Dead at Breakfast Read online

  “I remember that case,” Maggie said. “I was in college in the East but I had friends at Berkeley.”

  “I remember too,” said Hope. “There were footprints in the blood . . . ?”

  “Two footprints in the blood, and the murder weapon was never found. Nothing had been stolen. The assumption was that she knew her killer, or killers, and may even have participated willingly. Am I remembering this right?” Maggie asked.

  “There was some theory about bad LSD, and a boyfriend . . . no, wait, it was peyote buttons and the boyfriend was an anthropologist. Very involved with Stone Age religious rites.”

  “No one was ever charged.”

  “Yes, the boyfriend was charged and so was Melanie’s roommate, but they were never tried.”

  “Buster?”

  Buster was drumming his fingers on the table to keep himself awake.

  “What was the roommate’s name?” Hope asked.

  Maggie offered, “Eileen Bachman? Bookman? Beekman?”

  “Bachman,” said Buster.

  “And when they ran all our prints, they hit a match with Eileen,” said Hope.

  “Margaux Kleinkramer,” said Maggie.

  “Can I go now?”

  “Drive carefully. Thank you, honeybunch.”

  Buster was so annoyed at being addressed as honeybunch while he was in uniform, that he forgot he was stepping outside into a swarm of news bugs, god they were like deerflies or chiggers or something, buzzing and biting. Carnivorous insects, there was a concept.

  Hope and Maggie told no one what they had learned, but there was small chance that the press corps would fail to worm it out of someone, and indeed, by the end of dinner, the news was on the airwaves.

  Eileen Bachman, one-time suspect in the still-unsolved Berkeley murder that the press at the time had called the Druid Slaying, was staying at the Oquossoc Mountain Inn under an assumed name at the time that Artemis’s father was killed there. Local police were not yet saying that Antippas’s death was suspicious, but the press wasn’t in a mood to split hairs about that. Esquire magazine had published a long feature on the Berkeley murder at the time, with pictures of Melanie Gray, her then boyfriend, her grieving parents, her roommate Eileen, and the murder scene. Fifteen years after the murder, Vanity Fair had revived the whole story when it was learned that the other suspect, the victim’s boyfriend, had killed himself. Both articles, with pictures, were getting substantial play again in online news and gossip sites and spilling onto the TV news, in spite of the fact that no one had suggested that Margaux had motive or opportunity or was in any way involved in what happened to Alexander Antippas.

  The Kleinkramers had kept to their room and dinner had been sent up to them, but around nine o’clock, the elevator doors opened and there they were. Margaux was carefully made up, and Homer was composed and wearing a cheerful smile.

  In the lounge, all heads had turned; all eyes were on them. A preview of what Margaux would face everywhere she went for the rest of her life.

  “Hello, everybody,” said Margaux brightly. She scanned the room, hesitated a moment, then headed for Hope and Maggie’s table by the window where they were playing honeymoon bridge.

  “May we join you?”

  “By all means,” said Hope. “What are you drinking?” One of the waiters from the dining room had zipped to their sides as the Kleinkramers settled themselves.

  “Gin martini with a twist,” said Homer.

  “I believe I’ll have sparkling water with a dash of bitters,” said Margaux. Maggie saw that she was already stoned to the gills. Pills? Marijuana? Whatever it was, it was getting the job done. Her eyes were glassy and she exuded a beatific calm.

  “Canasta?” said Hope.

  “Lovely,” said the Kleinkramers.

  Buster was asleep with his boots on when Brianna got home from her shift at the nursing home. He was facedown on their bed in the tiny bedroom with the lights on. She knew that if he was wakened suddenly he might come up fighting or dive for his gun, so she rattled around in the kitchen, put the kettle on, and then washed the dishes left in the sink while she waited for the water to boil.

  Buster wandered out of the bedroom, looking dazed. Half of his hair was standing straight up.

  “Hey, sweet thing,” said Brianna. She went into the bedroom, took off her pink uniform, and came back out in the fancy terry cloth robe Hope had sent to Buster for Christmas the year before. As if he ever put on anything after his shower besides his boxers and a wife beater. The kettle whistled.

