Marta Perry (14 page)

* * *

Z
ACH
JOGGED
ACROSS
the road when he saw a car stopping in front of Meredith’s house that afternoon. He’d hesitated to go over in case she was getting some much-needed rest, but with all this company, she might appreciate a buffer.

He reached the gate as a man got out, then hurried around the car to open the passenger door. A woman emerged, carrying a sheaf of roses. Victor and Laura Hammond. That was surprising. From what Meredith had said, he’d thought Hammond was doing anything possible to keep Meredith away from his wife.

Zach swung the gate wide for them. Laura passed through without so much as a glance, but her husband looked at him closely.

“Zach Randal, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Looks as if we’re all coming to check on Meredith.”

“Terrible thing, terrible.” Victor’s pudgy face seemed to sag. “Margo King, of all people. I can’t believe it could happen here. They’re saying she was attacked.”

“That’s apparently what the police believe.”

Shaking his head, Hammond started up the walk. “Poor Meredith. She must be devastated. We felt we had to come and offer our support.”

As they approached the door it opened, and Meredith stood there. He was struck by how fragile she looked. He had to be patient with her, but the fear of what the police might even now be thinking jabbed at him. They might not have time for patience.

“Laura, Victor. It’s kind of you to stop by.” The pleading glance she sent his way seemed to ask him to help her get rid of them.

“We just had to see how you’re doing.” Victor pressed her hand. “This is such an awful thing. We could hardly believe it when we heard, could we, Laura?”

He glanced at his wife as he spoke, and Zach followed the direction of his gaze. Then he looked a little closer. Laura was on something, he felt certain of that. The dilated pupils and the glazed expression both told a story. The woman frowned, not seeming to know the right response to the question.

“Laura wanted to bring you some flowers.” He nudged her hand. This time she seemed to understand, because she handed the roses to Meredith.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper.

“Thank you, Laura.” Meredith hesitated a moment, and then she put her arms around the woman in a quick hug.

Laura clutched her tightly for a moment. Tears filled her eyes, and she didn’t seem to notice when they spilled over onto her cheeks.

“There now, dear, don’t cry.” Victor detached her and stood holding her arm. “This whole thing just seems so impossible. I suppose it was some vagrant. Or someone high on drugs. Don’t you think?”

Meredith shook her head, and Zach felt she’d reached the end of her rope. No matter how rude he had to be, it was time to get these people out.

“I’m afraid Meredith is still in shock.” He nudged them gently toward the door. “It was good of you to stop by, but she needs to get some rest now.”

For a moment he thought Victor was going to rebel, but then he nodded. “Yes, of course. Meredith, you just call me if there’s anything at all I can do. That’s what friends are for at a time like this.”

Meredith managed a nod, and Zach ushered them the rest of the way out. He closed the door on Victor’s obvious expectation that he was coming, as well.

He turned back to Meredith, his heart wrung by the pain in her face. He touched her arm gently. “Come and sit down before you fall down, okay?”

“I’m all right.” She murmured the words automatically, it seemed, and she let him lead her into the living room and settle her in a corner of the sofa.

He pulled a chair over so that he could sit facing her. For some reason, she looked even worse than she had earlier. “What’s going on? Has something else happened?”

“When Rebecca Stoltzfus, my neighbor, was here earlier, I talked to her again about the night Aaron died.” She looked at him as if to be sure he understood. “I was right about her. She had been holding something back.”

“What?” His instincts clicked on alert. Were they finally going to have something solid to work on?

“Rebecca said she went out on the back porch right around dark that night. She heard voices coming from the direction of the pool.”

“Did she recognize them?” That would probably be too much to hope for.

“No, but they were both male, and they were speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. And they were arguing.”

“Samuel,” he said. It would explain Samuel’s reluctance to talk to Meredith about that night.

“She didn’t know who it was,” Meredith repeated, sounding as if she were grasping at straws. “But when my cousin Sarah came, I said something about it.” Meredith rubbed her arms as if cold, making him long to do it for her. “She was upset, and no wonder. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

“You had to,” he pointed out. “If we’re ever going to get to the truth...”

