Rosemary for Remembrance

by Christine Arness

  “No, thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate your call.”

  After hanging up the telephone, she took a box of tissues from her desk drawer and wiped her eyes. “Goodbye, Michael,” she whispered.

  Letting go of the past left her with an empty feeling where the memory of Michael had rested, but for the first time since the accident she found herself at peace.

  Abigail was motionless, staring into space, when Debbie’s voice came over the intercom again. “An Oliver Payton’s on the phone, Abby. I know you said to hold your calls, but he claims it’s about the Dickison case.”

  Oliver Payton with the mocking eyes. Crippled in body and twisted in spirit. Oliver, the only man who knew for certain that Rosemary had been abandoned on Kelton Road.

  “Good afternoon, Ms. James. I assume you’ve seen the headlines? Nice photograph, but you look so professional and somehow sexless, not at all like the sensuous vixen who bullied me.”

  She found herself gritting her teeth and wished the man’s underlying tone of malice didn’t grate on her nerves. “You told the receptionist this call was about the Dickison case.”

  The rustle of a newspaper. “I’m not about to confess to murder, so don’t get your hopes up, but I had a dream about Rosemary that triggered a memory.” For the first time, he sounded subdued, tentative. “A few minutes after I turned off Kelton Road on my way back to town, a car passed me.”

  “Are you suggesting that this conveniently remembered and mysterious car clears you of suspicion? It won’t wash, Mr. Payton.”

  “But what if I can identify that car?” The pencil Abigail had picked up snapped in her hands at the question. “Last night I dreamt I was huddled behind the wheel, my cheek still stinging from Rosemary’s slap, when a car came toward me. Not content with blowing by in a cloud of dust, it swerved into my lane and I had to spin the wheel to avoid an accident. When I awoke this morning, I remembered that the incident actually occurred—and that distinctive high-set headlamp glaring into my eyes. The headlamp of a fancy car only a rich boy could drive.”

  She ignored the undercurrent of resentment that time hadn’t been able to dry up. “A rich boy and a fancy car.”

  “Austin Kyle. Every man in town envied him as he cruised in luxury while we had to be content with cracker box cars.”

  Abigail drew a deep breath. A witness who placed Austin near Kelton Road where Rosemary walked, unconscious of danger. “What makes you believe it was Austin’s car? Why didn’t you come forward with this information when Rosemary was found dead?”

  “I remember seeing him pull into the parking lot with only a single beam. The other must have burned out on his way to the dance. Austin kept that vehicle in tiptop shape. Whoever almost ran me off the road had one headlight. I can remember wondering in my drunken state if somehow I’d strayed onto the railroad tracks and a train was rushing toward me.

  “Celeste Borden lived out in the country and the quickest way to her place was to take Kelton Road to Walker Road. A tipsy Austin taking his date home hits a pedestrian, panics, and drives off. Wealthy parent buys off investigation. Logical?”

  He coughed. “That night I was totally humiliated. It seemed to me almost as if Rosemary had chosen death over my unwelcome advances. Today I reconstructed that muddled sequence of events and realized that the car with the glaring cyclops’s eye had been suppressed into a phantom of my nightmares.”

  Abigail sketched a crossroads with the pencil stub. “Would you swear to this information in a court of law?”

  A cackle of malicious laughter. “To see the judge stand in shackles before the peasants and proud Julia humbled? I’ll call that story in to the tabloids myself.”

  By telling the Kyles’ maid that she was Judge Wilcox’s secretary, Abigail got Austin on the line. She identified herself and requested a meeting.

  He sounded shaken, but strangely relieved. “I’ll meet you, but not here. I can’t be seen coming to your office, either.”

  “How about neutral ground?” she suggested. “One of the conference rooms in the basement of the historical museum. Three o’clock?”

  “Come alone. It will be easier that way.” He terminated the connection.

  Abigail thought about calling Ross and somehow making him listen. The worst he could do was hang up on her again, she thought.

