Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 (17 page)

“They’re going to have counseling for all the kids who ask. Out at school. But it won’t bring Franci back.” Gina downed the rest of the water, crumpled the cup, and reached for the phone. She swiftly punched the numbers.

No, nothing ever brings anyone back. And there are the long, agonizing hours in the night when the refrain goes on and on in your mind. “If we hadn’t driven to Cuernavaca that night on the twisting, narrow mountain road …”A rusted pickup out of control, smashing into us, and Richard and Emily and I were all right. But not Bobby. And I’d been the one who’d insisted we go. I didn’t want to miss the fiesta. Oh, Christ, a fiesta. I’d insisted….

Gina kneaded her temple. “Chloe? Just thought I’d check. Are you going back to school? Look, I can close up and come home— You’re sure?” The decorator’s eyes looked bruised. “Honey, honey, you couldn’t have known. There was no way you could’ve known.” Her fingers closed tightly on the silver necklace at her throat. “That’s right. Go on back to school. Yes. I’ll see you tonight.”

Replacing the receiver, she blearily focused on me. “I still can’t take it in. First Franci. Then Patti Kay. And I know Craig didn’t—God, I can’t even say it, it’s so sick. God, I feel like I’m choking.” Abruptly, she reached behind,
unsnapped the necklace. The metal clinked against the desk as she flung it down. “Okay, Mrs. Collins, I’ll get myself together. What do you want to talk to me about?”

It took a moment to push away the questions I’d never been able to answer—or escape—and plunge myself into the present. “Patty Kay.”

“All in one week,” she muttered. “Nothing like this’s ever happened in Fair Haven. Never.”

I understood. Patty Kay’s shocking murder and a teen’s tragic suicide would have the same devastating impact as the kidnapping of the Exxon executive from the driveway of his home in another exclusive suburb. A well-ordered universe was abruptly revealed as inimical, incalculable. Fair Haven had no place in its cosmology for cruel malevolence.

Gina yanked open her desk drawer, began to root around. “Oh, crap.” She looked at me desperately. “You have any cigarettes?”

I’d quit more than thirty years ago. Thank God.

She answered her own question. “No, no. Damn, I know I hid some somewhere. The last time I quit.” She jumped up, tugged her chair up to the shelving behind the desk. She climbed on the chair, poked her hand behind a stack of wallpaper rolls, then heaved a sigh of relief.

Her hands were trembling when she returned to her chair, clutching a crumpled pack of Winstons. She pulled out a worn cigarette. “It’ll taste awful.” She lit it, pulled the smoke deep in her lungs, made a face. “All right. Where were we? Oh. Patty Kay. What can I say? It’s insane. Now I’m afraid for Chloe to be home by herself after school. Maybe I ought to stay home. I never worried when the boys were home. They’d take care of their sister. God, that’s sexist, isn’t it? Chloe’s as capable as anybody. But she’s a girl and girls aren’t strong. But it wasn’t strength that mattered
for Patty Kay, was it? Somebody had a damn gun. Jesus, Craig’s gun! But the idea that Craig did it is stupid. Craig hates guns. It really upset him when Patty Kay got onto the gun kick. He acted like a nun at a nudist colony.” She flashed me a quick, contrite look. “I’m sorry. That’s my theme song with you, isn’t it? I don’t mean to make fun of Craig. But I grew up with guns. My dad hunted. My husband—when I had one—he hunted. My sons hunt. I just thought Craig was a wimp. But I
know
he couldn’t shoot anybody. But somebody did it. The thing is, how did some stranger get Craig’s gun? And why would Patty Kay be in the playhouse with a stranger? I mean, she definitely wasn’t born yesterday. I tell you, I’m confused as hell.”

There had been no description of the kitchen in the newspaper accounts.

I described to Gina what Craig had found, what the police had seen, what I had cleaned up.

“God, that’s weird. Just last week—” Her mouth snapped shut.

“Last week?”

“Nothing, nothing.” She stared down at the desk.

“The limericks? At the poker party?”

She looked relieved. “Then you already know. But Craig just had too much to drink. It didn’t mean a thing.”

“How did you happen to hear about it?”

“Brooke told me. David’s in the poker group.”

