Wreck the Halls

by Sarah Graves

  “Oh, come on. Just for that?” I waved at the venerable old maple. It was impressive, all right, a gigantic specimen that in summer would be a green paradise, in autumn a ball of flame. It had probably been planted around the time Washington crossed the Delaware. But it was hardly, I thought, a motive for murder.

  “We don’t know what killing Merle was for,” Ellie said. But as we reached Melinda's door she said, “I just wanted to talk to her.”

  By now it was full dark although my watch said the time was just four-thirty. Monday frisked in the snow, rolling in it to make doggy snow-angels.

  “But I’m not so sure that surprising them together is a good idea,” Ellie went on, frowning at the house.

  Going in somewhere, though, was essential. Walking had kept my blood moving but now the cold was seeping through the soles of my boots, turning my toes to ice cubes.

  “Look, I’m freezing. Let's go in and call, see if Sam's home, and ask him to come get us.” Otherwise, the trip back to my house was going to be a survival trek.

  “Maybe they won’t be delighted to see us,” I went on, “but if things get ugly we’ll walk out again, wait outside for Sam, and go home as if nothing happened. It’ll be fine,” I said.

  Which may have set the record for the largest number of complete inaccuracies uttered by me in a single breath. Because we did go in, and things did get ugly.

  But we didn’t walk out again as if nothing had happened.

  Not by a long shot.

  “What are you doing here?” Peter scowled up from the red velvet settee that formed the centerpiece of Melinda's lavish sitting room.

  Simple decor would have been the natural choice in a Maine island cottage overlooking Passamaquoddy Bay. Instead she’d filled the spaces with enough gilt mirrors, brocade wallpaper, fringed draperies, and figured lampshades to furnish a bordello.

  Peter held a glass of wine in one hand and a complicated-looking hors d’oeuvre of some sort in the other. A fire burned in the state-of-the-art propane fireplace Melinda had put in, preferring it of course to the labor and mess of wood. The stereo was playing “Bolero.” An upholstered wing chair was draped with Melinda's signature paisley scarf; no doubt she’d looked fetching by the firelight, toying with its fringes. But now at the sight of us she’d jumped to her feet, and what she looked, primarily, was livid.

  Thin, gorgeous, and furious with us: black slacks that made her look slim as a switchblade, cashmere sweater, angry pouting mouth below cheeks made even pinker than usual by her emotion. “Peter,” she said, not trying to hide her annoyance, “please pour our unexpected guests a—”

  “Shut up, Melinda,” he snapped. “They don’t want a drink.”

  Or if we did, I gathered we weren’t getting it. I glanced around: no sign here of Melinda's rumored brother-in-residence. Suddenly I wondered how accurate a story that was, too.

  “Haven’t you two made things bad enough already?” Peter demanded, glaring at Ellie and me. “For God's sake, I’ve had reporters calling.”

  I wondered as well why Melinda let him talk to her that way; it wasn’t like her. I’d seen her split a fellow's lip once at a dinner party after he got tipsy and said—not realizing she was standing right behind him—that he didn’t care how warm-blooded she was, she was still too skinny to make a man a decent mouthful.

  Thinking of that reminded me that she was capable of violence. But: beyond the sitting room, china and crystal gleamed on the dining table. Tall red candles were lit, the cloth was a festive green-and-gold, and delicious aromas drifted from beyond the swinging doors of her designer kitchen. She wanted something, all right, enough to let Peter Christie sass her.

  Or feared something. And not for Melinda the direct approach when devious would do.

  “Listen,” I said, “I’m not trying to get you in trouble. But I’ve got a decision to make about what I tell Bob Arnold,” I continued to Peter. “I know you weren’t here the night Merle died. And I know Faye Anne wasn’t, either. If you were together, and you don’t want that getting out, I understand. But if not, if you were doing something else…”

  Such as getting ready to knock off Merle Carmody and make it look as if Faye Anne had done it, I added silently. “… well, that would be another matter. Wouldn’t it?”

