The Killing Club
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AN HOUR LATER, Dad was asleep and Garth and I were well into a bottle of wine and still talking about what had happened to Amanda, about how Barclay might have murdered her and how I could possibly prove it when I’d been ordered not to try.The double homicide was not what I was used to.Not what happened in a place like Gloria.I found myself confessing to Garth, of all people, that I was scared that maybe Rod was right: Maybe I couldn’t handle a case like this, not just because I was 1 9 6
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so closely tied to the victims, not because I was a possible victim myself, but because I was professionally out of my league.
Garth took my face in his hands and shook it.“You don’t believe that.You think you’re as smart as they come.And God knows you’re stubborn enough.You’re a good detective, Jamie.Your dad just told me that, and, hey, shouldn’t he know?”
“My dad said that?”
“Yep.So don’t sell yourself short.Talk to me.” He smiled.“Just like we used to when the murders weren’t real.” He poured me more wine and patted the cushion of the couch beside him.Sam jumped there, rubbed himself enthusiastically against Garth’s body.Whenever Garth pushed him aside, he moved back.
I said it was because the cat knew Garth didn’t want him to be there.
“Cats are like that....” We watched Sam for a while, then Garth told me to talk to him about the case.
I said, “The problem is, this time the murders are real.So we need a real motive.” I told him I was troubled by Barclay’s motive for killing Amanda, and Ben too.It couldn’t be, I said, because Ben knew about the secret affair with Amanda.
Garth agreed: In the twenty-first century, not even politicians killed people to keep affairs quiet.“Even if worst came to worst, and you got a messy divorce, who’d remember in a year? This is a country with the attention span of a dog on crack.”
“I’m thinking Barclay killed her because she left him.That he ‘loved’
her.”
“Something like love,” Garth agreed.
It’s my belief that motive is the biggest key to solving a homicide.
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Find the motive, find the killer.The motive had to be there for the first murder too.For Ben.And that was the problem.How to tie them together.If Ben was the motive, maybe Barclay wasn’t the killer and Amanda just got in the killer’s way.Could it have been her theory about Lyall that got her killed? Could Lyall be alive?
Garth didn’t think so.
“What about those pasted notes from Halloween?” I reminded him.
“That’s a movie about a crazy killer coming back to his little town after fifteen years in a loony bin.That’s a movie with a poster that says, ‘The night he came home.’ Is that any way possible? That Lyall’s out there?”
Pouring himself another glass of wine, Garth thought it over.“What are you saying, Lyall was hospitalized or in jail all this time? Wouldn’t the check you ran on him have turned up something like that?”
It was possible, I argued, to disappear, to lose an identity as well as steal one.“Tell me about the night Lyall died.”
He tensed.“Tell you what?”
“Do you know why he killed himself?”
“Unhappy.Drugs.”
I watched his face, a very good-looking face.“How about—did it have anything to do with you guys driving away together after that football game?”
Garth looked carefully past me, stared at the Christmas tree lights blinking in the glass of the front window.A lock of his hair fell down onto his forehead and he brushed it back.It was handsome hair, but then he was the nightly news.Finally he said, “I don’t know if it did or not.”
I moved in front of him so he’d have to look at me.“You know what I think, Garth? You and Barclay and Connie—that’s what you were talking 1 9 8
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about at Ben’s funeral and at Deklerk’s.It’s got something to do with Ben, and it’s got something to do with the night of that football game when you all went to the playhouse together and something happened and Lyall walked away from you and drowned himself.”
He looked up at me, surprised, curious.“How can you know that?”
I said it was what I did for a living.“But I don’t know it.I need you to tell me.”
