The Minstrel and the Masquerade

by Lila K Bell

  “Oh,” Emily said, and some of the attitude melted away as she scanned me over.

  “She’s also looking into the murder.”

  I don’t know if I would have been that up front about it, but the change in Emily and her fellow server’s expressions was more than worth the lack of discretion.

  “Really?” the other server asked. “It was so awful. I still have nightmares about it. Are you, like, a private investigator or something?”

  “Or something,” I said. I didn’t want to go spreading rumours about my abilities or the legality of my inquiries, so I was okay to leave it open. Let them make their own guesses. If they thought I was a secret agent, so much the better. “I have a few questions for you, if you don’t mind.”

  The two girls exchanged a glance, and the other one shot a look toward the kitchen doors. “We should probably get back to work.”

  “It’ll just take a minute,” said Emily. She probably thought she’d get some publicity or official kudos if she offered anything helpful. Too bad for her. “This is Carolyn, by the way,” she said, nodding her head toward the other girl. “We were both working that night.”

  Carolyn nodded even as she gave Emily a stern look. Not even twenty years old, by the look of her, and she already had the Mom stare down.

  “Did either of you notice anything out of the ordinary?” I asked.

  “Not really,” Carolyn said. “It was a busy party and we were all over the floor, making sure the drinks and hors d’oeuvres were served. It was just a standard night until that woman fell down the stairs.”

  “There were six of you on the floor that night, right? Could one of the others have seen something? Have you heard anything since then that might be useful? I know gossip behind the scenes of these things can run a little wild.”

  Carolyn frowned. “Six? That’s not right.”

  Emily nodded. “There were only five of us working.”

  Sybil reached into her backpack and pulled out a stack of photos. I hadn’t realized she had them on her. What had she been doing with them all day?

  With the quickness of one familiar with their order, she pulled out six photos, showing the different servers differentiated by their hair and the style of their shirts. The masks obscured their faces, but in every photo they were carrying trays.

  Emily scanned them over, then laughed. “I remember now. It was Jenn. She wanted to leave early and someone else came in to cover for her. There must have been six during the switch-over. Remember, Caro? Didn’t Rayna take over for her?”

  Carolyn only shrugged, her attention sliding toward the dining room where she was due. “If you say so. Jenn doesn’t talk to me.”

  Ah, teenage drama.

  “What about these two?” I asked, pulling one of the photos of Marley and Brooks’ argument out of my own bag. “Did either of you happen to hear what they were fighting about?”

  Carolyn peered at the photograph. “Sorry. I remember passing by them at one point and heard them shouting at each other. No one likes being interrupted in the middle of a heated conversation to be asked if they want a drink. It’s a good way to get yelled at or the tray slapped out of your hand. I crossed the room. I left them alone.”

  Emily nodded. “Same. I was about to go over when the heat died down, but someone else was already there. I don’t know who it was. But—” She looked around the room as though making sure she wouldn’t be overheard. “I heard the guy asking the woman to do something. He was begging her. I thought he was about to drop to his knees and grab her skirt until she agreed. But she wouldn’t do it. I don’t know how it ended.”

  “Were there any other arguments?” Sybil asked, stealing the question from me. She was a quick learner.

  “The usual spats,” Emily said. “A big group like that, people start drinking, they start shouting all kinds of things at each other. Funny to watch sometimes. But I didn’t see anyone angry enough to murder someone.”

  Carolyn’s eyes widened. “What about that guy?”

  “What guy?” Emily asked.

  “The one who wasn’t in costume?”

  Awareness dawned on Emily’s face. “I can’t believe I forgot about him. He came through the kitchen and stood at the edge of the ballroom until he spotted the queen. He must have snuck in through the side door, because he wouldn’t have been let in otherwise.”

  “And they fought?” I asked.

  Carolyn and Emily shrugged. “I don’t know,” Carolyn said. “I just noticed him come in and find the woman, and then never saw him again.”

  Sybil grabbed my arm. “I think I know who they’re talking about.”

  She riffled through her photos, pulled one out, and showed it to the girls. “Is this him?”

  Emily smiled. “It certainly is. I wouldn’t mind running into him again sometime.”

  Carolyn rolled her eyes. The door to the kitchen opened and the manager came out. He shot both girls a nasty look and they scurried away without a goodbye.

  “I pulled this photo out to show you earlier and totally forgot,” Sybil said. “I thought it was weird he was here without a costume. Not even a mask. Think he could have done it?”

  She handed me the photo and a creeping sense of unease ran through me as I stared into the angry eyes of Court McCallister.

  10

  I love it when my instincts are right. There’s such a sense of validation, you know? Life is hard, dealing with people can be even harder, so when you learn that a gut sense you have about someone is correct, it makes you feel like you’ve earned your place on the map. You’re not just an ambling blood-sack with no concept of human emotion — hurray!

  It’s less fun when that instinct is telling you someone might have hated another human being so much they felt the need to steal her life.

  Then again, if people were good to each other all the time, I’d be out of a hobby, so there’s that.

