Читать книгу Boston Scream Murder - Ginger Bolton - Страница 12

Chapter 6

From my kneeling position, I noticed something else on the ground behind the bar—a long-handled cast-iron skillet like the one that Nina and I had rehung the night before in Rich’s cottage.

I stood, yanked my phone out of my apron pocket, tapped 911, and gave the dispatcher Rich’s address. “There’s a man here without apparent vital signs. Please send an ambulance and police officers.” I glowered at the skillet. “I think the man might have been attacked.” My voice cracked. I wanted to be outside that tent. I wanted to be far away. I wished I had never agreed to bring donuts to Rich’s party. I wished I hadn’t come....

A paddle banged against a canoe again, maybe farther away than the first time. Even if mist hadn’t concealed any boaters who might be out on the lake, I wouldn’t be able to identify a boat or a person through the tent’s vinyl windows. They blurred and distorted everything.

“The officers and ambulance are on their way,” the dispatcher said. “Stay on the line, please.”

“Okay.” My phone against my ear, I bent to study a piece of paper near Rich’s hand. The paper was wrinkled, as if Rich had been clutching it when he fell. A black felt-tip marker lay nearby.

Without touching the paper, I read what I could. It was a to-do list written in thick marker like the printing in the rental notebook at Rich’s cottage. Items were checked off in the same black ink: turn on electricity to tent at ten twenty-five, check; send Terri away at ten twenty-eight, check; caterers preliminary visit ten thirty to eleven, check; donuts and coffee at eleven fifty-five, blank; guests begin arriving at noon, blank; caterers return with last-minute food by twelve twenty-five, blank.

The top of the list was too wadded up to be readable, but I knew not to disturb what I strongly suspected was a crime scene, and I didn’t dare touch the list or smooth it to decipher it.

I moved to the tablecloth where the guest list was taped. With the back of one fingernail, I lifted the bottom of the piece of paper. Nothing was written on the other side. Why did the guest list have only about twenty names while there was seating for thirty-six people around tables in the back of the festive tent?

I had clearly heard Rich invite Cheryl and Steve, but their names were not on the list. Had Rich gone around inviting people at the last minute? Maybe he had ordered food and seating for more people than had accepted his invitation, which could have been why he’d been eager to invite Cheryl and Steve although he barely knew Cheryl and had merely been introduced to Steve.

The guest list was in an airy, feminine handwriting that was nothing like the dark printing and check marks on Rich’s to-do list and the printing in his rental notebook. The first name on the guest list was Terri Estable. The curlicued top of the T swept, tentlike, above the entire length of her name.

Hoping to catch a glimpse of the canoe I thought I’d heard, I eased out of the tent. I kept the phone next to my ear while I walked across the flat lower section of the lawn to Rich’s high-tech dock. Setting my sneakered feet down as quietly as I could on the synthetic planks, I made my way to the end of the dock. Ripples tapped at its supports. Out on the lake, thick mist hugged the surface of the water. The air smelled cold and watery. Beyond the cloud-like fog, I could see only the tops of trees around other sides of Lake Fleekom. Mist filmed the neighbor’s dock and the tall cedar hedge separating that property from Rich’s.

I turned around. Maybe if I stared hard enough to bring the hazy forest beyond the tent into focus, my hearing would sharpen also, and I would be able to distinguish the subtle sounds of a possible attacker slinking away through the underbrush.

A car door slammed. My heart racing and the soles of my sneakers pounding the dock, I ran back to land. The police already?

In a lacy pink dress and shiny black patent heels, Cheryl was mincing down the hilly part of the lawn toward the tent.

I called out, “Stay there!” I hadn’t run far, but I was out of breath.

The 911 dispatcher asked, “Are you all right?”

My hand hurt from clutching my phone. “I’m fine. The deceased was throwing a party that was to begin at noon, and a guest has arrived. I’m going to try to keep her and the others away from the deceased.”

“Excellent. If there might be an attacker around, don’t take risks.”

