“What if we get stuck?” Libby demanded.
“Why would we get stuck? It’s paved.”
“But let’s suppose we do.”
“And let’s suppose a meteor comes down and wipes out all life on Earth,” Bernie said.
“It could,” Libby muttered, slumping down in her seat. “Look at the dinosaurs.”
Bernie ignored her.
Libby rooted around in her bag for a piece of chocolate—a chocolate Hershey’s Kiss—and popped it in her mouth. So far the day had not gone well. She wished it would reverse its present course, but she wasn’t hopeful.
She ate another chocolate Kiss. Just thinking about the day gave her agita. First, the credit card machine was still malfunctioning; then she’d had to throw out a batch of burnt cookies, shortly after which Mrs. Veldman had come into the store, insisting that she’d ordered a carrot cake when she hadn’t, and had been placated only with the gift of a caramel swirl pumpkin cheesecake; and last but not least, Goodman Produce had messed up their order. It was Mercury retrograde at its finest.
But she didn’t say that to Bernie, because her sister had forbidden her to utter that phrase in her presence. So Libby just sat there, not watching the woods, as Bernie drove over the lot, because she felt that if she did, she’d catch a glimpse of someone watching her. Another thing she wasn’t going to discuss with her sister. When they got to the shed, Bernie backed the van onto the square of asphalt that butted up against the building.
“We’ll be able to get out faster if we need to,” she explained to Libby.
“Let’s hope we don’t,” Libby replied.
The motion upset the crows roosting in the branches of the oak tree next to the shed, and they came flying down, cawing and beating their wings at the intruders.
“Why don’t we just announce our arrival with a bullhorn?” Libby said as the cawing rose to ear-piercing levels.
Bernie turned off Mathilda’s engine. “They’ll settle down soon enough.”
“Well, I’m not getting out until they do,” Libby announced, watching the birds hopping around on Mathilda, their beady eyes staring at her. “I’ve seen The Birds.”
“According to Mrs. Randall, the crows are our friends,” Bernie replied.
Libby folded her arms across her chest. “Why am I unconvinced?”
Bernie grabbed the half-eaten bag of animal crackers sitting on the dashboard.
“Perfect,” she said as she put the hood on her raincoat up.
“What are you doing?” Libby asked.
“Feeding them on the ‘You never know when friends will come in handy’ principle.”
“And that did Darius so much good,” Libby muttered. Then she rolled her eyes. “And I’m the one you’re calling crazy?”
Bernie didn’t answer. She got out of the van, took handfuls of the animal crackers, and threw them in the air. The crows responded immediately, beating their wings, cawing, and flying around her. She instinctively ducked, at which point her cell slipped out of her raincoat pocket and fell in a puddle.
She waved her hands in the air. “Go away,” she yelled at the crows. They cawed and flew up onto a branch overlooking the van. “Sons of bitches,” she cursed as she bent down to retrieve her phone.
“That went well,” Libby commented from inside the van.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Bernie said as she reentered the van. She took down her hood, wiped the rain off her face, and tried her cell. Nothing. She waited a couple of moments and tried again. Still nothing.
“You need rice,” Libby said.
“Do you see any here?” Bernie snapped, giving in to cell-phone panic. She felt as if half of her life had been erased.
“We can go home and get some.”
“No, we can’t.” Bernie pried the back off her phone with the nail file she’d tucked in her pocket and forgotten to take out, wrapped the battery in a paper towel, dried the rest of the phone off with another towel, and put everything in the glove compartment. “We’re not going back until we do what we came to do.”
“You make it sound as if we’re storming the barricades,” Libby complained.
“In a manner of speaking, we are.” Then Bernie put her hood back up, stepped out of the van, and made a run for the entrance to the Berkshire Arms. Libby followed, the cawing of the crows mocking her as she ran.
“It’s miserable out there,” Bernie observed, throwing off her hood once she and Libby got inside.
