Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02

by Scandal in Fair Haven

  “The Reverend James Holman. But—”

  “Yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but Holman’s one of those far-right nuts. He and Patty Kay despised each other. Somebody told me he preached one Sunday and told his congregation she was visited by the devil. I think maybe it’s DEVIL in capital letters.” She smoothed the crumpled cellophane on the cigarette box and shook her head. “But I can’t imagine how Holman could know about the cheesecake. Sure, this is a small town, but believe me, he didn’t move in the same circles as Patty Kay. Not socially.”

  “Unless he’s a remarkable specimen, he’s not in the running. He had open heart surgery Friday. He’s still in intensive care.”

  “Oh.”

  I understood her disappointment. Wouldn’t it be lovely to fasten the blame on someone who wasn’t a part of Patty Kay’s social scene?

  She blew out a spurt of smoke. “Okay. The cheesecake. So you figure either one of the poker players shot Patty Kay or told somebody about the limericks and that person did it. Who are the poker players?”

  “Desmond Marino, Stuart Pierce, Willis Guthrie, David Forrest, and Craig Matthews.”

  “Well, Desmond has a mouth like Niagara Falls.” A tiny smile. “Guess I’m a great one to talk. God, yes, that’s true, both ways. But Desmond tells everybody everything. Patty Kay always said the only way Desmond kept from spilling client secrets was by keeping his big mouth busy with everything else.” She shrugged. “Of course, knowing how people are, all the others came home and told their wives. It’s too good a story not to. We were all sick of that wretched cheesecake. But you couldn’t say so because Patty Kay was so damned proud of it.”

  Gina’s eyes closed for just an instant. Then she looked at me. I knew she’d steeled herself not to cry. “Okay. The poker party. I guess we’re trying to figure out who might have had a motive. Not Desmond. There’s no possible reason. He wasn’t Patty Kay’s lawyer. Braden Fairlee took care of her legal affairs and always has. And Desmond and Patty Kay have been friends since they were little kids. So, let’s see. Stuart …”

  She glared at me through the swirl of smoke. “Dammit, I don’t like this.”

  “I know.”

  “Patty Kay’s going to be buried tomorrow.” She smoked and rubbed her temple, her face puckered in thought and misery. She stubbed out the cigarette.

  A minute ticked by.

  Finally, grimly, Gina looked straight at me. “Okay. Last week I was in Atlanta. A home decorator show. I stayed at the downtown Marriott. Convenient to the convention center. Had a damned tiring day. So about four I went to the bar. It sits up a level in the middle of the lobby. You know, kind of like an island. So you can look down and see the lobby and the elevators. I saw Stuart first. He was standing by an elevator. Then, damned if Patty Kay didn’t walk up. They were standing side by side, ignoring each other. Like they’d never met. They got on the elevator. Just happened it was only the two of them. The car went up to the sixteenth floor, stopped, came down again. I’d had to be brain-dead not to figure that one out quick. They were shacking up. I know it. I know it as well as I can tell you where the scar is—was—on Patty Kay’s right elbow. And what the hell that means with all of this, I don’t know. If anything.”

  It would be one more bar in Craig’s prison cell if it checked out. At least as far as the police were concerned.

  “I mean, I know how I read it. They couldn’t live together, but they still—” She paused and looked at me doubtfully.

  Why do younger people get so uncomfortable talking about sex to anyone over sixty? It’s part of the American youth cult. If they should live so long, they’ll discover that, as with most aspects of life, the more you’ve done it, the better you get—and give. Trust me.

  “Oh, hell, the truth of it is, Patty Kay and Stuart were meant for each other, but they were both take-charge types so they could never live together without killing each other….” She clapped a hand to her mouth, then violently shook her head. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t.”

  Perhaps not. But she’d said it.

  “What I’m getting at,” she continued hurriedly, “is they couldn’t keep away from each other. That’s why I called Patty Kay even though we weren’t speaking. She was mad as hell because I didn’t mince words. I told her it was wrong, told her she was playing with dynamite.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She told me to take my platitudes about love and marriage and go straight to hell. And if I knew so damn much about marriage, what happened to mine? We yelled at each other.” Gina buried her face in her hands.

