Dead and Breakfast

by David Crossman

  “I wouldn’t go far out of my way on his say so,” said Jill skeptically. She flicked on the light. “Good Lord, look at this place!”

  The half of the room nearest the door might have been inhabited by Martha Stewart in her formative years. Everything was neat and tidy, each object at more or less right angles to the surface it occupied. Caitlin had no doubt this was the Delilah’s domain. Given time, here was someone who might surpass even Mrs. Griffeth in terms of sheer blind devotion to the inconsequential.

  It was the other half of the room, however, that had elicited comment from Jill. If not for the fact that nothing was broken, the first impulse was that it had been ransacked.

  “This looks like my nephew’s room,” said Jill. Impulsively, she began to pick things up and fold them. “Where do we begin to find anything as small as a passport?”

  That it was a girl’s mess there could be no doubt. An inordinate number of shoes, for one thing, were strewn about where they’d been stepped out of.

  Enough clothing for the Grand Tour was draped on every surface or crumpled on the floor in disorderly piles. Odd, Caitlin thought, since she had yet to see Heather in anything but a sweatshirt and blue jeans. The bureau was crowded with post-adolescent essentials, everything from acne cream and skin softener, to deodorant and Tampax.

  “The alchemy of youth,” said Jill, as she sifted through the items.

  Jill poked at a nest of brightly colored underwear. “Remember when knickers came in either white or beige?” she said. She picked up by a particularly suggestive pair of panties, little more than a swatch of semi-transparent silk held together by thread, and held it up to the light. “Where do these go?”

  Remembering Farthing’s comment about her own underwear, Caitlin blushed and began sorting through the top drawer of the dresser. Here, an attempt at order had been made, however unsuccessfully, with underwear on the left, T-shirts in the middle, and socks and hose more or less on the right. Tucked among the latter was a little sheaf of documents bound with a rubber band. Topmost of these was the passport.

  “Voila!” said Caitlin, holding the little bundle aloft in triumph.

  “You found it?”

  “Point me to the nearest haystack, and we’ll see if we can’t find the needle everyone’s been looking for.” Caitlin pulled a passport out of the pile, and the rubber band snapped loudly into place around the remainder.

  “You’re sure it’s hers, and not Delilah’s?” said Jill.

  “I gather Delilah had hers with her.” Nevertheless Caitlin open to cover and cast a quick eye over the picture.

  “It’s her,” she said. But the words hadn’t left her lips before something else caught her arm. “Name/Nomme,” she read aloud, “Brianna Chase.”

  Disregarding the polite convention of privacy, she tore the rubber band from the remaining folder, including an envelope of photographs.

  “Really, Caitlin,” Jill admonished nervously. She’d unconsciously taken up the post of lookout by the door. “How would you explain what you’re doing?”

  “To whom?” Caitlin replied. “The girls are at the police station.”

  “To the other guests,” Jill protested.

  “Shh,” said Caitlin, for want of a rebuttal. She sat on the edge of the bed and began leafing through the photos encased in their plastic sleeves.

  The first few pages were innocuous enough – typical dorm room shots of a lot of kids, male and female, mugging for the camera. The section was prefaced by a title page that said “First year.”

  Caitlin thought of her freshman year in college. But for the fashions and quality of the snapshots, she might have inserted pictures from her own album, which would not have elicited comment.

  The sophomore year, identified by another title page, was similar. The cast of characters changed somewhat; the natural winnowing process of early college life. Delilah made her first appearance about midway through the year.

  “Delilah knows who she is.” Caitlin didn’t realize she’d been speaking out loud until Jill responded.

  “She would, wouldn’t she? Are you almost finished? I really have to get back to dinner. I daren’t trust Jean-Claude to stir that roulade properly.”

  It was obvious she was much more nervous about getting caught rummaging through a guest’s room then ruining dinner. Caitlin was about to make a remark to that effect when, with the turn of another page, her attention was transfixed by a photograph of two laughing young women on the beach proudly bearing their breasts for the camera. The picture was labeled simply ‘Me and Gayla, Cancun, spring break.’ The young women were Heather and Gayla Capshaw. Reflected in a car window behind them was the photographer, a black girl in a flowered bikini. Delilah.

