Someone Must Die

by Sharon Potts

  She stopped at the doorway to Larry’s room. A basket of wildflowers from she didn’t know whom. A balloon held by a coffee mug filled with candy—“Get Well Soon!” She eased the wheelchair closer to the bed, grimacing as her hands touched the wheels.

  His bed was raised, and he was propped up against a couple of pillows. A white bandage covered his head. It reminded her of the white bandanna he’d worn when he’d been Lawrence of Columbia.

  A million years ago. Mere seconds ago.

  He opened his eyes—sky blue set in bloodred. “Diana,” he said, his voice hoarse, “so glad to see you.”

  His words were muffled, almost drowned out by the ringing in her head.

  “How do you feel?” she asked.

  “Been better.” He tried to smile. The cleft in his chin quivered. “How about you?”

  “About like that.”

  “What about our girl Aubrey, eh? She really saved the day.”

  “She could have died.” Her voice came out too harsh, but she didn’t care. She wanted him to understand the magnitude of what could have been.

  “How long have you known Star was Gertrude?” she asked.

  He jerked, and the heart-monitoring machine he was attached to beeped his agitation. “Not until the day she tried to kill me,” he said. “When she recognized the ringtone on Aubrey’s phone as yours.”

  Our love is stronger than the pain. Sentimental nonsense. She should have moved on years ago.

  “So for eight years you didn’t realize who she was?”

  “Everything about her was different,” he said quietly. “Her face, her body, the way she talked and moved.”

  “How could you not have noticed her finger?”

  “I don’t know, Diana. The prosthetic was perfect, and she never took the ring off.”

  Or maybe he had seen what he’d wanted to see. “What about the ransom note?” she asked.

  “What ransom note?”

  “The one in the greeting card you left for me at the house.”

  “Greeting card?” he said. “My God. Star gave me an envelope when I went to the house to see you. She said it was a ‘We’re-thinking-of-you’ card and asked me put it with the mail. She didn’t want me to make a fuss about it. Was there a ransom demand?”

  “There was.” Diana was fairly certain he was telling the truth. At least about that. “I finally remembered,” she said. “About April Fool.”

  He kept his bloodshot eyes on her.

  “When I was carrying the little boy away from the explosion, I saw two people standing near a stoop a couple of doors down.”

  The heart monitor beeped again.

  “Something about the two people seemed familiar,” she said. “I don’t know—maybe I was concentrating so hard on getting the boy to safety that I didn’t pay attention. Or maybe I blocked the memory.”

  “You had a serious head injury.”

  “I did,” she said. “Were you hoping either the injury or the trauma of the explosion would wipe away my memory?”

  He seemed to go whiter. The monitor beeped more quickly.

  “You were right,” she said. “At least, for the last forty-five years or so. But today, I remembered.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  “The two people by the stoop,” she said. “He was wearing a white bandanna, and she had a long black braid.”

  She waited for him to deny it, but he said nothing. Just lay there taking shallow breaths.

  “I thought I had figured everything out, but I hadn’t. Gertrude even told me I was mistaken just before she died.”

  His eyes flew open.

  “You were the one who planned to blow up Low Library.”

  “No, Diana. I didn’t.”

  “Stop lying.” Her voice carried over the ringing in her ears. “I have the blueprint. It’s your handwriting on it, Larry.”

  He closed his eyes. A tear ran over the purplish pouch beneath his eye, then down his sunken cheek.

  “I’m trying to understand, Larry. We were lovers then. How could you have planned such a thing and me not know?”

  He kept his eyes closed. “You saw what you wanted to,” he said. “You believed I was a hero.”

  “I thought I knew you. You proclaimed to the world that murder wasn’t the answer. Was that a cover story?”

  He wet his lips with his tongue. “I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d never accept killing. I didn’t want to fall off the white horse you put me on.”

  But he had fallen. Far and hard.