  I wondered. It was an effective story. It saddled Craig with the additional motive of his wife’s infidelity. It also set up Stuart Pierce, her ex-husband, in the background as a solid suspect. And, if true, Patty Kay’s extramarital fling certainly was a lot more flamboyant than an argument over rezoning.

  Gina lifted her face. Her eyes were swollen. “I remember when we were girls, the first time Patty Kay saw Stuart. It was like watching Fourth of July fireworks.”

  “A grand passion.”

  “A grand passion.” She rubbed the balled-up tissues on her face, smearing what remained of her makeup. “Yes. That’s what it was.”

  “For Stuart too?”

  She sagged back in her chair, drained. “Hell, I don’t know. Who’s to say, with a man. She had a gorgeous body. Maybe that’s what he wanted. Maybe he didn’t really care otherwise. I know that whenever she walked into a room, Stuart had a damned hard time keeping his eyes off of her. Even after they were divorced. Even after he remarried. It must have driven Louise crazy.”

  Louise Pierce. Stuart’s second wife. Brigit’s stepmother. The one who snooped. How far did she snoop? How much did she know? Was this why she’d glared at Patty Kay at the supermarket?

  But these weren’t the only questions that needed answers.

  Was the rendezvous between Patty Kay and Stuart a regular occurrence? If so, were both satisfied with the status quo?

  Or was Patty Kay hoping and planning and counting on having Stuart back again as her husband?

  That would mean a divorce for her from Craig. Craig would lose his extremely comfortable life as the husband of a very rich woman. The public humiliation would be profound. Even a mild-mannered man could be moved to fury by adultery. And a lazy, comfort-seeking man might be desperately determined to preserve his cushy existence.

  What about Stuart?

  What if he wanted Patty Kay, desired her, lusted for her, but had no interest at all in destroying the fabric of his present life?

  What if Patty Kay were pressuring him? What if Patty Kay had threatened to tell Louise?

  Or turn it around, what if Patty Kay wanted dalliance and Stuart wanted permanence?

  What if Stuart threatened to tell Craig?

  “I suppose I shouldn’t say it … but Louise really hated Patty Kay. She always did.” Gina frowned. “This is like lifting up a garbage can and finding all those squirming white slugs. And the horrible part of this is, I know you’re thinking Patty Kay was cheap and trashy. But that’s absolutely not true. Okay, she slept with Stuart and she shouldn’t have, but anybody can have a blind spot.” Gina’s reddened eyes entreated me. “She was good and decent and—and honorable. I know that sounds funny, but it’s like with that preacher and the AIDS thing, Patty Kay just wouldn’t let it go. She knew it was wrong not to try to save people just because society is so stupid about sex. And she despised cruelty. One time when we were teenagers there was a workman kicking a dog, and she took a broom and lit into him. She was never afraid to do what she thought was right.”

  “She made fun of Brigit’s crush on Craig. That was cruel.”

  “She didn’t mean it that way. She just liked to make a joke of things. Sometimes she didn’t realize that she shouldn’t. She really believed people should be open about things. Good and bad. But she wasn’t cruel. She hated for people to take advantage of those who couldn’t protect themselves. In a funny way,
I think she thought Brigit was trying to take advantage of Craig, that she was going after him just to provoke her mother.”

  A serpentine approach surely. But possible. You can’t underestimate the young. Remember Joan of Arc and Billy the Kid.

  And I had to believe Brigit was self-absorbed. She’d shed tears for her mother, but her first thought was for Craig because of her own passion for him. And she hadn’t even mentioned the schoolmate who’d recently taken her own life. All those cars at the gray Cape Cod. I knew about the kind of pain behind those closed doors.

  I clenched my hands, but kept my voice even. “How about Willis Guthrie?”