  “Bingo.”

  “What did you find?” said Jill, disturbed by the look on Caitlin’s face.

  “The body in the moat,” Caitlin replied cryptically. She rose to meet Jill, whose curiosity had drawn her into the vortex of the misdemeanor, and showed her the photograph.

  “My goodness!” Jill’s initial reaction was to the sensational aspect of the picture. Then she recognized the faces. “That’s Heather and Amber!”

  “Brianna and Gayla, more precisely,” said Caitlin. “But these,” she said, pointing at Gayla’s breasts, “belong to Miss Tichyara.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Look at her nipples.”

  “She looks chilly.”

  “In Cancun? During spring break?”

  “Excited then,” said Jill. “Look at me! I’m a naughty girl!”

  It was a possibility, but Caitlin didn’t think so. “That’s their natural state. Just like Miss Tichyara’s.”

  “And thousands of other women. I don’t think that’s an argument that would hold much water in court.” Jill chuckled in spite of herself.

  Caitlin was not about to be derailed by logic. Things were finally beginning to make sense. “No. I photograph nudes. I study them, and bodies are just as identifiable as faces. Each has its own particular dimensions and characteristics. Just as unique as a fingerprint. And I’ll tell you something, this body,” she tapped the photo, “and Miss Tichyara’s are interchangeable. They’re so alike in fact,” she continued, verbally pursuing her train of thought, “that she drapes herself in those ridiculous outfits to hide the fact, knowing that the likeness would be obvious, particularly among a group of photographers.”

  To Jill, who was not a photographer, the evidence was less compelling. “You’re not making sense, Caitlin. Mrs. Capshaw identified Gayla’s body after her drowning.”

  “She was tricked somehow.”

  “Which would mean the medical examiner had been tricked as well. And the police . . . ”

  Caitlin wanted to scream. The last thing she wanted, just as her suspicions began to gain substance, was a cold parade of facts. “No!” she snapped, louder than she’d intended. “No! They pulled it off somehow. Somehow. Their bodies are identical.” She confronted the rising doubt evident in Jill’s expression. “Look at the differences between them – they’re superficial: dyed hair, their voices, those ever-present sunglasses . . . ”

  “Miss Tichyara’s blind,” Jill reminded curtly.

  “I bet not. I bet her eyes are the mirror image of Amber’s . . . and Mrs. Wagner’s.”

  “But that would mean that Mr. Piper is . . . that he knows . . . ”

  “He’s in on it! They’reall in on it!”

  Jill shook her head slowly. “You know what this all sounds like?” She stroked Caitlin’s head, “it sounds like someone who needs some sleep.”

  “It’s not so far-fetched when you think about it,” said Caitlin, consciously trying to keep desperation from her voice. “With all those millions at stake, Amber and Gayla would be able to assemble the cast of characters necessary to enact their plan.”

  “Which is ?”

  “To drive Mrs. Capshaw crazy,” said Caitlin, “so the deal goes through.” She brightened at the logic
of her reasoning. “For that matter, they could easily have paid off the coroner.”

  “And the police?” said Jill, finding her own resolve shaky.

  “Why not? We’re just talking about small town cops here. Part-timers, probably. It’s been known to happen.”

  “Oh, wonderful. Seems if anyone stands in the way of your little fairy tale, you just say they paid them off. Next thing you’ll be accusing me or Jean-Claude . . . ” she struggled for any name to emphasize her skepticism, “or Genevieve, for goodness sake. I’m going to finish supper, if it’s not been reduced to ashes by now.” She turned to go, but Caitlin seized her shoulder and spun her around.

  “Look at this,” she said, waving the photo in Jill’s face. “It’s proof that Gayla and Heather and Delilah knew each other.”

  “They all went to Dartmouth.” She poked a fingernail at the name below the photo. “Right?”

  Jill nodded meekly.

  “Then don’t you think it odd that the girls don’t seem to recognize Gayla in our Amber – either her face, or her name? Remember their first night here, when they met? There was no sign of recognition whatsoever.”

