A Lie for a Lie (36 page)

“You’re very good at hiding things, aren’t you? And really good at planning and executing a strategy once you have all the details in place. Of course
execute
’s a bad word, isn’t it? I’m not trying to mock you. I know you killed Grady, and I know why. But I don’t think you executed him. Not exactly. You were ready to kill him if you had to. You’d set everything up perfectly, although I really doubt you meant to do it the night of the finals.”

She was silent, but her expression still didn’t change.

“I’ll tell you how I see it.” I continued to pick out the song for a moment while I gathered my thoughts, then I stopped playing.

“I know about the
Wayfarers
tryout. I know he abandoned you, humiliated you, then took credit for a song that you’d written. He didn’t have much, if anything, to do with writing it, did he? It was your song all along, but you knew he was the one to really do it justice at the audition. So you were willing to share the credit, and you hoped it would be a ticket out of Emerald Springs for both of you. You wanted something more than the fluffy little life your mother had led. You were ready to reach for it.”

“And that leads to murder how?” She sounded genuinely interested.

“It wouldn’t have, I suppose, if it had ended there. But it didn’t. He pulled a fast one on you, and by the time that was over, you knew that nobody would believe the song was really yours. I think you probably imagined getting even with him for years. Most people would have. It was such a betrayal, it cried out for revenge. But after a while you grew up, you made a life here, you married a big shot in Emerald Springs, and you probably didn’t want to lose what you could count on. You’re the proverbial big frog in a small pond, Veronica. There are people who would give a lot to be you.”

“What a lovely way to put it.”

I shrugged. “You probably told yourself to let the whole thing go. For a while. You promised yourself you’d learned your lesson, that nobody could ever take advantage of you that way again. Then Grady did it once more.”

“Aggie, this is all very interesting, but it sounds like a half-baked theory you came up with because you don’t want to believe Nora Nelson murdered Grady. Unfortunately I think you’re the only person besides those crazy performers out at the farm who thinks she’s innocent. Now, I’m sorr—”

I ignored my mother’s teachings and interrupted. “See, the one thing you were
never
able to give up was your songwriting. And the songs kept you connected to that high school dream, even though everything in your real life said it was time for that to be over with. So you kept writing, and when you went to California for your board meetings, you always spent a couple of extra days in Los Angeles trying to interest agents or, really, anybody who would meet with you, in your growing body of work.”

“That would be pretty pathetic, wouldn’t it?”

“Really? I don’t think so. It shows initiative, which we know you have in abundance. And I imagine charm plays a part in who’s successful and who isn’t. I’m sure some people just met with you because you were so easy on the eye, so intelligent, so talented at making them feel good about themselves.”

“Please. Compliments given in the name of pinning a murder on me?”

“Then you ran into Grady. Or maybe you set up an appointment with him. I’m not sure. I do know you met with him. Fred Handlemann—you remember Fred—told me yesterday that he’d met you in Los Angeles himself. Grady introduced you as an old friend.”

“Ran into Grady? Do you think I’m that ineffectual?”

I had hit a sore spot. Encouraged, I tried for the same place again.

“Maybe not ineffectual, Veronica. Maybe just scared to face him after everything, afraid you might look like a fool.”

“Absolutely not. I managed to get his number, and I called him. I told him he owed me dinner for stealing ‘Rainbow’ from me.”

I was more encouraged. I was also hoping the tape recorder was picking this up, and that Lucy was now standing in the foyer, although if she was, she was awfully good at not making any noise.

“I imagine Grady wasn’t very enthused about meeting with you,” I said. “I’d guess you sweetened the pot to get him there.”

She was silent and wide-eyed a moment. Surprised at herself for responding? Surprised at my insights? Wondering what to say next? I couldn’t tell.

She pulled herself together. “There are people in town who know I once claimed that I helped Grady write ‘Rainbow. ’ You haven’t discovered anything new. And meeting with an old friend on a business trip is nothing but a big yawn.”

