Closer than the Bones (20 page)

“So you know that Brett is gay?” I asked, a bit stunned by the casual way in which she referred to it.

Mrs. Greer treated me to a look that made me feel about three inches tall. “Miss Carpenter, I been too long in this world not to know when somebody’s different, and it makes no nevermind to me who that boy wants to be with. I just hope he finds someone who’ll be good to him, because he’s a good boy himself, and he deserves that much. You know his folks won’t talk to him a’cause of that?” She shook her head at the folly of such behavior.

“That’s very sad,” I said. “I had no idea.”

“That boy’s got a lotta hurt inside of him, and he don’t quite know what to do with it,” she said. “I reckon that’s why he was taking those damn drugs for a while.”

I was shocked, momentarily, at Mrs. Greer’s use of even a mild profanity, but the depth of her emotion was such that it slipped out without her even realizing what she’d said.

“Do you think he’s off them now?” I asked.

“Yeah, he is. I can generally tell. I seen too much of it, I tell you, and you can see the signs, if you know what you’re looking for. He went off from here—after all that mess at Christmastime—and checked himself into one of them fancy clinics and got himself clean. He’s been more at peace with himself since then, I reckon, and he hasn’t needed them anymore.”

“That’s good news,” I said, vastly relieved. I hadn’t noticed any signs of drug use in Brett; and like Mrs. Greer, I had way too much experience, thanks to years of teaching, not to recognize some of them. “But you think he’s afraid that Jack will find out about the drugs?”

She nodded. “Most likely. Just ’cause he might’ve bought drugs from the girl last year don’t mean he killed her now, though.”

“You’re right,” I said in a firm tone, to convince myself as much as her, “and I’m sure Jack will see that.”

A lingering doubt remained, nevertheless. What if Brett had killed Hamilton Packer, and Katie knew something about it? Then if she’d tried to blackmail him, he might have panicked and killed her. The fact that Katie was killed in the summerhouse was important. Either Brett had done it, or the killer was attempting to make it look like Brett had done it.

I glanced at Mrs. Greer, and she nodded. It was almost eerie, the way the woman was following my thought processes. “It’s a good thing that boy has you on his side,” she said, smiling slightly.

“I was just about to say the same thing to you,” I said, grinning back at her. “I don’t think he killed anybody, but it doesn’t look very good for him at the moment.”

“Then somebody’s gotta figure out who did do it, Miss Carpenter.” Mrs. Greer made a simple statement of fact. “Mr. Jack will do it, I’ve got that much faith in him. But it don’t mean someone can’t help him along to finding the truth.”

“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “I know I can count on you, Mrs. Greer.” I stuck my hand out impulsively, and she took it. “And please call me Ernie. All my friends do.”

A broad grin lit her face. “And I’m Selma.” She squeezed my hand, then released it. She stood. “I’d better get Betsy down here and tell her what’s going on. She’s gonna be terrified, and we’ll be lucky if she don’t quit, right straight.”

“Where has she been?” I had forgotten all about Betsy, and now I was worried that some harm might have befallen her, too.

Selma gestured with her head. “She’s supposed to be upstairs, straightening up the bedrooms and making the beds. She’s probably listening to that Walkman of hers, even though I told her not to, else she would’ve noticed some of this commotion going on.” She carried her mug to the sink and rinsed it out, leaving it there. “You gonna be okay now?”

Standing, I acknowledged that I would. “If someone hasn’t done so already, I suppose I ought to go and let Miss McElroy know what’s going on.”

“And I’m going upstairs to find Betsy,” she said.

“Do you think Miss McElroy will be in her sitting room?”

Selma consulted the kitchen clock; it was a bit after four. “She ought to be by now,” she said. “And let her know that dinner’s gonna be a mite late tonight.” She left the kitchen, and moments later I could hear her climbing the back stairs.

Taking a deep breath, I went out the door into the hall and into the front of the house. Before I got to the sitting room, however, the door to the library opened, and Jack walked out. Seeing me, he called out my name, and I halted. “Can I talk to you now?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “But has anyone informed Miss McElroy about what’s happened?” I was feeling a bit guilty I hadn’t done so already.

