Triple Threat Mysteries Collection

Chapter 23

Upon entering the guestroom I checked for Ger"s promised info and was pleased to find it in the Inbox. As he"d said, there wasn"t much.

A grainy photograph near rural railroad tracks showed a dozen men with shovels and picks. It had been part of an article on expanding railways, but Ger had provided only the photo that held a couple of unremarkable sentences beneath. One name stood out, though: Fred Maxwell. It was hard to see his face, not only because of the poor quality of the photo, but the shaggy hair and beard. In the “Clinton News” section of a Connecticut paper dated May 1896, a blurb advised that Contractor Marcus F.P. Jerrold of Middleton and his men, Fred Maxwell and Peter Kelsomm, had begun working on a barn for Joseph Crumholz in the rear of his Clinton Beach cottage.

Ger restated a promise to keep looking and signed off with “xoxoxox”. Yuck. Well, what the two items did reveal was that Fred had indeed moved around doing odd jobs and subsequently – good for him – stayed out of trouble.

The cell phone started ringing. So much for a quick lay-down and freshen-up. The display said it was private investigator Johnny Gorcey. He was quick to respond; I liked that. Hopefully there was something of note to impart.

“Gorcey here. This Ms. Fonne?” He didn"t wait for a response. “How"s your aunt?”

“Fine, good, healthy,” I stumbled, surprised. I wasn"t sure what I"d been expecting, but it wasn"t a deep, booming, gravelly voice that sounded as if it belonged to a big bad-a*s TV tough guy. I could envision Gorcey standing six feet tall, as huge as a restaurant refrigerator, no neck, the body half muscle and half flab. He"d smoke cigarillos, drink black coffee by the potful, and eat rare steaks with sides of greasy, gravy-soaked fries. Clothes would be frumpy and baggy, not unlike the deceased Manhattan lawyer"s.

“Tell her Johnny sends regards.”

Who was going to argue with the brusque command? Not I. “Ummm, how can I help?”

He laughed, sounding like a staple g*n operating out of control. “You were the one who called for help, Ms. Fonne.”

“Right. Where shall we start?” I dropped into a chair in front of the vanity and eyed the weary face staring back. A quick sudsy shower might help. So might a triple espresso.

“Linda Royale. You probably already know this. There are no living parents. Sister Loretta Linn has lived in six states in the last eight years. She works for a few months, usually in an admin capacity, and moves on. Obviously she"s not one to lay roots. Brother Lido Lawrence is a travel-documentary cameraman – or was. He"s been out of work since he broke a foot and arm filming chipmunks in Canada two years ago. He got into some sort of depression. He has a son Theo he sees every three weeks. He also has a San Diego apartment and recently gave up one in L.A. due to financial woes. There are no red flags for either sibling, except for small-time theft when Lido was seventeen.

“Ms. Royale got married in her teens to a jazz musician named Chiffre Royale, who played sax on a few albums of notable artists. He died in a fleabag motel outside Chicago of a h****n overdose.” Paper rustled and his cough sounded like a bear growl. He offered a few quick facts related to her current employment and life. The not-so-interesting highlights: Linda had never been arrested, had received two parking tickets in 2012, and won a large-screen television that same year.

I turned back to the mirror and found Ms. Weary wasn"t looking any perkier.

“Ms. Royale was a client of Thomas Saturne"s, by the way. A pal of mine, Basil, was tailing him a while back. I checked with him – because something about her was gnawing at me – and he said he recalled a young woman by that name. Basil"s got a remarkable memory and can remember names, streets, cars, diners, you name it, without referring to notes. She met with Saturne a couple of times.”

I perked up suddenly. This was interesting. But where would it lead? “Why was he tailing Thomas? And why was she seeing him?”

“About three years ago, Thomas Saturne was suspected of stealing funds from a non-profit organization he represented. Nothing was ever proven – not in terms of him – though it appeared, Roblee Schnee, a guy at that org was the actual culprit. A few thousand dollars were found in a locked drawer in his desk and at his condo in a cereal box at the back of a closet. He committed suicide the day the desk discovery was made, so the case was closed and Basil"s services terminated.”

“He committed suicide … how?”

“The guy jumped from his thirteenth-floor balcony.”

“How neat.”

“And convenient?” he asked dryly, taking a gulp of something.

“Very.” Thomas would have been with Prunella then. Had they framed Roblee Schnee and opted for fresh starts?

“What about Linda? She wasn"t implicated or involved in this in some way?”

“No, nothing like that. She met Saturne about family stuff related to the Smiths – who she"s related to.”

