Trick or Treachery (17 page)

“Tony Scott’s invention?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he failed to come up with a working formula.”

“That’s what everyone says, Richard, but I’m just curious—the writer in me.”

“Well, let’s take a look.”

It took a minute for him to bring up the information I sought.

“That’s interesting,” he said.

“Yes, isn’t it? Can you print it out for me?”

“Sure thing. I suppose this means Tony did perfect the formula and had it patented in the company’s name.”

“Not necessarily,” I said.

“Why not?”

As the pages slowly emerged from his printer, I said, “First, Richard, according to this, the application for a patent on BarrierCloth wasn’t filed in the name of Marshall-Scott Clothing. Look. It’s been filed by another company, Nutmeg Associates, Inc.”

“Must be a subsidiary of Marshall-Scott Clothing. They have a couple of them, I know, because I did some photography for one of them earlier this year.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “But as for Tony Scott having perfected the formula, there’s nothing to say that the formula submitted to the Patent and Trademark Office actually works. Here, look at this note on the status of the patent:

“Wasn’t flammability always the problem?”

“As far as I know. I wonder how the tests came out.”

“Assuming they’ve been completed,” Richard said, chewing his cheek. “Mind if I ask you a question, Jess?”

“Of course not.”

“Obviously, your interest is more than simply being a murder mystery writer. What are you really looking for?”

“I wish I knew, Richard.” I took another close look at the printout in my hands. “Do you see the date that this patent was applied for?”

“November sixteenth, a year ago. It says it’ll probably be another year, especially with those tests going on in Vermont. These government agencies move slow as molasses.”

“November sixteenth, a couple of weeks after Tony Scott died in that tragic fire. Richard, you’re a doll.”

“Glad to help, but I wish I knew where this was leading you, Jess.”

“I do, too, but if I ever figure it out, you’ll be among the first to know.”

“Good morning,” I said to Beth Mullin as I entered Olde Tyme Floral, in the center of town.

“Hello, Jessica. Out for a constitutional?”

“You might say that.”

Beth’s husband, Peter, called a greeting from the rear of the shop, where he was preparing a floral delivery. I waved back.

“Is Joe Turco upstairs?” I asked, referring to the young attorney who’d taken on Lucas Tremaine as a client.

“I think so. Saw him come in about an hour ago.”

“Well, think I’ll pop up and see if he—”

I was saved a trip upstairs when Turco burst through the door to the flower shop, cradling a bundle of papers, and looking very much like someone in a hurry.

“I was just coming up to see you,” I said.

“Have to be another time, Jessica. I’m off to a meeting with everyone’s favorite person and my most recent client.”

“You really are representing Tremaine?” Peter Mullin asked, coming from the back room to join the conversation.

Turco shook his head and exhaled loudly. “Yes, I am representing Lucas Tremaine because . . . because he needs a lawyer and I happen to be a lawyer, who, I might add, believes that everyone deserves legal representation when they’re in trouble with the law, especially somebody like Tremaine who’s being persecuted for being different and controversial.”

“Is he in trouble with the law?” Beth asked. “Is he the prime suspect in the murder of that woman out at Paul Marshall’s place?”

“He’s a suspect,” Turco said, “like everyone else who was at the party. Look, I’d love to discuss this with you, but I’m already late for my meeting. I need some flowers sent to my sister in New York. Her birthday today.” He handed Beth a business card; he’d written his sister’s name, address and phone number on the back. “A nice colorful arrangement,” he said. “Keep it under fifty bucks, okay? I’ll pay you when I get back.”

I followed him past the door to the street. “Joe, a quick question.”

“Huh? Sure. What?”

“Have you heard of a corporation called Nutmeg Associates?”

“No. Why?”

“I was thinking of buying stock in it. I think it’s a subsidiary of Marshall-Scott Clothing.”

He shrugged. “Never heard of it, but I’ll check some sources when I get back.”

“That’s great, Joe. Thanks.”

