by JOAN HESSS
“No,” I said, “but I know why he’s missing. And he is definitely missing.”
“I think you’re missing some brain cells,” Caron said as she sat down near the door. The mumbling that ensued seemed to imply that her opinion was popular in the parlor.
Dewberry and Puccoon came back in the room. “We’ll get the sumbitch before he gets out of the parish,” said Puccoon. “It might be easier if we knew who he was, but Miz Malloy doesn’t seem to want to tell us.”
“I’ll tell you,” I said, “but before I do, let me ask you something. Did you happen to find the remains of a duck beside the bayou where Miss Justicia’s body was found?”
“It was an accident,” Maxie said. “We have been over this—”
“It was not an accident.” I looked at the police officers. “Well, did you?”
“No, ma’am,” Dewberry muttered.
I held up the plastic bag. “Then how would you explain the white feathers on my slippers?”
I might as well have asked them how they would explain the subtleties of the Napoleonic Code. Both of them gazed blankly at me, and Dewberry finally said, “Why would we want to?”
“Maybe you’re the only one of us to have her ducks in a row,” Ellie said. “The only problem is that you’ve been stepping on the little dears.” Her throaty chuckle sounded brittle, however, and she was picking nervously at her nail polish.
“I was thinking the same about you,” I said evenly.
She no longer attempted to sound amused. “I don’t know what you’re getting at, Claire, but let’s get one thing straight right now—I didn’t hurt Miss Justicia. She was my grandmother, for God’s sake.”
“I know you didn’t, Ellie. But you became an accomplice when you tried to make the murder look like an accident.” I flapped the bag with the slippers. “Tiny white feathers.”
“What are you saying?” Stanford exploded. “Are you saying that she was in cahoots with a duck that murdered Miss Justicia? I have tried to be tolerant with you, Claire, but—”
“Good grief, Stanford,” I said. “ducks don’t kill people. People kill people.”
“It must be Keith,” Phoebe said abruptly. “He’s the only one with whom she would be…cahooting.”
“I realized he was untrustworthy when I saw that hair,” Maxie said, nodding smugly. “I tried to warn you, Stanford.”
“I didn’t cahoot with anybody,” Ellie protested.
Caron hopped into the melee. “I Cannot Believe I was going to ask your advice about my complexion.”
Dewberry pulled out his gun, then realized he had no culprit within range, and, with a disappointed look, lowered it. “Where’s this Keith fellow?”
“Phoebe is mistaken,” I said. “Keith did not murder Miss Justicia.”
Stanford scratched his head. “Then it was the duck, after all?”
“Forget the duck, okay?” I said, then waited until he gave me a sulky nod. “In a sense, Miss Justicia brought it upon herself by demanding that her would-be heirs be present for her birthday dinner. Caron and I knew nothing of this, but the rest of you realized she would delete names without hesitation. Therefore, it was vital to be here. For some, the trip was inconvenient. For one, it was almost impossible.”
“But all of us came,” Maxie said.
“Eventually,” I conceded. “The problem was Keith’s detainment in prison. Ellie was led to believe she and her brother would receive the bulk of the estate—but only if they were in this house for the birthday dinner. The warden was unlikely to sympathize, so she convinced her boyfriend to pose as Keith. The last time she saw Keith, he no doubt was lanky and had long stringy hair and shabby clothes. No one else had seen him for such a long time that she hoped they might get away with it if he avoided everyone and hid behind the sunglasses and headphones.”
“Are you sayin we put up with that lout—and he wasn’t even Keith?” Stanford said, oblivious to the saliva on his lips, which gave him a rabid look. “I should have tanned his hide when he first walked in the door!”
I ignored him and said to Ellie, “This can all be verified by fingerprints, you know. Keith’s are on file with the FBI. Does your boyfriend have a record?”
“Yes, but nothing like the one he’ll have when this is over,” she said. “You’re right about Buzz. I promised him a cut of the money to pretend to be Keith. This problem with Big Eddie’s quite a bit more serious than I implied earlier, and Miss Justicia flatly refused to loan me money.”
“But why did you suspect this?” Phoebe asked sharply, as if accusing an undergraduate of imprudent logic.
