by Mary Daheim
“Who did?” Judith asked.
“You did, with that German bitch. You only wanted Aimee.” Nan’s eyes were glazed and she seemed to be talking to someone who wasn’t there. “You, my own father, killed my mother. I always knew. You were never sad, you only pretended. Children know when grownups pretend. And then we went to California with her.”
“Beth?” Judy put in.
Nan gave a semblance of a nod. “You got her pregnant. You never seemed to care that she was always mean to me. When the baby was on the way, she got worse. So you gave me away, to a couple named Leech. They adopted me. But I never got over all the horrible things that had happened, especially when you killed my mother.”
Judith and Renie exchanged flabbergasted glances. “Poor Nan,” Judith said aloud, and meant it. “Why didn’t she go to the police when she got older?”
Nan’s mouth formed into a sneer, but her eyes still weren’t focused on either of the cousins. “How old? I didn’t know my father had sealed up my mother in that wall. I thought he’d dumped her body somewhere—the bay, a river, a lake. I’d heard that my father died about two years ago. I never knew about my mother’s body until George Guthrie started renovating the Alhambra. I was so shocked and upset that I quit my job with him and, ironically, ended up here at Toujours La Tour. It was like I couldn’t escape the horror, even after over fifty years.”
Judith had a sudden insight. “You arranged for Aimee to exorcise the Alhambra, didn’t you, Nan?”
There was a touch of cruelty in Nan’s smile. Finally, she looked at Judith. “Of course. I suggested it to George. It was my farewell gesture. My adoptive parents, the Leeches, are both dead now, too, but I still have some contacts in Orange County. One of them, the same person who’d told me my father had died, also said that Aimee had become an exorcist.”
Nan stopped suddenly, her eyes no longer glazed. “Good God,” she murmured, holding her head. “What have I said?”
“An extremely tragic story,” Judith responded with heartfelt sympathy. “You’ve been treated with great cruelty.”
“Yes,” Nan said slowly, fingering her chin. “Yes, I have.”
“You must have resented Aimee terribly,” Renie put in.
“I never really knew Aimee,” Nan said, still speaking slowly. “I knew she’d ruined my life. Oh, the Leeches were decent people, but they’d come to California during the Depression, dirt-poor. They were uneducated and very religious, the Bible-thumping type. Their two children died before they ever left west Texas. They’d given up having another baby, and then my father offered to give them me. The Leeches were happy about it, they’d made some money in the defense plants during the war. But they were older by then, in their forties. I don’t think they understood what it meant to take on a six-year-old girl with constant nightmares.”
Judith was feeling very sorry for Nan Leech. Or at least for Anne-Marie Meacham, cast off by an abusive stepmother and a villainous father who had murdered her mother. “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you,” Judith said.
“I didn’t let on who I was when I contacted Aimee,” Nan continued, her voice gathering momentum. “At first, she turned me down. Her mother—that bitch, Beth—had recently died, and Aimee had personal business to attend to. I mentioned that we were scheduling a month in advance. Surely she’d be able to wind up her affairs by then? She laughed and said it was a rather large estate, and it would take months before everything was settled.”
Nan paused, her face hardening. “You must know that up to this point, I had no intention of killing Aimee. But when she began bragging about her inheritance, I was outraged. My father had gotten rich. He’d made a fortune in southern California real estate. Meanwhile, my adoptive father had gone on disability at fifty-one, and died four years later.”
“So why did you bring a gun along to the Alhambra?” Renie inquired, gingerly flexing her shoulder.
“I always carry a gun,” Nan responded. “I have a carry permit. I live alone, I want protection. And you never know what to expect when you’re out at night with a bunch of tourists who may or may not be crazy or drunk or both. Besides, we go to some pretty dangerous parts of town on the mystery tour. You never know who might pose a threat to the sightseers themselves.”
“But you didn’t plan to shoot Aimee,” Judith noted. “What happened?”
Nan started to shake her head, then winced and clutched the top of her skull. “God, I ache all over!” Awkwardly, she turned toward Renie. “Why didn’t you just kill me and get it over with?”
