4 Impression of Bones (5 page)

Juliet grimaced. She knew that Manoogin was taking this in
and would probably be asking her, or perhaps Garret, about her apparent habit
of finding bodies.

“And what kind of art do you do?” Vince asked politely when
what he probably wanted was to order both of them away from the crime scene. He
did not approach the body again, possibly to keep things as pure for the
forensic team as possible.

“I make puppets,” Esteban said, following Juliet’s lead which
cast him as an artist friend. He did not mention his puppets were made of bones
or that he was also a private detective.

“Lieutenant, would you mind if we went and got Raphael now?”
When
Manoogin
hesitated Juliet added, “He hasn’t said
anything about being tired, but I know he has to be exhausted and it gets quite
hot up in the tower. The smell is also very disagreeable.”

“Certainly,” Manoogin agreed. “I’m sorry that I can’t assist
you, but I can’t leave the crime scene unattended. If you need help, the team
will be here shortly and I can detail someone to assist you.”

He really was a human being and a gentleman.

“It’s okay. Esteban and I can handle it. We’re used to his
wheelchair. I’ll be back in just a bit.”

Juliet and Esteban left the dining room. Neither said
anything until they reached the stairs.

“Since when did you become such a liar,
bella
?” Esteban muttered softly.
He bent and brushed a few specks of yellowish sawdust off his pants. The great
hall, perhaps because of the wind moving between the open doors, was littered
with a dusting of wood shavings that were attracted to the static of Esteban’s
slacks. Juliet was glad that the shavings never made it up to the tower room.

“I’m not lying. Raphael is tired and it’s hot and stinky up
there. And I have so helped with his wheelchair many times. And I just think it
might be good if he saw the body—the other body —before it’s moved.”

Esteban grunted.

“You haven’t maneuvered him on a staircase like this one,”
he said, taking it in.

“We’ll manage.”

“That was the libidinous Randolph Kingman on the table?”

Juliet understood why he asked. With the neck turned around
it had been impossible to see the face.

“Yes.”

“And the cop, he has no idea who did it, of course?”

“No. Me either,” Juliet added. “Everyone left for lunch and
I figured we were alone. Apparently the security guard at the gate has taken a
powder too.”

“That is very odd,
bella
.” Juliet looked back at him enquiringly. “Usually you
know something of these things.”

“There is nothing unusual about my not knowing who the
killer is. I haven’t even met half the people involved with the project. And
anyway, I don’t always
know
. I just
hypothesize about the available data.”

Esteban didn’t dignify this with a reply. Perhaps he was out
of breath. Juliet certainly was. It was her third trip up the stairs and her
legs were protesting.

Raphael received the news of Kingman’s death with a lifted
brow. The second brow joined the first when Juliet explained that she and
Esteban were going to get him downstairs on their own and without the carrying
chair.

“I’m not complaining, because it is beastly hot up here and
the remains of the lady in the chimney are odiferous,” Raphael said. “But just
how do you plan to accomplish this feat without killing me or yourselves?”

“Well, I see two choices,” Juliet said. “We can back the
chair down the stairs—”

“And the other choice?”

“Esteban gives you a piggyback ride and I carry the chair.”

“And all this haste downward is so that I can see the body
in situ
?” Raphael guessed.

“Well … yes. You know Dolph and might notice something that
I’ve missed. Murder is not my area of expertise. I’m a linguist.”

“Esteban?”
Raphael asked. Esteban
seemed recovered from his climb but he had been shot in the chest last summer.

“
Mine is the strength
of ten because my heart is
pure
.
And we’ll rest along the way if need be.”

“Very well, though this does nothing for my dignity.”

“I promise not to snigger,” Juliet added with a smile of
gratitude. “And the reporter is gone.”

It took ten minutes, but they beat the forensic team by a
minute and a half. By the time they rejoined Manoogin and the shaken Sandra who
was huddled in one of her iron chairs, they were all flushed enough to lend
verisimilitude to the story about the tower being very hot.

Juliet distracted the lieutenant while Raphael and Esteban
looked around.

“It’s a shame that we had to bring Raphael down because it
would have been very interesting to see the retrieval of the.…” She stopped,
looking at Sandra. The poor woman probably didn’t need to hear about another
body in the castle. “Maybe I should take her out for a bit of fresh air.”

Manoogin studied Juliet for a moment and then nodded.
Apparently he felt he could trust her with the potential witness.

Juliet knelt down by Sandra’s chair. Her knees protested
after their long climb, but she made herself refrain from grimacing or grunting.
Juliet was not comfortable with casual hugging. She had a strong sense of
personal space and didn’t like to violate it in others. But at that moment
Sandra had no personal borders. Empathy, probably with some kind of touching, was
required. Juliet opted for touching her arm.

“Sandra, would you like to go sit outside with Mr. James,
Esteban, and me? There are some nice tables in the shade and we could have some
cool water.”

“I.…” She reached for her hair as though to smooth it and
then stopped. Juliet had noticed this habit of unfinished gestures before. It
was as if Sandra wanted to talk with her hands but had been told not to fidget.

“Lieutenant?” a voice called from the great hall. The
forensic team had arrived. They were laughing and joking so Juliet was pretty
sure that they had not been warned about the second body.

“In here.”

Two men came into the room. They had not changed into their
jumpsuits and latex gloves yet. They looked enough like Laurel and Hardy for
Juliet to blink. She hadn’t seen a green plaid suit in decades.

