The Tattered Thread, Page 4

CHAPTER FOUR

  Despite three doses of a grape-flavored antibiotic during the day, Silas still looked very ill. As he laid on a velvet, serpentine-back couch, his small, sockless feet rested against his mother’s left thigh. A pleated pillow was tucked under his head, and his blond hair dangled off one edge. Most of the furniture in the drawing room had been arranged in quaint conversational groupings, but no one was talking. Silas finally said, “Dad had a business meeting in his office this afternoon. He had one of those vinyl badge holders in his hand. I saw it. It was empty, though. The name card was missing.”

  “It was probably his own badge holder,” Cameron told him. “Everybody at the meeting had one.”

  “But Dad had taken his off. He changed his clothes before dinner. When we found him, he was wearing a smoking jacket.”

  “Okay, so he grabbed one from the box on the table. So what?”

  “If he did that, it would still have a card in it. All the others do.”

  “So?”

  “So what happened to the card?”

  “What difference does it make?” Cameron asked. “I mean, really?”

  “Whoever killed my father could’ve been wearing the badge holder when it happened, and Dad pulled it off during the struggle.” Silas paused to cough; it sounded deep, unproductive, and painful.

  “All of our employees hand their name badges in when the meetings are over,” Lois told her son. “They always do. So that couldn’t be.”

  “Well, maybe Dad took it out of the box when he was attacked. You know, to try and tell us who was hurting him.”

  “But there’s no name card in the plastic holder they found in his hand,” Cameron said. “It was empty. You said so yourself.”

  “We should look at the names left in the box to see which one is missing.”

  Cameron finally understood what Silas was getting at. “I guess,” he said, “but that would be circumstantial evidence at best.” He looked at the other adults in the room. “Wouldn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Silas said, “but at least it would be a start.”

  Leaning over a pier table draped with an elaborate quilt and standing between two towering bay windows, Elaine pulled one of the lace undercurtains aside. Watching from the window, she saw the police and someone from the coroner’s office combing the estate. The young officer who’d come in and taken fingerprint samples from everyone present was also out in the yard. Police vehicles lined the driveway with lights flashing on some of the squad cars. Even the fire department had been called, and a bright red engine was parked close to the house. By now the neighbors had to know that something terrible had happened.

  Elaine allowed the dark green, velvet curtains to fall back into place, running her hand over the smooth fabric. She looked at the others in the room. Cameron’s flawless features looked even better in the light from the Tiffany-style lamp on the table next to him. The intrusion by the authorities had long since wiped the satisfied smile from his face.

  Lois was sitting on the couch and staring at the marble fireplace as if she’d never seen it before. The richly sculpted, dove gray marble surround was a sumptuous piece of nineteenth century craftsmanship, the kind which would probably be housed in a museum someday. Studying the carved figurines earnestly, her mind seemed to be racing. Her sentiment was summed up in one sentence when she said, “The police are probably trampling the flower gardens,” and then didn’t say anything more.

  Vic, Lois’s brother-in-law, was sitting across from her in a tufted, green velvet chair with an inlaid frame. He was snoring his head off, and his breath was strong enough to sway the golden tassels on the Syrian rug resting over the back of it. Sure it was getting late, but it wasn’t that late. His graying hair was clumped together and shiny as if he hadn’t washed it in ages. Shriveled blades of dead grass were stuck in his hair above his right temple.

  Betty Rhoades, who was sitting closest to Vic on a green Rococo settee, seemed the most bothered by his offensive trills of slumber. The white moisturizer had been wiped off her face some time ago, but the pink rollers were still in her hair. After blowing her nose with a tissue she was holding, she glanced at Elaine and then sank down lower into her seat.

  When Elaine saw movement from the window, she turned to see what was happening. Someone wearing a hard hat and a special suit and boots walked past the window with a pack of some kind strapped to his back. “I wonder what he’s carrying,” she said aloud, so Silas sat up for a minute, stretching his neck up to see.

  “That guy must be an arson investigator,” he said, lying back down again. “You know, because of the explosion.”

  “What’s that thing on his back?”

  “A field-portable gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer.”

  Nodding, Elaine turned toward the window again. Two police officers were escorting Sam Giles into the house. Sam, the caretaker and trainer of the Kastenmeiers’ horses, usually slept in the small cottage next to the stables.

  “They’ve got Sam,” Elaine said, so Cameron turned to see what was happening.

  “I still don’t see John, though,” he said.

  “He’s probably dead, too,” Betty said matter-of-factly, and everyone looked at her. She sounded as if she knew something about it. All the staring made her add, “It only stands to reason.”

  “The man could be out on a date,” Cameron said. “After all, it is a Friday night.”

  “This is John Linton we’re talking about,” Betty retorted. “Hard as nails, a workaholic, no life outside these walls….” She paused. “His nickname should be ‘Overtime’.”

  “How about ‘Over Done’,” Lois replied, drawing everyone’s attention. “John has spent more time with Carl than I or any of his trollops have combined.”

  Silence fell as they heard voices on the other side of the drawing room doors. The mood grew understandably tense. After all, murder’s a serious offense and the detectives assigned to the case seemed like a no-nonsense bunch of people. Carlyle Kastenmeier had been a very rich and powerful man. Those who didn’t know him personally admired him for his contributions to charities and for his support of popular top government officials. Solving his murder would be a high profile event, and a lot of important people wouldn’t rest until the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death were finally laid to rest with him.