I all but goggled. “She"s related to the Smiths who once owned my aunt"s house?”

“Yes ma"am – one and the same family. In fact, Loretta Linn is the LL Smith who maintains a family blog.” More paper crackled. “It"s entirely possible this Chiffre guy got her started on the Smiths. She"d visited a lawyer by the name of Katt Salmon not long after they were married, seeing if she had legal claims to family cash.” I could hear the frown. “The guy probably wanted d**g money and thought this would be an easy way of getting it. There was a lot of correspondence between the Royales and the Smiths, but nothing happened. Salmon had no luck, either. Then the druggie-hubby died and she put it on the back burner – until she turned thirty-one last year. That"s how she got to be a client of Saturne.”

“I"m guessing nothing came of it.”

“As Saturne"s bitten the dust, you"d have to ask the lady herself for details. But no, it doesn"t look like anything came of it.”

“So she tried to get money again,” I mused aloud, perturbed. I could see Linda as many things, but not the greedy sort.

“I believe she wanted a set amount – nothing extravagant – for some family members, including her brother, because of his slump.” Gorcey moved on to May-Lee Sonit and again offered known facts. What I hadn"t been familiar with was the antique dealer"s two sisters and daughter. Forty-eight-year-old Marigold was a dentist in El Paso and forty-four-year-old Blanche a high-end salesperson in Miami. Daughter Karina owned a small event-planning business and lived with her eight-year-old son Guy-Marc in Seattle.

May-Lee had been married very young to Percival, but divorced within a few weeks. No new news there. Her daughter was the product of a short-term relationship with a pilot when she was twenty-four. Sammy, her last boyfriend, also an antique dealer, passed two years ago of pancreatic cancer.

“Do you want me to find out more regarding Ms. Royale and Ms. Sonit?”

“Hold off for now,” I answered slowly, considering it. If he couldn"t find any red flags, there likely weren"t any. But never say never, right? “How about the Sayers?”

Gorcey recited old news: the marriage, the writing, the employment history.

“So there are no closet skeletons, and I"m not talking about Aunt Mat"s little surprises.” I was discouraged and sounded it.

“Granted, there are no big closet skeletons, but I wasn"t finished,” he responded soothingly. “In 2010 Percival Sayers spent six months in a European spa, which is another word for rehab.”

“For what? Drinking? Drugging?”

“He had a breakdown.”

“What type? Mental? Emotional?”

“Both. Apparently Sayers lost it at a book signing for a friend. He ran amok, broke balloons while singing happy birthday to himself, and then munched a few flower arrangements.”

“What triggered it?”

“I don"t know”. He drew a deep ragged breath. “They"re both a bit strange, those two. Prunella Sayers spent her teen years in six different boarding schools.”

“Why so many?”

“Boredom? Teenage troubles? I didn"t think to find out, but I could dig around.” He cleared his throat. “Moving on … Hubert Flagstone, age sixty-seven, has been working for your aunt for decades. His folks and grand-folks were from Brighton England. His family moved here when he was six. These people lived pretty much everyday lives. His sister Miriam passed in 2010, killed by a herd of yaks when she was trekking across Nepal.”

“You"re serious?”

“Would I lie about a yak stampede?”

“Would you?”

He chuckled. “Beatrice Hellmutter Dorfenfeld"s mother was from Switzerland and the father from Austria. She moved here in the early sixties and hasn"t done anything but maid work. She worked for a couple of impressive and rich people until she took up with your aunt. In fact, she came into nice money when a theater couple she first worked for was killed in a car crash off a canyon road. She"d been with them three years. She got – let"s see – right, sixty thousand dollars.”

“Not bad.”

“Especially in the late 50s. That wasn"t chump change.”

“Why"d she not retire?”

“You"d have to –”

“Ask her,” we finished together.

He chuckled again. “She also got fifty thousand in 1969, when a spinster she was working for died in a fall. The mansion was built high on a hill and one day the old lady tripped and rolled down a few hundred yards. Her head smashed into a boulder at the bottom.”

Ouch. “Beatrice is quite lucky. I wish I could say the same for those she worked for,” I said. “Do you think they died of natural causes?”

“Do you think this woman"s capable of rigging a car or throwing an old lady to her death?”

“In the last little while, I"ve come to believe anything is possible. But if Beatrice was responsible, why keep working as a maid? She could have taken the money and bought a house, or gone back to school.”

anythingwas“When you"re a maid, you don"t have to pay rent, food is usually taken care of, and you get perks if you"re with the right folks. Maybe she likes sitting on money. Maybe she"s plain greedy. Or maybe she just likes working.”

