Dead at Breakfast Page 18

  “Good Clarence! Now Clarence, work! No, no no,” she added, as Clarence made for Mr. Rexroth again. “No. Not Mr. Rexroth. Buster, open the door.”

  Clarence sat near Mr. Rexroth, but facing Hope, with his ears pricked.

  “Find the other person, Clarence. There’s another scent and you know whose it is. Show us, boy!”

  Buster was feeling that his mother had watched entirely too many episodes of Lassie. Clarence, find little Timmy!!

  But Clarence was on his feet, nose to the ground, heading for the door. His head moved back and forth in a pendulum pattern, vacuuming for scent.

  “Mrs. Babbin, he must be on leash when he leaves the room!” cried Mr. Rexroth.

  “We can’t interrupt him now, he’s working,” she answered, following Clarence out the door, with Maggie right behind her and the men bringing up the rear.

  “Isn’t this amazing?” Hope asked Maggie. “It’s like the first time you use a Ouija board and you don’t believe it’s going to work at all, and then the pointer starts moving.”

  “I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Maggie. “I was just getting into this.”

  The dog stopped outside Earl Niner’s door and sat down with authority.

  Hope turned and gave Buster a questioning look. Mr. Niner? Now what?

  Buster stepped up and tapped on the door. “Earl? It’s Buster. Are you in there?”

  They all stood holding their breaths, listening for sounds on the other side. Then the knob turned and the door opened. Earl was in his usual painful posture, in dungarees, a T-shirt, and bare feet, with a parrot on his shoulder.

  Walter the parrot took one look at the dog and with a scream, dug his claws into Earl’s shoulder and flapped his useless wings. Clarence rushed into the room past man and bird and went to the empty snake habitat. He sat down and stared fixedly at it, as he had at Mr. Rexroth.

  Earl, torn between distress for Walter and anger that these people would bring a dog into his room, retreated to the far corner, where Walter hopped desperately onto his hand to be ferried back into his cage, uttering terrified cries. Earl closed the door, and Walter began picking at his breast feathers while Earl tried to soothe him.

  “Brilliant, Clarence!” Hope cried. “Just brilliant! Good dog!”

  “Earl, I’m sorry,” said Buster. “I didn’t know it would upset him.”

  “Don’t know much, do you?” Earl answered angrily.

  Maggie said, “He’s not tracking a person, he’s tracking the snake!”

  “Exactly!” cried Hope.

  “That ought to work. Well done, Clarence! Mr. Niner, could we have something that belonged to Grommet?”

  “Will you get out of my room and never come back?”

  Maggie swore that they would.

  Earl went to the terrarium and broke off a bit of branch that Grommet had slithered over in happier days.

  When Earl had closed the door on the little hunting party and they were in the hall, Clarence was given the bit of branch to peruse with his nose. He seemed thoroughly gratified.

  “All right! Clarence, work!” Hope commanded, and the dog set off at a good clip toward the rear of the hotel. Nose to the floor, he swung his head like a Geiger counter across his path as he moved with assurance to the back stairs and started down. Hope and Maggie looked at each other, triumphant, and clattered after him. Buster was right behind them and Mr. Rexroth followed, not wanting to be blamed if the dog did something to disgrace him.

  Maggie and Hope had not been down these stairs before and were full of interest. This was the staff’s domain. Clarence stopped at the landing for the second floor, sniffed thoroughly at the crack of the door that led into the guest rooms, then turned and returned to the stairs, continuing his descent to the ground floor.

  “He’s going to the staff lockers,” Hope said to Maggie. These, they knew, were down another flight, in a room next to the laundry.

  But Clarence was not. He sat down firmly, staring at the heavy metal door that led out of the stairwell. Buster stepped up to push it open, and they found themselves outside the kitchen in the large pantry where the plates and glassware were washed and stored. It was empty at the moment, as the staff was in the kitchen having family meal before dinner service began. There were two more doors in this room, one a swinging door with a glass pane that led into the kitchen, the other a blank door on the opposite side of the sinks. Clarence, scrubbing the air for scent, moved to this second door and sat again, staring at it as if he could open it with thought waves. Maggie and Hope looked at each other. Buster opened the door.

