Death of a Crafty Knitter Page 15

  "It was a domestic issue, resolved now."

  This sitting room wasn't on the public tour, and for good reason. All the precious objects had to be worth a king's ransom.

  My father kept his focus on the room's door, watchful for our suspect.

  "Dharma could be anywhere in this huge mansion," I said.

  "But that could have been Erica we saw in the third floor window."

  "Or maybe another maid. Running down two sets of stairs to answer the door would have had her breathing heavily by the time she reached us, especially in a tall house like this. The ceiling height in here must be twelve feet. Must be nice to be rich."

  My father chuckled. "I wouldn't wish this much wealth on my worst enemy."

  "Speaking of rich, she said Mr. Koenig isn't here right now, but I'm guessing your plan all along was to talk to the staff, not the uncle?"

  "The way you say the word plan implies I have one."

  "You don't?"

  "I have a process," he said cryptically. "Never have a plan. Plans go wrong."

  I nodded, getting the feeling I should be taking notes. A process is better than a plan, because plans go wrong.

  Erica returned with a tray of hot drinks. "Cocoa for your daughter, Mr. Day, because she was freezing."

  I took the cup she offered. It was tiny, like from a child's play set. I chalked it up to a weird rich person thing, but when I took a sip of the cocoa, I understood why the serving size was so petite. It was thick, liquid chocolate, rich and creamy, sweet but not too sweet.

  Erica asked if the cocoa was warming me up, and I nodded that it was, resisting the urge to jump up and hug her for the incredible treat.

  My father reached to his back pocket and withdrew a slim notebook with a pen tucked into its elastic closure. It wasn't one of those fancy leather Moleskine books, but a plain notebook with a thick blue elastic, like the kind you get around broccoli stalks from the grocery store.

  "Erica, I'm working on a cold case from a few years back. I know this is a long shot, because you were just a girl at the time, but I wonder if I might pick your brain anyway."

  "Oh, Mr. Day, anything for you. What would you like to know?"

  "Is it all right for you to talk to me now? Will someone else cover for you if the family needs something?"

  "It's okay." She waved her hand in a floppy, relaxed gesture. "Nobody from the family has been here for days."

  My father licked his thumb and flipped through the pages of his notepad, appearing to be looking at his notes on the cold case.

  "No houseguests?" he asked. "I counted eight cars in the staff parking, out of twelve available spots."

  "You're so cute," she said with a laugh. "Always counting things. We have everyone here today for taking down the Christmas decorations. Plus Mr. Koenig returns from Denmark next week, and the interior decorator is here because he wants his room painted the same color as the hotel he's in now. The decorator is so mad, too. She's going crazy. She says the light from the sun here is not like the light in Denmark and the same color is not going to look the same, but she will do it. You can't argue with rich people, you know? That's why they pay you better. So you don't say when they're being—"

  She was interrupted by the appearance in the doorway of another dark-haired woman who could have been Erica's older sister. Her eyes were wide and her cheeks looked ashen. She waved for Erica to come talk to her in the hallway.

  Erica excused herself, and my father and I waited all of two seconds to get up and tiptoe stealthily to the doorway to listen.

  "The police called again," the second woman said. "They asked about Dharma, and they also asked about Mr. Koenig's gun collection."

  "So? Why are you bothering me? She hasn't been here since dinner on Christmas Day. Just tell them the truth and they'll leave us alone."

  "But the gun collection. Oh, Erica, I'm in so much trouble. I forgot to lock the room on Christmas Day. He wanted to show everyone his new rifles, but then I didn't lock it after he was done. I'm such an idiot. I'm going to get fired, and I'll have to go back to my old job, getting steam burns from the linen press." She made a sharp, gasping sound, then started sobbing.

  "There, there." Clothes rustled, and I heard the sound of a back being patted. "I will make you some cocoa when I'm done in here. There's no harm in leaving a room unlocked, as long as…"

  The two were quiet for a moment, then lowered their voices to a level where I couldn't make out their words. Shuffling footsteps echoed in the hall as they walked away. I turned to my father with raised eyebrows. He had one hand on his cane and used the other to mime a gun.

