4 Murder at Breakfast

by Steve Demaree

  “I’ve got a present for you that can change your life. Hold on a minute. I’ll be right back.”

  I turned to Lou as soon as she left. He was either a good actor or had no idea what Rosie was up to. I cringed as I wondered if Rosie thought one of those “W” things could change my life. I didn’t have to panic long. In less than a minute she ricocheted through the swinging door carrying a cylindrical object about three inches in diameter and a foot or so high. It was wrapped in silver paper, possibly aluminum foil. Rosie knew that I don’t drink alcohol, so I couldn’t imagine what was inside the package. Not only wasn’t it something to drink, I could tell that it was too small to be anything from the Wii family.

  “Why don’t you open it? I think it will make your day.”

  Gently, she sat the object down on the counter in front of me. At least no one else was in the diner at the time, so I reached out and ripped the paper, hoping that whatever was inside wouldn’t embarrass me. When I had ripped away enough of the wrapping paper to see what was inside, I started laughing.

  “I should have known. A woman after my own heart.”

  “I think you’ll have a harder time breaking these.”

  I looked down at the large plastic cylinder filled with many colors of wrapped candy, all shaped like Hershey kisses. Rosie informed me that some were milk chocolate all the way through, while others were filled with almonds, cherries, or caramel, while still others contained white chocolate. She let me know if I was picky, I could read the strip of paper that protruded from each candy morsel. I would give them a try. No longer would I scare someone when I yanked my knife from my pocket in order to cut apart a piece of candy because two nuts were side by side. Maybe I would save the Hershey Almond bars for those occasions when dire straits kept me from food, and eat the kisses and hugs when I just needed a bite to keep me going. It might be hard for this old dog to try a new trick, but I would try.

  14

  I had hoped to arrive at Parkway Arms undetected. My plan was to head immediately to Mrs. Higgins’ apartment and hole up there with Lou and see if the possible scene of the crime enlightened us as to how the murder might have been committed. I pulled into the Visitors Parking area, stepped from the car, and heard the sound of a lawn mower. Evidently Monday is the day Wally mows the grass, and if my hearing was right, he was somewhere in the expansive backyard. Unless he whipped around the side of the house we would have no problem gaining entrance to the place without him seeing us. Lou and I walked more quickly than usual. We arrived at the front door, stepped inside and saw no one except the officer on duty. I had considered relieving him of duty, since I didn’t see anyone fleeing from the building, but I wanted to wait until after Lou and I planned our strategy. Quickly, I told him where we were going and told him not to inform anyone that we were there, unless someone asked for us.

  We hurried to the elevator and saw no one on our way, or in our way. I pushed the button. The door opened. I looked in, saw that neither woman from my nightmare was inside waiting for me. I stepped in, pushed the button numbered “2.” Shortly, the door closed and our quick trip began. Luck was with us. I turned the key to the victim’s apartment and opened the door. We stepped inside and I closed the door as quietly as possible. I eased over to the window and looked out. Wally, riding along on a large mower, looked up and waved. So much for secrecy. I waved back, and moved away, trying hard not to look like someone who had gotten caught.

  Lou and I scanned the room. It was not until we did this and looked for ways a murderer could have entered the room that it hit me. Each of the apartments had only one escape in case of fire. Evidently recent building codes didn’t include this monument.

  The obvious way someone could have entered the apartment was through the apartment door, had the chain latch not been on the door. Or was it? Could it be that the murderer put it on after the murder, or was Margaret Draper lying to us? We needed to find out who had keys. Not that everyone who had one would tell us the truth. The second most obvious entry was limited. The window. The window had been left unlocked, so someone could have come in that way. Anyone who happened to be on the back roof. From what I could tell, that limited the window access to two people, Russell Cochran with a ladder, and Elaine Jewell, if she walked across the roof. I would check again from the back yard, plus check with Wally about where the ladder is usually stored and how easily it can be moved.

