by Cathy Ace
‘Thank goodness we’ve got an electrician on the premises,’ I commented, suspecting we could hold out for a while with no light or heat, but that no water would have made life a complete misery. ‘Any idea what might have blown the main panel?’
‘No,’ replied Peter, ‘but, frankly, we’re lucky the whole place didn’t burn down; it doesn’t look like they know what a building code is in this place. No GFCIs, old wiring, and I swear both the generators are held together with duct tape.’
Never very technically minded, I had to ask, ‘What’s a GFCI?’
‘One of those special outlets you get where it’ll trip before you get a shock. A mini-breaker. You know, they have the little reset buttons on them?’ replied Peter, gratefully taking a mug of coffee from Adrian.
I understood what he meant. ‘Got it.’
‘Hey,’ said Adrian, sounding upbeat, ‘it could be worse – we’ve got water, thanks to Peter here, there’s no shortage of logs out back for the Great Room, and there’s gas for cooking – so we won’t starve or freeze. I guess we can wear all our clothes to bed if we need to; those little fan heaters won’t be much use without any power.’ Adrian poured another coffee from the glass cafetière, and passed it to me.
‘I haven’t got a fan heater in my room,’ I said, wondering why not – not that it would be of any use now, as Adrian had pointed out.
‘There isn’t one in our room, either,’ said Peter.
‘Maybe it’s just me,’ observed Adrian.
‘Are you guys bringing that coffee? Today would be great.’ Joe Gray sounded annoyed; I suspected he always sounded that way.
‘Sorry, we kept Adrian talking,’ replied Peter.
‘Hey, Joe, Peter’s managed to sort out enough power so we have water – isn’t that great?’ Adrian sounded delighted.
Joe Gray looked underwhelmed, and shuffled back toward the Great Room, where his wife had clearly been a member of the fire-building party.
He shouted across the entry hall. ‘Martha – the water’s back on. Go for it, baby.’ He cackled.
‘Oh Joe – don’t talk like that. It’s embarrassing.’ Martha Gray blushed, then she took herself off upstairs as fast as she could go, given her girth and age.
I wandered into the Great Room with Adrian and Peter. A series of ‘Atta Boy’ calls rang out for Peter, whose efforts were much appreciated by everyone, Joe Gray aside. Then everyone swooped down on the coffee. Luckily, the topics of flushing toilets and the advantages of a gas hob were front and center, so no one asked me where I’d been or what I’d been doing.
Despite the good news about the water, the mood soon became glum; we were all trying too hard to avoid the one subject that was bound to be consuming our thoughts – Meg’s death.
Jean Jones wasn’t talking to anyone; she sat alone in an armchair, nursing a brandy bowl, and staring, red-eyed, into the dancing fire.
Peter nodded his head toward Jean and whispered, ‘Taking it badly, poor thing. Anything we can do for her, d’you think?’
I gave it some thought. ‘I don’t think so, Peter; even though they were estranged, she’s still lost a daughter. It’s going to be tough for her.’
‘Do you think she’s sick in any case?’ he continued. ‘Her color’s not that good, is it?’
I looked at Jean once more; this was the first time I’d seen her in proper daylight, and Peter was right, her color wasn’t good. She was slightly jaundiced, but maybe that was her natural skin tone; Meg had always tanned well . . . maybe she’d inherited that sallow, easy-tanning gene from her mother.
‘You’re right, but she has just had one hell of a shock, Peter. Let’s give her some peace and quiet for now.’
‘There’s no need to whisper about me. I am in the room, you know,’ called Jean in our direction.
I was amazed she’d been able to hear us – we’d been whispering really quietly.
‘Sorry, Jean,’ replied Peter, ‘we were just wondering if there was anything we could do for you, that’s all.’
‘Well, you can’t bring her back, so no. Bloody stupid question, really, Peter Webster. Typical of you, that is.’
Poor woman – she couldn’t even get his name right.
‘Sorry, Jean,’ said Peter again, then he went to join his wife, who was calling to him from a sofa that offered a view across the undulating white valley, and the white hillside beyond.
