The Connecticut Corpse Caper Read online

Percival shook his head and leaned into the counter alongside me. “I like the slippers.”

  He was referring to a pair of fabulously fuzzy Pandas that warmed my feet and ankles, a birthday gift from my nephew. “They're perfect for chilly nights.”

  “I'll have to find me a pair,” he laughed, sounding like Santa Claus approving of a child's gift list. The hearty sound was oddly comforting.

  I motioned the fridge. “Grab the carton of low-fat. Beatrice swears this works better than hot cocoa.”

  He peered into the pot, appeared dubious, then stepped across the kitchen. “Would you care for cookies? We can sit here and chat until fatigue kicks in.”

  “There's a package of oatmeal-raisin in the second cupboard to your left. They'd go nicely with hot honeyed milk.”

  “Wouldn't Oreos make a better pairing?”

  “Oreos?” I stopped whisking. “I don't recall seeing any.”

  His smile was sly. “That's because there were only a couple of packages and I hid them behind the kidney beans in the pantry.”

  “You devil.” I whirled and pointed. “Oreos, Mr. Sayers! And fast!”

  He complied and I quickly whisked in more honey to compensate for the extra milk. After filling two large clunky mugs to the brim, I ambled to the breakfast nook and sat across from the middle-aged writer. I grabbed several Oreos from a plastic plate in the middle of the table and placed them on a paper napkin sporting a picture of pasta.

  “Do you think we'll find that sour-faced barrister?” He sniffed the milk-honey mixture and took a small taste. His expression suggested he wasn't sure whether he liked it, but he took another sip and bit into a cookie.

  “More likely he'll find us – when he's ready.”

  “You don't believe he's dead then?”

  “I don't know what to think. He looked pretty dead and felt pretty dead, but anything is possible. He may have taken something to simulate death. And the mess in his chest could have been special effects. I didn't touch the stake. Until his body shows up, I am going to refrain from voicing thoughts or suppositions.” I scanned his face and tried not to stare at the left jaw, which sported a jagged Z-shaped scar.

  “I acquired the wretched thing while on a safari in Kenya.”

  “Really?” I'd never have expected him to be a man of adventure.

  He laughed. “Nothing exciting or perilous transpired. I fell from a Jeep … in the hotel driveway … after one brandy too many.”

  I also laughed and happily munched a couple of cookies.

  He drank thoughtfully. “Your boyfriend seems an interesting sort.”

  “And so not me?”

  “You two are very different, but you do mesh well. I understand he's a celebrated pastry chef.”

  “He has a following,” I replied with a proud smile. “The Food Network will be airing a show next month featuring pastry chefs from around the country. Adwin's in the first three episodes.”

  “He never mentioned it.”

  “No, he wouldn't. He leans toward the private and understated. I only found out two weeks ago when I saw a trailer for the show – and there he was.”

  Percival chuckled. “I'm not sure 'understated' and Adwin are synonymous. He looks like the front man to an eclectic … offbeat band.” He grabbed another cookie and this time unscrewed the chocolate wheels. “Adwin's an unusual name.”

  “His first name is actually Adwin-Byron.”

  “He had imaginative, creative parents, I take it?” He licked the sweet white cream like a sugar-starved five-year-old. It wasn't like him – a stuffy, academic gent channeling his inner child – and I found the action and expression endearing in an odd sort of way.

  “His mother was a ceramics artist, his father an architect. Both were killed in one of Almafa's medieval alleys when he was three.”

  “The poor fellow.”

  “Fate's not always kind,” I said quietly.

  “Fate happens for a reason … if you believe in Fate.”

  “Do you?”

  His smile was quick. “How did you two meet?”

  “I was showcasing popular Wilmington restaurants two springs ago and as my cameraperson was following Adwin around the kitchen and getting in his way, Adwin tripped and literally fell into my arms … with an unbaked chocolate-raspberry cake. That was the first and last time I wore a lovely caramel-colored linen suit.”

  We chuckled and drained our mugs.

  “Care for another round?”

  “Why not?” Percival wiped tiny brown flecks from his chin. “I could get to like it if I drank it enough.”