  Two down and two to go. I walked over, lifted the glass door to the dumbwaiter and looked inside. I looked up. I studied the inside of the glass door. As far as I could tell, a small person could fit inside, but probably only a child, a jockey, or one of the little people from The Wizard of Oz. I pushed the button. The dumbwaiter didn’t move. Evidently it wouldn’t move unless the door was shut. I closed the glass door, pushed the button again. The dumbwaiter moved up to the third floor. I deduced that while the dumbwaiter was large enough for a small person, it couldn’t be operated by that person. There was no way to open the small elevator from the inside. Also, it would have been virtually impossible for someone to get inside and lift a tray of food without spilling whatever was on the tray. Lou looked inside the dumbwaiter and concurred with my deductions, although he didn’t rule out two munchkins in cahoots.

  I stepped away to the only other hole in the wall, the laundry chute. I looked in and down. There was no up. There must be a laundry chute for each apartment. This chute had ample room for most people, but I doubted if anyone would be dumb enough to step in and drop to the basement. I thought about letting Lou be my guinea pig and see if he survived the fall. Then I thought better of that idea. Hazel Allnut was a bigger pain, plus she was older and wouldn’t be missed as much if the trip was too much for her. I shook my head, whispered “Get thee behind me Satan,” and hoped that would be enough to satisfy God. I looked like I was back to square one, or one and two. The front door and the window. The door sounded better, but I checked the window again to see if the trees were close enough so that someone could hang glide in for a landing on the roof. I studied the odds, felt hang gliding carried the same odds as the laundry chute, and then only with a tailwind.

  I couldn’t figure out why I was spending so much time on the ins and outs of the room. More than likely someone poisoned the old lady at breakfast. Who knows what a swipe across one end of a stick of butter could do? All someone would have to do is hand over the butter with the poison end facing the victim. Or could it be that someone handed out after dinner mints on the stairs? No, the easier way to kill someone is to put mints in a basket in front of the elevator just before the person who is addicted to after dinner mints heads back to her apartment.

  Before I got too far off base, or closer to the truth, I put my exploits behind me. It was time for my favorite part of every case, or at least most of them. It was time to pick out an easy chair, plop down in it, and think. My favorite part was the plopping down part. Thinking is vastly overrated, but not enough people over the age of thirty spend enough time plopping down in a good old chair or on a sofa. I plopped and Lou followed suit. The furniture was fabric, not leather, so the sound a leather chair makes when someone of my magnitude plops down in it was missing. But I was doing what I excelled at, sitting and making myself comfortable.

  It was time to celebrate. I reached into my pocket, pulled out a Hershey Almond bar, and carefully removed it from its wrapper. There is something about a brand new Hershey bar. I never count the almonds. There never seemed to be enough, but in one way that helped me. I never ate two almonds at one time, and when one almond was a fair distance from the next, I could simply break it, and not have to use my knife to sever it.

  I had almost forgotten I now had a second choice. Rosie had put my present inside a bag, so no one would know what object I carried with me. Let everyone think it was incriminating evidence. I’d brought the kisses inside to keep them out of the hot sun. I dumped some of them out on the coffee table and started separating the colors. I soon learned that the same candy migh
t be in two different colors of paper, so I read the slip of paper that stuck out of each candy. Although I wasn’t turning over a lighter leaf, like you know who, I selected only one kiss of each type. To the best of my knowledge, the only Hershey kisses I ever had were the ones that have been around forever. I started with one of those, let it melt in my mouth, then moved on to the one with the almond inside. Next, I opted for a change of pace and tried the striped one, which was white chocolate. That left me the cherry and the caramel. I ate the cherry first, again letting the morsel melt in my mouth. When I got to the one with the caramel center and the chocolate melted and left me with the caramel experience, I felt I had discovered a pigmy version of a delectable dessert. Twenty of those and I would be in heaven. I looked up and noticed two eyes starring at me, eyes located just above a smile that looked like Oliver Hardy, minus a semblance of a moustache. I reached down, picked up one of my miniature chocolates and tossed it to my partner. He peeled the paper and ate it. I tossed him another. He tossed it back. Even by feeding him by microounces, I couldn’t nourish him back to health. At least he ate one. I couldn’t remember how many days it is that a human can live without chocolate, but, if nothing else, kiss by kiss I would see that Lou hung on to that tiny thread of life. I put the lid back on my container of candy and set it aside. Then, so my Hershey Almond bar would not feel left out, I took a bite of it.