“I tried,” Renie shrugged. “That mask rig is like a football helmet.”
“It is a football helmet,” Nan declared. “Dennis used it for the mask’s foundation.” She turned back to Judith. “As soon as we arrived, I left the trolley to meet Aimee. I was terribly curious, of course. She was already in the unit where she was going to perform her exorcism. George, I think, had taken her up there. I couldn’t resist. I told her who I was. She laughed and said she didn’t believe me. Her parents had never mentioned another child. Never. I started to get angry.”
“I can see why,” Judith said.
“I told her I could prove it,” Nan went on. “I had a copy of my birth certificate with me. I showed it to her, but she still laughed, though not quite as hard. Then I said I was entitled to half the estate. That’s when she got really nasty. Aimee said I was an impostor, and even if I weren’t, she couldn’t see why she should share. Legally, I wasn’t a Meacham. In fact, my father had changed his name to Ritter—Beth’s last name—when they moved to California. My parents had never been in a legal union because my father had married Aimee’s mother long before the war. I was a bastard. ‘Look at you,’ she said, still laughing, ‘you’re a tour guide, eking out a living by carting around a bunch of silly people looking for a thrill in their otherwise mundane lives. I’ve made something of myself. You’re nothing to me and nothing to anybody else’.” Nan’s face had grown very grim and her eyes glittered with hatred. “That’s when I decided to kill her. I couldn’t help it. All the rejection came flooding back, there in that very building where my father had killed my mother. I got out the gun and shot her twice. She stopped laughing then.”
Neither of the cousins spoke for several moments. A series of images passed through Judith’s mind’s eye: Little Anne-Marie and her mother, Dorothy, living alone through the war years; her father’s return and the brutal slaying of her mother; Beth replacing Dorothy and the flight to California; the news that Harry’s wife was going to have a baby and Anne-Marie would have to go; the new family, ignorant and stern, perhaps unable to show their adopted daughter either love or laughter. Sometimes people took children in for all the wrong reasons.
“Why,” Renie said, breaking the silence, “did you ever move back up here in the first place?”
“I hated California,” Nan declared. “To me, it was a symbol of exile and abandonment. The only happiness I’d ever known was here, when I was very young with my mother. I felt obligated to stay in California until my adoptive mother died. She was really a helpless, pitiful kind of creature.”
“That was very kind of you,” Judith remarked. “I wonder if a jury wouldn’t be lenient when they hear what you’ve been through all these years.”
Nan made a dismissive gesture with one gloved hand. “I’ve learned not to rely on or to trust anyone. If your father betrays you, who will ever stand up for you?”
“You have to give people a chance,” Judith said rather lamely.
“You’re terribly naïve,” Nan asserted, finally shedding the ghost costume and tossing it into a corner.
“Hey,” Renie said, “are you the one who conked Dr. Ashe over the head?”
Nan laughed, again an unpleasant sound. “Yes. I knew he’d been snooping around, looking for something which I learned was family heirlooms. That didn’t matter to me, he could cart off the whole building for all I cared. But after I shot Aimee, I had to get rid of the gun.
I knew where the original stash of gold and silver had been found in the former Schnell apartment. That was where I’d ditched the gun and Aimee’s belongings from the bureau drawer. There was no time to search through her things—I wanted to see if she had anything with her that related to her inheritance. I never got a chance to retrieve the items that day. Then I’d heard Dr. Ashe had been acting kind of strange, and I had to talk to him to make sure he hadn’t found it.”
Nan paused to twist her neck this way and that. “That’s why I disappeared for a bit. I needed the time to figure out how to set Alfred up. I’d hoped that I could just talk to him and find out what he found under the floor. But he was so cagey on the phone that I got suspicious. I finally arranged to meet him at the Alhambra. Naturally, I had to stage a diversion—those fireworks—so that we could get inside without being noticed. He took me straight up to the Schnell apartment, and my worst fears were confirmed when he started rooting around under the floorboards. I figured he’d found the gun and Aimee’s things, but left them there for some weird reason. Then I panicked. Those walls—partially exposed—the proximity to where my mother had died—it all came crashing down on me and I must have come undone. I hit Alfred Ashe over the head with one of his tools, got the gun and Aimee’s belongings, then fled. I was sure I’d killed him. I tried to take his pulse, but couldn’t find one—I must not have done it right. I never took first aid.”
