Grace Against the Clock (A Manor House Mystery)

by Julie Hyzy

  Bennett clapped his hands. “Wonderful. Will you see to it?”

  The waiter said that he’d be happy to.

  Before he could pack any more of the displayed food away, Frances got up and refilled her plate. When she resumed her seat, her gaze flicked between us, defensively. “Didn’t get a chance to eat.”

  “What I want to know,” I began, “is who Dr. Keay needed to talk to. Clearly, it had to be someone in attendance because Keay said he’d be right back. There was no way in or out beside the entrance—”

  Holding another appetizer aloft, Frances sucked at a tooth, making her cheek bulge. “Except for the emergency exit, remember.”

  “That sets off an alarm,” I said. “But what if it isn’t working?” I stood. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.” I hurried to the door in question, pressed the crash bar, and winced when the shrill siren pierced the air with its shriek. I made my way back to Bennett and Frances with my hands over my ears.

  All the waiters and waitresses had stopped in their tracks, putting down whatever they’d been carrying to cover their ears as well. Bennett and Frances had done the same. I waited, counting aloud, though no one could hear me, “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty . . .”

  Silence, sudden and deep, slammed like an invisible hammer.

  “You had to do that, didn’t you?” Frances said. Her plate was balanced precariously on her lap. She gripped it again with both hands.

  “There’s no way anyone could have come in or out through the emergency door,” I said. “We wouldn’t have missed that.”

  “Gracie,” Bennett’s voice was a warning, “there is nothing suspicious about the way Dr. Keay died. You’ve got that look in your eye again. Leave this alone.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Even though both Keay and Rodriguez got the cold and clammies, there were differences in the way they went down.”

  France wagged a finger. “Not all heart attacks are by the book, you know.”

  I sighed, restless. “Who was Keay meeting? Why couldn’t anyone find him?” I held up my hands as though grasping the air around me for answers. “Cherk claims Keay wasn’t behind the stage, and yet, that’s where he turned up. He said ‘injection.’ Of all the last words he had to choose from, why ‘injection’? He was a preeminent cardiothoracic surgeon. If he was having an attack why wouldn’t he say ‘heart’ instead? And why did he smell like liquor when Serena insists the man never drank a drop? Nope,” I said. “There are too many unanswered questions.”

  The two stared at me in silence for a long moment.

  “You really do have a hard time letting things go, don’t you?” Bennett asked.

  “Only when they don’t make sense,” I said. “I can’t help it. I prefer it when loose ends are tied up.” I took a look around as the cleanup continued. “I hope Rodriguez is okay.”

  Chapter 9

  Even though Sunday was usually a day off for me, I returned to Marshfield to oversee Cherk’s student team as they took down the stage and repacked all the photographs the man had brought for the presentation but never got a chance to show. Frances joined me.

  When they were almost finished, Frances and I took a very Jane Austen–like turn about the room, examining the area closely to see if there was anything amiss.

  Cherk had been a brisk taskmaster, but now that his students had completed their jobs and were on their way back to unload the truck at the theater, he became very chatty.

  “You here at Marshfield certainly know how to throw the kind of party that gets the whole town talking,” he said. “I was initially disappointed not to be able to make my presentation, but who can compete with a dead body followed by a cop suffering a heart attack, all in the same room?”

  “You’re too kind,” I said, returning his sarcasm.

  “That detective went down so quickly after Keay died—I started to worry who might be next.” When Cherk’s face creased into a grin, I suppressed a shudder. One minute he was fish-faced, the next, Dracula. Now a scary clown, complete with fake smile. The deep lines set in his pale skin made him look like an aged person wearing white greasepaint. Except he wasn’t all that old. And that was his natural skin tone.

  “I called Flynn this morning,” I said. “Rodriguez is stable, but may be looking at valve-replacement surgery.”

  Frances had already heard this update. She made a tsking noise. “And to think that he could have had Dr. Keay perform the surgery, if only he’d had his heart attack a week sooner.”

  Cherk said, “Poor planning on his part.”

  Frances apparently missed the mockery. “Dr. Keay was the best heart surgeon these parts have ever seen.” She got a familiar look in her eye and adopted an enticing tone. “He certainly turned his life around.”

  “Oh?” Cherk asked. “Do I detect the delicious waft of gossip?”

  “Don’t you know?” Frances asked sweetly, warming to the opportunity to share what she’d hinted at. “I know Grace wasn’t living here at the time, but I’m not sure when you moved here.”

  Cherk didn’t answer the unspoken question. “Spill, darling. Please. You have me on tenterhooks.”

  She perked up. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Frances had warned me shortly before the benefit that there was a story behind Joyce Swedburg and Leland Keay’s divorce. Now, as she settled in, I got the feeling we were about to hear the whole sordid tale, whether we wanted to or not.

  This time, I opted to let her continue. With all the unexplained happenings from last night, I thought it might behoove me to know a little more about the late Dr. Keay and people in his life.

  Tugging at the hem of her three-quarter-sleeve peasant blouse, she set her feet apart, like a fighter staking her ground. Vinyl sandals strapped her wide feet about as well as the gurney had strapped Rodriguez’s girth in the night before.

