“Jo, sweetie, it’s me.”
“Mom? Hi, how are you?” Jo sank down onto her bed.
“I’m fine, dear. It’s been too long, hasn’t it? I’ve meant to call at least a dozen times. How are you doing there, in that little town you’ve settled in? What is it called? I keep forgetting.”
“Abbotsville.”
“Yes, that’s right. Is your shop all set up now?”
Jo thought back. It seemed like a million years since her grand opening. How excited she had been that day. How quickly it had all fallen apart. But her mother, she knew, hadn’t called to hear about problems. She didn’t want any specks whatsoever on her rose-colored glasses.
“Yes, the shop’s up and running, Mom.”
“Wonderful! I’m going to tell all my friends here to stop in when they’re in the area.”
Jo couldn’t picture anyone wanting to detour to Abbotsville on a trip to Washington, D.C., or Baltimore, just for Jo’s particular craft supplies, but the thought was there. Carol Wagner did what she could for her daughter, and her daughter accepted it, knowing her mother’s limits.
Jo heard the clink of glassware on the line and pictured her mother standing in the kitchen of her little house, designed for senior citizens who might have mobility problems, although Carol Wagner had no concerns in that department. Possibly the youngest member of her small, central Florida community, Jo sensed that her mother enjoyed her position of relative youth, as well as the ease of the maintenance-free situation and effortless sociability. She had moved down there shortly after Jo’s father died of heart trouble, and seemed to have never looked back, except for the occasional contact with her daughter.
“So, when will you be able to come down here for a nice vacation? We have a lovely pool you can swim in as my guest.”
“It might be awhile, Mom.”
“Oh, I do hope not too long.” Jo’s mother began telling Jo about the almost daily swims she had been taking since she moved into her home, and which neighbors she usually encountered, tales Jo had heard a few times before. She began to tune out, and when the story expanded to descriptions of recent ailments of said neighbors, Jo barely listened, simply filling in any pause with automatic “uhhuhs.” At one point Jo thought she heard a noise from the area of her backdoor and she cocked one ear to listen. Some little night creature, perhaps, looking for crumbs? The noise didn’t continue, and she tuned back in to her mother’s chatter, just in time to hear the finale on Harriet Kreitner’s knee replacement.
“Uh, Mom?” she broke in, when Mrs. Wagner took a breath.
“Yes, dear?”
“Remember when we lived in Larksdale? On Rosewood Lane?”
“Of course. You were in elementary school then, weren’t you?”
“Uh-huh. Remember the Milburn brothers? They went around one summer bashing mailboxes.”
“Oh, yes. Why do you mention it?”
Jo heard the tinge of annoyance creep into her mother’s voice. Why do you mention things I’d rather not think about? she might as well have asked.
“I was just wondering. Nobody knew for a long time who was doing the bashing. But then you happened to see them one night, right?”
“Yes.”
“Was it hard turning them in? I mean, you and Dad were friends with the family and all. But somebody had to stop them. Was it very difficult?”
“Oh, I sent your father to talk to that policeman we knew. I told him to make sure we were kept out of it. I think they kept an eye on the boys and caught them in the act a couple nights later.”
Jo should have known. Dad was sent to take care of it, and Mom, as usual, sidestepped the issue. Jo wouldn’t have that luxury, however. No sidestepping possible here, only a straightforward march to Russ Morgan’s gray steel desk.
“Why do you ask, dear? Has someone been damaging mailboxes there?”
“No, Mom.” A murder or two, but our mailboxes are just fine.
“Well good. I want everything to be well for you, Jo. Especially after, you know.”
Yes, Jo knew. That little unmentionable incident up in New York. “Everything’s okay here,” she assured her mother. Jo had long stopped crossing her fingers when she said such things to her mother. They didn’t qualify as lies, she reasoned, when they were exactly what Carol Wagner wanted to hear. They always made her mother a little happier, and Jo was just as glad to cooperate. Unfortunately, they always left Jo feeling a little lonelier.
“I guess I’d better let you go, Jo. You probably have a lot of things to do.”
