Tickled to Death Read online

  He accepted my offer of a beer, begged quite charmingly for a sandwich, and sank down on the couch. I provided him with said sustenance and then sat down at a marginally civil distance.

  “My mother,” he said with melancholy, “has decided she wants to spend at least a week of her final days on a cruise ship. If I allow her to go alone, they may well be her final days. She’ll fall off the end of the ship within hours. I’ll be stricken with remorse for the rest of my life.”

  “So go with her.”

  “I don’t want to go with her. She’ll pick up some pudgy condo salesman in the bar the first night, and then parade around with him as if they were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.”

  “I thought you said she was going to fall overboard, not in love.”

  “Maybe it’s one and the same,” he said, no doubt thinking himself quite the cryptic. He gave me the opportunity to ask what he meant, but I looked incuriously at him and then at my watch. “I don’t suppose you want to come along and help me chaperon my white-haired seductress?” he added. “She has enough money to buy the ship. Surely she’ll spring for a ticket so that her beloved son won’t sulk in the bar while she plays roulette with her boyfriend.”

  “You suppose correctly. I’ve developed claustrophobia in my old age.”

  “Are you talking about a cruise ship or a relationship?”

  “I’m too tired for profundities,” I said as I finished my drink and again looked at my watch. “You’d better run along and call a travel agent. Your mother’s getting older by the minute.”

  To what I suspected was mutual relief, he gave me a passionless kiss on the cheek and left. It was possible I was as crazy as Luanne, I thought as I tidied up the living room. I’d just turned down a Caribbean cruise with a man who had never been suspected of murdering an ex-wife, having opted for a routine divorce. He met all of Luanne’s criteria: good-looking, rich, sensitive, virile…and available. I doubted he could sew on a button or whip up a batch of pesto, but stress had never affected his performance in the sack. Peter was a man of many talents; regrettably, his most pronounced one these days was his ability to irritate me.

  I heard from no one of any interest over the next few days, and on Saturday morning I was diligently dusting the window display (and sneezing explosively) when the telephone rang. My accountant had mentioned my second quarterly payment only the week before, and I was leery as I picked up the receiver.

  Luanne bypassed the customary pleasantries. “Claire, I need your help! The most terrible thing has happened, and there’s no one else I can turn to. I couldn’t stop pacing last night, much less get any sleep, and now I—”

  “What’s wrong?” I asked in the voice that slows Caron down when she’s describing Rhonda Maguire’s latest incursion into perfidy.

  “Captain Gannet came to the house at midnight and took Dick away for questioning. I called this morning, but all I got was a runaround from a simpering idiot who can’t be old enough to shave, much less be issued a weapon. He told me not to bother to go to the office because they won’t let me see Dick. If I knew the name of Dick’s lawyer, I could at least call him. Should I hunt through his drawers for an address book?”

  “Dick can call his lawyer himself.” I paused to sort through her babbled words. “He was taken away for questioning, you said? He wasn’t arrested?”

  “What difference does it make?” she wailed.

  “It makes a big difference, Luanne. Have they found new evidence to link him to his wife’s”—I made myself use the word least likely to send her into more wails of desperation—“accident?”

  “Gannet didn’t say. He just showed up at the door, ordered Dick to get dressed, and then put him in the car and drove away. Dick has a rifle in the closet. I’m going to drive over there and demand that they let me speak to Dick.”

  “No!” I gripped the receiver and frantically tried to think how to deter my best friend from being gunned down in the doorway of the sheriff’s office. “Under no circumstances are you to so much as open the closet door. Give me directions to the house. I’ll leave here as soon as I can track down Caron so she can mind the store.”

  She gushed with gratitude, then rattled off highway numbers, county road numbers, turns onto roads that lacked numbers, and an admonishment to watch for deer during the last few miles. I reiterated my promise, hung up, and called Caron at Inez’s house.

  “I have plans,” she said, unmoved by my plea. “It was whispered last night that my body is the precise color of bread, which certain people found hilarious. The sun is shining. I intend to lie out and finish that book about pubic hair. I shall resemble toast by the end of the afternoon, and Rhonda can just take her tacky—”

  “You’ll have to do it tomorrow,” I said, equally unmoved. “Luanne needs my help, and I cannot close the store on a Saturday. If you want to keep yourself in suntan oil, you’d better get over here in the next fifteen minutes.”

