Dead at Breakfast

  Sarah nodded. “By then I knew everything. Where she lived, what their new name was. I went out there. Jenny was scheduled to perform on some morning TV show. I went to the studio, and stood in line outside with all these ten-year-olds dressed like her character on the show. I was so filled with happiness I could hardly keep from crying. When it was my turn I handed her a picture for her to autograph and I said, ‘JennyKoukla,’ so only she could hear. She looked right at me and smiled, and I thought she’d say ‘Mama’ . . . I waited for her face to light up, I thought the whole nightmare was finally over. I’d imagined that moment so many thousand times.” Sarah had to stop speaking. Her lips were trembling. They gave her the time she needed.

  Sarah picked up where she had stopped, in that scene she’d relived in despair, so many times, of which she knew every nanosecond. “But what Jenny said was, ‘You read that article. Who shall I sign this to?’ I was close enough to see the tiny scar below her lip where she’d cut herself falling off a swing.”

  “No recognition.”

  “None. Then I went to Alexander . . . Oh you’ve heard enough.”

  “All right,” said Buster. “But about the night of the fire.”

  She shifted heavily in her chair. It was as if she’d forgotten where all this was heading. It was a very long time since she’d told anyone her real story.

  “Did you intend to kill him?”

  “Of course not. I wanted to scare the living shit out of him. I wanted him to know there was no forgiveness, ever, for what he did to our daughter. And me.”

  “So you went to Mr. Rexroth’s room.”

  “It just started with that coincidence. I was sick—I’d had a migraine for days—and I went to see Clarence. Animals are a comfort when everything’s wrong, they really are. Clarence always knew when I was sick or sad; he’d come put his head in my lap and stare up as if he could fix me with his eyes.

  “I was disappointed when no one was in the room. But then I noticed the closet door was open, and I saw the snake equipment, lying up on the shelf, like it had been put there for me.”

  “You knew what it was.”

  “I knew. There were copperheads on our farm. Garter snakes and milk snakes we handled ourselves because they’re not poisonous. When it was copperheads, we called the snake man.”

  “So you put on the gloves and took the bag and tongs. And then . . . ?”

  “Then I went next door. I knew Earl was down in the kitchen having his dinner, and Alexander was in the dining room. Stuffing himself. I picked Grommet up and dropped him into the bag, easy-peasy. Then I went down to Alexander’s room. Housekeeping had already turned his bed down, so all I had to do was slip Grommet in under the covers. Snakes like a dark burrow. I figured he’d go down to the foot of the bed, and when Alexander got into it, he’d feel Grommet or see him, and I hoped he’d have a heart attack, or a stroke.”

  She breathed deeply, then drank a slug of wine.

  “The kitchen knew I had a migraine; no one was looking for me. I went down the back stairs, hid the bag and tongs in the storage pantry, and went back to bed. All the while I lay there in the dark, I was thinking about Alexander finding a snake in his bed. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted him to know it was me. To know how much I hate him. Hated him.”

  “What did you do?”

  “When everything was quiet, I went back to his room. The light was on and I could hear the TV was playing. I opened the door with my key. Alexander was lying against the pillows with a burning cigar in his hand and the ashtray beside him. He wasn’t wearing pajamas. Just boxers, I think. Fat people are often hot, why is that? It was a disgusting sight. He stared at me, but otherwise he didn’t move. I walked very slowly toward him. I could see the absolute terror in his eyes. It was very satisfying.

  “I waited for him to speak but he didn’t. He only looked at me, as if his worst nightmare had just come true.

  “And that was what I’d come for. I had thought about finding the snake and taking it back to Earl, but it was too complicated. Besides, if I left it, Alexander wouldn’t be able to get out of bed the whole night for fear he’d step on it. So I turned around and left.”

  There was a long silence. Finally Buster said, “Paula Jackson, I am placing you under arrest for the felony murder of Alexander Kouklakis a.k.a. Antippas.”

  Sarah looked at him. Then she picked up her wineglass and drained it.

