Rum and Razors (19 page)

“Oh, God,” Laurie said. “Another thing you didn’t know about Walter, Jess, is that as he grew older he developed a terminal case of paranoia. I know the man you’re speaking of, a widower who came here for a few days to get over having just buried his wife. Spy?” She guffawed. “Poor Walter. He saw spies behind every tree.”

“But you obviously have been engaged in a running battle with Diamond Reef,” I said.

“Yes. But that was primarily Walter’s doing. The people who own Diamond Reef might not be the most sterling of characters, but they do listen to reason—when reason is presented to them. I’ve developed a decent relationship with their general manager, Mark Dobson.”

“Yes, I’ve met him,” I said, not wishing to elaborate on how much time I’d actually spent next door.

“But Walter would never listen to reason,” said Laurie. “As far as he was concerned, this was World War Three. At any rate, forget about spies, Jess. The Cold War is over, both between the United States and the Soviet Union, and between Diamond Reef and Lover’s Lagoon Inn.”

“I’m relieved to hear it,” I said, dabbing at my mouth with my heavy napkin and standing. “Did you see the police this morning diving into the lagoon? I assume they’re looking for the weapon.”

“I knew they were coming. They had the courtesy to call ahead of time.”

“Did they find anything?” I asked.

“If they have, they haven’t told me. Time to run, Jess.” She kissed me on the cheek. “Thanks for understanding about the divorce papers. It will stay between us. Right?”

“Yes.”

She used the phone on her desk to fetch Thomas to remove the remains of lunch, and disappeared out the door.

I looked at an ornate clock above her desk. It was almost two o’clock. I’d call Seth and tell him of the plans for dinner, and then head for Charlotte Amalie where I hoped the local newspaper’s morgue would shed some light on the three-year-old murder of Caleb Mesreau.

The divorce papers had stayed in the middle of the table throughout lunch, but Laurie had taken them with her. Just as well. Frankly, I wished I’d never seen them, had had the good sense to walk away from the process server.

But wishful thinking, as comforting as it can sometimes be, seldom accomplishes anything. I reached Seth at Diamond Reef and told him to meet me at my villa at six-thirty, had Maria at the front desk call me a cab, and prepared for yet another trip to the busy port city of Charlotte Amalie in search of answers to questions I hadn’t even formulated.

T
he heavy rain of late morning had been replaced by brilliant sunshine—as well as oppressive heat and humidity. My taxi had air-conditioning, but my driver chose not to use it. I sat in the backseat wiping perspiration from my face and leaning in the direction of the open window to catch any hint of a breeze.

Shoulder-to-shoulder tourists had turned Charlotte Amalie into a sweaty human ant colony and it was slow-going through the clotted downtown area. The driver followed Veteran’s Drive, which ran along the waterfront and became Frenchman’s Bay Road until the name changed again to Bovoni Road. “What’s that body of water?” I asked.

“Bolongo Bay,” my driver said. “Caribbean Bay beyond. See over there? St. Croix.”

“Yes, I see it.”

“Here we are.”

He pulled up in front of St. Thomas’s local newspaper, which was housed in a one-story white building. As I stood on the sidewalk fishing for money in my purse, I felt as though I was about to melt into the cobblestone. I’d never been so hot in my life. “Don’t you ever use your air conditioner?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, ma’am. Whenever it gets hot.”

“Whenever it gets—hot. Thank you for a pleasant ride.”

“Have a nice day, ma’am.”

I pushed through swinging slatted doors and was immediately confronted by a young woman who came around the desk, grasped one of my hands in both of hers, and said, “Mrs. Fletcher. I can’t believe how quickly you got here.”

“Pardon?”

“You must have had one of our taxi drivers who aspire to drive race cars.”

“You know who I am?”

She laughed, as though I’d told a joke.

“Why were you expecting me?” I asked.

More laughter. “For the interview,” she said.

“What interview?”

Before I had a chance to say anything else she led me by the hand past the reception desk, through another door, and into a small newsroom in which three people sat in front of computers.