  “What changed you?” she asked, her voice hushed inside her sawdust brain.

  “She did.”

  Diana felt a stab. So many years later, and she was still jealous of her.

  “Gertrude had such intensity,” he said. “She persuaded me that the only way to get the world’s attention was to do something devastating.”

  “So you came up with the plan to blow up the library and kill hundreds of students.”

  He pulled in several labored breaths. He was talking too much. Wearing himself out. “I was caught up in her vison,” he said finally. “She was always the one with the true convictions. Not me.”

  Lawrence of Columbia. He had been nothing more than an actor playing a part.

  “When I asked you to come with me to the FBI to stop the plan, you were reluctant at first, then you agreed.”

  “I was relieved you’d discovered the plan,” he said. “I hadn’t wanted to go through with the bombing, but I didn’t know how to stop it once it was in motion.”

  “Except you didn’t want anyone to learn the truth about you. That it had been your plan.”

  He lay there, dead still.

  She needed to get it out. All of it.

  “Instead of going to the bar to tell the others that we had negotiated for their immunity, you snuck down to the brownstone basement. You decided to silence the people who knew the plan to blow up Low Library was your brainchild.” She stopped to take a breath. “And that’s what you did, didn’t you? You silenced them. Michael Shernovsky, Gary Cohen, and Gertrude Morgenstern. And a five-year-old boy named Martin Smith, who happened to be riding his red tricycle that day.”

  He moved his head back and forth against the pillow, but she sensed it wasn’t in denial, but rather some inner hell he was trying to block out.

  “You were the one who blew up the brownstone on April Fool.”

  He let out a noise like he’d been kicked in the gut.

  “Except you had expected Gertrude to be in the basement, but she wasn’t. She was upstairs, where she’d been talking to me at the front door.” The beeping of his monitor seemed to merge with the ringing in her head. “So what happened, Larry? Did you see her running from the building and stop her at the stoop where I saw the two of you? What promises did you make after convincing her you’d known she hadn’t been in the basement when you threw the bomb? Did you tell her to plant her body parts and clothes to make it look like she had died in the explosion?”

  “I panicked.” His voice came out in a whisper. “I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

  “Did you reassure her that the two of you would run away and hide in Mexico? Maybe Puerto Vallarta or Cabo?”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” he said.

  Larry had been Gertrude’s shining knight, too. That’s what she’d called him. Her knight. It had been Larry who had made Gertrude promises, not Jonathan. It was all so clear now. So obvious.

  “You had a relationship with Gertrude when I believed it was just you and me.” The idea no longer hurt her. She was finally past that girlish pain.

  “That’s why Gertrude believed you. You two had already been planning to go off to Mexico.” La cucaracha. La cucaracha.

  The ringing in her head was too loud. She willed it to stop. “But you never replied to her messages after she went into hiding, did you? You discarded her.”

  “I was in love with you, Di. Never with Gertrude.”

  “Not
until she came back as Star. Although you didn’t know it was Gertrude, or that she had come back to get even with you and with me.” She paused, a lump rising in her throat. “And with Jonathan.”

  Because of Larry, the man she loved was dead.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m a fraud.”

  Diana leaned back against the wheelchair, the sickly smell of flowers surrounding her, the ringing in her head finally quieting down. Jonathan’s remains would be cremated, as he had wanted. There would be a memorial, but it wouldn’t be enough. Not nearly enough.

  “The sins of the fathers,” Larry was saying. “I’ve brought terrible pain upon my children. Upon you.” He met her eyes. “I’m sorry, Diana. I wish I knew what more I could say or do.”

  She turned away from the eyes that had once captured her heart.

  “Will you tell the FBI?” he asked. “There’s no statute of limitations on murder.”

  “No,” she said.

  “And the children? Are you going to tell Aubrey and Kevin what I did?” He wet his cracked lips with his tongue. “It would kill me if they knew, Di.”

