Midsummer Murder (28 page)

“Me, too,” she agreed.

“We can keep him here tonight and put him on a bus home tomorrow.”

“If the sheriff has done an even half-assed job, his picture will be posted everywhere.” She felt Connie nod his head. So that was out.

Connie was becoming heavy in her arms, fatigue replacing fear as Lindy rocked him slowly toward sleep.

“Damn. Talk about your rock and hard places,” said Rebo. He pulled his bandanna from his head and mopped his face. “If we tell Brandecker, he’ll have to tell the authorities. Too bad the man’s so damn scrupulous. If he weren’t, we could dump the kid on him.” He paused, then grinned. “And you could be having one hell of a little fling on the side.”

They finally decided to leave Connie there for the night. He was already asleep when Lindy lowered his head gently to the sleeping bag. Rebo volunteered to stay with him. It was getting late or Lindy 186

Midsummer Murder

would have argued. If Grappel discovered them, God knows what he would make of it. But they had no choice.

Rebo followed her to the ledge.

“Don’t worry mama, I’m strictly monogamous, and . . .” He placed his finger on her nose. “I don’t do children.”

She brushed his finger away and hugged him. “I have total confidence in you.”

“You do?”

She nodded and began her climb back to the path.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Rebo whispered. “You do that good.”

“What?”

“That mother thing.” Then he vanished, leaving her staring at the rock wall. Smiling, she climbed upward.

She retrieved her heels from under the bush and crept upstairs.

The room was empty. She had a brief image of Glen following Bill around to prevent him from keeping a midnight rendezvous. Lord, if he only knew.

She had barely jumped into bed and pulled the covers up, when she heard the door open. She yawned theatrically and asked in a sleepy voice, “Where have you been?”

“Talking to Bill.” Glen threw his jacket on a chair and kicked his shoes underneath.

“That’s nice.”

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him.”

No, he wasn’t, agreed Lindy and closed her eyes, this time for real.

187

Sixteen

Annie and Lindy stood in the driveway until Glen’s car was no longer in sight.

“Well,” said Lindy. “Just us girls.”

“Mom.”

Lindy knew from Annie’s tone where she was going. “The least said, the better.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven. But the next time you get any wild ideas, ask first.” Lindy moved away.

“Where are you going?”

“To see a man about a horse.” And, she added to herself, to try to think of something besides platitudes before she got there. She started back across the pavement. Two black sedans sped up the drive and stopped in front of the house. Car doors slammed and a cadre of Easton lawyers hurried up the steps.

She hadn’t gone far before she saw Rebo coming up the path. He was walking funny. As he got closer, she could see a patchwork of scratches across his face and arms. His complexion was a chalky brown.

“Little shit bolted,” he said. “I was graciously offering him a Pop-Tart for breakfast when he kneed me in the balls and took off.

By the time I was a baritone again, he was nowhere to be found.

Though I tried.” He held out his scratched arms as evidence. “The forest fought back.”

“What do we do now?”

“Let the sheriff find him,” Rebo grunted. “I don’t care what you do, but I’m going to go straddle an ice pack.” He limped away.

188

Midsummer Murder

Lindy felt her options disappearing. She couldn’t tell Bill about finding Connie. Especially now that he was out there somewhere unprotected. Bill would be bound by his sense of jurisprudence to tell the sheriff, regardless of how he felt about him. And Lindy knew exactly how he felt. If he wouldn’t put up with sloppy thinking from an amateur, he certainly wouldn’t condone it in a professional. But he would still feel compelled to act within the law. Damn the man for his honesty.

She headed for the theater. She’d look in on company class while she tried to figure out what to do. The company started each day with a ballet class. As Rebo had told his students, ballet was the foundation of their art, and its classical structure might inspire a little order to her thoughts.

She went through the front door and into the lobby; it was faster than walking around to the stage door in the back.

Rose was looking at the student pictures when Lindy walked inside.

“Morning,” she said then turned back to peruse the picture in front of her.

Lindy came to stand beside her.

“You know,” said Rose. “He’s not at all what you’d expect from hearing about him.”