  The door led into a second small room, narrow and not quite plumb, that had the feel of a space created accidentally by some ill-thought-out addition or remodeling. More a larder than a workroom, the shelves above the counters were stocked with large containers of flours, canned goods, imported nut and olive oils, bottles of homemade vinegars, and jars of preserved lemons. There were drawers and cupboards beneath the counters. The drawers, Maggie found, were filled with dish towels and other kitchen linens. Clarence, all-business, went straight to a cupboard to the left of the door, and sat down to stare at it.

  Before they could open it, the door from the kitchen swung open and Oliver came in. He stopped, looking surprised.

  “Hello,” he said. “Looking for ketchup? Sriracha sauce?”

  “I know he shouldn’t be in here, it’s not my fault,” said Mr. Rexroth piously. But Oliver said, “Hello, Clarence! You usually get room service, don’t you, big guy? But you found where we keep your stash.” He opened the door to the cupboard Clarence was fixed upon. On the lower shelf were stockpots and large saucepans, and a large plastic tub that had once held dishwasher powder. Oliver took it up and peeled the top off, and Clarence, his nose twitching with joy, began to wiggle and drool, his eyes fixed on Oliver and on the tub in his hand.

  “Let’s see, what have we got for you? This looks like curried chicken salad.” He held a chunk of something covered in sauce the color of turmeric, and before Mr. Rexroth’s squeaks of objection could become verbal, Clarence had seized it and swallowed, seemingly without chewing.

  “He shouldn’t have spicy food!” cried Mr. Rexroth, although it was he himself who didn’t do well with spicy food; Clarence seemed particularly to relish it.

  Hope and Maggie were looking deflated.

  “So he comes in for treats that are kept in that cupboard?” Maggie asked.

  “Well, Sarah usually takes them up to him. You can’t put meat into the compost, so we all save the scraps that would go to waste, and Clarence gets some and Mrs. Weaver feeds the rest to her pig.”

  Clarence was staring fixedly at the tub, his eyes yearning and a thread of drool intact from his dribbly jaws to the floor. His tail began to thump the floor as Oliver pulled out another chunk of chicken and he whisked it into his gullet without ever touching Oliver.

  “Hot Lips Houlihan,” said Oliver.

  DAY TEN, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15

  Tuesday morning, Cherry Weaver was brought before Judge Hennebery for presentment. Brianna was there, but neither of Cherry’s parents had bothered to come. Carson Bailey handed the judge a copy of the charges they were bringing, and dropped another copy on the defense table in front of Celia Little. He asked the judge to set bail at $20,000.

  Celia Little, instantly on her feet, cried, “Your Honor, you might as well set it at a hundred thousand dollars!”

  The judge said, “Very well, I’ll set it at a hundred thousand dollars.”

  Celia, Cherry, and Brianna shrieked in surprise, which apparently amused the judge greatly. He looked down at Celia over his glasses and said, “Isn’t that what you wanted me to do?”

  “No, sir, I want you to release her on her own recognizance! She’s got no money, her whole family is here in Webster County! She isn’t a flight risk!”

  “Miss Little, you’re new to my courtroom. I was just having some fun with you.”

  “This is not a laughing mat
ter to me or my client!”

  Judge Hennebery looked annoyed. “That would have gone over better with me if you’d said ‘No laughing matter, Your Honor,’” he said. “Bail is set at twenty thousand dollars.” He banged his gavel. Cherry turned in her seat to look at Brianna, her lips quivering. Celia sat down and angrily tried to collect her papers, but instead dropped most of them on the floor. At the prosecution table, Carson and his assistant were looking gratified. A bailiff arrived, and after one more anguished look at Brianna, Cherry was led away again and Brianna sat stock-still, trying not to cry.

