Closer than the Bones (11 page)

Chapter Nine

After a restless night, I woke the next morning feeling sluggish and unrefreshed. Try though I might, I couldn’t erase the image of Hamilton Packer’s pathetic corpse from my visual memory bank. Unpleasant as the man had been, even in our brief acquaintance, I wouldn’t have wished such an undignified death upon him. Maybe I could do something about figuring out who killed him, however, and help Mary Tucker McElroy sort out the whole messy situation.

I threw back the covers and crawled out of bed. Mornings like this I felt every second of my sixty years on this earth. Nothing that a brisk walk and a hot shower wouldn’t help, of course. Not to mention a healthy dose of caffeine. I groaned. I really didn’t want to have to face the rest of the household without having had at least two cups of coffee first.

Looking out the window at the storm clouds gathering, I decided to forego the walk and went for the hot shower instead. Twenty minutes later, dressed and in a slightly better frame of mind, I made my way downstairs as the heavens opened and the rains came down. Maybe the storm outside would pass soon; I doubted that the one inside would.

The dining room was empty, and I checked my watch. Just barely seven-thirty. The rest of the household didn’t seem to be stirring yet. I hadn’t heard any sounds of activity upstairs, and I wondered whether the staff would have reported for duty as usual this morning.

Opening the door to the kitchen, I discovered that even violent death didn’t disrupt some of the routines of life at Idlewild. Mrs. Greer, Betsy, and Katie were busily involved in their preparations for breakfast.

Mrs. Greer looked up, a slight frown on her face. The frown creased into a smile when she saw who had invaded her domain. During a brief chat last night we had discovered that I had taught two of her grandsons, one of whom I had successfully talked out of a career as a petty larcenist. I had discovered the boy pilfering lockers at the high school. Instead of turning him over to the principal for the appropriate disciplinary measures, I marched him into an empty classroom and treated him to one of my patented “facts of life” lectures. My students had been known to refer to these lectures as “Doomsday 101,” and most of them reformed quickly when threatened with a second dose of it. For showing this errant grandson the folly of his chosen course, I had the woman’s undying gratitude. He was now a junior member of the State Legislature.

“Mrs. Greer, could I possibly have some coffee?” I offered a rueful grimace, and she laughed.

“Miss Carpenter, you can have anything you like out of this kitchen. Coffee we got aplenty, and breakfast’ll be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail, if you’re hungry.”

I looked at the plate of steaming biscuits she held and decided that I was indeed hungry. Good homemade biscuits are one of life’s great pleasures, and I was imagining how one of these would taste, loaded down with butter and Mrs. Greer’s no-doubt homemade jelly. My mouth watered.

“Bless you,” I said. “But would it be an imposition if I ate here in the kitchen with y’all?” I indicated a small table over in the corner. “I don’t think I can face that dining room this morning.”

“Not a’tall,” she beamed at me. “You just set yourself down right there, and Katie’ll get you everything you need.” Fixing Katie with a stern gaze, she continued, “Hop to it, girl, and don’t keep Miss Carpenter waiting.”

“Yes’m,” Katie said, her eyes round. I imagined that Mrs. Greer was something of a benevolent tyrant in the kitchen. Katie didn’t look especially fearful, but she also didn’t waste time in following Mrs. Greer’s orders. Moments later, I had a hot-to-the-touch mug of coffee and a plate full of scrambled eggs, bacon, grits, and biscuits.

With great contentment I enjoyed my breakfast while I watched Mrs. Greer and her two helpers finish their preparations for breakfast for the household. Once all the food was ready, Katie and Betsy took various chafing dishes out to the dining room, where they set the table and made sure everything was prepared to Mrs. Greer’s exacting specifications.

I wondered why Morwell Phillips wasn’t somewhere around, keeping an eye on things, because I thought that’s what a butler was supposed to do. Obviously Mrs. Greer didn’t need supervision, and the poor man had had such a hectic day yesterday he was probably taking a much deserved rest this morning.

Sipping at my second mug of coffee, I said, “Mrs. Greer, I hope you won’t think I’m being ghoulish, but would you mind if I asked you and Katie and Betsy a few questions about yesterday?”