  Melinda's eyes narrowed. “Peter, dear, I think you should confide in Jacobia, don’t you? Because it might look—”

  Oh, what the heck; we were here, and the two of them were already mad at us. So I interrupted:

  “Yeah, it sure might. And here's how: you, Melinda, and Faye Anne all get together in a plan. Peter kills Merle, and Faye Anne takes the blame with her cockamamie story about not remembering what happened, counting on you, Peter, to get her out afterwards. Melinda's part in it is, she gets rid of an enemy in return for helping you.”

  Precisely how that part would work, especially since she didn’t seem to be helping him much right now, I hadn’t figured out yet. But maybe if I rattled them enough, they’d tell me.

  “Maybe Faye Anne goes to jail for a while,” I added firmly as Melinda gasped and Peter looked as if I might be his next victim any minute. “Maybe not. Merle's habit of hitting her could play a part in how that turns out.” In the other room, Ellie spoke quietly on the telephone, calling Sam.

  “But what Faye Anne doesn’t know,” I continued, “is that Merle's bad habit is the only thing she's got going for her. Because whatever you promised her, Peter, it could be that you weren’t planning to deliver it. Or,” I added, glancing around at the romantic setting, “you aren’t, anymore.”

  I was just fishing, hoping he’d bite if he got angry enough, and start talking. To my complete astonishment, he did.

  “All right, all right, we were together, Faye Anne and me. Is that such a crime? I needed to talk with her,” he added to Melinda, who despite her earlier joking on the topic now looked seriously unhappy at his admission. So either she was a marvelous actress or she really hadn’t known where he was, on Sunday night.

  “The thing is, Melinda and I were becoming… involved,” he told me. “And it was over between me and Faye Anne. She’d made that clear. But it wasn’t like I didn’t care about her at all.”

  Melinda was watching him carefully, waiting for more.

  Me, too. Meanwhile, Ellie had wandered into the dining room, to the long row of windows that looked out over the back garden. Four balsam wreaths made matched, ribboned bull's-eye centers on the windowpanes.

  “So I got her to agree to see me, when Merle would think she was at the meeting,” Peter said, with a frown at Melinda.

  “Peter,” she protested, “I told you why I called Merle. If you’d just let me know that you were with her instead of keeping it a deep, dark secret, why then of course I’d never have…”

  I had a feeling there were plenty of things Peter didn’t tell Melinda. Such as, for instance, that as his current romantic interest, she was little more than a bead on a very long string. Not that she wouldn’t have heard the talk about him, but she was just the type to believe she could change his womanizing habits.

  “Anyway, you saw Faye Anne that night,” I interrupted. “I guess you drove around, talking?”

  Because they couldn’t have stopped anywhere or someone would have seen them together, maybe pass it along to her husband. Peter nodded. “Right. We drove around. And I got a little emotional with her, I guess. I was angry with her for staying with Merle.”

  “So you argued about it. Drank a little, maybe?” I wasn’t sure why that mattered. The three wine bottles made me ask, that was all. He nodded again.

  “Yes. She wasn’t drunk when I took her home, though. Faye Anne never drank much. Just a sip. She said Merle drank enough for both of them. And I don’t know what she did after she went inside. I parked around the corner so he wouldn’t spot me, but I made sure I was where I could still see her opening the door, going in. So I’d know that she was all right.”

  Yeah, he was a real Boy Scout.
He frowned, remembering. “The house was mostly dark. A light in the kitchen, I think, but that was all. It was around eleven. The meetings went later but that's the latest he let her stay out.”

  “And that's the last you saw of her.”

  “Yes, the last I—”

  “But wait, that's not right. You saw her come out of the house the next morning, didn’t you? That's how you knew she was wearing the apron and gloves, you saw them when the police were bringing her out.”

  He flushed in the waning glow of the fire; I’d led him right into another lie, deliberately, then snatched him out of it.

  “Because,” I added, not looking at Melinda, “you’d been watching Faye Anne again. Following her. Calling her, too, maybe, and hanging up?”

