White Wedding

Chapter Three

The fir tree standing in the corner captured Lane’s attention as they gathered again in the lounge. The tall, symmetrical evergreen seemed to mock the stunned party. Lane knew that the tree would never be decorated now, just as she realized that there could be no wedding in the chapel tomorrow. She felt numb, unable to accept what they had discovered in the cave below.

The rest of the group dealt with the horror in their own individual ways. Most of them were still silent with shock. Not surprisingly, Ronnie was the exception. She was near hysteria as she collapsed into the nearest easy chair.

“Tell me it’s a joke!” she pleaded shrilly. “Someone tell me it’s all nothing but a hideous joke!”

No one did, or could.

“Stuie,” she wailed, “be an angel and get Mama a brandy. I know I saw a decanter in the library next door.”

“Get your own booze,” he growled.

“Little beast! How could you when I feel positively ill?”

“I’ll get the brandy for you,” Lane offered quietly. Anything to escape the cruel irony of that Christmas tree. Besides, wasn’t she supposed to be able to satisfy difficult people and their demands in situations of crisis? It was a necessary skill she had developed in her hotel work.

As she slipped into the adjoining library she hoped that ability wouldn’t fail her. Her hands were none too steady, however, as she poured a generous measure of brandy from the crystal decanter on the burnished tray. It was the sight of the weapons collection covering the walls of the library that unnerved her. She couldn’t help associating those gruesome artifacts with the obscenity in the cave.

When she turned with the glass, she saw that Stuart had trailed her into the library. There was a sulky, defiant expression on his young mouth. He, too, gazed at the weapons. But with a difference. There was a gleam, almost of satisfaction, in his eyes. Lane shivered when she realized that his attention was fixed on a tomahawk.

She passed him without a word and returned to the lounge. The brandy in her shaking hand was in danger of slopping over on the geometric patterns of the Scandinavian rug when Jack rescued the glass.

“Here, I’ll take it,” he murmured.

This was one time when she didn’t object to his assertiveness. She gladly surrendered the glass.

“Sure you don’t need some of this yourself?”

Lane shook her head. “What about the Askers and Chris Beaver?” she asked.

“Nils is still on the phone in the kitchen trying to raise the sheriff. Dorothy is with him. Chris is busy in the cellar making sure that the door this time is securely locked and that nothing on the other side is disturbed. Shouldn’t you sit down?”

“I’m better off on my feet.”

She didn’t feel weak in the legs, but she was suddenly cold. She went to stand near the fireplace, welcoming the heat from the pine logs. Jack delivered the brandy to Ronnie, who accepted it gratefully. For a welcome change, she was silent as she gulped from the glass.

It was the others, grouped on chairs and sofa near the fire, who were no longer quiet now that the initial shock had subsided. They discussed the tragedy in hushed, unbelieving tones.

“How could I have done it?” Allison whispered, hands clenched in her lap. “How could I have blamed poor Teddy for not finishing the flowers when the whole time—” She broke off, shuddering.”Dan,” she appealed to her cousin, “must we leave him down there like that? It seems so inhuman.”

The judge shook his head. “He can’t be moved, Allison. It’s a crime scene. Nothing can be touched until the sheriff’s team investigates it.”

“I keep seeing him in that way,” she moaned. “Like—like he was some kind of awful sacrifice. I suppose there’s no question of it? I suppose it was murder?”

“Had to be,” Hale muttered.

“But why?” Allison demanded angrily. “Who?”

They were questions that haunted each of them, but no one answered her. There were no answers. There was only the dismay.

“I don’t understand,” Allison persisted. “Teddy was supposed to have been alone on the island. Lane, wasn’t that what Dorothy told us this afternoon? That Nils left Teddy here all on his own yesterday and returned to the mainland.”

“Yes,” Lane agreed softly, “that’s what she said.”

