Driven to Murder

by Judith Skillings

  Outside, a cluster of children chattered as they drifted down the sidewalk. Inside it was hushed. Enjoying the moment’s solitude, Jo traced a finger along the molding of the built-in bookcases, glanced at the titles. Sailing, architecture, history dominated the lower shelves. On the middle shelves, the covers of best-selling fiction were pristine, spines unbroken. Over the summer, he’d promised himself that he would transform the smallest bedroom at the farm into a reading room with bookshelves on all walls and a skylight overhead. Like many of his daydreams, it would have to wait.

  Hearing footsteps, he turned. Pauline Moore entered the room ahead of her husband. When she paused to take stock of the lawyer, Robert stepped to her side.

  It was easy to see how the couple had passed as Rebecca’s parents. From Robert’s family Rebecca had inherited the body type, as well as the shape of his eyes. But not the color: Hers were gray-green; his were Atlantic blue. From Pauline came the outward expressions: the erect posture, the tilt of her head, the nervous hand gestures. Unconsciously or intentionally, Rebecca had mimicked Pauline’s mannerisms and her style.

  Pauline finished crossing the room to Jo and took his hand. She was gracious, cordial because breeding dictated it, but mistrust showed in her eyes.

  When she released his hand, he rocked back a half-step and nodded to them both. “Thank you for agreeing to see me on such short notice. I gave you the impression that I’m here in an official capacity. For that I must apologize. It’s not the case. Mrs. Wetherly did not send me. Rebecca does not know that I’m here.”

  Robert faltered. “You said you were her lawyer?”

  “I am. I’m also her friend.” He opened his hands, palms up. “An interfering one, I’m afraid.”

  Pauline grinned and slipped out of the room. She returned with coffee and biscotti, off-loaded them onto a pie-edged cherry table. She sat opposite Jo while Robert lingered near the windows, looking out, apart from the civilities. Lost in his own thoughts, he might not have been listening.

  Dunking a dried slice into the thin china cup, Pauline asked polite questions. Beneath her Bostonian accent, Jo heard a softer cadence. Occasionally a Southern expression popped through. Rebecca had never mentioned her mother’s origins. Obviously not New England. “Natchez?”

  Pauline looked startled. “Where I’m from? Nowhere so grand. A four-stop intersection west of New Orleans.”

  “You’ve strayed very far north.”

  “I came to be educated and stayed.”

  “Even when staying meant raising another couple’s child, pretending she was your own?”

  “Rebecca is family: Robert’s niece. His brother was dead. It was the least we could do.” She lowered her voice and cranked up the country charm. “Though believe me, lawyer, I would have suckled gator pups to stay in Robert’s world.” She pushed her cup aside. “Besides, it was no hardship; Robert and I wanted children.”

  “Yet hadn’t had them, after what, seven years of marriage?”

  Pauline shook crumbs from her fingers onto the napkin. “You’ve done your homework. And you are merciless. I understand why you and Rebecca get along.”

  Jo smiled. He didn’t mind being considered ruthless like Rebecca. Perhaps he was more ruthless, for he’d discovered a chink in the very smooth veneer Pauline wore. One Rebecca would never have noticed. There was a story behind their initial lack of offspring.

  Pauline left the room to refill the coffeepot. Jo blotted his lips on the small square of linen. He longed to ask Robert Moore the question taunting him: Why did you never tell Rebecca the truth? What would the man say? That at first Rebecca was too young to understand. Then as time passed it grew harder to explain. Everyone apparently accepted her as their daughter. Telling her the truth would have served no purpose, only inflicted hurt. As it was doing now. Hurt doubly painful because Rebecca could not tolerate half-truths. But Rebecca’s father faced away from him, waited for his wife’s footsteps before turning.

  When Pauline sat, Jo linked his fingers like a boy in Sunday school. He’d had enough socializing. “How did you pull off the deception within the family?”

  Pauline was not offended by his abruptness. She smiled a wide seductive grin. “It all fell into place so smoothly, Mr. Delacroix. It seemed like fate.”

  “Please, call me Jo.”

