Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02

by Scandal in Fair Haven

  On a fresh sheet, I listed these names:

  Craig Matthews

  Stevie Costello

  Brigit Pierce

  Stuart Pierce

  Louise Pierce

  Desmond Marino

  Willis Guthrie

  Pamela Guthrie

  Brooke Forrest

  David Forrest

  Gina Abbott

  One fact argued against the appearance of any of these: Cheryl Kraft knew each of them.

  Of course, it was possible that one of them had managed to enter the store and escape notice.

  Or what if it was someone who wouldn’t excite notice at all, such as Craig or Stevie?

  Or what if someone called and asked Amy to be in the storeroom or the alley at, say, two forty-five? That way the murderer might not have come into Books, Books, Books.

  Surely Amy hadn’t been that foolish.

  “Stevie, what about the door to the alley. Was it kept locked?”

  “No. Not during the workday. We would be in and out, tossing cartons, receiving deliveries.”

  That door would have been kept locked in a larger city. But this wasn’t a city, this was a small town. No one worried about thieves or street people coming in from an alley in Fair Haven.

  “So anyone could have come in, waited in the shadows near the delivery dock, knowing Amy would come into the back area at some point. Is that right?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  I felt confident everyone connected with Patty Kay knew the bookstore well enough to be aware of that alley entrance.

  So the murderer didn’t have to be among those in the bookstore.

  All right. Go at it another way. Amy knew something. That’s why she called the Matthews house. That’s why she left the message for me.

  What did she know?

  Was it connected with the phone call asking Craig to pick up the fruit basket?

  Or was it simply that she knew—and would swear— that Craig left the bookstore at a quarter to four on Saturday?

  Stevie leaned back in her chair and sighed.

  I looked at her. The sweatshirt she’d pulled on when we left her apartment was oversize. Not the kind of thing she’d wear to work. No, she wore cotton cardigans to work. She claimed someone had taken hers from the bookstore on Friday.

  What if—somehow—Amy knew better?

  What if Amy saw Stevie with that cardigan Friday night or Saturday morning?

  “Is Amy’s apartment near yours?”

  Stevie gave me a guarded, cautious look. “Nothing’s far from anything in Fair Haven.”

  “Did you and Amy shop at the same grocery?”

  “What are you getting at? Why are you asking me that kind of question? I didn’t have any reason to—”

  A brisk knock sounded at the front door.

  We both turned to look.

  I moved first. “Good. It’s Desmond.”

  Stevie unlocked the door.

  “Henrie O, I got your message. I talked to Susan Nichols.”

  We stood near the front checkout counter in a yellow pool of light. The lawyer looked desperately tired. His face was haggard. Dark circles shadowed eyes numb with misery.

  “Good. We’ve narrowed things down at this end. Amy was killed sometime between two-forty and three. What did you find out?”

  “Susan said Amy was hit on the head, probably stunned, then strangled. The police found a tire iron in the bottom of the dumpster. No prints on it, but traces of Amy’s blood and hair.”

  The attack was taking shape in my mind. I could see a figure in those dark shadows by the closed delivery door, Amy walking by, the brutal blow that struck with no warning.

  “Why hit her, then strangle her?” Stevie asked.

  I knew. “Strangling is quieter. The initial blow would make noise. Repeated blows would make more noise.”

  Stevie turned away.

  A tire iron. It could possibly be traced to a particular make and model of car. But it could be linked to a particular car only if fibers clung to it. Surely this crafty and careful killer cleaned the murder weapon thoroughly before bringing it to the bookstore. “What was used to strangle her?”

  “A navy scarf with a red diamond pattern.”

  “Oh, my God.” Stevie’s hands clutched at her throat. “Someone took my scarf. Someone took it!”

  19

  The MG headlights swept over the blue Lexus and green Porsche. I parked beside the Porsche, turned off my lights.

  It was dark indeed, midnight-dark.

  Craig hadn’t left on any outside lights to welcome me home. When I stepped inside, I saw that even the torchère down the hall was off. I used my small purse flashlight to illuminate my way to the stairs.

