Several Deaths Later (21 page)

    

    Susan Richards's room smelled of gentle perfume and cigarette smoke. The blinds were drawn, the bed properly made, all her cosmetics neatly arranged on the bureau.

    Tobin started first in the bureau drawers. He found nothing except the expected lingerie, blouses, scarves.

    He closed the final drawer and moved on to the closet. He paused once and clipped off the light because he heard somebody coming down the corridor. The footsteps were loud, squeaky with leather. Then they moved on past.

    Tobin resumed his search, finding two leather suitcases set side-by-side in the back of the closet.

    He turned on the light again and hauled both suitcases to the bed.

    The first suitcase was stuffed with more cosmetics. Running to wrinkle cream, and moisturizer, and Scandinavian elixirs that promised all sorts of miracles, they were sad reminders of how uncomfortably many beautiful women deal with impending age.

    In the second suitcase he found the two things of note: the small black and white photograph he'd seen Susan Richards holding the other day by the swimming pool and a folded letter identical to the one that Cindy McBain had seen stuffed under Kevin Anderson's door-the one with the Xerox of the infant. The one all the "Celebrity Circle" panelists had received.

    Tobin compared the small photograph to the Xerox image on the paper. They were identical.

    He knew now that everything Everett Sanderson's brother had told him on the phone was true.

    He picked up the phone, dialed the Farris cabin.

    Alicia Farris answered, "Hello."

    "Hello, Alicia. This is Tobin."

    "Oh. Hello." She did not sound the least happy to hear from him. After this afternoon he was hardly surprised.

    "I need to speak to Jere."

    "He's resting."

    "It's important."

    There was a pause. "Susan Richards is being charged with these murders. The scandal will destroy the show. What the hell more do you want, Tobin?"

    "I want to speak to Jere."

    "You sonofabitch."

    But she did not hang up. In the background she could be heard telling her husband who was on the phone. Jere cursed. Bedsprings squeaked. He said, "What the hell do you want?"

    "I need you to answer a question for me very carefully."

    "Why should I?"

    Tobin sighed. "It's important, Jere. That's why."

    Ice rattled in a glass, which helped explain why Jere sounded half-bagged. "What's your question?"

    "The night before last, did Joanna Howard push a love letter to you under your door?"

    "Why the hell would that be any business of yours?"

    "Answer me. Please."

    "No."

    "That's all I wanted to know."

    As he was hanging up, he heard Jere sputtering another angry response.

    

    

    

    "You always look so bundled up," Cindy said. "Slacks and long-sleeve blouses. You should let yourself go, especially on a cruise like this. You've got a nice shape."

    They were in Joanna Howard's cabin and drinking wine. White wine and lots of it. Too much of it, in fact. Cindy felt positively drunk.

    Late this afternoon she'd run into Joanna in one of the lounges. They'd had a steak sandwich together and then they'd come back to Joanna's to relax. Joanna reminded Cindy a bit of Aberdeen. She was full of questions about Cindy's life. The men she'd known and the places she'd gone and the best dresses she'd ever owned-but mostly about the men she'd known. Cindy felt like a movie star being interviewed by a slightly agog reporter-just the way Aberdeen always made her feel. But Cindy knew what Joanna was doing. She was trying to get over a broken heart because just this afternoon Jere Farris had informed her that he was breaking off their relationship.

    Cindy sneezed.

    "Catching cold?"

    "Allergies. They just come up."

    "Need a Kleenex?"

    Cindy rooted about in her purse. "I've got one here." She waved it like a tiny white flag of surrender, then applied it to her nose. She filled it in a single blow.

    "I'm sorry about Jere," Cindy said.

    She sat on the couch with her feet on the coffee table. Joanna sat across the room, scrunched up in an easy chair.

    "It's just as well," Joanna said.

    The funny thing, Cindy thought, was that even though Joanna was throwing back the wine, she didn't sound drunk at all.

    "It sure is," Cindy said, trying to sound brave on Joanna's behalf. "You'll find somebody twice as nice. Twice as nice."

    Joanna touched her stomach. "Need to go to the bathroom. You want some more wine?"

    "I can get it, hon. You just take care of your bladder."

    Joanna grinned. She had a perfectly wonderful grin. "You're so nice."

    "So are you."

    On the way to the bathroom, Joanna passed by Cindy and touched her on one of her big toes. "You're a good friend of mine."

    "Well, considering that you work with TV stars all day and I'm just a secretary, I consider that a compliment."

    "An executive secretary."

    "Well, yes, I guess that's true. An executive secretary."

    "Be right back."

    As soon as the bathroom door closed, Cindy sneezed this huge sneeze and then found herself with a wet nose and no Kleenex.

    On unsteady feet, she got up and began looking for a box of tissues.

    She opened the first bureau drawer she came to and

    while she did find a box of Kleenex Boutique, she also found something else.

    She was staring at the something else when she heard the bathroom door open up.

    "Cindy. What the hell are you doing in my bureau?" Joanna said. She didn't sound cordial anymore. Not at all.

    "I was just looking for Kleenex and I found…" And then her eyes dropped to the small black and white photograph.

    She had seen a copy of this in the envelope slid under the door in Kevin Anderson's cabin and-

    "My God," Cindy said. "You're the one who…"

    But she didn't have time to finish the rest of the sentence because Joanna had magically produced a gun.

    Cindy stared at it in disbelief.

    She was a secretary from Kansas City (well, all right, an
executive
secretary) and guns just weren't a part of her life.

