I’d rambled to the coffee maker, remarked, “You get your coffee from Greenberry’s. That must be expensive.”
“No,” said Cynthia. “That’s Mrs. Littlepage’s brand.” And then bright pink flamed over her cheeks. Stuttering, she continued, “Sh-she comes here. To go over he-her schedule and…”
“Ah. Then you must be the Folger’s girl,” I commented chattily. “You’re a lot braver than I am. I don’t think I could cope with my boss coming to my home every day.”
Cynthia twisted her hands. Odd reaction to a compliment.
I went back to the window overlooking the guesthouse. A perfect view of the guesthouse. Good view of both front and back doors, a full wall of windows, the driveway. A woman who slept poorly might have indeed seen something the night Lisa was killed.
I threw it out casually, in passing, as I scooped up Boris again. “It must’ve made Mrs. Littlepage feel good that you could keep a close eye on Lisa for her.”
Her skin jumped. All of it. Eyes to fingers. A body-sized itch. “I, um…She’d, um…”
No wonder Boris stared at her so intently. She reminded me of a mouse about to nibble forbidden cheese, all whisker-twitch and fur-ripples.
I lowered my voice into a soothing lull. “Miss Biggs. What did you see that night?”
The heavy-lidded eyes lifted, full of a despair that shocked me. “I saw him. With her.”
No movement in Boris’s tail.
Her voice rose, startling me and Boris equally. “I didn’t mean… I didn’t… I didn’t…”
She was headed for hysteria. I set Boris down, clamped her shoulders in my hands. “You didn’t what?”
Her shaking nearly rattled my teeth loose. “I didn’t mean for it to happen!”
The awful thing is, I felt triumphant. I was thinking, Finally, I’ve got Mary Littlepage!
And then Cynthia Biggs burst into hysterical tears, sobs that bent her double and drove her to her knees. “I didn’t mean,” she moaned. “I didn’t mean….I didn’t mean for it to happen! I swear, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t!”
She’d gotten to a scream by that last denial, and I shouted, “Enough!”
She wailed into her hands, face to the floor, body in a huddled knot.
“You didn’t mean for what to happen?”
Her breath hitched. I thought I’d have to call the EMTs, the way she was going on.
“Cynthia, tell me what happened and…”
She jerked away from my touch, and said in a shriek, “I didn’t mean her to die like that!”
Okay, that’s not what I expected. Not at all.
“Do you mean,” I began, and couldn’t go on. Cynthia Biggs was beyond listening, beyond anything but giant gulping cries that were half-sob and half-scream.
“Oh damn,” I said to the white and gray and chrome room. Then I hauled her to her feet, and took Cynthia Biggs to the office for questioning.
***^***
Cynthia Biggs did something I thought only happened in melodramatic Victorian novels. She cried herself sick. I mean sick as in vomiting up a quantity of coffee, breakfast cereal, and yogurt. All over a cell in my office. “Oh gross,” said Kim, before fetching the mop and pail. I called over to Kris Spivey for some clean scrubs, and after a look at Cynthia Biggs, asked Kris to send Dr. Hartley, too.
Dr. Hartley is the only doctor in town, and only in town because he married a Hutchins who decided she wouldn’t be parted from her roots. Apparently, Charlottesville wasn’t enough of a compromise between Crazy and his hometown of Louisa, and here they’ve been for twenty years. He’s one of those rare doctors who practices what he preaches. It’s somehow easier to be told not to smoke by a man who isn’t about to sneak off to light up.
Once we got Cynthia cleaned up and calmed down, he refused to prescribe a sedative. “I don’t want you takin’ advantage of her,” he told me stiffly. “No asking her anything till she gets a lawyer.”
I hate when people preach law to me, based on CSI and Law & Order reruns. “She’s not under arrest,” I informed him. “She’s in for questioning.”
He gave me a look down his nose—hard to do, since he’s shorter than me—and snorted. “Chief Rucker arrested…”
From behind us, a forlorn little voice snuffled, “That man didn’t do it.”
We both whipped around. Cynthia Biggs, scrubbed clean of her camouflage and in teal-colored scrubs, somehow contrived to be more invisible than she had in beige. I got the eerie impression I was looking at an animated pair of pants with matching top.
