’s murder would be in good taste. But I decided before leaving my villa that there was nothing distasteful about it.

  “Where did you get it?” she asked.

  “A shop in Charlotte Amalie. Peter, the driver you gave me, is related to the owner. Lover’s Lagoon Jewelry, I think it was called.”

  “A cousin.”

  “Yes.”

  “He calls everyone on the island his cousin.”

  “He seemed to have a lot of them.”

  “If things hadn’t gone the way they have, Jess, I’d order a bunch of those pendants for marketing the inn. Not much left to market, though, is there? Hungry?”

  “Not especially,” I said. “Laurie, I think we should talk about those papers on the table.”

  She looked down at them, then at me. She smiled. “Oh, those? You’ve already read them.”

  “As a matter of fact, I didn’t read them. I know I shouldn’t have accepted them from
the process server, but frankly, I was trying to spare you yet another complication.”

  “That was sweet of you, Jess.”

  “No, it wasn’t, and I don’t think you really consider it an act of sweetness. The fact is I took the papers, read the front page, and put them in a dresser drawer under some clothing. How did you know they were there?”

  Her laugh was nervous, and hardly genuine. “I didn’t know they were there,” she said. “Thomas was in your villa making a minor repair, saw them, and thought I would want to have them.”

  “He was repairing something in my dresser?”

  “I don’t think you’re in a position to question anyone’s actions, Jess. After all, you took legal papers that didn’t belong to you.”

  “You’re absolutely right, Laurie. But now that this has come into the open, would you like to talk about it?”

  “About divorcing Walter? Sure.”

  We sat and started on our salads. As my friend of long-standing began to talk, it was as though no one else was in the room, the perfect setting for a psychotherapeutic session in which the patient free-associates on a couch while the psychiatrist sits out of sight and offers an occasional grunt.

  “... And so I’d reached a point where I could no longer tolerate Walter’s philandering,” she said. “I know it isn’t good form to speak poorly of the dead, especially when it’s your husband, but you might as well know the truth. Walter had an insatiable sexual appetite everywhere but in our own bed. It had been going on for years. At first, I was hurt and felt betrayed, but then I learned to accept it, at least to the extent that it didn’t dominate my life.” She’d been looking down at her salad as she spoke. She raised her eyebrows as though asking for understanding. I said nothing in the best Freudian tradition. She didn’t need any prompting from me.

  “... Which was why we managed to keep the marriage together as long as we did. I focused on those things that were important to me—my cooking and cookbooks, the garden, a few intellectual pursuits that filled the time when Walter was away. He had the perfect job to indulge his agacerie. World-famous travel writer trotting around the globe in search of exotic getaways. Always young and attractive female travel writers on the same trips.” She snickered. “I even reached a point, Jess, where I not only accepted the situation, I actually began to rationalize his behavior. If I were in the same situation, maybe I would have taken on a lover or two.”

  I still said nothing.

  “Are you wondering whether I did? Take on a lover or two?” she asked.

  “No. At least not at the moment, although I did wonder once I saw the divorce papers whether there had been someone else in your life. Frankly, considering the extent of Walter’s adultery, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had.”

  “Not this lady, Jess. There was always too much to do to even consider it. With Walter traveling all the time, everything having to do with our life, especially purchasing, designing, and overseeing the building of this inn, fell to me. Sometimes I didn’t have time to take a breath, let alone strike up a relationship with another man.”

  “I can imagine,” I said, finishing my last leaf of spinach. “I suppose the irony hasn’t been lost on you any more than it has been on me,” I said.

  “Irony?”

  “Yes. Instituting divorce proceedings at a time that coincided with his murder.”

  Laurie nodded, got up, swung open the dome of the serving cart, and placed a plate in front of each of us. The crab cakes looked and smelled divine. They were accompanied by hash browned potatoes cooked to perfection, and crisp green string beans adorned with walnuts and mushrooms.

  We said nothing as we started to eat. I broke the silence by asking, “Is anyone aware besides me that you’d taken action to divorce Walter?”

  Her expression said that she thought it was a silly question. “Of course. My attorney, for one.”

  “Yes, I forgot about him. Anyone besides your attorney?”

  “No, and I prefer to keep it that way.”

  “I can understand that,” I said. “Did Walter know you were taking the action?”

  “You ask a lot of questions, Jess.”

  I laughed. “I always have. You know that from being my friend for so many years in Cabot Cove.”

  “To answer your question, yes, he did. And he wasn’t very happy about it. In fact, he told me he would fight me every inch of the way.”