  The women were well out of range, so we returned to our seats, ready to pretend we'd heard nothing.

  My father said to me softly, "Now we know where the murder weapon came from. Dharma slipped into the room where her uncle keeps his collection, and helped herself to a gun. The photo you took wasn't very clear, but I thought the weapon looked antique."

  "Antique? That's crazy. Even if it had been kept in a humidity-controlled case and been cleaned, it's an odd choice. Not to mention the fact it would be easily traced back to her if she just left it at the crime scene."

  We both sat there in silence for a few minutes, pondering this.

  "We're missing something," he said.

  "Let's dig deep, then."

  Erica returned, apologizing for the interruption.

  "I understand someone has stolen a gun from the premises," I said.

  Erica's eyes widened, and her hand flew to her mouth. My father looked nearly as surprised by my direct question, but recovered quickly.

  "We heard you speaking in the hall," he said. "But to be fair, we have very good hearing. It runs in the Day family."

  "We don't want to get in trouble," Erica said.

  "I'm sure it's nothing, but since we're here anyway, perhaps I'll just mosey on over and take a look at the gun room, while you prepare a list of everyone who was here for Christmas dinner."

  "Okay," Erica said.

  Okay? I gave my father a look that said, for lack of a better description, EEEEEE!

  Erica led us out of the sitting room.

  My father gave me a look that also said EEEEEE!

  Without looking back at us making faces, Erica said, "We just counted, and one of Mr. Koenig's handguns is missing. What's going on, Mr. Day? Is it the gypsy? The one who got killed?" She turned left, leading us down another cherry-wood-paneled hall.

  "Ms. Varga's murder is currently an ongoing investigation," he said, neither lying nor being entirely truthful about the legitimacy of our involvement.

  "Never cross a gypsy," she said as she led us to a set of stairs.

  "Stairs," my father said through gritted teeth. He took a breath. "Actually, this is perfect. I skipped some of my exercises this morning, so now I can catch up."

  "We'll take it slow," I said, but he was already five steps ahead of me, admiring the view of Erica's hips.

  While we climbed the stairs, Erica kept talking about Voula Varga. "They say her ghost is everywhere. I have all the brooms upside-down by the door at my house. I do not want a visit by her."

  "You never struck me as the superstitious type," my father said.

  She looked over her shoulder, giving my father a smile that bordered on flirtatious, despite the fact he was twice her age. I looked away, admiring the stairwell's artwork, framed prints of modern art. Were they prints or originals? I wouldn't know, because my degree wasn't in the arts. It wasn't in criminology, either, so I was in way over my head.

  The room where Deiter Koenig kept his weapon collection had not been a part of the annual spring tours of the mansion, and that was a shame, as it would have been far more exciting than the mansion's organic vegetable garden.

  And what a weapon room it was. Even my jaw dropped, and I've been to galleries and exclusive private collections around the world.

  The room was twenty feet by twenty, with display cases along the walls, thick gold
draperies on the windows, and a ten-by-ten display case in the center of the room. Inside the glass case, arranged on staggered plinths of varying heights, were knives, axes, arrowheads, and other ancient tools. Across the low case, on the far wall, were two stunning broadswords.

  My father turned left and went to the wall case of pistols, discussing with Erica who would have had access to the room on Christmas Day. As the two talked, I turned right and walked over to the swords. The one on the left was simple in design, and the one on the right looked similar, but fancier, like the movie prop version of the same sword.

  The neatly typed note card underneath the swords confirmed exactly what I'd guessed: on the left was the real thing, and the one on the right was a prettier fake that had been used in a movie.

  My father continued his casual-sounding questions with Erica, homing in on the information he wanted, while I wandered around the room, admiring the weaponry.

