For a second, I thought he was going to laugh. His eyes glittered and his mouth twitched a little. But he merely said, “I see. You didn’t like him. That’s interesting.” Crap, now what had I done? I tried to undo the damage. “No, Detective Stewart, I didn’t like him. But if you’re insinuating that I killed a man because I didn’t like him, may I just add that there are a lot of people I don’t particularly like. My boss, for one. She thinks running her clothes to the dry cleaners is part of my job description. I’m also not particularly fond of the checkout clerk who routinely comments on my purchases. And don’t get me started about my mother’s boyfriend. But I think you’ll find, Detective Stewart, that I didn’t kill any of them.”
Detective Stewart’s eyebrows rose so high they were in danger of disappearing into his hairline. “Are you always this angry, Ms. Parker?”
I sighed. “No. I think I’m usually a very nice person. But it’s been a stressful night.”
“I can understand that,” he said. “And I’m sorry to add to your apparently considerable stress level, but we do need to get as much information about what happened here tonight as we can. Let’s try this again.”
He read something in his notebook and said, “Why don’t we skip over Mr. Ramsey for now, other than to note that he was not to your liking.” I searched his face for any traces of irony but found none. “Who did he talk to?”
I closed my eyes, trying to remember. “When he first arrived, he was with his wife, daughter, and their friend, Daniel Simms,” I replied. “But they weren’t really talking to each other. Mr. Ramsey did all the talking.” I vividly remember what happened next: Gerald had all but threatened Aunt Winnie that he would force her to sell him the inn. Gerald’s words hadn’t bothered Aunt Winnie in the least. She wasn’t afraid of bullies and she wouldn’t have lost a minute’s sleep over his threat. But I knew Aunt Winnie and the police didn’t. To an outsider, their exchange about the house could look incriminating. I had to make sure that Detective Stewart didn’t get the wrong idea about Aunt Winnie.
“He commented on the changes that my aunt had made to the inn since she’d purchased it,” I continued. “From what he said, I gathered that when this place went on the market, Mr. Ramsey was interested in buying it, but the owner took a liking to my aunt instead. Mr. Ramsey indicated that he was still interested in owning the place and was hoping to convince my aunt to sell it to him.” I remembered what Aunt Winnie had said about Gerald’s influence with the zoning board and I could still hear Gerald’s “by fair means or foul” threat. “He was, in my opinion, somewhat rude about the whole thing, but my aunt just laughed it off.” There. That should downplay the exchange on the off chance that any of the other guests had repeated Gerald’s exact words.
Detective Stewart thumbed through his notebook, apparently in search of something. Finding it, he tapped his blunt forefinger against the page and said, “I have here that Mr. Ramsey was using his influence with the zoning board to put your aunt out of business and threatened your aunt regarding the inn.”
Shit. I had little doubt who would have repeated that bit of information to the police and I silently cursed Jackie. “Threatened?” I said, with what I hoped was an authentic tone of disbelief. “Mr. Ramsey was, I suppose, confident in his skills as a persuader, but he clearly didn’t know my aunt. She loves this place.”
Even before he continued, I knew I had phrased that badly, but still, the starkness of his next words took me by surprise. “Enough to kill for it?”
“No!” I said, scrambling to undo the damage. “You’ve got it all wrong.” My mouth went dry and my heart hammered in my chest. The police couldn’t suspect Aunt Winnie. It was absurd! “My aunt is the sweetest woman I know! As a kid, she wouldn’t even let me kill spiders in her house. Yes, she loves this inn, but she’s not insane. And besides, she’s not the kind of woman to let herself be pushed around by someone like Mr. Ramsey. She can take care of herself.” I realized I was shouting and struggled to compose myself.
Detective Stewart said nothing but raised his left eyebrow again, a trick I found increasingly irritating. “So, by your account,” he said slowly, “your aunt, who was being bullied by the deceased, could have had nothing to do with this, despite the fact that the murder took place in her home after she turned out the lights? In short—according to you—she is a harmless woman, incapable of violence.”
“Yes,” I said emphatically, even as some far-flung memory swam to the surface of my consciousness. Hadn’t there been a terrible altercation between Aunt Winnie and a friend’s husband long ago? As the details came back to me, I inwardly blanched. But surely the police here couldn’t know about that, could they? And besides, that had been a completely different situation. In that case, Aunt Winnie’s actions had been justified—almost noble, in fact. But to someone of limited imagination—I sized up Detective Stewart and sighed—it could look damning. I resolved to say nothing of the incident.
“Besides,” I continued in a calmer voice, “how do you even know that Gerald was the intended victim? I mean, it was pitch-dark in the room. Any one of us could have been shot.”
“We considered that possibility, Ms. Parker. However, there is no question that Mr. Ramsey was the intended victim. We found a piece of reflective tape, the kind that glows in the dark, on Mr. Ramsey’s suit coat. That was probably the green flash you saw. It is our theory that the murderer put the tape on Mr. Ramsey to ensure that he, or she, wouldn’t have any trouble hitting the target once the lights went out. Derringers generally hold only one or two shots. Our killer couldn’t risk wasting bullets.”
“Then you believe that one of the guests did this? There’s a door to the outside in the dining room. Someone could have opened the door, shot Gerald, and then run off.”
“Yes. Funny enough, but we actually came up with that possibility on our own, Ms. Parker. However, unless you are suggesting our murderer can fly, I don’t think that theory works. While there are footprints in the snow just outside the door, there are no tracks leading away from the house. Furthermore, the footprints outside the door were not fresh. A significant amount of snow had fallen on top of them. So much so that it seems unlikely that an intruder made them at the time in question. Did you happen to see anyone go outside during the evening?” he asked.
“Yes, actually. Joan Anderson and Polly Ramsey went outside.”
“Do you know about what time that might have been?”
I tried to remember. “Maybe around eight-thirty? I’m really not sure. I know I was still passing around the hors d’oeuvres. I had just refilled my tray in the kitchen and was returning to the dining room when they came back inside.”
Detective Stewart noted something down before he continued. “Do you know what they were doing out there?”
“They said they were looking at the snow.”
The eyebrow went up again. “Looking out the window wasn’t sufficient?”
It was an interesting point. I had been too busy making my rounds at the time, but now that I thought about it, it was strange. I don’t care how much of a kid you are at heart: adult women in evening gowns generally do not willingly go out in the middle of a snowstorm unless their car has broken down or they’ve partaken too much of the holiday spirit. As far as I could tell, neither Joan nor Polly had had too much to drink.
One of the many uniformed officers who had descended on the inn quietly walked into the room. Avoiding my eyes, he went straight to Detective Stewart, leaned in close, and whispered in his ear. Detective Stewart whispered back and they both glanced at me. I tried to radiate innocence and stared at the contents of the evidence box while they continued their conversation. In one sealed bag lay the gun. In another, lay the unisex, right-handed glove worn by the killer. Hearing a noise in the foyer, I saw the medical examiner putting on his coat to leave. Behind him, two officers rolled the gurney bearing the body of Gerald Ramsey out of the dining room and toward the door. The words from Aunt Winnie’s invitation came back to me: “Many will come, but one won’t be going home.” I felt sick.