Who Killed Dorian Gray?

by Carole Elizabeth Buggé

  Meredith was very upset at having missed the big event.

  “Why didn’t you wake me?” she said when Claire told her over breakfast.

  “Well, I thought it was more important that you got your sleep. It was all over in a couple of minutes.”

  “But I could have helped you! I hate missing stuff,” she added, picking at her scrambled eggs.

  Claire sighed. She hoped Meredith wasn’t going to punish her by not eating, a ploy she had tried once or twice before. Claire didn’t want to reinforce the behavior, so she said nothing, but it worried her; she had seen young women with eating disorders and it was disturbing. And so she tried not to show the relief she felt when Meredith reached for another bagel, wondering if the girl knew how effective her manipulations really were.

  Meredith sat happily chewing her bagel, though, swinging her legs under the bench in front of the picnic table on the porch. Sleepy yellow jackets hovered drunkenly over the jar of blackberry jam sitting on the red-and-white-checked tablecloth.

  “It’s funny how territorial animals are,” Meredith said.

  “Well, it’s instinct-driven behavior,” said Claire. “Even house cats retain those instincts. People are the same way.”

  “That’s for sure . . . even when the behavior is no longer adaptive, as the scientists would say.”

  No longer adaptive . . . what about murder? Claire wondered. She watched the yellow jackets reeling sleepily around the blackberry jam, like tiny yellow moons caught in its gravitational pull.

  “Do you know that according to Willard Hughes there are basically only three motives for murder?” Meredith said through a mouthful of bagel.

  “Swallow before you talk,” Claire said reflexively. “You’ve read A Date with Death, then?”

  Meredith rolled her eyes. “Of course. You gave me a copy, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” Claire didn’t remember. She was always giving people books; access to free books was one of the few perks of being an editor.

  “The first one, of course,” Meredith went on, “is passion—lust and revenge and all that stuff. I don’t think that’s what we’re dealing with here, though,” she said thoughtfully, wiping a bit of butter off the side of her mouth. “Neither of these was exactly well planned, but they . . . well, it’s almost as if there was too much stealth involved to be the product of a crime of passion. Those kinds of crimes are usually messier, more reckless. Here there was not a lot of planning, I think, but a good deal of clearheadedness, what the experts call an ‘organized killer.’ I mean, they wiped up the water on the bathroom floor, for God’s sake.”

  “I agree,” said Claire, helping herself to some eight-grain bread and jam. Sherry had bought two loaves for dinner the night before, but there was so much other food no one had touched it. “Someone who takes the time to wipe up water on a bathroom floor is hardly in the throes of uncontrollable passion. On the other hand, maybe after a moment of reckless rage, the murderer collected himself and wiped up the water—or maybe he didn’t even realize what he was doing. Someone’s state of mind at times like that must be hazy at best, I would think.”

  “Good point.” Meredith sounded a little surprised. She looked at Claire suspiciously, as if she thought Claire was just humoring her, then continued. “The second motive is self-protection . . . that’s a little harder to prove, because you’d have to know what the murderer was protecting himself or herself from.

  “And the third and probably most obvious is, of course, greed. Again, it’s hard to see how killing Maya would lead to monetary gain . . . still, there’s a lot we don’t know.”

  “True.”

  Just then the screen door opened and Billy Trimble wandered onto the porch. Both before and after the murders, he had kept largely to himself, and Claire was a little surprised when he sat down on the musty daybed. His fingers were paint-stained and he wore paint-splattered white work pants.

  “I understand there was a catfight last night,” he said, not quite looking at them. Claire studied his profile—straight nose, square chin; it was a strong face. There was no doubt that he was a good-looking man, but she did not feel at all drawn to him. There was something icy at his core, something that all the good looks in the world could not melt.

  “You slept through it, too?” Meredith brushed away a yellow jacket as she reached for the jam.

  “Sound travels oddly in this house,” he replied, oblique as always.

  “I slept through it because Claire didn’t wake me up,” Meredith said in an accusing tone.