  Caron’s compassion runs no deeper than her epidermis, but she is aware of the relationship between business activity and her own well-developed materialism. She and Inez arrived half an hour later. I gave one the feather duster and the other a lecture about not reading aloud from anything racier than Dr. Seuss, grabbed my scrawled directions, and left for Turnstone Lake, which was about forty miles from Farberville.

  I followed the numbers easily, but once I left the pavement for a series of dirt roads, I became confused. Luanne had mentioned signs nailed on a post. There was no post. If I’d passed another car, or an inhabited dwelling, I could have asked directions, but as it was, I felt as though I’d abandoned society for some sort of primeval immersion. The sloping woods were dappled with sunlight. Orange hawkweed bloomed in the shadowy retreats, and black-eyed Susans lined the ditches. A hawk circled high above a hilltop.

  I might have enjoyed this incursion into nature, but I was keenly aware that I couldn’t even find the lake. I wadded up the paper with the directions and tossed it into the backseat, gritted my teeth, and started turning left or right at each opportunity. My hatchback shuddered as I careened down and up the increasingly bad roads until I was on nothing better than a logging trail. The only water I’d encountered was a mushy puddle that left blinding brown splashes on the hood and windshield. I, a renowned amateur sleuth who’d utilized the smallest of clues to expose heinous crimes and unspeakable treachery (or an abundance of greed, anyway), was incapable of finding a large lake. Had my ego been less fragile, I might have found the experience humbling.

  I ran the wipers until I could see between the streaks, then took off once more. Several turns later I spotted a stout woman dressed in a wrinkled skirt, a baggy sweatshirt, heavy leather shoes, and a molded plastic pith helmet. As I stopped next to her, she turned and lowered a pair of binoculars.

  “Good morning,” she said, giving me a vaguely startled smile. “I’m on the trail of a hairy woodpecker. He is a shy fellow, and difficult to spot. I heard him only minutes ago, unless, of course, I mistook his hammering for that of his cousin, the downy woodpecker.” She cupped a hand around her ear and listened intently. “I don’t hear him now.”

  “I’m sorry if I alarmed him,” I said meekly.

  “Ah, well.”

  “I’m lost. I’ve been driving around these roads for half an hour. Can you aim me in the direction of the lake?”

  “The lake covers thirty thousand acres, my dear. We’re on what is basically a peninsula, with water on three sides of us.”

  I hunted around in the backseat until I found my discarded directions. “I’m looking specifically for Dick Cissel’s house on Blackburn Creek.”

  “Oh, you have strayed, haven’t you? It’s a good three miles from here. Let me fetch my bag and I’ll ride there with you. My hairy woodpecker is much too shy to show himself anymore today.” She took an enormous handbag from a branch and awkwardly climbed into my car. “I’m Livia Dunling, and you’re a friend of Dick’s. We stay on this road until the second turn to the r
ight.”

  “I’m Claire Malloy. I’ve never met Dick. A friend of mine is at his house, and she asked me to come.”

  Livia rummaged through her bag and took out a plastic pillbox and a canteen. After she’d swallowed a pill, she returned the items to the bag. “While I was filling the feeders this morning, I saw your friend on the deck. She appeared very distraught. I considered going to the house to see if I could comfort her, but I began to feel fluttery and went inside to lie down. I have a most aggravating heart problem.”

  I wasn’t sure what confidences I should share with my passenger. “You live near Dick?” I asked cautiously.

  “Directly across the cove. My husband and I own Dunling Lodge. I wanted to call it Dun-Roaming, but Wharton does not appreciate whimsy. He’ll be most displeased when he learns I’ve lost the jeep again. I don’t suppose you noticed it parked beneath a particularly fine specimen of wild dogwood?”

  “No, I’m afraid not.”

  “That’s the driveway,” she said as she swung open the car door.

  I jammed on the brakes in time to prevent her from tumbling under the tires to a certain death. “Thank you so much, Mrs. Dunling,” I said between gasps. “Are you sure I can’t take you to your front door?”

