Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 (32 page)

“Things like this don’t happen in Fair Haven,” Carl Jessop insisted.

Bob Kraft looked at the tree limbs sighing in the night breeze. “If this house burned, the fire could easily have spread to us.” Cheryl shivered and stepped closer to her husband.

A fireman turned his hose from the roof—the wooden roof—back to the ivied wall.

The ivy quivered beneath the force from the hose. If the ivy had caught on fire, the flames would have danced up to the wooden shingles.

Some of the spray misted over the Guthries. Willis skipped nimbly backward. “Watch it, watch it!” But Pamela didn’t move. She simply stared at the drenched stone of her dead sister’s house.

Captain Walsh, unshaven, his shirttail bunched in his trousers, once again stood beside me with his arms folded, his face impassive.

I shook my head. “No,” I said quietly. “I did not.”

That’s when Brigit broke away from her father. She ran up to me, grabbed my arm. “Where’s Craig? Where
is
he?”

“I’ve no idea.”

Brigit whirled toward the police chief. “Something’s happened to Craig. Why aren’t you looking—”

And the green Porsche slewed around the fire engine, jolted to a stop. Craig jumped out. He ran toward us.

“My God, what’s happened? What the hell’s going on?”

“Somebody tried to set the house on fire.” I wished I could see him more clearly, but the revolving light on the nearest police car washed over his face like a laser show, distorting his delicate features.

“I can’t believe it!” Nobody ever sounded more shocked.

Or more scared.

Craig swallowed, stared at the house with frightened eyes. “I sleep like the dead. If it had caught fire—”

The fire chief unsnapped the clasps of his heavy asbestos coat. He shook his head grimly. “If the roof caught, the house would have gone up like wildfire.”

Patty Kay’s cupboard offered an assortment of coffee beans. I chose Colombian, in my mind always the best. The last drops were seeping into the carafe when Craig poked his head into the kitchen.

“Are you making coffee?” He looked toward the kitchen clock.

It was a quarter to three. In the morning.

We were alone. Finally. The police gone. The firemen gone. The neighbors gone.

“Yes. I’ve got some thinking to do.”

He rubbed his eyes and looked absurdly young and vulnerable.

I gazed at him coolly. I hadn’t heard a car leave when the arsonist fled. But Craig could have parked on the next street.

“Yeah. God. I can’t believe everything that’s happened. And the way Walsh talked, it sounded like he thought one of us tried to burn the house down.”

“It’s occurred to him.”

“Why in the hell would we do that?” The outrage in Craig’s voice sounded genuine.

I added two scoops of sugar and stirred. I needed energy. “Oh, Captain Walsh can see where I—your doting aunt, of course—would do it to divert suspicion from you.” The coffee tasted magnificent.

Craig slumped into a chair. “Maybe we ought to tell him you aren’t my aunt.”

“Maybe.”

“Is that why he thinks I’d try to set the house on fire?”

“Perhaps. Of course, if you did it, that isn’t the reason.” I held his gaze. There wasn’t a flicker of understanding in his weary eyes. “No, Craig. If you did it, it would be because I know that Amy—very stubbornly—insisted you left the bookstore at a quarter to four on Saturday.” My hand tightened on the mug of steaming coffee.

I could throw it in his face and be out of the kitchen and down the drive in an instant.

But Craig sat unmoving, his face petulant and angry.

“She was wrong. That’s all. Wrong.”

“Where did you go Saturday afternoon, Craig? What were you doing during that extra fifteen minutes?”

He shook his head. His mouth closed in a tight line.

“Same place you went tonight? To Stevie’s?”

“I didn’t go anywhere.” He realized that was no answer. “I mean, I couldn’t sleep. Hell, I just went for a drive. That’s all. A drive.”

He jerked to his feet and shoved through the door into the hall.

In a moment the stairs creaked.

Once again Craig ran away.

He appeared upset by the attempted arson, frightened, shocked at the suggestion he was behind it.