  If society were to suddenly collapse under a zombie apocalypse, I would head straight to the Koenig Mansion and its armory. The brain-craving living dead wouldn't stand a chance against this arsenal. And in this apocalyptic scenario, my father's recipe for thirty-minute squirrel stew might come in handy, too.

  I wandered over to the arrowheads, turning my head so I could better hear my father's conversation with Erica.

  "Most of the guests were from out of town," she said. "Everyone left again right after Christmas, and we didn't do a New Year's celebration here at the house because Mr. Koenig had already left for Denmark."

  My father chuckled. "I like how you call this place a house."

  She stepped in closer to him. "Can I confess something to you?"

  My ears practically tingled with interest as I waited to hear Erica's confession.

  "We did have a party, but just the staff. All of us were here, except for the two people who don't drink, because they took everyone's kids." She held up both hands in an expression of awe. "We had a wild, wild, wild party in the ballroom. Then everyone slept over and we didn't wake up until past noon the next day."

  My father gave me a look, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. The mansion's staff all had solid alibis for the time of the murder. That ruled them out and left us with only Dharma. Things were not looking good for the woman, assuming the police could find her.

  My father promised Erica he wouldn't tell anyone about the staff party, then pulled open the glass doors to a display case of pistols. "No locks on these doors. I doubt the perpetrator left any prints." He sniffed the door. "At least none that haven't been cleaned away by Mr. Koenig's hardworking and hard-partying staff."

  "What can you tell me about the murder? I know you police aren't supposed to tell people things, but should I be scared? A woman who lived alone was killed. It's just me and my son at my house. I lock the doors and windows, but is that enough?"

  "Keep your eyes open," he said. "Plus you can always call me." His voice had taken on a throaty quality.

  As my father turned on the charm, I wished I could be anywhere else at that moment. Anywhere. Even trapped in a broken-down car while a horde of brain-craving zombies were closing in, admiring how my short hair revealed the tantalizing shape of my cranium.

  "Really? I can call you?" Erica grinned so wide I could see her pearly molars.

  I coughed abruptly and shot my father a look.

  Erica stepped back and said, "Excuse me. I need paper to write down the names of the people who were here, like you asked." She wrung her hands for a moment, casting her gaze nervously around the room, then turned and left in a swirl of black and white.

  "Dad, I don't think there are any clues on the backs of Erica's legs."

  "No?"

  "Hey, you can charm all the single yummy mommies you want on your own time, and not when we're at a crime scene, operating under the false premise of you still being employed by the Misty Falls Police Department."

  "There's nothing wrong with multitasking."

  "Speaking of which, you didn't ask her much about your cold case."

  "It's not going to get any colder." He went to the door and popped his head out to make sure the hallway was clear. "She doesn't know her employer's niece is a suspect. I don't think Dharma is hiding here, or the maid would have been more nervous. Most people—the non-sociopath ones, anyway—find it incredibly difficult to lie, especially if you're nice to them."

  "Good to know." I looked around at the many weapons. "Are we done? This room's amazing, but it's starting to give me the creeps."

  Erica reappeared with pen and paper in hand. "Your friends just showed up," she said.

  We went to the window, which faced the front entrance, and looked down. Tony and Kyle were walking toward the door from their police vehicle. They'd parked right in front, not in the visitor's parking, where they wouldn't have missed seeing my car.

  My father turned to Erica. "Quick. Is there a sneaky back way out of here?"

  Chapter 21

  There wasn't just one sneaky back way out of the Koenig Mansion, but a dozen. My father and I left through a delivery entrance, easily avoiding the official police.

  Erica hadn't enough time to write out the list of dinner guests, but there seemed to be no point anyway, since the staff and out-of-towners were all accounted for on the morning of the murder. My father asked Erica to email him the list anyway.

  I didn't breathe normally until we were driving away from the mansion.

  "That was a bit close for comfort," I said. "You're sure Erica won't tell Tony we were there?"

  "She said she wouldn't."

  "Erica seemed nice. Is she about my age, or is she younger?"

  He declined to answer that question.

  We approached the gates, which opened automatically, as before.

