An Anniversary to Die For (12 page)

“So your mother called you around this time,” Susan said, trying to get back to the story.

“Yes. Mother said she wasn’t calling from home, but she didn’t explain where she was,” Signe said. “Or else I wasn’t paying attention. She told me the jury had come back with a ‘not guilty’ verdict, and she wanted me to know right away. I was so relieved.” She pursed her lips and was silent for a moment before continuing. “Anyway, then Mother asked me if I could come to Hancock for the weekend. Of course, I said I would. I explained that I needed some time to get organized, but that I’d be here in the middle of the afternoon. Then Mother said Father was going to take her to dinner, that the food in jail had been repulsive, and we hung up.

“It wasn’t until I arrived in Hancock that I discovered that Mother had no interest in celebrating her release with me. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I was so happy with the news when she called that I completely ignored the fact that we are not the type of family who gets together to celebrate anything.”

“So what happened when you arrived?” Susan asked, thinking how sad that sounded.

“Well, I came straight to the house. Father was home, waiting for me in the living room, but Mother had gone out.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, she was getting her hair done and having a manicure and pedicure. At least that’s what she told Father when she left home. Apparently she went shopping, too. When she arrived home she was carrying at least a dozen packages from Saks.”

“When was that?” Susan asked, wondering if she would have done the same thing after being in jail for over a month.

“She came home around four in the afternoon. Father had made reservations for dinner at a place on the water up near Mystic. He and I had talked it over, and we thought it might be a good idea to go someplace where no one would know them. Of course, it turned out that Mother had other ideas.”

THIRTEEN

^“
WHAT OTHER IDEAS?” JED ASKED.

But Susan knew the answer before the words were out of Signe’s mouth. “She had decided to attend your party.”

“I gather you and your father were surprised by her decision,” Jed said.

“Shocked. We had planned a quiet evening in a restaurant fairly far away and had talked about how to avoid being followed by any press, and all of a sudden Mother is asking my father if his navy Brooks Brothers suit is back from the cleaners and if he thinks it’s necessary to buy—” Signe stopped speaking, obviously embarrassed. “Ah, if it was necessary to buy you two an anniversary gift.”

“Didn’t we have ‘No gifts please’ printed on the invitations?” Jed asked no one in particular.

“How weird,” Susan commented, glaring at her husband. After all, he was the one who was always saying they needed to stick to the subject. “Did your father have any reservations about coming to our party?”

“Yes. He didn’t come right out and say so, but I could tell. He told Mother that he was fairly sure he had refused your invitation and that it would be rude to turn up unexpected. But Mother said she had found the invitation on her desk and that, as the RSVP card was still with it, he could not possibly have refused. And she said it was going to be a big party and no one would notice if they hadn’t sent in the RSVP. She wouldn’t listen to anything else. She was determined to go, and the only decision to be made was what Father was going to wear and when they were going to leave.

“When Mother gets going, Father usually dithers around a bit and then he gives in. He was upstairs looking for his blue suit almost immediately.”

“What did you do?” Jed asked.

“This is the odd thing that happened,” Signe answered.

“My parents were both upstairs getting dressed. I was scrounging around in the kitchen, looking for something to eat, when my mother came downstairs. She was wearing a robe and she looked . . . I don’t know. . . . She looked weird.”

“What do you mean?” Susan asked.

“She was pale, of course. I mean, it’s not as though she’d spent the summer out in the Hamptons. And she’d lost weight in jail, but there was something else. It’s going to sound strange, but she looked serious—more serious than I’d ever seen her.”

“Did she say anything to you?” Jed asked.

“Yes, she said she had something to tell me. Something important. I had been getting ready to open a can of soup, and I put it away and sat on a stool. I don’t know what I was expecting. I was afraid . . . Well, to tell the truth, I thought for a minute that she was going to tell me that she had been poisoning my father, that she was guilty. But she started to talk about you two.”

“About Jed and me?”

