Chapter Forty-six
There was only one way to find out if my theory was correct. The next morning, I drove to the offices of Featherstone, De Vane, Doherty, Sanchez, and Schiller intending to show Leland Featherstone the program Darlene had found in the library file. She’d given me the folders to return. Fortunately, I hadn’t yet done so. I felt certain that by watching Featherstone’s face when he recognized it, if he recognized it, I’d be able to tell just how deeply he’d been involved with Estelle Swarthout.
If he didn’t react, I’d still have a way to ease into asking more questions. I wasn’t sure how far I could go in that direction. How does one quiz a man his age about an indiscretion that took place when he was a teenager? Aside from the delicate nature of the inquiry, I didn’t want to come right out and accuse him of being Estelle’s lover, let alone of murder. More than once, I almost turned around and went home, but my need to know the truth was too strong to allow me to retreat.
Charlaine, the law firm’s ever-vigilant receptionist, lifted her head from the paperwork in front of her when I entered. “I’m afraid Mr. Featherstone has a very busy schedule today,” she said in a listless voice. “Perhaps you could make an appointment for later in the week?”
“It’s very important that I talk to him. I don’t need more than a few minutes of his time.”
She sighed. “I’ll ask.”
When she picked up the phone to talk to Featherstone, I couldn’t help but notice that she was in desperate need of a manicure. Most of her subtly painted fingernails were still intact, but one or two showed signs of having been chewed.
On closer inspection, I saw other marks of distress. A long strand of dark brown hair had come loose from her French twist to trail listlessly across the high collar of her blouse and the blouse itself was somewhat rumpled. I’d wondered once before if she had a personal interest in Jason Coleman. Now I felt certain of it, and very sorry for her, although she was certainly better off without a crook like him in her life.
Charlaine disconnected after a brief conversation conducted in a voice too soft for me to overhear. “I’m sorry, Ms. Lincoln, but Mr. Featherstone is tied up in a meeting.”
“I’ll wait until he’s free.”
“It’s scheduled to last all day.”
She’d had practice lying for her bosses, but that didn’t mean she was good at it, or that she liked that part of her job. I was tempted to barge past her and force my way into Featherstone’s office, but that would only get me tossed out on my ear, probably by that same very large, very determined security guard who’d been on the verge of ejecting me on an earlier visit.
“Tell Mr. Featherstone I’ve found another diary,” I said. “This one was written in the nineteen fifties.”
When she’d relayed my message, a look of surprise came over her face. “He’ll see you now. I’ll have to take you to his office. His secretary would normally come get you but she’s out sick today.”
I started to tell her I could find my own way before belatedly realizing that if Featherstone had done what I feared he had, and thought I had proof of it, I might be wise not to walk into the lion’s den without backup.
“Do me a favor?” I asked in a whisper as our feet sank silently into the plush carpeting of the hallway. “Leave the door open a crack and stay near enough to hear what Mr. Featherstone and I say to each other.”
Her eyes widened. She understood that I was asking her to bear witness to our conversation. Considering what had come to light about Jason Coleman’s criminal activities, she had to be wondering if other members of the law firm, even the head honcho, were as honest as she’d once believed them to be.
In Featherstone’s outer office, I stopped her by placing one hand on her forearm. “It’s important, Charlaine, or I wouldn’t ask.”
“Okay. I can sit at Mindy’s desk.” She rapped lightly on the door before opening it. “Ms. Lincoln, Mr. Featherstone.”
When she backed out of my way, I entered. I didn’t dare look around to make sure she’d followed my instructions, but I didn’t hear the click of the door closing. Mentally crossing my fingers that she was seated near enough to catch every word we exchanged, I advanced toward the massive desk behind which Featherstone sheltered.
“What’s this about another diary?” He sounded testy.
“As you know, Nellie Swarthout wasn’t the only one in the family who recorded her thoughts and activities. Estelle also kept a journal.”
“So you mentioned on a previous occasion. Have you found another?”
“Yes.” Sitting across from him, I met his eyes, hoping he couldn’t tell I was lying.
“And?” His face gave nothing away.
“She mentioned you.”
His eyes narrowed, bringing his bushy eyebrows so close together that they almost touched. A bit of color flared beneath the normal pasty white of his complexion. “I’m sure you’re mistaken. I barely knew the woman.”
“In the late nineteen fifties, you and she belonged to the same local drama society.” I produced the program and slapped it down on the desk in front of him.
After a cursory glance, he ignored it. Leaning back in his desk chair, he regarded me with cool indifference. “That was a long time ago. I seem to recall that Estelle Swarthout took leading roles in several productions put on by our local drama club, and I occasionally helped out backstage for some of them, but I doubt she noticed me.”
“She did more than notice you and you noticed her right back. She was a good-looking woman. You were a teenage boy.” I held his gaze, unblinking. “I taught teenagers for decades. Then and now, they’re ruled by their hormones.”
Featherstone came up out of his chair and rounded the desk with more speed than I’d have expected from a man of his age. “What are you insinuating? What did Estelle write in her damned journal?” He halted in front of my chair and leaned in, placing one hand on each side of me to box me in. “Why did you come here?”