“I’m not a very good detective, I’m afraid. Anyway, I told her that if Samuel was there that night, he might have seen or heard something useful. I’m not sure she believed that’s what I was driving at, but she agreed to talk to him.”

“The police would get better results.” He was getting impatient already.

“No!” Alarm flushed her face. “You can’t tell the police. The whole family would never forgive me if the police came knocking on their doors.”

“Okay, no cops. But there’s one thing we should have done before this, and that’s searching your mother’s bedroom for any hint as to why she went out last night.” Was it only last night? It felt as if an eternity had passed. He’d never been on this side of an investigation before. “Or have you done that already?”

“I looked around to see if she’d left a note anywhere, but I didn’t actually search.” Meredith pushed a strand of hair back from her face. “You’re right, of course. We’ll have to do that now.”

She got up, heading for the stairs. She was so pale that he took her arm. “You look as if you’d be better off lying down,” he said.

“I’m fine.” Meredith’s answer was predictable. Stubborn, but predictable.

But when they reached the doorway to her mother’s room she stopped, hanging on to the door frame with one hand.

“Do you want me to do it?”

She shook her head again. “I’ll take the closet and the dresser. I know what should be there.”

“Just look for anything that seems out of place.” He could understand her not wanting him to go through her mother’s clothes, cop or not.

He started with the bedside table, searching quickly and methodically. Maybe Margo hadn’t left a note, but she might well have forgotten or ignored some indication as to why she’d gone outside. After all, she’d expected to come back.

Unfortunately, that didn’t seem to be the case. Zach worked his way around the perimeter of the frilly pink bedroom, checking every piece of furniture without success. He glanced at Meredith, who was going through the dresser drawers, examining each garment before returning it to its place. “Anything?”

“Only what I saw last night. She came upstairs at some point in the evening and changed into slacks and a sweater. The skirt she wore earlier is hanging on the door, and her slippers are lying by the bed. Nothing else.”

He approached the delicate white drop-front desk that stood next to the window. “What did she keep in here?”

“Writing supplies, mostly. She didn’t care for the computer.”

Zach opened the front. The inside, like the room, was fairly neat despite all the frills.

Meredith came to stand next to him, looking. “That’s the notepaper she used.” She indicated a compartment filled with folded note cards.

He pulled one out. It was expensive stuff, heavy cream paper embossed with Margo’s initials.

“My mother used that for all her correspondence.” Meredith touched the stack of matching envelopes, printed with the return address. “She wrote notes for everything—thank-you notes, complaints, reminders—always on her special notepaper.”

“What’s this, then?” He picked up the plain, cheap tablet of lined writing paper that lay in the center of the desk. A box of envelopes sat next to it, open. It looked as if a few envelopes had been removed.

“I don’t know.” Meredith looked at it, frowning. “That paper and those envelopes are definitely out of the ordinary for my mom.”

He flipped open the tablet. Cheap stuff, the kind you could pick up at any supermarket or discount store. Several sheets had been torn out. Curious, he counted the envelopes in the box. “Three missing,” he said. “Why would she use this cheap paper and plain envelopes instead of using her special stationery? Did she pay the bills?” That might be an answer.

“No, never. I took care of all the bills and any business concerning the property.” Meredith looked at him, troubled. “What does it mean?”

“I’m not sure.” Maybe he was building something out of nothing in his need to find answers, but it did seem odd. “Who would she write to that she wouldn’t want to use her special stationery for?”

“I can’t imagine.” She rubbed her forehead. “My brain seems to have stopped working.” She looked around the room, as if looking for something. “I just realized—the scrapbook isn’t in here, is it?”

“Scrapbook?” His brain failed him for a moment, too, and then he caught up. The scrapbook Meredith had told him about, the one the girls had kept the summer Aaron Mast died. “It’s not here. Don’t you keep it in your room?”

“I noticed it was missing this morning.” Her voice was tight. “My mother had seemed interested in it. I thought she might have brought it in here. But if it’s not here, then where is it? Someone else must have taken it.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

M
EREDITH
COULD
SEE
that Zach wasn’t convinced the scrapbook was missing, but after they’d gone through the whole house, he had to agree.

