“Sure.” Kim looked confused, but she moved aside.
Nora walked in through the glamorous living room and towards the mantelpiece. She stopped and looked up at the portrait photo of Kim and Perry. Her eyes paused on Perry’s cheeks, smooth and unlined.
“What’s the matter?” Kim asked.
“Nothing,” Nora said. “I was just thinking that wounds heal…sometimes. Like if a man is scratched by a woman on his cheek —time may eventually heal that, leaving not a single trace behind.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No. Of course, you don’t,” Nora said. “Matt Whitman was arrested thirty years ago, did you know that?”
“So what?” Kim looked confused. “What does that have to do with Perry?”
“It was a bar fight,” Nora said. “I thought that proved he was unstable, But Harvey pointed out that everyone does stupid things when they’re young.”
“O…kay?” Kim frowned.
“The thing is,” Nora said. “When you get into bar fights and you get arrested, they take your fingerprints. They also take a sample of your DNA.”
“Right? So?”
“So Matt Whitman was arrested about thirty years ago. Twenty years ago, the police obtained The Silver Strangler’s DNA, thanks to Patricia Halsey. They ran it through the system but it didn’t match anyone. Which means Matt Whitman is not The Silver Strangler. The Silver Strangler is someone who’s never been arrested.”
“The who? What’s a silver strangler anyway?”
“Oh, just a serial killer who was active in Wyoming twenty years ago,” Nora explained. “As a matter of fact, Zoey had a run-in with him. She escaped, luckily. All she remembered about the man who attacked her was his jacket. A silver jacket. The Strangler mysteriously stopped killing right around then. Nobody’s heard of him since.”
“OK… maybe he died,” Kim said.
“Maybe,” Nora said. “But sometimes, sometimes, when a serial killer gets married, he stops killing. It’s true, you know. Unbelievable, but true. It’s a pattern the FBI has observed in more than one killer. Of course, it doesn’t last forever. Sure, ten, twenty, thirty years can go by. But that lust to kill never goes away, really. It awakens at the oddest moments.”
“Nora, if you have a point, please get to it,” Kim said.
“You and Perry got married twenty years ago,” Nora said. “Right when The Strangler stopped his killings.”
“I don’t like what you’re implying,” Kim said, her face turning red.
“Alright,” Nora said. “Zoey was cleaning your attic that Saturday, wasn’t she? The day before she died?”
“So what if she was?”
“She found a jacket,” Nora said. “She found a silver jacket. Only, twenty years had gone by, and she wasn’t sure if it was the jacket, or if she was just being stupid. She packed up the jacket and planned to send it to her friend Patricia Halsey, the other witness. But at 7pm on a Saturday, the post office was closed. So, Zoey thought she’d confide in me, but that didn’t work either. You see, she saw Perry at my surprise party and, terrified, she left.
“No,” Kim said. “No.”
“Yes,” Nora said. “Perry is The Silver Strangler, Kim. I’m sure of it. He killed all those women, all those years ago.”
“No!” Kim broke down sobbing, tears creasing down her cheeks.
“That cologne you got him, that’s what finally clued me in,” Nora explained. “Mysore Rajah. A discontinued scent. A scent that Perry didn’t wear for twenty years. Deputy James said that Perry was smelling like a forest earlier today and he was right. Perry was smelling like a sandalwood forest. Mysore is famous for sandalwood. And Patricia Halsey’s one memory of The Silver Strangler is an overpowering scent of sandalwood.”
Kim could only shake her head in disbelief.
“For so long, I was so sure that it was Matt that I was blind to the obvious. It was your house Zoey was at that day. She found something here that freaked her out. She found the jacket,” Nora said. “She realized then that Perry might be hiding his true nature under a mask. She was right.”
“It’s not true,” Kim said. “Perry didn’t kill Zoey! He didn’t!”
“True. Perry didn’t kill Zoey, did he?” Nora asked. “No. Poisoning wasn’t his style. That was yours.”
“I—”
“You knew about the doll’s eyes plants, too.” Nora said. “You had access to them.”
