Also, it was impossible for Aaron to forget that she had suffered. She had lost her husband just six months ago. But worst of all— and this was very bad— Aaron was about to kick a hole in whatever consolation she might have found and bring ruination to her memories.
There was not one damn thing Aaron could do about it. Justice was justice, truth was truth. If Clara Trent’s late husband Ronan killed Alice Rhodes, which it now seemed certain that he did, the facts needed to come out. Alice Rhodes’ daughter, Vickie Ann, and her father, old Jim Tuttle, had been wondering since 1975. It was time they had answers. Closure, some people called it, though his years in law enforcement had convinced Aaron there was no such thing.
And Clara Trent? Clara Trent said that until Aaron drove over to talk to her the first time she had never heard of Alice Rhodes. Clara had married Ronan Trent several years after Alice was battered to death at the Gulf Dream Villas. The case was cold by that time, and Ronan Trent had dropped off the radar screen. When Aaron broached the subject, Clara had gotten a piece of paper so she could write Alice’s name down, checking the spelling with Aaron. He remembered that she was pale, but calm and businesslike as she wrote. Aaron saw a pink flush spread over her face and then fade, but that was all.
Clara had looked at him with an emotion Aaron couldn’t read— could have been disbelief, could have been pain— when Aaron persisted in asking if he could borrow something of Ronan’s to have it tested for DNA. After a brief hesitation she got up without a word and walked out of the room, leaving Aaron to wonder what the hell was coming next. In just a minute, though, she returned with a battered khaki hat that was stained with sweat and blobs of paint. She held it out to Aaron and said, “This was his painting hat.” The hat, in a plastic bag, was on the passenger seat. He was going to return it to her today, along with a file he had prepared about the Alice Rhodes case. It was the least he could do.
Despite the air conditioning the atmosphere in the car was close. Aaron dug in his pocket for his handkerchief and mopped his brow. Shadows of roadside trees skimmed across the windshield. There had been a lot of rain lately, the ditches overflowing, the trees verdant, the vines flourishing, twining avidly into the trees.
Ronan Trent had died and cheated the hangman. His widow, Clara, was collateral damage. It was a shame all around, but closing this case was the right thing to do.
The Alice Rhodes murder had been the first big case Aaron worked on after he joined the department. Of course he was small fry, and looked down on because his father, Woody, was the longtime county sheriff. Woody was a jovial back-slapper, a big man with a hearty laugh. Aaron— Junior— was quieter, more withdrawn.
It had always bothered Aaron that the Alice Rhodes murder went unsolved. Aaron hadn’t solved it back in 1975, but hey— neither had Woody. It took Aaron forty years, and he was looking at retirement, but he had solved it now.
Clara Trent. Collateral damage. It was a shame.
– 3 –
“Clara, would you like a cup of tea?” Nadine said.
Clara was standing by the front window of the gallery, looking out. Across a small parking lot, cars were passing through the outskirts of Luna Bay. Nadine, her assistant, was sitting behind a large white table displaying postcards, notecards, and a rack of brochures touting various Luna Bay attractions (fishing, snorkeling, boating, tanning, birdwatching, and more).
“Sorry. What?” Clara said. She turned around in time to see Nadine frowning at her with concern.
“Tea. Do you want a cup?” Nadine said.
“Oh. No, thanks.”
Nadine made a small sound of reproof. Blonde, freckled, a happily married mother of three, Nadine had been Clara’s assistant at the gallery for almost ten years. She was good at all the things Clara wasn’t— like everything connected with running a business. Clara had always relied on Nadine, but since Ronan died Nadine had been indispensable.
After a moment, Nadine said, “What time is the investigator guy supposed to get here, anyway?”
“Eleven.”
“And what’s his name?”
“I honestly don’t remember. I think he gave me his card, but I don’t know where it is. And I didn’t write it down.”
“Well, it’s ten on the dot right now,” Nadine said. She got up and turned the sign on the gallery door to “Open.” “If you’ve got an hour to spare, there are some items I’d like to go over with you.”
