Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  Chapter 8

  After the medical examiner’s officers had removed poor Mona’s body, Detective Hornblower gathered everyone in the main dining room and announced that he would begin questioning as soon as someone from the state DA’s office arrived from Boston.

  “Wow,” Meredith whispered to Claire. “This must be a big deal.”

  As everyone cleared out of the room, Detective Hornblower turned to Wally. “You’re homicide at the Ninth Precinct?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s downtown, isn’t it? East Side?”

  “That’s right. You know the city?”

  Detective Hornblower stretched his long back and pulled at his odd little beard. “I spent some time there,” he replied. There was something enigmatic about him, Claire thought, as though he were reluctant to release more information than necessary. Even his movements were guarded, calculated, devoid of excess. Here was a real Yankee, she thought, his profile reflecting the craggy New England coastline.

  The assistant from the DA’s office arrived in about an hour. She was a young black woman, conservatively (and expensively, Claire thought) dressed in a three-piece wool suit, warm honey brown in color, several shades lighter than her skin, which was the color of dark chocolate. Her clothes were tailored with the kind of style that is always in vogue. Her small, elegant head was set atop an impossibly long neck; she had the classic beauty of African sculptures Claire had seen in art stores on the Upper West Side. Her close-cropped hair accentuated the graceful lines of her neck and the size of her large, luxuriant eyes.

  “Rebecca White,” she said, extending a hand. Her handshake was firm and lean, an expression of her determination, and did not last a second longer than necessary. When Claire saw the quiet intensity of her gaze, it was clear that here was an ambitious, focused young woman who lacked nothing in the way of self-confidence.

  Ms. White sat in as Detective Hornblower questioned Claire, every once in a while interrupting with a question of her own: did Claire hear anything unusual during the night Mona was killed; was anyone at the hotel behaving strangely?

  Claire wanted to answer that, in her opinion, everyone at the hotel was a little strange, but she supposed this was a subjective judgment.

  If Detective Hornblower minded having Ms. White present during his questioning, he gave no sign of it. He was always gracious, standing politely when Claire entered the room and again as she left it. He was, she decided, of the “old school” of manners, like her father. In spite of her official position as a feminist, Claire enjoyed the courtly deference of such men; at a time when everyone seemed to be rushing to get ahead of everyone else, it made the world feel more civilized.

  “What did they want to know?” Meredith asked excitedly after Claire returned from the questioning.

  “It was all pretty obvious stuff: did I know the victim; did I know of anyone who would want to kill her—you know, the usual.”

  “Yeah, me, too.”

  The front door to the inn opened and a uniformed policeman entered, stomping the snow off his shiny black knee-length boots. “Detective Murphy, Massachusetts State Police,” he said. He was very young, with blond eyebrows.

  “Wow,” Meredith remarked, “they even called in the state troopers! This must be a big deal.”

  “They usually do in cases like this,” said Ms. White, emerging from the interrogation room. Her voice was as crisp as a fall apple.

  “Like what?” Meredith asked.

  “Murder cases,” replied the trooper. “In a small town like Sudbury there aren’t too many killings, you know.” He had a classic Massachusetts accent: flat rs, languid vowels; he pronounced “aren’t” as “ahnt.”

  “So when there’s a murder they always call in the state cops?”

  “Yup.”

  “What, they’re afraid the locals can’t handle it?”

  “Between you and me, after the Ramsey case in Colorado, everyone’s a little spooked,” Trooper Murphy remarked.

  “Oh . . . yeah.” Meredith nodded slowly. “I still can’t believe they’ve never even charged anyone in that case.”

  “Well, nobody wants that to happen in their town, so everyone’s being real careful. And we’ve got resources the local cops don’t always have.”

  “The state crime lab’s right over in Sudbury,” Ms. White commented.

  “Cool,” said Meredith.

  “Well, we should let the officers get on with their work,” said Claire. “Why don’t we go up to the room?”

  “Aw,” said Meredith.