No one in the room questioned this claim, but Lane noticed several gazes turning in the direction of the kitchen where Nils Asker was busy with the phone. She knew what they were wondering. She couldn’t help wondering it herself. Just how accurate was Dorothy’s assertion?

“Obviously,” Hale observed, “Teddy wasn’t alone. There was a killer with him. And either that someone was here the whole time or he arrived after Nils left.”

“Please,” Ronnie begged loudly, “will all of you just stop talking about it? Isn’t it bad enough that we had to see him like that?”

“Scalped, you mean,” Stuart reminded them callously, rejoining the group.

Ronnie, clutching her brandy glass, made a face of revulsion. “Only a monster could have performed something so indecent.”

Lane cast a swift glance in Jack’s direction. He was leaning against the other side of the fireplace. He had been quiet during the exchange of speculations, but she was close enough to hear him softly and slowly whistling under his breath. An unconscious habit that she recognized from the days of their marriage. It meant that systematic scientist’s brain of his was dissecting a problem.

“Yeah,” Stuart said, offering his dark warning to Ronnie, “and that monster could be lurking on the island right now. Any of you thought of that?”

The boy plainly enjoyed pressing his mother’s buttons, Lane thought. Ronnie’s reaction, a yelp of alarm, didn’t disappoint him.

It was then that Jack stood away from the fireplace and informed them mildly, “I don’t think so. I think the killer left the island. And his victim wasn’t scalped.”

“Of course he was scalped,” Ronnie insisted, as though he were trying to cheat her out of a perverse pleasure. “We all saw it, didn’t we?”

Jack shook his head. “We only thought we did. It had the illusion of a scalping because we were down there with those native remains, and there was an arrow in his chest. But the head had been shaved, not scalped.”

“Either way,” Dan said, “it was senseless.”

“Not from the killer’s viewpoint,” Jack maintained. “From what you’ve said about Teddy Brewster, I understand he had a mane of flaming hair and a flowered overcoat that was practically a trademark. Both the hair and the coat are missing.”

“Disguise.” Lane suddenly realized what he meant. “The murderer used them as a disguise to get off the island. He left as Teddy.”

“That’s right,” Allison said, remembering. “The Arnolds told us back at the dock that the rented snowmobile had been returned and that Teddy’s car was gone.”

Jack nodded. “All cover for the killer and a way to keep the florist from being missed right away.” His broad shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. “It’s conjecture, of course, but I think it’s the right explanation.”

Ronnie sagged with relief in her chair. “As long as it means there’s no longer a homicidal maniac loose on this island, that’s all I care about.”

But Hale wasn’t ready to let the subject go. “Genuine scalping or not, the guy still died with an arrow in his chest. And all that Indian stuff down there... Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

Allison turned to him, her voice sharp. “What are you saying, Hale?”

His gaze drifted in the direction of the kitchen. “You tell me. Or better still—” his look shifted toward the judge “—let Dan here tell us. You understand the Menominee lingo, Dan. I’ve heard you say so. So what were Chris Beaver and his sister telling each other out there in the kitchen when we started down to the caves?”

“Nothing important,” the judge demurred.

“Come on, you can do better than that. They were outraged, weren’t they, because they thought we were about to desecrate the sacred burial grounds of their ancestors?”

Dan, uncomfortable and reluctant, resisted Hale’s accusation. “That’s an exaggeration. They simply minded our...well, casual attitudes about the visit. I’m sure that’s all it was. You have to remember that the Menominee have resided in Wisconsin for more than five thousand years. Some say as long as ten thousand years. And, naturally, their descendants are going to have some feelings about—”

“Uh-huh,” Hale interrupted dryly, “the violation of ancient graves. Wonder if that’s how Teddy Brewster ended up down there? Wonder if he just wanted to have a look at those graves and somebody minded?”

Allison rounded on him indignantly. “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting? Because if you are—”

“I’ll tell you what he’s suggesting,” interrupted a coldly angry voice from the shadows of the dining room. “That I had something to do with the florist’s death.”