I promised that I wouldn’t and went up to meet Cheryl, who had obediently stopped when I told her to and was gazing uncertainly at me. “The party is canceled,” I explained.

Those usually benign and grandmotherly blue eyes could be shrewd. “Something terrible has happened, hasn’t it, Emily?” She reached out and gave my free hand a consoling squeeze.

I closed my eyes for only as long as it took to inhale. “I can’t talk about it, but I need to stay here. Would you mind telling anyone else who arrives that the party is canceled, and they should leave? That doesn’t include first responders but does include any caterers who might arrive. Tell the caterers not to unload anything.”

“I’ll do my best.” She was still holding my hand. “You take care, Emily.”

I thanked her. We let go of each other, and she started up the hill toward Rich’s driveway.

Feeling sorry for myself because I couldn’t have kept the empathetic woman with me for company, I returned to the doorway of the tent and stared at the beautiful setup for a seventieth birthday party that would never happen. The inside of the tent was silent except for occasional burbles from the slow cooker of Boston baked beans.

Earlier, those beans had smelled delicious. They no longer did.

“Need a hand?” someone asked behind me. I whipped around. It was Cheryl’s date, Steve. Like Cheryl, he was dressed for an afternoon garden party. He was wearing new-looking loafers, black slacks, and a dark burgundy dress shirt.

Doing my best to dissuade him from coming closer, I walked a few steps away from the tent’s entryway. “Can you help Cheryl?” She was up on the driveway beside the driver’s window of a white van with the Cat’s Catering logo on its side. She shook her head. More cars pulled into the circular driveway, and I thought I heard a motorcycle. Its engine revved and went quiet. “She looks a little frantic up there,” I said to Steve. “She’s trying to send the caterers away and tell other people that the party is canceled.”

“Why?”

I didn’t know how much Cheryl had told him about what I’d said, so I gave him only a short answer. “I’ll explain later.”

“Okay.” He turned around and sauntered up the hill.

Wearing dirty jeans and a faded black T-shirt, Terri’s ex-boyfriend, Derek, barreled toward him. Steve extended both arms as if to stop him, but Derek dodged around him and charged toward me.

Bracing myself for an attack, I considered diving into the tent and fending Derek off with that long-handled cast-iron skillet, which if I was correct, had already been used as a weapon that day. But it was part of the crime scene and should not be disturbed. Besides, it was too heavy for me to fling around with anything resembling precision. I would probably end up twirling myself and the skillet across the beach and into the lake.

Derek tossed a lock of blond hair off his forehead. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t come any closer,” I warned with all the authority of a short person wearing a police hat with a donut attached to the front.

The voice in my ear said, “The police are almost there.”

“The party’s canceled,” I said.

Derek’s eyes were half covered by his upper lids. “What party?”

From near the lake behind me, a woman demanded, “What are you doing here, Derek? You’re not invited. Go away.” I recognized Terri’s shrill tones and turned around.

Wearing a red life jacket over a red fleece hoodie, jeans, knee-high rubber boots, and binoculars on a strap around her neck, Terri was striding toward us and away from a red canoe pulled up on the shore next to Rich’s dock. The canoe hadn’t been there before I talked to Cheryl. Terri must have beached it almost silently.

Derek held his palms out toward us. “I’m leaving.” His hands were mostly clean, but black lined the creases. The stains looked a lot like the soot that Nina and I had scrubbed off our hands the night before after doing battle with the long-handled skillet in Rich’s cottage.

I was sure that the police would want to talk to Derek. “Wait in your car,” I suggested. “Someone will explain.”

He sneered. “I don’t have a car. And I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m not getting involved.” He stomped up the hill toward the driveway. The heels of his boots were worn down at the sides.

Terri turned to me. Her cheeks were flushed, and her lips were thin with anger. “What are you doing here?”

I guessed she didn’t know that Rich had ordered donuts and coffee from me. “I . . . Rich asked for our coffee and Boston cream donuts.”

