Little Death by the Sea (39 page)

She took a place at the back of the line that
wrapped around the Information Desk and checked her watch. She had
a full hour before take-off, and still no word from Atlanta. She
hoisted her carry-on bag to her other shoulder and tried to take
mental refuge in the stillness of the queue from the roiling, noisy
crowd moving and milling around her

Why wasn’t he paging her? Was her message not
forceful enough? My God! I said I’ve discovered the identity of the
killer, is that not strong enough? Maggie eyed the woman manning
the information booth and hoped she spoke English. Should she have
left a message actually naming the killer? Was it safe to do that?
She looked at her watch again. It was late afternoon back home.
Where had the detectives been all day? Will I need to prove that
what I say is true? She had an uncomfortable image of Burton
crumpling up her message and tossing it away. “Not that Newberry
woman again! Why doesn’t she give it a rest? ‘Found the killer’,
she says! Brother!”

Maggie looked around the rotund German
hausfrau standing stolidly in front of her in line to the
pinch-faced woman behind the booth. The woman didn’t look to Maggie
to be particularly helpful. Suddenly, she felt a permeating
weariness creep over her. She was so sick of trying to make people
give her information or help her. A garbled message in French came
over the public address system, and Maggie strained to catch some
semblance of her name being mentioned. In frustration and relief,
she finally approached the counter.

“My name is Margaret Newberry,” she said
breathlessly. “I am expecting a page.”

“Your question?” The woman looked at her
coldly.

This is it! I’m going to kill a human being
in an international airport!

“What part did you not understand,
Madame
?” Maggie said testily. “The pronunciation of my name?
Mar-gar-et New-berry.
Comprenez
?”

“There have been no pages for you.”

“Thank you. You’ve been a dear.” Maggie
scowled at the woman, enjoying the perverse pleasure of finally not
having to force a sociability she was long-past being able to feel.
She turned away from the counter, frustrated and defeated. She
walked toward the long corridor that led to her departure gate.

Maggie turned quickly to the wall of
telephones that lined the tiled boulevard within Charles DeGaulle
Airport. She deposited her bag against the wall and jammed a franc
coin into the machine. She had been crazy to withhold the name of
the killer in her messages to Burton and Kazmaroff. She had been so
sure that Burton would doubt her word that she had held off naming
the murderer until she could do it on the phone to him
herself—outlining her detailed evidence, sketching out her
argument. But, apparently, not having the name to work with only
seemed to ensure that Burton disregarded her messages. She had to
tell him what she knew and pray he would take it from there.

When the same bored Fulton County desk
sergeant came on the line, Maggie was brief. “Look, this is
Margaret Newberry again—“

“Detectives Burton and Kazmaroff are not in,
Miss Newberry. They have not seen your messages—“

“Do they call in for their messages from time
to time, I wonder?”

“I will deliver your messages to them as soon
as—“

“Look, forget it. I have a new message.”

There was an audible sigh on the other
line.

“Shoot,” he said.

“Tell Burton this,” Maggie licked her lips
and watched the traveler’s parade by her—nasty raincoats and
broken-down umbrellas, patched-together satchels accented by the
wicked slickness of leather micro-skirts and peeled-back hairlines.
“Tell him the key is Gerry Parker. You got that?” Maggie turned
away from the stream of airport travelers and faced the phone box.
“All the victims are connected to him. Tell Burton that Maggie said
‘Stump did it’.”

4

A haphazardly taped flap of the box that held
every piece of her wedding china began to slowly curl up as if
repelled by its own adhesive powers. Darla watched it from the
kitchen table where she was in the process of packing another box.
She made a mental note to repair it later and turned back to the
box on the table in front of her. Carefully, she placed a ten-inch
ceramic Madonna-and-child, which she and Gerry had found on their
honeymoon nine years ago, in a nest of tissue and newspaper. The
Madonna’s head was cocked as if questioning her.
Are you really
going through with this?
it seemed to ask. Darla tried to
imagine this box, with its fragile, hidden prize, in the bowels of
some rusting tramp steamer making its tedious, laborious way across
the Pacific Ocean, past atolls, uninhabited islands,
radiation-cooked archipelagos, and ancient shipwrecks to the lonely
little apostrophe of a country in the middle of the sea, at the
bottom of the world. She looked around her kitchen and saw the
boxes stacked against the counters, crowding the butcher’s block
table, obstructing nearly every passageway to and from the
kitchen—normally the room with the highest traffic in the
house.

