by Mary Bowers
“And the pills made her sleep,” I added. “Not just at night, but during the day, when she would otherwise have been wandering around the house getting in the way. Fashionistas from the tropics do not appreciate duennas cramping their style. Carmen must have thought it ridiculous that you had to put up with a grandmother who not only wanted to know who your friends were, but held the purse strings too. Did she laugh at you because of it?”
Jordan looked up at me. “You leave Carmen out of this. She doesn’t matter now. We aren’t together anymore.”
“But it was for her sake you slipped your grandmother an extra pill.”
“Jordan, shut up,” his father said.
But Jordan ignored him. “I swear to God, I only did it once. I hated myself for it afterward, and I never did it again, no matter what Carmen wanted. And Grandmother was fine the next day. It didn’t do her any harm.”
“Did you mention it to Carmen?”
He stared at me.
“Did you?”
“Why don’t you ask her?” he said evenly.
“Oh, we will, son,” the Sheriff said.
“She was a guest in this house the night your grandmother died.”
“You can’t prove anything against Carmen,” Jordan said.
“Just out of curiosity, why did you dump her as soon as you got her back to Miami?”
But he had said all he was going to say. I had other fish to fry, so I let it drop. Let the Sheriff carry on later, if he wanted to.
I went on. “So we’ve established that only somebody with access to Cadbury House, who knew about Vesta’s pills, how they were handled and where they were kept, could have overmedicated her.”
“If she was overmedicated,” Graeme said.
“That would include Graeme, Jordan and Carmen, Myrtle, and Vesta herself.”
“Grandmother would never have killed herself!” Jordan shouted.
“And given the scenario where extra pills are simply slipped into her pillbox, the killer didn’t actually have to be at Cadbury House that night. They just needed to be here at some point to put the extra pill or pills into the box. It could have been anybody who either wanted her quiet and out of the way for a while, or someone who actually wanted her dead. And no, Jordan, I don’t think your grandmother would’ve killed herself.”
“Then what do you think?” Michael asked, exasperated.
“Yes,” Tina said, thoroughly enjoying herself. “Tell us what you really think.”
“Miss Taylor, I want to get my sister home,” Florence said in a shaking voice. “She’s had about all she can take.”
I held my hand up for silence. “Maybe it’s time to go back to the real beginning. It all started with the visiting nurse.”
Chapter 28
I had to wait for about two minutes until the shouting and groaning stopped – Graeme was yelling that there had never been a goddamn visiting nurse, Jordan was saying his grandmother had only imagined a nurse, Tina was laughing like a hyena, enjoying my looking like a fool, and Myrtle was throwing in her two cents only I couldn’t hear her over the babble of the others. The cops were ominously silent, and Bernie was scribbling for all she was worth.
At this moment, when I knew I was losing them, I glanced out the window and saw a regal black cat walking up from the river. It came within twenty feet of the house and sat down, wrapping its tail around its feet and gazing at me with luminous green eyes. I had left her back at Girlfriend’s, but she was becoming untethered, I could feel it. She was leaving me. She’d dropped me into the boiling pot and now she was drifting away, unfazed.
It took me back to the very beginning, when I’d seen the creature calmly sitting on top of a trailer in the depot, considering whether or not to use me. It had brought me to this point. I didn’t want to be here, and I didn’t want have to go through the whole sordid scenario for everybody and try to convince them that I was right. Above all, I really didn’t want to betray Graeme.
I blinked my eyes, and as I watched, I saw the cat look back to the image of a lady walking up from the river. I say “image” because the full blaze of the sun didn’t touch it or even outline it, the colors around it overwhelmed it, emphasizing its transparency, and altogether it looked like a hole in the world where everything inside it was bathed in a different light.
Vesta.
She smiled at me and I felt pinpricks cascade down my body.
“All right,” I thought. “For you, Vesta. I’m doing this for you.”
She smiled.
I looked back to the room full of humans, and Tina said, “Well? Amuse us. Tell us what cockeyed theory you’ve come up with now.”
“Myrtle,” I said, “would you like to tell us about the nurse’s costume you found?”