  I watched him hesitate, then decide to try working out some way of putting a good face on that part of it. Because how could a lot of hang-up calls be construed as benevolent attention? He managed it, though.

  Defensively, to Melinda: “I worried about Faye Anne, that's all. I wanted to hear her voice, be sure she was okay. But I couldn’t speak to her, let her know it was me, in case Merle might have been listening in.”

  “Peter is always so concerned about his friends,” Melinda commented acidly, and stalked away from us.

  Ellie returned as the door between the dining area and kitchen swung angrily; moments later I heard ice cubes clinking. Something stronger than wine, apparently, was needed to wash down the information that Peter had been tracking Faye Anne around Eastport as if he were a bloodhound and harassing her with phone calls.

  “Nice dinner cooking,” Ellie said to him. Her face looked strange, as if she’d had bad news, and her voice was subdued. “I guess you and Melinda are a pair.”

  “I told you, it was over between Faye Anne and me,” Peter insisted. Melinda returned with a tall glass full of ice and amber liquid, her eyes still blazing.

  “Right,” Ellie said, “and I’ll bet it's really over, now. After all, she's in trouble, and what fun is a woman in trouble?”

  That riled him again. “She's the one they found covered in blood. You want to know if my feelings about her have changed? Big surprise: yes, they have. At first I thought she couldn’t have done it, but now that I’ve had time to think it over, I can’t figure out any other explanation. Other than that she killed him. And finding out that she could do that—”

  Melinda broke in. “The very idea of us all making up some big plot to kill Merle is nonsense. For one thing, I wouldn’t have any reason to go along with such a—”

  “I guess that property dispute is all settled, too, then,” I interjected mildly.

  She reddened. “How did you know about that?”

  “Merle didn’t by any chance try to double-cross you on the land, did he? Or… maybe you lent him the money to buy it?”

  “Why would I do that? Why, that's the silliest—”

  “Because anyone else would want the house and the adjoining land. But you wanted the specific piece of land between your house and that other one, nothing more. You don’t want a second house, or another tax bill.”

  She shuddered involuntarily: Melinda the penny-pincher. “But the property wasn’t for sale in two pieces,” I said. “Bank foreclosures don’t work that way. So you needed someone to buy it for you. Someone you could control, who would agree to pass the tree part to you and sell the house part to someone else, maybe.”

  “Wait a minute,” Peter objected. “First of all, why not just buy the whole place herself and sell off the house? Second, what makes you think Merle would’ve cooperated in all this? And if he would cooperate, why change his mind?”

  He swallowed some wine. “Seems like he’d come out of the whole thing with a house free and clear. You think she’d buy a house for him just to get one silly maple tree for herself?”

  He sat up looking proud of himself and from the glance she gave him, I could see that with this argument he’d gone a long way toward getting himself back into Melinda's good graces. I said: “I think she’d buy a house for Merle if she knew she was going to get the money back, once he sold it. Which he would, but meanwhile he would hold the title and more to the point, pay the property taxes and transaction expenses.”

  “And how exactly would I know to do all that?” she asked thinly. “I guess you think I’ve got know-how in the real estate area?”

  “I think it ain’t brain surgery. And I think you know how to manipulate guys like Merle. Ones who are greedy, stupid, and—here's the important part of it—usually drunk. So maybe he didn’t read the contract real carefully? A contract between the two of you? Or even read it at all?”

  Her face told me my wild guess was also a lucky one. I decided to push my luck. “A contract, say, that included your holding a lien on the entire property? And made sure you got the lion's share—or maybe even all—of any profit on the house?”

  Like I say, once upon a time I was the cat's pajamas in the money department. An ugly red began climbing Melinda's throat.

  “This is foolish speculation! Believe me, if Merle Carmody had made any deal with me, he’d have kept it, contract or no contract.”

  “That is the big question,” I agreed. “Once Merle made the deal, why did he go back on it?” Her confident answer had already told me there was nothing in writing that I could research, or anyway nothing among public documents. By now she’d have disposed of any private paperwork that he might have signed.

