A Groom With a View (15 page)

Shelley's eyes widened. "To make quite certain she tripped on the stairs, even if the push didn't do it!"

“Right. And then the person untied the seam binding — see where it's crinkled from being tied? And pitched it in the attic, thinking nobody would go in there, and if they did, it would just be more junk if it were noticed at all."

“That's really diabolical," Shelley said. "But how does it help?"

“I don't know. Except it proves that Mrs. Crossthwait's death was planned. It wasn't a spur of the moment thing.”

Shelley shivered. "Euwww. I don't like this at all. What a horrible scenario!”

Jane looked down at the tangle of binding. "I don't imagine this stuff would hold fingerprints, would it?"

“Jane, it's getting dark and I don't like us being up here alone. Leave the seam binding here and let's finish packing things up and we can go sit in the kitchen until Mel comes back. I suddenly don'tmuch enjoy our solitude. I wish there were someone else around. Preferably a man. With a gun.”

They went back to Mrs. Crossthwait's room. "Speaking of men, I haven't seen Larkspur for ages," Jane said, picking up an armload of boxes full of sewing notions. "He didn't say anything about leaving, did he?"

“Not to me. Where are we going with this stuff?"

“To her car. If we load everything into it, whoever comes to fetch it will have all her belongings.”

It took a couple trips, but they got everything except the sewing machine into the car; Jane planned to ask one of the strong young men to carry it out later. Jane put Mrs. Crossthwait's purse out of sight under the front seat, locked the Jeep, and pocketed the keys.

They headed for the kitchen to make some fresh coffee and found Larkspur leaning into the fridge, rummaging for sustenance.

“Where have you been?" Jane asked. "I was starting to worry about you.”

He continued to search the fridge. "Just here and there. I found some fabulous columbines back behind Uncle Joe's rabbit hutch of a house. They're not in bloom and might get really doggy flowers, but the foliage is magnificent. And there's a fern there that I can't identify."

“But no treasure?" Jane asked.

He whirled around, bumping his head smartly on the egg tray on the door. "Treasure?" he asked with exaggerated innocence.

“That's what you're really looking for, isn't it?" Shelley said. "How did you happen to hear about it?”

Larkspur took Mel's dinner plate out of the refrigerator. "May I have this, my dears?" At Jane's nod, he sat down at the table and took the foil off the plate. "Oh, lovely chicken salad. Divine. How
did
I hear about the treasure? Oh, yes. I mentioned to a customer that I was doing a wedding at a hunting lodge and was rather wondering what would complement deer antlers. The customer asked where the lodge was and he said he'd once lived somewhere nearby and told me about the treasure."

“Did he say what the nature of it was?"

“No, just that everybody in town believed there was something hidden in the lodge or the grounds that was extremely valuable."

“Who was this person?" Jane asked.

Larkspur made a flapping motion with both hands. "My dear, how could I possibly remember? I have absolute flocks of people in and out of the shop and it was months and months ago. Why? Does it matter who it was?"

“I guess not," Jane said. "Since it seems to be such a common rumor."

“Rumor? Are you really sure of that?" Larkspur asked.

“I'm not sure of anything except that I want this wedding to be over," Jane said. "So I can go home and sink back into being an antisocial slob."

“Testy, testy, my dear. And I'm absolutely certain you're never a slob. Antisocial perhaps on occasion, everybody's entitled to that, but not a slob. Where has your handsome detective friend gone?"

“Out to dinner. That's his that you're eating."

“Will he mind?" Larkspur asked, tucking into the chicken salad as if afraid someone might take it away from him.

“No, he's gone out and gotten a social life. Well, a professional social life," Jane said. "Maybe that's him now," she said at the sound of a door opening.

But it was Mr. Willis with a vast tray of ham and egg rolls, which he popped into the oven, but didn't turn the heat on yet. He was back in a moment with grocery bags full of beer, pretzels, chips, and dips.

“You shouldn't have," Larkspur simpered.

Mr. Willis looked down his stubby nose. "They're not for you. They're for the bachelor party. The young men won't care that it's not gourmet food."