Bending forward, elbows on his knees, he ran his hands through his hair.Then he told me the story.Some version of what he said had already crossed my mind.That night, after the so-called championship game, the group of five young men (Garth, Barclay, Connie, Lyall and Ben) and one young woman (Amanda) drove out to the Pine Barrens Playhouse in Barclay’s car.They sat around in the mismatched chairs collected by the Killing Club for our meetings.They got high together on cocaine provided by Lyall.At least for Garth—and he thought for some of the others—it was the first time with coke.At some point along the way, Amanda agreed (or offered) to perform oral sex on all of them as they sat in a circle on the stage.
But when his turn came, Lyall was unable to get an erection.“We gave him a really rough time about it.Pulled his pants off, held him down.It was sort of like a hazing, I guess you could say.Lyall got all upset and walked out.”
“...Yeah, well,” I said.
We were quiet for a while.Then I asked, “So what were you arguing about at Ben’s funeral?”
“Whether we should tell you.Tell the police.” He looked up at me.
“Ben always felt so god-awful about it—”
“Good for him.”
“When I saw her at the funeral reception, Amanda told me how he’d 1 9 9
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recently talked about it with her, said he’d seen a shrink about it, even confessed it at church—I guess he believed in that crap—but nothing helped.Plus, there was the cancer.And I don’t know ...” Garth sat up, finished his wine.“Probably has nothing to do with anything anyhow.”
“So what was the argument?”
The argument was that Garth had wanted to tell me about that night Lyall died, but Barclay and Connie had thought so ugly a moment was best left in the past.That it had nothing to do with anything.
SILENT, WE WERE STILL SITTING in that past when the doorbell rang.I hurried toward it, thinking it was Dino.It was five minutes to midnight.
But it was Rod, his suede collar pulled up against his ears.Just as he stood there, it started snowing, small sharp flakes slanting past him.He said,
“I’m sorry.That got ugly at Dixon and I should have set it right with you.”
“Then let me go after Barclay.”
He shook his head.“You need to step away from this case, at least for a little while.Danny’s going to take over.”
I was surprised, hurt and angry.“Is this Waige or is this you?”
Rod didn’t answer me and maybe I would have closed the door on him, but he’d walked around me into the hallway, from which he could see the living room, where Garth stood beside the Christmas tree, studying glass ornaments on it that my grandmother had brought with her from Venice.
Garth said, “Rod.Hi there.”
Rod nodded at him slowly but didn’t come any farther into the room.“Thought you went back to New York.”
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“In and out.With my sister for the holidays.”
I was so mad at Rod for turning my case over to Danny that I couldn’t focus on whatever was happening between Garth and him.Nobody spoke for a few seconds, then Rod just turned around and left, shutting the front door after him.Looking out the window, I watched him swipe snow off his windshield with the back of his arm.
Garth pushed Sam away from his pants leg.Indignant, the cat walked stiffly over to the Christmas tree and swatted at a red glass ball on a low bough until he knocked it off and broke it.
“Jealous type?” Garth asked.“Rod, I mean.Not Sam.Sam’s sort of into one-night stands.I’m the newest.”
&nb
sp; “Rod and I are fighting about the case.It’s not personal.”
He smiled.It was both infuriating and charming.Some trick.But slowly the smile went away and then we were just looking at each other.I knew I should tell him to leave, that I’d drive him to Katie’s, that we should go right now before the snow got worse.There were probably a lot of reasons why I didn’t.Anger at Rod.Upset about Amanda and Ben (not yet thirty and, like my sister, gone for good).The feeling that life, like my mother, was nothing you could count on to stick around.But mostly I just couldn’t move.I stood there as he reached for me.He pulled me gently by the hand down onto the couch, kissing me.
“I can’t do this,” I told him, but then I was kissing him and his hands were under my sweater, moving softly down my back, like a flame on the wick of bunched firecrackers, when it’s too late to stop them from going off.
“Give me a ride to my sister’s,” he whispered, his lips against my neck.And I knew what he meant.
