Desmond Farnaby stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips. “If I told them once, I told them a thousand times. You can’t—oh, hello, Mallory.”
“Hello, Desmond.” Holding out the spear, she said, “It looks like this fell off the wall. You might want to—”
“Oh, my God!” he screeched, this time with considerably more vehemence. “Oh, my God!”
Mallory just stared at him, puzzled over what indecent thing any tablecloth could possibly have done that would cause the hotel’s general manager’s hands to fly to his cheeks like the child star in Home Alone. But something about the look of shock on his face told her it was something a lot worse than outdated fabric.
She followed his gaze to the waterfall. It was only then that she noticed something unusual protruding out of the little pond surrounding it. Something large. Something oddly shaped. Something brightly colored.
Mallory’s forehead tensed as she tried to make sense of what she was looking at. And then, in a flash, she realized that Phil Diamond was floating facedown in the pool of water.
And from where she stood, he looked very, very dead.
To read more about travel-writer-turned-sleuth Mallory Marlowe, pick up your copy of Cynthia Baxter’s Murder Packs a Suitcase, on sale in November 2008. Includes Mallory’s travel tips and reviews of real Florida attractions!
A New Reigning Cats & Dogs Mystery
On sale in Summer 2009
“The greatest fear dogs know
is the fear that you will not come back
when you go out the door without them.”
—Stanley Coren, dog psychologist
Every woman expects her wedding day to be something out of a dream. So how could I ever have anticipated that mine would turn out to be a total nightmare?
It all went as planned until I found myself standing in front of the judge. I could feel the eyes of more than a hundred guests who looked on eagerly, perching on the edges of the seats that fanned out from the wooden archway curving above my fiancé, Nick, and me.
And I pretty much appeared to be a typical bride. I wore a beautiful ivory-silk dress, and my straight, dark-blond hair had been twisted into an updo that made me more glamorous than I’d ever looked my life. With both hands, I clutched a bouquet of delicate white roses.
At the moment, I desperately hoped they hid the fact that my hands were trembling.
The reason I was having so much trouble keeping my severe case of nerves from showing was that I was still wondering if I was ever going to manage to say those fateful, life-changing words: I do.
As I opened my mouth, doing my best to force myself to get those two syllables out, the peaceful scene was shattered by a woman’s piercing scream.
“A-a-a-ah!”
Instantly, everyone froze.
Nick turned to me, wearing a puzzled look. “Jess?” he asked questioningly.
I didn’t have time to be offended that he apparently assumed the desperate cry for help was mine. The shriek sounded as if it had come from inside the three-story Victorian that was the centerpiece of the estate on Long Island’s east end. A hundred fifty years earlier it had been the home of a prosperous sea captain, and just for today, it was all mine.
Maybe it’s because I’m a veterinarian who’s used to handling emergencies, but before I had a chance to mentally form the phrase “ruining your own wedding,” I whirled around, hiked up my long skirt, and raced back down the aisle toward the house. I was only vaguely aware of the chaos erupting around me as guests rose from their seats, glancing around with worried looks.
“A-a-a-ah!” we all heard again, the horrible cry cutting through the warm June day like a bolt of lightning. “No! No!”
The second scream assured me I was doing the right thing. So did the fact that the groom was right behind me, racing toward the house so speedily that his tuxedo could have been made of spandex.
“It’s coming from the house,” I yelled to Nick over my shoulder.
“It sounds like somewhere on the first floor,” he added breathlessly.
Even though I was wearing cream-colored heels, I managed to reach the front door just seconds after Nick. The two of us rushed inside, exchanging a look of concern over the unmistakable sounds of gasps and sobs.
“The kitchen!” I cried, sprinting down the hall.
I wondered if I’d be able to move faster if I kicked off my silly Barbie shoes, now that I was dealing with polished hardwood floors instead of the velvety-green grass on the back lawn. But I didn’t want to waste any time. Instead, I skidded around the corner toward the kitchen doorway, not knowing what I’d find.
But I certainly didn’t expect it to be a man lying completely still on the tile floor of the immense kitchen with what looked like an extremely sharp knife sticking out of his chest. And from the pallor of his skin and the dullness of his eyes, it looked as if he was dead.
I blinked. The man wasn’t anyone I recognized. He didn’t appear to be part of the catering staff; in fact, from the way he was dressed—a blue-and-white-striped seersucker suit, a lemon-yellow necktie, and white patent-leather loafers—I concluded that he had to be a guest. But he certainly wasn’t anyone I’d told my future mother-in-law, Dorothy, to add to the list of invitees.
“Do you know who he is?” I asked Nick, my voice a near whisper.
He shook his head. “I never saw this man before in my life.”
It was only at that point that I realized someone else was in the room. I studied the young woman cowering a few feet away from Nick and me, the expression on her face one of complete shock. Her shiny black hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail, and she was dressed like a penguin, leading me to the conclusion that unlike the man on the floor, she did work for the caterer.
I also assumed she was the screamer.
“What happened?” I asked her.
“I—I don’t know!” She gasped. “I went downstairs to the wine cellar for about ten minutes. I guess I was the only person in the house, since it looks as if everybody else sneaked outside to watch the ceremony. We’re not supposed to, but whenever it’s time for the bride and groom to say ‘I do,’ we can’t help it. Anyway, when I came upstairs just now, this is what I found!”
She paused to take a deep breath, then asked, “Do you think he’s dead?”
“It looks that way,” I replied gently.
Her expression still stricken, she pulled a cell phone out of the pocket of the tailored black pants she wore under a crisp white apron emblazoned with the caterer’s logo. As she punched in three numbers, she stepped away to a back corner of the kitchen. That left Nick and me with the unfortunate dead man.