“I don’t understand why anyone would want to take it.” Meredith sagged onto the sofa, feeling as if she’d run a marathon. “It wouldn’t even make sense to anyone but the three of us.”

Zach nodded, somewhat grimly. “That’s the interesting thing about this scrapbook. What could possibly have been in it to generate such interest?”

“Nothing. Or at least, nothing I can think of. I’ve been through it dozens of times.”

Zach sat down opposite her, studying her face. “Sorry. I know you’re beat, but we have to try and figure this out.”

“I understand. I just don’t know what I can say that will help.”

“First off, how could someone get into the house to take the scrapbook? It’s the only thing missing, so we have to assume the thief knew about it and thought it was a threat to him. Or her.”

She hadn’t really thought all of that through, but Zach was right. “As for getting in, that wouldn’t be hard. Mother was paranoid about locking up at night, especially when she was home alone, but she often left the door unlocked when she went out in the daytime.”

Zach frowned. “You ought to have dead-bolt locks on all the doors. Anyone could break in, even if she hadn’t conveniently left the place open.”

She couldn’t help defending her mother. “Everyone in town leaves their doors unlocked during the day. It’s hardly the big city. Neighbors would notice if a stranger was hanging around.”

Zach shot her an impatient look. “The person we’re interested in isn’t a stranger, Meredith. You have to accept that. If someone killed your mother because of Aaron Mast’s death, it’s someone you know.”

She knew that, intellectually. But emotionally, she couldn’t picture anyone she knew striking down her mother. She struggled with the idea, trying to fit a familiar face on the image in her mind of a dark figure creeping up on Margo.

“I know. It’s hard.” Zach seemed to read her thoughts. “But I don’t think we’re going to find that this was done by a wandering nutcase. Okay, so just about anyone could have gotten into the house. When was the last time you saw the scrapbook?”

She shrugged, feeling useless. “I don’t know. Last week, maybe? I found Mom looking through it, and I took it away and put it in the drawer of my desk.”

“Why was she looking at it?” The question snapped at her, as if Zach had forgotten who she was for the moment.

“I don’t know.” She tried to remember what her mother had said at the time. “It seemed to be curiosity. I think she’d overheard me talking to Rachel about it, and she always wanted to know what was going on.”

Zach drove one hand through his hair. “The whole thing is so nebulous. What could someone want with a kid’s scrapbook? Describe it to me.”

She wasn’t sure where to start. “Rachel and I made the scrapbook the summer Aaron died. Along with Lainey, Rebecca Stoltzfus’s great-niece. She was staying here that summer. I think it might have been Lainey’s idea to begin with. She created this fantasy game that we played all summer. Aaron was our perfect knight, and Laura his secret love. We knew about their romance, you see. We followed Aaron around, so we saw them together.”

“It’s a wonder he didn’t chase you away. Or tell your folks. Unless he didn’t know.”

“He knew, all right. But he was kind. Aaron was always kind.” She could see him so clearly in her mind’s eye, always young, hopeful, in love.

“So what exactly was in the scrapbook?” Zach brought her back to earth.

“Drawings, mostly. Sketch maps we made of our mythical kingdom. Bits and pieces of a story we made up.”

“It doesn’t sound like a threat to anyone,” he said.

“That’s why it doesn’t make sense. We certainly didn’t know anything about how Aaron died. Only that it happened, and our parents clamped down on where we went and what we did. Lainey was sent back to her mother, school started and it all slipped away like a dream.”

“So why...” Zach let that trail off, staring out the front window.

She followed his gaze. A police car had pulled up in front of the house.

Meredith’s stomach clenched at the sight of Chief Burkhalter walking toward the house, his two patrolmen trailing along behind. “What do you think they want?”

Zach stood. “This looks like more than follow-up questions. I suspect this means the medical examiner considers it a case of murder.”

Meredith fought back a powerful surge of anxiety. Now was not the time to give in to the powerful combination of grief and panic. She had to rely on the calm, rational thinking that had always been her strength.

