Caught Redhanded (7 page)

Curt grunted.

“Should I take that as a yes, I’d love to move to Pittsburgh?”

“Did you already take the job?”

“Sheesh, Curt.” I propped my elbows on the table and rested my chin in my palms. “I already told you I wanted to talk it over with you.” Where had this stubborn, unreasonable Curt come from?

He grunted again. “I’m not certain this conversation qualifies as talking it over.”

“Yeah, well, it would if you’d talk.”

Suddenly he leaned over the table, getting in my face. “Do you realize you haven’t asked my opinion?”

I drew back and stared at him. “I just asked if you wanted to move.”

“That is not asking my opinion. What if I think such a move isn’t in our best interest?”

Much as I hated to admit it—and I wouldn’t out loud, at least not right now; I was too steamed and too hurt—he had a point. “So what’s your opinion? Why wouldn’t this be in our best interest?”

“What about my career?” he asked. “Do I just give it up?”

“Of course not.” Talk about foolish. “I just said you could paint western Pennsylvania scenes. I mean, you can paint anywhere.”

He just stared at me.

“Well, you can. There’s sunlight in Pittsburgh and art supply stores and art galleries and anything else you might need.”

“And my work with Intimations?” he asked, referring to the gallery in Philadelphia with a branch here in Amhearst.

“They can still show your work. They show the work of lots of artists who don’t live locally.”

“But I teach for them.”

“I’m sure you can teach in Pittsburgh.”

“You’ve checked into it for me, have you?”

“Well, no, but we’re not talking the end of the earth here. There have to be lots of people who want to learn to paint there.”

He grunted again. “What if I want to keep teaching my students here? What if I want to teach in North Carolina?”

“North Carolina?” Where had that come from? Then I remembered he’d mentioned North Carolina when he’d stopped at the office this morning to see how I was after discovering Martha.

“In the Appalachians.” His eyes looked fondly into middle distance.

“You want to teach in North Carolina?” I all but screeched, albeit quietly. Screeching is more tone than volume, more intent than decibels. “But that’s too far to commute.”

He focused on me, his eyes shuttered to hide his emotions. “I was thinking of something more permanent.”

“What?” Surely I didn’t understand him correctly. “You want to move to North Carolina?”

“Maybe. You’re not the only one who gets job offers, you know.”

I was appalled. “Someone in North Carolina offered you a job? But you’re self-employed.”

He pushed his empty coffee cup aside and leaned toward me. This time he was eager, not displeased. “I got a call this morning from West Carolina Art Institute. They want me to come talk with them about joining their faculty.”

“Why you? How you?” North Carolina?

“Apparently one of the art profs was in Philadelphia and visited Intimations. He was impressed enough with my work to look up my Web site. He noted that I taught school before I started painting full-time and that I taught art classes now. Long story short, they approached me about filling a position unexpectedly vacated.”

“But what about the academic credentials to teach at a university?”

He looked much too pleased with himself as he said, “I have my master’s and with my credentials as a producing, selling artist, they feel it’s enough for an adjunct professor.”

I frowned at him. “So just like that you want to move to North Carolina? Without talking it over with me?”

“I don’t know if I want to move to North Carolina or not. I have to go visit, look the place over and talk with people.” He looked at me. “I’d like you to come with me when I go.”

“Oh.” The man was really serious about this possibility! “I can’t. I’ve committed all my vacation time for our honeymoon.” Not that I wanted to go even if I had the time.

He smiled. “I went on the web and checked, and there’s a wonderful paper in the area, sweetheart, just the thing for you. You’re very fortunate because newspapers are everywhere.”

“Right.” I stood, feeling betrayed, which I knew was foolish. But he was supposed to be delighted for me, not offering an alternate plan. “But they don’t all need another reporter.”

He stood to leave, too, and I followed him out. The temperature outside had moderated from the heat and humidity of the afternoon and the soft, long twilight of summer wrapped around us as we walked together to our separate cars, both parked in
The News
lot.