“There must be a mistake,” I said, continuing to be propelled to the rear of the newsroom and through an open door to an office where a bear of a man sat behind a desk. He was bald, and wore a white shirt and tie with the collar open and the tie pulled down. His features were heavy and coarse; his nose might have been rearranged from too many stiff left jabs in the ring.

“Adrian,” the young woman said, “meet Jessica Fletcher.”

He pulled himself to his feet and extended his hand across the desk.

“Mr. Woodhouse is the editor of the paper,” she said. “And he owns it.”

“Adrian Woodhouse here,” he said in a grumbly voice that matched his physique. “What did you do, fly here from Lover’s Lagoon?”

I let out a stream of air to lower my frustration level before saying, “Yes, I am Jessica Fletcher, but you shouldn’t know I’m here. I mean, shouldn’t know that I was coming here. You see, I only came to the newspaper because—”

“Doesn’t matter. Delighted to meet you. What say we get on with it?”

“On with what?”

“The interview.”

“What interview?”

He looked at me as though I were a dunce. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You got my message?”

“What message?”

“I called to arrange an interview with you for the paper. Famous mystery writer visits island and discovers the body of a
real
murder victim at Lover’s Lagoon. Frankly, I didn’t know whether you would want to talk about it, but I guess you do.”

Had I been a small child, I would have stomped my foot on the floor. “I did not come here to be interviewed about murders or anything else,” I said. “I would like to look up something in your morgue.”

Woodhouse and the young woman looked at each other with bemused, distinctly confused expressions. “Morgue?” they said in unison.

“Yes, your morgue. By the way, who took a message for me?”

“Your answering machine.”

“Oh. Well, I wasn’t there to get the message, but I am here to see what you have on a murder that occurred three years ago. A gentleman named Caleb Mesreau.”

Woodhouse frowned. “The Mesreau murder?”

“Yes.” It suddenly dawned on me that Adrian Woodhouse was the writer who’d done the recent article about the investigation into the Marschalks’ purchase of the Lover’s Lagoon property. “You wrote the article about Lover’s Lagoon Inn,” I said.

“That’s right. Why do you want to go back into the Mesreau murder?”

“Because your article seemed to hint that there might be a connection between his murder, and the purchase by my friends, the Marschalks, of the property on which they built their inn. Is there a connection?”

“Depends,” Woodhouse said.

“Depends upon what?” I asked.

“Depends upon whether you’ll let us do an interview with you. You let me interview you, and I’ll let you interview me about the Mesreau murder.”

“That sounds fair,” I said.

“Good.” He fell heavily back into his chair. “Me first,” he said, dismissing the young woman with a wave of his hand. I took a chair across the desk from him.

He started by asking me questions about my work habits, my approach to plotting murder mysteries—whether I started at the end and worked backward—and whether I considered my novels to be plot or character driven. I’m used to answering these kinds of questions. Lord knows I’ve been asked them enough times over the course of my writing career. Standard fare for interviewers.

But then he asked about my having discovered Walter Marschalk’s body at the beach at Lover’s Lagoon. My discomfort level rose with each question asked.

“What did he look like?” this big, gruff island journalist asked.

“Walter? The deceased? Grotesque. Horrible.”

“What was your reaction?”

Why do journalists always ask for your reaction to a tragedy? What was I supposed to say, that I broke out a picnic basket and celebrated having found a dear, old friend with his throat slashed?

Woodhouse sensed my annoyance and shifted gears. “I understand you had a conversation with our former senator, Bobby Jensen, and that you visited the accused, Jacob Austin, in jail.”

“Yes, I did visit Jacob. A conversation with Senator Jensen? I don’t think so.”

“From what I hear, you stopped him in the government building and had a long chat with him.”

I laughed. “Oh, that. Hardly much of a conversation. He was running to catch a plane, and his staff was anxious that he get moving. I simply introduced myself as a friend of the Marschalks, talked about a few things we had in common, and said good-bye.”

The scowl on Woodhouse’s face said he didn’t believe me, but he didn’t press. Instead, he asked, “You’re known as a woman who’s managed to unravel murders not only in your books, but in real life. What’s your read on this one?”

