Cheating at Solitaire(29)

Gregor heard the tone so clearly, it could have been a dinner gong going off in his ear. “What’s that?” he said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Stewart looked uncomfortable. “She’s not a twit, you know. She’s a lady. She’s a very intelligent and graceful lady.”

“Uh-huh.”

“There’s also the fact that she doesn’t seem to be open to that kind of suggestion at the moment,” Stewart said. “She’s, uh, she’s devoted to her family. She’s got a grandchild on the way. She’s a little young for it, but she’s very excited about it. She hasn’t got any of the attitude. I don’t think she even knew the attitude existed before we came to the island, and I’ve had to work overtime to prove I don’t have it in me.”

“I don’t think that should have been hard,” Gregor said blandly. “You were with her when you found the body.”

Stewart nodded. “It’s something of a long story. Filming shut down early that day because of the storm. If these people had had any sense, there would have been no filming at all that day. The weather reports had been full of it for a week. But they’re from Los Angeles, these people. They think they know everything.”

“They probably just don’t understand snow.”

“Filming shut down early,” Stewart said, “and I went over to this place they’ve got on Main Street, this sort of pub, except it’s rich people on this island so the place is all tarted up. I went to have a pint or whatever you call it over here, and Marcey Mandret was there, and she was drinking some kind of champagne cocktail. You ever had a champagne cocktail? The stuff tastes like rat piss.”

“I think we’re having some at my wedding.”

“Yes, well. That happens. So, Marcy Mandret was drinking these things, one after the other, and she was obviously completely gone. She had this little dress on that wasn’t suitable for the weather, straps and no sleeves, cut high on the thigh, and it kept slipping half off and exposing her breasts. She would get up and stagger around and the dress would fall half off and it was getting out of hand. So I went up to talk to her, to tell her to get her act together and get herself home, and she threw up on the bartender and more or less passed out.”

“She did this on Margaret’s Harbor?” Bennis chimed in from the sidelines.

Stewart turned around. “I know. Bloody the worst place. I thought the golf ladies were going to have aneurysms. So. She passed out, and I wrapped my coat around her so that her private parts wouldn’t be swinging in the wind—did I mention that these women never wear underwear?”

“No,” Gregor said.

“Well, they don’t, and she wasn’t this time. I wrapped my coat around her and threw her over my shoulder and got out of there, and fortunately the only photographer on the premises was the guy from the Home News, which up until this acted like we weren’t even on the island. I got out on Main Street and then I decided not to use the regular route, because there have been photographers on the island, the nasty ones, and I didn’t want what was defnitely going to happen if they got sight of us the way we were. So I went around to the back, but the snow was coming down very fast and I got disoriented. I knew I had to head to the sea, because that’s where the house Marcey and Arrow rented was, and I followed the sounds of the water, but I got turned around. I was hopelessly lost. Then I saw this one place, way out on the beach, and it had all its lights on. So I went there.”

“Annabeth Falmer can afford a house directly on the water on Margaret’s Harbor?” Gregor asked. “That can’t be history, no matter how popular. Does she have family money?”

“Not the way you mean,” Stewart says. “She’s got grown sons, a cardiologist and a litigator, as she puts it. They think she walks on water.”

“Ah.”

“Here’s the thing,” Stewart said. “She let me in. She offered me a cup of tea with brandy in it. And she already had Arrow Normand in the house. Arrow had shown up about twenty minutes before we did, staggering around, with her hair soaked in blood and, again, no underwear. Annabeth thought there had been a rape.”

“That’s logical,” Gregor said. “I probably would have too. Did you say her hair soaked in blood?”

“By the time I got there, the blood was close to drying and the hair was caked, but it would have been soaked. And it’s longish hair. Thin, but longish.”

Gregor picked up the picture again. “He was shot by someone on the driver’s side. The blood went back, not out. She couldn’t have had her hair soaked with it unless she was standing behind him when it happened.”