  State Police Officer Carly Leo arrived at Shep’s office right after lunch. She was an ambitious young transplant from Portland, with eyes a little too close together and a ponytail pulled so tight it looked painful. Shep was getting caught up on a home invasion case that had taken place in Yarmouth over the weekend that might have some overlap with an earlier one in his jurisdiction, and wondering to himself how much Cherry Weaver knew about handling snakes. Leo stood expectantly in his doorway with a stack of papers printed from an e-mail from the M.E.’s office. Shep looked up and said, “Is that what I think it is?” and Carly Leo took that as an invitation.

  “They can rush when they want to.” She handed Shep the papers, and moved the stack of files and newspapers from the one unoccupied chair in the room to the floor so she could sit.

  Shep pulled out the autopsy report and scanned the first page. He flipped to the second page, then back again. He looked at Leo, then picked up the phone and dialed the M.E.’s office. When he got Dr. Merganser herself on the line, he said “I’m here with Officer Leo. I’m putting you on speaker. Give us the bottom line.”

  “Bottom line,” said the M.E. out of the tinny speaker, “the snake didn’t kill him. He was breathing when the fire got him. The lungs were like burned paper.”

  Shep leaned back in his chair. Bad news for little Miss Firebug.

  “And why the fuck was he just laying there?”

  “Timber rattlers have a couple of different kinds of venom,” said the tinny voice. “The kind that Antippas got was mostly hemorrhagic and worked like a myotoxin, causing internal bleeding and muscle necrosis.”

  “What’s that in English?”

  “He couldn’t move. In a smaller man the venom would have led to paralysis of the diaphragm, which would have stopped his breathing,” Margaret Merganser said. “Antippas was so big that he probably could have survived it, if he hadn’t been lying there getting roasted like a weenie.”

  Shep picked up the report again and paged through it, thinking. So the snake in the bed was assault with a deadly weapon, but the fire was the killer. That meant they had to nail down the arson case and tie it up with a big red bow.

  The M.E. said, “Couple of reporters are dancing around outside my office here, trying not to wet their pants. Okay if I give them a statement?”

  “Sure, go ahead,” Shep said, and ended the call. He sat thinking. The tech guys would have to test again for traces of ILRs or accelerant. He knew it was there. That little girl had some guts, to bring the snake into it. He could think of some people he’d be glad to see snake-bit, but if he had to handle the snake himself he’d probably rather just shoot them. He had to admit, the scheme was clever. If the snake had burned up with the guy, as she must have thought it would, you could be looking at a perfect crime. Guy smoked in bed, end of story.

  The crime tech guys had put their samples into mason jars. He knew that nowadays big city fire forensics thought that heat-sealed nylon bags had a slower leak rate, but he couldn’t see it. Still, if there had been a leak, an error in handling the jars let’s say, you’d get a false negative. The tech guys hadn’t seen a pour pattern of gas, or varsol, and neither had he. But wait—the wastebaskets. He suddenly remembered, there should have been baskets by the desk and in the bathroom, and the baskets had been made of dried grass or some shit. Couple of those filled with tissue, or newspaper, lit with a match and set to travel to the bedding, or left on the bed, and it’s all she wrote. And it wouldn’t leave any suspicious traces.

  Man, if that guy was conscious, he must have been fucking terrified.

  He picked up the phone again to call Carson. That Weaver family. Some bad genetic juju there, he wouldn’t be surprised, like those people who come out of the woods once a year to go to the county fair, with their heads too big or too small, or too many fingers.

  Lisa Antippas felt as if she hadn’t slept in years. It was an evil-feeling day in Los Angeles, with hot Santa Ana winds blowing dust and grit, making you feel as if something terrible was about to happen. But everything terrible had already happened, and wouldn’t unhappen, ever. Her bed was a restless mess, the sheets damp from night sweats, and she had a drug hangover, richly deserved, as she’d taken double of everything, and still she spent the night in some nightmare twilight waking state, at the mercy of demons. For the first time in her life, she thought, I might not get through this.

  I might not get through this.

  Her twins had each other and they could cry; they had cried and cried yesterday until Ada’s eyes had almost swollen shut. Sometime late in the evening, though, Lisa had realized things had gone quiet at their end of the hall, and went to see what the girls were doing. She found them in pajamas, huddled together under a cashmere throw the decorator had said would never be used, eating ice cream out of the carton and watching The Daily Show.

