Death by Surprise (Carolyn Hart Classics) (15 page)

Harry stared at me, his grey eyes dark with anger. “I was thirteen when Susie died. I swore that someday, when I was grown, I would kill him. But the mountains killed him first.”

“Can’t you let it go?” I asked. “Let it all go?”

“It isn’t that easy,” he said slowly. “I don’t think the past is ever over. Ever.”

I understood that. I, of all people, understood that. “You don’t have to help me,” I said abruptly and I started to slide out of the booth.

“No, K.C. Wait.”

I looked at him inquiringly. “Don’t leave.”

“Don’t leave.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

We ordered a second round and were awkwardly silent for a moment, then he asked me about college and law school and, gradually, we began to talk, as if we weren’t a Carlisle or a Nichols, two people finding out about each other.

“Have you always worked for
The Beacon,”

His life hadn’t followed neat patterns, either. He spent a tour in Vietnam, was one of the early “advisers.” When he was discharged, he spent a few years drifting from one big city newspaper to another. He didn’t want to come back to La Luz and be the boss’s son. Then his father died of a heart attack and he came home to
The Beacon.

“Are you glad you came back?”

He nodded. “Mostly.” He looked at me directly. “I got married then, too.”

I waited.

“Two kids, Harry Jr. is a freshman at Dartmouth. Susie lives with me. She’s fourteen.”

“And your wife?”

“Ex-wife. She’s married to . . . a former friend of mine.”

So what do you say? ‘I’m sorry.’ ‘I’m glad.’ I didn’t say anything.

“I’m back where I started. A bachelor. I intend to stay that way.”

He said it angrily, bitterly. This was one divorce I wouldn’t ask about.

“Going it alone is better,” I said quickly. Maybe I almost believed it. It was the way I had lived for a long time.

Harry’s face smoothed out. “That’s enough about me. Tell me, K.C., why did you go to law school?”

I never had a chance to answer.

“Hey, Harry.” The bartender was yanking a thumb over his shoulder. “Phone.”

Harry went to answer. I finished my second margarita and decided that was enough. When Harry came back, I would thank him and offer him a ride back to his car. I needed to go home and do some thinking.

But when Harry came back, I knew from his face that something big had happened.

“I’m sorry, K.C. Sorry for you. Farris has arrested your cousin Kenneth.”

It fell into place for Farris, I later learned, as neatly as a cell door clanging shut. Maybe there is an instinct to the hunt, a subconscious nerve-twang, that prompts a detective to make a try, and, when it succeeds, he is acclaimed for his cleverness and it reconfirms his own confidence and sets in concrete his original perspective. Farris had the letter, of course, that damning letter that pointed to Kenneth. When one of his men returned to the apartment with the news that a neighbor had seen a man leaving Francine’s apartment hurriedly just after seven, Farris went immediately to talk to her. The final piece of good luck and, from Farris’ viewpoint, proper response to his seeking out, was the neighbor’s description of the man, “Well, it looked like the young man who is running for the House. I’ve seen his ads on the TV. Carlisle, that’s his name.”

Farris was primed for bear and he wasn’t new at the game so he took the time to roust out a judge and get a search warrant. He drove to Kenneth and Megan’s house. It was dark, a night light burning in the bay window. Farris wasn’t in any hurry. He settled back in his unmarked car and smoked and waited.

The Mercedes glided up the wide circular drive just before eleven. The garage door swung up automatically, the car pulled in and the door came down.

Farris and his assistant got out and walked up to the front door and rang the bell. Kenneth answered the door, still in the tuxedo he had worn to the symphony. Megan was just starting upstairs, her long dress a shimmer of silver in the light of the entry way chandelier.

It was about an hour after this that I drove up the steep street and turned into the drive. A police cruiser blocked the way. A policeman shone a light in my face. “This drive’s closed.”

“I’m going through. This is my cousin’s house. I intend to talk to his wife.”

He turned without answering and walked back to his cruiser and leaned inside to talk on the radio. I couldn’t hear the exchange, but he returned in a moment to ask, “Are you K.C. Carlisle?”