  I looked up with one eye. I couldn’t believe my one eye, so I used my second one, too. Wasting Away Lou had reached into his pocket, too, and pulled out a bag of M&Ms. He ripped the bag open with his teeth. I was thankful he had maintained enough strength to do that. Could it be that I was getting my old Lou back? He blew into the bag, opening it so that it would be easy to extract his little treats. The Lou I knew could guzzle a whole packet in one gulp. My enthusiasm was short lived. New Lou prevailed. New Lou reached in with formerly chubby fingers and extracted one M&M. One. Just one. He plopped it into his mouth and closed it. When was the last time Lou closed his mouth while chewing. But Lou wasn’t chewing. He was sucking on that one M&M the way I sucked on and savored my bite of Hershey chocolate. His laid back attitude infuriated me. Hastily I chewed my chocolate, bit my almond into oblivion, and ripped off another piece of my candy bar. Would Lou do the same? If so, I was man enough to keep going as long as he did. But Lou continued to suck on that one M&M. I doubted if he even knew what color it was.

  I shook my head, eager to clear those negative thoughts from my mind. Surely, Lou’s wasting away attitude was God’s way of punishing me for wishing mishaps on my next-door neighbor and Lou’s Wii. I wondered if Mrs. Higgins had infuriated someone by sucking on one M&M for hours, or had invited one of her neighbors over to Wii. Surely it would have taken a greater motive than that to murder someone. Or would it? I didn’t want something to happen to my friend. I merely wanted the friend I had had for years to return. In a way it was like being married to a woman, only to have someone replace her, someone who didn’t look nearly as good, and had only some of her personality traits. I’m not insinuating that Lou has ever looked good to me. I’m not that kind of guy.

  But enough about Lou. We weren’t there for him. We were there to find out who murdered Mrs. Higgins.

  Evidently my agitation came through when I spoke, because I spoke much louder than normal.

  I shouted out, “Well, what do you think, Lou?”

  Lou didn’t need to tell me that my outburst scared him. The M&M that burst from his mouth and landed in my hand let me know. I asked him if he wanted the slimy thing back. He refused, but at least he reached into his bag of M&Ms to replace the one I had caused him to spit. After I returned from washing the slime off my hand, Lou replied.

  “Think about what?”

  “Any idea what killed the woman?”

  “I thought you said Frank said it was poison.”

  “I mean any idea who did it and how they did it.”

  I understand that when someone begins to waste away to nothing the brain is one of the first things to go.

  “I think it was done in this building, Cy.”

  “Thank you, Captain Obvious. Do you want to narrow it down?”

  “Well, I think we can rule out the conservatory and Colonel Mustard.”

  “Let’s narrow it down to the dining room downstairs or the living room where we are. Would you like to narrow it down any further?”

  “I sure would, Cy, but right now I don’t think we have enough evidence to do that.”

  I could tell we were getting nowhere, but not as fast as usual. I suggested that both of us pull out our notebooks and write down any questions that we might have for any of the people who lived at Parkway Arms. We wrote down the name of each person, whether he or she worked and lived there, or just lived there. Neither of us uttered a word for the next thirty minutes. Then, we compared lists. After lunch, we would return and start to interrogate the suspects. I needed lunch to provide me with the nourishment necessary to talk to some of those people. Especially the maid who tackled me and the woman upstairs who wanted to, provided the resident bachelor was not interested in her.

