Cold Revenge

by Jo A. Hiestand

  “Do you know if Marta had friends in Elton?”

  “Why was she found there, in other words?”

  “It would give me a lead if she knew someone in the village.”

  “Sorry. Haven’t a clue. But, then, I didn’t know a lot of her friends. I didn’t mingle with them. She and I were merely friendly at the shelter. I hardly ever go anywhere, in fact, so I’m not the best person to ask about her friends, either living in or out of Elton.”

  “Where were you after the hymnal session was finished? Where were you the rest of the night?”

  “We finished up around half past ten, I believe. Close to it, anyway.”

  “Marta and Linnet left the casino…at what time?”

  “Just about eleven on the dot.”

  “Thirty minutes difference. Have you an alibi for eleven?”

  “Just that I was home.”

  “Anyone see you?”

  “No.”

  “Probably didn’t matter to your case.”

  “But I reported my neighbor’s dog. He was barking loudly, incessantly, and had broken out of their back garden. He was running around in my flowers, chasing a rabbit or something. I tried to catch him but I couldn’t. My neighbors weren’t home, so I couldn’t get their help. Some few minutes later, at half past eleven, I think, I heard the dog somewhere down the street, in a fight with some other dog. That’s when I called the police.”

  “And they would have a log of your call. Right. Well, the time constraint and distance work in your favor. You couldn’t have driven down to Nottingham at half past ten, found Marta, killed her, and been back by half past eleven to complain about the dog.” Even if someone else phoned from your house, he thought, there’d still be a record of it. It would have been played at the inquest and the case would have taken a different turn.

  “Do you have any ideas yet, Mr. McLaren? Do you think you know who might have killed Marta?”

  He smiled at her enthusiasm. “I’ve just taken on the case, Ms. Dwyer. I need more than a few hours.”

  She nodded, suddenly sober.

  “Perhaps you have an idea. Do you know of anyone who might have held a grudge against her or wished her dead?”

  “Oh, yes!”

  She said it so quickly, so forcibly, that McLaren blinked. “Really?”

  “Yes. The neighbor of hers. Herb Millington. She told me about talking to the constable about the suspected drug dealing.”

  “And you think Herb killed her? If he did ransack her house, it’s a long way from mere vandalism to murder.” His voice held both skepticism and astonishment. “Why do you believe it was Herb?”

  “Because he kept coming on to Marta and she wouldn’t have anything to do with him. She loved Alan deeply, so she wouldn’t risk her marriage by having an affair with Herb Millington.”

  “Perhaps not intentionally, but a lot of people believe they’ll be faithful for their entire marriage and then suddenly they’re involved with someone.”

  Verity shook her head. Her fingers fumbled with her cigarette, as though she were deciding whether to put it down. “You didn’t know Marta. She had an iron will. She wouldn’t have done such a thing. Especially not with someone like Herb Millington.”

  “Aside from the suspected drug dealing, which in itself may set many people against him, what was wrong with Herb Millington?”

  “Have you seen him, talked to him?”

  “Not yet.”

  She shuddered and scrunched her lips. “When you do, you’ll know what I mean.” She hunched her shoulders and took a drag on the cigarette.

  “So, what you’re saying, then, is that Herb Millington killed Marta because she refused his sexual overtures, correct?”

  “Could have done. He gets mad, shoots her…”

  Which, if true, would confirm Alan’s assessment of Herb’s violent outbursts.

  “I realize it’s not as good as a written threat or a string of police complaints,” Verity continued, “but stranger things have happened.”

  McLaren nodded, picturing the fight. If it had taken place in Marta’s home, there would have been blood from the head wound. Had Alan found it, cleaned it up, kept it quiet for some reason? Or had the fight taken place in Herb Millington’s home, or outside somewhere? It could have happened. “And you know about Millington’s sexual advances because you were over at her house once and witnessed it?”

  “Not at all. But we were coworkers. We talked a lot.”

  “About that?”

  “Yes. And about other things. You know. Girl talk.”

