When Hy bent down to her, Alyssa looked up, tears drowning her eyes, her face red and raked with anguish.
“He…he…” Alyssa’s voice was muffled in sobs. The knife lay on the floor beside her. And blood…
“Are you hurt…?”
Alyssa shook her head a few times, still unable to speak. Hy picked up the knife.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“He…he…”
“Who?” Though she knew.
Alyssa gulped. Tried to speak. Dissolved in tears again.
“Lee…Lee…” was all she managed.
“Leone?”
Alyssa nodded. She hiccoughed. Once. And then a fresh set of tears, newly formed, spilled down her face.
“Leone did it.” They both knew that Alyssa meant not just what had happened here, but Lord’s murder. Perhaps both murders.
Alyssa regained her voice. “He did it for me.” Hiccough. “He said he did it for me.” She looked down at the floor, where the knife was, blood on it. “He attacked me, tried to kill me, too.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No I…I…I don’t know what…how…I grabbed the knife.”
“I better get Jamieson.”
Alyssa’s hiccoughing stopped. Her tears dried up. Just like that.
“No,” she said. “No. Not just yet. I need a moment…”
“But he’s getting away.”
Alyssa smiled. It did not match the expression in her eyes – a hard gleam.
“He won’t go far.”
“Then I’ll go after him.” Hy didn’t know why she said it. Alyssa’s hard gleam had melted into a pathetic appeal. She looked so…so fragile, so vulnerable. The words were out of Hy’s mouth before she knew she’d formed them. This tiny creature was begging her protection and she felt compelled to give it. Why? What was tugging at her?
“He’s dangerous,” Alyssa warned, frowning.
Hy saw something, something in Alyssa’s eyes, the birth of a small smile on her lips, something that pricked her with nervous fear. Somehow, for some reason she could not have explained because it made no sense, she felt danger in this room. She wasn’t brave going after Leone, she just had to get out.
“Stay here.” Hy still clung to the knife, only dimly aware that she did so. “I’m going to find him.”
Jamieson entered the cottage for the first time since the morning after the murder. She turned on a light, and squinted as her eyes adjusted to it. It was good to be able to actually see things. What she saw wasn’t good: her bandage unraveled, sodden, stained with red clay. She found some scissors, sat down on one of the kitchen chairs, and cut off the filthy length of gauze. Then she cut the end in two and secured it around her ankle.
She was exhausted. Two nights of poor sleep in the Hall, the injury, the pain, the painkillers, now the migraine had eroded almost all her strength. She negotiated her crutches down the three stairs and eased herself onto the couch. She looked at the woodstove. Lord’s will. She pulled it out of her jacket pocket, the only place she had to keep it safe. Had either of them known which one it really favoured?
She leaned back into the couch. When she closed her eyes, vivid colours zigzagged in the periphery of her vision. The drumming of the headache became words, words that had been spoken in this room, the shattering of a glass on the tile floor, the whining sound of an electric guitar slicing through the air.
Jamieson shook her head to clear her mind and winced. The movement had sent pain rocketing through her brain. And Alyssa’s screams, though imagined, went searing through her.
“You fool!” Alyssa waved the papers at Lord and slapped them down onto the table. Her forefinger dove down onto them and landed, like a knife, on the offending words.
“You fool.” She read them out loud: “To my wife…”
“But you are my wife…”
She glared at him.
“Or were…and will be…again…”He put a hand on her knee. “Soon.”
She shook him off.
“You didn’t name me, idiot. You have to name me.”
She watched as he wrote her name in.
She pushed him away. “A witness.” She stood up.
“You’re not leaving?”
“We need a witness.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now.”
Leone. The footprints in the photo.
Jamieson tried to get to her feet, but the effort sent more pain pounding through her. She sat down again and stared straight at the woodstove.
