Bleeding Heart (25 page)

“What? Those crazy old bags. They’re just jealous!”

“This isn’t the high school prom, Gwen!” I snapped. “Or a beauty pageant. It’s not about who’s the prettiest or most popular girl in the class! And you know what makes me really angry? You gave such a great speech. You put together a terrific presentation. You were so confident and persuasive. And then you ruined it all by vamping around the room afterward.”

“That’s pretty harsh.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but it’s time you heard this. You’re not a teenager anymore. You’re a competent, capable, and mature woman, and you need to start behaving like one. Frankly, I think you’d get far better results if you stopped acting so desperate.”

“It’s not an act,” Gwen said, draining her glass. “I wasted too much time thinking Graham was going to come through for me. If I don’t raise at least half the money for the restoration by the end of this fiscal year, I know the board’s going to replace me. I’m forty-eight, Alice! My mortgage is under water. My 401(k) is a joke. So, yeah, I
am
kind of desperate, okay? I have to use everything I’ve got to make this happen!”

“And I’m telling you that you’ve got a lot more going for you than your looks. Start using your head. Rethink your strategy. Figure out a way to get the board—especially the women—back on your side.”

Gwen held the wine bottle up to the light. It was empty.

“You’re right,” she said with a sigh. She walked over to the table where the plans for the building restoration were displayed, put the bottle down, and shuffled the blueprints together. She started
rolling them up. “I need to rethink a lot of things. I’m beginning to realize just how hard Graham’s death hit me. I’ve been feeling so down—and vulnerable. It’s great you and Tom are getting together. But, honestly? It makes me feel that much more alone.”

“Come on—you could have your pick of men! All you have to do is crook your little finger.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she said, turning to face me. “But I’m worn out. I’m getting too old for all these games. I want someone who really cares about me—someone I can trust. And—well—you might as well know: Sal’s been asking to see me again.”

“Oh, no, don’t go there, Gwen!”

“I think I have to,” she said, closing her eyes. “I’m tired—and I’m afraid. Sal’s always been so loving toward me.”

“You almost broke his heart last time. It isn’t fair! And it isn’t the solution. You’d just be using him. You told me yourself that you weren’t attracted to him anymore. It would be cruel. It would be—”

“My damned decision!” she said, her eyes flashing open again. “I really resent it when you get all high and mighty on me, Alice. I hate it when you tell me what you think I should do. Because what you just don’t seem to understand is that I’m not
like
you. I don’t have your education or your inner resources. I don’t have your drive and determination. And I don’t have a well-off family waiting to bail me out if I fail.
This
is all I have,” she said, circling slowly around on tiptoe, arms curved above her head, like a little girl in a ballet class. “And it’s not going to last forever.”

“Y
ou’re being maudlin and ridiculous,” I told Gwen when she complained about losing her looks. “And you’re wrong about not being determined. Who was it that stood up to that bear the summer we first met? I’ll never forget how you faced off against him! You’ve always been fearless, Gwen. And self-reliant.
That’s
who you are. You’d be utterly miserable living off a man. And you’d make Sal miserable, too.”

“Stop lecturing me!” she snapped. “Even in your darkest hour, I never told
you
what to do. I was just there for you. I heard you out. I passed the tissues. I poured the wine. What I did not do was dispense any sort of judgment. And that’s what I need right now. A real friend—not a life coach!”

“I will not sit by and watch you throw away everything you’ve worked so hard for.”

“Well, I’m afraid you’re going to have to do just that,” she said. “We’re done here.”

Gwen and I don’t usually let our differences of opinion get in the way of our friendship. We argue, of course. Things can get
pretty heated between us, but we’ve never allowed the bad feelings to hang there for very long. Until that night.

“I think you’re making a terrible mistake,” I told her as I drew my bag up over my shoulder.

“Yes,” she said. “You’ve made that abundantly clear.”

I knew she’d call me over the weekend to apologize. She’d wake up the next day, think over what I’d said, and realize that I was right. It might take her a little while to admit it, I told myself on Sunday afternoon when I hadn’t yet heard from her. Gwen could be so stubborn! But on Monday morning when she still hadn’t gotten in touch, I realized how serious the situation was. It was inconceivable to me, but my oldest and dearest friend seemed to be giving up. On her independence. Her future. The very essence of what made her such a unique and wonderful human being.

