“Yes,” Clara said. “So you sent him the Warning from a Friend. But why did you go to Loggerhead Point?”
“To see him,” Patsy said. “I thought he’d be glad. I could help him get away. We could go away where they’d never find him.”
Clara was shaking. She had begun, finally, to understand. “But he didn’t want to go with you, did he?” she said. “He told you he didn’t kill Alice, and he had no reason to run.”
“That’s what he said. But I told him they had his DNA.”
“But if he was alive, he could explain the DNA,” Clara said. “He could tell them he was there with Alice that night. He lied about it before, but now he would tell the truth. He made love with Alice that night, but he didn’t kill her. He could’ve made his case.”
“Made love!” Patsy said with scorn. “It was disgusting. It was like animals!”
All at once, Clara understood. “You were there. Listening. Watching.”
“It was horrible!”
“It was horrible, and you couldn’t stand it,” Clara said. “So when Ronan left, you killed Alice.”
Patsy said nothing.
“She was beaten to death. What did you use?”
Patsy made a whimpering sound in her throat.
“What did you use, Patsy?”
“Baseball bat,” Patsy said. “It was leaning against the wall. She had bought it for her son Donnie. It was small, meant for a child. I took it away with me. And you know something? I took it home and cleaned it up, and that Christmas I gave it to the toy drive.”
“Brilliant,” Clara said. “And when you came here to see Ronan, did you hit him with a baseball bat, too?”
“No!” Patsy seemed offended at the suggestion.
“What, then?”
“I gave him a hot drink from my canteen. There was ketamine in it that I took from the animal shelter where I used to work. I had a feeling it might come in handy sometime, and I was right. Ronan was perfectly willing to drink it. He didn’t believe I’d hurt him.”
“What happened?”
“He got dizzy and felt sick. He went in the cabin and lay down. I put a pillow over his face and held it there. I didn’t want him to suffer.”
Clara bit the inside of her cheek to keep herself from crying out. So that was what had happened to Ronan. Her eyes stung. She hoped he didn’t realize what was going on at the end. But she would not let Patsy get away with this. With any of this. And she had to keep herself calm enough to do something.
They were approaching the cabin. There was no sign of the family of campers, or of anyone else. The heat lightning flashed silently, and the waves purled gently on the beach.
“Let’s go inside,” Patsy said.
“Why?” Clara let her hand slip along the outside of her handbag.
“Just go.”
Clara’s fingers found the opening of the small outside pocket. “So you can kill me in the same place you killed Ronan?”
“Inside.”
“I was in there today,” Clara said. “I looked around. I wanted to see the place where Ronan died.”
Patsy didn’t answer at first, but then she said, “You weren’t there.”
“I was.” She could feel the ring. She maneuvered until she could slip it on her finger. “I found something in there. Something that somebody dropped.”
“You didn’t.”
Clara could hear a tremor in Patsy’s voice. “I did,” she said. “I have it with me. Do you want to see it?”
“No.”
“It’s right here.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. Just let me show you.”
Patsy hesitated. “Tell me what it is.”
“I can’t explain. I have to show you, all right?”
Patsy didn’t speak.
Clara held out her hand. “Here’s what I found. Look!”
As if compelled, Patsy bent over Clara’s hand. There was almost no light, but when she bent over Clara’s hand Clara sensed her recoil when she saw the ring. At the moment Patsy was off balance Clara jerked out of her grasp and shoved her as hard as she could.
As Patsy stumbled backward, Clara scrambled for the gun. She pulled the gun from Patsy’s loosened fingers and stepped away. Holding the gun on Patsy she braced for another struggle, but Patsy was staring at her. “It’s my ring,” she said. “I lost it. Give it to me!” Her voice rose into a wail.
Through clenched teeth Clara said, “It’s Alice’s ring. Ronan gave it to Alice. You stole it from Alice’s dead body.”
“No!” Patsy’s knees gave way and she fell to the sand.
