Dead at Breakfast Read online

  “And the time he brought the snakes,” said Prince. “That python, that was enormous, that thing.”

  “Yes,” said Glory. Her expression had changed for a moment. “I remember that one. Nineteen feet long or something. They’d found her in someone’s swimming pool in Orange County.”

  “And that little nest of poisonous snakes he brought. Were they drugged or something?”

  Gloria was now a little wary. “I don’t think so.”

  “I just wondered. You seemed so calm around them. You must have worked with them before the show too, like with the cheetahs.”

  Glory glanced at her watch. “I must have,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m keeping you. My wife will be so interested to hear all this.”

  “You said ex-wife.”

  “Yes. But you know what they say, divorced but never unmarried. I’m told you were very angry with your brother-in-law the night of the fire, up in Maine.” Prince took out his notebook and a pencil.

  “Oh were you.” She was now thoroughly tired of this guy with his Columbo routine.

  “I was. Is it true?”

  “Of course it’s true. He behaved like a pig to my sister. To everybody. He was a pig. A fat, selfish, unfaithful pig.”

  Prince just looked at her, as if contemplating the intensity of her speech.

  “Unfaithful? Did your sister tell you that?”

  “She didn’t have to,” said Glory haughtily.

  “No? Why not?”

  She stared at him. “Everybody knew.”

  “The children?”

  “Not the children. As far as I know. Oh maybe even they knew. What’s your point?”

  “That not everybody knew. But you did.”

  After a long moment she said dismissively, “He was my brother-in-law. I’m very close to my sister.”

  Prince turned to a clean page. “Is it true you said you’d like to stick a knife in him and twist it?”

  “Probably. But I didn’t.”

  “No, we know he wasn’t stabbed. But you went to his room that night?”

  “Of course I didn’t!” she yelled at him. From far away in the house Prince could hear footsteps hurrying toward them.

  “And we would know that how?”

  “I was with my sister. All night! Ask her!”

  “How would she know? You said you’d given her massive doses of painkillers.”

  “Manuela, would you call Freddy? This man is leaving.” She looked at Prince with anger and added, “I’m calling my lawyer.”

  Prince stood. “I’m going. But could you just tell me, how a snake bag and snake tongs got into your suitcase?”

  “Freddy!” she yelled.

  Jorge tried for several hours to reach Selena Sherrill, then gave up and headed east to the younger Albert Clark’s house in Oyster Bay. He found a brick Colonial on a lane of handsome houses whose small surrounding yards looked new and raw as barely healed scars. An SUV of a size that probably got about twelve miles to the gallon sat in the driveway. There were two child seats strapped to the bench seat behind the driver, and in the way back there was a mess of comic books, action figures, candy wrappers, and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards.

  When Jorge looked up from peering into the car, he saw that the front door of the house had opened and a woman so thin she looked made from bicycle parts stood watching him. She was wearing black yoga pants and a tank top, and a pile of straw-colored hair surrounded her preternaturally narrow face. Her cheeks were flushed.

  “Can I help you?” she called, looking as if she really meant What the hell do you think you’re doing?

  “Oh, I’m sorry—did I interrupt your workout?” He walked up the driveway and took the brick walk to where she was standing, rather than walk across the lawn, which looked as if it needed all the encouragement it could get. “Mrs. Clark? I’m George Baker. I called before.”

  “I didn’t get any message.”

  “No? I’m sorry. I hope this isn’t a bad time. I was a friend of Albie Clark, Senior. I wanted to pay my respects.” He extended his hand and reflexively the woman accepted it. “You’re Melody?”

  She was. “My husband isn’t here.” This suited Jorge fine, as young Albert might have realized more easily than his wife that Jorge and Albie shared few common points of biography.

  “May I come in?”

  Still wary, she stepped back into the hall, leaving the door open behind her, and let him follow her into a sitting room off the front hall, which was mostly furnished with Lego blocks. There was an elderly armchair however, and a window seat. She took the chair, and he perched at the window.