  I was strolling across the kitchen when May-Lee entered, wearing much what I'd expect from a woman of her caliber: a floral Coromandel robe and lace-trim pajamas. She flinched upon seeing Percival and a fleeting look passed between them. It wasn't one of love or admiration, nor did it seem to be one of hatred or anger. What was it? Annoyance? Avoidance?

  “This seems to be a night for not sleeping. We're having hot milk with honey.”

  “And Oreos.” Percival held one up as if he were displaying an Olympic medallion. “You always liked them.”

  “I've outgrown them,” she said with a hint of dryness. Just like I've outgrown you, her expression added. She turned to me and smiled. “If you don't mind making me one – to go – I'll take you up on your offer. Thanks.”

  I offered a regal bow. Casually I said, “I imagine you two have known each other for several years, courtesy of my aunt.”

  Percival snapped a cookie in half. “We go back.”

  She tossed her head. “Way back.”

  “Way way back.” Both halves found themselves in his mouth.

  An undercurrent of enmity passed. I looked from one to the other as I whisked. What was between these two? Mutual dislike? An unpleasant bygone incident? A bad business deal? I decided it best to steer the conversation – and mood – elsewhere and asked May-Lee if she knew Jensen well.

  “I'd met him through Matty a few times over the years here … and once in London when the two of us had traveled there for a week of theater and shopping. He'd taken us to the Tamarind Restaurant in Mayfair for dinner and then a cruise on the Thames. He'd also brought his wife along. They seemed very civil and very proud to show us the city and sites.”

  “Did anything out of the norm stand out?”

  The antique-store owner eyed me curiously. “Such as?”

  I poured steaming milk into mugs. “I don't know, to be honest. Was he anxious? Was he getting along with his wife?”

  She walked over and took the mug I held forth. “That wasn't quite two years ago. I can't imagine anything having happened then that would bear any significance now.” She pursed her lips and stared into her mug. “For what it's worth, I do recall two things. First: he made several phone calls, which I suppose isn't that unusual, given his profession. But during a couple of calls he was visibly tense, even stressed. And during one of the more 'stressful' moments, he muttered good-bye in German.” She shrugged and stared flintily at Percival for five full seconds before returning to me. “Second: he and his wife behaved more like casual acquaintances. If was as if they tolerated each other, but barely.”

  Somewhat like you and Percival I was tempted to say.

  “Sleep well Jill.” She smiled and offered Percival the barest of nods.

  I glanced at him. He smiled, took a handful of Oreos, and came to get his mug.

  “Another one of these and I will sleep like a baby.”

  I hoped I would as well, but I suspected I'd be lying around, wondering what was between May-Lee Sonit and Percival Sayers – and come to that, what was between May-Lee Sonit and Prunella Sayers.

  * * *

  Adwin was under the blanket with Fred the Cat. The feline was snoring up a storm while the feline lover murmured in his sleep. It was nearly 3:00 a.m. and, yes I was tired, but I was also interested in seeing if jock-meister Ger had a response re Fred the Ghost. I grabbed the laptop and slipped into the dim hall.
Prunella had done the same.

  “I thought you were sleeping,” were our simultaneous, suspicion-tinged comments.

  “I have messages that need checking.” I scanned her silky crimson robe with – what else? – a bird motif running along the collar and sleeves. Puffins. Fat, tripping-the-light-fantastic puffins. The robe hung loosely, drawing attention to a 36C chest with ripples of cord-like scarring starting at the cleavage and stretching to sights thankfully unseen. High-heeled red satin slippers with huge furry pompoms matched nicely. With her hair uncharacteristically loose and wavy the way it was, the freshly scabbed cheek and abraded eyebrow, the bird lady held an unexpected sexy if not raw edge.

  “I'm in need of peppermint tea,” she said with a trim smile. “My stomach's acting up.”

  “Too much excitement?”

  “Too much rich food. Porter's a good cook, but he uses much too much butter.”

  I watched her sashay down a recently vacuumed Kashmar rug. Not that I made a habit of watching women's behinds, but hers had a seductive sway going on. Interesting. I moved onward with the intention of finding an empty guestroom, but ended up in Aunt Mat's bedroom. It was one place the gang had agreed it wouldn't encroach upon (showing consideration for our hostess and respecting the dead and all that).

