In Self Defense

by Susan R. Sloan

  “What a dreadful mistake,” they were heard to murmur. “What a terrible tragedy for Clare and the children. But we must make sure that Nicolaidis Industries goes on.”

  Douglas Potter, the vice president in charge of research and development, was named acting CEO, until a more formal process could be undertaken.

  Although she was by far the major stockholder in the company, Clare did not attend the meeting. Not that anyone expected her to. They all understood that there was grieving to do and arrangements to make.

  ***

  Nina found Clare’s address book in a desk drawer in the library and called everyone who was listed in it. She was just starting to dial the number for Doreen’s sister in Yelm when the housekeeper came through the back door.

  “I knew it, I knew it, I knew it,” Doreen cried, wagging her head and wringing her hands when Nina told her what had happened. “I just had this awful feeling all night long. I should have been here. I never should have let her talk me into going.”

  “I know how you feel,” Nina said. “But it all happened so fast. I don’t think your being here would have changed anything.”

  “How is she?” the housekeeper asked, heading up the stairs.

  Nina shrugged. “About how you’d expect her to be,” she replied. “I had to get her out of her room, so we put her in the yellow guestroom, and I’ve been checking on her every half hour. She hasn’t budged.”

  The two women stopped outside the room and peered through the doorway. Clare was barely visible beneath the covers. Her eyes were closed, her face flushed.

  “Did you call the doctor?” Doreen whispered.

  “Yes, of course,” Nina assured her. “He came last night and again this morning, and gave her shots. He said he’d come back this afternoon.”

  “What about the children?” Doreen asked as they went back down the hall. “Have they been told yet?”

  “I called Richard’s sister,” Nina said. “She said she would tell them, and then bring them home later.”

  Doreen stopped in front of the master bedroom and stared at the stained carpet and the bullet-ridden doorframe. “I think maybe it would be better if Julie and Peter stayed in Ravenna for a little while longer,” she said slowly.

  ***

  Clare awakened with a start. She was in a strange bed, bundled under flowery sheets that weren’t hers. She didn’t recognize the butter yellow paint that cover the walls, and the view out the window was all at odds with what it should be. For a moment, she wondered if she was back in a hospital, the victim of yet another calamity she couldn’t quite recall. Except she knew that hospitals had white sheets and white walls and no views.

  And then she remembered. She had killed her husband. She did what he taught her to do and squeezed the trigger until there were no more bullets left to shoot, and then the police came and the doctor, too. The police took the gun away from her, and the doctor stuck a needle in her. And then, somehow, she had ended up, not in a hospital, but right here. But where was here? She peered around until the yellow walls became familiar and she remembered the flowered bedding. She was in a guestroom in her very own home. Well, Richard’s home, anyway. It had never truly been hers. Not in all the ten years she had lived in it. But she would fix that now, she decided. Just as soon as she could, she would sell this place, and move with Doreen and the children back to Ballard. Then everything would be all right again. Clare stretched, rolled over, and went back to sleep.

  ***

  Richard’s parents came hurrying up from their home Richard had bought them in Centralia. His brother Jeffrey drove down from Bellingham. Elaine stayed at home with Julie and Peter. By noon, the story was being broadcast on every television channel and radio station, and the big house began to fill with people who wanted to pay their respects, from the rank and file of Nicolaidis Industries to the Mayor and even the Governor.

  It didn’t seem to matter that Clare wasn’t there to greet them. People understood, especially those who knew the specific circumstances of Richard Durant’s death. The family held court in her place. At first, they were flattered by the outpouring of sympathy, then overwhelmed, then exhausted.

  Doreen went into action, retrieving Clare’s address book and finding the number for the company that routinely catered their large affairs.

  “I’ll be there in half an hour,” the woman who owned the company promised. “I’ve got a dozen things I can pull out of the freezer. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.”

  ***

  Julie Durant stood in an upstairs window of her aunt’s home. It was starting to rain, big soft plops smacking against the glass pane that would soon become hurtling needles searching for cracks in the ancient wood frame. This place had lots of cracks, cracks that had turned into leaks, and when it rained hard, like it was about to do, her cousins set buckets out in strategic places on the second floor to catch the drops. Her uncle often spoke of having the roof repaired and the windows replaced, but it never seemed to happen.

  Julie didn’t mind. She liked this house. It was warm and cozy, and the creaks and groans in the night were familiar ones. She liked sharing a room with her cousin Becky, too. It was fun to whisper together, in the dark, just before falling asleep. And it was comforting to know that someone was there, just in case she might wake up in the night, and despite the darkness, see the foot.

  Peter might have wanted to go home, but Julie was in no hurry to get back to Laurelhurst. There was no need. The twelve-year-old was quite content to stay right here in Ravenna. She knew her mother was safe.

  Aunt Elaine didn’t let them go to school. Instead, she sat them down at the kitchen table and told them, as gently as she knew how, what had happened to their father. Not all the gory details, of course, she skipped over them, just the terrible end result. Peter was scared and began to cry. But Julie never shed a tear. As soon as she could, she escaped upstairs to the room she shared with Becky, closing the door and crawling, fully clothed, under the covers. She was shivering, but she wasn’t cold. She was sad, but not surprised. Ever since that day on the mountain, she had been waiting for something else to happen.

