Changing of the Guard Dog

by Lane Stone

  Lady Anthea and Mason drove in and pulled up next to me. She got out and Mason stayed in, nodding at me. Once she was in the Jeep, he left to go back to Buckingham’s.

  I updated her on what I’d been surveilling. “Pretty boring stuff,” I said to sum it up. “There’s Jane and Michael Burke from the Southern Delaware Daily.” We watched the couple join the group of musicians. Michael paused to snap a photograph or two. The spontaneous scene—some musicians leaned against the bus, many wore jeans, a few fingered imaginary instruments—would make an artistic tableau, but our local newspaper didn’t do artistic. What was Michael up to?

  More reporters joined the group. “It appears the press conference will be well attended,” Lady Anthea said. “And thankfully, one person will not be here. He’s sound asleep.”

  Maggie was on her phone again, but she was standing next to Cordy now. The bus driver stood guard at the bench but looked over at Cordy time and time again.

  “The only excitement we’ve had was a BMW that came speeding through, possibly driven by Bess Harper,” I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. “I wonder where she was going.”

  “Wherever it was, she was going in a hurry until John pulled her over,” I said and we laughed at her misfortune.

  I looked at my phone to get the time. “I wish they would start.” Next I looked at my side mirror to check the Savannah Road traffic. “Speak of the devil.” The BMW was back, still speeding and again skidding on the sandy asphalt, the driver obviously not chastened. The car blew by us so close the Jeep rocked.

  I held my breath and Lady Anthea let out a squeal at how near it came to the musicians before coming to a stop.

  Bess got out, confirming my suspicion that she was the driver.

  “Oh, no!” Lady Anthea and I said at the same time.

  Albert had gotten out from the passenger side. Maggie walked up and he allowed her to lead him to stand to the left of one of the giant music notes.

  “They weren’t unorganized. They were just waiting. How did they find him?” I was already reaching for the door handle to get out of the Jeep.

  Lady Anthea and I walked across the parking lot. “He knows,” she said.

  “Yeah, we have to assume he knows about the murders,” I agreed.

  She nudged my elbow and motioned for me to move to the side of the group, so we could stand in front of the speakers. Four musicians had climbed onto the bench and the others stood in curved rows in front of them, like ripples in a pond.

  “You weren’t able to talk him out of conducting the orchestra?” I asked.

  “I tried.” She shook her head. “He has no idea what’s involved.”

  “There’s got to be a lot more to it than waving your hands like you’re writing the letter L, but other than that, I really don’t know what a conductor does,” I said.

  “First, the motion is keyed to the tempo of the music being played. The shape isn’t an L. The movement used for four beats per measure might look like the number four, and represents a quick tempo. A conductor does so much more. An inspired conductor inspires his or her musicians. He or she brings out unexpected brilliance.” Her words were spoken with emotion.

  Sure, I could have used more details, but I wasn’t a complete Neanderthal. “That’s the tempo for “Don’t Be Cruel.”

  We were walking and she stopped watching her brother just long enough for an eye roll at my comment. “He’ll pat his tie three times,” she said.

  “Is that a code? Like he’s trying to get a message to you?” I asked.

  “Huh? No,” she said.

  “Something similar was used in The Southern Shotgun, the mystery I started last night,” I explained.

  “Please, Sue, I can’t listen to the titles of those books you read just now,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

  “It’s destined to be a classic.”

  “Or anything having to do with Elvis Presley, who is not the king of anything.”

  We stood in the sand in front of the makeshift stage. Bess now held a small wireless microphone. She and Maggie stood in front of the group and she cleared her throat, the universal signal for everyone around her to shut up.

  “Good afternoon,” Bess began, which was the cue for the lone television camera to begin filming. The bus driver held up his phone to video her. She introduced herself as the chair of the Potomac Symphony Orchestra board. “You may have heard that the music world lost a shining light over the weekend. Conductor and composer Georg Nielsen was to have debuted his masterpiece Symphony by the Sea right here in Lewes!”

  Cordy was standing in the first row of musicians, at the left end of the line. She jerked her head at what Bess said and the quick movement caught my attention.

  I leaned over to ask Lady Anthea if she had noticed Cordy’s reaction, but changed my mind when I saw what her brother was doing. He patted the button of his navy sports coat, then his tie. He repeated the gestures two more times. “He did it,” I said. “What does it mean?”

  “He’s uncomfortable,” she said, drawing it out.

  “Really? I’m pretty sure he’s scared,” I said. That might have been a little harsh, but I was still smarting from what she had said about Elvis.

  Bess went on, “We, as members of the Potomac Symphony Orchestra family, believe we’ve found a way to honor his memory in an extraordinary manner. To tell you about that, I’d like to introduce Margo Bardot, our executive director and stage manager.”

  Maggie took the microphone and beamed a smile at the small audience. “I’m delighted—” She froze. “I mean, I’m sad. Uh, what I mean to say is that I’m sad and I’m delighted. I would say, uh, I would say—”

  “Oh, no.” I knew I was about to go into a laughing fit and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.