  “Want some tea?”

  Buster shook his head. He was still coming back from whatever dream he’d been in.

  “Did you have any dinner?”

  Buster shook his head again. “I was going to heat a can of chili, but I never got to it.”

  Brianna took a frozen pizza out of their tiny freezer and popped it into the toaster oven. This was pretty much the sum of her culinary repertoire, but it was fine with Buster. He loved pizza.

  “Sandra down at Barb’s told me what happened at the inn last night.”

  “How’d she know about it?”

  Brianna gave him a look that meant, is that a serious question? “So how’s it going?”

  Buster sighed. He looked at the telephone, and saw that the answering machine was blinking. He must have missed some calls when he was sleeping.

  “The vic was a huge fat guy, bigger than Shep Gordon. Pretty badly burnt. You know when you leave hot dogs on the grill too long and the skin starts to—”

  “Yes,” said Brianna, cutting him off.

  “Not a pretty sight.” Involuntarily he recalled the face with the lips burned away and the teeth grinning.

  “So the fire killed him? Was it arson?”

  “I guess Sandra didn’t hear about what we found stuck on the guy’s back.” He told her, and she screamed. Brianna had seen a lot and she was hard to shock, but she really hated snakes. He started to tell her about the particular traits of the timber rattler, but she said, “Buster, stop.” He did, or switched tracks.

  “We still don’t know what killed him. If he was alive when the fire got going, why did he just lie there? So we’re waiting on the M.E.”

  “I had a surprise today too,” said Brianna.

  “Rumble at the bingo game?”

  Brianna was working in the Memory Neighborhood this month, with the dementia patients. Many were sweet, even if they kept asking the same question over and over, but a few were angry or unpredictable. She had a couple of big strong patients who took some handling.

  “No, I met your mother.”

  She popped the pizza out of the toaster, slid it onto a plate, and set it down in front of Buster. He was eating before she had time to hand him a knife and fork. After tearing into most of a wedge, chewing the way you do when your mouth is too full and the food is too hot, he said, “I thought you just said you met my mother.”

  “I did. She was at Barb’s with her friend Maggie. They asked me over to their table and we all had pie. I thought she was very nice.”

  Buster stared at her. “Wrinkly old number about this tall? About a hundred and thirty pounds, blond hair that looks like a wig?”

  “She is not wrinkly and I thought she was very pretty and very nice. She asked about my job, and all about how we met, and she said they hoped they’d see me again. I thought we might meet them in town for supper before they go.”

  Buster was nonplussed. His plan for how to let his mother know he had a girlfriend was to send her an announcement when their first child was born.

  The phone rang. They both startled at the sound; a call this late had to be bad news of some kind. Brianna lost the game of chicken they were silently playing as to who was going to answer.

  Buster could hear the speaker talking loud and fast and then Brianna screamed. There was some confused howling then, from both Brianna and the caller. Brianna hung up the phone and shouted at Buster, “Shep Gordon just came to the house and took Cherry awa
y! He took her away to Ainsley!”

  Shep Gordon had been on the phone with the M.E.’s office, trying to get some hard information about cause of death. The M.E. wanted to do the autopsy herself, this being a high-profile case and a complex one, but had eaten a bad tuna sandwich for lunch and gone home with food poisoning. The assistant M.E. had looked over the body and reported that the front half of the vic was cooked pretty good and it was disgusting to watch, how the flesh fell away from the bones if you fooled with it. They had to wait for the toxicology report to know for sure about drugs and poisons in his system, but it looked as if the snake had struck at least twice before meeting its own end. There were puncture holes on the upper back and on the back of one huge thigh. The way they reconstructed it, the snake must have been deep under the covers at the foot of the bed when Antippas got into it. It must have rattled, or tried to, but would that have been heard? Deprived of its chance to scare an enemy off, the snake had struck. The thigh first, they figured, then it slithered up, maybe trying to find the way out of the bed. Whatever happened next—the vic sat up? Threw back the covers? Rolled over looking for what had stuck him? The snake had gotten its fangs in again, deep, and wound up under the body when the guy felt the effect of the first bite and fell back. While they waited for the M.E. to come back, the office was doing research on what kind of venom this snake was packing and how it would affect a guy this enormous. They’d get back to them on this. But just spitballing, it looked like what Alexander Antippas died of was smoke and carbon monoxide from the fire. The airways, what was left of the nose, looked to them as if he’d been breathing as the fire heated up and engulfed the room.