“He left.”
I gave Boris a sidelong look. His tail was motionless.
“Lisa was still alive, then?”
Shaking, Cynthia nodded. “She waved good-bye. She saw me at the window. I didn’t mean to spy but I heard the truck and I just looked, it was just…” More tears streaked her face. Dr. Hartley gave her a soothing pat on the arm, and tissues. “People don’t come and go at that hour.”
I caught the tape recorder Kim tossed me, and asked Cynthia to repeat that. Dr. Hartley steamed, and once she’d gotten back to the part where people don’t come and go at that hour, he burst out, “She should have a lawyer!”
“She’s not under arrest,” I retorted. “She’s a witness giving a statement in a murder case! Miss Biggs, do you think you need a lawyer?”
The woman knocked me metaphorically flat. “Yes.” Her hands curled around the bars of the door to the cell, which was, by the way, extremely unlocked and wide open. She pulled the door shut herself, while we all watched with our eyes popping out of our heads, and then meekly requested, “May I call Mrs. Littlepage, please?”
Numb, I took the portable handset, dialed the number, and walked outside to give her a moment’s privacy.
“My God,” said Dr. Hartley, white under his tan. “Does she mean…”
“Doctor,” I ordered, “if you believe in justice, you keep this quiet. Don’t even tell your wife. Understand? That’s your patient, so there’s confidentiality involved anyway.”
I’d caught him off-guard. He blinked rapidly. “What? Oh. Yes, yes, I see.”
I hoped so, or the rumor mill would burn out from spinning so fast. Then I shook myself, went back inside to call the county prosecutor.
CHAPTER 12
When you don’t want to think about lawyers, they’re on TV and radio with 1-800 numbers to call if you think someone owes you a few million dollars. When you need a lawyer, they take their damn time showing up, and then slam into the office like they’re doing you a favor by ruining your day.
The county prosecutor is another Rucker, a cousin of the county police chief. Harmon Rucker, Esquire. Harry, as he prefers to be called, is Chief Rucker’s opposite: all sharp edges, ethics, and thoroughness. He’s also about five-six and walks like he’s seven feet tall.
“Another suspect,” he said to me crisply as he hung his suit coat carefully on the only padded hanger in the office. “You do keep me entertained, Sheriff.”
That was his brand of humor. It takes a little getting used to.
“We’re waiting for her defense attorney, I presume,” he continued, carrying his briefcase into my one and only interview room, also known as the kitchen and break room. Contents: refrigerator, microwave, cheap cupboards and countertop, and a heavy wooden table with four matching chairs. The table was bolted to the floor. A video camera was perched high on one wall. Otherwise, it looked like what it was: a municipal lunch room. I expected Harry’s leather briefcase to recoil when he set it on the table.
“Now, what do I need to know?”
I gave him the short version, and left him to assemble himself and his thoughts. Harry makes a lot of plea bargains, as with Eddie Brady, but it’s in the interest of the county. We’re small. We’re not very wealthy. County lock-up has maybe fifty cells, and we’ve only got two full-time judges to handle all courts. Trials are expensive, and so is housing a prisoner while you’re waiting for the state to find ro
om for them. Thus, Harry makes plea bargains, and our judges hand down some creative sentences. Like Eddie Brady, who was told if he appeared in Judge Shifflett’s courtroom again, he could forget a nice cushy stay in prison. “One more offense,” Judge Shifflett told Eddie, “and you’ll be cleaning trash off the roadsides from now till Glory. Without gloves.”
Now you understand why I don’t fuss about Harry’s predilection for finding other ways to deal with our criminal element. I’d love to see them all rot, but… Well, let’s just say the system is falling down because it works. Law-breakers go to jail and there aren’t enough jails. Of course, it’d help if jails went back to being horrible places to be, and not schools on how to be a more efficient criminal, but that’s another issue.
Mrs. Littlepage did not send just any defense attorney. She sent Myron Teague. Forty-something. Fierce. Camera-ready. And, unfortunately, smart. I had to Mirandize Cynthia before we could question her. I set my jaw and told myself we’d find a way, only to have Cynthia Biggs say, quite calmly, “It’s all right, I want to tell them.”
Boris slunk into the room. She jumped, squeaking. “Cat!”
