Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  “Welcome to the world, honey,” Jeffrey replied dryly. “Well, see you later.” He slung the parka over his shoulders and made his way through the darkened building, trailing a faint scent of sandalwood behind him. Claire heard the front door opening; a cold gust of wind blew down the hall, then the door closed again and all was quiet.

  “So were you trailing him?” Meredith said, standing up and rubbing her bony knees.

  “Well, not exactly.”

  “You were, weren’t you? Come on, admit it. You were spying on him!”

  “I heard someone moving around and I was curious, that’s all.”

  Meredith picked up one of her feet and held it against her knee, storklike. “Come on, ’fess up. It’s not a crime, you know.”

  “Fine,” Claire said. “Let’s go back upstairs.”

  Back in the room, Claire slipped into bed next to Wally with a sigh. She had missed the feel of him next to her, the solid architecture of his shoulders, where she could lay her head, his rough cheek next to hers, the warm vapor of his breath, so mysteriously sweet, as he slept. Her feet, always cold in the winter, longed to seek out the heat of his body; his feet, it seemed, were never cold, and were like a fire beside which she could warm her own. She missed the regularity of his breathing, so soft and soothing, his mouth slightly open when he slept. Sometimes she would lay a hand upon his chest so she could feel his heart, that faithful, rugged pump the Greeks believed was the seat of the soul. But most of all she missed his hands, long and beautiful, containing in their touch all that was good in him, all that was good in life. After their first time together she had been unable to erase the memory of his hands upon her body; they expressed so much. She thought with hands like that he could have been a sculptor or a pianist or a surgeon—but instead he was a detective. Very well, she thought as she lay in the dark beside him, a detective was what was needed now, and she was glad he was here.

  Chapter 11

  Claire was slow to rise the next morning, taking a long time to extricate herself from the heavy dreams that clung to her as she dragged herself back into consciousness. Meredith informed her that Wally had already gone down to breakfast.

  “Whenever you’re ready, I’d appreciate a little privacy for my chanting,” she said, folding her extra blanket neatly at the foot of her cot. Meredith regularly asked for extra blankets, but she always ended up tossing off all her bedding during the night.

  “Oh, fine,” Claire replied. After a quick shower, she pulled on a green cotton turtleneck and joined Wally in the breakfast room, leaving Meredith to her morning chant. The sound of her voice followed Claire down the long hall.

  “Nam yo ho reynge kyo, nam yo ho reynge kyo . . .”

  Claire wondered how long it would take Meredith to become thoroughly bored with the whole Buddhist thing, but for now she welcomed anything that might exert a calming influence.

  The snow shone crisp and white in the flood of yellow sunlight that fell on the landscape; Claire had to shield her eyes from the glare as she took her seat across from Wally.

  “Hello, sleepyhead,” he said, smiling. He looked rested, if a bit ungroomed, his grey hair falling in unkempt curls around his face. Claire especially liked his hair; even combed, it tended to be unruly.

  “You’re the heavy sleeper,” she answered as she reached for the coffeepot.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Didn’t Meredith tell you? You slept through all the excitement.”

  Wally frowned. “What excitement?”

  Claire told him about the nocturnal visit with Jeffrey, and he nodded thoughtfully. For some reason, she didn’t mention seeing Frank Wilson crying in the kitchen; she felt a little embarrassed about it, as though she had been spying on him.

  “Hmm,” Wally said after she finished her story. “Jeffrey said he was going outside for a smoke?”

  “Yes, and he had the cigarette to prove it.”

  “Interesting.”

  Claire looked around the room. It seemed she was the last to come down to breakfast. Paula Wilson was already busy clearing Richard and Jeffrey’s table; and Chris and Jack were such early risers that Claire assumed they had already come and gone. She didn’t envy Chris; in addition to caring for his aged father, he would now have to make funeral arrangements for his sister. She wondered how long it would take the medical examiner’s office to release the body into his custody.

  Just then Lyle and Sally entered the room, and Claire saw that she was not the last to come to breakfast after all. Sally looked pale and a little more distracted than she had the previous night, and Lyle’s blond hair looked unwashed.