Zach made a move as if to go to the door, but she waved him back, getting up. This was her home, and she felt the need to assert that fact.

“Chief Burkhalter.” She held the door wide to allow them to enter. The younger patrolman looked embarrassed, as if he couldn’t quite decide what to do with himself. But Ted... There was a cat-that-ate-the-canary expression on his face that raised her hackles in an instant.

She focused on Chief Burkhalter. “It’s good of you to come by. I was about to call to see if you had any idea yet about when I can schedule my mother’s funeral.”

Burkhalter’s gaze shifted away from hers. “I’m afraid I... We really can’t say, yet. The medical examiner called with his preliminary report. Still some test results to come back yet, but the long and short of it is that it looks like your mother was murdered.”

She’d thought she was prepared for it. Apparently she wasn’t. The room seemed to swim around her.

Zach and Burkhalter reacted simultaneously, each taking an arm to help her to the sofa. “Put your head down until the dizziness passes.” Zach’s hand pressed on her nape, guiding her head down. He sat next to her, and it seemed she could feel the tension in every cell of his body.

“I’m all right,” she murmured. She started to raise her head, found the room was still spinning and put her head down again.

“What were you thinking, blurting it out like that?” Zach’s angry question was obviously directed at Burkhalter.

“Sorry,” Burkhalter muttered. He patted her arm. “Davis, what are you standing there for? Go to the kitchen and bring Ms. King a glass of water.”

Hurried footsteps moved toward the kitchen. Cabinet doors opened and closed, water ran. Presently a glass appeared in her range of vision, the hand that held it shaking so that water sloshed over the side and dripped on her lap. She grasped it before he could do any more harm and raised her head slowly to take a sip of water.

“There, you’re looking better now.” Burkhalter sounded relieved.

“Thank you.” She handed him the glass. “I’m all right. It was just a shock.”

“Shock to everybody in town, I guess.” Burkhalter looked harassed. “I don’t know how the news got out, but seems like it’s all over town already.” He glared at his officers. “People calling up, thinking there’s some kind of maniac on the loose.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” The words were out before Meredith considered that maybe it would be better not to argue with the prevailing opinion. Still, she’d never been much good at lying, and she’d better not start now.

“What makes you say that?” Burkhalter’s gaze sharpened.

“Because I can’t understand why my mother changed her clothes and went out to the dam at night.”

Burkhalter nodded. “That’s the question, isn’t it? If she saw something or heard something suspicious...” He let that trail off, as if inviting her to provide an answer. Zach’s arm pressed against hers, expressing tension.

Well, Burkhalter surely knew that one as well as she did. Mom had called his office often enough. “If that were the case, my mother would call 911. Or possibly call me, if it wasn’t too alarming. She certainly wouldn’t change her clothes and go out to investigate on her own.”

“That’s what I figured, too. I suppose you looked for a note.”

“That’s the first thing I did.” She waved toward the kitchen. “You’re welcome to have a look yourself. We always leave...left notes for each other on the bulletin board next to the fridge.”

“Well, the thing is, I’d appreciate it if you’d let my people have a look around your mother’s bedroom,” Burkhalter said, his tone making it clear it wasn’t really a request. “Maybe there’s some indication of what took Margo outside.”

She was about to say that they’d just searched, but the pressure of Zach’s arm on hers stopped her. “Of course. Please, go ahead and look.”

Burkhalter nodded to Ted, and the two patrolmen headed for the stairs.

“It’s the room to the left at the top of the steps,” Meredith called after them, suppressing the thought of how her mother would have hated the idea of strangers looking through her things.

“There’s one odd thing that Meredith thought you should know.” Zach sounded as if he’d been quiet as long as he could manage. “About the jacket Margo was wearing.”

“The jacket?” Burkhalter frowned.

“I didn’t realize it at first,” Meredith said. “But that light tan jacket my mother was wearing was actually mine.”

Burkhalter’s frown deepened. “Where did you keep that jacket?”

“On the peg by the back door. I suppose she might have decided she needed a coat and just grabbed it as she went out.”

“Depend on it, that’s what happened.” Burkhalter looked relieved. “It got pretty chilly last night after the sun went down.”