  Toby rode with Buster in the patrol car, with Sarah in the backseat in handcuffs. Hope and Maggie followed in Hope’s car. All four of them walked Sarah into the state police barracks in Ainsley. It was quiet; the dinner hour. The first officer to see them and stop in her tracks was Carly Leo, the woman who claimed Cherry had confessed to her in the bathroom the night she was arrested.

  “Now what?” she said to Buster with exasperation.

  “This is Paula Jackson, the cook at the Oquossoc Mountain Inn.”

  “Executive chef,” said Sarah.

  “She has made a full confession to the assault on Alexander Antippas that resulted in his death.”

  Officer Leo was speechless. After a pause she said, “For god’s sake, Buster. What have you done this time?”

  “I suggest you call Detective Gordon,” said Buster, holding up his phone. “He’s going to want to hear this.”

  There ensued a period of pandemonium in the department as Shep Gordon was called, and Carson Bailey was called, and the sheriff was called to please explain the behavior of his deputy. Maggie, Hope, and Toby retired to the Chowder Bowl for some supper. They were just being served when a state police cruiser went steaming down State Street with siren whooping and blue lights revolving.

  “Shep Gordon’s in some kind of red hot hurry,” said their waitress, who had just delivered their shrimp rolls and coleslaw. “Wonder what that’s all about.” She went back to the kitchen for the fries they had ordered for the table.

  They were just finishing their coffee when the text dinger on Hope’s phone went off.

  “Carson Bailey has arrived,” she said. They paid their check, picked up the takeout bag with Buster’s supper that was waiting for them at the register, and went back to the state police barracks.

  Shep Gordon, a mountain of a man at the best of times, looked more like Krakatoa than they had ever seen him. He was waiting for them in a conference room. His face was red, and he was pacing. Buster by contrast was sitting peacefully on his side of the table, texting Brianna. His phone and Toby’s had both been recharged during the wait. Carson Bailey, standing by himself and fiddling with a clicker designed for use in dog training that he’d found in his pocket, had apparently been interrupted in the midst of a festive evening. He was wearing an unbecoming pair of plaid slacks and smelled of beer.

  After everyone in the room had been introduced, Shep took the chair at the head of the table, with Carson beside him. He signaled the others to sit down. Carly Leo came in just as Shep said to Buster, “Let’s hear this thing.”

  “Not yet,” said Carson.

  “Why? Who are we waiting for?”

  Carson paused, as if embarrassed, then said, “The attorney general.”

  Shep swung his vast bulk around in his chair and looked at Carson. He was grasping both arms of his chair, as if he could pick himself up and throw himself at someone, a portrait of simmering aggression.

  “Frannie Ober is coming here? Tonight?”

  For a moment Carson looked a little frightened. He said, “It’s a big case. I had to keep her looped. When I called her to say that . . . Deputy Babbin . . . she said not to start until she gets here.”

  The door opened and a strongly built woman with keen, dark eyes and expensively cut red hair strode in along with an officer in uniform, evidently her driver.

  “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting.” She extended her hand to each person in the room, introducing herself to those she hadn’t met, except for Carson, to whom she gave a friendly slap on the back. It wasn’t hard to see what ha
d gotten her elected. She took a seat. “Sorry for the way I’m dressed. Town-and-gown hoops game. Okay, let’s do this thing.”

  Buster started the recording.

  Detective Gordon seemed to have ants in his pants throughout the session. He’d cross and uncross his legs, and occasionally seemed to be controlling noises of derision. Carson kept his head down, making eye contact with no one, and taking notes.

  When it was over, there was a long silence in the room. Finally Shep said, “Well, we seem to have had some amateur detective work here, haven’t we?” He stared at Maggie and at Hope, as if expecting an apology for their interference. When no one answered, he went on, “Of course, this leaves a lot of questions. And I don’t see that it changes the case on the arson that actually killed the guy. We—”

  But he was interrupted by the sound of the attorney general laughing. The AG was shaking her head and looking at Shep, and from time to time at Carson Bailey, who was staring at his notes and blushing painfully. Then the AG suddenly stopped laughing and slapped the table.