Even though she was dry, her sneakers were wet, and she was not happy to see that they were making marks on the marble floor. Hopefully, the marks would dry soon. She and Libby hurried up the stairs to the third floor, glad that the lobby had been deserted. The last thing that they needed was witnesses. A couple of minutes later, Bernie and a slightly out of breath Libby were standing in front of Gus Moran’s door.
Bernie nodded to Libby. “Here goes nothing,” she said as she fished the key Penny had given her out of her tote. She was about to slide it into the lock when she decided to knock first. Just to be on the safe side. Which she did. Her hand closed on the knocker, and she knocked three times.
“I’m coming,” a voice from inside answered.
Bernie and Libby looked at each other.
“I told you this was a bad idea,” Libby mouthed.
“It’ll be fine,” Bernie mouthed back. She’d just tell Gus Moran that they’d made a mistake and knocked on the wrong apartment door. No big deal, or as Brandon would say, “No harm, no foul.”
Chapter 21
A moment later the door opened, and a man Bernie assumed was Gus Moran stood in front of her. She would have known who he was even if she’d seen him on the street, because he was the spitting image of his dad. A little taller, a little stockier, but he had the same brown hair, the same hazel eyes, the same slight cleft in his chin, the same air of casual authority.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” he told Bernie before she could tell him they’d made a mistake and knocked on the wrong door.
“What wouldn’t have worked?” Bernie asked, confused.
He nodded toward her tote. “I saw you palming the key and slipping it back in your bag. My ex gave it to you, didn’t she?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bernie told him with as much indignation as she could muster.
Gus Moran laughed. “Don’t bother lying. It isn’t worth it, but you can tell her for me that I changed the locks.” He leaned forward a little. “The problem with teens like Serena,” he confided, “is that they think all adults are idiots. That we’re half blind.”
“Your daughter—” Libby began, but Gus Moran interrupted, correcting her.
“She’s not my daughter.” A teakettle whistled inside. “Come in. You look as if you can use something hot to drink.”
“That does sound attractive,” Libby admitted. Her feet were sopping wet, and somehow she had drops of rain trickling down her back.
“Irish breakfast tea and cinnamon toast,” Moran said, smiling charmingly. “How can you say no?” he asked, gesturing for them to come in.
Bernie and Libby stepped inside. Gus Moran relieved them of their raincoats and wet shoes, put all the things in the bathroom so they could drip to their heart’s content, as he put it, and handed towels to the sisters. After they’d dried themselves off, he led them through the living/dining area and into the kitchen. Bernie recognized the high-end Italian hypermodern sofa, chairs, and coffee table from some of the more exclusive furniture stores she’d been in over the past couple of years.
“Nice,” she said, giving an appreciative nod.
“They should be, given what they cost,” Gus said. He indicated an intricate antique Persian carpet on the floor and two more smaller ones hanging on the walls. “I don’t need much, but I like excellence in what I do own.” Then he said, “Penny sent you, didn’t she? It’s all right.” He shut off the burner, put some loose Irish breakfast tea into a teapot, and slowly poured the w
ater from the kettle over the leaves. “I don’t believe in tea bags,” he explained.
“Neither do we,” Libby said.
“It’s nice to know some people still adhere to standards,” Gus said. The sisters watched as he turned on the oven, got out a baking sheet, then opened the red bread box on the counter, took out a large loaf of French peasant bread, and began to cut off thick slices of it. Then he went to the fridge, got out a round container of butter made from the cream of pasture-raised cows, lavishly spread it on the bread, and then arranged the bread slices on the baking sheet. “I bet she told you she thinks I killed Darius Witherspoon, and she wants you to find proof that I did, hence the key. Is that about right?”
“I told you,” Libby said, turning to Bernie.
Bernie didn’t say anything. She was thinking about what to do next.
Gus smiled at Bernie. “What? No answer?”
“None that I care to share,” she replied.
He chuckled as he reached under the counter and brought out the sugar and cinnamon. “A lot or a little?” he asked.
“A lot,” Bernie replied.
“Ditto,” Libby said, seconding this.