I was on firm ground, for the moment. “Stanford has blue eyes, and he mentioned that the twins’ mother had eyes the color of the morning sky or some such twaddle. Blue eyes are a recessive trait; it’s impossible for two blue-eyed parents to produce a dark-eyed child.”
Ellie lowered hers. “I told Buzz to keep the sunglasses on day and night. We tried tinted contacts, but they caused so much irritation that his eyes were more red than anything else.”
I waited until everyone had overtly or covertly determined that her eyes, as well as Stanford’s, were blue. “Ellie’s scheme worked well through the remainder of the day. After we’d gone upstairs to bed, he crept out of his little closet and into Miss Justicia’s room.”
“To look for the will,” Ellie said. “He was trying to help me.”
“The will, or perhaps some cash and jewelry,” I said with a shrug. “My guess is that Miss Justicia woke up and confronted him, no doubt in an unpleasant manner. He bashed her on the head with the brandy decanter, then dropped it in the bushes next to the house, where it was likely to remain undiscovered until he had a chance to dispose of it. The next day, however, it was gone.”
This provoked gasps and shrieks from all corners of the room, none of them particularly innovative or eloquent. When things quieted down, Ellie looked at me and said, “He came up to our room and swore that she’d clutched her bosom, turned white, and fallen dead from a heart attack. He swore it to me, Claire. He convinced me that we had to make it look like an accident so the police wouldn’t investigate too closely and find out he was an impostor. He’d been convicted of burglary a few years ago, and he was afraid they’d get the wrong idea about his presence in her room. It was stupid of me to buy it, but I did. If I’d known he killed her…”
“You wouldn’t have helped him? In any case, you did. The pseudo-driver’s arrival at the door was a fluke, but I’m sure you and Buzz had come up with a plan to rouse the household at the pertinent minute. Once Pauline reported that Miss Justicia was asleep, you—”
“I thought you said she was already dead,” Stanford said. Despite my careful pacing, he seemed confused. “I heard Pauline say—”
I wasn’t in the mood for replays. “She thought she saw Miss Justicia. What she really saw were pillows under the comforter and white fuzziness, since Keith had already taken the body to the bank of the bayou. What she didn’t see was Ellie hiding in the room.”
“I myself saw Miss Justicia in the wheelchair,” Stanford said, undaunted, “and I myself heard her cackle.”
“That’s what we assumed, because we’d seen it before and had no reason to be suspicious. Ellie was operating the wheelchair, with a piece of white boa wrapped around her head. She arrived at the bayou, placed Miss Justicia in the wheelchair, and pushed it in the water. She then hurried back to the house, where she had a surprise.”
“She did?” one of the officers said.
I did not turn around. “She most certainly did. I may need some assistance here, Ellie, but I’ll give it a shot. Pauline knew that so-called Keith was an impostor, so you decided to ply her with whiskey until you could convince her not to talk. You took the teapot and trotted down to the parlor—and discovered the real Keith.”
Once again, the room swelled with gasps and mumbles. Ellie was gnawing on her perfect nails, but she forced a smile and said, “I filled the teapot for Pauline a
nd took it to her. Then Buzz and I went back to the parlor to find out what the hell Keith was doing there. It turned out that he and Pauline had been corresponding while he was in prison, and she told him about the birthday gathering. He escaped and made his way here. He admitted he’d killed a taxi driver and left the body in a ditch. He was driving the taxi so he could find out who was coming, and maybe overhear useful conversations.” She shrugged. “He said that the tips were good.”
“Why didn’t Pauline say anything?” asked Maxie, the familial title withheld pending further developments.
“You know,” Caron said, “when we drove up in the taxi and she first saw us, she had a really funny look on her face. Maybe she was looking at the driver.”
Ellie nodded. “They’d always had some little signal for their midnight raids on the kitchen. Keith appeared on the porch at the appointed hour, but everybody came blundering into the foyer before they could talk.”
“I was hardly blundering,” I said, seeing no necessity to describe my initial reaction to the ghostly figure in the peignoir. “Well, perhaps I should have wondered how he knew precisely where the parlor was, and why he and Pauline had the same nickname for Miss Justicia.”