  McLaren knew what she meant. He’d grown up in a family of women and he’d been engaged. He’d heard enough discussionsserious and comedicabout husbands, boyfriends, girlfriends, jobs, diets, bad haircuts, actors, kids, school grades, health food, and love to last him until he turned one hundred. He could imagine very well Verity and Marta talking about Herb Millingtonpro and con.

  “I always wondered if she was killed for her money.” Verity’s voice had taken on the heavy, slow manner of someone waking from a deep dream and still held in its spell. She rose from her chair, went to the bookcase, and grabbed a photograph. Three women grinned from the confines of a gold-toned metal frame: Marta, Verity, and another woman stood side by side, cheek to cheek, their arms around each other’s shoulders. Best friends, enjoying a joke. The photo had been sharing part of the shelf with a half dozen small, ceramic animals. They were lifelike, painstakingly detailed. Several books on raptors, European badgers, and wildflowers filled the rest of the shelf. She angled the photo toward McLaren. “Funny, isn’t it? I feel closer to Marta now than when we worked together. Why is that? Does it have something to do with guilt?”

  “Why should you feel guilty? You’ve taken the blame for the missing money. Surely you don’t wish you had been the murder victim instead of Marta.”

  “No.” She said it slowly, almost begrudgingly, as she stared at the picture. “At least…No, I don’t know. At times I’m all right. I go about my day, resigned to my lot and making plans for when this all ends. But there are other times when I think about Marta and how her husband and son must ache from her death. She had a good many friends, you know. More than I’ll ever have. They must miss her dreadfully.”

  “So to ease or erase their suffering, you think you should have been killed.”

  Verity swept dust from the shelf before gently returned the photo to its spot. “Sounds absurd when you talk about it. But no, I wouldn’t go that far. I’ve no death wish.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it’s that she was so young and warm, and funny and full of life. Forty-five is awfully young to die, isn’t it?”

  “Most people leave unfinished dreams, Ms. Dwyer, if that’s what you’re thinking. Even if you live to be a hundred, there will probably be something you’ve not done that you wish to. Don’t let Marta’s brief life and her incomplete works haunt you. You had nothing to do with any of this other than be a pawn. It seems to me that you’ve been more than giving.” Who else would make your sacrifices, he thought. Taking the blame, keeping silent.

  “I told Alan just before the trial began that I wasn’t going to jail for Marta,” Verity said finally. “I had taken that money, I admit, but I wasn’t going to be saddled with suspicions of her death, no matter how good my motive was. Those suspicions would cling to me the rest of my life. I said I wasn’t taking the blame for any of it.”

  “What did Alan say?”

  “Nothing much. He just looked at me with those big brown eyes of his, threw his arm around his son’s shoulders like some talisman or bulwark or challenge, and said he was sorry but he couldn’t believe Marta had anything to do with the stolen money. What a laugh. Like he couldn’t believe Marta was capable of anything like that.”

  “He didn’t know about her gambling, then.”

  “Sure, he knew, but not about its frequency. It was like she was some perfect little saintly statue, perched
atop a pedestal. Only her plaster façade had developed cracks that he couldn’t see. Or he chose to overlook.” She took another drag on her cigarette. The cloud of smoke hung in front of her but she ignored it. “I liked Marta. We’d been close friends. Or so I thought until this happened. Until her silence.”

  “But she didn’t explain why you’d given her the money,” McLaren suggested.

  “No. Other than that little squeak, she didn’t defend me in any way.”

  “From what you just told me about Alan’s response, Marta didn’t say a thing to him about the money, either.”

  “If she did, Alan wasn’t admitting in public that his wife was involved in a theft.”

  “Nice couple.”

  Verity snorted. “Not as bad as Bonnie and Clyde or Rosemary and Fred West,” she said, recalling the serial killers. “But bad enough for me.”

  “Especially when you considered her a friend.”

  “And then she repays my friendship that way.”

  “Hard to take.”

  “Harder than Alan being momentarily embarrassed at his precious bank, yes, or having to find another job if his boss looks at him funny.”

