I shifted uncomfortably on the settee. Something Claude said sounded familiar. My hand reached over to my purse, grazed the top of it, and came to a stop. I was after the letter. I wanted to check it for a reference, a pattern: First year.
I pulled my hand back, as my mind raced through its collection of self-made indexes and lists, searching for more connections to what Claude was saying.
Claude’s hypnotic voice broke my train of thought. “Nina was upset after the breakup, then afraid after Calla died. More afraid than I’d ever seen her. She was convinced that the librarian had been murdered from the start.”
I nodded my head.
“Marjorie?” Guy said. “You knew this?”
“Yes,” I said. “You know I thought the same thing. I ran into Nina as she was exiting the courthouse after talking with a deputy. I’m guessing that was you. You didn’t believe her any more than you believed me.”
Guy stiffened, stood even taller. It was easy to see how he had been naturally built for the sport of basketball. I imagined him touching the clouds when he jumped for the ball. “It was an ongoing investigation, Marjorie. We couldn’t tell everyone what we knew. Duke was afraid Herbert’d run off and that would be that. He was our main suspect from the very beginning. The watch was a big giveaway. We just needed time to get the details right. I couldn’t go blabbin’ everything I knew to you.”
I stared at Guy, annoyed all over again, then turned my attention back to Claude. “She saw the same thing I had, that the bullet was in the wrong place, but I sensed she wanted to tell me more than that but couldn’t find it in herself to do so.”
“Nina was incredibly private,” Claude said.
“I didn’t even know of her or of her friendship with Calla until after Calla was dead. I talked to Calla, or saw her, a couple of times a week, and she never mentioned Nina. All she ever said was that I shouldn’t avoid the college types, there were some nice ones there that would welcome me. She’d see to it.”
“They wanted it that way. What they had together belonged only to them. I think they had a secret way of communicating that even I didn’t know about.” Claude lowered his face into the palms of his hands and began to weep.
Guy and I said nothing. Work continued in the dining room and the storm pushed past outside, but I was so focused on Claude that I barely noticed.
After a long moment, Claude looked up at Guy. “I’m sorry; I can’t believe she’s dead. She was always so afraid someone would find out. Not for her sake, but for Calla’s. There’s twice as many churches in this town as there are taverns, for Christ’s sake. It would have been a scandal that none us of could have weathered, and I’m as close to tenure as I’ve ever been. She didn’t want to damage that, we’d both worked hard for it, but she was so lonely she couldn’t help herself. It wasn’t the same for Nina as it was for me. Her love was forbidden, mine was just insatiable. I had no trouble coming to terms with my appetites, but Nina did.”
A blank look crossed Guy’s face. He didn’t understand what Claude had said, but I thought I did, if only because I had read a private letter between the two women. Deep inside, I was sure I was shocked. I had always believed that Herbert and Calla had a secret romance. Everybody had. But Herbert hadn’t been the secret. Nina had been.
We both know there is far more at stake than being disinherited, as our dearest Elizabeth was, the opening line of the letter had said. Claude had validated it. And this, for me, tied it all together—I must watch carefully now. Time is ticking. This first year seems different. It will pass, too. Like Claude said, Nina feared being discovered, felt the pressure of it, that it was close.
I wanted nothing more than to read the letter again to make sure I remembered everything in it correctly, but I couldn’t share it. Not now, if ever.
I looked at Claude closer. He had been a mess when he’d walked in the front door. His hair and clothes were all out of kilter. He’d looked hurried, thrown together, not his buttoned-up, proper self. It was like the phone call had interrupted him . . . I had assumed he’d been telling the truth about the papers he’d needed to take care of, but that was most likely not the case. He had been with someone.
“Will it be embarrassing for you to have someone vouch for your time after you left Nina here?” I couldn’t keep myself from asking. I didn’t think Guy knew what question to ask next.
Guy shot me a hard look that indicated I had crossed a line, but he didn’t say anything. He let me have my way.
“Yes, actually. How did you know?” Claude said.
“The same first year?”
“No. Oh, God, no. I avoid her as much as I can, but she’s there at every turn, it seems, with that daft smile on her face, like she’s waiting for just the right opportunity to tell the world what she knows.”
I knew the answer to this question before I asked it, even though I didn’t want to believe it. “She was at the funeral, wasn’t she?”
“Yes,” Claude said. “She had the audacity to march right up to us and speak like nothing had ever happened. She’s brazen that way.”
Guy’s face had gone from puzzled to frustrated. “Who are you two talking about?” he demanded.
“The person who killed Calla and Nina,” I said to Guy, standing up as everything came together in my invisible mental index. I stopped, as fear struck my heart, overtaking any satisfaction that I might have found the revelation. “You said she slashed Nina’s tires?” I said to Claude.
He didn’t reply, just nodded.
My tires had been slashed, too. “I have to go. We have to go, Guy. I’m worried about Hank.”
CHAPTER 47
We were halfway to the hospital before Guy said a word to me. “You shouldn’t have said that to him, Marjorie.”
To his credit, Guy let the siren of his police car remain silent. He had the bubble on top flashing, and he blew the horn when he came up on another car. His foot was pressed hard on the pedal, and the engine revved loudly, pushing every horse to its limit.
