Aunt Betty was dressed for the outing in a red polyester pants suit with a white lace blouse, but she’d kept on her fake fur parka for warmth.“You know why old people move to Florida?” she said.“They’re cold.It’s cold in here.” She rubbed my hands between hers.“I thought you were going to marry this guy Garth but he says you’re not.”
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“Aunt Betty, what’s going on? What are you doing with Garth?”
“What are you? He says you’re going to marry a cop who’s a Polish Indian.Good for you, Giovanna, but you’ll be thrown out of the family.”
I told her I didn’t think families did things like that anymore.
“Ha,” she said.
We ordered drinks, and while Garth told me how he’d located my great-aunt at Harbor House, she left us to call “a friend” who was placing bets for her on some of the Bowl games.
Here’s how Garth had put it together.Since Barclay and Amanda had restarted their affair in the fall (something Barclay had been trying to do for much longer than that), and since both were “public figures,” at least in the small world of Gloria, New Jersey, they needed a private place in which to meet.For convenience’s sake, that place couldn’t be far away.
Amanda had told Garth at Ben’s funeral reception (when they’d stood outside together so long) that she’d been having an affair with Barclay but she was breaking up with him.She mentioned that he’d had a beach house where they met and that it was in Sea Isle and it was on the ocean and he’d bought it three or four years ago.But that’s all she had told him.
(It was more than she’d told anybody else.) I interrupted.“Why would she say any of this to you?”
“I don’t know,” Garth admitted.“She was really upset about Ben’s dying.She said it had brought back to her how she’d lost Shawn.She didn’t want to mess around with her life anymore.All she wanted was a baby.Maybe I just happened to be there when she needed to say it.”
I didn’t tell him that she had been carrying the baby she’d wanted when she died, and that she’d broken up with Barclay because he’d served his purpose in providing her with one.As Barclay knew: That was the 2 5 6
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meaning of what I’d heard him yelling at her outside Dante’s that night before she died: “You got what you wanted and now you’re dumping me?
I don’t think so!”
And since Barclay had disappeared from Gloria after her death, and hadn’t taken a plane or a train or a car that anyone could trace, it had occurred to Garth that he might be hiding out in that house of his that was on the ocean.
So Garth did the research.Barclay Ober owned no such house under his own name in Sea Isle, nor was there property in the name of Amanda Kean or any of her married names.Next, Garth started looking up ownership of every oceanfront home in Sea Isle, anything purchased three or four years ago.He called the owners and marked them off his list as he learned they had no tie to Barclay.But there was one name that sounded familiar.Isaac Wurtz.Isaac Wurtz had bought a residential property on Daybreak Point Lane four years ago.Garth remembered meeting my great-aunt Betty Wurtz in the cemetery, and her saying how her husband had been in real estate but had died.That’s when Garth had thought of Barclay’s fondness for the movie Chinatown, in which the names of deceased residents of an old folks’ home had been used to buy L.A. real estate.
He located Aunt Betty at Harbor House.He learned from her that shortly before Isaac’s death four years ago, her critically ill husband had bought the Sea Isle house, for cash, and then had privately transferred its ownership to Barclay Ober.For his efforts, Isaac had received “a nice-sized and totally legit finder’s fee,” which Aunt Betty had probably not paid taxes on, and which was a big help when her husband died.She continued to receive a small annual “gift” as his widow from OLDR, which also sent her money every year for taxes and insurance and “maintenance.”
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. . .
“YOU BLABBED ALL this to Garth,Aunt Betty?”
She shrugged.“He’s a good-looking guy.” Obviously it was a gene-pool sort of thing with us.
Aunt Betty said she’d driven by the Daybreak Point house a number of times over the years, wondering if there was a way she could get her hands on it, since officially it was hers, but she had always been afraid of getting in trouble with the law.It was a reasonable suspicion, I told her.
From the restaurant, she directed us along an oceanfront street of beach houses that were squeezed together side by side but trying to ignore one another.At the outer point of a cul de sac, I pulled into the drive of a gray-clapboard beach house of modern design, full of angles, with its deck flung out to the ocean.The house was built over its parking area, and there was a car there that we later learned was registered to Amanda Tarrini Morgan.Inside the closed garage was Barclay’s BMW.
The garbage can was full.
Lights were on.
Aunt Betty went to the back door and rang the buzzer.If Barclay answered the door, she was going to say that she was having some trouble with the insurance company about the house.If I saw him, I’d call the local cops.
But Barclay didn’t answer the door.Sending Aunt Betty back to wait in my car, and leaving Garth to guard the back door, I went in through a window on the deck.Two white fans were turning in the ceiling of the large cathedral living room.But they couldn’t hide the odor or scare off the flies.
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Barclay lay on the wall-to-wall carpet with the back of his head blown off.There was a Beretta pistol near his hand.There was a bottle of expensive and fashionable brandy on a table beside the couch.It was nearly empty.There was a business card beside the brandy bottle: Barclay Ober, President, Ober Land Development and Realty.Above his addresses and phone numbers and fax numbers and e-mail addresses, he’d written in pencil, “I’m sorry.”
