Closer than the Bones (23 page)

It’s a good thing I have such a suspicious nature, I guess. I had known all along there was something odd about that note. The killer had read the same mystery novels I had, but he or she expected me not to catch on to the little game being played for my benefit.

If I had fallen for it (and I groaned at my own bad pun), my injuries or even death could have been dismissed as an accident. “Elderly woman dies in tragic fall”—I could see the headlines now in the local paper.

Was the killer lurking downstairs right this very moment, waiting to hear me plunging headlong down? I shuddered again at that pesky little question.

Probably not, I decided. I had made enough noise walking down the stairs, moments before. Surely if someone had been waiting, he or she realized when I stopped so suddenly and didn’t make a huge amount of noise, that I hadn’t fallen, nor was I about to fall.

As the saying goes, that dog won’t hunt.

I couldn’t just keep on sitting here like this. Either I had to continue downstairs or go back upstairs. I couldn’t scream for help, because I didn’t want to alarm Miss McElroy and risk causing her to have another “little spell,” one which might do considerably more damage than the one she’d had already today. But I wasn’t too eager to rush downstairs into the potentially waiting arms of someone who intended to do me grievous bodily harm.

I wanted to get Jack Preston here, so he could see what someone had done; and I was afraid that if I left the stairs, by the time I got back with someone to act as a witness, the evidence would be gone. Mostly, that is. The nail holes might still be there, but everything else could be removed fairly quickly, if someone was prepared.

But was the killer behind me, somewhere on the second floor? Or was he or she waiting down at the bottom of the stairs? That was the crux of my dilemma. Which way?

I needed to make a decision—fast—because I also didn’t want to be a sitting duck in case the killer got tired of waiting and decided to come after me with a big, blunt object or something sharp, like another butcher knife from the kitchen.

With that thought, I was on my feet and moving back up the stairs—with caution, mind you.

I almost wished the killer had been there, on the second floor. At least a confrontation might have resolved things, one way or another, but the hallway was empty when I got there.

Stopping only to retrieve the envelope from its hiding place, I went down the hallway to the front stairs, then stopped. I peered down but could see no one lurking in the hall below.

I figured the front stairs couldn’t be booby-trapped too, so I almost ran down them. Not slowing my hectic pace, I went through the hall and on into the back of the house, thrusting open the kitchen door and nearly causing Selma Greer to drop the roast she was carving.

“Can you come with me immediately?” I asked, not stopping to think that I might be scaring the living daylights out of her.

Carving knife still in hand, she came toward me. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“I want you to witness something,” I said, whirling and moving quickly back into the hallway and across to the door to the back stairs. Such was my faith in the woman that I never even thought about the foolishness of turning my back on someone with a big knife until later that evening. Sometimes you just have to go with your instincts.

I pulled open the door to the back stairs and flipped on the light switch. I started up the stairs, going slowly. I could hear Selma behind me.

I had gone nearly halfway up the staircase before I conceded defeat. Whoever had laid the trap for me had, in the time it took me to get back here, removed the fishing line. It took me a couple more minutes of patient searching—though my patience was in extremely short supply right then—but I did find the two small nails which had been used to secure the line. The killer hadn’t had time to remove those.

Selma waited, a few steps below me, a patient frown on her face. Sighing, I explained to her what had almost happened to me, though I didn’t tell her about the note I had, tucked inside my blouse. I would give that to Jack Preston and no one else.

“Did you see anyone or hear anyone come through the back part of the hallway or the back stairs in the last five or ten minutes?” I asked.

She relaxed her grip on the knife a bit while she thought. “Betsy was in the kitchen just before you came, getting some dishes to set the table with, and Miz Alice was there right after, asking for something cold to drink.” She shook her head. “I just couldn’t believe her walking upright like that, without her walker. She didn’t say nothing about it, but she sure looked different, I can tell you.”

“Anyone else?”

She started to shake her head, then stopped. “I did see Mr. Brett out the window, coming toward the house. I reckon he came in the back door, though he didn’t stop by in the kitchen, like he usually does. He almost always stops to speak to me, even if he’s in a hurry. But this time he didn’t.”