I shrugged. “I don’t have a ‘read’ on this. I wish I did. I know one thing. I don’t believe Jacob Austin murdered Walter Marschalk.”

“That so? Based upon what?”

“Based upon—my intuition. I understand I’m entitled to intuition by virtue of my sex.”

It was his first laugh of the day, a low rumble that sounded like approaching thunder. He paused as he searched for the next question to ask, which gave me a chance to say, “My turn now?”

“Almost. How were things going between Mr. and Mrs. Marschalk?”

“You mean their relationship?” He nodded. “I’d say it was—fine. Normal.”

“What was their ‘normal’ relationship? Loving? Caring?”

“Yes.” Should I mention that Laurie had filed for divorce from Walter, and that I now knew he’d been cheating on her on a regular basis? No, was my answer. To the police perhaps if questioned about it. But not to a journalist. For some reason, journalists believe that, by virtue of their profession, everyone has a duty to be honest with them. I don’t share that view. Certainly not where personal lives are involved.

“I hear they were having trouble in their marriage,” Woodhouse said.

I shrugged.

“I hear Mrs. Marschalk has been having a fling with someone other than her husband.”

“That’s news to me,” I said. “Who is she rumored to have been seeing?”

He ignored my question and asked, “What do you know about their financial condition?”

“Absolutely nothing,” I said.

“My sources tell me they owe a lot of money to bad people.”

“Bad people?”

“Organized crime. The Mafia. Loan sharks in Miami.”

“Mr. Woodhouse, you seem to have a wealth of information about my friends that I don’t have. I really would prefer that you stick to questions about things I know. Like how to write a murder mystery.”

“Okay.” After a few more such questions concerning my writing career and habits, he took a break to fetch a long black cigar from a desk drawer. He held it up over the desk. “Mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all.”

“Most people do mind. At least women. Especially cigars.”

“It’s your office. I might feel different if we were in my living room.”

He lighted the cigar with care and precision, careful not to allow the flame from a gold lighter to actually touch the cigar’s tip. After a few enthusiastic and satisfying puffs, he plopped large, bulky shoes on the edge of the desk, pointed at me with the cigar, and said, “Go ahead, Mrs. Fletcher. Your turn. But I reserve the right to ask a few more questions.”

“All right,” I said, glad the odorous blue smoke was drifting in the direction of a window behind his head. “You wrote the article that appeared earlier this week about the scandal surrounding Lover’s Lagoon Inn.”

“That’s right.”

“I found some of your inferences to be without substantiation.”

“Such as?”

“For one, the murder three years ago of Caleb Mesreau. Reading the article would lead one to believe that you suspect Senator Jensen and Walter Marschalk of having had something to do with that murder.”

He said nothing, simply lowered his chin to his chest and looked at me through heavy, bushy eyebrows.

“I agree that the fact that Mesreau owned a tiny piece of land that was crucial to the Marschalks going through with their purchase of Lover’s Lagoon is gist for speculation. But only that. Speculation. Frankly, when I read the article, I attributed what I considered a lack of solid journalism to a young, inexperienced reporter trying to come up with a sensational story. But now that I’ve met you, I realize my supposition was incorrect.”

“Are you calling me old, Mrs. Fletcher?”

I chuckled. “You certainly aren’t a fledgling cub reporter. I assume that you have more in your files than you revealed in the article.”

“Maybe I do. Maybe I’m saving it for another day.”

“Which, of course, is your prerogative. I would like to see your file on the Mesreau murder. I imagine you covered it extensively, which means your morgue would have it pulled together, presumably under
M.”

“
M
for murder?” he asked.

“
M
for Mesreau. Could I see that file?”

“I don’t see why not.”

I stood.

“Right now?” he said. “I have more questions for you. Remember our deal?”

“How could I forget it? Let me see the file, and then we’ll ask each other some more questions.”

He led me to a room in a corner of the building that was piled floor-to-ceiling with files. I’d made extensive use of newspaper morgues before, always with the help of a librarian in charge of the material. But this small newspaper obviously could not afford the luxury of such a person. Woodhouse, who wore many hats, also functioned as keeper of the morgue.