The Murder at the Murder at the Mimosa Inn

by JOAN HESSS

  “But I saw her …” Eric began.

  “It was dark outside, and you fully expected to see your wife. According to the script, she was there; you had no cause to doubt your subconscious premise. You saw a black-haired woman in a dark raincoat. It wasn’t Mimi.”

  “Who was it?”

  Playing the scene for maximum impact, Peter paused for a full thirty seconds. “This morning Eric saw Caron Malloy, who graciously agreed to reproduce the actions of one of the community theater members. She, like her model, had a black scarf tied around her head to resemble long, black hair.”

  “Friday night,” I said, determined to get a glimmer of the limelight, “you saw Harmon Crundall’s murderer—Suzetta Price.”

  From the top of the stairs came a tiny squeak. Suzetta gripped the bannister with white fingers as she looked down at us, and her glasses failed to hide the fury in her eyes.

  “This is absurd. Lieutenant Rosen, are you going to permit this amateur busybody to make wild accusations about me? I happen to be on assignment—for you.”

  Peter gave me a perplexed frown. “Do you have any evidence to substantiate your accusation, Claire?”

  “In my role of Bella Crundall, I went upstairs to find the option and secure it. Suzetta was in Harmon’s room.” I pointed at Bella, who hovered in her corner. “Was Suzetta there Friday night?”

  “No,” Bella said, “the room was empty. It was simple to take the option from the dresser and replace it with a blank from Harmon’s briefcase. I did not see Suzetta.”

  “I may have been a minute or two late,” Suzetta said. “That doesn’t prove anything. You ought to arrest this woman to put her out of her self-inflicted misery.”

  I flashed my fangs and turned to point at Nickie Merrick. “You went outside to meet Suzetta, didn’t you? You made the appointment just before the movie. Harmon’s little barb at dinner alerted you to the fact that he knew about the drug transactions taking place at his beloved theater. You had to warn Suzetta to stay away from you until you could do something about Peter’s presence and Harmon’s tacit threat to call the police Monday morning.”

  “I—I think Harmon overheard me when I stopped by Suzetta’s room to tell her about Rosen. His room adjoined hers, but I couldn’t worry about that. I had to warn her.” Nickie gave me a sad smile. “I tried to tell her Friday, but when I went to our emergency meeting places, you were there—at the boathouse, in the garden.”

  “Sorry, Nickie,” I said truthfully.

  The mustache was given a particularly vicious yank. It came off in his fingers. He stared at the tuft of black hairs, then carefully placed it in his coat pocket and said, “I told Suzetta to meet me at ten-forty-five. She never came.”

  “Am I accused of dealing drugs?” Suzetta squealed. It was not in the least adorable. “I am working for the police!”

  “So you are,” I murmured.

  Caron was standing quietly by the back door, looking as if she had dipped her hair in ink. I gestured for her to join me.

  “My daughter,” I said, “did not attend the movie Friday night; she chose instead to remain in the bedroom to talk on the telephone. In the midst of her conversation, she noticed several things that she did not realize were important.”

  I could see that Caron was deciding how to best play the scene. Clenching my teeth, I hissed at her to get on with it.

  “Well,” she said, opting for becoming modesty, “I happened to look out the window just as a blond head started for the boathouse. It was too silly to think about, so I didn’t pay any attention. But a minute later I heard someone come up the back stairs and tiptoe down the hall. I was worried it might be Mother, who doesn’t understand the postpubescent psychological need for peer communication.”

  “So you took a quick peek?” Peter said before she could warm up to the subject.

  “I saw Suzetta go into Mr. Crundall’s room, wearing a raincoat. She came out a minute later with a paper in her hand and went into the Vanderhans’ room. I don’t know what happened to the raincoat, but she wasn’t wearing it anymore.”

  “Did you hear anything as Suzetta went into the Vanderhans’ bedroom?” he prodded.

  “I heard Mrs. Vanderhan say something, then they closed the door.” A humble smile on her face, Caron pulled off the scarf and stepped forward to accept an Oscar.

