Dead at Breakfast Read online

  Cherry had had about an hour of sleep in Buster’s Barcalounger before her sister woke her that morning, though she was trying to be quiet about getting Buster’s breakfast. Brianna had a double shift at the nursing home that day, filling in for a colleague called to jury duty. She’d taken it on because she wanted the money; she hadn’t counted on getting zero sleep between midnight and eight, but she had to go, and there was the question of what to do with Cherry. Cherry was a mess; they couldn’t leave her alone. She might talk to people she shouldn’t; she might panic and take off.

  “I’ll take her up to the inn to stay with your mother,” said Buster.

  “I don’t want to go to the fucking inn,” said Cherry. “I wish the whole thing had burned to the ground.”

  “Hey!” Brianna said sharply. “Don’t you say that! Don’t say anything like that, ever again. To anybody!”

  “Don’t have a cow, man. They hate me and I hate them. I can say that if I want to.”

  “No you can’t! Jesus, Cherry, don’t you know what’s going on here?”

  “Yes. Everyone always blames me. I didn’t do anything! I was just standing there!”

  Brianna had heard this litany in the car last night. It was as if the shock of being suspected had caused Cherry to revert to the strategy of a much younger person, insisting that she never went near the birthday cake even though she had chocolate icing in her hair. As if no one could prove a thing if you just kept denying it. Had she done something?

  “You have to talk to Mom, and get yourself a lawyer and until you do that, you can’t talk to anyone. You have to be with people who can look out for you.”

  “Can I go to Dad’s?”

  Brianna was scrambling eggs. She hadn’t thought of that as an option. No one would, really, think of Roy Weaver as a port in a storm, except, apparently, Cherry. “If you can find him,” she said.

  Cherry dug in her pockets for her ancient clamshell phone, and punched in her father’s number. Brianna watched her. Cherry’s face was defiant as she clapped the clamshell shut.

  “Probably still asleep,” she said. “You can just drop me there, I’ll be fine.”

  “Listen. You have to make decisions. You need good advice and you need help. You need to talk to Mom.”

  “She always blames me.”

  “That’s because you’re such a fuck-up!”

  “Thanks, a lot!” She began to cry tears of self-pity.

  “Jesus. Stop it. I know you didn’t do anything, and so does Buster, but you . . . Oh, hell, I have to go.” She kissed Buster on the cheek, took a piece of dry toast from the toaster, went to get her coat from a peg and her purse and her car keys. She got the toast stuck in the sleeve of her coat as she put it on, then she was out the door, which slammed behind her.

  Cherry looked up miserably at Buster, who put half the scrambled eggs on a plate and handed it to Cherry with a fork. She stared at it as if she wasn’t sure what to do with it. Then she asked, in a small voice, “Is there any ketchup?”

  Buster found the bottle in a cupboard and gave it to her. They ate in silence, Buster at the table and Cherry in the Barcalounger, still in the sweat clothes she’d been wearing when Shep Gordon carried her off so many hours before.

  Judge Hennebery was no longer young, and since his wife had died, was not often completely sober. His daughter was after him to retire and move to Florida to a death camp; she never had had any sense, Ellen. What kind of grown-up woman would sign her name Elli, with a circle over the i?

  He liked coming to work. He liked having a place to go, and the courthouse in Ainsley was a little anthill, humming with gossip and activity. He liked going out to lunch every day to the Chowder Bowl across State Street, where they knew exactly how he took his coffee and saved him the end pieces on meat loaf day. He liked watching boys he’d known when they were in Little League all grown up, in office, in uniform, taking themselves so seriously.

  When Shep Gordon came in first thing on Friday the judge couldn’t resist having a little fun with him.

  “You back again, Shep? You look like a yard of chewed string, doesn’t your wife let you get any sleep? Must be nice, she’s a good-looking woman.”

  “We’re working on a homicide, Your Honor,” said Shep, politely. He wasn’t sure if the judge remembered or not. Was he as dotty as he sometimes seemed, or did he just enjoy rattling people?

