by Meg O'Brien
Then I realized it was only bougainvillea, its dry petals rustling in a small breeze.
The porch light was out, which surprised me. Again, I was grateful for the dark, and lifted the heavy knocker. Rapping three times, I waited.
Patrick didn’t answer.
I rapped again, a couple of times. Still no answer. Knocking once more, I was about to turn around and leave when the door opened a crack.
“Who is it?” a woman’s voice called out softly.
“Julia?”
I was only a little surprised to see Julia Dinsmore here. She didn’t put the porch light on, but stood there a few moments, peering through the crack in the door.
“It’s me,” I said. “Mary Beth. Can we come in? It’s urgent.”
She opened the door a bit more and said, “Mary Beth! Hi. What’s wrong?”
I held Jade close at my side. “It’s a long story. This is Jade, and I’m taking care of her for her mother. We need a place to, uh, spend the night. I thought Patrick might—”
I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. What had I interrupted here? Patrick and Julia in a tryst?
She must have guessed what I was thinking, because she smiled reassuringly and waved us in. “Oh, sorry. Sure, c’mon in. We really aren’t up to anything lewd. Just talking about old times.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course!”
I stepped over the threshold, saying to Jade when she hesitated, “It’s okay, honey. Julia’s a friend.”
Following Julia into the living room, I said, “I really am sorry to intrude. I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Just visiting with an old pal,” she said, leading the way into the living room.
I looked around. “Where is Patrick?”
“He went out a few minutes ago for more wine. I guess there’s something about talking over old times that gets the alcohol flowing.”
I took Jade over to the sofa and helped her get her jacket off. She hadn’t slept as much in the car today, and it was way past a six-year-old’s bedtime.
I encouraged her to lie down on the sofa, and covered her over with the same throw Lindy had used the night we were here. Jade couldn’t know this, of course, but I couldn’t help wondering what this little girl must be thinking, having seen the only mother she ever knew dead, and then her father…
I didn’t even want to think about that. Would Jade ever get over it?
I sat at the end of the sofa, my hand gently rubbing her feet through the blanket. Leaning my head back, I closed my eyes and sighed.
“Can I get you something?” Julia asked.
I opened my eyes and saw that she was standing over me, twisting her hands. She looked worried, as if she didn’t know what to do with us.
“A glass of wine would be nice,” I said. I looked at the sideboard and saw a bottle there. “I guess the wine is gone, though.”
She followed my gaze. “What?”
“The wine must be gone, if Patrick’s gone out for more.”
“Oh. Oh, that? That’s Cabernet. Patrick doesn’t like red wine, so he went to get more Chardonnay. God knows how far he had to go to find an open liquor store at this hour, though.”
“There’s one a little ways down the highway,” I said. “He probably went there.”
“Oh. Well, he shouldn’t be long, then.”
]She went over and poured me a glass of the Cab, which was warm and felt good going down. My nerves were a mess from everything that had happened since San Francisco, and my hand shook as I lifted the glass to my mouth.
Not as much as Julia’s shook though. She had apparently spilled some wine on her dress when she carried it over to me.
She saw me looking at the stain, but didn’t say anything.
“Some soda water might get that right out,” I said.
“It’s—it’s okay. I was going to throw this dress out anyway.”
She must be doing better than she’d let on, I thought. First, taxis all over L.A., and now simply ignoring a stain on a gold and white dress that looked like a designer item.
“Are you all right, Julia?” I asked. “You seem worried.”
“No, it’s just all that’s happened, I guess. Getting the call about Craig, then the funeral…I think I’m just exhausted.”
She sat in the chair across from me. “Do you mind if I ask you what’s going on?” she said. “Who is this little girl, and why do you both look so drained?”
I glanced over at Jade and saw that she was asleep, her little chest moving up and down in tiny rises with each soft breath.