She wiped her hands on her apron and poured herself a cup of coffee before she answered. She came and sat down at the table across from me. Shrewd eyes in a deep brown face not much older than mine assessed me. “I know enough about you, Miss Carpenter, to know you got a good reason to want to ask questions. Not like that jackass of a reporter who came knocking at the front door at six-thirty this morning.”

“Oh, dear, the press is already on the scene, are they?”

She snorted with laughter. “Yep, and so is old Herman Detweiler and his three big Dobermans. Those dogs are sweet as pie, but they can sure look mean enough. No reporter’s going to tangle with them, you can bet on it. Sweet or not, those dogs aren’t going to let no one who don’t belong here get close enough to bother Miss McElroy or anyone in this house.”

She went on to explain that Detweiler was the groundskeeper at Idlewild, and he doubled as the watchman when circumstances warranted. I hadn’t seen a sign of him or the dogs while I’d been here, and I was relieved to know that Miss McElroy and the rest of us had some protection—from the outside world, at any rate.

“I can just imagine what the newspapers are going to make of all this,” I said.

Her face tightened into a fierce expression. “Vultures is what they are! It was bad enough back at Christmas when that poor child killed herself out in the pond, but what in heaven’s name are they going to be saying about us now, when that old gasbag done gone and got himself killed in the bathtub?”

“The more quickly the sheriff s men get this sorted out, the better.”

Nodding, Mrs. Greer said, “That Jack Preston is a good man. He’s like a terrier, and once he gets a hold of the rat that did this, we can all sleep a little easier.”

I had to grin at the image of Jack as a dog, shaking a big rat in his mouth. “Yes, he’ll sort this out as quickly as he can, I have no doubt.”

“What did you want to ask me and the girls?” Mrs. Greer said, as Betsy and Katie returned to the kitchen. She motioned for them to join us at the table.

In the aftermath of Jack’s surprising announcement the night before, I hadn’t had time to ask him what he had learned from his questioning of Betsy or anyone else. He had been so caught up in the mechanics of his preliminary investigation and getting the corpse out of the house that I had kept quiet. By the time he and his men finally departed at around nine o’clock, Mrs. Greer and the girls had also settled in for the night in their quarters, and I hadn’t been able to find out anything. I was too impatient now to wait until Jack showed up at Idlewild today to question him.

“I know this is pretty nasty for all of us,” I said, looking at Katie and Betsy in turn. They were both pale and drawn, as if they hadn’t slept well, either, and I didn’t like to distress them with reminders of what had happened the day before. But if this thing was to be solved quickly, they were going to have to talk about it, over and over again.

The girls nodded at me. Encouraged, I continued. “It seems to me that one of the most important questions is where the weapon used on Mr. Packer came from.” I grimaced. To me it looked like the knife I brought downstairs yesterday, the knife I found in my room.” Quickly I explained the circumstances.

“Well, I never!” Mrs. Greer said, plainly horrified. “Ruining your good silk like that, and not to mention my good pillow!” I suspected that, if Mrs. Greer ever got her hands on whoever did it, that person would regret it mightily.

“Jack Preston showed us the knife,” she said, “and I recognized it right off. It was one of a pair right from this kitchen, all right.”

“Do you have any idea how one of the guests might have gotten it out of the kitchen?” I asked.

Mrs. Greer shrugged. “They all come in and out of the kitchen when they’re here, because they feel at home here. They’re always coming in to say hello to me and chew the fat a little. That Brett is always looking for something to eat.” She chuckled. “Good thing that boy runs like he does, or he’d be as broad as the side of a barn. The way he eats!”

“So did they all come into the kitchen at some point yesterday, before lunch?”

“Yes,” she said. “The girls and I were busy getting ready for lunch, and we didn’t have much time to talk. Any of ’em could’ve taken that knife whiles we was running back and forth, and nobody would’ve paid no never mind.”

Katie had gone rather still, I noticed. “What is it, Katie?” I asked. “Did you see something?”

Startled, she gazed at me, her eyes wide with innocence. “No, ma’am. Betsy and me were way too busy. Somebody coulda carried the fridge outta here yesterday, and we wouldn’t’ve seen it. It’s always like that when Miss McElroy has a lotta company come in.”

I thought she was lying, but I couldn’t prove it. Just something about the shifty way her eyes darted away after the initial contact with mine.