“The wedding party isn't back from dinner yet, are they?" Jane said, glancing at her watch. "Not yet. But the beer has to chill."

“Mr. Willis, have you heard anything about a treasure hidden in the lodge?" Shelley asked as he started stacking beer cans in the refrigerator.

“Who hasn't?" he asked over his shoulder. "It's not in the pantry. That's all I can tell you."

“You searched?" Jane asked.

“Who wouldn't?" he asked. "But I think it's foolish. I've worked in two restaurants that were in old houses that were supposed to have hidden treasures. I was there when one of them was discovered."

“What was it?" Larkspur inquired.

“A stack of old stock certificates for a defunct mining company. Hidden in the wall of an old pocket door. The owner had them framed as decorations for the walls and renamed the restaurant the Miner's Dream."

“What's a pocket door?" Shelley asked.

“The kind of door that slides into a thick wall," Jane said.

“Are there any here?"

“No," Larkspur answered with certainty. "And there's nothing in or around the well or the crawl space under the house."

“You grubbed around under the house?" Jane asked.

“Just by poking a flashlight into holes in the foundation. If there's anything here, I imagine the wrecking crew will get it."

“Is that how it works when something's torn down?" Shelley asked.

“I think so. That's how those pricey salvage companies get all the plaster and marble ornamentation to sell to suburbanites with more money than taste.”

Shelley bridled. "I just happen to have a section of egg and dart molding from the outside of an old office building in my front garden.”

Larkspur wasn't embarrassed. "But you, my darling, are the exception that proves the rule. I must go set up the flowers for the bachelor party.”

As he left, Shelley whispered, "Aren't flowers for a bachelor party a bit much?"

“They're very macho flower arrangements," Jane replied. "Yucca leaves and those big obscene red plastic-looking flowers with the white thing sticking up out of them. He's tossing them in for free as a bit of a vulgar joke.”

Jane was desperately eager for Mel to return so she and Shelley could pick his brain about anything he might have learned. But he came back to the lodge looking a bit green around the gills and was only moments ahead of the minibus with the wedding party coming back from dinner in Chicago. Jane reluctantly let him go to his room to nap off his dinner and threw herself back into her "hired hostess" role. Mr. Willis rushed the beer and grocery store snacks to the room where the bridal shower had been held earlier in the day, and Jane helped him put out wines, sherries, and elegant little nibbles in the main room for any guests who might be settling in there.

Shelley breezed through with an armload of coats she'd relieved the aunts and the bridesmaids of, and whispered, "Just think, Jane, it's eleven o'clock. By this time tomorrow, we'll all be home and this will be but a pleasant memory."

“Yeah, right. If we all survive until tomorrow night," Jane muttered, polishing a water spot off a sherry glass with the tail of her blouse.

The bachelor party sputtered into action. The group consisted of Dwayne, his brother, his groomsmen, Jack Thatcher, and a couple of the older man's business associates. Uncle Joe wasn't there. Jane hadn't handled the invitations, so she didn't know if Joe's absence was because Jack didn't want him there or Joe had refused to come. The young men, determined to impress their important elders, were awkward and gauche in their efforts to behave. The older men were bored senseless. Jane peeked in the door a couple times and on each occasion the two groups were keeping their distance.

Jane and Shelley took over a pair of chairs just outside the room, in case Jane were to be needed. "What loads of fun they seem to be having," Shelley said sarcastically.

“Poor things," Jane said.

“Which ones?"

“All of them. There's nothing worse than an obligatory festivity."

“I don't know — I think you're forgetting childbirth, tax audits, frozen pipes, flat tires downtown during rush hour, college tuition…" Jane put up her hand. "Okay, okay.”

Several of the women were also sitting around in the main room, but keeping their distance from Jane and Shelley. Whether by design or accident was questionable. The aunts were fiddling with the tuner on the old upright radio in the far corner. Possibly, Jane thought, to get a weather report. There were faint rumbles of thunder in the distance and Jane devoutly hoped there wouldn't be a repeat of the previous night's storms. There was still the possibility of having to hold the wedding in the dark.