“… Anything else?”

“There"s one more thing you may find interesting.”

I chuckled when he paused. “Okay, what else would I find interesting about Beatrice Hellmutter Dorfen-whatever?”

else“She had a cousin who moved to the U.S. a couple of years after she did. Cousin Erich worked as a butler, mechanic, and groundskeeper. In 1985, he was arrested for triple murders in San Antonio. Self-defense the guy claimed … fours years after the police found the bodies.”

after“You mean, a guilty conscience finally caught up with Cousin Erich?” I asked sarcastically.

“It was more like a fraidy-cat witness finally came forward. Abernathy Orville Manting was the late witness" name.”

“Late as in deceased? Or late as in taking his time to see the police?” I asked dryly.

“Both. A runaway golf cart smashed into the guy four days after he visited the boys in blue. He flew into a river cruise taking a river tour. He was already kind of dented after being hit, never mind what he was like when he came to rest on the helm.”

“Good luck continueth – not.”

Johnny laughed. “It"s only a temporary road-block.”

Hopefully. “Could I impose upon you to do more detecting?”

“You got the moolah, I got the time.”

I chuckled. “Will you find out about two people who probably have some sort of business affiliation with the Moones and the Sayers? The names are Gruber Pathos and Santana Anna Dinero, and that"s all I know about them.”

“I"m not called "Sherlock" for nothing.”

Mid afternoon saw three disenchanted faces in the drawing room: mine, Rey"s, and Linda"s. Aunt Mat had spent most of the morning chatting with Lewis. Gwynne, surlier than usual, probably because he wasn"t pleased about being stuck at the Moone mansion, re-checked the house “to be certain all was okay” and ordered everyone to “stay clear of marked and cordoned-off areas, or find yourselves in blistering hot water”.

Adwin had decided to bake quiches and breads for dinner. After assembling notes chronologically, I"d returned to the Internet and scanned some of Percival"s on-line landscaping and gardening articles (can you spell y-a-w-n?). I"d also discovered that the Sayers" father was a pharmaceuticals exec, Mother #1 (Percival"s) a professor of medieval English literature who"d later moved to England to open a pub, and Mother #2 (Prunella"s) a runway model.

Wayne, the former bookie, called just before Prunella and Percival had a blow up. It had been a short but raucous affair that resulted in a broken Cinnabar Chinese vase and swearing that turned Adwin"s pale face an interesting shade of rose. Wayne said Thomas" gambling problem had run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. He"d annoyed a few prime turf accountants and the odd mobster, including someone named Triple J, who"d died mysteriously in the eighties. Triple J had to be none other than the infamous Jimmy Jojo James. Somehow our blubbery barrister had always managed to steer clear of brass knuckles and concrete boots, but only just – hold on though. Triple J had died when Porter was still co-owner of that nightclub. And Thomas had a link to the mobster. Could the two men have known each other back then?

Come to that, where had the cook been those years he"d not been on the radar? Culinary school? Slinging hash in diners? He"d left Le Cochon Volant in the mid nineties and not shown up at the Moone estate until 2003.

Le Cochon VolantStepping to a drawing room window, I gazed out onto a glassy wonderland. The only life forms that might enjoy the outdoors today were Gentoo penguins. “What do you know about Thomas Saturne"s personal life?”

Wayne chuckled. “Ya mean his love life? His family and all that?”

“Uh-huh.”

“He loved the fillies – the four-legged kind.”

I laughed.

“He had the odd gal pal when I was still in the business. One was named Alice Sinatra – no relation to Old Blue Eyes. They lasted two years. That was at the end of the 90s. Guess she didn"t like playing second fiddle to a horse, because she wanted him looking at her tail, not the mare"s. Then he dated here and there, but didn"t seem interested in getting serious for a long time.” He paused. Vintage Randy Travis started to play in the background. “About a year ago, there was a younger odd one. She didn"t seem his type.”

Younger odd one? Prunella? Not likely, but I asked anyway. “You mean Prunella Sayers?”

“No, not that one.”

“You"re sure?”

“I knew about her – like who"d forget a name like that? This one was, hmm, mid-twenties maybe. It was hard to tell. She was dressed in clothes someone more in her fifties might wear: classy and not cheap, but "old world". I bumped into the two of them at a bar in the Fens. He seemed kind of anxious seeing me there, but he was polite enough. She had this strange smile on her face, like she had a secret and wasn"t going to share.”

her“What did she look like?”

