Thread the Halls

by Lea Wait

  I felt underdressed in my jeans. But there wasn’t anything I could do about that now. I didn’t even own a matching sweater and slacks set.

  “Sometimes,” I said, not adding that I’d only been the assistant to a private investigator. That detail didn’t seem important. What was important was what was happening behind the house right now. The reason there were two police cars in the driveway. Would anyone ask me about that?

  “Maine is as cold as Skye warned us,” said Thomas, with a smile. “Is it like this all winter?”

  “Depends. The temperature can be ten degrees below, or go up into the forties,” I said. “Today is about average.”

  “I turned the furnace up yesterday, and there’s wood for the living room fireplace,” Patrick said as he joined us from the kitchen.

  “We’re comfortable and warm,” Marie said. “Or—most of us are.” She glanced obviously at Blaze, who was standing as close as she could get to the fire screen in front of the blazing fire in the living room fireplace.

  “My feet will never be the same after having to walk through that snow at the airport this afternoon. What kind of a place is this? Iceland? I could get frostbite and lose my toes, and no one would care!” Blaze said plaintively. “Thomas, would you massage my feet?”

  Thomas ignored her.

  “I told you not to wear those stupid heels,” said Marv, glancing at her.

  “But I always wear heels,” pouted Blaze. “That’s what I do. It’s my signature. I’m a girlie girl. And besides, Paul loves me to wear them. He says they make my legs look sexier.”

  She stretched out one of her legs, as though to demonstrate. She looked around. “Where is Paul, anyway? He slept on the plane. He shouldn’t still be napping.”

  Should I say anything? Patrick glanced at me. I shook my head slightly.

  “Maybe he was more tired than you thought,” Thomas put in. “He’ll join us when he’s ready. He’s never missed an opportunity to have a cocktail, and Skye told him the bar was opening at six-thirty.”

  “Bartender at your pleasure,” Patrick put in.

  “I want to know what’s happening outside,” said Skye, firmly. “You know the local police, Angie. Why are they here? What are they looking for?”

  Everyone turned to look at me.

  “There may have been an . . . accident . . . in your back field. The police are checking.”

  “Accident? Was anyone hurt?” Skye asked. “Can we help?” She moved toward the door.

  “No.” I stepped to block her. “I mean, they asked me to tell you they didn’t want anyone leaving the house until they investigate. More people would mess up the scene.”

  “The scene?” Thomas stepped toward me. “What scene?”

  “Scene” meant one thing to a screenwriter and something quite different to a homicide investigator. “Where the accident happened,” I started to explain.

  Patrick couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “We found a body in the back field,” he blurted. “They’re calling the medical examiner and crime scene technicians.”

  “Ohhhhh.” Blaze turned and collapsed dramatically in an armchair by the hearth.

  I sent Patrick a “shut up” look. “The police aren’t saying anything officially now,” I said. “When they know something definite, they’ll let us know.”

  “I could use a double martini,” said Marv, following Patrick to the bar set up on a corner table in the large dining room. “This holiday is shaping up to be more exciting than I anticipated.”

  Skye took my arm and pulled me into the back of the front hall. “Angie, what really happened? I saw that state police car. They suspect murder, don’t they?”

  “Nothing is official until the medical examiner rules,” I said.

  “But murder is a possibility, right?”

  “Afraid so. Pete Lambert and Ethan Trask are out there. You met them both last summer. They don’t want anyone to worry until they know for sure. But, yes, murder is a possibility.”

  Skye’s shoulders sagged. “You don’t need to know the details. But although officially I’m home for the holidays to see Patrick, and show off my new home to friends, we’ve been having a rough couple of months in Edinburgh. We all needed a peaceful time to make some script changes and rest and reconnoiter. Maine is one of the safest states in the country. I never dreamed anything like this would happen. And in my own backyard!”

  I tried to smile, but couldn’t. “This isn’t what anyone wants. At Christmas or any other time.”

  The rest of her guests had gathered in the dining room. Blaze’s voice rose above the rest. “Oh, my God, look out that window! They’re carrying a body bag like the one we used in my last film!”

