“Taken by surprise, he broke the package open on his stomach, then faked passing out in front of Charlie, thinking that I would be coming in any second. That things could still be salvaged. But then you came in, followed closely by Constance, and you both assumed that Charlie had stabbed Hap, since he’d been holding what appeared to be bloody scissors. So, what could we do? We pretended to believe that Charlie had stabbed Hap, whisked him away as planned, and he promptly died in the ambulance away from prying eyes. I knew the truth, of course, and I was going to tell the police once everything with Hap was settled.”
“But then Charlie escaped custody,” she said.
“And Hap came back here.”
The voices in Bernard’s office, she thought. It hadn’t been the radio. “Hap was in your study earlier when I knocked on the door.”
“Yes, things had gone awry in his escape plan. His contact for the fake ID and documents needed for his new identity had gone missing. He was unreachable, gone from the face of the earth as if he’d never existed. The whole plan was compromised. Hap had also heard that Charlie had been charged with his murder. He’d seen Charlie’s photo in the newspaper, and he said he couldn’t let that lie. He came back to make sure it got sorted out.”
Vivian bit her lip. Hap’s memory was simultaneously traitorous and upstanding, dangerous and protective, deceptive and honest.
“But Hap couldn’t be involved with the sorting out,” Vivian said. “He was dead…to most people, that is.”
“Right. That’s what we were discussing when you knocked on the door. Hap hid in the closet. He heard our entire conversation.”
So he’d heard her saying that she felt horrible about the way things ended? Things were clicking into place, a timeline for a day that hadn’t made any sense before now. “And then he left that note in my room when we were at dinner, asking me to meet him in the boathouse tonight.”
“He did? Whatever for?”
“To apologize? To explain? I don’t know exactly. He died before I got a chance to find out.”
Bernard walked a few paces and then held one finger up.
“Someone else saw that note, or followed him to the boathouse. It must have been the person he’d seen at the garden party. I guess his original death wasn’t so believable to everyone.”
“Do you really think that’s what happened?” She thought of Hap in the boathouse at her feet, his face blank, his eyes clouding over. She hugged her arms to her chest.
Bernard nodded.
“And you cleaned everything up after Adaline took me to the house?” she said.
“Not personally, but I orchestrated the cleanup. And then I came out here to make sure he hadn’t left anything incriminating. These papers are old, meaningless. That valise is all I found. Someone clearly got here before me.” He shrugged at the paltry contents of Hap’s suitcase, at the papers strewn over the floor. They both stared at the open suitcase, the air hot and leaden between them.
“Where is Hap…his body?” she asked quietly. The echo of her question earlier in the day gave her goose bumps. Hap had been alive and listening to her ask it the first time. And now he really was dead, blue-tinged skin on a slab somewhere.
“At a funeral home nearby. His body will be cremated immediately. We can’t risk any of this coming out.”
“So this, Hap’s real death, is a secret?”
“Yes. Until I tell you otherwise. But, Vivian, you understand that I may never tell you otherwise. You may have to keep this secret for the rest of your life.”
Vivian nodded. She’d keep Bernard’s precious secret as long as she got Charlie back.
“Does the whole family know?” She thought of the pistol lying at the bottom of the lake, and of Gwen. Gwen certainly wouldn’t have thrown the murder weapon in the lake if she’d known a spy had killed Hap and not her brother.
“About the spying? Just the two of us. To everyone else, Hap faked his death because of gambling debts, and the underworld figures he was involved in sent someone along to finish the job. That’s what I’ll tell them.”
“Were you going to tell me any of this? Or were you planning on denying it ever happened?”
“No. And yes. But you didn’t drink your warm milk and brandy.” He lowered his head and glowered at her through red-rimmed eyes.
“I’ve always been difficult, haven’t I?”
Vivian held his gaze for a moment and then shifted her own to the floor. It would take some doing for her to believe the story Bernard had told her. But that didn’t matter right now. What mattered was that Charlie hadn’t killed anyone, and he needed his name to be cleared.