  Savoring the moment, she pushed up one sleeve and then the other.

  “It was a dry autumn. I remember,” she began in a tone that belonged around a nighttime campfire, “almost a drought. That’s important because it wasn’t like Keay could blame what happened on the weather.”

  I had no idea what Keay might want to blame on anything, but Frances was on a roll, so I didn’t ask.

  “Dr. Keay and Joyce Swedburg had been married for about fifteen, maybe twenty years at that point. No kids. She was, and still is, a high-powered attorney, and he had already achieved status as a world-renowned heart surgeon. They were living the good life, the two of them.”

  “Rich, accomplished, people. No dependents. Got it,” Cherk said.

  “The thing is”—Frances’s eyes sparkled; we were clearly getting to the good stuff—“Keay was a lush. A functioning alcoholic the likes of which I’d never seen before. Joyce pretended not to notice, and mostly everyone in town looked the other way.”

  “He operated on people? Drunk?” I asked.

  Frances shook her head. “Never touched a drop when he was on duty, but the minute he was off, or come the weekend, he partied hard.”

  “What about emergencies?” I asked. “Was he so irresponsible that he didn’t consider middle-of-the-night calls for help?”

  “He only performed scheduled surgeries. He’d made such a name for himself that he saw patients two days a week for consultation and two days a week in the O.R. He kept a strict, limited schedule.” She held up her hands at the unasked question. “He got away with that because he could. People flew from all over the country to see him. There was always a year-long waiting list because Keay almost never lost a patient. Desperate folks lined up and people treated him like a god.” One corner of Frances’s mouth turned up. “So what if he let loose on his own time? Everybody rationalized that the guy was under such stress while he was working that he ought to be allowed his vices. As long as it wasn’t hurting anyone.”

  Cherk and I
exchanged a look. “Vices?” I asked. “Plural?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Frances allowed her buildup to sink in before continuing, “Keay and Joyce kept up appearances and lived their life of luxury, looking like the happiest, most successful couple Emberstowne had ever seen.”

  I felt an “until” hovering in the air.

  Frances obliged. “Until the accident.”

  “I thought I’d find you down here.”

  We all jumped. I spun.

  Bennett had come into the room so silently we’d missed him. Either that or we’d been so drawn into Frances’s story that we’d tuned out everything else.

  “Good morning, Gracie, Frances, David,” he said. Then, perhaps reading the scene—the three of us huddled close together, with Frances holding court—Bennett asked, “What have I missed?”

  “Background on Joyce and Leland’s relationship,” I said. “Frances was about to tell us about an accident of some sort.”

  Bennett cocked an eyebrow at her. “Speaking ill of the dead, are we? So soon?”

  She held up both hands. “Facts are facts.”

  Bennett sent Cherk an almost apologetic look. “I’m sure I don’t need to warn you to be careful what you say around our dear Frances here,” he said. Resting a hand on my shoulder, he added, “Gracie knows what I’m talking about.”

  Unfazed, Cherk said, “Back to the accident.”

  Bennett held a hand out toward Frances in a silent “Go ahead” move.

  As though she hadn’t been interrupted, Frances jumped right back in. “One night, the good doctor was out carousing again. Joyce kept busy the way she usually did, working on briefs, alone. She got a call at about nine in the evening letting her know that her husband had wrapped his car around a tree in Westville. Totaled the car. Blood alcohol was way over the legal limit.”

  Bennett, not usually one for gossip, chimed in. “It was bad enough that he’d been driving drunk, but—”

  I could tell that this was the reveal Frances had been leading up to, and she wasn’t about to let Bennett steal her thunder. Her voice rose and bulldozed over his words. “But he wasn’t alone.” She wagged her brows at me and Cherk. “He had a woman in the car with him. A married woman.”

  “Were they hurt?” I asked, adding a faint question, “Was she killed?”

  “Lucky for him, no. She was banged up pretty badly, but eventually recovered. The doctor was fine. Maybe being all liquored up kept him loose, who knows? He barely had a scratch.”

  I had a feeling there was more.

  Frances continued, “Can’t say that Keay stayed in one piece after Joyce got ahold of him, though. He’d been having affairs with women in town for years. Lots of women,” she added with a knowing look. “He probably could have kept it going, too, if it weren’t for the bad luck smashing up his car like that.”

  “So that’s why Joyce divorced him?” I asked.

  “Yes and no,” Frances said. “Whether she’d known about the other women before the accident didn’t matter. What mattered was that her husband was a public spectacle and—you know Joyce—that is not the kind of attention she craves. Keay called her from jail but she refused to bail him out. Made sure no one else bailed him out, either. Couple of my friends in the police department were there when she finally showed up. She screamed at Keay, told him he could sit and stew for a couple of days and think about where his drinking had gotten him.”

  Frances looked around as though she needed a drink of water to continue. There was nothing, so she went on, “Joyce defended him in court against the DUI charges. Got him off with a warning if he promised to go into rehab. Keay’s passenger sued him and Joyce got that settled out of court. She came off looking like the devoted wife who had forgiven her husband this one transgression. The minute Joyce got him safely free, however, she kicked him out of their house and filed for divorce.”

