Ghost on the Case (Bailey Ruth #8)(59)

I was ready to go upstairs when I noticed a stack of newspapers on one side of the desk. I was there in an instant. I picked up the Gazette and scanned the headlines:


SECOND MURDER ON FITCH ESTATE;

BUTLER FATALLY SHOT IN LAKE CABIN


SUSPECT’S SISTER CLAIMS FITCH

SECRETARY FRAMED


TIME OF DEATH IN QUESTION;

WAS 10:07 GUNSHOT RELEVANT?

I went straight to Joan Crandall’s breathless depiction of Sylvie Gilbert (gallant and determined) and how she single-handedly disrupted Mayor Neva Lumpkin’s noon press conference about the murder of Wilbur Fitch early Wednesday morning and the murder of his butler, Carl Ross, Wednesday night.

I loved Joan’s lead.


Official Adelaide was no match Thursday for a sister on a missi—

“Hey”—the voice was high and uncertain—“how are you doing that? Buddy, where are you? How’d you make the paper hang in the air like somebody’s reading it?” A few feet away a slender girl with auburn hair and a sweet face stood by the desk. Although she and her apparent coworker Buddy (In the men’s room? At the soda machine? Outside on his cell phone lining up a date?) were absent when I arrived, she was now on the scene.

I had been too absorbed to hear her approach. I looked at the Gazette, and of course it looked like someone was holding the newspaper at eye level and reading because I was holding the newspaper at eye level and reading. As clever people, the kind who take physics, would be the first to agree, newspapers do not suspend themselves in the air. Regretfully, I let the sheets slip from my hands and flutter to the floor.

The girl watched the descending newsprint much the way she might have observed an upside-down car driving by.

I very much wanted to read the stories about the investigation, but I would have to return at a later time and cautiously filch a Gazette.

From the second-floor landing I looked down.

The girl was approaching the scattered sheets stealthily.

I suspected that when she gathered up the sheets and found no evidence of an elaborate mechanism to account for a newspaper hanging in the air before suddenly descending to the floor, she would devise a reassuring explanation: The newspaper on the desk was blown into the air by an inexplicable gust—the door opened or the heating system hiccupped—and she’d only imagined that it was being held as though being read because, of course, no one was standing there. She could be sure of the latter. She’d seen it with her own eyes.

It would never occur to her that a ghost held the paper and that excused my inadvertent transgression of Precept Six: “Make every effort not to alarm earthly creatures.”

Last night I’d stayed in the Red Room. A fine porcelain nameplate is attached to the door of each guest room. What would I choose tonight? I bypassed Scholar, Cardinal’s Nest, Gusher, paused at Will.

Shakespeare is always good company: Strong reasons make strong actions. Murder is a strong action that springs from a powerful motive. When I knew which motive mattered, I would see the face of a murderer.

Inside I realized my mistake. I should have known when a pattern of lariats bordered the nameplate. The lariat motif was continued around the borders of framed quotations from Will Rogers. Rogers is perhaps Oklahoma’s most famous native son, rodeo star, movie actor, comedian, political commentator, author, and a whiz at lassoing livestock. The quotes were embroidered in bright red letters against a dust-colored background. I read all the quotations, returned to four.


This would be a great world to dance in if we didn’t have to pay the fiddler.


Diplomacy is the art of saying “Nice doggie” until you can find a rock.


We are here just for a spell and then we pass on. So get a few laughs and do the best you can. Live your life so that whenever you lose it, you are ahead.


Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.

The decor was bunkhouse comfortable with lots of leather and maple and the aura of don’t-be-the-last-to-saddle-up. I settled in a green leather easy chair. How could I be in a room suffused with the exuberance of Will Rogers and not succeed at my task? It was a matter of judgment. I had the information. Instead of a wide-open search for a double murderer, I knew with certainty that one of five men was guilty. I had spoken with each of them. So what were the anomalies?

The Tiffany lamp on the table next to my chair shone on a spiral notebook and a pencil. I picked up the notebook, the kind my students used in long-ago classes, and the soft-leaded pencil. I flipped open the notebook, wrote.

Ben Fitch

Motive:

Wealth. Power. His last encounter with his father ended in a shouting match. Ben appears to be grieving. If he killed his father he would act the part of a bereft son. In his defense, he supports Sylvie Gilbert’s effort to weaken the case against Susan.

I liked Ben Fitch and, face it, he was hugely appealing to women, that curly dark hair and those blue eyes and air of the islands with his tanned skin. But what could appear more innocent than to rush to the defense of the woman he’d set up so nicely to take the blame first for his father’s murder and then for the man foolish enough to attempt blackmail. The pencil moved swiftly.


Points against Ben:

He profited hugely.

Juliet said Wilbur was going to disinherit him, was “beside himself” with fury. He was staying in the house and could easily knock on his father’s door after the party Tuesday night. His father would have had no reason to fear him.