“You’ll tell the police that story too?” she said.
“I’ll tell them enough to get the charges against Charlie dropped. Do you know where he is…really?”
She shook her head. She wanted to speak and found she couldn’t. What she wouldn’t give to know where Charlie was right now, to know that he was safe. Bernard nodded at her, and she stood. She smoothed her skirt down over her thighs and then made her way to the door.
As she put her hand on the door latch, Bernard spoke.
“I loved him like a son, you know,” he said quietly.
“I know,” she said.
• • •
The idea that international espionage had reared its head in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, was outrageous. Yet knowing Hap’s personality, Vivian found it entirely plausible that he’d gone to Spain for adventure and found more than he’d bargained for. But the way he’d actually died seemed off to her—a bullet to the stomach? Admittedly, she’d gleaned all of her information on espionage from the movies, but it didn’t seem right that a spy would kill another spy by shooting him that way. For one thing, that wound might not necessarily be fatal. For another, even if it was fatal, Hap may have had time to talk before he died. But the thing that bothered her the most about all of it was that someone trained to kill would not have shot once and then run off and tossed the murder weapon in the bushes. That was the mark of panic, as Gwen had said. Spies were trained not to panic.
As Vivian thought of Gwen, the summer kitchen came into view, and Vivian abruptly changed course for it. She paused, hidden from view of the main house, and listened. She heard only crickets. In the dim moonlight, she could just make out cigarette butts littering the ground at her feet. Vivian moved the butts about in the dirt with the toe of her shoe before crouching and picking one up. She brought it to her nose and sniffed. Perhaps Lucky Strikes. Vivian didn’t smoke anymore, but she knew from the free cigarettes that the sponsors gave to those associated with The Darkness Knows that the quality was only slightly better than that of Sultan’s Gold. She dropped the butt to the ground and scanned the remainder. They all looked the same. Then another butt caught her eye. It was wider, blunter. She picked it up, and the tobacco fell out of the end in tiny granules onto her palm. The tobacco was dark brown, almost black in color. She sniffed the butt and recoiled.
She’d smelled that distinct odor recently from the package of cigarettes among Hap’s things. The Gauloises. She scoured the ground, but there was only the one. The Lucky Strikes were likely Gwen’s, but someone else had been using this secret smoking spot, smoking a distinct French brand of cigarette. Was it Hap? Or the killer?
Vivian stood and pretended to smoke a cigarette. She found the right angle, just as Gwen had said, just as Vivian had done a thousand times in her youth. She could see the corner of the main house, but no one in the main house could see her. Then she mimed dropping the butt to the ground and grinding it out with the toe of her shoe. Vivian’s eyes strayed to the bush as Gwen had claimed hers had. It had been an early spring, and the foliage was already thick, the leaves green and lush. Could Gwen have seen the gun under all that in the dark?
She thought back to the gun lying on the bench of the rowboat. The moonlight had been feeble ev
en on the lake with no obstructions. No, the gun’s surface had not been polished. It had been a dull brownish-gray. It had not glinted in the moonlight on the bench of the rowboat, and it certainly would not have glinted from underneath that thick mask of leaves. If Gwen hadn’t found the gun under the bush like she’d said, then where had she gotten it?
• • •
It looked as if someone had been using the game room and just stepped out. The billiard balls were scattered around the table, the cue stick leaning against the side of the table. The radio was on in the corner of the room. Vivian didn’t have much time. She walked to the desk and noticed the newspaper clippings were gone. A clock ticked industriously on the desk as she opened the top drawer. It was 11:27 p.m.
She ran her fingertips across the empty desk and reached for the drawer pull.
“It’s all right, doll. You see, everything worked out just fine in the end.”
Vivian’s hand froze. That was Graham’s voice. She turned and stared at the yellow dial of the radio, and then she heard herself reply.
“Fitting that the real Kickapoo Lou came through at the end.”
