Tammy sat up straight. “I tell you, I don’t know what the world’s coming to! Patty Kay Matthews, the richest woman in town.”
“Was it a robbery?” I asked innocently.
Laveme tilted my head to work on the back curls. “No. God, it’s worse than that. They’ve arrested her husband—but I can’t believe he did it. My Billy worked on his car. Billy says no way did Craig Matthews shoot somebody. One time Matthews was going to leave his Porsche and Billy saw the gun in his glove compartment and he asked Matthews to take it with him. Billy said he’s never seen a man act so silly. Matthews didn’t even want to put his hand on it.”
“I know somebody who didn’t have any use at all for Patty Kay.” The blond stylist wriggled with excitement. “I saw Patty Kay at Kroger’s just last week and she came around one of the aisles and there she was face-to-face with Louise Pierce, her first husband’s wife, and you know what?”
Laverne and I both looked at her expectantly.
“Well, if looks could kill! Louise Pierce gave Patty Kay the meanest, hardest glare and she stalked right by without saying a word. Not a word. And the funny thing is, see, it was always Patty Kay who was mad because Louise got Stuart and Louise always went around looking like a cat with cream on her whiskers. But last week it’s Louise who’s furious. Now, I just have to wonder why.”
I wondered too.
“And after Louise stomped by, Patty Kay turned and looked after her. And she looked real funny—almost like she was scared.”
• • •
The sign hung a little crooked on the doorknob, a pasteboard clock face with movable hands. They registered eleven A.M. The legend informed: OUT OF THE OFFICE, BACK SOON.
I used my umbrella to fend off the light drizzle and strolled the length of Fair Haven’s Main Street. The restored brickfront buildings offered a charming assortment of shops. I admired patchwork quilts, wooden carvings, hand-wrought jewelry, and antique furniture and silver.
I walked back to Gina Abbott’s shop. Her display included a long swath of Manuel Canovas fabric with a floral design—bright pink peonies and stylized jade-green leaves—draped over an eighteenth-century gilt wood backless seat patterned after a Roman camp stool.
Gilt letters in the lower left pane of the window read simply: GINA ABBOTT, DECORATOR.
The light rain, persistent, elegiac, misted against the windows. I stepped into the recessed entryway. I tried the doorknob and was startled when it moved. Was it an oversight or was this indeed such a law-abiding small town that Gina Abbott didn’t bother to lock up? More likely, she’d forgotten. Whatever, I propped my umbrella against the wall and went in.
Her taste ran to earth tones—mauve, coral, sand, peach. The showroom was fairly small, but it afforded several enclaves for customers, comfortable chintz sofas and chairs grouped around coffee tables at a good height for studying catalogues and swatches and wallpaper samples.
I wandered toward the back. A door stood ajar. I pushed it wider.
Gina Abbott’s office was a jam-packed mess, but cheerful. Bolts of cloth, swatches of fabric, photographs, house plans, and stacked catalogues were everywhere.
The walls were bare except for a snapshot-laden bulletin-board. I walked closer. I recognized four faces immediately. The tennis quartet was obviously of long duration. Lots of tennis pictures with Patty Kay, Gina, Edith, and Brooke when they were in their late twenties and early thirties. Sometimes their children were there. It didn’t take long to figure out which belonged to whom.
Brigit didn’t smile very often. But as a little girl, she was always stylishly dressed. Trust Patty Kay for that.
Elegant Brooke apparently had only the one child. Even when he was a little boy, Dan was as spectacularly handsome as his mother was beautiful, perfect bone structure, glossy black hair, wide-spaced blue eyes, even white teeth in a confident smile.
I recognized the freckle-faced, stocky girl who’d tried to get Edith’s attention at Brigit’s birthday party. And the red-haired boy who’d admired Dan’s dancing partner was obviously her brother. The little girl had an especially sweet smile, the boy a steady, inquiring gaze. Edith Hollis was usually the model of brightness, but every so often the camera caught that edge of surliness. Was it jealousy? Lack of confidence?