  It was Jill’s turn to be buffeted by contrary logic. She lowered her head thoughtfully.

  “Odd?” Caitlin goaded.

  “All right, yes. Very odd,” said Jill, just above a whisper. “Mrs. Wagner is Gayla and Amber’s mother. Coincidence?”

  “No,” Caitlin continued with a flush of confidence. “I’m not sure yet how Piper fits into things. Certainly he knows Miss Tichyara isn’t really blind.

  “And what did he get from her room during our little fire charade last night?

  “I’m beginning to think the only genuine client I have on this trip is Mrs. Griffeth . . . and I’ll give you any odds that the ‘fairy’ in her photograph is Gayla – our Miss Tichyara. It all fits.

  “How hard would be to drive someone as guilt–ridden as Joanna Capshaw crazy, if she could be convinced that her dead stepdaughter’s ghost had come back to haunt her?”

  Jill’s resolve was not proof against the plausibility of Caitlin’s argument. “This is the last night,” she said thoughtfully. “Their last chance to make good on their plan.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven– Amber’s Eyes

  “That’s reason enough to hold them overnight, isn’t it?” asked Caitlin hopefully as Jean-Claude examined the passport.

  “What? That she gave a false name?”

  “No. That she was Gayla’s roommate. That she knows who Amber is, but pretends not to. Surely that suggests they’re up to something.”

  “Unfortunately, while our law gives us much more latitude than yours gives police in the States, it does not easily allow us to detain tourists because they may be up to something,” Jean-Claude replied. “Unless they do something illegal in the process.”

  As Caitlin’s heart sank she flung a desperate appeal. “You can watch though, can’t you?”

  “Watch what?”

  “Watch Heather and Delilah tonight – to make sure they don’t get up to anything . . . ”

  Jean-Claude, exasperated, protested. “I can’t prevent them from doing anything, until it is evident that what they’re doing is against the law.”

  “Then you can keep Joanna Capshaw safe,” Caitlin countered sharply.

  Jean-Claude thought a moment. “I will do what I can.” He tapped the passport against his knuckles. “But I must let the girls go.” He stood and went to the garden door, put his hand on the latch, and hesitated. “If I were you, I would warn Mrs. Capshaw. Tell her what you have discovered.”

  “That the daughter she identified in the morgue is alive and well, and pretending to be the blind girl in the room next door?” said Caitlin. “That would be just enough to send her over the edge.”

  Jean-Claude shrugged. “I’m sure you know best.”

  “I know nothing of the sort,” Caitlin said heatedly. “But that woman is that close to cracking.” She held her thumb and index finger a hairsbreadth apart, to illustrate her point. “And I’m not going to be the one to finish the job.”

  There was nothing else to say. Jean-Claude left, pulling the door quietly shut behind him. Caitlin watched him down the path to the drive. “The criminals of France have nothing to fear from that man.”

  “That’s not fair,” Jill defended, emerging from a cloud of steam over the cook stove. She wiped her hands on her apron. “Like he said, he’s bound by the law.”

  “Bound hand and foot, if you ask me.”

  “There’s a colander in the rack above your head. Put it in the sink, will you?”

  Caitlin complied automatically, her thoughts elsewhere.

  Jill tipped a pan of lightly wilted spinach into the colander to drain. “There may be something to what he said about telling Mrs. Capshaw.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea. As I said . . . ”

  “Maybe you wouldn’t have to tell her. What if we just got her out of harm’s way, somehow.” This stroke of genius – an obvious solution, simply stated – was delivered off-handedly as Jill began to remove the spinach leaves, one at a time, and press them carefully on a mat of paper towels.

  Caitlin adopted the suggestion without deliberation. “Where could we put her?”

  “She could go in my room, or in one of the family rooms on the third floor. I’d have to open it up and start a fire.”

  “Either one would suit,” said Caitlin. “Of course, we couldn’t let anyone know.”

  “That’s not likely, is it? Surely Amber will know.”

  “Not if . . . ” At the last second, Caitlin decided to keep to herself the plan that had just sprung, fully-formed, to her mind. “We’ll put her in your room. Late, after everyone’s in bed . . . or should be.”

