LET ME CALL YOU SWEETHEART

by Nancy Gideon

  If her mother killed Sam Crandall, she would not perpetuate a crime of pride. She would not allow Mary Crandall and her children to be victimized anymore. In her lap, she held the answers.

  She picked up the first sheet of paper and began to read.

  What we're doing is wrong, but I can't seem to help myself.

  A journal, written in her mother's florid style.

  Todd has been gone over a year. His letters seem written by a stranger. I wake up at night and can't remember his face and cry myself back to sleep knowing this stranger will someday be home and my life will no longer be my own. My only reprieve is in the arms of a man who's not mine to love.

  He told me again that he planned to divorce her. I have to believe him or I shall go mad.

  Bess stopped reading, too stunned to go on.

  Her mother, her pious, straitlaced mother, had an affair while her father was fighting overseas. What she held in her hands were private thoughts, reflections of a tortured soul trapped within this box for years.

  Who in Sweetheart had been Joan Carrey's lover? What married man had caused her to cast off all her moralistic codes for the sake of lonely passion?

  The answer had to be somewhere in the shuffle of unsequenced confessions. She picked up the next sheet.

  He lied.

  He told me what he knew I wanted to hear so I would damn myself with the sin of adultery. When I went to him after learning of Todd's death, I expected him to share my relief that we could finally be together.

  He laughed at me and called me a fool. He was right. I have been a fool to lust, a slave to pleasure, a hypocrite to all I have tried to instill in my daughters.

  They must never find out. And they must never make the same mistake I have.

  Bess shivered. She could hear the echo of her mother's zealous fervor building in those words. She picked up another page.

  I am betrayed.

  After all I've done, after all my careful teaching, she gave herself to that Crandall boy and is pregnant with his bastard. The wretched girl. Acting the whore and expecting me to forgive her. Never! How could she do this to me?

  Bess's initial shock gave way to pained anger. She crumpled the page in a convulsive fist, no more room in her life for her mother's vengeful spirit. Shaken but still determined, she read on.

  The devil came to my door last night and I vanquished him.

  To think he believed me weak enough to give in to his extortion. To save my family name, he said, reeking of liquor. He thought I would pay him, just as my old lover paid him for his silence. With enough money, he'd see his demon boy would never come to make a claim on my Elizabeth. Oh, he had no idea how far I would go to do just that. When I told him I would see him in hell, he laughed at me and pushed me down. I fell against the clock and that's when it became so clear.

  I did it for my Bess. For the sake of her salvation.

  And then I called him to help me conceal the crime.

  He owed me that much.

  Crafty devil that he is, he arrived with the perfect plan—a way to rid me of the menace of the boy along with the threat of the father.

  Bess's hands shook too severely to make out more words typed with such savage glee that the keys perforated the cheap bond.

  She held her mother's confession to murder.

  And Joan Carrey's unnamed lover was her accomplice.

  * * *

  "Melody, have you seen Zach?"

  Melody paused in her gathering of the dirty plates to give Bess a quizzical look. Beneath the questions lay a harder sheen of accusation. Bess had no trouble interpreting it. What have you done to my brother? The waitress's reply was cool.

  "Not since this morning."

  "I have to talk to him."

  "I'll tell him if I see him."

  "Mel, this is important, not just to Zach but to your whole family." That made the other woman's hostility ebb in curiosity. "Do you know where he might be?"

  "He's not at work?"

  Bess shook her head, growing frantic with the delay. "Ted, Mayor? Have either of you seen my brother?" Howard Anderson glanced up to smile. "I saw him go into Doc Meirs's just a little while ago. Something wrong?"

  "No," Bess said, her voice a little too brittle, her smile a tad too tight as she regarded the two men. "Just have something for him. I'll just leave it at the post."

  The men went back to their conversation and Bess squeezed Melody's hand.

  "Tell him I'm looking for him," she said in a low aside. When she started away, Melody caught her hand.