  I knew I couldn’t go after McCallister again without some kind of plan. I’d seen his hostility. Even with Margery dead, the rage he’d felt toward her hadn’t just disappeared. Even if he hadn’t killed her, I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t putting myself in danger by asking a few pointed questions.

  So I resigned myself to a quiet non-murder-filled afternoon. I dropped Sybil off at home and came home to find Bea and Gramps had returned with fresh veg and the ingredients for a blueberry cornbread that would prove to blow my mind after dinner.

  Mother and Father were blessedly out for the evening at Nancy Cartwright’s… Harvest Party? The woman runs a nail salon. I wasn’t quite sure why she wanted to mark the harvest, but any excuse to celebrate, I suppose. That left the three of us — four with Charlie begging us for attention — with a companionable evening of conversation and trying to talk Gramps into starting a different show for his insomnia. I wasn’t sure how fighting demons was supposed to help him sleep.

  I gave myself a break from thinking about Margery’s murder and, after a great cornbread-induced rest, was ready to tackle McCallister the next morning.

  I confess, I still didn’t have much of a plan.

  I also confess I hadn’t exactly spent a lot of time thinking about one.

  I had the evidence in my hand that Court had been at my party, and I knew how much he hated Margery. Maybe it would have been smarter to take what I had to Sam and let him go after the guy, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to hand it over.

  My gut told me Court had something to say, and if I trusted my gut that far, I would trust it to take me the whole way.

  It was time to wing it.

  Once again joining the DIYers as soon as the store opened, I tracked McCallister down in the paint section. He wore another — or maybe the same, who was I to judge — grey uniform shirt, his name tag clean and shiny, his brown hair neatly brushed, and he was organizing colour swatches.

  It was such a zen task for someone who’d shown so much anger against the woman who’d wrapped up his divorce.

  “Morning, s
unshine,” I greeted, coming up to lean against the swatch stand.

  Really? That was the route my gut was taking?

  I hope you know what you’re doing, gut.

  McCallister turned to look at me and it was obvious he had zero idea who I was. Fair. It wasn’t like we actually knew each other. To him, I was just another customer, albeit an overly friendly one. Or maybe he was worried he’d spent the night with me and couldn’t remember. I let him suffer for a moment.

  “I was in here yesterday. With the pliers? We chatted about Margery Brooks, your favourite divorce lawyer.”

  Recognition seeped into his eyes, followed closely by wariness. “Right. Is there something else I can help you with? Trouble with the pliers?”

  “Nope, they’re working great,” I said, and pulled Sybil’s photograph out of my bag. “I do wonder if you could tell me what you were doing at my birthday gala, and why you thought someone else’s party would be an appropriate place to have a conversation with a woman you loathed.”

  I kept my tone cheery and unthreatening. Apparently instinct preferred to take a direct route, but I was confident I could stand my ground. Worst case, I could fall back on being the wounded party, offended that someone would try to steal my thunder. It wasn’t like I’d accused him of anything.

  As I watched, McCallister’s face flushed a deep red. He took the photo and glared at it, then thrust it back at me.

  “Yeah, I was there. So what? You think I marched through all those people and poisoned her?”

  I slipped the photo back in my bag. “I was making the point that you weren’t invited. You didn’t even have the courtesy to come in costume.” I stayed on point, then allowed myself to trail off and allow a touch of worry to enter my voice. And it wasn’t all fake. This guy now had motive and opportunity, and he worked in a hardware store, which meant all kinds of gardening supplies. No doubt he knew enough to recognize a poisonous plant in the garden. I had to be very careful I didn’t drop my foot into my mouth. “Now that you mention it, you can’t deny it’s a little strange. You tracked her down, figured out who she was in her costume, and had it out with her in front of hundreds of people just a short while before she died. Probably around the time she was poisoned.”

  The line around his lips turned white with fury, and I was glad I was standing in the middle of a hardware store and hadn’t gone to see him last night.

  I thought he was about to throw me out, but after a quick glance to see if anyone was in ear shot, he said, “All right, fine. I went there to have it out with her. She’d been avoiding my calls, not replying to my emails. I heard that everyone who was anyone had been invited to the hotel, so figured she would be on the list. She was in here the other day buying hearts for her costume — it wasn’t hard to figure out who she was. And crowd or not, it was easy enough to find her, standing up on the stairs like she was holding court.”

  The venom in his voice from our first meeting seeped into the conversation, oozing into his words until they pooled in my ears and left a slick slime in the pit of my stomach.

  “I wanted to confront her in public,” he continued. “I wanted everyone to know what she’d done to me. But even in a crowd, dressed as some kind of fairy tale character, she still managed to put me down.”

  “What did she do to you, Court?” I asked.

  The question was out before I could stop it.

  Most of my curiosity remained solidly on the case, but aside from that, I wanted to know what could drive a man to that sort of desperation. He had to be holding a good job if he could afford Margery’s rates; he was handsome and now had the divorce he’d wanted. What she’d done had to have been pretty huge to drive him to the brink.