  Gina thought about it. And rubbed her temple again. “I hate looking at people I know and trying them out in my mind as killers. The odd thing is, I’ve known Willis and Pamela all my life and I don’t have any idea at all what goes on in his mind. I doubt if Pamela does. Maybe it’s all numbers. He’s an accountant. He’s the kind of person who doesn’t even seem to be there when you’re around him. Boring. Hardly ever says anything. Never gets excited. Never saw him lose his temper.” She wriggled uneasily. “But he likes things. Collects old silver. And rare books. And Chinese pottery. And Pamela’s nuts about porcelain dolls and seventeenth-century snuffboxes and antique toys. Their house looks like a museum. They’re damn lucky they never had any kids. Of course, if they’d had kids, maybe they’d have thought about something besides things all the time.”

  I was, I realized abruptly, liking Gina much too much. Her heartbreak over Franci, the empathy she had for people who had nothing in their lives but things, moved me. I needed to keep my distance. Because she’d shared a great deal with me—much of it damaging to others—and that could be very deliberate indeed.

  I gave her more room to maneuver. “So Pamela and Willis are greedy?”

  “Greedy. Avaricious. Grasping. But maybe I’m wrong. I mean, maybe it’s just that they don’t have anything else to care about. Things make some people feel good. Sometimes it isn’t just that my clients want their homes to be beautiful, they want to be surrounded by expensive objects. It’s beyond aesthetics. The more it costs, the better it makes them feel.” She shrugged.

  “Will Pamela gain financially from Patty Kay’s death?”

  “Look, everybody in town knows—Pamela and Patty Kay’d been feuding for months over some of the estate property their parents had left them. Pamela’s all for selling out to some condo developers. Patty Kay refused to agree. Kind of like my deal but on a much grander scale. Patty Kay wanted to keep the land undeveloped. She wanted to cede it to Walden School for a wilderness area. The land adjoins the school property. They were furious with each other.”

  Money.

  Such a good, old-fashioned, solid motive for murder.

  “Did they—either Willis or Pamela—dislike Craig?”

  “I guess not. Why would Willis play poker with him? ’Course, you can end up doing things with people you don’t like in a small town and there’s no way to avoid it unless you’re willing to be rude. But I don’t have any reason to think so. Except Craig’s not their kind of guy.” She looked suddenly embarrassed.

  My supposed relationship to Craig was gaining me entree; it could also shade responses. I spoke up quickly. “Don’t hesitate to say what you think. I don’t care about anything but finding out who shot Patty Kay.”

  “Well.” Gina cleared her throat. “Craig’s the nicest guy in the world, but he isn’t a hard charger. I mean, he’s not very ambitious. In the eyes of somebody like Willis. You know what kind of hours accountants work.”

  I smiled. “You mean Craig’s a charming young man who married a rich wife and was perfectly content to work —not very hard—at a bookstore she owned for pleasure.”

  She didn’t meet my eyes. “Uh, yes.”

  “That’s Craig. That doesn’t offend me. But it could offend others.” An envious person might take great pleasure in stripping my “nephew” of his life of ease.

  She hurried to change the subject. “David Forrest would be too uptight to stage the mess in the kitchen. I mean, this guy’s Major Dad without a glimmer of a smile. He’s still in the marine reserves. Marine boot camp was probably the highlight of David’s life.”

  “You don’t like him.”

  “No.” It was crisp and unequivocal. “If I had to point to somebody who could shoot in cold blood, he’d be the guy. He gives me the creeps. Everything has to be just right for Mr. David Forrest. I don’t see how Brooke stands it.”

  “Stands it?”

  “Living with him. It would be like having sex with a robot.”

  Her face flamed. For a moment, she’d forgotten her audience.

  “How did David Forrest and Patty Kay get along?”

  “Polite to each other. Of course, David’s always polite. Patty Kay thought he was boring, but so far as I know, he’d have absolutely no reason to kill her. Except maybe to rid the world of an uppity female.”

  “Antifeminist?”

  “Oh, honey, you’d better believe it.”

  “How does he treat his wife?”

  “David treats Brooke like he treats everybody else, as an underling. Of course, he was bred to it. There have always been two top families in this town, the Prentisses and the Forrests. And maybe the Forrests are even a little richer and a little more proud of themselves. Fuck them all,” she said cheerfully. “My dad ran a grocery store. Brooke and I grew up across the street from each other. Brooke knew what she wanted from the time she was tiny. She wanted to be ‘important’ and she set out to catch David Forrest when she was in junior high.” Her grin flashed. “Brooke was always the prettiest girl in town. And she prepared to be a rich man’s wife the way some girls set their heart on med or law school. And she made it.”