“I thought you said it was a skeleton up a chimney?” Laurel
said, staring at Dolph.

“There’s one of those too. I want to start with this one
though. He’s about a hundred years less dead and we might actually get some
evidence at this scene.”

“You called the ME?” Hardy asked. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“Yeah, he’s on the way. Start processing the scene without
him. Just leave the body be for now.”

Juliet turned back to Sandra when a cold hand touched her
arm.

“I would like to go outside now.” The woman’s face had no
color in it. Juliet hoped she wouldn’t faint.

“Okay.” Juliet’s knees popped on her way back up. “Lieutenant,
we’re going to get out of your hair. There are some picnic tables on the east
side of the castle. We’ll be out there when you need us.”

Manoogin nodded, taking in Sandra’s pallor and Juliet’s
reluctant arm around her waist. Juliet had the funny feeling that something
about this gesture met with his approval.

Juliet somehow
found herself giving Lieutenant Manoogin a tour of the nearly empty castle
though she was barely qualified for the job. Esteban and Raphael were gone, as
was everyone except the security guard who claimed he had left his post when
Dolph, or someone pretending to be Dolph—the connection on the house phone was
bad—called the gatehouse and told him that there was a trespasser in the trees
by the north fence line. The guard said that though he had left at once to
investigate, he hadn’t seen anyone and it was impossible to tell if anybody had
been there because the ground was blanketed with spongy pine needles and thick
with shrubs.

Juliet had wanted
to talk with her friends about what they had seen in the dining room and the
conclusions they had drawn, but there hadn’t been time before Manoogin thoughtfully
sent them away.

They started the
tour in the kitchen which looked a bit like something out of a haunted house,
but which at least had functional appliances, being part of the modern add-on
which was already wired for electricity. One wall was a large fireplace with
artificially blackened brick. It hadn’t been there a week ago. In addition to
the electric fire, it had an actual wood stove for doing pizza and bread and
several wall niches for storing kindling and larger logs. There were blackened
pots hanging overhead nestled among bundles of dried herbs and ropes of onion
and garlic. There were hooks, too, where one could hang hams or sausages,
provided one had no concerns about hygiene. Only the smell was wrong and it
broke the illusion of an ancient country kitchen. There was no odor from the
ash in the fire, no lingering breakfast smells of toast and coffee. For the
time being, the room was nothing but a stage set.

The one thing
Juliet liked was the old coal stove which had been left in place and repurposed
as an herb garden. Rosemary and marjoram sprouted out of old burners. There
were also grow lights and a built-in mister.

“Who did this
room?
Which artist?”

Juliet thought
it wise of Manoogin to try to make sense of his suspects through their art.

“A Broadway
set designer named Antonia Warren. I’m not sure which decorator she works with.
Most of the designers are done now or are keeping away while the heavy
equipment is here since there isn’t much parking and the noise is unpleasant.”

Manoogin shook
his head at the room either in admiration or disbelief.
Or
perhaps both.

As they walked
through the castle, Juliet could see him pondering the sanity of the recruited
artists, who were almost all women. It was understandable. A lot of the rooms
were very strange and a little too
avant-garde
for the general public.

Trimming the
castle was certainly a tricky proposition. There was a real danger that if
decorated in period furnishings the place would appear embalmed, more a museum
than a home. But in an effort to break with tradition they had achieved the
weird effect of having dressed up the architectural corpse in borrowed and
ill-fitting clothing. The rooms weren’t exciting, just visually jarring. That
was partly because a lot of the furniture had been pillaged from attics and
basements and
Frankensteined
into new and vaguely
gothic or faux medieval pieces that were more eye-catching than attractive or even
functional. Budgets were tight so it was bound to have
happened,
though it may have been better had the various artists consulted one another
and tried for a cohesive theme.

“Any men working
on this project?” he asked after she had named two other female artists.

“Do you mean
artists?” Juliet asked.
“One,
Miguelito
Cavalli
.
He hasn’t arrived yet, I don’t think.
He is doing the solarium. It’s all frosted glass and faux crystals.”

“Which hasn’t
been installed yet?”

“Not yet. Some
of the interior decorators are male, though not many. Dolph’s secretary, Myra
Wicks, can get you a list.”

They passed
the library and paused involuntarily. The rooms had been searched by the police,
who had eventually arrived en force to help with the search, but Juliet still found
herself peering into the shadows for undiscovered threats and danger.

There were
plenty of shadows in the library though no danger except for outraged taste. The
offenses began with an anachronistic suit of armor that had been repurposed as
a floor lamp, its helmet replaced with a
swagged
and
fringed Victorian lampshade which made one think about a drunken knight running
loose in a bordello. The room was also full of animal parts, mostly skins and
tusks and horned heads culled from five continents. It seemed more a natural
history museum than a place for reading or smoking cigars with a brandy. The
old books were quite attractive being bound in rich leather, but they were too
fragile to handle, shattering when pried open. It was another room for show and
not for living in and the vandalism of traditional styles left both of them
blinking.

“Holly
O’Bannon,” Juliet answered without prompting, seeing Manoogin staring at the
armor lamp. “She is known for her whimsical children’s illustrations. She also
designed a float for the Rose Parade last year.”

“And
Raphael James?
What
room is he working on?” He spoke with a professional dispassion which did not
in any way indicate disinterest.