Dead at Breakfast

  “Yes,” said the man, getting ready to close the door.

  Jorge figured he had about two seconds. He flashed his license to carry a concealed weapon and said quickly, “Detective Carrera. Are you Hank Armor?”

  The man glanced down the hall, then stepped out onto the stoop and pulled the door almost closed behind him. He was in short sleeves and it was brisk outside. And inside, the cake was melting.

  The man glanced at his watch. “I’m him,” he said.

  “I’ll be quick, I really will. You were scheduled to work with a patient called Ruth Clark, back in March. Do you remember?”

  Armor stared at him.

  “House in Southampton, terminal cancer patient,” said Jorge.

  “Look,” said Armor. “It was unavoidable. I have . . .” He gestured with his head back toward the house behind him. “I have a special-needs kid, something came up, I texted Nurse Ramos that I’d be there in ten, and I was.”

  “You were late for your shift.”

  “The agency knows all about this. What do you want? Ramos had to go, her own mother was sick at home, and I was ten minutes late. That’s all.”

  “Ten minutes?”

  “Fifteen,” he said. “Look, we’re in the middle of . . .”

  Something was wrong. The interruption was one thing, but this man was more irritated by the questions than he should have been.

  “I know. Really, we’re almost done. The patient had passed by the time you got there, is that right?”

  “Right. The husband was with her, it wasn’t as if she’d been left to . . .”

  ‘I understand. But she was alive and peaceful when Nurse Ramos left.”

  “Yes.”

  “Her shift notes were clear.”

  “Right.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I called 911, and they came and declared her, and I went home. Missed a day’s pay,” he added.

  That’s not what’s bothering you, Jorge thought.

  By evening Maggie had debriefed Jorge, and Buster had given a full report from Detective Prince. Buster turned out to have a talent Maggie was ashamed that neither she nor anyone else at her school had discovered. He had an incredible memory for the spoken word. He’d given her the whole conversation verbatim, and when she checked them against Prince’s notes, which arrived later via e-mail, he’d been letter-perfect.

  “Did you know he could do that?” Maggie asked Hope.

  “I can’t remember,” said Hope.

  The four of them—Maggie, Hope, Toby, and Buster—were cloistered in the sunroom, doors shut, jigsaw puzzle forgotten.

  “I think we’ve got to fish or cut bait here,” Maggie said. “The longer the police and the AG’s office spend on Cherry, the harder it’s going to be to turn that ship around. If we’re right, we’re wasting our time on all the other leads, and if we’re wrong, we’ll be embarrassed and apologize.”

  “We could go to the AG with what we’ve got and get him to order Shep Gordon to start over,” said Hope.

  Toby gave a bark of laughter, and Hope looked at him, wounded.

  “What’s so funny?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “All agreed then?” said Maggie.

  Three assented. Hope seemed to be sulking.

  “Buster, you’re on,” said Maggie. He stood, squared his shoulders, and left them.

  In what felt like a very short span of time, Buster had returned with Chef Sarah. He carefully closed the door behind them when they entered, and locked it.

  Sarah heard the click of the lock and looked at Buster, surprised. Then she smiled and said, “You need me to help with your puzzle? I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”

  “Have you?” said Maggie. “Good. Please sit down.” Sarah took a chair with her back to the wall of glass, with Buster beside her on one side and Toby on the other. No one made a move to clear off the jigsaw.

  “Buster is going to record this conversation. All right with you?” said Toby. Sarah looked from one man to the other, then said, “Why not?”

  Buster set his phone on the table between Sarah and Maggie.

  Maggie began, “We’ve been concerned about Cherry Weaver. According to her, you told her you knew she didn’t do anything wrong. Is that true?”

  Sarah hesitated, then said, “I did, yes.”

  “It meant a lot to her. And we agree with you. We think the police have got the wrong end of the stick, and we’ve been trying to get it the right way around.”

  “How are you doing?”