Barclay wore only a bathrobe, a very nice silk one.He’d been dead for days.
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SO THAT,EVERYONE THOUGHT,was that.It was Barclay’s house.The note on the card was in Barclay’s handwriting.
The Beretta handgun was registered to Barclay.The Sea Isle medical examiner found powder burns on his hand and face consistent with a self-inflicted gunshot through the open mouth.We all agreed he’d killed Ben to stop Ben from exposing what he’d done to Lyall.We said he’d killed Pudge to stop Pudge from exposing what he’d done to the one person he appeared to have cared about, or at least couldn’t bear to lose except to death—Amanda.We said he’d killed himself because he couldn’t bear the horror of all he’d done and all he’d lost.It made sense.
Garth had his story for his TV show.I had the Killing Club killer.The white news vans with their satellite dishes raced from one scene of blood or grief to the next, terrified that their rivals would get there first.But it was Garth who got there first.The problem was, we all had it wrong.
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It was after eleven at night when Rod and I drove in separate cars to River Bend to tell Barclay’s family that he’d killed himself.I was going to let Rod give the news to Meredith.Tricia was at church for the Christmas Eve mass that had started at ten.Meredith would take it better from Rod than from me, because she was going to blame me for driving her son to suicide, and it would be easier for her to progress from that blame into the pain of losing her only child if I wasn’t around.
Meanwhile I went looking for Clay.The first place I looked was where he was—the private hideout he’d made of the old summer kitchen, off in the dark beyond the main house among the other outbuildings.
Clay let me in, unlocking three different locks.He already knew his father was dead.A classmate, whose older brother had heard the report on the police band, had called him.
At first he pretended that he was glad�
�his father was a monster and Clay was glad he was dead.I sat with him while he did that.Then he pretended that he didn’t care.I sat with him while he did that too.
We sat on the couch side by side for a long time before he silently cried.
At the center of the single room was a white worktable.On it sat a lot of hi-tech machinery; among the computer monitors was a small direct printer with a digital camera.And neatly stacked in rows along the end of the table were digital photos: I asked if I could look at them.He shrugged.
I said, “I used to take pictures.The Hart High newspaper? I was the photographer.”
“It’s just junk,” he told me.
But it wasn’t.He was very good, much better than I’d ever been.The photos were mostly portraits, but not posed—candid shots.These people didn’t know they were being photographed.And Clay was telling you 2 6 1
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exactly who they were.His grandmother, his father, his stepmother—you didn’t like them.There were a dozen from Ben’s funeral reception.One sweet close-up of Pudge that I asked him to give me.There were a lot of me.
A lot of Connie too.Many of Connie with Tricia.At River Bend, at Immaculate Conception.One in the rose garden in summer.The roses were all different colors.And one of Connie, close-up, taken here in the summer kitchen, that scared me, even though he was smiling at the camera.
I was so focused on studying this picture that I didn’t hear Clay at first.He was telling me that he knew I wouldn’t believe him, but he’d found something hidden behind a shelf here in his hideout.“I know you think I’m lying, but I didn’t put it there.It was just there.”
He was holding ripped-out pages of magazines, with glossy Absolut ads, and stuck in their midst was a piece of paper with pasted letters on it.
They spelled “Death has come ...” Only those three words.
“...Backup plan.” It all came together for me.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” Clay flung himself on the small cot in the corner.
“I believe you.” I gave him a hard embrace. “I’ve got to go right now.”
Clay swiped at his eyes.“Did somebody tell my grandmother and Tricia?”
“Rod’s with them now.”
He nodded.“I guess I better go see.” He was the man of the family now and the weight of it sank onto his thin narrow shoulders.
“You’re going to be all right, Clay.It’s going to be okay.” I brushed his unkempt hair off his forehead.His eyes, the lashes wet now, looked so much like Gina’s.
“I guess.”
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. . .
STARLIGHT WAS SO BRIGHT I could find my way into the garden at Immaculate Conception without a flashlight.It was now after midnight and the church was empty.I knelt in the rose bed beside the stone birdbath, digging up samples of the earth to put in my evidence cup.I would take them back to the lab.But I already knew that the soil would match the dirt we’d found on the body of Lyall Hillier.
I DIDN’T HEAR HIM coming but I felt the motion in the air as he swung the shovel.Starlight glinted on the blade as it struck me on the side of my head.
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HE THOUGHT HE’Dknocked me out,but I’d turned my head at the last second.Blood in my eyes blinded me and I was fighting not to lose consciousness.Lying there in the rows of dead roses, I could still see that he was motionless, looking down at me.
Connie just stood there, staring.Maybe he thought I was dead.
It was like I could feel him thinking, so intense was the silence, as he worked his way through to how I’d gotten here.What had he done wrong?
He’d been so careful, backup upon backup.Barclay’s “suicide” was the logical end.Why wasn’t it over?
