Chapter 5
While Chris drove the twenty-seven miles to the airport Camford shared with three other small towns she wondered what to expect from this visit. Pansy McMillan had been widowed a year and a half earlier. Her third husband, Quentin, had died on the thirteenth green at his country club in Naples, Florida. Since that time she had become a world traveler and was as likely to call her daughter from Morocco as Florida.
Theirs was not an easy mother/daughter relationship. The fact that Pansy carried Quentin's cremated remains with her on her expeditions had been a source of some conflict. Chris thought it was sentimental at best and ghoulish at worst. Pansy had documents explaining the ornate vessel's contents. She would pack it in her checked luggage and off "they" would go.
"Dear Q always wanted to see Venice," Pansy would announce over the phone to Chris, usually from the airport just before her flight was called. Chris had not known Quentin McMillan well—he and her mother had married when she was in college—but she'd liked him and wondered aloud what "Dear Q" would have thought of this process. Pansy thought Chris lacked both sentiment and humor. It was a personality conflict that dated back to Chris's childhood and had settled into a sort of cold war that rarely flared up but also didn't go away.
When Chris arrived at the airport Pansy was in a wheelchair. That drove all thought of tension from her mind.
"I'm sorry I forgot to mention it, Dear One," Pansy said shrugging helplessly.
"I don't know how you could forget something like this, Mom. What happened?"
"Knee surgery." Pansy pointed out her suitcase as it circled on the carousel.
With the help of the flight attendant who had stayed with her since the plane landed, they got to the parking lot and maneuvered Pansy into the station wagon without additional injury.
Once they were on the road Chris tried again to get an explanation. Pansy would only say was that she would need to spend at least six weeks being looked after.
"I wouldn't do this to you, Darling, but you know, it's like that poem by Robert Frost." Oblique as the reference was, Chris immediately recognized the reference to "Death of the Hired Man." "When you have to go there, they have to take you in."
"Mother, don't give it a thought. This will work out fine. Drew and I will set up a system. It'll be fun to have you through the holidays." Chris mentally crossed her fingers.
Before they were back in Camford, Chris used her cell phone to call Drew. He agreed to meet them at the house so he could help get his grandmother safely inside. Pansy started to insist there was no need for special efforts on her behalf, but Chris reminded her of the four steps into the house and the full staircase to the second floor.
When they pulled into the driveway Drew bounced down the back steps, grinning. "How's my best girl?"
Walter cavorted and woofed and got in everyone's way. While Chris tried to subdue the dog's enthusiasm, Drew maneuvered the wheelchair so his grandmother could slide out of the car safely.
"So what did you do to yourself?" he asked as he drew the chair backward up the rear steps and into the kitchen.
"And why didn't you call us?" Chris asked as she followed.
"Dear ones, I didn't have the time. Things happened so fast. I fell last Wednesday. The next thing I knew I was in the hospital and they were saying that surgery was the best choice and bing, I was under the knife." Pansy wheeled her chair somewhat awkwardly toward the living room.
Chris trailed after her. "You still should have called or had someone call for you, Mother."
"I need crutches or a walker. I'm suppose to use them several times a day for a while until I'm ready for physical therapy," Pansy said. "Is there some place in Camford I can find a physical therapist? There must be. Anyway, isn't this going to be fun? We haven't spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together in years. I'll bet Drew was fifteen the last time you came down to Florida for the holidays. Dear Q would be sorry he missed this."
"Did you bring Quentin with you, Mom?"
"Not this time. He'll just have to spend the holidays alone on my mantle down in Naples. He really never liked the cold you know."
Chris nodded and took a relieved breath. "So please tell us how you fell and tore up your knee."
"Yeah, Gram. What did you do to yourself?" Drew sat on the couch near Pansy.
Pansy, to Chris's astonishment, looked sheepish. "I suppose you two will never let me forget this. I fell into a bunker on the twelfth green."