  15

  Rosie smiled as we walked into the Blue Moon. She was still happy to see Lou, even though the restaurant’s profits had plummeted since he started eating like a flower child. As had been the case most times lately, I ordered first. It had been a while since I had had corned beef hash. I ordered a double-order with hash browns, fried eggs over easy, and some link sausage. I cringed when Lou ordered a club salad, but with turkey as the only meat, and balsamic vinaigrette dressing on the side. I had no idea what that balsam stuff was, but I knew from the sound of it that whatever it was it had to be one of those dressings you can see through. I wondered if I would carry on on my own after Lou took to his bed, lacking the strength to carry on as he used to. I didn’t enjoy my two pieces of pie quite as much that day. It was as if someone had poured some of that balsam stuff on them. I tried to work up the courage to tell Lou that there were limits to what he could eat in my presence.

  +++

  After lunch, on the drive back to Parkway Arms, Lou and I discussed what we knew.

  “Okay, Lou, let’s go over what we know for sure. We know that Mrs. Higgins died of poisoning and that she died sometime Friday morning. She was poisoned either before she went to breakfast, at breakfast, on her way back to her apartment, or shortly after she returned to her apartment.”

  “Yeah, Cy, and we also know that regardless of where she was poisoned someone came into her apartment. Why he or she came in, we have no idea, but someone was in her place.”

  “Well, Lou, whoever it was could have gone in there in order to confuse the time of death. Maybe someone wanted it to look like she died peacefully, or not so peacefully, while eating her lunch. I wish I knew whether or not that chain latch was on all day. If it was, that limits how she was killed or how the murderer got in. If the chain latch was on, the murderer would’ve had to have come in by the window, and that would mean that only Russell Cochran could’ve come down from his apartment or Elaine Jewell walked across the roof.”

  “There’s only one problem with that.”

  “And that is?”

  “Elaine Jewell was out during lunch.”

  “Then someone used Miss Jewelll’s key and went through to the roof.”

  “That wouldn’t work either.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because the only time anyone could’ve used Miss Jewell’s apartment to gain access to Mrs. Higgins’ apartment, either Miss Jewell was at home or the carpet was wet and no one could’ve gained access to the hall. It had to have happened at breakfast.”

  “Unless the linebacker maid entered the apartment just before shampooing the carpet.”

  “That won’t work, either. Provided the victim’s door was locked, her only entrance was through Miss Jewell’s apartment. According to Frank and according to what we know about the residents, Miss Jewell was in her apartment until after Mrs. Higgin
s was murdered. No one could’ve gained access to any apartment until after 10:00, and by that time the victim was dead. Mr. Cochran was in his apartment. Miss Jewell was in hers. There was no ladder where the woman who is away lived, and none of the residents can fly. No, provided the chain was on, no one could have murdered her except Mr. Cochran, Miss Jewell, or someone who ate breakfast with her.”

  “What if someone was in her apartment when she returned?”

  “That won’t work, either. Because Mr. Cochran and Miss Jewell were both in their apartments, someone could have left only by the front door, and it’s impossible to leave by the front door and put the latch on afterward.”

  “Regardless of who did it and how he or she did it, we know that someone, probably the murderer, was in Mrs. Higgins’s apartment at least once, possibly more than once. But whoever it was had to have done it before the carpet was shampooed or after the carpet dried.”

  “If she was poisoned in her apartment after she ate breakfast, one of the other tenants could have stopped by her apartment before heading out for the day, but after she returned from breakfast. If so, she would’ve had to have unlatched the door and opened it to whoever it was. Regardless of whether that happened or not, someone had to have been in the apartment after 4:00. The carpet didn’t dry until then. Lunch didn’t arrive until after the floor was off limits, and the next time someone could’ve gotten in the apartment was 4:00. Then we have to decide what we think about the statements by the manager and the cook. One said that the dumbwaiter was open shortly before 5:30. The other said the chain was on the door shortly thereafter. If both of them are telling the truth, then someone had to have been in that apartment after 4:00. Is it possible that someone went to the apartment sometime after 4:00 and stayed until after the manager left to call us? Wouldn’t someone have been missed if he or she was gone for that length of time? Or could it be that the manager said that the safety chain was on the door to defer suspicion away from herself and toward someone else?”