  “Homicide now, is it?” said the judge. This was news. Hadn’t had one of those lately. Yesterday it was a suspicious fire of unknown origin. “And what is it you want from me this morning?” Hennebery asked him.

  “Arrest warrant, sir.”

  “That was quick. You got your paperwork?”

  Shep handed up the affidavit he had prepared, and Judge Hennebery read it slowly, humming. Then he slid his reading glasses down his nose and looked over the rims at Shep.

  “You want me to sign this and risk getting mowed down flat by Beryl Weaver? I been crosswise with her before. It’s quite an experience. That’s a lot of pressure on a man not in the first blush of youth.”

  “I’m sorry about that, but—”

  “Oh I’m just joshing you, Shep. I’ll sign it. But you better have done your homework.”

  “Understood, sir. Thank you.”

  The day had dawned sullen, with gray light that didn’t seem to be half-trying, and dense, blue-gray cloud cover hanging over the lake, which the inmates of the Oquossoc Mountain Inn watched glumly from the dining room as they ate their breakfasts. Everyone knew the rain was coming, and when it began, moments after a crack of thunder that sounded like a cannon being fired on the roof, it rained down in straight sheets like the downpour created by machines on movie sets. Buster hustled Cherry from the parking lot in through the kitchen door and to the staff locker room. She was soaked and shivering, and thoroughly pissed when she went to hang up her sweatshirt and found her locker padlocked. She followed Buster into the kitchen, wet as she was, and stood for inspection by her mother, who had turned from the sink to look at her. Buster was hoping against hope that Beryl would stop what she was doing and come to wrap her arms around Cherry, who had, let’s be honest, had a shitty night and was about to have a shittier day.

  But Buster should have known better. “Look what the cat dragged in,” Beryl said to her younger daughter. To Buster she said, “Am I babysitting?”

  “She needs to be with someone who can give her good advice. I don’t know, but I think she’s about to be arrested. Do you know a lawyer you can recommend?”

  “I know a lawyer, but I can’t recommend him,” said Beryl.

  Buster saw Chef Sarah spot them from where she was supervising the hot line. Sarah wiped her hands on the dish towel she carried in her apron tie, and came to them.

  “Cherry. Are you all right? Do you need some breakfast?”

  Cherry shook her head. “I ate.”

  “I’m sorry to hear what happened last night. Can I help in any way?”

  Cherry shook her head dumbly, her eyes suddenly wet. Softness undid her.

  “I’ll tell you what. We’re finishing the breakfast rush here, and then I’m teaching a butchering class. But when I’m done I’ll find you and we’ll go talk to Mr. Gurrell. I’m sure you didn’t do anything wrong, Cherry. We’ll figure this out. Try not to worry.”

  Cherry took a moment to think about this unexpected kindness, but then looked up and met Sarah’s gentle gaze. She nodded. Her mother, who had been watching from the sink, advanced on Cherry, holding a paper towel, and said, “Blow your nose.” Then Beryl went back to washing up.

  By the time Shep got back to the barracks, Carson Bailey, assistant state attorney general, was waiting for him.

  “How’s it going, guy?” he asked, shaking Shep’s hand. Carson was from inland, son of a chicken farmer who’d tried to compete with out-of-state agribusiness and failed dramatically. The huge chicken barn where once he’d presided over the opposite of whatever is meant by “free range,” in chicken husba
ndry, was now a vast indoor antiques and flea market, and Archie Bailey had died young in a “hunting accident.” He hadn’t lived to see Carson graduate from law school and move to Augusta, the first in his family to work at a white-collar job. No one knew how Archie would have felt about it. Carson, named for Johnny (his mother was a fan of The Tonight Show), looked like a doofus, with his doughy face and puffy hair, but he was good in the courtroom.

  Carson followed Shep to his office, where they closed the door so Shep could fill him in. “Fill me in,” was what he always said, as if a case were a page in a coloring book. First he got the outlines, then he went to work with the crayons.