The startled members of the group around the fireplace looked up to find Chris Beaver standing in the doorway. There was a dangerous expression in his dark eyes as he moved rigidly into the lounge.

“That’s right, isn’t it, McGuire?” he challenged Hale.

Shaking off Allison’s restraining hand, Hale rose to his feet and confronted the other man. “Maybe it’s more than just a suggestion,” he said recklessly. “Maybe it’s an accusation.”

An outraged Chris charged before anyone could stop him. His fist slammed into Hale’s face. Ronnie screamed as the others came to their feet. But it was Jack who sprang between the two men, separating them before the incident resulted in a full-scale brawl.

“You all right, McGuire?” he demanded.

The lawyer, pressing a handkerchief to his bleeding nose, nodded and glared at his attacker. “You’ve got a bad temper, Beaver. Some people might say it’s a murderous one.”

Chris would have gone for him again, but Jack held him off. “That’s enough,” he ordered. “From both of you. No more senseless accusations and no more wild punches. We’ve got enough to handle without you two losing your heads.”

Chris, looking grim, pulled away from Jack. Without a word he turned and headed toward the kitchen. Allison started to go after him.

“Chris, wait!”

The proud, retreating figure never paused. He brushed silently past his bewildered brother-in-law, who had just arrived in the lounge doorway, and disappeared into the darkened dining room.

A sickened Lane, suddenly needing to put distance between herself and the nasty scene she’d just witnessed, left the fireplace and drifted across the room to one of the French doors overlooking the bay. From this position she sympathetically watched Allison realize that it was her fiancé she was supposed to comfort, not Chris Beaver. Allison tried to put a concerned hand on Hale’s arm, but he shook it off.

With Hale in this kind of nasty mood, Lane wondered how she would ever find the courage to approach him on the subject of her sensitive mission. Or whether now there would even be the opportunity. But she’d promised, so eventually she must find a way.

An uncertain, puzzled Nils Asker went on hovering in the doorway until Jack pressed him for the news they were all waiting to hear.

“How soon can we expect the sheriff?”

The lanky Nils shook his head, reporting gloomily, “We can’t. Not for now, anyway. I kept trying, but the phone is useless. It’s that devil of a wind out there. Communication tower on the mainland must be down. It can happen along the peninsula with these cellular phones, the power getting interrupted when the weather’s nasty like this.”

“Dear God!” Ronnie cried. “You mean we’re cut off out here with a dead body on our hands?”

“Until the phone’s on again,” Nils admitted. “Should be back in service by morning. That is, if this wind ever quits long enough.”

“And what if it doesn’t?” Jack asked. “What then?”

Nils took a slow, deep breath before answering. “Then I cross over in my truck as soon as there’s enough light.”

“And I, for one, am going to be riding with you,” Ronnie insisted. “I have no intention of staying trapped out here.”

Nils shook his head stubbornly. “If I end up going, I go alone. I know the ice, and I can make it. But if there’s whiteout conditions still, it’s gonna be real tricky. And I won’t risk a passenger with me.”

“He’s right,” Dan agreed. “We’re much safer waiting here. Besides, the sheriff will expect us to remain on the scene. Involved or not, we’ll all of us have to answer a slew of questions.”

His affirmation brought on a fresh burst of objections and speculations. Dan quietly slipped away from the commotion at the other end of the room and joined Lane where she remained at the window.

“Sorry about this,” he apologized in a low, grave voice.

Lane gazed at him, not certain what he was referring to.

“Out there,” he said, nodding at the glass behind her.

She realized then that he was talking about the wind that was still blasting fearfully around the corners of the lodge. “You’re apologizing for the weather?”

He smiled gently. “In a way I do blame myself. You see,” he explained, “Allison made me responsible for checking out the forecast for this weekend. You know, making sure we weren’t going to get snowbound here.”

“But there isn’t any blizzard.”