Nan paused to utter a jagged little laugh. “I should have joined the Girl Scouts, I guess. Don’t they teach lifesaving and such? Anyway, Alfred survived. The irony was that I don’t think he actually found anything. And when he comes to, he can identify me as his assailant, but not as a killer.”
“Hey,” Renie broke in, “answer a different question. All along, I wondered why Judith saw Jeremy going up to the third floor before she discovered the body. Do you know what he was really up to?”
Nan’s expression conveyed disdain for both Renie and her query. “Of course. He was making sure that none of the workmen were up there interfering with the media. Jeremy and George didn’t want any glitches.” Nan narrowed her eyes at Renie. “Surely you didn’t suspect that twerp Jeremy capable of carrying out a murder like Aimee’s?”
Except for a snort from Renie, the cousins ignored the question. “Why,” Judith asked slowly, “are you telling us all of this now?”
Again, Nan laughed. “Why not? You figured out I did it, though I don’t know how.”
“But I didn’t actually…” Judith started to protest.
“Besides,” Nan broke in, “I’m still going to get away with it.” In a lightning move, she dove for the gun by Judith’s hand.
“Hey!” Judith cried, but her reactions were too slow for the desperate woman. Nan had the gun in both hands, and the cousins were trapped.
“It felt good letting it all out,” Nan said in a rapid voice. “I’ve kept it bottled up too long, like my mother being shut up inside that damned wall. I’m sorry I have to do this, but I simply can’t go to jail. You two are too smart for your own—”
A figure even more frightening and formidable tore into the office, plowing straight into Nan and knocking her to the floor. Once more, she lost the grip on the gun as Emil the ostrich began to peck at her head and shoulders.
“Help!” Nan screamed. “Help me! What is this thing? Get it off me!”
Judith regarded the creature’s attack with dismay; Renie looked bemused. Nan writhed under the ostrich’s assault, trying to crawl free. The bird’s beak was strong. He had begun to draw blood from Nan’s neck.
Renie strolled over to the desk and scooped up a handful of jelly beans. “Here, Emil, how about some sweets?”
To Judith’s amazement, Emil raised his head, the long neck stretched out toward the candy dish. Just as he was about to lunge for either Renie or the jelly beans—Judith couldn’t be sure which—Liz Ogilvy and the KINE-TV crew charged through the door.
“What…?” Liz cried in a startled voice. She signaled to the camera crew. “Roll those suckers! This looks like news!”
Emil’s head went up. Suddenly he looked frightened, and set off at a trot through the door, scattering at least three TV crew members. No sooner had the ostrich made his exit than a herd of emergency personnel, including four uniformed police officers, rushed inside.
“She’s on the floor!” Judith shouted. “The one with the peck marks!”
“‘She’?” the older of the two officers responded. “Who is she?”
“Nan Leech,” Judith said hurriedly, as she tried to edge toward the door. “She’s responsible for the murder at the Alhambra Arms.”
The older officer stared down at Nan, then gave Judith a skeptical look. “Hold on, how do you know…?”
“That woman on the floor is the tour guide!” Liz exclaimed.
The other officer turned to Liz. “You know her?”
“I met her…” Liz began as Judith and Renie quietly left the room.
“Holy cats,” Renie said as they got outside and saw at least five emergency vehicles parked by the tour office. “They must have subdued the tuba player.”
“I need some peace and quiet,” Judith murmured. “I wouldn’t mind a drink, either.”
The cousins moved closer to the sidewalk. “You’ll have to give the police your statement,” Renie said. “So will I. We’d better wait until—” She stopped as the tour trolley came into view. “Oh, oh. These folks are in for a real sightseeing adventure.”