Most of the snapshots, of course, were of elfin Gina’s children. Gina’s daughter was the chubby blond girl who’d danced so adoringly with Dan Forrest. Gina’s two sons were wiry, short, dark, and exceptionally athletic. There were lots of photos of wrestling matches, swim meets, tennis tournaments. In contrast, her daughter was fair and plump and usually carrying a book.
“Who the hell are you?”
I hadn’t heard a sound.
I turned around calmly.
She’d come in through the back door. She stood just inside, water dripping from her apricot silk raincoat, her bony face drawn into a furious scowl her sleek black hair damp against her head.
She reminded me of a very small cat I’d once had. Sophie didn’t weigh four pounds dripping wet. But let anything or anyone invade her domain, from a six-foot-six television repairman to a boxer dog, and she’d gather herself for combat. And mean it, all the way to her marrow.
“Mrs. Abbott?”
“You got it. This is my office. Who the hell are you and how did you get in?”
“The front door was unlocked. I didn’t mean to trespass. I’m Henrietta Collins, Craig Matthews’s aunt. I’m in town to try to help him. His lawyer, Desmond Marino, told me you were Patty Kay’s best friend.”
She yanked off her rain cap, tossed it toward a green jardiniere on a small rosewood stand.
“Oh, God. I’m sorry.” She shrugged out of the raincoat. “This has been a fucking awful day.” She flung the coat toward a coat tree and walked past me. Her face crumpled into lines of misery as she began to cry. She reached blindly for her chair, sank into it.
“I’m sorry. I’ll come back another time …”
“No. Wait. I’m sorry.” Gina snatched a handful of Kleenex, scrubbed at her face. Mascara streaked her cheekbones. “I keep saying I’m sorry. I sure am. I’m sorry as hell. For everybody. You ever been to a funeral for a fifteen-year-old?”
I felt as though I’d been carved out of ice, without a heartbeat, without a breath.
Not quite fifteen. Bobby was twelve years and four months and sixteen days old.
Some wounds never heal. Never. So yes, I understood Gina’s tears, and I understood, too, the fear, the soul-deep fear, that spurred her outburst.
Because if it can happen to a friend, it can happen to you.
As it did to me.
I could see Bobby’s face so clearly, even after all these years, sandy hair and laughing green eyes and a generous mouth, so much like his father’s.
I couldn’t answer Gina.
But she didn’t give me a chance.
The words came in an anguished torrent. “Why the hell can’t they tell you when something’s that bad? I told my kids, ‘Jesus Christ, come to me if you’ve got a problem. I don’t care what it is—a baby, cocaine, you’re gay, just for Jesus Christ’s sake, tell me!’” The tears trickled down her grief-ravaged face. “It doesn’t matter what it is. That’s what I tell them. We can handle it. But when you die, you die.” She clenched her small fists, pounded them against the desktop. “I’m so mad. So mad! I could shake Franci until her head pops off. But I can’t. Because she rode her bike to the other side of the lake on Friday and walked out into the water and never came back. And do you know why?”
My heart ached at the agony in her cry.
“Because of some stupid fucking letters, that’s why. That’s all it was, anonymous letters telling her she was ugly, a lesbo, and everybody knew it, that she was too stupid to go to college and she had a funny smell and was a four-eyed loser. Most of it was just stupid, silly childish crap, but it got nastier and nastier. Some of it was sickening. Stuff Franci couldn’t even start to understand. But she knew it was bad. A
nd Franci was this uncertain, self-conscious, pudgy kid—and yes, dammit, she was slow—with thick braces and an awkward way of walking, up one day and down the next like most kids, and she couldn’t handle it and she couldn’t tell her folks because they didn’t talk about things like lesbians and maybe they’d believe it since everybody else did. That’s what she told Chloe, My Chloe. And Chloe, the idiot child, didn’t tell me because she promised Franci that she’d never say anything to anybody.”
Franci Hollis, the girl they’d talked about at the beauty salon. The daughter of Patty Kay’s tennis friend, Edith Hollis. The sweet-faced girl in the film of Brigit’s birthday party.
Gina struggled to breathe.
I walked over to a water cooler, pulled down a paper cup, and filled it.
Gina took it gratefully. Gradually, her sobs eased.
