Swan Song

by Judith K Ivie

  “I’m not following. Did he and May have a history?”

  “Not together, no, but I’ve been thinkin’ about it, and I’m pretty sure he had one with Lizabeth Mulgrew or W.Z.B. Trague. He must have, in order for him to have any involvement in this situation, and whatever happened, it twisted something inside him. May saw what she believed was a good, decent man, and maybe he used to be, but something’s gone very wrong. May shouldn’t blame herself for bein’ deceived, since he obviously intended to do just that.”

  I thought about that for a minute. “So the bottom line is, you don’t think Schenk has any personal animosity toward May. You think because of something that happened in the past with Lizabeth Mulgrew or Wilhelm Trague, he deliberately deceived her, is that it?”

  “Either that or he’s batshit crazy,” Margo shrugged. “My big point is that nobody really knows anybody else no matter how long or short a time you’ve been acquainted. Everybody has secrets, and we may never know what they are. Sometimes we just have to get over it.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Wednesday finally arrived, and although things were well under control at work, we were all stymied by our inability to help May find Lizabeth Mulgrew’s hidden drive. A happy note was that our third partner, Charlene “Strutter” Putnam, had returned from her visit to family in Jamaica.

  As unproductive as the week had been so far in terms of May’s dilemma, it was wonderful to have Strutter back among us. Her vacation glow, together with her customary motherly calm, were soothing offsets to collective frustration. We wasted no time filling her in on the Lizzie Situation, as we’d come to refer to it, over Chinese take-out at May’s on Wednesday evening.

  “So what do you think?” Margo demanded from where we sprawled side by side on the sofa, stocking feet up on May’s coffee table.

  Strutter’s startling aquamarine eyes twinkled merrily over the rim of her wine glass as she tucked her feet under her, catlike, in an overstuffed chair. “I think your friend Lizabeth is having some fun with you—or at least, she was trying to,” she told May, who lolled in the big recliner.

  May blinked. “Well, sure. That was kind of the point. She said so right in her letter, see?” She retrieved a copy of the letter from the table beside her and read aloud from it unnecessarily. Any one of us could have quoted the whole thing verbatim at this point. “ ‘What say we have some fun?’ Although I’ve got to say, this hasn’t been much fun so far. We’ve been chasing our tails, even though we cracked Lizzie’s song code, and we’re no closer to finding that flash drive than we were last Friday.”

  Strutter smiled kindly. “Your friend was a mystery writer, wasn’t she?”

  “Publisher, not writer,” I clarified. “She ran an independent publishing company just like May does, only for mysteries instead of romances.”

  Strutter nodded. “Sherlock Press. She published May’s mysteries, I remember. So she had lots of knowledge about mystery plots, how they’re constructed and so on, right?”

  “Sure,” May agreed. “She must have read and edited hundreds of them over the last decade.”

  “But she didn’t write them?”

  “No, Lizzie was a dyed-in-the-wool business woman. The writing side of it never interested her at all, even though she was a crack editor.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  Something in Strutter’s tone made us all sit up and pay attention. Even May’s confidence seemed to waver.

  “Pretty sure, yes. It would be hard for me not to know a thing like that in this incestuous little industry. Take me, for example. I’m known primarily as a mystery writer, but I’m sure most fans of the Ariadne Merriwether series and at least three-quarters of the people at Mysteries USA know I’m also a romance publisher. As a matter of fact, many authors write series in both genres.” She turned her hands palm up. “What are you suggesting?”

  Strutter put down her wine glass and tapped her chin with a slim brown finger. “I’m not much of a mystery reader. I prefer biographies of the tell-all variety,” she grinned, “but I’ve seen a lot of the classic mystery movies on TV. It’s either that or soap operas when you have a colicky newborn.” In addition to her college-age son Charlie, Strutter had a charmer of a little girl named Olivia, currently six years old. “It seems to me that any mystery worth its salt has more than one layer to it.”

  Now she really had our attention. “What do you mean?” I demanded. “Explain, please.”

