To the Grave

by Carlene Thompson

“Dana.”

  “Okay. Dana. I just wanted to tell you, Dana, you’re one of the best mothers I’ve ever seen. The other nurses at the hospital have commented on it. Mary adores you. She loves her father, but you are Mommy, the one she knows will always protect her.”

  Dana’s throat tightened and she felt tears in her eyes. She couldn’t even manage a “thank you.” She’d just shut the door, leaned again the wall, and let the tears flow. Her? A good mother? The idea stunned her. She hadn’t been a good mother in the past, but she would be from now on, she silently vowed. She would be.

  Dana trailed slowly down the circular steps from the fourth-floor living quarters to the main floor of the gallery. Between moonlight and the streetlights, she didn’t have to turn on the gallery lights. Instead, she wandered around, looking almost blindly at paintings she’d seen every day for months. She did pull up short when she saw the discreet Sold sign on Mardi Gras Lady and wondered briefly who had bought it. She really didn’t care, though. She just wanted the piece out of here.

  Dana went into the kitchenette off the main gallery and fixed a cup of hot chocolate. When she began touring the lower floor for the second time, she realized she hadn’t put on her slippers, but the cool tiles felt good on her narrow feet, especially as she sipped the warm drink. She walked to the front windows and looked out on Foster Street.

  They had gotten Mary home by two o’clock with Ken grouching about having to delay the daily gallery opening for over an hour when Dana and the nurse could have gotten Mary home just fine by themselves. Dana had ignored him, Mary’s good spirits had sunk into quiet conversation with Ms. Greene, and the nurse’s lips had narrowed with barely concealed dislike whenever she caught sight of Ken.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Dana and Ms. Greene tended to Mary. Gallery traffic had been light, which frustrated Ken but Dana had found to be lucky. She wasn’t called upon to act cordial and give her memorized spiels about the artwork, and Ken couldn’t conjure up his usual charm. Instead, he had paced, made phone calls, complained constantly, lost his temper over a ten-minute electric failure, and paid only minimal attention to Mary.

  As Dana now stood at the front window, she saw their black Mercedes Cabriolet with Ken behind the wheel. He was headed south—south, toward Bridget’s house. Less than twelve hours after his daughter had been brought home from the hospital, he was going in search of Renée’s replacement, the woman Dana knew he planned to leave her for, the woman he thought would give him a son along with endless hours of passion in the bedroom.

  Dana smiled slightly, sardonically, almost cruelly. He could spend the whole night driving, calling, searching, pining.

  She didn’t care. And neither would Bridget.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  1

  Ms. Greene sat bolt upright in bed, certain something was wrong. Glad for the strong night-light, she did a quick scan of the rectangular room, white dressers, a rocking chair, a canopied bed on which lay an evenly breathing child. She sighed. She did not possess ESP, always knowing when things weren’t right. She was not special. She was just Ms. Greene, Registered Nurse, watching over five-year-old Mary Nordine, who had recently undergone an appendectomy.

  Ms. Greene climbed quietly from her bed, which was remarkably comfortable for a rollaway. Mrs. Nordine had wanted her to sleep in the room next door, but Ms. Greene liked to be close to her patient, even when she’d had to sleep on a few folded blankets on the floor. Compared to that arrangement, the rollaway was a dream.

  Mary lay on her back, her blond hair spread beneath her head like a golden halo, her little pink mouth slightly open, her arms closed around a stuffed lion named Dandelion. “It’s his turn,” she’d explained seriously to her nurse at bedtime. “I have seven stuffed animals and every one gets to sleep one night a week in the bed with me. Daddy says that someday I’ll get to have a live animal,” she’d said with excitement. “But I don’t think it’ll be a lion.”

  “I doubt not, but puppies and kittens are just as good for a young lady like yourself,” Ms. Greene had answered earnestly. “After all, a lion would be bigger than you. He’d be dragging you all over the place. Now wouldn’t that be a sight!”

  Mary had laughed and hugged Dandelion closer while the nurse gently tucked her in and smoothed the child’s bangs back from her forehead. “You have sweet dreams, little Mary. You’re home with your mother and father and both Dandelion and me to look after you. You couldn’t be safer!”