"Golf?" Chris and Drew said in simultaneous disbelief. "You were playing golf?" Pansy McMillan had never, to her daughter's certain knowledge, expressed a positive interest in the game that was her third husband's obsession. Whenever she had the opportunity she had described it variously as a waste of valuable time or the ruination of a pleasant walk. She fumed that the need to make a tee time subverted their breakfast more times than not, or that there was always some event at the club that prevented their taking a two-week cruise or spending a month in France.
"You were actually playing golf?" Chris had a hard time picturing this.
"Well, I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I took some lessons at the club last spring after I got back from China. I never did get around to relinquishing Q's membership and I thought I'd see what it was like before I did. I actually sort of enjoy it. I mean, I'm not fixated the way Quentin was and I never will be, but it is kind of fun." Pansy continued to look embarrassed.
"Well," was all her daughter could find to say.
Drew said, "That's way cool, Gram. High-five!" They slapped hands. "So are you any good?"
"Well, I keep up with the old ladies, but I may never play again. I'm beginning to think this was an omen. Quentin loved the game. Maybe he's jealous because he can't play anymore."
"I really doubt that he pushed you into the trap, Mother," Chris said, trying to keep a sensible core to the conversation that frequently, with her mother, would spin out of control.
"They're not traps. They're bunkers," Pansy said, then turned to Drew. "I feel his presence, you know,"
Chris said, "How could you not, toting him around the world as you do? Don't you take him with you in your golf bag?" Why does my mother always make me feel like she's a teenager and I'm the parent. She checked her watch. Slightly less than two hours... right on schedule.
Sleeping arrangements seemed difficult until they finally settled Pansy on the convertible sofa in the office on the main floor. Better a little discomfort on the lumpy couch than negotiating the staircase. Chris moved her computer to the guest bedroom on the second floor and worked out a plan with Drew for meeting Pansy's needs with minimal fuss.
Thanksgiving dinner the next day went remarkably well. Pansy chopped vegetables on a board on her lap in the living room and watched football with Drew. Chris did the cooking. It was the first Thanksgiving she could remember in which a difference of opinion over how to make the stuffing didn't threaten to give her indigestion.
For her part Pansy worked at being the perfect guest and seemed delighted by her family's extra attention. When the police dropped by on Friday morning, a casual observer would have thought the murder had been arranged exclusively for her entertainment.
Hjelmer Ryquist rang the bell at nine. He was hardly in a holiday mood but that changed when he was introduced to Pansy McMillan. "Pansy... that's an unusual name." He sat and accepted Chris's offer of coffee.
"I have seven sisters and we're all named for flowers. My father wasn't a gardener, but he had a Burpee catalog, or so the story goes."
Ryquist grinned. "So what are the others' names?"
"Iris, Marigold, Daisy, Petunia, Rose—she's the oldest—Lily and Daffodil. My father said they had to stop having children because he didn't want to name a child Oleander."
In the kitchen Chris poured coffee and warmed cinnamon rolls in the microwave. When she came into the living room with a tray, Ryquist was chuckling and grinning at Pansy in what was, for Chris, a rerun of the reaction to her mother of
every male she'd ever known.
"Thanks, Doc," Ryquist said and took a big bite of roll.
Pansy leaned forward in her wheelchair with a winning smile. "Now, Hjelmer, you need to tell me all about the murder. Chris has told me some things, but I need to hear all the details."
Chris thought, Fat chance of that happening.
Licking his fingers and wadding up a paper napkin, Ryquist defied her expectations. "Okay, Pansy, what would you like to know?"
By the time he'd laid out the situation for Pansy, Chris had confirmed a lot that she'd suspected and learned a number of things for the first time. Elizabeth Page had been killed in the room where she was found very shortly after she left the message on Chris's answering machine. Said machine had been plugged in all week at police headquarters and checked periodically. It seemed to keep perfect time. Thus the police were willing to accept that she had died shortly after 5:54 p.m.