As I hit the electronic key to open my driver’s door, Curt swung his arm around my shoulders and drew me close. He kissed the top of my head, then my lips. I wrapped my arms around his middle and kissed him back.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah,” I said as I rested my head on his chest. But I didn’t know how without one of us feeling cheated. Resentful. There was a good start for a marriage. I blinked back tears as I leaned into him.

Oh, Lord, it’s not supposed to be like this!
Then I added,
Please change his mind!

EIGHT

I
walked into the Amhearst police station at about eight-thirty Wednesday morning and asked for Sergeant Poole. My stomach was a mass of knots and I had a throbbing headache from lack of sleep. In my purse I carried the equivalent of a ticking time bomb.

That’s what I got for reading someone’s private diary.

But how could I not?

I stood in the small entry hall beside the Coke machine. The dispatcher looked at me from behind his wall of bulletproof glass and in a metallic voice that emanated from a speaker over my head told me he’d see if the sergeant was available.

I hadn’t even finished reading the second wanted poster tacked to the bulletin board near the station’s front door when William appeared. He looked especially solemn as he led me into the bowels of the building where the offices were.

“How are you this morning, Merry?” he asked when we were seated in his office.

I smiled wanly. “I’m well,” I managed. “How are you?”

I’d worn a V-neck T-shirt and a linen big shirt, both a lovely rose shade that made my cheeks look nice and pink, on the theory that the bright color would give me courage. It wasn’t working. I just don’t do well with guilt, mine or a friend’s. I jumped on a subject that would put off the topic of my visit a few more minutes.

“Did you know that Martha Colby’s mother is in Amhearst after thirty or so years?” I thought of the stricken face I’d seen last night at Ferretti’s.

He nodded. “She came barreling in here yesterday evening, demanding to know what had happened to her baby.”

“Her baby?” This from a woman who had stayed away for so many years?

“Yep.” William’s mouth curled cynically for a moment, then eased into its normal line. “I do think she was very distressed in spite of the strange situation.”

“Why did she come back? Did she say?” I eyed him. “I’m sure you asked.”

“I did, but you know I can’t talk about an open case with you, Merry.”

“Yes, but isn’t it strange that she’s here when the murder happened? I mean, after not being here all those years?”

He held up a hand in a halt gesture. “Don’t jump to conclusions. Just because she’s in town doesn’t mean she’s automatically connected with the crime.”

“Well, I think the timing is a bit suspicious.”

He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “Just another little mystery to go with the one you might be able to help me with.”

“Yeah?” I sat up straighter, immediately off balance. William usually told me to step back, not give him help.

“Yesterday when Officer Schumann went to Martha Colby’s home, she met a very irate neighbor.”

Mrs. Wilson. Oh, boy.

“This neighbor, a remarkably agile, clear-minded woman of eighty-three years, told Officer Schumann about a ‘housebreaker’ whose name she couldn’t quite remember, but she thought it might be Joy. She said that the woman was, and I quote, ‘a bad un.’”

Housebreaker? A bad un? I almost wished I had my own burglar bar. Then I could challenge Mrs. Wilson to a duel for the slur to my character and she and I could have crossed bars as cavaliers used to cross rapiers.

“Have you any idea who this woman might be?” William looked at me, his craggy face stern.

I swallowed. “Is this woman in trouble?”

“It depends on whether she broke any laws.”

I thought of how I’d wandered through all the rooms. “Like what?”

“Did she break and enter? Steal anything?”

I thought of the diary burning a huge hole in my purse. “I’m certain she didn’t break and enter. She knocked on the door and it flew open.” Okay,
flew
might be an exaggeration, but it was definitely not closed. “She called hello and when no one answered, she went in to be certain everything was okay.” Just a good neighbor doing a good deed. That was me. It just happened I did this good deed in the house of a recently murdered woman.

“And what did she find?” William asked, his eyes watching me like the cat that had cornered the poor little innocent mouse housebreaker.

“She found a pretty house that had already been searched.”

“How did she know that?”

“Mrs. Wilson told me—her. Ken Mackey had been there and the new boyfriend whose name she doesn’t know. Have you found Ken Mackey yet?” I asked in the hopes I could distract him from my iniquitous behavior.

