Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  “Good morning,” Chris said as Claire entered the dining room. He sounded relaxed, even cheerful. She hadn’t seen much of him the day before; he spent most of the day in his room talking on his cell phone. After going into town for new batteries in the morning, he had spent the afternoon making funeral arrangements for his sister. It was to be held in Darien in a week’s time, and there were relatives and friends he needed to call, as well as booking the church. It seems Mona had been a devout Catholic, and was well known in her local parish for her charitable deeds, or so her brother said.

  “Good morning,” Claire said, taking a cup of coffee from the sideboard over to her table. Understandably, Frank Wilson had not yet hired anyone to replace Mona, and the guests were doing their best to make things easier on the staff.

  Jack Callahan smiled at Claire and gave a little wave. His eyes were cloudy, but he, too, looked cheerful and rested. The more she saw of them, the more Claire thought that the father mirrored the moods of his son. Claire noticed that Jack held something in his hand.

  “What have you got there, Jack?” she asked.

  “Oh, it’s one of those letters from the bedside table; you know, the ‘secret drawer,’” Chris answered.

  “Really?”

  “Papa found it last night and for some reason he’s attached to it. I don’t even know if he understands any of it, but I figure it can’t hurt if he wants to carry it around for a while. Right, Papa?”

  Jack swiveled his head toward his son. “She died, you know.”

  “Yes, Papa,” Chris answered softly. “She died.”

  Claire wasn’t sure if he was referring to Mona or someone in the letter. “Can I—can I see it?” she asked.

  “Can Claire see the letter, Papa?” Chris said, gently prying the paper from the old man’s hand. Jack put up no resistance, but watched as his son handed the letter to Claire.

  The handwriting was firm—the pen a ballpoint—and looked to Claire very masculine. It was short and to the point:

  I can’t help it—I love her. So I am a prisoner like everyone else in this damn place—a prisoner of love. Why we don’t all just rise up and leave I don’t know; it’s as though we’re trapped by our own lassitude, our failure of courage. And my slavehood is worst of all, because as long as she’s here, I’ll never leave—never. Why hope runs so rampant within me is a mystery to me, but somehow it does. I keep thinking, imagining, that someday she’ll see beyond my appearance to who I really am, and then she ‘ll love me. Until then, I’m doomed to follow her about like a poor pathetic dog, waiting for any scrap of affection.

  “Thanks,” Claire said, handing the letter back to Jack. Though she had no way of proving it, the letter made her think of Otis Knox—especially the reference to his appearance, since she felt instinctively from the first that he was self-conscious about his harelip.

  Henry Wilson appeared at the door to the breakfast room with a basket of muffins, which he placed on Claire’s table before scurrying from the room just as Meredith made her entrance. Her hair was still wet from her shower, and little droplets of water fell on her shoulders as she sat down. Wet, her hair was the color of a tarnished penny.

  “Meredith, you should have dried your hair,” said Claire. “You don’t want to get sick.”

  Meredith rolled her eyes. “You have perhaps heard of the germ theory of disease.”

  “Yes, but getting cold can lower your resistance,” Chris Callahan pointed out as he dug out a slice of grapefruit for his father. The old man chewed it slowly, puckering his lips, his pale eyes watering.

  “Whatever,” Meredith said with a shrug, diving into the basket of muffins. “Poppy seed—awesome!” she exclaimed, taking one. “Hey, did you see the Seinfeld episode where Elaine tests positive for opium because she’s been eating poppy-seed muffins?” she asked Chris.

  “I don’t own a television.”

  Meredith’s eyes widened. “Really? Wow. That’s wild . . . wow.”

  “Well, Papa, time to go for our morning walk,” Chris said, taking his father by the elbows and lifting him out of his chair.

  As the two of them made their way slowly out of the room, Meredith shook her head. “Wow. Imagine—no television.”

