“How do you know this?" Mel asked mildly.
Gus Ambler laughed. "Good detectin'. Actually, my late wife sometimes helped at the lodge. Mucked out the place for spring cleaning. Did a little darning and ironing and such. Every time she did canning or baking, she made extra for O. W. and Joe. Said she felt sorry for both of them with no women to look after them.”
The waitress came back for their plates, all three of which looked like they'd been licked clean. "Got any of that rhubarb pie?" Gus Ambler asked.
“You don't need no pie, Gus," she said.
“Just a sociable piece to eat with my friends. Three of 'em," he said, ignoring her assessment of his figure.
Mel didn't want to make a fool of himself asking about the treasure, but he had to at least make a stab at the subject. He'd blame it on Jane. "My friend Mrs. Jeffry," he said, "the one who's managing the wedding, says a couple people there have mentioned a treasure.”
He expected the tough old sheriff to laugh himself silly and was astonished when Gus said mildly, "Yeah, everybody knows about that."
“You mean there is one?" Mel asked.
Ambler made an expansive "I dunno" gesture. "I meant everybody's heard the story. Don't know if it's true. It wouldn't have been so strange if O. W. had left his money and property to the three legitimate kids and left something else to Joe."
“But if Joe had secretly inherited a lot, why would he go on living in the lodge?" Officer Smith asked. He'd been quiet all through dinner, probably because he was busy eating the only decent meal he'd had since his wife left town.
“I reckon it's because it's the only place he knows," Gus Ambler said. "He's got his television and radio, his hunting magazines and no ambition or interest in much of anything. And where could he go where he'd have the same privacy?"
“What will he do when the lodge is torn down this summer?" Mel asked.
“I asked him that when I ran into him at Wanda's a week or two ago," John said. "It was a mistake. He told me to mind my own business and he'd go wherever he damn well pleased.”
Ambler nodded. "Pretty much the same reaction I got when I tried to talk to him about it."
“So it's possible he does have the means of setting himself up someplace else?" Mel asked.
“So he says," Ambler said, looking around for the waitress. "Where's that pie, honey?" he yelled across the room when he caught her eye.
“I think he does have something hidden," John Smith volunteered. "We get a lot of calls from him. Prowlers, peeping Toms, trespassers. Could be his imagination, since we never find anyone. Or it could be that he's protecting something valuable."
“Or something he reckons is valuable," Ambler added.
“What do you mean?" Mel asked.
“Well, toward the end of O. W.'s days, he got real ambitious. Had some builders in. Out-of-town builders, mind you. So they couldn't gossip about what they were doing. Had a couple rooms painted and fixed up. A wall torn out and another put up. Changed the locks. Sent out a couple of those moth-eaten old animal heads to a taxidermist. Replaced the doorknobs so they were all the same, had some kind of work done on the old well. Again, by outsiders. Patched up the roof and I don't know what all…"
“Your wife reported this?" Mel said with a grin.
"She watched like a hawk. Thought it was out
of character. Anyway, the work was almost done
when O. W. had the first stroke. It was a pretty
bad one. Twisted up his face, made him lame, and got him pretty nutsy. He'd wander off at night. Only thing that saved him was that he made such a racket with his walker that Joe always heard him. Anyhow, the thing I've always wondered was this: if he was having this work done to hide something, and he had the first stroke before he could tell Joe what he was up to, he might have forgotten it. He forgot that he needed to go in a bathroom to pee indoors and even forgot his own name half the time.”
The pie finally arrived and was every bit as good as the chicken fried steak. Gus Ambler ate with relish for a few minutes, then asked Mel, "So how do you figure this has anything to do with that woman being murdered?"
“I doubt that it does," Mel said honestly. He turned to John Smith and asked, "How are you getting along on finding out about the rest of the people who were there?"
“Finding out a lot," Smith said. "But none of it seems especially relevant. That Dwayne guy that Livvy's marrying has a teenage shoplifting record. It should have been expunged years ago, but was still on the books by accident. His mother is clean as a whistle and the brother had a speeding ticket two years ago."
“Where's he work? Dwayne, I mean?" Mel asked.
“He's the junior-most vice president in a little branch of a big mortgage company. Paid with a title instead of money like those outfits do people," Smith said.
“No financial hanky-panky?" Gus Ambler asked.
“Can't be sure exactly. His boss didn't have much to say about him," Smith replied. "I got the impression he didn't much like the boy, but had no specific criticism he wanted to talk about. The boss is a pretty small cog himself and wouldn't risk causing trouble for himself. He did say that Dwayne was winding up his work and moving to his new wife's company after the wedding."
“What about the victim?" Ambler asked. "That's the place to start."
“Harmless, annoying old woman. The local police where she lived found paperwork about some kind of fight she was having with the I.R.S. and the Social Security people. Apparently there's a discrepancy between what she paid in her self-employment taxes and what she was trying to get from Social Security. Wads of paperwork from both agencies and her accountant. But I can't see that it has anything to do with her death. We talked to the accountant. The only thing that came out of it is that he's also the accountant for one of the bridesmaids' fathers. Eden Matthews. The curvy one."
“I know which one she is," Mel said with a grin.
“It seems like simple coincidence," Smith said. "I can't see a way it would be connected. The accountant also said that a couple of years ago Mrs. Crossthwait tried to start some sewing classes. Rented sewing machines and a room at a community center. It didn't fly and that's when hertax troubles started. His wife, out of compassion, signed up and said Crossthwait was so critical and nasty to the students that half of them never came back. He had deposit slips showing those who had signed up and one of them was a Hessling, possibly the groom's mother, though the deposit slip didn't give a first name."
“Did she stick out the course?" Mel asked.
“No way the accountant could tell. Only two of them tried, unsuccessfully, to get their money back. The rest just didn't come back," Smith said.
“Seems unlikely that Mrs. Hessling would harbor a grudge for years over a sewing class. Enough of a grudge to kill the teacher," Mel said. "Not to mention that it might not even be the same person.”
Smith shrugged. "Closer to impossible. Mrs. Crossthwait also kept a big old scrapbook of wedding pictures of all the brides she'd sewed for. One of the earliest was Jack Thatcher's sister Marguerite. But it was eons ago."
“What about the other people who were in the house the night she died?" Ambler asked.
“Nothing much. No police or legal records on the bridesmaids. The florist is weird as hell, but hasn't stepped outside the law as far as we know. The caterer had to sue someone two years ago to get his bill paid, otherwise nothing else on him.”
Mel asked, "And Uncle Joe, who often sees or imagines prowlers, didn't report any that night?"
“Not a peep from him that night," Smith confirmed.
“Sounds to me like you've got a mess on your hands," Ambler said gruffly. "Any chance the woman who died wasn't the intended victim?"