Three May Keep a Secret (An Endurance Mystery)

by Susan Van Kirk

  “Brenda had a spectacular funeral pyre. The secret is taking away the starter. It ‘hinders the investigation,’ as the fire chief would say. Too bad the fire department got there so quick. I was hoping that wouldn’t happen. If I hadn’t killed her she would have eventually figured it out and bled me poor with her little blackmail schemes. She told me about those, too, you see.”

  “How could you do that when you were such good friends in high school?”

  “Friends?” he scowled. “Brenda and I were never friends. It was Ted Kessler she ran around with.”

  Grace stared at him, trying not to gasp. “Ted Kessler?”

  His darkness turned to laughter. “That Judas? He’s long dead, Grace. See, that’s one of the things I learned at the Kesslers—about Judas, the betrayer.”

  She cleared her throat and said in a soft voice, her breath catching, “Nick Lawler. So your friend Ted is buried in your grave.”

  “And a very fine resting place it is, Grace—better than he deserves—looking out over the meadow and wild flowers.”

  “Was the coin with the raven on it his?”

  Nick Lawler’s face darkened. “That damn, stupid thing. He wore it around his neck. He was always talking about it. Some author he liked wrote a poem about a raven and Ted was always quoting lines from it.”

  That must be how Brenda figured it out, thought Grace.

  Lawler swiveled to the side on the wooden crate and reached into the other plastic sack. “And now, Grace, something special. You’re going to see something only Ronda Burke has seen. Well, and me, of course. After all, I am the designer. This is special. I look at it a lot.” He pulled out what looked like a scrapbook to Grace. Opening the cover, he held it up so she could look at it, as if she were an eager child and he was reading a book to her.

  “See, here are the fire stories from the early fires Ted and I set. I’d never really had a friend before, Grace. He loved to watch fires as much as I did once I showed him how to set them and how beautiful they were as they burned. Here’s the barn we set, our very first production. Pretty, huh? Course in black and white you can’t see all the incredible colors. And there we are on the civilian lines watching the firemen put it out. But they didn’t save much. We were too good. No one even guessed.”

  “What about Ronda? How did she see it?”

  He snapped the book shut and stood up, menace on his face. “I’m showing you these masterpieces and that’s all you can talk about? That piece of crap, Ronda?” He took a step toward her and she shrank back in the corner trying frantically to think about what she could do to calm him. Her legs were weak and she looked down and calmed her trembling hands.

  “No, Bill, er, Nick. I’m interested. Sit down again. Show me.”

  He stopped moving toward her and frowned. “I thought you would like these photos, Grace.”

  “Oh, I do, Bill, I do. Show me more.”

  He sat back down and turned some more pages, describing the fire that burned most of the downtown, barely escaping when a policeman was checking doors on his regular rounds. His voice rose and his face became animated. “This was practically a whole block, Grace. A clothing store, doctor’s office, shoe store, pharmacy, and even the bank. It was the best fire we set and people were talking about it for weeks and weeks.”

  “That is a beautiful fire, Bill.”

  “You can call me Nick, you know, if you want. Only you know about my name now and I know you won’t tell. It’s been years since anyone’s called me that.”

  She stared at him, especially his mad eyes and crooked smile, and figured it would be best if she went along with his self-indulgent story. Her mind fumbled, searching for something to say. “I’m so used to calling you Bill, it’s hard for me to think of you as someone else.”

  “That’s all right, Grace. You can call me Bill. You know, no one else has seen this but Ronda, and that wasn’t because I showed it to her. That sneaky, lying bitch. She figured it out from Brenda’s stories at the bar. When I was gone one day, she got into my apartment and found this under a lot of stuff in my desk drawer. She wanted fifty thousand dollars. What else could I do?”

  “I agree. People aren’t supposed to get into your private things. That was so wrong of Ronda. You must be right about her. But she was killed with Dan Wakeley’s gun, Bill. How?”

