Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 (31 page)

“No. God, I’m glad. It’s so awful.”

“Were you off work?”

“I wasn’t feeling well. I had a headache. So I went home for a while. Then I felt a little better and I decided to go to the park.” Very glib, very quick. She’d thought about this.

“Park?”

“Cravens Park. It’s a mile or so from here. I sometimes take a picnic lunch to the park.”

“Did the police find you there?”

“Yes.”

“When?”

“About four.”

“With Craig?”

“Oh, no. I mean, we didn’t go there together. We just happened to run into each other.”

She didn’t lie nearly as well as Craig.

“Oh.” I let it hang.

Her eyes nickered away from me.

“Did you see anyone else at the park?”

“I didn’t pay any attention. We—I was walking in the rose garden, and I ended up in the little amphitheater. It’s at the end of a path and rather secluded. No one else was there. Until Craig came.”

“When was that?”

“I think it was around four.”

So she wasn’t alibiing Craig—or herself—for the time when Amy was killed.

“I was so surprised to see him,” she said hastily.

And I entertain Venusians before sunrise every Tuesday.

I refrained from saying it. I needed her cooperation.

She wasn’t thrilled at my plan.

But she agreed.

We each manned a telephone. That was one reason I’d wanted to come to the store. More than one phone line. We split up the list. I gave her the clerks. I took the customers. But I tried to listen to her questions and responses even as I talked.

At this point I didn’t trust anybody.

It was like wearing a Walkman with a different talk show in each ear.

Stevie got more willing responses than I, of course. She was, after all, the boss. I was an unknown woman calling late in the evening to ask about a traumatic event. I had one hangup and one threat to report me to the cops. “Be my guest,” I replied. “There’s no law against asking questions— and I hoped you would want to find the person who strangled Amy Foss. She was nineteen.” That got me cooperation.

Stevie and I each asked the same questions:

Did you talk to Amy?

When?

About what?

When did you last see Amy?

Who did you notice in the store from two-thirty to three o’clock?

We made the last call shortly before eleven.

By eleven-fifteen we worked it out:

Amy was last seen at two forty-five by Jackie. “She was walking toward the storeroom. I never saw her again.”

At two-fifty, Paul realized the information desk wasn’t manned and there were several customers waiting. “I thought maybe she’d gone to the bathroom. But she didn’t come back. So I took over.”

At three, Todd started hunting for Amy.

“Okay. It seems clear enough. She was killed between two-forty and three. So, let’s see how many people we think were in the store then.”

This was where it broke down. No one could say with any great certainty. We did get the names of three longtime customers. Stevie could call them tomorrow to see if they’d noticed anything helpful.

The rest of the list was indeterminate. An older man, a redheaded woman, a young guy in a navy hooded sweatshirt and pants, a couple of elderly women, two teenage girls. And, of course, the clerks, Todd, Jackie, Paul, Candy, and Cheryl Kraft.

On a fresh sheet, I listed these names:

One fact argued against the appearance of any of these: Cheryl Kraft knew each of them.

Of course, it was possible that one of them had managed to enter the store and escape notice.

Or what if it was someone who wouldn’t excite notice at all, such as Craig or Stevie?

Or what if someone called and asked Amy to be in the storeroom or the alley at, say, two forty-five? That way the murderer might not have come into Books, Books, Books.

Surely Amy hadn’t been that foolish.

“Stevie, what about the door to the alley. Was it kept locked?”

“No. Not during the workday. We would be in and out, tossing cartons, receiving deliveries.”

That door would have been kept locked in a larger city. But this wasn’t a city, this was a small town. No one worried about thieves or street people coming in from an alley in Fair Haven.

“So anyone could have come in, waited in the shadows near the delivery dock, knowing Amy would come into the back area at some point. Is that right?”

“I suppose it is.”

I felt confident everyone connected with Patty Kay knew the bookstore well enough to be aware of that alley entrance.

So the murderer didn’t have to be among those in the bookstore.

All right. Go at it another way. Amy knew something. That’s why she called the Matthews house. That’s why she left the message for me.

What did she know?

Was it connected with the phone call asking Craig to pick up the fruit basket?

Or was it simply that she knew—and would swear— that Craig left the bookstore at a quarter to four on Saturday?

Stevie leaned back in her chair and sighed.

I looked at her. The sweatshirt she’d pulled on when we left her apartment was oversize. Not the kind of thing she’d wear to work. No, she wore cotton cardigans to work. She claimed someone had taken hers from the bookstore on Friday.

What if—somehow—Amy knew better?

What if Amy saw Stevie with that cardigan Friday night or Saturday morning?

“Is Amy’s apartment near yours?”

Stevie gave me a guarded, cautious look. “Nothing’s far from anything in Fair Haven.”

“Did you and Amy shop at the same grocery?”

“What are you getting at? Why are you asking me that kind of question? I didn’t have any reason to—”

A brisk knock sounded at the front door.

We both turned to look.

I moved first. “Good. It’s Desmond.”

Stevie unlocked the door.

“Henrie O, I got your message. I talked to Susan Nichols.”

We stood near the front checkout counter in a yellow pool of light. The lawyer looked desperately tired. His face was haggard. Dark circles shadowed eyes numb with misery.

