Sweet Revenge

by Diane Mott Davidson

  The oncoming phalanx of law enforcement personnel didn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that if Drew Wellington was indeed dead, the media would swoop down on our small mountain town with less mercy than local red-tailed hawks showed to meadow mice. Even on a frigid December night like this, they would come. I looked back at our little library. Wind whipped the snow into the pines and aspens around the brick building and up the hill that ran behind it. I could just imagine the shrieking announcements: It looks as if a former district attorney has met a mysterious end in the library… It would be a TV, radio, and newspaper feeding frenzy. I didn’t want to think about it.

  Maybe Drew had just had a heart attack. It could be, I thought, that the cops from next door were only being careful in ordering us all apart. Perhaps Drew was going to make it. But I doubted it very much.

  Roberta Krepinski stood not ten yards away from me. At least she’d had the forethought to don a puffy down jacket. In the light of the neon lamps that shone outside the entrance, her face appeared ghostly pale. Poor thing. Maybe because she looked so young and so thin, I felt motherly toward her. I made a mental note to ask the sheriff’s guys to have all the staff and volunteers wrapped in the quilts that loving, unpaid workers sewed for the victims, families, and witnesses to accidents and violent crime.

  I pulled my cell out of my apron pocket and tried Tom…again. The last few times I’d punched in the numbers, I’d received that rapid busy signal that told me either everybody and their brother was on a cell phone, or Tom was driving through one of those folds in the mountains into which no signal penetrated.

  “Schulz,” he answered on the first ring. That businesslike tone of his put the fear of God into criminals, and sometimes even me. I shuddered.

  “Something bad has happened to Drew Wellington,” I began without preamble. “Roberta found him…” My teeth were chattering and my ears felt frozen.

  “Goldy.” Now his voice was warm, comforting. “Tell me where you are.”

  “I’m at the library. The department is on its way.”

  “I know. My guys already called me. I should be there in fifteen minutes.” He paused for a fraction of a second. “Did you…see anything?”

  “No, but—” The wind whistled into my cell as I tried to talk.

  “Goldy?”

  “Sorry, it’s just—” I wanted to tell him about seeing Sandee, or seeing a woman who looked a lot like Sandee, at the library.

  “Why don’t you wait in your van? You can come out and meet our guys when they get there.”

  “Some officers are already here. I mean, they were next door. We’re supposed to wait.”

  “We?”

  My mind whirled. “Sorry to be so out of it. I’m talking about all the library staff and the volunteers. Plus myself. They told us to hang around so we can talk to, you know, the investigators. Your guys.” My teeth were chattering. “Plus then there’ll be an ambulance, more cops—”

  “Please do me a favor and get in your van. If anyone hassles you, tell them to call me.”

  “All right, all right,” I promised as I walked toward my vehicle, which was exactly where I’d left it. The vehicle that had been parked so ineptly next to me was gone. I felt my shoulders sag.

  “Tom, there was an SUV next to me, and now it’s gone—”

  “Miss G. Get in your van and lock the doors. Then you can tell me what’s bothering you. Besides the missing car there. Something else happened, right?”

  What something had happened, really? As I wrenched open the van’s driver-side door, I tried to mentally rewind and replay those fifteen minutes before the library was supposed to close. I’d been setting up for an event. I’d seen that ghost again, this time near the shelves. Then everything had imploded.

  “I thought I saw Sandee near where Drew was found. She may have been watching him.”

  “Sandee Brisbane? Again?”

  “Yup. Then a few minutes later, Roberta Krepinski discovered Drew in a chair by the corner,” I went on. “You know Roberta, the reference librarian?”

  “I don’t know her. But she found Drew Wellington?”

  “Yes, Tom. She said she thought he was asleep, and went to wake him.”

  “You talked to her?” he asked, his tone tense. If this was a crime scene, was the implication, he wouldn’t want me talking to anyone.

  “She called for help when she found him, and I went to see what was wrong. She kept repeating, ‘I thought he was sleeping.’ I guess she feels responsible.”

  “But you didn’t see Sandee, or someone who looks like her, still hanging around?”

