Dead at Breakfast Read online

  “Detective Carrera, visiting from New York. I heard you found the guy on the beach the other morning.”

  He looked surprised and wary. Had he missed something? Done something wrong?

  “Oh no, no, nothing official. I just stopped in to say hi to Harry Rideout. How are you doing? That must have been one rough wake-up call.”

  Dylan’s face softened slightly. Jorge did his best to appear avuncular, and his best was pretty good.

  “I’ve been better,” Dylan allowed.

  “I remember my first time. Homicide in Patchogue, a guy took his baby by the heels and swung her against the wall, because she wouldn’t stop crying.” He’d never been in Patchogue, but he knew how to pronounce it. “Suppose there’s no doubt that he did it himself?”

  Dylan shook his head, his lips pressed together, as if sickened by the image in his mind. “Weapon still in his right hand. Angle of wound exactly what you’d expect. Blood pattern consistent. No other footprints on the sand.”

  “And we know he was right-handed?”

  Dylan nodded. They talked about shock, and grief, and how you handled it if you were in blue. Jorge told Dylan his daughter knew the victim, used to help take care of the wife, Mrs. Clark. She was a painter, he understood. It turned out Dylan had responded to that call too, when the wife died.

  “You have really been through it,” Jorge said sympathetically. Dylan nodded.

  Jorge let him sit with this. Then he said “Are you the one who found the note?”

  Dylan nodded again.

  “Why did he do it?”

  The younger officer looked torn. Jorge was a cop; he should have known Dylan couldn’t tell him. It belonged to the family. On the other hand, he was a cop, what was the harm? The rest of the guys here had read it.

  “Terry, my daughter—she asked me that,” Jorge added, “and I didn’t know what to tell her. She felt so close to the family. It’s eating at her. You ever lose someone like that?”

  Jorge waited, thinking of how he could get the properties clerk to hand over the personal effects, if Dylan wouldn’t open.

  But he did. He looked up at Jorge and said, “I’m not sorry for what I did. I’d do it again. But neither can I live with it.” At first Jorge thought Dylan was speaking for himself, but when he got to the “neither” he realized he was quoting.

  “That was the note?”

  Dylan nodded.

  “And what did it mean?”

  “Wish I knew.”

  “Do his children know?”

  Dylan shook his head. “They haven’t seen it yet. The son said he’d come out here to get the effects on the weekend. Didn’t seem to be in a hurry. We still have the body. They haven’t bothered to choose a funeral home.”

  “That’s cold,” said Jorge.

  “Yes,” said Dylan.

  Maggie was in her room reading Middlemarch when Jorge called. It was just before lunch.

  “‘I’m not sorry for what I did. I’d do it again. But neither can I live with it,’” Maggie repeated.

  “That’s it,” said Jorge.

  “You didn’t see it yourself?”

  “No. But I promise you, young Dylan knew it word for word.”

  “You got his name in case we need him?”

  “Badge number, everything.”

  “Did he have anything else that struck you?”

  He told her that the family hadn’t bothered yet to collect Albie’s effects or make arrangements for the body. Maggie was thoughtful.

  “He had a son and a daughter. The son is called Al and lives somewhere on the island—Oyster Bay, somewhere like that. I think the daughter lives in the city.”

  “Name?”

  Maggie thought. “Serena . . . Selena.”

  “Married?” Jorge asked.

  “Yes. With children. I’ll find her and call you back.”

  She sat for a bit, watching out the window as a pair of Canada geese waddled down the lawn and glided onto the lake. She thought about the evening Albie had talked about Ruth’s death and his estrangement from his children, and also about whether geese really do mate for life. How to learn the truth about either? If she were at school, she could have found what she wanted to know about Albie’s children in a heartbeat. And Maggie would be welcome if she showed up at Winthrop—too welcome, maybe, which was why she had resolved to stay well away from the whole community in order to let her successor get his legs under him. But she’d already broken the promise by contacting Jorge. One tiny call to the development office wasn’t going to hurt.

  “Good morning, Adrianna, it’s . . .”