  In the upstairs hallway I hesitated. I wanted to bang on his door, demand to know where he’d been when Amy was murdered.

  But why would Craig strangle Amy with the scarf belonging to the woman he loved?

  A double bluff? But he didn’t have that kind of gambling instinct. I would have sworn to that.

  God, how it went round and round in my mind.

  Yes, it’s Craig.

  No, it can’t be.

  I turned away.

  In my room I slipped into my T-shirt and shorts, raised the window wide, and turned off the light. I was exhausted. I fell almost immediately into a restless, uneasy sleep. A mind on overload doesn’t make for sweet slumber.

  Images tangled: grayish ankles, Patty Kay atop an elephant, the bruised shadows beneath anguished aquamarine eyes, a single-engine plane twisting and turning against a stormy sky, a monstrous ginger mustache, the glisten of earth at a gravesite, the sonorous piety of an evangelist’s radio spiel, the dizzying smell from a gas pump …

  Gasoline.

  My eyes snapped open.

  I breathed the harsh, unmistakable stench of gasoline.

  I rolled out of bed, hurried to the window.

  No moon. No light.

  And wafting through the window on the silky night breeze, the acrid scent of gasoline.

  Below, I heard the scuff of hurrying footsteps—and the sound of liquid sloshing, splashing.

  Whirling, I grabbed up the flashlight from the night-stand. I ran out of the room and down the hallway.

  I flung open Craig’s door.

  “Craig, Craig!”

  My flashlight danced across the empty bed. The silken spread was thrown back, a pillow bunched against the headboard.

  My late husband, Richard, always cautioned me not to jump to conclusions.

  I jumped to this one fast and pounded down the main staircase.

  I was mad.

  That sorry, no-good, murdering bastard!

  I did have wit enough to click on the main hallway light, grab the phone, punch in 911, and yell, “Fire! 1903 King’s Row Road,” before I slammed out the back door, flashlight in hand.

  “Craig! Craig!”

  The stench of gasoline was overpowering here.

  My thin pencil of light swept the back of the house.

  I caught a glimpse of a dark, running figure.

  A heavy piece of metal clanged on the drive.

  And my brain caught up with my emotions.

  The green Porsche wasn’t in the drive.

  Someone had Patty Kay’s gun.

  I flicked off the light, jumped to the ground and ran behind the Lexus.

  Over the thud of my heart in my chest, I listened as hard as I’ve ever listened in my life.

  A dog yapped hysterically.

  But I didn’t hear the sound of a car starting.

  Then the night was alive with sirens.

  I had on the outside lights around the pool and playhouse when the fire engine roared into the drive behind the house. Firemen jumped to the ground, dragging heavy hoses.

  The others arrived hard on the heels of the fire truck: Captain Walsh, two patrol cars, and sketchily dressed neighbors hurrying up the drive or across the backyard.

  The Je
ssops first, then the Forrests. The Krafts, in matching black silk pajamas, arrived next, followed by the Guthries. Stuart Pierce wore warm-up pants. He jogged up the drive, Brigit close behind him, a heavy cardigan pulled over her pink pajama top. A breathless Gina Abbott trotted up the drive with her daughter, Chloe. Last to arrive, their eyes dull and exhausted, were the Hollises.

  I shouted above the spate of questions, pointing to the gasoline tin lying in the drive near the end of the house.

  The fire chief herded all of us to the deck by the pool; two firemen began to hose down the house, washing away the gasoline from the thick ivy.

  Gina Abbott’s uncombed black hair stuck out on her head in sprigs and tangles. Chloe Abbott kept pulling down her shortie nightgown and glancing shyly toward Dan Forrest. The Hollises stood side by side, silent and somber. The Jessops ranged uneasily up and down the deck, chattering nervously.

  Brooke Forrest clung to her son’s arm. She stared at the house, her beautiful face a mask of fatigue. Dan’s cheeks were pink with excitement and his eyes darted from the police cars to the fire truck to the house, but the teenager stood there decorously with his mother. David Forrest’s navy-blue robe fit him like a uniform. A scowl creased his face.

  “Things like this don’t happen in Fair Haven,” Carl Jessop insisted.

