Pleasantly Dead (10 page)

“Around then. Maybe a little later.”

“Was he running?”

Lloyd shook his head. “He weren’t running.”

Brisbois’ grip tightened on the pen. “What was he doing?”

“He was walking.”

“Was there anybody else around? Did you hear him arguing with anybody?”

“He was talking to Miss Miller.”

“When?”

“Around then.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He was talking to Miss Miller around when I saw him.”

“Did you hear what they were saying?”

“Not much. They were kind of laughing.”

“Did they seem pretty friendly?”

“I guess. Maybe Mr. Leslie was laughing because Miss Miller came out her window and climbed down the trellis.”

Brisbois stopped writing. “You saw Miss Miller climb down the trellis.”

“Not all the way. There was a bush. But I saw her come down from the window and get a toehold in the trellis. And Mr. Leslie was watching and then she came out from behind the bushes and he laughed again.”

“Then what?”

“Then they went down through the trees.”

“Which way?”

“To the west side.”

“And then?”

“Don’t know. I couldn’t see them once they got into the trees.”

Brisbois rubbed his forehead. “Let me get this straight. You saw Miss Miller with Peter Leslie minutes before he was found dead and you didn’t say anything?”

“Nobody asked. Then you told me to get out. So I just went to work. There was a lot of weeds.”

“You didn’t happen to see Miss Miller coming out of Peter Leslie’s cottage.”

“Nope.” Lloyd wrinkled his forehead. “Next time I saw her she was going into the inn.”

“Up the trellis?”

“In the back door.”

“When was that?”

“Just after.”

“Five minutes, ten, fifteen?”

“Just that.”

“Miss Miller. What did she look like? Did she seem upset?”

Lloyd cogitated on that for a minute. “She weren’t crying or nothing. She was just hurrying along. I guess she didn’t want to miss first pickings.”

Brisbois blew out a long breath. “Okay, Lloyd. Did you see Miss Miller and Peter Leslie together before?”

“Just to eat sometimes.”

“Did they seem friendly? Do you think they liked each other?”

“Don’t know.” He frowned. “Don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Wouldn’t be nice.”

“It doesn’t matter if it’s nice. This is a murder investigation. You’ve got to tell the truth.”

“Mr. Leslie pinched Trudy on the bum. Miss Miller didn’t like that.”

“When did this happen?”

“Lunch. Day before yesterday.”

“How do you know Miss Miller didn’t like it?”

“She was mad.”

“How do you know?”

“She didn’t sit with him. She poked Mr. Simpson on the arm and told him to sit away from Mr. Leslie.” He grinned. “She likes Mr. Simpson.”

Brisbois nodded, flipped a page in his notebook. “Did Trudy complain to anyone?”

His face clouded. “It was bad. Trudy went into the kitchen and cried.”

“Did she tell you what happened?”

“I just saw.”

“Do you know if she told anybody?”

“She told Gregoire. He was mad. And Tim was mad. Gregoire said he’d talk to him, man to man.”

“Did he?”

“Don’t know. But he was mad. He smashed an egg and got shells in the frying pan. Then he got mad, the way he does when I scare him, and smashed an egg on the floor.”

“Did Mr. Rudley know what Mr. Leslie did?”

Lloyd shook his head. “Gregoire said we shouldn’t tell him. He said Mr. Rudley might choke Mr. Leslie and it wouldn’t be good for business. He said Mr. Rudley wasn’t much of a dipplemat.”

“Diplomat.”

“That too.”

“Did Mrs. Rudley know about Trudy?”

“Tim said Mrs. Rudley would hit Mr. Leslie with the frying pan if she knew.”

“So nobody told her either.”

“Gregoire said he needed the frying pan. He said he’d figure out something.” He grinned. “I guess it would have been better if he had got hit with the frying pan.”

“Did Gregoire say what he’d figured out?”

“No. Didn’t hear him say more.”

Creighton picked a stalk of timothy and pulled it between his teeth. “Did you like Mr. Leslie?”

“Not too much.”

“Do you know anybody else who didn’t like him?”

His face darkened. “I guess Trudy didn’t like him. And Gregoire didn’t like him. And Tim said he was a dirty old man. Mrs. Millotte didn’t like him either.”

“Did he pinch her too?”

“Don’t know.” He ducked his head. “She has a skinny behind.”

“Did Tiffany like him?”

