Cozy (Stanley Hastings Mystery, #14)

by Parnell Hall

  “As would his father and mother. Neither of whom were at the movie. Either of whom could have taken the knife. Indeed, who would have had more access than the chef? As to motive, a parent will often kill to protect a child. Either one of them could have struck Mrs. Mclnnerny down if they saw her as a threat to their son.

  “And here again we have the exception that proves the rule. I said there had to be one killer. Well, yes and no. If the killer was their son—if Randy killed Christine Cobb—well, they could kill to cover up that fact.”

  I spread my arms. “Well, you see, we suddenly have several suspects. Can we narrow it down? Let’s go at it from another angle. Let’s see who could have taken the knife.”

  I turned, pointed to another table. “I’m going to ask you, Lucy, if you saw it there when you went to the kitchen during the time you were gone from the movie?”

  Lucy’s eyes widened, and her face drained of color. “I ... I ...” she sputtered.

  “There are many witnesses to the fact you left the movie. At approximately the time Mrs. Mclnnerny was killed. It becomes very important whether you saw that knife.”

  Lucy had regained her composure. Her face was hard. “Are you accusing me of this crime?”

  “Not at all. You certainly had the opportunity. But your motive’s a little thin. Even if Mrs. Mclnnerny had accosted you in the kitchen and wanted to know what you were doing, when all you doing was copying a recipe, well, I can’t see you killing her over that.”

  Murmurs of “recipe” could be heard around the room.

  I smiled. “I see that rings a bell. I gather some of you are aware of Lucy’s sideline.” I turned back to Lucy. “But so what? Even if she caught you at it, it wasn’t as if she could turn you in.” I smiled again, gestured to the chef. “Particularly since your employer knew you were doing it. There was nothing illegal about it. A chef has every right to sell his recipes, even if his manner of doing so is somewhat bizarre.”

  The murmurs this time featured both surprise and grumbling. I avoided looking at Alice.

  “But that’s a side issue. The point is, did you see the knife?”

  Lucy’s jaw had been set, but now her face showed her dismay. “No. I didn’t notice.”

  “That’s a shame, but I didn’t really expect you did. And, of course, if you had seen anyone you would have said so. I take it you did not?”

  “No.”

  “Then we must move on. One more fact is known. At the time of her death, Mrs. Mclnnerny was inquiring about drugs. She asked Randy about them. Specifically, she asked about cocaine. I know that’s news to most of you, but it is also a significant fact.

  “Oh, one more significant fact. The bloody gloves. The evidence against Florence includes a pair of bloody gloves that were found in her room. This, I must say, is the one thing that most strongly convinced me of her innocence. I don’t care how stupid a murderer is, they do not leave the bloody gloves in their room.

  “On the other hand, the murderer is happy to leave the bloody gloves in someone else’s room. Could someone have planted the gloves in Florence’s room? Absolutely. There’s a passkey hanging on a hook behind the front desk. All the murderer had to do was take the passkey, open Florence’s door, and plant the gloves. I happen to know this key opens Florence’s door because while she was in jail I used it in order to walk her dog.

  “And that’s another thing. The dog. Florence got out of jail, came home, and went right out to walk Prince.

  “And that’s when the murderer planted the gloves. That’s the only time the murderer could have planted the gloves. Because the murderer couldn’t have done it while the dog was there.

  “So. A picture is beginning to take shape. The murder had something to do with money. Something to do with drugs. The murderer was connected in some way to at least one of the two victims. And the crimes are related.

  “Do we have a suspect? Yes. Unfortunately, we have several. The first one we must set aside. That would be Florence. I admit the evidence against her is grim. Her husband had an affair with Christine Cobb. She came to New Hampshire, registered at the inn, and appeared to dog Christine Cobb’s footsteps until her death. Is there an explanation for her behavior other than guilt?”

  I paused, looked around. “Unfortunately, we do not know. And the reason we do not know is because Florence has not told us. Nor has Florence told the police. Nor has Florence told her lawyer.”

  I paused, let that sink in. “And why not?”