The cops looked up, surprised, and the Sheriff gave Bernie an angry look.
“Oh, knock it off,” she muttered at him. “It got results, didn’t it?”
“Myrtle? I’m guessing you found it in the master suite and took it away before Diana could see it.”
Graeme’s head snapped around and he stared at Myrtle.
In a pitchy little voice, she said, “Yes.”
“And you kept your mouth shut about it, because you didn’t want Vesta to know. And after Vesta died, you decided you’d never tell anybody about it, because you didn’t want to bring shame on the Huntington family. Is that right?”
Stubborn as ever, she looked at me with her mouth shut tight.
“I’m not following this,” Officer Peterson said. “Is one of these guys a cross-dresser? If so, I’m outta here. I could care less.”
“Well, Graeme?” I asked. “How about you, Jordan?”
“Of course not,” Jordan said, but Graeme said nothing. Shocked, Jordan turned to his father, saying, “Dad? Tell them. It doesn’t matter.”
“No, I am not a cross-dresser,” Graeme said tightly.
“No,” I said. “You aren’t. And neither are you, Tina.”
She stared at me.
“That costume belongs to you, doesn’t it? After all, you were a nurse before you were married. What better erotic costume to get than a skimpy little nurse’s outfit with a big white cap to match? It belongs to you.” I made a quick sign at Myrtle to keep silent. Tina must not know that the costume had been washed. “Come on, Tina. A DNA test will tell us for sure.”
“Yes, it’s mine,” she said defiantly. “So what?”
“It’s hers?” the Sheriff said.
“It started after your husband died, didn’t it?” I went on. “Graeme was so kind, wasn’t he? Maybe he didn’t intend for things to go so far, but he and Diana hadn’t been getting along, and you were so distressed. I suppose it was some primitive territory thing that drove you to insist on coming to Cadbury House for your trysts whenever Diana was out, instead of just having Graeme come to your condo. And of course, if his car had been seen in the parking lot of your condo too often, it would’ve started gossip. How much better to come to him here, where there’s nobody around to see your car, and only a confused old woman and a servant who didn’t count in the house. Jordan lived away, people tended to ignore Vesta and her ramblings, even when she talked about the ‘nurse,’ and you knew that Myrtle was so devoted to the family, she’d never gossip. So it was safe, as long as Diana never knew.
“But it wasn’t very satisfying after a while, was it, Tina? Graeme was a good catch, and the only thing keeping him in Tropical Breeze was a sickly mother who just wouldn’t die, and a wife you figured he’d divorce the minute his mother was dead. Vesta came from a time when divorce brought shame on a family. She wouldn’t have liked it, so you thought Graeme was waiting until she was beyond being upset by a divorce. Is that what he told you, to keep stringing you along?”
“I never strung her along,” Graeme said. “And it wasn’t like you’re saying. Sure, we played around. The nurse’s costume was a turn-on, and for a while, it was fun. But it was never serious.”
Tina shrieked. That�
��s the only way I can say it. She had jumped up from the arm of Graeme’s chair, and she shrieked like an animal. Both the Sheriff and Peterson moved quickly. They stood close behind Tina, one on either side, ready for whatever was going to happen next, but Tina was focused on Graeme. She didn’t care about the cops.
I looked at Graeme. “You can do the math as well as I can,” I said. “Are you going to keep protecting her, now that you know that she killed both your mother and your wife?”
His face went through a heartbreaking range of expressions as he realized that what I was saying made sense.
But he still didn’t say anything, so I went on. “It now looks like I left somebody off my list of suspects – all the people who had access to Cadbury House and knew about Vesta’s pills – that list should’ve included Tina. Through her affair with Graeme, she was familiar with the house and its routines. She may even have seen Graeme sorting the pills. And she would have known that Diana was the only person in the house who drank vodka. Graeme probably told her all about it – his frustration with Diana’s drinking – her ‘afternoon swim’ – the hard liquor in a house that had only served wine before he remarried. First Tina put extra pain pills into Vesta’s box. Was Tina here any time after you got your mother’s pills ready for the week?”
