by Carolyn Hart
As I came to that realization, I understood just how difficult Lloyd’s situation was. The police analysis—and my late-come understanding—of Connor’s murder made all kinds of sense:
The wedding party arrived on the eve of the anniversary of the death of Roddy Worrell in a fall from the tower. Connor Bailey was reluctant to return to the site of Roddy’s death. Her fiancé, Lloyd Drake, had insisted. Other members of the wedding party opposed the upcoming marriage. Someone hostile to the wedding hired George Smith to create Roddy’s ghost. The ghost terrified Connor. Connor insisted upon returning home, regardless of the wedding. Lloyd was infuriated. The objective had been accomplished: the wedding was off. Last night either Connor and Lloyd quarreled and he killed her or, furious at the ruin of his plans, willing to see her dead rather than lose her, Lloyd woke Connor, gained access to her room, and killed her. I felt sure that these were the facts that seemed apparent to the police.
Everything depended upon the reason for Connor’s murder. Why was Connor killed? The wedding was off. That had obviously been the plan behind the ghost. It certainly wasn’t necessary to kill Connor to prevent the marriage.
Why did Connor die? And who killed George? That brought me back to this room, back to the woman who braced herself against an old wooden desk as if her body had no strength.
“You hated Connor.” I walked slowly toward that defeated, weary figure. I moved past the desk, turned to face her. “You were jealous—”
“It was her fault.” Her eyes were dull and empty, as if no matter how long she looked, she would never see. “If she hadn’t chased after Roddy…”
“There were always women with Roddy, weren’t there?” I knew that kind of man, the cocky bantam rooster strutting his masculinity, always seeking a conquest.
“I loved Roddy.” It wasn’t an answer. Or maybe it was the most complete answer of all. “If only…”
“If only you’d not been so angry that night.” I spoke quietly.
Her eyes closed, her sandy lashes light against her freckled skin.
“You went up to the tower.” I could see the moonlit platform, Roddy sitting on the ledge, legs dangling on the outside. He must have heard the footsteps coming up the stone stairs. He was just a little drunk, maybe sliding toward the maudlin, singing something old-fashioned, one of the songs so popular with the guests, maybe “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” or “Paper Doll,” his husky voice soft as velvet. A cocky guy, used to wowing the ladies. “Did he think you were Connor, coming to say she was sorry? That’s what happened, isn’t it? He didn’t even look around, did he?’ He didn’t need to. Let the woman come to him.
Thelma’s eyes opened. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking into a grave.
“He thought you were Connor. What did he say? Something sweet? Something crude?” Or was it worse than that? “Did he ask about his ticket to Atlanta, and you knew that this time he really was walking out?”
Her lined face drooped, the slack skin flaccid as a punctured balloon. She moved like a sleepwalker toward the counter, lifted the hinged section.
I followed, a hound on the heels of a wounded fox, pleasing to a dog, sickening to me. But if the fox had bloodied fangs…“Was it you George saw that night at the tower? You claimed he saw Connor. You made that up, didn’t you?”
She opened the door to her office. “Get away from me.” She was almost in command of herself, her voice once again cold and hard. “I don’t have to talk to you.” The door slammed in my face.
I turned on my heel and moved swiftly across the lobby and out onto the side terrace. I moved fast just in case Mrs. Worrell decided to call the police. It wouldn’t take me long to do what I needed to do. My fingers tightened on the keys in my pocket.
When I stepped into the long shadowy hall of our floor, I was shaken by the utter quiet. But perhaps it was the very ordinariness of the hall which shocked me most. There was no trace here of drama. Investigators had walked here, carrying their paraphernalia—lights, cameras, sketchbooks, fingerprint powders. A pathologist had knelt beside Connor’s body, examined the trauma, made observations and came to conclusions. I walked on tiled floors which might possibly, here or there, show a scuff. But that was all. The doors along the corridor were closed, as mute as the doors to anonymous hotel rooms around the world. This could be a hallway in Bangkok. This could be a hallway in Paris. There was nothing in this hallway to mark the murder of a woman.
