Cold Case (45 page)

Garnet straightened his tie for the umpteenth time. He couldn't keep his eyes off Thea. He made no approach; after the scene at Weston Psych, he must have realized his sister would run to avoid him. Tessa Cameron looked utterly bewildered in her widow's weeds. I wondered whom she'd donned the black silk shirtwaist for—her lover, Drew Manley, dead four days, her “lost” children?

Tessa studied Thea carefully, standing, and pivoting on spindly heels. Saw the steely hair, the undistinguished profile, the utter plainness of the pretender to the throne. Yet, there was something, some memory that kept Tessa turning her head in her daughter's direction. Tessa seemed, I thought, beyond all else, puzzled.

The digging took two hours and twenty-seven minutes, with several breaks, during which the rhythmic noise would abruptly halt, and the audience hold its collective breath. When they finally struck the metal casket, it pealed like a muffled church bell. Tessa shivered. I searched the area for Edith Foley, for a man who might be one of her sons. No. There'd be no need to involve them yet. I was glad I wasn't a Swampscott cop, glad I wouldn't be bringing the news to Edie's house.

“Tell me,” Thea said, clinging to my arm.

I knew what she wanted to hear; we'd been through it before. “It's simple,” I said. “They had to have a murder so you could be buried in holy ground.”

“Yes,” she said, her fingernails nearly piercing my skin. “My mother was—is—so religious, so Catholic.”

I tried to pry her hand from my elbow.

“And they had to have a body,” she continued, prompting me, urging me to speak.

“So they could bury the gardener.”

“The man
I
killed,” Thea said, “with a trowel. The first man I killed.”

I nodded. Her stubborn commitment was past argument. She saw her duty clearly: The way to save Alonso was to claim Manley's murder; the way to claim Manley's murder was to admit Alonso's.

“It should be over soon,” I said.

Mooney tapped me on the shoulder.

“Time to toss some tinder on dry brush?” I whispered.

“They're opening the casket,” he announced.

Garnet stood, clearing his throat. “If it's a question of identity,” he said, “I believe proper procedure would dictate taking the casket, unopened, to a mortuary or funeral parlor of the family's choosing—”

“To the Medical Examiner's Office,” Mooney corrected. “It will eventually be conveyed there.”

I left Thea with Roz—Thea's protective lioness, as if she needed one with all the attendant cops and son, Alonso, too—and entered the stifling tent. The smell hit like a clenched fist. I backtracked blindly, reaching for the tent's opening fold, retreating into the sunshine, gasping for air.

“Here,” Mooney said, offering me a rag. I took it gratefully. He'd soaked it in turpentine. Chanel wouldn't have made a dent.

Back inside, it took my eyes a moment to adjust. The tent kept out more sun than I'd expected.

“There is one skeleton,” the man from the ME's office was saying into a tiny tape recorder, “consistent with a female body of less than twenty years.”

“The casket,” Mooney said. “Is it extraordinarily heavy or high?”

“No.”

“In your opinion, could it contain a secret compartment?”

“No.”

“A second corpse?”

“No.”

I could make out Garnet to one side, handkerchief pressed to his nose.

Mooney said, “Then keep digging.”

The gravediggers looked at each other in astonishment. From where I stood, I could see the tops of their heads, but their boots were lost in the blackness of the pit.

“Hey, now,” one of them said, “that's enough. If we got to dig out another, it'll be after lunch and not before.”

“I'm sorry,” Mooney said. “I didn't mean you. You're finished for the day. Two forensic anthropologists will be taking over.” With a few grunts the diggers heaved themselves over the side of the gaping hole.

Two of the men I'd classified as FBI entered the tent, one black, one white. The white carried a large toolbox. Both donned headgear reminiscent of miners' hardhats, with front-mounted flashlights. I would have liked to inspect their toolkit. From where I stood I could see small handbrooms, a tiny trowel, toothbrushes, tweezers.

The black man surveyed the ground, knelt, and let a handful of dirt sift through his fingers. He said, “It would be best to winch up the casket, place it on a trolley, and remove it, rolling the cart along the uncut turf. If the rest of you will now leave the tent, we could work more easily.”