  Now, Ms. Greene stared at her patient, sleeping peacefully and breathing normally, the picture of a child on her way back to health. But while Mary might be sleeping peacefully, Ms. Greene felt wide awake. She looked at the clock. Three forty-five! Hours would pass before she needed to be at her duties. She couldn’t just lie on the rollaway bed forever. She didn’t want to turn on a light to read. Besides, if she didn’t get her rest now, she’d be groggy tomorrow.

  Warm milk. She’d been in this predicament before and warm milk had never failed to make her drowsy. This was her first night with the Nordines, though, and she was unfamiliar with the kitchen. She didn’t want to turn on the big, glaring lights instead of the small ones or bang around looking for the proper pan. She didn’t like Mr. Nordine one little bit and she could tell he had no patience. If she woke him up, he’d make a terrible fuss and awaken Mary, maybe even upset her.

  Downstairs! Ms. Greene suddenly remembered seeing a small kitchenette almost hidden on the first floor of the gallery. Three stories down from here, she could probably even drop a pan and he wouldn’t hear it. Certainly, they kept milk in the small refrigerator. That would be the answer. She’d creep down, fix her milk, and be back in twenty minutes without disturbing a soul.

  Ms. Greene put on her fleece robe and house slippers and slipped out the door, closing it almost completely. If Mary happened to wake up in distress, the nurse wanted someone to be able to hear the child call out. Then Ms. Greene started down the wide, curving hall of the circular gallery, glad for the small lights placed every few feet at floor level. Good heavens, she thought, people in town went on and on about how beautiful this gallery was, but Ms. Greene certainly wouldn’t want to live here on the fourth floor of a building that went round and round and round.…

  Although she’d held tightly to the handrail and the tiny floor lights continued all the way down the stairs, by the time Ms. Greene reached the bottom she felt dizzy, which was unusual for her. She’d always been strong and had excellent coordination. True, she had never been in a “home” like this one, but still, she didn’t like her momentary lack of physical control. She felt almost like she had as a young girl riding a Ferris wheel for the first time. She took a minute and drew a deep breath, her gaze traveling around the large gallery full of shadows created by the moon and streetlights. Mrs. Greene wasn’t the nervous type, but to her surprise, she felt a tremor of unease pass through her like a cold wind.

  “Oh, don’t turn into a scared old woman at your age,” she told herself sternly. “Sixty-three isn’t old—it isn’t even close to old.” Her hand fumbled along the wall, searching for the light panel. “Now if you were eighty-three—”

  Her sturdy, competent left hand had found the panel, and with a strong swipe upward she flipped every light switch. The room blazed as if on fire. For a moment, she was light blinded, raising her right arm to cover her eyes and stumbling to the edge of the last step. Her right hand still protecting her eyes, she fumbled with her left hand to find the panel and flip some of the switches to Off, but she kept missing most of them.

  Slowly, she lowered her right arm, blinked away some of the tears, and barely opened her eyes. Turn off some more of these infernal lights, she thought, but for some reason she couldn’t move. She stood rooted to the bottom step, her insides shaking, her eyes roving, roving—

  Until she saw Ken Nordine propped beneath the portrait with the beautiful woman dressed in a ball gown and wearing a mask with a black star around the right eye—

  Looking
just like the hideous hole in Ken Nordine’s face where his right eye should be.

  2

  “Should I take my child back to the hospital?” Dana Nordine looked at Chief Deputy Eric Montgomery with frantic eyes. “She had an appendectomy. I have a nurse here for her, but when Mary hears about this—” Dana gestured in horror at the body of her husband.

  “Does she know what’s going on?” Eric asked.

  “No. Only that there’s some kind of ruckus. That nurse, Ms. Greene, found him and how she kept from screaming off her head I’ll never know, but she just came after me and we called the police and here you are and here Mary is and I don’t know what to do!”

  Ms. Greene, who had been standing with forced calm beside Dana, looked at Eric. “Chief Deputy, I’m the nurse Mrs. Nordine hired to look after Mary for the next few days. You can certainly call a doctor for his opinion, but I believe it would be best for Mary not to be moved now. I just checked on her. She was just waking up and asking if something was wrong. I said there was just some minor trouble downstairs, checked her vitals, and she was drifting back to sleep when I came down. I think someone should stay with her and give her a story about what’s going on down here—something that’s not upsetting, of course—and we should see that she’s kept calm and still. If we take her away, she’ll know something bad is wrong. Also, it’s supposed to be nippy today.”