  “A slight inconvenience when measured against your situation.”

  “I guess it just showed their true colors, which hurt me deeply.” She crushed out the cigarette. “I suppose the suspicion of revenge could’ve landed me in prison, for her murder, I mean. Lord knows I had motive enough for revenge, but I didn’t kill her. I wish I knew who did.”

  McLaren let the silence well up between them. Revenge was a powerful motive for many crimes. He struggled with it himself.

  “I’ve had a lot of time to think about all this, Mr. McLaren. Well, you do, don’t you, when you’re serving a sentence?” The street had grown quiet. No traffic drove down the road, no dogs barked, no birds twittered at the windowsill or in the trees. The world seemed to be listening for Verity’s thoughts. “It’s kind of hard to forget. If there hadn’t been all that money, well, maybe none of this would have happened. What do you think?”

  “Do you mean the money from the animal shelter?”

  “No. The money she won that night at the casino.”

  “I thought she lost. I thought that was the reason she couldn’t put the money back in your cash register, the reason that led to” He nodded toward the kitchen and the calendar.

  “My year of new experiences. Sorry. I didn’t make it clear. No, I was talking about the night in June when she won, the night she was murdered.”

  “Eleven June.”

  “She’d won a huge amount of money. I know about it because it was brought up at the trial. The croupier testified as to her winning, a player at the table also testified, the cashier testified, and Linnet testified. They all remarked as to the amount. It was the same in each person’s telling: £253,560.”

  “A lot,” McLaren agreed, exhaling loudly.

  “More than several year’s salaries, and earned in a moment with a flick of the croupier’s wrist and Marta’s positioning of her chips. Must be nice.”

  “I’ve heard of big wins before, but rarely of a win that large. She must have been over the moon.”

  “I suppose so. I never got to ask her.” She let the implication hang in the air between them.

  “If she was killed that night, what happened to the money she won?”

  “Presumably stolen. It wasn’t found on her body.”

  Chapter Ten

  McLaren was nearly home, approaching Somerley from the copse of birch and willow that sheltered the remains of an old stone barn. It’d been a full day and he had a lot to considernot only with the case but also with Dena and Karin. Was it coincidence that these two personal segments had cropped up the moment he’d taken on this cold case? He’d left his mobile phone number with Verity, getting her solemn assurance she’d ring in case she thought of anything else. Which he hoped she wouldshe seemed a reliable witness besides being a person who had a stake in what had happened. That she appeared to hold no grudge against Marta, despite her eleven months community service order and lost job at the animal shelter, told a lot about her character. So yes, he was hoping she would come up with something he could use when she’d had a chance to think.

  He was considering the disappearance of the casino money when he turned down Somerley’s main street. Dena’s red MG was parked opposite the pub. He stopped behind hers, locked his car doors, and strode into the courtyard. She was sitting at a wrought iron table, writing a letter, but stopped and looked up at him.

  “Thirsty? Or just thought of a good retort from last night’s conversation?” She shoved a strand of her hair behind her ear. It caught the golden rays of the early evening sun, bringing out the hints of chestnut coloring in its brunette hue. It was also fragrant with the scent of her shampoo: honeysuckle. Like the soap and perfume she used.

  McLaren stared at its beauty, nearly drowning in her scent.

  “Well? Am I supposed to be intimidated by your strong, silent stance, or is this a game of charades and I’m to guess what you’re portraying? Rock of Gibraltar, right? Or a statue of Adonis. It can’t be that you’re tongue-tied, Michael. I’ve heard you rabbit on about cases.”

  “For God’s sake, Dena.”

  “Well, that’s a start. Maybe not as nice as ‘Hi, how are you?’ but it’s something. You’re probably rusty. No one to talk to but your pile of rocks. Not that you ever were a smashing conversationalist, but you could always talk about police work. It was just the personal topics, the unleashing of your emotions that you couldn’t handle. Are you any better at that now? Had any practice standing in front of the bathroom mirror?”