  I shrugged. “Because, point of fact, Florence doesn’t know. Florence’s biggest problem in defending herself is the fact that she is totally ignorant of all aspects of the crime. So we must take her for a moment and set her aside.

  “So, what are we left with? Of the remaining suspects, we have three. Lars Heinrick. Johnny Mclnnerny. And Randy Winthrop. Is there any way to choose among them? Actually, there is not. Any one of them might have done it. And while we can raise inferences through deductive reasoning, there is nothing that can be proved.”

  I paused, looked around the dining room.

  “So how can we know who did it?”

  I smiled.

  “Actually, it’s rather easy.”

  I paused again, then spoke softly.

  “We have a witness.”

  I waited for the reaction, the murmur of whispers through the room.

  I smiled again.

  “That’s right. Ironic, isn’t it? Here we drive ourselves crazy trying to develop theories of the case, and all the time there is an eyewitness. No need for guesswork, we can solve the crime.

  “I’m going to solve it now. To do so, we need a lineup. That’s how identifications are made. The suspect is picked out of a lineup.”

  I went to an unoccupied table, took three chairs, placed them in a row in the front of the room.

  “I realize in a police lineup there’s usually six. In our case there are only three. Randy, come here.”

  Randy looked up, sullen and unwilling. I walked over to his table.

  “You want the killer caught, Randy? Help me out here.”

  Louise looked about to protest, but her husband said quietly, “Do it, Randy.”

  Randy looked at his father. Then got up, followed me over to the chairs. I sat him in the one on the left, then went and got Johnny Mclnnerny. He didn’t protest, just followed me blindly to the front of the room. I sat him in the chair in the middle.

  I walked over to the booth. “Come on, Lars,” I said.

  I took his arm, helped him out of the booth. Guided him over to the chairs, sat him in the one on the right.

  “And there you have it,” I said. “Our three suspects, all in a row. Your basic lineup.

  “And now the witness.”

  I went through the swinging door into the kitchen.

  I returned a minute later with Max the cat. I cradled him in my arms, stroking him, keeping him calm, a tough job, with so many people around.

  “Here’s your witness,” I said. “Max the cat. Max lives in the kitchen, but he also hangs out in East Pond. He was there last night, and he saw the murder. He saw the killing, and he was absolutely traumatized by it. I’m trying to calm him down. I’m going to ask you all to be very quiet and not scare him. But the fact is, Max saw the murderer, and Max is going to identify him now.”

  I looked around. Everyone in the dining room was staring at me as if I’d lost my mind. I ignored them, talked to the cat.

  “Are you ready, Max? Here we go.”

  I set Max on the floor in front of the three chairs.

  No one moved. You could have heard a pin drop.

  Max looked toward Randy.

  Then toward Johnny Mclnnerny.

  Then toward Lars.

  He lashed his tail back and forth. Licked his lips.

  Looked at Randy again.

  Then his head swiveled around. His body followed. He padded over to Lars, dropped his hindquarters, and suddenly sprang into his lap, landing with his full weigh
t, and digging in with his claws.

  Lars sprang to his feet, hurling the cat to the floor. He glared at me, his face contorted with rage.

  “You devil!” he cried. “How did you get it?”

  I smiled.

  A quote from Agatha Christie.

  Perfect.

  35.

  “I CAN’T THANK you enough,” Louise said.

  “Don’t be silly.”

  We were sitting on the porch of the Blue Frog Ponds. There we were, at long last, the owner and I having the dreaded bed-and-breakfast conversation. Though at least it didn’t seem to be running to “how we came to buy the inn.”

  “It’s not silly,” Louise said. “I mean, look what happened. The police made a mistake. Arrested the wrong person. What if she’d gone to trial, and the case had fallen apart. And the evidence had gotten mixed up, and nothing was ever proved. All his life, there would have been a stigma on my boy.”

  “I’m glad there’s not, but I don’t think anyone ever seriously suspected him.”

  “It doesn’t matter. There’d be talk. There still will. Particularly if they can’t convict that young man.”

