Dead at Breakfast Read online

  Earl pulled out and waved the work gloves that had been stuffed into his back pocket. “You don’t want to pitch manure without your gloves. Give ya blisters.”

  Buster started back to his vehicle for an evidence bag, by which he meant a trash bag in this case, in which to put Earl’s interesting discovery. (Most country people had trash bags in their cars in case of roadkill, unexpected dump runs, or needing somewhere to put wet bathing suits.) As he passed the door to the kitchen he stopped to note the wheelbarrow standing by the steps. He took in the scene. Technically, he should have taken a picture or made a sketch of it, standing right there, but he didn’t need to. For all the things he couldn’t do that were easy for other people, he had his own unusual skills. One of them was that he could take in a huge amount of visual data and map it later, to scale.

  The kitchen door opened, and Mrs. Weaver came out with a large bucket full of vegetable trimmings, fruit peels and cores, and what looked like dozens of egg shells and a couple of pounds of coffee grounds. He watched her empty them into the wheelbarrow. She straightened, turned, and gave him a long look. Reading faces was one of the things he wasn’t so good at; was that disgust, or sorrow, or accusation? Whatever it was, she gave him a good dose of it, then turned and climbed the steps.

  He was the police. Her daughter was in jail. Why should she be happy? On the other hand, Brianna . . .

  Buster was about to move on toward the parking lot, when he heard a tap on the kitchen window. Chef Sarah was there. She smiled and held up a finger to him, meaning “wait a minute.”

  He waited.

  Sarah emerged with a sweater thrown on over her apron, and her bare feet stuffed into chef’s clogs. She was carrying a paper bag.

  “Sorry, I had to find something to put these in. I made chocolate croissants this morning and nobody ate them. They’re no good the second day. Take them with you.”

  Buster wasn’t sure what to do. They weren’t supposed to take presents, especially not at crime scenes. “I shouldn’t,” he said, beginning to back away. He could smell them now. Chocolate and butter.

  “Of course you should,” she said kindly. “You’re missing your lunch.” She tucked the bag under his elbow. Embarrassed, he thanked her. She was hurrying back to the kitchen, which he was glad of, because that made it too late to give the bag back.

  Hope and Maggie had been to church and enjoyed the service very much. The church itself was picture-postcard beautiful, a nineteenth-century monument to simplicity, white clapboard with a square sanctuary, and a short but shapely steeple. The windows were leaded, with ripply old hand-blown glass, but clear instead of stained, which made the interior particularly stark and peaceful. The hymns, played on a piano by a short round lady with a head a little too small for her body, were tub-thumpers, clearly played by ear. Maggie found that if you tried to sight-read the harmonies in the hymnal, you soon found yourself in conflict with the accompanist. That left the tiny choir a little at a loss, since they were reading the music, but the congregation joined in lustily. The preacher, an erect spindly man wearing ancient black robes, gave a simple homily for the children in the front rows, who afterward were led down to the Sunday school in the basement. Then he delivered a gentle sermon for the rest of the sinners. Maggie had the impression that everyone in the room had heard it before, but she felt that everyone enjoyed a lesson drawn from the wisdom of the Peanuts comic strip. At the close of the service they were urged to join the fellowship hour in the parish hall, where the preacher happened to know there would be some of Mrs. Missirlian’s good banana bread. Hope and Maggie didn’t have to be asked twice.

  The parish hall underneath the sanctuary was lit with fluorescent fixtures that looked like overturned ice trays. There was green linoleum on the floor, and blackboards on wheels stood in the corner where Sunday school had been conducted. The children, now freed from Sunday strictures, were running in and out of the throng playing tag, their hands full of cookies. Maggie and Hope surveyed the scene, then chose their marks. Maggie headed for the piano lady, while Hope homed in on a beefy young man with a soul patch and a cross tattooed on his neck.

  “Good morning,” Maggie said, offering her hand. “I just wanted to thank you, you played with such spirit. Maggie Detweiler.”

  “Peg Nuttle,” said the piano lady, beaming. She had plump soft arms with dimples at the elbows, and a very sweet smile. “So nice of you to say that. I’m self-taught, I’m afraid. We had an organist, a beautiful musician, but he died. Is this your first Sunday with us?”

