“I don't think so.” His voice was low and intimate. “Good night,” I said firmly, then hung up the phone.
Had I misinterpreted? I thought not. He knew Garnet was gone, and he was ready to move in. I didn't want to get into that kind of messy situation, and I knew I'd have to straighten him out before much more time went by.
Before I was finished placing the teapot, milk pitcher, and a cup and saucer on a tray, the telephone rang again.
“Hello,” I snapped, knowing I sounded impatient.
“Hi, Tori. This is Woody.”
All I could think of saying was, “Oh no!”
If he thought that was an odd greeting, he didn't say so. “I wondered if you were busy this coming weekend?”
Another man trying to make a move on me, and Garnet barely out of town! “Busy? Yes, this weekend and every weekend for the rest of my life. And don't ever call me again.” I banged the receiver down hard enough to rupture his eardrum. The nerve of these men! Garnet had only been gone one day, and already two guys were trying to pick me up.
Ethelind was a confirmed Anglophile, and her library contained all the great English female authors of the Golden Age of Mystery, the period between the two world wars. I selected an old favorite, Dorothy L Say-ers's Gaudy Night, and settled down in the front parlor under a crocheted afghan to lose myself in Oxford. Outside, an autumn wind was howling through the trees, a sure sign that our beautiful but hot Indian summer was near an end. But inside, I was warm and cozy, with my cats, my tea, and my book.
My peace was shattered abruptly when I heard a ringing noise coming from the upper reaches of the house. Fred and Noel heard it at about the same time. Fred reacted by crawling beneath the afghan to hide, while Noel stared intently at the ceiling as if she could see through it.
“It sounds almost like my alarm clock,” I told them. “Could I have accidentally set the alarm for ten at night when I was trying to turn it off this morning? I'll be right back.”
After marking my place in my book, I ascended the grand front staircase to the second floor and my bedroom at the end of the hall. Sure enough, my alarm clock was cheerfully ringing next to the bed. I pushed the button to quiet it, then reset it to ring at eight tomorrow morning.
The cats were pacing nervously in the front parlor when I came back. I apologized for leaving them, and they settled down after I'd stroked them for a little while. I poured myself another cup of tea, opened my book to the marked page, and returned to the world of Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. After a short while the pages began to blur. I yawned and tried to keep reading, but it was all I could do to hold the book upright, much less turn the pages.
I gave up and let the book drop to my chest. With my eyes closed, my thoughts drifted back to the investigation I'd been trying to put out of my mind for the evening. I gave in and decided to think about who might have had a reason to kill Mack Macmillan. His wife? Because the spouse is always number one on suspect lists. But Charlotte was away the weekend he was executed, and everyone who'd known the Macmillans as a couple spoke of her devotion to him.
Woody Woodruff? He and Macmillan had had some sort of row about property development. But would he be stupid enough to kill an enemy in a way that made him the obvious suspect? I didn't think so.
Janet Margolies? Her family's business was being torn down to make way for the Macmillan Highway to Hell. The execution was her idea, and she had invited Mack to play the role of the victim. She had the keys to the storeroom where the guns were kept in her possession. Janet Margolies could be a suspect.
Darious DeShong? Involved, like Woody, with loading the guns. But other than that, there was no reason to suspect him. I could see no connection between him and Macmillan.
Ken Nakamura? Had he held Mack responsible for his brother's death and his family's disintegration? The old professor claimed to be a pacifist, but was he really?
Gloria Zimmerman? She'd said she was glad he was gone. Had a grudge against him because of his lobbying support for puppy mills. Not really a motive for murder, unless there was something I had missed.
Lillie White? Mack hadn't spent as much time with her after Charlotte had gotten out of the hospital. Did Lillie, a woman scorned, seek revenge?
Helga Van Brackle? Still furious with Mack for dumping her for Charlotte. Being at the college, she might have had the opportunity to get hold of the storeroom key.
Was there anybody in the Caven-Adams County area who didn't have a motive for killing the man? Maybe Cassie was right about me being obsessed. Maybe I should move on as she had suggested. I wasn't concentrating. I yawned and stretched, feeling very sleepy.
Someplace very far away, the wind whistled through the treetops. Almost as if it were a living creature, it sniffed at the windows, looking for a way to force itself into the old house. I pulled the afghan up to my chin as protection against the drafts and drifted off to sleep.
A man stood in the room, his back to me. “Garnet?” I tried to sit up but couldn't. I was paralyzed, unable to move a muscle. The man turned, ever so slowly. I smiled and started to reach out to him, but his face was a blank void, as if he were wearing Charlotte Macmil-lan's elastic mask. A gaping hole appeared where his mouth should be, only it was larger and blacker than any mouth I'd ever seen. Cold permeated my body. I wanted to scream, but no sound came out. The mouth hole grew larger. I thought of a wide-mouth bass, coming closer as if it wanted to swallow me whole. And as it drew near, I could smell evil. The mouth laughed, and it was not a man any longer, but a dragon. The foul smoke rushing from his mouth nearly choked me.
Gagging from the stench, I mustered all my strength and turned my face away from the beast, and something soft touched my cheek. A tear? Not paralyzed anymore, I brought my hand up slowly to wipe it away. Something sharp raked across my nose. I flung my arms out, connected with a cat, and was scolded by a sharp cry, followed by another, and another.
I sat up, choking, trying to figure out where I was, why everything was so dark. The disgusting smell from the stranger's mouth was still there, making me cough, choke, wheeze.
Softness pressed against me. “Fred?” I muttered into the darkness.
Reeow!
The stranger with no face and a huge black mouth- he had to have been a dream. I was awake now, wasn't I? Why was I having so much trouble seeing? Why was the terrible odor still there? I must still be dreaming, I decided, and lay back on the couch.
Meeow!
This was no dream. Fred was head-butting me and yelling at me in cat talk to get up. This time I flung the afghan off and got to my feet. And I realized that the room was not dream-darkened but was instead filled with a thick, acrid smoke. An orange glow on the small Persian carpet under the tea table was actually a smoldering fire, and little tongues of flame were already creeping up the afghan.
Wide awake at last, I grabbed the smoking afghan and rushed out of the room with it, wrestled open the front door, and heaved the thing onto the front lawn. Then I ran back into the room and with superhuman strength, born from desperation and need, dragged first the rug then the couch out of the house, onto the grass, and as far away from the building as I possibly could.
Back inside, I threw open the parlor windows and let the air circulate. The fire seemed to have been confined to the rug and couch, but I called the volunteer fire department and stood by the door, ready to flee if anything flared up again.
Fred and Noel stayed close to me as the firemen charged in wielding a ton of fire-fighting equipment. The men checked the ceiling and walls, pulled down the drapes, and chopped a big hole in the floor to make sure the fire hadn't spread to the floor joists. After about an hour they seemed convinced that there was no further danger. By the time Ethelind walked in the worst of the smoke and smells had dissipated.