  ***

  The children! Clare sat bolt upright. A small lamp burned on the nightstand beside her. It was dark outside the window. And there was silence. Where were the children?

  She scrambled out of the bed, pulled on the robe she found at the foot of it, and hurried out the door and down the hall, not stopping to wonder why she had been sleeping in a guestroom. But the children’s rooms were empty, their beds still made up and waiting. Clare tried to remember. What day was it? It was Friday, wasn't it? Of course, she thought. The children were in Ravenna, because of that silly stalker scare. But it was late. Surely they should have been back by now. They had a special dinner planned. Richard was coming home tonight.

  Clare went back down the hall. Perhaps they were keeping Doreen company in the kitchen while she was cooking, or watching television in the family room. Without thinking, she started down the front stairs, stopping only when she reached the halfway mark and realized that there were a whole lot of people she didn’t remember inviting that had apparently come to visit. They were staring up at her with a strange mixture of surprise and horror in their eyes.

  And then she remembered.

  ***

  The investigation, although pretty routine, took five days, and in the end, as expected, Richard Durant’s death was ruled an accident. Erin went to Laurelhurst to give Clare the news barely an hour before it was released to the public.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about all this,” she said.

  “It isn’t your fault,” Clare assured her with a sigh. “You did your best. I know you did.”

  Erin took a breath. “But sometimes, our best just isn’t good enough,” she said. “Which is really why I’m here. I wanted to talk to you about the stalker.”

  Clare looked up, startled. “Oh my God,” she said. “He’s what started all this, and
I’d almost forgotten him. How strange.”

  “What with everything that’s been going on, I don’t think it’s so strange,” Erin responded.

  “But the thing is,” Clare told her, “I haven’t heard from him. I mean -- not at all. Not since . . . well, you know, before Richard. You don’t think that’s strange?”

  “I think he’s a complex man, our stalker,” Erin said. “And I think he’s playing a very complex game, with rules that only he understands.”

  “You don’t think it could mean that he’s just -- gone?” Clare asked with a note of hope in her voice.

  “From everything we know about him,” the detective replied, “I’m afraid he may just be . . . waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For things to calm down around here. For family to leave, for other people to stop hovering around you. For an opportunity to find you alone again, and even more vulnerable.”

  “The funeral is tomorrow, and Richard’s family is leaving on Sunday,” Clare told her. His parents had insisted on staying, and do their best to console her. They were good people, but she could see, behind their kindness, in their eyes, that they blamed her, and would likely always blame her, for Richard’s death.

  “Unfortunately, we aren’t going to be able to keep the stake-out going indefinitely,” Erin explained. Indeed, her captain wanted to forget the whole thing completely, at least until the precinct got over the black eye it had earned. They had already removed the surveillance equipment.

  “We won’t be monitoring around the clock, but we’ll be keeping the tap on the telephone. And if he makes any attempt to contact you again, call us immediately.” The detective pulled out one of her cards and scribbled her cell phone number on the back of it. “You can reach me at this number. Anytime, day or night.”

  “Thank you,” Clare murmured. She didn’t bother to say, but assumed the detective knew, that the last thing she had been worried about during the past week was the stalker.

  ***

  The funeral went off without incident. The church, which comfortably held close to a thousand people, overflowed with mourners, and there wasn’t enough room for all the flowers. It was necessary to reroute almost half of the arrangements to local hospitals and nursing homes prior to the service.

  Clare didn’t know how it had all come together . . . the coffin . . . the funeral home . . . the viewing . . . the scheduling of the church and everything, but she suspected that Richard’s brother Jeffrey probably had a lot to do with it. She didn’t ask. She tried to remember the last time she had actually been to church, and couldn’t.

  Likely, though, it was when her mother died. She remembered the little clapboard church of her youth, a friendly, welcoming place in Ballard, where they held her mother’s service, and her father’s before that. Not to mention her wedding.

  This church was big and impersonal, built of rough stone and smooth marble. Richard had insisted on it for the children’s christenings. Everyone was kind enough, but it seemed more like a place of business than a house of worship. Perhaps she felt disconnected because she didn’t regularly attend services. Richard had never paid much more than lip service to religion, far preferring to play golf or go sailing on Sundays.

  The ushers and pallbearers were all friends and employees, but Clare didn’t know how they got assembled. She was escorted to the first pew, with Julie and Peter on either side of her. Richard’s parents sat next to Julie, and his brother and sister and their families sat on the other side of her, next to Peter. The pew was tall and straight and hard and unforgiving. Perhaps intentionally, Clare thought. She put her arms around her children and held them tight.

  When every seat was filled, and everyone had settled down, and the minister was stepping up to the altar to begin the service, a woman slipped through the heavy outer doors and stood quietly at the back of the church. She was tall and dressed in black, with a heavy black veil concealing her face. No one paid much attention. When the service ended, and everyone turned to leave, she was already gone.