  He had once been her hero, her white knight on a snowy stallion. The man she had sipped wine with on the shore of the bay. He was the father of her children.

  “No. I won’t tell anyone.”

  She rolled her wheelchair away from him, toward the door. “Enough have already suffered and died because of you.”

  CHAPTER 55

  There was dried blood on his neck. Aubrey dampened a washcloth in the bathroom and cleaned it off as her father slept on the raised hospital bed. The blood turned the washcloth a brownish red and left a metallic smell that overpowered the sweet scent of wildflowers in the basket the Simmers had brought when they’d come by the day before.

  Prudence had hugged Aubrey so tightly it took her breath away. Aubrey had saved her grandson. She had become the family hero, a designation she had never sought.

  But at least everyone was safe now.

  She watched her father’s eyelids twitch, as though he were dreaming. Had he loved Star? She was certain he had no idea what his girlfriend had been planning all these years.

  He opened his eyes, as though startled by something.

  “I’m here, Daddy.”

  “Yes, Princess,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  He looked so helpless connected to machines, a turban bandage on his head. His blue eyes, completely rimmed in red, were defeated-looking.

  “You know, Daddy, we’ve all been so relieved to get Ethan back that no one’s thought about how Star’s death affects you.”

  He winced as though in pain.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Would you rather not talk about it?”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “Did you love her?”

  He seemed to be battling with something.

  “It’s hard to turn love on and off,” she said.

  “Even when you realize the one you love is a murderer?” His eyes seemed to be pleading with her. But why? Because he wanted to be forgiven for still loving a monster?

  She took his hand, avoiding the tubes in his arm and heart-monitoring contraption on his finger. “It’s all right if you love her,” she said.

  He squeezed his eyes closed. “Not her,” he whispered. “Me. Would you still love me, Princess?”

  “I love you no matter what, Daddy.”

  He kept his eyes closed, but tears leaked out and ran down his face.

  She dried them with her fingertips, then kissed his bruised forehead. “I’ll let you rest.”

  She took the bloodied washcloth with her and rinsed it out in the bathroom sink. But the metallic smell stayed with her.

  CHAPTER 56

  The memorial service for Jonathan Woodward was held on Sunday, five days after his death, at a small bay-front park not far from where Aubrey had grown up. Her mother had made the arrangements quietly, without informing the news media, and kept it to a small group of family and friends.

  Aubrey held her mother’s elbow, careful not to touch her bandaged hands, as they walked from the wooded area across the grass to three rows of white folding chairs that faced the bay. Many of the seats were already occupied by people Aubrey didn’t recognize, probably colleagues of Jonathan’s.

  “I’m fine, sweetheart,” her mother said. “Really.”

  But Aubrey didn’t release her grip on her mother’s arm. Mama might insist she was no longer having dizzy spells, and that the ringing in her ears was mostly gone, but Aubrey worried the emotional impact of today’s service might set her back.

  She helped her mother into a chair in the front row next to a judge, a colleague and friend of Jonathan’s who had agreed to officiate. She thanked the judge for coming, then nodded at Kevin and the Simmers, who had taken seats in the third row. Kevin had driven down from Palm Beach with Prudence and Ernest. Kim had stayed behind with Ethan at the Simmers’ house, not willing to entrust him to a babysitter’s care. Aubrey certainly understood Kim’s feelings.

  The judge got up to speak about Jonathan. He had a low, soft voice that blended with the breeze coming off the bay. It was late afternoon, and the air was beginning to cool, like the night Aubrey had come here with her mother.

  That was Monday. Six days ago. A lifetime ago.

  Aubrey watched a sailboat tacking across the gray-blue water, coming toward shore.