“Alice’s ring. Alice’s,” Clara said. She unzipped her handbag, reached inside, and retrieved her phone.
26
Several days later, Vickie Ann and Coby were sitting on the enclosed back porch of Vickie Ann’s house. Jim Tuttle’s recliner had been pushed into a corner, and a couple of rattan chairs brought in from the garage. The two of them were drinking iced tea and eating chocolate chip cookies Vickie Ann had baked that morning.
“I never did like her,” Vickie Ann said. “I never said anything, but I knew there was something off. When I think of the times she was in this house, and when I think of what she did to my family—” Vickie Ann blinked back tears. “It’s evil, that’s what it is. And she pretended all the time to be a good person.”
“Evil,” Coby echoed, but his mouth was full and the word didn’t come out clearly.
“It’s unbelievable,” Vickie Ann said. “Everybody is in shock. The Missionary Society has taken her name off the membership rolls. She killed my mama and Daddy Jim! How can somebody be as horrible as she was?”
“She killed the other guy too. Ronan Trent,” Coby said.
Vickie Ann nodded. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over this. Ever,” she said mournfully.
“Don’t dwell on it, Vickie,” Coby said. “At least she got caught.”
“Finally!”
“And I got out of jail.”
“Yes.” Vickie Ann took a cookie from the plate. “I’ve been thinking, Daddy,” she said.
“Well good, Vickie.” Coby looked at his watch. “Man, I got to get out of here. I’m already a couple of days late in paying our partners that three hundred to start up our business. If I don’t get it to them they might get mad, and we’ll lose the opportunity.”
Vickie Ann said, “But Daddy, I was thinking. I’m tired of being here. I want to come live with you, all right?”
Coby was standing up. “I got to be honest,” he said. “Right now, it wouldn’t be a good idea. I’m going to be working night and day to get our business off the ground. And—”
“But I want to help! I want to be there too!”
“And you will be,” Coby said. “Just as soon as the time is right, OK? I’ll let you know when.”
“But Daddy—”
“I got to go, Vickie. Cheer up. Don’t you like the nice present I brought you?” He gestured toward a carved wooden box sitting on the table beside the cookie plate.
Vickie Ann brightened. “It’s beautiful. I love it. Will you be back soon?”
“I’ll be in touch,” Coby said, and then he was out the door.
Vickie Ann stood at the window and watched Coby walk through the back yard past the garage and disappear down the alley. She was not too disappointed. Coby was going to be working hard, starting the business. She would miss him, but she was pretty sure he would be back before long.
27
“Now that Patsy started talking, she never shuts up,” Aaron said. He was standing in Clara’s kitchen, slicing tuna salad sandwiches in half and putting them on two plates.
Clara was slicing lemons for iced tea. “It started that night,” she said. “I think she’d reached the breaking point. She knew she wasn’t going to get away. But she fully intended to kill me, I’m sure about that.”
“Oh yes,” Aaron said. “She hated you. You married her d
ream lover.”
They took the food out to an umbrella-shaded table on Clara’s back porch. It would be a midafternoon lunch, but Aaron had been busy all morning and had gotten a late start for Luna Bay.
Clara looked out at the water in the distance. She still felt unsteady, but relief had begun to seep in. She said, “I don’t believe there was ever anything real between Patsy and Ronan. I think she sat at his table in the canteen, and after they exchanged a few words Alice happened to stop by and join them. Ronan got a look at Alice, and that was that. But in those few minutes when they were alone together Patsy constructed an entire romance. As she saw it, Alice had taken her man away.”
“That’s pretty much how she’s telling it,” Aaron said. “Maybe that’s how she got away with killing Alice for so long— by doing everything the opposite of what you’d expect. She didn’t run away from Alice’s murder. She insisted on going and finding the body.”
“She embraced it,” Clara said. “She spied on them when they made love. Maybe she knew Ronan had given Alice a ring. She spied on them, killed Alice and took the ring, and then was crazy enough to wear it herself.”