I hesitated outside Neal’s door, glanced from it to my own and on to Diana’s. The doors were closed. It didn’t matter which room they occupied. All that mattered was their search for help.
I walked on, then stopped, listened, every fiber of my being alert and wary.
The sound came again, a click and a rattle. I realized there was a break in that long series of closed panels. The door to Connor’s room was open. There was no police tape, no sealing of the room. The investigation was done, the forensic team departed, the body removed.
I eased ahead as carefully as a cat burglar in the bedroom of a sleeping socialite, jewels casually tumbled on a nightstand.
The last ten feet I heard no sound, no movement. Why was the door to Connor’s room open? I reached the doorway, looked into the room.
Steve Jennings was a big man, but he looked old and shrunken leaning against one of the sliding doors to the closet. His head rested on his crooked arm. In one hand dangled a red silk dress. His face burrowed into the soft folds.
I looked past him, at the suitcases ranged along the wall, the unmade bed, the half-open door to the bath.
They’d packed for Connor last night. But, of course, that would not include the things she would need for today. Now Steve was readying Connor’s belongings for return to the United States. “Where was she lying, Steve?” It was a hard question. I made my voice gentle.
Steve jerked toward me, the dress crumpled in his big hand. He had finally completed shaving, but his face looked like old leather swollen by rain, baked by sun, puffy, a sickly shade of ocher. He studied me like a man spotting something particularly nasty, a bloated corpse, a bloodsucking leech, a crow picking at a carcass. “Goddamn ghoul. That’s what you are.” He pushed away from the closet door, blocked my view into the room. “I’ll be goddamned if I’ll satisfy your curiosity.”
I didn’t look at him. I looked at the red dress, so enduringly feminine in his huge hand. “Was that what Connor was going to wear home today?”
A spasm of grief rippled over his face. He tried to speak, closed his eyes, once again buried his face in the crook of his arm.
“I’m sorry, Steve.” And I was, desperately sorry. Life should never end this way. Never.
“Sorry.” His voice was muffled. He tried to control his ragged breathing.
“Steve, you cared for Connor. You don’t want to let the person who killed her get away with it, do you?” I forced myself to speak quietly, to be patient. I needed to get in that room. More than that, I needed this man’s help.
His head jerked up. Eyes bright with tears glazed into hard, bright anger. “They’ve got him. They’ve taken Drake into Hamilton. I never liked him, prissy, humorless, selfish bastard. I tried to tell Connor. Oh God, if she’d only listened to me.”
“You didn’t want her to marry him.” This was a man who could think and plan. He’d been here last year. He knew all about Roddy. He could have flown to Bermuda, met with George at the BUEI. Steve knew Connor Bailey better than perhaps any of the others. He’d known her for years, her insecurities and uncertainties. He could have foreseen the results of the ghostly visitations—vulnerable Connor frightened, unimaginative Lloyd dismissive. Had Steve hoped to be there to pick up the pieces? But once again I slammed into a dead end. He wanted Connor’s love. Why would he want Connor dead? The only possible reason would be mismanagement of Connor’s money. And then, to save himself, would he kill the woman he loved? He might still press the soft folds of her dress to his face, breathe in the scent that would never exist again
.
He glared at me. “I knew he was wrong for Connor. But I never thought he would hurt her.”
I met his gaze directly. “Lloyd says he didn’t kill Connor.”
Steve’s look was contemptuous. “What else would he say?”
I smoothed back a strand of hair, taking an instant to fashion my answer. “I have known Lloyd for almost a quarter century, Steve. Yes, he is a far cry from macho, definitely humorless, serious. And yes, he has a temper and he can be selfish. The fact that he pressed for the wedding to be here is an example of that, but do you know, it is also an example of a sweet side of Lloyd, a romantic sensitive desire to wed the woman he loved where he first saw her.” I could hear his voice—”Yes, it was love at first sight”—as he’d replied to my joking query. Serious, sensitive Lloyd.