  “If you can sleep through your own snoring, I guess you can sleep through anything,” Claire replied cheerfully. Meredith rolled her eyes, which Claire ignored. “You’re all the way at the other wing of the house, so I’m not surprised you didn’t hear it,” she said to Billy.

  Billy let his head fall on the top of the mattress that made up the backing to the porch “couch” and sighed. “You know, this porch really needs a better couch. Maybe I should look for one at a yard sale—that is, if Inspector Clouseau would let us go into town.”

  “You can go, you just have to ask permission,” said Meredith.

  Billy shook his head wearily as if the idea were just too much trouble to contemplate.

  “Did you hear anything unusual the night of Maya’s murder?” Meredith said suddenly.

  Billy stared at her as though she had asked the question in Swahili, then he laughed. “Has the inspector hired you as a part-time assistant?”

  “Detective, not inspector. Did you hear anything?”

  Billy scratched himself and looked out over the valley, where some wispy white clouds lingered over the treetops. At first it seemed as though he wasn’t going to answer, then he ran a hand through his thick, paint-spattered hair and sighed.

  “All I remember hearing that night was somebody going to the bathroom at some point. I was awakened by the sound of the commode flushing—the bathroom is right next to my bedroom—and then I heard the footsteps of someone going back to their room.”

  Meredith looked at him intently. “Do you have any idea of who that might be?”

  Billy shrugged. “I can’t really say. It could have been anyone whose room is in the east wing.”

  “Unless the west-wing bathroom was occupied at the time,” said Claire.

  “True,” Meredith said. “That would mean it could have been anyone except for Two Joe or Jack, whose rooms are on the first floor, and who would presumably use the first-floor bathroom.”

  “Unless that was occupied, too.” Claire was beginning to enjoy this—and it kept Meredith occupied and less restless than usual.

  “So the residents in the east wing besides you are Gary and Tahir, right?” said Meredith.

  Billy rolled his head as though he had a crick in his neck. “That’s it,” he said laconically.

  “And in the west wing . . .”

  “Only Camille and you and I are left now,” said Claire.

  “Oh,” said Meredith, “I guess you’re right.”

  “Why don’t you ask Tahir what he heard?” said Billy. “He often stays up at night working and his room is across the hall from mine.”

  “And Gary’s room is right next to you, right?” said Meredith.

  Billy didn’t reply. Claire wasn’t sure if he had heard the question or if he was deliberately ignoring it, but he stood up and stretched his lanky body. “I’m going back to work,” he said. “See you later.” He strolled back inside the house, leaving Meredith and Claire alone with the yellow jackets.

  “Hmm . . . something’s going on there,” Claire said. “Did you see how he reddened when you mentioned Gary’s name?”

  “He did?” Meredith tossed the rest of her bagel into the bushes, where a flurry of sparrows descended upon it, twittering loudly.

  “Oh, yeah . . . there’s some Gary/Billy thing going on.” Claire watched the birds pecking and spatting over the bagel, their short harsh chirps mingling with the drone of katydids in the s
urrounding woods. “He’s a cold one, that Billy,” she added, collecting the breakfast dishes.

  “Mmm . . .” said Meredith. “Camille said that Billy and Maya were involved with each other?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I wonder . . .”

  “What?”

  “Well, promise me you won’t get mad at me if I tell you?”

  Claire smiled. She could remember using those exact words with her mother, and also remembered her mother’s response: “How can I know until you tell me?”

  She decided she wouldn’t be so relentlessly logical with Meredith. “Okay,” she said, “I promise.”

  Meredith leaned forward on her skinny elbows. “Well, I overheard part of a conversation between Gary and Billy last night after you went to bed. I was on my way upstairs, and heard them arguing.” She looked at Claire apprehensively. “You’re not angry, are you?”

  Claire smiled and shook her head. “Under the circumstances, I’m just relieved you didn’t tape record it.”

  “Well, Gary seemed angry about something, because he kept saying, ‘I never should have come back, I should have known better.’”