She glared at me but didn’t say anything. Had her canoe paddle been the one I’d heard banging against a gunwale a couple of times since I arrived? She could have clobbered her long-lost and suddenly new boyfriend with the skillet, the plate of Boston brown bread, or her paddle, and canoed away quickly and noisily. After she was sure that someone else would be here and would therefore appear guilty, she could have slipped quietly back to shore and acted innocent.

I wasn’t certain, but I thought that the canoe I’d heard being bumped with a paddle was aluminum. Terri’s canoe looked like fiberglass with wooden gunwales.

I knew it wasn’t nice to question her before she learned the truth about Rich, but I wasn’t sure that what had happened to him would upset her. Maybe she already knew. I didn’t ask why she went canoeing in huge rubber boots. According to Tom, heavy boots could have been at least part of the reason Rich’s late wife drowned in this lake. Instead, I asked her, “Were there other boats on the lake?”

“I heard some boats while I was out there, but it’s too foggy to see more than a few feet away, and I don’t know who else might have been paddling around.” She touched her binoculars. “I go birding in my canoe whenever I can, but today, when I had my first chance to canoe on Lake Fleekom since Derek got us kicked out of the cottage we rented, it was too foggy to see many birds. It was cold, too.”

We rented? According to Derek and the rental records that Nina and I had found in the cottage, Derek was the renter, in name at least. Terri wrapped her arms around the red life jacket. It almost perfectly matched her canoe. She continued shivering.

I wasn’t cold, but I was close to trembling, too, from shock.

Above us near the driveway, a motorcycle roared away.

I asked Terri, “How many homes and cottages are on this lake?” I tried to sound casually friendly and conversational despite the phone plastered to my ear.

“Ten or twelve, I guess, from what I could see before Derek and his friends got us kicked out, plus there’s a county park with a beach where people launch rowboats and canoes. This lake’s too small for motorboats.” Her gaze darted from me to the tent to the back of Rich’s house to the driveway. “Do you know where Rich is? He sent me away so he could surprise me after the caterers arranged everything inside the tent.” She pointed up toward the driveway. “They’re leaving, so they must be done.” She looked down at her rubber boots. Their toes glistened with water. “I suppose I should go change, but I’m sure he won’t mind if I just peek into the tent first.”

Whether she cared about Rich or not, I didn’t want her to see him or interfere with the apparent crime scene. Feeling terrible about him and also about keeping his death a secret from her, I blocked her from going closer to the tent. “The party can’t go on.”

“What?” she screeched. “Why not?”

A man pushed through the hedge between Rich’s yard and the neighbor’s. How did police keep crime scenes pristine before backup arrived? People were coming from everywhere, even out of the bushes. The man strode across Rich’s lush lawn to us. He was tall and muscular. His paint-stained work pants and sweatshirt made me guess that he was not dressed for Rich’s party. Maybe, like Terri, he had not yet changed. Judging by the gray in his hair and the wrinkles in his neck, he was about Rich’s age.

“What’s wrong, Terri?” he asked. His brown eyes looked concerned. A small spray of cedar stuck out of his hair above one ear.

Terri reached up, pulled the debris out of his hair, and dropped it on the lawn. It could have looked like an intimate gesture if she hadn’t seemed too distracted to notice what she was doing. “This caterer says the party can’t go on.” Maybe she was also too distracted to realize that the intimacy of her gesture could have given away that she was close to Rich’s neighbor after only recently reconnecting with Rich.

And perhaps as much as two hours after Rich might have been attacked . . .

I guessed that the police would want to talk to these two, especially Terri, and they’d also want to be the ones to inform her of Rich’s death so they could gauge her reaction. I pointed up the hill at a cozy grouping of lawn chairs near a deck spanning the rear of Rich’s house. “You two could sit up there until everything’s sorted out.”