  She nodded as she continued. “So smoothly, Jo, it was like the gods had choreographed it. The lies simply became truths. Thanks largely to my mother.”

  She hitched her chair closer, putting her back to her husband. To shield him, or to exclude him? Perhaps to prevent his hearing a variation on the truth she’d fabricated especially for the nosy lawyer? Jo leaned back, ready to listen with the trained ear of a storyteller, with the jaded one of a lawyer.

  Like a proper Southerner, Pauline began with her past. She claimed she was the product of the union between a mediocre insurance salesman and a failed Delta queen. Her mother, Suzanne Blanchard, had failed at so many things—marriage, child rearing, life—that she had no choice but to drink her sorrows away. When particularly drunk, which included those few occasions that she was invited to their holiday gatherings, Suzanne liked to remind her daughter that she likewise was a failure.

  “No offspring, despite being married to a stud from such a fine, frigid family. Her words. More coffee?”

  “No thank you.”

  She went on as if oblivious to Robert’s presence. “When I could no longer tolerate her jibes, I announced I was pregnant. It was just to shut her up. I planned to ‘lose’ the baby before having to produce it. Then Jamie’s sailboat capsized and we found Rebecca.”

  Her voice softened as conflicting emotions flickered across her face. He wondered how she would describe the event to a close friend: as one of the most overwhelming days of her life, or one of the most joyous? Or a little of both?

  Robert walked into her range of vision, ending the confession. He picked up the story. “My mother-in-law’s drinking was an asset, as was her distance. She lacked the money to travel and Pauline rarely returned to Louisiana.”

  At the mention of drinking, he crossed to a built-in cupboard and produced a bottle of Lillet, splashed the pale liquid into three etched glasses. He placed one near his wife’s arm and handed another to Jo. It was too early for him, but he said nothing. Robert Moore invited him to stay for lunch. Jo declined, saying he had a twelve o’clock flight. Moore nodded before taking a sip.

  “By the time Pauline’s mother first held Rebecca, we’d convinced her that she had misremembered the birth date. Lied that our daughter had been born many months earlier. Pretended to be affronted that she couldn’t even get her granddaughter’s birth date correct. Rebecca was a petite infant and toddler, so the deception was plausible, if not totally convincing. I’m sure Suzanne has always suspected something wasn’t quite kosher, but she can’t deny the family resemblance. Most likely she assumes Rebecca is my love child, whom Pauline agreed to raise. It doesn’t matter.”

  Except to Rebecca.

  “And your own parents?”

  Pauline took over the thread of the story so smoothly it seemed rehearsed, or at least pre-arranged, with each of them assigned specific chapters to narrate. She leaned forward, a fingernail trailing along the design in the glass. “As I said, the fates were kind. Thad and Eleanor Moore spent from nineteen sixty-five to seventy-eight in Europe. Thad was a economics professor assigned to a think tank in Geneva. They were totally immersed in his work and the circle of friends they’d made. In all that time, they returned to the States only once. They were dependant on my letters and Robert’s occasional phone calls for news of home.

  “Jamie was such a disappointment to them. He was their Peter Pan son who left home to sail out of any port that offered him a job on the water. He’d be gone for the better part of year and we’d never hear a word. Rebecca was six months old before we knew she existed. I’d never even held her before the accident. So—”

  She pushed back, opening out to
include her husband. “So, we agreed to not tell Thad and Eleanor that their youngest son had sired a child out of wedlock. Somehow writing, ‘PS your bum-of-a-son has a bastard daughter,’ seemed a bit déclassé. We allowed Jamie and Nicole time to decide what they were going to do with their lives.”

  Jo met her stare, thinking: Or were you waiting until you also had produced an heir? Pauline Moore did not impress him as the sort who would settle for princess when the crown was up for grabs.

  Robert circled to stand behind her chair. “Mother had a severe case of bronchitis the spring Jamie and Nicole died in the sailing accident. The doctor would not allow her to leave Geneva and fly back for the funeral. She was immensely despondent. So distraught that we added a direct lie to the earlier one of omission. Having never told them about Jamie’s child, we decided to pass Rebecca off as our own.

