Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  Claire folded her underwear into the bayberry-scented dresser drawers. She was sorry she had asked; she felt the pang of jealousy she always felt when her dead friend’s name came up, and was angry at herself for feeling it.

  Meredith rolled over onto her side and leaned up on one elbow. “Cool room. All this stuff looks like antiques—you think?”

  “Probably some things are reproductions,” Claire replied, closing her suitcase and sliding it onto the top shelf in the closet. She always liked to unpack right away, even if she were only going to be in a hotel a day or two. It made her feel more at home.

  “Yeah,” Meredith said, opening the drawer in the oak bedside table. “Hey, look at this!”

  Claire turned to see Meredith holding up a stack of letters. “Where did you get that?”

  Meredith pointed to the open drawer. “Here—they were in here.”

  Claire went over to the table for a look. The drawer was filled with letters—a thick pile of them, all different shapes and sizes. She pulled out a handful and looked through them. Some were on Wayside Inn stationery, some on cheap notebook paper ripped from a loose-leaf notebook; there were even a couple written on the backs of paper place mats from roadside diners. The handwriting on each was different, and some were dated while others were not. Many were signed and some were not, but all of them contained the same salutation: Dear Secret Drawer Society.

  Claire looked at Meredith. “What is this?”

  Meredith shook her head. “Beats me. I never saw anything like it before.”

  “I’ve done a lot of traveling, and I never even heard of a Secret Drawer Society.”

  “I guess people write letters and leave them in drawers for other people to read. I think that is way cool!”

  Claire looked at the stack of letters in her hand. “Yeah, I guess so . . .” She imagined all the people who had stayed in this room, writing their hearts out to people they would never meet, unfolding innermost secrets that they then tucked into a drawer for strangers to read. She sat on the edge of the bed, the letters in her hand, torn between curiosity and her desire to respect other people’s privacy.

  Meredith had no such compunctions. She lay on her back reading greedily, chewing on her cuticles as she read, her pale blue eyes squinting in the dim light.

  “Why don’t you turn on the other lamp?” said Claire.

  “Mmm,” Meredith murmured, not really listening.

  Claire got up and went to the other side of the bed to turn on the lamp, and as she did a letter fell from the pile she held. She picked it up and looked at it. The letter was on Wayside hotel stationery and was undated. The writing was firm but girlish, the handwriting of a young woman, she thought. She was about to put it back in the pile when the first sentence caught her eye.

  Again and again I ask myself why I am doing this, and I arrive at the conclusion that I seem to be powerless to resist . . . why this is I don’t know; there is a dark pull in the man which keeps me coming back, like a hopelessly charmed rabbit frozen in front of the swaying snake who is about to devour it.

  Meredith rolled over and looked at Claire. “What are you reading?”

  Claire handed her the letter.

  Meredith read the first couple of sentences and shrugged. “Mundane metaphor . . . the whole snake thing’s been done to death. It is an interesting sexual subtext, though,” she said, brightening a little. “Looks like a case for Dr. Freud.”

  Claire looked at the letter in her hand. “I wonder who she is.”

  “Look! Here’s another one—same handwriting!” Meredith pulled another letter out of the drawer. She read it aloud to Claire. “‘What would he do if I broke it off with him? What would he do? I don’t know, and that frightens me. Do you ever really know someone, know what they are capable of when they feel they have run out of options?’”

  Claire shook her head. She could sympathize with the emotions expressed in the letter. After all, how well had she known Robert, known what he was capable of? She had not listened to that inner voice warning her . . . and here was a young woman listening to that voice—and what she heard frightened her.

  There was a knock at the door. Claire quickly stuffed the letter back into the drawer and headed toward the door, but Meredith beat her to it.

  “Who’s there?” she said.

  “It’s Frank Wilson.”

  Meredith flung the door open. In the hallway stood the innkeeper, his big face ruddy.

  “Ms. Rawlings?” he said. “You have a phone call at the front desk.”

  “Oh,” said Claire, surprised. “Thank you.”

  “Who is it?” asked Meredith.