  “Well, I don’t think we need to call a doctor; then we won’t,” Eric said. “Is that all right with you, Mrs. Nordine?”

  “Uh, yes. Yes. Thank you, Ms. Greene. I don’t know what I would have done without you or what would have become of Mary or…”

  “Just hush now, dear,” Ms. Greene said gently. “I know this is awful, unbelievable, but the chief deputy and the rest of the police will get it all straightened out and everything will be fine. Isn’t that right, Mr. Montgomery?”

  Eric merely nodded. He could only wish he had Ms. Greene’s confidence, because when little Mary learned her father had been brutally murdered he didn’t know if everything would be fine for her again.

  * * *

  Eric and Deputy Jeff Beal stood side by side, staring. “I can’t believe this,” Jeff said. “On Tuesday we were looking at that Arcos fella with his right eye shot out and wearing strings of purple beads. Now here’s Ken Nordine in what I’d swear is exactly the same position.”

  “The crime-scene photos will tell us, but I’d say you’re right.”

  “But somehow, this looks creepier to me. I mean, Arcos wore all those strange clothes and had the long black hair and … well, he just didn’t look like a regular person. Ken Nordine, though, was a different story. He was always dressed in those expensive suits and people said he had charm and kind of European manners and women were just crazy about him and … well … just look at him now.”

  Both men flinched at the sound of Dana Nordine’s voice behind them. As his face reddened, Jeff’s gaze remained fixed on Ken while Eric looked at Dana guiltily. “Sorry, Mrs. Nordine. We must have sounded unforgivably disrespectful.”

  “Not at all.” Dana’s eyes looked flat and emotionless in her pale, triangular face. She’d pushed her hair behind her ears, the lobes sparkling with small diamond studs. Her thin lips were colorless and her hands were clenched so tightly the knuckles had turned white. “I went upstairs with Ms. Greene to check on Mary. She’s asleep, thank God.” Dana asked in a whispery voice, “Do you know what happened?”

  “We know that your husband was shot. So far, we’ve only found one bullet, but there’s a gash on the back of his head. I’d say he was bludgeoned before being shot.” Dana cringed. Too much information, Eric thought. She didn’t need to know everything right now. “Mrs. Nordine, can you describe your husband’s evening? Did he get any calls, go anywhere?”

  “Well, I’m not sure I can recall the whole sequence of the evening. I was distracted because of Mary,” Dana said shakily, her gaze fixed on Ken.

  “I need to ask you some questions. Would you like to go up to your living quarters?”

  Dana hesitated, then shook her head. “I want to stay down here. I’ve already seen Ken. The hole where his beautiful eye should be, the blood, those horrible purple beads—those beads! Why in the name of God would someone hang those gaudy beads on him?”

  She looked beseechingly at Eric, who took her arm. “You really need to sit down. You’re a little shaky.”

  Dana covered her mouth as if she were going to burst into laughter. Then she slowly removed her hand. “Yeah, I’m shaky. This kind of thing doesn’t happen to me every day.”

  Eric guided her to a pale leather couch and two-chair suite near the front of the gallery, as far away from Ken as he could get. Dana headed for the couch and positioned herself carefully, as if out of habit, tucking her long legs beneath her and placing her blue velour robe around them. Before her legs had disappeared beneath the robe, he’d noticed her bare feet and bloodred toenails.

  “I saw the kitchenette. Do you need something to drink? Water? Coffee?”

  “I need a tall glass of single-malt Scotch,” she said tonelessly.

  “I understand and you can have all the Scotch you want in a few minutes, but I need for your thoughts to be clear when I question you,” Eric said gently.

  “I know. I was only joking about the Scotch. I don’t even like it.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “Ken was the Scotch drinker. I don’t want anything right now.”

  “All right.” Eric sat down on one of the chairs, withdrawing his notebook. “As I asked before, was Mr. Nordine acting differently this evening?”

