The boat ride back to Luna Bay did not seem real to Clara. She kept the ring clutched tightly in her hand, almost believing that when she opened it again her palm would be empty.
She and Aaron didn’t talk much until they reached Clara’s apartment. As soon as they walked in Clara took out The Book of Alice and opened it on the coffee table. She leafed through the pages and found the one with studies of Alice’s hands. Sitting together on the sofa, Clara and Aaron bent over the book. “There it is. See?” Clara said.
Aaron looked at the drawings and then at the ring, which Clara had placed on the page. “That’s it,” he said. “Unless there were a lot of them manufactured and sold.”
Clara picked the ring up and studied it. “I don’t think so,” she said. “It looks hand-crafted. And this little rose looks like it came from another piece of jewelry and got re-purposed into a ring. I don’t believe it was mass-produced.”
“So we’re pretty sure it’s the very same ring.”
Clara felt as if she were standing on the edge of an abyss. “I have no doubt.”
Aaron leaned back. “What do you think it means?”
“I can only guess,” Clara said slowly. “Ronan had Alice’s ring. I never saw it before, but somehow he kept it all these years. And then he lost it. Or he threw it away, in the sand in front of his cabin on Loggerhead Point. Maybe he tossed it out because he got a warning from a friend, and he thought it would be too dangerous to keep.”
“So you believe he had Alice’s ring,” Aaron said. “What does that say to you?”
“Well—” Clara leaned back beside him. “It could mean that he killed Alice. It could mean he took the ring off her finger and kept it as a souvenir. Couldn’t it?”
“Maybe she gave it to him. To remember her by, or something.”
Clara turned to look at Aaron. “Is that really what you think? Because it seems to me this makes it look much worse for Ronan.”
“Clara, we can’t prove either theory,” Aaron said. “We know the ring was found near Ronan’s cabin. That’s it.”
“It’s so strange,” Clara said. “First there’s hope that Ronan is innocent, because the DNA evidence isn’t as watertight as we thought. And then everything turns upside down because the dead woman’s ring is found near Ronan’s cabin forty years after she was killed.”
“The case is still closed,” Aaron said. “It won’t be reopened unless I can get hard evidence against Coby or somebody else.”
“So the ring makes no difference either way, since Ronan is still officially the killer.”
“It doesn’t make a difference at this point, no.”
“I guess that’s it, then,” Clara said.
“Clara, listen—” Aaron’s phone rang. He said, “Oh, hell,” and took the call.
After a brief conversation he ended the call and turned to Clara. “That was the office. I have to get back to St. Elmo. Somebody has come in and he’s asking to see me.”
“Is this about Coby?”
“No.” Aaron was on his feet, digging for his car keys. “This is about Jim Tuttle. I’ve got to go talk to a man named Leo Swain. He helped Patsy with the body and then he disappeared. I guess he’s back.”
Clara saw Aaron to the door. He said, “I wish I didn’t have to go right now. I wish we could take some time and talk more about all this.”
“Next time,” Clara said.
Aaron bent to kiss her, and she offered her cheek. He gave it a peck, said, “I’ll call you,” and was out the door.
Clara sat down on the sofa again. She bent over The Book of Alice, studying Ronan’s drawings. She touched the ring, running her finger lightly over the silver leaves surrounding the coral rose. After a moment or two, she picked up the ring and slipped it on her finger.
20
Leo Swain was sitting on a bench in the St. Elmo County Sheriff’s office. His backpack, bulging with the handwritten notebooks of Confessions of a Humble Man, was propped beside him. He had brought with him the only thing that mattered.
Leo could have stayed up on the river. He believed he would’ve remained undisturbed in the houseboat, at least in the short term. It was quiet up there except for bird calls, the lapping of water on the bank, the wind in the trees, the occasional thrumming of an outboard motor as fishermen rode past. If Leo had wanted to hang around he would’ve had to go out and find a place to buy food, some version of Margene’s MiniMart up in the swamp. There probably was such a place. Maybe he would’ve gone to work there eventually, since he already had experience. And if somebody had shown up and laid claim to his hideout Leo would have left, no problem, and gone on to the next place, lugging his backpack. But it wasn’t going to happen that way.