“Back off.”
He didn’t budge.
“Let’s talk about this like reasonable adults, shall we, Mr. Featherstone? After all, the events in question took place a very long time ago.”
I didn’t mention that there is no statute of limitations on murder. We were both well aware of that fact.
He straightened, but continued to loom over me. I tried to scoot the chair farther away from him, but it was heavy and the carpeting was plush. I didn’t get very far. I was beginning to think that lying about the existence of a second diary and its contents might not have been the smartest way to proceed.
Since it was too late for me to change course, I continued to lie through my teeth. “Estelle made plans and recruited someone no one would suspect to help her. It’s still remarkable that the two of you got away with it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
If he’d said he didn’t know what I was talking about, I might have been more inclined to believe him. Pronouns are important. His word choice and the way he was breathing heavily and clenching his fists convinced me that I had indeed discovered the identity of Rosanna’s murderer. Why else would he be so agitated?
“You must have been disappointed afterward,” I said, “when Estelle withdrew her favors. Or did she convince you that it was too dangerous to continue your liaison?”
“There was no liaison,” he said through gritted teeth.
“One-night stand? I suppose Estelle was the type who’d prefer that—less emotional attachment on her part.”
“How dare you insult that poor woman!”
That brought me up short. Poor woman?
“You pity her?”
“Of course I do. I did.”
He turned away from me, moving toward the window with tottering steps. He stood there, swaying slightly, his back to me as he stared out at the parking lot. I doubted he saw the cars or any of the nearby buildings. His mind was clearly focused on the past.
“What happened to he
r after she left the farm?” I asked. “Why didn’t she pursue the career she wanted so badly?”
When he finally answered me, his voice was choked with emotion. “She had a complete mental breakdown after the murder. She was the one who refused to return home or let anyone else go in to collect their possessions. Tessa relied on my father to find a place for them to live. Estelle was bedridden for weeks. She never fully recovered, not even after Tessa took her to California in the hope she really could find work as an actress.”
He rested his forehead against the windowpane. It took him several moments to regain control of himself, but when he did, he seemed to realize that he might have revealed too much.
“My father was the Swarthout family lawyer,” he said in an obvious attempt at damage control. “That’s the only reason I know anything about the situation.”
“Did your father also persuade the police not to investigate too thoroughly?”
The lawyer gave a short, humorless bark of laughter. “How would I know? I keep telling you—I was just a kid at the time.”
When he turned to face me, I got hastily to my feet.
He made no move in my direction. I couldn’t guess what he was thinking, but when he spoke, his voice was harsh and overly loud.
“If Estelle wrote anything about me in her diaries, she was delusional. She was a very disturbed woman. She was brilliant onstage, but she didn’t deal well with reality.”
“You sound as if you knew her rather better than you’ve admitted.” Even knowing the risk, I couldn’t stop myself from blurting out another question. “What did she promise you in return for killing her stepmother?”
His cry of agony was the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard. He took a step toward me, hands outstretched as if to throttle me.
I backed away from him, prepared to make a run for it, but in the next second Featherstone dropped like a rock. He fell to the plush carpet, clutching at his chest and gasping for breath.
Charlaine appeared in the doorway, took one look at her boss, and reached for the phone. It was a good thing she’d been eavesdropping. I was so shocked by the sudden turn of events that I couldn’t have managed to punch in 911, let alone make a coherent request for an ambulance.
Chapter Forty-seven
Three days later, on Friday, the day before the deadline Tessa had set, I launched Nellie’s diaries into the world. I was already in my robe and slippers, having fixed myself a grilled cheese sandwich and a bowl of tomato soup for my supper—that was all I felt like eating—when my doorbell rang.
My first thought was that someone was bringing me bad news about Leland Featherstone. As of a few hours earlier, when I’d last checked with Detective Brightwell, Featherstone was still in intensive care, his prognosis uncertain.
I’d never imagined that confronting him would cause a heart attack, although in retrospect I should have considered that possibility. With the benefit of hindsight, I recognized signs that he had a dicey heart, but I’d been so intent on proving my theory that I’d blatantly ignored them.
If it turned out he was guilty of Rosanna’s death, I wanted him arrested and tried for that crime, but I’d never intended for him to end up dead.
“When will I learn?” I’d asked Calpurnia when I returned home from Monticello that day. “Solving murders should be left to the police.”
Except, of course, that the police would never have interpreted that passage in Estelle’s journal the way I had. Circumstantial evidence it might be, and pretty weak besides, but together with what Featherstone had told me before he collapsed, it had been enough to convince me that Estelle Swarthout had seduced her underage lover into killing her stepmother.
I opened the door to find Luke and Ellen standing on my front porch. My cousin frowned when he saw what I was wearing.
“Are you sick?”
“I’m just having an early night.” His exasperated sigh put me on the defensive. “Is there some reason why I shouldn’t?”
“Yes, there is. Have you forgotten? This is the evening that mystery author is appearing at the library. I thought we could all go together.”