  “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  She inclined her head.

  “I can’t get used to it, Albie gone. And Ruth too, she was a sweet woman I always thought.”

  “How did you know my father-in-law?”

  “Oh, way back. College. We didn’t see each other as much in recent years, which I regret. I travel a lot.”

  She wasn’t giving him any help, and he was distracted by the thought that he’d like to take her into town and make her eat a bacon cheeseburger and a butterscotch sundae.

  She glanced at her watch. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I have to pick up my youngest from nursery school in a few minutes.”

  “Oh,” he said, “I have come at a bad time. Forgive me.”

  “But I should tell you that if you came for a warm cuddly love fest about good old Albie, you’re in the wrong pew.”

  Jorge did a good job of looking taken aback. “I’m sorry—there’s obviously something going on here I don’t understand.”

  Clearly, Melody agreed with him.

  “The Albie I knew was a lot of fun, he . . .”

  “I’m sure he was, and lucky you. But he made everyone around him miserable. Look, I’m sorry to be blunt. But this family is having a hard time, and tiptoeing around it isn’t helping.”

  After a stretch of thinking he didn’t know what to say, Jorge said, “I don’t know what to say.”

  “No, you don’t,” said Melody. Jorge thought she was about to order him out, but as often happens with bottled-up anger, hers, uncapped, had a pressure of its own, and she wasn’t done.

  He stayed where he was, and after another pause, said, “I’m trying to understand. When Ruth got sick Albie gave up everything to take care of her . . .”

  “He took her prisoner,” Melody snapped. “It wasn’t clear that her cancer couldn’t be managed. She could have had more time, with us and with her grandchildren.” She gestured at the toys around the room. “But Albie had to know best. It was all about him. He couldn’t let it be her decision.”

  “But didn’t she love the beach, wasn’t it . . .”

  “He moved her away from her doctors and everyone who would have been on her side. And when we tried to talk to her about it, he answered for her. She wouldn’t say a word against him.”

  “So maybe it really was what she wanted.”

  Melody made a rude noise. “She didn’t want to spend the last months of her life fighting with him. She’d always taken what he dished out and she kept it up to the end. My little one has no memory of her as a person at all. Just a scary old sick lady in a bad wig, that’s all she remembers. I loved Ruth. And now we’re supposed to be sorry for Albie’s pain because he slit his throat? What a shitty, cowardly thing to do.” She glared at Jorge.

  Since that seemed to be the last word on the subject, Jorge said, “Well. I’m sorry to have bothered you.”

  She didn’t even offer to see him out. She just stood watching as he left the house and got into his car, and was still at the window as he drove away.

  He drove to the Sunrise Highway and headed east.

  Visiting hours at the Ainsley Jail were from two to four. The officer on the desk gave Buster and Roy Weaver padlocks, and told them to leave all metal objects, weapons, and anything that could conceal contraband in their lockers. For Roy, that meant the jacket he was wearing
over his T-shirt. By the time they were called to go into the security airlock between the prisoners’ world and the outside, Roy’s pale arms were covered in gooseflesh.

  The visitors were crowded into a small square room, like a freight elevator that didn’t go anywhere, as the door they had just passed through was locked tight. In with them were an older woman with what looked to be grandchildren, a young man with a small boy, clearly his son, and assorted others. The door on the opposite side clicked and shimmied after the guard with them gave a signal, then rolled back.

  Buster and Roy stepped into a large room with tables and chairs and uniformed guards standing against each wall. The wall of windows showed the cheerful sunlight and the parking lot beyond. The floor was linoleum, the walls institutional tile, altogether much like a grade school cafeteria except there was no food and the tables were bolted down.

  The other visitors chose tables and sat down in silence, knowing the drill. Buster chose a table and sat, but Roy remained standing as if he didn’t want to drop his guard until he knew where he was and what was going to happen next.