  “I wonder what he meant by that?”

  Just then the screen door opened and Liza came out, an odd look on her face.

  “Hi, Liza—what’s wrong?” said Claire.

  “Have you seen Marcel?” said Liza. Marcel had shown up at Ravenscroft with his dog Ellie about an hour ago.

  “I think he went into town for some parts for the water heater. Why?”

  “I—I think Ellie’s found something.”

  “What is it?” said Meredith, following Liza and Claire back into the house.

  Liza didn’t answer, but led them through the kitchen and out the back door, across the back lawn to her little garden at the edge of the woods. There, between the garden and the woods, sat Marcel’s golden retriever, Ellie. She looked up at them and grinned, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth, which was covered with dirt.

  “What’s she got there?” Meredith pointed to the object Ellie held underneath her paws.

  Claire leaned over and looked. There, its blade dull and encrusted with dirt, was a hunting knife.

  “Call Detective Hansom,” she said.

  Chapter 19

  Detective Hansom wasted little time bagging the knife and taking it down to the forensics lab. Gary and Billy had received permission from Sergeant Rollins to go into town to shop, so after ascertaining from Claire that the object in question was in all likelihood Gary’s missing hunting knife, Hansom refused Camille’s offer of a cup of coffee and pulled away in his black sedan, leaving a puff of white dust behind him.

  Liza and Claire stood on the porch and watched his car disappear around the sharp turns of Camelot Road.

  “Wow,” said Liza. “Wait till we tell Marcel what his dog dug up.”

  “Well, it’s not necessarily of any importance,” said Meredith from where she lay sprawled out on the daybed, picking at a scab on her leg.

  “Meredith, leave that alone,” said Claire. “Why do you do that?”

  Meredith shrugged and plucked a sprig of honeysuckle from the bush that hung over the porch railing. “I dunno.” She pulled the stamen out of the honeysuckle.

  “Do you think the knife is . . .?” Liza said softly.

  “The murder weapon?” Claire finished for her. “Could be. I mean, why would anyone go to the trouble of burying it if it weren’t? But there might not be any fingerprints on it, so that still puts us close to square one. Unless . . .”

  “Unless what?” said Meredith, sitting up.

  “Unless someone was seen stealing the knife from Gary.”

  Just then Marcel’s red truck pulled into the parking lot and the handyman got out. Ellie came running from around the side of the house to greet her master, throwing her big lean body on his, licking his face. On her hind legs she was nearly as tall as he was, and the two of them looked well suited: big-boned and lanky, goofy and sweet, dog and master.

  “Hey there, girl, did you behave yourself while I was gone?” said Marcel as Ellie followed him up the steps to the porch, her feathery tail slapping against his legs.

  “She may have unearthed a piece of evidence—literally,” said Liza.

  “What do you mean?” Marcel’s big brown eyes were as innocent as a child’s.

  “Wow,” he said when they told him about the knife. “Where’d you find that, girl?”

  “From the look of it, she brought it in from the woods,” said Liza. “We couldn’t find any holes here on the property.”

  “Wow,” he repeated, then smiled shyly. “I wonder if there’s any reward money or anything.”

  “I don’t think so,” Meredith replied disdainfully. “This is a murder investigation, not a kidnapping.”

  “How do you think she found it?” said Claire.

  “Well, she’s a retriever.” Marcel scratched the dog’s ears. “She’s got a good nose for blood, and she’s trained to follow a scent.” He straightened his long back and shrugged. “Digging is something she’s always done; I tried to break her of it, but I finally had to put a fence around my garden. Sometimes she just gets it into her head to dig; can’t say why exactly. Instinct, I suppose; you can’t cure a dog of that. Well,” he said, “I gotta go finish with the water heater so you all can have hot baths tonight.”

  He strode into the house, his work boots clomping loudly on the wooden floor. Hot baths . . . Claire shuddered. She was sticking to showers at Ravenscroft from now on.

