by Kate Wilhelm
“I just don’t see how Dorothy Dumond knew that Eve was a threat,” Lawrence said after a moment.
“At about five that evening when Dr. Rasmussen was on her way to a meeting with the trustees, Eve caught up with her at the door of the conference room. The door was partway open. Eve told Dr. Rasmussen she had to know something before the program on Monday. At that time the college was going to present an achievement award to Earl Marshall. The door was opened wider and there was a roomful of trustees, including Dorothy Dumond. Putting together what she heard then, and what Earl no doubt had told her about the supermarket incident, she knew or at least suspected that Eve had discovered that Earl had not written the novel at all.”
“He didn’t know she killed Andrea? Didn’t he suspect?” Lawrence asked.
“I think he came to that conclusion some time during the next week or two, and when he did he packed up everything he had and left. After the success of the novel, the shoe was on the other foot. He was the one with money, and his consent was needed to sell the house. He said no. Probably the investigators will learn that Dorothy was dependent on him, and that he doled out just enough for her to keep up appearances, and not a cent more. She needed to consult him about maintaining the house, hiring things done, keeping up appearances. She had to pretend disdain for travel to Europe, travel to anywhere. She couldn’t afford it. Payback time.”
“Vengeance,” Tricia said in a hoarse whisper. “Howard, Earl, both vengeful, punishing.”
Charlie had avoided glancing at Jenna as he talked about the death of her sister. He turned to her and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t soften it.”
Huddled in her chair, she looked small and vulnerable, wounded. “I had to hear everything,” she said. “I had to know.”
“Constance,” Tricia said then, “you were going to tell us how you knew or guessed that Andrea told Howard… You know, about the rowboat.”
“I read her novel,” Constance said. “It’s a fictionalized autobiography. In it a young girl tells her mother something that leads to the murder of two people, and later, as a young woman she comes to realize that her innocent remark made her mother know the truth about her husband’s death, that he had been killed deliberately, although his death had been called accidental. Eve came to know that it was an autobiographical novel after she found Andrea’s notebook. She hadn’t known it yet when she interviewed Earl Marshall the first time, but when he said he loved the movie that was made, she was appalled. He said then that the book was about a homicidal mother, murders, and that it made a ton of money, which made him happy. Eve protested that the novel had those things in it, but it wasn’t about death and murder, it was about guilt, conscience, the struggle with responsibility. About the inhuman decision a girl had to make, to denounce her mother, whom she loved. About the terrible consequences of her remark, about justice. And that was Andrea’s struggle when she came to realize that her own chance remark to Howard had resulted in tragedies. The chance remark had to have been about the false boat repair that Alice had told her about. In the novel, this is what the child told her mother, ‘I’m sorry that Uncle Jim didn’t fix Daddy’s car right.’ I suspect that Andrea said something like that to Howard, ‘I’m sorry they didn’t fix the boat right.’”
“Hardly like having to betray your own mother,” Lawrence said. “She didn’t even know Howard.”
“She was fatherless,” Constance said. “He came along and gave her a bicycle, bought her ice cream, played with her, laughed with her. A child that age might well have fantasized that he was her father, the idealized father she yearned for. It was enough of a struggle to allow her, or perhaps to compel her to write a beautiful novel about that struggle with her conscience, her guilt feelings, betrayal.”
For the first time Ted spoke up. “Charlie, how much of this has to come out?” He looked old and tired, and there was no trace of hostility in his voice, which sounded more like that of a man who had been defeated.
“I’m not a reporter looking for a scoop,” Charlie said. “The family had to know and now you do. Separate issue from the murders of Eve Parish and Pamela. The only thing that ties it all together is Andrea Briacchi’s novel and her murder.”
Ted turned to Debra Rasmussen, who had tried to merge with the back of her chair again, the way she had done before on the back porch of the house in upstate New York the day they had come to consult with Charlie and Constance. Debra shook her head. “It’s none of my business,” she said. “I’ll have enough questions to field concerning Dorothy. When that becomes public, the talk of a curse will be gone.”
She stood and added, “Chief Engleman said we have to wait for the sheriff, but we don’t have to wait in here. I’m getting a drink, if there’s anything left to drink.”
“I’m with you,” Charlie said, then added to himself, I knew she’d take charge, given the chance. She had just dismissed the class.
21
IT SEEMED THAT BY RISING, DR. RASMUSSEN had sent a signal, and cell phones were pulled out, people separated, and murmuring voices stirred the air.
Charlie mixed the last of the bourbon with a little water and stood at the kitchen door, where he could see the long hall and entrance door. Sheriff DeLaura arrived and was waved into the library. Several minutes later Chief Engleman and several deputies escorted Dorothy Dumond and Earl Marshall out. Engleman was carrying the trash bag. DeLaura looked down the hall and strode partway to Charlie.
“You stick around,” he said in a tight, cold voice. “I want a long talk with you. Where’s Dr. Rasmussen?”