  “We had the girl here for a couple of hours last night—”

  “You didn’t charge her?” Carson interrupted. He had told Shep not to charge her until they could dot every i and cross every t. He wanted his cases to stick tight when he threw them at the wall. And he never met a metaphor he couldn’t mix.

  “And we made good progress,” said Shep, ignoring him.

  “But you Mirandized her?”

  The card with the Miranda warning on it that Cherry had signed was passed to Carson.

  “She had plenty of grudge against the deceased, I’ll tell you that. She is one very angry little item. Whole family is trash.”

  “And she didn’t ask for a lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Well, fill me in.”

  “She’d had a run-in with Antippas when he first arrived at the hotel. Antippas was rude, it wasn’t her fault, yada yada, everyone hated him, it wasn’t just her, but Antippas complained to Gabe Gurrell about her. Gurrell gave her her notice the next day. Gurrell swears it wasn’t just about Antippas, but Cherry didn’t believe it.”

  “Make any threats against him? Antippas?”

  “No, but she had a roaring blowup with Gurrell in the lobby the afternoon of the fire. Plenty of witnesses. Took off her uniform and threw it at him and marched out in her underpants.”

  Carson whistled.

  “So we’ve got motive. Revenge on Antippas and Gurrell. Opportunity?”

  “Plenty. Her mother, Beryl Weaver, works in the kitchen. Got her the job. Cherry knows the layout, and has access to anywhere in the building.”

  “Tell me about this firebug thing.”

  Shep showed him the pictures of the night of the Oquossoc fire, then pictures from four other fires in the area in the last two years. In all of them, Cherry Weaver could be seen in the background, hanging around watching, always in her sweatshirt with the hood pulled up except for one taken against snow in which she wore a red-and-black-plaid peaked cap, with ear flaps. Carson whistled again.

  “Any priors?”

  “The usual. Twice swept up with some older kids who broke into camps off-season to party. Her older sister sowed some wild oats, and if their mother was working and Brianna was watching Cherry, she’d just take her along. Listen, I’ve got something else for you. When Cherry was fifteen, she was arrested for shoplifting at Renys in Ellsworth. First offense, suspended sentence, and of course, her juvenile record is sealed.”

  “But you know a guy.”

  “I do. Guess what she was trying to knick.”

  “Fill me in.”

  “A can of lighter fluid.”

  Carson’s doughy face split into a smile. “Was she really,” he said, as if he’d just learned Cherry had baked him a cake.

  The two set to work. They wanted to search Beryl Weaver’s house, Cherry’s car, her locker in the staff room at the inn, and anything else they might think of. Even though Cherry had shrugged and said “Sure, I don’t care,” when asked if it was all right with her if they looked around her room, they didn’t want a bit of this questioned in court once their case was made.

  Buster needed to get to work, and he still needed a place to park Cherry, since it didn’t look as if her mother was going to pitch in. She couldn’t stay with him; she couldn’t be anywhere near an investigation when she was its prime suspect. He knew how this worked. The moment the police believed they had their man, or woman, the investigation went into a funnel. Prosecutors were no longer striving to find out what had happened, they were only looking for evidence that supported what they already believed. Other possibilities, other suspects, any evidence that pointed another way, was ignored. Shep and Carson Bailey were now building their case against Cherry. Buster wanted to be there, to know what arrows were pointing in directions they were ignoring now, or suppressing.

  He found Hope and Maggie on the glassed-in porch, drinking tea and working on their jigsaw puzzle.

  “Good morning, dear,” said Hope fondly. “And Cherry! How nice to see you.”

  Buster hadn’t spent so much time under a roof with his mother in decades. It was disorienting to find her helpful. He ventured, “Cherry needs to settle somewhere until we can . . .” He didn’t know how he should finish the sentence.

  “Yes of course,” Hope said, turning to Cherry. They had heard what had happened to her in the night, as had everyone else in the inn. The word had radiated from the kitchen staff outward from the moment Beryl had come in to work. “We’d love to have you join us, Cherry. Chef Sarah is going to give a manly lesson in knives and butchery this morning, and we don’t think we need to learn about that.”