  Claire turned to her. “Why don’t you stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  Meredith sighed and flopped down on the bed. “Okay! But don’t be too long. Bet it’s Lover Boy,” she added as Claire closed the door behind her.

  “Here, you can take the back staircase—right this way,” Frank Wilson said, turning left down the hall. At the end of the hall was a crooked, winding staircase, and Claire followed him down, the ancient stairs creaking under her feet.

  When they reached the front desk, he handed her a telephone.

  “Sorry it’s so noisy here, but it’s the only phone we’ve got,” he said as Claire picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?” she said, and heard Wally Jackson’s familiar baritone on the other end of the line.

  “Oh, hi. It’s me.”

  “Hi. Where are you?”

  “I’m in New York. I’m calling to say that I’m going to be held up a day longer than I expected. There’s some breaking information on a murder investigation, and I—well, I hope to get there by Thanksgiving Day.”

  There was a pause and then he spoke again. “You’re not mad, are you?”

  “No, of course I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed.”

  “Me, too. But I’ll see you soon as I can. What’s it like there? Is it nice?”

  “Yes, it’s really nice,” she answered. She almost mentioned the Secret Drawer Society, but decided to wait until Wally arrived and she could show him the letters.

  After she hung up the phone, Claire looked around for Frank Wilson, but he was nowhere to be seen. She started up the staircase, but just as her foot touched the first step she turned and looked back. She heard no particular sound, but she had a feeling someone was standing behind her. Peering out of the gift shop, which was closed now, was the boy she had seen earlier with Mrs. Wilson. His thin, pale face was serious and unsmiling, and he stared at Claire as though he wanted to speak to her but was too shy. She smiled at him, and he withdrew back into the darkened store. Claire hesitated and then turned and went up the stairs.

  Back in the room, Meredith was sprawled out on a cot reading, a stack of letters next to her.

  “Where did you get that?” Claire pointed to the cot.

  Meredith rolled over onto one elbow. “Oh, I asked for it to be sent up. I’m a restless sleeper, you know.”

  Claire sat down on the bed and began unlacing her shoes. “Yes, I know. You also snore, but there’s nothing we can do about that.”

  Meredith rolled her eyes. “Well, you don’t have to rub it in.”

  Claire laughed. “Sorry. But you do.”

  “I know. It’s my adenoids . . . I’m an adenoidal breather, at least that’s what the Connecticut quack doctor says.”

  Claire took her shoes over to the closet, the hardwood floor cold under her bare feet. “I used to think only fat old men snored, but I was wrong.”

  Meredith rolled over onto her back again. “Yeah, and marathon runners can have heart attacks—big woo.”

  Claire pulled off her turtleneck sweater, the air crackling with little white bursts of static electricity.

  “Cool—static!” Meredith said as Claire folded the sweater and put it in the dresser drawer. “You should get a load of these letters; they’re really wild,” she added, holding up a fistful of them. “There’s all kinds of weird s
tuff here! Some of it’s not even PG reading. Man, if my dad only knew!”

  “Oh yeah?” said Claire, pulling on the red-and-grey-striped flannel pajamas Wally had given her for Christmas. She had mentioned once that when she was a kid she loved her red flannel pajamas, and Wally had gone out and found her some the next day. “Can I see?” she asked, settling down under the covers. She still had to brush and floss, but first she wanted to feel the sheets on her bare feet. “Mmm . . . this is nice,” she murmured, leaning back on the fluffy goose-down pillow. “I could get used to this.”

  “Here’s another letter from that same girl we read earlier.” Meredith flung a letter across the bed. Claire picked it up and recognized the same handwriting: At first I was caught up in the thrill of it, even though I knew it was wrong—or maybe because I knew it was wrong—but even when I got more scared I was unable to stop . . . I’m afraid to talk to him about it, and I can’t talk to anyone else. What am I going to do?

  “Pretty weird, huh?” said Meredith. “I wonder who she is—who they are?”

  “Yeah,” said Claire. “So do I. But now it’s time for all weary travelers to get some sleep.”

