by Sarah Graves
“He knew you’d been wiped out.”
“Ayuh.” Alvin grimaced. “All gone, every penny of it.”
“And he knew you needed the money, so you could hire nurses and household help. So Ellie could get married, and not feel she had to take care of you and Hedda all the time.”
“That’s right. He knew. But I was the greedy one, he said, and look what it got me.” His gaze, looking out over the water, was bleakly despairing.
“Maybe so, but Alvin, that’s not the point. The thing is, Mcllwaine lured you into buying that stock. He knew it was going to be worthless.”
Mcllwaine, I remembered from the Fortune magazine piece, was one of the few who hadn’t fallen for Charlie Finnegan. But he had put his old friend Alvin into the disastrous venture. He must have, because he hadn’t only been funding Alvin’s purchases, he’d also been giving him tips. It was always how Alvin, never canny with money, had decided what to buy.
“And knowing you the way he did, he figured you’d probably take a flier on it. He ruined you, Alvin, and the thing is, he did it flat-out on purpose.”
The penny dropped. “Revenge,” Alvin breathed. “For all the years of me having that letter. Or him thinking I did. For feeling that he was under my thumb.”
Another thought struck me, worse.
Much worse. “Alvin, listen. When you were arguing with Mcllwaine, did he say anything else? Not about the money, or the mugging. Did he say anything about the baby?”
“Oh, yes,” Alvin said tiredly. “He dragged it all out, all that old dirty laundry. Said he’d been rubbing our noses in that mess for years now, and we were too foolish to see it. I still don’t see what he meant by that, maybe nothing. Probably he just said it to hurt.”
He shook his head. “Enjoyed making fools of people, he did. And hurting them. Not like when he was young.”
But I thought Alvin did know; he wouldn’t meet my eyes any more. He was still lying about the attack on Hedda, too; there was something he was too ashamed to tell me.
I also thought that someone else heard Mcllwaine’s gloating the morning of the murder, and hadn’t liked being made a fool of.
Hadn’t liked it at all. “Alvin, did you hear anything that you haven’t mentioned, after Mcllwaine left your office?”
He was weeping openly now. “I heard … a woman’s voice. A young woman. Just one sharp cry … Elbe’s voice. I don’t see how, I thought she’d gone to your house, but … she did it, didn’t she? And it’s my fault. All, everything my fault.”
He sobbed, pushing his face into his hands.
“Alvin. Listen to me, now. Your hearing’s not so good, and you were on the phone at the time. So, what if the voice you heard from the other room wasn’t Ellie’s? What if she was with me, when you and Mcllwaine were having your quarrel?”
Five minutes one way, five minutes the other: it could work the opposite of the way I’d theorized the night before, talking with Clarissa. Ellie might not have had time to kill Mcllwaine at all, or even hear his outburst to Alvin, because she had already been across the street, with me.
But it was an outburst I was sure had been heard all over the house, given Mcllwaine’s anger and Alvin’s increasing deafness.
Alvin frowned, puzzled. “But how could that be? If Ellie wasn’t there, then besides Thren, there was only Hedda and—oh.”
He turned to me, and for a moment the ravages of the years fell away from his face; he was once again a clear-eyed young man with a future ahead of him. Then the illusion shattered, and the reality broke over him: all that had happened, and everywhere he had gone wrong.
Beginning, of course, with Hedda. “Alvin, what was the real reason you were so angry with Hedda that you wanted her attacked? And so angry with Mcllwaine that you held his crime over his head for thirty years, and as good as blackmailed him over it, even though he’d been your best friend?”
Over our heads, a blue jay screamed monotonously. Out on the water a foghorn moaned as the mist began rolling back in, its grey tendrils slithering between the ancient graves. The little boat’s shape wavered in the fog bank.
“What,” I pressed him as his elderly face began crumpling, “was Hedda’s mistake?”
A muffled thump! came from the direction of the water, out toward Lubec. The blue jay emitted a startled squawk and flapped away. Alvin’s head turned suddenly as smoke, darker than the fog, began boiling from something halfway between the waterfront and Campobello.