  This time, however, Ross’s secretary refused to put her through. “I hear a lot of shouting going on and unless it’s a real emergency, Ms. James, I can’t let you talk to him. They haven’t even stopped for lunch.”

  Abigail wondered if Ross had refused to talk to her, was even now standing there listening to see if she’d beg. Okay, she thought. I’ll crawl, Ross, I’ll do whatever it takes to get you on my side again. Wording her message carefully to avoid using Austin’s name, she said, “Tell him that my suspicions were correct in the Dickison case and I’m meeting the suspect at the historical museum at three P.M.”

  Chapter 45

  José acted as Helen’s reluctant assistant in the construction of the bomb, mopping the sweat from his brow with a red bandanna and mumbling under his breath in Spanish as he tried to decipher the instructions in the experiment log. A bruise throbbed on his toe where he’d stubbed it while unearthing a battered tin box from the mountain of debris filling one end of the garage. His main contribution had been to pack the diesel fuel—soaked fertilizer into the container while Helen shaved one end of the fuse with an old razor.

  Now he was wringing his hands. “Be careful with the silver tube, Senora Peters. Riveria said it could explode.”

  Helen waved the crimping pliers in exasperation. “I’m accused of being senile—not silly, José. Everyone knows you don’t juggle a detonator. Now, I’ll just attach it to the fuse.”

  José winced. The hand of Dios must protect him from crazy old women. Unable to watch this step, he covered his eyes until Helen replaced the lid on the tin box and slid it into a large straw bag.

  “Now, we’ll pack some yarn on top. Old ladies are never without their knitting bags.”

  After stuffing in two skeins of baby blue that had been destined to become a blanket for a neighbor’s newborn, Helen slid the straw bag off the table. The weight of the concealed box was too much for a frail arm, however, and only José’s leap forward kept the explosive from crashing to the floor.

  “Oh, pooh on Roosevelt. It’s too heavy. What shall I do?”

  José laid the bag on its side as if handling a crate of thin-shelled eggs and yanked out the bandanna again. “Can we forget this madness, Senora Peters?”

  Her bony shoulders sagged. “I don’t want to lose my home, José.”

  Now Senora Peters reminded him of his grandmother and the sight of her faded eyes and sad pinched mouth twisted his stomach. A man cannot turn his back on his own grandmother. “I will carry it for you.”

  She brightened. “Wonderful, José. You’re such a darling boy—I think I’ll adopt you.”

  José rolled up his sleeves and lugged the bag out to the car as Helen locked up the house. Collapsing into the front seat, he clutched the silver crucifix at his throat and prayed for the protection of the Madre de Dios.

  Helen put the car into gear. By tonight the dreaded court would be no more. Destroy the court; destroy the nightmare.

  Chapter 46

  Flora struggled to suppress the gnawing pain that radiated through her body in waves. “What time is it?”

  “About a quarter to two. When Ms. James called, she said she’d be here after five.” Tenderly sponging beads of perspiration from the invalid’s forehead, Belle asked, “Can I get you anything?”

  Flora raked her nails on the light blanket covering her wasted body, her voice hoarse. “Rosemary’s pearl.”

  Trying to conceal her amazement at this request, Belle retrieved the jeweler’s box that had been concealed under folded satin sheets in a bureau drawer for many years. Opening the box, the housekeeper lifted the luminous orb from its velvet bed and placed the pearl
on Flora’s outstretched palm.

  A shudder racked her body as the skeletal fingers closed convulsively on the treasure; after a few moments, however, her contorted mouth relaxed, the sick woman gave a deep sigh and fell asleep. Belle watched in disbelief as the furrows of pain smoothed from the sufferer’s forehead, almost as if she drew some of her sister’s strength and life force from the pearl.

  Chapter 47

  Austin went up to his room and ran a comb through the abundant silver locks that Julia insisted remain swept back from his brow in a rather Roman senatorial style. As he studied the reflection of his soft shirt and silk tie, he wondered what type of clothing he would be issued in prison, and decided that faded denim would be better than the smothering robes of justice.

