Dead at Breakfast

  “When she was brought in for questioning,” said Pammie, “she was in the bathroom, and of course someone has to be in there with her. She was crying, and saying she shouldn’t have done it, and talking about how scared she was. It never even occurred to her she was talking to a policewoman!”

  The lady with the pin curls was now across the room under a dryer, and Charlotte had come to join their conversation. “Carson Bailey says he’s got guys in supermax whose cases weren’t as tight as what they’ve got on Cherry.”

  “Really?” asked Hope.

  “He says so.”

  “He says everything points one way. There aren’t even any other suspects.”

  “Charlotte cuts his hair,” said Pammie. “Carson Bailey.”

  “Well, when he’s in Ainsley. She had motive and opportunity, Cherry did, and the whole family’s mean as skunks. She’s started fires before.”

  “And she’s an idiot. Kind of kid who’d murder her parents and then want sympathy that she’s an orphan.”

  “She sets fires so she can see her father,” said Charlotte.

  “She told her lawyer she did it,” said Pammie. “Her lawyer’s an Indian.” She had finished her work with the ratting comb, and was now gassing Hope’s head with hairspray. When she was satisfied she handed Hope a mirror and spun her chair around so she could see the back of her head.

  “I was amazed you let her do that,” said Maggie once they were on the street.

  “I got sort of fascinated,” said Hope. “How do I look?”

  “I think your prom date’s reaction will be shock and awe.”

  Hope stopped walking and dug in her purse for her compact. She peered into its small round mirror. “You know, I wanted to have my hair done like this for my prom in 1964, but my mother wouldn’t let me.”

  “Now you can cross it off your bucket list.”

  “I’ll say,” said Hope, putting away the compact. “But I wanted to hear what she’d say, didn’t you?”

  “I did. What did you think?”

  “I was appalled.”

  “Yes. No other suspects? They’re not even looking for other explanations?”

  “I think it’s time to call my old friend, the reporter.”

  “Has he ever seen your hair like that?”

  “Nobody has. But it will make him feel young.”

  “Do you think he’d come up here?”

  “He lost his wife last year. Now he doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

  “Sounds familiar,” said Maggie, stopping in front of Mr. Paperback. “Look, today’s papers.” They went in and bought the Boston Globe and the New York Times, and all the Artemis tribute magazines that had been rushed into print in the last week.

  All the magazines wrote up the fire at the Oquossoc Mountain Inn. They reported that a suspect was in custody and two ran interviews with a self-important Carson Bailey pretending to be modest about how quickly they had solved the case. Hope and Maggie sat silently in the library after dinner, reading each article as if studying for an exam. There were pictures of Alexander in his young manhood. Pictures of him and Lisa, posing in evening dress with beakers of wine in their hands, at a gala at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Accounts of Alexander’s business career, how he’d started as an immigrant carpenter and ended as a megarich developer of shopping malls and suburban office parks. They showed pictures of the funeral cortege arriving at Forest Lawn after the Staples Center. Someone had gotten a shot with a telephoto lens of Lisa being helped into the chapel by her son, her face completely hidden by a veil that concealed her like a burka. She was wearing high heels in spite of the fact that her right ankle was taped and looked like a football. Glory was right behind her, flanked by Sophie and Ada. The girls looked terrible.

  A reporter for one of the Artemis Tribute magazines did a piece on her school days, how she’d attended the elite Harvard-Westlake School until sixth grade, when she transferred to Uplands, a school known for accommodating professional children. They’d gotten a copy of the yearbook for the year her class “graduated.” In Artemis’s case that was a term of art; she had evidently been tutored on the set while she was working more than she’d attended in person. But she had been enough of a presence to leave a record of personality and friendships. Her name was given as Jenny Antippas. Under her picture, along with favorite sayings (Wait a hot minute . . . blue M&M’s . . . rockin’ the Cartier!!) were her nicknames: Artemis, Goddess, and JennyKookla.

  “Look at this,” said Maggie. She put the page in front of Hope.

