Swan Dive (21 page)

Something about clear nail polish (vodka?), chaise lounges (smoking outside vs. inside), pudding dishes (glass vs. plastic), and then a camera (a detail in photo #5 that Lexie identified, but didn’t say what). Did Johnnie Mae know what it was? Or who set the fire?

I bet Lexie knew who started it. And it got her killed.

I wasn’t jubilant or excited or pumped with adrenaline. I was frustrated. I’d had this stupid iPad the entire week and it was all right there. Would Ransom have figured it out if the police had the iPad? And why couldn’t anyone just spit this shit out in the beginning? Why didn’t Johnnie Mae say something to the police or her attorney or anyone when Lexie was killed?

The clock on the iPad said 12:37. Today was the Friday before Christmas and the last day of performances. Plural. Not just the evening performance, but also a morning performance for the school kids. Maybe no one knew where Truby Falls the ex-con was, but I had a pretty good idea where Johnnie Mae the volunteer was. At least until the curtain fell and all the little dancers plié-ed their way home.

It didn’t take long to get ready and out the door. I thought the morning performance started at eleven. With intermission and ovations and the re-hanging of glittery wardrobes, the backstage should still be lively.

It was not.

There were only three cars and two trucks parked in random spots across the tree-lined lot. I parked cattywampus and rushed inside. Two crew members were talking on their way out.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Where is everyone?”

“Show ended an hour ago,” one of the men said. “Lunch break and then the place will fill up again around three.”

I thanked him and watched them go. 

The theatre was dim and quiet. I peeked into the dressing rooms. The lighted vanities stations were empty, except for hundreds of accessories: clips, bands, pins, brushes, and pots upon tubes upon palettes of makeup.

Without people to create the cacophony of theatre buzz, the building felt eerie, abandoned. I walked toward the stage and heard a noise. A scrape on the wood surface. I climbed the steps and entered the opening scene of
The Nutcracker
. A mansion living room painted on heavy canvas served as a backdrop. An enormous Christmas tree stood at the far side of the stage. Its long branches were decorated with shiny bulb ornaments and had so many lights, it illuminated the entire stage. Colorful packages were arranged in clusters around a large nutcracker toy. Two tufted chairs fronted an imaginary fireplace with prop tools, including a brass grill.

I was about to walk away when I noticed a pair of legs sticking out from beneath one of the chairs. They were frail and stickly and they moved.

“Johnnie Mae?” I asked.

She bumped her head as she scooted out. “Elliott! You startled me. I think everyone has gone.”

“I actually came to see you.”

“Me?” She stood about ten feet away. She looked tired and sad, her hair bun frayed and her skirt dusty.

“I want to talk about Lexie,” I said gently. “I know you’re her mother. Her birth mother.”

She put her hand to her throat. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yes, you do.” I gestured to the two chairs by the fireplace. “But I don’t understand why you didn’t say something after Lexie died.”

Johnnie Mae eased into the chair and sat at the very edge. She looked both ready to run and ready to collapse. “How did you find out?”

“The Amazon reviews. At first I thought Lexie used them as a diary, then I realized she used them for communication. Very clever. It took me a week to figure it out.”

She smiled the faintest of smiles. “Lexie’s idea. She said no one would know. She actually did use it as a diary at school. That’s where she got the idea. She was so smart. But what led you to me?”

“Your opal earrings. I saw them on a review and remembered you wore an identical pair.”

Johnnie Mae touched one of them briefly, softly brushing over the stones. “Opals are her birthstone. I bought them so she’d know it was me. You know, recognize them from the review and know who I was. But she never got to see them. I waited too long.”

“Why didn’t you say something after she died? To me, the police, anyone? I know you two were trying to figure out who set you up for arson.”

Johnnie Mae sat up straight. “You read all that?”

“I didn’t read all the messages, but I did read the final ones. The ones that talked about photographs, presumably evidence from your trial.”

“Those damn photographs! I got my girl killed.” 

“You didn’t kill Lexie, Johnnie Mae.”

“Yes, I did. I was a horrible mama to her. I should’ve protected her. I should’ve been there. And I never should’ve sent her those photos.”

“Tell me about the photos. What did they prove? Who set you up?”

“I don’t know what or who. Lexie said she found something in one of them.”

“Photo #5.”

“Yes, but I don’t know what because I have looked at that damn thing until I’d memorized every last grain of film. And I’ll tell you as sure as I’m sitting here, nothing jumped out at me.
Nothing
. But it jumped out at her, and hours later, she was gone forever.”

