A Groom With a View jj-11

by Jill Churchill

  Livvy blushed scarlet, but Dwayne just grinned and said, "Come on in. We can behave ourselves for a while. At least until tomorrow."

  “Oh, Dwayne," Livvy simpered.

  “Kitty brought her gift to set out," Jane explained.

  “Oh, Kitty! How really lovely," Livvy said, pulling away from Dwayne and examining the cut crystal fruit bowl Kitty was holding. Livvy took it from Kitty and held it up against the light from the window. "It's just beautiful, Kitty. How good of you.”

  Kitty's face was utterly blank. Apparently she wasn't any better at reacting to compliments than she was at coping with bad jokes. Jane would have to remind Kitty to smile during her bridesmaid duties. Jane took the bowl from Livvy, rearranged a few other items to make room for it where the sunlight could catch in the facets, and went back to door duty with Shelley.

  “The dresses are done," she said. "The girls look lovely. Even Kitty. If she'd just smile occasionally."

  “Mel's here," Shelley said. "Turned up just as you went upstairs. He's in the kitchen."

  “Let's assume we've done enough greeting and grab a bite of lunch before it's all gone," Jane said.

  Mel was at the kitchen table, watching Mr. Willis and one of his local helpers put the luncheon leftovers away. He greeted Jane and Shelley with a rather more solemn manner than they'd expected."Is something wrong?" Jane asked quietly.

  He shook his head. "Not a thing," he said, turn‑ ing and making a subtle shushing motion. This is not good, Jane thought.

  “Jane, let's get some food and eat outside," Shelley suggested brightly. "Mel, have you eaten? Why don't you join us?”

  Mr. Willis was so eager to get them out from underfoot that he quickly prepared plates for the three of them and shooed them out the door. There was a disreputable picnic table under some trees just behind the lodge and they settled there.

  “So what's wrong?" Jane said before anybody could get a bite of food.

  “I stopped in town to introduce myself on the way here," Mel said, looking longingly at a deviled ham sandwich. "The local police are a bit on the gabby side. Took my word for who I was and told me some interesting things." He lunged at his sandwich, determined to get at least one good mouthful before Jane started the inevitable inquisition.

  “Like what?" Shelley and Jane asked as one voice.

  He chewed luxuriously for a moment, took a sip of his soft drink, and sighed. "The most important is that it appears Mrs. Crossthwait was pushed pretty hard. There are faint fresh bruises that look like fingertips on her back."

  “What?" Jane exclaimed. "You'd have to really put a huge amount of force behind a shove to make finger marks."

  “Not if the person was on a blood thinner, apparently," Mel said. "The officer on the scene found a bottle of medicine in her purse, called the prescribing physician, and was told she had recurring incidents of phlebitis and was taking a pretty hefty daily dose of anticoagulant. That's why she bruised so easily. Now, you two chew that over while I eat.”

  Jane looked at Shelley. "Maybe somebody shoved her earlier."

  “But why?" Shelley asked.

  “Maybe by accident," Jane improvised. "If somebody else tripped, they might have put their hands out to stop their fall and ran into her instead.”

  Shelley rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right. And she didn't say a word of complaint? Jane, this was a woman born to complain."

  “Well, I'm going to believe it until someone proves otherwise," Jane said. "I don't want to think someone deliberately pushed her down those steps to her death."

  “Jane, don't be a Pollyanna," Shelley said. "It sounds to me like someone did exactly that. And I'd like the authorities to scoop him or her up before we have to spend another night in this place with the perp. I don't think there are even locks on the bedroom doors.”

  Jane put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. "Okay, okay. But it wouldn't necessarily be someone who's staying here."

  “The Wandering Maniac Theory?"

  “No, but there are a lot of people involved in this wedding who were nearby last night. Some of the guests at the motel arrived last night. The Hesslings, for instance."

  “But what could the Hesslings have had against Mrs. Crossthwait?" Shelley asked.

  “What could anybody have had against her?" Jane countered. "Except that she was a rude old bat.”