  “Pretty well, we think. There were a number of people with reasons to dislike Alexander Antippas. Whether those reasons rose to the level of motives for murder is debatable. But in any case they didn’t have much in the way of opportunity, except for poor Cherry.

  “The case against Cherry we all know about. Then there’s Lisa Antippas. She stands to inherit, and she was very angry at her husband. She’d even been overheard saying she wished him dead. But she was under great strain when she said it, and the night of the fire she was incapacitated. As far as we know.

  “Glory Poole. She too had expressed a wish to harm her brother-in-law, but did she have opportunity? Maybe. Albie Clark had reasons to wish Antippas ill, but there too, we can’t see that he had opportunity. How would he get a master key? How would he get into all those rooms?

  “Mr. Rexroth had snake equipment, and could probably have gotten a key somehow to Antippas’s room, but what was his motive? If he had a grudge it was against the wife and the dog.”

  Sarah listened thoughtfully. Her calm gaze was steady.

  “Then,” said Maggie, “there is one person who had every opportunity, but no apparent motive.”

  “I take it that would be me?” said Sarah. “From the fact that you called me in here.”

  “You have the run of the house. You work with Mrs. Eaton and could get a master key anytime. You’ve been seen coming out of Mr. Niner’s room when he wasn’t there, and your prints are all over that room, as well as in Mr. Rexroth’s.”

  “I go up to visit the animals. I take them treats.”

  “We understand that. But there’s something else.”

  From among her papers, she produced a facsimile birth certificate from Washington, Pennsylvania, dated March 31, 1980. Jennifer Ann Kouklakis, 6 pounds 14 ounces. Parents: Alexander Kouklakis and Paula Kouklakis.

  Sarah looked at it. She looked calmly at Maggie.

  “And?”

  “I’m going to tell you a story,” said Maggie. “This happened to a colleague of mine, oh, years ago.

  “He was running a country day school in Colorado. He had a new child in his school, a fifth grader. Nice little boy. The only thing odd about the family was that the father paid all the tuition in cash, in advance. My friend thought nothing of it until one day a woman arrived on campus with a couple of policemen and all kinds of paperwork. A warrant for the arrest of the father. They had a picture of him, wanted for kidnapping his son from the custodial parent. Totally different name than they knew him under, of course. Court papers, granting the mother custody. Birth certificate, little baby footprint, the whole thing. She’d spent every dime she could earn or borrow for seven years on investigators, looking for them. She clearly had taken no care of herself; her clothes were cheap, she was fat, she looked nothing like the glossy, well-tended people who claimed to be the boy’s parents.

  “The policemen ordered the child brought to the head’s office. The woman burst into tears and ran at him, calling him Darling, and the boy was absolutely terrified. He had no idea who she was.”

  The room was quiet. Sarah looked at the table, as if her mind were on the jigsaw, whose pieces could be seen here and there beneath their notes and papers.

  Toby finally said, “What happened to the boy? Did the mother take him?”

  “The court ruled that it was in the boy’s best interest to stay with the family he knew.”

  Sarah said softly, “That’s a te
rrible story.”

  “I agree,” said Maggie.

  “What happened to the boy after that?” Sarah asked.

  “I don’t know. The family moved on and my colleague took a job somewhere else. That’s one of the things about being a school person. There are so many stories you never learn the end of.”

  There was another silence, and Maggie let it stretch. Finally Sarah said, “And you’ve told me this why?”

  “Because you are the Paula Frances Jackson who grew up in Washington, Pennsylvania. You’d never been fingerprinted before last week but it’s easy enough to prove.”

  Sarah’s eyes went to the birth certificate. She didn’t speak.

  “The Paula Jackson who married Alexander Kouklakis in Chania, Crete, in August of 1975.”

  Sarah stood up. Buster, instantly on his feet, said, “Ms. Jackson, please sit down.”

  After a long moment, Sarah sat.

  “Martin Maynard has been very helpful,” said Maggie.

  “Lucky you,” said Sarah. Oddly she didn’t seem particularly angry.