Suki had tried to burn it. She was the wife. Everything was hers, but had she known it? She had seemed genuinely surprised when she found out that the change in it made no difference at all. Everything was hers. If she thought Alyssa was to get it all, she’d have been jealous or angry. Jealous or angry enough to kill?
Jamieson didn’t like Suki, but she tried hard not to let personal emotions enter into her police work. She didn’t like her, but she didn’t think she was a killer. Her prints were not on the axe. Nor were Alyssa’s. The only prints on the axe were Leone’s. She should arrest him. There was the ring at the crime scene. All the evidence pointed to him as the killer. But something was stopping her from accusing him. It wasn’t that simple. Somehow she knew it wasn’t that simple.
What of Alyssa? Pushing for that change in the will. It made it look like the murder was about possessions, but what if it was possessiveness, not possessions? Alyssa had said, “Lance was always mine…we belonged together.” Suki’s dislike of Alyssa and her hold over Lord made them both prime suspects. They might have more reason to kill each other than him, but he had been playing one against the other.
And what of Leone and Lord’s “betrayal?” Was he not a possessor, too, a possessor of Big Ed and his legacy? And Bullock himself. He possessed everything – and nothing.
There were lots of leads. Lots of threads to gather up.
With renewed enthusiasm for a case that was in more tatters than her bandage, Jamieson stood up, forgetting her crutches.
She folded up in pain, clutching the will, then tried again, using the crutches, back on her original mission to find Murdo, and now Alyssa, to have a little chat about possession.
Alyssa went upstairs to the bedroom when Hy left. She took a long match from the box by the candles, and in a slow ritual, lit one, then another, then another. Their yellow flames flashed gold on the red tin foil covering the vanity, forming a bright circle around the picture of Baba. She didn’t even know who he was. She hadn’t ever studied Buddhism, only adopted some of its outer trappings. This was her own ritual, divorced from the Catholic upbringing she shunned, her own creation to trick what she wanted out of the universe. She stood hypnotized by the flickering flames, until, slowly, she lit another match, and put it to the incense, drawing the smell into her nostrils, the fragrance of desire. Her desire. She knelt down on the prayer mat and forced herself to be calm, smooth face, but tight lips and gritted teeth, not relaxing, not meditating, just trying to make the universe bend to her will. She was demanding what was hers, what belonged to her.
“Mine. Mine. Mine.” She chanted the words, like Lili’s om. But Lili’s om was selfless. Alyssa’s chant was all about Alyssa. Her mantra, herself.
“Let me be, let me be…” She couldn’t think of the word. She couldn’t think of one thing she wanted to be. There were many. Rich. Adored. Untouched and untouchable. Chaste.
Hy found Leone in the thick mist at the edge of the cape. He was huddled on the ground, moaning piteously. It was the sound that guided her to him. She couldn’t see him at all until she very nearly tripped over him.
She crept up, knife still in her hand, not knowing what she would do if she had to use it, pricks of fear up her arms and legs. When he raised his head, and looked at her with those mournful eyes ringed with sorrow, she
could not believe he was a killer. If he was, he was not a killer who scared her. The tension eased in her shoulders, the adrenalin stopped pumping through her blood. Still, she clung to the knife.
His body was heaving with unspent tears, his eyes dry with a sorrow that went beyond tears, stunned, robbed of expression, turned blank by the loss, the final loss of all his hopes.
“I did it for her,” he said.
Hy could hardly believe it. Whatever it was he was confessing to he’d done for Alyssa? Then she remembered that small bundle of appeal on Annabelle’s kitchen floor. Alyssa had, if not a physical strength, the strength to get others to do her will. Why else was she, Hy, out on the cape with Leone? She’d wanted to get away from Alyssa, true, but her first impulse had been to protect her.
To kill or be killed? For Alyssa? She gripped the knife.
“You killed for her?”
Leone said nothing.
