I had to see the face of my intruder.
He slumped in the room's single easy chair, his dark eyes wide and staring, focused on nothing.
His face surprised me. It was slender, almost delicate for a man. It reminded me of tintypes of Robert Louis Stevenson, oval with deepset eyes, a small, gentle mouth, a high-bridged nose. In his mid-thirties. Despite the bristly
stubble fuzzing his cheeks, my intruder had a thoughtful, civilized, almost professorial look. But he appeared desperately tired. More than that, his face retained a kind of incredulous astonishment, like the single survivor of a road smash surveying the crushed cars and mangled victims.
His long, lean body sagged with despair. He wasn't dressed for the part of a housebreaker. He wore a glen plaid cotton shirt, stylishly pleated khaki slacks, tasseled burgundy leather loafers. But his right trouser leg was soiled, some kind of dark stain.
And I had the elusive, teasing sense that I'd seen him somewhere before. Somewhere…
Faintly a motor rumbled from the road.
He jerked upright, every muscle tensed, his pale, strained face frozen in panic.
The roar grew louder, nearer.
He scrambled to his feet.
The car rattled closer, closer. And then it was by. The sound receded.
He drew his breath in, gulped it. His hands were shaking.
I saw him clearly now in the light. All of him-including his left shirt-sleeve.
I stared at the sleeve, at the blackish substance that discolored it. It was quite different from the stain on his trousers.
Blood.
Viscous thick blood had dried to a dark crust above the cuff.
A wound?
He didn't move like an injured man. His left fist was tightly clenched. The instinctive tendency of an injured member is to go limp, thereby putting the least possible stress on pain-racked flesh.
Abruptly his fight-or-flight stance relaxed. The young man turned, stumbled wearily to the chair, and flung himself down.
I slipped away from the door, edged silently across the bedroom. I was wearing cotton shorts and a T-shirt, my favored garb for sleep. My suitcase and gym bag were on the floor near the bathroom. I fished out a pair of sweats and my Reeboks. I placed the Mace canister handily on the edge of the bed, then slipped into the sweats, pulled on athletic socks and the running shoes. Maybe it took me forty seconds.
I crept quietly back to the open door. He hadn't moved.
My husband Richard always warned me against snap judgments. But I don't waste time, and I don't waver between choices.
I stepped out into the living room. "Excuse me. Could you possibly be in the wrong cabin?"
I did, of course, have the Mace in my right hand, ready to spray, and I was on a direct line to the front door.
His head jerked toward me. The remaining color drained from his face. He turned a sickly hue. I thought he was going to faint.
He struggled to his feet, staring at me as if I were the first witch in Macbeth.
I know that at times I can be intimidating. I have a Roman-coin profile, dark hair silvered at the temples, jet-black eyes that have seen much and remembered much, and an angular body with a lean and hungry appearance of forward motion even when at rest. However, surely not witchlike. Oh, the right age perhaps, but I feel that I look especially nonthreatening in baggy gray sweats and running shoes.
"Oh, my God, who are you? What the hell are you doing here?"
"Henrietta O'Dwyer Collins," I replied crisply. "I'm a guest of Margaret Frazier's. So I might ask the same of you."
He swallowed jerkily. "A guest… oh, Christ. If that isn't my frigging- Sorry. God." He looked past me toward the bedroom. "Where's Aunt Margaret?"
Aunt Margaret. Of course. That's why he looked familiar. That aquiline nose and small, full mouth.
I slipped the keys and Mace canister into the pocket of my sweats.
Craig. Margaret's nephew. "I'm sorry to say she's in the hospital. A heart attack and bypass surgery. But she's…"
He wasn't listening.
I felt a quick flare of anger. No wonder Margaret had resisted notifying him.
"I believe she is going to recover quite nicely, in case you're interested."
His eyes blinked. He heard my anger. It took a moment for him to make the connection. "Aunt Margaret… oh, I'm sorry." Blank dark eyes finally focused on me. "She's real sick? I'm sorry." He gave me a shamefaced look. "And I'm sorry I scared you. I didn't mean to. Truly, I didn't know you were here. I'm Craig. Craig Matthews."
