“I’ll bet! What do you think I am, a hundred years old?”
“She’d be eighty-four if she were still alive.”
Grace hesitated, and then asked, “What was her name?”
“Her screen name was Fran Clinger. She was in the Faraway Quilters with you out in Hollywood.”
“That was a long time ago,” Grace Merrit replied. “I don’t remember the name.”
“I was hoping—”
“Sorry. I don’t remember her.”
“She killed herself!” Mandy hurled the words like missiles. “She killed herself and you don’t remember her?”
Mona Emberry stepped quickly between them. “Of course we remember your grandmother. But you’d better go now,” she told the young woman.
Mandy Snider quickly finished the rest of her beer and gathered up her costume. As she headed for the front door she turned and said, “You haven’t heard the last of me. I want to know why my grandmother died. I want to know the truth about the Quilters!”
Then she was gone.
“What was that all about?” Kate Brady asked. Some of the other women were voicing their displeasure at the scene.
“Where did you find her, Shelly?” Kate’s husband asked. “That getup was really weird.”
“I’m the one who mentioned her to Shelly,” Mona Emberry admitted. “But I didn’t expect anything like this.”
“I’m sorry things got out of hand,” my wife apologized. “I’m sure it won’t happen again.”
But just as it seemed the tempest had passed, Simon Ark asked, “Just what was the purpose of the Faraway Quilters?”
Grace Merrit took a deep breath and gave her stock answer. “We played cards.”
I was dreaming of a meeting of the Quilters, made up of glamorous Hollywood starlets remembered from my youth. Somehow Shelly was there, too. One minute there seemed to be a sex orgy complete with drugs, but then it turned into some sort of Communist front organization. I enjoyed it better as an orgy, but then I was awakened by Shelly pushing on my arm. “There’s someone at the front door,” she said, and I heard the insistent chimes ring again.
I rolled over to peer at the clock radio. “At seven-ten in the morning?”
“Go see who it is.”
“Do I have to?”
“One of us does.”
I grumbled and slipped into my robe. Downstairs, through the tiny windows in the front door, I could make out a uniformed policeman. That was always bad news at this hour of the morning. I opened the door and he asked, “Is this the residence of Shelly Constance?”
“That’s my wife. She uses her maiden name sometimes.”
“There was an accident overnight, down the hill. We believe the woman was coming from here, and I’m sorry to tell you she was killed in the crash. Her vehicle went off the road and it wasn’t discovered for some hours.”
“Killed? My God! Who was it?”
“A young woman named Mandy Snider.”
Shelly had followed me downstairs when she heard her name mentioned. “What is it?”
“Your speaker last night, Miss Death. She was killed in an accident down the hill.”
“How awful!”
“Had she been drinking while she was here?” the officer asked.
“No, she left right after— Oh, I think she did have a beer. But only one.”
“You served it to her, Miss Constance?”
“It’s Mrs.,” she corrected, giving our last name. “She asked if we had a beer and I gave her one. The young woman was certainly not drunk on one beer.”
“How did you know she was here?” I asked.
“The car was registered to a Veronica Brand. She told us Miss Snider borrowed it last night to speak to a women’s group at your house.”
“That’s correct,” Shelly said. “She spoke here, had one beer, and left about ten-thirty.”
“Were you aware that Miss Snider was only twenty-one years old?”
Shelly was immediately flustered, and I quickly took over. “Officer, drinking is legal at that age and she only had one. If you’re implying something different I think we should have a lawyer present.”
“That’s entirely up to you, sir. I believe a detective will be coming by later to take her statement.”
When he was gone, Shelly asked, “Should we call a lawyer?”
“For now let’s just call Simon Ark.”
I met Simon at the train and brought him to the house. A detective named Sergeant Mason had arrived during my absence, but assured us we did not need a lawyer.
“We have no plans to charge your wife with serving beer,” he said. “We understand that you hired this woman from a classified ad for Miss Death. Only trouble is, she wasn’t Miss Death.”
Somehow that didn’t surprise me. I told the detective about her amateurish performance. “But then how did she get here?” Shelly wanted to know. “And why did she come?”
“The owner of the car, Veronica Brand, is the real Miss Death, something of a local kook. She’s the one you talked to on the phone. Two days ago Mandy Snider came to her house and offered her a thousand dollars if she could come here as Miss Death last night. She said she wanted to surprise an old family friend.”
“A thousand dollars!” Shelly exclaimed. “I only paid her fifty bucks!”
“Exactly. It was big money to Veronica Brand and she readily accepted it. She even loaned Miss Snider her SUV for the night. It seems she came here to confront some old friend of her grandmother.”
“There was a confrontation,” Shelly agreed. “One of our members was a movie star in her youth. Mandy Snider said her grandmother was a member of their group and was driven to suicide.”
“Is any of that true?”
“I have no way of knowing.”
He made a few notes. “You gave her a beer before she left?”
“She asked for one. I opened it and handed it to her.”
“Did she drink it from the bottle?”
“I think someone handed her a glass.”
“What’s the purpose of all these questions?” I wanted to know. “One beer could hardly have contributed to the accident.”
Sergeant Mason closed his notebook. “That’s correct. There was a minimum amount of alcohol in her blood. But this morning’s autopsy turned up something much more significant: traces of chloral hydrate.”
“Knockout drops?” Simon asked.
“Exactly. If someone here slipped them into her beer, there’s no way she could have driven down that hill without crashing.”
“Are you saying she was murdered?” Shelly asked.
“It appears likely,” the detective answered. “I’ll need the names and addresses of everyone who was here last night. How many are in this Quilters group?”
“Twelve, usually, but only eleven of us were here last night. Plus my husband and Simon Ark here. Oh, and Kate Brady’s husband Wayne. He had to drive her. I guess that makes fourteen, not counting Mandy.”
“What’s your connection with all this?” the detective asked Simon.
“I was asked to give a brief talk on New Age topics.”
“What’s that?”
“Mysticism, astrology, and the like.”
“What is this group, anyway?” Mason wanted to know.
“There’s nothing sinister about us,” Shelly assured him. “We talk and play cards. Sometimes we have a speaker.”
She gave him the list he’d requested and he promised to get back to us. When the three of us were alone, Shelly said, “This is the first time I’ve been a suspect in a murder case.”
“It seems we’re all suspects,” I told her. “What do you think, Simon?”
He pondered for a moment and then asked Shelly, “Why are there twelve women in the Quilters?”
“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Grace and Mona. I think they founded a similar group out in California when she was there.”