He took another step.
"Walsh will get there." My voice was level. "I'm already there. Craig-it's time you told me the truth."
"You've got to shut up. Look-who asked you here? What the hell are you doing? Trying to get me convicted? Get out. Just get out. Okay? Get the hell out of here." His voice cracked.
I said nothing.
"You aren't my aunt. Just pack your-"
"It's a little late for you to say so, isn't it? What makes you think Walsh would even let me leave town now? Especially if you tell him we're not related. He might begin to wonder just what kind of story we rigged. And why. No, Craig. You lied and now you're stuck with it. I'm not going anywhere."
His hands tightened into fists. Color flamed on his face. "Dammit, dammit, keep your mouth shut, you've got to.
You've got to!" Then, with a last furious glare, he turned and ran out of the room.
In a moment I heard the door slam. And, faintly, the motor of the Porsche.
Interesting.
Craig got mad-and he ran.
Just as Stuart Pierce predicted.
I walked toward the kitchen. I still had to eat. I wondered if Craig was hotfooting it to Stevie Costello's.
Not, I presumed, if he had a brain.
Because Captain Walsh surely was going to keep track of his prime suspect.
But maybe that's exactly what Craig would do.
That might truly put the fat in the fire.
At this point, I royally didn't give a damn what Craig Matthews did.
But I was still in the game. I wouldn't deal out.
Not because of Craig.
Because of Margaret.
Because I don't run.
And because of Patty Kay.
If Craig was guilty, I wanted to know. I would grieve for Margaret, but I had to know. In my mind I saw a young, graceful, vibrant woman in the peak years of her life, smiling, playing tennis, working for her community. And I saw her lying dead in her own blood.
I stopped at the telephone in the main hall.
No message lights.
Be interesting to know if Craig'd already had a call from Stevie.
I dialed Desmond's office.
This time he answered.
"You're working late," I said.
"Yeah. I just got back from getting Craig out of jail."
"I know. I talked to him."
"Tell him to keep a low profile. Walsh is determined to pin his hide to the barn door."
"I'll tell him." And so I would-eventually. "Desmond, who's going to chair the trustees meeting tomorrow night?"
Desmond sighed heavily. "I guess I will. I'm vice president." Papers rattled. "Brooke's already left me three messages, something about a memorial for Patty Kay."
Brooke certainly had an agenda.
So did I. Two, in fact. One I explained to Desmond. The other-mounting a search for the author of the letters that drove Franci Hollis to her death-would have to wait. But, in time, I would get to it. Cruelty cannot be permitted to triumph.
"Sure. Why not? Will I see you before then?"
"Yes. How about after the funeral?"
"After the funeral." Desmond's voice lost its buoyancy.
"Patty Kay's guild is bringing luncheon over to Pamela's. I'll look for you there." I put down the receiver.
I heated a frozen dinner. Not supermarket fare, but Patty Kay's marvelous cooking: sesame chicken, scalloped zucchini, carrots. As soon as I finished the dishes, I headed upstairs to Patty Kay's office.
Patty Kay's trashed office.
I stood in the doorway.
Surely this was proof of Craig's innocence. For he was in police custody when this office was ransacked.
But Patty Kay's death could have triggered panic in other quarters. What if she had letters from Stuart? Present-day, passionate letters? What if Gina had fired off an angry, threatening letter about the land zoning?
I couldn't assume this mess was made by the murderer.
But I was still glad young Dan Forrest hadn't sought
out the source of the noise Monday afternoon. There was a viciousness to this devastation that appalled me.
I set to work. I couldn't put everything where it went, of course, because I didn't know. And many objects were too broken to be repaired. But I tidied up. And finally felt I had all the papers that belonged in Patty Kay's Walden School file.
I took the material, more than a dozen folders in an expandable brown file, down to the clubroom. I didn't want to stay in the office with the scarred desk and shattered bookcase glass.