  A week ago, Ethan had been kidnapped. Since then, she had experienced more pain and fear than she’d had over her entire life. She’d been in an emotional vortex, anxious about Ethan, at times doubting her parents, and finally, terrified for all of their lives. Jonathan had been killed, Dad had almost died, and the trauma of almost losing her mother and Ethan in the time-share explosion haunted her daily. During the last couple of days, she would find herself suddenly shaking uncontrollably in the middle of some mundane task, her brain’s way of reminding her it was far from healed.

  The judge had sat down, and others got up to speak. A law clerk, who talked about how Jonathan had helped him through a tough personal time and gave him a fresh start. Other judges and lawyers, who spoke about Jonathan’s inherent goodness and devotion to the law. Jonathan was not afraid of making tough decisions if they were the right decisions, someone said, even the ones that pained him personally.

  Aubrey sensed her mother shift in her seat. “Are you okay?” Aubrey asked softly.

  Her mother nodded. “I need to speak.”

  Aubrey helped her up, but her mother pulled out of her grasp and went to the podium alone. In her loose black dress, white bandaged hands in front of her, dark hair blowing in the breeze, Mama reminded Aubrey of a frail nun.

  Mama looked over the heads of the assembled mourners, back at the trees, or perhaps at something only she was able to see. “Jonathan was one of the kindest, most loving people I’ve ever known. His death is a loss to humanity and utter heartbreak for me.” She put one bandaged hand to her neck. “But there comes a time when we must say good-bye to our loves and to our dreams. A time when we must say good-bye to the past.”

  Her mother was finally leaving her demons behind, but she had lost a great deal in the process, including the man she had loved.

  Life, Aubrey was learning, was filled with painful choices, and love didn’t always prevail. She hoped her mother would at least find peace now.

  No one spoke after Mama sat down. The judge thanked everyone on Mama’s behalf for coming, then the mourners gathered around her.

  Aubrey took a few steps back and waited under the shade of a big old banyan tree, ready to jump in and catch her mother if she appeared faint. She watched as people offered their condolences, awkward in their embraces because of her bandaged hands. Through it all, Mama nodded, her eyes unfocused, as though she were somewhere else.

  Kevin said something in Mama’s ear. She nodded and gave him a sad smile. He kissed her cheek and then came toward Aubrey.

  “Hey,” he said. He was still pale, but his eyes were n
o longer bloodshot. “This sucks for mom.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “It does.”

  “I never understood her before this happened.” He glanced back at their mother, who was talking to the Simmers.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought her coldness had to do with me. With something I had done to displease her. I didn’t get that she was so angry at herself that she had a tough time showing love.”

  A ray of sunlight pushed between the leaves of the banyan tree. Aubrey had finally gotten it, too. All the years of trying to understand who she was, but it had taken the trauma of almost losing Ethan for Aubrey to finally appreciate her family’s dynamics. Kevin had reacted to Mama’s aloofness by pulling away, while Aubrey had become Mama’s protector, sensing a wounded person who needed her support.

  “Have you forgiven her?” she asked.

  He nodded. “Now I’m trying to forgive myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ve been living a lie,” he said. “I was angry with everyone around me, when it was me I was pissed off at.” He met her eyes. They were the same dark-chocolate color as her own. “I’m sorry if I turned my own feelings of inadequacy against you.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. You’ll always be my big brother.”

  “I know that, but I’m still working on fixing myself.” He gave her a crooked grin. “I told Kim I’m quitting my job at BBM.”

  “What? You are?” This was a surprise. “What did Kim say?”

  “To do what’ll make me happy.”

  “Well, good. I’m glad she’s being supportive.”

  Prudence and Ernest were each giving Mama a hug. It seemed Kim’s parents no longer blamed her for Ethan’s kidnapping. Well, they were bigger people than Aubrey had always assumed.

  “Do you know what you want to do?” she asked.

  “Not really.” Kevin frowned. “I need to be happy with myself so I can be there for my family.” He gave her a little smile. “And you’re my family, too, kid. I’ll never forget that again.”

  Her throat closed, making her unable to speak, unable to tell him how much his words meant to her.