  “I did too see her,” Sally said as they took their places a couple of tables away.

  “Look, Sal—” Lyle began, but Sally shook her head.

  “I saw her, I said!”

  Paula Wilson approached their table with a fresh pot of coffee, pouring them each a cup. Sally muttered something and pulled at a strand of hair. Lyle responded by pushing a lock of greasy blond hair off his forehead. Lyle and Sally were always fiddling with their hair; like a lot of couples, they shared certain mannerisms.

  “I saw her,” Sally mumbled, reaching for the cream pitcher.

  “Who did you see?” asked Frank Wilson as he entered carrying a basket of sweet rolls while his wife returned to the coffeemaker to refill her pot. Claire hadn’t seen a sign of Philippe or Otis yet that morning, and it had been Mona’s job to serve breakfast.

  “She thinks she saw the Woman in White,” Lyle replied as the innkeeper placed the rolls on their table.

  Frank Wilson smiled. “Oh? Then you’re very lucky; not that many people have actually seen her, you know.”

  “Well, I don’t know if Sally’s the most reliable eyewitness,” Lyle began, but Sally cut him off by banging her fist on the table sharply.

  “I did see her,” she protested loudly. “I saw her coming up the—”

  But at that moment the coffeepot slipped from Paula Wilson’s grasp and fell to the floor with a crash. They all jumped a little at the sound, but Sally appeared especially startled; she practically catapulted from her chair and stood trembling, staring at the jumbled mosaic of jagged pieces of the coffeepot, the black liquid oozing into the cracks between the floorboards. She stared down at the floor, her hand to her head, a frightened expression on her face. She looked up again at the other people in the room, as if she was searching their faces for something—an answer of some kind, perhaps.

  “How incredibly clumsy of me,” Paula Wilson muttered, bending over to pick up the broken shards of china.

  “Don’t do that—you’ll cut yourself,” her husband said, laying a hand on her shoulder.

  She looked at him intently for a moment, then straightening up, turned abruptly away. “I’ll get Max,” she murmured, her heels clicking sharply on the bare wooden floors.

  The chef returned a few moments later with a broom and a dustpan and speedily disposed of the broken china. Young Henry Wilson then appeared with a rag and solemnly mopped up the spilled liquid. It was at that moment that Meredith strolled into the room.

  “What’s going on?” she said, sliding into the vacant chair next to Claire.

  “Nothing, just a broken coffeepot,” Claire answered.

  “It’s probably because of that letter you found last night,” Lyle added, pushing a strand of hair from Sally’s face.

  “What letter?” Meredith chirped.

  “Oh, it was one of those letters in our bedside table,” said Lyle.

  “Yeah, I know; we’ve got ’em, too,” said Meredith. “What did yours say?”

  “Oh, it was by someone who supposedly saw the ghost—you know, the girl who wanders around here at night.”

  “Really?” said Meredith. “Can I see it?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Lyle answered with a look at Sally, who was sitting now, staring at Henry as the boy carefully mopped up the last of the coffee. Her eyes looked haunted, and her lower lip tremble
d as she sat, hands folded in her lap. Lyle laid a hand gently on her arm.

  “It’s okay, Sal, it’s going to be okay,” he said softly.

  Claire supposed Sally was unnerved by the murder, but there seemed to be something else going on as well, something she had noticed when she first saw the young couple. There was an intensity about them, as there often is with very creative people, that was both intriguing and unsettling.

  She watched as Henry carefully picked up the wet rag and carried it back toward the kitchen. The Wilsons’ dog Shatzy greeted him in the hall with a couple of furtive licks on his arm, but the boy ignored the dog, intent upon his mission.

  “That boy has entirely too much sense of responsibility,” Wally commented after he had gone. “No kid his age should be so damn quiet.”

  “You got that right,” Meredith said as she slathered orange marmalade on a sweet roll. Nothing could ever be quite sweet enough for Meredith; she heaped spoons of sugar into her tea, dipped her cookies in maple syrup, and, when Claire wasn’t looking, would eat piece after piece of cake, washing it down with chocolate milk.