“Never said.”

Brisbois reclaimed the interrogation. “Did you see anyone else around this morning?”

“Just who I always see.”

Brisbois waited, pen poised.

“Mrs. Millotte drove up with Trudy. She gives her a ride.”

“Anybody else? What about delivery people?”

“Nope.”

“What about the guests?”

“Some of them was around.”

“Did you notice anybody in particular?”

“There was some out in the boats. Mr. Phipps-Walker and Mr. Thomas. And Mr. George. He was feeding the ducks by the dock.” He giggled. “Tim says he looks like the Frankenstein monster.”

“That big square clumsy-looking guy?” Creighton asked.

“Gregoire said his shoes look like the bumper cars at the fair,” Lloyd said.

“Did you notice anyone else?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Then I went in to get breakfast. I got four slices of bacon and three slices of cheese — cheddar — on a bun — whole wheat — and a cup of milk.”

“And then?”

“Mr. Rudley called me to go look for Tiffany. Said nobody was supposed to be out by themselves. So we went looking and there she was in the Birches like Snow White. And then there were people all around. And you told me to wait outdoors.”

“Why did you and Rudley go to the Low Birches? Did you hear something?”

“We spied her linen cart parked out front.”

“And you and Rudley were together the whole time?”

“Every minute. Until you put me outside.”

Brisbois sent Lloyd back to the garden.

Creighton chuckled. “Didn’t you want to know if that milk was 1 percent or 2 percent?”

Brisbois glared at him.

“I think this investigation would be easier if we hadn’t interviewed him.”

“He has a knack of complicating the picture.”

“What I don’t get,” said Creighton, “is that the sun’s barely up and the place is hopping.”

“You’ve taken too many vacations in Mexico,” Brisbois said. “Place like this, morning is where it’s happening. Fishing. Nature walks. Nap in the afternoon and back at it when the fish are biting.” He reviewed his notes. “Okay. We have Leslie pinching Trudy. Miss Miller sees him do it and, apparently, doesn’t like it. Lloyd didn’t like it. Neither did Gregoire nor Tim. The Rudleys wouldn’t have liked it if they had known. If they had, Rudley would have throttled him and the missus would have hit him over the head with a frying pan.”

“Which is why nobody told them.”

“So,” Brisbois continued, “Leslie was a grabber. And a pincher. Lloyd assumed Miss Miller didn’t like that. But maybe she did. Maybe what she didn’t like was that the attention wasn’t directed at her. She did climb down from the trellis to meet him.”

Creighton snickered. “She’s a librarian. Some of those artsy women can be pretty flakey. Maybe a little mild S & M turned her on.”

“But she’s been making eyes at Simpson.”

“So Leslie was a little diversion, something on the wild side.”

Brisbois spun to face him. “Maybe. It got out of control. He did something she didn’t like. Maybe something that frightened her. Maybe threatened to tell Simpson if she didn’t go along. So she whacked him on the head, then slashed his wrists just to make sure he was dead.”

“Her clothes were scattered on the floor in Simpson’s room. There wasn’t a drop of blood on them.”

“So she was in the nude when she killed Leslie.” He paused. “There wasn’t any splatter.”

“She eliminated that problem by holding his arms under water while she cut.”

“That would take a bucket of cold-blooded intent. Not to mention unwavering decisiveness. She wouldn’t have had much time to dither.”

“Are you going to haul her in?”

Brisbois stood, taking a swipe at the seat of his pants. “I’d like to haul them all in, including that old arthritic bat and the birdwatcher. Lock them up — to keep them from killing anyone else — or getting killed.” He looked gloomy. “First, we’ll interview the young lady.”

Brisbois waited in the foyer while Creighton went upstairs to retrieve Miss Miller. Garrett Thomas sat on the veranda, nursing a scotch and entertaining Aunt Pearl. By the sag of her cigarette and her exaggerated gestures, Brisbois guessed she was half-smashed.

The Sawchucks were coming up the steps, he clutching the railing, she clutching his arm. They wore identical navy shorts, red Hawaiian shirts, white cotton socks, and black orthopedic shoes. He sniffed. Brisbois resented the expensive carelessness of the wealthy as much as he resented their ostentation. The Sawchucks’ shorts cost a hundred bucks each, he imagined. If he’d been wearing a pair of pants that cost a hundred dollars, he would be watching where he sat, constantly guarding against snags and stains.