I opened my mouth to protest.
She squealed as Boris touched her. “Get it off me!”
“Coercion!” bellowed Myron, and I had to carry Boris out to his condo with instructions to eat lots of tuna. Red-faced, I stomped back to the interview. Damn lawyers.
When I returned, Cynthia Biggs was about ready to cry. Teague was shouting at Harry, and Harry was gunfire-fast retorting without either drawing breath. I expected someone to pass out from lack of oxygen, but maybe lawyers have learned to do without higher brain functions. They both kept going until Cynthia screeched, “I did it!”
Well, that got everyone’s attention.
The words tumbled out of her faster than a flash flood down the mountainside. I couldn’t believe them, and if I hadn’t listened to the recording later, I’m not sure I’d have believed she said them. Aunt Marge has always said it’s the quiet ones, but this was, well, crazy.
Not that this stopped Cynthia Biggs from rattling off the most red-faced, hand-wringing, tearful confession I’ve ever witnessed.
“I did it,” she repeated once we’d all gotten our breath back. “I saw her with that man and I knew what it would do to the family and to Mrs. Littlepage and I just didn’t want her to keep seeing him, but she laughed and said awful things about, about, ab-b-bout Mrs. Littlepage, and,” wheezed Cynthia around a sodden handkerchief, “it just got out of control. It just… There was a letter opener on my desk, and….” More tears, more red-faced stuttering. “And then she was on the floor and there was b-b-blood everywhere, and I knew I c-c-couldn’t l-let her stay there, and…”
“And there’s no way in hell,” I said, my brain at last unfrozen, “no way you could haul that body that far.”
At that, Cynthia grew oddly steady. “I had a tarp from the garage. I slid her down the stairs.”
Even Teague paused, caught by imagination: the dreadful morbid thud-thud-thud of the body going down the stairs.
“I put her in my car. I drove to the park. We…”
I pounced. Harry was even faster. “We?”
She’d paled to gray, and recovered magnificently. “We used to talk, sometimes, about how dangerous the park is. Because of all the strangers on Spottswood.”
Understand, a stranger in this case was defined as someone not from Crazy. Which, incidentally, described Cynthia Biggs. She’d been born in Winchester, raised in Arlington, and schooled in Charlottesville. Until she got a job for Mrs. Littlepage, she’d probably never even heard of Crazy.
“What did you do with the tarp?” I demanded.
Teague blustered, “Don’t answer…”
“I folded it up and put it in a trash bag.”
The heat of my anger actually froze me solid. Rucker. That idiot. He hadn’t checked her trash. Or any trash, I amended mentally. Littlepage trash was sacred. And was now buried in a landfill somewhere a few hundred miles away.
“Miss Biggs,” Harry asked in a gentle voice, “did you tell no one what you’d done?”
Her eyes said yes. Her mouth, regrettably, said, “No.”
Harry did a few more formal dance steps before concluding it best she be locked up and charged with Lisa Littlepage Hunter’s murder. As he and Teague left my office, Teague was already saying, “I don’t care she was Mirandized, that confession’ll never make it to court.”
“You think the Littlepages will let this go to court?” I heard Harry chuckle. “Son, you are in for a hell of a wake-up call.”
The door shut. Cynthia Biggs lay weeping in her cell. Kim skittered to me with a cup of coffee and perched on my desk. In a hushed funeral-home voice, she asked, “Is it true? You think there won’t be a trial?”
“I think,” I said without knowing quite why, “the Littlepages will do just about anything to keep their names from being attached to a scandal. And I’d say your secretary offing your daughter counts as one.”
Kim’s forehead puckered. “How’s it a scandal? I let someone into my house and they killed my daughter, I’d damn sure want them to rot and to hell with what anyone says.”
“Yeah, but you’re normal,” I pointed out, tossing tuna treats to Boris in an attempt to placate him. He had not appreciated being booted out of the interview. “Trust me. The Littlepages will find a way to come out looking like heroes.”