  "Bess?"

  She paused at the other's intensity.

  "Zach loves you. No matter what happened between you, remember that."

  She knew in her heart, but hearing it spoken out loud with such surety brought a sheen to her eyes and a gruffness to her voice.

  "I know, Mel. And I won't forget."

  * * *

  Sheriff Lloyd Baines looked up from his paper-strewn desktop to scowl at Zach and Fred Meirs. Something in Crandall's smug smile, in the hard glitter of his glare, warned him that it was payback time.

  "I'm busy," he growled, trying to disguise his uneasiness. "Make it quick."

  "Lloyd," the doctor began with a quiet professionalism, "we've got new evidence in the Crandall case."

  He gave a nervous snort. "After seventeen years? What did you find? A confession signed by Elvis?" His eyes narrowed. "C'mon, we know who killed Sam Crandall, and I don't have to look very damn far to find him."

  "We have what we believe to be the murder weapon," Meirs continued. "The dimensions from my initial examination of the body match, but we'll know more conclusively when we get reports back from Des Moines."

  Baines's flabby features tightened. "You've already sent it off?"

  Zach let out a slow, thin smile. "Knew you'd want it done right away before anyone could tamper with the findings."

  The sheriff's jaw worked fiercely before he ground out, "It's my case. All evidence should go through me."

  "Professional courtesy," Zach drawled. "I knew you didn't have the right facilities here to check for possible blood, hair and tissue matches so I sent it to the state lab boys. They're very thorough. Nothing gets by them. They'll send you a copy of their findings."

  "Well, thanks a helluva lot for including me in my own case."

  "Oh, you're going to be included, Sheriff. Don't worry."

  Baines glared at Zach, agitation edging in next to anger. "So who did you find to take the blame for you, Crandall?"

  "Nothing I want to speculate about yet."

  He sneered, "Yeah, I'm sure. If you're done wasting my time on this fairy tale…"

  "Actually, I've come to request your official assistance, this being your case and all."

  Again, the suspicious glare. "Doing what?"

  "I've reason to believe the killer didn't act alone. Since some might consider me too personally involved in the case, I'd like you to handle the questioning of our primary suspect."

  "Do you want me to question you now or shall we do lunch?"

  Zach's smile played out firm and final. "We're going to pay a little visit to a friend of yours."

  Lloyd Baines grew suddenly very serious.

  * * *

  Having just missed Zach at Fred Meirs's office, and with messages scattered all over town, Bess returned home to anxiously wait for one of them to catch him. She couldn't relax. What she planned to do would either tear her world apart or it would put it all together. No guarantees. So many times she'd shied away from risks, choosing what was safe and predictable out of fear of disappointing anyone. Now the only one she worried about failing was herself … and Zach.

  She'd made up her mind to roll with the consequences that came, no matter what they might be, to depend on her untested inner strength to support her in lieu of public opinion. She'd survive. And she would prosper, if not in Sweetheart, then somewhere new. She would not take another step back to what was. Now was the time to go forwar
d. The truth would take her there as a key, not the lock.

  Then she needed to tell Zach about Faith and trust him to do the right thing with that knowledge. If he couldn't forgive her, she might not get over it, but she would go on.

  "Trust me," was the message he'd given Faith to deliver before the teen left to visit Mary Crandall.

  It was time she did.

  To fill the interminable minutes, Bess started through her mother's journal entries again. Not pleasant reading. Each page described the workings of a repressed and disturbed woman who sought to use her children to repair her own mistakes. Julie had refused to be manipulated, but she had been the perfect faithful foil of her mother's increasing madness. She'd been too close to see what was so obvious to her now.

  Most of the rantings centered on her mother's hatred and mistrust of men; on the father that deserted her when she was a teen, on the husband who went off to war and never returned, on the lover who made promises he never planned to keep. On the wrong-side-of-the-tracks boy who corrupted her daughter and stole away her last chance at redemption.