I knew that. And, as I had thought, the cheesecake story had obviously had wide currency.

Gina’s relief at not having to tell me about Craig’s transgression faded. “But if Craig didn’t shoot Patty Kay—and I know he didn’t—then somebody knew about those stupid limericks and threw the cake to make it look like him.” She took a last greedy puff from the cigarette, dropped it into a Coke can. “Oh, Christ. That’s awful. That means …”

She wrapped her arms tightly around her body. Her tear-streaked face suddenly looked old, the bones harsh against tight skin.

“You were her best friend.”

The only response was a spasm of pain on that haggard face. Her lips trembled.

“Desmond Marino
said
you were her best friend.”

She pushed up from her chair, bent across the desk to grab the cigarette pack. She began to pace, head down, smoking, before she replied, in a staccato burst. “Yeah. He got it right. I was. I mean, I still was—even though we weren’t speaking to each other. I was so damn mad at Patty Kay.” She stopped, flung her head up. “Christ, she was so rich. She couldn’t even begin to understand about not having money, or having to worry about money. I mean”—she whirled—“she couldn’t see any side to things but
her
side. I’ve been working a deal that could mean almost a hundred thousand dollars to me. It all hinges on getting some property I own rezoned for commercial instead of residential. It’s right on the edge of the historic district. This property was home to historic flophouses and, a long time ago, to Fair Haven’s fancy ladies. The buildings sure as hell aren’t worth saving. But Patty Kay wanted a buffer area between the historic houses and commercial development. And it’s the only thing I’ve got that could bring in some real money and I truly need it for the kids’ college expenses. My ex, the sorry asshole, is too busy with his new little brood to help the kids go to school. So it’s all up to me.”

She dropped into her chair again, stubbed out the cigarette, and yanked out the center desk drawer. She found a cream-colored envelope and held it out to me. “I swear to God, I could have
killed
her!”

I pulled out the enclosure, embossed with Patty Kay’s initials, and saw that familiar, flowing, crimson script:

“Did you tell her how much you needed the money?”

“Tell her! I
begged
. So she offered to pay for the kids to go to college, and that was the last straw. Dammit, I don’t want charity—I want to be able to pay my way.”

“But you were still playing tennis with her?”

She flung her hands up. “Oh, yes. We just weren’t speaking. Brooke was irritated with us and Edith kept trying to patch it up—and now Patty Kay’s dead.” Tears sparkled in her eyes. “And I can’t even tell her I wasn’t really mad at her. I was
nuts
with everything! Trying to get by on too little money, trying to get my ex to cough some up, trying to keep up appearances—God, the guttering’s bad on the house and I can’t afford to replace it, but you don’t ever want anybody to know you’re down and out. They’d avoid you like the plague.”

“Okay,” I said mildly. “You and Patty Kay had a quarrel. But you still knew her better than anybody else.”

“Oh, yeah. I’ve known her forever. Since we were little
kids. Even then, she bossed me around. Patty Kay was always in charge. But she was so much fun. So damned much fun. And now you’re telling me somebody she knew—somebody
I
know—shot her down.” Again, compulsively, she reached for the cigarette pack.

“When was the last time you actually talked to her?”

Gina lit another cigarette, stared at its flaming tip.

A billboard announcement couldn’t have made it clearer that she didn’t want to answer.

“Recently?” I persisted. “After your quarrel over the property?”

“Well, something else came up. And I did talk to her. And it made her madder than hell.”

“About?”

“Nothing that could have anything to do with—with her murder.” She chose her words with enormous care. “So the last time we talked—even when we weren’t talking— was pretty harsh. And I hate it.” Her voice quivered. “Because no matter what, I loved her.”

“Someone didn’t.”

She snatched another Kleenex, wiped her eyes. She didn’t look at me. “I know of one person. There’s this preacher—”

“The Reverend James Holman. But—”

“Yeah. I know it sounds crazy, but Holman’s one of those far-right nuts. He and Patty Kay despised each other. Somebody told me he preached one Sunday and told his congregation she was visited by the devil. I think maybe it’s DEVIL in capital letters.” She smoothed the crumpled cellophane on the cigarette box and shook her head. “But I can’t imagine how Holman could know about the cheesecake. Sure, this is a small town, but believe me, he didn’t move in the same circles as Patty Kay. Not socially.”