  Peter moved in front of her. “Mimi was upstairs waiting for a report when the murder took place. Suzetta, however, decided she could deal with Harmon Crundall and still make it to the Vanderhans’ room without anyone noticing the time discrepancy. To her perplexity, the original option had been removed by Bella. Had Suzetta not taken liberties with her script, she would have arrived in Harmon’s room first and been able to burn the option. Suzetta was the last visitor to see Harmon alive, and she murdered him.”

  “You haven’t proved it!” she said. Her sneer wobbled, but she recovered and tossed her chin.

  I wrinkled my nose adorably. “Your bikini was drying in the bathroom last night. When could you have found time for a swim except in the middle of the night? Who could have guessed you’re Olympic material?”

  Peter’s nose was rather adorable, too. “Since you knew Bruce was waiting on the road for Harmon, you had only one option—to take the most direct route from the other side of the lake.”

  “And I did sneeze at your raincoat,” I added with an adorable blush. “Mold from the boathouse, you know.”

  “You’re all crazy!”

  Deputies edged forward. Nickie was pulled aside, and his sputters cut off by the click of handcuffs. Suzetta whirled around and made a dash for the door. It ended with a dent in Sheriff Lafleur’s badge, nose level.

  The curtain fell not on thunderous applause, but on a squeak. It was followed by a stunned silence.

  THIRTEEN

  “Did Sheriff Lafleur find the croquet mallets?” I asked Peter.

  “Eric tossed one under the porch when he came back to the drawing room. Suzetta intended to hide the other in the woods, but she never had a chance to slip away.” He looked up at the waiter and gave our order, then said, “There was no question that Suzetta’s was the weapon; the blood type matched and there were a few hairs and bits of flesh.”

  The waiter blanched. When he found his voice, it reminded me of a tree frog I once knew at the Mimosa Inn. “Would you care to see the wine list, sir?”

  Peter selected a bottle of wine and allowed the waiter to flee to the kitchen. “We found the mallet in the trunk of her car, along with a black scarf and enough drugs to prove she was the campus distributor. Merrick was eager to tell us all the details of her involvement, no doubt thinking it would endear him to us.”

  “Did it?”

  Peter discovered something of great interest on the ceiling. “We were not thrilled by any of it. Suzetta was not a regular member of the CID—thank God—but merely a civilian recruit. Last fall she was picked up with a purseful of pills, and we decided to drop the charges if she agreed to work for us. An unfortunate decision.”

  “Was she working for Nickie from the beginning?”

  “When we first picked her up, we erroneously assumed she was a customer, not a retailer. She turned in very precise weekly reports about Merrick’s movements at the theater, but she could not pinpoint the identity of the contact. Now I know why.”

  “Did you give her the gun?” I asked as a shiver raced up my back. “She wasn’t playing when she forced me downstairs. If you hadn’t popped out of the office, I wouldn’t have been around to interfere with any more investigations.”

  “We issued a temporary permit. She convinced us that she needed it for her own safety, because of the unsavory people involved. One of them happened to be our undercover agent.”

  “She strung you along for eight months?” I said with mock bewilderment. “The keen minds at the CID never suspected that their very own agent was also their drug dealer?”

  “And our murderer,” Peter sighed. “You did well, Claire.�
�

  “We were lucky that she believed Caron’s story about the raincoat. The child did well too; I almost believed her myself.”

  “You’ve reared an accomplished liar.”

  I nodded graciously. The waiter sidled up to the table, a wine bottle clutched in his hand. The label was read and the cork ceremoniously examined. Then, his hand trembling so wildly that wine splashed onto the tablecloth, the waiter poured an inch into Peter’s glass and stepped back to stare at us.

  “Fine,” Peter said after a sip. As the waiter filled my glass, he lifted his and said, “To murder.”

  Purple rain spewed onto the tablecloth.

  “Which one?” I replied sweetly.