  She smiled almost apologetically. “The thing is, one thing almost always leads to another in these stories, doesn’t it? The detective or the amateur sleuth starts out looking for evidence of one thing, but after he follows a few leads and talks to some people, his investigation points him in an unexpected direction. Pretty soon he’s on the trail of something else entirely. Isn’t that how these things work?” She addressed this last to May, who was staring at her fixedly.

  “My god,” she said with disbelief. “How did I not see this, and me in the mystery writing business?”

  We all looked at each other, trying to readjust our thinking as Strutter made soothing noises. “It’s just my fresh eyes. You’ve all been too close to it to have any perspective.”

  “Emma said the same thing just before she cracked Lizabeth’s code,” I muttered.

  “Don’t stop now, lady, you’re on a roll,” Margo urged. “We’ve been drivin’ down dead-end streets for days now. What else do you see that we can’t?”

  “Yes, please, we need all the help we can get,” I begged.

  Even in the deepening dusk, we could see Strutter smiling her gentle smile. “I wish I had something specific for you, but all I can say is, the few mysteries I’ve read always have more than one aspect to them. The detective or the amateur sleuth basically has conversations with this person and that, and those conversations reveal more information, which leads to other people and other conversations.” She shrugged. “Sooner or later, the detective talks to the right person and gets the critical piece of information that leads to him or her solving the mystery. Right, May?”

  May was paying close attention to what Strutter had to say. “That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but your premise is right on. I guess we need to fan out this investigation and talk to some more people. Which reminds me, Isabelle told me just before she left for her hair appointment that Duane and Becky had reported back to her on their visit with the catering manager at the Hilton.”

  “What’s this now?” Strutter demanded. “I’m not Duane’s mom, technically speaking, but he’s been my son’s best friend for longer than I can remember. He also spent more hours at our house than his own for the last four years, so I have a special interest. What are those two up to?”

  May got up to refill our wine glasses, and Margo outlined the kids’ plan to infiltrate the catering staff at the Hartford Hilton for the duration of the convention coming in on Thursday evening.

  “Because of his glowin’ recommendation from his caterer boss of last summer, Duane was able to get Becky a quick interview this afternoon so he’d have some company when he goes under cover,” she giggled. “To tell the truth, I’m a little jealous of those two young ‘uns. The whole thing sounds like a hoot, just the kind of thing I would have done twenty years ago.”

  I lifted an eyebrow at her.

  “Okay, thirty years ago,” she amended and stuck out her tongue at me.

  “Not to mention it sounds like a great way to get the inside scoop on what really happened in Lizzie’s room in the wee hours of Friday morning,” May added, dropping back into the recliner. “Duane already knows his way around the Hilton pretty well because of his previous gigs there, so he might even run into somebody he worked with last summer who would give him the lowdown.”

  “Gigs?” Strutter murmured.

  “Lowdown?” I added.

  Margo laughed out loud. “I think Auntie May’s really gettin’ into the spirit of this thing.”

  May waved her hand at her niece. “I kno
w it’s been less than a week since this whole crazy situation arose, but I have to admit, investigative work has a powerful seductive quality. I can understand why you girls have participated in solving a local crime or two. It’s totally involving.”

  “Crime or two, huh,” Strutter scoffed.

  “According to Armando, more like a dozen or two,” I complained, “but he always was one to exaggerate.”

  “But we did mostly enjoy ourselves—at least, when we weren’t scared to death,” Margo summed up.

  “So tomorrow afternoon, Duane and Becky are reporting to the Hilton to earn a few extra dollars and talk to as many staff members as they can find who worked at the Mysteries USA convention last weekend. They’ll be fine,” May added as a frown settled over Strutter’s lovely face. “They’ll be surrounded by lots of people all the time, and they know how to reach us if need be. Besides, a full-service hotel isn’t a bad place to be in the middle of a blizzard.”

  That snapped all of us to attention. “What blizzard? Armando is supposed to be flying home from Florida on Sunday,” I wailed.