As they ate, Clara noticed that although the weather was warm there was a hint of autumn in the breeze. Aaron said, “Something’s bothering me.”
Clara squinted at him, shading her eyes. “What is it?”
“Things were quiet for forty years. Until I reopened the case,” Aaron said. “That’s what started things up again. If I hadn’t done that, Ronan might still be alive, Jim Tuttle might still be alive—”
Clara put her hand on his arm. “You can’t look at it that way,” she said. “You were trying to find the truth about the murder of Alice Rhodes, and eventually you did. What happened was Patsy’s fault, not yours.”
“I don’t know,” Aaron said. “It going to take me a while to work it all out in my head.”
“Me too,” Clara said. Across the water, the hazy line of Loggerhead Point seemed to float on the horizon. She went on, “I think Patsy panicked when the case was reopened. She wanted the blame to be put on Ronan, but she also wanted to warn him. She got the idea that she could save him, and they would be together at last. But if he wouldn’t cooperate, he had to die. Otherwise, he might figure out what really happened to Alice.”
“And Jim was a threat as well,” Aaron said. “He was convinced that Ronan wasn’t the killer, and he kept saying so. Patsy was afraid somebody would eventually listen to him.”
“So she drove around searching and found him wandering near Luton’s Landing Road. She picked him up and drove him to Luton’s Landing.”
“Right. She claims he pulled the gun on her and she took it away from him, and he lost his balance and fell into the canal,” Aaron said. “We know she took his gun. That’s the revolver she used to threaten you.”
“And maybe she was going to use it on me at Loggerhead Point,” Clara said.
“Maybe. But she also had a bottle of water mixed with ketamine in her bag,” Aaron said. “Ketamine is an animal tranquilizer, and she stole some when she was working at the animal shelter. She may have had some idea of making you drink it and then smothering you like she did Ronan. But by that time she wasn’t thinking straight.”
After sitting a while longer, they took a walk down the path through the dunes to the beach. Aaron put his arm around Clara’s shoulders. “Are you going to be all right?” he said.
“I hope so,” Clara said. “Eventually. I need to figure out what’s next. What about you?”
“I’m going to retire,” Aaron said. “And then I’ll figure out what’s next, too. But I know I want you to be part of what’s next.”
“Of course,” Clara said. “We’re connected. That won’t change.”
The shadows were lengthening, and they turned back toward the house. Aaron said, “My daughter told me she’s planning to get married. She asked me to come to Denver and meet the man.”
“Good idea,” Clara said. “I didn’t even get to meet her.”
“She was just here for the funeral, and then she had to get back.”
“What’s her name?”
“Lily Trulock Malone,” Aaron said. “Named after my grandmother, Lily Trulock.”
“And what does she do?”
“She’s a rookie cop.”
Clara smiled. “Investigating runs in the family.”
“I guess it does.”
They continued to Clara’s place and went inside to clean up the kitchen as the shadows lengthened toward dusk.
THE END
Part II
28
Clara Trent woke with a start. Although the air conditioner was on, she was sweating, her hair damp. She sat up. Judging by the pale gray light filtering through the bedroom curtains, it was early in the morning.
This was unusual. Because of the pill she took at bedtime, she usually passed the night in a kind of stupor, sometimes waking to stare into the dark and stumble to the bathroom, collapsing into unconsciousness again as soon as she returned to bed.
She almost never dreamed, which was a good thing, and she hadn’t been dreaming just now, not that she recalled. Still, for some reason she had a distinct feeling of dread, which had lingered into her wakefulness. She looked around the room. When her eye passed over an array of hats hanging on the wall she noticed the empty hook and thought: Oh yeah. Right.