Jean Jones shouted across the room to me, in a voice that everyone could hear, ‘So, Cait, are you going to work out who killed Meg, then?’
Martha Gray had just reentered the room, so we were all present for Jean’s little bombshell. You could hear the intakes of breath, waiting for my answer.
I decided to go on the offensive. ‘Yes, Jean – I think I should. Or maybe we can all work it out together.’ I had to bear in mind the fact the killer wouldn’t want me to uncover their identity, and I didn’t want to go putting myself in danger. ‘Let’s face it . . . we’re all thinking the same thing, aren’t we? That someone here, in this room, killed Meg. And, after yesterday, we’re all wondering what it was she knew about us that might have meant someone decided to stop her from “telling all” in her autobiography.’
‘Exactly,’ shouted Sally Webber. ‘I said that to Peter this morning. There’s been nothing but funny goings-on since we got here, and I don’t like it.’
‘Funny goings-on’ was the most inappropriate euphemism for murder I could imagine. But it was coming from Sally, after all.
‘How did she die, Cait?’ asked Sally, outright. All eyes were on me.
‘It’s not clear,’ I replied, honestly enough. ‘But she didn’t kill herself, I can be pretty sure of that.’
‘Why?’ Sally again.
‘No note, no obvious signs of a way by which she could have done it . . . and her body was moved after her death. Did anyone here do that?’ I thought it best to be direct.
Heads were shaken all around the room.
‘If she’d killed herself, or died peacefully in her sleep, why would someone move her afterwards? And why would they keep it a secret?’ I asked.
‘It could have been natural causes,’ suggested Dan James in his booming voice from beside the fireplace. ‘You know, just died and keeled over, in bed.’
‘Like I said – there are clear signs on her body that tell me she was moved after her death; a couple of hours after her death, actually. She died sitting up. We found her lying down. And, no, she couldn’t have fallen that way, just due to gravity. So we’re back to the same questions – why would someone move her, and not now admit to that?’
More head shaking all around.
‘So, not suicide, and not natural causes. That only leaves one option,’ I said.
‘It makes no sense—’ began Adrian O’Malley.
Joe Gray interrupted. ‘Oh, come off it, Adrian – that’s just dumb. It makes perfect sense that someone might want to kill Meg; I don’t know what she thought she had on me, because I can’t think of a thing, and – other than my wife and Luis – I don’t know the rest of you from Adam, so who knows, it could have been any one of you who wanted her dead.’
‘You don’t know what Meg had on you? Now, isn’t that interesting, Joe.’ It was Dan James again. He looked like a cat licking cream. ‘I think I might have an idea what it was. I’m surprised you don’t.’
‘Oh, and you’re totally without blame, are you?’ snapped Martha Gray at the ruddy English professor, rushing to her husband’s defense. ‘Meg and I had long, intimate chats about you, Dan James, so you be careful what you say about my Joe and my Meg. There’s such a thing as libel, you know.’
‘It would be slander, actually, Martha, but thanks anyway.’ Joe Gray’s comments were calm, for him. They seemed designed to quieten his wife, rather than praise her.
‘Listen to that one, will you,’ piped up Jean Jones, who was now sitting on the edge of her seat. ‘Thought you were like a mother to her, didn’t you, Martha? Well, you weren�
�t her mother, I was her mother. Not anyone’s mother, are you? Know what I mean, Martha? Meg and I might not have talked much over the years, but when we did talk, you can be sure she told me about your “long chats”. All about them. Maybe you were the one who didn’t want their secrets coming out. But there, I’ll say no more on the subject.’
I wondered who’d accuse who next.
‘That’s enough, Jean; your temper and your anger is upsetting Sally.’ Peter Webber’s voice was quiet, yet strangely commanding. ‘Can’t we all just be quiet, and wait?’
‘You should know all about keeping quiet, you’re good at that – right?’ Adrian O’Malley surprised me with that one. His eyes were narrow, and he seemed nervous, but he pushed on nonetheless. ‘Meg told me about you. Does the wife know, I wonder?’ He left that comment hanging in the air.