Leo shifted his weight on the bench. The department secretary was going about her business, paying no attention to Leo. She had told him that Aaron Malone was the only investigator currently in the department who had worked on the Alice Rhodes case in nineteen seventy-five, and that Aaron Malone had also reopened the cold case. She had given Leo a keen look and said, “Do you have information for him?”
Leo, standing at the counter, nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am, I believe I do.”
“I’ll see if I can reach him. He’s got some family issues right now, and—” She left it hanging, called a number, and had a conversation in an undertone. When she hung up she said, “Mr. Swain, Aaron is in Luna Bay, but he’s about to leave. It’ll be at least an hour before he gets here, though. Can you come back?”
“I don’t mind waiting,” Leo said. He took his backpack and settled on the bench. Other than visiting the water fountain and the men’s room, that’s where he had been ever since, and it was now within a few ticks of the hour mark.
Leo thought about his notebooks, bursting with all kinds of information except what he had originally set out to write. The words that had come to him back in his trailer had never left his head: You can’t write a confession without confessing. Well, Leo had tried, but determined as he was, he couldn’t. If he was going to finish his work, and if it was going to mean anything to Leo or anybody else, he had to do what he set out to do, and that was confess.
The door opened and a man walked in. The secretary looked up and said, “Hi, Aaron. This is Mr. Leo Swain. He’s been waiting here to see you.”
The man turned, nodded at Leo, and said, “Come on into my office, Mr. Swain.”
Leo stood, picked up his backpack, and followed Aaron Malone.
21
Aaron had spent the drive back from Luna Bay thinking about Clara, Loggerhead Point, and the ring the campers had found— Alice’s ring. He had tried to be gentle about the implications, but privately he thought it looked bad for Ronan. Still preoccupied, he walked into the department and saw a man sitting on the bench by the door.
Leo Swain did not look familiar to Aaron. He wore a white T-shirt with a row of ballpoint pens in the pocket and he had bristly gray hair, eyes of an indeterminate color, and a forgettable face. Aaron might have seen him at Margene’s sometime, but if so, he had no memory of it.
When Leo put down his backpack and seated himself in the visitor’s chair in Aaron’s office Aaron said, “I understand you were with Miss Patsy Orr the day Jim Tuttle’s body was discovered at Luton’s Landing.”
Leo nodded. “Yes, sir, I was.”
“Can you tell me about it?”
Aaron listened to Leo Swain’s version of the events at the canal, which matched closely what Patsy Orr had said. Leo ended up by saying, “I told Miss Orr I didn’t have a phone and I suggested she call the police, and that’s what she did.”
Aaron nodded. “And then what?”
Leo shrugged. “I felt like there wasn’t anything else I could do, so I left.”
“Did you tell Miss Orr you were coming back?”
“Maybe I did say that.”
“And did you go back?”
“No, sir, I didn’t,” Leo said.
Aaron frowned. “Why not?”
>
“I just— I guess I didn’t want to get involved. The old man was dead.”
Aaron leaned toward Leo. “Mr. Swain, I tried to locate you to question you about this incident, and I couldn’t find you at your trailer. You didn’t show up for work at Margene’s, either.”
“That’s right,” Leo said.
“What happened, Mr. Swain? Where did you go?”
Leo looked at Aaron, and Aaron saw him take a breath. Then he said, “My name is not Leo Swain.”
Aaron sat back. “I see,” he said, although he definitely did not see.
“I was born with the name Rex Loomis,” Leo said.
Rex Loomis. Aaron had heard that name. It would come to him.
Leo went on, “Forty years ago I was at a poker game at the Gulf Dream Lounge, out on St. Elmo Beach. I had been hitchhiking along the highway, and when I saw the Gulf Dream Lounge, there on the corner where Margene’s is now, I told the trucker who was giving me a lift to let me out. I don’t know why, except the Gulf Dream looked like a congenial venue for a footloose young man. And it was.”