He nodded. “She’s with her husband and the Bertrams in the sitting room. I’ve asked them to wait there until I can talk to them. Right now, though, I’d like to talk to you.”

“Where’s Brett?” I asked, fearing the answer.

“He’s gone up to his room with one of my men,” Jack said. He then gestured toward the library. “Let’s talk.”

“Certainly,” I said, preceding him into the room. I sat down in the same chair I had occupied earlier in the day, and Jack went around behind the desk and plopped down.

Deep lines had appeared in his forehead, and I could see that the strain of this second murder was eating away at him. His posture bespoke his tiredness; and as I watched, waiting for him to say something, he rubbed a hand across his face.

Taking a chance, I said, “There was nothing you could have done to prevent this.”

Startled, he dropped the pen he had started to pick up. “I didn’t realize mind reading was one of your talents.” His grin was rueful, full of regret.

I shook my head. “It’s the same thing I’ve been telling myself, that’s all. I don’t think either one of us could have forestalled it.”

Jack’s mouth compressed into a grim line. “Maybe. But if I had gotten to the girl sooner and made her talk to me, then I might have prevented this.” He threw his hands up in the air. “If she even knew anything. But now we’ll never know for sure.”

“She probably knew something, or else she pretended she did,” I said. “I can’t imagine why else someone would have done this to her.”

“You’re right,” Jack said, “and I should have made more of an effort to talk to her and get her to tell me what she knew, or what she thought she knew. Poor girl.” He suddenly struck the top of the desk with the flat of his hand, and the sound made me jump. “Damn it! This shouldn’t have happened!”

I could see the grief and frustration in his face. I wanted to offer him some kind of comfort, but for the moment, I couldn’t think of anything else to say, anything that would convince him. He’d have to work through it on his own. Just like I would, I thought. I didn’t know if I could ever forget the sight of that poor girl, beaten so savagely. She would haunt me for years to come.

Time to move on. Dwelling on it at this moment wasn’t helping her or me. “What did you need to ask me?” I said.

Jack collected himself, stopped staring broodingly off into space. “Right. Tell me again how you came to find her, and what you saw.”

I sat back in the chair and drew a deep breath, willing my voice not to shake. Slowly, and as clinically as possible, I related what I had seen. “I’m afraid I didn’t have time to notice very much. I was so horrified by... her that I couldn’t take in anything else.”

Jack nodded. “It was grim, one of the worst I’ve ever seen.”

“One thing which occurs to me,” I said, wondering whether he would, or could, answer me. “How could someone do that to her and not”—I searched for a way to describe it that wouldn’t sicken me—“show the signs of it?”

He stared at something I couldn’t see, as if weighing what to say. “We found a sheet that the killer must have draped around himself—or herself.”

I took a moment to consider that, then risked asking another question. “But why would Katie have just waited, passively, to be attacked, while someone wound a sheet around himself? Or herself?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Jack said, after another long pause. “But we suspect she was already unconscious before she was beaten so severely.”

The horror of it all came back to me with such immediacy that I felt I was once again standing on the threshold of that room. I could see the poor girl all over again, could smell the stench of the blood, feel the sweltering heat around me. I fought for control, willing myself not to vomit.

Jack, lost in his own torments, didn’t appear to notice that it took me a couple of minutes to regain some semblance of composure. My voice was shaky when I could speak again. “What about the murder weapon?” I asked. “Did you find it.”

“Oh, yes. There was no mistaking it.” He rubbed a hand across his face again.

“Can you tell me what it was?”

He looked at me, his eyes cold and distant. “You’ll know soon enough. It was Brett Doran’s laptop computer.”

I sagged in my chair. I thought about seeing Brett that morning, fiddling with his laptop. I couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe that he had done this horrible thing. Illogical as it sounded, even to me, the weapon used convinced me of Brett’s innocence. Someone had deliberately used the computer in order to frame him.

When I could speak again, I asked, “Does Brett know yet?”

He shook his head. “No, and I shouldn’t have told you, but I know you won’t tell him.” He fixed me with a steely glare. “Will you?”

“No, you have my word on that.”