  “Cute picture,” said Hope. “How do you think they got the yearbook?”

  “Bought it from one of her classmates. What do you make of this, though?” she said, tapping the page.

  “JennyKookla. Kookla? Kukla, like Kukla, Fran and Ollie?”

  “Maybe. Some kind of pet name. Does anyone that age even know about Kukla, Fran and Ollie?”

  “They’re show business kids, they might. Does kukla mean something? We should Google it.”

  Maggie took out her phone and looked at the screen. “One bar.”

  “Sometimes you can get two if you’re closer to the antenna,” said Hope.

  “Is Mr. Gurrell still here? His computer is hardwired to it.” The Internet signal, they now knew, came to the hotel from a transmitter on a hill four miles away, and was a line-of-sight connection, meaning that if fog or heavy rain or anything else obscured the view, the signal blinked out. Out was its condition more often than not, because some trees had grown up since it was installed, whose topmost branches flickered in the way of the signal in any kind of wind. The trees were on someone else’s land and the owner declined to remove them. The hardwired computer worked better than the hotel wi-fi, which shouldn’t have been true, but was. Places this far from town were supposed to get DSL lines sometime soon, but if you called the phone company to learn when, they would generally admit that it would be around the next ice age.

  Mr. Gurrell’s door was locked.

  “That’s frustrating,” said Maggie.

  “What was Kukla?” Hope asked. “A snake?”

  “No that was Ollie. He was a one-toothed dragon. Kukla had the big red clown nose and angry eyebrows.”

  “Strange nickname for someone you liked.”

  “Let’s go see if housekeeping will let us in.”

  The door to the housekeeping office was open, but no one was there and the drawer where the skeleton keys were kept was locked.

  “Do you think the front desk would let us in?”

  “She shouldn’t, but it’s worth a try.”

  On their way toward the front of the house, they heard a peal of female laughter from the kitchen, then a low chuckle from a male voice. The door was slightly ajar, and Hope, ever curious, stopped and pushed it open.

  In the sink nearest the industrial dishwasher, which was rumbling, was Chef Sarah, holding a long wooden spoon with Walter the parrot perched on the handle. Beside her, Earl Niner was wielding the dish sprayer over the bird, who cooed and chuckled, a portrait of happiness. As the women came in, Walter hopped off the spoon handle into the sink and grabbed the spoon with his beak, which made Sarah laugh again. “You like that, don’t you, Wally?” The spray rained over him. Clearly Wally did.

  Sarah looked up and said, “Don’t call the health department, will you? He’s a very clean bird.”

  “I can see that,” said Hope. “I never thought of birds liking water.”

  “He’s from the rain forest. He loves it,” she said. Earl turned the water off, and Walter hopped back onto the spoon handle and stretched his wings out like a frustrated god, demanding more water tribute. When none came, he shook himself and began to puff his plumage. He was wet enough to look a little like a plucked chicken. He turned his head so he could fix Earl with one bright orange-rimmed eye. Sarah lifted him, and he stepped off his handle perch onto Earl’s shoulder.

  “It’s very bad of us, but he enjoys it so much.” She reached
over to scratch Walter’s pin feathers, and he leaned in toward her in pleasure and puffed his plumage. He shook himself again, and Earl’s shirt began to darken with wet.

  “I better get him upstairs and dry him off,” said Earl.

  “Bye-bye, Walter,” Sarah cooed at him. “Say bye-bye?”

  Walter uttered a sardonic hahaha sound. It made Hope and Maggie laugh. Earl turned and went out, with Walter chirruping on his shoulder.

  “They don’t really talk,” said Sarah. “African Grays are the talkers. He just goes hahaha when you tell him to say something. He also does a very good smoke alarm.”

  “What kind is he?” Maggie asked.

  “Amazon orange wing. How can I help you ladies? Were you looking for me?”

  “No,” said Hope. “We were on our way to the front desk when we heard you laughing. We came in because we hate to miss anything.”

  “You really love animals,” said Maggie to Sarah.

  “I do. They’re so much safer than people.”