How I’d gotten here—to this rose garden in the starlight, where years ago Father Cooke must have discovered the buried body of Lyall Hillier, and paid for his discovery with his life—had happened too slowly to save Barclay, much less Amanda or Pudge.Not until I was standing in Clay’s small hideout, there in the dark at River Bend, hearing the boy beg me to 2 6 4
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believe him that he hadn’t pasted the letters on the death threats, had I gotten it.Not till I was looking at Connie’s awful smile in the photograph, had I suddenly seen that we’d all been wrong.A collage of images, all jumbled, out of time, had rushed at me then, more and more coming as I drove to the church on the green.
The fertilizers used for roses.
Father Cooke’s bringing roses from his garden to my grieving father.
In high school, Connie, a scholarship winner with a golden future, had worked at Immaculate Conception as Father Cooke’s gardener.
Connie vomiting at Lyall’s funeral.Not wanting anyone to talk about Lyall.
Roses at Lyall’s grave.
Ben turning to the Church, to Connie.
The shape of the shadow crossing the Tymosz living room that morning when I’d come back and discovered where the nails had held the wire across the basement door entrance.
Connie going hunting with Barclay.
Connie’s never taking off his gloves at Dante’s after Pudge died, wincing when Danny shook his hand, not because he didn’t like Danny but because his hand had been burned from the oil splatter as he’d shoved Pudge’s head down into the vat.
The smell of Pudge’s Marlboro cigarettes caught in the fabric of Connie’s overcoat.
Connie’s slip-up, telling me he was looking at the snow falling as he’d heard about Pudge’s death from Eileen, when it had stopped snowing long before that, because he’d gone long before that to Dante’s to murder Pudge.
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Connie a constant visitor at River Bend, able to come and go as he wished.And so able to make Barclay the killer.Barclay’s car, his weapon, his motive.Able to make it look as if Barclay were mimicking the Killing Club killings.The copied keys, the anonymous notes cutting up pages from magazines Clay was using in his art class; the note to Amanda, printed on Clay’s printer in the summer kitchen, where Connie had planted the copies of the notes.Everything tied to River Bend, where Connie came daily, where he was Tricia’s sympathetic counselor, there to help her struggle with her husband’s infidelity.Everything Barclay allegedly did tied to that infidelity with Amanda.
I heard Connie say, “God, it’s been a long time coming.”
“Since you killed Lyall? Yes.”
In the starlight, I lifted my head till our eyes met.Connie just kept looking down at me, his hair neatly trimmed, his overcoat pressed.I asked him, “Did you mean to kill Lyall on purpose or did it just happen and then you had to make it look like he killed himself?”
Connie sighed a long low sigh; it sounded strangely relieved.“Lyall?
He told me he was going to go tell the school, and go tell Father Cooke.
He was going to tell about what we did with Amanda and him, and the drugs and everything.”
“Your life would have been different.”
He shook his head.“My life was different.”
I rolled over fast, raising my arm with my gun.“Step back, Connie.
Just step back.”
But quickly he raised the shovel high in the air.“Don’t make me, Jamie!”
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I shot the shovel spinning out of his hand.He screamed, grabbing his bleeding hand.
“Put your hands over your head!”
“Why did you have to do this? Why didn’t you just let it go?”
“Connie.Now.Right now.Put your hands over your head.”
He just kept shaking his head.Then he slowly said, “Jamie.Kill me.
Please.”
Fighting my way to my feet, wiping blood out of my eyes, I kept the gun on him.“You’re under arrest.”
“Please.I can’t
do it myself.”
“I know you can’t.You’re under arrest.”
He turned and ran into the dark too fast for me to fire again.I heard the door to the church bang open.
Hauling out my cell phone, calling 911, I staggered after him.The door was now locked.There was a mullioned window nearby.I kicked through it and crawled inside.The church was an endless vault of black smoky shadows.I could smell the evergreen decorations for Christmas.
There would have been hundreds of people here at that Mass singing “Joy to the World” together, just hours ago.
“Connie ...” My voice echoed through the cathedral.I felt my way along the side aisle, from pew to pew.“Connie, let’s stop this.Let’s get you some help.You want it to be over.I know that.You want it to be over.” I kept talking, looking, listening.
Suddenly Connie rushed out at me in a run.Silent, but his face in a scream, he was thrusting an enormous iron candelabrum at me.The three long bare spikes pointed at me.At the last second, I rolled forward, 2 6 7
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knocking Connie over onto the marble floor, just as one of the spikes tore through the sleeve of my coat.
We fought on the floor, rolling, kicking, but his coat tore loose and he got away from me.
I couldn’t find him again.He knew the huge space in the dark.I didn’t.
In a crouch, slowly moving aisle by aisle I inched toward the altar.
My eyes adjusting to the starlight that was coming through all the arched windows.And I could hear him.I could hear his shoes on the marble, walking toward the choir screen.
Then all at once Connie lit one of the tall white candles.The light was like a nimbus around him.Then he started lighting the other candles at the altar.Walking unhurriedly, methodically from candle to candle, he lit them all, as he must have done in his teens when he’d helped Father Cooke with the services.
In that candlelight, I could see him clearly.He looked weirdly white-faced in his dark suit, like he was wearing a mask in a play.Then he stood still beneath the wooden crucifix that hung from a gold chain in the chancel.
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