  Bob Kraft looked at the tree limbs sighing in the night breeze. “If this house burned, the fire could easily have spread to us.” Cheryl shivered and stepped closer to her husband.

  A fireman turned his hose from the roof—the wooden roof—back to the ivied wall.

  The ivy quivered beneath the force from the hose. If the ivy had caught on fire, the flames would have danced up to the wooden shingles.

  Some of the spray misted over the Guthries. Willis skipped nimbly backward. “Watch it, watch it!” But Pamela didn’t move. She simply stared at the drenched stone of her dead sister’s house.

  Captain Walsh, unshaven, his shirttail bunched in his trousers, once again stood beside me with his arms folded, his face impassive.

  I shook my head. “No,” I said quietly. “I did not.”

  That’s when Brigit broke away from her father. She ran up to me, grabbed my arm. “Where’s Craig? Where is he?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  Brigit whirled toward the police chief. “Something’s happened to Craig. Why aren’t you looking—”

  And the green Porsche slewed around the fire engine, jolted to a stop. Craig jumped out. He ran toward us.

  “My God, what’s happened? What the hell’s going on?”

  “Somebody tried to set the house on fire.” I wished I could see him more clearly, but the revolving light on the nearest police car washed over his face like a laser show, distorting his delicate features.

  “I can’t believe it!” Nobody ever sounded more shocked.

  Or more scared.

  Craig swallowed, stared at the house with frightened eyes. “I sleep like the dead. If it had caught fire—”

  The fire chief unsnapped the clasps of his heavy asbestos coat. He shook his head grimly. “If the roof caught, the house would have gone up like wildfire.”

  Patty Kay’s cupboard offered an assortment of coffee beans. I chose Colombian, in my mind always the best. The last drops were seeping into the carafe when Craig poked his head into the kitchen.

  “Are you making coffee?” He looked toward the kitchen clock.

  It was a quarter to three. In the morning.

  We were alone. Finally. The police gone. The firemen gone. The neighbors gone.

  “Yes. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

  He rubbed his eyes and looked absurdly young and vulnerable.

  I gazed at him coolly. I hadn’t heard a car leave when the arsonist fled. But Craig could have parked on the next street.

  “Yeah. God. I can’t believe everything that’s happened. And the way Walsh talked, it sounded like he thought one of us tried to burn the house down.”

  “It’s occurred to him.”

  “Why in the hell would we do that?” The outrage in Craig’s voice sounded genuine.

  I added two scoops of sugar and stirred. I needed energy. “Oh, Captain Walsh can see where I—your doting aunt, of course—would do it to divert suspicion from you.” The coffee tasted magnificent.

  Craig slumped into a chair. “Maybe we ought to tell him you aren’t my aunt.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Is that why he thinks I’d try to set the house on fire?”

  “Perhaps. Of course, if you did it, that isn’t the reason.” I held his gaze. There wasn’t a flicker of understanding in his weary eyes. “No, Craig. If you did it, it would be because I know that Amy—very stubbornly—insisted you left the bookstore at a quarter to four on Saturday.” My hand tightened on the mug of steaming coffee.

  I could throw it in his face and be out of the kitchen and down the drive in an instant.

  But Craig sat unmoving, his face petulant and angry.

  “She was wrong. That’s all. Wrong.”

  “Where did you go Saturday afternoon, Craig? What were you doing during that extra fifteen minutes?”

  He shook his head. His mouth closed in a tight line.

  “Same place you went tonight? To Stevie’s?”

  “I didn’t go anywhere.” He realized that was no answer. “I mean, I couldn’t sleep. Hell, I just went for a drive. That’s all. A drive.”

  He jerked to his feet and shoved through the door into the hall.

  In a moment the stairs creaked.

  Once again Craig ran away.

  He appeared upset by the attempted arson, frightened, shocked at the suggestion he was behind it.

  When I’d awakened and smelled gasoline, I’d immediately believed it to be Craig’s effort to silence me.

  But I could simply be a bystander. Perhaps the house was to be set ablaze to kill Craig. Certainly the person who splashed the gasoline couldn’t have known Craig wasn’t in his room. Though surely a mind bent on murder would notice the absence of Craig’s Porsche.