The autopsy had been completed downstate. Elizabeth hadn't been drunk, but the rest of the toxicology reports wouldn't be in until later. She had died within minutes, if not seconds, of sustaining a massive head injury caused by the half-inch stainless steel ball bearing found in her skull. The bearing had no significant marks on it. There was nothing to suggest how it got into her skull other than it did so with great force. She hadn't fallen off the ladder unless she'd been standing on the bottom rung because she had no injury consistent with falling from a height.
"What about a slingshot?" Pansy inquired eagerly.
"Take a pretty big one," Ryquist said slowly. "I suppose we should look into that."
"Absolutely, Hjelmer. I know something about slingshots. There are hunting ones that might do the job. I think you'd have to get off a lucky shot though." Pansy stopped and blushed. "Well, you know what I mean. You'd have to hit a person just right."
Ryquist chuckled. "Now how do you know about such things?"
"When I was trying to reeducate the Thompsons' nasty old cat I tried to get one big enough to do him in, but they talked me into one that would have been good for killing birds, but not bigger game. They said I would have a hard time pulling a bigger one."
"Mother!" Chris gasped. "You wouldn't have tried to kill Thomas, would you?"
"Well, maybe not, but he made me so mad that I inquired. Once he found out he'd get whacked when he sprayed our back door, he stayed away so I didn't need to pursue it."
"Mrs. Thompson would never have forgiven you."
"Marybelle Thompson was an old poop and so was her cat," Pansy said positively and sipped her coffee. Hjelmer Ryquist nearly choked. Chris made a helpless gesture behind her mother's back.
"Actually, Pansy, we have an idea that something a bit more exotic might have done the job," Ryquist said when he'd recovered. He described the not-so-subtle hint they'd gotten from the sculpture found in the wood scrap bin in the sculpture studio. "We messed with it on Wednesday. Had Bjornson show us how it worked. No way it could have done the job. Not powerful enough. But something like it, a stronger version, maybe."
"You don't really think Richard Bjornson could have done it, do you?" Chris asked skeptically. "He's got a mean streak when comes to practical jokes, but I think he's more juvenile than murderous."
"I hear you, Doc, but he's the only one I know of close to the case who knows how to make electro-magnetism move ball bearings." Ryquist shrugged. "Got to put him at the top of the list for the time being."
Chris shook her head. "I understand from my son that diagrams for things like that are on the Internet. He and his friend Ted have been looking at them for their physics class. At least, he says that's why they're looking at them. Does that make them suspects too?"
Pansy and Ryquist spoke at once. Pansy's "You don't mean it!" was laid over Ryquist's "What do you mean?" He held up his hand to keep Pansy at bay for a moment. "Explain that, Doc."
"Drew said Ted found plans for building unusual devices for shooting things on the Internet. That's where they got the plans for the potato cannon they were messing around with last week. Why wouldn't there be plans for something like the system Bjornson uses? I'm guessing he didn't invent it."
Once again Ryquist and her mother spoke simultaneously. This time Pansy won. "What's Drew doing with guns?" she asked, wide-eyed.
"It wasn't a real gun, Mother. They made some kind of cannon thing that shoots potatoes. They used hairspray for the propellant. They didn't tell me what they were up to until they'd done it, but it seemed to go okay and they didn't hit anyone or hurt themselves. They were just trying to see how far they could blow a potato."
"You say they found plans for an electro-magnetic gun on the 'Net?" Ryquist asked when he could get a word in.
"I guess so. They were talking about that and some other things when they were over here for dinner a couple of weekends ago. It connected in my head because I knew what Bjornson's show was going to be like and I suggested they go see him at work. Drew could tell you, I'm sure."
"Where can I find him, Doc?"
"He's upstairs, sleeping. Do you want me to wake him?"
"Nah, it can wait. Right now I got another problem you can help me with. That's why I stopped by. I'd like you to go over to Page's apartment with me. Can you do that?"
Chris looked at her mother.
Pansy fluttered her hands in a shooing gesture. "I'll be fine."
"I'll get my coat."