  “Detective Gordon,” she said. “Here you have a full and credible confession from a suspect with a powerful motive and every opportunity. Your case against Cherry Weaver was always full of holes and to my mind, malice.”

  “Now wait a minute,” said Shep, inflating like a vast puff adder. “Wait a minute. She had motive and opportunity, and she’s a firebug for sure, our pictures of fire scenes—”

  “Your pictures of fire scenes prove she shows up whether there’s been an arson or not. She told you why, and so did her sister and her mother.”

  “Oh right, her sister and her mother. Well that proves that,” said Shep sarcastically. “And Henry Rexroth saw her snooping along the corridor . . .”

  “Says he saw her,” said the AG. “People lie, Shep. Especially when they want to deflect suspicion. Or criticism.”

  She leaned forward and put her hands flat on the table, glaring at Shep.

  “Do you have one shred of physical evidence that connects that young woman to the fire? Even any evidence that there was arson at all?”

  “The evidence at the scene strongly suggests—” Shep began, but he was cut off.

  “One fingerprint? One shred of DNA?”

  “She would have worn gloves.”

  “Fine. Have you found the gloves?”

  “Ma’am, you don’t know much about arson, do you?” said Shep, condescendingly. “The preponderance . . .”

  “Speaking of evidence.” Ober raised her voice and talked over him. “There’s the matter of that suitcase. Does the term ‘chain of custody’ mean anything to you, Shep? Are there any rules that apply to you, any at all? The way you handle evidence, we’ll be lucky if we can convict even with a confession!”

  “Who . . .” Shep roared, looking around in fury, and then stopped. He suddenly remembered that that fussy little crime tech guy from Bangor with his Baggies and his tweezers had seemed a touch ticked off with him, what was that guy’s name?

  There was a furious silence as they faced each other.

  Frannie Ober said finally, in an almost normal voice, “You have a full and credible confession from a suspect who saw the victim, paralyzed by snake venom whether she knew it or not, in bed with a lighted cigar in his hand. He set himself on fire, and you know it.” She stood up and started for the door, then stopped and turned back.

  Shep Gordon took that moment to insist, “With all due respect, no one has explained the missing wastebaskets! And Cherry Weaver confessed to Officer Leo here!”

  Ober was suddenly furious again. “I’ve seen the notes on that ‘confession.’ This has gone on in this county long enough. Carson, I want you in my office Monday morning. There will be consequences.” Then she was gone, followed by her detail.

  There was a stunned silence for a long minute after the door shut behind them. Finally Carson Bailey said, “I guess we’re done here,” and he followed his boss out of the room.

  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19

  Gabriel Gurrell seemed finally to be a shattered man. Hope and Maggie went to his office to say good-bye to him and found him staring at the television screen where Sarah in handcuffs, on what seemed like an endless news loop, walked down the courthouse steps in Ainsley. The press mob, back in force, crowded around her and shouted questions, shoving microphones toward her impassive face.

  Gabe had his elbows on the desk, one hand folded around the other in a way that seemed to signal both prayer and the possibility of his punching someone. The knuckles of his thumbs were pressed against his lips as if to keep him from shouting or weeping, while on the screen the press verbally pelted Sarah. The word Artemis kept cutting through the clamor. Sarah’s hands were cuffed in front of her and state troopers on each side of her had meaty hands around her arms. She stared straight before her, head up. At times she seemed to be looking out of the screen into the eyes of whoever was watching, the million-headed Hydra of anonymous audience. For so many years, she had been no part of her famous daughter’s life. Now at last she was in the middle of it. But still alone.

  Gabe noticed his guests at the door and muted the sound from the set. He stood. Hope and Maggie, somewhat embarrassed, said their good-byes, expressing their sympathy for him and sorrow for Sarah. He nodded and hummed in appropriate registers, more than actually speaking. They left him quickly.

  “In shock,” said Hope as they rolled their bags across the lobby.