  “Over the phone, I confessed to my mother that Pauline had given birth to a girl some months earlier. I took full blame for not telling them sooner, invented complications during the pregnancy and with the birth. Insisted that Rebecca had been so sickly, we feared she would die. We hadn’t wanted to burden my parents when they were too far away to do anything. They were hurt, as you can imagine, but delighted to learn they had a grandchild. It helped get them through losing Jamie. Six months later, when they finally visited, Mother realized that Rebecca was nearer two years old than one. ‘Overly precocious,’ was how she phrased it. We told her the truth.”

  “She agreed to say nothing?”

  Robert grinned for the first time that afternoon. “Not even to my father, who is oblivious to everything except the economic repercussions caused by political upheavals. Rebecca could have sprouted two heads and he would have patted each one without comment.”

  So a tragedy had been layered with lies and turned into a blessing. An undersized, perhaps undernourished orphan had been given a home and raised with every advantage. Pauline had produced an heir out of the cold Atlantic, quieting her mother and giving hope to her in-laws. Robert had been able to see glimpses of his dead brother live on in Rebecca. A near-perfect ending.

  Not until he’d boarded his return flight did Jo analyze his meeting with Robert and Pauline Moore and term it a personal success. Despite his guilt over going there without Rebecca’s knowledge, he felt relieved. He’d given her parents some insight into Rebecca’s state of mind. Ammunition that might help them deal with her. He had no right to do that, but he’d known that before he boarded the plane in DC. What he didn’t know was how they would react to him. As it turned out, he was going home with a heavier briefcase and a lighter heart.

  As Robert was walking him to the door, Pauline had rummaged in the bookshelf. She handed him a photo album and a bound Moore family genealogy with a cracked spine. Both were for Dorothea Wetherly, to provide her concrete evidence of her granddaughter’s family. While she would never know Jamie, she could study every phase of his early years. Lower her magnifying glass and pour over snapshots—curled rectangles in black and white, which revealed so much apparent in the grown Rebecca. Dorothea would be pleased.

  What pleased him was their acceptance of him as a friend who cared for their daughter.

  Though too old to need it, he’d never outgrown the need for parental approval. Pauline’s was laced with wry understanding; Robert’s was more reserved, but he hadn’t dismissed Jo through the back door.

  They didn’t ask if his relationship with Rebecca extended beyond friendship, which was just as well. What would he have answered? That he cared enough to risk his life to save her from drowning? He would do it again without hesitation if necessary. He would save her over and over and over, like a dream you repeat nightly, hoping that the ending will change.

  Or praying it won’t.

  He would protect Rebecca because he had not saved his first love. There had been no parental approval then, from either family. Yet now Angelica’s father, Thomas Levy, was dying and wanted to see him. As the captain announced their final approach into Ronald Reagan National Airport, Jo leaned heavily against the seat and watched the sun blaze vermillion above the Potomac. In three days he would be on another airplane, traveling into his past. With luck, he would meet with Levy and finally have answers.

  Twenty-one

  After two and a half hours of unrelieved boredom, Mick got his fifteen minutes of Indiana fame giving his statement to the cops. Neither State Trooper Gunn nor Chief Patten of the Speedway Police was impressed with Mick’s police credentials. The rookie was skeptical that he’d come all the way to Indy to attend a race he didn’t care about. “How could a man not care about open-wheel racing?”

  Mick assumed that was a rhetorical question and let it pass.

  The officers were irritated that neither Hagan, Ian Browning nor Rebecca Moore could vouch for each other’s whereabouts in the hours just before the body was found, despite the fact that they were sharing a house. Which seemed too cozy and a mite peculiar. Particularly to the cop with the dimple. He’d gotten a good look at Moore. Even in a race suit, the package looked prime, for an older woman. The kid snorted. No way she should sleep alone with two men in the house. Mick didn’t blame him. Sounded pretty unbelievable to him, too.