Garnet, scuffing at the dirt with a wing-tipped toe, said, “I don't intend to move without some sort of explanation.”

Mooney, ignoring Garnet completely, said, “He couldn't have been buried far under the casket.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Garnet snapped.

The black forensic anthropologist said politely, “Gentlemen, would you mind moving this outside?”

So the conflagration took place outdoors in the shimmering heat, ten sunny days after Andrew Manley had come to me about a manuscript written by Thea Janis, living genius, long presumed dead.

It began with the sudden exodus from the tent, but the seed had been sown as soon as Garnet left Tessa's side. When her son abandoned her, Tessa had hurried off to inspect the opposition. Marissa tried her best to hold the older woman back, to keep mother from daughter. No use. Tessa, seemingly struck mute, placed a gloved hand under Thea's chin, tilted her face to the sun.

“Mama,” Thea said. Just the one word with a faintly foreign pronunciation.

Tessa began babbling in Italian. She lost all color in her face. I was afraid she would faint.

“Mama, I'm sorry,” Thea said defiantly, for my ears, for Mooney's ears, but most of all for Alonso's. “I didn't mean to kill Drew Manley. I know you cared for him.”

Tessa turned away, stumbling, walking past Thea's chair onto the closely clipped grass. After four quick steps, she faltered, stopped. No place to go.

Alonso said, “Wait a damn minute.
Mama?
If she's your mama, then—Mom, what are you saying?”

Thea rose and put a hand to his lips. “It's okay, darling,” she said. “It's a relief. I'm guilty. I have nothing to hide now. You'll be free to go soon. I don't blame you for any of this. Just go home. Promise me that.”

He looked at Thea, then at Marissa, thinking perhaps of other promises, kept and unkept.

“We have something here!” The voice from the tent seemed far away, muffled.

Mooney stared at me, lifted his right eyebrow. I took a deep breath. I didn't want to blow my one planned line, my lighted match, as it were.

“Thea,” I asked, “was your brother Garnet present when you killed Alonso's father?”

“When she what?” Alonso demanded.

I knew he was chained hand and foot, still I feared he might hurt his mother, who glared at me with hatred in her eyes.

“No,” Thea said. “No!”

“She never told me who my father was,” said Alonso. “I assumed—” He stared at Garnet, looked away. “She said, just another guy on the road. A one-night stand. She wasn't even sure of his name. After a while I stopped asking. I never stopped wondering.”

“He was a gardener,” I said, holding out the photo Beryl had loaned me in exchange for her sister's words and pictures. He took it, his eyes glued to the image of the man who might well be his father. “I think he loved your mother,” I went on, “and possibly your mother's sister, and I don't think that sat well with the family, their well-bred daughters and a gardener.”

Alonso's mouth worked. He swallowed, said, “You killed him because—”

“Bitch!” Thea screamed, staring at me. “Take me to jail, anywhere, away from here! This isn't what I wanted. Alonso, I never meant to hurt you. I killed Dr. Manley for you.”

“You didn't know where Manley was.” Alonso spat the words at her like they were poison. “Tell me about my dad.”

“Who knew where Manley was?” I asked quickly, shoving words into the gap.

“Marissa,” Alonso said. “She took me to this incredible house. She said if I asked for it, it would be mine. They never even used it. Can you believe that? A family so rich they'd leave a house to rot? A mansion on the ocean. I grew up in trailers, in other people's garages. Mom took in laundry, for chrissakes.”

Thea bowed her head. “That was only for a little while, Alonso. Only a little while.”

“Long enough so I was the maid's kid, all through school. ‘Wash my sheets, Alonso.' And then, all of a sudden, I thought I came from a family with a fucking mansion on the ocean. Money to burn.” He gazed at his mother questioningly, but she turned away, refusing to meet his eyes. “I guess I do,” he murmured to himself. “Guess I do.”

“Did you tell him that, Marissa?” I asked.

“I may have told him the family was well off,” she said, glancing down at her nails, totally in control.