Luis Lopez had been sitting quietly on the floor beside the fire while all the barbs had been slung around above his head.
Then he joined in, declaiming, as usual; I found it very irritating. ‘But Peter is a good man. I cannot believe you would speak against him, Adrian. If anyone has kept something from his wife, and the world, it is you. I am famous, like you once were. I have people who throw themselves at me; I know what this is like. But you, you have a real skeleton in your closet – like Meg said. I do not think you will have told anyone about this skeleton.’
‘Ha!’ exclaimed Joe Gray. ‘All this talk of closets and stuff is getting boring. Come with me to make more coffee, Luis.’
The mood was broken, but I’d made some real progress; in less than ten minutes I’d gleaned that whatever it was Meg knew about the people in that room, she’d clearly shared the knowledge about each person with someone else. I didn’t think anyone would be lining up to share their own dark secret with me, but they might tell me what they knew about another person. It was worth a shot. Now all I had to do was get each person alone, and use any devices possible to get them to come clean about what they knew about someone else.
I decided to begin with Joe Gray. He was heading for the kitchen, and Luis hadn’t moved, despite Joe’s encouragement, so I volunteered to help with the coffee, and hotfooted it after the brusque little man. It sounded as though he knew something about Luis Lopez, or was I imagining it? I had to find out.
‘I’ll give you a hand with the coffee; I’ll be glad to get out of that atmosphere for a while.’ I’d decided to play ‘pathetic’ for Joe; I couldn’t imagine he’d fold for a strong woman, but he might have to put a dumb one straight. ‘It’s all a bit much for me, Joe. I mean, I know I’m a criminology professor and all that, but I don’t deal with actual crimes, you see, just the textbook stuff.’
I was lying, but he had no way of knowing about my contract work with the I-HIT squad, and Bud Anderson.
‘I guess that’s what all you academics are like – no idea about real life.’ He sounded bitter.
‘Luis doesn’t seem to be taking Meg’s death as badly as Jean is, does he? I mean, he seems to be taking it rather well, wouldn’t you say?’ I thought I’d cut straight to the chase.
‘Luis? He was pretty good for Meg’s profile for a while. They were only too happy to have her on all those chat shows and use the photos of the two of them together. Good for business, was Luis. All those women watching him strip off every week, then reading her books and imagining him as the love interest? Yes, he had his uses.’ Dismissive. Bitter. I wondered why.
‘So, with Meg’s profile being so high, I bet you were sorry to lose her as a client.’
Joe Gray put down the coffee pot and stared at me with his beady black eyes. He sneered. ‘What the hell would you know about it? I’ve put the last four years of my life into building that woman’s career, then she threw it all in my face. All because of him. That bubkis.’
‘Why “bubkis”, Joe? It means less than nothing, doesn’t it?’ I was playing dumb, and it seemed to be working.
‘Yeah – Luis is certainly less than nothing; he’s a nothing pretending to be a something. Something he’s not.’
‘How do you mean?’ I felt I was getting close.
Joe Gray laughed; it wasn’t a pleasant laugh. ‘You got it that the doors between them were locked this morning?’
I nodded. I’d wondered about that.
‘Well, she wasn’t missing out on anything by locking them.’
‘You mean, they didn’t sleep together? Ever?’
‘No point. Meg wasn’t his type.’
‘But they’re engaged.’ I tried to sound puzzled.
‘Engaged? Yeah – that was good for her last book. And I’m sure they could have kept it going for a while. You know he’s been “engaged” twice before? But never married. None of them’ll go that far. They’ll go along with it for a while, then they realize how dumb they’ll look when the truth comes out. And out it’ll come, you can be sure of that. Some day. There’s an actual movement that “outs” stars, and it was my job to make sure no one outed him while he was with Meg. She’d told me she was going to break off the engagement, but not before that little snake got her into all that psychobabble stuff. I was the one who introduced them, so I guess I only have myself to blame. Brought it all on my own head.’