“Yes.”

“You can go through.”

He backed his car out of the way and I edged by in the Porsche.

The house blazed with lights. Two more squad cars were parked by the front steps. The front door was open. I stepped into the entryway of pale green Italian marble. I could see my reflection in the gilt-framed mirror that hung above a Chippendale side table. My face glimmered at me, pale and strained.

A uniformed policeman sat uncomfortably on a spindle-legged chair. “Are you Miss Carlisle?”

I nodded.

“Mrs. Carlisle is in there,” and he nodded towards the drawing room.

Megan waited for me just inside the double doors. She reached out to draw me through. “K.C., thank God you’ve come.” She shut the doors. “They’ve arrested Kenneth. K.C., they’ve arrested him for murder.”

Her eyes burned in a face paled by shock. The diamond necklace at her throat glittered in the light of the wall sconces. Megan clutched at her throat, oblivious to the necklace, frantic with worry.

“I know, Megan. That’s why I’ve come. Tell me everything that’s happened.”

Footsteps sounded above us. Megan looked up at the ceiling. “They’re still here. They are pawing through our things, looking everywhere.”

“Do they have a search warrant?”

“Yes. They showed it when they first came. They found something in the trunk of Kenneth’s car. I don’t know what it was but they were all excited.” She paused and looked at me with haunted eyes. “And Kenneth . . .” She said it slowly, it was hard to say, “Kenneth looked awful when they asked him for the keys. It was when they came back in from the garage that they arrested him.”

I suddenly felt very tired. I knew what they were hunting for, of course. Any of the materials that were missing from Francine’s desk. And, more than that, they were looking for whatever had been used to strangle her. It was Harry who had told me he was sure something had been used, a rope or a tie of some kind.

“Megan, where was Kenneth tonight, between six and seven?”

“Between six and seven?” she asked faintly.

I nodded.

“He called,” she said dully, “about six and said he would be a little late getting home. He needed to finish a contract.” She hid her face in her hands for a long moment. Her voice was muffled. “Oh, K.C., I called the office about six-thirty. I wanted him to stop on the way home and buy some Chablis . . .”

There wasn’t any answer. “What time did he get home?”

Her hands dropped away from her face. I didn’t look at her. It was too painful.

“About seven-thirty.” Her hands knotted in fists. She continued reluctantly, “He was upset. I knew that. I always know when he is upset, when something is wrong. He said he had a bad headache, but he insisted we go on to the symphony.” She looked at me forlornly. “K.C., what happened?”

“Have you told this to the police?”

She shook her head.

“Keep your mouth shut. If they want to talk to you, refuse to say anything unless I am present.”

“All right, K.C.”

I hesitated, but I had to ask it. “Megan, do you have any idea what Francine had on Kenneth?”

“No. But something has been wrong for weeks. Kenneth hasn’t been himself. At night, we would be home, just the two of us, and I would look up and he would be looking at me . . . so strangely. When I would ask, he always said nothing was wrong. But K.C., I knew that wasn’t true.”

Yes, something was very wrong. Kenneth hadn’t engineered the dissolution of the Cochran-Carlisle trust for nothing.

“Has it just been the past few weeks?”

Her mouth tightened. “Yes. I know what everyone will say. They will say he was having an affair and this woman found out and wanted money to keep it secret and he killed her because of me . . . or the campaign.” She swallowed jerkily. “It isn’t true. I tell you it isn’t true.”

The wife was always the last to know, wasn’t that the folk wisdom?

I wouldn’t know. I had never been married, never had a husband to lose. But I wondered if in this instance folk wisdom failed? Wouldn’t you know, wouldn’t you know instinctively if the man you loved had turned to another? Perhaps you could be fooled if he had always been untrue, but I felt sure that couldn’t have been the case with Kenneth.

Kenneth loved Megan.

That was a constant, a basic, a given.

Wouldn’t Megan have known?