“Said what?” I asked.
“That his wife had been killed. You don’t know that for sure, Marjorie, and you can’t go sayin’ such things to anyone if you don’t have the answers from someone who knows about those things and says so.”
I stared at Guy and didn’t say a word. I wanted to ask him what had happened to him, why he had become so hesitant and cautious. But the truth was, I knew the answer to my own question. He had taken a blow to the head and to his pride when he’d confronted a killer and ended up on the wrong side of a two-by-four. If he’d come out a hero instead of a victim, it would have been him that was in the running for sheriff, not Duke Parsons. His second marriage had failed at about the same time, and I supposed if there was one place that was consistent in his life, it was his job as a deputy sheriff. It was all he had, and the last thing he needed to do was risk losing it.
“You’re right, Guy. I shouldn’t have said that. I say a lot of things I shouldn’t say.”
He glanced over at me, looked me in the eye, then returned his attention back to the road. “You’re sure about this?”
“As sure as it’s raining cats and dogs.”
“If you’re wrong . . .”
“I’m not.” I followed his gaze as St. Joseph’s came into view. It looked like Frankenstein’s castle on the night the villagers gathered to burn it down. “But if I am, it won’t hurt to have questioned her.”
“Duke’ll be mad about that. That I didn’t get his approval before doing this.”
“I can handle Duke. He can’t fire me, and I doubt he can fire you until he’s the real sheriff instead of an acting one.”
Guy tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, then laid on the horn to push a milk truck out of the way.
“How come you’re worried about Hank?” Guy asked, as the truck pulled over and he easily maneuvered around it.
I had to recompile all of the index entries in my mind in their right places all over again. I didn’t have
time to tell Guy everything—I wasn’t sure he would connect the dots about Calla and Nina—but I thought he would understand my basic fear once I told him the root source of my suspicion. “My tires were slashed this morning, just like Nina’s were. All of them. And the phone line was cut. I was isolated, on my own. Luckily, Pastor John Mark stopped by and drove me over to the Knudsens’ place. But the odd thing was that Shep didn’t alert me that something was wrong. Normally, he’d bark his fool head off if a stranger set foot on our land, but he didn’t even let out a single growl.”
“He must’ve known the person,” Guy said.
I nodded. “Yes. He must have known her.”
“You think she’d really hurt Hank? There’s no cause for that.”
“I don’t know what to think. I just know she said she had a shift at the hospital today, and Hank’s there, too. I want to make sure he’s all right. You need to talk to her, Guy. For Herbert’s sake, if nothing else. If someone else did this terrible thing, murdered two people and tried to make them both look like suicides, then you owe it to him to make sure she didn’t have anything to do with this.”
“You’re right. I would want to check on Hank, too, if I was you,” Guy said, as he wheeled the police car into the hospital parking lot.
We rushed by Olga Olafson without saying a word. Her face was full of questions and her tongue full of rules, but none of that mattered now. All I wanted was to see Hank as healthy as he could be, sitting up in his bed, his bag packed, ready to go home.
But that’s not what I saw as I entered his hospital room.
I stopped just inside the door. Guy was on my heels and nearly knocked me over as soon as he saw what I saw. I suppose he should have been in the lead, but my first concern was seeing to Hank. I was going to leave the police work to Guy.
Betty Walsh stood over Hank with a pillow in her hands.
I didn’t know if she was pulling it up, or putting it down. She’d frozen in place when she heard us enter the room. At first glance, she looked like a perfect statue of a candy striper doing her duty, caring for a patient unable to care for himself. But what I saw was more than that.
I was already convinced that Betty had killed Calla and Nina, and it wasn’t a far stretch to imagine that she could be capable of killing Hank, too.
I’d known all along that the only reason Hank hadn’t taken his own life was that he hadn’t been able to. He’d begged me in his deepest, darkest moments to put a pillow over his face and walk away. “No one would know,” he’d whispered. But I couldn’t, wouldn’t do such a thing. He knew that. But maybe Betty Walsh would. She’d made him laugh, flirted with him. I’d been jealous of her with him. They’d been alone together. Had time to talk about things I couldn’t know about. I knew what Hank Trumaine was capable of, how desperate he was to end the suffering his accident had brought to us both. And I was starting to see the same thing about Betty. If she had killed twice, she could do it a third time.
What I saw in Betty Walsh’s hand wasn’t a dutiful, caring act, but a weapon. A weapon that would finally answer Hank’s prayers.
“Put the pillow down, Betty,” I demanded.
Guy had eased to my side. He looked at me oddly, but said nothing.
“Oh, hey, there, Mrs. Trumaine. I was just gettin’ Hank some comfort,” Betty said, without missing a beat.
Hank snapped his head toward me. The skin on his face was as tight as an overripe tomato and just as red. He started to say something, but I was too far away from him to hear the words.
Just like she was dropping a feather, Betty released the pillow from her grip, and it landed directly on Hank’s face. He couldn’t bat it away, move it with anything other than the turn of his neck, but he didn’t make a move.
Instinct demanded that I rush to Hank, rescue him, but I didn’t move.
