Marry in Haste

by Susan Van Kirk

  “But Darlene—”

  “Didn’t I say ‘shut up,’ Emily? Don’t you want to hear the details you slept through or not?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “Again, just shut your mouth. And you’re right. You don’t think. Otherwise, you’d have grabbed those kids and left Conrad long ago. Now, where was I? See, Emily, what happens when you interrupt me?”

  She stared straight at Emily, while Grace watched Lettie and then looked down at her phone on the table. Lettie suddenly smiled. Fortunately, Darlene couldn’t see her smile, thought Grace.

  “And how did Conrad repay Will? He put him in prison, probably for the rest of his life. And you, Emily. You could have gotten him out of that fate. But you’re too selfish and self-centered to do it. So you destroy my only hope of happiness, you selfish bitch.”

  “Darlene, how could I destroy Conrad’s reputation by swearing he forged those papers?”

  Suddenly, Darlene threw her head back and let out a huge laugh. Then she suddenly became calm again, looked at Emily, and said in slow, measured tones, “Why should you worry about the reputation of a man who constantly beat you and told you how stupid you are? You should be glad I killed him. You could have had some kind of wonderful life after his death. But now you won’t live to see that. You were too much of a wimp to do what had to be done, but at least you can take the blame for this debacle. Who wouldn’t believe you went crazy and killed Grace and busybody here?”

  “How did you manufacture Emily’s prints on the murder weapon, Darlene?” Grace pushed, hoping to bring her back to a less hysterical, more rational state.

  “Ha! The glass and fingerprints were easy. I knew Emily took sleeping pills, which zonked her out. No reason she’d wake up. I had gloves on, but she was out like a light, and I simply walked into her bedroom, put the glass piece in her hand, and held the edge of it before I took it back to Conrad’s room. Perfect. And I planned. Oh, so carefully. I wore a plastic raincoat the blood would slide down, and disposed of the coat in Woodbury. Booties from the hospital where I work kept the bloody prints from any shoes showing up. I carefully put them on after killing him. Of course, they’re gone too. Disposed of.”

  “But Darlene,” Emily said. “You’ll never have Will again. He’ll go to prison for a long time.”

  “Not if I can help it. With you gone, Emily, and you, too, Grace, no one will know Will is guilty because I’ll use the story I already made up. Conrad forged Will’s signatures on those loans, and I can make up a paper where he practiced.”

  Grace felt a furry ball sit on her foot and rub against her leg. Eliot was under the table. She remembered she had her phone within a hand’s-length on the table. Maybe she could sneak it down to her lap while Darlene was enthralled in her own story.

  “What about us?” Lettie asked, directing Darlene’s attention to her instead of Grace or Emily. “How will you explain our deaths?”

  “Easy,” Darlene said. “Emily went crazy, and she shot both of you and then herself. I can make it look like that. She was in despair because of her husband’s death, and you tried to stop her, but she shot you and Grace in the struggle. Then, of course, she’ll shoot herself. Too bad the kids aren’t here tonight. I’ll have to dispose of them down the road.” She stopped a moment and caught her breath. Then she began to laugh again, first quietly, and then more shrilly. “At least you can all three go together!”

  Grace had slipped her phone onto her lap during Darlene’s monologue, and she looked at Lettie. Lettie caught Grace’s stare and struggled to rise and say, “Darlene, you don’t want to do this—”

  Then all hell broke loose. Grace tapped Myers’s ringtone from her list, the “Stayin’ Alive” ringtone came on, and Eliot jumped out toward Darlene and began chasing his tail in a circle as Darlene—startled—screamed and moved backward. Lettie raised her crutch and smashed Darlene’s arm, and the stunned woman dropped her gun, but it discharged once when Lettie’s crutch hit it. Suddenly, the swinging door into the kitchen flew open, and TJ rushed in, her gun leveled at Darlene.

  “It’s over,” TJ said, as Jake Williams and two other officers followed her in from the kitchen, and one kicked Darlene’s gun out of reach.