  Just then Lyle and Sally came into the room. Sally did not look good. In fact, Claire thought she looked awful. Her face was strained, and shockingly white next to the blackness of her hair, as though she had been totally drained of blood. With her straight jet-black hair and thin lips, Sally really did look like a vampire.

  With a nod to Claire and Meredith, she and Lyle took some coffee from the sideboard and sat down at their table. Sally ran a hand through her disheveled hair. Her hand trembled as she reached for her coffee—then, suddenly, she groaned and pitched forward, as if shoved from behind, over the table, her head hitting it with a clunking sound. Lyle stared at her for a moment as if he couldn’t quite register what had just happened, then he leaped to his feet.

  “Sally, what’s wrong? What is it?” he cried, grabbing her by the shoulders in an attempt to pull her upright. She just groaned, and her eyes were closed.

  Lyle looked around the room wildly. “Help!” he shouted, but Claire and Meredith were already on their feet.

  “Meredith, go call 911—quickly!” Claire barked as she negotiated the maze of tables between her and Lyle.

  “Right!” Meredith replied, her face almost as white as Sally’s. She lurched out of the room, rapping her shins against table legs as she went.

  When Claire reached Sally, the first thing she did was feel for a pulse. The girl’s skin was clammy; in spite of the coolness of the room, droplets of sweat clung to her forehead.

  “What’s happened?” Lyle whispered as Claire felt for a pulse in Sally’s neck.

  “Shh,” she commanded, locating a faint, ragged pulse. The girl’s breathing was rapid and shallow, and when Claire gently lifted her head from the table, she saw that her eyes had rolled up into her head.

  Lyle stood by, wringing his hands and moaning softly.

  “Oh, Sally, what have you done?” he murmured, rocking back and forth, shaking his head.

  “Is this from a drug overdose?” Claire asked.

  “I don’t know,” he wailed. “I thought she was done with that—we both were,” he added, seeing Claire’s disapproving look.

  Meredith came rushing back into the room, followed by Frank Wilson.

  “The ambulance is on its way,” he said. “What’s happened here?”

  “She just—collapsed,” Lyle moaned. “She felt a little dizzy and nauseous this morning . . . then we were sitting here and—you saw it—she just fell forward all of a sudden.”

  “Is she alive?” Meredith asked, her eyes gleaming.

  “Yes,” Claire replied, “but her pulse is very weak.”

  “Should we do CPR?” Lyle asked.

  “I don’t think so, unless her heart stops,” Claire replied.

  They heard the faint wail of a siren in the distance, a sound that grew rapidly louder as the ambulance approached. Claire pulled back the curtain to look out at the red-and-white vehicle barreling down the street and rounding the curve in the road by James Pewter’s house. With a loud squeal of brakes it pulled into the driveway and jolted to a stop. One paramedic shot out of the cab as two others emerged from the back carrying a stretcher.

  Claire met them at the front door, with Frank Wilson following right behind her. “She’s been unconscious for about seven minutes,” she said as she followed the paramedics into the dining room. “Her pulse is faint and irregular,” she added, suddenly feeling as if she were on an episode of ER.

  “Any known food allergies?” one of the paramedics asked as the other two lifted Sally onto the stretcher. She was a stern-faced woman of fifty or so, and evidently was in charge. She had a body like a female golf pro: stocky, solid in the hips, with generously proportioned thighs.

  Lyle shook his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

  The wo
man continued her recitation. “Any heart condition, diabetes, history of drug abuse—”

  The look on Lyle’s face stopped her. She cocked her head to one side and peered at him. “Did she ingest any drugs or alcohol?”

  “No! I mean, not anymore,” Lyle answered, and then, in response to the look the woman gave him, he added, “We were done with all that. We were both clean when we came here, and I checked her luggage to make sure . . . she was clean, I swear to God.”

  The chief paramedic couldn’t resist a quick roll of her eyes as her colleagues swung Sally’s limp body onto the stretcher. The woman’s square jaw jutted forward as she continued with her list. “Any history of liver disease, kidney failure, renal disease, tumors, gynecological problems—”

  “No, man—look at her!” Lyle cried, his face red. “She’s too young to have any of that stuff!”