“Well, mainly you,” Signe answered. “She told me that you had been involved in solving murders—not as a police officer, though. That you did it on your own. I didn’t know what to say, so I just listened. I think that’s when she told me that the reason she and my father had moved to Hancock was to be your neighbors.”

“What?” After thirty years of marriage, the Henshaws spoke as one.

“That’s what she said. I’m sure of it.”

“Did she explain?” Jed asked.

“Did she tell you that she—or your father—had known us before coming here?” Susan asked.

“She didn’t explain—” Signe paused. “—exactly.”

“What do you mean?” Susan asked.

“Did she say she knew either of us before she came to Hancock?” Jed asked again.

Signe answered Jed’s question first. “No, she didn’t say anything about that. I’ve thought this over. I knew you’d ask. All she said was that she and my father moved here— to Hancock—to be your neighbors. But that’s not all she said. She also said that if something happened to her, I should remember that it was important that they live near you. That’s all there was time for. My father came into the room to ask her to help him pick out a tie, and she didn’t say anything else—about you, or moving here, or what she thought might happen to her.”

“That’s so weird,” Susan said.

“What did you do then?” Jed asked.

“Nothing much. I suggested that maybe a present would be a good idea, and I headed downtown to Twigs and Stems. To be honest, I was looking for Erika more than anything. I was glad Mother was found not guilty, of course, but if we weren’t going to go out to dinner to celebrate, there really wasn’t anything for me to do in Hancock. I . . . You can probably tell that I haven’t maintained a close relationship with either of my parents. I thought that checking in with Erika would mean that the trip here wasn’t a complete waste of my weekend.

“Of course, Erika wasn’t there. The girl minding the store said she had been in earlier in the day, but had gone home to get ready for a party. I had no idea what to do.” Signe got up and wandered over to the kitchen window and looked out at the backyard. “There was a present there waiting to be picked up and taken to the Landing Inn. I offered to deliver it, and I did. That only took about an hour. Then I stopped in at the McDonald’s out on the highway, ate an incredibly fattening dinner, and drove back to my parents’ house. I wasn’t surprised to find that they had already left. In fact, I was counting on it.”

“What did you do then?”

“Fell asleep in front of the TV. I was exhausted. I didn’t even wake up when they first arrived home.”

“They arrived home? Both of your parents?” Susan jumped in with a question.

Signe looked surprised. “Yes, of course. . . . Oh, I see what you mean. I . . . I thought my mother and father had come home together. And they weren’t all that late, either. When did your party end?”

“Heavens, it was well after one A.M. when we finally went upstairs, wasn’t it?” Susan checked with Jed.

“At least. But Ashley and Doug left before it had really gotten started, remember.” He looked at Signe. “When did your parents arrive home?”

“The news—the eleven o’clock news—was just ending.”

“It’s probably a half hour drive to Hancock from Oxford Landing that time of the night,” Jed said. “Maybe less.”

“But that’s an hour round-trip,” Susan said slowly.

Signe looked at Susan, a puzzled expression on her face. “When did you find Mother?”

“A little after one, but she must have been murdered and placed on our bed quite a while before that. I mean . . .” Susan looked at Signe. “You look a bit pale. This must be awful to hear. Maybe—”

“No, I’m okay. I need to know about this. Really. Go on.”

Susan pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “It’s the time frame that puzzles me. I thought . . . I knew your parents left the party early, but I just assumed that they never left the inn.”

“Or my father either?” Signe asked.

“I didn’t really think about that. I just assumed they were together . . . until your mother was killed that is,” she added.

“So you think my father killed her.”

“Of course not! I . . .” Susan stopped and tried to think of a nice way to answer the question. “Look,” she began slowly, “that is what most people will—or are, I guess— thinking.”

“But my father came home early. I spoke with him.”

“Signe, I hate to ask you this,” Susan said. “And I know the way the question sounds, but were you watching TV in the family room next to the kitchen?”

Signe looked surprised, but answered promptly. “Yes.”

“And your parents entered the house through the garage. That is, they came in through the kitchen.”