  “I think they can. Of course, I don’t want to talk out of turn.”

  Jean and Joan came out on the porch.

  “Oh, good, you’re up,” the thinner one said. A mental cross-reference reminded me that would be Jean. “We’re checking out this morning, but we have to know. Is it over? Did he confess?”

  I shrugged. “You know as much as I do. I haven’t heard a word since they took him away.”

  “And you,” Joan said, accusingly. “We looked for you last night, and you were gone.”

  “I’m sorry. I had to take care of my wife.”

  Which was true. While the police were taking Lars into custody, I had bundled Alice off to bed. Which was one of the reasons Pinehurst and I hadn’t spoken.

  “Oh, how is she?” Jean asked.

  “Much better, thanks. Twenty-four-hour bug.” I jerked my thumb. “She’s calling the camp now, trying to see how our son is doing.”

  Jean and Joan sat down at the table.

  “So, tell us,” Jean said. “What’s the story? How did you know it was Lars?”

  “Because it wasn’t Florence.”

  Joan made a face. “Don’t be like that, or I’ll strangle you. Tell us how you knew.”

  “I would rather not be strangled, but that happens to be the answer. Florence looked guilty. Florence had the motive and the opportunity. Her husband had an affair with Christine Cobb, and she followed her here and dogged her footsteps. Those are facts that you could not get away from. If Florence is not guilty, how could they possibly be true?”

  I shrugged. “They could only be true if they were carefully engineered by someone else. In which case, there was only one person that someone else could be.

  “Forget Florence for a minute, and think about what really happened. Lars Heinrick is an unscrupulous young man who wants money. So he marries a young woman and kills her for it. A perfectly simple crime. Of course, I don’t know if it was that premeditated. He might have married her, and then decided to kill her, or he might have been planning on doing it all along. I would assume the latter, since he kept the marriage a secret. And this secret was a major factor in obscuring his motive. Not that it wouldn’t have come out eventually, but, in the meantime, their ignorance of this made it all too easy for the police to develop a case against a different suspect.”

  “What’s that got to do with Florence?” Joan said.

  “I’m getting there. But it’s important to understand the background. Lars Heinrick has married Christine Cobb. She has money. He wants it. His problem is how to kill her without suspicion attaching itself to him. The concealed marriage is a step in that direction. As I say, it will give the police time to suspect someone else. He has to make sure that happens. How does he do that? He frames them.

  “And how does that work? Let’s go back to the original problem. Christine Cobb is an attractive young woman who happens to be a bit of a flirt.”

  Jean snorted. “That’s one way of describing her.”

  “Right,” I said. “Some people would say she was downright promiscuous. At any rate, she’s had her share of affairs, some with married men. Lars pokes around, finds a case of one man she’s had an affair with who subsequently divorced his wife. That wife is Florence Baker. So Lars proceeds to find out what he can about her. Which is probably not that hard. Christine Cobb knew Florence’s husband. She met him somehow. So they must have had some acquaintances in common. Through them, Lars learns about Florence Baker. Keeps tabs on her, to see what she’s going to do. And what does he learn? He learns she’s going on vacation in New Hampshire. He finds out where and when, and makes a reservation for the same day at the same bed-and-breakfast.”

  “It’s an inn,” Louise said.

  “Of course,” I said. I was glad Alice was still on the phone. “Anyway, he books a vacation at the Blue Frog Ponds. On the day in question, he leaves early, to be sure he checks in ahead of Florence. So it will look as if she followed him there.”

  I held up one finger. “Here we have a flaw in his plan, and one that will come back to haunt him. He had a reservation. And so did she. So it’s not like she followed him up here. The rooms were booked in advance.”

  “Right,” Joan said. “So how could that work?”

  “The only way would be if she found out where he was going, and then made a reservation there. But in point of fact, her reservation was made first. Now, granted, it could have happened that way. She could have learned where Lars and Christine were planning to go, and made a reservation at that place before they did. But that’s pretty thin. It’s not the type of argument I’d be happy to make. And I’m sure Lars’ attorney will not be particularly pleased, either.