  “No, Tom. And you’re right. I’m not even sure it was Sandee. You know her hair’s different, or at least not the same as Sandee Brisbane’s was six months ago. But I’m pretty sure it was the same woman I saw in the car last month, up on the road to Regal Ridge. You know? I thought that woman was Sandee, too.” There was silence for such a long time on the line that I thought I’d lost the signal. “Tom?”

  He took a deep breath. “How’s Roberta doing now?”

  “Not so hot.” I didn’t say what I suspected, that Roberta would be traumatized that her beloved library was now going to be invaded by law enforcement, and to receive more negative media attention than the Hindenburg.

  “You’re sure she was the one who first came across him, Miss G.?”

  “Yes. No. The emergency exit was making this horrible noise, and I just heard Roberta moaning and crying, and I went over to help. We lowered Drew onto the floor—”

  “Aw, jeez.” Tom’s tone said, So much for the crime scene.

  “Tom! We thought he’d had a heart attack or maybe a stroke, I don’t know. He looked awful. I felt his neck and there was no pulse.” Almost as an afterthought, I said, “There might have been blood on the carpet.”

  “You didn’t see a weapon anywhere, I take it?”

  “Nope. Just a thermos of spilled coffee, and a, well, a silver flask inside his briefcase. And it was…cold over there. That emergency exit I mentioned? It had been opened. Plus, there was…the smell of booze, and coffee.”

  My phone beeped—call waiting. Could it be Arch, phoning to say he’d arrived at Todd’s? Like Tom, Arch was a worrier.

  “Tom, I have to go. This could be Arch.”

  “See you in ten.”

  Instead of Arch, my caller turned out to be good old Marla, who in addition to being my dear pal was the self-appointed Aspen Meadow Town Gossip.

  “Tell me,” she said breathlessly. “Drew Wellington? He’s, uh, been involved with half the women in Furman County. And not all of them women his age, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t know what you mean. And how did you hear so quickly about what was going on here?”

  She cleared her throat. “A library patron who was allowed to leave gave me a buzz, thought I’d want to know what was happening.”

  I shook my head. “So what’s this about Drew being a ladies’ man?”

  “Doesn’t Tom let you in on anything?”

  “Not on that kind of thing. Plus it’s been a few years since Drew was D.A. The department is due here any minute, though—”

  “Oh, please,” she said, indignant. “The department is going to want to talk to me, when they try to figure out what happened.”

  “I’ll send them right over. So,” I said, thinking of twenty-two-year-old Sandee, “were these women all younger than Drew?”

  “Some of them were,” she said, then hesitated. “Actually, I’m not familiar with all the details. I’ll check. Somebody could have been executing a vendetta, that kind of thing.”

  “We don’t even know if what happened here was a crime.”

  “Uh-huh. Has law enforcement arrived?”

  As if on cue, red, blue, and white lights cut through the darkness and falling snow. That shrill call of sirens approaching meant that all the regular folks out on the road had finally moved out of the way. I shivered inside the van, which I hadn’t
turned on while I was trying to talk on my cell.

  “You’re not saying anything,” Marla prompted.

  “They’re almost here. You want to tell me something, or not?”

  “He was involved with at least three women that I know of,” she said quickly. “And he called them all problems. Topping the list was his ex-wife.”

  “What? Who describes his ex-wife as a problem?”

  “Who doesn’t?” Marla’s voice was impatient. “I heard Elizabeth still hates Drew. Doesn’t that make her a problem?”

  The sirens’ screaming was less that a block away. The police-car and ambulance lights flashed so brightly I had to turn away and face the hill that rose behind the library. “What other woman problems did he have?”

  Marla sighed. “His girlfriend is Patricia Ingersoll.”

  “Patricia Ingersoll? The head of Losers?”

  “The very one. I’m sure the head of a local weight-loss group hopes one day to put you, O lover of cream, out of business. Poor thing, it’s only been a year and a half since cancer killed Frank. I think she’s still on the rebound from losing him. Still, I heard Patricia had cheered up when she and Drew Wellington set a wedding date.”