“It’s a horribly long story, Julia. I should probably wait till Patrick gets back to tell it. But the short of it is, we’ve driven down from San Francisco, and it wasn’t a good experience.”
“Mmm. Fog along Moss Landing?”
“And then some. You’ve been caught in it?”
“Craig and I used to hike through the mountains in Santa Cruz and Carmel, and I remember some real scary drives up and down the coast between the two.”
Her eyes welled and her mouth shook. She raised a hand as if to still them. “I never thought I’d miss him this much.”
“I’m sorry. I guess Patrick’s helped a lot, though?”
She nodded. Pulling herself together, she looked me straight in the eye and said, “Pardon me if this seems mean, Mary Beth, especially after you helped me the other day. But Patrick really doesn’t need any trouble right now.”
I felt a small jolt of surprise, like the kind when you’re out on a date and you think you’re going to get a ring, but get dumped instead.
“Trouble?” I asked.
“You must know the police are looking for you. They think you had something to do with Craig’s murder. And maybe even Tony’s and Arnold’s. They’ve been around asking questions.”
“Oh, God, I’m sorry. It never occurred to me that Patrick would be bothered like that. But Julia, surely you don’t believe that I killed them!”
“Of course not. Not for a minute, Mary Beth. But since you and Patrick are close again—”
“Wait a minute. I’m going to represent him again. That doesn’t mean we’re ‘close.’ Not the way it sounds like you mean.”
She looked flustered again. “No, not at all! I just meant that because of the connection, they seem to be focusing a lot on Patrick now. I think they may be looking at him as a possible accomplice.”
“But that’s crazy! Why would Patrick—”
I stood and walked over to the doors overlooking the deck. I was shaken by the implication that the police thought Patrick and I might be in some sort of conspiracy. If it had gone that far in just two days, I was in hotter water than I’d known.
Hadn’t Dan shown his superiors and Lieutenant Davies Craig’s CD, after all?
It was pitch-black outside, and I automatically reached for the switch that put the deck lights on. As Patrick had said, I do have a way of taking over. It was just too dark beyond the doors, and the thought that anyone could be standing there gave me the jitters.
I felt a bit silly when the lights flooded on, only to reveal that the deck was devoid of human life.
Julia came up behind me and said, “Mary Beth, I don’t mean to be unkind. I just think it might be better for Patrick if you left. Now, I mean, before he gets back. If the police even get a hint that you’re here, they’ll probably come and arrest you and Patrick. I would hate to see that happen to him.”
“I agree,” I said. “I don’t want to see that, either.”
I walked over to the sofa and looked down at Jade. How much more could this child of mine take? How could I best protect her?
My plan had been to spend the night here, and in the morning call Nia’s father in London, and the other doctor I knew of in L.A. Once I found out what could be done for Jade, and if she could be taken care of in L.A., I’d ask Nia to come home, and then turn myself in. Nia would take care of Jade, I knew, until I was able to.
Whic
h I hoped wouldn’t take long. I’d tell the police about Roger having killed Lindy and Irene, and about Craig’s book and Roger’s attempt to stop its publication by killing Craig.
But what if they still couldn’t link Roger to the other two murders?
That’s what it kept coming back to. If Roger had killed Craig, who had killed Tony and Arnold? And why?
I sat on the edge of the couch next to Jade, preparing to wake her up and leave with her, though I wasn’t sure where I was going. Then I heard something: a small sound, nothing much, but at the same time so huge, it changed all our lives.
I looked at Julia, who seemed oblivious to it. I’d heard this sound before, though, when I was still Patrick’s agent. We’d go out now and then to a restaurant or meetings and I’d wait here, tapping a foot impatiently, wondering if he’d ever finish checking his e-mail so we could leave.
It was the noise a computer makes when it’s going online. One of those high-pitched squeals that’s something like a fax machine. My own computer, and probably most people’s don’t go online by themselves. Someone has to hit the right keys.