  “It is, and we thought it was lovely. So you’re not a professional?”

  “Oh, no. We’re pretty much all volunteers, here. I’m a kindergarten teacher.”

  Maggie felt a little click of satisfaction. She had a kind of radar for school people and had a small bet with herself that this was one. “Well, how lucky I am to meet you. I’m a teacher too, or I was, and wherever I go I always want to know about the local school. Is it that pretty brick building up the street, with the big elm in front?”

  “That’s it. And I just live around the corner. Makes for a short commute. Not that we exactly have a rush hour here.”

  “K through eight? K through twelve?” asked Maggie.

  “Oh no, we only go up to six here in the village. It used to be that that’s all the schooling the country children got, sixth grade and then they went to work. Nowadays they go in the bus over to Bergen Falls to the junior high. They got a real nice new building there now.”

  “I’d love to see it.”

  “Are you in town for a while? I think Mrs. Pell is in California visiting her daughter, she’s the principal.”

  “We’re staying at the inn.”

  “Oh. My,” said Peg. “The inn, they’ve had such goings-on. Were you there for the fire?”

  “We’ve been here since last Sunday. My friend”—she indicated Hope across the room, deep in conversation with the soul patch man—“has family here.”

  “Now who would that be?” asked Peg, her interest refocused.

  “Do you know Deputy Babbin?”

  “Buster! Such a sweetheart! I’ve taught boys like that.”

  “We’ve all taught boys like that,” Maggie said, smiling. “You know, we’re awfully sorry about Cherry Weaver being arrested.”

  “Oh, it’s a terrible thing. I was saying to my sister, I really don’t know what to make of it. I wouldn’t have thought . . .”

  “Well that’s what I wanted to ask you. You knew her when she was little?”

  “She was in one of my first classes.”

  “We always remember our first ones, don’t we?”

  Peg agreed, pleased to be talking with someone who knew the territory.

  “She wasn’t bright like her sister, of course,” said Peg.

  “Did you teach Brianna too?”

  “No, but it’s a small school. Brianna always won the spelling bee. Everyone thought she’d go to college. She’d come in at lunchtime to see Cherry, and that little girl just lit up every time. Nice children.”

  “Tell me about Cherry.”

  “She was one of those ones who see words backward?”

  “Dyslexic?”

  “I think so. We only did prereading in kindergarten at that time, and she could handle that, but she struggled later. She was a sweet child. She made me a May basket. She . . .” Peg caught herself and stopped.

  “What?”

  “Oh, I was just going to . . .”

  Maggie said, “Go on. I’ve heard it all.”

  Peg said, “Well. When I thanked her for the basket and told her what a dear little girl she was, she said she liked me better than she liked her mother.”

  “Ah,” said Maggie. She had indeed heard this story before, and it was a very tricky moment for a teacher, especially in a small town. You’re pleased to be loved, but you also know that something is wrong in one of your families, and what if anything should you do about it? She nodded sympathetically.

>   “Of course I said I was sure she didn’t really and she seemed stung. Disappointed in me. I still remember that. She was shy of me for a while, but she got over it. A very sunny nature she had then. I was always sorry about how it changed her, later. She’d come back to visit me when she was in fifth and sixth. Just drop in during recess and sit in my classroom, on one of those little chairs, and play with the guinea pig. When she was in my class, I had chosen her to take the guinea pig home over Christmas. She was so proud of that.”

  “I love it when they come back,” said Maggie. Though in fact it gave her pause when a kid would rather hang around with grown-ups than with her own age group.

  When Maggie related this conversation at Barb’s, where they had repaired for an early lunch to compare notes, Hope said, “I think Cherry’s mother must be a Capricorn.”

  “Because?”

  “She’s such a hard-ass.”

  “Apparently. Does your soul patch man know the Weavers?”

  “Intimately. He ran with Brianna and her friends in high school, and half the time Cherry was with them, because Beryl Weaver was working nights. He said Cherry didn’t like her mother, and when I asked him what made him say so, he said ‘have you met her?’ When she drove the school bus she threatened to tape their mouths shut if they weren’t quiet. She kept a roll of duct tape on the dashboard. Actually used it a time or two.”