  He stared down at her, feeling pain and anger. “Why do I, or any copper, get crucified and criticized for the very traits that make us good cops? We’re taught from Day One that we must show no emotion on duty, that we must wear a public face in order to be seen to be in control of any situation.”

  “I’ve heard your recital, Michael. Your safety and your career are on the line if you lose control. Any control. And the damned list is endless! Control of your emotions, the victim’s emotions. Control of the traffic, people, the crime scene. Calm down, submit to orders, submit to authority, don’t let the suspect know you’re scared or repulsed or angry or sad or humiliated. You’ll lose your power.”

  “Those aren’t just words, Dena. They’re what we have to remember if we’re to keep the floodgates closed on emotions that could harm us. We’ve seen it all so we’ve experienced it all: anger, pity, pride, excitement, revulsion, fear, cowardice, envy, hate. But we keep it beneath our public face so we can do our job because the victim is counting on us to handle the situation. We can’t cry and effectively do our job, for Christ’s sake! We can’t turn our feelings off and on like a water spigot.”

  “I know, Michael. I’ve experienced it.”

  He paused, aware that he had been implying he was still part of the ‘we’ and ‘our’ he had just mentioned, aware again of the honeysuckle scent of her, the dark eyelashes that cast shadows on her eyes. “We…we live in a world of orders, Dena. If we’re not giving an order to someone, we’re receiving orders from the top brass.”

  A phrase of a song slipped outside as a waiter entered the pub. When it had grown quiet again, Dena said rather reluctantly, “I understand that. But it’s more than that. I can’t get close to you! You’ve put up a wall around yourself.”

  “If I have, it’s nothing personal. It’s left over from my old job.”

  “So you want me to smile and just take your orders and love your silent, stand-offish attitude.”

  “Of course not. But you should know that I’m trying to learn how to do it.” He looked at her, wanting her to say she realized his dilemma, that she had been too demanding in wanting him to pour out his feelings to her. But she merely stared at the table, her eyes lowered, her fingers tracing the rim of her glass, as though she were considering something.

  A lifetime pas
sed before she spoke. Her voice hadn’t softened in those few moments; the edge was still there, a sign of her frustration and pain. She shifted in her chair so she squarely faced him. “Fine. Smashing. Whatever you say, Michael. I’m tired of it all.” She laid down her pen but kept her fingers on top of it. “I repeat, are you thirsty? You want a beer?” She eyed him when he grabbed the back of a chair. “You’re awfully dressed up. Trousers, cambric shirt, tie. You quit early from work? Must have done. No stone dust in your hair, no work boots. What’s the matter?” She eyed him, concern evident in her brown eyes.

  “Mind if I sit down?” He remained standing until she nodded, then he pulled out the chair. The wrought iron legs screeched against the flagstone paving. He lifted the chair for the remainder of the way and then set it down, angling it toward her. “No, I won’t have anything. You’re drinking wine.”

  The mundane observation startled her. “Uh, yes. I always do.”

  “You drank a beer once, I recall.”

  “Did I?” She screwed up her mouth, clearly puzzled at the subject. “Yes, I did. At your birthday party. But it was a shandy.”

  “Still, you did have a beer once. The night of my folk group’s first appearance. A Bass.”

  “What a memory! Fine, I had a beer. That once. And I disliked it. Is this why you’re here? To see if I’ve developed a taste for beer?”

  “Actually,” he said, his voice softer, “I just spotted your MG and thought I’d talk to you.”

  “Was it something I said last night? I haven’t seen you for a year, Michael. Not since you left your job.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  “About what? Not seeing me, or leaving your job?” The sheet of stationery rustled in a breath of wind. Dena set her mobile phone on it.

  “Both. It’s just that”

  “You’ve been hurt. I know that! So does everyone near to you: your parents, your sister, your brother-in-law, your friend Jamie. We know what you went through and we feel for you. We always will. You got a rotten deal. But there has to be an end to your wound-licking. You have to shake it off and get on with your life. I’ve waited for a year, hoping for an overture of love.”