Eden had commandeered the best lamp and had a vast array of fingernail cosmetics on a table. There were half a dozen files and buffers, a kaleidoscope of bottles of colored polishes, and a selection of bottles of mysterious liquids. Kitty and Layla were finishing up yet another jigsaw puzzle on a big, hoof-footed coffee table by the fireplace.

Mrs. Hessling wasn't among them. She'd come back with everybody else on the minibus, but had pleaded weariness and Errol had taken her back to the motel. Nor was Livvy anywhere in sight. Jane had no idea where the bride might have gone, but kept reminding herself that she was the wedding planner, not the girl's mother, and it was none of her business where Livvy spent the evening before her Big Day.

A few minutes after Jane and Shelley settled in, Mel reappeared, rested but a bit bleary. "What's going on?" he asked.

“Not much," Jane said. "A floundering bachelor party. So tell us what you learned this evening.”

Mel briefly reviewed his dinner with John Smith and Gus Ambler, hitting all the high points. The monks, the drunken hunting parties, the ascent (or descent, depending on how you looked at it) into domesticity, and Uncle Joe's arrival and Gus's perception of him as a wild boy who went off to war and came back vaguely damaged. He repeated what Gus had said about O. W. being so tightfisted all his life and pretty dotty at the end.

“But he gave Joe full credit for taking good care of his father as long as he could. Not with much good grace, however."

“Did you mention the treasure rumor?" Jane asked.

“I did, and to my surprise, he didn't fall down laughing at a city slicker suggesting it."

“So he thinks there was one?"

“He didn't go that far. Only allowed as how it was barely possible." Mel went on to explain about the renovations done at the end of O. W.'s life and his secrecy about just what was being done to the house and why.

“So he could have slipped in a secret passage or hidden something in a wall?" Jane asked.

Mel looked highly skeptical. "You've been reading old gothic novels again, haven't you?"

“I'm serious, Mel. Why would anybody have new walls put in and hire an out-of-area firm to do it unless there was a secret room he didn't want the locals to know about?"

“Maybe there weren't local carpenters he thought were any good," Mel said. "And maybe he was just getting a bit paranoid. He was elderly and might have already been having little strokes that didn't make a physical difference, but altered his mental attitude.”

Shelley said, "I don't see how any of this could possibly have to do with Mrs. Crossthwait's death. Unless she discovered something in the lodge that Uncle Joe didn't want her to talk about.”

Jane shook her head. "Mrs. Crossthwait didn't strike me as a very observant person. And I can't see her roaming around looking the place over. How would she have even suspected there was a treasure?"

“Narcissus knew," Mel said.

“You mean Larkspur," Jane said. "That's true. And he had no connection with this place until the wedding was planned."

“Could that be why she was so slow with the dresses?" Shelley speculated. "So she would be invited out here? I don't think the dressmaker is normally invited to the wedding.”

Jane's eyes widened. "You could be onto something there. Livvy picked her because she heard Mrs. Crossthwait had an excellent reputation, but that couldn't have been true unless she got the dresses for other people done in a timely manner.

If Larkspur had heard the rumor of something valuable hidden here, Mrs. Crossthwait could have just as well heard it, too."

“But I don't think, even if this is all true, that Uncle Joe is the only suspect," Shelley said. "Suppose… suppose the treasure, if it exists, is something big and obvious?"

“Like what?" Jane asked.

“I don't know. But just as an example, maybe one of these big pieces of furniture is incredibly valuable. Made by someone terribly famous, or with a long exotic history of being in the room where the tsar and his family were assassinated. Don't roll your eyes that way, Jane. I'm just making up examples."

“Go on," Jane said, stifling a smile.

“Okay, so if it's something that would be obvious if it went missing, anybody in the family might know, but couldn't just tuck it under their arm and trot off with it. They'd want to wait until Uncle Joe was out of here and the place was about to be torn down, then they'd run up here with a pickup truck and two strong moving men and snaffle the thing.”

Since neither Jane nor Mel was openly laughing at her yet, Shelley went on. "So we know very little about Mrs. Crossthwait's background, but people sometimes have weird little pockets of knowledge. Like you, Jane, and that particular skill of yours." Shelley made a gesture of wiggling a seam ripper in a lock.