When they entered Elizabeth Page's apartment a half-hour later, Chris was embarrassed by her own prying curiosity. Elizabeth would have hated having people tromping through her home, or at least so Chris imagined. When the door opened on a tidy arrangement of Scandinavian furniture and area rugs, she was taken aback. This was not what she'd imagined, though truthfully she'd never given Elizabeth's home a moment's thought until this morning. Teakwood and cloth-cushioned chairs, sleek end tables, bookshelves packed neatly with books, and small pedestals displaying objects from around the world created a designer look that was very attractive, even welcoming.
"You ever been here?" Ryquist asked as they stood in the small foyer. The kitchen opened to the left and the great room was straight ahead.
"Never, Hjelmer."
"Well, you knew the lady better than me, so check it out. I want to see if your impressions are the same as mine." He gestured for her to look around. "Tell me what you think."
The kitchen was tidy, nothing on the drain board or in the sink. It was a typical apartment dweller's kitchen, small and convenient as long as you didn't try to do Thanksgiving dinner for twelve. Chris moved into the living room and looked around. The sensation of being a voyeur was disappearing fast because there was literally nothing out of place. It looked like a model home. There were no newspapers, no magazines, no personal pictures. Only artfully designed furniture, just-right vases with silk flowers, and small sculptures on elegant pedestals.
She picked up an elaborately carved black wood figure and turned it over. The label said it was Benin. Original African sculpture. She set it back down.
"She had a nice collection, Hjelmer." Chris gestured. "These are worth a packet."
"Keep going, Doc. Anything strike you about this room?"
"You mean that she didn't live in it?"
"Yeah, like that. Tell me more."
"I never heard of her having big parties, but maybe she invited her board members and people she was schmoozing over for drinks. This would be an impressive place to entertain a few people."
"Look over the rest of the place, Doc."
Chris obediently started down the hallway, poking her head first into the bathroom to the right. Neat as a pin. Fresh towels laid out, nothing in the wastebasket.
"She must have had a cleaning service, Hjelmer," she said as she backed out of the room and continued down the hall.
"My thought exactly," Ryquist said as he followed. He almost ran into her when she stopped suddenly.
"When was this place cleaned last?" She turned to face him. "So far it looks like she never
set foot in it."
"We haven't talked to the cleaning lady yet. Out of town for the holiday, but if I had to guess I'd say it was cleaned on Monday morning. We didn't send anyone over here until Monday afternoon and this is the way it looked."
"Whoever it is must have a key."
He nodded. "Would seem so. We'll see."
The master bedroom lay straight ahead. It too was a model of tidiness though here there was actual evidence of Page's presence in the form of two shirts and a skirt on the end of the bed. They were neatly folded. There were five pairs of shoes with varying heel heights standing at attention in a perfect line facing the closet door.
Chris shrugged. "The cleaner tidied up, folded the clothes. Elizabeth probably left them lying around when she got dressed for the opening."
"Check out the other bedroom. She used that as an office." Ryquist led the way back a short distance up the hall and opened the door.
Chris said "Well!" and stopped just inside the door. She took in a disorder that spoke of the same filing skills Elizabeth guarded so jealously at the museum. Bookshelves groaned under the weight of books, papers, and magazines stuffed helter-skelter in every crack and crevasse. Copies of Art News and Art in America filled a bottom shelf to the left of the door. Additional copies for which there was no room were piled next to the bookcase.
The desk was a teakwood table set at a right angle to the wall. Beneath it was what Chris took to be a filing cabinet, also in teak. The table held a lamp, a miscellany of pens and paperclips, and computer cables that lead from the printer on the left to nowhere.
"Did you take her computer, Hjelmer?"
"Yep. That's all we took though. Otherwise it's exactly as we found it."
Chris looked at the dusty footprint of the computer. Dust was missing from most of the rest of surface of the desk, but it clearly outlined the computer.
"She didn't let the cleaner come in here," Chris said at last.
"That's what I was thinking," Ryquist agreed.