  Skye and I looked at each other.

  Since I’d been outside an ambulance had pulled into the drive. It was still snowing, but lightly. The EMTs had worked quickly. They must have gotten permission from the medical examiner to move the body, maybe because of the snow. Pete had once stayed with a body all night because the ME couldn’t get to it quickly enough.

  “Who would have been wandering around the back field in this weather?” Skye said, almost under her breath.

  Marv Mason finished his drink and handed it back to Patrick for a refill.

  We all heard the knock on the door.

  Chapter 15

  “May virtue mark my footsteps here

  And point the way to Heaven.”

  —In 1801 Sally Champney stitched two alphabets in French knot, stem, and cross-stitch. She included a scrolled border, a fence, flowers, trees, and birds surrounding a large urn of flowers, flanked by two baskets of flowers. Sally lived in Ipswich (sic), New Hampshire.

  For a moment, no one answered the door.

  Then Patrick dropped the lemon he’d been squeezing for Blaze’s mineral water and walked into the front hall.

  He opened it as Ethan was about to raise the brass knocker again. “We saw . . . out the window,” Patrick started to say.

  “Pete and I would like to come in,” Ethan said.

  Patrick opened the door wider.

  We all gathered next to the Christmas tree in the hallway. The newcomers to Maine stared at Ethan’s state trooper jacket and badge, as Ethan and Pete stomped the snow off their boots and came in.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. West,” said Ethan. “Sorry to see you again under such circumstances. I assume Angie told you someone had an accident in your back field?”

  “She did,” Skye answered. “Do you want to talk with everyone?”

  “I would,” he agreed.

  “Why don’t we all go into the living room?”

  Skye was gracious, as always, but her right hand, holding her wineglass, was shaking. “Can I offer you something to drink?” she asked Ethan and Pete.

  “No, thanks,” Pete said. “We’re on duty.”

  “What about coffee?”

  Ethan smiled. “Coffee would be appreciated. Thank you.”

  “Two blacks,” Pete said.

  “I’ll go tell Bev,” I said, heading for the kitchen. I didn’t want to miss anything, but I suspected Ethan and Pete wouldn’t want anyone else to leave the room.

  The warm kitchen was filled with the rich smells of haddock chowder and baking bread, maybe the bases for the pizzas. I wished I could stay there and not deal with what was happening in the living room.

  Bev Clifford, wearing a long apron over her jeans and flannel shirt, was sitting at the large pine kitchen table. She looked up as I came in. “Police are here. I saw them.”

  Of course. The wide kitchen windows, like those in the living room, looked out on the field beyond. How much had she seen?

  “They’re with the Wests and their guests in the living room. Do you have any hot coffee? Two cups? They’ve been outside.”

  “Coffee should help warm ’em, even if their news is grim. How do they want ’em?”

  “Both black,” I said, looking around and admiring the immaculate room. “Your chowder sme
lls delicious.”

  Bev got up and poured coffee into two large Edgecomb Potters mugs decorated with lupine.

  “Brought some of my own lobster broth from home as a starter,” she said, handing me the mugs. “Lobster broth makes all the difference.”

  “Gram says the same,” I agreed. “Thank you.”

  “Angie? Let me know what happens?” she said as I turned to go.

  She’d been crying. What did she know?

  “I will. I promise.” I hesitated a moment. I didn’t want to be heartless, but why was Bev Clifford so upset? Although death would be upsetting to anyone.

  She sat again, hard, on one of the red painted chairs around the table. Skye had designed a new kitchen for the old house that was bigger than three rooms at my house. The custom cabinet makers had fit modern appliances into the Victorian house without making them look out of place. How much cooking would Skye be doing here herself? I wasn’t sure. But Bev Clifford would be taking advantage of the two stoves (not counting the microwaves), two sinks, and a walk-in refrigerator. A wine refrigerator was hidden behind one of the panels.

  After Skye and her friends went back to Scotland, those conveniences would sit, unused, possibly for months.

  I’d almost gotten to the door to the hall when a woman screamed.