  The waiter’s eyes widened. He crammed the bottle into a bucket of ice, gurgled, and again fled to the kitchen, perhaps to find a butcher knife in case of an attack.

  “The mock one, I think,” Peter said. We clinked glasses across the table. “Did any of the cryptic clues escape your cunning mind?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, crossing my fingers in my lap. “The one that read, ‘Tues. a hobo collapsed’ was obviously an anagram for the boathouse, which was to be the scene of the crime. ‘Do we have to pay?’ was a reference to the blond wig and the synthetic hairs found there. ‘An abbreviated problem of personal identity’ told me that Suzetta was a P.I.—a private detective. I realized that she had to be working for the Vanderhans.”

  “Well done, Miss Marple. Of course, the ‘batter dipped portion of minced meat, sans time limits’ meant that we were looking for a croquette with a t and an e, which are the outside letters of the word ‘time.’ A croquet mallet was the weapon.”

  “What else could it be?” I murmured. “It did seem unfair that the clue was in my menu only. How did you know about that clue, Peter?”

  “It was in all the menus, but you were the only one to choke on it. How did you do with the Baggies of evidence—did you deduce the significance of all of them?”

  “Except one,” I admitted. Candor cleanses the soul, as long as one doesn’t get carried away with it. “What about you?”

  “The lipstick smudge on the glass from Harmon’s room indicated that a woman had been with him. Suzetta’s lipstick was too dark, so it must have been Mimi’s. The ashes were from the option, as we all knew, and the hairs from the wig. Is that all?”

  “The mud clump, which came from Bella’s shoe rather than Eric’s,” I said. “Did the lab report show traces of lime?”

  “I received the analysis this morning, and yes, lime was present. Our forensics man raises roses himself, and he was quite excited with his findings. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was two weeks late with the monumental discovery.”

  “Poor, inept Eric was scripted to overhear Mimi’s conversation with Harmon when the tryst was made. He said afterwards that he was opposed to the mock murder from the beginning, since he realized he was apt to bungle his role. He’s going to teach incomprehensible things at Farber College next fall, and let Mimi and Bruce handle the innkeeping and theater productions. They’re sticking to comedies from now on, but not the sort that take place in the Mimosa Inn’s drawing room.”

  “Then Harmony Hills will not mar the view?”

  “No,” I said. “Bella tried to convince herself that Mimi had murdered her husband in order to justify exercising the option. Since she would be avenging his death, to the tune of several hundred thousand dollars, she tried very hard to believe it. Later, she felt guilty enough to allow the Vanderhans to purchase the option from her. She’ll have to order her tulips from Holland.”

  The waiter came to the table with our order, his face carefully set in a deferential mask. We received our plates in record time, and he was again allowed to take sanctuary in the kitchen. By this time, the chef and several assistants were watching from the doorway, and the other waiters made wide circles around our table, as if we were surrounded by a haze of plague germs. I rather appreciated the privacy.

  “Bella did retire,” I added to Peter as I picked up my fork. “A great relief to her chemistry students.”

  “We forgot the final clue in the boathouse—the book of matches with two missing from the left side. Is that the one you could not decipher?”

  “Nobody was left-handed,” I said. “I watched Bella when she lit a cigarette. The only other person who smoked was Eric, and he was most definitely right-handed.”

  “But he often turns the matchbook upside down.”

  “Feeble at best,” I sniffed. I gave all of my attention to the food, hoping that the recapitulation was over. One clue remained, the one that read, “The rickety building holds the answer.” Caron, who knew what it meant, had refused to discuss it until she had communicated with every peer in Farberville about her vital role in the solution of the murder. She has a lot of peers, although not one of them can equal her melodramatic flair.

  I finally put down my fork. “Better than crow a la king and humble pie,” I said with a grin.

  “That depends on who’s cooking.” His grin was broader, but he’d had more practice. “Did you read this month’s copy of the Ozark Chronicle? Not only did I fail to make the cover, I wasn’t even mentioned. It hurt my feelings; I thought Mrs. Robison-Dewitt and I were friends.”