"So where are the papers and things that must have been on the desk from here to here?" She gestured at the more or less dust-free area that was the majority of the table.
"We're wondering about that too. Check out the file cabinet."
The cabinet was under the table to the left. Chris bent and tried to open the face. It wouldn't budge. Kneeling, she inspected the wood. Barely perceptible lines told her what she needed to know and instead of trying to swing a door to the right or left, she pushed down on the trim strip. In a miracle of Danish design and craftsmanship the front slid down and out of sight like a roll-top desk in reverse.
Inside were conventional file drawers that pulled out in the usual way. One drawer was full of old tax returns and related receipts going back about twelve years. The other held nothing. About eighteen inches of empty space suggested a lot of missing material.
Chris stood and looked at Ryquist.
"So, you think she's likely to have scooped up a bunch of papers or whatever and done something with them?" he asked.
"I have no idea, Hjelmer. It's like her desk at the museum."
"Sure is, Doc. I'm guessing someone took all the papers on the desk and in that drawer. Just like in the museum. Now, another reason I brought you here…. When we got here there was one file folder on the floor in the hall." He moved to the doorway and pointed toward the living room.
"Whoever it was dropped something?" Chris joined Ryquist in the hall.
"Not much in it but this envelope." He fished in his breast pocket and withdrew a plastic bag marked with the location and time it was recovered. An unsealed business envelope inside was addressed to "Dr. Christmas Connery, Head Bitch, Division of Fine Arts."
Chris stared at it, transfixed. She looked up at Ryquist. "What was in it?"
The policemen seemed to regard her with X-ray vision. "A letter of resignation."
"Elizabeth's? She was going to quit?"
"It wasn't dated. Maybe she was just keeping it on reserve."
"I can't believe she'd quit—not unless she had a better job at a bigger museum. Did she say why she was leaving?"
"Nope. Just that you should put the museum and all its parts where the sun don't shine."
"Ouch."
"No kidding. You had no idea?"
"None. Not that I'd have been unhappy to see her go, frankly. Good as she was at running a going institution, I'd have welcomed the chance to work with someone else, someone less confrontational. She took a lot of energy."
Ryquist didn't say anything immediately.
"Hjelmer, I didn't kill her."
"Pretty sure that's true, Doc, but I gotta cross all the Ts, ya know? So you didn't have any idea she was thinking of quitting?"
"I'd have thought she was more likely to have considered it back when I first came. That was a rough year. Maybe the letter was a leftover."
"Just kept it for sentimental reasons?"
Chris smiled. "You might say that."
"Okay, Doc. One more factor to file with all the other loose ends."
It was almost noon when they arrived back at Chris's house. Pansy peppered Ryquist with questions, which he answered with what seemed to Chris to be very un-policeman-like abandon.
Drew stumbled downstairs. Chris introduced Ryquist, and he immediately began asking questions about potato cannons, E-M guns and the Internet. Drew rubbed his face and blinked.
Chris took pity on him and poured him a cup of coffee. "Give him a minute, Hjelmer. It's taken him half an hour to wake up since he was born."
By the time Drew was awake and articulate, the coffee was gone and a fresh pot was brewing. Pansy insisted from the doorway of the kitchen that everyone sit down for turkey sandwiches and leftover stuffing. No one paid her much attention as they listened to Drew explain where he thought Ted had found the plans on the 'Net.
"You got copies of these plans?" Ryquist asked.
Drew shrugged. "Just the potato cannon. Ted's got the other one. He's way interested in that stuff. I just go along for grins."
"What's Ted's address?"
Drew gave it.
"He in town or what?"
"He's at his folks' place in Maryville. He'll be back Sunday night."
Frustrated with that line of inquiry until then, Ryquist prepared to leave.
Pansy wheeled herself out of the kitchen with a tray of sandwiches on her lap and announced lunch. Chris, who had never yet seen a man capable of resisting her mother when she was determined, was not surprised to see Ryquist remove his coat and sit at the dining room table.