Deadly Beloved

by Jane Haddam

  “Then you are in this picture?” Gregor asked.

  Julianne Corbett waved it away. “I haven’t kept up with those people the way I should have. We all just sort of drifted apart after graduation. Karla too, of course. It had been years since I’d seen her.”

  “You’ll be glad to hear that the word from the hospital is better than expected,” John Jackman said. “She is expected to come out of it. Eventually.”

  “But ‘eventually’ could be years from now,” Julianne Corbett said.

  “I’m afraid so.” Jackman shrugged. “The doctor I talked to kept saying he was getting very good signs. Whatever that means.”

  Gregor picked up the photograph again. “You must have been in some kind of contact with her,” he said. “You arranged this reception in her honor. You knew she was coming to Philadelphia.”

  “Actually, it was Tiffany who found out that Karla was coming to Philadelphia,” the congresswoman said. “She keeps up with things like that. She’s a very good assistant, really, in spite of the hair and the name and the brides’ magazines. Not that Tiffany is in any danger of becoming a bride anytime soon. I hadn’t even known that Karla was famous for being a photographer.”

  “She had a bunch of pictures in the Sunday Times Magazine,” Jackman put in helpfully. “And she had lots and lots in Vanity Fair. Don’t ask me why Vanity Fair wanted to publish a lot of photographs of starving Rwandans.”

  “It’s compassion as a consumption item,” Julianne Corbett said wryly. “You have to bleed for the wretched of the earth or your new Ralph Laurens won’t be the right color red.”

  “When did you decide to give this reception for Karla Parrish?” Gregor asked.

  “Oh, immediately after I knew she was coming,” Julianne Corbett replied, “except, it was like I told you, it was all Tiffany’s idea. Karla was asked to speak at Penn, did you know that?”

  “Yes,” John Jackman said.

  “Well,” Julianne Corbett said, “we thought it would be a good idea, you know, good for me in terms of the publicity, good for me because I’d get a chance to see an old friend, and good for Karla too, because it would introduce her to some important people locally. I don’t care what kind of famous photographer Karla has turned into. She’s still the same old Karla. Socially awkward. Not a thing to say for herself.”

  “From what I recall,” Gregor Demarkian said, “she wasn’t standing in the receiving line the night of the reception—”

  “Well, that isn’t entirely fair,” Julianne told him. “There really wasn’t much of a receiving line. Karla was standing next to the punch bowl in the main room. It was much the best place for her. Everybody had to pass by the punch bowl. And as soon as the arrival crowds died down, I was going to stand there too. That was the plan.”

  “So everybody knew in advance that Ms. Parrish would be standing at that table,” Gregor Demarkian said.

  “Everybody who had any part in the planning of the reception,” Julianne Corbett agreed. “Tiffany. And the other assistants. And the caterers and those people.”

  “What about this plan to have you stand there yourself? Was that generally known?”

  Julianne Corbett looked honestly bewildered. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘generally known.’ This wasn’t a secret, you know, Mr. Demarkian. This wasn’t as if we were planning campaign strategy or something like that. This was a party.”

  “You weren’t worried about security?” John Jackman asked.

  Julianne Corbett snorted. “In spite of the things you see in Clint Eastwood movies, most members of the United States Congress are not followed everywhere by Secret Service officers and have no need to be. Really. I’m just me. A middle-aged, middle-of-the-road woman who is going up to Washington to do her best. I’m not even on a committee yet.”

  “You’re pro-choice, aren’t you?” John Jackman asked. “This is a pretty pro-life state. And there has been violence against pro-choice advocates in other places.”

  “In the first place, what violence there has been on that score has been almost universally against abortion providers,” Julianne Corbett said, “and pro-choice or not, I couldn’t provide anybody anywhere with any kind of medical procedure. I can’t even look at the blood when I cut my legs shaving. In the second place, there is a lot of pro-life sentiment in this state, but it runs to the bleeding-heart let’s-get-down-and-pray-for-everybody variety. We don’t have a lot of radicals in Pennsylvania. Not of that stripe.”