Charlie shrugged, but she stepped out from the dining room and the sheriff motioned for her to go with him to the library. Behind him, Charlie could hear Tricia talking to one of her brothers. “I called home and I’m leaving just as soon as the sheriff says I can. Not another night in this town.”
“Me too,” Ted said. “Stuart, what did you tell William?”
Charlie turned to look at them.
“Only that Charlie found the checks. The rest can wait until I get home and he’s in better shape. I told him I have to hang around another few days to take care of Pamela’s remains when they release her body. We decided on cremation.”
After Rasmussen was finished with the sheriff, she left quickly. He asked for Jenna next, and when she was finished giving a statement, she and Stuart went out to the terrace. Watching them, Constance recalled what Stuart had told Charlie earlier, that he didn’t have time for a long-distance romance. She thought that might change in the near future.
“You know the Sheriff of Nottingham will hold me until last, don’t you? And he won’t be in a hurry to let me go.” Charlie said. At her nod, he added, “I know this great little Italian restaurant, like being in a Tuscan trattoria. And after that, I know about this little gingerbread house… ”
Her eyes could be like ice chips, he thought watching her, and they could be as warm and blue as the summer sky, the way they were when she smiled and nodded. “I know my wifely duty,” she said. “I’ll wait for you.”
After Tricia finished her statement, she asked Stuart if he wanted her to wait to give him a ride to his camp. Stuart said maybe he could go with Charlie and Constance when they took Jenna back to town, and maybe Jenna could take him to the camp later, if she didn’t mind, maybe. She blushed slightly and said that would be fine, since she had her car available in town.
Quickly then, Jenna looked at Constance. “You talked with Andrea’s mother, didn’t you? I want to get in touch with her. She should be the one to press a case against Earl Marshall for stealing her daughter’s novel. I hope she can recover every cent he has left. I want to help her do that. I want to shout to the world that he stole Andrea’s novel.”
“We told her that we’d let her know how this comes out,” Constance said. “We’ll go see her tomorrow.”
“May I go w
ith you?” Jenna asked.
“Of course. I’ll call to tell you what time we’ll leave.”
Lawrence, the last family member to talk to the sheriff, came to them and said, “I guess I’d better read that novel myself. What’s the title of it?”
“I have the copy Constance let me read,” Jenna said. She withdrew it from her handbag and showed it to him.
Finally, with Jenna and Stuart out on the patio, and she alone in the television room waiting for Charlie, who was in a long conversation with the sheriff, Constance thought about the bleak house that had brought joy to no one, about the joke that misfired, the tragedies that ensued, and she thought about Andrea Briacchi, where it all started and where it all finally ended. Rest in peace, she thought, and in her head she heard herself whisper her name, Andrea.
To purchase Kate Wilhelm’s titles on ebook, go to:
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Watch for the new Barbara Holloway Mystery coming in September 2012!!
• By Stone, By Blade, By Fire
Other books by Kate Wilhelm now available:
Charlie Meiklejohn & Constance Leidl Mysteries
• Seven Kinds Of Death
• All For One
• Smart House
• Sister Angel
• Sweet, Sweet Poison
• The Gorgon Field
• The Dark Door
• Torch Song
• The Hamlet Trap
• With Thimbles, With Forks, And Hope
Collections
• Music Makers, including:
“Music Makers”
“Shadows On The Wall Of The Cave”
“Mockingbird”
“The Late Night Train”
“An Ordinary Day With Jason”
• The Bird Cage, including:
“The Bird Cage”
“Changing The World”
“The Fountain Of Neptune”
“Rules Of The Game”
Other Fiction
• Don’t Get Caught — NEW! —
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Kate Wilhelm
Kate Wilhelm’s first short story, “The Pint-Sized Genie” was published in Fantastic Stories in 1956. Her first novel, More Bitter Than Death, a mystery, was published in 1963. Over the span of her career, her writing has crossed over the genres of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy and magical realism, psychological suspense, mimetic, comic, family sagas, a multimedia stage production, and radio plays. She has recently returned to writing mysteries with her Barbara Holloway and the Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl Mysteries novels. Her works have been adapted for television, theater, and movies in the United States, England, and Germany. Wilhelm’s novels and stories have been translated to more than a dozen languages. She has contributed to Redbook, Quark, Orbit, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Locus, Amazing, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mysteries, Fantastic Stories, Omni and many others.
Kate and her husband, Damon Knight (1922-2002), also provided invaluable assistance to numerous other writers over the years. Their teaching careers covered a span of several decades, and hundreds of students, many of whom are famous names in the field today. Kate and Damon helped to establish the Clarion Writer’s Workshop and the Milford Writer’s Conference. They have lectured together at universities in North and South America and Asia. They have been the guests of honor and panelists at numerous conventions around the world. Kate continues to host monthly workshops, as well as teach at other events. She is an avid supporter of local libraries.
Kate Wilhelm lives in Eugene, Oregon.