  “No, no, I shall hike down by the gully where Wharton reported a hooded warbler only yesterday. He was certain he heard the distinctively flirtatious tawee-tawee-tawee-tee-o. Have a nice visit with your friend.”

  She limped across the road and into the woods, her bag thumping arrhythmically against her broad hips, her binoculars held aloft in one hand should they be called into immediate action.

  Feeling inordinately guilty about frightening away the hairy woodpecker, I waited until she’d disappeared, then drove down the driveway and parked beside a forest-green Range Rover. The front of the house was an unimposing expanse of native rockwork with only a few high windows. Landscaping consisted of neglected shrubs and a flagstone sidewalk. I had not yet seen the lake, but I heard the drone of a motorboat and deduced its proximity.

  The front door opened before I could ring the bell, and Luanne gave me a radiant smile. “Oh good, you’re just in time for a Bloody Mary on the deck. Dick is so excited to be meeting you.”

  2

  “What do you mean?” I sputtered, perhaps unattractively. “I thought you were planning a commando raid on the cellblock to rescue this man. In order to save your life, I came racing across the county, bouncing down miserable little back roads—”

  “They brought him back an hour ago,” Luanne said as she pulled me into a room with a vaulted ceiling, hand-hewn beams, and a rock fireplace that soared a good twenty feet and was broad enough to roast an ox. Even to an untrained eye like mine, the furnishings were expensive, all natural fibers and muted colors. The wall in front of us was predominantly glass, and I finally saw the lake spread out like a sparkling field. Sailboats bobbled, while motorboats streaked past them and party barges chugged more sedately. On the far side were rolling mountains and a few houses visible among the trees.

  “An hour ago?” I said. “That would have been about the time I arrived at the first of many dead ends. It’s a good thing you didn’t give the army directions to Kuwait. They’d be floundering around Siberia to this day.”

  Luanne had the decency to look somewhat abashed. “Don’t tell Dick I called you in hysterics, please. I told him I invited you out for lunch.”

  “We’re already telling lies to Mr. Right?” I said as I removed her hand.

  “I don’t want him to think for an instant that I have any doubts about his innocence. He’s trying to be blasé about it, but he snarled at Jillian for using all the hot water, and—”

  I may have been a wee bit out of control by now. “Jillian? Is this another applicant for marital murder?”

  “Dick didn’t murder anyone! He’s the one who’s being victimized by this investigation.” She glanced at a deck strewn with wicker furniture, then hustled me into a bedroom with neatly made twin beds and an aura of staleness that suggested it was a guest room. She sat down on one of the beds and wrapped her arms around herself. To herself as much as to me, she said, “I’m trying so hard to be positive and supportive, to smile and say the right things, to listen with just the right amount of sympathy. Maybe I’m being a hypocrite, but my relationship with Dick is so important that I’d put on an apron and make a casserole if he asked me to.”

  “You don’t know how to put on an apron,” I said as I sat across from her. “So who’s Jillian?”

  “Dick’s daughter from his first marriage. She graduated from an Eastern women’s college a year ago, and now she mopes around the house, and occasionally answers the telephone and does filing at the foundation office. I’m making every effort to get along with her, but sometimes I want to throttle her. Then I start feeling sorry for her and start thinking about making her a casserole, too!”

  My last stirrings of anger evaporated. We’d been friends for several years, and never before had I heard the intensity in her voice when she talked about making a casserole for a man—or anyone else.

  “All right,” I said, “I’m merely here for a Bloody Mary and lunch, but you have to promise to call me after you get back to Farberville so we can discuss all this. You owe me big, Luanne. This isn’t as bad as when you coerced me into assisting you with that ditzy beauty pageant, but I haven’t found my way back to the highway yet, either.”

  We went out to the deck. One of the wicker chairs produced a man with silver hair, bloodshot blue eyes, and darkly tanned skin. He was no taller than Luanne, but beneath a worn cotton sweater, his shoulders were wide and his waist well controlled for his age, which I estimated to be fifty. None of his features was worthy of accolades, but when he smiled at me, I felt bathed in a sensual glow. Luanne was right. He was sexy.