In the blink of an eye, Betty Walsh had pulled a gun from somewhere inside her uniform and was pointing it directly at me.
CHAPTER 48
Time has a way of stopping when you’re staring down the barrel of a gun.
“Don’t move. Neither of you,” Betty ordered. Both of her hands were clasped on the grip of the handgun. They were as steady as her voice. She meant business.
I’d never doubted that about Betty Walsh. But I meant business, too. I would have moved heaven and earth to keep Hank safe, and it looked like I was going to have to.
“You’re makin’ a big mistake, there, miss,” Guy said.
I didn’t give Betty time to respond. “Shut up, Guy. She knows what she’s doing,” I said, without looking him in the eye. If he didn’t know he’d just been put in his place then he didn’t know anything about women at all—which was entirely possible, considering his previous record.
I think my tone threw Betty off. She looked at me curiously, then smiled slightly with an upturn of her bright red lips. Our eyes locked.
Guy sucked in a breath. I didn’t need to glance at him to know the look on his face. He had interrupted my bark correctly and was upset with me. But if he was smart, he’d pay attention and let me talk to the girl.
“I do know what I’m doing,” Betty finally said. Rain pounded on the window behind her. The blinds were pulled tight, and it was impossible to see outside. An overhead fluorescent light bathed the small hospital room in false sunlight. It could have been any time of the day, anywhere in the world, but all that mattered to me was happening right in front of me. Nothing else existed.
I tried to slow my heart rate down. Never show an angry dog fear. I had done that before; faced down a mad dog and a crazed human being. I needed to draw on that experience more than anything else. My wits were all I had. Indexing couldn’t save me now.
“You know there’s no way out, Betty,” I said. “Not this time. Why don’t you tell me what this is all about?”
A bead of perspiration had formed on Betty’s forehead and started to drop down her face, cutting a rivulet in her foundation as it went. Freshening up was out of the question.
The mar in her makeup was the only thing out of place. I had to give it to her. She had cleaned up well after hanging Nina from the rafters. I was sure of that now. Sure that Betty had killed both women.
She shook her head. “There’s always a way out, Mrs. Trumaine.”
“There’s more police coming, Betty.”
Guy shifted his weight next to me. I knew he was calculating his odds, looking for a way to detain her without somebody getting hurt, without ending up at the wrong end of the stick himself.
Betty’s hand wavered for the first time. Her trigger finger twitched, came off the gun for just a second. “I’ll shoot him. I swear I will. I’ll spin around and put him out of his misery.”
“Hank has nothing to do with this, Betty,” I said, as calmly as I could. I thought I could see a slight rise and fall of the pillow; Hank was breathing, but it must have been difficult for him, not being able to move. He had to know what was going on, that I was in danger and he couldn’t do anything about it. I was sure that was more difficult for him than anything else. He couldn’t rescue me any more than I could rescue him.
I focused on Betty. “It hurt when the professor broke it off, didn’t it?”
“What do you know?”
“I know how hard it is to end something with someone you don’t want to. My heart’s been broken before.” That was a lie, but she didn’t need to know that. I had only loved one man in my entire life, and that man was Hank.
An impatient look crossed Betty’s eyes. Please, Guy, just let me handle this.
“That’s what you think this is?” Betty sneered. “That I’m acting like a jilted brat just because the professor tossed me aside? Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“He lied, that’s why. He lied to me every day. They all do. Walking around acting all high and mighty, all the while they’re sneakin’ around doin’ ugly, despicable things. Nobody is what they say they are. Nobody. It’s all lies.”
“Life can be disappointing sometimes,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you go around hurting folks, Betty, just because they hurt you.”
“Don’t lecture me. I get enough of that at home. That I’m not good enough, not tryin’ hard enough, not pretty enough. You don’t know anything about my disappointments, so don’t try to tell me anything about what hurts and what doesn’t.”
“I’m not here to take sides, Betty. I just want to take Hank home. That’s all. I just want to make sure he’s all right and go home where we both belong. You understand that don’t you?”
Nothing changed in Betty’s expression. It was like she hadn’t heard a word I’d said. “He wasn’t ever going to leave her, no matter what. Even though she didn’t love him. She loved someone else. The librarian. Did you know that, Mrs. Trumaine? The professor’s wife and the librarian loved each other. I found their letters in a book. It was awful, and he knew. He knew!”
I felt Guy stiffen next to me. “We don’t get to choose who we fall in love with, do we, Betty?” I said.
She looked at me curiously, then narrowed her eyes as they filled up with more hate. I needed to calm her down again. The beads of perspiration had multiplied on her forehead. Her skin was pale white underneath the thin coating of makeup.
“I thought about it for a long time,” Betty said. “And then I realized, I just needed to practice. It was like playing piano. I had to devote time to it, and then I figured it all out by going hunting with Jaeger, that killing wasn’t as hard as I thought it was. It’s kind of like sex, Mrs. Trumaine. It hurts a little at first, you get all sweaty, and then it’s over quick. But it gets easier. You learn to not feel a thing about it. I practiced for it just like I would for a piano recital. I practiced until I got every note just right.”
See Also Deception Page 21