Sean said, “Once I got locked up for a murder you did, you mean. You weren’t gonna share that money with Grandma. You were gonna disappear. That was your bug-out cash.”
“I swear, Mom,” Carter whined. “I was gonna pay you back and then some. I still will if I can somehow get out of this.” He cut his eyes toward Martin and me. The hairs on my nape stood up and shook their little fists at him.
“Where’s that money now?” Sean asked.
“Lose the knife and we can talk about it,” Carter said.
His son’s response was to nick him again, this time hard enough to produce a tiny bead of blood. Carter sucked in a breath, but his obdurate expression said he had no intention of revealing the location of the cash.
I kept surreptitiously glancing outside, hoping to spy a cop or two, hoping one of the neighbors had heard Carter’s screams and called 911. Barring immediate rescue, I figured our best bet was to try and keep the three generations of Morettis talking as long as possible.
“Answer my question,” Sean said. “How’d Mom end up dead?”
“Remember Thanksgiving?” Carter asked. “How mean she was to me? How she ran me down in front of all the relatives?”
Sean cackled. “That was awesome. One thing about Mom, she really knew how to stick it to someone.”
Audrey sat up straight. “Well, that particular someone was your father. She should’ve shown more respect.”
“News flash, Grandma,” Sean said. “This loser’s not my father. And if he was any kind of real man, he’d never have let his woman run around on him.”
Said the young man who was cheating with his girlfriend’s bestie. I sensed a double standard at work here. And no, I did not point that out, much as I was itching to.
“Okay, so anyway,” Carter said, “I was really steamed, and I took Peaches aside before dessert and told her she better start paying me support, and keep paying me, or I was gonna tell everybody about the prostitution and blackmail. Including the cops.”
In other words, he’d decided to blackmail the shrewd, experienced blackmailer who had at least thirty IQ points on him. What could possibly go wrong?
“Lemme guess,” Sean said. “She laughed in your face.”
“Yeah, she did,” he said, “at first. But then when she’s getting ready to leave, she takes me out to the back porch and says the only reason she was so bitchy was ’cause she’s been missing me so much, and my threat was the ‘wake-up call’ she needed to get her head on straight. She tells me she’s sorry for everything and wants me back.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this at the time?” Audrey asked.
“Because Peaches said not to. She wanted her and me to do something first, something romantic that we did just once, years ago when we were first dating. She wanted us to meet in the Historical Society attic the next night and, um, you know... ‘rekindle the magic.’”
“Gross, dude,” Sean said.
“But it has to be like the first time, she says. Totally secret. No one can know, no one can see us go in. She told me to meet her at the building at two a.m., and exactly where to park my car—a few blocks away behind a vacant store. Also she made me promise to wear a disguise, just in case anyone saw me. You know, fake mustache, hat, glasses.”
Sean snorted in derision. “Dork.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t do it,” he said. “And I caught hell from Peaches for that, but I couldn’t see the point. I mean, it was two a.m. in the morning, for crying out loud. Why all the sneaking around? We weren’t kids anymore. Well, except that we were kind of breaking into the building in the middle of the night.”
Martin spoke up. “How did you get in?”
“Peaches’s mom used to be president of the Historical Society,” he said. “When Peaches was a teenager, she snuck off with the keys and made copies. Mrs. Gillespey never knew.”
I said, “Did Peaches wear a disguise that night?”
“Yeah, she had on these sunglasses,” he said, meaning the ones that had fallen from her purse onto his chest. “I mean, sunglasses in the middle of the night? ’Cause there’s nothing weird about that, right? And a blonde wig.”
“A wig!” Audrey stabbed a finger toward her son. “You never told me about any wig. You were supposed to take everything of hers out of that attic, in case it could lead the authorities to you. You didn’t think that included a disguise?”
“I panicked and forgot about the wig, all right?” he said.
“Just like you panicked and forgot to take the bottle of soda with you,” she said.