  But Adrianna was already greeting her with glad cries. After they’d exchanged personal news, Maggie said, “Could you look something up in the stud book for me?” The development office had a shelf full of Social Registers, for obvious reasons. “See if there’s an Albert Clark of Manhattan and Southampton, wife named Ruth.”

  Adrianna was with her in a moment. “Got it. Albert M. Clark, Yale class of ’72, wife Ruth Borden. Quite a string of clubs, do you want to know those?”

  “Not at the moment. Is there an Albert M. junior?”

  “One in St. Helena, California, one in Oyster Bay.”

  “The second one, please.”

  Adrianna read her the information, and they spent a little time gossiping about the hubbub of school. The new head was locked in a struggle with the school cook, who wanted an expensive restaurant bagel toaster for the lunch room, and also wanted to grow her own herbs and salad greens on the school’s roof, which the athletic department needed for recess. Maggie, dying to question and comment, said instead, “Well I’m sure he’ll work it out,” and sent her love to Adrianna’s husband.

  Then she dialed another number.

  “Good afternoon,” she said into the handset, “this is Mrs. Detweiler from the Social Register. Have I reached the Albert Clark Junior residence?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is Mr. or Mrs. Clark available?”

  “This is Mrs. Clark,” said the woman.

  “Oh good,” said Maggie. “Is this a bad time?”

  “No, it’s all right.” Neutral affect, neither annoyed, nor particularly polite.

  “I’d just like to update your information,” said Maggie. “You are Melody, née Bothwell?” She was. Maggie went through the family’s listing, recording Melody’s new e-mail address and confirming the children’s present ages, and learning in the process that the oldest boy was now at a junior boarding school in Massachusetts. She wondered what that was about, since Americans didn’t usually send children away that young, unless there was a behavior or learning problem, or the family was breaking up. She just barely stopped herself from asking.

  Then the tricky part. “Now I hope you can help me,” she said. “I’m told our computer files in one part of the alphabet have become corrupted—I’m so sorry, don’t ask me to explain that, I just know the words—and we have lost our entry for Mr. Clark’s sister, Selena.” Please let it be Selena and not Serena, she chanted inwardly.

  “None of her contact info has changed,” said Melody. “Mrs. Richard Sherrill.”

  “In Manhattan?” said Maggie, pretending to flip pages. “Not the one in Hobe Sound?”

  “Manhattan.”

  “Thank you so much, could you give me that number?” Melody could and Maggie jotted.

  “You’re welcome. If you don’t get her, you should probably know that their father just passed.”

  “Oh my goodness, I am so sorry! I wish you’d told me, I could have called another time!”

  “It’s fine,” said Melody rather flatly.

  Maggie sat for a while, thinking.

  Hope had had a restless night and gone back to bed after breakfast. As noon approached, she was bathed and dressed for the second time, and feeling ready to greet her public. In the corridor, she knocked on Maggie’s door, but got no answer. She tried her key card in Maggie’s lock just out of curiosity, and was relieved when
it didn’t open the door. That at least narrowed things down a tiny bit.

  It wasn’t quite time for lunch and she knew the papers wouldn’t be in for hours. She thought she’d probably find Maggie on the sunporch, struggling with the Ship of Fools, but decided to go downstairs the back way, following the route Clarence had shown them yesterday.

  There seemed to be no one abroad in the hotel, and she wondered for a moment if something had happened while she was asleep. A neutron bomb or something. No one was watching television behind closed doors, or typing or singing in the shower; no one was rolling a housekeeping cart down the corridors. It wasn’t Sunday so soon again, was it?

  No. Wednesday. Well, then, just a quiet morning in the off-season. She crossed the small landing into the back wing, the oldest part of the hotel, and stopped again, thinking. This first room here had been Albie Clark’s. Poor man. She knew it was a suite with an extra bay and bank of windows on account of the new wing having been set at an angle to the old one. She tried to remember if she had seen Albie in the hall the night of the fire. She was fairly sure she had; she had a dim memory of yellow pajamas, but again, her memories of the fire were a jumble, as things tend to be when one has been awakened from a sound sleep and frightened half to death.