“I—”
“It struck me earlier today, when my daughter told me I’m not half as sneaky as I like to think I am. That day in your study, you imagined you heard a knock on the door and conveniently left me alone to snoop.”
A faint smile touched Kim’s lips.
“It’s true, isn’t it? You were so desperate to pin the crime on someone else. First Matt, then Brock. Either would do. First, you showed me Zoey’s will. It was a happy accident that you and Perry happened to be the witnesses. So, when you killed Zoey, your first plan was to accuse Brock. You knew he’d get accused because of the money trail. And, of course, you could have told me anything that Zoey might have said to you about him or the will or Matt and I’d have no reason not to believe it. So, you tried to plant the idea that Brock did it when you first came to the diner to see me, only it didn’t work. Once I met Brock, I knew he was innocent. So then you placed a note in Perry’s drawer that proved Matt had access to doll’s eyes and, therefore, to white baneberries. You deliberately planted that note there, hoping I’d make the connection. Only, silly me, I took ages to do it. I didn’t make that connection until earlier today.”
“Because you’re an idiot, Nora!” Kim exclaimed. “You’re an idiot and a pain in my side. Always snooping, always in everybody’s business. You nearly ruined us when you gave that idea about the package to Brock.”
“Ah, the package,” Nora said. “Brock guessed where Zoey had hidden it, only he got greedy. So he tried to blackmail Perry. I’m guessing he was dreaming of a red convertible and a bag full of cash. Poor Brock. Even after all these years, he still fell for the lure of easy money.”
“Why couldn’t you just stop snooping? Even a brick through your window didn’t knock any sense into you,” Kim said. “I like you, you know. I always thought you were a good person.”
“I think I am,” Nora agreed. “I guess it blinded me a little.”
“So here we are,” Kim said. “What now? Are you going to try and blackmail me, too?”
“I’m here to tell you that it’s all over,” Nora said. “The sheriff knows, and he’s on his way to Perry to get a DNA sample. When the sample matches, and I’m sure it will, all of this will be over.”
Kim bit her lip and turned to the window. She clenched her fists.
“Why did you help him, Kim?” Nora asked. “You could have come forward. You could have given peace to the families of the women he’s killed. Instead you chose to shield him.”
“You won’t get it,” Kim said.
“Try me.”
“I love him, Nora. He loves me.” Kim turned around, her eyes still teary. “We never had kids, but we had each other, and that was my world. He told me about his past. He confessed to me a long time ago. But I forgave him. Don’t you see? He changed. He gave up his murders for me. He stopped. He said it was like a sickness in him, that he couldn’t help what he’d done to those women. What was I supposed to do? Perry’s a good man. You’ve seen how he helps the charities here. Once he channeled all of his energy into building an empire at work and a home with me, he didn’t have those destructive urges anymore. He didn’t even remember that life.”
“He didn’t remember that he’d once attacked Zoey?” Nora asked.
Kim shook her head. “No. It was dark, and he didn’t really pay attention to their faces. He never realized how Zoey was connected to his past. If he had, we’d have fired her ages ago.”
“Or worse. And the jacket?”
“He kept it. Sentiment, I suppose. I told him more than once to get rid of it. Bu
t as the years went by, we forgot all about it. It stayed in a box up in the attic.”
“Until Zoey found it,” Nora said.
“I knew she had to die then, Nora. I knew she’d never keep quiet about it,” Kim said. “Perry told me I should be the one to do it. That way, I’d know what it felt like, too. I’d feel the power coursing through me. But I didn’t want to watch it happen. I wanted to be far away. The baneberries were perfect for me.”
Nora stared at her, feeling as though she were looking into Kim’s exposed heart. The veneer of respectability and riches had been stripped off now and all that stood in front of her was a person who was willing to lie and kill for love. Funny. She’d always thought of love as pure and wholesome. But it wasn’t, really. Like any other emotion, it could twist itself into the darkest of shapes if you didn’t stay true to your moral center.
“Zoey didn’t deserve to die for your cowardice. Brock didn’t deserve to die, either, even if his greed got the better of him,” Nora said. “You say you forgave Perry but you weren’t the only one whose forgiveness he should have begged for. You should have given him up to the police right then. He deserves to pay for his crimes. Now, so will you.”