  And it was too much to hope for that he’d have taken a copy for himself. If he had, she wouldn’t be looking indignant; she’d be looking scared.

  “One possible answer: he figured out that he was getting screwed,” I said. “So he decided to do what you most wanted to prevent: cut the tree, or threaten to, anyway, to force you to forgive the lien.”

  But Peter was shaking his head. “Merle wouldn’t have gone for it. He was stupid, but sly. If a deal looked too good, he’d have smelled a rat to begin with.”

  And that stopped me, as Melinda looked warmly at him again. Raw cunning was indeed one quality Merle Carmody had possessed in abundance. Yet the money for the property and his recent home improvements had come from somewhere.

  A car pulled up outside: Sam. Peter followed us to the door.

  “You’re wrong about all this.”

  “You wanted Faye Anne's diary found.” I untied Monday's leash. “You knew what was in it, knew it could be read as premeditation.”

  “No,” Peter insisted. “I wanted to help. You’re giving me way too much credit.”

  I wouldn’t have called it credit. And anyway, I didn’t believe him. I wasn’t convinced that he’d murdered Merle Carmody or that Faye Anne hadn’t. But there was something so cravenly opportunistic about Peter Christie, so anxious to spy out his own best chance to come out of this all right—and as comfortably as possible—that I didn’t trust him.

  He was hiding something; I felt certain of it. But what? Ellie still looked troubled, too, as we made our way to the car where Sam waited, just outside.

  “Jake. While you all were talking I was looking around in the house, and at them.”

  Her voice sounded strained. At the end of the drive another car slowed, moved on. “I noticed,” I said. “And?”

  “Melinda was wearing fancy cloth slippers with metallic embroidery. Peter wore loafers, expensive ones. And they were dry.”

  “So?” The air was coldly crystalline, the stars overhead as sharp as splinters.

  “There were footprints out back. Fresh ones, boots in the snow. Right up to those back windows. And another thing. Her phone has the buttons you program. For frequently dialed numbers? So I pressed the first one.”

  “And?” Across the bay, the holiday lights on Campobello Island twinkled distantly. The Roosevelts used to summer there: FDR had been stricken with polio there. No boats were in sight. The freighter had passed through the channel by now and the fishing boats were home for the night.

  “Well, if you were part of
a plot to kill Merle Carmody—”

  “And,” I added, “you want to lay the blame on Faye Anne—”

  “Right,” she said. I opened the car's back door; Monday leapt in gratefully. Sam was behind the wheel, alone.

  “Why,” Ellie went on, still sounding distracted, “would you have Bob Arnold's number on your speed dialer?”

  “Huh,” I said. “That is interesting.”

  But it wasn’t all. When I opened the front door, the inside light went on and I saw her face.

  She’d learned something else. And she hadn’t wanted to say it, not until we were away from Melinda and Peter. “What?” I demanded.

  It was Sam who answered grimly. “The scallop boats are all back. All of them but George's,” he said.

  Eastport women have been sending their men to sea for hundreds of years; no one makes much fuss over it. But by six that evening all the wives of the Etta's crew were in my kitchen, white-faced and silent.

  Ellie took the fruitcakes out of the oven, burning herself in the process. One of the women wrapped ice in a towel and another got some butter.

  “Don’t care what they say,” she muttered, dabbing a bit on the spot. “The old remedies ease you best.”

  But there was no easing what we felt. Wade came in at around seven, dressed in winter storm gear, and we all looked at him.

  “Coast Guard's out,” he reported. “Search helicopter's coming. I’m going, too. Had a position on them from the EPIRB, out past Crow Island.”

  The electronic position indicator radio beacon, he meant; an essential piece of safety equipment on a fishing vessel. But there was no actual guarantee that the beacon was still with the boat. In a catastrophe it could be sent drifting. The tides and currents could carry it for miles.

  “When?” one of the younger women cried, then pressed her fingers tight to her lips. Anything you said, now, could be the wrong thing. Around us the old house seemed to hold its breath: none of its usual creakings and sighings as it settled. As if like us it could only wait, hoping, to find out what would happen.