He conceded that not all the guests were wealthy. Mr. Simpson and Miss Miller had probably saved for the vacation, forgoing a trip to Europe, while the Sawchucks could enjoy both and probably did. The Pleasant seemed a cut above the other lodges in the area — the fine old building, the incomparable chef and the flower lady, the fine china, and expensive-looking silver. He thought of Rudley and his plaid shirts and Margaret and her simple dress and felt confused. He didn’t know how to measure the Pleasant and it bothered him.

He guessed his idea of summer at the cottage was his grandparents’ camp in Northern Ontario, an uninsulated cottage where the rain drummed heavily on the roof, where you whacked your head if you sat up in your bunk bed, and the bathroom was a basin on the stoop and an outhouse in the trees. Where the dock rode low on a reedy waterfront. Or it was the lodge up the lake where they sometimes went for a burger, a place where the whole family worked like dogs, and the fishermen and working-class families inhabited housekeeping cottages with rough board interiors, tiny bathrooms with stained sinks and mildewed shower stalls, where the food was served in a dining room with a cracked linoleum floor and the tables had oilcloths and a mishmash of chrome and vinyl chairs usually in a dull ruby red or opaque amber. He loved that place. It was a place you could go to in a bargain-basement shirt and shorts still stiff with sizing, in tube socks (the kind that came three to a pack with different coloured bands), and down-at-the-heel Hush Puppies or brand-name-knock-off sneakers. Where the meals were meat and potatoes and apple pie and coffee that tasted like real coffee served on a collection of china with cutlery that looked as if it had been picked up willy-nilly at yard sales. He didn’t feel comfortable walking into the dining room here, even in his suit and tie. He imagined the guests totting up the value of his clothes and sniggering behind the stiff linen napkins as they paused over appetizers of calamari and entrées of filet mignon. He had to admit that Rudley ran a tight ship and everyone worked hard, but he couldn’t understand why people enjoyed working for a grouch like him or why a sweet person like Mrs. Rudley had married him.

He glanced at his watch. What in hell was keeping Creighton?

Out on the veranda, Thomas poured another glass of wine for Aunt Pearl. Mrs. Millotte made her way from the dining room with a tray of lemonade and iced tea. The Sawchucks turned their faces to her in beatific unison as she slid the carafe of iced tea onto their table. Brisbois wondered what Mrs. Millotte, a straight-laced, straight-shooting kind of woman, thought about this bunch of flakes she worked with — a cook who wore a velvet rose on his lapel, a waiter who seemed to make a study in high camp, the maid, who looked like the prim young thing out of an Agatha Christie novel, the kind who ended up being the one who did it, Rudley, who showed the guests scarcely more courtesy than he showed the staff, and Lloyd, who would have fit in nicely at the Bates Motel. He shivered. This place was just a ritzier version of the Bates, with people dropping dead and disappearing all over the place, but not a person struck him as having the time or potential for manslaughter (although one of them surely had) nor was there a damned piece of useful physical evidence — so far.

Except for the shoe. Even that could be a plant. But they were working on it. He sighed, knowing his case might rest on a shoemaker with a good memory.

Five minutes later, Creighton appeared with Miss Miller. Brisbois escorted her to Rudley’s office and motioned her to a chair beside the desk.

“Mr. Leslie was murdered this morning,” he said without preamble.

She drew in a sharp breath. “Leslie?”

“This is the first time you’ve heard this?”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

Her brow wrinkled. “Because I haven’t been out and about.”

“You didn’t hear the sirens?”

“Vaguely.”

“Where were you this morning, Miss Miller?”

“You know where I was.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I know where we found you. Where were you this morning between six-thirty and seven-fifteen?”

She didn’t answer.

“What would you say if I told you an eyewitness saw you climb out of your window, climb down the trellis, and rendezvous with Peter Leslie at the back of the Pleasant?”

She sighed. “I would have to say your eyewitness was telling the truth.”

He watched her.

“I did climb out of my window. It was about six-thirty. I climbed down the trellis and met with Peter Leslie, as we had previously arranged.”

“I’m listening.”

“I made the suggestion to him, but it’s not as you think.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I did it to get back at him.”

“Go on.”

“We went down to the Low Birches. He told me he wanted to have a bath first. He went into the bathroom. He ran a bath. A few minutes later, he called me. I went in. He was in the tub, stark naked.”