  “She ripped me off,” he hissed, his gaze darting around the room behind me. “For months we sat in her conference room, week after week, my cheating wife trying to take me for everything I was worth. She wanted the kids, the money. In the end, Margery got me everything I asked for, sure, but the bill she handed me when it was all said and done almost wiped me out. Not only what I’d gained in the settlement, but my private savings, as well. She laughed when I confronted her the first time. Told me I should have paid more attention to the fine print. All of the expenses were legitimate.” He snorted, and his fist tightened at his side. “Really? She needed to spend a week in Toronto surveying our property there? I believe that like I believe she was born was that nose.”

  My mouth went dry. I’d gathered from the files I’d scanned in her office that she’d played those kinds of games, but to completely wipe her client out was brutal. Unethical, even. How many of her clients had actually paid without giving it a second thought?

  “What were you hoping to accomplish at the party?” I asked. He had no reason to answer me, but I thought it was worth a try.

  To my surprise, he shrugged. “I wanted her to acknowledge that she scammed me. I wanted her to negotiate. She refused to hear me out. She took greater advantage of me than my ex-wife ever did. It almost would have been worth it to stay married to the woman.”

  I swallowed hard to work some moisture back into my mouth. “How far would you have been willing to go to get out of paying that bill?”

  He jerked back, as though remembering who he was speaking to — a strange woman prying into the most personal corners of his life.

  “Not as far as murder,” he snarled. “She might be dead, but I still have to pay the bill, don’t I? I didn’t kill her.”

  I remembered what my father had said about the difference between Margery and Ralph and took a chance. “Now that her partner is taking over your file, won’t you be able to work out a better deal?”

  McCallister started, and I knew I’d hit the nail on the head.

  I raised my eyebrow. “Well then, it seems that no matter how much you deny it, with Margery dead everything is coming up McCallister.”

  ***

  I hadn’t given McCallister a chance to respond. Nothing he said would have changed my mind, and I needed time to think over what I’d learned. So I left the hardware store on a high note and drove around town for a while to work off my adrenaline and decide what to do next.

  Without being aware of it, my mind steered me in the direction of Stonegate, and before long I was parked in front of Joseph Marley’s house.

  This was quite the rabbit hole I was tumbling down, and I hoped my instincts weren’t going to lead me astray.

  I didn’t get out of the car right away. I’d just dug deep into one stranger’s private affairs — what right did I have to do it again to this man and his grieving wife? But if I didn’t ask about his argument with Margery, the police were certain to, and at least with me he could believe he had the upper hand. It was a gift, really.

  Making sure I had the photographs of him and Margery in my bag, I got out of the car and walked up the laneway to the front porch. The garden he’d been slaving over yesterday waved cheerfully with autumn blooms, a brightness that countered the dragging heaviness that remained around the rest of the house.

  I knocked on the door and he answered a few minutes later, his gaze focused on the ceiling. I guessed Kelly was still sick in bed and he didn’t want her disturbed.

  “Yes, what can — Ms. Gates?”

  His surprise was understandable. I didn’t expect to find me here again, either.

  “Hello, Mr. Marley. I’m sorry to bother you again, but I wanted to stop by and see how you were doing.”

  “Of course,” he said. “Come in. But if you wouldn’t mind keeping your voice down, I don’t want to wake up my wife. The doctor was here this morning and has her under sedation. She’s still very upset about what happened.”

  “The last thing I want to do is disturb her.”

  I followed Marley through the foyer and into the kitchen at the back. The space was warm and open, with black marble countertops that shone with a fresh polish. I set my bag on a bar stool beside the island and turned to face him.

  “I hope I’m not
being intrusive, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened and how much you must be feeling it,” I said. “I wanted to make sure you weren’t beating yourself up about the argument you and Margery had before she died.”

  Was it my imagination that he paled at the mention of it? It was too quick to see for sure before he turned toward the fridge and pulled out a jug of water. He kept his back to me as he poured himself a drink. “Argument?”

  When he faced me, his expression was twisted in confusion. I didn’t say anything, allowing his memory to work it out on his own — or for him to realize there was no point in pretending.

  It took about twenty seconds.

  “Oh!” he said, and he chuckled. “That was nothing. It was a family spat over something Kelly had asked Margery to do. It was nothing.” His smile faded. “I do regret that it was the last conversation we ever had, though. I wish it could have been a better memory to take with me.”

  I reached into my bag and pulled out the photos, laying them out on the kitchen counter. “It looks a bit more than a spat to me,” I said. “If anything, it looks pretty intense.”

  I pushed forward the one of him with his finger in Margery’s face. He looked as though he was about to shove her, or she him. There was no doubting the passion in both their expressions, even with the masks. The kind of fury you expect would spread throughout the entire room.

  “The police are going to want to talk to you,” I said gently, and it was the most honest thing I’d said to him since I’d arrived. “They’re going to speak with the servers who overheard part of the conversation, you begging Margery to do something for you and her turning you down. They’re going to want to know what the argument was about and if you were the one who slipped the poison into her drink.”

  Marley looked up at me, his face a ghostly white, though I couldn’t tell if it was fear or anger that had caused the change. He threw back his water and slammed the glass down on the counter.