Betsy snorted. “You sure had enough time to make goo-goo eyes at Brett, though.”

“Yeah, and you woulda been rubbing yourself all over him if’n you’d had the chance!” Katie fired back.

“Girls!” Mrs. Greer’s voice brooked no argument, and her two chastened helpers shut up.

“So any one of them could have taken the knife from the kitchen yesterday before lunch,” I said. “What about after lunch? When I left the dining room with Mr. Phillips—and we were the last ones out as far as I know—the knife was still on the table. When did you start clearing away?”

Mrs. Greer frowned. “Not for a while. I had the girls working on the vegetables for last night’s dinner, and it wasn’t till they was done with ’em that they went to clear the dining room.”

“Yes’m,” Betsy said. “It was a while before we did. It’s like I told my cousin Jack, when we went to clear away, that knife wasn’t on the table.”

“Somebody came back and took it,” I said, leaning back in my chair and sipping at my coffee, which by now had turned cold.

Again, Katie had that air of stillness about her. She wasn’t old enough, or sophisticated enough, to hide it, though she was trying.

“I don’t suppose either one of you saw something?” I asked.

Betsy shook her head, and so did Katie.

“Thank you for answering my questions,” I said. “And thank you for a marvelous breakfast, Mrs. Greer. I don’t know when I’ve ever had biscuits that light and fluffy. I could eat a dozen, and I'd still want more.”

She beamed her thanks at me. I took one last sip of my coffee and set the mug down on the table. “Katie, Betsy,” I said, slipping into my stern teacher voice without even thinking about it, “I want you both to be very careful. Someone in this house has killed a man in cold blood, and that person isn’t someone to mess around with. If you’ve seen anything, anything at all, that strikes you as the least bit strange, you need to tell me or Jack Preston about it. Don’t put yourselves in danger.”

Betsy had a puzzled look on her face, while Katie assumed a mulish expression and said, “I can take care of myself.”

I sighed. Maybe I could coax whatever it was she had seen out of her. If I couldn’t, I was very much afraid that the girl’s stupidity was going to cost her the ultimate price.

I decided there was no point, at the moment, in fretting over Katie’s mulishness. I’d give her some time to think over what I had said, and then I’d tackle her again. If I couldn’t get it out of her—whatever it was she knew or had seen—then I’d set Jack at her. Maybe he’d have better luck.

By the time I left the kitchen around eight-fifteen, I had settled on a course of action for the morning. First on my agenda was checking with Miss McElroy and informing her of my plans. We’d never had the chance for the chat that she had wanted yesterday afternoon, and I needed to consult her. From what she had already told me, I knew she didn’t appear downstairs before nine. She had said I could come to her bedroom whenever I felt the need to talk with her; and though I hated to disturb her rest this morning, now was the best time.

As I passed the open door of the dining room, I glanced inside. Brett Doran, Lurleen Landry, and Russell Bertram were seated at the table, eating breakfast. No one was talking. Even with a brief glance I could see they all were as tired as I was.

Upstairs, I knocked on Miss McElroy’s door, and after a moment I heard her call, “Come in.”

I tried not to gawk once I was inside the room. Her bedroom was easily the most lavishly appointed chamber in the house. The richness of the materials in the drapes and the upholstery, the jewel-like hues of their colors, and the elegant solidity of the furniture bespoke money, pure and simple. This room had been tastefully and lovingly designed and maintained over the years, as had its sole occupant. Seated in a chair near the window which looked out over the back garden, and attired in a dressing gown of deep maroon velvet, Miss McElroy had the air of regal dignity which had not forsaken her, despite the events of the previous day.

Though her face had new lines etched into it this morning, she spoke in her usual vigorous tones. “Good morning, Miss Carpenter. I trust you didn’t have as wretched a night as I did.”

“I doubt anyone in this house slept very well last night,” I responded, my tone as light as I could manage.

She nodded. “I take full responsibility.”

For a moment, I thought she was confessing to the murder. The expression on my face must have amused her, because she laughed, a bitter sound.

“No, Miss Carpenter, I didn’t thrust the knife into poor Hamilton’s back, but I might as well have done it.” Her hands gripped the arms of her chair so hard I could see her knuckles turn white. “If I hadn’t brought everyone here on such a capricious notion, Hamilton would still be alive.”