  “Why the change to Sarah, by the way? Paula Jackson disappears in California sometime in 1990.”

  “When I got a job in a kitchen in San Francisco, Chef already had a Paula on the hot line, so he called me Sarah.”

  “Nice name.”

  “He liked it.”

  “Is there anything you want to tell us?” Maggie asked.

  “Yes,” said Sarah.

  “Stop,” said Buster. “My phone just ran out of juice. And you have the right to remain silent.”

  Sarah waved his words away.

  Toby took out his phone, poked the settings, and laid it on the table.

  Sarah said, “This is the first thing I’ve been able to do for my daughter in twenty-eight years. It was worth it.”

  Buster slumped and put his face in his hands. He was thinking: Cherry. Brianna. Even Mrs. Weaver would have to stop treating him like something she found on her shoe.

  “Would you tell us about it?” Maggie asked.

  Sarah took a deep breath. She looked at her watch, then apparently remembered that the world as she knew it had just ended. What happened to the dinner service was no longer her problem.

  They gave her time to breathe and adjust to the new order of things. Hope asked if she wanted coffee, or a drink, and she said yes.

  “Which?”

  “Both.” Hope left for the kitchen. Buster passed a Miranda warning card and a pen across the table. Sarah picked up the card and examined it, front and back, then sat, apparently lost in thought for a minute or two. To everyone in the room it seemed like an hour. Finally Sarah took the pen, signed the card, then raised her eyes to look at Maggie, who was watching her thoughtfully.

  “What made you think of me?”

  “No one thing. Just a grain of sand that kept accumulating layers.”

  “Some pearl. Starting when?”

  “After the fire, when I was thinking of everything that led up to it, two things about you snagged my attention. Well, three. You changed when you learned the Antippas family was in the hotel.”

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. At first, it was mostly like someone who has to endure a really bad smell. It’ll be horrible but it will pass.”

  “That’s about right,” said Sarah.

  “But when Artemis died, you disappeared. You got sick.”

  “Migraines. God, I hate them.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “And that was it?”

  “Almost. One other thing. I was struck somehow, the night the class had dinner together and we got to singing fight songs, by the way you quoted the line from Casablanca. You remember?”

  “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, they walk into mine.”

  “Yes. It reminded me of something that happened my first year as a school head, the way people say something out loud that has enormous meaning for them, that they think no one else will understand. There was a math teacher who—”

  “Darling, don’t tell us another story,” said Hope. She closed the door behind her with her foot and set down a large tray with a coffeepot, cream and sugar, two bottles of the best red wine in the house, and cups and glasses. “We’re all still recovering from the first one. I want to hear Sarah.”

  Sarah poured herself coffee and a goblet of wine. She let Hope serve everyone else. Hope suddenly stopped with the wine bottle tipping in her hand and said, “Wait. Why didn’t Antippas recognize you?”

  “He never saw her,” said Maggie. “Sarah made sure of that. There were a couple of times when he wanted to speak to the chef, remember? It was always Oliver who went.”

  Into the next silence, Buster said, “Did you take treats to the snake?” He waited for his mother to say “Oh, Buster,” but she seemed to think this quite a sensible question.

  Sarah said, “No, but I give Earl bait for his mousetraps in the barn. Peanut butter. Sometimes when he caught one, I’d go up with him to see the feeding. I was a tomboy and always found them fascinating. Snakes. Early in our marriage I found a milk snake in our henhouse in Pennsylvania and put it outside with a stick. Alexander was terrified of it. After that he called me Hygeia.”

  “What’s Hygeia?” asked Toby.

  “Daughter of Aesclepius, god of healing,” said Maggie. “Snakes were used in medicine in ancient Greece.”

  “You mean you’re a snake handler?” said Tony to Sarah.

  “I’m a farmer’s daughter. You deal with animals. Grommet liked to be handled. I never meant for him to get hurt.”

  “Alexander?”

  “Grommet.”

