The conversation in the glade had become tense, and Victoria wasn’t sure what she could or should do at this point. Where was Casey?
“Let’s head back to the library,” said Amelia. “Do you have the time? I forgot my watch. It must be close to four o’clock. You probably want to finish up the last few—”
“The quilt can wait. I know full well why you came back, Amelia. You were jealous.”
“Jealous?” Amelia’s voice was incredulous. “Of what?”
“You don’t need to play dumb. Not ‘of what,’ Amelia. Of me. And my man.”
“I don’t understand, Fran.” Amelia’s voice had become unnaturally calm.
“You’re too intelligent to fake it like this, Amelia. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. You even made that nasty comment when we met in the library.”
“What comment?”
“Don’t be coy, Amelia.”
Victoria felt a drop of rain on her face. Where was Casey? That utter calmness in Amelia’s voice meant she’d realized Fran was unbalanced. Did she realize her danger?
“Ahhhh,” said Amelia. “Your student. When I asked if you’d fallen in love with your student . . .”
“That was uncalled for,” said Fran.
“I apologize. I realize now how much he means to you, and I had no right to be so flippant. I’m sorry, Fran.”
“Meant to me,” said Fran.
“ ‘Meant’?”
“He’s dead. You know he’s dead.”
“I’m so sorry.” Victoria heard a movement, as though Amelia was getting up. “It’s raining. We need to go back to the library.”
“Sit,” said Fran. “We’re not going to the library.”
“Would you like to talk about him?” asked Amelia.
High up in the rhododendrons, the rain began to patter on the thick foliage. A few drops trickled through. Victoria moved closer to the edge of the glade, where there was more shelter and she’d be closer to Amelia.
“He was Professor Breznikowski’s son,” said Fran.
“I had no idea.”
“Lee was eight years old at the time. The professor was going to marry me and we were going to move to West Virginia with Lee to start a new life, but you—”
“Fran, I had nothing to do with—”
“—you and others like you at school—”
“None of us students knew you and the professor . . . Well, nobody knew anything until after you switched your major to math.”
“I didn’t switch. The dean forced me.”
“Whatever,” said Amelia.
Victoria’s leg muscles began to cramp.
“What about your man?” Amelia asked. “Does he live on the Vineyard?”
“I told you, he’s dead.”
“I’m sorry. When did he die?” Amelia asked, so softly Victoria wasn’t sure she heard.
“I killed him.” Fran’s voice was flat.
“You killed him? Your student . . .” Amelia’s voice trailed off. “Not LeRoy Watts? You killed LeRoy?”
“He wouldn’t listen to me. He denied knowing you.”
“But LeRoy Watts didn’t know me, Fran. I didn’t know him, either. I never met him.”
Victoria felt a sick lurch in her stomach. Casey ought to be here by now.
“He was LeRoy Breznikowski,” said Fran. “Not Watts.”
“The professor’s son . . .”
“Yes. The professor’s son. Lee changed his name to Watts when he changed his major to electrical engineering. He thought that was clever.”
“I see.”
“They wouldn’t let his father marry me. Lee was going to marry me instead.”
“But he was already married, with two children, Fran.”
“He was going to leave that wife of his for me.”
“He was ten or eleven years younger than you.”
“Age doesn’t matter.”
“But . . .” said Amelia, “but . . . why kill him?”
“To keep you away from him.”
“Me?” Amelia sounded astonished. “I didn’t even know the man. And you killed him before I got here!”
“I’ve known all along who you were. Your daughter told the knitting group you’d be visiting.”
“How did you kill him?”
“Victoria Trumbull figured it out. Your mother.”
“You killed him with a knitting needle? He was a big, strong, athletic man. How could you take him by surprise like that?”
“When I went to talk to him, I hadn’t intended to kill him. I tried to reason with him, to insist that he leave his wife, but he wouldn’t listen. He pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned your name. I had my knitting with me, of course. I pointed a needle at him for emphasis, simply trying to get his attention.” Fran’s voice had become shrill. “He laughed and I lost my temper. I aimed at his neck and lunged at him. . . .”
Victoria tensed.
“I could see his blood throbbing through his carotid artery. I focused on that artery, and he never saw it coming.”
Victoria heard a sudden rustle of clothing and she lurched into the glade, her cramped leg on fire, just as Fran shouted, “Like this!”
Victoria burst onto the scene, her lilac-wood stick held high in both gnarled hands.
Fran was lunging toward Amelia, a long steel knitting needle aimed at her neck.
Amelia was shrinking back on the bench, both hands held against her throat, staring in frozen horror at Fran.
Victoria uttered a horrendous, prolonged, primal shriek and slammed her stick down on Fran’s hand with a hideous crack.
Fran screamed and dropped the needle. Amelia leaped up and twisted Fran’s arm behind her back.
“Casey!” Victoria’s voice was a mere whisper. “Casey!”
Running footsteps pounded on the deer path.
“Casey?” Victoria could only form the word. No sound came out.
“Victoria!” Casey arrived, out of breath, gun drawn.
Casey called Junior Norton on her cell phone. Then Elizabeth at the library. Elizabeth’s car was parked in the library’s parking area, where Amelia had left it. She retrieved her keys from under the seat and drove, somewhat too fast, to the arboretum, where she found her grandmother sitting placidly on a stone wall under the shelter of the arboretum’s gift shop roof, her hands folded on top of the lilac-wood stick Elizabeth had made for her. Amelia hovered in the background like an unsure hummingbird.