I took a deep breath. “I won’t tell you that I know Lloyd is innocent. I don’t know that. I can see the facts. But I will tell you that the man I’ve known for twenty-five years would not strangle anyone and certainly not the woman he loved. And he did love Connor. Maybe they weren’t well suited”—I waved my hand in dismissal—“but their love was genuine.” I took a step toward Steve. “I want you to think for a moment, Steve, about this man, now at the police station in Hamilton, facing question after question after question, and I want you to believe that he is innocent. Just for an instant, imagine how he feels. He isn’t young. He came to the most romantic island in the world to marry a woman he adored. They quarreled and he was jealous—jealous of you, jealous of the big Texan. His dreams crash into nothing—the wedding off, Connor turning to you for support. But there is worse to come, much worse. Connor is strangled and now he is at the police station, and they are accusing him. If he is innocent, he is torn by the anguish of loss and the helpless terror that he is going to be jailed for a crime he did not commit, would never have committed. And Steve, if you don’t care about Lloyd, if in one way or another you still blame him for everything that happened, think about Connor. Do you want her murderer brought to justice?” I held his gaze. “No matter who it is?”
“That’s where your pipe dream turns to nothing, Mrs. Collins.” He leaned forward and now his eyes were thoughtful, calculating, intelligent. He was a lawyer looking at a problem. “Because who are you going to cast as your killer? Who the hell had any reason to kill Connor? Cops always look at family first. You’ve got Marlow and Jasmine. Marlow took care of her mother. Marlow loved her mother. They had no fight. Connor was proud of Marlow though she always laughed that she could have a daughter who never gave a thought to fashion. And Jasmine’s just a kid. Aaron? He’s a throwback to the old hippie days, you know: money’s the root of all evil, green the earth, that kind of stuff. But Connor liked him. No problem there. Who does that leave? Me?” He didn’t bother to make a denial. He simply shook his head. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Collins. I understand you want to help your grandkids, but the truth can’t be changed.”
“You’ve forgotten one name, Steve—the person who hated Connor.” I left it at that, watched as his face changed.
“Oh.” He rubbed his face. “Mrs. Worrell.”
“So you will admit there is one possibility.” I made it a statement, not a question. “And as long as there is even the most remote chance that Lloyd is innocent, I have to keep looking.” I gazed straight into his intelligent, grieving eyes. “You can help me.”
Steve looked down at the red dress, carefully folded it. He walked slowly toward the open suitcase on a luggage rack, gently placed the dress on the top. He closed the lid and, finally, faced me. “What do you want to know?” His face was grim, his voice remote.
“Where was Connor lying?” So much depended upon his answer.
He stood just past the hallway that ran between the door to the bathroom and the sliding doors to the closet. The luggage rack sat between the closet and a dresser. The bed was opposite the dresser. There was a generous amount of space on the far side of the bed, room enough to accommodate two easy chairs and the round table with two straight chairs. The connecting door to Lloyd’s room was at the far end of the dresser. It was closed.
Steve’s tired, swollen face turned toward the dresser. He swallowed jerkily and pointed. “There. She was lying on the floor between the dresser and the bed.”
On the floor between the dresser and the bed. Not lying in bed or sitting in a chair. She must have been standing when she was attacked. But which direction had she faced? “Where was her head?”
He pointed again. “Her head was toward the balcony, her feet toward the hall door. Her face”—his voice wavered—“was pressed against the floor. When I opened the door”—he nodded toward the connecting door to Lloyd’s room—“I saw the top of her head and the side of one cheek, all purple and bloated, and the thick white terry-cloth belt to one of those robes. It was crossed behind her neck.”
Connor’s killer came up behind her, looped the tie over her head, pulled it tight.
I moved past Steve and that’s when I saw a twisted and crushed pair of wire-rim glasses poking out from beneath the dresser. “Are those Connor’s glasses?”
“Yes. Usually she wore contacts. She was terribly nearsighted. But she didn’t like glasses.” He almost managed to smile. “She thought they made her look frumpy. She only wore the glasses when she wasn’t using her contacts.”