Darla’s kitchen—warm and country with its
wooden spoons on the walls and beribboned, macraméd potholders—had
been where the family congregrated for “comfort foods”, for
standing around and talking about what happened in school, at work.
There was always a pot of coffee bubbling, a freshly-iced layer
cake on the counter, the lovely, lilting aroma of something
delicious just removed from the oven.

Gerry had even cleared the refrigerator of
magnets.

The house was quiet this afternoon. Darla had
allowed Haley to spend the night with a friend although she had
been tempted to keep her daughter home for company. But the weeks
were racing away when Haley would still be able to see her friends
and Darla couldn’t deny her much during these last hard weeks
before the move.

“Your father and I would move without batting
an eyelash.” Her mother, the stereotypical Army wife, had called
earlier in the day to see how the packing was coming. As Darla had
expected, her mother could see no reason for Darla’s reluctance,
let alone resistance, to the idea of moving. “Guam, Germany,
California...”

“I know, Mom, I know,” Darla had argued, “but
you and Dad did your moving before we kids were born.”

“So? We certainly didn’t plan it that way.
The service won’t let you, you know. You go when and where they
tell you to go. And Gerry needs to do this for his career, and you,
as a good—“

“It’s not for his career, Mom!” Darla had
wanted to rip the phone out of the wall. Was everyone ready to see
her in a covered wagon, forging ahead to some primitive new
land...at the bottom of the world? “He doesn’t even have a job down
there. He’s just doing it out of fear.”

“Darla, I don’t like to hear you talk like
that. A wife should support her husband. Not snipe behind his back,
dear.”

Darla wanted to weep, and she had already
done plenty of that. She shoved another empty box onto the kitchen
table and began rummaging around for more newspaper. Some days she
thought she could really make it work, could stop fighting with
Gerry about it and just get in step with him. Other days, she
cried.

5

Maggie sat with her airline seat tray
half-open and propped up against her knees, gazing blankly at the
flight attendant as he methodically inflated life saver vests and
indicated where to access oxygen masks.

It was pretty clear that Elise had died in
Maggie’s place. Mistaken identity had never occurred to her. To
believe that some low-life scumball would want to kill her druggie
sister was more acceptable than to believe that it had been Maggie
all along that the killer had been after. Totally besotted with
Gerry, Patti Stump had killed, or tried to kill, all women close to
him.

Maggie tugged on her seat belt, although it
was already fastened and tightened, and glanced at her seatmate. He
looked a businessman. She was surprised that someone would travel
transatlantic in a suit and tie. He smiled at her pleasantly and
she returned the smile.

How many times had Patti seen Gerry smile
jovially at Dierdre? Or seen him ask Dierds with real animation and
pleasure how her weekend was? How many times did Patti watch Gerry
laugh at one of Dierdre’s silly—usually unintended—jokes, all the
while plotting to kill her? Maggie shivered. The bitch had meant to
kill Maggie as well.

She had killed Elise. She had wiped out
Maggie’s only sister.

A flush of rage seared through Maggie at the
thought. She tried to remember Stump’s reaction the next day at
work after Elise had died. All she could picture was the woman, in
her psychedelic glad-rags sitting at the conference room table and
tapping an impatient fountain pen against her spiral notebook. It
was Stump who had run into Alfie in the apartment hall and
ridiculed him. Stump had made the obscene phone call, and the
threatening note. It was Stump who had attacked Maggie in the
woods. When Maggie thought of the condolence card Patti had signed
for Elise, she wanted to rip the woman’s face from her skull.

“You okay?” Her seating companion cocked his
head at her and smiled slightly. “Are you a little nervous about
the flight?”