So, Luis Lopez was gay. I reasoned it was probably something he wouldn’t want made public; while being gay might not be the problem in Hollywood it had once been, he probably wouldn’t get the roles he wanted if the truth came out. A gay man playing a straight romantic lead, or a gay man playing an action cop, is not something that’s seen every day. He was on the gravy train right now – the world finding out about his true sexual orientation might dislodge him. Luis struck me as a man who liked fame; he wasn’t known for ducking the paparazzi.
‘So, do you think Luis might have killed Meg to keep his secret safe?’
‘If I knew that then I’d be the professor,’ smirked Joe. ‘You’re the one with all those brain cells Meg told us about. You work it out. All I’ll say is that he might be earning a lot right now – but he spends it fast, too. It costs a lot to keep his men-friends quiet. But not all of them want money. There was one who just couldn’t take the pressure – killed himself, about five years ago, when Luis was “engaged” to that starlet who’s in all those action movies these days – you know, the one who can’t seem to keep her clothes on?’ I nodded, I knew who he meant.
‘So Luis really does have a skeleton. In his closet.’ The edit button that’s supposed to control the links between my brain and my mouth seemed to have stopped working for a moment.
Joe Gray’s eyes sparkled wickedly. ‘Yeah – you could put it like that,’ then he smiled in a different way – warmly – at his wife who’d come to see if she could help us in the kitchen.
‘The cavalry – good; I’m gonna get back to the fire, I’m cold. I’m sure you two women can manage.’ Joe waved as he headed back toward the Great Room.
‘What can I do?’ asked Martha Gray. She seemed relieved to have escaped the rest of the group.
‘Not much – we just have to wait for the water to boil so we can fill the cafetière again,’ I said gently. ‘It was such a shame that Jean was so upset that she had a go at you, Martha, but I’m sure she’ll feel a bit better soon. But hey, you were a good wife to come to Joe’s rescue when Dan James started to say nasty things about him.’
Martha rolled her eyes. ‘Professor Dan James is not a nice man, Cait, and that’s the truth. Meg told me all about him. The things he used to get up to with those girls at his university? I found it hard to believe, I have to be honest.’ I wondered just how sheltered a life Martha Gray had really lived – not that sheltered, I reckoned.
She drew closer to me – I felt a confidential conversation coming on, which was just what I wanted.
‘I’ve never told anyone this,’ she began, promisingly, ‘but when I first met Meg she was still in a real state about Dan James, and she’d left him four years earlier. She never told me much about the other men in her life, but Da
n had stripped her of her dignity, and that’s the truth. She told me he once as good as killed a man, you know.’
I didn’t know, but I wanted to find out.
‘No!’ I whispered, conspiratorially. I wanted Martha to feel as though we were two girls, having a gossip; it seemed she liked gossip.
‘Yes,’ she replied, clearly believing that I couldn’t believe it. ‘Not as in killing him outright, of course –’ she sounded a little disappointed about that – ‘but what he did to him definitely led to his death. It seems the young man had written some poetry that Dan criticized quite cruelly in class. It pushed the boy over the edge, and he dropped out of school. He’d worshipped Dan, apparently, and he just couldn’t cope with his ridicule. The poor boy ended up living on the streets, eventually took to drugs and died, penniless and alone. And all because of how Dan James had treated him. It was as good as murder; Meg said so, and she worried terribly about the poor boy in question. She tracked him down, on the streets, and tried to make Dan go to him, before he died, to apologize; but Dan said that he had to speak the truth, and that the boy’s poems were rubbish. Of course, no one at Dan’s university knew anything about it; they thought the boy just couldn’t cope with the workload and just dropped out, like they do. But Meg knew, and she never forgave Dan. She said that his pride would be his downfall.’
‘Do you think he might have killed Meg to stop her from telling the story to anyone else?’ I tried to not sound excited.
Martha Gray thought for a moment then spoke thoughtfully, ‘The proud are often not brave. And I think whoever killed Meg must have been brave, or foolhardy. You say you don’t know how she was killed, so I’m assuming you’ve discounted a lot of the obvious methods. So what’s left? I think if you can work out how she was killed, you’ll understand who would have been capable of doing it. And who would have wanted to do it enough that they risked it.’