  Gunn’s patience ran out faster than Mick’s questions. He ordered him to stop asking, since he wasn’t about to answer any more. Professional courtesy aside, the trooper saw no reason to share his findings with Lieutenant Hagan. “I will confirm that, at the moment, we’re treating the case as an assault by person or persons unknown, for reasons unknown. As soon as we talk to Mr. Madison we may know more, which I will not be sharing with outsiders.” Gunn walked away.

  Mick turned to Patten, cajoled him for the name of the hospital where Peyton had been taken, claiming Moore would want to send flowers. Maybe she would. Maybe flowers delivered to her ailing boss would assuage her guilt and they could hibernate for the rest of the day, lick each other’s wounds. He’d ask her as soon as she was free.

  At present, she was giving her statement to another officer for the official, soon-to-be-typed-and-signed version. Elise Carlson stood a few feet away, waiting for her turn to speak to her mechanic. In contrast to last night’s party mood, the lady was somber. No longer soignée, though still elegantly groomed. Her daytime attire consisted of Brooks Brothers’ resort wear: navy silk trousers and matching turtleneck, tan tweed blazer, cigarettes in the breast pocket behind a crest. She was the most put-together person milling around on the tarmac.

  He sidled over to commiserate with Browning and the security guard. One direct question about where the race teams kept their transportation elicited the information he wanted. There was lust in the security guard’s voice as he described the mother of all motor homes belonging to Peyton Madison. “Can’t miss it. It’s parked right outside the track, lot two. Size of a Greyhound bus and painted in the team’s colors of red, white and gold. License plate says PM003.”

  Mick exited at the nearest gate, walked down Sixteenth Street, turned right on Georgetown and crossed at the light. Lot number two, reserved for RV parking, was maybe an eighth-of-a-mile walk from the pit area. If, as Moore suspected, Madison had slept in the bus to keep an eye on the race car, how would he have known that an intruder was messing about in the tent? Was he doing rounds of the track every hour on the hour? Why not just hire a security guard, pay Henry overtime to come on duty early?

  The lot was packed full of motor homes like he’d never seen in a roadside campground. These were upscale, country-club cousins of those advertised on the Tom Raper Mobile Homes billboards that flashed by every two miles on Interstate 80. He could hear people stirring in a few as he walked past. The odor of coffee wafted from an open door. Some ambitious nomad had erected a Weber grill outside on the pavement and was frying bacon on a griddle.

  Peyton’s bus was parked diagonally near the back, taking up at least six spaces while warding off all neighbors. It was impressive, even if you found bus travel less appealing than tandem bicycling.
Shiny, freshly painted, smoked-glass windows. In addition to being a block long, both sides of the bus expanded outward a couple of feet, making it look like one of those toads that puffed out its cheeks to attract mates.

  He circled the bus, listening. Other than the hum of a compressor, all was quiet, as expected.

  When Browning had been dropped off after the party, his key wouldn’t open the door to the bus. He’d pounded but no one answered. His timing might have been off. His boss might have been in the bathroom. Or passed out and didn’t hear him. Or entertaining company and didn’t want to be bothered. Hell, it was possible that he was already fried and unconscious in the race car and the perp was inside searching the bus. Just like he hoped to be.

  He scanned the area looking for trash, retrieved a waxed hot dog wrapper from up against the chain-link fence. Used it when he inserted the key he’d borrowed from Browning into the lock, then placed the paper carefully over the chrome door latch and pulled. The latch released and the door swung open with an hydraulic whoosh. Good. No need for picks, no breaking and entering.

  He hollered out hello, not sure what he’d say if someone answered.

  No one did. He pulled himself up the two high steps into the bus and whistled in amazement. It wasn’t a bus, it was a suite. The driver’s and co-pilot’s seats were white leather, swiveled at a touch. There was a matching leather banquette along the left side with a teak coffee table in front of it. Another seating arrangement on the right, then Corian counter with cabinets above, dishwasher below. Microwave, sink, bathroom with large glass shower stall, separated off by a sliding mirrored door. At the tail end was the master bedroom with queen-size bed and a wall of closets. All the comforts of home and then some.