“But do they know you also wrote ‘Remember Me in April’?”

“Why are you harping on that?”

“I think, Veronica, that when the police search your home, they’ll find your hand-notated score, the original. Or maybe you sent it to your lawyer with instructions not to open it. If it was sealed and postmarked, the date you wrote it would be clear. You see, I believe that when you met Grady for dinner that night in L.A., you took a copy of ‘Remember Me in April’ with you, because you were so tired of dealing with people who didn’t know you, you decided to deal with somebody who did. Grady was a rat, but he was a known quantity. And you thought that because he owed you, he would at least take a look at ‘April’ and let you play it for him.”

“You have quite an imagination.”

“So do you, because although I haven’t heard your other songs, these two are good. Imaginative, evocative, perfect for Grady’s voice. And obviously written by the same person. Now that we know that person wasn’t
Grady
, it leads right back to you.”

“I suppose you’re an expert on the subject of songwriting as well as so many other things?”

“I’m guessing you went to his house, where there was a piano you could play it on. I also imagine that the moment he heard it, Grady realized how perfect it would be for him. I saw a lot of different sides to Grady Barber while we were working so closely, and I know that when he needed to, he could charm the socks off almost anybody. I think that night he charmed
you
. I think he told you how sorry he was for what he’d done, that he’d been thinking about you for years, that he hadn’t known how to approach you. Maybe he even sang the song’s chorus along with you. Under the circumstances it would have had particular meaning.”

I picked out the notes and sang the words as best I could.

 

Veronica looked pained, either at the message, or more likely my voice. “If any of this crazy tale you’re spinning is true, why on earth would I have just given him another song? I’m sure you checked. My name isn’t on ‘April.’ ”

“Oh, I think you were so wary at first, understandably so, that you wanted to keep it strictly business.”

And now I was at the place where I went straight out on a limb. I just hoped that like Moonpie, I was really going to be okay.

I closed the fallboard and stood so we were eye to eye. “But I don’t think you kept that night strictly business, Veronica. I’m guessing he wined and dined you, that he complimented you, not just on the song, but on everything. Maybe you’d never been his girlfriend in high school, but this wasn’t the same scruffy Grady, the outcast that your in crowd made fun of. This was Grady Barber the film star, the Vegas entertainer, the man who left Emerald Springs, the way
you’d
wanted to, and made a new, exciting life for himself. I think you went to bed with him. And I’m afraid I know what Grady liked to do when he was in bed with a woman. He liked to make videotapes. He liked to film his activities, then he liked to hold the tapes over his lovers’ heads for whatever he needed from them. Our Grady was an
A
number one blackmailer. And he used that tape to blackmail you and make you give up another song.”

“How did you come up with this?”

The words weren’t an admission, but I thought Veronica sounded more interested in knowing how I’d arrived at my conclusion than in proving her innocence.

“I know how savvy you are,” I explained. “All along you were willing to just let him have the song, because, of course, this was never about money. But you probably wanted the credit, right? And I know you wouldn’t have walked into this blindly. I believe this was all about getting the respect you deserved. So you must have gone to Grady with a plan to protect yourself. And the
only
thing I can think of that might have derailed that plan is sex. You don’t want the life you have, but you’ve never quite been able to leave it. You made one attempt as a teenager and lived with that humiliation for too long. So when you had to choose whether to give Grady another song or to let Grady give your husband the videotape, you made the safest choice. You chose what you already had and handed over ‘Remember Me in April.’ ”

Veronica looked off into the distance, almost as if she were watching that scene in L.A. unfold again. “He called it tit for tat. Do you know, he actually said that? He thought he was so funny. And that’s the moment when I knew I wanted him dead.”

Not yet an admission of guilt, but oh, so close. Of course my elation was tempered by that eternal question “Why?” I had hoped she would be so overcome by emotion she would blurt out the truth, but Veronica still seemed collected and sure of herself. Was she simply ready for this to be over with? To let the world know what she had done and take her punishment?