“Good. We’ve narrowed things down at this end. Amy was killed sometime between two-forty and three. What did you find out?”

“Susan said Amy was hit on the head, probably stunned, then strangled. The police found a tire iron in the bottom of the dumpster. No prints on it, but traces of Amy’s blood and hair.”

The attack was taking shape in my mind. I could see a figure in those dark shadows by the closed delivery door, Amy walking by, the brutal blow that struck with no warning.

“Why hit her, then strangle her?” Stevie asked.

I knew. “Strangling is quieter. The initial blow would make noise. Repeated blows would make more noise.”

Stevie turned away.

A tire iron. It could possibly be traced to a particular make and model of car. But it could be linked to a particular car only if fibers clung to it. Surely this crafty and careful killer cleaned the murder weapon thoroughly before bringing it to the bookstore. “What was used to strangle her?”

“A navy scarf with a red diamond pattern.”

“Oh, my God.” Stevie’s hands clutched at her throat. “Someone took my scarf. Someone took it!”

The MG headlights swept over the blue Lexus and green Porsche. I parked beside the Porsche, turned off my lights.

It was dark indeed, midnight-dark.

Craig hadn’t left on any outside lights to welcome me home. When I stepped inside, I saw that even the torchère down the hall was off. I used my small purse flashlight to illuminate my way to the stairs.

In the upstairs hallway I hesitated. I wanted to bang on his door, demand to know where he’d been when Amy was murdered.

But why would Craig strangle Amy with the scarf belonging to the woman he loved?

A double bluff? But he didn’t have that kind of gambling instinct. I would have sworn to that.

God, how it went round and round in my mind.

Yes, it’s Craig.

No, it can’t be.

I turned away.

In my room I slipped into my T-shirt and shorts, raised the window wide, and turned off the light. I was exhausted. I fell almost immediately into a restless, uneasy sleep. A mind on overload doesn’t make for sweet slumber.

Images tangled: grayish ankles, Patty Kay atop an elephant, the bruised shadows beneath anguished aquamarine eyes, a single-engine plane twisting and turning against a stormy sky, a monstrous ginger mustache, the glisten of earth at a gravesite, the sonorous piety of an evangelist’s radio spiel, the dizzying smell from a gas pump …

Gasoline.

My eyes snapped open.

I breathed the harsh, unmistakable stench of gasoline.

I rolled out of bed, hurried to the window.

No moon. No light.

And wafting through the window on the silky night breeze, the acrid scent of gasoline.

Below, I heard the scuff of hurrying footsteps—and the sound of liquid sloshing, splashing.

Whirling, I grabbed up the flashlight from the night-stand. I ran out of the room and down the hallway.

I flung open Craig’s door.

“Craig, Craig!”

My flashlight danced across the empty bed. The silken spread was thrown back, a pillow bunched against the headboard.

My late husband, Richard, always cautioned me not to jump to conclusions.

I jumped to this one fast and pounded down the main staircase.

I was mad.

That sorry, no-good, murdering bastard!

I did have wit enough to click on the main hallway light, grab the phone, punch in 911, and yell, “Fire! 1903
King’s Row Road,” before I slammed out the back door, flashlight in hand.

“Craig! Craig!”

The stench of gasoline was overpowering here.

My thin pencil of light swept the back of the house.

I caught a glimpse of a dark, running figure.

A heavy piece of metal clanged on the drive.

And my brain caught up with my emotions.

The green Porsche wasn’t in the drive.

Someone had Patty Kay’s gun.

I flicked off the light, jumped to the ground and ran behind the Lexus.

Over the thud of my heart in my chest, I listened as hard as I’ve ever listened in my life.

A dog yapped hysterically.

But I didn’t hear the sound of a car starting.

Then the night was alive with sirens.

I had on the outside lights around the pool and playhouse when the fire engine roared into the drive behind the house. Firemen jumped to the ground, dragging heavy hoses.

The others arrived hard on the heels of the fire truck: Captain Walsh, two patrol cars, and sketchily dressed neighbors hurrying up the drive or across the backyard.

The Jessops first, then the Forrests. The Krafts, in matching black silk pajamas, arrived next, followed by the Guthries. Stuart Pierce wore warm-up pants. He jogged up the drive, Brigit close behind him, a heavy cardigan pulled over her pink pajama top. A breathless Gina Abbott trotted up the drive with her daughter, Chloe. Last to arrive, their eyes dull and exhausted, were the Hollises.

I shouted above the spate of questions, pointing to the gasoline tin lying in the drive near the end of the house.

The fire chief herded all of us to the deck by the pool;
two firemen began to hose down the house, washing away the gasoline from the thick ivy.

Gina Abbott’s uncombed black hair stuck out on her head in sprigs and tangles. Chloe Abbott kept pulling down her shortie nightgown and glancing shyly toward Dan Forrest. The Hollises stood side by side, silent and somber. The Jessops ranged uneasily up and down the deck, chattering nervously.

Brooke Forrest clung to her son’s arm. She stared at the house, her beautiful face a mask of fatigue. Dan’s cheeks were pink with excitement and his eyes darted from the police cars to the fire truck to the house, but the teenager stood there decorously with his mother. David Forrest’s navy-blue robe fit him like a uniform. A scowl creased his face.