  I wanted to say, You heard that from whom? But one of the sirens had stopped. The prowler lights flashing through the pines had also ceased their shaky forward movement. Two medics with their bags jumped out of the ambulance and raced into the library.

  “I need to talk to you later,” I told Marla. “But tell me quickly how you learned about Drew’s love-life issues.”

  “A friend of mine, along with perhaps twenty other people, heard Drew Wellington making a cell-phone call at DIA, just before their flight to Salt Lake City. He said he had a problem with his ex-wife, and a problem with his girlfriends. That’s girlfriends, plural. Then he laughed. And he yucked it up about his situation within earshot of all twenty folks.”

  “Problems with his girlfriends?” I echoed. “That’s girlfriends with an s? Is that the third woman?”

  Somebody tapped on my window and I jumped.

  “Mrs. Schulz, is that you?” A round face with thick lips and pudgy cheeks was peering into the van. He wore a dark, scalp-hugging snow hat. “Goldy? It’s Neil Tharp, Mr. Wellington’s…business associate. Could we talk to you? Could you get out of your van for a minute, please?”

  “Bye, Marla.” I closed my phone and got out of the van.

  “Miss G.?” Tom called from the front lawn of the library. Tom was here, finally. Thank God.

  Neil Tharp glanced back at Tom and licked his lips. When someone from the crime-scene unit suddenly cried, “Schulz!” Tom had to go off in the opposite direction. Neil, sensing an opportunity, pulled off his hat, as if he were introducing himself, but he wasn’t.

  “We need to talk to you,” he said urgently.

  “What’s that, the royal we? I’m not supposed to be talking to anyone until I’ve given a full statement to the police, Mr. Tharp.”

  He pulled his unhealthily pasty face into a scowl and countered with “Mrs. Wellington is very eager to talk to you.” He motioned to a dark Jeep.

  My shoulders sagged as Elizabeth Wellington barreled in the direction of my van. The former prosecutor’s ex-wife was a professional fund-raiser. Short and top-heavy, she had narrow dark eyes, a steel-wool pad of blackish-brown hair, and a way of charging up to you that made you feel as if she was going to bowl you over. She always wanted donations for this or that, and she was very good at making you feel guilty if you politely declined to get out your checkbook. I’d catered for her a few times, for charity events, and we went to the same church, St. Luke’s Episcopal. Even in the best of times, I hadn’t found her to be the most pleasant of women. And this definitely was not a best time.

  “What happened to Drew?” she demanded of me now.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Would you answer my question, please?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “We heard you were with him,” she argued. “You must tell us.”

  I looked at both Neil Tharp and Elizabeth Wellington. How did everyone in this town hear news so quickly? I said wearily, “I must not.”

  Neil Tharp said, “We’ll see what Investigator Schulz has to say about that.”

  I almost laughed.

  Neil politely told Elizabeth Wellington that it would be better if she waited in the Jeep. She charged away as quickly as she’d appeared. Neil, meanwhile, scooted toward me until his short, muscled body was uncomfortably close. I felt annoyed, because I wanted to see Tom, to talk to him, to be held by him. I did not want to visit with a man whose sparse black hair, now being snowed on, was held in its comb-over by something vaguely smelling of musk.

  “You have to talk to me,” Neil repeated.

  I shook my head and stared at him. He squinted at me and did not move, as if we were in some kind of standoff. I turned aside, looked straight ahead, and did my best to ignore him. Meanwhile, Tom was taking forever with the crime-scene unit.

  I knew Neil Tharp had worked for Drew Wellington in the map-selling business. These days, accumulating maps—or cartographic records and charts, as one church matron called them—had suddenly become very big, for both decoration and investment. Now that the family-crest and coat-of-arms fads had passed, these collectors, mostly nouveau riche folks like the MacArthurs, had an insatiable desire to make the interiors of their new mountain homes look respectably old by putting up maps with Latin words that nobody, except perhaps Arch, could read.

  What was next, I wondered, tapestries of the Lady and the Unicorn?