  Chapter 16

  “America Greeting Clio and Liberty. Monument, listing patriots Washington, Montgomery, Green, Franklin, Warren, Adams, Mercer, Putnam, Jay, Clinton, Gates, Morris, Fayette.”

  —Seventeen-year-old Chloe McCray of Ellington, Connecticut, stitched this in silk and metallic thread on silk, most likely at Lydia Bull Royse’s school in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1814. Her patriotic scene depicts Liberty and America (holding the Constitution), meeting Clio, the muse of history, who is kneeling with an open book.

  I ran toward the living room, the mugs of hot coffee sloshing and dripping on my hands and the floor. Bev Clifford followed me.

  Those in the living room were posed as though they were on a stage set.

  Blaze Buchanan had stopped screaming and was now sobbing in Thomas’s arms. Skye was sitting near the bookcase, her knuckles white as she held on to the chair arms. Patrick stood behind the chair, his hand on her shoulder. Marv Mason and Marie O’Dell were sitting on the couch.

  They all looked in shock.

  “What’s happened?” Bev whispered behind me.

  I put the mugs of coffee on a glass table near the detectives and gestured to Bev that we should go back into the hallway.

  “I found a body in the back field,” I told her quietly. “You saw the police there. Patrick thought it was Paul Carmichael. We told Ethan and Pete. Looks like they’ve told Paul’s friends.”

  “Poor young man,” said Bev. “Such a future ahead of him. I was going to ask him for his autograph before he left. Going to frame it for the Wild Rose Inn.”

  A little late for that.

  I went back into the living room. Pete and Ethan were glancing at each other. “To confirm that the man we found is Paul Carmichael, we’d appreciate one of you who knew him coming outside to the ambulance and identifying him,” Ethan said, quietly but firmly.

  “I knew him better than anyone,” Blaze said, raising her head from Thomas’s chest. “We were going to be married!”

  Thomas and Marie exchanged surprised looks.

  Blaze wasn’t wearing a ring. Not every engaged woman wore one, but I suspected Blaze would have.

  “But I can’t do it! I can’t see him . . . like that!” she sobbed.

  “I’ll come with you,” Thomas said. He left Blaze and walked toward Ethan. “We all knew him. Do you have any idea what happened?”

  “Not yet,” Ethan said. “Thank you. This won’t take long.” He and Thomas left. Pete stayed and picked up one of the cups of coffee. No doubt he wanted to hear anything the others said.

  “Understand you folks had a long flight today,” he said.

  “We flew in from Edinburgh,” Skye said quietly. “The flight was about six hours, but we were delayed taking off because of heavy fog in Scotland.”

  “Not many overseas flights to Portland. Fly into Logan and connect there?”

  Pete’s questions were more than casual interest. I’d heard him investigate suspects before. He was filling out a time line.

  “The studio provided a private plane. We flew into Brunswick,” said Skye. “Why?”

  “Just wondering how long you folks had been here,” answered Pete.

  “We arrived in Haven Harbor at about four,” said Skye. “We’ve all been in this house since then.”

  I was sure she believed that. But if the body outside was Paul Carmichael’s, at least one of them had left the house between four and six o’clock. Patrick had told me they’d planned to go to their rooms, unpack, rest, and make phone calls. Had Paul told anyone else he was going outside? Had he been admiring the view, as Patrick and I had been? Was he meeting someone?

  Possibilities whirred through my head.

  Ethan and Thomas came back in, shaking newly fallen snow off their shoulders and feet.

  Everyone stared at them, waiting to hear.

  “It’s Paul,” said Thomas. He sat heavily on the couch next to his wife. “No doubt.”

  Blaze started sobbing again. Or at least her shoulders were heaving as she hid her face in her hands.

  “How could this happen?” asked Skye. “What happened to him?”

  “We won’t know until the medical examiner takes a look at him,” said Ethan. “In the meantime, I’m going to ask you all a few questions. You were the last people to see him alive.”

  And the only people in town who knew him, I thought.

  “They got in from the Brunswick airport at about four,” Pete said.