I glanced at Julia again, my mind racing to assimilate this information but she was already heading for the front door, eager to show us out.
“I’ll just take my glass to the kitchen,” I said. Jade was still sleeping, and I hesitated, looking at her. But I had to take the chance that Julia wouldn’t be after Jade.
She’d want me.
The minute I got to the kitchen I set my glass down, opened the basement door and ran down the steps, then over to Patrick’s “cave”—the office he’d built for himself without any windows or view to distract him while he wrote.
The door was solid mahogany and heavy. Yanking it open with both hands, I found Patrick tied to his office chair with what seemed to be clothesline. There was adhesive tape over his mouth, but the look in his eyes was one of sheer relief.
I ran over to him and pulled the tape off.
“Ow!” he said. And then, “Thank God!” His voice was so hoarse he didn’t sound like himself at all. “I heard you up there, and I managed to log online with my nose, but I wasn’t sure you’d hear it.”
“Your nose?” I said, half laughing. “My poor Patrick, I never wanted to mention it, but you do have an awesome nose. Are you okay?”
I glanced at his desk, looking for something to cut the rope.
“I will be,” he said. “They’re in that drawer. Scissors.”
I pulled them out. “She’ll be here in any minute. Let me call the police first,” I said, picking up his desk phone to dial 911.
“Not a smart move, Mary Beth,” Julia said from the doorway. “You should have taken that little brat and gotten out of here when you could.”
“Mary Beth, go!” Patrick yelled. “Run!”
“Too late,” Julia said. “Too late.”
She was pointing a small pistol in my direction, the kind of weapon a woman carries in her purse. I backed off, raising both my hands palm out.
“You don’t have to do this, Julia. You’ll go to prison for life. Why would you want that?”
“Shut up,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter to her,” Patrick said. “Don’t you get it? She’s already murdered three times.”
His voice sounded angry, but there were tears in his eyes. “She killed them, Mary Beth. Tony, Craig and Arnold. She’ll kill us now, too. She doesn’t have anything left to lose.”
“My dear Patrick,” Julia said, “you are so right. I’ve got nothing to lose now. And with no one left to talk, who would ever suspect me? I’ll just collect Craig’s money and be on my way.”
“If you mean his advance from the book, there isn’t one,” I said. “I haven’t made a deal yet.”
“Not to worry,” Julia said. “Paul Whitmore told me he offered you a seven-figure deal. As Craig’s widow, I was going to instruct you to take the offer. Now I’ll just have to make that deal myself. And even better, I won’t have to pay you a commission.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, but like you said, Julia, too late. Whitmore withdrew the offer late yesterday. I guess he didn’t tell you that.”
She paled. “You’re lying. He told me at the funeral—”
“And yesterday he changed his mind. The fact that Craig is dead makes it a tough sell now. He won’t be around to talk about the book on tour, and when it’s nonfiction, that makes a big difference. I doubt anyone will touch it now.”
“That’s not possible. Craig told me this book was a sure best-seller. He said there would be more than enough money for both of us soon.”
“Oh, God, Julia. All writers say that. They always think the next one’s the one. And you told me yourself that Craig was a gambler. They lie all the time about money.”
“No! No, it was different this time. He swore to me that this book would be a runaway best-seller. For God’s sake, that’s the only reason I stayed married to him this time! You can’t imagine I’d really want him back. I hated the man. Hated his lazy habits, his addictions, the other women—”
She came closer with the gun, as if by threatening me she could somehow make me produce a pot of gold. “I need that money, Mary Beth! I’m on the verge of bankruptcy, and I’m losing my business!”
“Oh, well, not to worry, then,” I said. “I’ll tell Nia to forward Craig’s checks to you. There won’t be much, of course, just dribs and drabs of royalties from his old books now and then. Enough to pay the light bill—for a month or two.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t possible. I know you’re lying. You have to be lying,” she said numbly. The hand with the gun hung limply at her side.