During my brief conversation with Joe Turco, Brenda Brody,
Cabot Cove Magazine
’s copy editor, entered Olde Tyme Floral. I followed her inside.

“ ’Morning, Brenda,” I said.

She looked at me with what I can only label an angry expression.

“How are things at the magazine?” I asked.

“Just fine,” she replied. She placed an order with Beth for two bouquets of flowers to be delivered later that day to Lucas Tremaine’s building on the old quarry road.

“Special occasion?” I asked.

“Our weekly meeting, calling to the spirits. Lucas likes to have flowers at the séance.”

“Oh? Sounds like a good idea,” I said.

Brenda, a short, compact woman with red hair and very thick glasses, completed her transaction and turned to leave. She reached the door, stopped, faced me and said, “You know, Jessica, for a writer you’re a very close-minded woman.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” I said.

“I suppose because you’re very successful and famous, you feel justified in dismissing what you don’t understand.”

“Such as Lucas Tremaine’s activities?”

“Exactly. Being skeptical, even scornful of what he does when you don’t even
know
what he does strikes me as prejudiced—something I’d never known you to be.”

“Maybe you’re right, Brenda. I don’t know what Mr. Tremaine does.”

“
Dr.
Tremaine.”

“I didn’t realize he had a doctoral degree. It just seems to me that paying money to be put in touch with a departed loved one doesn’t—” I shook my head. “Well, I have to admit, it doesn’t make any sense to me.” She started to respond, but I held up a hand. “Then again,” I said, “I’ve never attended a séance, so I agree with you. I shouldn’t be scornful of something I don’t know about.”

“That’s nice to hear,” she said.

“What happens at one of his séances, Brenda? Educate me.”

“Are you really interested in knowing?”

“I wasn’t until we started talking. But, as you say, if I’m going to judge Mr. Tremaine—Dr. Tremaine—I should know what I’m talking about.”

Brenda started to explain, step-by-step, what happens at a séance, but stopped after a minute and said, “I have a better idea. Why don’t you come with me tonight?”

“Come with you? Me? Go to a séance?”

“Yes. That way you can see for yourself.”

“I don’t know, Brenda, I—”

“Lucas could try to put you in touch with Frank.”

The mention of my deceased husband stung for a moment, particularly in the context of trying to communicate with him through the mumbo jumbo of a séance conducted by a charlatan. But two things immediately crossed my mind. I had wanted to learn more about Lucas Tremaine in connection with Matilda Swift’s murder—and I did not want to continue being known as someone who’s critical of others without actually knowing what they do, and how they do it.

“All right,” I said. “What time?”

“Nine. Want me to pick you up?”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said. “I don’t drive, as you know.”

“You really should learn, Jessica,” Brenda said.

I smiled. “You’re right about that, Brenda. One of these days.”

“I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty,” she said.

“And I’ll be waiting.”

When she was gone, Beth Mullin looked up from an arrangement she was creating and said, “You’re really going to a Lucas Tremaine séance, Jess?”

“Looks like it.”

“Never thought I’d see that,” she said, artistically placing gorgeous pink roses into the arrangement.

“I never thought I would, either. Next thing you know, I’ll be learning to drive a car.”

From a distance, the old roadhouse looked dark when Brenda and I drove down the old quarry road that evening. But as we neared the dilapidated building, I could detect the flicker of candlelight through a downstairs window. A half dozen cars were pulled up onto the property, parked in haphazard fashion on the mostly dirt lawn, as if their drivers had been too rushed to consider parking in neat rows. I wasn’t even sure all of the cars were functional; some may have belonged to the previous owners of the building and been left to rust as a grim reflection of the aging structure.

Brenda found a vacant area away from the other vehicles and shut off the engine. She lowered her head for a moment, as if in prayer, then looked at me. “Are you ready?” she whispered.

“Yes, but why are you whispering?”

“Lucas likes us to spend some quiet time before we come in. If we’re peaceful and quiet, our souls will be open to the spirits around us. He says loud noise discourages them.”