  “Pinochle!”

  The waiter had unobtrusively wormed his way to the table to remove our plates. At my outburst, he gave a shriek, dropped his tray, and dashed for the kitchen. I wondered if coffee was out of the question.

  “She was playing with Dr. Chong Li,” Peter said, “but don’t repeat it to anyone—ever. The gentleman lost seventeen dollars and forty-five cents.”

  “A closet gambler,” I said. “The woman deserves to have her vice exposed to the world. However, as long as I never see her again, I suppose I can be magnanimous. Shall we go?”

  Peter slapped his forehead. “We forgot one of the cryptic clues,” he said in a display of dismay. “I’ll try to catch the waiter’s eye to get a check while you expound.”

  Damn. Time for a devious ploy. “Aren’t you going to lecture me about interfering with a police investigation? It tends to be our standard parting conversation.”

  “No, in your role of amateur busybody you were of great assistance to the Farberville CID—this time. The clue?”

  “Did we forget one? I thought we …” I faded as I took in his knowing smile. “Well, what was it?”

  “I believe it said, ‘The rickety—’”

  “I know what it said. What does it mean?”

  “The letters e-r-i-c are hidden in the first two words of the clue, which of course exposes the identity of the mock murderer: Eric. He stopped on the porch to put on a wig. That’s when he saw Suzetta leave the boathouse, which led to all the confusion.”

  “Some of it, anyway,” I said, thinking of the confusion that had arisen from a certain log in a cove. It was, I decided, time to resolve the problem once and for all. An investigation was necessary, even if it lasted all night.

  I curled a finger at our waiter, who was slumped in a chair next to the kitchen door, fanning himself with a menu.

  “Check, please,” I called. It was the least I could do.

  The Claire Malloy Mysteries by Joan Hess

  Strangled Prose

  The Murder at the Murder at the Mimosa Inn

  Dear Miss Demeanor

  Roll Over and Play Dead

  A Diet to Die For

  A Really Cute Corpse

  Death by the Light of the Moon

  Poisoned Pins

  A Holly, Jolly Murder

  A Conventional Corpse

  Out on a Limb

  The Goodbye Body

  Available from St. Martin’s Paperbacks

  “THIS TIME, IT’S NO GAME.”

  I stared curiously at what I presumed was the bird-watchers’ club. An icy finger danced up my spine as I took in their dazed expressions. A grebe could not be responsible for the strange stillness of the bird-watchers—no matter how pecu
liar its plumage, or idiosyncratic and public its mating habits.

  After a whispered conversation with the woman, Peter came back to the croquet court to take Eric aside. The blood drained from Eric’s face as he listened, and he began to sway with a queasy motion. The game halted, and mallets were slowly discarded. We formed a circle around Eric and Peter.

  Peter took a deep breath. “Apparently the Audubon people hiked around the lake early this morning to a nesting area they explore on an annual basis. In one of the coves they found a rowboat, and in the rowboat a body—face down in several inches of water. There was a bloody indentation on the back of his head, and no doubt about his condition. I’m sorry to have to tell you that Harmon Crundall is dead. But this time, it’s no game.”

  “Hess’s books are funny, acerbic, touching, terrific.”

  —Elizabeth Peters

  “Joan Hess is one very funny woman.”

  —Susan Dunlap

  “Joan Hess is the funniest mystery writer to come down the pipe since England’s incomparable Pamela Branch. And oh, how well Joan writes.”

  —Carolyn G. Hart

  “Ms. Hess goes about things with a lively style. Her heroine, Claire Malloy, has a sharp eye and an irreverent way of describing what she sees.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Hess is not only witty, but has a lot of insight into human motivation.”

  —Mystery News

  “Claire Malloy mysteries are fun to read because of the way the lead protagonist seems always to land in ludicrous situations.”

  —Harriet Klausner, Painted Rock Book Reviews

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