“Unless he’s a remarkable specimen, he’s not in the
running. He had open heart surgery Friday. He’s still in intensive care.”

“Oh.”

I understood her disappointment. Wouldn’t it be lovely to fasten the blame on someone who wasn’t a part of Patty Kay’s social scene?

She blew out a spurt of smoke. “Okay. The cheesecake. So you figure either one of the poker players shot Patty Kay or told somebody about the limericks and that person did it. Who are the poker players?”

“Desmond Marino, Stuart Pierce, Willis Guthrie, David Forrest, and Craig Matthews.”

“Well, Desmond has a mouth like Niagara Falls.” A tiny smile. “Guess I’m a great one to talk. God, yes, that’s true, both ways. But Desmond tells everybody everything. Patty Kay always said the only way Desmond kept from spilling client secrets was by keeping his big mouth busy with everything else.” She shrugged. “Of course, knowing how people are, all the others came home and told their wives. It’s too good a story not to. We were all sick of that wretched cheesecake. But you couldn’t say so because Patty Kay was so damned proud of it.”

Gina’s eyes closed for just an instant. Then she looked at me. I knew she’d steeled herself not to cry. “Okay. The poker party. I guess we’re trying to figure out who might have had a motive. Not Desmond. There’s no possible reason. He wasn’t Patty Kay’s lawyer. Braden Fairlee took care of her legal affairs and always has. And Desmond and Patty Kay have been friends since they were little kids. So, let’s see. Stuart …”

She glared at me through the swirl of smoke. “Dammit, I don’t like this.”

“I know.”

“Patty Kay’s going to be buried tomorrow.” She smoked
and rubbed her temple, her face puckered in thought and misery. She stubbed out the cigarette.

A minute ticked by.

Finally, grimly, Gina looked straight at me. “Okay. Last week I was in Atlanta. A home decorator show. I stayed at the downtown Marriott. Convenient to the convention center. Had a damned tiring day. So about four I went to the bar. It sits up a level in the middle of the lobby. You know, kind of like an island. So you can look down and see the lobby and the elevators. I saw Stuart first. He was standing by an elevator. Then, damned if Patty Kay didn’t walk up. They were standing side by side, ignoring each other. Like they’d never met. They got on the elevator. Just happened it was only the two of them. The car went up to the sixteenth floor, stopped, came down again. I’d had to be brain-dead not to figure that one out quick. They were shacking up. I know it. I know it as well as I can tell you where the scar is—was—on Patty Kay’s right elbow. And what the hell that means with all of this, I don’t know. If anything.”

It would be one more bar in Craig’s prison cell if it checked out. At least as far as the police were concerned.

“I mean, I know how I read it. They couldn’t live together, but they still—” She paused and looked at me doubtfully.

Why do younger people get so uncomfortable talking about sex to anyone over sixty? It’s part of the American youth cult. If they should live so long, they’ll discover that, as with most aspects of life, the more you’ve done it, the better you get—and give. Trust me.

“Oh, hell, the truth of it is, Patty Kay and Stuart were meant for each other, but they were both take-charge types so they could never live together without killing each other….” She clapped a hand to her mouth, then violently shook her head. “I didn’t mean that. I didn’t.”

Perhaps not. But she’d said it.

“What I’m getting at,” she continued hurriedly, “is they couldn’t keep away from each other. That’s why I called Patty Kay even though we weren’t speaking. She was mad as hell because I didn’t mince words. I told her it was wrong, told her she was playing with dynamite.”

“What did she say?”

“She told me to take my platitudes about love and marriage and go straight to hell. And if I knew so damn much about marriage, what happened to mine? We yelled at each other.” Gina buried her face in her hands.

I wondered. It was an effective story. It saddled Craig with the additional motive of his wife’s infidelity. It also set up Stuart Pierce, her ex-husband, in the background as a solid suspect. And, if true, Patty Kay’s extramarital fling certainly was a lot more flamboyant than an argument over rezoning.

Gina lifted her face. Her eyes were swollen. “I remember when we were girls, the first time Patty Kay saw Stuart. It was like watching Fourth of July fireworks.”