“Thank you,” he said. “If my boss ever finds out about any of this”—he waved a hand back and forth between us—“I’d be in deep doo-doo for sure.”

“He won’t hear it from me,” I said fervently. “I know this is highly irregular, and I appreciate your trust. I won’t violate it.”

“I know,” he said.

“I think someone is trying to implicate Brett,” I said. “I just don’t believe he would have done this thing. And if he had, which I don’t think he did, he certainly wouldn’t have used his computer as a weapon!”

“Luckily for him, he may have a good alibi,” Jack said. “We won’t know for sure until after the autopsy, of course, but at a guess, she’d been dead for about an hour when you found her. According to Doran, he left about thirty minutes after lunch. He went into town to buy cigars, went straight there, and he says he hung around the shop, smoking and talking to the owner, for over an hour. If the owner corroborates that, then he’s probably in the clear.”

“Lucky for Brett, but not so lucky for the killer.”

“If someone is trying to implicate Doran, of course,” Jack said.

“Or at least really trying to muddy the waters.” I frowned. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance someone saw Katie going out to the summerhouse?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t had much chance to ask questions yet, but from what I can tell so far, everyone was either busy working or taking naps. No one saw anything. For sure, no one has told me that they saw anyone, Katie included, going into that summerhouse.”

“Frustrating,” I said. “So what do you do?”

“Keep digging,” he said, “and hope that we turn up something on the scene that gives us a link to someone in the house.”

“How long is all that going to take?”

Jack shrugged. “We have to send most of it to the state crime lab in Jackson, and normally it could take several weeks. But I’m sure the sheriff will ask for a rush to be put on it, and we might get something back in a week, if we’re lucky. And if there’s anything to find.”

“Let’s pray that there is.”

“Yeah, I want this over with, and fast.” His face was as grim and determined as I had ever seen it.

I shivered, as if the proverbial goose had just walked over my grave. “You think there’s a chance the killer might strike again?”

“I sure as hell hope not,” Jack said, “but it looks to me like someone’s unraveling. The other two murders were much cleaner, more clinical. This one, well, it was nasty, full of rage. I don’t think it’s a good sign.”

“Surely the same person is responsible?” The thought that we might be dealing with more than one killer was mighty unsettling.

“Most likely,” Jack said. “The likelihood of having two different killers at work here is about nil, I’d say.” He threw up his hands. “I could be wrong, but I don’t think I am. This whole mess doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. A nice, clean domestic, where you know immediately what’s going on—that’s what I’m used to. We don’t get many cases like this, at least not in our county.”

“Thank goodness for that,” I said. “But any murder is one too many.”

“Yeah.” The strain in his face suddenly made him look years older.
Poor boy
, I thought, he really is taking this hard.

“Is there anything else you need from me right now?” I asked.

“No, thanks,” he said, standing up. “I need to get on with things, check in on my men, see what they’ve found out. Plus I need to keep asking questions.”

“And I’d better go check in with Miss McElroy. She’s probably been wondering where I am.” I got out of the chair and followed Jack to the door. He motioned for me to precede him, ever courtly.

He headed for the kitchen, to talk to Selma and Betsy, I figured, or else to go back out to the summerhouse. I shuddered. I stood and watched his retreating back for a moment, then turned toward Miss McElroy’s sitting room.

As I approached, I could see that the door stood the tiniest bit ajar. I lightened my footsteps, almost by instinct, wondering what—or whom—I might observe through the crack in the door.

Mindful of Miss McElroy’s warning yesterday, I cautiously stuck my eye to the crack and peered in. Not much of a view, although I could see Miss McElroy’s chair from my vantage point.

Empty. That was strange, since Jack told me he'd asked for Miss McElroy, her husband, and the Bertrams to wait for him in here.

As I waited and listened, I couldn’t hear any signs of conversation. Then there was a bit of movement. I recognized Alice Bertram. She had come just within my line of vision, and she appeared to be alone. Then she walked fully into view, her back toward me.

I pushed the door lightly, and it swung open a few inches on silent hinges. She didn’t appear to have heard anything. Now I could see better, and as I waited and watched, she continued walking around the room.

I drew in a breath of surprise. I realized what was strange about what I was seeing.