How had this happened? I knew she’d been going through a rough stretch since Mackenzie’s passing, but I couldn’t remember her ever sounding so down and defeated. Not to mention deceitful: lying to the police and rekindling an affair with someone she no longer loved. This wasn’t the Gwen I’d known and admired most of my life. What was really going on? I kept turning over in my mind one particular thing she’d said:
I’m afraid
. But of what? Whom? What wasn’t she telling me? For the first time since I learned that Mackenzie’s death had been ruled suspicious I felt my confidence in Gwen’s innocence start to waver. After all, I’d learned the hard way about being too trusting. I’d learned in the cruelest way possible that thinking you know someone, even someone dear to you, doesn’t always mean you do.

With all this on my mind, I arrived at the office on Monday in a foul mood. Mara seemed more withdrawn than usual, too, though it was hard for me to tell what her true emotional baseline was anymore. The closeness we’d shared when we were first dealing
with the Mackenzie mess was gone now. I wasn’t quite sure why, but I could definitely say when it had ended: the night Erlander had called her at home and told her about Richard’s disappearance. I couldn’t believe she would actually suspect me of foul play, but she was certainly acting as though she did. When I caught her eyeing me surreptitiously later that morning, I finally snapped:

“What? Is there something you want to ask me?”

“No,” she mumbled, looking down at her keyboard.

“Is there something you feel we should be talking about?” I tried again. I was fed up with whatever cat-and-mouse game she was playing. When she didn’t answer, I found my all-too-ready temper coming to a boil. “What the hell is it, Mara? Don’t you think I see you staring at me with those—”

“Hello? Excuse me?” Chief Schlott asked, pushing open the screen door. One of his deputies, a young officer with a buzz cut whom I knew only by sight, came in after him. “I knocked, but I guess you didn’t hear me.” He looked from me to Mara, then back to me again. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“That’s okay,” I said, though I felt embarrassed at being caught in the middle of a harangue. I knew I had a reputation around town for having a short fuse. It went back to those early, trying days when I’d first relocated to Woodhaven and was forced to rethink my entire life. I was pretty curt then. And demanding. I kept most people at arm’s length. Relations improved when folks got to know me better, but I think Erlander’s recent round of interviews had unfortunately jogged a few memories. I could almost hear people thinking . . .
I always thought she had something to hide . . . Surely she must have at least suspected what her no-good husband was up to . . . I heard she learned Mackenzie owed her a ton of money—right before he was murdered. I bet she really lost it then!

I got up from my desk and came around to shake Ron Schlott’s hand. But then I saw the piece of paper he was carrying. He held it up in the air between us.

“This is a warrant, signed by a judge, to search the premises of this place of business and the attached greenhouses. Just to make this official, Alice, I need to inform you that I’m Chief Ron Schlott of the Woodhaven police force and this is my deputy, Niels Halderman, who will be helping me with the search.”

“A search warrant?” I asked stupidly, though the evidence was right in front of my face. “What in the world are you looking for in here?”

“I’m sorry, Alice,” Ron said. “I really can’t go into that. May I have your permission to start?”

I glanced over at Mara, who was staring back at me, openmouthed.

“Of course,” I said, mystified. The whole thing felt as melodramatic and unreal to me as a made-for-TV movie. “Search away! If you’re looking for a blunt object, there’s a nice heavy maul in the tool area in the back of the barn.”

“What?” the deputy gasped.

“She was only kidding!” Mara cried, rising halfway out of her chair. “She doesn’t mean anything by it. She didn’t do anything wrong!”

“It’s okay, miss,” Ron said as he started across the room to the double doors that opened to the back of the building. “No one’s accusing Mrs. Hyatt of anything. And I recognize a joke when I hear one.”

I knew I had nothing to hide. At the same time, I felt anxious and conflicted as Ron and his deputy moved methodically through the converted barn. I watched their progress through the long sliding window that separated the barn from the office area. They were
running gloved hands over the mowing equipment. Taking down and closely examining every shovel, rake, and hoe. Looking around and behind the forty-pound bags of fertilizer and grass seed. Though these were just workaday items—and the bigger machines on lease—the search still felt like an invasion of my privacy. And no matter what Ron claimed, there was an implicit threat in what they were doing. They were obviously looking for something that might implicate me in Mackenzie’s death.