He went on, “It was kind of late in the afternoon, and I took a seat at the bar. I hadn’t even finished my second beer before I got to talking with the bartender and a couple of locals, and they invited me to play poker that night. I gathered it was a regular weekly game, but the cast of characters varied depending on who showed up or didn’t. They asked me to play, and I said sure. And that’s how I happened to be playing poker with Ronan Trent. We were sitting next to one another at the table in the back room.”
“I know who you are, now,” Aaron said.
Leo gave Aaron a nod of recognition. He went on, “Ronan wasn’t much good as a poker player. I think he may have played there before, but he was no expert. And you can take that from me, because I was.”
“You were what?”
“An expert. I was a very good poker player, or so I fancied at the time. I was young, I was cocky, and I was a total idiot.”
“All right. Go on.”
“Ronan was losing, and he was preoccupied. We were all drinking, including him, and the more he drank, the more he seemed like he had something else on his mind. He wasn’t interested in the game, that was obvious.”
“How did he act? Nervous? Scared?”
“Not scared, nothing like that. More like distracted. And he didn’t even seem to care that he was losing. I kept expecting him to fold and leave.”
“So what happened?”
“Things got out of hand.” Leo shook his head ruefully. “Everybody had had a lot to drink by that point. As for me, I was winning. I was winning almost every hand, and I saw some of the others looking at me and muttering. I’d been in that same position before, so I said I was going to take a break and visit the men’s room. Right about that time Ronan said he needed a breather but he’d be back later on, and he left.”
“So the other players had decided you were cheating,” Aaron said.
“That’s what they thought,” Leo said. “And here’s the pitiful part— I was.”
“You were cheating?”
“I was an idiot, I already told you. Once I went to the men’s room, I decided it was time to get out while I still could, so I left by the back door. I went out onto a little patio area, and I hear voices coming from the poker room window. The players were talking loud, and I could tell they were mad. I could see Ronan up ahead of me, walking fast up the rise toward the Gulf Dream Villas.
“I took off and started to run. I could see Ronan cross the parking lot at the Villas. When he was just about there, I saw somebody walk around the far corner of the Villas, coming toward him. I just caught a glimpse. A person in dark clothes, wearing a cap or something. Kind of bundled up, considering it was a hot night. Nobody I could recognize. I had my own problems right then.
“Anyway, the person seemed to see Ronan and turned around and went back around the corner. And Ronan went to the door of one of the units. That’s when I heard yelling behind me, and I knew I had to put on all the speed I had. I took off up past the Villas and through the woods in back. I was a pretty fast runner then, and I headed for the deep woods with them after me. After a while they gave up, and that saved my skin.”
Aaron sat back. “So you’re telling me you saw somebody hanging around the Villas that night. Somebody besides Ronan Trent.”
“Somebody else was there, without a doubt. Yes, sir.”
“So Ronan Trent didn’t make up that story of an intruder hanging around.”
“He didn’t make it up. I saw the person the same as he did.”
“But you just kept on running.”
“I just kept on running,” Leo said. “I didn’t even know about the murder until a few days later. And I didn’t come back to tell what I’d seen.”
“I worked on that case,” Aaron said. “What you’ve just told me could’ve made a big difference.”
“I understand that,” Leo said. “I’ve known that all these years. But I was already in serious trouble, and I didn’t want to go to jail.”
Aaron had known there had to be more. “What trouble was that?”
“The kind of trouble an idiot gets into,” Leo said. “I was doing exactly the same thing— cheating at cards— in Mississippi, not long before. And like an idiot, I got cocky and I got caught. But that time, I had a car. I got in it to drive away, and one of the guys from the game jumped in front of me in the parking lot, trying to force me to stop. I hit him and kept going. I found out later that he died. I ditched the car, hid out for a couple of days, and then I started hitchhiking. That’s how I ended up at the Gulf Dream Lounge.”
