Who Killed Mona Lisa?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  “Somebody knows something, but nobody’s talking.”

  Claire turned to see Chris and Jack at the top of the stairs. “All right, Papa,” Chris said gently, guiding his father by the elbow down the steps. “Let’s go for a little walk, shall we?”

  “I’m walking, but nobody’s talking,” the old man declared, louder than before, as Chris led him down. He stopped just in front of Wally.

  “Do you think James Pewter killed my sister?” he said.

  Wally studied his face for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “No, I don’t.”

  “Then why . . .?” Otis asked.

  Wally shrugged. “They must have needed to make an arrest.”

  “So they arrest just anyone?” Frank Wilson said.

  “Well, he wasn’t just anyone,” Wally remarked. “After all, he did have a basement full of jars of mushrooms, some of them poison.”

  At that moment Meredith came running down the hall from the kitchen.

  “What did I miss?” she said breathlessly, wiping her hands on a white cotton apron tied around her waist. She was covered in flour; in addition to a light dusting of it all over her green sweater, there were smudges all over her face, and the fingers of both hands were white. “What happened?”

  “They just arrested Mr. Pewter,” Claire answered, still unable to believe it herself. Everything seemed surreal; still groggy from her nap, Claire had that sense of unreality you sometimes get after a long nap in the afternoon. When she went to sleep it had been light, and now it was dark outside; although the grandfather clock in the hall said it was only five forty-five, it felt like midnight.

  “Oh, man!” Meredith said in her most disgusted voice, slapping a thin thigh in frustration. A cloud of white billowed up from her apron, and she coughed as she turned to Wally, who stood, hands in his pockets, studying Otis Knox. Wally wore a rumpled light brown corduroy jacket, the suede-padded elbows slightly soiled. Wally was not a snappy dresser; but then, his lack of vanity was one of the things that had attracted Claire to him.

  “Was it the mushrooms?” Meredith said.

  Wally nodded, but the look on his face was bemused. “They seem to think he was having an affair with Mona Callahan.” He looked at Otis as he said this, and the bartender’s face reddened.

  “Well, I have to get back to work,” he muttered, and, slipping away, disappeared into the tavern. Frank Wilson followed after him; it looked to Claire like he wanted to talk to Otis.

  Meredith’s jaw dropped, just like a cartoon character, Claire thought. There was something about the girl that evoked a Warner Brothers character; she was so exaggerated, so much larger than life. “No way!” she exclaimed. “Out of the question!”

  “Really?” said Wally. “Why do you think so?”

  Meredith shook her head. “Just couldn’t be . . . it’s hard to say.”

  “Is it because he’s older?”

  Meredith shook her head, and a few flakes of flour floated down from her hair. “Nope, it just isn’t right.” She turned to Claire. “You know what I mean?”

  Claire nodded slowly. “Yes, I do . . . they just don’t match. It’s hard to explain.” She smiled at Wally. “Call it woman’s intuition.”

  “I knew you were going to say that!” he groaned, rolling his eyes. Though Wally was by nature restrained, Claire thought that being around Meredith had made him more expressive. When they first met, he would never have resorted to such a theatrical gesture as rolling his eyes, but now it seemed perfectly natural. Well, she thought, people become more like each other as they grow closer; Claire had caught herself adopting little gestures or phrases Wally used, quite unconsciously, just as she had imitated the laugh of a cousin she admired when she was a child. It was almost totemic, this absorption of another person’s traits, like Native Americans who dress up in the skin of an animal in order to assimilate its courage, grace, and strength.

  “So why did they get him?” said Meredith.

  “They showed up with a search warrant for his house and found jars of amanitas in the basement,” said Wally.

  Meredith shrugged. “Big deal. He’s a mycologist. Besides, if he were guilty, don’t you think he’d destroy the evidence?”

  “Apparently they found a book on mushrooms with the page on amanitas marked.”

  “Oh, jeezus!” Meredith snorted. “I mean, setup city! Duh. Do they think he’s an idiot?”