“Keep telling yourself that, if it makes you feel better,” I said. “But even if the book sold, don’t you think that grabbing a ton of Craig’s money so soon after his murder might just give the police reason to wonder about you? The Black Widow aspect of it, I mean.”
She straightened and seemed to gain back her strength. And her anger.
“Not when they’ve got you to wonder about. I’m so glad you showed up, Mary Beth. Now I can make it look like you killed Patrick. This will be your fourth murder, of course, and the media will say you went nuts from too much pressure at work and began killing off your clients. You even used these handy-dandy little toys, and they’ll be talking about that for years.”
She reached into a pocket of her silk jacket and pulled out an ornamental Chinese dildo, much like the ones all three men had been killed with.
“It would have been much nicer for you, of course, if you hadn’t shown up when you did, Mary Beth. I was just about to shoot my old friend here and make it look like a suicide—complete with a letter saying he was wracked with guilt over the murder of his friends—when you knocked…and knocked and knocked…on that damn door.”
She held a hand to her head. “You give me a headache, Mary Beth. I thought sure you’d wake up all the neighbors and they’d call the cops.”
“So you came up and let us in, knowing you were going to kill us?”
“Not at all. You might have been smart enough to leave when I told you to. You just weren’t.”
“I was smart enough, though, to suspect there was something wrong when Patrick wasn’t around and his deck lights, which he puts on every single night, without fail, were out. Didn’t have time to think of that, huh, Julia?”
She smiled, but there was no humor in it. “You might say I’ve been busy.”
“Too busy to think to turn the computer off, too, I guess. So it wouldn’t squeal when it went online? Or how about the fact that Patrick only drinks Cabernet, and would never go out in the middle of the night for white wine? I didn’t think of that until I heard the computer. Then I put the two together, and—how stupid of you, Julia.”
She looked disturbed by that, as if surprised that she hadn’t worked out everything. “I guess you were smarter than me after all, Mary Beth. Well, I have good and bad news for you. The good news is that you w
on’t be a suspect anymore. The bad news is, you’ll be dead. And so will that sweet little girl upstairs.”
I’d been willing to let her talk for a while. But that was the wrong thing to say.
Looking behind Julia to the door, I said, “Jade! Don’t come in here. Run!”
It was an old trick, but it worked. Julia turned to look and I lunged at her, taking her down before she could think to do anything but drop the gun. She was taller than I, but I knew the moves and she didn’t. I had her pinned to the floor within seconds.
“Patrick, see if you can dial 911 with that magnificent nose,” I said. “Tell them we have the murderer of Craig Dinsmore, Tony Price and Arnold Westcott here.”
Julia tried to kick. She even spit at me. But she wasn’t going anywhere.
“So tell me why she killed Tony and Arnold,” I said to Patrick after we’d watched Julia being taken away. We were sitting on his deck with blankets around us, getting some much-needed fresh air. Amazingly, Jade never woke up through it all. She was still asleep on the couch.
“That’s the hideous thing about it,” Patrick said. “She did it so no one would suspect she killed Craig. She wanted to make it look like a hate crime, and she was ready to tell the police that Craig was gay, even though he wasn’t. But when the police started suspecting me of being in cahoots with you, she decided it might be a nice idea to make it look as if I were guilty, and I’d been so wracked with a guilty conscience, I’d killed myself.”
I had been so sure Roger had killed Craig. Now I knew why there was no connection between him and Tony and Arnold.
“I never would have believed it,” Patrick said. “I’ve known Julia for years, and there she was pointing a gun at me.”
“So she actually killed Tony and Arnold for no reason at all? They didn’t do anything to cause it?”
“Not a thing.”
“That’s just…incredible,” I said. “And what about the Chinese dildos? How did they come to be the murder weapons?”
“Tony had bought one at her antiques shop in New York City last year. He brought one back to Arnold, and me, too, as gag gifts.”