  Not a nice way to go. Not at all. The guy must have been fucking terrified, knowing what was happening, and unable to help himself.

  Shep drove back to Ainsley in a contemplative mood. He thought he’d take his stepson shooting at the rifle range on Sunday. Kid drove him nuts, but Shep could be nicer to him; a little bit went a long way with this kid, who hadn’t had much luck in the father department. It would please the wife too, which might work out well for Shep also. Nothing like the thought of finding a big poisonous snake in your bed to make a guy appreciate the homely pleasures.

  Back at the barracks, Shep had talked to the fire marshal’s office. He asked to see all the photos from fire scenes in the area in the last two years. There hadn’t been that many, and few of them had been at all suspicious. One guy in West Bergen had tried to burn his barn down to collect the insurance, and he’d done a piss-poor job of it. Mostly it was wiring, chewed through by squirrels or just overloaded, that started things. A lot of times, especially in old farmhouses, there weren’t many outlets because there wasn’t that much to plug in when the electricity had come in. Now though, you had your computers and hair dryers and a bunch of other hair things he didn’t understand, his wife had this thing that heated her curlers. And TVs and toasters and microwaves and then, oh god, Christmas lights and all that. People would get extension cords and have all this stuff running from one plug and then be surprised when the house burned down.

  What he was interested in now was what he could see in the background of the fire pictures. Who was there watching. People liked to watch fires; you couldn’t blame them. He liked to have a bonfire at New Year’s himself. If there was snow, and it was safe. He and his buds would pile up old tires, and trash wood you couldn’t burn in the woodstove without gumming up the flue, and they’d have this huge pyre going all day, with people standing around drinking coffee and hot chocolate, the kids with marshmallows and the grown-ups with rum in theirs, cooking hot dogs on sticks and just enjoying the color and the life in the flames, the sparks going up into the blue dome above them.

  But people who set fires, they enjoyed fires in a different way. For some it was sexual. You looked for guys wearing big loose overcoats, having at themselves insides their clothes. God, some people. If the fire broke out at night, you looked for people who were fully dressed, instead of rousted out in their jammies, like they knew ahead of time what was going to happen.

  He went carefully through the pictures Deputy Babbin had taken. He’d been first on the scene at Oquossoc. There was Gabe Gurrell looking panicked, with a coat on over his nightshirt, and his skinny shanks stuck into puffy sheepskin slippers. Like bunny slippers. Nightshirt? He supposed that made it easier to clear the decks for action than pajama pants. Was Gabe getting any action? Where’d you get a thing like that, a nightshirt, he wondered. Shep bought most of his clothes at Manganero’s, where you could also get gas for your car or diesel for your truck, buy a head of lettuce, get your work clothes and boots, your fishing and hunting gear including a good selection of rifles and shotguns, or rent a wedding dress.

  Once the fire trucks arrived, the pictures were busier. Some of the guests from the inn were in the parking lot, gaping upward at the fire as the men did their work, putting up ladders, hauling hoses, attacking the flames. The guests were all half dressed or in nightclothes, wrapped in blankets or bathrobes. Buster had done a good job, shooting away from the fire, recording the background. Who was there who shouldn’t be? Whose cars were those? He enlarged the pictures on his screen as much as he could without losing detail; made a list of license plates, including partials; took note of the watchers. In addition to the firefighters, there were only two people completely dressed. One was a skinny bent-over guy, wearing a barn jacket and dungarees. Shep couldn’t see the face. He’d seen people bent over like that with rheumatoid arthritis. Mrs. Carter, who went to his wife’s church, when you talked to her she seemed to be talking to her shoes, but she was an old sweetheart, sharp too, and she bore the pain wonderful. He couldn’t see the face on this guy, but he had a hunch it was that fellow Niner, who’d had the accident that time. Shep had been a deputy patrol officer back then, and he remembered talking to men who responded to the scene. A wonder the guy could walk at all, a wonder he was still breathing.