  “I think Wally’s right,” Claire observed. “They were desperate for an arrest.” She went on to tell them about the conversation she had overheard between Detective Hornblower and Rebecca White. When she was finished, Wally frowned.

  “Nothing good can come of an arrest made out of desperation; it only leads to more trouble.” He shook his head. “Ms. White is obviously an intelligent and ambitious young woman, but both youth and ambition can work against you if you’re not careful.”

  Meredith narrowed her eyes. “Hey, is that meant for me?”

  Wally smiled. “Not really. Interesting that you thought it was, though.”

  Meredith rolled her eyes. “Whatever. You can cut the psychoanalysis crap. My dad keeps trying to get me to a shrink, and I keep telling him I’d be fine if he weren’t married to the Saran Wrap queen of Connecticut.”

  Claire frowned. “Saran Wrap?”

  “Yeah. She’s so paranoid about germs she has to wrap everything in plastic all the time. Food, I mean.”

  “Like leftovers?” said Wally.

  Meredith shook her head. “Oh, God forbid we should ever eat leftovers—no, no, no—that would surely lead to botulism and death! No, I mean as soon as anything is bought she has to wrap it up—celery, crackers, whatever. It’s downright creepy, if you ask me.”

  “It may be creepy, Meredith, but you need to watch your language and your manners,” Claire remarked.

  Meredith sighed. “Sorry,” she said to Wally.

  “Just because you’re smarter than a lot of people is no excuse to be rude to them.”

  Meredith’s eyes widened as she looked at Wally. “I never said I was smarter than him!”

  Wally laughed. “It’s all right; maybe you are.”

  “Saran Wrap, huh?” Claire mused. “That reminds me of something, but I can’t think what . . .”

  Meredith smirked. “Having an Alzheimer’s moment?”

  “Very funny. Just for that, I think I won’t tell you what it is.”

  “You mean you remember?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, come on; tell me, please! I promise I won’t make any more cracks about your age.”

  “She’s not that old, you know,” Wally pointed out.

  Meredith sighed heavily. “I know. I was only kidding. Now, what was it you remembered?”

  “Well, it reminded me of when I used to wait on tables, and how the chef there was crazy about using Saran Wrap for everything.”

  Meredith’s eyes opened wide. “You used to be a waitress? No way!”

  Claire smiled. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

  “Where?”

  “A little French restaurant in New York, when I first arrived just after college. But that’s not important. What I was thinking was how he would make up the menu each day, and I was wondering if Max did the menu planning himself, or if the Wilsons helped him.”

  “Well, there’s one way to find out,” Wally remarked. “Let’s just ask him.”

  Max was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on his pastries before baking them in the large confectioner’s oven nestled against the kitchen’s far wall.

  “What happened to you?” he said to Meredith as the three of them walked into the kitchen. “I had to finish the pastries all by myself.”

  “Sorry—I got sidetracked,” Meredith replied, hopping up onto a tall stool next to one of the counters. Max kept the stool there to sit on from time to time while he worked, he had told Claire; his back had a tendency to spasm if he stood for long periods of time, and he had heel
spurs in both feet.

  “How’s your back?” Claire asked.

  “I’ve had better days. Ah, well, every job has its occupational hazards,” the chef answered with a good-natured shrug. “At least it’s better than skydiving.”

  “We were wondering,” Wally began slowly, “who set the menus each day?” Wally had a way of asking questions so they sounded less like a police interrogation and more a matter of genuine curiosity and interest—a useful trait for a homicide detective, Claire thought.

  Max slid a tray of puff pastry into the oven, and a wave of heat enveloped the room, making the skin on Claire’s face tighten and flush. Max straightened up and wiped the sweat from his pink cheeks. “Sometimes I do them myself, and sometimes Mrs. Wilson gives me suggestions. Why?”

  “Who set the menu the night before Sally died?” said Meredith.

  Max leaned against the counter, his stomach in its white apron puffing out in front of him like rising pastry dough. “Well, let me see . . . we did it together, as I recall . . . this is right; she had some things she wanted me to cook that night.”

