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12
ST. LUMIS, MARYLAND
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
HALLOWEEN
Pippa Cinelli pulled her small black-and-white Mini Cooper into the rear gravel lot of Major Trumbo’s B&B on Flounder Court. She’d forgotten how many streets in St. Lumis had fish names. It was nearly four o’clock in the afternoon, the drive from Washington longer than she’d expected with weekend traffic. She had only a couple of hours before it was dark.
She lifted her go bag and a single carry-on from the skinny back seat and made her way up the flagstone walkway to a large Victorian house, once owned, she remembered, by the Calder family, and now, evidently, by the Trumbos. It looked prosperous and well-maintained, painted white with blue, green, and yellow trim. A large skeleton hung in a downstairs window, and jack-’o-lanterns lined the sidewalk. She’d snagged the last room available, the honeymoon suite on the third floor. Half the nightly rate was coming out of her own pocket, but she wanted to stay in the very center of town. She was so excited, she was nearly bursting through her skin. This wasn’t about pulling crooks off golf courses, this was about a maniac with a flashy preamble, obviously proud of himself for his originality, proud of the alarm and fear his puzzle would cause. Dead birds? Bones? He was showing off, matching wits with Savich, and now with her. He had set the game in motion with no one watching, no one chancing to see. It was up to her to find out who and why.
She remembered Halloween was a big deal in St. Lumis, and sure enough, she’d seen dozens of carved pumpkins as she’d driven in, and assorted skulls and goblins adorning some houses and businesses. Most of the town would turn out for the yearly Halloween party at Leveler’s Inn and Conference Center, a local happening as big as the Fourth of July. She’d checked, and the Halloween bash was still being held at Leveler’s Inn. She’d come prepared for the festivities with an ornate Venetian mask, bought two years earlier when she’d visited Las Vegas for a bachelorette party, and a long crimson cloak to go with it. What a fine opportunity to start nosing around.
She was shown to her honeymoon suite by Mrs. Trumbo, a big woman with silver-and-black skeleton earrings hanging from her earlobes and an apron with a picture of a growling red cat on it tied around her substantial middle. She smelled great, and Pippa said so. “Oatmeal cookies?”
Mrs. Trumbo beamed. “Yes, and wait until you taste one. Just look at me.” Mrs. Trumbo patted her middle. “My special Halloween oatmeal cookies are shaped like ghosts and goblins and monsters. I decorate them all in orange and black—well, the ghosts are white. They’ll be out of the oven in exactly six minutes. Do come down and have one while they’re nice and warm and gooey. I don’t suppose there’s a Mr. Cinelli coming? To make proper use of this marvelous suite?”
“Sorry, I’m alone, a real shame. This will be my home away from home for a while, maybe a week. I heard about the Halloween party at Leveler’s Inn. Do you go? Will it be fun?”
“Oh my, yes, it’s always a drunken hoot. I hear it’ll be even bigger this year. Guess what, Ms. Cinelli. I have a special circular bed for you. I’m told it’s all the thing for young people. Me? I think it’s strange, myself, feels like I’m sleeping on a big round cookie.”
“First time I’ll be sleeping on a round bed,” Pippa said. “I’ll let you know. Thank you, Mrs. Trumbo. I’ll be down as soon as I can for the cookie. Have you been here long?”
“You know, I lived here, then left, then moved back, and when the Calders left five years ago to retire to Maine, not Florida, I bought the house and turned it into a B&B.” She paused a moment. “My husband, the late Major Trumbo, had thoughts, too, of a B&B, but then he up and died of a heart attack. When you have breakfast tomorrow in the living room, I’ll show you his urn on the mantel, all gold and shiny. So now it’s my B&B, all mine.” She beamed at Pippa. “I had to spend a pretty penny updating the bathroom here. Cut out a utility closet to make it nice and big, and to fit the Jacuzzi tub, large enough for a party, if you ask me.” She sighed. “Major Trumbo would have gotten a kick out of it, poor old geezer.”
When she was alone, Pippa walked to the two wide windows at the front of the room and stared out over three blocks of St. Lumis toward the Chesapeake. The water looked cold and gray in the dying daylight. She saw most of the boats were already docked and secured for the night. She remembered the police station was on Main Street, a pedestrian name for a street in St. Lumis, and good luck for the person who’d sent the red box and the puzzle pieces. If Main Street had been named Bass Lane or Speckled Trout Avenue, a computer search would have found it quick as spit, as her grandfather loved to say.