Maggie took a deep breath and nodded
affirmatively. “Yes, I guess so,” she lied. How else to explain the
fact that she couldn’t sit still and wanted to run up to the
cockpit and jam her foot on the accelerator pedal? Get this crate
moving!

“The statistics are in our favor, you know.”
He had a pleasant, English accent, and Maggie found herself
wondering, for a moment, what his business in America might be. He
vaguely reminded her of Roger.

“Although I know that’s little comfort where
hysteria’s involved.” He raised his hand as if to pat hers and then
thought better of it. “We’re quite safe, though, I must say. I
shouldn’t worry.”

“Yeah, I know.” She smiled at him.
“Thanks.”

“The drinkie’s cart will put you right,” her
companion said affably, and Maggie nodded, then turned her head
away.

All this time, sharing office space with the
woman who murdered Elise—who would’ve murdered me as well if she
could have. When her next thought hit her, it occurred so abruptly
and with such certainty that she jerked upright against her
seatbelt and gave out a sharp gasp that prompted her seatmate to
wrap his hand around her wrist. And although she could hear him
making soothing noises to her, she understood nothing of what he
said.

My God, she thought, gripping the
armrests.

Darla...

6

Jack Burton tossed the chalk lightly in his
hand and stared at the blackboard facing his desk. He was tired and
edgy and craving a cigarette. This case felt like it was unraveling
at his feet but with nothing at the end of the string.

Kazmaroff hit the door solidly with the palms
of both hands as he walked through it and Burton jumped.
Jerk-off!
he thought, angrily.
He’s trying to rattle
me.

“So, you gonna answer her messages?”
Kazmaroff said as he settled himself, noisily, in his desk chair.
He walked the chair out from behind his desk, the wheels squeaking
annoyingly as he did so, until he too was facing the blackboard.
“Still nothing, huh?” He nodded at the board.

“Unless you’ve thought of something between
here and the can.” Burton sneered.

“No, can’t say that I have.”

“And no, I am not calling Paris, France, if
that’s what you’re asking.”

“She’s not in Paris now.”

“Or wherever the hell she is.”

“I imagine she’s en route.”

‘
En route
?’ Jack wanted to stuff the
large stick of chalk down the smug bastard’s mouth. ‘
En
route
?’

“I’m not calling her airplane, Dave,” he said
wearily, tossing the chalk onto the blackboard tray and returning
to his desk.

“Well, then, what about this Stump business,
huh?”

Jack tried to think if he knew any other
adults who said “huh” the way Kazmaroff did. He leaned against the
corner of his desk and watched both his partner and the
blackboard.

“You tell me,” he said.

“I think she’s crazy,” Kazmaroff said flatly,
flicking a blond hair from his burgundy Gap blazer. “I think she’s
got some idea that she’s a detective, like, you know...I don’t
know, Nancy Drew or something, and she’s pulled together a story in
her own mind that takes care of someone at her office she doesn’t
get on with. That’s what I think.”

“Have we questioned Patricia Stump?”

“We questioned everyone, Jack, right after
the secretary got killed.”

“The secretary didn’t get killed. It was the
traffic manager.” Jack watched Kazmaroff closely.

Kazmaroff seemed to be inspecting his nails.
“Yeah, okay, whatever,” he said. And...wait a minute, which one’s
Stump, anyway?””

“Christ...”

“No, now, give me a minute.” Dave jumped up
and sorted through the pile of file folders scattered across his
desk.

“You don’t even know who you talked to?”
Burton felt both pleased and disgusted at the way this conversation
was evolving.

“Listen, I talk to a dozen people a day, give
me a break, okay? Oh, yeah, hey that’s interesting.”

“What?” Burton forced himself not to go and
look over the bastard’s shoulder. “What does it say, man?”

Kazmaroff scrutinized the file folder
contents. “I guess we didn’t talk to her,” he said.

“What?”

Kazmaroff cleared his throat and shifted
uncomfortably from his left foot to his right. “Well, she wasn’t
available the day we hit most of ‘em at the office and when we went
to the memorial service, she said she couldn’t talk. Said she was
too broken up, you know?”

Burton stared at him. “So we never got back
to her?” he asked, finally.