As we and others exited our vehicles, the thuds of car doors being closed filled the night, and I wondered if we were chasing away the spirits before we even started.

I looked up into the black sky, the scrim for a full moon and millions of stars. We have spectacular night skies in Maine, crystal clear and often startling in intensity. I was glad for the light the moon generated. Without it, we would have been shrouded in darkness as we approached the front of the crumbling building, the candle in the window the only illumination.

Brenda opened the front door, exposing a small anteroom. On a table on the wall opposite the door was a large glass globe containing a blue bulb that washed the wall with azure light. The odor of incense reached me as I went up three rickety wooden steps and entered the anteroom. Other than the faint dissonant tinkling of wind chimes, there was silence inside the building—until a gust of wind slammed the door shut behind me. Brenda, myself and two others who’d just come in jumped at the sudden loud sound.

I leaned to Brenda’s ear. “What do we do now? Where do we go?”

She answered by nodding in the direction of a pair of large double doors to our right. I followed her as she opened one and we stepped through. We were now in a larger room lighted by candles in wall sconces high on either side. As my eyes acclimated to the dimness, I saw that we were in a chapel of sorts. A makeshift altar on which two candles burned brightly took up the far end. The smell of incense was strong. I looked for pews; there weren’t any. Instead, the middle of the room had a large round table surrounded by a dozen chairs, some already occupied.

Brenda seemed transfixed by the very act of being there. “Brenda,” I said.

She snapped out of her reverie and looked at me as though I were a stranger.

“Should we sit down?” I asked in a whisper.

“Yes,” she answered.

We took two vacant chairs at a side of the table that had us facing the altar. Others at the table had their heads bowed, their hands flat on the tabletop. I saw Brenda assume that position, and I did the same. With my eyes closed, and the tinkling of the wind chimes the only sound, a lovely calm came over me, as though my brain had been emptied of all clutter, leaving it free to dwell only on tranquil thoughts, pleasant thoughts, light and airy images of blue skies, green pastures and colorful birds in flight.

But that reverie was interrupted by a pin-spot that suddenly came to life from above the table, bathing its center in white light. Then a man’s voice said, “Good evening.”

Lucas Tremaine walked slowly toward us from the direction of the altar, his figure silhouetted against the candlelight there. He wore some sort of billowing gown that fluttered behind him as he approached. When he reached the table, I could see that his gown, more a cape actually, was purple, and covered him from neck to ankle.

“Good evening, Dr. Tremaine,” his supplicants said reverentially, and in unison, the effect of their combined monodic voices like a Gregorian chant.

Eleven of the twelve chairs were occupied. Before taking the remaining empty one, a large red leather chair with a high back, Tremaine placed in the center of the table an object he was carrying. It looked to me like a crystal ball of the sort fictional fortune-tellers seem always to have in front of them. The overhead pin-spot caught its glossy surface, and was reflected back in myriad colors that moved and made the luminous orb seem alive.

“I’d like to welcome a newcomer to our group, Jessica Fletcher. I’m sure most of you know her as a famous writer of murder mysteries.”

Those at the table glanced at me but said nothing. I didn’t know whether he’d recognized me when he arrived at the table, or if Brenda had alerted him earlier that I’d be there. Either way, I hadn’t a clue whether it was appropriate at a séance to respond, so I said nothing, nor did Tremaine seem to expect a response. He sat back and closed his eyes; his lips trembled, or he might have been chanting things to himself, his mouth silently forming the words. He opened his eyes, took in each of us at the table, then asked, “Who wishes to speak with a loved one who has crossed the divide into the next dimension?”

People shifted in their seats; were they being polite and waiting for others to go first, or were they unsure whether they wanted to jump over the “divide,” as Tremaine called it?

Finally, Brenda Brody spoke: “I want to speak with Russell,” she said, her voice quivering. “I need to hear from him whether he was ever unfaithful to me. There were rumors that still keep me awake at night, torture me every day. I want to ask him directly so I can find some peace.”