She reached out, gripped my arm. “I tell you it can’t be true, K.C. We . . . Kenneth and I . . . I tell you, it can’t be true.”

“All right, Megan,” I said soothingly, “relax. Don’t get upset.” Wasn’t that a laugh. Don’t be upset, dear, just because they’ve arrested your husband for murder. “Let’s sit down, Megan, think it out, pool what we know. It’s the only way we can help Kenneth.”

If Kenneth could be helped. I didn’t say it, but I thought it. I asked what I had to know, “Megan, what did Kenneth say when they arrested him?”

We sat on the long couch beneath a vivid Van Gogh. I remembered when Kenneth and Megan bought the painting at an auction at Sotheby’s. They had been so proud of it, in a well-bred way. Now the driven, tortured strokes in the painting seemed to echo the pain in her face.

“He just looked stricken. He turned to me and he tried to smile. It was . . . dreadful. He said, ‘Megan, no matter what they say, I didn’t do it.’ Then that man, the police captain said it was time to go down to the station, they had a lot to talk about. Kenneth didn’t even look at him. He just ignored him and stared at me and said, ‘Megan, please, I love you,’ and then he turned and walked out with all those men around him.”

Kenneth was always such a perfect product of his background and breeding. For him to have spoken publicly, before the police, of love showed just how great the strain upon him.

I could imagine the words, almost see Kenneth’s face. Of all who knew him, perhaps I alone knew how much he loved Megan. I didn’t think, no matter what happened, that he would lie to Megan.

For the first time since Harry told me Kenneth had been arrested, I began to think in terms of Kenneth’s innocence, not his possible guilt.

There could be an innocent explanation for all that had happened. If Kenneth had been at Francine’s apartment, it didn’t necessarily mean he was her murderer. I had been there and I hadn’t murdered her.

I couldn’t help Kenneth unless I knew more than I did now.

“Megan, tell me exactly when you realized Kenneth was disturbed about something.”

She frowned. “It was almost exactly a month ago. He was late coming home from the office and he isn’t often late. We were supposed to go to the charity auction at Ruisdael’s that night. Kenneth had forgotten and that was so unlike him. We went and he didn’t make an offer on anything. I made a bid finally on a weekend at La Jolla and Kenneth hardly had a word to say about it on the way home. Nothing was right after that evening. Kenneth would try hard to be happy, like we’ve always been, but then his face would look worried, distant. I didn’t ask him. I thought surely he would tell me soon. But he didn’t. Then I worried that it was another woman. It is so common, you know. So many people we know . . . but K.C., I can’t believe it, I don’t believe it. It wasn’t that he didn’t come home at night or didn’t,” she paused painfully, “make love to me. It wasn’t that at all. He seemed, really, to love me more, to be more intense. It was more as though he had a dreadful fear.” She pushed up from the couch and walked to the mantel to stare into the empty grate. “Then I was afraid, so afraid, that there was something terribly wrong physically. That he had cancer and he didn’t want to tell me.” She turned to look at me, her narrow chin high, “But Kenneth isn’t a coward. Oh K.C., I haven’t known what to think.”

“I don’t know what it could be, either,” I said slowly.

“There is something,” she said, her voice weary. “I’ve known it ever since the night at your mother’s. I asked him on the way home if Francine Boutelle had asked him for money. He looked straight ahead and kept on driving and then he said he didn’t want to talk about it, that I wasn’t to worry. I knew then that he didn’t want to tell me. I guess I was hurt. I didn’t mention it again. I started talking about the campaign, about how well the contributions were coming in . . . He reached out and took my hand and held it so hard. I wanted to cry. But I didn’t.”

The Megans of this world don’t often cry. They don’t often ask for help, either.

“K.C., please, tell me, whatever it is, if you know. I can’t help Kenneth if I don’t know what he’s fighting.”

“I would tell you if I knew, Megan. All I can say for sure is that Francine Boutelle was a blackmailer. She tried to blackmail me and Priscilla. I’m certain of that. I think she had also threatened Grace and Travis and Edmond.”