  “Nope, not over—not by a long shot, or a short shot,” said Lettie grimly. Grace Kimball lay on the floor in a spreading pool of blood.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “Grace, we have to stop meeting in the ER.”

  Grace Kimball looked at TJ standing in the doorway of the ER patient room. She started laughing and so did Emily, who was sitting on a chair while the doctor wrapped Grace’s arm. “Not so bad this time, TJ. Just a flesh wound, bleeding but no damage to nerves. I was lucky. When Lettie hit the gun with her crutch, it spun Darlene in my direction.”

  “Otherwise, she would have shot me,” Emily said. “So thanks, Grace, for taking the bullet.”

  “And do you know where the other witness to the crime is?” TJ said.

  “Lettie?” said Grace. “Well, no. They brought me in here by ambulance, so I don’t know what you and the police have been doing . . . probably making a huge mess in my house. I’ll bet Lettie is right on top of them, too, giving directions about what the police can and can’t do.”

  “I’m sure she would be yelling at them. Actually, by now she’s at her house holding Eliot and petting him because he’s traumatized. She called Del to come over and help.”

  “How did you know, TJ?” asked Emily.

  “Know to come to Grace’s house?”

  “Yes.”

  “We weren’t going to Sweetbriar Court. Actually, we were heading to Darlene’s house, and I happened to look down the court as we passed and saw Darlene’s car.”

  “How did you figure out it was Darlene?” Grace asked.

  “Yarn.”

  “Yarn?”

  TJ looked at Grace and laughed. “It’s your fault. You forced me to read A Tale of Two Cities in high school. Remember Madame Defarge? The night of Conrad’s death, Darlene knit in the family room while she waited for the poker game to end. The yarn—which I thought might have come from the killer brushing up against a sweater, was in the list of trace evidence. I remembered you mentioned to me, Grace, that Jeff said Darlene had stayed that evening. I imagine when we check her house we’ll find the yarn and it will be a match. A small piece of it was evidently on her clothes. Then the potting soil cinched it. Her house has been on the garden walk in the summer, and she has a shed full of gardening equipment. She just happened to have left the potting soil in the shed, but I believe she disposed of the gardening gloves she used. When she killed Conrad, some of the soil from her gardening gloves came off on the bed. It’s a match,” TJ said. “Oh, and by the way, just before I took her to the public safety office, Darlene admitted to running you two off the road and sending Grace the warning letter. She also broke into your house, Grace, to scare you.”

  “I find it so hard to believe,” Emily said. “Now Will may end up in prison and so will Darlene—the last adults, except for Jessalynn and me, in the Folger families.”

  “Sure looks that way,” TJ said. “Maybe you can have a clean start with Caitlin and Conrad. I suppose the bank will pass into different hands. The board of directors will elect someone. What an amazing end to a four-generation history with the bank and the town.”

  “Well, that should do it, young lady,” said the doctor. “I think, just to be safe, you should take a course of antibiotics. Here’s the prescription, and also I’m sending some pain pills with you. Otherwise, just get a lot of rest and let the stitches heal up in your arm.”

  The weary women walked out of the ER arm in arm—one a cop, one a retired teacher, and one a healing abuse victim. TJ took them back to Grace’s, and Emily headed home.

  Later that evening in Grace’s living room, TJ stoked the fire and made sure the flames burned brightly. The remaining police had left, and most of the mess was cleaned up.

  TJ sat back down and too
k a sip of wine. “It’s pretty ironic when you think about it.”

  “Think about what?”

  “Darlene. Here she thought if she murdered Conrad she’d advance her husband’s career. Instead, Folger’s murder kicked off an investigation into his finances, which led to the discovery of the kickbacks. Darlene claims she didn’t know about the money they were getting under the table so, essentially, she ended up putting her own husband in prison and herself too.” TJ looked at the flames burning brightly and shook her head. “Amazing.”

  “Greed and envy. They’ll get you every time.” Grace paused. “I think I can see now how Emily might have fallen into the trap of abuse. It makes sense, especially as I read Olivia Havelock’s diary. She had no protection from abuse back then. Even today, it’s hard to escape from that cycle of self-doubt and fear you’ll die.”