“My kind of women,” Gus remarked as he sprinkled an ample coating of sugar and cinnamon on the bread, then opened the oven door, shoved the baking sheet in, closed the door, and set the timer. “I bet my ex told you I was violent and she was afraid of me,” he said, straightening up. “She told you I had done things in Hayden, bad things that I’d never been prosecuted for.”
Libby nodded.
“Something like that,” Bernie conceded.
Guy Moran pointed to himself. “Call up anyone you like and ask them. Hell, I’ll give you the number of anyone you ask me for, and they’ll tell you what I’m telling you. Penny’s just selling her usual brand of lies. Look at me. Do I look violent to you? Do I look like the kind of man who would do what Penny told you I did?”
“No,” Libby replied. “You don’t, but that doesn’t mean—”
Moran interrupted. “Do guys that are violent make cinnamon toast?”
Bernie and Libby couldn’t help it. They laughed at the non sequitur.
“Of course they don’t,” Gus Moran continued. “Plus, you girls look as if you have pretty good instincts. I don’t think you’d have agreed to come in here if you thought I was that violent. You’d have to be nuts to do that, and you two don’t seem nuts to me. Anything but.”
“You’re good,” Bernie said, complimenting him on his line of chat.
Gus bowed his head. “Thanks. I try.” He wiped his chin with his fist. “I’m hoping you’d like to hear my side of the story now that you’re here.”
“Love to,” Bernie told him as the smell of cinnamon wafted out of the oven. God, was there a better scent?
“Excellent,” Gus said. He nodded toward the teapot. “Cream? Lemon? Sugar?”
“Sugar, please,” Libby said.
“Lemon in mine,” Bernie told him.
“I think I can do that,” Gus said.
Bernie and Libby watched as Gus Moran put the teapot, the sugar bowl, a dish of lemon slices, mugs, small plates, forks, teaspoons, and napkins on a tray. “I used to be a waiter,” he told them as he carried the tray out to the living room.
“Start,” he said, putting the tray down on the coffee table. Then he went back into the kitchen. Bernie and Libby heard the timer ring. A few minutes later, Gus came out bearing a blue earthenware plate piled with the cinnamon toast.
“Wonderful,” Bernie said after she’d bitten into a piece.
“Amazing how the simplest things are always the best,” Gus Moran commented.
“True,” Bernie said after taking a sip of her tea. Indeed, this was the perfect snack for this kind of day. “So,” she said, beginning what she and Libby had come here for, “you’re telling me that you’re not violent and you didn’t kill Darius Witherspoon.”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Gus Moran replied.
“And why should we believe you?” she asked.
“Gut instinct?” he answered.
Bernie took a sip of her tea and watched the rain turn to drizzle. Over to the east she could see the outline of the Hudson River. “Okay, then explain to me why your ex said what she did.”
Gus Moran took another bite of his cinnamon toast and wiped his hands on a paper napkin. “That’s simple. Because she’s pissed. She’s pissed that she signed a prenup and she’s not going to get anything now that we’re getting a divorce, not that I have anything at the moment, and she wants to get back at me. And I know she comes off as the poor downtrodden one, but believe me, she’s not. Anything but. What she is, is a psychopathic liar who can convince anyone of anything.” He pointed to himself. “But the person who is downtrodden here is me. The only thing I’m guilty of is making poor choices.”
Bernie listened to Gus while she continued to sip her tea and watch the sky lighten up. At this rate the sun might even come out. “I’m guessing that Penny is your bad choice.”
Gus Moran grinned, stirred his tea with a teaspoon, and put the spoon back on the tray. “See. I knew you would get it. Penny is scary. She seemed like the nicest, sweetest person imaginable when I married her, and then boom”—he clapped his hands together—“she turns into a full-on psycho. She buys all these expensive clothes and goes out and has her teeth fixed and her boobs done.”
“That doesn’t necessarily make her crazy,” Libby pointed out. “Maybe greedy, but not crazy.”