  “Oh, that’s the good part. She thought she was so smart. But she wasn’t as smart as me. You should have seen her face when I met her out at the cemetery and pulled out that gun. She had a purse with her but couldn’t get to it fast enough. When I looked in it and got rid of it I found a little handgun that would hardly have killed a flea. Clever, ha! The only bad thing is that no one else could find out how much more clever I was. Only you, Grace.”

  “The gun? Dan’s?”

  “Oh. Well, the night he got drunk in the bar and the cops came in and took him home, I found his handgun in the truck’s glove compartment. I’m good at picking locks—it came in handy, especially in Tennessee. The police had Wakeley at the top of their list. It was a thought I had about using it down the road if I needed it. I’ve got a gun but it isn’t registered.”

  “That was very clever. Even Sweeney wasn’t sure that Dan was innocent. You’re right. He’s been her top prospect for Ronda’s killer. Pretty slick, Bill. Quite ingenious.”

  His eyes narrowed and he pulled out a knife from a case attached to his belt. “Don’t patronize me, Grace. I know I’m clever. The police haven’t caught me yet and they never will.” He moved over toward the pile of wood in front of Grace’s hole. Her breath caught and she almost forgot to breathe. Shocked, she watched as he picked up a small stick and went back to the crate. Sitting down, he began whittling on the stick. She let out her breath. Then she looked down at her hands and realized she had dug her fingernails into the palm of her hand.

  “So how come you burned down the Kesslers’ house? And why were you living with them in the first place?”

  “Well, I wasn’t. Not exactly. I just stayed there sometimes. Remember you asked me about my past and I told you it was a long story? Well, I have time now.” He looked up toward the window. “Isn’t dark yet.”

  “So how did that happen?” Grace sat back, trying to look like she was comfortable and he didn’t scare the hell out of her. Softening her features, Grace loosened the death grip on her hand. She felt the area of the sore spot on her head where she had been hit. The blood was dried. She also felt something else—Lettie’s bobby pins—and that made her remember Roy Trotter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Grace thought it still looked light in the barn, but it was definitely less light than a while ago. She hoped that by now someone had missed her back home and TJ was figuring out where she was. What was taking her so long? Her only chance was to keep Tully talking so that TJ would have time to find her. Watching his beady eyes, she knew that she needed to keep him focused on talking about his cleverness so he wouldn’t go over to the wood pile and see the hole she had dug out. Her mind racing, she fumbled for something to ask him.

  “So, the Kesslers?”

  “That takes a bit of explaining. Hmm—we’ve got time. You see, I was actually born in Washington State. It was right after the war, 1950, and my old man and mom had four kids already. He also had a disability that kept him out of the war. Them times during the war were good, according to my brothers. Odd jobs kept them in food, but once the soldiers came back, work was hard to find.”

  “I can imagine,” Grace said. She tried to sound empathetic, forcing her voice to remain calm. “So what’s your earliest memory?”

  He looked down at the piece of wood he was carving. It must be a nervous habit, thought Grace. Something to keep his hands busy.

  “My earliest memory?” He looked up and pursed his lips. “Hmm . . . probably being hit so hard I flew across the room. My old man. Don’t remember what I’d done. Maybe cried too much. Must have been four or five. Mostly I followed my older brot
hers, but they didn’t want me hanging around with them. So they’d spit on me and occasionally hit me and tell me to go home. Left me with my mom. I was too young to know that she couldn’t keep off the sauce. Alcohol—her drug of choice. Figured that out later. But when I was little she mostly drank cheap stuff and slept a lot of the day. So I just kinda figured out how to entertain myself. Guess that’s where I learned about being alone.”

  Grace hesitated, her mind racing, and she renewed her cautious words. “How did you end up in Endurance when you grew up in Washington?”

  “My old man heard about a construction job back in Illinois. Some guy just passing through. By the mid-fifties construction was doing pretty good since a lot of tract houses were being built once the soldiers were back. He managed to get us there somehow. Don’t remember much about that.” He looked up from his whittling and pushed the pile of wood shavings around with his foot. “Got a job building houses. One day he was working on a roof and he fell. Claimed he was hit with a two-by-four from another worker who didn’t like him. Might be. He could be an ugly son of a bitch when he wanted to be. He landed on his back and it was broke. Between surgery and rehabilitation, he got hooked on painkillers. Never worked again that I can remember.”