  “I brought Trivial Pursuit,” said Wally, emerging from the direction of the kitchen.

  Meredith brightened. “Okay.” She loved Trivial Pursuit.

  By the time they had played one game, the pale evening sun was setting over the frozen landscape. Claire went downstairs to get them all some tea. On the way upstairs, balancing the tea tray carefully as she climbed the smooth wooden steps, Claire heard music coming from one of the rooms, and she paused in front of the door. She recognized the taut, compact singing voice of Edith Piaf.

  Non, rien de rien,

  Non, je ne regrette rien.

  As she stood listening, Claire remembered the first time she heard Piaf sing. She was at a party in college, and someone put on a recording of “La Vie en Rose.” Suddenly Claire’s attention was pulled from the conversation she was having and fastened upon that voice. She had never heard anything like it—not pretty, exactly, but so full of pain and experience and passion. Here was a woman who knew who she was, and who could communicate that directly to an audience, without frills or tricks or even pretty sounds.

  The sound of the door opening startled Claire, and suddenly she stood facing Richard. His blond hair was immaculately combed, his blue-and-white pinstripe shirt perfectly crisp and ironed.

  “Can I help you?” he said, holding the door open only far enough so that Claire could see part of the bed. To her surprise, Sally sat on the edge of the bed. When she saw Claire, she smiled and gave a little wave.

  “I—I was just listening to your Piaf recording,” Claire answered, feeling the blood rush to her face.

  Richard’s face softened. “You like Piaf?”

  “Yes—yes, I do.”

  “Sally does, too.” He nodded toward her. “I don’t want to disturb the other guests, but I don’t like to travel without my tapes.”

  “Well, it won’t disturb me at all. I was just eavesdropping.”

  Richard sighed. “With all that’s been going on, I’m especially glad I brought my tapes. It’s soothing to have something familiar around at a time like this. Do you want to come in and join us?”

  “No, thanks,” Claire replied, peering over his shoulder to see a tape recorder on the bedside table.

  “If you’re looking for Jeffrey, he’s not here,” Richard remarked dryly.

  “No, I was just—”

  “He disappeared about an hour ago and I haven’t seen him since. Said he was going outside for a smoke, but then he never came back.”

  “Oh, I’m sure he’s around somewhere.”

  Richard looked at her. “My dear, don’t concern yourself. Jeffrey has been known to disappear for days at a time. Don’t worry; he’ll come back when he needs money.”

  “But where would he go?”

  Richard shrugged. “Who knows? Can’t be much action in South Sudbury, though if there’s a bar scene, you can count on Jeffrey to ferret it out.”

  Claire felt uncomfortable, as though she were hearing more than she wanted to.

  “I’m sorry.” Richard sighed. “This can’t possibly be of interest to you.”

  Claire could just hear what Meredith would say in response to this: Actually, everything is of interest to me. But she just smiled and shook her head. “No problem—really.”

  What she really wanted to say was, Do you think Jeffrey is capable of killing? But she kept that question to herself.

  “Hey,” Richard said. “Do you have le
tters in your bedside table?”

  “Oh, the Secret Drawer? Yes, we do. Meredith is enthralled by them.”

  “I can see why. There are some pretty interesting ones. We found one by someone who claimed to have seen this so-called Woman in White.”

  “Really? Can I see it?”

  “Sure—just a minute.” Richard disappeared into his room and came out a moment later holding a letter on hotel stationery. “There’s no date, but it looks to be fairly recent.”

  Claire took the letter, which was written in flowery script in blue ink. “Do you think I could show Meredith? She’d be really interested in this.”

  “Sure, go ahead, take it. I think they’re interesting, too, but Jeffrey finds the whole thing silly—or so he says.”

  “Thanks,” Claire said. She didn’t want to get into the middle of Richard and Jeffrey’s relationship. “Well, I’ll see you later.” She started down the hall.

  “Let me know if you want to borrow my tapes,” Richard called after her.

  ‘Thanks, I will.”