  “No one’s too young to have anything,” the paramedic replied as her colleagues carried Sally out of the room. “Are you coming to the hospital with us?”

  “Yeah—yeah, I wanna stay with her.” Lyle was practically in tears now, and Claire felt sorry for him. His lips were swollen, his eyelids were red, and he looked absolutely terrified.

  “Do you want me to come with you?” she asked.

  Lyle looked at her with a bewildered expression, as though the decision was too much for him, and shook his head.

  “No, I’ll look after her.” He suddenly grabbed Claire’s hand and squeezed it so hard that her knuckles crunched. “Thanks, though, for—everything.” Then, with a look at the others who stood around, hands at their sides, he turned and ran out the door, following the paramedics, who were already loading Sally into the back of the ambulance.

  Claire watched it drive off as Jack Callahan made his way slowly down the stairs, leaning on his son’s arm. They both wore bulky blue snow parkas.

  “What’s going on?” said Chris, his voice languid as always, even under such circumstances. He guided his father over to a chair in the corner.

  “Sally just collapsed,” Meredith replied cheerily, hanging on the doorknob and swinging back and forth.

  “Stop it, Meredith,” Claire told her as Frank Wilson came back into the room.

  “Oh, they’re gone already?” he said, his big face soft with disappointment.

  “Yup,” said Meredith. “They were fast.”

  “I wanted to ask them—”

  “What?” said Meredith.

  “Oh, never mind . . . it’s probably not important.”

  “What?” said Claire.

  “I’ll ask Max when he returns,” the innkeeper replied.

  “Where is he?”

  “He went to town to do some shopping,” Wilson said, then he turned and went back into the kitchen.

  Jack Callahan watched him go, a pensive expression on his face, then he looked at the basket of poppy-seed muffins on Claire’s table. “Do you know the muffin man?” he murmured thoughtfully, almost to himself, before letting his head sink onto his chest.

  “What’s that, Papa?” said Chris Callahan.

  Jack raised his head and focused his bleary eyes on his son’s face. “He lives in Drury Lane.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Meredith whispered to Claire.

  “I don’t know. It’s an old children’s song; I remember it from childhood.” For the rest of the day she had trouble getting the words out of her head. They ran, over and over again, like a loop, through her mind:

  Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man?

  Do you know the muffin man? He lives in Drury Lane.

  Claire had a tendency to trap things in her head—song lyrics, poems, bits of verse, even nursery rhymes or ad slogans—creating for her a kind of internal soundtrack. As she walked down the street, it seemed there was always a phrase of some kind rattling around in her head. Now Jack’s words rang in her ears like the voice of Fate itself.

  Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man?

  There was something ominous in this little snatch of nursery rhyme, it seemed to her, some message, if only she could figure out what it was. Out of the mouth of babes, she could remember her mother saying when her younger brother said something particularly cute or astute. Well, there was something in Jack’s dry, affectless observations that seemed to lend them the weight of prophecy. Even though she knew it was probably nonsensical, Claire couldn’t help feeling there was something to it.

  Do you know the muffin man? He lives in Drury Lane.

  Chapter 14

  Everyone awaited anxiously all morning for word of Sally’s condition. Richard and Jeffrey had gone into town after an early breakfast, so they didn’t hear that she was ill until they returned a little after one o’clock.

  Claire expected Jeffrey to receive the news with a sneer, but to her surprise he shook his head sympathetically.

  “Poor kid.” He sighed. “Playing with matches . . .”

  “How do you know?” said Richard, depositing an armful of packages on the sideboard. “It could have been food poisoning.”

  Jeffrey shrugged. “I know a junkie when I see one. At least give me that, won’t you, dear boy?” he added ironically, with a pat on Richard’s cheek.

  To Claire’s surprise, Richard smiled and blushed. Whatever trouble the two were having, they seemed to have patched things up, at least for the time being.