  “Differently? No. He was restless, but he was often restless in the evenings. He had so much energy he always wanted to be busy. Today wasn’t a busy day at the gallery. Also, for some reason, Ms. Greene annoyed him, although he was hardly around her all day. I wanted her here. I’m afraid I’m not the most adept mother, especially of a child who’s sick. Well, not sick, but recovering from an operation. Mary had an appendectomy on Wednesday.”

  “And your husband was worried about Mary?”

  “Well, he was concerned, of course, but she seems to be doing well and we have Ms. Greene.” Dana hesitated and then said a bit harshly, “Frankly, I don’t think Ken was all that worried about Mary.”

  “I see. Any idea of what was worrying him?”

  “Well, as I said, he’s often restless and he doesn’t sleep well. Sometimes he takes a sleeping pill. The last few days, though, he’s been concerned about someone on our staff—Bridget Fenmore. She has the title of manager, but she really does the bookkeeping more than anything else and even Ken has to help her with that. Anyway, she didn’t come to work yesterday or the day before and didn’t call. Ken tried to reach her and couldn’t. I can’t say I was particularly impressed with Miss Fenmore’s skills, but in the two months she’s worked for us she’s always been reliable and prompt.”

  “Does Miss Fenmore have family here?”

  “I don’t know. Ken hired her. When he was getting worried about her yesterday, I told him to look at her personnel folder and check on her family—maybe they would know something. He said he’d driven past her house and the newspapers and mail were piling up.”

  “He drove past her house?” Eric asked. “Did Mr. Nordine know Miss Fenmore well?”

  Dana’s eyes shifted away from his. “I’m not certain. Maybe.”

  He was having an affair with her, Eric thought. His girlfriend of not more than two months hadn’t shown up for a couple of days and he was more worried about her than his own daughter, who’d just had surgery. “Do you know if he ever called her family or maybe contacted some of her friends?” Eric asked in a neutral voice.

  “No. Frankly, I never thought about her again. I thought she’d show up on Monday with a good excuse—good enough to keep Ken from firing her. She’s only twenty-six … and she looks a lot like Renée Eastman … did.” Dana sighed. “If she hasn’t come home yet, I’ll look through her personnel papers today. Mayb
e I can locate her family and they’ll know where she is.”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Nordine. We’ll go through all your records if you don’t mind.”

  “Not at all. Everything’s in order and I’m not sure I could really concentrate today.”

  “No one would expect you to. It’s really a police job, anyway.” Eric cleared his throat. “Can you tell me about tonight? Was anything different than usual?”

  Dana went silent for a minute. “I’m sorry. I’m trying to remember,” she said. “Ms. Greene and I spent a lot of time with Mary early in the evening. Around eight o’clock, I came down to the main gallery. We usually have quite a few visitors at eight on a Saturday night, but there were only a few. I’d expected low business because of the Blakethorne wedding. Did you know?”

  “I attended.”

  “Oh!” Dana must have realized she’d sounded unflatteringly surprised that a policeman had been invited to the wedding of the wealthiest man in town. “Was it nice?” she asked quickly.

  “Very nice. My girlfriend’s sister was Patrice Greenlee’s maid of honor.” Eric always avoided mentioning his personal life in an interview and could see the curiosity in Dana’s eyes. Oh well, the damage is done, he thought. “I see Marissa Gray. Her sister is Dr. Catherine Gray.”

  “I know Catherine! Well, a little bit. Marissa did two very nice articles about the gallery. I didn’t know there was a connection.” Eric frowned and Dana added, “Between you and the Gray sisters.”

  I didn’t mean for you to, Eric thought. “Our families were friends since the girls and I were children,” he said more abruptly than he’d intended. “So around eight o’clock the gallery was nearly empty and your husband was surprised by that? Unhappy?”

  “Both. We’d been invited to the wedding, although we don’t really know either the bride or groom, but with Mary newly home and all, I’d said I absolutely wasn’t attending. And Ken’s heart didn’t seem into going, either, which was odd for him. He loved to socialize.” She tilted her head and looked at Eric ruefully. “To be honest, he wanted the chance to promote the gallery to Lawrence Blakethorne’s wealthy friends.”