“Who is he?” I asked, my head spinning as I tried to make sense out of what I was seeing. “I don’t think he’s affiliated with the estate, since when I booked it someone would have mentioned that he’d—”
I never finished my sentence because I’d just become aware of the sound of rubbery heels, the kind that are attached to practical shoes, squishing against the tile floor behind us.
Which meant my mother-in-law had joined us.
“What’s going on in here?” Dorothy Burby demanded. Smoothing the fabric of the drab, ill-fitting blue-gray dress she’d chosen to wear on this lovely June day on which her son was getting married, she added, “For goodness’ sake, Jessica, you can’t just leave your guests sitting out there in the hot sun! This is supposed to be a wedding, so I don’t understand why—”
She gasped, then slapped her hands against her cheeks.
“Good heavens!” she cried. “What happened to Cousin Nathaniel?”
“Cousin Nathaniel?” Nick and I repeated in unison.
“That’s right.” Dorothy fumbled inside the oversized black purse cutting into her shoulder and pulled out a pair of what I assumed were reading glasses. She planted them at the end of her nose, then leaned over the poor man’s body and peered closely at his face.
“That’s Cousin Nathaniel, all right,�
�� she declared. Sighing loudly, she said, “I’m the one who invited him. I had to. He’s family.”
“You mean I’m related to this guy?” Nick asked, amazed.
“Of course.” Dorothy sniffed. “He’s Ruthie’s son. You know, Gladys’s sister’s boy.”
From the confused look on Nick’s face, he didn’t know any more about who Ruthie or Gladys was than he did about the man I’d just started thinking of as “poor Cousin Nathaniel.”
“But I never expected that he’d actually show up,” Dorothy added.
I bet he wishes he hadn’t, I thought grimly.
It was at that point that I realized it would have been more appropriate for me to use the past tense when referring to poor Cousin Nathaniel.
“I’ll be darned,” Dorothy went on, shaking her head in wonderment. “He looks good. I mean, better than I would have expected. I haven’t seen him in—I don’t even know how long it’s been. But it’s so like Ruthie’s family to ruin somebody’s wedding. I bet the cheap so-and-so didn’t even bother to bring a present!”
The fact that this particular guest might not have increased my ever-growing collection of small appliances even further didn’t seem to matter much, given the fact that he wouldn’t even be around to eat a piece of wedding cake.
Actually, thinking about my wedding suddenly seemed selfish. There were too many other questions to ask right now. But before I had a chance to ask even one of them, people began rushing at us from all directions. The rest of the catering staff crowded into the room first. Only seconds afterward the guests began streaming inside, their furrowed foreheads and clouded eyes completely out of sync with the bright flowered sundresses and pastel-colored sport shirts they wore.
I was about to tell them all to calm down and to back away from what I was beginning to realize was a crime scene when Dorothy grabbed my arm. She yanked me over to a granite counter covered with silver trays with tiny quiches and scallops wrapped in bacon.
“Will you look at this?’ she hissed in my ear. “It started already, and the cops haven’t even gotten here yet!”
“What started already?” I asked. Not only was I completely bewildered, I could practically feel a black-and-blue mark forming where Dorothy’s fingers were clamped around my flesh.
“The—the chaos, of course!” she sputtered. “The craziness. And the newspapers and TV stations haven’t even gotten wind of this yet!”
“I can imagine how you must feel,” I said sympathetically. “Losing a relative in such a horrible way, even though it sounds as if you hardly knew him—”
“I was thinking of how bad this looks,” she interrupted. “I mean, what kind of people have murders going on in their own families? Certainly not respectable people!”
I was dumbfounded. But when it came to dealing with the mother of the man I love, I always trod carefully.
“I can see why you’re upset,” I said.
“Of course I’m upset!” she spat back. “This is completely unacceptable, and I want it to go away as quickly as possible. And as quietly as possible. Which is why you have to do something about this, Jessica.”
“Me?” I squawked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Find out who did this disgusting thing, of course!”
“Excuse me?”
“Solve the murder!” Dorothy insisted shrilly. “Find out who killed poor Cousin Nathaniel as fast as you can so we can all move on! That is what you do, isn’t it? When you’re not doing that—that job of yours, riding around in that ridiculous bus treating cats and dogs and Lord only knows what else. Solving crimes is your hobby, isn’t it? You do it the way some people do needlepoint or—or collect porcelain dolls or Wedgwood.”
It was hard to imagine putting solving murders and displaying dolls in the same category. Then again, this wasn’t the first time Dorothy and I failed to see things in the same way.
“Solving homicide cases is the police department’s job,” I pointed out.
“Hmph!” With a toss of her head, she said, “Who knows how competent they are?”
“It’s true that in the past, I’ve gotten involved in solving a few crimes.” I was doing my best to remain calm—and diplomatic. “But it’s not exactly what you’d call a hobby. In fact, it’s—”
“Yes, but it’s something you’re good at, isn’t it?” she persisted. “You have, shall we say, a knack for it. The way I happen to be good with people.”
I wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole.
“I understand that you’re upset,” I said, trying a different tack. “And of course you’re concerned. Anyone would be. But that doesn’t mean—”
“Jessica, I’ve made up my mind,” Dorothy said firmly. “You’re going to solve this crime. After all, what else do you have to do with all your free time?”
MONKEY SEE, MONKEY DIE
A Bantam Book / August 2008
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2008 by Cynthia Baxter
Hand-lettering by Ron Zinn
* * *
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
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www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-553-90532-8
v3.0
Monkey See, Monkey Die Page 28
