“Gustave Niedernstatter?” Rob repeated. “Doesn’t sound familiar. Do we know him?”
“He’s—he was attending the convention down at the Inn,” I said. “Remember how Cordelia and I were complaining about someone we called the Gadfly?”
Rose Noire nodded.
“That’s him,” I said.
“Oh, man,” Rob muttered.
“Rose Noire, how did you happen to find him?” Cordelia turned back to her cooking, but I could tell her attention was on our conversation. A good thing she’d probably fixed oatmeal a few thousand times in her life. “Isn’t it a little early to be out, even for you?”
“I have so much to do today,” Rose Noire said. “And I woke up early, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep, so I thought I’d start my usual chores. I went out to let the hens out, scatter food for them, and refill the bird feeders so Delaney could see her chickadees. Oh, dear. I didn’t get to the feeders,” she said. “Or the chickens. I should—”
“You should stay here and get some food in your system,” Cordelia said. “It’s only just getting light. The birds won’t starve if they have to wait a little while longer.”
“Rob, could you go out and do it?” Delaney asked. “It would make Rose Noire feel so much better.”
“Right.” Rob looked relieved to be given a job to do—one that didn’t involve staying in the kitchen and dealing with a tearful cousin. He fled before Rose Noire could finish giving him instructions for how much of what feed to give the chickens and the chickadees.
“I’ll go and help him.” Michael had returned, dressed in jeans and a heavy fisherman’s sweater. “Not sure he even knows where the chicken feed is.”
“So, Rose Noire, go on,” Cordelia prodded. She was alternating between stirring the oatmeal and chopping up the raisins, dried apricots, and walnuts she was going to add to it. “You went out to feed the birds and…”
“And he was lying there, behind the barn,” Rose Noire said. “And I overreacted.”
“Overreacted?” Delaney said. “I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be upset, finding a dead guy in your own backyard.”
“I just panicked,” Rose Noire said. “I don’t know what came over me. I should have had more empathy for his situation. Said a blessing over him or … something.”
“Running in to sound the alarm sounds quite sensible to me,” Cordelia replied.
“It hit you hard,” I said. “Any particular reason?”
Rose Noire cocked her head as if listening for some small, inner voice.
“I was looking for an omen,” she said finally.
Cordelia and Delaney reacted with puzzled frowns. But I’d known Rose Noire longer. I nodded my comprehension.
“Because today’s not only practically Christmas, it’s also the winter solstice,” I said. “A day to make a new beginning.”
“Exactly!” Rose Noire actually smiled at that. “It was so cold and dark, and I was trying to think positive thoughts. Honoring the shortest, darkest day of the year, while also thinking about the promise of the season. That today is the start of the return to light and love and warmth. And I’m having a little solstice celebration later today, with a couple of fellow Wiccans, and thinking about that made me happy. And then I saw him.”
“You can do a cleansing later,” Delaney said, patting Rose Noire’s back again.
“Yes,” Cordelia said. “The ritual will make you feel better.”
“Actually, the ritual has already begun.” I was peering out of the back window. Horace had joined the group by the side of the barn, and Dad was bouncing across the yard with his medical bag in hand. “Chief Burke and Vern Shiffley are standing vigil by the body. Dad’s here. He’ll pronounce the Gadfly officially dead, and then he and Horace will begin examining the scene. They’re all playing their parts in the ritual. A secular one, of course, and one we’d rather never need. But it’s some comfort, isn’t it, to know the search for justice has already begun?”
“Yes.” Rose Noire closed her eyes and let out a breath. “Yes. Thank you. That helps.”
We heard a rap on the back door, which then opened to reveal Chief Burke. And Mother.
“Good morning, dear,” Mother said, giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. “I came with your father.” She repeated the greeting with Delaney, then pulled up a chair, sat down beside Rose Noire, and took both of her hands. “How are you doing, dear?” she asked.
“Better,” Rose Noire said, in a voice that still quavered a little. “But it was pretty awful.”
“May I take your coat?” I asked the chief.
“Give it a minute, if you don’t mind,” he said. “I need to warm up a bit.”
“There’s hot tea,” Cordelia said. “English breakfast tea,” she added as she filled a mug for him. The chief looked relieved at the news that we weren’t trying to dose him with one of Rose Noire’s allegedly healthy but definitely noxious herbal blends.
“Thank you,” he said, wrapping his hands around the mug. “Meg, may I take over your dining room for a little while? For interviewing the witnesses and such.”
