Standing, I told him, “Look at
me
.” I gestured at my entire body, greased and oiled from hair to toenails.
He raised a hand to his mouth, suppressing a laugh. “Sorry ’bout that.” And he grabbed two of the oversize bath towels, handing me one. “Let me help swab you down, matey.” And we went to work, trying to get the oil off me, but without much success.
“I think we both need a quick, soapy shower.”
“Care to share?” he asked as he pried his shoes off. I wrapped an arm around him as we walked toward the bedroom. “Good idea.”
We were running late for breakfast Tuesday morning. Monday night’s dinner party at the Geldens’ country home, topped off by Neil’s inventive frolic on the sunporch, had kept us up till the not-so-wee hours. Although we greeted dawn with less than enthusiasm, switching off the clock radio for another half hour, we both savored an unmistakable afterglow that would fuel our day more efficiently than sleep or coffee could. After showering again (by my count, we had done this three times within the last twelve hours, excessive even for us obsessive types) and dressing, we headed downstairs together, hungry from the rigors of our nocturnal workout.
Arriving in the kitchen, we were surprised to find not Barb, the housekeeper, but Pierce, the sheriff, rummaging for a carton of milk in the refrigerator. “Morning, Doug,” I told him. “Make yourself at home.”
He turned to us. “Oh—hi, guys. Where have you been? It’s late.”
Neil simply explained, “Late night last night.” He winked at me while carrying the full pot of coffee from the counter to the table, where mugs were set out with Barb’s bagels and Pierce’s kringle.
“Where’s Barb?” I asked, sitting.
Pierce shrugged. “She said she had some ‘chores’ to get busy with.” He sat and cut large wedges of kringle for the three of us.
Pouring coffee, Neil asked, “She said ‘chores’?”
Pierce nodded while feeding himself.
I mentioned to Neil, “We need to tell her there’ll be a dinner guest Thursday.”
Neil nodded, taking his first sip of coffee.
Pierce swallowed. “Anyone I know?”
I laughed. “Join us, Doug—no need for subtlety.”
He shook his head, also laughing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. I’ve got a public-safety committee meeting that night, but thanks for the invitation.”
Neil told him, “Frank Gelden is coming over. His wife will be out of town again this week. There’s a rehearsal on Wednesday night, but Thursday is quiet for all of us.”
Pierce recalled, “Oh, yeah—you were out at their place last night. How was it?”
I asked, “You mean, dinner?”
“Well, sure—but everything. Wasn’t he going to research mushroom toxins?”
“Correct. He found the coroner’s mushroom theory plausible, but not airtight. He identified fly agaric as being the likely culprit—
if
mushrooms poisoned Jason—but those toxins act very quickly, so the mushrooms themselves should have been found in Jason’s stomach.”
“And they weren’t,” added Pierce.
“Right. So that whole angle is chancy at best.”
He reminded me, “The whole ‘unnatural causes’ angle is still chancy. The coroner hasn’t issued his final report yet.”
Neil asked, “Do you know when to expect it?”
“Soon. Formhals managed to get a rush on the toxicology tests; the DA has started pressuring
him
as well. Results normally take weeks, but he expects to have them anytime now.”
“Well,” I said, after swallowing coffee, “at least we’re seeing some progress.”
Pierce continued, “Depending on the results, if Jason died of natural causes, the case will be closed; if not, I’ll be launching a murder investigation.” A sobering comment, it produced a lull in our conversation. Pierce poured a glass of milk, then drank some.
Neil leaned back in his chair. “Suppose Formhals does determine that the death was a homicide. Where do you start, Doug?”
“We’ll review the possible suspects.”
“Okay.” I leaned forward. “Let’s do a dry run.”
Pierce chuckled, telling me, “You seem to have a few ideas already, Mark. Who’s on your list?”
I ticked off, “Mica and Burton Thrush, Tommy Morales, and Denny Diggins. And—” I was about to add Nancy Sanderson to my list when Neil interrupted.
“I hate to mention the unthinkable, but what about Thad?”
Good question. Recalling the stash of fly agaric in Thad’s room, I forced myself to wonder if his involvement was still unthinkable. I waited to see how Pierce would react.
He told us offhandedly, “Sure, Thad’s on my list—I have to keep an open mind about this. But aside from the threat, which was purely coincidental, what could link him to the murder of Jason Thrush?”