  “But pipe bombs do suggest radicals,” Gregor Demarkian put in. “In fact, pipe bombs were first used in this country in an anarchist bombing in New York City. I think in the popular imagination, radicals is exactly what it looks like we have here.”

  “Maybe.” Julianne Corbett was skeptical. “But what about that woman last week or whenever it was? The one who blew her car up in a parking garage? She wasn’t a radical, was she?”

  “Patricia Willis,” John Jackman said. “She was a middle-aged housewife from a place called Fox Run Hill. It’s—”

  “I know what it is,” Julianne Corbett interrupted. “It’s one of those gated communities. Let’s all huddle together and put a fence up to keep the barbarians out.” She grimaced.

  “Did you know that Mrs. Willis made several significant contributions to your campaign?” Gregor asked her.

  Julianne Corbett bobbed her head vigorously. “Oh, yes. Tiffany found that out. It’s like I said. Tiffany’s a very good assistant in spite of the addiction to bimbo style. It was because of that that I asked Bennis Hannaford to make sure to bring you to the reception. I really am very sorry about Bennis, Mr. Demarkian, I didn’t mean to get her caught up in some sort of mess.”

  “I don’t understand why finding out that Mrs. Willis had contributed to your campaign would lead you to ask Bennis Hannaford to bring me along to a party,” Gregor Demarkian said.

  Julianne Corbett shrugged. “It’s because of the exposure. Everybody’s very worried about exposure. Anything at all, no matter how small, can sink you in politics these days. God only knows what I thought. That Mrs. Willis was stealing the money from her husband to contribute to my campaign. That she killed her husband when he found out about it. There’s a scenario for you. How can I tell how people are going to behave?”

  “Fair enough,” Gregor said. He pointed at the picture on the desk. “You said that was taken at Vassar College. Did you graduate from there?”

  “Yes, I did. Years and years ago.”

  “Did you know that Mrs. Willis graduated from there?”

  “Did she? No, I hadn’t heard that. What class was she in?”

  “Class of 1969,” John Jackman said.

  Julianne Corbett looked bewildered. “Are you sure? I was in the class of ’69. I saw her picture in the paper. She didn’t look like anybody I had ever met.”

  “Would you have met every woman in your class?” Gregor asked.

  “No, of course not. I wouldn’t necessarily know all of them by sight either. It’s just… odd.”

  “Maybe you knew her by her maiden name,” Gregor said, “MacLaren.”

  “What?” Julianne Corbett said.

  “MacLaren,” Gregor repeated. “Her full name was Patricia MacLaren Willis. She was usually known as Patsy.”

  “Patsy,” Julianne Corbett repeated.

  “Is something wrong?” John Jackman asked.

  “Let me get this straight,” Julianne Corbett said. “What you’re trying to tell me is that this woman who murdered her husband out in Fox Run Hill and then blew her car up with a pipe bomb in a municipal parking garage, this woman was the same Patsy MacLaren who graduated from Vassar College in 1969?”

  “That’s right,” Gregor said.

  “That’s wrong,” Julianne Corbett said. “Mr. Demarkian, I knew Patsy MacLaren. I knew her quite well. She was my closest friend. We were so close, in fact, that I was with her on the night she died—in New Delhi, India, four months after we graduated.”

  FIVE />
  1.

  SARAH LOCKWOOD KNEW SHE had to be careful. At this stage in things—the almost-but-not-quite, the just-next-to-done—anything could happen to screw it all up, and the last thing she wanted was for something she did or said to bring the whole thing crashing down on her head. Because of that, she was even grateful to Patsy Willis for killing her husband and bringing a pack of detectives down on their heads. The detectives made Kevin nervous, but Sarah saw them as a distraction. Joey Bracken was so fascinated by the things that were going on in the Tudor across the street, he was barely looking at the papers Kevin had spread out in front of him on the breakfast room table. The papers were the most impressive Sarah had ever seen. God only knew where Kevin had gotten them. They went on for pages and pages of utter incomprehensibility. There were maps too, but Sarah knew where Kevin had gotten those. They had been copied out of an ancient edition of the World Book Encyclopedia they had in the basement and then run through the computer so that they would look official. Now one of them had a “lot” outlined in red highlighter and marked with an X. Joey’s cashier’s check was paper-clipped to the page just above the X’s top left tip. Joey was leaning sideways in his chair, trying to see if something was happening at the Tudor, although nothing was. It was too late in the day for policemen and too late in the week for anybody to be much interested in Patsy Willis. The explosion in Philadelphia at Julianne Corbett’s party had taken everybody’s mind off spousal murder.