I doubted I could count on that.

“How did you come up with your plan to kill him?” I asked.

She looked back at me and smiled, but she didn’t speak.

“I’ll tell you what I think,” I said. “Your anger built once you came home, didn’t it? You kept trying to figure out ways to get even, this time for real. Then, your husband told you about Sister Nora and the real estate deal he was trying to finalize. Lucy told me only a few realtors knew about their search for property, and I’m sure Farley was one of them. When he found out Lucy Jacobs had sold Nora the perfect farm, he was furious. I’m sure he told you all about it. And you knew who Nora was. You probably knew everything about Grady’s life, about all his marriages—”

“The day I heard Nora Nelson was coming to Emerald Springs to live, I felt like God was talking to
me
. I felt like He had stepped down from heaven and put his hand on my shoulder and told me to go ahead and bring Grady here. Nora Nelson’s crazy. She hears voices. She thinks God’s speaking to her and telling her to save the world. She deserves to be locked up.”

I made sure my jaw wasn’t hanging open, but it was an effort. Who was the real maniac here? Nora, who heard God telling her to do good works and save the earth? Or this woman, who heard God telling her to kill a man who had wronged her and frame someone else? I didn’t even know what to say, but it didn’t matter, because Veronica filled the silence.

“And you know what? The day, the very day after I heard Nora was moving here, the judge we’d hoped to get for the Emerald Springs Idyll backed out. And I knew then what I was going to do, what I was
supposed
to do.”

“Everything just fell together?” I asked this as gently as I could.

“Like it was meant to be.”

“
Umm
. . . Maybe so, but how did you get Grady to come? Why would he show his face in town knowing you had proof that ‘Remember Me in April’ was your composition? Wasn’t he afraid you’d tell people, even if it ruined your marriage? That you were setting him up so he’d be here when you did?”

“He knew better. After all, I’d given him the song, hadn’t I?”

She wanted me to work it out, but my brain had stretched as far as it would go. At no point in my hypothesis had I figured on Veronica’s conviction that she was meant to murder Grady, that somehow she had divine permission, even help. That gave everything a new twist. People who are misguided enough to use God as an excuse for violence are people with no problems repeating themselves. I had been banking on Veronica’s innate good sense to keep this conversation in bounds, good sense that had been distorted by her fury at Grady the night of the Idyll finals, but good sense that could still be appealed to. Now I knew better.

“So you’re not quite as adept at this as you think you are,” Veronica said when I didn’t, couldn’t, respond. “I’ll just tell you, so you won’t have to strain so hard. I told Grady I had
another
song for him. One that was better than the other two put together. I told him I would give it to him free and clear if he came to Emerald Springs and gave me the tape.”

“You thought that would end it?”

“Of course, I knew he could make a million copies first, but I told him that like before, I’d have proof this song belonged to me. If a tape of us together ever showed up anywhere, I’d bring out the heavy guns, because by then I’d have nothing to lose. But unless that happened, this would be the end. He would come and judge the Idyll, which would make up for a lot of the bad things he’d done. After all, raising that money for the new pediatric wing would make me look like the town savior. At least I’d have that. Grady would have a wonderful new song, and I would have the tape and my place in Emerald Springs history. And all our business would be completed.”

I remembered that right from the beginning, Fred had said Grady was behaving much worse than usual now that he was home again. So greed had brought him to our fair city, but even Grady had realized he might be walking into trouble.

“And he bought that?” I asked

She shrugged one slender shoulder. “He was hungry for another hit. I’d given him the only two he’d ever had. He was willing.”

He was a fool. But hadn’t we all been fools? Hadn’t we underestimated this woman? Luckily, I hadn’t underestimated her so much that I hadn’t gotten backup. And now, I was almost sure my backup had arrived. As Veronica had given her explanation, I had heard the front doors of the church open, and the faintest whisper of footsteps.