“Maybe Lexie confided in someone. Courtney, Vigo, Berg?”

“Never. She swore she wouldn’t tell a soul until we went to my attorney with the proof. It was imperative we maintained secrecy.”

“Was this all through Amazon?”

“Mostly. When I mailed the photos I was still in prison. Understandably, she didn’t want to give out her address. A friend helped me out. And no, the friend isn’t involved.”

“Let me help. Maybe I’ll see what she saw.”

“I don’t have them and I don’t know where they are. I’ve looked everywhere. Her apartment, the dance studio, even the Wharf. Everywhere except her parents’ house and the Stream Kitchen set. Even here.” She waved her arms around the theatre. “And I’m still looking. This place is huge, and they have to be here.”

“Lexie hid them?”

“She must have.”

“Unless someone took them.”

Tears filled her eyes and she gripped my arm. “Please don’t even think that. If someone took them, then we’ll never know, and she’ll have died for nothing.”

I held her hand on my arm. “She didn’t die for nothing. We’ll figure it out. Tell me what the other photos meant. Something about vodka and plastic drinking cups?”

“Yes!” She wiped her face. “The photos are of the living room, what was left of it. In one photo you can see a bottle of scotch, which I never drank. Never. It was a gift bottle that had been in a cupboard forever. Definitely not something I would’ve had open. In another photo, my ashtray and cigarettes, burned and smashed, but still you could make them out, were on the carpet by the charred coffee table. I never smoked inside the house. Couldn’t, the landlord forbade it. That may have been a crappy, cheap house, but it was all I could afford. I couldn’t afford to lose it.” She got up and walked over to the tree.

“And the pudding dishes?”

“I used a plastic cup for drinking. I’m not proud of who I was,” she said with her back to me. “I’m ashamed and horrified and I have to live with it. But I know what I did and didn’t do and how I acted. I drank at night, on the porch, vodka in a plastic cup. Not a drinking glass, like was found. Not scotch, and not inside.” She picked up a fallen ornament and hung it back on the tree.

I joined her. “All very circumstantial.”

“I know. Proves nothing. But Lexie saw it and knew in her heart I didn’t burn down our house for money. I didn’t kill our neighbor. I didn’t abandon her. Someone else started that fire and wanted it to look like it was me.”

“But who? You have no idea?”

“I have an idea, I just don’t have proof,” Johnnie Mae said. “Oh my God, what will I do?”

The ornament she was holding fell and rolled across the stage, behind one of the chairs. I walked over to grab it when every light in the theatre went out. Two loud clunks. Darkness fell in an instant. It consumed me. As if the air itself were black.

“Hello?” Johnnie Mae said.

I started to rise. Running footsteps pounded across the stage. Johnnie Mae screamed a half scream. Then a muffled thump.

Silence.

I froze. A statue of fear. Swallowing panic.

A soft footstep. A creak.

I gently eased to the floor on all fours. I crawled to my left, toward the fireplace and the side stage. Someone knocked out the lights and struck Johnnie Mae. They had to know I was near the chairs. I crawled faster. 

Something swung in front of my face, maybe three inches away. Air whished by accompanied by a soft grunt.

I flew back and smacked into the fake wall behind me with a thump.

The weapon slammed above my head. It missed me, but kept crashing toward me. Faster and faster. Frantically trying to find me in the pitch black.

I covered my head with my hands. Swung my legs out in a sweeping motion. They rammed into someone. A thud and a grunt. And a roll. 

Scrambling forward, I searched for a weapon. Anything. I grabbed onto something heavy, wooden, just as a hand grabbed mine. I yanked the wood object, kicking and screaming. I hit someone. Hard.

“You bitch!” A familiar voice. Female, outraged. She clawed at me. Kicked me in the shoulder. “Give that back.”

I swung with everything I had and missed. But kept swinging. I hit her leg, maybe a thigh. She cried out and came at me.

Her arm wrapped around my neck and she squeezed. It was so dark. I couldn’t see or breathe or get any bearings. I tried to scream, but no sound choked out. She squeezed tighter. We stumbled forward, then back. I elbowed her in the stomach. Once. Twice. Finally I twisted free. With one huge push, I rammed my hands into her shoulders and she screamed.

Metal music stands and chairs clanged and rattled as she fell into them. I grabbed my cell from my pocket and turned on the flashlight.

My foot was an inch from the stage edge. Courtney Cattanach lay crumpled on the floor of the orchestra pit. She still moved. Slightly.