  “At the risk of sounding like a textbook, Grace, the women who leave battering partners are seventy-five percent more likely to be murdered than those who stay. And that murder usually happens about the time the woman tries to leave. Unlike those women who left, Emily is at least lucky in a sense because Conrad’s death took away his possibility of killing her or even stalking her.”

  “I don’t think Olivia Havelock ever had a peaceful day once her husband began abusing her. The laws, courts, and police departments were run by men. Women’s shelters didn’t exist.”

  “So true. Today we have the Violence Against Women Act, and it does give some protections. But it’s still tough. I think the last statistic I read was that women who stay in a shelter have a fifty-fifty chance of getting permanently away from their abusers.”

  They were both silent for several minutes. Then Grace said, “Emily is a stronger person now than she was just a month ago. With the support of her parents and the help of her children, she’ll be able to make a life for herself. She won’t ever be the woman she was, but she will be stronger.”

  “I agree,” said TJ. “And she has the financial resources, along with the family support. Most abuse victims don’t have that.”

  The logs in the fireplace moved and the fire crackled. Both TJ and Grace sank back a little deeper into their chairs, and Grace took a long, deep breath.

  TJ felt the warm glow from the wine. “You know, Grace, this will never end.”

  “What will never end?”

  “Me pulling you out of catastrophes of your own making.”

  “What do you mean, ‘of my own making’? Sounds rather accusatory.”

  TJ shook her head slowly. “You are sitting here with your arm bandaged up, and you just got over a concussion.”

  “So? What’s your point?” Grace said, a tiny smile on her face.

  “It’s just second nature to you. You’ve never met a stray kitten, dog, or former student you didn’t believe in.”

  “So?”

  “Well, I was just thinking. It doesn’t look good. How many students do you suppose you’ve had over twenty-five years?”

  Grace counted in her head. “Hmmm. Maybe between twenty-five hundred and three thousand.”

  “I don’t think my career will cover them all. I rest my case.”

  The two friends watched a log move and sparks fly up the chimney. Then, after seeing Grace wince, TJ said, “I don’t suppose you’re going to take one of those pain pills.”

  “You know how I hate to take pills.”

  “Yeah. I figured. Here, let me pour you some more wine. So, what are you going to do about the diary you found from—what’s-her-name? Olive?”

  “Olivia. I will show it to Sam and let him read it, and then I will try to trace whether she had any children or grandchildren. If she had any descendants, they should have it.”

  “And how did it end? Happily ever after, as in a fairy tale?”

  “I’m going to read the end tonight. Stay tuned.” She paused and then added a thought. “You know, if Jeff hadn’t bought Lockwood House and asked me to research it, I wouldn’t have learned so much about domestic abuse. And it will enable me to keep helping Emily. The house has such a sad past, but maybe Jeff can turn it around. It looks so dark and gloomy now, but with the right restoration he can turn it into something special. Maybe that will banish the mysteries and remove the presence of whatever unhappy ghosts still haunt it.”

  They stared into the fire, a comfortable warmth filling the room.

  “And what about Jeff Maitlin?” TJ said, breaking the silence.

  “Oh, he’ll show up again. I’m sure. He said he’d be back and he will be. The only question is when, and whether or not the demons that pulled him away have been destroyed. I haven’t a clue what his business is, but I think it must be about his past—just like everything else.”

  “Will you tell him you’ve been shot?”

  “Are you kidding?” Grace paused. “If things get serious, he may want to check on my medical and life insurance before he makes a commitment,” she said.

  “You know, Grace, you’ve lived an unusually exciting life for a retired English teacher in a small town in the boring Midwest.”

  “You think?”

  “You’ve been tied up and almost died, threatened, run off the road, and shot. I’m a homicide detective and my life isn’t even close to that dangerous.”

  “Maybe I should write a book.”

  “I think it sounds more like what a small-town, retired English teacher in the Midwest would do.”