That little boat. Jemmy, I thought. All those explosives …
A stab of sadness pierced me, but I didn’t have time to think about it now. “Alvin,” I urged him impatiently.
“Oh,” he mourned, staring out at the smoke column, “I wish I had swallowed those pills.”
Then he looked straight at me, gathering himself, ready to tell the worst thing at last.
“Hedda and Thren together … that baby was theirs. She didn’t tell me until after, but when she did, threw it in my face and laughed at me, I was so angry. I wanted to hurt Hedda, teach her a lesson, make her come home whether she liked it or not.”
“And?” I asked, but by that time of course I knew.
“I told Thren what I wanted—didn’t tell him what I knew about the baby, of course, only that I’d waited long enough for Hedda to come on home—and he agreed to do it. But it wasn’t enough. It ate at me all that night after I talked to him, it wasn’t enough.”
He took a deep breath. “For that short time, it was like all my love turned to hate. Just as strong, but somehow … turned the opposite. Turned to poison, and I guess it poisoned me, too, because the next day I took the train to Boston, on to New York.”
I waited. It was pouring out now, and Alvin was right: it was like poison, long held back, the secret he’d kept all those years. It had made him Hedda’s slave, and let him start turning Ellie into one, to stand in for him when he was gone.
“Hedda said I was a country boy,” he went on, hollow-eyed at the memory of what came next, “too green for the big city, but I was crazy, didn’t care what happened to me. I left the big Grand Central Station, went downtown, asked around, went into terrible places, finally found the men Thren had hired. And I paid them extra, a lot extra. Told them what else I wanted done. But the fools got it wrong.”
Not a case of brutal thugs going too far, but one of mistaken identity: all those years ago, the wrong young woman had died. And Mcllwaine had thought he was responsible.
“And the baby? Did Mcllwaine tell you who it was, the morning he died? To get the last laugh on you?”
“Oh, yes.” Alvin nodded. “It was Janet, of course.”
52
I raced back across town toward Key Street, hearing the howl of sirens from down at the harborfront. Alvin had refused to come with me, still wanting to be alone, and I didn’t have any time to argue with him.
As I drove, I imagined it: the quarrel, the shouting. Hedda and Janet upstairs together, hearing it all.
Hearing every bitter word: that Janet’s birth mother was Hedda White, and her natural father Threnody Mcllwaine. That the truth had been under Janet’s nose all along.
Hedda, meanwhile, would have learned that Mcllwaine, at Alvin’s request, had arranged the attack that crippled Hedda for life. The two women must have been thunderstruck, and enraged.
And then one of them, the one who was able, did something about it. That was why Hedda had lied for Janet, and said that Janet was with her all the while: she knew what Janet had done, and approved.
But now Janet was alone with Hedda, which struck me as a perfect example of one down, one to go. Why Ellie would lie to protect Janet was a question I figured could be answered later. Right now, what I needed was to get between Janet and Hedda before Janet could realize the rest of her ambition: becoming an orphan. Hedda was Janet’s alibi for murder, but now no alibi was needed, and Hedda was the only witness.
I pulled up hard in front of the Whites’ house. Janet’s little car was in t
he driveway, behind the Buick. Arnold’s car raced past me, but he didn’t spare me a glance as more sirens rose from the harbor area, the smoke from the explosion now rising high into the sky.
I hurried up to the Whites’ front door, figuring I could still stop Janet from killing Hedda, probably with booze and pills as she’d tried doing the night before. Only my arrival, plus Hedda’s iron constitution and long tolerance for liquor, had made a second attempt necessary.
And right now was the ideal time for Janet to be making that attempt. I burst into the house, certain that in the next moment I would save Hedda from becoming Janet Fox’s second victim—her first, of course, being her own father.
That was what I figured.
I didn’t figure on the pearl-handled revolver.
53
With the small, irrelevant part of my mind that was not focused on the weapon, I thought: Blue.
Hedda’s hair, naturally white, had been rinsed at the beauty parlor just after Mcllwaine’s death.