  Bess read the accounts of her mother's plots to destroy her relationship with Zach, turning each page with deeper and deeper distress. She recognized the patterns of emotional abuse heaped upon a naive girl. Just as damaging as the ones Zach wore on the surface, hers scored psychologically on her spirit instead.

  The two of them had never had a chance. Not then, but perhaps now.

  Then the text grabbed her full attention again. Its next few pages held hints of something darker than her mother's mania.

  Someone's been in the house.

  Nothing's been taken but I know things have been moved.

  He's searching for the evidence that his sin is as great as mine, but he won't find it.

  A violent chill shook through her. Someone had prowled through their rooms, perhaps while they were away, perhaps while they slept. She immediately thought of the violation at the bookstore.

  I live in constant fear.

  Bess's gaze flew along the page. With each paragraph she experienced her mother's panic, drawing on the scent of smoke, the feeling of suffocation as she'd lain helplessly waiting to die. Was it the same man terrorizing both mother and daughter?

  How foolish of me to think Crandall my only danger. Last night, I confronted my oh-so-successful lover to tell him to leave me alone or I'd give my souvenirs to his wife and his adoring public. I've never seen him in such a fury. When I would not give him my keepsakes, I thought he was going to kill me, too. He threw me down the basement stairs in his rage. I'm left crippled and would be at his mercy if not for these records I've maintained so carefully, and for Bess who is my guardian angel. He will do nothing while she is with me, so I must see she stays ever near.

  Her mother's fall, no accident, just as the attack on her at the bookstore had been no accident, nor the incident on the road. What had her mother kept to place them in such jeopardy? She'd found no mention of the man's name, only admissions of her mother's own guilt.

  Or did the box contain more than the weapon used to take Sam Crandall's life and the tortured ramblings of the woman who'd killed him?

  Bess shuffled through the loose and yellowed papers until she discovered a small bundle near the bottom. She lifted out a stack of credit card receipts, all rubber-banded together. She flipped through them: numerous dinners at Haven's, records of various hotels from neighboring communities. Her mother never drove a day in her life, so how had she reached these rendezvous?

  Awareness struck, like the glancing blow above her heart, providing the final piece to the puzzle before her.

  She returned to the kitchen with the papers and snatched up Sam Crandall's cab log, comparing the dates, the places. Joan Carrey had relied upon Charlie's cab to take her to adjacent towns. The destinations were always legitimate: stores, banks, libraries. But where she was dropped off was not where she was going. That's what Sam Crandall discovered, probably by following her and putting two and two together to make extortion.

  Realizing she had the final answer in her hand, Bess checked the other side of the charge receipt to find the embossed name from the plate and the affirming signature at the bottom.

  Just as everything fit together with a stunning force, a knock at the door distracted her from it.

  Zach.

  She ran to open it, anxious to tell him of all she'd discovered.

  But it wasn't Zach standing on the back porch.

  "Hello, Bess, got a minute?" He pushed his way into the kitchen without awaiting her response.

  Trying to act naturally, Bess smiled to conceal her fear and said, "If this is another attempt to buy the store, I'm afraid the answer is still no. I've decided to do some renovations."

  Ted Doolin smiled back, the gesture slick and sincere. "Really? I admire your tenacity. If you need extra funding, just come to me at the bank."

  Bess's features stiffened around her fixed grin. "I think I'll have enough to remodel with the insurance money from the fire. Some of our books were quite rare and valuable. Mother had the foresight to get special riders on them."

  "A clever, methodical woman, your mother. Anticipating the worst and always ready."

  Bess's heart began to pound so fast and loud she couldn't believe he didn't hear it. She had to get him out of the house. She had to get the evidence to Zach. Then her dismayed gaze jumped to the box sitting open on the kitchen table. And she glanced up in alarm to find Doolin following her movements with grim purpose. He stepped over to the table and gave the papers a quick perusal.