  Next, she thought, came the room that the Poole sisters had occupied, and next to them Mr. Rexroth and Clarence, and then the small room where Mr. Niner lived. There were two more rooms on the other side . . . who had been in those? The Kleinkramers, she was fairly sure, and Teddy Bledsoe. And then at the end of the hall, the turret suite where the Maynards had been. The turret was charming from the outside of the building. A drawing of it served as the inn’s logo on the letter paper and promotional bumf, and photographs of it adorned the website’s home page. They had spent some time with Martin and Nina in their sitting room, talking over D.C. schools. The sitting room was on the same level as the corridor, while the bed and bath were above, which probably explained why alone among the hall’s occupants, the Maynards hadn’t seemed to want to kill anyone in the Antippas family. For most of course, the corpse-elect would have been the dog.

  How, she wondered, was an FBI agent affording the best digs in the house? Was that something to ponder? Perhaps Martin was a demon investor on the side. Or maybe Nina was an heiress. Or maybe civil service paid better than she’d been led to believe.

  Hope heard a door open softly behind her, and turned to see Chef Sarah emerging from Mr. Niner’s room.

  “Oh, hello, Hope,” said Sarah.

  “Good morning, Chef!” said Hope brightly. “Visiting Mr. Niner?”

  “Visiting Walter, actually,” said Sarah. “He loves toast crusts. I bake them extra hard for him.”

  “He probably got the remains of my breakfast,” said Hope. “I never eat the crusts.”

  “I think perhaps he did,” said Sarah, who knew very well what leftovers came back to the kitchen. “I could make some soft rolls for you if you’d prefer that.”

  “No, I love the bread you make; I just like to eat the middles out.”

  Sarah smiled. “Just like my daughter.”

  “Oh! You have children?”

  Sarah looked distracted for a moment, then said, “Just the one.”

  Sensing something sensitive there, Hope changed the subject. “Is Mr. Niner in? I’d love to see Walter.”

  “No, he’s out in the stable.”

  “Ah. I better wait till he’s here, then.”

  “Yes. Walter’s an old grouch with strangers.”

  Together they walked down the back stairs. “I was wondering,” said Hope, “how Walter and Grommet got along. If Walter flew over and perched on top of the snake cage, why wouldn’t Grommet strike him?”

  “Oh, Walter doesn’t fly,” said Sarah. “Before Earl got him, some beast cut his flight feathers short to make him seem to be a young bird.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s not legal to sell wild parrots. They were trying to make him look as if he wasn’t middle-aged. The feathers grew back, but he still doesn’t fly.”

  “So Walter was caught in the wild?”

  “We think so.”

  “Poor creature. No wonder he’s grumpy.”

  “Yes. Will you be in for lunch? I’m making popovers for Maggie’s birthday.”

  “You are amazing to remember. She’ll love that.” They parted at the kitchen door.

  Hope was right about Maggie and the puzzle. When Hope found her, she had just succeeded in piecing together the poor soul swimming hopefully alongside the ship with his begging bowl. He was naked except for his hat.

  “You are relentless with that thing,” said Hope.

  “I can’t help it. I can’t resist making order out of chaos. But look at him. Who goes swimming with a hat on?”

  “I would if I had one,” Hope said. “It’s been a long time since I went more than a week without having my hair done. It feels as if it’s going to crawl off and die.”

  Come to think of it, Maggie observed, her friend was looking a little bedraggled. “Why don’t we drive into Ainsley this afternoon, there must be a hair place there.”

  “What a good idea!” That settled, Maggie told Hope about the note left by Albie Clark, and the heartless behavior of his children. Maybe he was capable of real cruelty, if they were that angry. Hope told Maggie about her encounter with Chef Sarah outside Earl’s room.

  “Well, that gives us plenty to think about,” Maggie said. And they went to the dining room to await the popovers.

  If you want to know what’s going on in a town, a great place to start is the hair parlor. Hope wondered why they hadn’t thought of it before. They found Upper Cuts on State Street, just across from the courthouse, beside a diner called the Chowder Bowl. A large woman wearing a pink apron and holding a bowl of something with a powerful chemical smell stopped her work and came to greet them.

  “I’m afraid we don’t have appointments,” said Hope. “Is there any chance I could get a shampoo and set?”