“They’re going to have counseling for all the kids who ask. Out at school. But it won’t bring Franci back.” Gina downed the rest of the water, crumpled the cup, and reached for the phone. She swiftly punched the numbers.
No, nothing ever brings anyone back. And there are the long, agonizing hours in the night when the refrain goes on and on in your mind. “If we hadn’t driven to Cuernavaca that night on the twisting, narrow mountain road …”A rusted pickup out of control, smashing into us, and Richard and Emily and I were all right. But not Bobby. And I’d been the one who’d insisted we go. I didn’t want to miss the fiesta. Oh, Christ, a fiesta. I’d insisted….
Gina kneaded her temple. “Chloe? Just thought I’d check. Are you going back to school? Look, I can close up and come home— You’re sure?” The decorator’s eyes looked bruised. “Honey, honey, you couldn’t have known. There was no way you could’ve known.” Her fingers closed tightly on the silver necklace at her throat. “That’s right. Go on back to school. Yes. I’ll see you tonight.”
Replacing the receiver, she blearily focused on me. “I still can’t take it in. First Franci. Then Patti Kay. And I know Craig didn’t—God, I can’t even say it, it’s so sick. God, I feel like I’m choking.” Abruptly, she reached behind, unsnapped the necklace. The metal clinked against the desk as she flung it down. “Okay, Mrs. Collins, I’ll get myself together. What do you want to talk to me about?”
It took a moment to push away the questions I’d never been able to answer—or escape—and plunge myself into the present. “Patty Kay.”
“All in one week,” she muttered. “Nothing like this’s ever happened in Fair Haven. Never.”
I understood. Patty Kay’s shocking murder and a teen’s tragic suicide would have the same devastating impact as the kidnapping of the Exxon executive from the driveway of his home in another exclusive suburb. A well-ordered universe was abruptly revealed as inimical, incalculable. Fair Haven had no place in its cosmology for cruel malevolence.
Gina yanked open her desk drawer, began to root around. “Oh, crap.” She looked at me desperately. “You have any cigarettes?”
I’d quit more than thirty years ago. Thank God.
She answered her own question. “No, no. Damn, I know I hid some somewhere. The last time I quit.” She jumped up, tugged her chair up to the shelving behind the desk. She climbed on the chair, poked her hand behind a stack of wallpaper rolls, then heaved a sigh of relief.
Her hands were trembling when she returned to her chair, clutching a crumpled pack of Winstons. She pulled out a worn cigarette. “It’ll taste awful.” She lit it, pulled the smoke deep in her lungs, made a face. “All right. Where were we? Oh. Patty Kay. What can I say? It’s insane. Now I’m afraid for Chloe to be home by herself after school. Maybe I ought to stay home. I never worried when the boys were home. They’d take care of their sister. God, that’s sexist, isn’t it? Chloe’s as capable as anybody. But she’s a girl and girls aren’t strong. But it wasn’t strength that mattered for Patty Kay, was it? Somebody had a damn gun. Jesus, Craig’s gun! But the idea that Craig did it is stupid. Craig hates guns. It really upset him when Patty Kay got onto the gun kick. He acted like a nun at a nudist colony.” She flashed me a quick, contrite look. “I’m sorry. That’s my theme song with you, isn’t it? I don’t mean to make fun of Craig. But I grew up with guns. My dad hunted. My husband—when I had one—he hunted. My sons hunt. I just thought Craig was a wimp. But I know he couldn’t shoot anybody. But somebody did it. The thing is, how did some stranger get Craig’s gun? And why would Patty Kay be in the playhouse with a stranger? I mean, she definitely wasn’t born yesterday. I tell you, I’m confused as hell.”
There had been no description of the kitchen in the newspaper accounts.
I described to Gina what Craig had found, what the police had seen, what I had cleaned up.
“God, that’s weird. Just last week—” Her mouth snapped shut.
“Last week?”
“Nothing, nothing.” She stared down at the desk.
“The limericks? At the poker party?”
She looked relieved. “Then you already know. But Craig just had too much to drink. It didn’t mean a thing.”
“How did you happen to hear about it?”
“Brooke told me. David’s in the poker group.”
I knew that. And, as I had thought, the cheesecake story had obviously had wide currency.