  “Did he mention the father?”

  “He did. He worked for a tree surgeon summers and weekends when he was in school, and Roy Weaver was part of the crew, when he felt like earning a buck. Roy used to taunt the high school kids. His way of greeting them was to grab them hard by the crotch and say, ‘Just wanted to see if you’d grown a pair.’ Then he’d laugh. My guy said it really hurt.”

  “Lovely. Did he know anything about Cherry being in trouble?”

  “Yep. You were right. And he’s the one who drove her to the mall.”

  “Back up.”

  “Here’s the story. A lot of tree work is winter work. Did you know this? You get ice and snow coating the tree limbs, the limbs fall down and take down the power lines—in the worst weather, the tree men are out in bucket trucks eighteen hours a day, clearing away the deadfall so the power guys can fix the lines. He says your hands and feet are so cold when you get home that you soak them in cold water and it feels as if it’s boiling. I told him I knew the feeling.

  “So some of the linemen had these hand warmers that you carried in your pockets. They burn for hours. They work like cigarette lighters, but enclosed somehow—I just took his word for it.”

  Maggie had her phone out and was Googling “hand warmers.”

  “Well, look at that,” Hope said, when Maggie showed her the screen. “I had no idea. I should have them in every pocket. Anyway, my guy showed one to Cherry and she got excited and wanted to get one for her father for Christmas. He didn’t know she was planning to steal it.”

  “And she was how old?”

  “Fifteen. But unfortunately, it wasn’t the gizmo she stole first. It was . . .”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “Yes. The lighter fluid it runs on. If you get the fanciest kind, something Zippo makes, it doesn’t give off as much smell and that’s important if you’re hunting. Her dad’s a gun nut. You don’t want your prey to . . .”

  “Got it,” said Maggie. “So she was arrested at fifteen for stealing a fire accelerant, and now they’ve got her for arson and felony murder.”

  “Exactly. She must have been pretty poor at stealing. She also lied about it, which doesn’t help. She told the police she wanted it for her boyfriend. They wanted to talk to the boyfriend so she made up a name. When they couldn’t find him she said he’d just joined the navy . . .”

  “Oh the poor booby.”

  “And all because she was embarrassed that she was trying to be a hero to her dad.”

  “I assume Detective Gordon knows about the arrest, even though it shouldn’t be on her record?”

  “Of course he does.”

  “What made your church friend tell you all this?”

  “I think he’d been dying for someone to ask him. He’s got a little sneaker for Cherry would be my guess. And he hates the dad. Also, he might have spent just a little bit of time in the slammer himself. He suggested that he didn’t think it was the right place for Cherry.”

  “I thought that looked like a prison tattoo.”

  Detective Gordon was waiting when Buster carried his bulky treasure into the barracks in Ainsley. He said, “What happened to you, you run into a bakery truck?” Buster looked down and brushed at his uniform shirt, showering croissant flakes onto the floor.

  Shep took the bagged suitcase into the evidence room, where he and Buster and a crime tech donned plastic gloves. “Let’s see what we got here.” He took the suitcase from the trash bag and set it on the table. The crime tech took out a pair of tweezers and began fussily picking up bits of horse plop and vegetable matter and dropping them into plastic bags.

  Shep took the suitcase.

  “Detective,” said the tech, “I was going to dust for prints first.”

  “After will do fine,” said Shep. He popped the clasps and opened it.

  It was almost empty. There was a plastic bag with the Oquossoc Mountain Inn name and logo on it, and on the other side, “laundry” printed in moss green script. There was also a pair of heavy leather gloves, a thing like a weird butterfly net, and an apparatus that looked like the kind of grabber you use to pick up your socks from the floor when you’ve had a hip operation and can’t bend over. Shep’s mother had to use one of those for months after she broke her pelvis.

  Shep picked up the laundry bag and looked in.

  “What’s in it?” Buster asked.