“All right.” Clara knew Nadine’s tactics by now. If Clara got moody— and Clara got moody regularly— Nadine tried to distract her. If tea wouldn’t work, a brisk business discussion just might. Clara followed Nadine toward the small office at the back.
Clara had started the gallery years ago. Her parents, both of them dead now, were well-off financially, and they hated Ronan. Ronan was their nightmare personified, everything they didn’t want for their daughter. They settled money on Clara, but with every possible proviso that Ronan would never be able to lay his hands on it. In a counter-move, Clara found a location and, using the money from her parents, started a gallery to show and sell Ronan’s paintings.
The largest room in the Clara Trent Gallery was devoted to Ronan’s dark, chaotic abstracts. When these failed to sell to the tourists who came to Luna Bay to enjoy the beach, sunsets, and seafood, the gallery went through rocky times. Clara, whose faith in Ronan’s talent never wavered, realized that she had to expand her scope if the place was going to survive. She herself had been an art student when she and Ronan met. As a desperation move, she began painting small works depicting local scenes— marshy landscapes with moss-hung trees, dunes covered with sea oats, shrimp boats, a deep blue bay with the dark line of an island on the horizon. Compared to Ronan’s work, these were the essence of convention, if not banality. As it happened, the tourists liked them and started to buy them. Then it turned out the locals liked them, too. Clara was asked to do a painting to be used on the poster for the oyster festival. She arranged for some of her more popular images to be reproduced on prints and notecards. The fortunes of the Clara Trent Gallery picked up, and Clara taught workshops, contributed paintings to charity auctions, and spoke to school art classes. Even so, she retained a solitary streak, and she remained, along with Ronan, an outsider.
At present, the Clara Trent Gallery showed the work of a number of local artists, plus Clara, plus Ronan. If Ronan had been bothered by the fact that Clara succeeded with the public as he never had, he didn’t say so. Being Ronan, he simply continued doing what he did, and painting what he painted.
Ronan regularly took his boat across the bay to the tip of a narrow, isolated peninsula called Loggerhead Point. He stayed away for weeks on end, camping in a tumbledown shack, painting works most people saw as incomprehensible and unappealing. Ronan had been going to Loggerhead Point for years, and he had made no concessions as he got older and became a grizzled, ferocious-looking man with ailments he wouldn't take care of, a local character who was tolerated but never understood. He refused, adamantly, to take a cellphone with him. He would not estimate the length of his stay. He decreed that Clara would see him when she saw him, and he did not want to be bothered otherwise.
Clara got used to it. She saw him when she saw him. Then one day he took his boat over to Loggerhead Point, disappeared into the dunes as usual, and weeks went by. He never came back. By the time Clara, with some trepidation, reported his absence to the police and they went looking, Ronan had been dead for a month at least, his body in a state of dissolution and ruin that didn’t bear thinking about. Certainly, thinking about it caused Clara, his wife for decades, acute pain. Not to mention guilt. But how could she have known? He had done it for years, and he had always come back eventually. When he left he had seemed in decent, if not perfect, health. Clara had had no reason to be concerned, or so Nadine had told her over and over. But judging from some of the looks she got in town, Clara wasn’t sure everyone took that view.
And now this. This investigation into the murder of Alice
Rhodes. But the investigator was coming, he would apologize for putting Clara through so much distress, and—
“Clara, you’re not listening. You’re not even pretending to be listening,” Nadine said.
Clara blinked. She said, “You’re right. I’m not even pretending. I’m sorry, Nadine.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Nadine said. “Let’s get the investigator out of the way first.”
As they returned to the front room, a couple of women wearing sandals and loose print dresses were walking in the front door. Nadine stood by to greet them, and Clara said, “I’ll wait upstairs. Call me when he gets here.”
Nadine nodded, and Clara climbed up the staircase to wait.
– 4 –
Aaron Malone had been on the road almost an hour. He was approaching the town of Luna Bay, with its spreading oaks and historic homes, the town marina with boats docked at the water’s edge. At the traffic light, he took the turn that led to the Clara Trent Gallery.