“No, but these winds... The thing is, I let someone else do the checking for me.” His gaze traveled in the direction of the group at the other end of the lounge. “And they promised... Oh, well, I’m being foolish. The forecast was probably off. And, anyway, you don’t think about freak winds stranding you if it’s precipitation you’re worried about.”

Lane had no opportunity to hear a further explanation. A storm of another kind had surfaced across the room.

“Here we go,” Dan muttered. “Ronnie is being Ronnie again.”

He left Lane to rejoin the group as Ronnie, in a loud voice, raised another storm of objection and demand.

“I don’t care how safe you all keep insisting we are! It’s only a theory the murderer left the island, not a guarantee! This is a big house, and that lunatic could be hiding anywhere inside! I think the least the men could do is offer to check the lodge from top to bottom before we all go to our rooms for the night. I’ll never sleep a wink otherwise!”

Veronica Bauer was clearly no advocate of equal rights for women, Lane thought wryly. Not in this situation, anyway.

Jack, leaving the others to placate the tiresome, difficult woman, crossed to Lane at the window. “What was that all about just now?” he asked her in a low voice.

She knew he was referring to her hushed exchange with Dan Whitney. Jack was far too observant. And his virile nearness was still much too disturbing. She shared with him the judge’s brief conversation.

Jack frowned. “What was he suggesting? That someone here deliberately withheld the truth about the weather conditions for the weekend?”

Lane shook her head. “I’m not sure. I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”

At the other end of the lounge Ronnie seemed to realize Jack had left the circle that was supposed to be paying attention to her. There was displeasure in her expression when she looked around and discovered him with Lane at the window.

“Jack,” she coaxed from across the room, “you’ll be my supporter, won’t you? Tell them that the men should spread out and search the house before we lock ourselves in for the night.”

Lane could see that her handsome ex-husband was very close to telling Ronnie Bauer exactly what he thought of her pretentious state of nerves. “Please,” Lane urged him in a hurried undertone, “just humor her. Anything to get this situation over with.”

She suddenly found the whole emotional scene excessive and exhausting. All she wanted was to go to her room and crawl into bed, even if sleep itself wasn’t possible. She was all for Ronnie’s plan, no matter who the search included or excluded, if only it achieved for them a blessed state of release.

Jack eyed her. She could see that he, too, had no desire to prolong the strained gathering. “All right,” he agreed dryly, “we’ll look under the beds.”

The men, Stuart with them, filed out of the lounge in the direction of the staircase. Allison followed them as far as the foyer, offering instructions for access to the attics.

Lane found herself alone with Ronnie. The older woman spared her no word or glance. She was interested only in her brandy glass, which she had long ago emptied. Getting to her feet, she drifted off to the library to help herself to a refill.

Lane was grateful for the solitude. And then, with a rush of guilt, she remembered Allison. She had failed to offer her friend a single word of comfort regarding her spoiled wedding. Allison must be sick about the disastrous result of what was meant to be a memorable holiday weekend.

Intending to comfort her, Lane headed for the foyer. Tense voices stopped her just short of the doorway. Before she could retreat, she realized she was overhearing for the second time today a conversation that was meant to be private. This time it was Allison and her cousin engaged in a low, hurried dialogue from a corner just around the archway.

“Sweetheart,” Dan pleaded kindly, “I know you don’t want to think about it, but it’s bound to come up in the investigation. Right or wrong, Chris and his brother have gotten reputations for themselves since that Dream Dance, and when questions are asked—”

“I won’t listen to this!” Allison fiercely cut him off. “Being militant about something doesn’t mean you’d resort to—well, I won’t even name it. It’s unthinkable!”

“I know. I’m just saying you have to be prepared.”

“You’re like all the others. You think I’m being defensive and unreasonable. Well, I won’t stand by and see him crucified.”

“You’re right. Allison, I’m sorry I ever brought it up. Just forget that I...”