Judith and Renie moved away from the entrance drive to avoid getting hit by the trolley. A glance at the parking strip revealed Emil, his head stuck in the ground.
“Is that where you pulled up the sign?” Judith asked.
“Yes.” Renie grinned at the ostrich’s rear end. “A ready-made sanctuary for our Emil. What would we have done without him?”
Another car, one which looked familiar to Judith, was pulling in behind the trolley. “That’s Woody’s Acura,” she said. The doors opened on both sides of the car. “That’s Woody.” Judith gulped. “And Joe.”
Joe had changed from his mechanic’s togs into a beige linen sport coat and brown slacks. He looked very professional. And utterly astounded.
“Jude-girl!” he shouted. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Hi,” Judith said in a feeble voice. “We’re here with Emil.”
“Emil?” Joe was striding over to the cousins. He took one look at the ostrich, scowled at Judith, and turned on his heel to follow Woody inside the office building.
The tourists were pouring out of the trolley, voices raised, gestures flying, and chasing after Jeremy Lamar, who was racing through the front door. He was repulsed, along with the tour group. One of the uniforms ordered the sightseers back on the bus. Jeremy remained behind, arguing with the officers.
Traffic, which had been fairly heavy on this holiday weekend, began to slow to a crawl as drivers stopped to stare at the emergency vehicles—and Emil.
“Woody must have been alerted to the 911 call,” Judith said. “He must have picked up Joe on his way here.”
“What do we do now?” Renie asked as some of the drivers began honking at Emil.
“Nothing,” Judith said, nodding toward the parking area. “Our cars are boxed in. Besides, we still have to give our statements.”
“Rats,” Renie said, her gaze wandering down the street toward T. S. McSnort’s. “Why don’t we wait for them in the bar? It’s hot out here and it’s noisy, and if Emil ever gets his head out of that hole, he might go for us.”
Judith turned around to look at the Toujours La Tour office. Jeremy was still engaged in a heated exchange with the uniforms. The tour group had returned to the trolley, but it was obvious that they were growing restive. Apparently, they thought the emergency personnel were all part of the tour’s climax.
“I wonder if Jeremy will make a success of this enterprise,” Judith mused.
“If he does,” Renie responded, “he’ll need a new secret
ary.”
Jeremy had finally turned away in disgust and got back on the bus. The trolley took off with a rattle and a roar, then barged into traffic. Apparently, the tourists were being taken to a different venue.
Judith and Renie looked at each other and shrugged. Emil remained stuck in the dirt.
“I wonder how long he’ll stay there,” Renie remarked and started to point toward the bird. “Should we call his owners to…aaahh!” Her face contorted and her arm fell uselessly to her side. “Damn!” she cried, close to tears. “I dislocated my shoulder again!”
“Oh, poor coz,” Judith exclaimed in sympathy, “let me help you!” She lunged at Renie, tripped over an uneven place in the sidewalk, and fell to the ground with a cry of anguish. “My hips! They feel like…they’re gone!”
At that moment, two medics wandered out from the tour office. Judith barely saw them out of the corner of her eye. “Help!” she called in a feeble voice, but the traffic drowned her out.
“Help!” Renie shouted, adding a string of profanity that would have shocked even the most broad-minded.
The medics, one male and one female, hurried to the cousins. “Are you the victims?” the female asked, kneeling down beside Judith and Renie.
“In a way,” Judith managed to get out between clenched teeth. “I think I dislocated at least one hip.”
“Shoulder here,” Renie gasped, then swore another blue streak.
“Let’s get a second ambulance,” the male medic said to his female coworker. “I don’t think we can fit them both into one vehicle.”
“Yes, you can,” Judith panted.
“We…do…everything…together,” Renie murmured between bouts of pain.
The medics exchanged quick glances. “Okay, it’s possible. The shoulder is kind of small. The hips are bigger.”
“Uunh,” Judith mumbled, taking the comment personally.
Five minutes and considerable agony later, the cousins were loaded into the medics’ van. The siren went on, the lights flashed, and they pulled out of the Toujours La Tour parking lot.