  “I would say she’s wrapped, and not wrapped, herself in a good and proper knot,” Lady Anthea said behind her hand.

  Maggie had hit on a way to express her opposing feelings, and gave a nervous laugh. “You might say I’m relieved. Yes, I’m relieved to announce that the performance will be conducted by Albert Fitzwalter, Duke of Norwall.”

  I turned to the Delaware Bay behind me and saw John walking my way. Could I nonchalantly walk to the water? Would I have time to get away before I cracked up? The answer was no, and I fake-coughed to hide my laugh.

  John was at my side, “Ma’am, am I going to have to arrest and not arrest you?”

  Lady Anthea turned her back to the stage, too. She was fighting a losing battle to keep from laughing. She tried to keep her lips closed, so when the laughter came out it sounded like, puh, puh. She dabbed her eyes.

  I took a deep breath and chanced a look back at the stage. Maggie held out her shaking arm and Albert came forward, smiling. His face displayed contradicting emotions, like a man who wanted to run for his life, but not leave.

  He nodded and smiled, first to the right, then center and then left, at the smattering of people, applauding politely. He patted his tie again and began, “Good afternoon.”

  Lady Anthea had turned to face the stage. “How do you think he’s doing?” she whispered.

  “Can’t you see him? Want me to scoot over?”

  “I was curious to know what you thought. Do you think he’s handsome?” she asked.

  I knew to be diplomatic, but that’s about all I knew. John leaned forward a bit to look at Lady Anthea, then at me. When our eyes met, we telegraphed our mutual confusion. “Sure, in a duke kind of way.”

  “What?” she said, clearly as confused as I was as to what I meant by that.

  “When he talks, only his lips move,” I said, keeping my voice low.

  “Isn’t that how everyone speaks?” she asked.

  “It’s like the rest of his face has the day off,” I said.

  She was laughing again. P
uh, puh.

  I was laughing. John was laughing. We managed to keep the volume down but our three sets of shoulders bobbed like we were on the high seas.

  “I’m here today with my sister. Anthea, please join me. She’s the owner of the Buckingham Pet Palace.”

  Chapter 13

  Her brother’s invitation for Anthea to come to the stage sobered us up fast. She didn’t go forward. Instead she’d smiled graciously and waved. “Sorry about that,” she said when the crowd turned their attention back to the speakers. “He knows I’m barely a co-owner and you do ninety-nine percent of the work.”

  I shrugged off both his comment and her apology. We’d never had a moment’s confusion about our arrangement. Our contract allows us to use her name and likeness and that of their estate, Frithsden, in exchange for a portion of the profits. Last year she conducted dog agility and trick classes to help pay for a new roof for their Grade I listed house. Between our research and our conversations with Lady Anthea, Shelby, Dana, Mason, Joey and I had learned a bit about Frithsden’s history. First, it was pronounced Friz-den. Next, it was in the Greek Revival style—it was designed to look like a Greek temple, the Theseum in Athens, to be specific.

  Albert was speaking again. Earlier at Buckingham’s I’d seen him from the side, and now at the beach he was directly in front of me. He told us how happy he was to be in “historic Lewes” and how “friendly and welcoming everyone” had been. I didn’t know if his unoriginal comments were because he wasn’t a going-out-on-a-limb kind of guy, or from the fact that he’d been in town less than twelve hours, and didn’t know any more than that about us.

  I looked around at the small audience and noticed two men who were neither photographing nor recording the event. One wore designer eyeglasses and was in the process of switching them out for the sunglasses version. “Who are they?” I said it aloud, but to myself.

  “Who?” Lady Anthea asked.

  “Those two men look very familiar to me, but I can’t place them,” I said.

  Lady Anthea tilted her head to look discreetly. “They were in the driving skills class yesterday.”

  “Oh, yeah!” The friend with the stubble wore a different flannel shirt today. The guy in the specs wore a different cashmere sweater. Today’s was navy. “You were still in the puppy room when the guy in plaid blew up at Charles Andrews,” I said.

  “Can you blame him after he told them to, and I quote, ‘grow a pair’?” she asked.

  John chuckled and his deep voice must have carried, because both men looked at us, then moved away.

  “What I want to know is how stubble can look the same every day?” I asked. “It gives new meaning to the phrase, ‘it’s five o’clock somewhere.’”

  Albert thanked the group again and turned to hand the microphone back to Bess Harper, who in turn offered it to Cordy Galligan. She smiled shyly and raised a slim hand to her neck. No, no, she mouthed.

  My phone pinged that I had a new text message. I took it out of the pocket of my khakis and saw it was from Dana, who was back at school. She had forwarded an image of a man and woman leaving an ornate, historic-looking building. I gasped.

  “That’s Cordy Galligan,” Lady Anthea told John. “She could be from another time.”

  “How do you mean?” John asked.

  “She’s so demure and innocent.” This could have been followed by a dreamy “ahhhh.” She was entranced.