Lane didn’t stay to hear anymore. Remorseful, she backed away into the depths of the lounge until she was out of listening range. She had managed to overcome the longing to eavesdrop. She could do nothing, however, to control her curiosity about the mystifying exchange she had just overheard.

A moment later Allison returned alone to the lounge. She looked distracted and unhappy as she glanced in the direction of the kitchen. “I suppose I’d better go talk to Dorothy,” she murmured. “She’ll want to know about to- morrow. Whatever’s happened, people will still need to eat.”

Lane didn’t try to stop her when she went off to the kitchen. Nor did she detain Ronnie when she reappeared with her brandy glass, wanting to know, “Where’s our hostess?”

“In the kitchen.”

“Think I’ll join her.”

Apparently Ronnie had no desire to be alone with her. That suited Lane just fine. She couldn’t think of a subject the two of them might have in common. Unless it was Jack, and she certainly had no intentions of sharing her impressions in that direction. Least of all with Veronica Bauer.

Ronnie left. Lane was alone once more. And restless. She almost wished she had joined the men in their search. She wondered what, if anything, was happening with them. She could hear no activity overhead. The lodge was too solidly built. And the lounge, except for the ceaseless wail of the wind outside and the soft popping of the fire in the grate, was suddenly too quiet.

Lane decided she didn’t want to remain in the room. She couldn’t bear another minute of this empty waiting. She went out into the foyer and stood at the bottom of the massive staircase, listening. Silence.

She turned away and noticed that the door to the Viking banquet hall hadn’t been closed. The room was too cavernous to be adequately heated. Cold air from the place invaded the foyer. Lane went to shut the door, and instead found herself venturing into the great room.

The soaring, raftered hall was a well of darkness. Her hand groped for a light switch on the wall inside the entrance. She failed to find one. It didn’t matter. There was a kind of grilled hatch in the wall that backed up to the library. Light from the library on the other side spilled a weak glow into the hall. It was just sufficient enough to permit her to make out the nearest objects in the gloom.

Lane could see the poinsettias massed on the long table. She could also make out an enormous sideboard where Teddy Brewster had arranged a collection of Father Christmases garlanded with holly and ivy. They were another depressing reminder to her that this was Christmas Eve. The members of the house party were supposed to be in the lounge drinking punch, decorating the tree, sharing a lively anticipation for tomorrow’s wedding. Instead, they were dealing with murder.

It wasn’t the cold in the hall that made her shiver. It was the sight of the poinsettias on the table. They were as red as blood.

Mistake, she thought. I should never have wandered in here.

Lane turned sharply and started to leave. Instead, she collided with a shadowy figure who had slipped in behind her. She gasped with alarm, prepared to scream the house down, as a pair of hands reached out and gripped her by both arms.

“Easy,” muttered a deep voice.

He was no more than a silhouette against the light from the foyer. But she recognized that rich baritone. Though she hated to admit it, she was immediately reassured.

“Jack! You might have warned me instead of sneaking up on me like that.”

“Sorry. I didn’t know it was you I was investigating in here until you turned around.”

“Then you had no reason to grab me.”

“I wasn’t grabbing. I was steadying.”

His hands were still on her arms, and the sensation of his strong fingers scalding her flesh was decidedly unsettling.

“Well, you can unsteady me now.”

She could sense his reluctance as he slowly released her. “What are you doing in here, anyway?”

“Just waiting for an all clear from the search party. Where are the others?”

“Still playing hide-and-seek upstairs. I got tired of the game.”

“Did you find anything?”

“Yeah, a hell of a lot of dust bunnies.”

She hadn’t expected otherwise. “Then can I go to my room? I don’t know about you, but I’m ex—”

She never finished her plea. Jack silenced her with a shake of his head and a rapid finger against his mouth. She noticed that his attention was suddenly riveted on something over her shoulder. Her head swiveled in bewilderment, and then she saw it, too.