“It rolled onto the floor. Come on, Mom, it was disgusting up there. And dark. What did you want me to do, get down on my hands and knees and grope around for it?”
“Yes! Yes, you should have gotten down on your hands and knees and found the darn thing. I suppose I should be grateful you at least told me about it, so when the detectives asked if we drink black cherry soda, I knew to say no, and to make sure you did the same.” She scowled at me. “So that’s why you were asking about a wig, Jane. Because when you found Peaches, she was wearing one.”
What could I do except nod and say, “That’s right, Audrey. I didn’t realize it was a, um, disguise.”
“Once we got inside the building,” Carter said, “I told Peaches she should go ahead and take off the wig, but she said she wanted to leave it on. Fine with me. I figured it was some kind of kinky sex thing.”
“Dude!” Sean barked.
So it was okay for him to call his mom a slut, but any suggestion that his parents had a sex life was gross. Got it.
“Sorry,” Carter said. “Anyway, I wanted our date to be real romantic, so I brought all this stuff with me. Champagne, scented candles, chocolate-dipped strawberries. Peaches always liked fancy stuff like that. I was thinking it was gonna be magical, a new beginning, like she said. But I gotta tell you, the place was just plain nasty. Not even a decent place to sit, much less, well...”
I thought of the two rusted iron bedsteads I’d seen up there, with their filthy bedding. I suspected that attic had been just as grotty a quarter century earlier, but back then, Peaches and Carter had been a couple of horny kids barely out of their teens, living with their parents, and willing to put up with a lot for the sake of privacy.
“There was this plug-in radiator up there,” he added, “and I turned that on because I was freezing my— I was really cold.”
I said, “I’m guessing that when you left the attic, you forgot to turn it off.”
Carter started to nod until the presence of the knife blade reminded him that wasn’t a good idea. “Didn’t realize it until they said Peaches got all, you know, mummified. Because of the dry heat.”
“It was a blessing in disguise,” Audrey said, “him leaving that radiator on. I was thinking that after a week or so, she was going to start to stink, and if it was noticeable in the rest of the building, then someone would go up there to investigate. But Carter’s forgetfulness paid off, for once. It bought some time, anyway. Not that it made any difference in the long run.”
I didn’t like the way she was looking at Martin and me, and wondered if there might be a gun somewhere in the house. That was Grandpa Gillespey’s hunting knife Sean was threatening his dad with, so it was possible the old man had kept a rifle or shotgun in the house. For that matter, I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that Peaches herself had owned a weapon.
I decided in that instant that if Audrey left the room for any reason, we’d hightail it out of there, call 911, and hope Sean’s self-protective instinct would override his desire for revenge. After all, killing his father in cold blood would result in an extended, possibly permanent, return to the slammer.
Feline growls and hisses drew my attention to the dining room entrance, where five cats now laid claim to the puddle of clam chowder.
Martin said, “So, Carter, you brought the champagne and all that, but who brought the black cherry soda?”
“Peaches,” he said. “
Who do you think? I was happy at first, you know, that she cared enough to bring my favorite drink. She insisted on popping the cap for me. Later I realized she did that so I wouldn’t notice the cap was a little loose.”
“Because she’d already opened it?” the padre said.
“Yeah. So she could add her extra-special secret ingredient.” Carter groped at his side for the empty sample pack of Zenaproche, which he wagged. “She must’ve dissolved all of these in that bottle. Probably figured the soda would kill the taste. She figured wrong. I took one sip and said jeez, must be a bad batch. She said, nah, nah, try a little more, I’ll bet it’s this musty old place messing with your taste buds. Then she pretended to take a sip and said it tasted fine to her.”
“Where did Peaches get the Zenaproche?” I asked.
“From Evie,” he said. “That’s her job, hawking drugs to doctors so they’ll prescribe them. She gave some samples of those pills to her mom, hoping they’d, you know, calm her down. Worked like a charm, huh?”
“I’ve, like, begged Evie for samples,” Sean griped. “But would she ever?”