  “Do you think she did it?” Joey Bracken was saying, his pen poised above the paper he was supposed to sign like a safe poised to fall on Daffy Duck’s head in an old cartoon. “Tried to blow up Julianne Corbett, I mean. They all say she probably did it.”

  “I don’t see why Patsy would want to blow up Julianne Corbett,” Sarah said. “From everything I’ve heard, she worshiped the woman.”

  “Yeah, I’d heard that too,” Joey said. He sounded eager. Sarah thought he looked awful being eager. His eyes bugged out. The fat line across his stomach seemed to pulse. It made Sarah crazy to think that Joey and Molly had more money than she and Kevin did. Joey looked like he ought to try out for the starring role in a movie about a guy who spends his whole life in a diner and Molly—

  —but Molly wasn’t there. Sarah got up from her chair at the table and went into the kitchen, looking for Perrier water, looking for a way to calm down. She also took some nuts out of a cabinet near the stove, because unlike most of the people she knew, Joey Bracken ate most of the time. He had been in her kitchen for half an hour now and he had already gone through an entire bowl of potato chips and half a cheese roll.

  “The way I see it,” Joey was saying, “is that she’s not quite right in the head. Patsy, I mean.”

  “That’s the way we all see it,” Kevin said. “Jesus Christ. We wouldn’t want to think she was right in the head. We wouldn’t be able to go to sleep next to our wives.”

  “What?” Joey Bracken said. “Oh. Oh, yeah. I never thought about it like that.”

  Joey Bracken’s cashier’s check was for thirty thousand dollars. It was made out to himself, as if he had asked a lawyer for advice about it—but Sarah didn’t think he had. She thought he had just asked somebody he worked with at his bank. She wondered what Joey really did there. She couldn’t believe he had a serious job. He was just too stupid. She wondered what Molly’s father did too. Maybe it was Molly’s father who had the money, and he was with the mob, which was the kind of organization Sarah could imagine Joey succeeding in.

  “The thing is,” Joey said, “if you look at it this way, then she’s likely going to try to strike again, right? The question is, where?”

  “You mean Patsy Willis is going to try to blow somebody else up?” Kevin looked shocked.

  “It stands to reason,” Joey Bracken said.

  “I don’t think it stands to reason at all,” Kevin said. “You don’t even know she blew that party up. That’s just speculation.”

  “It was the same kind of bomb,” Joey said.

  “It’s a really simple kind of bomb,” Kevin told him. “I could show you how to make one myself. I have made one myself. Back when I thought I was going to be a revolutionary.”

  “I never knew you thought you were going to be a revolutionary.” Sarah brought the nuts to the table. Joey Bracken grunted when he saw them and reached out for a handful of cashews and Brazils. The peanuts were oiled and salted. Joey got a wash of grease across his palm.

  “Are you just going to buy Molly the lot for a birthday surprise,” Sarah asked him, “or are you going to get a builder and put the house up and present the whole thing to her as a kind of big package?”

  Joey looked down at the paper he was supposed to sign. “Oh, I couldn’t build the whole house without telling her. She’d know there was money missing. This is about as big a surprise as I’m going to be able to get. And I’m not going to be able to keep it a surprise at all.”

  “I keep a private checking account for things like that,” Kevin said. “You ought to think about it. Otherwise, you can’t buy them anything serious, and they like to have things bought for them. Wives, I mean.”

  “Yeah, I know. But Molly says she doesn’t trust me with money. I work in a bank, she ought to trust me with money.”

  “I know just what she means,” Sarah said. “I have the same problem with Kevin all the time. Men just don’t have the same priorities women do.”