  Out among the cars, it looked as if there was another figure, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, wearing a sweatshirt with the hood up. Skinny and small, could even be a woman. Shep couldn’t get any detail at all on the face. He was out in the dark of the parking lot, well away from the rest of the people. Or she.

  Shep went to the photos taken by the real photographer, the crime scene guy. You could tell by the light from the flames and the number of cars and people in the shots that this was later, closer to morning. In a lot of them, police vehicles were lighting the scene with their headlights. There was the bent-over guy, facing the fire. His face was in bright light and Shep was now sure it was Niner. Now where was Mr. Hoodie?

  There he was. He’d come in closer to the scene, and was standing near one of the fire trucks. He was keeping in the shadows, but there was one shot that showed the face clearly. The hood was pulled tight so just the features showed, no hair, no neck. He still couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman but it was small and young. Youngish, anyway. He looked carefully at the cars in the parking lot, making note of which ones had been there from the beginning and were still there, this late in the scene.

  He went out to the bullpen and asked, “Anyone here from the Bergen area? Bergen, West Bergen?”

  “Dorothy. She’s from Bergen Falls. I think her mom still lives there.”

  “Get her, will you?”

  Dorothy lumbered into Shep’s office. Shep gave her a seat, and pulled up the pictures of the fire that included Mr. Hoodie. She looked carefully at the pictures as he scrolled through them. When he got to the one with the face showing, he stopped. Dorothy leaned into the screen.

  “Can you make it bigger?”

  He did his best, and Dorothy said suddenly, “Oh sure, I got her now. That’s Cherry Weaver. I know her mom. Cherry used to work at the Upper Cuts shop here in Ainsley. She did my perm once.”

  Shep leaned in and studied the intent little face peering out of the closed circle of the hood. It looked like something medieval.

  “Roy Weav
er’s kid? What’s she doing at the inn, you have any idea?”

  “I think I heard she was working there, but don’t take my word for it.”

  “No I won’t. Thanks much.”

  Dorothy went back to her desk, and Shep printed the pictures that showed his two persons of interest, then went back to the bullpen.

  “Harris? Wheatly? Will you guys get back over to the inn and talk to Gabe Gurrell? Find out what Earl Niner has to do with the inn, why he’s here in these pictures with all his clothes on. Then find out everything you can about this girl, Cherry Weaver. What was she doing there last night. And find out if either of them knew Antippas, had any reason to harm him.”

  His detectives took off, back to Oquossoc, and Shep settled in to look at the rest of his pictures of local fire scenes.

  DAY SIX, FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11

  It was three-thirty in the morning when Brianna was allowed to see Cherry. It might have gone faster if Buster had come with her, but Brianna didn’t think so and wouldn’t let him. A local deputy sheriff didn’t swing much weight in these leagues and besides he’d been up for like twenty-two hours straight and needed the sleep. Plus, she sort of didn’t like picturing Buster telling his mother that he’d spent the night getting Brianna’s sister out of jail.

  Cherry was not under arrest, but no one would tell Brianna if she was there as a witness or a suspect. Brianna sat in the unhealthy fluorescence of the police barracks waiting room, watching peace officers go in and out with purposeful demeanors. Now and then she would try to ask someone a question, and always she’d be told to wait for Shep.

  When Cherry came out at last she was alone; she took one look at her sister and burst into tears. Cherry’s mouth went into a strange oblong shape when she cried. Brianna clamped an arm around her and marched her out of the station, while with the other hand she called her mother to say she was taking Cherry home with her. The call went to the answering machine, of course. Beryl wasn’t one to lose a lot of sleep over other people’s messes.