He lifted a slender, well-manicured hand to massage his temple. The emerald in a thick yellow-gold ring glittered like putting-green grass on a sunny day.
The bloodstain ran from just above the cuff to his elbow.
He followed my glance.
There are many kinds of silence. Companionable. Hostile. Angry. Shamed. Defeated.
And frightened.
His handsome face crumpled, a mixture of horror and
pain and disbelief. He shook his head. "I didn't kill Patty Kay. I didn't do it." It was a husky, broken whisper. Gingerly, he touched the crusted blood with his right hand. His fingers quivered.
His denial echoed in my mind. What had I stumbled into? I didn't kill Patty Kay. Did he say it again or did the shocking, frightening phrase simply pulse in my mind?
No wonder Craig Matthews wasn't worried about his aunt. No wonder his demeanor was terrified.
I tensed like a runner awaiting the starter's pistol. My hand closed again around the slender Mace canister. Margaret's nephew or no, if he took a step toward me…
Instead, he backed to the chair and sank into it again. Dully, he looked up at me. "You know Aunt Margaret?"
I said nothing.
He blinked; his mouth twisted in a small embarrassed smile. "Sorry. I can't hold anything in my head. You said you were her guest. Sure."
He was a man in shock. Talking about the price of chicken feed while the sky fell.
He shook his head, as if struggling to clear it, then once again got to his feet, as if belatedly remembering his manners. "I'm sorry. Awfully sorry. I woke you up, frightened you. I didn't mean to. I mean, I didn't see your car. But I didn't look. And it was dark… I'll leave."
But once on his feet, he simply stood.
"Where will you go?" I took my hand out of my pocket. I was in no danger from this scared, disoriented young man.
"… Chattanooga, I guess. I've got an old friend there."
"Do you need a friend?"
"I've got to talk to somebody. I'm in trouble. Big trouble."
He'd whispered, I didn't Mil Patty Kay. I didn't do it.
Yes, I thought, he probably was in a shitload of trouble.
Killers come in all shapes and sizes. And it is domestic violence that can sur
prise you every time.
He didn't look like a man who'd killed a woman.
I wasn't afraid of him.
I know when to be scared.
He glanced toward the door, then back at me. His shoulders sagged. "I don't know what to do. 1 don't know what the hell to do."
There was the tiniest suggestion of a plea in his voice, perhaps a flicker of hope in his eyes.
I knew what I was hearing, the tones of a man accustomed to letting someone else run the show.
I wondered when I'd been transformed from a Shakespearean witch to a succoring figure. If he were older, he would know better than to assume age renders its possessor harmless. But he was seeing me now as not only harmless but someone to help. The friend of his aunt.
I'd spent a lifetime among take-charge men. I'd butted heads with most of them. But even while insisting upon my rights and prerogatives, I'd admired their verve and spirit and, yes, the automatic masculine presumption of each and every one that by God, I'm in charge here. It's a factor that makes news pools a living hell for real reporters. The testosterone level among newspapermen beggars description. As a class, it's also true of lawyers.
So winsome I'11-leave-it-up-to-you types don't impress me.
But I hadn't spent a lifetime asking questions to be able to ignore what was obviously a life-and-death drama. And this was Margaret's only living family, the son of her beloved sister.
He was gazing at me with pleading spaniel eyes.
It wouldn't hurt to talk to him. Talk didn't commit me to anything. Not a single damn thing. After all, my night's sleep was already ruined. Moreover, I had to find out if I could help Margaret's kin.
And, yes, I admit it, I wanted to find out what had happened to Patty Kay. Who, what, when, where, why, how- they pulse in my blood and in my brain. Maybe I should have them scored on my tombstone. Or, She Came, She Asked, She Wrote.
So that's how it began for me.
I said, "Who's Patty Kay?"
"My wife."
"What happened to her?"
The dazed, uncomprehending look returned to his eyes. "I came home and-and I went in the house and called out. But she didn't answer. I went upstairs. She wasn't anywhere. But she'd told me to come home. I mean, I thought she had. There was this message from her. But maybe it wasn't from her because-"
I held up a hand. "Wait a minute. You came home." I didn't yet know where "home" was. There was so much I didn't know. But it was critical to keep him focused. "You looked for Patty Kay. What happened then?"