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K A T I E
ON THE WAY TO KATIE’S,Garth and I stopped by the old empty Pine Barrens Playhouse near the docks where Lyall had drowned himself.Garth broke the lock with my lug wrench, and we used my big Maglite to look around.The stage of the theater where we’d held the original meetings of the Killing Club was littered with debris and dead leaves.Nature was reclaiming it—moss and weeds growing in the walls and floorboards, cracked windows filmy with cobwebs.We found a few memories.An empty bottle of Lambrusco, a moldy Sherlock Holmes paperback.It was the first time either of us had been there since our last meeting, when we’d sat around in shock about Lyall’s death.
“ ‘Smells like Teen Spirit,’ ” Garth said out of the dark beside me.
“Yeah, he’s dead too,” I said.“Cobain.Remember how they used to say Connie had his eyes?”
“No.”
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“I guess it was just a girl thing.”
I spotted one of the old canvas director’s chairs, overturned, the seat ripped, the wood rotted.“That was a long time ago.”
Garth shoved an old couch out of the way.There was a six-pack of bottled beer behind it; half the bottles had burst open and cracked from a decade of freezing cold and high heat.Garth sat on the couch; not something I’d want to do, I told him.I kept looking around.
After a while, I heard his voice.“Hard to go back.Sitting here the way we did, dreaming up murders.Outcasts of the world.”
I walked back to him.“At least in our own little narcissistic minds.”
“Yeah, it’s hard to hang on to that much self-absorption.’Course, I try.” He grinned as I flashed the light at him. “It works on TV.” Standing up, he brushed off his cashmere overcoat.“You think Barclay really has the guts to kill people for real? Connie says he’s pretty ruthless in his business dealings, and I know he cheats on his wife and he’s pretty nasty to his son.But can you get from that to putting an arrow into the face of somebody you were in love with? And he was, with Amanda.At least when I knew him.” Garth looked around the theater. “Trust me on that.
But murder and Barclay Ober?”
“I’ve been a cop for six years.I’ve seen real things real people have done to each other that I couldn’t have imagined when I was sitting here on this stage with the stupid Killing Club.”
I was flashing the light around for a last look before we left.Backstage near a loading dock, the beam picked up a small section of the cement floor that looked a different color gray from the rest of the floor.
The playhouse had been built in the forties; a movie house, then a theater, it had been unused (except by us) for more than a decade.The section of 2 0 3
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fresher cement was about four by four, roughly shaped.Weird looking.
But maybe drainage or pipes or cable or septic, I thought.It was the sort of thing I noticed.
THE SNOW HAD CHANGED to movie snow—pretty and lazy and disappearing without trouble when it hit the canvas top of my old Mustang as we drove to Katie’s.The trees were white and the highway black.
Christmas snow.It was just as well the roads weren’t slippery as I headed west of town onto smaller and smaller roads that led to the woods where Katie and Sweets had built their house.Because I was sliding on ice of my own, what with Garth’s hand on my leg or his lips on the palm of my hand.
I’m not sure what would have happened if the two women hadn’t been having a party.If they’d been asleep and there’d been nothing between me and Garth’s bedroom except a few cats, I think I would have gone there.
But it was after midnight and that was the name of the song Eric Clapton was singing very loudly from their stereo and they were having a party.A big cheerful holiday dance party for fifty or sixty people—
mostly high school teachers, the staff from Sweets’s dental practice, and some of Gloria’s gay-lesbian community, which was a lot larger than my dad would have ever suspected.When Garth and I pulled into the yard it was lit up with sparkling lights in the trees, lights wrapped around the porch rails and the torsos of the big nude sculptures.There were so many old Volvos and new Saturns squeezed together in the clearing, it was hard to find a place to park.Noise burst from the house and the festivities had spilled over into the pyramid-shaped studio out back, from which laughter (and what I suspected was the haze of pot smoke) floated toward us 2 0 4
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through the snow.Gloria is a small town, but not that small; most of these partygoers had probably never met Ben or Amanda.At any rate, they weren’t friends of theirs and, despite the news coverage about Amanda, their deaths had to be just abstract losses.