“Sure.” Kim looked defeated. “I never understood Perry’s bloodlust, you know. I hated murdering them. It felt sick and gross to me. I didn’t feel powerful. I felt weak.” Sighing, she said, “I suppose the sheriff will be here soon?”
“He will,” Nora said.
“I suppose you’ve been recording all this, too?” Kim laughed.
“I have,” Nora admitted. “There’s just one more thing: where’s the jacket?”
“Back in the attic.” Kim laughed again, more maniacal now. “Can you believe it? After all this rigmarole, Perry still refused to burn it. Flat out refused. We kept it in the attic and swore not to let anyone else up there.”
Nora looked up the stairs and then back at Kim.
“Go ahead,” Kim said. “I’m going to take a nice bath with a bottle of wine for as long as I can. I suppose it’ll be my last — I hear they only have showers in jail.”
Nora frowned. Kim was acting weirdly. “You aren’t going to try and escape, are you?”
“What’s the point? I wouldn’t get very far.” Kim’s shoulders were slumped and her head was down. “I’m done. You’re right. It’s all over.”
Outside, Nora could hear sirens as the sheriff raced up the street. Kim gave a sad smile and began walking towards the master bedroom. Nora followed her for a bit and then stopped when the bathroom door slammed shut.
Then, curiosity overrode all her other senses. Nora raced upstairs to the attic. It was small, cramped and dusty with piles of old furniture, stacks of yellowing magazines and boxes & bags of old clothes scattered around. Nora spotted the parts of the attic that looked as though they’d recently been dusted and headed toward them. Within a few minutes, she was holding what she knew was the package. It was ripped open on one side to reveal a silver, shimmering cloth.
The jacket.
Nora felt a shiver pass through her as a sudden gust of wind shook the house. The first call of winter. She felt regret flow through her as she thought of Zoey, followed by a sudden feeling of peace. Wherever she was, Zoey would be happy to know that her murderers had been caught.
*****
Downstairs, the door banged open and the sheriff announced something very loudly. Nora ignored it all. She stood amid the sunbeams that floated through the window, still holding the jacket. It was only when she heard loud cries and someone screaming “Call 911!” that she realized something had gone wrong.
When she arrived at the bathroom, the sheriff was shaking Kim’s body, which he’d found lying on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills in her hand.
“What happened?” he asked Nora as she approached, a horrified hand over her mouth.
“She couldn’t face it,” Nora said. “She couldn’t face the idea of her carefully constructed lies all falling apart. So she took her own life.”
Sheriff Ellerton took off his hat and wiped his forehead. “I’ll never understand people,” he said. “Just when I think I might, they surprise me once again.”
“It was the easiest thing for her, I think,” Nora said. “She was a murderess, but Kim never had much of a spine. She didn’t have the nerve to tell the police about her husband’s misdeeds and she didn’t even have the guts to look Zoey in the eye while killing her. She poisoned her from afar. She certainly wasn’t up to facing the punishment that was coming to her. So she took the easiest way out.”
*****
Epilogue
Three Months Later
Another party! Nora smiled as she bustled around the house. Grace was standing on a step-stool in the backyard, putting up fairy lights. Harvey was vacuuming the living room, looking cute with a smudge of dirt on his cheek.
As for Nora, she was in the kitchen, baking batch after batch of super-brownies, as Hazel called them. Hazel had absolutely fallen in love with the white-chocolate and caramel brownies that Nora had baked spontaneously in the days after Zoey’s death. So, naturally, Nora had promised to make her a huge batch on her birthday.
Hazel and Matt had managed to secure a loan from a bank and used it to purchase the equipment they needed. Now that Perry was in jail, and his companies were being dismantled, the Town of Milburn really did need a good landscaping company. Hazel and Matt had been so swamped with orders that they’d already hired a team of four young students, including Hazel’s friend, Amber, who was taking a year off before college.
There was a knock on the door and Nora looked up. It was Ronnie Shepherd.