  “Charlie will be stuck at UConn, and the basketball game might even be canceled,” Strutter moaned.

  “If it gets too bad, John and I might be snowbound in front of the fireplace,” Margo smiled, obviously not terribly upset at the prospect. “When’s it supposed to start, Auntie May? I haven’t had time to listen to a forecast in days.”

  In response, May picked up the TV remote from the table beside her and clicked the power button, then tuned the set to the Weather Channel. Immediately, the screen was filled with radar maps filled with ominous-looking fronts closing in on New England. Words like “Nor’easter” and “gale force winds” spewed from the audio.

  “Looks like Friday night is going to be the worst of it, and the following twenty-four hours look pretty bad, too,” May interpreted. “Wind damage and power outages seem to be getting the most attention.”

  “I hope the group coming into the Hilton will at least have some entertaining folks to be shut up with for a weekend. What group did you say it was?” Strutter asked.

  The rest of us looked at each other. Our Jamaican partner wasn’t a fan of spooks and hants, as she called spirits, or anything else pertaining to the deceased, so I wasn’t at all sure how she’d take this news.

  “Um, it’s the regional sales meeting of a national association of funeral directors,” I told her. “You know, morticians.”

  “And embalmers,” Margo added wickedly as May chuckled.

  Strutter gave us all a sour look. “Sounds like a real scream,” she said and crossed her eyes.

  Chapter Thirteen

  We were all grateful when Thursday passed without incident. My partners and I were able to catch up with the inevitable end-of-the-month backlog downstairs, while May and Olivia kept their noses in their computers upstairs. Presumably, Isabelle was tending to business, and May was going through her publishing contacts to see who else she might reasonably contact about W.Z.B. Trague to get a lead on where he might have lived.

  Duane and Becky galloped up and down the stairs a record number of times in their haste to clear up their own workloads before heading off to the Hilton for Becky’s interview with the catering manager. Assuming all went well, both of them would be passing trays of hors d’oeuvres that evening at the funeral directors’ first-night cocktail party.

  “I wonder what an embalmer’s choice of cocktail would be?” I wondered out loud as we took a mid-afternoon coffee break. The nature of this convention had captured my imagination—and not in a good way.

  “You wouldn’t think they’d touch alcohol after they see what it’s done to their clients,” Strutter muttered as she dunked her tea bag.

  “On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly why they do drink,” Margo grinned. “They know better’n anybody else that there’s no escapin’ the grim reaper, so they probably figure they might as well enjoy themselves while they can.” She winked at me as Strutter shuddered.

  “Who would deliberately choose to go into that line of work?” she wondered, wrinkling her nose.

  “Somebody who wants to be able to provide a service that every single person in the world is going to need someday,” I suggested. “There are lots of unappealing careers out there that people deliberately choose. In fact, they go to school for years and years and take out huge student loans just for the privilege of going into what to me would be a disgusting line of work.”

  “Such as?” Margo asked.

  “Well, proctology, for example. Now there’s a medical specialty that has to attract a nutcase or two,” I retorted, and she laughed in agreement. “Or even dentistry. Why would you want to have your hands in people’s mouths all day, especially when most of your patients either hate you or are terrified of you? Yet the dental schools are full every semester.”

  “Maybe they’re sadists,” Strutter mused, “like that hideous guy in Minnesota who paid a fortune to kill Cecil the Lion with a bow and arrow just for fun. Now there’s a piece of work. I bet we could round up a sizable group of folks who would pay for the chance to terrify that guy.”

  “I have no doubt,” I agreed, “but you can’t tar an entire profession with one brush. My dentist is one of the nicest people I know. He’d have to be to put up with me, because I’m a big coward in the dentist’s chair. Anyway, back to the morticians. I have to say, I think they get a bad rap. Admittedly, preparing dead bodies for burial isn’t work that would appeal to most of us, but it’s an essential service. Besides, funeral directors do a lot more than that. I think they must be very compassionate to be willing to respond at all hours of the day and night and help distressed, grief-stricken people do what needs to be done at the worst moments of their lives.”