  “Let us know if you hear anything,” Richard said as he carried the packages upstairs. “We’ll be in our room.”

  Later, Claire walked past their room and heard the sound of laughter, and underneath Edith Piaf’s voice:

  Non, rien de rien,

  Non, je ne regrette rien.

  She smiled and walked on. With so much pain and sadness around, she was glad to see someone carving out a little corner of happiness, tenuous as it might be.

  When Claire got to her room, Meredith was lying on her stomach on her cot studying some of the letters from the secret drawer.

  “Whatchya up to?” Claire said.

  “Studying handwriting,” Meredith replied without looking up.

  “Yeah? Why?”

  “Well, one of the letters may be from the victim—or the murderer.”

  Claire pulled a thick burgundy sweater from the closet. The inn was chilly, and she had been cold all day. “Well, I guess it’s possible.”

  Meredith sat up and crossed her legs Indian style. “You bet it is! Just think what a breakthrough a discovery like that could be!”

  “So how do you propose to test your theory?”

  Meredith gave her best shot at a mysterious smile. She was hardly a Mona Lisa, though, and Claire tried unsuccessfully to suppress a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Meredith demanded.

  “Nothing . . . well, it was the expression on your face.”

  “What about it?”

  “Never mind . . . what’s your plan?”

  “You’ll see,” Meredith answered curtly. “When the time is ripe I will reveal all.”

  “Meredith, it isn’t illegal, is it?”

  Meredith snorted. “I should hope not! Don’t insult me—puh-lease!”

  She sounded like a New England dowager whose pride had just been injured, a sort of adolescent Margaret Dumont.

  “Well, forgive me,” said Claire, imitating Meredith’s artificial, hoity-toity tone of voice. “I had no idea your moral standards were so high—but I must say I’m relieved.”

  “Well, they are.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Both of them were half kidding now, just playing with each other. Just then Wally came in. “What’s going on here?” he said.

  “Claire is comparing me to a common criminal,” Meredith replied, rolling over onto her back. “Can you imagine?”

  Wally shared an amused look with Claire. “Outrageous,” he said. “She should be horsewhipped.”

  Meredith’s jaw dropped and she sat up. “Really?”

 
“No, but we’ll settle for a spanking.” With that, Wally reached for Claire, who screamed and dove across the bed to escape. Laughing, Wally grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward him. Claire was laughing, too, and pretended to bite his hand, just barely touching the skin with her teeth. She could taste the salt on his skin, and a sting of lime aftershave on the tip of her tongue.

  By now Meredith was laughing, too, as she helped pull Claire over her side of the bed.

  “Come on,” said Wally, “take your punishment like a man.”

  They were making so much noise that they didn’t even hear the first knock on the door. The second knock, however, went through them like a gunshot. They all stopped laughing simultaneously, and Claire went to the door and opened it. She knew what the news was as soon as she saw Frank Wilson’s face.

  “I just got a call from Rufus Hornblower. Sally died at the hospital.”

  “Oh, God,” said Claire. “Oh, my God. What—how?”

  Frank Wilson sighed. He looked exhausted, his handsome Irish face puffy and pale. “There’ll be an autopsy. It’s too early to tell, but it had all the signs of poisoning.”

  “Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” Claire said. “Poor Sally. Where’s Lyle?”

  “He’s downstairs. Hornblower’s on his way over here now.”

  “I knew it!” Meredith crowed as Claire closed the door and came back into the room. “Sally knew something, and the killer had to silence her!”

  “Oh, Meredith,” Claire said, “people die of poisoning all the time. It doesn’t necessarily follow that she was murdered, you know.”

  But even as she said the words, she didn’t believe them.

  “I’m going downstairs to see if I can help.” Wally rose from the edge of the bed. As he passed Claire he reached for her impulsively and gave her a hug.

  “E-yew,” said Meredith, “no kissing.” She herself resisted physical contact of any kind. She called people who hugged all the time “touchy-feelies.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Claire.