Thursday night at bedtime Patty Kay was happy. She abruptly realized she'd forgotten some files. She drove to Walden School, returned with-presumably-the file holder I now possessed. Friday morning at breakfast, Patty Kay's mood had altered completely. Friday afternoon she arranged a last-minute dinner for the school's board of trustees.
I glanced at the clock.
Half past seven.
At midnight I gave up. I'd read and reread every file in the folder: Budget, Physical Plant, Personnel, Recruiting, Sports, Academic Programs, Scholarships, Endowment, Land Use, Media, Board Minutes.
If there was anything the least bit odd, unusual, or suspect in that mass of material, I couldn't find it-and I'm damn good at finding odd, unusual, or suspect facts.
I was frustrated. Frustrated, confused, and exhausted.
I finally gave up and went to bed. After locking my door and wedging a chair beneath it. Craig had run away, true. But I couldn't be certain he was innocent. And I knew a great deal he wouldn't want Captain Walsh to learn.
I woke several times in the night and once was tempted to get up and have another go at the files.
Because the answer had to be there, hadn't it? Patty Kay was her usual self Thursday evening. She went to the school, got those files, came home. And Friday morning she was very upset. Why, dammit, why?
The Episcopal burial service is swift and merciful. A silk pall covers a closed casket. The liturgy emphasizes the promise that death is swallowed up in victory. Prayer asks that the deceased, increasing in knowledge and love of the Lord, go from strength to strength in the life of perfect service in the heavenly kingdom.
Sometimes there Js a eulogy, often not. There was a eulogy for Patty Kay. "… your servant, O Lord, who labored diligently to make this world better…"
The elderly priest quietly and lovingly recalled Patty Kay's impact on the lives in her community. Her good works. And they were many.
It was beyond the priest's skill to recall her gusto for life, her cocky disdain for the pretentious, her willingness to face abuse for unpopular causes.
It was odd, staring at the cross emblazoned in scarlet
on the golden silk pall, how well I felt I knew a woman I'd never met.
The church pews were full. There were foldi
ng chairs set up in the narthex.
I sat with Craig. We'd exchanged only nods that morning. He came downstairs shortly before the limousine arrived. He'd avoided looking at me, hiding behind the newspaper with his coffee.
But he never turned a page of it.
We sat alone in the first black limousine.
A haunted-looking, red-eyed Brigit rode with her father and stepmother and the Guthries in the second limousine.
But despite my irritation with Craig and despite my newly kindled suspicions of him, the funeral made me glad I'd come to Fair Haven three days ago.
Because Craig would have stood alone without me. And that shouldn't happen to anyone. As the service began, I could feel his body shrink beside me, as if a heavy weight bowed his shoulders. He gripped the unopened prayer book so tightly, his fingers blanched.
It was almost as if an invisible wall surrounded him when we entered the church. So many eyes slid away from his glance. So few hands reached out to touch him. So many quick, covert looks followed after he passed.
As we walked out of that packed church, I could count on one hand those who even acknowledged his presence. Gina Abbott. Brigit. And yes, Stuart Pierce. And the Forrest family, Brooke, her husband David and son Dan. Cheryl and Bob Kraft.
But most eyes avoided contact. Most faces turned away.
Some of it might have been awkwardness.
How do you greet a man whose wife has been violently murdered?
It isn't the acceptable way to die. If Patty Kay had died
of cancer, the handclasps would have come, the murmured condolences.
But this was murder, and Craig had been arrested for the crime.
And I wondered how many knowing looks had been exchanged in conversations across Fair Haven, how many silken whispers shared: So much younger than Patty Kay… I've heard he and that girl, the pretty blond one, at the store… The gun came from his car… Always thought he looked shifty…
It was no better at the cemetery.
Craig sat stiffly beside me in the first row beneath the green funeral canopy. The bronze casket rested above the newly dug grave. The gravesite, part of the Prentiss family plots, was near the top of a hill. A sea of tombstones fell away below, sparkling in the soft April sunlight. Pine trees stood watch, sentinels to sorrow. But no observer would have noted heartbreak in the face of this widowed husband. Instead, Craig looked hunted, his eyes defensive, his shoulders hunched, his tightly clasped hands trembling.