  "Talk us through the case," he said. "What do we know about Dharma Lake?"

  "For starters, she believes in karma, which means doing good things for others, so it comes back to you. She probably has strong ideas about right and wrong. From what I heard at the pub, she thought Voula Varga's black magic was wrong. She wanted her to stop doing whatever she was doing."

  "There's the motivation," he commented. "We need means, motivation, and opportunity."

  "As for means, there's the gun missing from the armory back there. Now, whether it was Dharma, or her husband, or another accomplice who grabbed it from the room, it's easy to connect her and the gun. Then she made her own opportunity when she went to the house that morning. Maybe she showed up at the woman's door to apologize."

  My father's head bobbed. "But when you go somewhere to apologize, you bring flowers or chocolate, not a gun. Maybe flowers and chocolate."

  "You would know," I teased.

  He had a point, though. A weapon was protection, or for threatening someone. If Dharma really believed Voula was practicing black magic, wouldn't a magic necklace be better protection?

  After a moment, my father said, "Let's say Dharma showed up with the gun, acting like the sheriff of a Wild West town, trying to run the voodoo lady out of town. Things get heated. They argue, wrestle over the gun, and it goes off. Total accident. She'll serve some time for manslaughter, but she'll still have her good karma, because she thought she was doing the right thing."

  "If the shooting was an accident, that would explain why her getaway driving wasn't exactly sneaky." I tapped on the steering wheel. "What if she didn't know the gun was loaded? That weapons collection back there was pretty intense. Is Mr. Koenig nutty enough to display loaded guns?"

  "I checked a few of the other handguns. There were some nice pieces in there, and I couldn't resist. No ammunition in the ones I looked at, and I didn't see any bullets in the room. If I were him, leaving my cases unlocked to better show off my collection, I'd be damn careful to keep the bullets in a safe that only I had the combination to."

  "How many places in town sell ammunition?"

  He stared out the window for a minute, at the passing snowy terrain, then turned to me.
"Just one place, and it's next to that sandwich shop that does the grilled panini with three kinds of cheese. I suppose we could swing by Wild Buck's, just to be thorough. I might be persuaded to buy you lunch."

  I nodded. "We do need to eat."

  My father knew the owner of Wild Buck's, the town's hunting and fishing shop. The man was neither wild, nor named Buck; he was Owen Johnson, a small man with a smooth scalp, a squeaky voice, and a warm handshake. When I was younger, I thought Owen Johnson was the cartoon Elmer Fudd, hunting wabbits, come to life.

  Upon our arrival, Owen was restocking shelves with fishing lures. My father told him to keep working, and not to let us stop him.

  I picked up one of the feathered lures to admire the design. "This could be a cute little earring," I said.

  Owen Johnson smiled a crooked smile. I guessed it wasn't the first time he'd heard a woman say that exact thing.

  He opened a cardboard box on the worn linoleum floor and started sorting through the packed items. He said, "Finnegan Day, you don't look dressed for ice fishing, so you must be here to ask me about that woman's suicide."

  "Suicide?"

  My father and I exchanged a confused look.

  "Seems like an open-and-shut case to me," Owen said. "I'm no detective, but when a woman comes in and buys a box of bullets, then turns up dead the next day, a guy's gotta figure it was no accident."

  A confusing mix of horror and curiosity came over me.

  I knelt down so I could look into Owen's face while he stooped over the box of lures. "Mr. Johnson, are you sure it was Voula Varga who came in and bought bullets? She had long black hair, very curly, and was probably dressed in layers of dark, flowing clothes. Was it definitely her who bought the bullets and not another woman, say, with silver-white hair?"

  "I know who it was," he said. "She was always driving around in that coffin-mobile with her name on the side. Sheesh. Can't miss a character like that. Then she wanted bullets for a twenty-thousand-dollar gun. I was like, hey, lady, why are you ripping off the good folks of Misty Falls with your little palm-reading act if you can afford a twenty-thousand-dollar gun? Sheesh. Some people."