“And did the same damn thing all over again,” Aaron said.
“That’s what an idiot does,” Leo said. “I haven’t played poker since, though.”
“But somehow you got away— twice— and you came back here. You went to work at Margene’s, where the Gulf Dream Lounge used to be.”
“Yes, I did.”
“But Mr. Swain— Mr. Loomis— why?”
“I felt like I should be here. I didn’t feel right anywhere else.”
Aaron was baffled. “You came back here because it felt right?”
“That’s about it,” Leo said.
“You killed a man. There’s going to be consequences. You understand that?”
Leo nodded. “I wasn’t ready to face the consequences then, but I am now.”
Aaron sighed. “I’m going to have to hold you, Mr. Swain. I’ve got more questions, and I’ll have to contact Mississippi.”
“Yes, sir.” Leo Swain looked completely at peace.
The paperwork took Aaron quite a while to complete, but eventually he reached a stopping place. He had some final arrangements to make for his mother’s funeral, and his daughter was going to be flying in. He turned off the lights in his office and went home to his empty house. He sat at his kitchen table, drank a beer, and shed a few tears for his mother.
22
Clara had felt very strange when she put Alice’s ring on her finger. My pretty ring!!!! Alice had written. Clara took off the ring and left it on the coffee table next to The Book of Alice, where it seemed to give off an innocent glow against the dark wood of the table. The pretty silver leaves, the carved coral rose— how could such a sweet object be part of a terrible tragedy? And how had it happened to be in the sand at Loggerhead Point? That was yet another question Clara might never be able to answer.
She tried to think about something else. She had done almost no painting since Ronan’s death. She needed to get back to work. She had the sketches she had made on the beach in St. Elmo. Maybe they could be a starting place for something? She dug out the sketches and sat at the dining table with them in front of her, but her mind kept drifting away.
Toward the middle of the afternoon, the phone rang. It was Nadine, calling from downstairs. “There’s a woman here asking to see you. She says she drove over from St. Elmo.”
“Did she give a nam
e?”
“Hang on,” Nadine said, and in a moment returned to the line. “Merle Evans.”
It took Clara a moment to recognize the name. Merle Evans had been Alice’s co-worker at the air force base. She and Patsy Orr had discovered Alice’s body together. When Clara phoned her, Merle Evans had been adamant in her refusal to talk with Clara. So what was she doing here? “Send her up,” Clara said, and a minute later she was answering the door to her visitor.
Merle Evans had a severe face with a prominent nose and chin-length gray hair. She was sturdy-looking and wore sensible shoes and a short-sleeved navy blue dress.
As Clara ushered her in Merle said, “We haven’t met in person, but we spoke on the phone.”
“I remember,” Clara said. “You refused to see me. You were pretty firm about it.”
“I didn’t want to talk with you,” Merle agreed. “I didn’t even keep your phone number. I don’t really want to talk with you now, but I’ve decided that I have to.”
Mystified, Clara fell back on manners. “Why don’t we have a cup of tea?” she said, and led Merle into the kitchen, where there was a small round table and a couple of chairs. Merle sat down with her handbag in her lap while Clara put the kettle on and got the teapot out of the drainer. “It’s good of you to come all this way,” she said.
Merle said, “I had to. I wanted to speak with you face to face.”
That ended the conversation until they each had a mug of tea in front of them. Clara said, “What did you want to tell me, Mrs. Evans?”
“Call me Merle,” Merle ordered.
“I’m Clara.”
Merle took a careful sip of tea. “This morning, I was at a meeting at Patsy Orr’s house,” she said. “The Floral Tribute Committee of the Missionary Society met to discuss flowers for two upcoming funerals— Wanda Malone, who was Aaron Malone’s mother, and Mr. Jim Tuttle. Mr. Jim, I expect you’ve heard, died in a drowning accident.”
The Complete Mystery Collection Page 146