  Meredith’s latest sleuthing idea was to study the psyches of the resident writers by reading their work. She began with Jack Mulligan, whose writing, Claire had to admit, was rather good. He wrote mostly short stories—mythical, poetic stories of men and the sea—but his writing style owed more to the magic realism of Borges and Márquez than to Hemingway. Meredith lay on her stomach on Claire’s bed, her nose close to the text (she was nearsighted but refused to wear her glasses), one finger in her mouth, chewing absently on her cuticles.

  “Well, he’s pretty good,” she said, tossing the manuscript aside when she finished. “You’d never guess from his writing that he’s a Nazi.”

  “Get any clues from his work?” Claire was fishing through her dresser for a sweater. A wind had whipped up from the west, the sky was overcast, and the temperature had dropped ten degrees since morning.

  Meredith rolled over onto her back and stared at the ceiling, her thin arms behind her head. “Hard to say. Maybe, maybe not. He’s real into the whole seagoing mystique, and there are resonances of German folk myths . . . other than that, there’s not that much to go on.”

  “Well, keep me posted,” said Claire. “I’m going downstairs to make lunch.”

  “Got any tuna fish?” said Meredith. “I’m in the mood for brain food.”

  Claire laughed. “What you really like is all the mayonnaise I put in it.”

  Meredith rolled her eyes and sighed. “Whatever.”

  When she returned to the room with sandwiches for Meredith, Claire found her with her nose buried in A Piece of Earth, Tahir Hasonovic’s award-winning collection of short stories.

  “Hey, this is really good,” Meredith said when Claire entered the room. “This guy can really write.”

  “Yes, he’s good, isn’t he?” Claire set a plate of tunafish sandwiches on the dresser. Meredith liked them cut up in quarters; she liked what she called “dainty food,” little hors d’oeuvres and such, bite-sized morsels she could pop in her mouth. She preferred the crusts cut off of sandwiches, but Claire refused to do that, insisting Meredith eat her crusts. Occasionally she found damp little piles of rolled-up crusts in the garbage, that Meredith had managed to throw away when she wasn’t looking.

  Meredith rose from the bed, stretched, and plucked a sandwich from the plate. “You know,” she said, “it’s interesting that Tahir writes about an alter ego who’s tall, when he’s so short.” She sighed and took a bi
te of her sandwich. “Men hate being short, and women don’t like being tall. It’s too bad, really.”

  “I don’t mind being tall,” said Claire.

  “Well, you’re not all that tall,” said Meredith. “What are you, about five-nine?”

  “Five-eight.”

  Meredith snorted, blowing a little scrap of sandwich across the bed. “Oh, please. That’s not tall; my mother was tall, but five eight is not tall!”

  Claire smiled. Katherine Lawrence had been tall—close to six feet in her stocking feet. That, along with her dynamic personality, made her hard to ignore—or to forget. Like mother, like daughter, she thought as she watched Meredith chewing vigorously on her sandwich.

  “Well,” said Meredith, “next I guess I’ll read Liza’s work. Have you got anything of hers?”

  “Uh, I think I have something.” Claire fished through the stack of manuscripts on the floor. She pulled out a collection of short stories entitled Southern Gothic. “Here’s something,” she said. “Why don’t you look at a couple of these?”

  “Okay.” Meredith bounced on the bed, a fresh sandwich clutched in her thin fingers.

  “Meredith, why don’t you calm down a little while you’re eating?” Claire suggested.

  “All right—whatever.” Meredith stuffed the sandwich in her mouth and reached for the manuscript. Claire left the girl lying on her side, a sandwich in one hand, the manuscript spread out in front of her, and went downstairs to make some tea.

  After Meredith finished with the writers, she moved on to the artists. Without telling them why, she obtained permission to tour each studio. “After all,” she said over a bowl of Grape-Nuts that afternoon in Liza’s cabin, “whoever heard of an artist who didn’t want to show their work?”

  Sherry stirred half-and-half into her coffee. “But what does a painting really tell you about the painter? It’s even harder to decipher than a book . . . apparently Picasso was a real bastard.”