  “Underpants,” said Shep. He used to say “panties,” but his wife had broken him of it by calling his underwear panties and shirties and socksies until he got the point. He picked up the butterfly net thing and held it up. It didn’t look new, and it didn’t look random; it was a four-foot-long double bag made of slippery material, and had a triangular frame at the top attached to a telescoping handle. “Now what the hell do you make of this?” he asked. “You ever seen a thing like this before?”

  “Nope,” said the crime tech.

  “Sure,” said Buster.

  The other men looked at him. “It’s a snake bag,” he said. “You pick up the snake with those tongs, and pop him into the bag, then you whip it closed with these.” There were ties attached at the top. Shep stared.

  “Well, aren’t you a fountain of wisdom today,” he said.

  “How does the snake like it?” asked the tech.

  “Depends on how used he is to people, and what kind of a mood he’s in. They don’t mind the bag once they’re in it. It’s like a den in there. Don’t usually like the tongs so much though, unless you’re real good at using them.”

  They all contemplated the equipment.

  “This stuff belong to that Niner guy?”

  “I guess it must,” said Buster, “but I didn’t see it in his room. All he had, that I saw, was a hook and a pair of handler’s gloves. And not these gloves. His are a different color.”

  “A hook.”

  “A snake hook.” Buster got out his notebook and drew a picture of a pole with a curved metal hook on the end. Then he added a snake, suspended in loops from the hook about a third of the way along its body. “You got to practice some to learn to slip it under without hurting him, and you have to get him in the right spot, third or halfway along, so he doesn’t slip off, or strike.”

  There was a silence.

  “I got to tell you,” Shep said, “this is seriously creeping me out.”

  Buster shrugged.

  “I guess we better see if little Cherry has a thing for snakes,” Shep added. “And go over this whole rig for prints, inside and out.” He patted along the inside of the suitcase, then unzipped one of the side pockets. Out came a little sewing packet,
a tube of stain remover, a couple of packets of nail polish remover wipes, a corkscrew, and a fat amber vial of pills. The prescription was for Lisa Antippas, oxycodone, take every 4 to 6 hours as need for pain. Quantity 90.

  “Ninety?” asked the crime tech. “What was she going to do, open her own drugstore?”

  DAY NINE, MONDAY, OCTOBER 14

  Monday morning, the Antippas household had been buzzing since 6:00 A.M. Sophie and Ada had done their own hair and makeup, but Artemis’s stylist was with them with a rack of dresses that had been lent by eager designers.

  Sophie had announced she was wearing her own clothes, but when she saw how her sister looked in a black silk Calvin Klein sheath, she too began trying things on. In the master bedroom, their mother was having her makeup redone, because she’d started to cry and had ruined it the first time. The makeup artist was dyeing her eyelashes black, so she wouldn’t end up with mascara all over her face.

  In the guest suite, Glory’s hair was being blown out by the guy who used to style her for her talk show. She had spent the previous afternoon with twists of foil all over her head having her highlights done and the room still smelled of peroxide. Behind her, the bed was covered with dresses and suits, and a seamstress sat patiently watching the blow-out, waiting to do a last-minute fitting as soon as Glory decided for sure what she wanted to wear.

  Jeremy, in the suit his father had bought him for his college graduation, was sitting outside by the pool under a shade umbrella. It was a bright day, perfect California weather. His mother could see him out the window, and knew by the way he was moving his shoulders and head, that he was lost in whatever music was streaming into his ears through wires too tiny for her to see from this distance. Artemis was in his head and singing to him.

  In the living room, Manuela and Freddy sat stiffly in their best church clothes. Outside, two long limousines sent by Forest Lawn sat ready to take them all to the Staples Center.

  Shep Gordon was off duty on Monday, at the Columbus Day parade in Ainsley with his wife. His stepson was playing the drums in his high school marching band and his wife’s sister and her children were with them, standing in the drizzle, the kids poking each other and failing to pay attention or keep still as they waited for Donnie to pace proudly by. There was only a skeleton staff back at the state police barracks that morning, so it was Detective Flax who took the call from the crime lab. They had had no trouble finding a match for the prints all over the snake handling gear in Ms. Poole’s suitcase. They belonged to Henry Rexroth.