  Adjusting the lighting, I sat at a Queen Anne vanity set, a cherry ensemble much like Aunt Mat: pretty and feminine, delicate yet sturdy. Logging on, I found a lengthy email response with two scanned documents from Ger.

  Fred Maxwell – our resident spook – was a relative of Pete Maxwell, the guy who tipped off Sheriff Garrett about Billy the Kid's whereabouts after that spectacular escape from the Lincoln courthouse in 1881. That's where the association between Fred and the Kid ended, although the former wasn't considered that upstanding a citizen either, having hung around with cattle rustlers, small-time bank robbers, and working women.

  Fred liked ladies. A lot. He enjoyed spending earnings on them. A lot. Because he wasn't that careful about staying in the shadows or keeping a low profile after a bout of thievery or rustling, his wayward ways had made mention in local papers. Were the ladies to blame? Or the libido?

  One such lady, Mahogany Belle, didn't take kindly to Fred's overzealous if not controlling affections and Fred didn't take kindly to having his overzealous if not controlling affections snubbed. Mahogany Belle skedaddled to Big Chester, a local merchant and town cleaner-upper, who ran Fred out of town with a bag of feathers in one hand and a bucket of tar in the other. Gambling, questionable women, and debatable judgment resulted in Fred being jailed thrice for petty crimes and nearly being lynched once. Maybe the man found God, or at the very least peace, because he ended up settling in Norfolk Virginia for three years.

  This was more information than I'd have expected, given the limitation of documents and chronicles in the 1880s, but our Fred showed up in a few records and the like, including a diary from young Anna Mae Bellamy, who'd first met him one afternoon when he'd delivered her father's newly shod Arabian Stallion. Apparently chaperons and parental units weren't as abundant as you might have thought, given the times. The eighteen-year-old spent a couple of hours with Fred, chatting over life, his mainly. In addition to youthful female feelings, she chronicled all she'd learned, such as his fall from grace and his respect for the “gentler sex”, his traveling from state to state until he rode into Virginia, and his subsequent discovery of honest work: blacksmithing. It was a trade he'd originally learned from his father, but he'd only worked at it for a few short years. Evidently running with rustlers had had more appeal.

  Lucky for me, Anna Mae's small leather-bound diary was part of an on-line archival collection at Duke University and that Ger had taken the time to assist with my request.

  Fred had been a cowboy kind of guy, for a while anyway, one who'd seen and done wrong, then found purpose and tranquility along the way. Though how he'd ended up in Connecticut and, more specifically, in Aunt Mat's house was anyone's guess. Maybe we'd never learn, unless he'd left a diary in the walls he surreptitiously strolled along.

  I requested Ger to uncover what happened to Fred between Virginia and Connecticut. The timeframe would have been 1885-1890.

  Was it important to discover more about Fred? No. But I was curious. I stared past the window and saw that the rain had stopped. It was probably gathering momentum. I scanned an indigo sky filled with brilliant specks of silver, scrutinized the constellation Perseus, picked out Algo, the second brightest star in Perseus, and gave myself a mental pat on the back for remembering parts of the magnificent celestial sphere, thanks to a brief foray into astronomy. It looked frightfully cold out there. When the storm returned in all its pre-winter fury, and I had no doubt that it would, it was going to be a nightmare. Traveling would be challenging if not treacherous. The wisest thing would be to hunker down, preferably by a roaring fire with lots of blankets and a big pot of cocoa or milk and honey.

  My thoughts returned to the two men who'd just died. Why not ask Ger to help with that, too? “I need all the facts you can find on the Moone mansion. If you're too busy, please ask Angela. In fact, have her learn all she can about Thomas Saturne and Jensen Moone. Please have her summarize the important/interesting facts in point-form. Need ASAP. Love ya.” Like root canal. If anyone could unearth unusual or hard-to-find data, Angela could. The woman was a whiz at ferreting out remote facts, but what would you expect from a former corporate research analyst?

  Did I feel like sleeping or sleuthing? Jensen's murder, real or not, had me wondering. Where was that man? Hiding in another secret room, laughing and gleefully rubbing his hands like a movie baddie? Or was he stuffed in a cubbyhole somewhere? He'd certainly looked dead, but special-effects make-up could achieve amazing results and death could be feigned, as I'd intimated to Percival. Severe hypothermia, for example, could make someone appear dead. But that could be ruled out in Jensen Moore's case; it was pretty unlikely someone had dunked him into Greenwich Harbor. There were “zombie drugs” of course, but that was a stretch. I doubted anyone here was into voodoo, but never discount the improbable. What other drugs were there – say, didn't tetrodotoxin cause paralysis?