  After a beat, Maggie said, “I think we’d better back up,” said Maggie. “Start with Crete.”

  Sarah met her eyes again. “That was a mistake, wasn’t it? Mentioning Crete.”

  “Yes. And you worried, after you said it.”

  “I did. I didn’t think it would do any harm, but then I saw something in your face.”

  “And you thought about taking off?”

  “I’m all packed. I was leaving in the morning. Don’t tell Gabe.” She was still more than half in her old life.

  “Start with Chania.”

  “We met in a café on the lagoon. He wanted to practice his English. I had planned to go on to Turkey but I never left. He was . . . well. It was a magical summer and we didn’t want it to end. We were both alone in the world. Both orphans, both only children. By September, I was pregnant and in love. He was in love, at least I thought so, and he wanted to come to America. End of story.”

  “Beginning of story,” said Toby. “You have another child?”

  “No. I lost the baby. I lost two, before we had Jenny. She was such a wanted child. And Alexander was enchanted with America. To him, everything seemed so big and rich. Even my poor little farm seemed rich. At first.

  “We lived in the house I grew up in. He got a job in construction in WashPaw, and on weekends fixed all the parts of the house that were falling apart. I raised chickens and gave voice lessons.”

  “So it was true,” said Maggie, “that you were a singer?”

  Sarah looked at her and showed just a glimmer of irritation. “You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “I try not to.”

  “So Jenny got it from you, the music,” said Maggie.

  And Sarah’s eyes suddenly shone with tears, though her expression remained stony. Finally she said, “She sure didn’t get it from her father.”

  Toby said, “Go on.”

  “We were both so happy when Jenny was born. We’d had lonely childhoods. Everything seemed to be going well. Alex was clever about design and systems, and he got a job with a bigger firm, developers, in Pittsburgh. He hadn’t traveled much; to him it was Athens or Paris. It was sweet. He was good with clients, and they had him working in the front office. He was meeting fancy people. Doing some business travel. Going to lunch at the Duquesne Club. He was beginning to understand what
rich really looked like.

  “Then he started taking golf lessons at a public course in WashPaw. That annoyed me; I was alone with the baby all week and suddenly on the weekends too. She missed him and so did I. He said the company wanted him to be able to play golf with clients and he was doing it for us. He spent hours in the evenings at the driving range; at least that’s where he said he was. Then one night he announced he was spending the weekend at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier with his boss and some other people. I asked if their wives were going along, and he said he thought so. I asked if I was invited and he said that I couldn’t go because of the baby. I pushed; I wanted to hear that at least I’d been invited.”

  She fell silent. Some moments of pain retain their power to hurt, even after decades.

  Maggie said gently, “He hadn’t told them he was married.”

  Sarah threw her hands in the air, whether at what that moment had meant in her marriage or at Maggie’s seeing it coming, was not clear.

  “We had a terrible fight. He claimed it didn’t mean anything, he was just more useful to them as a bachelor. He could flirt with the clients’ wives, escort a daughter. Wasn’t I pleased with how fast he was rising? I hit the ceiling at that but I think I knew it was pointless. He was ambitious beyond anything I’d ever imagined. He was looking for a rich wife who could help him get where he wanted to go. I wasn’t ever going to be that; I didn’t even want to be. But I thought at least I’d always have Jenny.”

  She poured herself more wine and handed the bottle to Toby, who poured for the others.

  “Do I have to go on?” she said. “Or can Maggie just tell you the rest?”

  “Go on, please,” said Buster.

  “He moved into Pittsburgh. I had custody of Jenny. One Saturday he picked her up for his scheduled visit and I never saw her again. Well, except once.”

  “You tried?”

  “Of course. I tried everything. I taught, and I worked for a couple of caterers to earn money for detectives, but I couldn’t afford very good ones. And we weren’t looking in the right places. Then one day I had coffee with a friend whose kids were watching the Disney Channel, and there she was. My Jenny. There she was.”

  Tears were near again.

  Maggie said, “We know you sold your house in 1990.”