  "Actually, I came over to discuss some things, but now I can see that talk isn't necessary. You've done my work for me." He gathered the log, pages and the receipts, setting them in the box, replacing the lid. "Now all I have to do is get rid of the loose ends. You'll have to come with me, Bess. Please don't underestimate my willingness to hurt you."

  "I won't," she answered, and he chuckled at her sudden temerity.

  "Full of surprises, just like your mom. I underestimated her more than once. But this should take care of those miscalculations. Come along, my dear. My car's in the drive."

  "Aren't you afraid someone will see us together?"

  "Why would I be? I'm an old family friend counseling a distraught young woman who's just discovered her sainted mother to be a killer."

  "Zach already has the murder weapon," she said, stalling for time, trying to think her way out of the situation.

  "That's good. It should prove a solid case against your mother."

  "And what about you and your part in it? She called you to take Zach's father to their house. It was your idea to frame Zach."

  "True, but you have no evidence against me. I was very careful. And once I dispose of these," he tapped the box, "I can sit back with the rest of the town council and express my shock over the tragedy."

  "And what about me?"

  "You're a smart girl. I can see you've already figured that part out. I'll leave the appropriate pages from your mother's diary clutched poignantly in your hand. I think it would be rather poetic for Crandall to find you … after your suicide."

  Her breath seized up imagining it. "He won't believe it."

  "Yes, he will, and think of his guilt, knowing you took your life because you couldn't bear the pain of what your family had caused his to suffer. A rather classic ending. I think your mother would have approved." He tucked the box under his arm and gestured toward the door. His smile vanished. "Shall we go?"

  She shut off all thought except survival. She couldn't afford to be distracted by visions of Zach's shock and sorrow upon finding her dead. He'd blame himself. She knew he would. And so she couldn't allow Doolin to go through with his plan. She headed for the door in front of him, alert, more alive than she ever thought possible, as she looked for her chance to escape her planned fate.

  Doolin grabbed her arm as they started down the back steps. She saw his car parked beside the house, a big tank of a black Buick. And on
its shiny front bumper was the unmistakable rubber burn from Zach's motorcycle tire.

  She walked toward the car slowly, meekly, letting Doolin think she was scared witless. It wasn't hard. She was terrified right down to her cotton socks but her mind was functioning in overdrive.

  Did he have a gun? Could she slip away and run for help? How far would she get before he overpowered her? He wasn't young, but a man of vanity, he'd stayed fit. One thing was certain, if she climbed into his car, she wasn't leaving it alive.

  The clarity of hindsight amazed her. She could see Ted Doolin seated at Sophie's having coffee at the table next to her when she confided her doubts about Zach being the killer, and again this morning when she'd spoken to Melody all flushed and excited. How hard could it have been for him to put two and two together and guess his charade was about to see light? When she'd refused to sell him the bookstore so he could demolish it along with any proof her mother might have hidden there, he'd done the next best thing in trying to torch it himself. He left no doubt in her mind that he had no compunction about taking another life.

  She slowed her steps. When Doolin pushed her forward, she turned, thinking to delay him with questions. Didn't killers love talking about their genius after having to hide it from the world?

  "I don't understand why you let yourself get involved with Sam Crandall's murder."

  "I had to make sure he was dead. The bastard had been blackmailing me over Joan for years. It was my chance to be rid of him, once and for all. And I couldn't risk your mother doing something stupid, like confessing everything to save her twisted soul."

  "So you helped her put Mary Crandall in prison. Didn't that bother either of you, an innocent woman going to jail?"

  "I didn't lose any sleep over it, and your mother sure wasn't going to speak up at the trial, not and let Crandall's boy get his hands on you. She was one crazy broad, your mother."

  "But smart enough to keep you sweating for seventeen years."

  Doolin scowled, unamused. He gave her another shove and Bess pretended to stumble on the loose stones. Caught off guard, Doolin's grip slackened and Bess took advantage to explode into a run like a sprinter coming out of the blocks.