  Conversation at the dinner table, in contrast to the festive, bittersweet intercourse typical of last-night celebrations, was perfunctory, as if everyone was preoccupied with his own thoughts, which Caitlin had no doubt was the case. Even Mr. Piper, who could generally be counted on to fill any lapses, was not broadcasting, his comments delivered chiefly to Miss Tichyara on the QT, or Mr. Wagner,sotto voce.

  The excellent meal over which Jill had labored with all the considerable artistry at her command was nibbled at without comment by everyone but Mrs. Griffeth, whose comments of approbation accompanied every course. Mistaking her companions’ relative quiet for interest in what she had to say, she made every effort to prove worthy of the attention. When, in those brief silences necessitated by the indrawing of breath, she encountered none of the customary cynicism, she assumed she’d won them over and plunged resolutely ahead with her narrative.

  “Mr. Griffeth wouldn’t touch spinach with a barge pole,” she was babbling, as Caitlin’s auditory radar swept inadvertently in her direction. “The only green he can abide is celery smeared with peanut butter, though I do manage to slip a bit of coarsely ground parsley into his chicken Kiev now and then. It’s for his own good.”

  Caitlin, searching from face-to-face for telltale evidence of conspiracy – of which she imagined an abundance – was startled upon arriving at Mrs. Wagner, to find the woman staring back.

  “Where are those college girls?” Mrs. Wagner said, as soon as their eyes met.

  Caitlin had already decided what to say when the question was asked, and to watch the reaction. If, in the process, she upset the apple cart, so much the better. It was now or never, as the girls would probably be returning any minute. “I hadn’t wanted to say anything,” she lied, “but since you ask, I’m afraid they’ve been detained by the police.”

  Mrs. Wagner’s response was immediate and profound. The water glass she was holding slipped from her fingers as if someone had severed her nerves then, trying to catch it, she sent it flying across the room where it shattered inches from Robespierre, who was propelled up a nearby curtain, much to the amusement of the tropical fish.

  She started from the table, but was apprehended halfway by Ji
ll. “Sit. Sit. I’ll see to it.”

  Mrs. Wagner was flustered. “I’m so sorry. How clumsy of me.” She subsided onto her chair. “Detained you say?” Her reflexive glance, as Caitlin expected, was not to her husband for reassurance, but across the table at Amber. An appeal.

  Amber turned quickly away.

  “What on earth did they do?” asked Mrs. Griffeth, annoyed that her anecdote had been interrupted. “Drugs I expect. All the young people are . . . ”

  “No,” Caitlin cut in. She tried to behave casually, taking in as many of the faces as possible and their response to the bombshell she was about to drop. “It seems they found the murderer the local police were looking for and were keeping the knowledge to themselves.”

  For a moment, the only sound was the broken glass being swept into the dustpan. “They were bringing him food, according to Mr. Farthing.”

  “Farthing?” said Mrs. Wagner, her mask of benign good fellowship dissolved completely. “What does he have to do with anything?”

  How much to say, how much to hold in reserve? Caitlin balanced the options. She’d keep Farthing’s profession to herself for the time being. “He followed the girls to the place where the man was hiding.”

  “What was he doing following them in the first place?” Amber asked accusingly.

  “Sounds like just the type of thing he’d do, if you ask me, “ said Mr. Piper. “Where is he?”

  Caitlin was content to let them think what they would of Mr. Farthing for the time being. “I haven’t seen him. He must’ve gone for one of his walks. Jill, these truffles are divine.”

  “I’m glad you like them,” said Jill, coaxing Robespierre down from the drapes. “It’s a local recipe.”

  What would happen, Caitlin wondered, if she let the other shoe fall by casually observing the similarity she had noticed between Miss Tichyara and Amber? Ideally, the conspirators might be forced to abandon their scheme. But who among them could be relied upon to behave rationally, especially since they had risked so much already, and with so much still at stake? The thought occurred to her they might just as easily decide to kill everyone. The possibility, almost immediately discarded as absurd, seemed less so upon a few second’s reflection.