Like Terri’s ex-boyfriend, the neighbor looked strong enough to fatally wield that skillet. The blue, yellow, and white splotches on his outfit were probably paint, but what about the red and brown ones? I didn’t want to stare at them but couldn’t help it. He held a hand out toward Terri, “I’ll wait with you, Terri.” Maybe he knew what was in the innocent-looking party tent and why I didn’t want Terri to see it.

Terri ran her hands through her pixie-cut brown hair. She barely seemed to hear either of us. “Rich said I should put my canoe away when I got back. I’ll do that.”

I knew I should try to stop her, but the sound of sirens, still far away, distracted me. Unless the hills and valleys around Lake Fleekom were throwing echoes in strange directions, the sirens were coming toward us.

Terri shrieked, “Is there a fire?” She glanced up toward Rich’s house as if expecting flames to spew out of upper story windows. Because the house was set into the hill, there were three floors in back. The neighbor put his arm around her. She sagged against him for a second, then detached herself and marched down to her canoe. She lifted it to her shoulders and carried it above her head up the hill. The neighbor retrieved her paddle from the beach and followed her to the back of the house. She lowered the canoe and slid it underneath the deck. Although she was only about my size, she made it all look easy. I was certain her canoe weighed more than my kayak, which I tended to carry with both hands in front of me like the novice I was.

Rich’s neighbor leaned the paddle against a pillar supporting the deck, led Terri to the lawn chairs, and helped her sit in one. She was still wearing her life jacket and binoculars. The neighbor eased down into a chair next to hers and stared down toward the tent. I had an uncomfortable feeling that he was watching my every move in an assessing and judgmental way.

Two police cars raced down the hill and tore into the driveway. I told the 911 dispatcher that first responders had arrived. She let me disconnect.

Finally, I could use my phone’s camera. I ran into the tent, quickly snapped pictures of the guest list and the to-do list, and ran out again.

Two of the four officers emerging from squad cars were close friends of mine, Misty Ossler and Hooligan Houlihan. Beckoning, I called to them. They waved and trotted down the grassy slope toward me. The other two officers went out of my sight, toward the front door of Rich’s mansion.

I stared up at the tall stone structure. Was anyone inside it? Did Rich have servants? Family?

Terri was standing, the back of her hand against her mouth. The neighbor had stood, too, and again had his arm around Terri. He was glaring at me as if he’d watched me dash into and out of the tent and had figured out that something was very wrong. Maybe the neighbor had attempted to kill Rich, was afraid he hadn’t succeeded, and didn’t want me or anyone else reviving him.

I wished that reviving Rich were possible.

Misty grasped my arm. “What’s up?”

I babbled, “I brought donuts to Rich Royalson’s birthday party and found him lying inside the tent. I think he’s dead, and it looks like he could have been attacked with a skillet.” I pointed. “He’s behind that flap, between it and the bar.”

A bit taller than her auburn-haired, freckle-faced patrol partner, Misty was also senior to him in the police department. She preceded him into the tent.

An ambulance screeched into the driveway. Samantha jumped out of the driver’s seat. I called to her, and she ran down the hill while her partner, a man I didn’t know, opened the back of the ambulance.

I pointed to the tent doorway. “Misty and Hooligan are in there with him. I think we’re all too late.”

Samantha gave me a concerned look, patted my arm, and went into the tent.

I glanced at Terri again to see if she showed any signs of recognizing Samantha, who, I thought, lived near her.

I couldn’t tell if she recognized Samantha, but she probably recognized Samantha’s EMT uniform, and she and Rich’s neighbor had to have recognized Misty and Hooligan’s uniforms. Terri cradled her cheeks in her hands. She looked about to scream.

Samantha’s partner wheeled a gear-covered stretcher down to the tent. He left the stretcher outside and carried gear inside.

I heard Misty radio headquarters and request a detective.

She didn’t need to. An unmarked police car pulled up behind the marked cruisers. A tall and handsome man wearing a dark gray suit unfolded himself from the driver’s seat.

Brent Fyne, the man Nina called my handsome detective.