  I was surprised to hear that. It seemed to me that a man hell-bent on bedding as many women as possible during his lifetime would not be especially upset when his wife of long-standing decided to end the marriage. Then again, I reasoned, Laurie was vitally important to the life Walter had chosen to live, especially once his dream of owning an inn on Lover’s Lagoon had become reality. I didn’t doubt for a moment that it had been Laurie who’d done all the hard work, and that Lover’s Lagoon Inn might never have been possible without her. I suppose my expression mirrored what I was thinking because she said, “You’re obviously surprised that Walter was committed to fighting the divorce. Don’t be. He knew a good thing when he saw it, the best of both worlds, the dutiful wife holding down the fort and making things happen at home, leaving him free to indulge himself.”

  I took a few forkfuls of the crab cakes—they were sumptuous, no surprise—before saying, “Are the police aware—?”

  Her interruption was sharp. “Did the police know I was going to divorce Walter, and that he intended to fight it? That gives me a motive for having him killed, doesn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything like that, Laurie,” I said, a lie, perhaps, but necessary at that moment.

  “But you’d be right to think it,” she said. “If you hadn’t accepted the papers from that process server, none of this would be necessary. But since you have, let me be direct. I do not want anyone to know that I had begun divorce proceedings against Walter, or that he was committed to fighting it. Especially the police. I don’t need the complication of being viewed as an angry wife with a motive to kill.”

  I thought a moment before saying, “They won’t hear it from me. I assure you of that, Laurie.”

  “Good. By the way, I tried to call Vaughan Buckley this morning. He’s out of town, due back this afternoon.”

  “Is Buckley House publishing one of your cookbooks?” I asked. Buckley House, a prestigious New York publisher, had been my publisher for years, and its founder, Vaughan Buckley, and his wife, Olga, had become good friends. I wasn’t aware that Vaughan had published any of Laurie’s culinary efforts, although I did know that Walter Marschalk’s last two travel books carried the Buckley House imprint on their spine.

  “No. I wanted to get an update on royalties that might be due from Walter’s books. I’m looking everywhere these days for funds.”

  “Yes, I imagine. If you talk to Vaughan, please give him my best. Actually, I’m due to call him to see what he thinks of the manuscript I turned in just before leaving Cabot Cove.”

  “I certainly will.” She glanced at the clock. “Enough of this talk. Finish your lunch. I have a million things to tend to before the party tonight. I’m so glad you can come.”

  “Speaking of that, I forgot to mention that Seth Hazlitt from Cabot Cove is on St. Thomas. He’s staying at Diamond Reef.”

  Laurie’s eyes widened, and she sat back in her chair. “Seth here? How wonderful. Why didn’t you invite him for lunch?”

  “I didn’t think it was my business to,” I replied. “But would it be all right if he came to the dinner party tonight?”

  “Would it be all right? I’d be angry if he wasn’t here. You’ll tell him the arrangements?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why is he staying at Diamond Reef?”

  “Didn’t want to intrude upon you.”

  “Tell him to check out and get over here. On the house.”

  “I’ll tell him. Laurie, I know you have to run, and lunch was wonderful. But I’ve been meaning to ask you about the gentleman who had dinner al
one in the dining room the first night I was here. Walter was antagonistic toward him. In fact, he told me he wasn’t a legitimate guest, but was spying for Diamond Reef.”

  “Oh, God,” Laurie said. “Another thing you didn’t know about Walter, Jess, is that as he grew older he developed a terminal case of paranoia. I know the man you’re speaking of, a widower who came here for a few days to get over having just buried his wife. Spy?” She guffawed. “Poor Walter. He saw spies behind every tree.”

  “But you obviously have been engaged in a running battle with Diamond Reef,” I said.

  “Yes. But that was primarily Walter’s doing. The people who own Diamond Reef might not be the most sterling of characters, but they do listen to reason—when reason is presented to them. I’ve developed a decent relationship with their general manager, Mark Dobson.”

  “Yes, I’ve met him,” I said, not wishing to elaborate on how much time I’d actually spent next door.

  “But Walter would never listen to reason,” said Laurie. “As far as he was concerned, this was World War Three. At any rate, forget about spies, Jess. The Cold War is over, both between the United States and the Soviet Union, and between Diamond Reef and Lover’s Lagoon Inn.”

  “I’m relieved to hear it,” I said, dabbing at my mouth with my heavy napkin and standing. “Did you see the police this morning diving into the lagoon? I assume they’re looking for the weapon.”

  “I knew they were coming. They had the courtesy to call ahead of time.”