Aaron didn’t come over to Luna Bay much these days. Too many tourists, too many fancy shops, too many eating places serving healthy food. Aaron wanted his seafood fried, and served with hush puppies and iceberg lettuce salad with ranch dressing. Or just skip the salad. Anything steamed, or even broiled, was not appealing to him. Shrimp could be boiled, though. And oysters could be raw. With hot sauce and soda crackers. Aaron felt his stomach rumble. It was only late morning, and he was hungry already.
Soon he was leaving downtown Luna Bay. Blue water was visible off to his right, and shops had given way to houses. He could see the gallery up ahead, a two-story white frame house with a small parking lot in the front and a magnolia tree in the side yard. A sign over the front steps said The Clara Trent Gallery. Aaron pulled into the parking lot and turned off the motor. He wished, briefly, that he could be back in the office doing paperwork. Picking up his briefcase and Ronan’s hat in the plastic bag, he got out and trudged toward the front door.
He entered the front room, spacious and white-walled and hung with paintings. He had passed through here briefly on his previous visit. A woman he remembered as Clara Trent’s assistant said, “You’re here to see Clara, aren’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m Aaron Malone, from St. Elmo.”
“I’ll let her know you’re here.”
Aaron gazed around the room at the paintings. He hadn’t really looked at them last time he was here. They had a calm atmosphere about them, he thought. He wouldn’t mind having one on his wall at home. He glanced into the next room, which was hung with large canvases covered with blobs of paint that looked like somebody just threw it on. The colors were dark with slashes of bright, and there was no telling what they were supposed to be. He drew back to look at the first group again.
He was trying to identify the location in one of them when a voice said, “What do you think?”
He hadn’t heard Clara Trent approach. He turned to her and said, “These are really pretty.”
Clara looked tense, he thought. He hated to think how she’d be feeling soon. She said, “You like them?”
Art was not one of Aaron’s specialties. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
She gave a brief nod. He saw that her hands were clasped tightly in front of her. She seemed to be doing her best to be cordial— unless she was just trying to postpone their conversation. She said, “You can probably recognize where some of these were painted.”
Aaron moved closer to look at a seascape. After a moment he said, “This one looks like St. Elmo Bay. Because of that line of trees back there.”
“You’re right.”
“It looks just like that. Whoever painted this one was really good,” Aaron said.
She smiled briefly and said, “Thank you. I painted it. All the paintings in this room are my work.”
“Really?” Aaron had known Clara was a painter, but he hadn’t given much thought to the fact. He said, “They’re beautiful.”
“I’m glad you like them.” She didn’t sound all that glad, but she didn’t sound sorry, either. She looked straight at him, but her gaze told him nothing. She said, “We can talk upstairs.”
He followed her up the staircase and into her apartment, where they had met before. They entered a large, open room with a couple of sofas and coffee tables as well as a dining table next to large windows that looked out on an upstairs deck and, beyond that, grass-covered dunes, a white strip of beach, and the bay.
Above one of the sofas was a large painting that Aaron remembered from last time. The colors were intense, black and purple and deep blue, with a few slashes of red and yellow. It could’ve been two crabs tearing each other apart, or it could’ve been something else. Aaron nodded at the painting and said, “Who painted that one?”
“That’s one of Ronan’s.”
“Oh.”
While Aaron was trying to think of an appropriate comment Clara said, “Please sit down,” and he put his briefcase and the plastic bag on the coffee table and took a chair.
Clara sat across from him, her eyes fixed on his. She said, “What do you have to tell me?”
Aaron took a breath and started to talk.
– 5 –
Clara had now committed to memory the investigator’s name: Aaron Malone. At the moment he was sitting in her living room, a sad expression in his brown eyes. He was wearing a navy blue blazer and khaki slacks, both of which were somewhat wrinkled, and his blue striped tie was askew. He looked like a man who would rather be anywhere but where he was.
