by Ann Cook
As Brandy snatched open the door, she heard heavy footsteps echo beyond the screen plantings. Blackthorne? She slipped into her seat, pulled the door closed, groped in the sudden dimness for the lock. She felt a movement beside her. Grace gave a thin cry, raised a shaking white glove above the steering wheel and pointed toward the passenger window. “Isn’t that someone you know?”
Brandy jerked her head up, fingers still on the door sill, eyes straining. Through the rain she could see no one. “Where?”
A handle clicked, from nearby came a strange, exultant cry, then a crashing pain flamed in the back of Brandy’s head. She slumped forward, barely conscious of footsteps splashing outside, of a beam of light sweeping over them. A man shouted, and the door was flung open.
Brandy’s arm dropped. She felt rain, felt herself crumpling downward through open space, saw the wet pavement rise toward her, tasted salt. She thought in slow motion: she would hit the concrete, would never know the answer. Her eyes closed and she gave herself up to pain.
But she did not smash against the pavement. Instead, she fell onto something with give. Arms turned her body so that she faced upward. Her eyes flicked open. Her vision blurred. With a fierce chill she thought of Blackthorne. Then through the rain above her, she saw another face, one with high cheekbones, brown eyes, and a dripping mustache.
Far in the distance she heard a voice say, “Most unpredictable woman I ever met.”
She thought vaguely, Steve must have brought John for back–up. Couldn’t have asked another deputy. Not a Sheriff’s Office operation.
Behind them a man’s voice boomed, as if from miles away, “What the hell happened? Her head’s all bloody!” It sounded like the guard.
“Call EMS! Hurry!” John, once again. The man retreated, running. Cradling her head, he gently lowered her onto the damp pavement.
“Relax. You’re going to be all right. You took a nasty blow.” He turned away and spoke to someone else. “Let me have that rain slicker.”
From the other side of the car, as in a dream, she heard Steve’s sharp voice, “Don’t touch that hammer!”
Hearing’s the last of the senses to go, Brandy thought, drifting, and hoped water would not ruin Steve’s equipment.
She remembered stepping into her car, the footsteps, Grace telling her to look out the window, the click of a handle, and then the blow. John still knelt, spreading a rain cape over her. Running down her arm she could see pinkish water——maybe she was bleeding——then a riverlet of dark gray. The temporary rinse.
“You do try a man’s patience,” John said. Unlike the perfect, cautious Sharon, she thought, bitter in spite of the pain. Sharon would be waiting somewhere in warmth and comfort with Captain Able and his helpful wife. John added, “Lucky Steve kept track of you after you came through the gate.”
“Never saw him,” she whispered.
“You weren’t supposed to.”
As John tucked something soft under her head and pulled up the rain slicker, his dark eyes widened. “What in God’s name? Eva Stone’s dress!” She wanted to tell him about the all–important red dress with the white collar, about the belt buckle and the buttons, but she was too tired and her head ached. The strand of blue beads had broken and, one by one, rolled down her bodice and hit the pavement with tiny plinks. She lay close to John, rain cooling her face, and closed her eyes.
Fuzzily, she floated over the scene, saw the boat house, saw John and the snake, saw Sharon. Wondered if she had fallen against his sore arm. “Did I hurt you?”
“Not badly.” A siren shrilled nearby. Tires screeched on wet concrete. Another ambulance, she thought, weary from the throbbing. Getting to be a habit.
Steve again, distant. “You have the right to remain silent…”
Grace’s voice cut, pearl–like, through the din. “She came back. I knew her immediately. Ghost indeed! She never leaves me alone.”
Brandy’s eyelids fluttered. A numbness crept over her like the closing of a shutter. But she had proved her theory. Thinking of Grace roused her. A line of Lady Macbeth’s wafted through her head. “Look like the innocent flower,” she whispered to John, “but be the serpent under it.”
TWENTY–FIVE
Rain spattered the window, and in the twilight the glistening fronds of a cabbage palm bobbed against the glass. Brandy lay propped on a pillow, aware of a sharp, medicinal odor, her aching head swathed in bandages. A nurse was shining a small bright light into her eyes, and behind her, others were waiting. Among the faces she could not find John’s.