“So what happened then?” Martin asked. “After you realized something was wrong with the soda?”
“Well, we argued about it, ’cause she just wouldn’t let it go, you know? You’re being silly, she says, drink the damn soda. I go, you’re so sure nothing’s wrong with it, drink it yourself. Only, when I tip the bottle to her mouth, she blocks it with her hand and I lose my grip and it rolls into a corner.”
“Peaches couldn’t have been happy about that,” I said.
“She says, you idiot, I went to all that trouble, and for what. You went to all that trouble? I say. Who brought the champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries? Which, by the way, she never touched. I’m just saying.”
“Like it would kill her to eat one strawberry,” Audrey said. With no irony whatsoever.
“So I’m ready to book it out of there,” Carter said, “but I just can’t get over how weird Peaches is acting, even for her. I mean, that she even thought a date in that disgusting place would be a good idea. And then her freak-out over the soda. It began to dawn on me that something wasn’t right.”
Oh, now it began to dawn on you, I thought. “So what did you do?”
“I grabbed her purse and looked inside,” he said.
“She must have tried to stop you,” I said.
“Sure, for all the good it did her. I might not be playing football for Fordham anymore, but there’s still plenty of muscle under here.” He patted his soft midsection.
“What did you find in her purse?” Martin asked.
“The stuff you see here, basically. The empty pill pack, the rope, and, uh, this knife. Son, do you think you could just ease up—” He broke off as Sean did the opposite of easing up. “No? Okay, doesn’t hurt to ask, right?”
“So her plan was to do what?” I said. “Sedate you so you couldn’t fight back and then...?”
Audrey said, “Isn’t it obvious? She was going to tie him up and then stab him or slit his throat or something. To keep him from squealing to the cops about her blackmail scheme. Not that I knew anything about the blackmail until tonight. All Carter told me was that Peaches went nuts and tried to kill him for no reason.”
“Once I found her, you know, murder supplies,” Carter said, “she really did go nuts. Tried to grab the knife and stab me. But like I said, she was no match for me, physically. Which is how come she tried to get me to drink that soda with the Zeenapoche... Zennapooch...”
“Zenaproche,” Martin said.
“Yeah, that stuff,” Carter said. “The names they give these drugs, jeez. So at that point, all I want is to get out of there, but she’s fighting like crazy to keep me from leaving.”
Sean said, “She knew you’d go straight to the cops about the blackmail.”
“I wouldn’t have, though,” Carter said. “I was bluffing the whole time. I mean, I was involved too deep in that scheme for too many years. If I’d turned her in, I’d have gone down right along with her.”
Not necessarily, I thought. If he had a good lawyer—the well-favored Carlos Levine, Esquire, sprang to mind—then perhaps Carter’s cooperation with the authorities could have resulted in a favorable plea deal on the bribery charges.
“Peaches was totally out of control,” he continued. “Punching, kicking. She even picked up this old fireplace poker and went after me with that.”
Martin and I exchanged a look. He’d used that same poker to lift Peaches’s wig when we’d thought it was a small, elegantly coiffed animal perched on her face.
“Finally I managed to get her onto this chair,” he said, “and tie her to it with the rope she brought. All I wanted was for her to calm down enough to listen to me, so I could tell her I wasn’t really gonna turn her in. But she never backed down. There she is, tied up, completely helpless, and she’s slicing me to ribbons with that nasty mouth of hers. Going on about how stupid I am, how gullible, how I’m not a real man. It was ten times worse than at Thanksgiving.”
“Ouch,” Sean said.
“Peaches always knew how to push my buttons,” Carter said, “and boy, did she push them that night. I felt myself losing control, but she never let up for a second, wouldn’t give me even that long to catch my breath. She was wearing this silk scarf around her neck, and I tried to push the material into her mouth. Like a gag, you know? She bit my hand. Hard.”
Even knowing where this story was heading, Sean snickered. I’d never hated him more.