I left Garth outside to smoke his cigarette.“It’s an outdoor sport now, you know, smoking.In New York, it’s the only fresh air I get.” He grinned at me, waved good-bye.
In the main house, couples of all types danced wildly on the bare floor that edged the pool in a long room that had nothing else in it but this “thermal storage unit.” Tonight the pool was filled with floating candles in red poinsettias.A man and a woman, Hart High teachers, paddled around in the water, wearing floppy cloth reindeer antlers.On pulsing stereo speakers, Carole King gave way to Bonnie Raitt.
Katie spotted me in the crowd.“Welcome to Chelsea Morning,” she shouted.“What are you doing here, Jamie? Chauffeuring the prince around again?” Katie wore a long, loose, green velvet dress and a crown of spangled tinsel in her braided hair.Just then Garth appeared beside his sister.She looked from him to me, grabbed my arm and pulled me away.
Shoving through a mass of dancers gyrating in steps that they’d done a decade ago, we squeezed our way into her bedroom.Three cats were sleeping on the bed, as far from the party as they could get.
Katie pushed me down to the hearth of the stone fireplace free-rising in the middle of the large cluttered room.The log fire was warm on my back.Grabbing my hand, she slapped my engagement ring.“That’s all I’m going to say,” she muttered.“Except”—and she gave my wrist a shake with each phrase—“how many times can one intelligent woman make the same stupid mistake? Believe me, this prince isn’t looking for a glass 2 0 5
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slipper.” Suddenly she hugged me to her tightly. “And I’m sorry about Amanda Morgan.Go home.”
“Knock knock.” Sweets came into the bedroom. Tall and thin, she wore black slacks and a red satin blouse with a black scarf.“Jamie.How you doing? Sorry to bother.” (Sweets was from Boston; bother sounded like bahther.) “But, Katie, didn’t we buy two cases of that other Char-donnay?”
Katie explained where the wine was.Sweets turned back in the doorway to tell me that Dino had skipped his dental appointment and I should remind him he needed to get those cavities filled before the teeth abscessed.After she’d returned to the party, I told Katie that Dino had skipped more than Sweets’s appointment; he’d skipped town, blowing off community service.
>
“What are we going to do with him?” Katie said.It had been into Katie’s arms that Dino had taken his first wobbling steps.“Our Dino.”
I felt so safe beside her on the hearth that I told her about the terror I hadn’t yet mentioned to anyone else.The fear that Dino had gotten the Mercedes from Clay, had gotten the crossbow, had—in some freakish mishap or drugged state—ended up somehow killing Amanda.Or if he hadn’t, he (and maybe Clay too) would be accused of it, or implicated in it.Perhaps accused of Ben’s murder as well.I told her that the night of the fire Dino had picked up Clay at a friend’s in Glen Valley, just a few blocks from where the Tymoszes lived.That I’d seen them driving around.
Katie kept stroking my hand.“But Clay didn’t take the car from River Bend until two hours after they think Amanda died.You just told me that.Dino took him joyriding, they started to run out of gas, and they left the car at the rest stop.That’s it.”
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“Unless Tricia is wrong about the time she saw Clay leave.Or lying.”
“Why would she lie, Jamie? And two hours wrong?” She gave me a little shake.“Honey, you know Dino could never figure out how to use some kind of high-tech crossbow.He couldn’t do it!”
Somehow she made me laugh at that.“That’s better.” She took my hand.“Now I’m going to tell you something, but I don’t want you to flip out.That paper collage of words you showed me last week? Something about death and a sheriff in a little town?”
“Are you going to tell me Clay, Katie?” I pulled my hand back.
“Just that Clay’s in my art class.And we’ve been making paper collages.I checked before I said anything to you.But I was right about those letters from the Absolut ads.I found the same fonts in magazines in my supplies closet.But even if Clay and Dino did send you those notes, I’m sure it was just a stupid joke.Jamie, are you listening to me? It’s nothing.”