“I just came by to drop off this list of instructions,” Ronnie said. “It’s got all of Mrs. Mullally’s medications listed.”
“Thanks, I’ll make sure Hazel gets that,” Nora said. “Won’t you come in, Ronnie?”
“I can’t. Tom and the kids are in the car. We’re all packed,” Ronnie said. “I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you, Nora.”
“Me?” Nora demurred. “I didn’t do a thing.”
“Oh, yes, you did. You talked some sense into Tom,” Ronnie said. “I don’t think he’d ever have agreed to take some time off if it hadn’t been for you. As for Hazel, I’m sure you were the one who put the idea into her head that she should live with Mrs. Mullally till she finds more permanent housing.”
“Mrs. M. is like a grandmother to Hazel. She jumped at the idea,” Nora said. “And, personally, I feel much better knowing she’s going to live with someone sensible and sharp like Mrs. M.”
“Yes, well, it certainly took the guilt off my shoulders,” Ronnie said. “I don’t think either Tom or I would have felt right about leaving Mrs. Mullally and taking a long vacation if it wasn’t for Hazel.”
“Sounds like you need it,” Nora said. “Just make sure you use the time well, okay? Be good to each other.”
“We’re trying. We really are.” Ronnie smiled. “Tom’s changed. He isn’t lazy or grouchy like before. Well, not quite as much! And, as for me, I realized I was far harsher on him than I needed to be, and I’ve toned it down, too.”
“Good,” Nora said. “Then there’s only one thing left to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Take this batch of brownies,” Nora said. “I insist. Road trips make everyone hungry.”
Ronnie hesitated for just a moment before wrapping her arms around Nora and squeezing tight. “Thank you,” she whispered in Nora’s ear before the sound of a car honking had her running back out.
“Are you done with the brownies?” Harvey came into the kitchen with the vacuum tucked under one arm, his hair sticking up in all directions. “Amber called. She’s bringing Hazel home in fifteen minutes.”
“Uh oh!” Nora put her hands on her head and looked from the oven to her flour-stained apron.
“Go on up and get changed.” Harvey smiled. “I’ll handle the kitchen, don’t worry about it. Just be down in ten minutes.�
�
“But the others—”
“Grace and I will corral them into the living room and shut off the lights. Do you remember where the ‘Happy Birthday’ candles are?”
“In the drawer next to the spoons,” Nora said, planting a kiss on Harvey’s nose. He grinned at her.
“You work too hard,” she told him. “We ought to think about taking a vacation, too.”
“I don’t think there will be any vacations for me in the next year!” Harvey laughed. “But soon enough, my love. Soon enough.”
With Perry’s company dying out, it meant that a lot of projects fell to Nathaniel Real Estate, and Harvey’s company’s previous issues were no longer a problem. It was a pity he wouldn’t be retiring anytime soon but, then again, Nora wondered if he’d ever really wanted to. Harvey did seem to love his work, even if it exhausted him sometimes.
“Go on.” Harvey patted her shoulder. “There’s no time to dilly dally! Get outta here!”
She raced upstairs and changed as quickly as possible into a decent dress before slipping on the earrings Hazel had gotten her for her last birthday. She paused for a moment as she caught sight of herself in the mirror.
Once upon a time, Nora had been younger and slimmer, with longer hair and unlined skin. Now, she was a bit plump around the middle with loose, little bags under her eyes and her hair was more silver than blonde. But, as she smiled, the years seemed to melt away and all she could see in the mirror was her old self, standing proud and happy at what had become of her life. The years had been good to her.
*****
Downstairs once again, she was surrounded by excited giggles and a lot of shushing as the lights were turned off. “They’re just pulling up, guys!” Grace called out. “Get ready!”
Nora crouched down along with Harvey in the middle of the crowd and, as the door opened and the lights flicked on, they all jumped to their feet with loud cries of “Happy Birthday!”
Hazel squealed with joy and clapped her hands to her cheeks, though the slight glint in her eye told Nora she’d been suspecting this “surprise” party would be happening today. Nora rushed forward to hug her and Grace wheeled out a table with a mountainous pile of brownies on top.
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