He thought for a moment, then sat back, defeated. “Yes.”
“Anybody could have,” Tina said. “This place is in the middle of nowhere, and during the day they didn’t bother to keep the doors locked. When it comes to motive, we’d have to include you too, Taylor. Vesta told you she was leaving money to your shelter in her will. I got it straight from the lawyer’s mouth.” She gave Michael a tight little smile, and he glared back at her. “And you, too, for that matter, darling. You handled the estate, you met with her constantly. It doesn’t prove anything, except that we all could’ve meddled with the pills. The list of suspects is growing.”
Michael spoke up. “As for motive, the legal documents hadn’t been drawn up yet for the legacy to Orphans, so Taylor had a motive to keep Vesta very much alive. She couldn’t have risked losing that legacy by acting too soon. She would’ve been after me to know if the new Will had been signed, and she wasn’t. She never mentioned it again after our meeting with Vesta. As for myself, I can’t prove a negative, but I knew nothing about how Vesta’s pills were handled.”
Tina began to purr. “But you’re so much more than a family lawyer, aren’t you precious? A family friend, that’s what I’d call you. A very close family friend. You knew a lot about the family routine here. That’s called reasonable doubt, I believe.”
Michael didn’t look concerned. “I’d be pleased to submit the estate to an independent audit, if Graeme wants it. No, Tina. Aside from caring about Vesta on a personal level, I’d give a lot right now to have her alive and right back here in the room with us.”
I went on, staring at Tina. “It must have seemed like a good time to do it. If there was any suspicion aroused by Vesta’s death, there would have been lots of people in the house at the time. Jordan was here with his girlfriend and he was also throwing a party. And Graeme wasn’t likely to admit that he’d had his mistress in the house, so you’d never even be suspected. And you were sick of waiting, weren’t you? Maybe Graeme had told you he couldn’t make any big changes in his life until his mother passed away, or maybe you just assumed it. Then when she finally did die, instead of divorcing his wife, he turned around and dumped you.”
Tina was staring back at me, her face congested, stubbornly silent, but Graeme spoke up. “I told her it was over. My mother’s death was a wake-up call. I loved my wife. I wanted to work on my marriage, and I couldn’t do it while I was still –“
“Getting a little on the side,” his son said bitterly.
“I’m sorry Jordan, but you don’t know what it was like. Diana was always after me to move away from here, and I couldn’t. From the day we moved into Cadbury House, my marriage was in jeopardy; Diana hated it here. But my mother needed me. I was trapped. I never meant for things to go as far as they did with Tina. I tried to let her down easily, but she just wouldn’t accept it. She began to make my life a living hell, threatening to tell Diana, threatening to tell my son, trying to find out details about the family money from Michael – when I found out she’d been trying to get close to him so she could find out more about my estate, I was livid.”
“I’m not entirely stupid,” Michael said. “She tried to be subtle, but I saw through her pretty quickly. Not quickly enough, as it happened: my one mistake was to mention the legacy to Orphans of the Storm, but when I realized what she was really up to, I thought Graeme should know.”
“And I appreciated it. She even started arguing with me about it in public, and in a place as small as Tropical Breeze I was running into her everywhere I went. The diner, the hardware store, the grocery store. Diana had her book club meetings on Wednesday nights, and that was the night Tina would come over. The Wednesday after my mother died, I had already made it clear the affair was over, but Tina snuck into the house anyway. Even though she knew my son was still in town! Thank God he’d taken Carmen and gone out.
“Tina showed up in that damned nurse’s costume, prancing around with her bare butt showing under that little white skirt, trying to seduce me. When she’d first worn it for me – oh, hell! I’m a man, not a saint. It was a turn-on. But that last time, when she sneaked up on me wearing that thing – it brought me to my senses. My mother had just died a couple of days before, for God’s sake! I had already told her it was over! I told her to take the damn thing off, get dressed and get out. No more Mr. Nice Guy. I was finished.”
“And instead,” I said, “she took the damn thing off and left it somewhere she hoped Diana would find it and want to know what the hell was going on.”