  What happened was that a door in the back wall opened into the room, and the prisoners who had visitors filed through. In the front were the mothers. The first, a frighteningly skinny blonde dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the two girls who had come with their grandmother. Everyone in this group except the mother seemed stiff and uncomfortable. The second woman through the door was stocky and much tattooed, but the man with the little boy wrapped her in his arms with great tenderness. She picked up the boy and buried her face in his neck. They moved to a table far from the rest. Then came a couple of older women greeting brothers, or lawyers or neighbors, and last came Cherry.

  She was pale as a slug, and her eyes were dull. She knew only that she had a visitor, and expected Brianna, or the lawyer woman. When she caught sight of Roy, she stopped walking and her lips began to tremble. Roy went to her and after a moment of not seeming to know what to do, he put his arms around her and said, “Cupcake.” Behind him, Buster could see Cherry’s mouth take on the oblong it made when she cried, and she wrapped her arms around her father.

  Toby Osborne had driven out to get the lay of the land. After stopping at Barb’s for a crab roll, and at Beryl Weaver’s house to take some pictures, he drove on to Ainsley to do some research for Maggie at the library. When he was finished he swung up to the mall to pay a visit to Celia Little, whom he found in her office immersed in an online accounting course she was taking in case the lawyering thing didn’t work out. She was discouraged about the Weaver case, she admitted. She knew everyone deserved a defense, even when they were guilty, but she had student loans and bills to pay and had hoped for a case she could win, a chance to make a little name for herself.

  “What makes you think you can’t win this one?”

  Celia shrugged.

  “What does your investigator say?”

  She looked startled. Was she supposed to have an investigator?

  He took out one of his cards from his days at the Globe, crossed out the phone number, and wrote the number of his mobile.

  “Here. Now you have an investigator.”

  “I can’t pay you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said.

  She watched him limping with his cane across her ratty yard, tufted with brown crabgrass killed by frost, and noticed the yellow-green half tennis ball that had been lying beside the walkway since June. She really ought to pick that up. But she didn’t see how that old guy was going to make much difference to anything.

  She turned back to her accounting homework.

  Back in his car, Toby placed a call to an editor he knew at the Kennebec Journal to ask about public defenders in Augusta. He didn’t want to scare the family, but there had to be somebody better for Cherry than Celia Little. He could see why Hope couldn’t interfere here, but there was no reason he couldn’t.

  Then he turned his car around and drove down State Street, parked in the municipal lot in front of the court house, and wandered into the Chowder Bowl. He sat at the counter and ordered a cup of decaf tea. He chatted with the waitress about business (good, but would be better if they had a big trial going), the judges and lawyers who came in regularly (Judge Hennebery was a favorite, an old kidder), which did she recommend, the chowder or the shrimp roll (both were real good but she favored the shrimp roll), and where in town could he buy a newspaper? (Mr. Paperback across the street.) He thanked her, and told her that if that wasn’t decaf she’d served him, he wanted her number so he could call her at two in the morning. She was tickled and urged him to come back for a shrimp roll soon.

  It was quiet in the car for some miles as Buster and Roy drove back toward Bergen. The whole visit had been emotional, and Buster had the feeling that Roy would have been happy not to say another word for a week, but too long a silence made Buster antsy. He said, “You and Shep Gordon go way back?”

  “Yuh,” said Roy.

  “How far back?”

  Roy looked at him, as if to say Are you really going to do this to me? But finally he said, “Grade school.”

  Buster nodded thoughtfully. Roy’s legs were jiggling again.

  “He’s not a bad cop,” Buster said.

  “Good for him.” Roy looked out the window. Then he took out a cigarette and lit it without asking if Buster minded.

  “Were you in the same class?”

  Roy stopped jiggling his legs and looked at Buster. You’re really going to do this to me, the look said. But with an annoyed sigh, he answered, “No. He’s a year younger. But he was always bigger.”