“I’m not—”
“Aren’t you curious to find out who it is?”
“Not really. No.”
“But you have to come.” Ellen sounded extraordinarily insistent.
I couldn’t understand why she was so upset with my decision to stay home. It was just a lecture and book signing. I eyed her with sudden suspicion. “What aren’t you telling me?”
“You’ll have to come with us to find out.” Luke took me by the shoulders, turned me around, and gave me a gentle push in the direction of the stairs. “Go change into something suitable for meeting a famous author. Who knows? He or she could turn out to be one of your favorites.”
Muttering under my breath about pushy people, I started to climb. If I stayed in, the evening was likely to turn into a pity party full of self-recrimination, and since they were giving me no choice, I decided to welcome the distraction.
Ten minutes later, looking reasonably respectable, I rejoined them downstairs. They were sitting close together on the living room loveseat with Calpurnia sprawled across both their laps. Luke jumped up as soon as he heard my footsteps.
“Ready to go? Great. We want to get good seats.”
I had to chuckle at that. Lenape Hollow is a great little town, but it isn’t known for having huge numbers of avid readers. This “mystery author” would be lucky if there were a dozen people in the audience. Even if the event had been advertised with a name attached, I doubted the turnout would be much better. Maybe Stephen King or Nora Roberts or the author of the latest tell-all memoir out of Washington or Hollywood could attract a bigger crowd, but anyone less famous? Not a chance.
The number of cars parked on the street and in the lot behind the building came as a pleasant surprise. Maybe more people than I’d realized read the library newsletter. I didn’t think Pam had done much else by way of advance publicity. Then again, I hadn’t been paying a lot of attention. I’d had other things on my mind.
Inside, at least two dozen people milled about. All of them, it seemed, had been sufficiently intrigued by the “mystery” angle to show up.
When I spotted Bella Trent among them, I quickly changed direction, determined to stay as far away from that annoying woman as possible. Ellen saw her, too, and steered us toward a trio of seats on the opposite side of the room. They were in the second row with an excellent view of the empty podium and the decorative screen set up behind it.
Another quarter of an hour passed before a smiling Pam Ingram made her way to the front of the assembly. Her face flushed with excitement, she waited until everyone quieted down before she spoke.
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that I introduce our speaker for the evening, the wonderfully talented, world-famous writer of historical romances, Ms. Illyria Dubonnet.”
I think I gasped aloud, although the applause from the crowd drowned out the sound. I’m pretty sure my mouth dropped open. I know my eyes widened in astonishment when a complete stranger emerged from behind the screen.
Then I looked again, and “Illyria” winked at me.
The eyes belonged to my old friend Lenora Barton, but the rest of her was unrecognizable. Makeup, a wig, and certain . . . enhancements to her rather pedestrian figure, had turned her into the very image of what a successful, bestselling romance writer ought to look like. She was impeccably turned out in a pale blue pantsuit that clung in a subtly flattering way to her newly acquired figure. The wig wasn’t some brassy “big hair” do, but rather an age-appropriate confection somewhere between white and gray. The makeup, on closer inspection, only seemed lavishly applied because I was accustomed to seeing her without any at all.
Lenora threw herself into the role with an enthusiasm that had me goggling at her throughout the talk. For a woman who had always claimed she was happiest staying out of the spotlight, she had come out of her shel
l with a vengeance.
By the time the question and answer period arrived, my astonishment had been transformed into admiration. Years of teaching had given Lenora the ability to listen to questions and respond to them in an easy manner that made everyone feel comfortable. For the most part, her replies were truthful. Fortunately, no one asked her if Illyria Dubonnet was a pseudonym.
At the end of the Q&A session, Pam removed the screen to reveal two chairs placed behind a sales table piled high with Illyria Dubonnet novels. Lenora chatted with her fans and autographed copies of her books while Pam sat beside her making change from a cash box and accepting checks. She even had a device attached to her iPad that enabled her to take credit cards.
I felt a moment’s trepidation when Bella Trent approached her idol, but I needn’t have worried. She fawned over “Illyria” but she was so in awe of her that she could barely speak coherently. Lenora dealt with her with aplomb, treating her as she would a shy student having difficulty with an assignment.
Frowning, I turned to glare at Ellen and Luke. “Bella knew who the mystery author was going to be. You knew.”
“Luke arranged it all.” Ellen beamed with pride. “He came up with the perfect solution to your problem with Illyria’s biggest fan.”
Looking sheepish, Luke shrugged. “I was concerned about the way Bella was behaving. She was stalking you, Mikki. So I got in touch with your friend Lenora, planning to ask if she had any suggestions.”
“And?”
“And, as it happened, my timing was perfect. She hadn’t gotten around to telling you yet, but since she retired from teaching in June, she’s been working on a plan with her publisher and a publicist to go on a book tour.”
“But she’s always refused to do one before.”
“Exactly. She’s been a mystery author in more ways than one. That means there’s a huge demand on the part of her readers to meet her in person. Her visit here is a sort of test run, but she’s already booked in a dozen cities, starting on the release date of her next novel.”
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