  Even if the hotel residents had been able to pretend to some kind of normalcy, the yellow plastic tape with the warning POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS wrapped around the entrance to the basement made it impossible to forget that the inn was the scene of a murder. Claire walked past it on her way back to the room, and as she turned the corner into the front hall, she saw the tall, thin form of Detective Hornblower. He wore a grey parka that looked too short on his long body, and he was engaged in conversation with Frank Wilson. They were speaking very softly, and Claire couldn’t make out their words. She pretended not to be overly interested, but Meredith had no such guile.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she said, gliding over to where the two men stood.

  “Meredith, don’t interrupt them,” Claire said, pulling her back.

  “No, it’s all right,” Frank Wilson said. “We have to get everyone together, and maybe you can help.”

  “All right!” Meredith chirped. “You can count on me!”

  When everyone was finally gathered, in the small dining room adjacent to the bar, Detective Hornblower entered the room, his stern face unreadable. At the detective’s request, James Pewter, too, was there. Claire had not seen the historian since the previous afternoon, and she thought he looked more rested and less jumpy than everyone else. Without much preamble, Detective Hornblower delivered his news. The medical examiner’s office, he said, had determined that Mona Callahan was two months pregnant.

  Everyone received the announcement in shocked silence, all except Meredith, who muttered, “I knew it!” under her breath.

  With a glance at Meredith, the lanky detective cleared his throat and continued. “There was also the presence of sperm in the victim’s vagina . . . and we’re going to be asking for saliva samples from all the men present for the purposes of DNA testing.”

  James Pewter crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side. “Can we refuse?”

  Detective Hornblower nodded. “Yes, you can. This will be done on a voluntary basis. However, we can get a court order—”

  Jeffrey snorted. “Well, hell, I don’t mind. I’ve got nothing to hide!”

  No one appeared particularly amused by his comment. Hornblower ignored him and continued.

  “Detective Murphy will be collecting the samples in the taproom, so if the men would remain here, the women can go.”

  Otis Knox stepped over to the detective. “Was she–was there any sign of…” He paused and swallowed hard.

  Hornblower looked at him. “There was no indication that she was sexually assaulted, if that’s what you were going to ask,” he answered gently.

  Otis nodded, and Claire saw that he was biting his lower lip so hard that it bled.

  Meredith begged to be allowed to watch, but Claire assured her that it would just be a bunch of men spitting into sample dishes.

  “Oh, all right!” Meredith said with a sigh as they stood in the hall outside the dining room. “I never get to do anything around here!” she whined as they passed Detective Murphy.

  “I’ll tell you what you can do,” Max said, coming up behind her. “After I’m done here, why don’t you come help me in the kitchen?”

  “Oh, okay,” Meredith said, a tragic look on her face. She might have the IQ of a genius, Claire thought, but she had all the self-dramatizing, melodramatic moods of a typical adolescent.

  “I have work in the kitchen,” Max said to Detective Hornblower. “May I go first?”

  “Certainly.”

  When Max emerged from the taproom, Meredith followed him. Claire poked her head inside the kitchen for a moment.

  “Are you sure she won’t be in the way?” she asked.

  “No, she can help me prepare dinner,” Max replied. “That’s funny,” he said, pointing to a wooden rack of knives hanging on the wall by the stove. “My big carving knife seems to be missing . . .” He rooted around some more, looking through a stack of cutting boards, poking around in drawers filled with utensils.

  As he was doing this, Frank Wilson walked into the kitchen. “You didn’t miss anything,” he said to Meredith. “It was just spitting into jars.”

  Meredith shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Hey, Frank,” Max said, “have you seen my carving knife?”

  Frank Wilson shook his head, his lips tight, a distracted look on his broad face. “Maybe you misplaced it during the blackout,” he commented vaguely, and wandered out again.

  “I can’t understand it,” Max muttered, rifling through yet another drawer, the kitchen utensils rattling as his big hands pawed through them.

  “Maybe you should tell Detective Hornblower,” Meredith suggested.