  After this meeting, the nomination to the court would no longer hang over his head like Damocles’s sword and he felt poised on the edge of a new life. Julia would be furious when she learned what he was about to do, but perhaps then she could relax and live her own life instead of trying to stage-manage his every moment. Austin’s only regret was that he wouldn’t be allowed to do any carving when in prison, but, of course, to hear his friend Warden Newberry talk, knives were always in plentiful supply behind bars.

  In her room, Julia pressed a cold hand to her lips, thankful she’d picked up the receiver in time to hear Austin make an appointment with that horrible James woman. She must prevent this meeting at all costs. Julia forced herself to pick up the receiver again, aware she was taking an irrevocable step, one that would change their lives forever, and wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or sorry when the man she’d been trying to reach since reading the morning paper picked up the phone.

  After listening to the torrent of words, he chuckled. “I planned on seeing Ms. James later on today but we might as well make it sooner. But before I do, Julia, I require some cash. About one hundred thousand dollars worth.”

  She sucked in her breath, aghast at the extent of his greed. “I can’t possibly come up with that amount of money. They’ll be meeting in an hour.”

  “I’ll take a written statement and an I.O.U., Julia. A written statement that you’re hiring me to commit murder.”

  “Murder!”

  “Don’t balk at the term—your hands aren’t exactly lily white, Lady Macbeth. Remember Nathan Reed, your fiancé who died such a tragic death?” As the sputtering on the other end of the line increased in volume, he grinned. “Oh, calm down—I’ll make sure Ms. James is no longer a problem. You just come up with the dough.”

  “You vicious hoodlum!”

  “I’ll meet you in the alley behind your bank—First Savings, isn’t it?—after I finish up here. I’ll be carrying my boom box, but don’t worry about being embarrassed by loud music. It’s a tape recorder and I’ve taped every one of our meetings and phone calls—just a little insurance in case you decide to show up with the cops behind you. Oh, and I’ll require that knuckle-duster you flash around as a down payment. The stones are genuine, aren’t they?”

  Julia cradled the receiver with shaking hands. The past was crashing down around her ears and she longed to curl into a fetal position and succumb to hysterics, but after a moment the steel returned to her spine. She was a Kyle. And she would cope.

  She hurried down the hall to Austin’s workshop, but found it deserted and one of the Gorham coffee servers lying on the floor surrounded by a dark pool of liquid. The waste of the spilled coffee seemed to represent her efforts to groom and mold Austin in her father’s image and she pressed her knuckles against her mouth, the cluster of diamonds and rubies cutting into her lower lip. Now the monster demanded the sacrifice of the ring given to her on her eighteenth birthday.

  She could not give up this symbol of her father’s love and trust. Stroking the column of her throat, her gaze traveled to the tool racks, and drawn toward their lethal sparkle in the sunlight, she stepped over the spilled coffee and studied the case of custom carving tools. The answer to her problem had been here all along; Austin’s foolish hobby would be the means to secure his nomination. Picking up a tool with a wicked curving hook on the end, she balanced it across her palm. She remembered that when her father had slipped the ring on her finger, he’d told her that she had the hands of a doer: “Not like your milksop of a brother, Julia. I’m depending on you to keep our honor bright. We are Kyles.”

  She experienced again the thrill of pride when he patted her hands. Lawrence Kyle rarely smiled on his children or displayed affection and this memory strengthened her resolve. A shaft of sunlight caught the cold steel, giving it a glowing life of its own, an Excalibur to save Camelot.

  “Austin will get that nomination, Father—I’ll protect our honor.” She smiled, reassuring a man who no longer existed except in her troubled mind.

  Julia was writing the required I.O.U. when the sound of a car’s engine sent her to the window in the front hall and she saw Austin drive away in his silver Mercedes, banishing her last hope that he was too cowardly to go through with the meeting. The maid brought in a basket of fresh flowers to be arranged in the dining room and stopped, seeing her mistress standing there, her spine rigid and her hands pressed against the glass as though she were a prisoner longing for a distant freedom.