  “Didn’t your brothers work?”

  “Oh, some. But they were mostly out of the house by then. I haven’t seen them in, oh, twenty, twenty-five years.”

  Grace shifted her leg and rubbed the area where the handcuff had scraped off some skin. She kept trying to think of questions—anything to keep him talking. “So how did you get to Endurance?”

  “I was fourteen when that happened, but I was pretty scrawny. My old man could still put some pain on me. One of the guys my dad worked with was moving to this little town he’d heard of, and we weren’t doing much good in Rockford, so I guess my parents decided to hitch a ride. We had to steal to get enough to eat and get clothes, and I got good at stealing and picking locks. I went to school but not exactly all the time. I was used to getting hit by then. But eventually I got big enough my old man couldn’t beat me anymore. I’m sure I was a forgettable kid at school. My mom drank steadily and my old man collected his check and bought more painkillers, legal or not.”

  Grace forced herself to look at him and said, “You seem to have done pretty well for yourself despite the sporadic days in school.”

  “Well, Grace, I learned. I was pretty good-looking in high school. Course my hair was brown and my eyes were blue, not like now. But I could mostly charm the teachers and talk the girls into just about anything. I finally figured out if I was friendly and helpful, I could get what I wanted. Stealing came naturally since my parents taught me young. But you know, I looked around, especially at them, and thought maybe I was born for better than this. I just knew I could do better than they had. Maybe I was destined for great things. I just couldn’t figure out how.”

  Grace looked at his face as he talked. Jill had been right, she thought. He did come off as charming and earnest even when he was planning to kill you. She took a deep breath, willing her hands to unclench.

  He must have noticed her hand movement. “You know, when I look at that scar on your hand, I kinda figure it’s destiny that we’re friends and that you understand me.”

  Grace put her best “understanding” face on, but all the while she was thinking about what a despicable person he was and how he had, indeed, fooled everyone. But not Brenda, she thought. And not Ronda.

  He was still scraping wood off the stick he’d picked up and talking along as if he were explaining his entire life to her. She acted like she was listening and cocked her head to one side. But behind her careful attention to detail, Grace was thinking about Lettie’s bobby pins.

  “Didn’t want to kill the Kesslers. They kinda took me in, you know. I met their kid, Ted, on the football team. Coach talked me into it. Guess he thought I was big enough to play ball. But I didn’t have money for shoes and he said he’d take care of it. It wasn’t as if he felt sorry for me. He was just kinda matter-of-fact about it. Ted Kessler played on the team and we started talking. I’d always been alone before. He didn’t care about my folks—where I came from. Anyway, they’d had a fire at a shed on their farm and William—that’s his dad—called the fire department because he was afraid it would spread too fast and get some other buildings. Changed my life.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can still see it. Those flames going up to the sky. They were beautiful, all orange and shadowy and it almost seemed as if they were going up to heaven.” Grace watched the rapture on his face as if he were seeing the flames just yards and years away. “And then the firemen arrived—nothing exciting ever happened in my life till then. I watched them the whole time they were there, looking at their uniforms and equipment and seeing how . . . how they were thanked by everyone that came by to watch. Like nothing I’d ever seen before. And as I thought about it, I realized I could make that happen. It was powerful stuff.”

  Grace watched his face transform into a smile and an almost trance-like state. I’ve got to get out of here, she kept thinking. He’s insane. She wrapped her arms around herself, willing her legs to be stronger.

  “The only thing bad about the Kesslers was that they kept after me about going to church and becoming a Christian and being kind to people. I went once. That was enough. They wanted to change me into something I didn’t know nothing about. I listened, kind of going along with them for a while. Ted was there too but, despite all their goody, goody words, he’d climb out the drainpipe near his window at night and we’d go out and set fires.