  “I’m surprised Forrest didn’t—to use an odious phrase —marry a girl from his own class.”

  Now the grin was a little wicked. “I guess I was wrong. I guess he’s not really a robot.”

  “But the bottom line is you don’t know of any reason why David Forrest would have murdered Patty Kay?”

  The malicious light in her eyes died. “No. None.” She slumped back in her chair.

  I knew she was weary, too weary for much more.

  “Just one more thing. Brigit thought her mother might be angry with the headmaster at Walden School. Would you have any idea why?”

  “With Chuck?” Gina rolled her eyes. “Who could get tired of Mr. Eternal Youth? That man makes all grown-ups feel like they’re eighty. Christ, if he believes half the stuff he spouts! According to Chuck, Walden School is right up there with Eden, the garden spot of the world.” The good humor fled her face, leaving it sharp and angry. “Well, there’s a goddamn snake in Eden, all right, and Chuck’s going to have to root it out. He’s got to find out who wrote those notes to Franci. He’s got to!” She grabbed the cigarette box and stuck it in her purse. “In fact, I’m going to go talk to him now.”

  I wished her well. I wished I could help in the quest for Franci’s tormentor. But this was a task that had to be done by an insider. Craig’s aunt had no entrée here.

  But I could be sure of one thing.

  The headmaster of Walden School was going to be under siege.

  Which could be quite helpful to me.

  I always loved the rough-and-tumble of news conferences. The pressure of answering sharp, sometimes loaded questions with no prep time can reveal a man’s or woman’s character fast. I didn’t want to miss the session between Gina Abbott and the headmaster. And Chuck Selwyn was definitely on my list. Thanks to Brigit.

  “I’m on my way to see Mr. Selwyn too.”

  She shrugged impatiently. “Mrs. Collins, I know you’re going the extra mile for Craig, but I have to tell you Chuck’s not a candidate for first murderer. I mean, this guy’s a certified eagle scout. Mom and apple pie are absolutely sacred to Chuck. Patty Kay absolutely terrified him.”

  “Brigit said her mother was very angry at him. I wan
t to know why.”

  Gina was slipping on her raincoat, digging out her car keys. “Who knows?” she replied absently. “Maybe Chuck finally had the guts to stand up to Patty Kay over something. Sure, you can ask him. But I get first crack….”

  11

  “I’m looking forward to seeing the school.” And I was. I’d heard enough about Walden School to pique my interest. I reached down and grabbed my umbrella. “I’m parked in the public lot.”

  Gina slipped into her raincoat. “I’m there too.”

  At the front door, she rattled the knob to be sure it was locked. She didn’t look at me.

  As we crossed the street, she said briskly, “Walden School’s on land near the river that was donated by the Prentiss family. The old Prentiss house, built in the early 1800s, is the school administration building.”

  The air was damp, but it had stopped raining. I tucked my umbrella under my arm. “I suppose Patty Kay felt rather proprietary about Walden School since her family donated the land. Is that why she was on the board of trustees?”

  Gina nodded. We walked briskly down the side street and into the parking lot. She stopped beside a silver BMW. “That, and she loved to teach.”

  “Teach?”

  She shot me a quick glance as she leaned down to unlock her car. “Surprised. I can see why. I mean, it was dilettante, sure. Three mornings a week. Comparative lit. Spanish. Patty Kay had a thing about Latin writers. Said they saw death in life better than anybody. Greek to me.”

  “So she was often at the school.” I should have looked Patty Kay’s daybook over more thoroughly. Yes, I’d read the notation “Class” at nine A.M. Friday. Read right over it, actually. Class literally had meant class. I’d assumed she was often on the campus in her capacity as a trustee. I’d better be careful about making assumptions.

  “Sure. She was out there a lot.” Gina slid behind the wheel.

  I walked quickly to my MG.

  The silver BMW roared down the street. Gina Abbott drove the way she talked, fast and jerky.