That was the logical explanation. She found herself hoping Zach wouldn’t repeat his obvious fear that she had been the intended target.

“And Meredith discovered today that something is missing from the house,” Zach said instead.

Unfortunately that was just about as bad in terms of subjects she didn’t want to discuss with Burkhalter. It was going to lead inevitably to telling him what she’d been doing, and she knew what his reaction would be.

“Well, that’s more like it.” Burkhalter brightened at the thought of a thief. “What was taken? Money? Silver?”

“Nothing like that,” she admitted. “It was a scrapbook. An old one that I had from the summer Aaron Mast died.”

Chief Burkhalter looked as like a man who’d missed a step in the dark. “An old scrapbook. Well, now, don’t you think you might just have forgotten where you put it? I mean, that was a good twenty years ago. It could be stuffed away in a box—”

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. I’ve had it out recently. Rachel Mason and I kept it together.” She decided to leave out mention of Lainey for the moment, fearing it would confuse the issue further. “My mother had been interested in it, as well. I know exactly where it was in my room, and today I discovered that it was missing.”

Burkhalter ran a hand through his graying hair, making it stand on end. “I don’t get it. Why would anyone want an old scrapbook a couple of kids made? Why all the interest in it?”

Meredith took a breath, trying to arrange her thoughts. “The thing is, we... Well, we kind of had a crush on Aaron Mast that summer. We used to follow him around. We knew all about his secret romance with Laura.”

“Well, yeah, guess that never was as much of a secret as those two thought. Sad business.” He shook his head. “What happened last night kind of brought it back to me.”

Burkhalter had been chief then. He’d have been one of the ones who’d pulled Aaron’s body from the pool, most likely. And he’d been the one to announce that it was an accident.

“When Rachel came back to town, we started talking about that summer. That was when I got the scrapbook out. We realized that we...had questions about Aaron’s death. When Rachel found that note in the covered bridge that had been left for Aaron, it made it look as if he had killed himself.”

Burkhalter’s face had grown steadily redder as she talked. “It was ruled an accident. Everybody accepted that. Don’t you think I had my suspicions of suicide at the time? Never leads to anything good, a relationship like that one. Laura broke it off, the boy was despondent and he killed himself. I did the kind thing and ruled it an accident. You should have let it alone.”

She felt herself wilt under his glare. If she’d never started looking into Aaron’s death, Sarah and his parents might have been content with a soothing lie. And her mother might still be alive.

“How do you know Laura broke up with him?” Zach’s question probably took both of them by surprise. “Did she say so?”

“I didn’t question her. She was upset, under a doctor’s care.” Burkhalter’s face was an alarming shade. “I did what was best for everyone concerned.”

“Did you?” Zach ignored the warning she was trying to convey through the pressure of her hand on his. “What if it wasn’t suicide? What if someone doesn’t want Meredith snooping into what happened to Aaron? What if that same someone was responsible for Margo’s death?”

Burkhalter shot to his feet—not an easy feat for someone of his girth. “Maybe the Pittsburgh P.D. deals in fantasy. I don’t. When someone gets killed, the killer is usually someone a heck of a lot closer than that.”

He jammed his cap on his head and stamped off toward the stairs. Meredith listened until the thud of his footsteps had faded. Then she let out a long, shaky breath.

“He didn’t believe me.”

“Us.” Zach’s hand closed warmly over hers. “I made things worse. But his mind is so closed it would take a stick of dynamite to open it.”

“What can we do?” The situation closed around her like quicksand.

Zach’s face tightened. “We start looking for that stick of dynamite.”

* * *

Z
ACH
WAS
NOT
in the best of moods when he headed for the King house the next day. The sense of helplessness gnawed at him. He had to be doing something to help Meredith, whether she wanted him to or not.

After the cops finally left, he’d tried to comfort Meredith, but she had withdrawn again. He wanted to get back to the closeness they’d reached before Margo’s death, or even the sense he’d had of Meredith relying on him when Chief Burkhalter was questioning her. But Meredith had given him a frozen look and said she was tired. In other words, go away.