  “But the Kesslers would talk about it at dinner at night, about all the farmers who’d lost livestock in the fires. They said some of the fires were wiping people out. And Ted began to change, to feel guilty, like what we were doing wasn’t right, wasn’t ‘Christian,’ he’d say. And he began to talk about confessing what we done. I couldn’t have him do that, could I? So I waited and thought about what I’d do.” Grace noted his feverish eyes and determined tone.

  “William and Terry—those were their names—let me stay at their house, even overnight in their guest room. They called it that—‘the guest room.’ Of course they didn’t know Ted and I slipped out a lot. So I stopped by my parents’ and stole some of my old man’s pain pills. He’d never miss them, and she was always so drunk she wouldn’t know what was going on. And I crushed them up and doctored their milk that night. They slept like babies. And I moved Ted to the guest room and used gasoline all over the first floor. By the time it hit the upstairs they’d never know. Worked perfectly.” He hesitated, then smiled at Grace and added, “Fire trucks came out and it was the best fire—by far—I’d ever set.”

  Grace shivered again and thought about how she could get out. The longer he talked, the crazier he sounded. He appeared to be enjoying himself, as he explained with such pride things he’d probably never been able to tell anyone. And now it was getting dark outside. She could barely see the front of the barn through the door he’d left open. Adrenaline rushed through her body and her breathing quickened. She would have to be ready the moment he left.

  “I watched the Kessler fire from some trees back of the house. After it took the house to the ground, I headed out of town figuring no one would miss me and they’d all think I died in the fire. Sure enough, everyone thought it was me that died and Ted who set it. After that I worked in a lot of places, mostly washing dishes or cleaning bars. Every so often the fire bug would hit me and I’d set a place and leave again. Mostly traveled through Tennessee, keeping out of trouble.”

  “So why’d you decide to come back here?”

  “Well, this is home, at least the only home I’d ever stayed at for more than a few years. I found I could pass as Bill Tully. I’d saved a bit of money for a down payment on a broken-down bar, and I talked some people into loaning me the money to fix it up. I could always do that, you know. I became a ‘respectable’ community member and no one knew. No
one suspected. I fooled them all. Here I was, a seventeen-year-old high school dropout, and I owned my own place. And it would have stayed that way if Brenda hadn’t come snooping around. But I took care of her and Ronda, too. And after tonight, no one can tie me to any of this.”

  “I have a feeling TJ will figure it out.”

  “Nah. I’m too smart, Grace. No one’s caught me yet. Not Sweeney, not anyone in town, and, after tonight, not you.”

  “Someone will see my car, Bill.” And I’m hoping the battery in my cell phone hasn’t run down. She uncrossed her knees and pushed up her sleeves. A fluttery feeling in her chest told her the time was close.

  “Don’t think so, Grace. Moved it back in the trees. Even a helicopter couldn’t find it. I’ll get rid of it once I set the fire. Shouldn’t be hard.”

  Grace thought, her jaw firmly set, I don’t think so, Tully. I think I’m smarter than you.

  “We’re friends, Grace. But I can’t let you tell people about me. Don’t worry. It won’t take long. And you’re used to fires; you said yourself that you’d already been in one. Maybe you were supposed to die in that one. That’s what I thought about when you showed me that scar on your hand. You cheated death that time. A death is owed. Now here you are again with an imminent fire. See, I’m just making things right.”

  He laughed as he stood up to leave. “Just think, you’ll have a ringside seat to my most beautiful creation.”

  Tully moved over to the door and reached for something Grace couldn’t see. As he came back she could tell he was carrying a gasoline can. Her eyes widened, her breath caught, and she could feel her legs starting to shake. All the strength she had gathered drained out of her like air leaving a pin-prinked balloon. He can’t mean this. It can’t be happening again. But this time I can’t get out. This time I’ll have no one to rescue me. She pushed herself back to the corner, clutched her arms to her chest and pulled herself in, willing her body to curl up in a ball.