Now those glasses, crumpled by the force of her fall, poked from beneath the dresser. Obviously, the police had left everything in the room as they’d found it. Clearing up the room was the responsibility of the family.
Connor fell forward holding her glasses…I looked back toward the open door into the hallway and a picture formed in my mind. She had answered the door last night, admitted a visitor. She’d been awakened and she needed her glasses to see. She turned and started toward the dresser, picked up her glasses.
That’s when the belt of the robe was looped over her head.
I pointed at the open doorway to the hall. “The murderer came through that door. Connor went to get her glasses. That must mean she’d just been awakened. Did she see so poorly she would have had her glasses on if she was awake?”
“Yeah. That’s right.” Steve rubbed his cheek, stared down at the glasses.
“The attack came from behind. If she was walking toward the dresser, it definitely indicates the murderer came in from the hall.” I pointed at the connecting door to Lloyd’s room. “But that’s how the murderer left—after putting up the chain on the hall door.”
Steve frowned, folded his arms across his front.
“Think about it, Steve.” I gave the room one last swift glance. “Why would Lloyd knock on the hall door? That makes no sense.”
I left Steve, face bent forward, chin on his chest, thinking.
I was damn glad there was something to think about. For the first time, I didn’t simply have to hope that Lloyd was innocent. For the first time, I didn’t have to say that violence was not characteristic of Lloyd. For the first time, there was a specific physical fact—Connor’s crumpled glasses—that pointed toward Lloyd’s innocence. Yes, the reasoning was based solely on the glasses and the orientation of her body, but that reasoning worked for me. I was certain that if the murderer came in from the hall, Lloyd was innocent.
Now, if only I could make that evidence work for Chief Inspector Foster.
I hurried up the hall, glancing at my watch. The day was dwindling down. A few minutes before six. I realized as I reached the door to the terrace that I was almost light-headed from lack of food. But that could wait. And I didn’t take time to check on the kids. I trusted them to get the job done. They might well have contacted a lawyer by this point and be on their way to Hamilton to meet him at the police station.
The setting sun had slipped behind the hills to the west. The water was nothing more than an impenetrable swath of darkness except for faraway lights that marked the slow passage of a freighter. Lampposts glowed at either end of the wall on the upper terrace. Tiny white lights spangled the o
ccasional bay grape tree. I paused for a moment to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. I walked carefully on the flagstones, the light in the hotel grounds sufficient for a romantic evening, inadequate for serious illumination.
I was midway across the terrace, marshaling arguments in my mind, planning peripherally to resort once again to the candy machine in the short hallway for a meal substitute, when I saw the shadowy form sitting on the terrace wall. A face was turned toward me, a pale indistinguishable blob. There was movement and the sitter swung about, stood. “Mrs. Collins.”
I was surprised. If I couldn’t see in the darkness, how had the person sitting on the terrace wall recognized me? I realized that I had been clearly visible in the hall light when I opened the door to come outside.
After the initial greeting, Aaron simply stood by the wall, looking my way.
I walked toward him.
He lifted his hand, swung it toward the steps leading down to the parking lot. “I saw Neal and Diana. They left a few minutes ago on the mopeds.” He cleared his throat. “I’ve been out here for a while. Marlow’s got a migraine. She’s really sick. I got her some medicine and an ice pack, but she just wants to be left alone. I don’t blame her. Maybe she can get some sleep. I looked around for Steve but I didn’t find him. I’ve just been sitting here. Diana and Neal were in a hurry.” He paced back and forth, glanced out at the darkness of the ocean. “I thought Diana saw me, but she didn’t say anything. I guess they don’t want to talk to any of us.” He sounded forlorn and tired. “I’m sorry, sorry about the whole thing. Their dad…God, it’s tough, isn’t it?”
Impulsively, I reached out, touched his arm. “Lloyd’s innocent, Aaron. Please tell Marlow. I’ve found proof. I’m on my way to see the chief inspector.”