Lindy looked at the picture. Larry Cleveland smiled back at her. “I thought the same thing when I first saw it,” said Lindy.

“Kind of reminds me of that riddle.”

“What riddle?”

“You know, that one about what enters on four legs, does something on two, and then exits on three.” Rose shrugged. “I don’t remember how it goes exactly.”

“ A baby, a youth, and an old man,” Lindy answered. “But I don’t follow you.”

“Well, here is the ‘baby’, blond, blue-eyed, handsome . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Then there’s the boss.” Rose pointed to the closed door of the theater where Jeremy was teaching company class. “Blond, blue-eyed and handsome, only older. And then . . .” She turned toward the glass front of the theater. “There’s him.” Ellis and Stu passed in front of them, looking comfortable and unhurried, their quarrel apparently resolved, out for a morning stroll. “No longer blond, but I bet he was, blue-eyed, still kind of handsome, and walking with a cane.”

189

Shelley Freydont

“Hmmm,” said Lindy. “It is a weird coincidence, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” Rose pondered for a moment. “I wonder. The Eastons seem to have a penchant for the—”

“Blond, blue-eyed, and handsome,” finished Lindy.

“Hmmm,” said Rose.

* * *

Lindy felt calmer after watching class. Ballet was so well ordered. One exercise built on another until all the body parts were warmed up and working; smaller movements grew into larger ones, requiring more and more strength as the class progressed. And when the final exercise was finished, the body was primed and ready to work. Sounded like good technique for an investigation, too, thought Lindy. Start with the small and build to the larger picture. Pay attention to each separate part until the whole situation made sense. But how to do it?

She began organizing each incident sequentially, then took them apart and looked for common threads. A dead boy, a staged suicide, a landslide. Sex and real estate. A powerful family, loyal friends and employees, and the disgruntled few. Where was the pattern?

Marguerite, powerful, beloved, unyielding; Ellis, well bred, but slightly befuddled and anachronistic; Stu, the family friend. Was that just Marguerite’s euphemism for Ellis’s lover? But they were over sixty. As if sexagenarians didn’t have sex, thought Lindy, disgusted with her own prejudice. Prejudice? Byron Grappel, hating the camp and Robert, because of Chi-Chi, or because of something else? And what about Adele? She had slipped the bottle of pills into her pocket.

It seemed perfectly reasonable at the time, but was she hiding something?

Was she involved or was she in danger? And who had typed the suicide note on the computer?

It had to have been someone after they had taken Robert to the infirmary. Why else would the chair have been moved? Someone typed the note and turned Robert’s chair to face the computer.

Someone who didn’t know that Robert didn’t type. Good Lord, had she interrupted the killer after he had placed a potentially lethal dose of drugs in Robert’s drink? Had he been there watching her? Then typed the note after they had taken Robert away?

190

Midsummer Murder

She sprang out of her seat; the cushion flipped up and she hurried up the aisle. She had to talk to Bill. He knew something that she didn’t. Something that Jeremy had told him. He’d have to tell her. She’d trade him information if he wanted to play it that way. Between the two of them, they would be able to figure it out.

She stopped as soon as her hand reached the bar of the lobby door.

Or could it be that Jeremy knew who the killer was? A cold sweat broke out on her face. Her stomach churned. Maybe Robert really did know how to type; she only had Chi-Chi’s word for it that he didn’t.

Shit, her imagination was running wild. This was doing no good. It was time to humble herself before Bill.

She didn’t have far to look. Bill was coming around the back of the theater. A knapsack was slung over one shoulder. He braced himself when he saw her.

She walked slowly forward. She was no more prepared to encounter him than he was ready for her. Inexplicably, she felt that their friendship was about to be tested. She waffled a minute wondering if finding the killer would be worth the price. And why it had come to this. Was it because of everyone’s assumption of their sexual involvement, or was it that they really didn’t have each other’s trust?

He was waiting for her, standing his ground, not making the first move. She took a steadying breath and walked up to him.

“Hi.”
Great, Graham,
she thought.
Brilliant opening.