  “And maybe just a touch ambivalent about us, at the moment,” said Maggie as they went out the side door toward the parking lot. They had agreed that the kindest thing they could do just then was to get out of his sight.

  Before they left, they had taken apart the jigsaw puzzle and put it back in its box, so it wouldn’t be damaged by sun before someone else thought of it. It could well be some time before the staff of the inn was fully back in working order.

  “Toby must have checked out early,” said Maggie as they settled into the car. “I didn’t say good-bye, did you?”

  “We had a little nightcap together last night, after the dust settled,” said Hope.

  “I see, said the blind man.” Maggie looked pointedly at her friend, but Hope, feigning nonchalance, was laboring to get the car turned around without backing into Zeke, who was fussing nearby with a leaf blower. There had been a wind in the night, and a drift of yellow leaves that had been dancing in the branches yesterday was now collecting against the curbs of the parking lot.

  “Toby knows I’m not a morning person,” said Hope.

  “Does he, indeed?”

  “And he had to be off early.” She had the car heading in the right direction now, and the long driveway was before them.

  “I take it you were more than friends at one time,” said Maggie, buckling herself in and bracing her foot against the floor as Hope took the first curve.

  There was a longish silence and then Hope said, “We had our moment,” with a little smile. “Before either of us was married, of course.”

  “Ah,” said Maggie.

  Buster and Brianna were seated in the corner booth at Just Barb’s, where Maggie and Hope had arranged to meet them for lunch on their way out of town. Buster had been asked to take some time off while the sheriff decided whether to discipline him or to recommend him for detective.

  “When will they let Cherry out?” Hope asked Brianna as she slid in across from her, wondering how she felt about children, how many and how soon.

  “This afternoon, I hope. There’s paperwork.”

  “There always is.” Hope started to say that if Cherry needed any help starting over that she would be glad to . . . but Maggie stepped hard on her foot under the table before she got more than a word or two out.

  To prevent her friend from making any more noises like a mother-in-law, Maggie asked, “Buster, in the car last night, did Sarah explain about the suitcase? That was the one thing I meant to ask and didn’t.”

  “Toby asked her,” said Buster. “She had stowed
the snake stuff in the back of that cupboard . . .”

  “The one Clarence led us to,” said Maggie.

  “Yes, just to get it out of sight until she could put it back in Rexroth’s room. She didn’t want to be found wandering the halls with it.”

  “No.”

  “She planned to sneak it back when Rexroth was at breakfast the next morning. Or worst case, just to throw it out. Antippas would have screamed about the snake in his room by then, Niner would be called to recapture it. No one would know how the snake had escaped, no harm no foul.”

  “Somehow I don’t think this story was ever going to come out well for the snake,” said Maggie.

  “No,” said Hope. “Or Mr. Niner. An escape artist rattlesnake in residence wouldn’t be something you’d want in your Yelp reviews.”

  “Risky leaving the stuff in the pantry, wasn’t it?” Brianna asked.

  “She said it was stuffed way in back behind the scraps bucket. She figured it would be more damning if someone found it in her room,” said Buster. “So many people are in and out of the kitchen, it might have been anyone who put it there. But when the fire broke out, she put on her parka and found gloves in the pockets, and that gave her a better idea. She had a pretty good notion where in the building the fire was. So once everyone else was evacuated, she went to Lisa and Glory’s room and stole what she hoped was Lisa’s suitcase. She ran down the back stairs with it, and put the snake stuff in it. Then she hid the suitcase in the basement tool room and came outside with blankets for everyone.”

  “And I made her give those gloves to me!” said Hope. “So then when she had to move the suitcase . . . never mind, I know. She was dressed by then. All the cooks have their pockets full of latex gloves.”

  “Or there were work gloves in the tool room,” said Buster. “I didn’t ask that. But when we called the meeting in the dining room, that gave her the chance to get the suitcase from the tool room and put it out in the compost heap. It was still dark. No one would be out that way to see her and no one would be surprised that she disappeared during the meeting; they’d assume she was heating something or serving something. And in fact none of us did notice.”