The nurse looked up at Brandy’s mother, hovering at the other side of the bed. “No sign of irregularity,” the nurse said. “The doctor’s still checking for a subdural hematoma.” Mrs. O’Bannon’s forehead was deeply furrowed——maybe with worry, maybe with disapproval. Probably both. Her worst fears about newspaper reporting had come to pass.
“You have a lot of guests. Too many. They mustn’t stay long,” the nurse said and swept out of the room.
Around the walls ranged a variety of faces. Brandy was surprised to see Sylvania and Blackthorne, Mr. Tyler looking quizzical behind his horn–rimmed glasses, and Steve in uniform. Even Ace Langdon lounged in the doorway. She was not surprised to see Detective Morris draw up a chair beside her, his lips turned down tight, but the corners of his eyes crinkling. She felt like the prime exhibit in a museum.
The detective poised his ballpoint pen over a spiral note pad. “I think you’ve recovered enough to explain what you were doing at Grace Able’s place.”
Brandy savored the moment. “Only one scenario fit all the facts in the murder,” she said, unrepentant but careful not to move her head. “I was sure I knew how Eva Stone was killed, but I couldn’t prove it. My memory’s woozy about what happened just before I was hit and afterward, but I know what I planned to do, and I guess I did it.”
From the back of the room Steve shot her a wry grin. “You sure did,” he said.
“I reasoned out the method first. Lily Mae Brown saw Eva Stone walk into the lake and disappear. Her shouts raised a search, so in the beginning I couldn’t figure out how Eva’s skeleton turned up later buried near the same spot. I thought maybe a strong swimmer had dragged her under the water, struck her several times, and hidden her body in the shrubbery.
“But how could all those searchers fail to see what was going on? And how could the murderer place the tire iron where it was needed, drag Eva out of the water, hit her repeatedly, and then conceal the body where all those searchers couldn’t find it? There wasn’t time. Lily Mae was pretty fast getting down those four flights of stairs.” Brandy paused and looked around her.
“And then people kept saying I reminded them of Eva Stone. That gave me an idea. From the back, almost any young woman the right size might look like Eva, especially dressed like her. Maybe Eva was killed earlier, and someone took her place for that walk into the water. The only women still on the premises near Eva’s age were Sylvania and Grace. Because of her height, Sylvania couldn’t be mistaken for Eva. But Grace could be. That fact was the key.
“The whole process came to me after we learned about the tire iron and Eva’s clothes. If Ace was telling the truth——and he was——he’d put the tire iron in Grace’s car behind the front seat.”
From the doorway Ace nodded vigorously.
“Ace told us Grace was there after the tire was changed. Think about that scene. Blackthorne said Brookfield was coming back to the house early for an appointment, but the tire was changed before Brookfield got back. We know Eva came to the party for the sole purpose of telling Brookfield about the baby. She must’ve asked to see him. When she learned about his engagement to Grace, she must’ve believed he’d call the wedding off and marry her instead.”
Sylvania dropped her head and looked at her large hands in silence.
Brandy glanced at Brookfield’s devoted sister. “And he probably would have. But Eva never got the chance to tell him. She had-n’t seen him alone all w
eekend, so she asked him to meet her. Said it was important. Then she made a fatal mistake. She decided it would only be fair to tell Grace. After all, Grace was in for a terrible shock.
“Eva didn’t know Grace well. She’d didn’t know Grace has a tendency to feel persecuted. She always sees herself as a victim. Even now I’ve seen the symptoms. When Eva followed Grace out to the car and told her about the baby, Eva explained she was going to tell Brookfield. Grace’s greatest desire in life——to marry Brookfield——was not only threatened, but ended. She saw herself, not Eva, as the victim.”
Sylvania put one hand on Blackthorne’s arm, her angular face a study in concentration.