I dialed 9-1-1 with shaking hands and climbed down into the pit, scaling the stage wall with one hand while I held the phone with the other.

I told dispatch, in broken sentences, to get to the Sea Pine Community Theatre with an ambulance. I searched for something to tie Courtney’s hands and feet. I found a necktie and a hair ribbon. I tied as fast as I could, then stayed close. I waited for the police. I kept my flashlight on and noticed the wooden weapon she’d used to attack Johnnie Mae and me. The oversized nutcracker. It lay broken by her feet. A folded envelope stuck out from the cracked head. I quickly pulled it free.

Inside were five crime scene photos of a burned out living room.

EPILOGUE

(Day #10 – Saturday Morning)

A brisk breeze blew across the Carolina blue sky as I sat on the patio next to the Big House pool. I wore a sweater over my linen tunic and sipped hot cider from a ceramic mug.

“Quiet day back?” Carla asked, sipping next to me.

“I love January,” I said. “Cold, but calm. Hibernation time for most of the residents.”

After the arrest of Courtney Cattanach for the murder of Lexie Allen, Mr. Ballantyne encouraged me to take some time off. Truth is, I didn’t need much encouragement. We spent Christmas together, then I caught a flight (or scheduled one, since the Ballantynes let me take their jet) to Carmel-By-The-Sea, California. I spent ten days at the Cypress Inn, Doris Day’s hotel. Madison Night, a friend I met after a luggage snafu, recommended it, and it was exactly what I needed.

“How’s Johnnie Mae?” I asked and leaned back with my feet tucked under me.

“Gone,” Tod said as he walked up with a box in his hand. “Came by to thank you after you’d left. Said she’d leave you a review when she settled in someplace, but it might be awhile.”

“That poor woman,” Carla said. “I doubt she’ll ever settle in anywhere. At least until the trial is over.”

I nodded and sipped. “Even then. Courtney Cattanach destroyed her life, and then took her daughter’s. Kind of impossible to recover from that.”

“That wicked child had nothing but dumb luck,” Carla said.

“And it would’ve continued if she would’ve just let it be,” I said. “Courtney never intended to kill Johnnie Mae or her neighbor or set up a fake insurance claim with that fire. She was eight. She only wanted Lexie to be taken away from her mother so she could live with them.”

A girl who wanted what she wanted. She pieced together an eight-year-old’s plan and went for it. Sneaky, clever, out of control. She must have been furious when Lexie didn’t end up living with them. With her mother in prison, Lexie got a new life. A better life. Better than her old one, better than Courtney’s.

But Courtney held on to their friendship, taking charge, keeping it together. Until it started to fall apart. Lexie went to a different school, then a different career. In the end, it was every man/woman/dancer for herself.

“That’s one bad, bad little girl. What gave her the idea to start a fire?” Tod asked. He put the box on the table and poured a cup of cider.

“Courtney’s mother,” I said. “She used to harp on Johnnie Mae’s drinking, and how one day she’d pass out drunk while smoking and burn the house down. Child services would take Lexie from her, and how wonderful life would be without Johnnie Mae in the neighborhood. In Courtney’s mind, that meant Lexie could live with them.”

“The logic of an eight-year-old girl,” Carla said, shaking her head.

“Seriously,” I said. “Courtney hated Johnnie Mae because she didn’t like Lexie spending so much time across the alley at Courtney’s. Felt she was a bad influence.”

“Even a drunk mother’s instincts are spot on,” Tod said.

“Tod!” I said.

“What? She admitted she was a drunk,” Tod said. “Had she spent less time with her vodka and more time with her daughter, none of this would’ve happened.”

“I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted a second grader would be so devious,” Carla said.

Dumb luck it went down the way it did,” I said. “She didn’t set up Johnnie Mae for arson, it just looked that way.”

“Why didn’t Johnnie Mae say something at trial?”

“Humiliation and doubt,” I said. “She was still trying to sober up. She knew it wasn’t arson, but she wasn’t sure if she caused it accidentally. Later, after years of therapy and sobriety, she reviewed her own case. That’s when she saw the inconsistencies.”

Carla poured more hot cider from a steel carafe on the table. “Why not speak up then?”

I wrapped my hands around the cup and blew across the top, steam floating through the air. “I don’t know. But the shame of it all? That fifth photo Lexie was killed over? The one Johnnie Mae and I were attacked over? It showed a barrette. A kid’s barrette.”