Desmond Marino was in the front row of a semicircle of mourners facing the grave. The lawyer's monkey-bright eyes, somber and thoughtful, remained on Craig.
Marino wasn't the only person watching Craig. Captain Walsh stood deep in the shadow of the towering pine. His cool, dissecting eyes never left Craig's face.
The priest's resonant voice carried his words to us: "Almighty God, with whom do live the spirits of those who depart hence in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful, after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, are in joy and felicity…"
I looked at other now-familiar faces.
Chuck Selwyn, the headmaster, might have posed for Funeral Director, U.S.A. His black suit, bowed head, and
somber face embodied decorous grief. Tonight at the trust ees meeting, I intended to point out that there was nothing in Patty Kay's school files about an aeronautics program.
Mr. Selwyn, what was the real reason for her anger with you?
I couldn't wait.
"We give thee hearty thanks for the good examples of all those thy servants, who, having finished their course in faith, do now rest from their labors…"
Louise Pierce touched a dainty cambric handkerchief to her eyes. But her heart-shaped face was calm. I saw no tears. Her other hand gripped her husband's arm possessively. I remembered her tone so clearly.
Stuart is my husband. Mine.
"And we beseech thee…"
Stuart Pierce seemed unaware of his wife's touch. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back and gazed at the casket, his dark eyes empty, his face bleak.
Patty Kay and I- it was always wild and a little bit insane.
"… that we, with all those who are departed in the true faith of thy holy name…"
The Forrest family was in the center of the semicircle. It would have been a focal point for a photographer. I supposed the Forrest family always automatically assumed pride of place. David Forrest's stern face was composed. His black pinstripe suit fit him perfectly. Of course. I would scarcely have expected less. Dan Forrest, slim and handsome in a crisp navy blazer and dark gray slacks, stood between his parents. The handsome teenager was definitely his mother's son, her beauty transformed into a young man's clear, resolute features. Dan stared fixedly, his eyes enormous, at the flowering rhododendron to the right of the gravesite. Death is difficult for any young person, and within the space of a day Dan Forrest had experienced both
the death of a schoolmate and of a family friend. I hoped the counselors at Walden School were skilled. Brooke's lovely face twisted in sorrow. Tears slid down her cheeks. Her husband might say she and Patty Kay were merely social equals. There was more here than that.
It's so important to do the right thing.
"… may have our perfect consummation and bliss…"
Gina Abbott's eyes were closed. Her bony face was drawn and frighteningly pale.
That's the last time we talked. We yelled at each other.
Gina's daughter Chloe clutched a prayer book. She stared at the casket with puzzled, frightened eyes.
"… both in body and soul…"
Stevie Costello's arms were clasped tightly across her chest. She wore a boxy black suit that wasn't especially becoming. It made her look shorter, heavier. And black turned her pale face sallow. She, too, watched Craig.
"… in thy eternal and everlasting glory…"
I almost didn't recognize the final member of the tennis foursome. I had yet to meet her, of course, other than in Patty Kay's videos of the tennis holiday and Brigit's birthday. I wished I could step forward, take her arm, cry, "I understand, I understand."
Edith Hollis looked twenty years older than the woman who had vacationed at the tennis resort. Her fair, freckled face was bloated with suffering; her chunky body-once a muscular threat on the court-sagged heavily. She clung to the arm of the man next to her. Her husband, I assumed. His face, too, bore the marks of sorrow. Balding and stocky, her husband looked my age. He was probably twenty years younger.
My heart ached, too, for their son, Walt, the dead girl's brother, the other nice-looking redheaded kid in the snap-
shots in Gina's store. Walt's sunken, splotchy face- so young, too youn
g for so much pain-looked utterly dazed, lost, despairing. My Emily had grieved so long, so deeply for her little brother.
"… through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
One final prayer.
The funeral director caught my eye and nodded.
"Craig."
Those hunted eyes slid toward me.
"Time to go," I murmured.
Brigit was the first of the family to reach open ground.
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