No smile. Just an intent look. “I feel a trap here,” he said finally.

And there they stood, being stubborn. Just like many times before.

Only this was different. She could feel it as sure as she felt the sweat gathering in her armpits.

She groped for something to say. Every possibility fled her brain, leaving it blank and stupid. The silence continued.

“You want to see what I have in this bag?”

Had he just made the first step? Or was he deflecting her again?

“Etchings?” As a joke it fell flat. Stop being glib, she warned herself.

“Yes.”

He turned away. She followed him across the graveled clearing until he stopped at a table and plunked the bag onto it. They sat down.

Lindy watched him press open the plastic clasp and pull out a brown lunch bag.

191

Shelley Freydont

Lunch? She watched warily as his hand reached inside again. This time he pulled out a flashlight, which dragged a surgical latex glove along with it. He tossed the glove aside. “A makeshift evidence kit.

Adele gave me the gloves.”

Her interest increased.

He turned on the flashlight and opened the bag. He didn’t have to tell her not to touch it. He knew she wouldn’t. Somehow that fact made her feel better.

He shined the flashlight into the bag. Lindy peered past it to three tiny pieces of metal. “What are they?”

“Remnants of dynamite caps.”

“You found these at the site?”

“Above it.”

So that’s where he had been. She smiled her approval.

“Just dumb luck. And not usable in court.”

“But—”

“Found and removed from the crime scene by an amateur. Like I said, not much use.”

Crime scene, she thought, but she said, “You’re not an amateur.”

“These days I am. But at least we know.”

Lindy wondered if it was disappointment she heard in his voice, or just resignation. Over their months of friendship, she had learned that he had given up his job as detective in the NYPD because his wife, an actress, had thought it wasn’t classy enough. He had quit and she had left him. That was fourteen years ago and that was all he had ever said on the subject.

“Are you going to tell the sheriff?” She knew the answer.

“As a matter of formality.”

She nodded. But his next statement shocked her.

“I suggested he look. Yesterday.” She watched his jaw tighten then relax. “This morning the area had been contaminated, big time.”

“You think he destroyed evidence.”

Bill quirked his head to the side. “He missed these.”

“I wish you’d yell at me,” she blurted out. “You’re being much too accepting. It’s not like you.”

He smiled. A shadow of his usual one. “I haven’t spent much time with the company before this, Lindy. I don’t like it.”

“We’re that bad?” She tried for a casual tone, but she felt hurt.

192

Midsummer Murder

“Just the opposite.” He folded the ends of the bag and returned it and the flashlight and glove to the knapsack. “Will you tell me what you’ve found out?” He held up his hand. “No reciprocation.”

But she understood now. Jeremy had told him something in confidence and he wouldn’t betray it. He was caught between his loyalties and he was unhappy.

She told him about the day she found Robert slumped over his desk. About the chair being turned the wrong way and her surmises as to why.

Bill only nodded as she spoke as if he had expected as much. But the story about finding the cave and Connie clearly surprised him.

“You should have told me. I wondered where you were off to last night. I would have followed you, but I couldn’t detach your husband.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You planned it that way.”

She nodded.

“Figures!” Now, he yelled. “Of all the stupid—did you stop to think of the repercussions? The kid could be in danger—you could be in danger.” Then he stopped as abruptly as he began. He grabbed the knapsack off the table. “Never mind,” he said in a quieter voice. She watched him walk away.

She added Bill to the list of people she had pissed off that week. The others had forgiven her. Hopefully, he would, too.

* * *

Lindy sat for a while alternating between watching Bill’s back as he walked toward the house and staring at her shoes. If he had been honest with her from the beginning, she would have told him what she and Rebo were planning. And if she had told him, he would have handled it much better than they had done. They had let Connie get away, and now he was wandering around frightened and possibly in danger.

Then it occurred to her that Bill had not asked to see the cave. She started to run after him, then stopped, dropping abruptly back onto the bench. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to be in the position of having to tell the sheriff. He was tying his own hands. They had wanted his help, had even brought him here, and they were making it 193