  “Oh, man. I was just getting settled in. And look at all these unread letters.” Meredith sighed, pointing to the pile next to her.

  “There will be time for more reading tomorrow. It’s lights-out time.”

  “Okay,” said Meredith, putting the letters back in the drawer.

  Claire went into the bathroom to brush and floss, and by the time she returned to the bedroom Meredith was asleep, lying on her back, mouth wide open, snoring gently. Meredith was like that: she could drop off to sleep instantly, like a cat. Claire envied her this; she always took much longer, and tended to lie in bed replaying the events of the day before finally succumbing to sleep.

  She turned off the bedside lamp and lay in the dark inhaling the scent of bayberry mixed with eucalyptus. She turned her head to look out the window, where there was a large maple tree just outside. It looked so brave and lonely in the stark November night sky. Stripped of leaves, the branches shook and dipped in the wind. Claire lay awake a long time listening to the wind. It reminded her of childhood winters out on the lake, where she had the same feeling of isolation, of being at the end of the world. Here, tucked away in the corner of Massachusetts, surrounded by woods, the nearest village was only a mile away, but tonight that mile could have been ten or twenty. Claire felt cut off from life outside the Wayside Inn, isolated by the wind that wrapped itself around its weathered eaves.

  As she drifted off to sleep, once again the words to the song from A Little Night Music drifted into her head:

  Every day a little sting, in the heart and in the head,

  And you hardly feel a thing—brings a perfect little death.

  Chapter 3

  The next morning Claire looked out the window at the maple tree, its outline black against the bleak November sky. In the middle of the trunk was a huge, gnarled knot. Claire gazed at its whorls and swirls, which reminded her of a face—the eyes, nose and mouth of some ancient and wise creature, old as the Massachusetts landscape—perhaps a woodland gnome whose spirit was trapped in the old tree by a witch’s curse.

  The sun had slipped below a low grey cloud cover, but higher up the sky was a clear pale blue, the sun’s light reflected off sparse, wispy clouds. The effect was surreal, like a Magritte painting.

  Why, Claire wondered as she dressed, did she love this change of season, this slow dimming into winter’s darkness? She had learned to thrive on a sense of oddness, as Meredith had; sometimes Claire thought the girl accentuated her eccentricities on purpose, just to prove she didn’t mind being different.

  “‘Oh, oh, oh, what’s love got to do, got to do, got to do, got to do with it? What’s love but a secondhand emotion?’”

  Meredith was singing to herself while she dressed. Since she had taken up chanting, something had opened up in her, loosening a flood of vocalizations. She sang and hummed to herself all the time now; Claire caught bits of popular songs, snatches of themes from Beethoven symphonies, advertising jingles. It reminded her of her father, who often walked through rooms snapping his fingers while humming to himself.

  “‘What’s love but a secondhand emotion?’” Meredith stood on the round braided rug in the center of the room, clad only in a long white man’s shirt and socks. Lately she had taken to wearing men’s shirts several sizes too large for her. Claire wondered if she had pilfered them from her father’s closet. If so, maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing. Still, she worried about the girl’s breezy contempt for her father. Ted Lawrence loved his daughter, but he was perplexed by her—as were a lot of other people.

  “Where are my pants?” Meredith said, arms crossed over her thin chest.

  “Right there,” Claire answered. “You’re standing on them.”

  “Oops. So I am.” Meredith bent down and picked up her pants, sliding them over her thin white legs.

  “Come on,” said Claire, “or we’ll miss breakfast.”

  “Okay, okay!” Meredith replied in her Alvin the Chipmunk voice.

  Max von Schlegel was a bear of a man. With his bullet head, thick neck, and pale blue eyes, Claire thought he looked exactly like a movie Nazi. He was the chef at the Wayside Inn, and now he stood presiding over breakfast like a king watching over his subjects. He was making the rounds of the breakfast room, chatting with customers, doing a part of his job he clearly enjoyed. So far the only other guests in the breakfast room besides Claire and Meredith were two men, one middle-aged, with sandy blond hair, the other young and dark. They sat at the other end of the room and spoke in hushed tones.