  Mel was chewing thoughtfully and looking back and forth at them as if they were a tennis match.

  “Nothing," Shelley said. "Nothing that I can guess, anyway. Jane, you're the only one who was seriously mad at her — don't bridle up like that — and you're also the one who had the most to gain from her staying alive and well and sewing her fingers to the bone."

  “Well, if somebody deliberately killed her — and I don't admit I believe that — then it was someone in her own life who simply followed her out here so as to cast suspicion on somebody at the lodge. I will not allow this to have some connection to my wedding planning."

  “Ah," Mel said around a potato chip. "Now I get it, Jane. You think this is going to reflect on you somehow?"

  “Are the police checking on her private life?" Jane asked, not answering his question because the honest reply would sound mean-spirited, even to her.

  “So far, they haven't found evidence that she had much of a life," Mel answered. "A rented apartment above a bookstore, a bit of savings but not an impressive amount. She was a childless longtime widow with Social Security, a little pension from her late husband, and her sewing money. She lived a very quiet life, the bookstore owner says. Her only visitors, as far as he knows, were the ladies she sewed for, and a couple women from her church who held an occasional meeting at her place. Oh, and she took a trip once a year in January to visit a cousin in Florida or Texas, he couldn't remember which. Somewhere warm, he said."

  “But—" Jane said.

  “It's too early to know more, Jane," Mel said, holding up his hand like a traffic cop trying to stop a runaway eighteen-wheeler and believing he could do it. "They only started this morning. You may be right and she has some dark secret that will come to light. But right now, the only suspects are the people who are here for the wedding."

  “Swell," Jane said. "I suppose in view of those bruises, presumably from a strong malicious shove, the local police are going to be back here. Casting a pall. Questioning the guests. Making nuisances of themselves."

  “Afraid so," Mel said.

  “Okay," Jane said with a martyred sigh. "We can cope. I can get a grip. Figuring out a murder is, in the grand scale of things, more important than a picture-perfect wedding.”

  Mel muttered something that sounded like, "And a lot more interesting.”

  “What was that?" Jane asked.

  Mel smiled. "Me? I didn't say anything.”

  Shelley glanced at her watch. "Almost time for the bridal shower, Jane. Eat your lunch and then we'll go make sure it goes well."

  “I'll consider it to have gone well enough if everybody comes out of it alive," Jane said.

  Ten

  The bridal shower had a brittle atmosphere of ·· forced festivity. The air crackled with high-pitched laughter. Few of the women attending really knew each other terribly well. Some of Jack's friends' trophy wives were acquainted and regretted it and snubbed one another in the nicest possible way. Only Layla and Eden seemed to have formed a friendly bond with Kitty on the fringes of it. The aunts were pretending that the whole plan had rested in their capable hands, and were playing the role of cohostesses with relish — which irritated the stuffing out of Jane.

  She and Shelley had rounded up the guests and seen to it that the food and drinks were ready, then got out of the way. "I don't suppose we can hang around and eat?" Shelley asked. "Sort of lurk in the background and munch quietly?" The menu for the party included puff pastries with raspberry filling, rich little handmade chocolate wafers in the shape of bells, and champagne cocktails.

  “There will be leftovers," Jane assured her. "A
nd if we eat them in private, we can be much greedier. We can rub them straight onto our thighs if we want and skip the digestive process entirely. What a dismal party."

  “Dismal-ish," Shelley admitted. "But that's not your fault. It's because the only thing they all have in common is poor Livvy. If you'd put on the exact same shower for Eden, for instance, it would have been fun because she has a personality. What were the little foil packages Livvy was carrying around?"

  “Compacts. Really lovely things and the only decision Livvy seemed to have a strong opinion about," Jane said. "They're bridesmaid gifts. Real gold with Livvy and Dwayne's names and the date of the wedding beautifully engraved on the back. They must have cost her the earth."

  “What a lovely memento," Shelley said. "At least she has good taste. Oh, that's bad of me. She's such a nice, Milquetoast sort of girl. I just want to give her a transfusion of spunk.”