Gina’s relief at not having to tell me about Craig’s transgression faded. “But if Craig didn’t shoot Patty Kay—and I know he didn’t—then somebody knew about those stupid limericks and threw the cake to make it look like him.” She took a last greedy puff from the cigarette, dropped it into a Coke can. “Oh, Christ. That’s awful. That means …”
She wrapped her arms tightly around her body. Her tear-streaked face suddenly looked old, the bones harsh against tight skin.
“You were her best friend.”
The only response was a spasm of pain on that haggard face. Her lips trembled.
“Desmond Marino said you were her best friend.”
She pushed up from her chair, bent across the desk to grab the cigarette pack. She began to pace, head down, smoking, before she replied, in a staccato burst. “Yeah. He got it right. I was. I mean, I still was—even though we weren’t speaking to each other. I was so damn mad at Patty Kay.” She stopped, flung her head up. “Christ, she was so rich. She couldn’t even begin to understand about not having money, or having to worry about money. I mean”—she whirled—“she couldn’t see any side to things but her side. I’ve been working a deal that could mean almost a hundred thousand dollars to me. It all hinges on getting some property I own rezoned for commercial instead of residential. It’s right on the edge of the historic district. This property was home to historic flophouses and, a long time ago, to Fair Haven’s fancy ladies. The buildings sure as hell aren’t worth saving. But Patty Kay wanted a buffer area between the historic houses and commercial development. And it’s the only thing I’ve got that could bring in some real money and I truly need it for the kids’ college expenses. My ex, the sorry asshole, is too busy with his new little brood to help the kids go to school. So it’s all up to me.”
She dropped into her chair again, stubbed out the cigarette, and yanked out the center desk drawer. She found a cream-colored envelope and held it out to me. “I swear to God, I could have killed her!”
I pulled out the enclosure, embossed with Patty Kay’s initials, and saw that familiar, flowing, crimson script:
Dear Gina,
I wish I could support you in your efforts to have the Brewster property rezoned. But I can’t. We have to stop the encroachment of commercial building within the historic district. Fair Haven must not lose its most precious heritage.
I’m surprised and disappointed by your defection. I thought we were both committed to historic preservation. Obviously, we can’t be supporters one day and opponents the next. I didn’t think you would succumb to financial considerations.
I hope you’ll see the necessity for consistency and drop your request for rezoning.
Love,
Patty Kay
“Did you tell her how much you needed the money?”
“Tell her! I begged. So she offered to pay for the kids to go to college, and that was the last straw. Dammit, I don’t want charity—I want to be able to pay my way.”
“But you were still playing tennis with her?”
She flung her hands up. “Oh, yes. We just weren’t speaking. Brooke was irritated with us and Edith kept trying to patch it up—and now Patty Kay’s dead.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “And I can’t even tell her I wasn’t really mad at her. I was nuts with everything! Trying to get by on too little money, trying to get my ex to cough some up, trying to keep up appearances—God, the guttering’s bad on the house and I can’t afford to replace it, but you don’t ever want anybody to know you’re down and out. They’d avoid you like the plague.”
“Okay,” I said mildly. “You and Patty Kay had a quarrel. But you still knew her better than anybody else.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve known her forever. Since we were little kids. Even then, she bossed me around. Patty Kay was always in charge. But she was so much fun. So damned much fun. And now you’re telling me somebody she knew—somebody I know—shot her down.” Again, compulsively, she reached for the cigarette pack.
“When was the last time you actually talked to her?”
Gina lit another cigarette, stared at its flaming tip.
A billboard announcement couldn’t have made it clearer that she didn’t want to answer.
“Recently?” I persisted. “After your quarrel over the property?”
“Well, something else came up. And I did talk to her. And it made her madder than hell.”
“About?”
“Nothing that could have anything to do with—with her murder.” She chose her words with enormous care. “So the last time we talked—even when we weren’t talking— was pretty harsh. And I hate it.” Her voice quivered. “Because no matter what, I loved her.”
“Someone didn’t.”
She snatched another Kleenex, wiped her eyes. She didn’t look at me. “I know of one person. There’s this preacher—”
Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 Page 12