Blue, Can Man had babbled to me, two days later. Probably the first time he’d said it, he had meant Nina’s Lincoln.
The second time, after he’d nearly been run over, he’d meant blue hair. He’d been so terrified of Hedda, it was all he could say.
Compared to the Bisley, her weapon was a trifle, but when it was aimed straight at me, it looked like a cannon: that damned little pearl-handled revolver.
“I kept it”—she grinned horribly, enjoying my surprise—“under my mattress. And of course, when the mattress got turned, I tucked it into my handbag.”
Her grin widened. “A lady needs a way to protect herself, you know. Too bad I wasn’t carrying it the night I met those bastards my husband sent. My husband,” she added, “and Thren Mcllwaine.”
I shuddered to think who must be next on her agenda: Alvin, of course. The next time she was alone with him …
She got up stiffly. “Turn around. Janet, stand beside her,” she ordered. “Now, we are going on a visit.”
Janet clutched the papers and torn portrait I had left on the table. Hedda must have summoned her here the moment I’d gone.
“March,” Hedda ordered, and we proceeded together out the front door, across the street, and onto my porch: three ordinary Eastport ladies the sight of whom would not stick in anyone’s mind, should we happen to be noticed at all.
The faint reek of smoke still lingered in the otherwise empty house. Janet shut the door behind us.
“Into the parlor,” said Hedda. Janet looked frightened, but she obeyed.
“Go down into the basement,” Hedda told her, “and make sure everything is ready.”
Hedda poked her weapon into my spine. Janet did as she was told, her feet thumping down the basement stairs.
“You sit there,” Hedda told me, gesturing at the sofa.
Her gnarled hand gripped the revolver competently. Janet had started medicating her again, I realized. Janet would, of course, have had more narcotic supplies, and Hedda’s tolerance was well established; her mind was still clear. Her hand was steady, too, as was her hate-filled gaze, and I knew she would shoot me as soon as look at me. It was what she meant to do with the revolver.
It was, I saw now, not the lightweight little weapon I’d thought at first glance. With its two-inch barrel, the five-shot Smith & Wesson .38 Chief Special may resemble a toy, but it is the standard backup weapon of New York City undercover cops. In Maine, thirty years ago, you could buy one over the counter for a hundred bucks, no paperwork required.
I’d learned all this from Wade, proudly and diligently, as part of becoming familiar not only with the Bisley but also with handguns in general. Someday, the information would come in handy, Wade had told me.
But now all it did was terrify me further. Hedda’s finger was on the trigger, the hammer pulled all the way back, and from where she was standing she could place a shot through my heart without any trouble.
Other, of course, than the trouble it would cause me.
“Janet is going to put you in the hole in the basement, and cover you with lime. Then Janet will fill the hole with the gravel George Valentine has put down there. A fine boy, George.”
Her lip curled, conveying precisely what she really thought of George. Janet reappeared in the doorway.
“Then,” Hedda said, “Janet will take your keys and credit cards, drive off in your car, park it in the long-term lot at the Bangor airport, and buy a ticket. After that…”
Her face twisted happily. “Well, everyone knows you’re a financial expert. They’ll think you’ve done something clever about money, and to cover your tracks after, you’ve run off somewhere. Janet will take the bus back, and no one will even look for you, not here.”
“But they will. No one would believe I’d abandon Sam.”
Hedda grimaced. “Oh, you stupid creature, of course they’ll believe that. Haven’t you done it once before? That’s what your ex-husband was telling us this morning, while you were snooping in my attic. That you went off somewhere and left your son with him.”
I decided not to argue with Victor’s version of events. “I have no reason to run away now,” I said. “No one will believe it.”
“Your house burnt, your son run off, your ex-husband with a pretty young girlfriend, and your lover tragically drowned,” Hedda recited pleasurably. “Oh, plenty of good reasons.”
My heart seized coldly. “Wade …”
“There was an explosion. The Little Dipper. It was on the scanner, just a few minutes ago. Gone.” Her eyes glittered with malicious delight.