She made a stop downstairs to get her oatmeal cookie, a ghost with gobs of white frosting. Her first bite tasted like pure warm sin. She could practically feel her blood sugar shoot up. Mrs. Trumbo gave her an orange pumpkin, carefully wrapped in a napkin, and Pippa slipped it into her jacket pocket. She walked out of Major Trumbo’s B&B, her beautiful crimson velvet cloak swirling around her black-booted feet. Leveler’s Inn stood three blocks west, set well back from Tautog Street, its deep front grounds beautifully planted and maintained. She remembered it had started out in what was then a poorer part of town, until it was bought by a corporation and made into a hotel that had lasted into the early new century. Then it was bought by Mr. Field Sleeman, St. Lumis’s only wealthy local, who’d revamped it into the new Leveler’s Inn, the town’s only destination for company retreats and conferences.
It was full-on dark now, a three-quarters moon low on the horizon. She’d passed only a couple of kids trick-or-treating, since it was getting late. She saw some teenagers laughing, shoving one another, talking on their cell phones, a couple of them wearing mom’s sheets around their necks. Bedroom superheroes? She wondered what this teenage pod would do if no one answered the front door. Was toilet paper draped in trees still the big thing?
She pulled on her mask as she walked into the inn, tugged her French braid out over the elastic, and strolled into the large ballroom. It was decorated to the hilt with skeletons dancing on the walls, and loop after loop of black and orange crepe paper was strung from the ceiling. The huge room was filling up fast, the noise level rising. A band played an enthusiastic rumba in the corner, and she saw three costumed couples performing quite well. There was a large rectangular table at the other end of the room with a huge punch bowl and plates of fresh veggies and dip, untouched, and a score of different kinds of pies, all nearly gone. There were several dozen circular tables, each with ten chairs, most of them filled with costumed locals. A small grinning pumpkin with a lit candle inside sat on each table. More people arrived behind her, sending the noise level even higher.
Nearly everyone wore masks, and many were decked out in elaborate costumes, like Captain Hook or Bluebeard, she didn’t know which, several Musketeers laughing at their own jokes, and a Captain Kirk doing the rumba with Lieutenant Uhura in her twenty-third-century miniskirt.
And there he was, Chief of Police Matthew Wilde, standing by the large food table chatting with two couples drinking orange Halloween punch from clear plastic cups. She watched Captain Picard dump the contents of a flask into the punch, probably vodka, and wondered how many other partiers had done the same thing and would continue to. She remembered her dad used to carry a flask to this shindig every year, her mom laughing and shaking her head at him. He never said a word about the small vodka bottle in her purse.
She paused a moment and studied the police chief. In the photos she’d seen of him as a detective in Philadelphia only months before he’d quit the force, he’d looked dour and stiff-lipped, showing about as much life as a stick of wood. But tonight, he was smiling and looked relaxed, his once military-short hair now on the long side. He wasn’t wearing a mask or a costume, but sharp-looking civilian black wool slacks, a white shirt that was open at the neck, black boots, and a black leather jacket, what she thought of as the Savich School of Fashion. His eyes were a mix of green and blue, heavily lashed. He looked rangy, lean like a runner. She knew he was three years older than she was, divorced, no children, and she wondered what had happened to break up the marriage. In the photos she’d seen, he’d been clean-shaven. No longer. Now he sported dark beard scruff, a look she normally didn’t like, but on him, it fit. He looked a little tough, maybe a little mean, but overall, he projected calm and trustworthiness. I know what I’m doing and I’ll keep you safe. Was he what he advertised? In her first six months as an FBI special agent, she’d met two police chiefs she’d wanted to punch out for how they’d treated her, a woman FBI agent.
Pippa looked away from him, over the fast-filling ballroom. Probably at least one hundred and fifty people were here. What with the masks and costumes, she hadn’t recognized anyone, but that also meant no one would recognize her.
Time to meet Wilde. She made her way to the food table and poured only half a plastic cup of the spiked Halloween punch to go with the oatmeal cookie she gingerly slipped out from her pocket beneath her red velvet cloak. She sipped her punch, chewed her cookie, and watched him. He was only six feet away. Soon he would see her and come say hello, realize he didn’t know her, and introduce himself.
Sure enough, here he came. “I’d recognize that smell anywhere—it’s one of Mrs. Trumbo’s famous oatmeal cookies.”
He had a deep voice, and a smooth cadence, an accent more mid-Atlantic than Southern.
She broke off a piece from the pumpkin oatmeal cookie, handed it to him. “Here you go.”
He smiled, popped it into his mouth, wiped his hand on his slacks, and stuck out his hand. She shook it. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Matthew Wilde, chief of police here in St. Lumis.”
“I’m Pippa Cinelli.” She eyed him up and down. “You could have at least duded up like a Wild West lawman and worn a yellow duster, a nice big Colt .45 strapped to your leg. Maybe some black gloves.”
“A yellow duster, hmm, like in the old spaghetti westerns with Clint Eastwood? That’s quite an image—maybe next year.”
Pippa pushed back her mask and eyed him. “You’d mosey when you walked, too, make the duster flare out, show off your boots. Men would fear you, and women would want to jump you. Well, at least maybe the teenage girls.”