  Max von Schlegel approached Claire and Meredith’s table, smiling broadly. “So, you are liking the eggs Sardou?”

  “Yes, everything is very good,” Claire replied.

  Max nodded. “Good. The recipe is from my Viennese grandmother.” A trace of his Austrian heritage clung faintly to his consonants, thickening them ever so slightly, like the hint of cornstarch in a sauce. Max’s bluff, friendly manner belied his intimidating physical appearance. Here was a man who enjoyed his food—his girth was evidence of that—without embarrassment. He stood over their table, a spotless white apron covering his impressive stomach like a drop cloth thrown casually over a sleeping leviathan.

  He closed his eyes and rocked back on his heels, an expression of bliss on his smooth pink face. “Ah, what a cook she was; she could coax the flavor out of any food! A genius with fish, a virtuoso with veal.” He opened his eyes and smiled modestly. “I like to think I have inherited a little of her talent, perhaps.”

  “Oh, definitely,” said Meredith, lifting a blueberry muffin from the breadbasket on the table. “That duck last night was kickass!”

  Max frowned. “‘Kickass’? What is ‘kickass’?”

  “It means really good,” Claire said quickly.

  Max smiled dubiously. “Oh. The duck is a secret recipe; nobody alive knows it but me.”

  Just then Frank Wilson walked up to their table. “Good morning, ladies. Did you sleep well?”

  “Like the dead,” Meredith replied.

  “Good, good; I always say a good night’s sleep leads to a healthy appetite. Right, Max?” he said, with a glance at his chef.

  Max nodded—a little stiffly, Claire thought. It was hard to read how the chef felt about his employer, but Claire thought she sensed some tension between them.

  The big Austrian turned a broad smile toward Claire and Meredith. “Ja, I like customers who like to eat—otherwise I am out of business!” He chuckled a little at his own comment, then wiped his hands on his pristine white apron. His fingers were short and thick as sausages. “Well, I get back to the kitchen now. God only knows what goes wrong when I am not there.” He gave a little bow, turned, and walked regally from the room.

  After he was gone, Frank Wilson laughed gently. “Max is a real character, as they say, but I’m lucky to have him. He really
is a first-class chef . . .” He seemed to be about to say something else, but stopped himself.

  “Drinking problem?” said Meredith.

  The innkeeper turned to her, surprise on his face. “What?”

  “Does he have a drinking problem?” Meredith repeated.

  “Meredith!” Claire said sharply, loud enough that the two men at the other table looked up from their conversation.

  “What?” Meredith asked defensively.

  “That’s rude, and you ought to know it.”

  Frank Wilson smiled and shook his head. “It’s all right—as Art Linkletter once said, kids say the darnedest things.”

  “I’m not a k—” Meredith began, but Claire cut her off.

  “As long as you say foolish things like that, you are.”

  Meredith shrugged and poked at the basket of muffins with her fork. “A lot of adults say stupid things.”

  “Maybe, but that’s no excuse,” Claire replied. “I’m sorry,” she said to their host.

  “Don’t think twice about it,” he answered. “As a matter of fact—”

  “Oh, hey!” Meredith said suddenly. “We have a question to ask you.”

  Frank Wilson looked down at her with a benevolent smile. “Yes?”

  “What is it with those letters upstairs—that Secret Drawer Society? What’s that all about?”

  “Oh, you found your secret drawer?”

  “Yes, we did,” said Claire. “I wonder why I’ve never heard of it before.”

  “Well, it’s a tradition going back centuries, mostly in old inns . . . I’m not sure when it started exactly, but we’ve had it here at the Wayside since before I became innkeeper. Someone told me the whole thing is a New England phenomenon. I did a Web search once, but didn’t come up with much. It’s amazing what people will write about—the most intimate details of their lives.”

  “Well,” Claire remarked, “people have the need to get things off their chest, I guess, and the anonymity of the letters offers a safe outlet.”

  Frank Wilson cocked his head to one side. “That’s true, but you’d be surprised how many people actually sign their letters.”