“That might meet the definition of blundering,” Phoebe said thoughtfully. “It’s synonymous with making an error, or, colloquially, botching things up.”
“Thank you for sharing that with us,” I said. “Then, Ellie, you heard people returning to the house?”
“I decided I’d better make an appearance. Buzz told me later that Keith was threatening to expose the charade, but he also told me he’d convinced Keith to split to a motel and wait. That’s the last I saw him until today.”
“You did seem upset when we found the body,” I said, “but I’ll be the first to acknowledge your acting skills. Miss Justicia’s cackle was perfect, and you fooled me when you claimed to be bewildered by the man asleep in the parlor.”
“Buzz is the one who killed them,” she said, her eyes welling with tears. “He thought everything was okay until he heard you talking on the telephone about the decanter. He took a few shots at you at the cemetery to frighten you into packing your bags.”
“How did he know I was there?”
“The old men in front of the barbershop asked Bethel and me if we knew you were there. I may have mentioned it when I called the house, but I had no idea that he would do anything like that. Last night, he totally lost it when I told him about the decanter’s discovery. I tried to stop him, Claire, but he insisted on going into town to look for you.”
“And what did you think he was driving? The wheelchair?”
“I didn’t ask,” she said in a low voice.
“Perhaps you didn’t need to,” I said. “The cackle was well practiced, and the sound of your humming and singing in the bathroom was taped in advance. You did bring a tape recorder, didn’t you? Is it in the closet, along with the pieces of feather boa?”
She bit her lip, then turned to Rodney and gave him a dazzling smile. “Since you’re a member of the family…?”
“I’m delighted to be of service,” Rodney murmured, “but I bill by the hour in criminal cases, and require a retainer.”
“You are such a card, Cousin Rodney,” she drawled.
“A veritable ace of spades,” he said, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
Maxie began to sob, although I suspected she was distressed not by Ellie’s involvement in Miss Justicia’s death but by Rodney’s entrance into the lineage. Phoebe handed her a handkerchief, patted her shoulder, and then looked at me with a cool smile. “Since you’ve proved how clever you are, Cousin Claire, why don’t you impress us more by sharing your theory about the location of the will?”
“She never wrote it,” Stanford said as he headed for the cart. “Maybe she was going to, but she was struck dead by that long-haired hippie before she had a chance.”
“She spoke as if she had,” Phoebe countered.
Maxie wiped her cheeks. “Indeed, she hinted very strongly that the will was ready to be read.”
I once again had everyone’s attention, including my daughter’s. “I think we can assume the house was searched very thoroughly. Miss Justicia knew you all would be sniffing for it every time she turned her back on you. There is one place no one had access to during the day, and limited access at night—unless you were willing to search her room while she was asleep.”
“The wheelchair?” Caron said, proving at least some of her genes were from a pool rather than a bayou.
Puccoon cleared his throat. “Excuse me, but when Dewey and me was dragging it back to the house, the armrest fell off.” He took a rolled paper from his back pocket. “Is this what you folks are looking for, Mr. Stanford?”
15
After an intolerable amount of spirited debate, it was agreed that Rodney would read the will aloud. Ellie demanded to be allowed to stay, and the police officers seemed in no rush to leave in the midst of the impressively melodramatic scene, even though Officer Bo and the coroner were waiting outside for them.
“It’s dated last week,” Rodney began, wrinkling his forehead as only a lawyer can do, “and appears to be in order. We’ll have to confirm that it is written in her own—”
“If you don’t mind,” Maxie said, puffing furiously on a cigarette. Ashes littered her bosom, but she was unconcerned, perhaps for the first time in her life, with appearances.
“As you wish. ‘I, Justicia Beauville Malloy, being of sounder mind than any of you greedy, slobbering scavengers, am going to do the right thing. Oh, I know you’ve been kicking each other under the table and stabbing each other in the back, but blood is thicker than swamp water. We’ve been decaying for generations, and what’s left is a sorry lot.’”
“Look who’s talking,” Puccoon whispered to Dewberry. He realized he’d been heard, and edged behind the door.