He must be the killer. Hy shuddered with a mixture of fear and the cold, the damp fog swirling around them and seeping into her. They could just see each other, but nothing else around them, the coast and the village enveloped in white-grey mist as thick as nine-day-old porridge. Hy could not see the village, nor the dome, which must be nearby, nor the shore, not even the edge of the cape. How close were they to the edge? Where was it? Ahead, or behind? The sudden loss of any sense of direction put Hy into a panic. She felt as if the ground were opening up beneath her feet.
“I wanted to protect her.”
“To protect her from Lord?”
He shook his head.
“Jim MacAdam?”
He shook his head again. Hy pulled back, her eyes drilling into his, his seeping with moisture – from the fog or emotion?
“For her. I did it for her.”
“You said that.”
But he could say no more. Alyssa had rejected him, but he couldn’t tell the truth about her, about what she – and he – had done. He couldn’t convict her with his own words, his own breath, not even if it saved him.
“Did Alyssa kill Lord?”
He was having a hard time getting his breath. She saw pain in his brown eyes. Emotional or physical?
“Did she kill MacAdam?”
Still he said nothing. Just stared at her with those wounded eyes, washed in torment and tears, his body heaving with grief at Alyssa’s rejection, after all he had done for her, was still doing for her. He would tell this woman what he must tell her.
“No, no.” There was a long pause. He breathed raggedly and spoke with effort. “I killed them.” He didn’t mind if they locked him up for life. His life was over without her, or hope of her.
“But you said before…”
He said only one more thing.
He clutched his hand to his heart, the pain in his face intense, the tears finally squeezed out of his eyes, pooling on his face. He gasped for breath, then let it all out on one word:
“Alyssa.”
His last breath, spent on her name.
Chapter Thirty-One
“You could have woken me.”
Murdo shook his head.
“No, I couldn’t. I tried.”
Jamieson’s pearl-white skin flushed.
“The juice was spiked,” said April. It was all over the village now, as people who’d never touched a drop of alcohol in their lives were waking up with pounding heads.
“Yes, but I didn’t…” Realization dawned. The painkillers. Of course. They numbed one kind of pain but triggered the migraine. She was still feeling it – pounding, insistent. After the long walk on crutches to Lord’s and back up the Shore Lane she felt…
“Do you mind if I sit down?” She was anxious to question Alyssa, but she had to sit for a moment.
“Please do.” April helped her into the reclining chair, from which, once ensconced, Jamieson thought she might never be able to get out. The chair had tilted back, and April had worked the lever to bring the footrest up. Jamieson felt ridiculous, but that’s how she had felt most of this long, long weekend.
Murdo had been tucking into a full English breakfast when Jamieson had arrived. Bacon and eggs, ham, home fries, fried tomato, and fried bread. Jamieson looked at it and wanted to throw up. She very nearly did when Murdo pulled the breath mint box out of his pocket and put it on the table.
Jamieson screwed up her face. “What’s that smell?”
April opened the container and thrust it forward. The smell was overpowering.
“Tomalley,” said April.
“Tomalley?”
“Lobster guts and poo,” said Murdo.
“Actually, the liver – a few days old.” April put the lid back on. “That’s why it smells so bad. Lobsters are bottom-feeders. They eat garbage. That doesn’t help.”
“I can’t imagine that it ever smelled good.” Jamieson cupped a hand over her nose and mouth.
“Well, no.” April handed the container to Jamieson, who looked puzzled.
“Why give it to me?”
“It’s evidence,” said Murdo. “Taken from the wound.”
“How?”
“Billy. He took it from the wound, before the body washed away.”
Well, he was good for something, Jamieson thought, as she inspected the container. God, it stunk. She felt her stomach rebel.
“Tomalley. What part of the lobster?”
“Arse end,” said Murdo.
“Top half,” April corrected, a look of prim disapproval at his language making his face go red.
McAllister had said she’d seen a lobster sticking out of the wound. This, perhaps, proved her right. But did it mean anything to what had happened that night? Other than that a bird had dropped the crustacean on the corpse and another one had plucked it away?