    Not at all…

    

    

    

    "She's your daughter, isn't she?"

    "I don't know what you're talking about."

    "What did they do to make her want to kill them?"

    "Who?"

    "You know who. Ken Norris and Kevin Anderson."

    "I thought we were friends, Tobin."

    "We are friends, Susan. I'm trying to stop anybody else from being killed." He paused. "She's your daughter, isn't she, Joanna Howard?"

    "No."

    "You're lying."

    "As I said, I don't know what you're talking about."

    "You thought she died in the trailer with your husband but she didn't. I talked to Everett Sanderson's brother-she crawled away from the blaze and the police found her in the morning."

    "I'd like a cigarette."

    "I don't have any."

    "Why don't you ask the steward outside the door?"

    "In a minute."

    Susan sighed and let her head drop. Even in a loose gray workshirt and wrinkled jeans-and utterly without makeup-she was still beautiful. Fading as she approached her mid-forties but beautiful nonetheless.

    They were in the cabin where Susan was being held. Sometimes people passed by in the corridor. Some of them whistled and some of them laughed. It seemed to

    Tobin that at this moment no one on the entire planet had any right to whistle let alone laugh.

    He stood three feet away from her. There was no doubt at all that he was her inquisitor. He wished it did not have to be this way but there was no choice. Not any longer.

    He said, "You did a good job when you ran away from the trailer, Susan. Just enough plastic surgery that nobody back home would recognize you. Not right off, anyway. But you didn't count on the Sanderson brothers and you didn't count on your own daughter."

    Susan looked up finally. Her face was ruined in the way a stroke victim's face is sometimes ruined. A look carved into the face forever. She said, "She's crazy, you know." She was starting to choke and cry.

    "They helped you, didn't they-Ken Norris and Kevin Anderson-they helped you burn down the trailer, didn't they?"

    She nodded, continued crying.

    "They came to a small town to make a movie and you were dazzled-only your young husband was a very jealous man and wouldn't let you go when they made you promises about Hollywood-and so the only way out you could see was to burn down the trailer. Along with your husband and your daughter-and start all over again as Susan Richards."

    He got up and she came at him and he could see now she was just as crazy as she'd accused her daughter of being.

    He slapped her across the mouth once, with something like expertise, and pushed her on the bed.

    He stood over her and said, "That's how you got your start in Hollywood, wasn't it? You were sleeping with them and they helped you burn down the trailer and so you were all locked in together. They had to help you succeed. Did they know your daughter was in the trailer that night?"

    "No," she said softly. "I told them she and her father were out of town. They just thought they were helping me get a new start-burning down the trailer and sneaking out in the middle of the night. I was… crazy. All I could think of was getting rid of my daughter and husband and-" She rolled over on her stomach and put her head down and the sobs were so hard that the entire bed bounced.

    He wanted to go over and slide his arm around her-he could not imagine how you could hold in your mind the fact that you had tried to kill your own child-and offer her whatever mixture of hatred and pity he felt for her.

    But instead he said, "Jere Farris was a part of this, too, wasn't he? The other night Joanna tried to tell me she'd slipped a love letter under his door-but it was a Xerox of her baby picture, the one she left with Norris and Anderson before she killed them. She killed Sanderson and Iris Graves because they'd figured out who she was too. She didn't have any choice."

    There was a knock.

    Tobin kept his eyes on her as he went to get the door. When he opened it, the room was filled with the scent of the ocean. The steward stood there. "The captain asked me to check with you after ten minutes. To see if everything was all right." The steward carried a formidable walkie-talkie.

    "Tell him everything's fine."

    The steward nodded and closed the door.

    When Tobin turned back, she was gone. He went over and sat in the easy chair and listened to her pee in the toilet.

    When she came out she said, "Can you imagine her life, Tobin? Can you imagine how I've destroyed it? Her own mother trying to kill her."

    "I know." Suddenly he was tired of her self-pity. It was her daughter who should be pitied.

    "I want you to tell her that I don't expect her to forgive me. But that I do ask her to understand that I was very young and that her father was very cruel."

    "She was your daughter."

    "Just tell her that, Tobin. Just tell her that."

    He got up and put his hands in his pockets and began to pace.

    He turned abruptly for the door.

    "Where are you going, Tobin?" she said.

    "Where the hell else?" he said. "To find your daughter."

    

    

    

    "Where's Jere?"

    "Went for a walk," Alicia Farris said at her cabin door. "What the hell do you want with him?”

    She was drunk.

    

    

    He ran the length of the deck and found no sight of Jere Farris. He found a phone in a lounge and called the captain. He explained as concisely as he could who Joanna Howard really was. "Find her before she kills Farris," he said.

    

    

    He was back on the deck, headed for Cindy's cabin when he sensed rather than saw someone step from the shadows behind him. He'd been aware of a presence ever since leaving the lounge a few minutes ago.

    She put the gun into his ribs, jamming it hard, and said, "I want you to help me get in to see my mother."

    "I can't do that. She's under guard."

    "I overheard your conversation with the captain. All you need to do is give the word."

    "They're looking for you."

    "I just want you to get me inside her room."

    He saw her face finally, there in the moonlight. For the first time he saw a resemblance between the two women. Surgery had altered Susan Richards's face. What they shared was their insanity.

    She prodded him with the gun.

    The steward glanced up. "You going in again?"

    "Yes."

    He started to say something as he stood there in front of the door, officious in his whites, his walkie-talkie impressive, but Joanna spoiled all that by catching him a hard clean blow with the butt of her gun on the side of his head.