“Creamy skin. Cool eyes. Clean, fresh; you know? She was wearing a short skirt made of nice fabric and a tight top, not sleazy though. The clothes were classy and expensive, like I said. She had nice toned arms and athletic legs that were real easy on the eyes. It looked like she was into taking care of herself.”

“Was she pretty? Cute? Stunning? Did she have a tiny nose or a Jimmy Durante schnoz? Was her hair red, blonde, or brown?”

“She had shoulder-length hair. It was dark brown – like the melted chocolate you dip marshmallows and fruit into. There was a little blond in it, too. The light in the bar made her hair and fancy pins sparkle and shimmer. I remember thinking the hairpins and clothes didn"t much match the face or body – not just because of the age – but because she was kinda wholesome yet kinda sporty.”

He"d painted a pretty generic picture. Maybe a re-check of photos with Thomas in them would reveal a woman bearing Wayne"s description. “You didn"t catch a name, did you?”

He chuckled again. “Does "Dewdrop" count?”

I cringed. “Oof, you"re joking?”

“I am.” He chuckled again.

Whew. I wished him well, disconnected, and sauntered to the sofa.

“Anything interesting?” Rey asked, not looking like she cared one way or the other.

“Not yet.” I lay my cell phone on an armchair. “But at least phones are still functional.”

She sighed loudly. “Gawd, I want to go back to my Brentwood apartment – to a palm-treed courtyard with a decent pool, a bad script, and a fitness-loving smart-assed neighbor and his fat farty St. Bernard.”

Adwin and May-Lee sauntered in and took seats beside Rey. “I wouldn"t mind being at the restaurant, working on a tray of treacle tarts or cherry-cashew mousse.”

Linda stretched her legs. “I wish I could be sitting on my lumpy couch, watching HBO, and eating an all-dressed veggie burger with crisp sweet potato fries and a big chunk of gooey carob cake.”

“And I wouldn"t mind lounging in a pine-scented bubble bath in my teeny condo, with a good mystery book and a view of Mr. Black"s deck … and two-hundred-and-fifty-pound Mr. Black doing his early morning tai-chi ritual in 80s Spandex wear,” I said.

Rey gave a thumb"s up. “Maybe we should get him together with Trevor, the fitness-loving smart-assed neighbor. Sounds like a match made in heaven.”

“I"d like to be back at the shop,” May-Lee offered with a smile, “talking about the joys of owning a Shaker Ladder-Back chair or a Hepplewhite cabinet.”

Prunella entered. She looked like a supermarket customer who"d had a run-in with the produce manager over wrinkled peppers. “Perc should be down soon. He was trying to nap. The poor dear didn"t get much sleep last night.”

The “poor dear” probably got more than most of us. He"d surely not been researching on the Internet or investigating corridors, alcoves and recesses during the early hours. Speaking of, “poor dear” entered as Beatrice wheeled in an antique oak dining trolley with cookies, dates and clementines, a fat jug of water, and two carafes, one of tea and one of coffee. Maybe the siblings" fight had taken its toll: he seemed jittery, tense, and unhappy. With a quick nod, he grabbed three mocha wafer cookies and slipped into a chair near Adwin, and we settled into silent snacking.

After several quick if not anxious jaunts here, there and everywhere by the various folks who"d congregated in the drawing room, Aunt Mat still hadn"t shown her face.

“What do you suppose that woman is up to?” Prunella asked upon returning from upstairs, a plaid silk scarf in one hand.

Percival"s smile was feeble and swift. “That woman is probably planning another trick. Or maybe she"s detesting our presence and wants to stay away.”

“What"s to detest? We"re all lovable, endearing people,” she responded flippantly.

Adwin suggested she could be talking with the police.

Rey shook her head. “Lewis is in that rear guestroom making calls and issuing orders, and going through a third pot of coffee. He said he would head out later, if the weather shows any mercy. Gwynne is in a second-floor bedroom, working on cop stuff and wiping his brow a lot. He"s looking ratty and washed-out.”

“Maybe your aunt"s embarrassed as to what her get-together has resulted in and is staying the distance,” Linda suggested.

Rey took several gulps of water and wiped a hand across her lips like a football player who"d chugged a bottle of H2O after a scrimmage. “Maybe we"d better find out if she"s okay.”

Linda straightened. “Where do we find her?”

“Her room would be a good place to start,” Prunella responded tersely, draping the scarf around her shoulders.

We looked at one another and filed upstairs.

Then filed down again when we discovered she wasn"t there. Before anyone could suggest an alternative part of the huge house to check, Beatrice"s anguished shout – a cross between a bull elephant cry and a foghorn alert – summoned the g**g to Reginald Moone"s library-study.