  “Do you remember what exactly?” said Claire.

  “Whose idea were the mushroom crêpes?” Meredith added.

  “Well, you know we always have to have a vegetarian entrée, for the poor Miss Sally, who was a vegetarian, you know.”

  “Yes,” Wally remarked. “I wonder who else knew that?”

  Max shrugged and ran a hand over his forehead, which was perspiring thickly. “It was no secret, this. I seem to remember Mr. Jeffrey making a remark upon it once, about how some people couldn’t stand to eat another animal, and how it might do her some good to have some red meat once in a while.”

  Claire nodded. “That sounds like Jeffrey. But whose idea were the mushroom crêpes? Can you remember?”

  Max cocked his head to one side. “Let me see . . . ah, yes, it was Mrs. Wilson. She wanted me to try a new kind of flour—something with semolina in it, I believe.” He made a distasteful face. “I told her it was not good for the cooking, this flour—too grainy—but she insisted I try. I was right, of course,” he added with a little smile. “The crêpes were not very good.”

  “Where is this flour now?” said Wally.

  Max frowned and crossed his arms. “I threw it out. One really cannot work with materials like this. It is like trying to paint an oil painting using the finger paints.”

  “So the crêpes were her idea,” Meredith mused.

  “Yes, but this is really nothing unusual,” Max replied. “She suggested several other things on the menu as well, and as I say, it is not at all uncommon.”

  “Philippe and Otis were both waiting on tables that night, as I recall,” said Claire. “Who besides them would have known which table was getting the mushroom crêpes?”

  Max shrugged. “Oh, anyone. All they had to do was look at the order slip; the table number is clearly written upon each one.”

  “And were you in the kitchen during the whole time?” said Meredith.

  “I had to leave several times—once to use the toilet, and another to help Frank carry in some wood from outside. The boys were both busy with their tables, and the fires needed more wood, so I took a few minutes to help.”

  “I see,” said Wally. “So the kitchen was left unattended?”

  Max nodded. “And now, if you will excuse me, I must attend to my little friends in the oven. I can smell they are almost ready, and once a pastry is overcooked, it is ganz schrecklich—really terrible.”

  They left Max puttering among his pastries and wire whisks, the picture of contentment.

  “So James Pewter was right,” Meredith remarked as they crossed the bare wooden floor to the back staircase. “Anyone at all could have slipped poison mushrooms into Sally’s crêpes.”

  “You know,” said Claire as Meredith started up the stairs, “the murderer must have thought Sally’s being a drug addict provided the perfect cover. He or she must have figured that everyone would just assume it was a drug overdose…and in any case, why would they look for a poison as specific as amanita?”

  “But the murderer didn’t count on you,” Wally added, laying his hand on her shoulder and giving it a squeeze.

  As she put her hand on the railing, Claire thought she heard something—a kind of yelping sound. It wasn’t coming from inside the house, but from somewhere outside, she thought.

  “Wait a minute,” she said to Wally.

  Meredith, who was halfway up the stairs, turned around. “What? What is it?”

  Claire shook her head. “Hold on a second. I think I heard something…there! There it is again.”

  It was a kind of wailing, like a cry for help, only it didn’t sound quite human. Claire put her hand in the air. “There! Did you hear that?”

  Meredith came clomping loudly back down the stairs. “Hear what?”

  “There—there it is again. It sounds like someone’s in trouble. I’m going to find out what it is.”

  “Wow, you do have good ears,” Meredith marveled as she followed Claire down the hall toward the back entrance, which opened out onto the parking lot.

  “You can’t go outside without your coats,” Wally said. “It’s too cold.”

  “I’ll get them!” Meredith cried, sprinting up the stairs two at a time. Moments later she returned laden with parkas, hats, and gloves. The sound had died down while she was gone but returned as they were putting on their coats. This time Meredith and Wally heard it, too.

  “I hear it now!” Meredith cried as she pulled on her red mittens. “It does sound like someone’s in trouble!”