  Jane nodded. "I'd like to like her, too. I think everyone would. What's not to like? But she's a mannequin with a complex computer system that instructs her to talk and move and act with propriety, but no sparkle."

  “What's all that noise outside?" Shelley asked.

  "The groom and his friends, I assume," Jane

  said as she and Shelley hauled themselves out of

  their comfortable chairs and went to check. The

  young men were playing touch football. Except for their size, they were indistinguishable from a bunch of fifteen-year-olds, although their language was a bit cleaner. Not much, though.

  Somebody, perhaps the lethargic Uncle Joe, had dragged out a couple of lawn chairs and set them by the main door. Whether this was their destination for some reason, or they were just in transit, Jane couldn't guess. But Jane pulled one of them in front of the door. "Sit down, Shelley. If any of the bride's party needs me, they'll be able to spot us here."

  “Sure you wouldn't really rather sit a little farther away? Like somewhere in Seattle?" Shelley asked.

  As they got situated, Mel and Officer John Smith emerged from the woods. They had old Uncle Joe walking between them. It was impossible to hear the conversation they were attempting to have with him, but not hard to guess the gist. Mel or the local police officer would speak. Uncle Joe would instantly shrug incomprehension. Joe's part consisted entirely of hands outspread in ignorance, negative shakes of the head, glares, and halfhearted attempts to shake the other two men off.

  “He knows something about this," Jane said. "What makes you think that?" Shelley asked, staring at the small group.

  “Because he's pretending to know nothing. Nobody knows nothing."

  “You can say that because you don't know my cousin Alfred.”

  Jane laughed. "Shelley, if somebody asks you something and you haven't got the answer, don't you at least pause and consider whether you might have some bit of information, no matter how trivial?"

  “Yes, I guess so. But I'm not a cranky old recluse who isn't enjoying having his turf invaded."

  “That's the point," Jane said. "It is his turf. In his view, anyway. He's apparently lived here, quite alone most of the time, for years. And for all his crabbing around, acting too feeble to be of any use, I think he knows every stick of furniture in the dark."

  “You think he was one of the people roaming around last night during the storm?"

  “I'd bet anything on it," Jane said. "And I'll bet he saw or heard things he's keeping to himself. That's why he's so vehemently denying any knowledge of what's going on here to Mel and Officer Smith. He doesn't seem to even like having family around. Imagine how he feels about The Law invading.”

  The cat Jane had met up with the night before came strolling around the corner and sat down to evaluate them for a long moment before taking a really serious stretch and then jumping on Jane's lap. She scritched him behind his ears.

  Shelley was staring toward, but not at, the football game. She was thinking so hard, Jane could almost hear the gears grinding. Finally Shelley said, with uncharacteristic timidity, "Jane, I know this is nuts, but everybody seems to know something about this story of a hidden treasure. But nobody admits to believing in it. Don't you find that a bit suspicious?”

  Jane kept petting the cat. "I guess so, but let's define 'everybody.' Layla vaguely remembered the story. Eden more so, and it was she who said the aunts came up with the theory and Jack checked it out and denies that there is one. But that's all.”

  Shelley shook her head. "Larkspur is roaming around with spade and shovel and a wild, greedy, non-floral gleam in his eye."

  “That's right. I'd forgotten about him. How would he know?"

  “We must ask," Shelley said. "If he's heard it, there are probably hundreds of other people who also have."

  “So where's this leading us?"

  “Well—" Shelley hesitated. "Not that I think this is necessarily right, but suppose there really is a treasure here—"

  “If there were a hidden treasure," Jane interrupted, "why would it necessarily be at the hunting lodge? If I had a treasure, I'd buy a big old safe and stick it in there."

  “But then it wouldn't be hidden, just locked up," Shelley said irritably. "Just hear me out, will you? Suppose there was a treasure, and it was in Mrs. Crossthwait's room. If I'd been O. W. and wanted to hide something here, I'd have hidden it in my own room or the one next to it so I couldcheck on it while I was here, and be sure nobody else would be staying in the room when I wasn't here."