Vivian stood, transfixed, staring at the radio speaker. It was the transcription recording they’d made a few days ago. She hadn’t stuck around to hear it played back to them after the recording session. It was strange, hearing herself like that. Her voice was higher than it sounded to her when she spoke.
“Yeah, that horse really stuck it to the syndicate, didn’t she?” Graham said. “Heck of a girl.”
“Mr. Quint got his money,” Vivian said as Lorna.
“And I got my girl.”
“Oh, Harvey.” Then she heard herself sigh—heard Lorna sigh—in that practiced, dreamy way.
The organ swelled, and the ending credit sequence began. “That was ‘The Call of Kickapoo Lou,’ another thrilling episode of detective muscle on The Darkness Knows. Starring Graham Yarborough as Detective Harvey Diamond, Vivian Witchell as Lorna Lafferty, and Dave Chapman as Mr. Quint. This is announcer Bill Purdy, and I invite you to join us again next week for another tantalizing tale of detective muscle in The Darkness Knows. This program was transcribed.”
The chimes rang in the half hour and broke into Vivian’s stupor. No one had told her they’d actually be playing the recording over the air. She thought it had been strictly for advertising purposes—for Mr. Marshfield to sell more Sultan’s Gold to an unsuspecting public. She glanced at the clock again. The show usually ran at eight o’clock on Thursday nights. Why play it at this late hour? Perhaps it was just a test of the new technology—to gauge listener reaction to something new. Late in the evening just before sign-off was usually when the station was apt to take risks. And perhaps they had a slot to fill.
Then a voice came over the airwaves that she recognized but had never heard on this side of the speaker.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This is Morty Nickerson, your host for Fantasy Ballroom, the half hour where I spin your favorite dance records.” Vivian smiled. Morty wasn’t half bad, she thought. His voice was smooth, measured, and at least half a register lower than his normal speaking voice. She still didn’t think there was much of a future in spinning dance records on the radio, but he’d been at it for six months so maybe there was something in it she just couldn’t see.
The smooth clarinet intro of “Moonlight Serenade” interrupted her train of thought, and Vivian turned back to the desk and the task at hand. She pulled open the top drawer, and the first thing she saw was a key. Vivian stared at it. She had quite a habit of finding keys in desk drawers, she thought. Though this one was certainly easier to find—and hopefully much less trouble. She thought of all the trouble finding that key months ago in her father’s study had brought.
She plucked the key from the drawer and turned to the gun cabinet. The lock opened with an efficient snick, and before she knew it, she was staring at dozens of guns: pistols, revolvers, shotguns.
There were rifles displayed vertically, barrels up, at the bottom of the cabinet. For hunting, she presumed. The handguns were hung in an orderly fashion on wooden pegs at the top. There weren’t any labels. After all, Bernard knew his own guns, but a quick survey led her to the disappointing conclusion that all of Bernard’s guns were accounted for, and none were currently lying under a hundred feet of water in Geneva Lake. She sighed, and then her eyes snagged on the gun on the far right peg—a gun that looked just like the one Gwen had thrown into the lake. Vivian reached out tentatively and removed the small pistol. Bernard’s version was shinier than the other one had been. She turned it over gingerly in her hands. It was smaller than she remembered from the boat and heavier than it looked. It wasn’t likely to be loaded, but holding it made her nervous. Still, she couldn’t help but hold it up in firing position and look down the sight at the far wall.
There was a thump behind her and she whirled, gun still in hand.
“Christ, Viv. Watch that thing.” David stood in the doorway, hands raised.
Vivian stood motionless for a few seconds before she realized what she’d been doing. She lowered the gun with an apologetic shrug. “Sorry. I didn’t mean…”
“What are you doing in here?” David lowered his hands, but still stood stiffly in the doorway. Vivian knew she looked suspicious, standing at the open gun cabinet, a pistol in her hand, Glenn Miller’s orchestra playing softly in the background. She sighed and sat down at the desk, the gun cradled in her lap.
“You’ve…heard about Hap? He’s really dead.” She tried to picture the faces of those she’d passed in the parlor just after it had happened. Had David’s been among them?