  “Are you going out, too, Miss Kyle?”

  Julia started and made a visible effort at composure. “I have some business in town, Lizbeth. Tell Cook to push dinner back at least an hour. Get the dusting done. And Mr. Kyle spilled some coffee in his workroom—clean it up.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” An unsmiling Lizbeth watched Julia’s departure. “I hope Cook boils the dinner into shoe leather.”

  Chapter 48

  Gwen, an ice bag held to the throbbing lump on the side of her head, had been dialing Abigail’s number all morning. She listened to the phone ring for the fifteenth time and hung up.

  Before going to the store last night, they’d stopped at a card shop and he had charmed the clerk into bringing out the unsold valentines from six months previous. He took forever to pick out a card but instead of giving it to Gwen as she’d expected, he tucked it into the glove compartment—“for a very special lady.”

  After she’d programmed the computer to make the calls, they made love on her boss’s desk. He had been excitingly masterful and she had responded to his brutal demands like a flower lifting its head toward the sun.

  But afterward, while seated on the floor and sharing a marijuana joint, Gwen had made the mistake of teasing him about his obsession with the woman whose driveway he’d marked with the chalk outline and whose window he’d had her scream under, the woman who would be receiving those calls.

  “And I know her number,” Gwen had said with an innocent smile as her hand massaged his bare chest. “I’m gonna call her and tell her to leave you alone—you’re all mine.”

  His reaction was swift and brutal. Grabbing Gwen by the hair, he slammed her head against the wooden leg of the desk. Dizzy, sick with pain and disbelief, she heard the vicious words hissed in her ear, “If you ever talk about the things I’ve done, I’ll come back and kill you slowly, you silly little cow.”

  He pulled on his clothes with jerky movements, his breath coming in harsh gasps; she could sense his eyes boring into her cringing, naked body. “I’ve got some time to burn, baby—if you’re smart, you won’t make me have to come see you again. I know how to make you cry my name even as you plead for mercy.”

  And then he was gone, the outer door slamming as Gwen huddled on the floor and cradled her bleeding, throbbing head. She wasn’t able to stand up without falling until the early morning hours. Sick to her stomach, tears running down her cheeks, she pulled on her dress and replaced the blotter and other items that had been swept off her boss’s desk. After erasing the program from the computer, Gwen wobbled out to catch a bus.

  Her lover was crazy. He hated this woman—whoever she was. He hated all women. Gwen refilled the ice bag, aware that this other woman had to be warned—somehow Gwen knew he wou
ldn’t stop at just hurting the poor thing. But if she betrayed him, then he’d come back to exact his revenge—he knew where Gwen lived, too.

  She looked at the slip of paper on which she’d copied Abigail James’s number from the computer program and began dialing again, the most unselfish and heroic act of her life.

  Belle was also dialing Abigail’s home number at intervals. The receptionist at the law office had not been helpful: “Abigail is not available today. But if you’ll give me your name and number, I’ll see that she gets back to you tomorrow.”

  Tomorrow would be too late. He’d burst into the kitchen last night, making demands, shouting accusations. After two glasses of brandy, Belle had been in no condition to face his contempt.

  “You’re no better than one of the old-time slave girls, jumping into bed with the master of the house. What were you looking for, Belle? A little fun in between dusting and ironing? Did you really think he loved you? Did you enjoy it?

  “My momma didn’t enjoy it—being half white—having half of her blood blue instead of red. But you didn’t think of that, did you? Well, she followed in your footsteps—got pregnant at sixteen. From a white scum who treated her like his whore.”

  He mocked her horrified expression. “I suppose you think I’ve got it made with such a distinguished lineage, but even though I don’t look black, all the kids knew that inside I was a tar baby—the gangs called me ‘the pale face.’ I was beat up more times than a carpet during spring cleaning.”