When I’d awakened and smelled gasoline, I’d immediately believed it to be Craig’s effort to silence me.

But I could simply be a bystander. Perhaps the house was to be set ablaze to kill Craig. Certainly the person who splashed the gasoline couldn’t have known Craig wasn’t in his room. Though surely a mind bent on murder would notice the absence of Craig’s Porsche.

A mind bent on murder … I’d talked with all of them now, the men and women who knew Patty Kay Matthews well enough to entice her into her playhouse to her death.

Craig Matthews. Definitely under the thumb of his strong-willed wife. Had he tired of Patty Kay’s domination? He was involved with Stevie Costello. Whether he would admit it or not. Did he want both Patty Kay’s money and Stevie as his wife? Was the flung-about cheesecake a daring effort on his part to appear the victim of a frame?

But was there time for him to arrive home, shoot Patty Kay, trash the kitchen, and be gone before the police arrived at 5:09?

Oh, yes. Especially if he left the bookstore at a quarter to four—and had a little help from his girlfriend.

Stevie wasn’t at the store Saturday afternoon. She could have made the calls to Craig and to Amy. Perhaps that was the cause of Amy’s murder. Certainly Stevie would have tried to disguise her voice. But something—some intonation, some phrase—may have betrayed her.

Stevie’s sweater could also be part of the elaborate
double bluff. Who’d be dumb enough to commit murder and leave her sweater behind? That would be the defense claim.

But that wasn’t the only possibility. Craig could be innocent as a lamb, the hangups fortuitous, the deli call actually from Patty Kay. A neighbor could have found Patty Kay’s body and made an anonymous call that brought the police.

Because the murderer could be Stevie. It would surely be much nicer to be married to Craig than to be his mistress. And there was all that money Craig would have—if Patty Kay died.

The cheesecake? A little harder to imagine a rationale here. It was surely intended to incriminate Craig. But Stevie might have been a little too clever. She could have thrown the cake, confident all the while that Craig was at the bookstore, well alibied. Yes, of course. Should she ever come under suspicion, the accusation would be weakened because Stevie of all people would not want Craig arrested.

Complicated. Maybe too complicated.

The sweater?

If Stevie and Patty Kay struggled, the sweater might have fallen or been pulled off. It would be hard for Stevie to pick up her sweater if it was steeped in Patty Kay’s blood.

Committing a murder could rattle even the coolest head.

In a way, I was playing a macabre game of paper dolls, slipping in place each time a different face for the dolly with the gun.

Brigit Pierce?

So young and so old at the same time. Almost a child, definitely a woman. And crazy about Craig.

Could that girlish infatuation for her stepfather have turned to an ugly hatred if she thought Craig agreed with
her mother that she should be sent away to school? Had Brigit tried to set the house ablaze to kill Craig? Brigit hungered for her stepfather’s touch. Her mother had laughed. Worse, Patty Kay had threatened to send Brigit away. Youthful passions burn hot and bright with no thought for tomorrow.

I’d come to like Patty Kay. I admired her courage, her humor, her competitiveness, her brashness, her refusal to knuckle under to what she believed to be wrong.

But she was far from perfect. She was a woman who had been unable to imagine how others felt. She was so certain of her course, it didn’t occur to her that what seemed so clear, so obvious, so right to her might be impossible for another to accept.

Even Desmond Marino, who’d loved Patty Kay, knew that she had a fatal lack of perception. Yes, Desmond had loved his old friend. Unrequited love can turn bitter and dangerous. In a twisted way, I could see him eager to destroy the man who had the woman he wanted. Had it galled the clever, ebullient lawyer that Patty Kay was content with a man Desmond considered ineffectual? For a highly successful lawyer, Desmond had mounted a lackluster defense for his client until I arrived to prod him.

Gina Abbott. Quick, intense, passionate. She claimed she’d quarreled with Patty Kay over the latter’s liaison with Stuart. Why should Gina care? Was the true quarrel over rezoning land? Gina saw the rezoning as a ticket to college for her children. How desperate was she to remove Patty Kay’s opposition?