I wanted to shriek, to fall down on the hardwood floor and weep, but I couldn’t, because if I moved a muscle, Hedda was going to shoot me.
Her plan wouldn’t work for very long, of course. But by the time it stopped working, I wouldn’t care. I’d be dead, buried in a hole in the basement.
“So you’ll let your own daughter go to prison for a murder that Janet committed,” I said.
“But I didn’t—” Janet began urgently.
“Quiet,” Hedda snapped. In the distance, I could hear one of the town trucks coming slowly up the street. With it would be the town’s small payloader, scooping up the sand that the public works department had spread during the snowstorm; in Eastport, they recycled the stuff. Together, the vehicles made a low roar that increased steadily, as the trucks approached the house.
I realized what Hedda was waiting for: enough noise to cover the gunshot.
“It had to be you, Janet,” I said. “Hedda’s hands are good, now, but you hadn’t had enough time to get her all liquored up on the morning your father died. She wouldn’t have been able to grip that ice pick. But she’ll let her daughter suffer for it.”
“Ellie,” Hedda contradicted, “is not my daughter. Oh, she is biologically,” she added quickly as I opened my mouth to protest, “but that’s all. And that meant nothing. I knew it from the moment she was born. I felt nothing.”
My heart broke hard for Ellie, remembering what she’d said about Hedda being an unnatural mother, the calm, forgiving way Ellie had accepted it. Then Hedda was talking again, in an angry rush to get the words out before the trucks got any nearer.
“This,” Hedda said proudly, “is my real daughter.”
Janet nodded, but Hedda was clearly not the birth mother the young woman had fantasized about for all those years. Watching the mix of emotions play on her face, I almost felt sorry for her.
Almost. “Why,” I asked Janet, “did Ellie protect you? Why did she confess if she didn’t do it, and how did she know you did?”
“But I didn’t,” Janet insisted again, beginning to look quite frantic; obviously this hadn’t been a part of her scheme, but now she was trapped into doing what Hedda wanted, because Hedda had the gun.
Hedda stole an exasperated glance at Janet. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, tell her if you must. You girls are all such blabbermouths.”
“I heard them arguing,” Janet said, the words coming out in a
resentful hurry. “I heard my father” she spat the word, “saying that he was, and that Hedda was my mother.”
She took an angry breath. “And that he’d been rubbing their noses in it, without their knowing, on account of me being around all the time but they didn’t realize who I was.”
She put the papers she clutched down onto the coffee table, and spread out the pieces of the portrait, putting the torn parts together like puzzle pieces.
“He knew,” Janet raged, “all along.”
The ripped edges of the photograph dug deep grooves of hatred and bitterness into the serene young face portrayed in it, as if the violence that had been done to the paper had been done to the woman herself, over a lifetime of disappointment and vengefulness.
And suddenly I saw, really saw who the woman was.
You never knew her, then, Alvin had told me. Or you would understand.
What she’d lost, he meant: all that radiant serenity. Or what she’d learned while two faceless thugs worked at crippling her. While she listened in an alley to a woman being beaten to death.
And when she learned that the fatal beating had been meant for her.
She saw me getting it and laughed unpleasantly at the look on my face: all along.
“Of course I knew. You don’t think Thren was afraid Alvin might want revenge on him, do you? Oh, no.”
Her face twisted. “After all, it was Alvin’s idea in the first place. Thren just did what Alvin wanted. But I—I had friends in the city, too. Friends who whispered. And soon enough, they whispered things to me—who was responsible, and that I’d been the one who was supposed to end up dead. And that if I didn’t go, I still might.”
Forgotten in Hedda’s monologue, Janet listened raptly as if to a fairy tale. Every detail was, to her, another piece of the vital puzzle of what her mother had done and been. But what she heard next did not agree with her so well.
“So I did. Left it all behind,” Hedda went on. “If I couldn’t dance, it was nothing to me anymore. So I turned my back on every bit of it—unless it could help me get me what I wanted. Money—I didn’t even care if Alvin wouldn’t spend it, as long as Thren kept having to pay. And I got,” she added, “the last laugh.”