“
Courtney’s
barrette,” Tod said. “That’s something.”

“Not really,” I said. “It proved to Lexie and Johnnie Mae that Courtney likely set the fire, but it would never hold up in court. A little girl who didn’t like to share her barrettes, and never once went over to Lexie’s house, is hardly evidence. Johnnie Mae and Lexie would’ve never gotten the case reopened. And fingerprints and DNA were long gone.”

“Not to play armchair detective,” Carla said. “But Lexie figured out the significance of the picture the day she died. More dumb luck Courtney found poison berries and somehow get Lexie to bake them into killer cupcakes and then eat them? All within the span of like an hour?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “Courtney knew Lexie was communicating with her mother as soon as they moved into the condo. She also knew they were looking at evidence from the fire. Courtney panicked a week before they found anything incriminating. To her, it would all come out and ruin her. She has major auditions right after the holidays.”

“
Had
major auditions,” Tod said.

“Indeed,” I said. “She may have had dumb luck, but she wasn’t dumb. She came close to getting away with murder. Used Lexie’s passion for cooking, and their friendship, against her. Grabbed a handful of Mamacita’s berries, swapped them in the kitchen, and encouraged her to bake something special for opening night. Luckily, no one else ate them.”

“Did you hear about Inga?” Carla asked. “She’s still in a coma.”

“Courtney attacked her, too, and for nothing,” Tod said.

“Yeah,” I said. “Courtney thought Lexie confided in Inga, gave her the pictures to hide on opening night.”

“That girl acted on the wrong impulse every time,” Carla said. “Such a shame, chicken.”

“Berg probably would’ve been next, if she hadn’t found the pictures at the theatre,” I said.

“He’s running Inga’s studio while she’s in the hospital,” Carla said. “And focused on lighter-themed choreography. At least for next season.”

Tod handed me the box. “This came for you.”

A belated Christmas present I gave myself. I opened the cardboard flaps to reveal a beautiful white box inside. A new iPad of my own. I don’t know how I lived without one of those things.

We talked for another half hour, but moved onto more pleasant topics. Like the Ballantynes embarking on a thirteen-state tour of the nation’s most impoverished neighborhoods with a team of educators and philanthropists. Their mission: to reimagine the education system in conjunction with affordable housing. I admired my Ballantyne family, and it comforted me to keep their home, and foundation, running while they went off to save the world.

I left Carla and Tod on the patio and grabbed my hipster from my desk drawer. I clicked off the lamp, tidied my desk, and left the Big House.

Matty was waiting for me next to the Mini. He leaned against the driver door, one foot casually crossed over the other.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said back.

“The first board meeting of the year isn’t until tomorrow,” I said and mentally slapped my forehead. I did not know how to talk to him. My stomach started to knot.

“Yeah, I’m here to meet with Jane. We’re putting together a proposal for the Sea Pine Prep senior class project.”

“Cool,” I said. I refrained from shuffling my feet.

“I’m sorry for the way we left things. You were right to say what you did. How you felt. I miss you, too. As friends. I don’t want to lose it, either.”

“Really, Matty?” I asked and the knot in my stomach started to unravel.

“Really,” he said. “It may take me a while to work it out in my head, but I’ll get there.” He walked toward the entry steps and turned back. “I’m glad you’re okay, El.”

I smiled and waved and climbed into the Mini. I drove the two miles to my cottage at the beach. I switched my linen workday clothes for a sweatshirt and cotton pants (yes, they were sweatpants) and flip flops, then went out to the back deck.

The temperature grew chillier as the sun disappeared and the sky darkened. I stepped down to the sand and walked the twenty feet to Ransom’s deck next door.

He was grilling my favorite chicken kabobs. The smoky barbecue scents escaped when he lifted the lid. A bottle of Riesling with two wine glasses sat on a table near the railing, with a panoramic view of the Atlantic.

“Right on time,” Ransom said. He closed the lid on the grill and put his hands on my face. He kissed me as if he hadn’t seen me in years. It was delicious. “Good to have you home,” he said when he pulled away.

“Agreed,” I said and poured a glass of wine. “And happy to be back at work.”

“Yeah? Lots going on in the world of charity balls and ladies lunches?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” I said. “Zibby Archibald called. Her neighbor’s parrot is missing and she wants me on the case.”

He laughed, then looked at me with a straight face. “Sounds simple,” he said slowly.

“Don’t they all?”

I had just logged over a thousand hours toward my PI license and I couldn’t wait to log the other four thousand and change.