Brooke Forrest. It was so terribly important to Brooke to do the right thing. Appearances were the reality to her. She didn’t seem to be able to focus on her friend’s murder as much as the necessity for the trustees to choose the
proper memorial for the dead woman. An upside-down world view?

David Forrest. He didn’t like Patty Kay. Her disregard of social standards—
his
social standards—deeply offended him. But surely the world was full of people who offended David Forrest?

And they were quite alive and well.

Stuart Pierce. His emotion over the loss of his former wife seemed genuine. But he might have grown restive since succumbing once again to her charm. Had she threatened to tell Louise about their relationship, to ruin his second marriage?

Louise. A smug, satisfied woman, happy with her life. I didn’t think she’d stop at anything to protect it.

Willis and Pamela Guthrie. Both worshiped at mammon’s shrine. They loved things, not people. Would either of them have been willing to destroy Patty Kay’s house and its beautiful contents?

Chuck Selwyn. Gina called the headmaster Mr. Eternal Youth. It was hard to separate him from his uplifting twaddle. How much of it did he believe? He thought Walden School was an Eden. He’d do anything to protect it.

But how could burning down Patty Kay’s house protect his precious Walden School?

Why try to set this house on fire?

I drank deeply of the coffee. That was the important question.

Why did someone want this house to burn?

To scare me? To kill me? To kill Craig? But what a hit-and-miss, uncertain method of murder.

There was nothing hit-and-miss about the gunshots that ended Patty Kay’s life.

So why a fire?

To destroy the house.

That was the obvious, quick, immediate answer.

Take the obvious answer first.

The house, the house—how could it be a threat …

I sat very still.

Because the searcher hadn’t found what he or she sought in Patty Kay’s office Monday afternoon.

Yes. Oh, yes.

That search had been so violent, so desperate, so furious.

Yes.

Something in Patty Kay’s office …

The Walden School files.

My shoulders sagged. I’d been through those files, through them and through them.

Craig linked Patty Kay’s unhappiness to the files she’d brought home late Thursday night.

If Craig was telling the truth about that.

But if Patty Kay arranged that last-minute dinner because of a matter she wanted to bring before the trustees, why hadn’t she lined up the necessary support?

All right. Toss the dinner. It didn’t matter.

Yet, she died only a few hours before the trustees would come to her home.

I looked at the clock.

Almost half-past four.

The darkest watch of the night.

Images flickered in my mind.

Patty Kay. Brave, obtuse, generous, stubbornly unforgiving. Patty Kay fiercely playing tennis, Patty Kay laughing as she teased Brooke, Patty Kay atop an elephant, Patty Kay facing down the sanctimonious minister, Patty Kay lightly dismissing her daughter’s first passion, Patty Kay driving out to school for her files …

Everything was fine until Thursday night, when she went out to Walden School.

Walden School, an enclave of privileged youth. I thought of the magnificent grounds, the fine buildings, and manicured playing fields. Even a beautiful lake. But now the lake had served as the background for such a needless young death. These students were pampered and protected and offered the finest education. But not even world-class cosseting could protect one young girl from ugliness and despair.

The serpent in Eden.

That was the kind of injustice that would inflame Patty Kay.

I imagined her driving there Thursday night, going to her office …

Thursday night.

Night. When no one is about. Or, if about, sometimes those who slip quietly through darkness are up to no good.

Abruptly I saw the trees and not the forest.

Quickly, quickly I ran through the idea in my mind, the shocking, explosive, quite possible idea.

Oh, yes, yes, it could be.

God, it could be.

Patty Kay would indeed be upset, outraged, determined to take action.

I pushed up from my chair, began to pace.

Think, Henrie O, think.

Patty Kay would have to be sure.

Perhaps somewhere in the house was proof of my theory.

But there might be an easier way.

If Patty Kay had acted as I thought she would, done what Patty Kay Prentiss Pierce Matthews would have had to do to be certain, there might yet be proof!