  What to ask next to keep this going? Buster tried, “Were you on teams together?”

  Wrong gambit. Roy gave a hoot of laughter. “Teams!” he said, seeming delighted at the thought.

  Oh. Right, thought Buster. Roy Weaver a team player? Roy Weaver going out for basketball?

  “I just didn’t like him. But things were fine until they bused us to the junior high. Shep liked to walk up and down the aisle and mess with people. Driver couldn’t make him sit down. Nobody could.”

  Buster nodded. This was a very long speech for Roy, and he recognized the pressure behind it. He had known altogether too many kids like that. Especially at that age, they come into their growth, and they thought that meant that somebody died and made them king of the jungle.

  “Used to like to take my hat. He’d take it off my head and play keep-away with it. Toss it to his friends. Back and forth over my head.”

  Buster could picture the scene. Roy, a natural solitary, made the center of attention. People like Shep always knew exactly who would mind most. Everyone laughing, even the ones who liked Roy, because if you didn’t laugh with people like Shep, it was your turn next.

  “What did you do?”

  Roy cut his eyes toward Buster, then back to the road. The pause lengthened. Finally he shifted a little in his seat and said, “Broke into his house on Christmas morning. Took a dump on the living room rug.”

  Buster let out a guffaw and Roy smiled briefly himself. Buster couldn’t help himself, he punched the steering wheel, laughing.

  Finally, Buster said, “His parents must have been plenty mad.”

  “They were not pleased,” Roy admitted.

  “Did they know who did it?”

  “No, but they knew it had something to do with Shep.”

  “And he knew it was you?”

  “Kids all knew. I don’t know how, I never told anyone. When I’d get on the bus they’d elbow each other and look at Shep.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Left my hat alone,” said Roy.

  All the way back to Ainsley after he dropped Roy off, the thought of that Christmas morning made Buster laugh again. And then he’d remember Cherry. He didn’t think Shep Gordon would railroad a person unless he really thought she was guilty. But if he did think she was guilty, he was never going to budge from his spot. Shep just didn’t.

&
nbsp; When Buster had docs or images on his phone and needed hard copy, he’d forward them to Janet Torrey in the Bergen Town Hall from wherever he was, and she’d print them for him. He’d swing around to pick them up on his way to Just Barb’s, where he was bound to go sooner or later. On Thursday afternoon he reached Janet at about four. She was a large woman with a ready smile and beautiful glossy dark hair. The previous day had been her birthday. Her counter was covered with birthday cards, and she was wearing a circlet on her head made of silver paper covered with colored foil stars.

  “I see you’ve been crowned,” said Buster as he strolled in.

  “My granddaughter made it. And my grandson made me a cake from scratch, without a recipe. They saw that movie, about the rat that becomes a French chef, the Disney movie? and Nathan started baking. I didn’t tell him what I’d do if I found a real rat in my kitchen.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Nine.”

  “How was the cake?”

  “Real good. It took my daughter all night to clean up the kitchen, but that cake was delicious. Chocolate with blue icing and gummy bears. Now what is this?” She was looking at the image that had just emerged from the printer.

  Buster stood to look over her shoulder. It was a picture of a page of handwritten notes from what was pretty clearly a standard issue police notebook. The writing was large and clear, but in two places, lines had been crossed out and corrections were hand-printed in the space above the original note.

  “Are you supposed to have these?” she asked, a crease of worry between her eyebrows.

  “Have what?” said Buster, taking the papers and slipping them into a backpack that had seen better days.

  “Oh,” said Janet. “Right. Lost my head for a minute and thought we’d done some printing. You give Brianna my best.”

  “I will. You look good in that crown.”

  “I thought so too. I told the selectmen, I’m wearing it from now on.”

  On the sunporch at the inn in the late afternoon, Maggie was explaining what Jorge had learned about Albie Clark, at least in the world according to his children.