  “Makes me sick,” said Cherry. With a look of gratitude toward his mother, Buster slipped out.

  “Me too,” said Maggie. “I remember in biology when they made us dissect a cow’s eyeball. You had to hold it still with a fork. I still can’t even think about it.”

  Cherry looked suddenly so ill that they dropped the subject. She really was under terrible strain, poor little thing.

  “Are you good at jigsaw puzzles?” Maggie asked.

  “Don’t know,” said Cherry.

  “Of course you don’t, you haven’t been wasting your life the way I have. Well come sit, and I’ll explain my methodology.”

  “And if you don’t like it, you can sit with me and knit. Do you know how to knit?”

  Cherry shook her head. She’d never in her life encountered grown-ups like these, except to wait on them, one way or another. Grown-ups with indoor pastimes other than drinking beer or watching the tube.

  “Well look at you!” said Maggie, approvingly. Cherry had methodically collected all the variegated greenish-black pieces, and had succeeded in putting two together.

  “Oh I hate you,” said Hope. “I’ve been at this for hours and I haven’t fit a single thing in. This puzzle is too big. I’m going to look at the picture.”

  She turned over the box the puzzle came in, which Maggie had turned upside down to defeat temptation, and showed Cherry the picture they were trying to form.

  “You mean you had that all along?” Cherry asked. What was it with these people? It was already, like, impossible, all these millions of pieces, and they were making it harder?

  “Maggie is a purist but I’m not,” said Hope. “Let’s stage a rebellion. See, here’s where your pieces are going to go.” She pointed to the leaves at the top of the mast of the Ship of Fools, and Cherry bent over to peer closely at the image. It was unlike anything she’d ever seen. There were a lot of, like, medieval people in a little sort of round boat that only an idiot would go to sea in, and a skinny nun and an ugly guy with a shaved head were trying to bite some round bread or something that was hanging between them even though there was food on the table (table? In a rowboat?) while these other people, naked, were in the water trying to get in or get the food.

  “That’s the picture we’re making?” was the politest thing she could think of to say.

  “Yes,” said Maggie. “It’s Art. Don’t you like it?”

  Cherry hated it.

  “Good girl,” said Maggie. “We don’t like it either, but it looked as if it would be fun to work on.”

  “When it’s done will you frame it?” Cherry asked.

  “We hope we won’t be here long enough to find out. But no, we’ll take i
t apart and leave it for the next people.”

  Cherry thought she better not say how stupid this struck her to be, but in the meantime, she was quite liking the sorting and fitting. She spotted another piece of “her” part across the table and went back to scanning for more.

  “We met your nice sister yesterday,” said Hope.

  Cherry was surprised. “Brianna?”

  “Are there more of you?”

  “Oh. No, just me and Brianna. There was a brother before I was born, but he died.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Maggie. “But your parents must have been very happy when you were born,” said Maggie.

  “I don’t think so. They got divorced when I was two or something.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry,” said Maggie again.

  “Yeah, it sucked,” said Cherry, and there was a silence, during which Cherry found another match among her leaf pieces.

  “Buster and Brianna are close, I understand,” said Hope.

  Cherry looked up. “You know Buster?” She had heard this lady call Buster “dear,” but she thought that was just like Sandra at Just Barb’s, or the cashiers at Walmart, who called everybody “dear.”

  “He’s my son,” said Hope.

  Cherry didn’t mean to show her astonishment, but she did. This was Buster’s mother? Buster, who was a cop and lived in a trailer with her sister?

  “So, we’re concerned about you,” said Hope. “And I hope you’ll let us know if we can be any aid or comfort.”

  Cherry’s mouth went oblong and she began to cry.

  Hope instinctively moved to Cherry’s side and put a hand on her shoulder. Cherry flinched.

  “I’m scared,” she said. There followed a storm of crying, great gouty sobs, as if her insides were trying to get out. This child hadn’t found a lot of sympathy in her life, Maggie thought. She’d seen people cry like this and be lying through their teeth, but still.