Dryly, I mentioned, “Mushrooms. And the starring role on opening night. Sorry to say, a lot of people think it adds up.” I pushed away my half-eaten pastry.
“Okay,” Pierce conceded, “the threat has a logical link to opening night, but still, that’s sheer coincidence. As far as mushrooms are concerned, that angle isn’t public knowledge yet. Thad may be headed for an emotional crisis with all this, but we’d need a lot more evidence before he faced arrest.”
God. We were actually discussing the possibility of arrest. What, I wondered, would Pierce consider sufficient “evidence”—the stash of fly agaric? I’d lost any taste for my coffee—there was a knot in my stomach.
Neil leaned into the conversation. “As long as we’re exploring the mushroom angle, let’s not forget Tommy Morales.”
Pierce asked, “The little kid in the play with Thad?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know what to make of him. He’s seemingly nice enough. But”—I raised a finger—“he stepped into a major role in
Teen Play
because of Jason’s demise. Frank told me that Tommy wanted the Dawson role all along
and
was resentful of Jason’s wealth. Plus, I myself heard him express his ambitions at the party last Saturday night.”
“But the corker,” added Neil, “is the fact that Tommy is the only member of Fungus Amongus who’s also involved in the play—other than Thad, of course.”
To make sure Pierce was connecting the dots, I explained, “Frank is fairly certain that any member of the mushroom club would be savvy enough to identify and harvest the deadly fly agaric.”
“Wow.” Pierce shook his head, pulling a pad from the inside pocket of his summer-weight linen blazer. “I’d better start taking notes.” He clicked a ballpoint pen and began writing.
We’d all stopped eating, so Neil rose from his chair and carried the pastry and bagels to the counter. Over his shoulder, he said, “Whether mushrooms were involved or not, Mark thinks that both Mica Thrush and her father make appealing suspects.”
“I agree,” said Pierce. “They’re at the top of my list.” Proving his point, he flashed us the list. “Burton Thrush had a ten-million-dollar life-insurance policy on his son, and his business is on the skids—enough said. As for Mica, well…”
“As for Mica,” I finished his thought, “she is one spooky girl. I don’t know
where
she’s coming from, but her bizarre behavior with her brother’s corpse on Friday night gave me the chills. She’s obviously into the whole ‘gothic’ mind-set, fascinated by death.” Recalling the grisly fate of her neighbor’s cat, I concluded, “When it comes to Mica, nothing would surprise me.”
Neil returned to the table and sat, grinning. “She surprised you with that bombshell about Jason being gay.”
“That she did.” Fingering my coffee cup, I told Pierce. “Like you, Doug, I was inclined not to believe her. But Neil thinks it might be an important lead.”
Neil asked, “Didn’t she suggest that Jason was having a lovers’ spat?”
Pierce nodded. “In so many words, yes. She also suggested that the ‘other man’ was none other than Denny Diggins.”
I asked Pierce, “Did you ever get the computer log of Jason’s phone records?”
“Late yesterday. Unfortunately, it gives us too
much
information—every call in or out of the Thrush residence during the week prior to Jason’s death. They have several lines, and there were hundreds of calls, but I saw no discernible pattern. Sure, there were conversations here and there with other people involved with the play; you’d expect that. But there was no preponderance of calls to or from any one person, and—get this—there wasn’t a single call we could trace to Denny Diggins.”
“Hmm.” I drummed my fingers on the table. “Mica suggested that Jason had something going on with Denny, and Denny himself told me he’d phoned Jason repeatedly on Friday. Where was he calling from—a phone booth?”
Pierce shook his head. “First thing we checked. No pay-phone calls.”
“It just doesn’t make sense. I could understand if Denny had been phoning Jason and lied about
not
making the calls, but why would he say he
had
called when he hadn’t?”
“Hey,” said Neil, enlightened. “He might have told everyone that he’d been desperately trying to reach Jason in order to establish how ‘worried’ he was, when in fact, he knew all along that Jason was at home, in his bedroom, dying.”
Pierce and I glanced at each other. Pierce said the very words I was thinking: “That would fit.”
I asked anyone, “What do we really
know
about Denny Diggins?”
Neil shrugged. “Local radio host. Phony accent. Highly conceited. Bachelor.”
Pierce nodded. “That sums him up pretty well.” He paused before adding, “I hate to sound stupid, but do we actually
know
that Denny is gay?”