Brett Doran! I was stunned, to put it mildly. Surely Brett wasn’t responsible for this.

No, he couldn’t be, I reasoned with myself. He wouldn’t have given himself away so clumsily by using his own note card to entice me into the trap. It simply didn’t make sense.

“Anything, or anybody, else?” I said, a note of desperation creeping into my voice.

“People’s always coming and going out in that hall,” Selma replied. “Mr. Morwell, he be in and out of the kitchen three hundred times a day, though I hadn’t seen him much this afternoon. Except when he come to ask me to sit with Miss Mary Tucker later on. And then to get Miss Mary Tucker some cold juice.” She thought for a moment. “Half the time I don’t pay no attention to what’s going on, with the door shut and all; and if someone’s making an effort to be quiet, then I wouldn’t hear ’em no way. So I reckon just about anybody could’ve been up and down the stairs, doing what you say they did, and I wouldn’t ever’ve known about it.” Seeing the frustration plainly in my face, she added, “I sure am sorry, Ernie.”

My shoulders slumped in defeat. “It’s not your fault, Selma,” I assured her. “With everything else you have to do, you certainly can’t play watchdog for me.” I paused for a moment. “The more I think about it, I’m reckoning that whoever set that little trap for me must have been upstairs the whole time. Then, as soon as I started down the front stairs, he or she nipped over to the back stairs and removed the fishing line and disappeared back up the stairs.”

“Mrs. Greer, is something the matter?” Betsy came out of the kitchen, wringing a towel in her hands. The poor girl looked terrified. If someone said “boo” to her about now, she’d hit the back door running and never look back, I’d be willing to bet.

“No, no, Betsy,” Selma said, trying her best to appear like the knife she was carrying was simply a utensil and not a weapon.

“We were just talking about something,” I chimed in.

“Nothing you need worry about.”

Betsy didn’t appear to be very much relieved by our assurances. “The reason I’m asking is that I came into the kitchen just now, and the gravy was bubbling over on the stove and making a mess.” By the tone of awe in her voice, I knew such an occurrence was rare in Selma Greer’s kitchen.

Mumbling under her breath, Selma strode past Betsy, back into the kitchen. Betsy shrugged in my direction, then turned and followed.

I thought I might as well see whether Jack was anywhere nearby. He couldn’t do much, after the fact, about the thwarted attempt at making me break my neck, but he ought to know about it.

There was no sign of him, however. When no one answered my knock, I tried the knob of the library door, but it refused to turn. Jack and his men were off somewhere, working on the case. Surely they’d be back before the night was over, and then I could tell him what had almost happened.

What to do next?
I asked myself. I thought of two things I should do, but I wasn’t overly inclined to do one of them. I needed to talk to Brett, just to verify my suspicions that someone else had written that note, pretending to be from him. But as far as I knew, he had moved up to the third floor after Hamilton Packer’s murder, and I didn’t relish the thought of going up to there in search of him. This house, so eerily silent at the moment, made me twitchy.

The second thing I had thought about, I could accomplish more easily. Ever since I had caught Alice Bertram in flagrante delicto, as it were, I had been wondering what it was she was searching for in Miss McElroy’s sitting room. I had interrupted her, that much I was sure of, but what was she looking for? And why was she looking for it in that room?

I figured she must have been looking for the missing manuscript. But why in that room, in particular?

Time to ask her some more questions, so up to the second floor I went. The first bedroom to my right on the second floor belonged to Lurleen Landry, and I had seen one or the other of the Bertrams coming out of the door of the second bedroom on this side. To that door I marched, and then I knocked lightly upon it.

After a moment, I heard footsteps approaching the door, but the door didn’t open. “Who is it?” A muffled voice came to me through the burnished wood.

“Ernestine Carpenter, Mr. Bertram,” I responded. “I’d like to talk to your wife for a moment, if I might.”

I heard a key turning in the lock, and the door opened a few inches.

Russell Bertram, looking more washed out than usual, regarded me with hostile eyes. “What do you want now?”