  “Oh, yeah?” I held out my phone for her to see. She took it from my hand and examined the photo more closely. Her eyes widened, then closed, and she gave the phone back to me. I handed it to John.

  “This is her?” he asked, pointing first to my phone and then to the improvised stage. “When was this taken?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “It says Saturday,” I answered, already forwarding him the photo of Cordy Galligan and Georg Nielsen walking arm in arm. “They were coming out of a restaurant in Manhattan. When she brought her dog to Buckingham’s, I heard her tell Margo Bardot she didn’t know him.”

  He paused just long enough to run his hand down my back and was gone. I watched him until Lady Anthea spoke. “Seeing the man the day he died doesn’t mean she killed him.”

  I shook my head. “No, and remember he was killed in Lewes and she only got here today.” I looked at my screen again and noticed that while the conductor was smiling broadly, Cordy’s smile was tight and hadn’t reached her eyes. Not even close.

  Lady Anthea and I went back to looking at her brother.

  “Should we be worried about him?” I asked.

  “I won’t pretend to not know what you mean,” she said, certainly more aware of her brother’s limitations than we were. And we were well aware. I doubted she knew that Shelby, Dana and I google-stalked his every move, ridiculing his silliness and shallow, pompous public remarks. His poor management of Frithsden was the reason Lady Anthea had entered the partnership with me. That much she’d shared during her first visit to Lewes. “Everything we’ve learned about the two murders has led back to the Potomac Symphony Orchestra,” she was saying. “And he’s going to be with them all week.”

  Bess Harper had the microphone that Cordy had turned down. “We all hope to see you at the concert on Friday night!” She emphasized “all” and lifted her arm, indicating the rows of musicians standing behind her.

  We applauded, politely, and when the group of musicians dispersed, the reporters descended on them.

  “Let’s go,” I said, striding through the sand toward the group. “We have to get busy.”

  Lady Anthea nodded, again not pretending she didn’t know what I was talking about. We had murders to solve.

  I whispered, “Does public speaking make your brother nervous?”

  She shook her head no.

  “Then why does he seem so uncomfortable?” I asked.

  “He’s worried about who will find out and what they will think,” she said.

  She was talking about the Royals.

  Chapter 14

  Lady Anthea finagled an invitation to tea from Bess Harper, using her brother as bait. John had proof she’d telephoned Nick Knightley on Saturday, although she swore blind she hadn’t. Plus, she had expressed an intense dislike for both of the victims. All Lady Anthea and I had to do was gently nudge the conversation to Georg Nielsen or to the symphony or to her whereabouts on Saturday night or Sunday morning, and we’d have clues, known as evidence to the boys in blue. Easy.

  We walked diagonally through the Lewes Beach parking lot to Bayview Avenue. Strips of grass surrounded a square, raised porch, which was the entrance to their at-least-million-dollar home. Bess stooped and tilted back a foot-high statue of a frolicking dolphin. She slid the hidden key out and unlocked the door.

  Lady Anthea and I, along with an untalkative Albert, sat around Bess’s dining room table as she worked in the kitchen. We were on the second floor of the townhouse, not the entry level, which was a layout that offered a nice view of the water from the balcony and the rooms on that floor. The walls of this room and the living room were lined with modern art, but I didn’t dare walk around to look at any of it. I felt like the room was holding me hostage. Bess had told us the paint color on the walls was ultra violet when she apologized for the smell caused by the recent redecorating. Ultra violent would have been more like it.

  The dining table was made of repurposed whitewashed pine planks, and the centerpiece was a tall, simple vase filled with seashells, interspersed with black-and-white plastic shovels for making sand castles. The fun decorative accessory was nonthreatening, so I focused on that.

  Albert still hadn’t spoken to me. I’d tried making conversation with him as we walked to Bess’s house but he had pretended not to hear me. I was curious about why he was snubbing me, but I didn’t really care.

  I whispered to Lady Anthea, “I’m not ashamed to admit I’m a little afra
id of the color of these walls.” They were aggressively purple.

  “It’s really horrible, isn’t it?” Oops. Bess had come in with the teacups and overheard me. Here was someone who now had the right to be standoffish. It wasn’t like Albert had caught me saying anything like that.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, reaching for a china cup. “I know next to nothing about decorating.”

  “But, Sue, your house—” Lady Anthea started.

  “Really, it’s okay,” Bess interrupted. “My husband has these two rooms repainted every spring with the Pantone Color of the Year. So at least I’ll only have to live with it for one season. Or that’s how it usually is.”

  “Ordinarily, you’re only here in the summer?” I asked, working my way to the topic I was interested in.

  “That’s all the time I’ve had to spare since I was elected board chair for the symphony,” she answered.

  “But for this visit you came, uh, when?” I asked.

  “I’m here this week for the concert.”

  “So it was you who suggested Lewes as the venue?” I asked. The symphony orchestra’s home was Washington, DC. Why had they come all the way to Delaware?

  “Is your husband a decorator?” Albert asked, taking the cup Bess offered him and unwittingly veering the conversation to something inconsequential. Actually, he’d T-boned my questioning.