“You’ll have to take over the library instead,” I told him. “We’ve turned the dining room into a bedroom until Delaney’s allowed to do stairs again.”
“Roger. The library it is.” He seemed to be studying Rose Noire.
“Why don’t you let Meg fill you in on what she saw?” Cordelia suggested. “While I get a hot breakfast into Rose Noire. She’s had a shock.”
“I’ll be fine,” Rose Noire said, with a tremulous smile.
“Eat your oatmeal,” the chief said, smiling back. “We’ll talk soon.”
So the chief and I went down to the library.
“Rose Noire seems to be taking this rather hard,” he said, when we were well out of earshot of the crew in the kitchen.
“It’s the winter solstice,” I said. “She thinks it’s a bad omen, finding a body on the solstice.”
“A bad omen at any time.” He shed his coat and sat down at one of the sturdy oak tables. Then he took out his notebook and looked up at me expectantly. “And you could have knocked me over with a feather when Debbie Ann told me who the victim was. I’m going to do what I can to keep our investigation from interfering with your grandmother’s conference—”
“But the murder investigation takes priority over the conference,” I said. “She’ll understand.”
“Ah, but will the attendees feel that way?” he asked.
“If we spin it right, they’ll be enchanted,” I said. “At least ones who are here mainly because they’re true-crime addicts. I bet a lot of them will be excited at being part of a real live murder investigation.”
“We can always hope,” he said. “So, I caught a little bit of what Mr.—” He glanced down at his notebook.
“Niedernstatter,” I supplied.
“What Mr. Niedernstatter was up to at the conference,” he said. “Let’s make sure I know the whole of it. And do you have any idea why he was out here at your house last night?”
“After Cordelia kicked him out, he started calling and texting her,” I said. “Alternating between pleading with her to let him back in and threatening what he’d do if she didn’t. She blocked him, and then he started doing the same thing with Kevin, and after Kevin blocked him, it was my turn. I must have ignored half a dozen calls and who knows how many texts before I blocked him. So I expect he wanted to talk to one of us. Or all of us. And came out here to do it. No idea how he figured out where to find us. Or why he’d think we’d be willing to talk to him at all, much less in the middle of the night.”
“He was probably killed before midnight,” the chief said. “According to your father’s preliminary estimate. That makes it a little less implausible.”
“But no less annoying.” I sighed. “That he’d come out here at all.”
“Might help Rose Noire’s state of mind,” he said, “if we point out he was killed last night, not on the solstice itself.”
“That’s true,” I agreed.
“And it would be nice to know where he was between the time Ms. Cordelia kicked him out and his death,” he went on. “I checked with the county attorney yesterday afternoon and she gave me the go-ahead to charge him with animal cruelty. I was going to haul him in and do that, but even though I had a countywide BOLO on him, we never found him.”
“I bet he guessed you were after him,” I said. “And made himself scarce.”
“No doubt. And when I get his phone records, the pings may shed some light on where he’s been keeping himself.”
“And when he arrived here,” I added. “He and his killer. Unless, of course, whoever killed him pays enough attention to the role cell phone data plays these days in catching criminals.”
“True.” The chief winced slightly. “Nowadays, anyone who pays the slightest attention to true-crime stories knows enough to turn off their phones before going on a crime spree.”
“And most of the attendees pay a lot of attention to it,” I said.
“So worst case, Mr. Nieder … Nieder…”
“Niedernstatter,” I said. “But wouldn’t it make sense for us to keep calling him Mr. Norton? Because most of the suspects and witnesses you’re going to be interviewing won’t have any idea of his real name.”
“That makes sense.” He sounded relieved. “Worst case, it’s possible that Mr. Norton turned off his phone when he left the conference and his whereabouts for the last twelve hours will forever remain a mystery.”
“That would be unfortunate,” I said. “But I doubt if he did. Most people have trouble living without their phones for half an hour, much less half a day. I bet you’ll be able to track him.”
“Hope so.” He opened his notebook. “So let’s go over what you observed at the conference—because half the attendees there are going to be suspects. All the ones he was harassing, both before and at the conference.”
“Yeah, pretty much the immediate world,” I said.
“Which means this won’t be an easy homicide to solve.”
“Are they ever easy?” I asked.