Leone O’Reyley lay dead on the cape, his dreams, his love and loyalty to Ed and Alyssa floating off on the fog.
Hy had known it was hopeless for some time now, but she kept giving him CPR, alternating between pushing on his chest and trying to breathe life back into his body, killer or not. She had to get help. It was time to bring Jamieson into this. She’d be furious, but it was Alyssa whom Hy now feared, Alyssa with her transformative power, the ability to make herself the vision that every man wanted. What more might she be able to do?
Alyssa had the mental skill to shift reality.
And an axe? Did she have the power to wield that as well?
“I should arrest you,” said Jamieson, even though she felt stripped of her power, thrust back on the reclining chair in April’s kitchen. They’d all been shocked when Hy had entered with the bloody knife in her hand. She’d had a long explanation.
“Arrest me?”
“For…for…” Jamieson struggled to sit up, fiddled with the lever and the footrest hit the floor with unexpected speed, the chair swung up straight, hurled Jamieson forward and smashed her bandaged foot to the floor.
“For obstruction of justice…” There was pain in her voice.
“Obstruction? I thought I was helping you out.”
“I’ve told you before. Police business. You shouldn’t get mixed up in it.”
“I could hardly help it.” Hy’s head was high, her chin stubborn. “Anyone would have done what I did. There was a scream, and I responded…”
“How do you know he’s dead?”
“Dead is dead,” said Hy, and Jamieson, having seen her share of corpses, knew what she meant.
There was the question of what to do with the body. There was the problem of the wound, the knife, and the blood. Did that have anything to do with his death – or had he died from natural causes?
When Jamieson called Nathan, he swore he could take the body across the causeway in the fog because he knew it, as his aunt Gus would say, “like the back of his hand.” He said he’d be there in ten minutes.
Time enough, thought Jamieson, to have a little chat with the woman next door. She ordered Nathan to pick her up at Alyssa’s on his way to the cape.
“Murdo, help me up.” Jamieson hated to ask, but there was no way out of this chair and onto the crutches without help. “You’re going up the cape to watch over the body. I’m going to have a conversation with Mrs. Lord.”
“I’ll go with you,” said Hy.
“No,” said Jamieson, and Hy bristled.
“No. Go with Murdo. Show him where the body is.”
Hy put the knife down on April’s table, covered in crumbs. Jamieson shook her head. She wondered what forensics would make of that. She got a plastic bag from April, put the knife in it, and left with Hy and Murdo, hobbling next door on her crutches.
As a police officer, Jamieson had to knock.
Alyssa wasn’t there – or wasn’t answering.
In the end, Jamieson just walked in, signaling Hy to continue on to the cape with Murdo.
“I should be here for Nathan,” said Hy, “to show him the way. Three of us can search for her more easily. And I know the house – all the nooks and crannies, and there are lots of those, believe me. Besides,” she pointed to the cruches, “you’ll never get in the attic on those.”
Jamieson caved in. Alyssa, so tiny she could be anywhere in the big house, couldn’t be found.
Anyone else would have seen a skinny, undersized woman with the features of a spoiled child, but so great was Alyssa’s power over Ed, that he saw the most beautiful creature he had ever seen – lithe, lovely, perfect, and the man in him came alive as she crossed the room, floating, pure.
She was close, so close that he should have seen she was just a little mouse, a spiteful, nasty woman, with nothing to offer. To him, she was a vision. Not a mere flesh and blood woman. A goddess come to life. Athena herself. Alyssa. Athena. Even the cadence of the name was the same. The goddess of love. Pure love.
In her own mind, she was a goddess. Not Athena. Diana, the huntress. Chaste and chasing. Not the man. His manhood. To destroy it and retain her chastity. Pure love was only for herself. Amour propre. Self-love. Ed? Him she hated for his desire.
Mind Over Mussels Page 25