  I was reaching for the keyboard when a strange sensation overcame me. It felt as if someone were watching. I turned slowly and froze. I could have sworn … I saw Aunt Mat beyond the armoire mirror.

  Hopping to my feet, I hastened to the ornate wardrobe, and yanked open the heavy satinwood door. It was empty inside. Completely empty. No clothes hung from a rod on the right; nothing was folded and sitting on four shelves on the left. How sad. Once you were gone you were consigned to memory and the Sally Ann.

  The inside of the door held nothing save a panel of soft, clean puckered paisley fabric. Decorative to be sure, but decorative to whom? Dust fairies? Absently I fingered it and then pulled it gently. The panel of fabric swung outward, revealing the rear of the mirror. Pressing my face to the back painting proved nothing. It wasn't a two-way mirror or a magic one. No illusion. Merely a delusion – mine. My imagination was having a figment of some sort.

  Stifling a yawn, I stepped into the hallway and stopped, my eyes as wide as my mouth.“Ha, ha, ha, you and me, Little brown jug, don't I love thee!”

  Stunned, awed, and frightened, I watched Fred the Ghost saunter past. He glanced sideward, smiled, and I felt myself being twirled around in a dosy-do. Then he entered a wall. I wasn't sure if I was more startled by the fact he'd greeted me, danced with me, or that he wasn't more than thirty-five years of age. Anna Mae, the young diary keeper, had described Fred as possessing a “funny crooked smile” and being as strong and striking as a vaquero. She was right. Those sky-blue eyes, surrounded by tiny crinkles – laugh lines made more noticeable by regular exposure to frontier sunshine – twinkled with mischief. The coffee-brown beard was full and the hair shaggy and short. He was of average build and average height, with broad shoulders, and his clothing typical of the period: plaid pants and double-breasted jacket, and cravat. Ha
d he borrowed the outfit from the householder, or had Fred always held a sense of fashion? Or was it possible he'd been a guest of the Moones back when? It was difficult to imagine Fred, coming from a very different social force, hobnobbing with a Moone, but never discount the improbable, right?

  This time I'd had the privilege of seeing him for several seconds as opposed to viewing him for a blink. Tonight he hadn't appeared like a will-o'-the-wisp or a flickering light or image, or a movie ghost, all translucent. Nor had he appeared hazy or filmy like the spirits in the footage our station had presented in a two-part documentary on local supernatural phenomena. I'd done a portion of the voice over and had absorbed a lot of information. The subject had never been a fascination of mine prior to that, but for several weeks after the project wrapped up I'd found myself scanning shadows and watching darkened windows and empty fields.

  Fred looked pretty damn life-like. Human. Real. I hurried to the wall, tapped and slapped. My fingers tracked wrought iron candleholders and swirled paint, but couldn't locate levers or buttons or springs. What blood-and-bones person walked through a wall as solid as the Hoover Dam? None.

  I hastened into the bedroom and dove under the covers, caring little if Fred the Cat was there or if the fuzzy beast minded that I'd hugged him to my chest like a teddy bear.

  Adwin rolled forward, asking sleepily, “That you, my little Twinkie?”

  “Go back to sleep, my beloved Ho Ho.” The whiskered teddy bear began purring and the low rumbling sound was soothing and pleasant. With a stifled sneeze, I settled in for what was left of the night.

  “Where've you been?”

  “Dancing with a ghost.”

  14

  1-2-3, You're It

  Dressed in faded Diesel jeans and a Nautica full-zip sweatshirt, Adwin strolled into the bedroom and dropped bundled items into a small wooden hamper in a corner. With towel-dried hair and a Dennis-the-Menace cowlick hanging between the eyes, he looked impishly cute. “What are you doing?”

  “Reading up on the history of the property, courtesy of our station's research associate, Angela. Ger texted her before going on air and she was on it pronto. She sent me what she found on the property so far. She'll get back to it when she's put out a few fires at the station.”