  After a slight pause, Maggie said, “Maybe you can help us . . . we wanted to get that new desk girl to break us into Mr. Gurrell’s office. I don’t suppose you have a key?”

  “I think I might. What do you need there?”

  “The Internet. We want to find out what kukla means.”

  “Oh!” said Sarah. “I can tell you that.”

  Maggie, who had been waiting for Sarah to say Kukla, Fran and Ollie, said, “You can?”

  “Yes. Koukla means ‘pretty doll,’ in Greek.”

  “Really!”

  “What an amazing woman you are,” Hope added. “You speak Greek?”

  Sarah said, “Not really. I spent a summer on Crete, once.”

  “I’ve been to Crete,” said Maggie. “I was on the trail of the Minoans.”

  “You’d just read The King Must Die?” Sarah asked.

  “Exactly!” cried Maggie. “You too?”

  “Fascinating book,” said Sarah, smiling.

  “Were you studying on Crete?”

  Sarah turned and began washing out the sink. “No . . . You know. Just bumming around with a friend.”

  “Ah. Well thank you very much, that solves one mystery.

  “Good night,” said Hope.

  “Good night,” said Sarah, when they were at the door.

  DAY TWELVE, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 17

  It hadn’t taken Jorge long to find out where the Richard Sherrills sent their kids to school. The private school grapevine in New York City could give the CIA intelligence envy. The Sherrill boy, Lucas, who was twelve, was at the Buckley School. The younger daughter, Sally, was at Chapin. Jorge, dressed like a banker, was waiting across from Chapin Thursday morning as the lower school girls were delivered to the school doors by parents and nannies. He knew what Selena Sherrill looked like from Google Images, and from the grapevine that Richard worked on Wall Street, while Selena was a stay-at-home mom. He figured the odds were good that she did the drop-off.

  His plan had been to fall into conversation with Selena if he could, but chance provided a better plan. Selena greeted a friend whose daughter had just run inside, and they left school together, walking west. Jorge followed discreetly. They paused on the corner of Park and Eighty-fourth Street and talked for some time, although it was a crisp morning and a chill breeze had come up. When they parted, Selena to go south, the other woman on toward Central Park, Jorge let Selena go and followed the friend. At the corner of Madison, he caught up with her.

  “Excuse me,” he said, “but wasn’t that Selena Sherrill you were just talking to?”

  The woman looked at him, surprised. She’d fished a red earphone wire from her pocket and had been just about to pop in her earbuds.

  “George Baker,” said Jorge. “I saw you together in front of the school. I was dropping off my granddaughter. I wasn’t sure, I haven’t seen Selena for years. Which way are you going?”

  “Across the park,” said the woman, not putting the earphones away.

  “I’ll walk with you,” said Jorge. “I was a friend of Albie Clark, Selena’s father. Did you know him?”

  “I did,” said the woman. Jorge stuck out his hand and said “George,” again, and this gave her little choice but to either snub him, or accept the introduction. She did the latter, a touch reluctantly, and said “Jean Chant.”

  “Great name,” said Jorge. “Did you know him from the Hamptons?” He was guessing, but guessing well.

  “Yes. That’s really how I know Selena. Our husbands were summer friends out there as children.” She resumed walking. “I’m going to be late for work,” she added, picking up her pace, “if I don’t keep moving.”

  “I don’t mind,” said Jorge as she took long quick strides down the block. Moving right along with her, he added, “I’d like to pay my respects to her but I wasn’t sure it would be welcome.”

  “Yes,” said Jean Chant. “It’s complicated.”

  “Do you think she’d mind a visit from an old friend of her father’s? Selena? I’d like to—you know, sit shivah with her or something like that. Sit and remember him. We’d lost touch in later years, and it bothers me.”

  Jean looked at him without slowing her pace as they hit the Walk light and crossed Fifth.

  “I think if I were you I’d write a note,” she said dryly.

  “They weren’t close? I’d gotten that impression, but Albie was private,” said Jorge.