  When she arrived in the room and found Meredith and Wally absorbed in another game of Trivial Pursuit, Claire took her tea down to the bar. She also took along the letter Richard had given her. As she turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs, she saw Lyle and Jeffrey at the other end of the hall, next to the kitchen. They were engaged in conversation, their heads bent toward each other in a way that looked surprisingly intimate to Claire. They didn’t notice her, and she took advantage of this to linger by the front desk.

  “No, I’m sure,” Lyle was saying.

  “But can you believe her?” asked Jeffrey.

  “I can’t worry about that anymore,” Lyle replied with a shrug, then sighed and looked away, in Claire’s direction. He caught Claire’s eye, so she gave a quick little smile and hurried down the hall. She hoped they hadn’t realized she was eavesdropping. She wasn’t sure what they were talking about, but she had an idea that it involved drugs.

  She pushed open the thick oak door to the bar and took a seat in front of the fire. The room was empty; there were no other customers, and no sign of a bartender.

  Claire watched the steam rising from the hot tea, its warmth quickly dissipating into the cold, thin air. She stared into the yellow firelight and felt the mesmerizing effect of the dancing flames, so like a living thing. The hiss and crackle of the fire was a soothing background as she read over the letter.

  Can it be possible? Am I going mad, or did I really see her last night? Of course, the fire has us all rattled, but even now my blood turns cold when I think about that thin white figure at the end of the hall, her dress flowing about her like a shroud, even her skin translucent! I can’t tell anyone else of this—he would think I am truly mad, of course . . . at any rate, he would use it against me in some way. I know him too well by now, too well . . . if it was Laura I saw, then perhaps it was because we are kindred spirits after all, and both know what it is to have a broken heart.

  I can’t help feeling that in seeing her, I am also seeing myself, for I, too, sometimes feel I am just a ghost, a wraith wandering these halls, with no future and no past. I wasn’t even afraid of her, not really, and found myself wishing she would talk to me, feeling that she would understand me, but she just looked at me with those great haunted eyes . . . poor spirit, caught between two worlds, as am I . . .

  The writing trailed off, as if the author had simply lost heart. Claire put the letter back into her pocket. The poor woman—and she was certain it was a woman—seemed so lost, so lonely. Her identification with the ghost was so pathetic. Claire didn’t believe in ghosts, not really, but even so she pulled her cardigan closer around her shoulders.

  Surrounded by swirling snow and ice, her skin felt so dry, as if it might crack, no matter how much lotion she slathered on it. She stared into the glowing fire.

  There were aspects of the letter writer Claire identified with—except that she herself had chosen the solitude in her life. She wondered if her parents’ death had caused her to fear becoming too deeply involved with other people. She tended to shrink away from the messier side of human interaction. People could be so clingy, so unpredictable. And now Wally and Meredith mattered so much to her . . . more than she would have wanted, perhaps, but there was no going back. It was as though, after standing on a riverbank for a long time, she had finally dived into the water, and could do nothing but swim with the current. Still, she couldn’t help looking back at the receding shoreline from time to time, remembering the security of feeling her feet upon solid ground.

  The door to the bar opened and Meredith entered, clutching a letter in her hand. “Look what we found,” she said. “It’s dated during the big fire two years ago.”

  Claire took the letter from her, and immediately recognized the handwriting. She read it over quickly.

  Dear Secret Drawer,

  You are the only one I can write to about this. Such fear and dread fill my heart that I am afraid it will burst. What have I done to deserve this? I feel as though I’ve been caught up in a whirlpool and am being slowly dragged down to the depths . . . I have been betrayed by those closest to me, and yet how can I think of betraying them? I have been put in an impossible situation, with no one to talk to, and I’m afraid I’ll go mad.

  “Pretty wild, huh?” Meredith said when Claire finished.

  “Yes,” Claire answered. “Wait just a second.” She fished the other letter from her pocket, and sure enough, the handwriting on the two letters matched.

  “Wow,” said Meredith when Claire showed her. “Bingo!”