“It didn’t take Grace long to choose a plan of action,” Brandy went on. “She would’ve asked Eva to sit in her car, so they could talk. Then she seized the tire iron behind Eva——probably used some trick to get her to turn around, just like she did me——maybe said she saw Brookfield coming——and then she struck Eva several times so quickly and so hard that Eva had no time to defend herself or even cry out.
“Grace knew that she had to make it look like Eva drowned. When the deputies found those buttons, the belt buckle, and the beads buried near the tire iron and not with the skeleton, I knew I was on the right track. It meant that Eva’s dress had been removed from the body.”
Morris’s eyes darted toward Ace Langdon. “I’ll admit I suspected a different kind of crime.”
“But it was Grace who stripped off Eva’s dress,” Brandy continued. “It wouldn’t have been easy, but the dress buttoned all the way down the front. She might’ve pulled it down over Eva’s feet, then thrown sheets over the body to hide it. Remember, those sheets and towels had been stored in her trunk. No one would have thought anything of Grace opening her trunk, even if they’d seen her. And no one else was in the area. Then she slipped into the dress herself.”
When Brandy began her explanation, Mr. Tyler had been standing with arms crossed and eyebrows raised. Now he was also taking notes.
“About that time Brookfield returned,” Brandy said. “Lily Mae heard him say he was looking for Eva. Meanwhile, as soon as Grace concealed the body, she headed for the water. She may have been paranoid, but she was shrewd. Her plan wouldn’t work unless someone saw a girl they thought was Eva go into the lake, so she rang that bell loudly, waded out, and waited until she heard Lily Mae call out to her from the upstairs window. Then Lily Mae and Henry Washington saw her go under.
“I puzzled about the bell from the beginning. It was unlikely that it rang by accident. More likely it rang on purpose. That did-n’t make sense if Eva was committing suicide. But it made sense if an imposter faked a drowning.”
Sylvania exhaled, her face no longer as tense. “After all these years,”she said, “Lily Mae will be glad to learn she couldn’t have prevented Eva Stone’s death.”
“I plan to tell her myself,” Brandy said. “To Grace, Lily Mae was just a tool. When Grace heard Lily Mae call out, she walked quickly out into the water. She was a good swimmer and Mabel says she still is. She sank down and swam under water around that spit of land. She would’ve climbed out on the other side of the bougainvillea hedge, while Lily Mae was still hurrying down those four flights of stairs. Grace was blocked from view by the hedge when she ran to her car, jumped in, and took off. Everyone remembered that she was gone before the search was well underway. Mr. Blackthorne saw her pass him on the road.”
“Cold–blooded bitch,” the developer said, then glanced at Sylvania and added more quietly, “You mean she drove into town with Eva’s body on the seat beside her?”
“She must have. Once we knew Eva didn’t drown, I was puzzled because the body wasn’t found during the search. I figured somebody spirited it away somehow.”
Fully interested now, Ace eased farther into the room. “How was the body buried, then, back on the property?”
“There’s just one explanation. I imagine Aunt Sylvania knows. Grace couldn’t have managed the job by herself. After the search failed, Brookfield drove into town to tell the Stones that their daughter had apparently drowned. He also told Grace. That’s when she must have confessed the crime to him.
“Probably she told him she had panicked when Eva threatened to take him away from her. Eva was a beauty, remember? Grace knew that Brookfield once had a hot romance going with Eva. Grace would’ve said Eva claimed he was still in love with her, that he was marrying Grace for her money. I’m sure she told him she lost all control at the thought of losing him and struck Eva with what was handy, the tire iron. She may even have claimed that Eva attacked her first, out of jealousy. Grace would certainly have said that she never meant to kill her.
“But what about the baby?” It was Sylvania, her voice unusually soft.
“Grace couldn’t risk telling him about the baby,” Brandy said. “If she had, she knew Brookfield would bite the bullet and turn her in. But he believed it was a terrible accident, the result of a fight between the two women. He probably felt responsible because he’d had the affair with Eva the previous year. So he loaded the body in his trunk and agreed to bury it on the Ables’ property. He could conceal it there more easily than anywhere else, especially since all those grounds had already been searched.