“I don’t believe it, Mr. Malone,” Clara said.
Aaron Malone took a white handkerchief— also wrinkled— from his pants pocket and mopped his forehead. He said, “I understand how you feel—”
“Honestly, Mr. Malone, I doubt that you do,” Clara said.
She saw him take a breath. He put his handkerchief away and said, “Mrs. Trent—”
Yes, her remark had sounded hostile. But in this situation, a hostile attitude would be a mistake. “Please call me Clara.”
He looked surprised, but said, “All right. And I’m Aaron.”
She leaned forward. Between them was a coffee table with Ronan’s hat, contained in a plastic bag, sitting on it, along with a manila folder. In a more neutral tone she said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe it, Aaron.”
“That’s understandable,” he said, his tone equally neutral.
“You’re telling me my husband Ronan— my late husband— murdered this woman. Alice Rhodes. Back in nineteen-seventy-five.”
“Yes, ma’am— Clara. We got a match on his DNA. The case is closed.”
“Just like that.”
“It was the last piece of the puzzle. I’m truly sorry to have to tell you this news.”
Clara tried to sit back in her chair, but she couldn’t. She wanted to launch herself toward Aaron Malone, grasp him by his shoulders, and tell him how wrong he was. Nobody knew Ronan’s flaws better than Clara. He was a madman who had driven her crazy for years. She would believe almost any negative story about Ronan’s behavior, but she did not believe he murdered this woman— Alice Rhodes.
She said, “Mr.— Aaron, you told me you decided to reopen this case some months ago. Why?”
He shrugged, as if his reasons were trivial. “We go through cold cases once in a while, see if there’s a way to clear them up. In this instance, we had physical evidence that I thought might yield DNA. Back in ’seventy-five nobody knew about DNA. That path wasn’t available to us then.”
Clara nodded. “So you sent off— a piece of carpet?”
“That’s right.”
“It had semen on it, this carpet.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Yes. I sent it to the State Lab to see if there was evidence of DNA. And as you know, there was.”
She nodded. “So they found DNA, and you looked for a match.”
“I looked for a match in the system, among the recorded samples. There was no match.”
“Right.” Clara felt her fists
clench. She didn’t even try to open her hands. “So you had DNA but no match. And at that point, you decided to take another look at my husband, Ronan.”
“That’s right.”
“My real question,” Clara went on, “is why you made that leap. Why Ronan? I thought you said you had several suspects. But you came to me first, didn’t you? To get a sample from Ronan?”
“Yes. I did.” Aaron’s face had closed down. It was taut, expressionless. He went on, “I came to you because Ronan Trent was our primary suspect at the time. It made sense to try him first.”
“He was your primary suspect? You did have others?”
“We had others. But Clara, the fact is that Ronan’s DNA matched our evidence. We don’t need to test anybody else. I’m sorry. Very sorry. But the case is closed.”
Clara felt her face getting hot. Worse, she felt tears brimming in her eyes. Chagrined, she blinked them away. She said, “You are wrong. You’re wrong, and Ronan isn’t here to plead his case.”
Aaron looked at her with infuriating pity. “Ronan had a chance to plead his case back in nineteen seventy-five,” he said gently. “He told us a story that was full of holes, and it kept changing. We know he lived at the Gulf Dream Villas, a few doors down from Alice Rhodes. According to him, he knew her by sight, but had never been in her apartment. Well, now we know he was definitely in her apartment, so he lied about that. We know he was playing poker that night at the Gulf Dream Lounge, down on the highway below the Villas. First he said he was at the poker game the whole evening. Then he said maybe he left for a little while to go back to his place for more money, since he was losing. Then he said he probably did go back, and when he went back he saw somebody— a person he couldn’t identify— lurking in the dark near Alice’s place. Meanwhile the poker players were drunk, and a fight broke out over somebody cheating. None of the players could say whether your husband was there the whole time or not. Nobody else reported someone lurking in the dark up at the Villas. We couldn’t make a case— against Ronan, or anybody else. But now we can, and now we have.”
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