Alonso used his voice as a weapon, a crude cutting tool. Elevating his chin, he stared at Marissa as if he could see past the brim of her hat. Slowly, he drawled, “Hey, cutie pie, after your little ‘kidnapping' adventure, did you tell your dearest husband exactly who you'd been to bed with, what a great lay I was, how much better than he ever was, how much you got off oh it? You know, the stuff you said you'd tell him if you got the chance? Or did you holler ‘rape' instead? Is ‘rape' why I know about that cute little star tattooed on your cute little butt?”

A flush crept up Marissa's cheeks. Her mouth worked for a moment before she drew herself to her full height. Her voice was tight enough to quiver when she finally spoke. “You'd think the police would keep him quiet!”

Garnet snorted. “Why silence the ring of truth, Missy dear? I do hope you had one hell of a time, because you know, it's going to cost you—”

Weakly, Tessa said, “Children—” She must have meant don't quarrel or don't squabble in public, but she couldn't take her eyes off Thea's face, couldn't raise her voice above a whisper.

She walked back toward Thea then, stiff-legged on the uneven grass, an old woman.

“How could you?” she asked in her crow's voice.

“How could you?” Thea answered.

“How could I what? I don't know what you're talking about.”

“She's crazy, Mother,” Garnet said.

Thea ignored him. “You never heard me cry at night? You never heard Beryl weeping?”

“Children cry.”

“Especially when they have bad dreams, Mama.” A single tear rolled down Thea's cheek. “Remember how we always had bad dreams?”

“Not you. Never you. Beryl had nightmares. She was a difficult child, always.”

“It must have been difficult for her, being the sacrificial lamb. Don't you remember her dreams? About Father? And about Garnet,” she finished slowly.

“
You
never had those dreams. It was only Beryl—”

“I lied, Mama. I forgot.”

“And the dreams were never about Garnet,” Tessa insisted. “About Franklin, yes. Beryl was afraid of her father. She was a fearful child.”

Tessa tried to touch her daughter, wipe away her tears. Thea drew back warily.

“They weren't dreams. You had to know that. What could Father have said to you? That it took him an hour to tuck in his daughters at night? That he was working late? Our room was almost right above your room. Did you lock your door? Take more sleeping pills? Turn on the radio? A little soothing music to block out our cries?
Beryl always told the truth
. She didn't need your pet psychiatrist. We didn't need Dr. Drew—you never believed us.”

“You agreed with me, Thea, that nothing had happened!”

“I repressed it! I couldn't deal with it, so I made it go away.
But you lied!
You said Garnet and Dad weren't even home, and bad little Beryl made it all up to get attention.”

I said, “When Drew Manley first hired me to find Thea, he was excited, elated as a child. The next time I saw him, he was destroyed. A broken old man who
knew
, in this one case, that he'd done far more harm than good. Today, more psychiatrists give credence to children's tales of abuse. They make sure the kids see a physician. They search for physical evidence—”

Mooney emerged from the green tent and cleared his throat. Such a small noise, but it turned us all around as if our bodies were on strings.

“There is another skeleton,” he said. “It appears to be that of an adult male. Unearthed sixteen inches beneath the casket, lying in soil.”

“This is absurd—” Garnet spluttered.

“Calm down. You might want to know that the remains are consistent with having lain in the ground for twenty-four years—”

“Twenty-four years!” Garnet scoffed. “What about twenty-six? Thirty? Fifty?”

“The forensic anthropologists can more accurately date the remains at their laboratory.”

“This is ridiculous,” Garnet said, drawing himself up to his full height. “Surely we're not responsible for whatever was in the earth before we buried Thea!”

“For now,” Mooney continued, “I can say positively that the hyoid bone has been recovered, snapped in two, a clear indication of strangulation.”

Quickly I said to Thea, “Was Garnet with you when Alonso died? Were any of his friends there? Because
you
didn't kill him, Thea.”

“Susan,” she spat. “I'm Susan. I'm nobody.”

“
Thea,”
I said, “you hit the man because he hit you, but you didn't move him from Weston to Marblehead. You didn't strangle him when he came to. You may have helped shove his body in the freezer in the Marblehead basement, but you didn't bury him.”

“I didn't strangle him! I hit him with a trowel! I told you. I told the police. I told everyone!”