  Max stared at her, his blue eyes wide. “Really? You think—do you really think so?”

  Meredith shrugged. “Sounds likely to me. If you ask me, it was a pretty big knife that stabbed her.”

  Max’s pink face turned pale. “Oh, Gott in Himmel . . . you mean maybe they used the knife—my knife . . .” His face darkened again and he frowned angrily. “Schweinhund . . . es ist wirklich unglaublich.” He lumbered heavily out of the room, muttering to himself in German.

  Meredith turned to Claire. “Well, I don’t want to be morbid, but don’t you think it’s logical?”

  “Yes,” Claire had to admit. “I do.”

  Meredith wanted to wait around to see how Max’s announcement would be received, but Claire suggested a walk. She felt the girl had been cooped up inside too long, and she herself was feeling a little stir-crazy. She would have suggested they drive into town, but she didn’t trust her old diesel Mercedes to start up in this weather without a lot of coaxing, and she didn’t have the energy. Wally had taken the train up, so her car was all they had for transportation.

  “Where can we go?” said Meredith when Claire brought up the idea of a stroll outside.

  “Oh, we can just walk around the woods. Or how about the mill; we can go over and look at it in the snow. Wouldn’t that be fun? Maybe we can find a sledding hill somewhere. I’ll bet there’s a sled somewhere in the hotel.”

  Meredith sighed as she pulled on her red down jacket, a present from her father. Meredith loved wearing red, even though, with her orange hair, Claire thought it made her look like a multicolored lollipop.

  “Don’t forget your earmuffs,” Claire said. Meredith had a tendency to get earaches in cold weather.

  “Earmuffs, check,” Meredith replied, sliding them on over her grey wool hat.

  They pushed open the heavy front door and stepped out into the thin wintry air. A frigid blast hit Claire square in the face, taking her breath away.

  “Wow, this is intense,” said Meredith as they picked their way across the frozen landscape, their boots crunching against crusty snow. The ground was now so covered in its thick whiteness that Claire could not imagine it any other way. For some reason, she felt curiously alive in this deep freeze of winte
r.

  “Hey,” said Meredith, “earth to Claire. Where are we going, anyway?”

  Claire stopped walking. She realized that she had become totally lost in her thoughts, just wandering along without thinking where they were going.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Want to go see the mill?”

  “Whatever,” Meredith replied. “It’s damn cold out here.” Claire ignored the girl’s attempt to get a rise out of her; “damn” was hardly a word worth getting upset about.

  They walked across the road and up the little hillock that led to the mill house. The mill wheel turned on and on, as inexorable as time itself. The heavy wooden paddles groaned and creaked, pushed upward by the rushing water underneath, the stream bubbling and gurgling below. Claire stood staring at the turning wheel, the wind cold against her cheeks, mesmerized by the slow, rhythmic motion.

  The wind was bitterly cold, a biting, frigid blast of northerly air that swept across the open field. Claire folded her arms across her chest, pushing her hands into the armpits of her jacket to warm them. She looked across the bare, hard stubbled wheat field, layered with snow blowing off the brown stalks that stuck up through the snow. It came off in wispy white gusts, like sea spray. Meredith was walking all the way around the building, standing on her tiptoes to peer in the windows.

  Claire looked at the mill wheel, and it occurred to her that it appeared to be turning more slowly than it was when she had last seen it. Was it her imagination, she wondered, or was there an unevenness to the motion of the big wheel as it rotated on its thick iron axle? Claire took a step closer, standing at the brink of the stream, and peered across the water at the gears of the wheel.

  There was an odd sound, a sort of ker-chunk, ker-chunk, that didn’t seem right to her. She looked closer, and then she saw it: wedged in the gears of the big wheel, its blade twisted and rusting, was a long-bladed kitchen knife.

  Chapter 12

  “Oh, man,” said Meredith, standing beside Claire, shivering as they were hit by another icy gust of arctic wind. They stood watching Detective Hornblower and Wally working to extricate the knife from the gears of the mill wheel. “This is totally outrageous.”