  “Okay," Jane said. "I'll buy that. So you think Mrs. Crossthwait found it?"

  “She seemed to be a bit on the deaf side, but her eyesight must have been a wonder. You've seen her work. All that meticulous, tiny handwork."

  “But Shelley, she was here for less than a full day. How could she have found something Uncle Joe has never noticed? And if the whole Thatcher family and circle of friends plus a few strangers have heard this rumor, how could he not know about it? He's had years and years to look for it. My God! I'm starting to sound like I think it exists.”

  Shelley was prepared to counter this argument. "Look at the way he dresses. No one on earth has taste that bad unless they're at least color-blind."

  “Wrong. My grandfather was very fond of checks, plaids, and stripes together in his old age. And he had good vision. Just no taste."

  “Okay, I'll give you that one," Shelley said. "Paul's father wears the most awful hats in the world and doesn't seem to have any idea how silly he looks. But you do have to admit that Mrs. Crossthwait must have had exceptionally good vision."

  “That one I agree with."

  “So suppose she dropped a pin on the floor, bent over to get it, and realized the joints in the flooring formed a little door?"

  “The room has a linoleum floor."

  “Don't be so picky. It was just an example," Shelley snapped. "Just suppose she spotted something that didn't look quite right, investigated, and found something valuable? It could have been something very small. The corner of an envelope barely visible at the edge of a rug or something."

  “What if she had?" Jane said. "We don't know enough about her to guess whether she'd just pocket it among all that stuff she brought along and live the rest of her life in luxury or whether she'd have turned it over to the rightful owner."

  “The rightful owner, who is presumably Jack Thatcher, wasn't here yet when she died—"

  “That we know of," Jane reminded her. "We have no idea where he was last night and it's only about an hour and a half from Chicago to here."

  “—but she might have dropped a hint to someone about having found something important. She was up in that room most of the time she was here and everybody else was roaming around wherever they wanted. Anyone could have visited her up there and no one else might have even noticed.”

  There was a loud yelp from one of the football game participants. Jane watched in horror as two of the young men rushed over to where Dwayne Hessling was spread-eagled in the grass. But before she could act, he'd gotten up and was bending his arm
experimentally. "It's okay," he said. "I can still move everything.”

  Jane let out the breath she'd been holding. "All we need him to do is break an arm or leg," she said.

  “We'd just have to have Larkspur do something with tulips and baby's breath on his crutches," Shelley said with a laugh.

  Jane gave her friend the look she usually reserved for the mother of children who were misbehaving in the grocery store. "Get back to your theory. We're already about six 'supposes' away from any sort of reality. Might as well run the whole course."

  “Hmmm. To tell the truth, I'm not sure where I was going with it. Except to say that it's possible Mrs. Crossthwait saw or found something valuable and put herself in danger by mentioning it."

  “You're ruining my theory that somebody who has nothing to do with this wedding discovered that she was a Nazi collaborator and followed her here to bump her off as an act of revenge," Jane said.

  Shelley smiled. "Sorry about that. But why would anybody follow her here to kill her? They wouldn't know the layout of the place, especially in the dark."

  “Maybe it wasn't dark all night. We had lights on in the main room when the power failed. Maybe it came back on during the night."

  “But unless they'd been lurking under the furniture all day, how would an outsider even know what room she was in?" Shelley asked.

  Jane thought about this for a long moment and couldn't dredge up an argument. "Okay, okay. So if the police are right that somebody pushed her down the steps, and if it's somebody who was staying overnight, who do you suggest as chief suspect?"

  “The aunts?" Shelley answered halfheartedly.

  “Come on, Shelley! What threat could Mrs. Crossthwait have possibly been to either of them?"

  “Well, there's the treasure story. From what we've heard, they're the ones who thought it up and the only ones, besides Larkspur, who seem to believe it. What if she found something valuable and mentioned it to them? Maybe something she didn't even recognize as being of value."

  “And they wanted it for themselves, not to share with Jack, who had never believed the story to begin with…?" Jane said.