  A mind bent on murder … I’d talked with all of them now, the men and women who knew Patty Kay Matthews well enough to entice her into her playhouse to her death.

  Craig Matthews. Definitely under the thumb of his strong-willed wife. Had he tired of Patty Kay’s domination? He was involved with Stevie Costello. Whether he would admit it or not. Did he want both Patty Kay’s money and Stevie as his wife? Was the flung-about cheesecake a daring effort on his part to appear the victim of a frame?

  But was there time for him to arrive home, shoot Patty Kay, trash the kitchen, and be gone before the police arrived at 5:09?

  Oh, yes. Especially if he left the bookstore at a quarter to four—and had a little help from his girlfriend.

  Stevie wasn’t at the store Saturday afternoon. She could have made the calls to Craig and to Amy. Perhaps that was the cause of Amy’s murder. Certainly Stevie would have tried to disguise her voice. But something—some intonation, some phrase—may have betrayed her.

  Stevie’s sweater could also be part of the elaborate double bluff. Who’d be dumb enough to commit murder and leave her sweater behind? That would be the defense claim.

  But that wasn’t the only possibility. Craig could be innocent as a lamb, the hangups fortuitous, the deli call actually from Patty Kay. A neighbor could have found Patty Kay’s body and made an anonymous call that brought the police.

  Because the murderer could be Stevie. It would surely be much nicer to be married to Craig than to be his mistress. And there was all that money Craig would have—if Patty Kay died.

  The cheesecake? A little harder to imagine a rationale here. It was surely intended to incriminate Craig. But Stevie might have been a little too clever. She could have thrown the cake, confident all the while that Craig was at the bookstore, well alibied. Yes, of course. Should she ever come under suspicion, the accusation would be weakened because Stevie of all people would not want Craig arrested
.

  Complicated. Maybe too complicated.

  The sweater?

  If Stevie and Patty Kay struggled, the sweater might have fallen or been pulled off. It would be hard for Stevie to pick up her sweater if it was steeped in Patty Kay’s blood.

  Committing a murder could rattle even the coolest head.

  In a way, I was playing a macabre game of paper dolls, slipping in place each time a different face for the dolly with the gun.

  Brigit Pierce?

  So young and so old at the same time. Almost a child, definitely a woman. And crazy about Craig.

  Could that girlish infatuation for her stepfather have turned to an ugly hatred if she thought Craig agreed with her mother that she should be sent away to school? Had Brigit tried to set the house ablaze to kill Craig? Brigit hungered for her stepfather’s touch. Her mother had laughed. Worse, Patty Kay had threatened to send Brigit away. Youthful passions burn hot and bright with no thought for tomorrow.

  I’d come to like Patty Kay. I admired her courage, her humor, her competitiveness, her brashness, her refusal to knuckle under to what she believed to be wrong.

  But she was far from perfect. She was a woman who had been unable to imagine how others felt. She was so certain of her course, it didn’t occur to her that what seemed so clear, so obvious, so right to her might be impossible for another to accept.

  Even Desmond Marino, who’d loved Patty Kay, knew that she had a fatal lack of perception. Yes, Desmond had loved his old friend. Unrequited love can turn bitter and dangerous. In a twisted way, I could see him eager to destroy the man who had the woman he wanted. Had it galled the clever, ebullient lawyer that Patty Kay was content with a man Desmond considered ineffectual? For a highly successful lawyer, Desmond had mounted a lackluster defense for his client until I arrived to prod him.

  Gina Abbott. Quick, intense, passionate. She claimed she’d quarreled with Patty Kay over the latter’s liaison with Stuart. Why should Gina care? Was the true quarrel over rezoning land? Gina saw the rezoning as a ticket to college for her children. How desperate was she to remove Patty Kay’s opposition?

  Brooke Forrest. It was so terribly important to Brooke to do the right thing. Appearances were the reality to her. She didn’t seem to be able to focus on her friend’s murder as much as the necessity for the trustees to choose the proper memorial for the dead woman. An upside-down world view?