Today, the investigator from St. Elmo was coming back. Clara told herself she would be relieved to have the matter cleared up. Ronan, her husband, had been dead not even four months when the investigator— she had forgotten his name— had turned up to talk with Clara about a long-ago case in St. Elmo. Clara barely took in what he was saying: first, because she was medicated, second because what he was saying was unbelievable, and third— she couldn’t remember the third reason. Well, third was probably because she didn’t want to take it in, couldn’t take it in, and refused to take it in. She wrote down the name of the woman who was murdered. The paper was in her bedside table, but she didn’t need to take it out. The victim’s name was Alice Rhodes, a name Clara had never heard until the investigator said it.
The investigator, whose name she should’ve written down but hadn’t, told her he had reopened a cold case, the murder of Alice Rhodes. Alice Rhodes had been killed back in 1975, several years before Clara and Ronan met. With apologies and murmurs of eliminating Ronan from inquiries, the investigator asked if he might borrow something that had belonged to her late husband in order to get a sample of Ronan’s DNA. Ronan, it seemed, had been a neighbor of Alice Rhodes at a place called Gulf Dream Villas on St. Elmo Beach, about an hour’s drive from Clara’s home in Luna Bay. Ronan was one of a number of people who had been questioned about her death at the time.
Clara’s reaction had been along the lines of: After everything I’ve been through— now this? She was pretty sure she’d asked the investigator if he was aware that her husband Ronan was dead, had been dead four months, and the investigator had said he was aware of that and he was very sorry to trouble her and sorry for her loss.
Clara had convinced herself, momentarily, that the fact of Ronan’s death settled the matter, but then the investigator had asked again, in a gentle tone, if she could let him borrow something of Ronan’s to send off to the lab. She could see, in his brown eyes, the set of his mouth, the posture of his body, that no matter how calm and pleasant his voice sounded he was not going to leave her house without something of Ronan’s. At that point, she got up, went to the bedroom, took from the hook the hat Ronan always used to wear when he painted outdoors, and brought it back to the investigator. Let him test whatever he pleased. If there was one thing Clara knew it was that Ronan Trent had never killed anybody, and that included this woman— Alice Rhodes. Ronan had been an artist. He had been crazy, antisocial, and weird. He had not killed anybody. Let the investigator send the hat off and eliminate Ronan from his inquiries.
The investigator promptly took the hat and then took his leave, prob
ably fearing that she would change her mind before he could get out the door.
She had heard nothing more of the matter until yesterday, when he had called and asked if he could come talk with her.
Clara had balked. She had said, “Can’t we talk now? Talk on the phone?”
“I’d really like to talk with you in person, Mrs. Trent. Can I come to Luna Bay and meet with you this afternoon?”
“I have to be in the gallery this afternoon. It’s my assistant’s day off.”
“Tomorrow morning, then?”
She had consented. He was set to arrive at eleven a.m., which was still hours away.
Clara lay back against the pillows, gazing at the empty hook where Ronan’s hat used to hang.
29
Shortly after nine that morning Aaron Malone, an investigator for the St. Elmo County Sheriff’s Department, walked across the courthouse parking lot to his car, sank into the broiling driver’s seat, put the air conditioner on full blast, and took the highway out of St. Elmo, heading east. Aaron was a tanned, strongly-built man with graying dark hair and only a few extra pounds on his tall frame. His brown eyes had a tendency to telegraph his emotions, despite the restraint he had learned in his many years in law enforcement. He was not looking forward to the day in front of him, which promised not just one, but two difficult encounters, one of them with his mother.
His mother would call him Junior, which nobody else had called Aaron since sixth grade. Worse, his mother would ask him— over and over and over— where Stacey was, and if Stacey was coming to see her. When this first started, after his mother went to the rehab place after a stroke, Aaron had weaseled about Stacey. For the first couple of visits, he told his mother that maybe Stacey could make it next time. Eventually, he had felt compelled to say, slowly and emphatically, “Mama, maybe you don’t remember that Stacey and I are divorced. She’s married to a snowbird now, and she lives with him up in northern Michigan. In a house by a lake.” (The “house by a lake” part really rankled Aaron.)
The Complete Mystery Collection Page 148