Gus Moran held up his hand. “That’s the least of it. I would have said yes, if she’d asked. But she didn’t. She lied to me about it, and then, when I confront her, she goes nuts. She slashes my car’s tires, she threatens me with a knife, and she tells me that if I don’t give her everything she wants, she’s going to tell everyone I raped and beat her. She hacked into my e-mail accounts.”
“Okay. So she is nuts,” Libby agreed. “If what you say is true.”
“It’s true, all right.”
“Is that when you divorced her?” Bernie asked.
Gus looked abashed. “I wish I had, but I’m ashamed to say I didn’t.”
“Why in heavens not?” Libby exclaimed.
“Good question.” Gus Moran shook his head and studied the sky for a moment before settling on an answer. “Let’s just say that it was the wrong time to get into a pissing match with her.”
“You were doing something you shouldn’t have been doing?” Bernie asked, intuiting this from the expression on Gus’s face.
Gus rocked his hands back and forth. “Some people might see it that way.”
“What was it?” Bernie asked.
“Not relevant,” Gus said. He inspected his fingers before looking up. “All you have to know is that it was easier to let things go.”
“I know how that is,” Bernie remarked.
Gus Moran flashed her a thankful smile. “But then, when my thing with Witherspoon went south and I’m flat broke, you know what Penny did?”
Both Bernie and Libby shook their heads.
“She went ballistic and threatened him! She demanded that he give our—note the pronoun—money back, or she was going to make him pay.”
Libby finished off the last of her cinnamon toast. “How was she going to make him pay?”
“No idea,” Gus Moran told Libby. “She said she had something on him, but I’m damned if I know what it was.”
“So what did Witherspoon do?” Bernie asked.
“He told her to bugger off.”
Bernie took a sip of her tea. “And did he lose her money, as well? Did you give Witherspoon her money, as well as yours?”
Gus Moran snorted. “What money? She was working part-time at the checkout counter at Gristedes, for heaven’s sake, when I met her. She had no money. She was getting food stamps.”
“And Serena?”
“I think her dad is in jail.”
“You know his name?”
Gus M
oran squinted while he thought. “Alan Burns. Byrnes, Briar. Something like that. Why?”
Bernie shrugged. “No reason, really.”
Gus Moran got up off the sofa. “I want to show you something,” he said, beckoning for Bernie and Libby to follow him into his bedroom. Sitting on top of his dresser was a thirty-gallon terrarium. Gus Moran went over, took the top off, carefully set it down, lifted out a turtle, and brought it over to Libby and Bernie. “This is Daisy,” he said.
The turtle looked at Bernie and Libby, and Bernie and Libby looked back at the turtle.
“I’m starting over again with Daisy,” he explained.
“Pardon?” Libby said.
“It’s simple, really. Penny was my third failed marriage, and the absolute worst of the bunch, so I’ve decided to start at the beginning. If I can maintain a good relationship with Daisy, I’ll go on to the next level and then the one after that. Eventually, hopefully, I’ll graduate to a dog, and if we do well, I might get back to women. But for right now Daisy and I are it.” He carefully put Daisy back in her terrarium and replaced the lid. “And as for Darius Witherspoon, despite what my ex says, I had nothing to do with his death.”
“Even though, according to Penny, he cost you all your money?” Bernie asked.
Gus Moran shrugged. “Hey, when you go treasure hunting, risk is the name of the game. I’ve been down before. I’ll be back up soon. In fact, Witherspoon had some new project going on, something he was really excited about.”
“What was it?” Bernie asked, sensing a possible lead.
Gus Moran shook his head. “He wouldn’t tell me. Said he wasn’t ready yet for full disclosure.”
“So he wasn’t depressed or anything?” Libby asked, trying to clarify the issue.
“Hell no,” Gus Moran said, leading them back into the living room. “He was stoked. He said whatever he was working on was going to earn him international fame. It was going to be like King Tut’s tomb all over again. So I sure as hell wouldn’t kill him. Why would I when he promised me a place on his next expedition?”
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