I pretended to be busy. Mara did as well, scheduling an appointment for me with one of our clients. Checking in on a worker who’d been out sick. She was still on the phone when Ron and the deputy emerged from the barn. They appeared to be empty-handed.

“I’ve got to head back to the station now,” Ron told me, “but Niels is going to stay on and finish up here.”

“Fine,” I said, relieved that Ron obviously didn’t think the rest of the search was worth his efforts. The whole thing was such a waste of time! I got up and walked him out the door.

“Sorry about all this,” Ron said quietly as we watched his deputy cut across the lawn to the greenhouses.

“I assume that if you found anything incriminating you’d have had me in handcuffs by now.”

“I’m afraid I can’t dis—”

“Oh, I know, Ron,” I said. “You’re just doing your job.”

I went back into the office and tried to do mine, but I couldn’t concentrate.
What in the world was Erlander up to?
For surely, this whole thing was his idea, and he would have had to have something specific in mind in order to get a judge to sign his warrant. As I was mulling this over, Mara’s cell phone rang.

“What?” she said, picking it up. “Oh . . . no! When did it start? How bad is it?”

She sounded upset. My first thought was that Danny’s babysitter was on the line and something had happened to Mara’s son. I knew Mara hated to have anyone pry into her private life and disliked taking personal days, but I was determined to give her the afternoon off if she needed it. Typically, though, when she glanced up and saw that I was looking her way, she spun around in her chair to face in the opposite direction. Though she lowered her voice, I was still able to make out snatches of her side of the conversation.

“But why didn’t you . . . I wish you had . . . of course we will . . .”

Then a loud crash and tinkle of glass coming from the greenhouse made me forget all about Mara’s worries. I sprinted across the lawn to deal with my own.

Niels was sprawled at the far end of the new extension with three of my antique bell jars in shards around him. These had been my grandmother’s and, though I rarely used them in the garden these days, I treasured their pretty domed shapes and cut-glass handles. To keep them safe, I had arranged them on a strong aluminum shelf above one of the long seedling trays. In the summer season we used this area for drying and processing herbs and flowers for the teas, extracts, and potpourri that I’d been selling for the last couple of years at the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s Holiday Fair.

“What the hell happened?” I demanded as I made my way down the aisle toward Niels. I noticed a thin trail of blood trickling along his jawline.

“I’m sorry,” he said, attempting to sit up. “Those things just came down on me.”

“I very much doubt that,” I told him. “Don’t move. You’ll only cut yourself more. I’ll get a broom and try to clear this mess up.”

It took a while. There was glass everywhere. The bell jars had obviously hit against the hard aluminum counter edge as they came
down and shattered into what seemed like literally a million pieces. Except for the cut on his cheek and a few scratches on his palms, Niels was fine.

“I’ll have you know those bell jars were antiques,” I said as I swept around him.
What an unnecessary loss!
I thought, my anger building again as I whisked a portion of my family’s past into the dustpan. “Irreplaceable antiques.”

“I’m sure the county will pay for any damages,” he told me.

“Do you have any idea what the word ‘irreplaceable’ means?”

“I’m
sorry
, okay?” he said. He was obviously one of those people who went on the defensive when he was found in the wrong. Bullies did that, it seemed to me, and I didn’t like bullies.

“What in hell are you looking for?” I demanded. “It’s ridiculous to have you creeping around behind my back, destroying my property! Just tell me what it is you want, for heaven’s sake. I’ll help you find it!”

“That’s okay,” he said, getting to his feet and gingerly dusting off his pants. “I already did.” It was only then that I noticed he’d been lying on top of a big black plastic bag. Whatever was in it appeared to be squashed beyond recognition.

“You did?”

“Yes, thanks,” he said, picking up the bag. “Sorry about your jars.”

I walked slowly back to the office after he’d left, trying to figure out what the deputy could have carried off with him. There was nothing much in the greenhouse this time of the year. The annuals had all been planted. It was far too early in the season to start bringing in the tender perennials for the winter. I didn’t actually spend much time out there myself these days. Mara had taken over most of the watering, maintenance, and cleaning. Perhaps she’d have some idea what the deputy might have found.