Jo didn’t argue. She promised to pass on her mother’s best to Carrie, and to think seriously about driving down to Florida. They finished with a breezy “love you” on each side, and ended the call, Jo’s hand lingering on the phone as it rested in its cradle. What if, she wondered, she had taken up her mother’s invitation after Mike’s accident to move somewhere near her? Would she have been better off? Would it have been worth it to live a life of pretend happiness in year-round sunshine in order to avoid the troubles that had rained down on her where she was?
Jo sighed, and dragged herself off the bed. Perhaps a little food and drink would help with the gloom, although the only kind of drink that would really help was not what she would allow herself tonight. A clear head and alcohol-free breath were what she needed for her meeting with Russ Morgan tomorrow, if she finally decided she should go.
She went to her kitchen and pulled open her refrigerator to stare inside: a few aging eggs, wilted lettuce, and a covered dish of leftover macaroni and cheese. She pulled out the dish and was heading for the microwave when the phone rang. Who would that be? she wondered. Her mother, with one more neighbor’s story she had forgotten to share?
Jo headed toward the phone, macaroni in hand. A figure suddenly stepped out of the shadows, and Jo screamed, dropping her dish, which clattered to the floor.
“Let it ring,” Deirdre said, her suggestion reinforced by the gun in her hand. “We have more important things to take care of.”
Chapter 29
Jo stared at the gun in Deirdre’s hand. A small, silver piece that fit easily into her palm, it looked almost like a toy. But Jo didn’t doubt the deadliness of it, nor, from the look on Deirdre’s face, her intentions. All doubts about the woman’s capacity to commit murder had definitely been erased.
“How did you get in here?”
“You’re careless with your keys, Jo. I borrowed the one to your back door one day during a workshop and copied it. How helpful of you to label each key. You thought it had slipped off your ring onto the shop floor. That was my way of returning it.”
Jo remembered the incident. She hadn’t even missed that particular key until one of the workshop ladies—Mindy?—spotted it lying near her desk. Jo had indeed assumed it had simply fallen off somehow, and tightened up her key ring with one of her jewelry pliers, apparently locking the barn door, in effect, after the fact.
“Why don’t you clean up the mess on your floor, Jo? I wouldn’t want you to accidentally slip and fall.”
Jo stared at Deirdre, wondering if she could be serious. A menacing wave of the pistol convinced her, and Jo grabbed a fistful of paper towels and mopped at the macaroni, all the time aware of Deirdre hovering closely. Jo’s mind raced, trying to think what she could do to get away from this woman who clearly planned to shoot her, but nothing foolproof came to mind. Karate kicks were not in Jo’s repertoire, unfortunately, and the only weapon she had at hand—her kitchen knives—were not faster than speeding bullets. Maybe she could distract Deirdre, somehow.
“How did you know I was starting to figure it out?” Jo asked, reaching for a final curled noodle with her towels.
Deirdre smiled an eerie smile. “You seemed so interested in my ring last night, Jo. And then my photos. It made me worry. The photo I put in my scrapbook of Alden and me at the Muscular Dystrophy Ball didn’t include Bethanne—I had trimmed her off, as she needed to be. But I looked up my original copy. Bethanne is
wearing a pendant that Alden must have given her. I could see how similar it was to my ring, though I hadn’t noticed it at the time, since I didn’t have my ring yet. You saw that pendant, didn’t you Jo? When you visited Bethanne.”
Jo nodded.
“I thought so. I realized, then, you were starting to put it all together. Obviously, I had to stop you before you got too far.”
Obviously.
“I guess I can understand you wanting to kill Bethanne,” Jo said. “She must have made you furious, luring your husband into an affair. I presume you mistook Genna for her when she was walking the dog?”
Deirdre frowned. “Yes, that was a mistake. Unfortunate, since Bethanne quickly became less accessible.”
Jo caught the coldness of Deirdre’s attitude toward Genna’s death. “Unfortunate” and “mistake” instead of what it truly was: a terrible crime. It gave Jo chills.
“And Kyle was a threat for what he knew?”
