“This is almost as nice as the General Pickett,” Moonbeam said, surveying the table. “Let's have a toast. Where are your glasses?”
“In the sideboard, over there. I'll put on some coffee. Gloria, can you help me?” She looked surprised but followed me into the kitchen. I started the coffeemaker, then said to her, “I saw your picture-in a frame-in Darious DeShong's workshop.”
She gasped. “You didn't think I had anything to do with his death, did you?”
While such a thought had crossed my mind, I didn't need to tell her that. “What was going on between you?” And a much younger man, I wanted to add.
“Nothing. Well, nothing anymore. We did have a thing going for a little while. I met him while I was investigating the puppy mill the Hostettlers ran at their farm. It was one of the worst I've seen; I gave them six weeks to clean it up or go to jail.”
“They haven't,” I said.
“I know. I should have gone back there, but I didn't want to run into Darious again. Tori, there was something wrong with that man. But he was gorgeous, don't you agree?”
I nodded, agreeing with both statements, Darious was gorgeous, and there had been something wrong with him.
“I can't put my finger on it, but shortly after we… I mean… well… you know, I began to suspect he wasn't all he appeared to be. And that carousel… if you're rich enough to own one, you don't have to live in a barn. And you don't try to hide it. He'd disappear, sometimes for days at a time, and get furious with me when I asked him where he'd been. He hit me-once- that was enough. After that, he called… maybe half a dozen times. I hung up on him every time. Then that ended. I never saw him again.”
“You were lucky to get away with only being hit,” I said. “He tried to kill me. And he did kill Dr. Washabaugh.”
“How do you know…?”
“ Charlotte confessed everything to me. She and Darious were truly a team made in hell. I don't know which of them was worse. Let's go into the parlor, so I can tell everybody at once what happened on the tower.”
The eight people in the parlor had already helped themselves to food and had begun to eat. I sat down and waited for Gloria to fill a plate.
“How did you figure out Charlotte killed Darious?” Tamsin asked, too eager to wait. “Did you find a big clue?”
I smiled. “No big clues, Tamsin. I'm not really Nancy Drew.” I drew a blank stare from her on that one. “The Hardy Boys? Sherlock Holmes?” Blank again. Kids these days. What do they read anyway?
“ Champagne?” Moonbeam asked me.
“Just a little.”
She filled a glass to overflowing and handed it to me. “Then how did you figure it out?” Moonbeam asked.
“I guess you could say there were a lot of little clues that didn't mean much until they were added up. As you know, my attention was focused on discovering how Mack Macmillan could have been shot. Everything pointed to an error on Woody's part, but somehow I couldn't believe that a professional like Woody could ever make such a tragic mistake.”
Moonbeam smiled at Woody, who beamed back at her.
“But nobody else had access to the room where the guns were, except Janet Margolies, and although I learned she resented Macmillan because he decided to put a road through her family's business, I couldn't really picture her, at nine months pregnant, doing such a thing.
“So that meant someone else had to have access to the key, and according to Janet the only person who could have gotten hold of it was Mack himself. I knew he had the opportunity to load the guns, but I also had to look for a reason. What would make a man stand in front of a firing squad when he knew it would be firing real bullets at him?
“The answer came when Vesta Pennsinger, Dr. Washabaugh's assistant, told me Mack had been devastated when he heard his cancer diagnosis. That was what suggested suicide to me. I thought perhaps Charlotte had helped him plan his death, but when I confronted her with my suspicions, she produced a suicide note, in Mack's handwriting, absolving her completely. Case closed, I thought.”
“Wait a minute, Tori,” Moonbeam interrupted. “More champagne anybody?” She poured drinks all around while Woody opened another bottle.
When they'd settled down, I continued. “Case closed-until the next day when I learned that Lillie
White, Mack's mistress, was expecting a baby, and he'd told her very recently that the child would always be provided for. Buchanan McCleary told me that Mack tore up his trust recently and had written a simple will, which had the clause in it that stated half his estate was to go to his children. I think, Luscious, if you read Mack's will, you'll find that that provision will cover Lillie's baby.”
“Providing her baby is Mack's child,” Helga sniffed.
“There's always DNA testing,” Moonbeam said, refilling her glass.
“I still didn't have any reason to suspect that Charlotte killed her husband, though. After all, she was at Penn National racetrack that weekend. Not until last night… when I couldn't sleep and was mulling everything over-I remembered she always interpreted for him, converting everything said to him into sign language. And Vesta had told me how upset he was when he learned about the cancer. Naturally, he would be upset, for using sign language that Vesta and the doctor didn't understand, she told her husband he was going to die slowly and painfully, and very soon.”
“But she loved him dearly,” President Godlove said. “That was obvious. At faculty parties she never left his side. Seemed to adore him.” He wiped his mouth with his paper napkin. “Now you're saying Charlotte convinced her husband he was dying and coerced him into planning his own death so she could get his insurance money? That sounds rather improbable.”
“But I can understand how she did it,” Helga said. “She made him so dependent on her, interpreting for him even when he was in Congress, that he trusted her completely. He was enchanted by her, as if she were a witch casting a spell. She stole him right out from under me.”
“What was he doing under you?” Moonbeam giggled. Too much wedding champagne, I thought.
“Fas devant les enfants,” Woody said, looking at Tamsin and surprising me.
“I'm old enough to know what's going on, and I'm in second-year French,” Tamsin huffed.
“What made you suspect her?” Gloria asked.
I answered President Godlove's question, which had almost been lost in the champagne-induced gaiety. “Her heart was broken when he told her about Lillie and the baby and asked for a divorce. Her passionate love for him turned to passionate hate, almost overnight. She'd rather see him dead than with another woman. She knew she could persuade him to commit suicide, but she was a practical person. If he was killed in an accident, she'd get the insurance money. She convinced him she'd share it with Lillie. That was all the assurance he needed. He still trusted her.”
“This is awful,” Ken Nakamura's son spoke for the first time. “I really don't think Tamsin should be listening to this.”
“Leave her be,” Moonbeam snapped. “She's almost grown up. As you'd know if you ever spent any time with her.”
The ex-husband's jaw clamped shut and his face reddened. Moonbeam and Tamsin exchanged knowing smiles.
“There's a thin line between love and hate,” Moonbeam said with a hiccup. I couldn't tell if she was talking about Charlotte and Mack or herself and her ex-husband.
“How did you figure out she killed Darious?” Tamsin asked eagerly.