Feast of Murder(62)

“She was a hell of a lot greener than Charlie was when he went upstairs,” Sheila Baird said. “Don’t frown at me, Tony. I can say hell if I want to. I’m a grown woman.”

“I wasn’t frowning at you for saying hell,” Tony Baird said. He was sitting all the way back against the wall, but on the other side of the table from where he had been during dinner. Instead of being wedged immobile into a corner, he had easy access to a passage out. He used it. He stood up, tucked his shirt more firmly into his jeans, and stared at Gregor. “If you’re going to elaborate on your ridiculous and dangerous theories of Charlie Shay’s death, I’m not going to sit here and listen.” He turned to Bennis. “I’ll see you later,” he told her. “If you get tired of listening to this old windbag, come down to my cabin and I’ll give you a drink.”

“That old windbag has done a lot more with his life than you’ve done yet,” Sheila Baird said.

Tony ignored her. He brushed by Gregor and hustled out.

“Well,” Sheila said, as soon as he was gone. “That’s that. Now we can get down to something interesting.”

Whether or not the others wanted to “get down to something interesting” in quite that way was moot. They all seemed to be embarrassed by Sheila’s directness. Mark Anderwahl stared at his hands. Calvin Baird stared at the ceiling. Fritzie Baird stared into space. Only Sheila Baird looked directly at Gregor, and her eyes were avid.

Gregor found a chair, pulled it out into the middle of the room, and sat down in it. He noted that Bennis had taken Tony’s chair at the back and nodded to her.

“Well,” he said to the assembled company, feeling a little like a brand-new school teacher on his first job. “I take it you all know what happened. Or what I think happened.”

“I know Jon doesn’t agree with you,” Calvin said pointedly. “And I know you’ve got no jurisdiction here, either. I don’t see why we should talk to you at all.”

“You shouldn’t, if you don’t want to,” Gregor said pleasantly.

“But I do want to,” Fritzie Baird said. “It will be much better this way, Calvin, it really will. Mr. Demarkian will find out what happened and then when we get to land he’ll tell the police and then that will be that. We won’t have to be bothered.”

“But we will be bothered,” Calvin said. “The police won’t take this man’s word for anything. They’ll just investigate all over again and they’ll investigate him in the bargain.”

“I don’t see why they should,” Sheila Baird said. “He’s got a reputation, after all. It’s not like he’s some stranger in off the street.”

“He might as well be,” Calvin Baird said stiffly. “I don’t know anything about him. I never even met him before today.”

Gregor considered saying something very similar to Calvin Baird—that he had no reason to believe Calvin hadn’t murdered Charlie Shay, since he’d never met Calvin before today—but that sort of tweaking was almost always counterproductive, and in this case would have to wait. Gregor coughed into his hand instead and tried to get their attention.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “there are really a few things I would like to know, and someone in this room will probably be able to tell me. They really are little things. Would you mind?”

“Yes,” Calvin said.

“Oh, go ahead,” Sheila told him. “If you keep asking permission, you’re just going to have this old goat fussing at you without end.”

“Fine,” Gregor said. “Do any of you people know where Charlie Shay was right before dinner? And I do mean right before.”

“I know where he was a little time before dinner,” Sheila said. “Maybe ten minutes or so before. He was in our cabin, Jon’s and mine. With Calvin here. The three of them were talking.”

“That was a private meeting,” Calvin said coldly.

“It was the usual business crap,” Sheila said. “They’d been in earlier for hours, and then they went off and then they came back and then they went off again and then there was dinner.”

“All right,” Gregor said. “Now, I saw Calvin Baird in the passage on this deck about five minutes before dinner. I take it you were coming from this meeting Mrs. Baird is talking about?”

“You’ve got to say Mrs. Sheila Baird,” Fritzie said suddenly. “Otherwise, I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

“He was coming from that meeting,” Sheila Baird said, giving Fritzie a murderous look. “He left after Charlie did. Jon and Calvin always have a lot to talk about together.”