  Jeremy, though, was a boy, and alone, and he’d been Jenny’s pet. He probably had a tiny crush on her, along with every other boy his age in the first world. He’d still been outside sitting by the pool, drinking and listening to his headphones, when she went to bed, and now he was nowhere to be seen and his door was shut.

  Her memories of the day before were an insane jumble. Limousines, camera flashes, microphones, Jenny, eight feet high on the screen at the Staples Center. People wanting to touch, to ask, to hug, to say . . . nothing that would help. By the time they got to the service for Alex, Lisa was feeling nothing, surprised she could remain upright. Thank god her hat had a heavy veil; she needed that scrim between herself and the world. Then the people at the house, whoever the hell they all were, Glory had taken over along with Jenny’s ghastly manager, thank god. Drinking, eating, signing memorial books, saying stupid untrue things to the kids, who bravely stood there, being talked to. By that time Lisa was at the end of a long tunnel, watching from her private hell, and after a while she had gone to her room and stayed there.

  Glory had been up and out early. She had talk shows to do and had to be at the station for hair and makeup at seven. Lisa wished Glory were here, that they could sit on the couch and watch TV together right now as they had done when they were children. She thought about eating ice cream for breakfast and even went as far as to look in the freezer but found—just as well—that the girls had eaten it all.

  She moved as if she were a hundred years old. She sat down before the TV in the breakfast nook and waited for Glory to come on. She got rather fascinated by a guy showing her how to make shrimp fajitas. Then came Glory’s segment.

  It was excruciating. Footage of the day before, questions about Artemis as a little girl, footage of her glory days on the Disney channel and later, her concerts. They showed one very funny clip from SNL, and asked questions about what she was like at home in those years. It was one of those shows where four hosts talk, mostly at once, shouting and laughing, asking obvious questions, then shrieking with astonishment at the predictable answers. Glory was a pro, thank god. Dishing it out smoothly. Until they started on today’s new hook, the way they were going to keep the story alive. Where was Artemis’s real mother?

  “Artemis’s real mother is my sister, Lisa Antippas,” said Glory.

  “Of course she is . . .” said one, and

  “Oh that’s so true,” said another, and

  “You know, family is who shows up,” said a third. All talking over one other, nobody listening.

  When the question had be
en rephrased, Glory said, “Her mother abandoned her. Lisa and Jenny bonded instantly, that little girl was so hungry for a mother’s love.”

  “Oh that’s right, she was called Jenny,” said one, while

  “Poor little thing, she was how old?” asked another, and the third and fourth said “Imagine leaving that poor little girl.”

  Glory said, “Alexander said his first wife didn’t believe she could be a good enough mother,” and the interviewers said, in overlapping voices, “Oh it’s like, what was that movie, Meryl Streep, Kramer versus Kramer.”

  Except for the youngest interviewer who had never seen the movie, and instead whizzed through her mental movie database and said at last, “Dustin Hoffman.”

  “And where is she now?” asked someone.

  “I have no idea,” said Glory, with contempt. “We don’t know if she’s even alive. To be frank. Her daughter’s a millionaire many times over. Was. We were always waiting for her to come out of the woodwork.”

  Lisa found the remote under a pile of newspapers and turned the show off. She sat, staring at nothing, thinking about Jenny, when she and Alexander were first together. The child was absolutely disturbed, in Lisa’s opinion, though at the time she knew almost nothing about children except that in many ways she still was one herself. How funny—Jenny had sort of grown up to have the life that Lisa once thought she might have. Back when she was a gorgeous girl barely out of her teens, and before she knew how common youth and beauty were, especially in Hollywood. But those first months—Jenny had nightmares, she’d whine until they let her get in bed with them; then she’d pee in her sleep. Alexander had to take Lisa to a hotel if they wanted to have sex, which they did, more or less all the time. And the tantrums when Alexander tried to leave. Jenny would howl and cling to his legs, face red, eyes streaming and nose dripping snot, getting it all over his pants leg. You’d have thought her life depended on her keeping him all to herself. More than once Lisa had thought she should just move on.