  “And then what did you all do?” asked Ethan. His notebook was already in his hand. He sometimes used a tape recorder, but this was early in the case. If it was a case. I kept hoping they’d find that somehow, despite all that blood I’d seen, Paul Carmichael had died of natural causes.

  Skye spoke for all of them. “We took our bags to our rooms. Mrs. Clifford had a pot of chowder and platters of sandwiches prepared, so then we came back downstairs and ate.” She looked around. “We scattered. I went to my room to unpack and lay down and fell asleep. I came back downstairs at about six-fifteen.” She looked at Ethan, explaining. “We’d said we’d meet downstairs for drinks at six-thirty, before dinner. I wanted to check with Mrs. Clifford to make sure everything was set for the evening.”

  “Was anyone else downstairs when you got here?”

  Skye shook her head. “Just Mrs. Clifford.”

  Ethan nodded. He’d want to talk with Bev later. But she’d disappeared . . . no doubt back to the kitchen.

  “And the rest of you? Ms. Buchanan, do you feel up to talking now?”

  Blaze shook her head, but turned around. “Paul and I went upstairs first, like Skye said.” She glanced at her hostess. “We looked at the fantastic views from both our rooms.”

  “You and Mr. Carmichael had separate rooms?” Ethan asked.

  Blaze managed to giggle through her tears. “Officially, sure. We hadn’t announced our engagement.”

  Thomas and Marie exchanged looks again. I suspected this was the first time they’d heard of any engagement.

  “We talked and then came downstairs and had lunch, like Skye said. Paul had a cup of chowder, I had a peanut butter sandwich, and Paul had two of the roast beef ones. And a couple of beers.”

  Skye looked surprised. “Mrs. Clifford didn’t serve beer with lunch.”

  “No,” Blaze confirmed. “He went into the kitchen and asked for it.”

  “And then what did you do?” asked Ethan.

  “I went back upstairs to unpack. Some of my clothes crush easily, and Mrs. Clifford told me she didn’t do ironing.”

  I glanced at Patrick, who was swallowing hard. He’d hired Bev to live in and cook, and she’d volunteered to help with getting the house
ready for his mother’s guests. He hadn’t hired her to be a maid or valet.

  “When you went upstairs, what did Mr. Carmichael do?”

  “He was sitting there.” Blaze pointed to where Thomas and Marie were sitting. “Finishing his beer. I didn’t see him after that. I went upstairs and called my agent and my sister, straightened up everything I brought with me, and took a little beauty nap. I didn’t sleep much on the plane.”

  “Did you hear or see anything before you came downstairs again?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sensitive to noise. I always sleep with earplugs and a mask. I didn’t hear a thing.”

  “And when did you come downstairs?”

  “At six-thirty, when Skye said we should be here,” she answered, almost demurely.

  “Okay—how about you?” Ethan turned to Marv Mason, who’d gotten up from the couch and was standing by one of the bookcases.

  “I was upstairs the whole time. I skipped lunch.” He patted his stomach. “Been eating too much on the set. I went over some notes about the script I wanted to discuss with Thomas and Marie after dinner, called some people, and checked my computer for messages. The usual. I didn’t come down until a little after six-thirty.”

  “Did you have any contact with Paul Carmichael after you went upstairs to your room at about four?”

  “None. I had no reason to talk to him.”

  Thomas and Marie were next. “We were together the whole time,” said Marie. “Ate lunch, unpacked, talked about the script in our room, and I downloaded a mystery set in Maine—one of Kate Flora’s—and started to read it. Thomas outlined some ideas to talk to Marv about after dinner.” She turned to her husband. “I don’t know what will happen to the script now, with Paul gone.”

  Thomas patted her hand. “We’ll talk about that with Marv and Skye later, dear.”

  I noticed he didn’t mention discussing the script with Blaze.

  “And, Patrick?”

  “I helped Mom and the others in with their bags and then went to my place.” He looked at the group. “I live in the carriage house, down the drive from here. I called Angie and asked her to join us for dinner tonight. When she got to my place we decided to take a walk before dinner. I was due back here at the house by six to set up the bar because I was going to act as bartender for the evening.”