“No. What else did she see?”

Well, I hadn’t really thought that ploy would work. William was too sharp. “She said pictures had been displaced and some things knocked over. She thought some pictures might have been taken. Oh, and the bathroom was a mess.”

William suddenly leaned forward and I fought the urge to lean back. “Now my big question,” he said, his intense gaze drilling into me. How did bad guys ever keep from spilling their guts when someone like William went after them? Any minute now I’d confess to everything from assassinating Abraham Lincoln to stealing the atomic bomb secrets for the Rosenbergs. “Did she take anything?”

I shook my head so hard I felt like a bobble-head doll. “No! She didn’t take anything! And she didn’t touch anything, either.” I shifted, nervous. My purse shifted with me and I realized I’d just lied to William. “I mean, she didn’t intend to take anything. It just sort of happened.”

William said nothing, just stretched out his hand.

I reached into my purse and extracted the diary sealed in a plastic bag. It looked so innocuous, so ordinary. How could something so commonplace be so damning?

“I found it on the back patio, sort of like someone had dropped it,” I said. “I picked it up without thinking. When Mrs. Wilson came out, I dropped it in my purse because for some reason I can’t explain, I didn’t want her to see it.”

He pointed his index finger at me, his hand in the form of a revolver. “Did you read it, Merry?”

I flushed. “Yes.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. The unspoken words,
save me from amateur detectives and newspaper reporters,
hung in the air between us like the dialogue bubble in an old comic. He opened the plastic bag and let the diary fall onto his desk.

Don’t open it! Please don’t open it. Ever.

Foolish, foolish wish. William picked up a pen and with the retracted end lifted the cover. Holding the cover open with the pen, he used the eraser end of a yellow Ticonderoga pencil to flip through the book page by page, scanning, tucking each page under the pen as he moved through.

Perched there on my uncomfortable plastic chair, my knees together, my hands clenched, I felt like Quisling, that Norwegian traitor in World War II who helped the Nazis. His name was now a synonym for turncoat. Of course, William was hardly the Nazis and turning in a piece of critical evidence wasn’t anything like turning on your countrymen. Still, no matter how right and lawful my actions, I knew that in the future
Merrileigh
would be a synonym for a false, fair-weather friend.

I sat as still as I could. Then I saw William’s eyebrows rise and he stopped turning and read.

I suddenly felt twitchy all over. I knew exactly what he was reading. Last night as I sat with the diary in bed, leaning comfortably on my pillows with Whiskers purring at my side, I’d sat straight up and yelled, “No!”

Whiskers jumped and snarled at me for wakening and dislodging him. Tail high, he stalked to the foot of the bed where he turned in a circle several times before collapsing with a loud
umph!
I reread the entry dated April 20, but it said the same terrible thing it had the first time through.

Once again, Mac to the rescue. Tall, dark, good-looking—and such fun! Goodbye, Ken. Hello, happiness. How does a girl get so lucky yet again?

Following that were two and a half months of glowing entries about Mac mixed every so often with mention of his temper, the bruises on her upper arms, the broken crockery, ending with a recounting of a visit to the dentist a week ago to have a broken tooth repaired.

I told him I walked into a door, but I could tell he didn’t believe me. I told Mac that if he ever touched me like that again, I was going to the police. I mean, he actually punched me in the mouth! As usual he made apologies all over the place, brought me flowers and told me how wonderful I was. No wonder he can convince people so well. Words are his stock in trade. I’m not sure about anything anymore except that I love him and he scares me. What a mess!

By the time I was finished, I was on my knees beside the toilet losing what little was left of my spaghetti dinner. I sat huddled on the floor leaning against the tub, my mouth tasting sour.

So Mac had come into her life again. That didn’t mean he had killed her. It didn’t. But what about Dawn? Would he kill Martha to keep Dawn from knowing about her? About his temper? His abuse?

And how did I know it was my Mac Martha was referring to? Surely there were other people in and around Amhearst called Mac. I just didn’t happen to know them.