"I went in the dining room. Everything was ready for the party." Again disbelief flared in his frightened eyes. "We were going to have a party tonight. The table was set. The china. The silver. Crystal. Perfect, the way Patty Kay always has everything. So I thought she was probably in the kitchen and just hadn't heard me. She cooks-Patty Kay always cooks everything herself. She doesn't believe in having it done by a caterer. She always laughs and says she's a better cook than any caterer. And she is. So I thought she was in the kitchen and I went in there and that's when I
knew something was wrong, really wrong. Cheesecake was all over everything."
"Cheesecake?"
"Patty Kay's cheesecakes are famous-chocolate wafer crumbs and butter and creme de menthe and… Some-body'd taken the cake pan and thrown it up and there was stuff on the ceiling and the cabinets and the floor, and the pan with the chocolate-the one on the stove-had burned black. The smell was awful. And there was creme de menthe splashed on the floor and a whole bottle of creme de cacao emptied out too. 1 mean, it scared me. What the hell was going on? And Patty Kay wasn't anywhere. Then 1 saw the back door was open. 1 wasn't really thinking. I started for the door, too fast 1 guess, and 1 skidded and slipped." He looked down at his trouser leg. "Got the stuff on my hands too. The liqueur. 1 picked up a towel and wiped my hands off, then I went out the back door. Everything looked okay, like it always did." His voice lifted with remembered astonishment. "The deck and the pool. And nobody was out there. That meant Patty Kay had to be in the playhouse-if she was anywhere. So I ran down there."
He came to a stop. His fingers gripped the worn sides of the armchair.
"What did you find?"
Just for an instant his eyes met mine. They were worried, uncertain, frightened-and sickened. "1-" He yanked a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face. "I've got to have something to drink."
I went into the kitchenette, grabbed a glass, and filled it with tap water. He was close behind me. But 1 wasn't frightened. He scarcely knew I was there.
1 held out the glass to him.
He took it and drank in long, greedy gulps. He
slumped down at the rickety pine table. Sweat beaded his face. An unhealthy reddish flush overlay the paleness.
I took the seat opposite him.
I didn't repeat my question.
But we both knew it wasn't going to go away.
He didn't look at me. He spoke as if each word were a burden. Was he picking his way or was the recollection too painful?
"I ran down the path. The playhouse door was partially open. But when I pushed, it didn't move. I kept shoving and shoving. Finally I squeezed inside." He shuddered. "You don't ever think that something like this can happen to you. Not-not murder."
He stared down at the table, but I knew that wasn't what he saw.
"The door wouldn't move because Patty Kay was bunched up on the floor behind it. I got down on my knees. I lifted up her head"-His voice cracked. His fingers sought his blood-encrusted shirt-"and her face… there was blood-" He buried his face in his hands.
"Why didn't you call the police?"
His hands fell away. His head jerked toward me. "How'd you know-"
"You're here. You ran. Why?"
"Because- " His eyes flickered away.
I leaned forward.
"The siren. I heard a siren. Coming closer and closer. I knew it was coming there."
"Why did you run?" I insisted.
His fingers plucked at the bloodied sleeve. "I don't know." There was just a trace of sullenness in his voice. "God, wouldn't you? Come home, find your wife bloody and dead. Hear the cops coming. Why? Why were they coming? And they always blame the husband. Pick up a
newspaper, any newspaper. You read about it almost every day. You know that."
I knew it better than he imagined.
But with good reason.
So often, so very often, death wears a familiar face.
Of course, those statistics are changing. We live now in a drive-by-shooting society. More and more often death is a stranger. That's why the homicide solve rates have plummeted.
"They'll put me in jail." Fear lifted his voice.
"They certainly will if they pick you up as a fugitive, Craig. You must go back."
Like a bereft child, he looked at me. "What am I going to tel
l them?"
"Whatever your lawyer advises you to tell them."
"Lawyer?"
"Don't you have a lawyer?"
He shrugged. "Not me. Patty Kay does. Mr. Fairlee."
Scandal in Fair Haven Page 2