  “I got one of my best girls, just waiting for you. Pammie?” she called across to the sinks, where a slim woman with hair the color of a tangerine was leisurely sweeping up cuttings. Pammie stowed her broom and came to them, wiping her hands on her smock.

  “You can take a wash and blow out, can’t you?”

  Pammie looked at her watch, which had a bright plastic band the same color as her hair, and agreed she could.

  “And what can we do for you, hon?” asked the big woman, turning to Maggie. She looked at Maggie’s no-fuss flurry of white hair and clearly thought, Not much.

  “What about a manicure?” said Maggie.

  “Dandy,” said the large woman, whom they would learn was a Mrs. Pease. “Choose your color and Tina will be right with you. Would you like her to set up her table beside your friend, so you can talk to each other?”

  “That would be lovely,” said Maggie.

  When she had Hope shampooed and draped in a pink plastic smock and towels, Pammie said, “And what brings you ladies to Vacationland this time of year?”

  “My son lives in Bergen,” said Hope.

  “You staying here in town?”

  Where? Hope wondered. She’d seen a grim-looking cluster of pastel tourist cabins on the outskirts, but they looked closed for the season.

  “No, we’re over in Bergen at the inn.”

  Pammie lowered her dryer and brush. “We heard everyone left after the fire. Were you there?”

  Maggie looked up and caught Hope’s eye.

  “We were.”

  “Terrible. We heard it’s closing,” said Pammie, resuming her work.

  “It was very upsetting, but really just the one wing was affected. Mostly it’s water damage. As I understand it.”

  “That Cherry Weaver?” said Pammie. “She used to work here.”

  Their noises of genuine surprise encouraged Pammie. Hope and Maggie had definitely not known this piece of serendipity.

  “She came here
right out of high school. Mrs. Pease was training her. It was 2009, I think, CHARLOTTE! WAS IT 2009 CHERRY WEAVER CAME?” she called to the large woman above the noise of the dryers.

  “July 2009,” Charlotte answered. This was not the first time this subject had come up in the last week.

  “So you knew her?” Hope asked. “What was she like when she was here?”

  Pammie rolled a thick lock of Hope’s hair around her brush and gave it a good pull, then turned the dryer on it. “Dumb as a box of hammers,” said Pammie.

  “Oh dear.”

  “Well, but come on. You don’t need too many brain cells to figure out you shouldn’t set your boss’s place on fire, right after he gives you the can. We got off easy here, I guess. CHARLOTTE—WE GOT OFF EASY HERE! RIGHT? SHE MIGHT HAVE BURNED YOU DOWN!”

  Charlotte’s mouth was full of bobby pins; she was giving the old lady in her chair a kind of pin curl set that hadn’t been seen since the 1950s as far as Hope knew. Still, it was clear that she’d thought of that, that Cherry Weaver might have burned her whole salon right down and taken the whole block with it. She was nodding a world-weary agreement and so was the lady in her chair.

  “Charlotte had to let her go. She kept talking to the tourists about gun control. People from New York! Boston! What does she have between the ears?”

  “You know what I think?” said Mrs. Pease, taking the bobby pins out of her mouth. “I think she has one of those complexes.”

  “Really?” said Hope.

  “Like you hear on Oprah. About her father. She couldn’t get his attention if she set her own hair on fire right in front of him, but she kept trying.” Mrs. Pease put the pins back in her mouth, made another tight curl of blue hair with her fingers, then pinned it tight to the old pink scalp in front of her.

  “He’s a fireman,” said Pammie. “And a hunter. Charlotte went to high school with him. Gun nut, you’d probably say,” she said grinning, giving Hope’s shoulder a nudge.

  “Oh no,” said Hope. “I’m quite a good shot myself. My husband and I used to hunt ducks in Canada.”

  This went over extremely well, and impressed even Maggie.

  “So this idiot child, Cherry,” said Pammie. She now had Hope’s hair smooth and dry, the way she normally wore it. Without stopping to ask, Pammie started to back-comb the hair the way you make beehive hairdos when the spring musical is Grease. Maggie waited for Hope to scream, but Hope didn’t say a word.