Neil glibly answered, “
I’ve
never slept with him.”
I laughed. “Denny’s fruity as they come, and it’s a reasonable assumption, but I have no direct knowledge that he’s gay. Maybe he’s closeted. Or just plain affected.” Turning to Pierce, I noted, “You’ve lived here far longer than we have. What’s the scuttlebutt?”
“I was deep in the closet myself till last year. If Denny’s had an active sexual history in this town, I was never privy to it.”
I thought for a moment, then told Pierce, “I’m beginning to feel we should talk to Denny sooner rather than later. This confusion over the phone calls is troubling; it lends a shred of credibility to Mica’s offbeat story.”
“I agree,” said Pierce, “but remember, I’m not investigating a murder yet. If I haul him in and think he’s guilty, I’ve got nothing to book him on. Maybe
you
could devise some reason to question him.”
I nodded, pondering this—it wouldn’t be the first time I’d called someone down to the newspaper on a spurious pretext.
Neil snapped his fingers. “Glee Savage.
Teen Play
will be running for another weekend; assign Glee to write a follow-up feature on the play and its director. Denny is such a publicity hound, he could easily be lured down to the
Register
for an interview. Once you’ve got him, ask him anything you want.”
Standing, I kissed Neil’s forehead. “Thanks, kiddo. You’re brilliant as well as beautiful.”
He told Pierce under his breath, “Mark married me for my brains, you know.”
“I believe it,” said Pierce with a laugh, throwing his hands in the air, recognizing a no-win debate. He stood and carried his cup and a plate to the sink. “That’s the plan, Mark?”
“That’s the plan. I’ll discuss it with Glee as soon as I get downtown. And you’ll let me know if you hear anything from Formhals?”
“Absolutely.” Pierce moved to the back door. “I thought I’d drop by the paper later this morning anyway. You’ll be around?”
“All morning. See you later, Doug.”
“Bye, Doug,” Neil told him as he left the house with a wave.
I began rinsing a few things, putting them in the dishwasher. Neil cleared the table, returning the milk to the refrigerator. I asked him, “Want more coffee?”
“No, thanks—all tanked up.” He brought the pot from the table and dumped it in the sink, then handed it to me.
While giving the glass pot a good rinse, I said, “It seems the mystery of Jason’s death has been as heavily on your mind as on mine.”
“Well,
sure.
This isn’t ‘just another news story’—it hits pretty close to home.”
I nodded. “Did you notice? When we discussed Thad with Doug, he dismissed the likelihood of ‘arrest’—but he did broach the subject, and he did say the word.”
“Yeah, I caught that. Thank God Thad didn’t surprise us with another early mushroom hunt. If he’d popped into the kitchen and heard that, he’d have been devastated.”
I walked back to the table, looking toward the hall doorway, hoping Thad slept soundly upstairs. “I’m afraid he’s already on shaky ground, emotionally I mean. We’ve got to put this behind him.” Turning to Neil, I said, “That was a great suggestion, by the way, about Denny’s follow-up interview.”
He crossed to me from the sink. “Just doing my bit.”
I put my hands on his shoulders. Softly I told him, “In case I neglected to mention it, you were spectacular last night.”
Grinning, he repeated, “Just doing my bit.”
He placed his hands around my waist, and we stood together, looking at each other for several long, silent seconds.
Then the soft, breathy notes of a clarinet drifted through the house and met our ears. Instinctively, we turned toward the hall, listening. After a few practice scales, the sounds took on the structure of music. I recognized a phrase or two from the melody I’d heard Barb practicing on Sunday morning, now sounding much more polished.
“She’s been busy,” said Neil.
Nodding, I told him, “She’s really good—surprisingly good.”
The piece had odd rhythms, an eerie quietude, and frequent little trills suggestive of birds. It seemed plaintive and vulnerable, yet agitated by an underlying turbulence.
Neil cocked his head. “It’s not quite ‘pretty,’ but it certainly has a beauty about it. Do you know the piece?”
“It’s familiar, but I can’t place it. I know this much, though: it’s modern, and it’s extremely difficult. Barb may be a bit rusty, but she’s a highly skilled player.” Her clarinet drifted through measure after mea- sure of the piece, exploring a sensitive range of dynamics while evoking unseen colors and teetering, uncertain emotions.
Then, with a sad, quiet trill, it ended.
A small bird, I felt, had died.