  They charged out the back door and into the icy parking lot, where they stood listening, but the air was still, silent. “It’s stopped,” Meredith said, her breath a puff of white mist.

  They looked around, but there was no sign of movement. Not even a wisp of breeze stirred the barren tree branches, black and stiff as sentinels in the frigid air.

  Then it came again—clear and chilling, a yell of pain.

  “This way!” Claire called, pushing through the snow in the direction of the sound. Several hundred yards behind the inn, where field met woods, a little wooden shack was nestled among a pile of tall yellow weeds. Claire had noticed it before and supposed it was a toolshed of some kind. As she charged toward it, her legs plowing through knee-high snowdrifts, she could hear plainly that the sound was indeed coming from inside the shack.

  “This way!” she shouted over her shoulder to Wally, who had Meredith by the hand and was dragging her along behind him. The girl’s long spindly legs were not built for this kind of work, and she was struggling to keep up, her breath coming in frozen gasps, her red scarf dangling down to her knees as she plunged from one drift to the next.

  As she neared the shed Claire noticed two sets of tracks in the snow, coming from another direction: one was a person, and the other looked like the prints of a medium-sized dog. The prints led right up to the door of the shack.

  By the time Claire reached the shed, the sounds had stopped. The door was closed tightly; she reached for the handle and pulled hard. The snow provided less resistance than she expected, and to her surprise the door flung open.

  There, standing hunched over, with a stick in one hand, was Henry Wilson. The other hand was clasped firmly around the collar of his family’s dog, Shatzy. Claire realized instantly what was happening in the toolshed, and a sickening sensation crawled up her legs, leaving her weak-kneed: the boy had been beating the dog with the stick. Suddenly everything turned white, like a movie screen fading out, and Claire heard someone screaming. The next thing she knew Wally was holding her, pulling her away from Henry Wilson, who stood cowering in the corner, terror on his sallow face.

  “No, Claire!” Wally was saying, and then Claire realized the person she had heard yelling was herself. She looked down at her right hand, which Wally was restraining, and saw that she held the stick formerly held by Henry Wilson. “It’s all right now,” Wally whi
spered, and Claire looked around for Meredith. The girl stood in the doorway to the shed, looking at her with an expression Claire had never seen before: a combination of horror and awe. Claire looked down at the stick in her hand, and at that moment she was even a little afraid of herself.

  Chapter 21

  “Please don’t tell my mother!” were the first words Henry Wilson spoke as Wally took the leash from him. Poor Shatzy cringed as Wally reached down to stroke his head.

  “It’s all right now,” he murmured as he petted the dog, who was still shivering in fear, the hair on his misshapen body standing up in all directions. “No one’s going to hurt you anymore,” Wally said as Meredith, recovered from her shock at Claire’s behavior, rushed to the dog, hugging it tightly in her arms.

  “You poor thing!” she cried. “What did that terrible boy do to you?”

  “Not so tightly, Meredith,” Wally said, and then he turned to Henry Wilson, who stood trembling in the corner. “Why did you do this, Henry?”

  The boy just shook his head, his eyes wild with fear. “Please don’t tell my mother,” he rasped. Furious as she still was, Claire couldn’t help noticing that the boy was so terrified that he could hardly speak. The words stuck in his throat, clogging his windpipe, and his pale face was even more ashen than usual.

  Still, her heart hardened against him when she saw the poor dog shivering in Meredith’s arms. “Why shouldn’t we tell her, Henry?” she said coldly. “Tell me that.”

  Henry lowered his head as though he couldn’t bear to look at her. Indeed, Claire felt a bit like Medusa. “Why shouldn’t we tell her, Henry?” she repeated, and she felt as if it was her heart that had turned to stone.

  The boy still refused to look at her. He cringed against the wall, shaking his head, then he covered his face in his hands and exploded into loud sobs. Startled, Claire looked at Wally, who shook his head.

  “Come on, Henry, let’s go back inside where it’s warm,” he said.

  “Don’t—tell—my—mother,” Henry gasped through his sobs as Wally gently raised him to his feet.