“Before I knew what was happening,” Carter continued, “I was twisting that scarf tight around her neck, just trying to get her to shut up.” He paused, his chest pumping as if he’d run the hundred-yard dash. “It was her fault. You see that, right? She tried to kill me, and then, then she just would not shut up.”
No one spoke for a full minute. We all just sat there avoiding one another’s eyes. Finally I said, “Audrey, how did you get involved?”
“Well, Carter called me from the attic,” she said, “in a panic. He told me what happened. Not all the details, mind you, but the gist.”
“You must have been shocked,” I said.
“In a way,” she said, “I was half expecting something terrible to happen. If you’d known Peaches, you’d understand. I’m not saying I’m glad she’s dead, but I’m grateful things didn’t go her way.”
“What did you do when he called you?” I asked. “I know you told him not to leave anything up there that she brought with her.”
Audrey nodded. “And to wipe the place down for fingerprints. Also to search her pockets for anything that could lead the authorities to him. We checked Peaches’s garage and saw that her car was there. I assume she walked to the Historical Society—it’s about two and a half, three miles from here. A taxi would have been too risky, considering what she had planned. I made Carter stay home and out of sight for a couple of weeks until his bruises healed.”
I recalled Lee Romano’s words from her TV show that evening. Her killer would have walked away bruised and scratched, at the very least. She was right.
Martin said, “What I want to know is, why did you leave Peaches in the attic? Why not move the body to some remote location? Bury it in the woods or something?”
“That sounds good in theory,” Audrey said, “but when you think about it, there were too many risks involved, too many places where trace evidence could be shed. With the sophisticated forensic tools the police have? It would have been like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs from that attic all the way to the disposal site.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re a fan of those true-crime shows.”
“Well, they’re certainly a lot more entertaining and educational than most of the garbage that’s on TV nowadays,” she said. “And as for leaving Peaches in a remote location, that attic kind of fit the bill. No one ever went up there, and since her body didn’t decompose in the usual way, who knows how long she would have remained undiscovere
d? If you two hadn’t gone up there for your own little romantic getaway—”
“It wasn’t like that,” I said. “We were just looking for a quiet place to... Aw, forget it.”
“Peaches chose that attic because she knew how isolated it was,” Audrey said. She took pains to make sure no one saw either of them enter the building. And obviously she planned to leave Carter’s body up there. She certainly couldn’t have moved him by herself.”
“So her plan worked,” Martin said, “only, not in the way she envisioned.”
Without warning, Sexy Beast gave a sharp, imperious bark and catapulted himself off my lap, bounding gazelle-like over the fallen yucca tree trunk and across Carter’s supine form.
SB’s abrupt flight startled everyone, including Sean, who jerked backward and watched the small dog sprint toward the dining room entrance.
It was all the invitation Martin needed. He sprang off the bench, leaping over the yucca obstacle course to tackle Sean. The young man howled in pain as the padre slammed his knife hand into the stone floor, dislodging his grip on the weapon. Within seconds, he’d flipped Sean onto his stomach and secured his wrists with the yellow rope.
Audrey started to rise, until Martin snarled, “Sit down!” After a moment’s hesitation, she obeyed, her expression resigned. Carter didn’t even attempt to sit up but simply lay there, weak with relief. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called 911.
As for Sexy Beast, some affronts were simply too much to bear. He’d tolerated the chowder-loving cats, just barely, but his patience had its limits. And those limits were currently being tested by the biggest raccoon I’d ever seen. We’re talking forty pounds, easy.
The cats appeared well acquainted with this hefty fellow, who’d no doubt spent the winter bulking up on the cat food Audrey had been putting out, not to mention the odd half-eaten sandwich and bowl of cereal Sean had left lying around. The felines ate alongside the masked bandit, paying it no mind as it selected the choicest morsels of clam and potato, shoving each tidbit into its mouth with its delicate little hands and chewing with loud smacking noises.
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