  Still, I’d watched with amused interest as Neil Tharp waddled around behind Drew during the coffee hour after the Sunday services at St. Luke’s. Our rector, Father Pete, had specifically prohibited folks from trying to sell any kind of stuff at church. But Drew had ignored him and worked hard, and charmingly, on trying to enlighten parishioners as to what a great investment old maps were, how they dignified the living-room walls of the very best homes.

  If Father Pete had frowned on Neil and Drew’s practice of hustling business during the two church-service coffee hours, he had frowned even more severely when the two men started showing up with freshly baked doughnuts from the Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop. I, of course, knew well that there was nothing like free food to put people into a buying mood. Father Pete had tried to look stern, but two cream-filled chocolate-glazed Bismarcks was all it had taken to get him in line. But the next week, I hadn’t been so sure of this. Father Pete had continued to watch Drew and Neil carefully…and after a while, he declined all doughnut inducements.

  One time, when Drew had been uncharacteristically absent, I’d seen Neil’s mouth moving as he sat in one of the pews before the liturgy. I had wondered if he was speaking in tongues. Turned out he’d been talking into his cell through an earpiece. At the time, I’d thought this showed profound disrespect for the Almighty. Like Roberta Krepinski wanting to correct folks at the library, I’d wished for an electrified cattle prod, turned to zap.

  “Miss G.,” Tom called out again finally. “I’m coming.”

  “Mrs. Schulz,” Neil said quickly. “Here is Investigator Schulz. Now talk to me, please. I know you were supposed to be setting up for an event, so I would like to know exactly what happened in there, how someone in the library could have—”

  “Uh, excuse me,” said Tom as he placed his large left hand oh-so-gently on Neil’s chest. “I need you not to talk to my wife at this time, please.”

  “Do you have any idea who I am?” Neil sputtered. “I must know what happened here, and if you do not allow me to talk to…to your wife, I will report your insubordination to your—”

  “I know who you are.” Once again, Tom’s clipped speech sent chills of fear down my back, and he wasn’t even talking to me. I had no idea how Neil Tharp’s spine was doing. I know that Neil was pushing his chest up against Tom’s hand, and Tom was pressing hard right back. “Let’s see. Insubordinat
ion? Okay, I got it. I need you not to talk to my wife at this time, please, sir.”

  “But you don’t understand,” Neil wheedled. “Mr. Wellington had some very, very valuable pieces with him—”

  “Pieces of what?” Tom asked.

  “I’m not going to talk to you now,” Neil Tharp said with a sudden sniff. “I will reserve my comments for the sheriff only. Meanwhile, I am leaving.” He abruptly turned on the thick heel of one of his black leather shoes and marched off in the opposite direction. Tom pointed to one of his investigators, then to Neil. One thing was certain: Neil wasn’t going anywhere.

  “Oh, that was smart, Tom. He reports you to the sheriff, then what? You’re always telling me to be more agreeable—”

  Tom leaned over furtively and pecked my cheek. I wanted to kiss him back, but I was suddenly aware that the team of cops unrolling crime-scene tape around the library parking lot had stopped moving.

  I murmured, “Thanks. But really. What’s going to happen if Neil Tharp reports you to the sheriff?”

  “Oh, that.” Tom gazed off in the direction of Drew Wellington’s assistant, who was being questioned by an investigator. “Was Neil Tharp in the library this afternoon? I mean, did you see him?”

  “No.”

  “And you don’t know how he got here so quickly.”

  “No to that, too.”

  “Trust me, we’ll deal with him later. Now”—his green eyes penetrated mine—“how are you doing?”

  “I’m cold,” I said, suddenly realizing I was freezing.

  “Why didn’t you stay in the van and turn on your engine, get yourself warmed up?” he scolded.

  “Because I was trying to talk on my cell, and my engine isn’t all that quiet. And then Neil Tharp came over and started peppering me with questions.” I couldn’t seem to help the note of hysteria that was creeping into my voice. “He was so demanding!” Without my willing it, my voice rose. “And then, you saw him, he was practically pushing his way into my face—”

  “Stop talking for a sec.” Tom cocked his head toward the team of curious cops, who pretended to be working diligently to finish the unwinding of the crime-scene tape. “Everybody’s listening very hard.”