  “Mr. Baker, I doubt you and Selena have the same view of her father. He was a shit to her mother. There were always other women, and he wasn’t such a red hot father, either,” said Jean. She said it as if it was something she’d wanted to tell the world for some time.

  After a moment to digest this, Jorge said, “You shock me.”

  “Yes, well. Are you sure you’re going this way?”

  “It’s fine. I’ll grab a cab on Central Park West. I never saw that side of him.”

  “A lot of people are different behind closed doors,” said Jean. “He was a very angry man.”

  “I did know he was very annoyed with some neighbors in the Hamptons.”

  “Those Greeks? Everyone was angry about them. That’s not what I meant. Look, I don’t want to speak ill of the dead, but Mr. Clark is not a person I feel neutral about.”

  “I understand. Sorry, I know I’m imposing. I’m just, I guess, puzzled. When Ruth got sick he seemed so stricken.”

  “Conscious-stricken is more like it.”

  They were deep in the park now and Jorge was practically running to keep up with her.

  “Does Selena’s brother feel the same way about him?”

  “You better ask him,” said Jean Chant. Then she looked at her watch, muttered, “Sorry,” and took off race-walking, putting her earbuds into her ears as she went.

  Toby Osborne, late of the Boston Globe, reached the Oquossoc Mountain Inn on Thursday in time for elevenses. Hope had reserved a room for him in the wing where Earl Niner and Mr. Rexroth lived, partly so he could sniff around there without attracting notice, and partly because Zeke and some boys from the village were starting the cleanup in the wing that had burned and she wanted to protect him from the noise.

  Toby was a gorgeous shambling mess, with white hair and a bald spot on the crown of his head, and eyebrows that made every woman he met contemplate pruning shears. Hope saw him drive past the front door and into the parking lot, and she and Maggie watched from the sunporch as he got out of his car and fetched his duffle bag from the backseat. He stood looking up at the site of the fire for a good while.

  They were waiting for him in the lobby when he came in the side door with his bag on his shoulder, walking with a cane.

  “What are you hobbling about?” Hope asked as she went to greet him.

  “Hip,” he said. “They say put off a replacement, as long as you can. I may have overdone it. It’s not as bad as it looks though, and the cane comes in handy for hailing cabs. What happened to your hair?”

  “I’m underc
over,” said Hope.

  They got him checked in and settled, and met at a table in the corner of the dining room to explain where things stood. When they were done, the table was covered with crumbs and empty coffee cups, and drawings of the hallways charting what rooms people were in the night of the fire. Toby said, “Let’s review the bidding. Margaux Kleinkramer. Eileen Bachman. I covered the Druid Murder. My first big murder case. I’ve got my notes somewhere.”

  “Margaux had no more motive than anyone else on the corridor,” said Hope.

  “No. But no less, either. And maybe a dicier past than anyone knows. And Albie Clark.”

  “Motives. Animus. Opportunity if he got hold of a master key.”

  “And the suicide could be a confession of sorts.”

  “You’d think they’d at least be looking at that, wouldn’t you?” Toby asked.

  “We would.”

  “I did some checking on your key players before I left home. Carson Bailey. Judge Hennebery. They say that Hennebery was made a judge too young, and resents all those years on the bench making civil servant pay, while his old law firm colleagues got rich dragging out divorces among the yacht club set. Pro prosecution, gets impatient if cops don’t give the testimony the DA wants. Big ego, foul temper, and he falls asleep during testimony.”

  Hope and Maggie looked at each other.

  “And he likes to gossip about cases.”

  “To reporters?”

  Toby smiled. “Sometimes. Especially if he doesn’t know they’re reporters.” He flipped to a new page on his legal pad and said, “Rexroth.”

  “He has less motive than Albie, but more opportunity. He’s lived here for years and surely knows how to get a key if he wants one. And he’s pretty squirrelly,” said Maggie. “You could say he got off scot-free after handing his wife a poisonous snake. Who’s to say he wouldn’t try it again, if someone really pushed his buttons.”

  After a beat, Toby put a question mark beside Rexroth’s name.