  “Molly wants to have a baby,” Joey said. “It just doesn’t seem to happen for us. I was thinking that maybe this would cheer her up.”

  “Well, it certainly is a cheerful place,” Kevin said. “Sarah and I can attest to that. We get cheered up every time we think about it.”

  “And it’s still so reasonable,” Sarah said. “Oh, I know it doesn’t sound like it when you’re used to land prices in Pennsylvania, but in Florida these prices are ridiculously low. Especially for waterfront. Friends of ours just bought a waterfront lot in Boca Raton and it cost them three quarters of a million dollars. For the lot.”

  “Oh, I know. I know,” Joey said. “And Molly wants a vacation place. She’s said so over and over again. Did the Willises have a vacation place?”

  “I don’t know,” Sarah said. “We didn’t know the Willises all that well. They were—well, you know. Older people. Set in their ways.”

  “Stuffy,” Kevin contributed solemnly.

  “I was just thinking that if the Willises had a vacation house, Patsy could have gone there.” Joey reached into the little bowl and took the rest of the nuts out of it. His whole hand looked salted. “She has to be somewhere. She can’t just have disappeared. And yet she has disappeared. Just listen to the newspapers.”

  “Listen to the newspapers?” Sarah said.

  Joey waved his greasy hand in the air. “To the television news. You know what I mean.”

  “The television news doesn’t know everything,” Sarah said. “I’ll bet the police know where Patsy is right this minute. They’re just biding their time.”

  “Biding their time for what?” Kevin asked.

  “To have all the evidence they need before they go to trial,” Sarah said. “To make sure they can lock her up. All those things. They don’t like to make arrests and then later have the person go free at the trial. You know how it is.”

  “You watch too much television,” Kevin said.

  “I’d better sign this thing,” Joey told them. He leaned over the paper and signed, which Sarah and Kevin didn’t pay any attention to. Then he took the cashier’s check out from under its paper clip and signed the back of that over to Kevin Lockwood. Sarah and Kevin did pay attention to that. That was what really mattered here. That was what was going to get the bills paid for the next couple of weeks.

  “Well,” Kevin said as Joey handed the check over.

  “I got to thank you for doing this,” Joey said. “I couldn’t ever have done it on my own. I don’t know enough about this kind of thing.”

  “There’s nothing
much to know,” Kevin said. “And it’s going to be old-home week down there next year. Evelyn and Henry are doing this too. It’s going to be Fox Run Hill all over again.”

  “Molly doesn’t like Evelyn and Henry,” Joey said. “She thinks Evelyn is too fat. And she thinks Henry is a prick.”

  “Does she?” Sarah said.

  Kevin put the check in the chest pocket of his shirt, folded up, out of sight. “Well,” he said. “I’m glad you’re doing it. It will be good to see you and Molly down there next year. Or this year. Whenever you decide to build.”

  “I still think somebody ought to check into whether or not the Willises had a vacation house,” Joey said. “You don’t want a person like that wandering around in the open, do you know what I mean? Even if it is a woman. It isn’t safe.”

  “I’m really sure she isn’t after you,” Sarah said.

  “The next thing you know, she’s going to try to blow up the president of the United States, and then there are going to be days and days and days of Dan Rather moaning about how we never do things right and get them settled beforehand. You just wait. And don’t forget: If she was gunning for Julianne Corbett, she didn’t get her.”

  “What does that mean?” Sarah asked.

  “She didn’t get her,” Joey insisted. “Corbett is still alive. Which means maybe they ought to have a guard on Corbett.”

  “Maybe she was gunning for that photographer who took the awful pictures of starving people,” Sarah said, “or maybe she was gunning for that woman from the animal rights movement who got blown up. Or maybe it wasn’t Patsy Willis at all. Really, the way people go on about this, you’d think space aliens had landed on the ninth fairway at the Fox Run Hill Country Club.”

  Joey Bracken got out of his chair and went to stand at the sliding glass doors that led out to the patio, and that also looked around the back toward the Willises’ mock-Tudor.

  “Maybe that’s what happened,” he said solemnly. “Maybe aliens landed at the country club. It sure as hell feels odd enough around here since Patsy offed Steve.”