What had his wife told him, I wondered, to make him change his demeanor toward me in this way? Then I realized that, more than likely, he was deeply ashamed for me to know the part he had played in the death of his only child. Perhaps he was expecting me to say something nasty to him.

I could only pity him. I couldn’t imagine what it was like for him to bear such a terrible responsibility, but he probably paid for his negligence every day of his life.

Because of that I was gentler in my response to him than ordinarily I would have been, confronted by such rudeness. “I apologize for disturbing you,” I said, “but I really must talk to Mrs. Bertram. Would you ask her if I might come in and see her?”

With a sudden, violent motion, he threw open the door. “You might as well come in. I’m going down for a drink, Alice.” He nearly careened into me, and I got a strong whiff of his breath as he passed. The drink he sought downstairs would not be his first of the day, nor likely his fifth or sixth. I was afraid he might fall down the stairs. I listened for a moment, but I heard no crash.

I shut the door behind me. Gazing across the room toward the window, I could see Alice Bertram regarding me balefully from an armchair.

“I really can’t think of anything else I have to say to you,” she said, her voice icy with disdain.

Sighing, I walked at a slow pace toward her. I was familiar with this reaction. I had seen it many times in my years as a teacher. Often, once someone confides a dark and shameful secret, that person harbors resentment toward the recipient of the confidence. Alice now deeply resented me for having heard her tale of misery. I couldn’t let that deter me now, however.

“If this weren’t important,” I told her, my voice calm but firm, “I wouldn’t disturb you. Would you mind if I sat down?” I gestured toward the chair which stood as companion to her own.

She shrugged. “You might as well.”

“Thank you,” I said, sitting down. Before I could say anything further, she began speaking, her anger pouring forth.

“Russ is convinced that as soon as Mary Tucker knows what happened, she’ll throw us out of the house. He says she won’t have any more to do with him if she finds out he was responsible for our son’s death. I daresay he might be right, because Mary Tucker is such a pious old bitch sometimes. But she has a nerve, I can tell you that, if she thinks she’s just going to throw Russell Bertram out of this house! Why, that woman wouldn’t be anybody if Russ hadn’t become friendly with her and given her entree to all the fancy publishing folk that she was trying to cozy up to! If it hadn’t been for Russ, she wouldn’t be anybody.”

The best defense is a vitriolic offense—that must be the Bertram strategy in deflecting criticism or blame. I still had a lot of sympathy for Alice Bertram and the ordeal she had faced in losing a child in such a senseless, brutal fashion. Nevertheless I wasn’t going to sit here and indulge her by listening to such foolishness.

“That’s between you and Miss McElroy,” I said, staring her straight in the eye. “It’s nothing to do with me, but you’d better wait until Miss McElroy has recovered a bit before you go blasting away at her.”

Alice had the grace to look somewhat abashed at that, but her patience with me had worn thin. “So what is it that you want from me?”

“Earlier today, when I found you in Miss McElroy’s study, you were searching for something when I interrupted you. I should have asked you about it then, but I got distracted. Now I want to know what it was you were looking for and whether you found it.”

For a moment I thought she might try to deny it, or to bluff her way out of it, but the look of determination on my face must have convinced her it wouldn’t do much good.

“If you must know, I was looking for that damn manuscript of Sukey’s. I wanted to find it and destroy it. That piece of trash can’t ever be published, and if I get my hands on it first, there won’t be anything left of it for anyone to see.”

“I figured that’s what you were looking for,” I said. “Did you find it?”

“You’re not blind,” she said. “Did you see me with it?”

“No, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t go back afterwards and keep looking.”

“Well, I didn’t,” she said. “I’ve been in this room ever since I left you, talking to Russ.”

I decided not to press her any further on that point. It sounded like the truth, and it very well might be. But I had another question.

“Why were you looking in Miss McElroy’s sitting room? Why would you think the manuscript would be in there?”

She laughed. “Because I saw Mary Tucker go in there with it.”

Chapter Sixteen

For a moment I forgot to breathe, I was so stunned by Alice Bertram’s statement. “Miss McElroy?” I croaked out at last. “Surely you can’t be serious!”