  “Good point, Sugar. I know when Uncle Doug passed, Auntie May and my parents were very grateful to the funeral home employees who smoothed the way for all of us. They were warm and absolutely delightful.” Margo grinned suddenly. “Plus, I know for a fact that they have perfectly delicious senses of humor.”

  “And you know that because …?” Strutter said doubtfully.

  “Because years ago, before I wound up servin’ coffee to the pretentious little associates at that awful law firm, I worked as a temp at a funeral directors’ convention in Atlanta. I was a little nervous about it at first, but after the first day, I had a ball. They were always prankin’ each other.”

  “I’ll probably be sorry I asked, but what kind of pranks?” I said.

  Margo thought for a few seconds. “Like hidin’ inside a closed casket that’s on display so when a prospective customer came over to have a look, they could throw open the lid and say, ‘Beautiful, isn’t it? And so comfortable, too.’ Things like that.”

  I smiled to be a good sport, but Strutter didn’t. “Okay, funeral directors are lovely people with great senses of humor. So what’s the latest on the weather? I’m worried that it will get bad faster than predicted, and the convention will be called off. This may be the only chance Duane and Becky get to grill the other catering staff about last weekend.”

  We were interrupted by May and Isabelle, who clunked down the stairs from their office and hustled across the lobby to join us. “Guess what?” May waved a piece of notepaper at us cheerfully, and Isabelle was grinning from ear to ear. That in itself was unusual enough, for such a cool and collected woman, to capture our attention.

  “What?” we chorused obediently.

  “We’ve finally got a credible lead on W.Z.B. Trague, don’t we?” May announced, turning to Isabelle for confirmation.

  She nodded vigorously. “We do indeed, and it didn’t take very long, once we hit on the idea of getting some contact names from the Independent Publishers Association’s website.”

  “That was your idea,” May reminded her, and Isabelle blushed modestly.

  “Why did you want publisher contacts? We know Trague was published by Random House. I thought you were going to try Renata Parsons, hi
s former agent?” I pointed out.

  “She’s not answering her phone, at least not to me,” May reported. “I have a sneaking suspicion that Renata knew about Trague’s final manuscript and what his plans for it were. She may have known that Lizzie and I were friends, or at least professional colleagues for many years, and she may suspect that I have knowledge, if not actual possession, of that manuscript. Of course, this is all supposition on my part, but it seems logical. Why else wouldn’t she return my calls?”

  Isabelle jumped in to support May’s theory. “She was at the keynote luncheon last week, as well as the awards dinner. She knows what May looks like, and she may even have seen May and Lizzie together the night of the cocktail reception, just like Martin Schenk.”

  Somewhere in the depths of my tired brain, a tiny bell went off. “You know, I believe I may have seen Renata Parsons at the diner last Sunday when we were having brunch,” I said slowly. “She was sort of sliding into the women’s room. I guess it was because May had just mentioned the pink streak in Renata’s hair that I noticed her at all. I just remember thinking the woman I saw was way too old to be streaking her hair and wearing a skirt so short, or something like that. Then we went out the door, and I never gave her another thought. Do you think it’s possible?”

  May stared at me. “More than possible, unfortunately, because if you really did see Renata Parsons at the diner last Sunday, it could only mean that she’s …”

  “… following you,” Isabelle finished the sentence, “and that would be truly creepy.”

  Margo waved her hands impatiently. “Ladies, ladies, let’s not become overly paranoid. First you think Martin Schenk is followin’ May, and now you think Renata Parsons is trailin’ around after her. How likely is that when nobody’s supposed to even know about the Trague book?”

  Strutter, who had been quiet for some time, spoke up. “Schenk knows about it, because he read Lizabeth’s letter to May. It could be that he contacted Renata Parsons, and they’re working together to find the manuscript. It might also explain why Renata won’t return your calls.”