“Please restrain yourselves,” Rodney said sternly. “There are a few more observations concerning the present individuals, but I’ll provide each of you with a copy so that you may read it at your leisure. Shall we cut to the bequeaths?”
An odd ripply noise came from Maxie’s flaccid mouth. Stanford harrumphed and downed his drink. Caron’s lip shot out as she gazed into a dismal future bereft of wealth and Louis Wilderberry. Ellie softly clapped her hands.
“Good idea,” I said, doing nothing at all.
Rodney cleared his throat. “All right, here we go. ‘To Maxine Rutherford Malloy-Frazier, an appropriately pretentious name if ever there was one, and her daughter, Phoebe Malloy-Frazier, I leave Malloy Manor and its contents. The house is haunted, but only by termites and dry rot and peeling paint. It’s a perfect setting for you.”
“Oh, dear”—Maxie panted—“I’m feeling quite woozy. Phoebe, fetch me a glass of sherry. How wonderful of Miss Justicia to ensure that the house will—”
“Get on with it,” Stanford said.
“‘To my sniveling son, Stanford, I leave all my stock in Pritty Kitty Kibble. I don’t know what it’s worth now, but if nothing else, it’ll make fine toilet paper.’” Rodney paused, but Stanford was slumped over and any comments he was making were inaudible. “To continue, ‘To Pauline Hurstmeyer, who dedicated her life to despising me, I leave the proceeds of all my life-insurance policies in hopes that it’s not too late to purchase herself a companion.’”
“Where is she, anyway?” Maxie asked, having gained enough self-control to feign curiosity, if not concern.
“Making the last payment on a companion,” I said. “Bethel D’Armand, to be precise.”
“They…ah?” Maxie sought a phrase appropriately genteel to reflect her newly enhanced status. “They have gone away together? Is he the one to whom she referred when she so coarsely mentioned an unrequited love?”
Phoebe blinked at her mother. “She implied it was requited often at the Econolodge. Her exact words were—”
Maxie cut her off. “I remember her remarks. She was in
shock at the time and rambling.”
“I’m happy for her,” Ellie said, “but could we get on with it, Cousin Rodney? These policemen are breathing down my neck and I’d like to hear the rest of the will before I’m dragged away to the dungeon.”
He resumed reading. “‘Everything else is to be divided among those of my grandchildren who are present at the dining room table of Malloy Manor on the evening of my eightieth birthday. You’re the new generation. You might as well enjoy disgracing the family in the future.’”
Ellie’s eyes glistened. “Miss Justicia, if you weren’t embalmed, I’d kiss you! Let’s take roll: Cousin Caron and I were at the table, and so was dear Cousin Rodney. Poor Keith was absent, although it certainly wasn’t his fault, since he was dead. We’re down to thirds. I could have used all of it, but this is an improvement over nothing. Champagne?”
“Actually,” Phoebe said, removing her glasses to clean them on a tissue, “as an accessory to Miss Justicia’s murder, you’re not entitled to inherit from her estate.”
Ellie blanched. “Don’t be silly. I still get my share of the money, don’t I? I didn’t kill Miss Justicia. All of you heard how Buzz did it. I just—helped him make it look like an accident. Big Eddie’s getting impatient. I need the money.”
“At least room and board will be provided by the state,” Maxie said with a malicious smile. “So, Cousin Caron, it seems you and this”—she swallowed what must have been bitter taste—“son of Miller’s will divide the money in the trust. Isn’t that a lovely surprise? It would be a nice gesture on your part to make a donation in honor of Miss Justicia, to ensure the continued preservation of Malloy Manor.”
“Tax-deductible, of course.” Phoebe poised her pencil over the notebook to record any offers.
“Yeah,” Caron said dazedly, hundreds of miles away in a swimming pool. And not alone.
“I get my share!” Ellie said savagely. Her perfect complexion marred by angry blotches, she stood up and glared challengingly at each of us in turn. “Nobody would get a damn penny if we hadn’t hurried along Miss Justicia’s death a little bit. You think it’s easy to make that sound? You know how much practice it took?” Her hands began to jerk and her voice grew more shrill. “Hours! It took hours! You sorry amateurs never could have done it!”