“Of course. Would we want to be blackmailed the rest of our lives? And risk having Alden’s career destroyed? You know how the media is. Always looking for the least bit of dirt on candidates. Alden is heading for the governorship. Everyone says so. And after that—who knows? The Senate, or even the White House!”
Deirdre had grown agitated, moving about as she talked, waving her pistol for emphasis. Jo backed slowly toward her trash can with her handful of noodle-filled towels, watching Deirdre and trying to remember which knives had been left in the knife block that sat on the counter, and which lay buried in her dishwasher.
“Perhaps Alden should have considered that before he got involved with Bethanne.”
Deirdre’s anger melted into rueful pity. “Men can be so weak, can’t they? For all his brilliance, Alden managed to let himself be drawn in by that tennis slut. If it weren’t for me watching out for him, who knows where he’d be? When I pointed out the risks he was taking, Alden agreed it had to end.”
Deirdre said it as calmly as if she and Alden had discussed the downside of wearing polka-dotted bow ties to public appearances. Jo wondered how calmly these “risks” had in fact been pointed out. She reached the trash can and turned to deposit the towels. The knife block sat a few inches to the right, and Jo saw two handles poking out of it: the boning knife and the small paring knife. Which one should she try to grab?
“When did you become aware that Kyle knew what was going on?”
“The night that Alden met with Bethanne at the club to break it off with her. I had slipped over to monitor the situation, determined to step in if she gave him a difficult time. But then I saw that ridiculous person from the tennis shop, creeping around, spying on them.”
Deirdre looked at Jo, incensed. “Bethanne was being perfectly reasonable at the time, but Kyle, I knew, had no sense of what was important. He would think his pitiful acting career, getting money to bankroll it or publicity to fuel it, was more critical than who eventually guides our state, or our country, toward peace and prosperity.”
“And of course, who stands beside that governor or president,” Jo added.
“Alden wouldn’t be where he is except for me,” Deirdre declared. “I deserve the rewards of being First Lady.”
That’s what it was all about, of course. Deirdre didn’t really care about the country’s need for Alden. Deirdre cared most about her place in the spotlight, once the elevated positions were reached. Something else now occurred to Jo.
“My car accident. Did you have something to do with that?”
“Of course. You were getting too close, determined to talk to Bethanne. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision, though, so I had to use what I had at hand.” Deirdre gave a small laugh. “Alden always claims I carry a small pharmacy around with me. I have to admit I’ve gathered up quite a variety of pills. It’s not always easy being the wife of a politician, you know. There’s enormous stress involved, which brings on sleep problems and such.
“The doctor I went to see in Baltimore prescribed the Restoril I used on Kyle. I wouldn’t dare go to Doctor Davidson here in Abbotsville. The people in his office know me, and you know how easily things get out. Besides, the office staff of my Baltimore doctor is extremely overworked, and they don’t always guard their cache of drug samples as they should. They make it so easy to reach for a few packets on your way out from the examining room.” She smiled, amused. “I’m not even sure what I dropped into your soda that night.”
“You intended to kill me?”
“As I said, I didn’t have time to plan. I wanted to at least slow you down. You were starting to move much too quickly in dangerous directions. I tried to convince you it was the jealous boyfriend who killed Kyle. There I was, showing up for all those wretched workshops of yours, just to guide you onto safer paths. This could have all been avoided if you’d only cooperated.”
As Deirdre paced, ranting on about her supposed hardships and pressures, then crowing over her clever handling of them, Jo reached back for the paring knife, hoping Deirdre’s agitation covered the movement. She slid the knife into the back pocket of her jeans, grateful for the recent weight loss that made them loose enough to do so easily.
“What about that anonymous letter you called me about?” she asked, anxious to keep Deirdre talking.
“Again, something intended merely to slow you down.”
Something intended to get me arrested for murder. “So you wrote it?”
“Certainly. Taking all the proper precautions, of course. How helpful all those television crime shows can be. I used the library’s computer to print it out, wore gloves to prevent fingerprints, and swabbed the envelope’s flap with a wet cotton ball to avoid leaving DNA. Not that I thought they’d ever go to that much trouble on a simple letter, but one never knows.”