“Yes.” Signe paused. “That is, I assume they did. I didn’t actually see both of them. That’s what you’re getting at, right?”

“Yes. Who . . . Which one did you see?”

Signe looked scared. “Father. He . . . he came to the doorway and said that Mother was tired, so they’d left early and were going straight to bed. He . . . he asked if I needed anything. I said no. Father said that we’d all have a big breakfast together in the morning and for me to get a good night’s sleep. I . . . I said good night and turned back to the television. I meant to go up to bed, but I just wasn’t all that sleepy after my nap. I watched a Cary Grant movie on TV for a while, and then, around the time I started to doze off again, the phone rang with the news about Mother’s murder.”

“You answered the phone?” Jed asked the question.

“Yes.”

“Who called?” Susan asked.

“I think it must have been Chief Konowitz, but I’m not sure. He introduced himself right away, but I wasn’t paying much attention. I was half asleep. All I heard was a male voice asking who I was, and when I told him, the caller said that my mother was dead and that he would like to speak to my father right away. I hung up.”

“You what?”

“I hung up. I thought it was some sort of joke, frankly. You have to understand how strange things had been in that house for the past few months. My father had stopped answering the phone completely. He said the only people who called were reporters or idiots—people making crank calls, suggesting the names of lawyers for my mother, and other sorts of junk that either upset him or hurt his feelings. He had been using the answering machine to screen phone calls since the day after Mother was arrested. I just assumed that this call was one of the ones he had described to me.

“Anyway, the phone rang again, and I picked it up planning to tell off the idiot on the other end of the line—only it turned out to be Erika. She knew about the murder, had called my apartment in the city, and when she didn’t find me in, she thought I might be here. She . . . she told me that my mother was in fact dead.” She frowned and looked down at the floor.

“And you went upstairs to tell your father,” Jed prompted when Signe had been silent for a moment.

“Yes. That’s exactly what I did.”

“And what did he say?” Susan asked, hoping she didn’t know the answer to her question.

“Nothing. He wasn’t there.” Signe looked at the Henshaws. “I know what you’re thinking, but my father would never ever have killed my mother. I’m sure of it.”

“What did you do then?” Susan asked.

“I didn’t know what to do. I walked around the house for a bit. I think I turned on the radio. I was thinking that perhaps the news of the murder might be on. I didn’t know what to do,” she repeated. “And then . . .”

“And then,” Susan prompted.

“Then my father walked in the front door.”

“Where had he been?”

“He couldn’t sleep,” Signe insisted. “He told me that he couldn’t sleep so he went for a walk. He didn’t really go anywhere in particular. He said something about walking around the block a few times.”

“Did you tell him about your mother’s death?” Susan asked gently.

“Yes. Of course. What else would I have done?”

“He must have been shocked,” Susan suggested.

“Did he tell you why your mother had stayed at the inn after he left?” Jed asked.

“Yes. He said that something had happened at the party that upset them and they had planned on leaving together, but while they were walking to the car, they’d had an argument about something he had said to someone, and my mother stalked off. He said he tried to follow her, but she just took off down some path by the river and he got lost. Anyway, he couldn’t find her, so he finally came home.”

“He left her at the inn?” Susan asked.

“Yes, he said she knew so many people at your party that he was sure she would find a ride home. He didn’t say anything to me when he got home because he didn’t want me to worry. But it turned out that he was so worried he couldn’t sleep.” Signe stopped speaking and looked up at the Henshaws. “I know it sounds odd, but it could be true!”

“I suppose . . .” Susan started.

“You have to understand what I’m going to say to you,” Signe said urgently. “I know Father. He did not kill my mother.”

Susan patted Signe on the shoulder. “It doesn’t matter what we believe. What matters right now is what the police think happened.”

“They’re going to look to the family for suspects first, aren’t they?”

“Probably,” Jed answered.

“But that doesn’t matter in the long run,” Susan added quickly. “There must be other people who wanted your mother dead.” She realized that what she was saying was not necessarily comforting and stopped.