  “All that’s true,” Bennett added. “And if there was any good that came out of it, it was that Dr. Keay has been sober ever since.”

  “Until last night,” I reminded him. “You saw how he stumbled. He was clearly under the influence of something.” I waved a hand near my nose. “If that wasn’t enough, I could smell it on him.”

  “Who knows what pushed him over the edge?” Cherk said. “We all have darkness lurking in depths we presume others will never see.”

  Frances blinked at him.

  Clearly unaware of the sinister undertone in his pronouncement, Cherk continued, “Whether he was concerned about disappointing his adolescent date later, or he was worried about having to make a speech, clearly the man found the pressures too much to bear and succumbed to the lure of the drink. There is a devil within us all.”

  “That’s what’s bothering me,” Bennett said. “Leland has made many speeches in his career. This was nothing new. Why would he have been nervous? There was nothing at stake. These were all people he knew and worked with.”

  “And if Serena is to be believed, he wasn’t out of her sight long enough to drink the volume necessary to impair him to such a degree,” I said.

  “Things aren’t making sense.” As Bennett spoke the words, he made eye contact with me. “Not that we need to do anything about it. I’m sure the autopsy will reveal that he died of natural causes, and that what looked like drunkenness may have simply been signs of a stroke.”

  I opened my mouth to argue that Bennett’s theory didn’t account for the unmistakable scent of alcohol, but decided to let it go.

  Chapter 10

  I’d let Frances know that I’d be a little late arriving at work Monday morning. Hillary had impressed on me—multiple times—that the blueprints Frederick had borrowed from the historical society needed to be returned as soon as possible. I decided to drop them off on my way to work.

  I set out for my quick stop at the society’s offices in town, thinking about everything that had transpired over the weekend. Last night at home with my roommates, we’d opened a chilled bottle of rosé and simply talked the night away. That quiet respite, being able to relax with two of my closest friends, had turned out to be the relief I’d needed from the stress of managing the Marshfield party and the double heart attacks that had claimed one victim and threatened another.

  Scott, Bruce, and I had gone over the blueprint plans closely, trying our best to glean whatever information we could about the house we lived in. We’d found it fun to think about what life had been like more than a hundred years earlier. I didn’t have paperwork to tell me when the first shovelful of dirt had been turned over when the house was built, but there was no doubt the home had survived a great deal of history. Oh, the stories it could tell.

  The three of us had also decided to take another look at the workbench in the basement and had agreed that the wobbly built-in should go. Better to take it out on our timeline than to wait for it to collapse on its own.

  I arrived at the historical society’s office moments after it opened for the day. Opening the front door wide, I could smell history the moment I stepped in: musty, and familiar. I took a deep breath and savored it. Although I’d returned to Emberstowne to live more than a year ago, I hadn’t spent any time here yet. I knew the society existed, but I had so much of historical significance to sort through at Marshfield before I even began to explore the rest of the town, that I hadn’t paid this place proper attention.

  The room’s ceilings were high. Bookshelves, crammed tight with leather-bound volumes in shades of navy, black, and the occasional faded red, beckoned to be perused. The narrow storefront doorway gave the illusion of the space being tiny and cramped, but walls within had been knocked down between the original store and the adjacent buildings that flanked it, making for a wide, spacious area. There were glass display cases showcasing artifacts that had been collected over the years.

  A shiny oak counter stretched along the length of the wall to my left.
“Good morning,” I said to the man behind it. The dark wooden floor creaked as I made my way in, and the man behind the counter came around to greet me.

  A head taller than I was, he was probably a couple of years older than Adam and good-looking, but with a noticeable paunch. He wore 1970s-style glasses, a plaid flannel shirt open over a solid gray tee, and stonewashed blue jeans. With his trim beard and full head of hair—both of which sported a slight touch of gray—he looked like Central Casting’s ideal choice for “handsome nerd.”

  He leaned to look out the front windows, peering up at the sky before answering. “It is,” he said, then returned his attention to me. “Let me guess. You must be Grace Wheaton.”

  “I am,” I said. “And you are?”

  “Wes McIntyre. I’m the historian in residence.” He extended his hand, causing me to shift the rolls to my other arm so we could shake.

  “In residence?” I asked. “You don’t really live here, do you?”

  “Not in the office, although it sure feels like it sometimes. I live in the apartment above. One of the perks of the job.” As we stepped back into our own spaces, he added, “Very pleased to meet the woman who everyone in town is talking about.”

  “Me?” I asked with a self-conscious laugh. “Why on earth would anyone be talking about me?”

  “You’ve earned quite a reputation for yourself,” he said.

  I waved my free hand dismissively.

  “I’m not kidding,” he said with an infectious grin. “Did you really take down a thief with an antique sword? Singlehandedly?”

  I couldn’t resist. “No way,” I said. “That sword was heavy. I used two hands.”

  His eyes sparkled. “I’d love to hear more about that someday.”

  “I’m sure the tale has grown with the telling and the truth would be a disappointment,” I said, eager to change the subject. It always surprised me to find out when my exploits were the topic of conversation among people I’d never even met.