  Claire handed the letter back to her. “Yeah. But there’s really no way of knowing who wrote them.”

  Meredith plopped down into the nearest chair. “Sure there is.”

  “Really? How?”

  “Oh, I have my methods, Watson; I have my methods.”

  Just then Detective Hornblower ambled into the bar. He sat down in one of the unoccupied chairs and ran his hand over his close-cropped grey hair, then tugged at his beard stubble.

  “How’s it going?” said Meredith. “Any clues yet?”

  He shifted his lanky body and shook his head. “I can’t really discuss the case, I’m afraid.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Meredith, “because I could really be of some help.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” he suggested, “if I need some help, you’ll be the first one to know.”

  He sighed and looked around. “Is there anyone around who can get me something to drink?” he said, shifting his weight again. Even at rest, there was a tension in his limbs, a coiled readiness for action.

  “I’ll go get someone!” Meredith chirped, launching herself from her chair, but just then Philippe came into the room.

  “Hiya, folks,” he said. “Can I get you something?”

  “Any chance of getting some coffee?” the detective asked.

  “I think there’s a fresh pot on in the kitchen,” Philippe replied. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Where’s Wally?” said Claire.

  Meredith sat down again. “Taking a bath.”

  “Oh, there’s one thing I forgot to mention,” Claire said to Detective Hornblower. “I don’t know if it’s important or not, but the night before last I heard a dog howling.”

  Detective Hornblower nodded slowly, his big face serious. “When was that?”

  “In the middle of the night sometime. I didn’t look at my clock.”

  “I see. Was it nearby, do you think?”

  “Yes,” said Claire, “it was.”

  “The Wilsons have a dog,” Meredith offered.

  The detective swiveled his large head toward Claire. “Could it have been their dog, do you think?”

  “Yes, I think so. Was I the only one it woke up?”

  “No one else has mentioned it, but they may not have considered it important.”

  “Even the most seemingly irrelevant detail is potentially important,” Meredith declared. />
  “I agree with you there,” the detective replied.

  Just then, as if on cue, the Wilsons’ dog trotted into the bar, right behind Philippe, who entered carrying a steaming mug of coffee on a tray.

  “Here you go,” he said, setting it on the table next to Detective Hornblower. The dog stood watching and then lay down at the detective’s feet.

  “Is this the dog?” he said.

  “Yup,” said Meredith. “Ugly, isn’t it?”

  For all its homeliness, the dog was appealing in its own way: its large, dark-ringed eyes were soulful, and it carried itself with a solemn dignity, as if it were unaware of its jumbled potpourri of a body.

  “Hey there, Shatzy.” Meredith leaned down to pet him. Detective Hornblower reached a long arm over the side of his chair and absentmindedly scratched his ears.

  “‘Shatzy’ is German, isn’t it?” he said.

  “Yes,” Claire replied. “It means ‘sweetheart’ or ‘beloved.’”

  He nodded and took a sip of coffee. “Are the Wilsons German?”

  Claire shook her head. “I don’t know . . . maybe Paula is. I thought he looked Irish.”

  Just then Wally entered the bar. His hair was wet and his face had a pink, scrubbed look; he looked much more rested than he had when he arrived.

  “Speaking of sweethearts,” Meredith murmured, with a little poke in Claire’s side.

  “Hi there,” said Claire. “You look better.”

  Wally sat down. “I feel better.” His glance fell on Shatzy, who had rolled over onto his back. “Is that a dog?”

  “Yup,” said Meredith. “Ugly, huh?”

  “Poor Shatzy,” said Claire. “People can be so rude, can’t they?”

  The dog lifted one floppy ear and let it fall again, closing his eyes with a sigh of contentment. It was clear that he was utterly indifferent to whatever was being said about his appearance. He had all the things that mattered to a dog: plenty of food, a warm fireplace to loll in front of, and an endless stream of people to scratch his ears. All in all, it was not a bad life if you were a dog, Claire thought.