  “Dick Cissel,” he said as he offered me a hand that had probed crooked teeth in countless little mouths. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you. Luanne has told me some pretty interesting stories about you. Shall I fix you a Bloody Mary or would you prefer something else?” He indicated a table crowded with bottles, an ice bucket, glasses, and other essentials.

  “I’d love a Bloody Mary,” I said as I gave Luanne a dark look. Resisting the urge to mention a few “pretty interesting stories” I’d heard about him, I went to the rail and watched a skier swish out of view. On an adjoining hill was a stone house with three stories of curtainless windows and a veranda edged with flower beds and shrubs. No one was in sight, but birds were attacking the dozen or so feeders with varied degrees of aggression.

  “Is that Dunling Lodge?” I asked, calculating the distance. The birds were nothing but dark spots against the sky, and the flowers indistinguishable masses of color. If Livia Dunling had seen Luanne’s expression, she’d done so with the aid of her binoculars. I wondered if she had an unimpeded view of the windows in the master bedroom.

  Dick brought me a drink. “Yes. Wharton bought it for Livia as a surprise when he retired from the army. It seems it was a fashionable hotel in its hey day, and he took her there on their honeymoon forty years ago. Twenty years ago it was no longer fashionable, and ultimately it was abandoned. Wharton arranged for all the repairs and remodeling, then put her in the car one afternoon and presented her with it.”

  “Isn’t that romantic?” said Luanne in the breathless voice of a romance-novel heroine. She leaned into Dick, her shoulder rubbing his, her expression as gooey as her voice. I fully expected her to bat her eyelashes and call him Rhett.

  “Definitely,” I said in the curt voice of someone who’d been dragged across the country for no reason. I was rewarded with an extended tongue, and reciprocated in kind.

  Dick either missed or ignored our petty exchange. “It was built back in the thirties as a WPA project, so modernizing the wiring and plumbing must have required a lot of cash. He only remodeled the main floor. The rooms on the top two floors are coated with mildew and filled with junky furniture
. There’s a bat colony in the attic. Jan and I used to sit out here at sunset and watch them stream out from beneath the eaves.”

  “Jan was Father’s first wife,” said a flat voice.

  “Why, Jillian,” Luanne said, spinning around and edging away from Dick as though she’d realized he was a leper, “I didn’t hear you come back. Did you get what you needed at the office?”

  Dick motioned to the shadowy figure standing inside the living room. “Come meet a friend of Luanne’s and have a drink with us.”

  The young woman who halted in the doorway was distinctly solid, and apt to be stolid as well. Her brown hair was short and straight, her forehead bisected by bangs, and her nose the only dominant feature on her round face. She wore a beige skirt and blouse and run-down loafers. Ignoring Luanne and me, she said, “No thank you, Father. I have to take a proof page to the print shop in Farberville. I put a pan of frozen lasagna in the oven, and there’s a fresh salad in the refrigerator. The rolls are on the counter.”

  “You didn’t have to go to any trouble,” Luanne said with a strained but determined smile. “I was going to fix something light.”

  “I’m in the habit of preparing Father’s meals,” she said with no smile whatsoever as she disappeared into the living room. Seconds later, a door slammed.

  Dick gestured for us to sit down in the oversized wicker chairs. “Jillian didn’t mean anything, Luanne. She’s just worried about this mess and feels as helpless as I do. Gannet is going to retire at the end of the year, so all we have to do is ride out six more months of his vindictiveness and I’ll be a free man. I’ll also be certifiably insane, but that’s to be expected after marathon sessions with a man with reptilian breath and dandruff.”

  “Luanne mentioned this Captain Gannet,” I said, disregarding a muffled snort from a nearby chair.

  Dick grimaced. “I picked up some gossip about him at that little store by the turnoff. It seems the Gannet family has lived in this area for numerous generations. They were forced to sell their property when the lake was put in, and now the old homestead is under thirty feet of water, as are the bones of the ancestors and Captain Gannet’s cherished boyhood haunts. They sold under protest and to this day continue to resent the lake and those of us who can afford weekend houses and boats. Gannet has elected to take out his hostility on me.”