“I assume, then, you plan to eventually eliminate Bethanne, as a proper precaution, of course,” Jo said.
Deirdre sighed. “It’s so true that a woman’s work is never done. At first she was being sensible, and willing to step quietly out of the picture, for her own sake as well as ours. But she seems to be an ongoing temptation for Alden. If she had only gone away and caused problems for someone at a tennis club in Arizona, for instance, she would have saved a lot of trouble for us all.
“But enough of this. It’s time to get moving.” Deirdre picked up Jo’s keys from the counter. Jo took a step toward Deirdre, but Deirdre stopped her with a firm thrust of her pistol. “First, though, remove that knife from your pocket.”
Jo’s heart sank.
“Slowly,” Deirdre added, watching intently as Jo silently followed the order.
“Drop it on the floor and kick it to that far corner.”
Jo did so, watching her only hope spin out of reach.
“Now walk ahead of me into the garage.”
Deirdre pulled open the connecting door and waved Jo out. She held Jo’s keys in her left hand. Where did she plan to take her? Surely Deirdre couldn’t drive and hold the gun on her at the same time? Jo’s hopes began to revive. If Deirdre ordered her to drive, perhaps she could manage an escape after all.
Jo stepped down the single step into the garage and moved past her workshop room toward her car.
“Stop,” Deirdre said, and Jo heard her keys jangle. She looked around and saw Deirdre locate the key to Jo’s jewelry workroom and fit it into the lock. She waved Jo in.
“What—?
“Just get in!”
With Deirdre’s pistol nearly in her face, Jo got in. But what was going on? Did Deirdre plan to let her live after all? Did she intend to simply confine Jo there while she escaped? That didn’t make any sense. Deirdre didn’t want a life on the run; she wanted a life of prestige and power.
Jo heard the lock turn, then footsteps walk to her car. The car door opened, and in a moment Jo heard her ignition turn over. She expected to hear the garage door open next, but instead she heard her car door slam shut and Deirdre’s footsteps return.
No, oh no!
“Don’t do
this, Deirdre!”
“Don’t worry, Jo, it will be quite painless.” Deirdre’s voice came from near the door.
“You won’t get away with it! Alden’s career will be over!”
“Ah, but I will, Jo. I’ve had time to plan this. You see, when they find you, they will think you committed suicide. I will come back in the morning for our appointment to discuss a jewelry commission. Remember that brooch design we were going to discuss? No? No matter, it will be scribbled on your calendar. What a horrible discovery I will make then. Perhaps I’ll even get one of your neighbors to help me find you. Of course I will have unlocked this door, first.
“And the police will eventually find a letter—hidden somewhat sloppily in your bedroom—that will obviously be from Kyle—threatening to blackmail you about your husband’s murder. It will become so clear that your conscience overcame you and you chose suicide, surrounded by your beloved jewelry implements. Lieutenant Morgan will have no trouble whatsoever believing it.”
Jo saw immediately how right Deirdre was. Morgan would take it as confirmation of what he’d suspected all along. His case would be tidily and efficiently closed as Jo was proclaimed responsible for the recent Abbotsville murders.
“Good-bye, Jo. I’m sorry. I truly am. But you wouldn’t listen.”
Jo heard the door to her kitchen close, and Deirdre’s footsteps faded away as she headed toward Jo’s bedroom to plant her false evidence. Within moments Jo faintly heard her back door close and pictured Deirdre slipping easily to wherever she had left her car, unseen by neighbors who were likely staring at televisions rather than out their windows.
All the while, Jo heard her car engine chugging away, pumping carbon monoxide into the closed garage. Jo rattled the knob on her workshop door and then threw her weight against it. Again. It barely moved.
It had never occurred to her that she might be locked in this room, accidentally or not. The door locked and unlocked by key, which she carried on her key ring. She only locked it when she was out of it, never while she was inside, working. And if she had her key ring with her, there was no need to keep a spare inside the room. It wasn’t a freezer, after all, simply her workroom. She never, never anticipated something like this.
Wreath of Deception Page 20