  “Well, that settles it. I can’t do that. I’d hate to give people what they expect.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Grace walked TJ to the door and watched her slip and slide across the icy street to her house. She smiled as she heard her swear a few times, attempting to stay on her feet. Then she went back to her sofa in front of the fire and thought about the events of the past month. Was it only a month? It seemed like years. She took a sip of her wine and looked at the bandage on her arm. Her arm was sore, and the local anesthetic was wearing off, but she had felt worse. Tonight she should sleep well, knowing Emily and her children were safe, and Darlene was behind bars where she couldn’t hurt anyone else.

  And then there was Lettie to consider. She would be losing her crutches tomorrow and have some kind of walking hardware so she could get around better. And although she was at her own house tonight, she planned to be back tomorrow with Eliot in tow. TJ has probably lost her cat, Grace thought. Lettie will be telling her “legion” that she and Eliot Ness were the heroes of the day, and, in fact, they were. This time, Grace had to give Lettie credit. But she wasn’t sure it was going to make her sister-in-law any easier to be around. And what if she and Del Novak become an item? And what if they marry? Arghh! What will I do for a cook?

  She stared into the fireplace, and the flames burned down to embers. From there, her mind wandered to the Will Folger family and how avarice and envy changed their lives forever. On the other hand, what might Will’s life have been like if his father hadn’t favored one son over the other? It was an age-old story, wasn’t it?

  And Conrad. She remembered looking at the pictures in his bank office—was that only a month ago?—and thinking about the generations of despair on the faces of the women in those families. She sighed. There were better laws these days to help abused spouses, but what good was an order of protection if a former spouse could stalk his victim and kill her? The prisons were filled with victims who murdered their abusers. I must remember, Grace thought, that men are abused too. But I think the statistics of victims weigh heavily in the female direction. Emily would most likely still be in the cycle of abuse if Darlene hadn’t killed her husband. And she is working so hard to get better and take care of her children.

  Darlene as Madame Defarge? Grace had thought of her more as Lady Macbeth—but she was a little more sanitary about the blood spatter. Hmmm . . . she had the ambition and the weak husband.

  Well, it’s about time to go to bed and hope for sleep with this bandage on my arm and a bit of pain. She paused for a moment with her
thoughts, and then she started to cry. She didn’t know if it was the close calls of almost losing her life lately—in a ditch on the road, or in her own dining room from a gun—but it finally all came too close to home. She grabbed a box of tissues and just let it all out, everything, from the threats to Emily and herself, to the departure of Jeff Maitlin. It was all too much to take in, and she knew she needed to sleep. Finally, her waterlogged eyes began to slow, and the flood turned into sniffles, and she knew she would be able to go on.

  Damn that Jeff Maitlin, she thought, in a rare instance of swearing. How could he leave me at a time like this? And why does he never call to let me know he’s all right? She glanced at her phone, checked to see if she’d missed any calls while she was at the ER, and laid it back down on the table. Well, that’s it. The fire was down to ashes, and she walked over to make sure the fire screen was safely in place. Then she turned off lights throughout the house, especially the front porch, double-checked the locks on the doors, and went to the kitchen for a glass of water to take upstairs. She took one last look around the living room and had just put her foot on the first step, when she heard the ringtone go off on her phone.

  “A New York State of Mind.”

  Suddenly all the anger of the evening disappeared, and she turned and walked back over to the sofa and stared at her phone. His picture smiled up at her, and she couldn’t help but smile back. She studied her phone display with the “Accept” and “Decline” buttons. Let’s see. Which one should I choose? Then, she quickly tapped her screen.

  EPILOGUE

  25 April, 1894

  The spring is upon us and it gives one reason to hope. But that is difficult for my own life. The judge sent me to Dr. Brown to make a determination of why I have not conceived. The physician looked at me with concern, but did not inquire about the bruises on my back. He can find nothing wrong with my ability to bear children, so perhaps I should be thankful fate has kept me from bringing a child into this miserable existence.