  The burial was private, intended to be just for family and a few close friends. Blessedly, it didn’t rain, for which Clare was thankful, but the sun was cold on their backs, cold on the grave. A figure dressed in black stood off to one side, behind a clump of bushes, not part of the official group. Nobody noticed.

  When the last shovel of dirt had been heaped upon the coffin, they were driven back to Laurelhurst where the caterer, who had already been working around the clock for a week, had laid out a feast. Over five hundred mourners made their way to the house, moving through the downstairs rooms and around the lawns, eating, drinking, and speaking in hushed tones.

  “I think we sent him off well,” Richard’s father said. It was the third child that William and Emma Durant had buried, having lost one to leukemia and another to the Gulf War. “I hope so, anyway.”

  “Of course we did,” the minister, never one to pass up a good party, assured the old man. “He’s with God now.”

  “Grandma, do bad people go to Heaven?” Julie asked.

  “Of course not, dear,” Emma Durant replied. “Only good people go to Heaven. Bad people go to Hell.”

  “Well then, can good people do bad things?”

  “Good people are good because they don’t do bad things,” her grandmother told her. “Why do you ask?”

  Julie shrugged. “I was just wondering,” she said.

  ***

  The house was quiet now. Richard’s parents had finally gone back to Centralia, his brother to Bellingham, his sister to Ravenna, and it was just Clare and the children and Doreen, rattling around the big rooms.

  “Are we going to stay here?” Julie wanted to know.

  “Do you want to stay here?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Julie replied promptly. “This place has too many rooms. I’d rather live in a cozier house, a house like Aunt Elaine’s”

  “I don’t want to live at Aunt Elaine’s,” Peter said in alarm.

  “We’re not going to live there,” his mother told him. “I think what Julie means is that she wants us to find a house that’s like Aunt Elaine’s.”

  “Aunt Elaine’s roof leaks,” he argued.

  “Then we’ll just have to fined a house with a roof that doesn’t leak,” Clare said.

  “When?” he asked.

  “Not right away, maybe, but soon,” his mother promised.

  Much as she wanted to sell this house and move away from all it represented as quickly as possible, Clare was practical enough to know that people weren’t going to be in any great hurry to buy a high-ticket home to a murder. It would take time, time for the story to die down, time for people to forget, time for the value of the place to return, time for the right buyer to show up.

  The first step had already been taken. The master bedroom had been restored. The stained gray carpeting had been removed. The holes from the bullets that had missed their mark had been repaired, the pale burgundy walls had been repainted, and the bedroom door had been replaced. But Clare would never sleep there again.

  Seven

  She was tall, with dark hair done in a fashionable fluff, and the kind of skin that didn’t require much, if any, makeup. In person, she might have seemed a trifle too thin, her nose a shade too long, her mouth a bit too wide, but the cameras loved her, and were never far behind her, wherever she went.

  Dusty Grissom didn’t have to read the society pages to know who she was. Her name was Stephanie Burdick. The great-granddaughter of a governor, the granddaughter of a senator, the daughter of a noted philanthropist, her family’s blood was as blue as it got around Seattle. It was generally acknowledged that her lineage dated back to the first landing on Alki Point. By the time she turned twenty-seven, she had already been publicly married and privately divorced twice. When she walked into Police Headquarters on the first Monday in November, Dusty’s eyes nearly popped right out of his head.

  “I’d like to see the detectives in ch
arge of the Richard Durant case,” she said, her voice soft and melodious.

  Dusty and Erin escorted her into one of the interview rooms, took her coat, brought her coffee. Rain pelted the windows, the kind of hard, driving rain that normally ushered in the month, but the socialite didn’t have a hair out of place.

  “What can we do for you, Ms. Burdick?” Erin inquired politely.

  “For obvious reasons, I don’t want to be involved, you understand,” Stephanie said, and the reluctance was evident in her voice. “I thought I could just forget it, and it wouldn’t matter. But foolishly or not, I find that I can’t forget it, and that it does matter.”

  “What is it that matters?” Dusty asked.

  The woman reached into her handbag and pulled out a small digital recorder. “This is a telephone message that was left for me on the afternoon of the day that Richard Durant . . . died.”

  She pushed the start button. After a digital pronouncement of the time and date, corroborating her statement, a voice that, to Erin’s ears anyway, sounded a lot like she recalled Richard Durant’s voice sounding said, “Hi darling. I was right last night -- things did get wrapped up here sooner than expected. So I’m on my way home. I have to call Clare to let her know, but I’ll tell her I’m taking the late plane and won’t be home until around midnight. Which, assuming this plane gets in on time, means I should get to your place by seven. Can’t wait. Miss you. Love you. See you soon.”

  The message ended and Stephanie Burdick pressed the stop button. “I know you’ve ruled Richard’s death an accident,” she said. “But I didn’t know if you had all the facts at the time.”

  Erin let out a long breath. “You and Richard Durant had a relationship?”

  Stephanie nodded. “For a little more than two years,” she replied, a bit of a catch in her voice. “Few people knew. We were very discreet. We were planning to marry.”

  “Durant was going to divorce his wife?” Dusty inquired.

  Stephanie nodded. “Yes.”