Fran Bacon was gone. Junior Norton and Casey had driven her to the County of Dukes County jail, where they filled out reams of paperwork and left her.
“Mother,” said Amelia later that evening when they had dropped into their respective seats in the parlor, “what can I say?”
Victoria, her throat raw from that shriek, whispered, “Mothers take care of their young.”
Elizabeth carried drinks into the parlor. Victoria’s and Amelia’s were suspiciously pale, indicating a high percentage of rum to cranberry juice.
Elizabeth lit the fire and sat on the floor at Victoria’s feet.
“What made you suspect Fran, Gram?”
“Can’t talk,” Victoria whispered.
“I think,” said Amelia, “it was when I told your grandmother about Fran stalking Professor Breznikowski, right, Mother?”
“Erotomania,” Victoria whispered.
“What?” said Elizabeth.
“You said ‘erotomania’?” said Amelia.
Victoria nodded and took a large gulp of her drink.
Amelia said, “It’s when an otherwise-normal, usually intelligent person becomes obsessed with someone, is convinced that person loves her, and believes people are standing in the way of that love match, right?”
Victoria nodded.
“She’ll do anything to get the obstacles out of her way. It’s often a woman. Most other stalkers are men.”
“Why kill the guy she believes loves her?”
“She t
hought I was going to steal her man away from her.” Amelia looked down into her drink. “She had to kill him to prevent that. I was the cause of LeRoy Watts’s death.”
Victoria shook her head vigorously. “Nonsense,” she whispered.
“We were wondering where Fran was,” said Elizabeth. “Casper and Jim had packed up the quilt and we’d called FedEx to pick it up. We chilled a bottle of champagne to celebrate and were waiting for Fran so we could pop the cork. That’s when Casey called and told me to get to the arboretum right away.”
It took time for Victoria’s voice to return to normal. During that time, Amelia waited on her, and Victoria welcomed the attention. Amelia soaked a facecloth in witch hazel for her mother to hold against her throat. She brewed cups of herbal tea laced with honey, offered scoops of soothing coffee ice cream, raspberry Jell-O. Victoria spent most of her time, when she wasn’t writing her column, in the garden, and Amelia worked with her, quietly weeding close to her mother.
Casey dropped by every day. On the third day, Victoria’s voice returned to normal, her deep, strong ordinary voice. She was out in the garden, weeding the touch-me-not that now had small flower buds. Casey knelt down beside her to help.
“What about LeRoy Watts, or Breznikowski, or whoever he was, Victoria? There are a lot of loose ends.”
“Be careful of the poison ivy,” said Victoria, pointing her weeder at a healthy patch next to the touch-me-not. “Fran was afflicted with erotomania, a strange disorder that can affect otherwise healthy people who function normally, except for that one obsession. You can pile the weeds there.” Victoria pointed. “I’ll cart them to the compost heap later.”
“Go on with what you were saying,” said Casey.
“In the case of erotomania, the obsession is usually directed at a single love object. Stalking can go on for years, as it did in Fran’s case, and can suddenly shift. Her love object was Professor Breznikowski, who was oblivious to his student’s obsession. When the university intercepted Fran, her attention switched to the son they called Lee. In her fantasies, he was her son.”
“But he was only eight at the time,” said Casey. “And she was, what, nineteen or so?”
“A big age gap when one is eight and the other is nineteen, but the gap closes. LeRoy enrolled in Northeastern, knowing nothing about Fran’s obsession with his father.” Victoria held the handles of her kneeler and got to her feet. “I’m going to pull that poison ivy vine out before you tangle with it. You’re getting awfully close.”
“But . . .”
“I’m not particularly suscetible to poison ivy.” Victoria tugged the shiny three-leafed vine out by its roots and dropped it onto the compost pile.
“But . . .” said Casey again.
“I’ll rub some touch-me-not on my hands, just in case.”
“Back to LeRoy Watts and Fran,” said Casey.
“From what I can gather, LeRoy intended to major in math and took a couple of courses with Fran—Dr. Bacon. Fran apparently had lost track of the Bresnikowskis. She, of course, recognized the name, LeRoy Breznikowski, and immediately targeted him.”
“Where did the Watts name come in?”
“That was partly in response to her unwanted attention. He switched his major to electrical engineering and changed his name. He thought Watts would be a easy name for customers to remember for his intended electrical career.”
Amelia came out to the garden with a pitcher of lemonade and poured cups for her mother and Casey. She’d heard some of the conversation. “His widow spoke about the phone calls he’d been getting. Were those from Fran?”
“I assume so,” said Victoria, sipping her lemonade.
“What puzzles me, Mother, is the fact that LeRoy Watts was also a stalker. According to everyone I’ve talked to, he was a pleasant, normal-seeming man.”
“I’m not sure anyone fully understands the psychology of stalking. Was the fact that he himself had been stalked by his professor a factor? Who knows.”
“He stalked with a video camera as well as with phone calls. Isn’t that unusual?”
“It’s not uncommon for a stalker to use more than one approach. Look at the paparazzi, who aren’t even considered deviates. They go to any length to capture a celebrity on film. Digital, now, I suppose.”
Amelia said, “As an object of a stalker, couldn’t he see what he was doing to others?”
“An obsession can be blinding,” said Victoria.
At the end of the week, Howland Atherton drove Amelia to the ferry. Victoria rode in the front seat. Howland carried Amelia’s suitcase to the baggage cart, and Victoria and her daughter parted at the gangplank.
“You’ll let me know if you need help of any kind, won’t you?” said Victoria to her daughter.
“Darling, I will,” said her daughter.
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