A Groom wirh a View

the floor in a heap.
    Mel sent Jane to guard the front door and make sure no one left.
    “Is he dead?“ she whispered.
    “Very. “
    The guests were babbling hysterically. Several grabbed at Jane as she passed through the crowd around the door.
    “What’s happened?”
    “Who was screaming?“ they asked.
    “There’s been an accident,“ she said loudly, her voice shaking. “Keep the doorway clear. Don’t anybody leave.“ She had to pluck several hands off her sleeve to get away.
    She could already hear sirens when she reached the door. Iva Thatcher had followed Jane and said, in a frail, trembling voice, “It’s not Livvy, is it?”
    Jane gave Iva a quick hug. “No, no. It’s not Livvy. It’s Dwayne. I’m afraid he’s dead.”
    “Dead! How?”
    Jane didn’t want Iva starting a riot of rumor. “I don’t know,“ Jane lied.
    Two police cars and an ambulance pulled up as well as a beat-to-hell green Plymouth. A very short, tough-looking elderly man got out of the car. Jane guessed it was Gus Ambler, the old sheriff Mel had gotten the background on the Thatchers from.
    “Where is the victim?“ John Smith asked.
    Jane pointed the way and stood aside as he and the ambulance attendants rushed past. The old man was last and puffing with the effort to hurry.
    “I’m with the police,“ he said gruffly.
    “I thought so,“ Jane said, letting him pass. She couldn’t have stopped his headlong rhinoceros progress if she’d tried.
    She closed the door and leaned back against it with her eyes closed. If she’d had her car keys in her possession at that moment, she might well have grabbed Shelley and staggered to her rusty, familiar station wagon and driven away.

Twenty

    It was the longest afternoon and evening of Jane’s life.
    The Thatcher family and everybody else who had been known to be in the lodge when Mrs. Crossthwait died had been told in no uncertain terms that they had to stay until the next day. It went far beyond mere coincidence that two murders should occur within the same group of people without there being a connection. Jane and Shelley took their turns at calling home and explaining that they would be delayed another day. Jane didn’t elaborate to her mother-in-law why this was. She just let her think it was to finish off all the loose ends.
    She overheard Layla on the phone a few minutes later, sobbing to her husband that she wanted to come home to him and the babies. Shortly after Layla’s call, she spotted Eden on the phone, talking very quietly and intensely, funneling her words into the mouthpiece with her hand so as to not be overheard.
    Everyone present had to be questioned. The guests were all upset and some of them wasted a lot of time being indignant and rude out of sheer fright and the desire to get away. The off-duty police officers were called in and the county sheriff’s office sent a scene-of-the-crime unit.
    Mrs. Hessling was too grief-stricken to even speak coherently and Errol begged the police to let her go back to the motel. The coroner, who was also the local doctor, had shown up and supported the idea, even supplying Errol with a mild sedative to give her.
    Surprisingly, Iva got involved. “You must stay with your brother’s... body,“ she told Errol. “It isn’t decent to leave him with strangers. I’ll take your mother back and keep an eye on her while my sister watches over Livvy.”
    Mr. Willis and Larkspur both attempted to escape on the grounds that they had business scheduled for the next day, but were told it was too bad and they better get in touch with their assistants or partners and instruct them to take over. They did so with very bad grace.
    The guests were all given paper and pencils and asked to write down everything they’d seen and heard, no matter how trivial, from the moment the photographer took the group picture until Kitty had started screaming.
    Most of them had only the vaguest recollection of what they’d noticed. A few admitted they’d had too much champagne to remember much. Some wrote virtual tomes of “he said and then I said.“ Each had to give his or her written report to one of the off-duty officers, who read them, asked additional questions about times and locations, and made a red check mark at the top of the first page. This was what Jane, feeling very much like a prison guard, had to collect before people were allowed to leave in twos and threes.
    Between departures, she skimmed through the reports and decided