David nodded. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked past her. His eyes were red-rimmed, and his lower lip trembled just the tiniest bit. But he masked his emotions with a stern expression. He was his father’s son, after all, but he was doing a better job pretending that Hap’s actual death hadn’t affected him.
“Rum luck,” he said. “Hap was something, wasn’t he? Always too much. Always doing things the hard way. He couldn’t just fly a plane… He had to fly it upside down and with a man strapped to the wing.” He shook his head. “And he couldn’t just gamble, lose a few dollars here and there. No, he had to lose big and get a price on his head.”
Vivian furrowed her brow with feigned surprise. “What’s that?”
David cocked a brow. “Gambling debts. Big ones. That’s why he faked his death on Sunday…to elude real death by the goons sent to do him in.”
Vivian paused. That was the same story Bernard had tried with her. Did David actually believe it, or was he just using the cover story Bernard had coached him on? She decided to play dumb and let him talk. “Really?”
David nodded. “Father told me. I didn’t know until last evening. Constance came to me and told me some hogwash about having seen Hap very much alive in the guesthouse. Of course, I thought that was some cock-and-bull story. I didn’t believe her.”
“Constance said?”
“Said she was out for a late-night walk. She’d peeked into the windows of the guesthouse and seen Hap quite alive in there after he was supposed to be quite dead.” David lowered his chin and looked at her, gauging her reaction to such news, she supposed. But Vivian was focused on what she’d not heard in David’s rendition of Constance’s story. Constance had either not told David she’d seen Hap and Lillian together, or David was purposely leaving that out of his version of events to save face—or cover up a motive for murder.
“Did Hap see Constance?” Vivian asked.
“I don’t think so. I thought maybe Constance had had some sort of mental breakdown. She was always very fond of Hap, you know. It really wrecked her when he went off to Europe so suddenly years ago.” David frowned and locked eyes with her, and Vivian got the impression that he meant to convey with the dramatic pause that they both knew exactly why Hap had gone off to Eur
ope so suddenly years ago. Vivian glanced away and cleared her throat. She pulled the neckline of her dress away from the dried sweat on her chest and pretended that comment meant nothing to her.
“Anyway,” David continued. “It’s been an…odd…few days with the murder and Charlie’s disappearance, and Father being so tight-lipped about everything. We were all in this strange suspended animation. None of us saw Hap, you see. None of us got to say a proper goodbye. I thought maybe Constance couldn’t believe he was really dead. After all, I couldn’t believe it either. Not really. Maybe she’d imagined seeing him in the guesthouse. Wishful thinking? So I went to Father. I sat down across from him in his study and said, ‘Constance says she’s seen Hap in the guesthouse just now.’
“Well, Father is a terrible poker player. The look on his face told me everything. He was so surprised that he couldn’t hide it. He knew Hap was alive, of course, but he wasn’t supposed to be within one hundred miles of here. I asked Father what was really going on, and he told me everything. That Hap’s life was in danger due to gambling debts. He had some hired goons after him, and the only way to get them off his trail was to fake his own death.”
Vivian nodded, careful to keep her face blank. So David really didn’t know about the spy story.
David drummed his fingers against the desk before speaking again. “And I guess those goons found out that Hap wasn’t as dead as he’d appeared, and they came back a few hours ago and finished the job.”
Finished the job. The ominous words hung in the air between them.
“I’ll admit it makes as much sense as anything else,” Vivian said, measuring her words carefully.
“It must have been terrible for you to see that.”
“It’s a terrible thing for the family,” she said carefully.
“For Father especially,” David said, a wan smile lighting his lips. “After all, I was the son he had, but Hap was the son he wanted.”
Vivian didn’t know what to say to that unexpected admission. She examined David’s expression, his posture, for signs of bitterness, but she saw only resignation. David had grown up in Hap’s shadow. Hap was a ne’er-do-well, but he’d always been a peg above David in his father’s estimation.
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