“The police never had any reason to check Grace’s car for evidence. No one suspected a murder. Grace had plenty of time to clean up the car and the towels and sheets she’d wrapped the body in. No one but the Stones would understand the motive, and they weren’t talking because they wanted the baby. Anyhow, they thought Eva had killed herself because of Brookfield.”
Sylvania raised her head. She was wearing her usual loose smock–dress and black oxfords, but even in those clothes she had dignity. “Miss O’Bannon’s right, I’m afraid. I admit that she’s lifted a burden I’ve carried for years.” Her long fingers gripped Blackthorne’s arm. “I do know now how it was done, but I didn’t understand until a few days ago.
“My burden was heaviest last week, when I found out about Weston Stone.” For the first time she bestowed on Brandy a fleeting smile. “I heard Brookfield out by the bougainvillea hedge the night after Eva Stone disappeared. He’d brought Grace back to the house with him.” Her voice took on an ironic edge. “He said to help his mother cope with the Stones.
“We’d searched all along the lake already, but Brookfield said he wanted to look again. He was gone so long, I thought maybe he’d found something. In about an hour, I followed him. When I got near the hedge, I heard him digging.” She looked down briefly. “I don’t know what I thought, but I was worried. I called out to him. He said he was digging all along the shore, trying to uncover some sign of the body. I believed him.”
Brandy spoke softly. “Brookfield didn’t dare hire a carpenter when he built the boat house over the grave, afraid they’d uncover the body. John spotted an amateur’s hand. I wondered then why a man of his wealth would do the job himself.”
Grimly, Sylvania nodded.
Brandy probed Sylvania’s response in the same quiet tone. “Later he must have told you something nearer the truth.”
Sylvania clasped her hands before her. “When he knew he did-n’t have long to live, he told me he was leaving me the house. He asked me to promise never to sell it to anyone to live in. When I questioned him about it, he put his hand in mine and promised on his immortal soul that he’d never hurt anyone himself nor done anything truly wrong. He said his request was for the good of the family.”
She paused. “He also made me promise that if anything ever happened to Mabel, I’d see that Grace was taken care of. I didn’t make any connection between the two requests at the time. I loved my brother and I believed him. Now I think he protected her from herself all her life. That’s why he employed Mabel.”
She folded her hands together. “I wonder now if Grace’s mental condition kept them from having children. Maybe when she didn’t get her way, she was still violent. That would explain some odd, nervous spells he said she had. May
be he was afraid the tendency was hereditary. I know there were rumors that she was unstable.”
Brandy nodded, remembering Mack’s remark about the Able women. “And when you learned that he had a son by Eva Stone?”
“I was devastated. I thought Brookfield had abandoned his child. I remembered his digging that night. I thought he’d lied to me. He’d murdered Eva and buried her body. I thought that was why he didn’t want anyone else living there——because they might discover the body.”
“And did you tell Mr. Blackthorne about your fears?”
Sylvania twisted her big hands together and looked at the portly man beside her. “I had to confide in someone, even before I learned about Weston. I finally told him about my promise to Brookfield, and he agreed to help me. I’d wanted to move for years. That house gave me a terrible feeling all the time I lived there.” She shuddered. “I’ve never talked about it to anyone. But there was something there. Something on that fourth floor. Something on the lawn at night. I felt like a prisoner in my own house. There were places in it I didn’t dare go. When Brookfield and Grace lived there, they had the same feeling.” Her tone grew harsh. “Grace must have been especially frightened.”
Steve spoke up again. “She said Eva never left her alone.”
Sylvania sighed. “So Axel offered to buy it, tear down every plank, and the boat house, too, and build over it. He said at last I’d be free of my promise to Brookfield, and get some money out of it, too.”
Sylvania looked at the heavy face of Axel Blackthorne with a gaze both reproving and tender. “He blundered around trying to help me, trying to frighten off your investigation.
First, so John wouldn’t save the house. Then when you found the skeleton, he tried even harder. He had you followed by the security guard who worked at the new development. He just wanted to find out what you were up to and discourage you.”
Brandy tried to sit up straight, then winced and sank slowly back. Her mother, who had been unnaturally silent, frowned.