***^***
I was more right than I knew. The next day, it was all over town that the Littlepages were paying Teague to continue representing Cynthia Biggs. Our public defenders—we’ve got two, Dr. Hartley’s daughter Tanya, and Skip Warner—must have given a sigh. Skip spent his days defending DUIs and public nuisances; he’d have loved a shot at a felony defense. And Tanya was only a part-time public defender. She spent the rest of her time up in Charlottesville or at Wintergreen, husband-hunting. A juicy case like this would’ve given her some real cachet in her crowd.
It was also all over town that Mrs. Littlepage had told Harry, “We blame ourselves for not seeing Cynthia was disturbed, and obviously overworked. We could never have guessed her dedication to our family ran to the… pathological.”
By lunchtime, the whole town was murmuring sympathy and admiration. I wanted to vomit.
On the other hand, as Aunt Marge told me cheerfully, “Now you know why she didn’t react as you expected.”
This was true. Cynthia Biggs had no doubt called Mrs. Littlepage immediately, and…
The thought started a whole new train in motion. “Wait a minute,” I rapped out, putting down my fork. Boris stretched up to bat at it, hoping the salmon would fall off the end. “If she knew Cynthia killed her daughter, and she didn’t tell us… That’s accessory after the fact.”
“At worst,” Aunt Marge corrected stringently. “Eat your fish, dear.”
I automatically ate some fish. “At best, it was obstruction. Who would cover up for their daughter’s killer?”
“Mary Palmer Littlepage,” replied Aunt Marge positively. “And no, dear, I am not going to join those who speak of her generosity and forgiveness. I know her a bit better than that.”
I blushed from shame. I really need not to underestimate Aunt Marge.
“I am going to say, however, that she has no doubt been mortified to know this, and was thinking primarily of avoiding any scandal attached to her family name.” Aunt Marge read my face accurately, put up a hand. “Any further scandal. I don’t doubt in a few more weeks or months, Cynthia Biggs would have been discreetly fired and perhaps given a plane ticket to a far-off place. Say, Africa. Or China.”
“As a reward?” I choked out, then reconsidered, as Boris meowed for salmon, his mismatched eyes pleading, I’m starving.
“Argh,” I continued, would’ve hit myself on the head if I hadn’t been holding a sharp object. “To minimize the chance she’d talk to anyone who cares.”
“At the very least,” agreed A
unt Marge, and glared at Boris when he hissed at Natasha. The latter retreated quickly, to my godmother’s disgruntlement. “That cat of yours…”
“Wants his salmon first,” I said, flaking off a tiny morsel and letting him lick it from my fingertip. “Beggar.”
Supremely happy to have had his treat, Boris flopped down to wash his expanding gut. He ignored Natasha when she slinked back into the room, tail bushed, and took refuge by Aunt Marge’s ankles.
“I,” announced Aunt Marge, “am simply relieved to have this whole sordid business behind us.”
I couldn’t disagree. Yet I couldn’t agree, either. I had to admit that Cynthia’s confession wrapped it all up nice and neat, without it being too neat. I decided to take a walk in the twilight, one of those wandering rambles around the yard and down the road that meant Boris could snuffle and stalk to his heart’s content without risk of being left behind. Maybe if I walked off some of that salmon and puff pastry, I’d feel better.
I ran through the scenario in my head, while the sky darkened, and the stars popped out. I remembered reading once that some culture somewhere believed stars were holes in the sky. And I thought that I could handle holes in the sky better than holes in a story. Like, for instance, the story told by Cynthia Biggs.
“Okay, Boris, pay attention,” I said as he scuttled off after some small squeaking thing in the roadside weeds. “It’s late. Cynthia can’t sleep. She hears Raymond’s truck. She looks outside, and….”
And she sees the truck. Sees a very Hispanic man getting out, with a giggly, not-too-sober Lisa. They enter the guesthouse. Silhouettes, maybe, tell the rest of the story. Whatever the case, Cynthia watches the man leave, maybe after a passionate kiss from Lisa. She goes downstairs…
Okay, wait. She said she killed Lisa with her letter opener, in her apartment.
Okay, she goes downstairs, confronts Lisa, and they go back to Cynthia’s apartment.
Why not go into the guesthouse?
I frowned, rearranged the details. Lisa bids Raymond good-night, and sees Cynthia at the window. She goes up to Cynthia’s little apartment, maybe to ask her not to reveal the secret to Mrs. Littlepage.
Crazy, VA Page 12