  “On the other hand, thin as it is, it probably would have been sufficient to convict Florence. Since everything else damning was in place, or seemed to be. As long as you take the facts at face value, here’s Florence following the woman around who had the affair with her husband. It’s hard to see beyond it.

  “Anyway, that’s what Lars did. That’s why he wound up at Champney Falls.” I smiled. “Here again, we overlook the obvious. Florence got there first. When Alice and I went to Champney Falls, Lars and Christine passed us on the way up. When we got to the top, Florence was there eating lunch with her dog. Obviously, she’d gone up ahead of them. The police explain it away— she overheard them at breakfast saying that where they were going, so she simply went there first.

  “Actually, it was the other way around.”

  Louise frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Actually, it was Lars who overheard Florence saying she was climbing Champney Falls and arranged to go there too.”

  “How do you know he didn’t just follow her there?” Joan said.

  “Because Christine isn’t in on it. She doesn’t know Lars is following Florence. Lars can’t get in the car with her and say, ‘Let’s follow the woman with the dog.’ He has to say, ‘Hey, I’ve got an idea, let’s go to Champney Falls.’ And if Christine isn’t ready to go when Florence leaves, he has no reasonable explanation for hurrying her. Not that he can tell her. Which is why he gets there after Florence, much as he would prefer to have gotten there before.”

  A police car pulled up, and Chief Pinehurst got out. As he came up on the porch the women all began talking at once.

  “What happened?”

  “Is it over?”

  “Did he do it?”

  “Did he confess?”

  Pinehurst put up his hands. “Please, please,” he said. “I’ll tell you all about it, but not so fast. I don’t suppose I could get a cup of coffee?”

  Jean and Joan looked at him in total exasperation, but Louise said, “Anything you want, Chief,” and went in the front door.

  Pinehurst pulled up a chair, sat down at the table, and deflected any questions until Louise retur
ned. As he accepted the coffee and took a sip, it occurred to me the case was ending just as it had begun, with Pinehurst stalling and dragging things out.

  “So,” he said, “in point of fact, Lars Heinrick has not confessed, nor do I expect him to. But that shouldn’t concern us, because we should have no problem building a case.”

  “How?” Louise said.

  “Very much along the lines Mr. Hastings suggested. If this happened the way he laid it out—and there is every reason to believe that it did—then corroboration will not be hard to find. If Lars Heinrick made inquiries about Florence, learned of her vacation, and arranged to be here, too, that can undoubtedly be shown.”

  “Have you uncovered anything?” Jean said.

  “Not yet, but we’re just getting started. The point is, if the solution is correct, the evidence must be there.”

  “But you have nothing to go on?” Joan said.

  “Did I say that?” Pinehurst said. “Not at all. I merely said we had not yet run down those particular leads. But as far as having nothing to go on—while Lars Heinrick hasn’t confessed, Delmar Hobart has.”

  The name meant nothing to Louise, but Jean and Joan perked right up.

  “Delmar Hobart!”

  “The hiker!”

  “You mean he was in on it?”

  “Not the actual crime,” Pinehurst said. “But he was certainly a factor. You see, Delmar Hobart was Lars Heinrick’s drug connection. “

  Jean and Joan’s eyes were wide.

  “I knew it!” Jean said. “I knew there was something wrong with him.”

  “And we’re the ones who nailed him!” Joan said.

  “That’s true,” Pinehurst said. “Your information did help.”

  Joan looked positively flattered, but I could see Jean’s mind going.

  “Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Jean said. “If Hobart was the drug connection, and Mrs. Mclnnerny was asking about drugs ...” She turned to me accusingly. “And if Mrs. Mclnnerny overheard your phone call. The one where you learned his name ...”

  Chief Pinehurst bailed me out. “You’re right,” he said. “That’s how she knew. I told Mr. Hastings we’d identified Delmar Hobart as a drug dealer. But I asked him to withhold the fact. You mustn’t blame him for not sharing the information. At the time, there was no reason to believe it had anything to do with the case.”