“They can be,” he replied. “Back in my Baltimore homicide days, so many of them were either drug- or gang-related. You knew who the players were and what beefs they all had with each other. Half the time you had confidential informants who were happy to curry favor by spilling everything they knew, and it wasn’t hard to figure out who did it. Between those and the domestics, a lot of them were easy. This won’t be.”
I nodded. I could see what he meant. He had a hotel full of people who were mostly respectable, law-abiding citizens with a greater than average interest in crime. This was going to be tough.
“But maybe we’ll get lucky.” He deliberately replaced his frown with an expression of intent interest. “Fill me in.”
“Okay—here goes.”
I gave him everything I could remember about the Gadfly’s clashes with Ezekiel Blaine, Amber Smith, Ginny and Janet, the redheads, Festus, Grandfather, Cordelia, and at least half of the hotel staff and conference volunteers. And I worked in the Gadfly’s real name a couple of times, both so the chief could learn it and so I felt more comfortable pronouncing it myself.
“An equal opportunity jerk,” the chief said when I’d finished.
“Maybe we’re looking at a real-life replay of Murder on the Orient Express,” I said, only half joking.
“I think if a crowd of Mr. Norton’s detractors had convened behind your barn to do him in, you’d probably have noticed.”
Someone knocked on the library door.
“Come in,” the chief called.
Cordelia entered.
“I’m heading over to the Inn now,” she said. “Obviously your investigation takes priority, but I’d like to do what I can to keep my conference on track. And you’re not the only scheduled speaker who’s going to be pretty busy with this investigation.”
“Horace, Dad, and Kevin, for sure,” I said.
“I’ve already arranged with Ekaterina to make a meeting room available for you to use if you want to interview people at the hotel,” Cordelia went on. “I expect most of the people you’ll be wanting to talk to will be there, so it will be a lot more efficient than ferrying them out here or even down to your station.”
“And it will minimize the interruptions to your conference.” The chief had a twinkle in his eye. “That does sound like an excellent idea.”
“Chief?” Michael had appeared in the doorway between the library and the sun porch. “Horace and Meg’s dad say they’re finished with the body, and do you want to see it—him—one last time before the ambulance takes him away?”
“I probably should. Thanks.”
Michael nodded and ducked out again. The chief stood and began struggling back into his wraps.
“I’ll see you over at the Inn,” he said to Cordelia, who nodded and strode out. “I’m sure with the dining room occupied, you’ll want the library back sooner rather than later,” he added to me.
“No rush,” I said. “We’re not having any big gatherings this year—not here at the house, anyway.”
“Good to know,” he said. “I’ll stay till I’ve interviewed Rose Noire and anyone else who might have seen anything here, and I’ll let you know when I leave for the Inn. Or will you be heading over there to do whatever Cordelia has on your plate?”
“I have no assigned responsibilities at the conference,” I said. “In fact, the main job Cordelia gave me was to help keep Norton in line, but whoever did him in just took care of that. Unfortunately,” I added, in case it sounded as if I was happy about his death.
“Alas,” he said, before striding out through the sunroom.
Michael returned.
“Of all days for something like this to happen,” he said.
“Christmas day would be worse,” I said. “Or Christmas eve.”
“True,” he said. “But are you still okay with me going up to Dulles to deal with Mom?”
“I’m fine with it,” I said—although in truth I’d forgotten all about it in this morning’s excitement. The last couple of years, Michael’s mother had grown fond of taking a Christmas cruise, then joining us for a belated holiday celebration sometime in January. This year she was sailing out of Baltimore but hadn’t found any cheap flights from Newport News to BWI. So she’d recruited Michael to pick her up at Dulles, take her to lunch, spend some time with her, and then deliver her to the Baltimore Harbor in time for her boarding. Michael had actually been looking forward to having a brief get-together with his mother—and also to whiling away the several hours of driving with a new audiobook.
“And don’t forget, you’ll be picking up Delaney’s mother while you’re up there,” I added. “Give your mom my love and tell her we’re looking forward to seeing her for New Year’s.”
“You’re sure?”
“Just try to make it back for the concert,” I said. “And the fireworks, of course.”
“Keep me posted on what’s happening here,” he said. And then, after a quick farewell kiss, he hurried off.
I glanced at the craftsman-styled clock that sat on a nearby shelf. Nearly nine o’clock. Only nine o’clock. It had only been around two hours since Rose Noire’s screams had awakened me, but it already felt like a day and a half.
And I should check on Rose Noire. And Delaney. And maybe even Rob.