“She left it on the top shelf of Diana’s closet,” Myrtle said. The sound of her voice startled everyone. They had forgotten she was even there. “I found it that night when I came in to turn down the bed. When I went to put the throw pillows in the closet, I saw the cap. It stuck up like a little box, and with that big red cross on it, it was like a stoplight. I got it down and I knew right away whose it was. She’d been catting around the house for months, although I couldn’t believe they were still at it, what with Miss Vesta passing away just a few days before. That wasn’t right, Mr. Graeme,” she said with a trembling voice. “I never said a thing about it and I never will again, but that just wasn’t right.”
“I know,” he said with his eyes closed.
“You two weren’t even sneaky about it! Once Miss Diana was gone for the evening, well, the things I heard! I had to just get out my Bible and try not to listen. One time Miss Vesta even caught that creature in the house.”
“In the nurse’s costume?” the Sheriff asked with frank interest that went beyond duty.
“No. Just in ordinary clothes.”
I pondered, then nodded. “The day I came here with my volunteers, Diana mentioned that Vesta had talked about a nurse.”
“It was her way of hinting to Diana without coming straight out and telling her,” Myrtle said. “She wanted to let her know there had been a strange woman in the house, start Diana thinking, doubting, maybe find out about the affair and put an end to it. When Vesta caught that tramp in the house she asked what she was doing here. Tina lied to her, made up some story about being the new nurse. It must have come to mind because of that costume she had. Vesta pretended to believe her, but she wasn’t that far gone. She knew exactly what was going on with her son and this hussy, but she didn’t say anything about it. She was just hoping Tina would go away. That Graeme would get rid of her and it would all be kept quiet. Diana didn’t get the hint. It only made her think Vesta was senile.”
“You can’t prove any of this,” Tina said.
“No, we probably can’t,” I said. “But as for the way you killed Diana, we probably can.”
“You knew that Graeme and Diana were working on their ma
rriage,” I said. “When you came into Thirty-Nine that night, you probably saw the reservation book at the hostess station. Reservation for four – Huntington is a fairly long, recognizable name, even upside down. So you realized the whole family was going to be there soon. That’s why you went into the bar and started drinking, right? You were waiting for Graeme and Diana to arrive before making a scene, but they were late, and you managed to get so drunk you were asked to leave. So you barged into the dining room and nearly spelled it all out for Jordan and everybody else in the room. Graeme and Diana weren’t there yet, but you were going to tell the whole town about your affair, and you wanted Jordan to be the first to know, and in public.
“But Doc Fleming got you out of there and put you into his car, where you pretended to pass out. You were watching when Diana and Graeme came down the street, arm in arm, getting along and looking happy. It drove you out of your mind. Any other mistress would’ve jumped out of the car and confronted them. But you must have already had another plan.
“Doc took you home, and I’m guessing you pretended to be more drunk than you were. After he left, you got into your own car and drove out here to Cadbury House; you knew the house would be empty: Myrtle had been fired, and everybody else was at Thirty-Nine. You had a key, either one Graeme had given you or one you had stolen, and you let yourself in. You knew that Diana was in the habit of having a drink at the pool, and you knew that she was the only one in the house who drank vodka. You crushed up some of Vesta’s pain pills, which were still in the kitchen, then mixed them into the open bottle of booze you knew only Diana would drink from. Then you waited for her to drink the narcotic and drown. It worked perfectly. I bet you even left your cell phone at home, so the GPS wouldn’t give you away. But did you know that your car also has GPS? All the cops have to do is check where your car was that night, and they’ve got you. And though you wiped your fingerprints from the pill bottle and the booze bottle, I’m willing to bet you didn’t clean them off the mortar and pestle. You used it to crush up the pills, didn’t you? Then you put it back, but you didn’t do a good job of cleaning out the residue from the pills. It looked kind of dusty when I saw it the day we found Diana in the pool. If you were that sloppy, you probably didn’t bother about your fingerprints, either. You weren’t entirely drunk, but I guess you weren’t entirely clear-headed, either.”