Murder on the Cape Fear (15 page)

He gave me a thoughtful look, as if weighing what he might owe me. “Yes, they got good prints. Trouble is, they don’t match any prints on file. Not everybody gets fingerprinted, you know.”

He opened the car door. Anticipating my next question, he said, “Same prints on both knives.”

17

Close to midnight I slid into bed beside Jon. He did not awaken, but in his sleep became aware of my presence for he reached out his arms to enfold me. I moved into his embrace and listened to his quiet breathing. I experienced deep contentment and felt secure. My encounter with Nick had shaken me, had caused all the old insecurities I’d experienced when married to him to surface. I was so glad to get back to the safety of my precious Jon.

As my body eased into relaxation, my mind raced. What a day! Finding Patsy, the police, selecting my wedding gown, dinner with the gang and Candy and Bo, Captain Pettigrew’s journal, the prowler in the Captain’s house, the police again. And finally seeing Nick for the first time since last November.

I’d never be able to sleep. But I did. I decided to focus my thoughts on the wedding gown, pictured myself walking down the aisle with Melanie - Jon and Cam waiting at the altar. I smiled to myself and drifted off. There were better days ahead.

At some point during the night I awoke briefly, reminding myself that I had to make a thorough search of the Captain’s house.

And so the next morning, Friday, after a hearty breakfast with Jon at the Causeway Café on Harbour Island during which I filled him in on last night’s prowler, we were back at work at the Captain’s house. The din of hammering on the exterior was horrific as carpenters completed the job of replacing rotting wood with new on the south wall. As Jon and Willie Hudson engaged in a shouted consultation about the break-in last night, my mind skipped ahead to possible hiding places. I’d start upstairs first.

Willie said he was sure he had locked up last night but would double check from now on, and told us his grandson Dwayne was looking for work, and a night shift would suit him fine. Dwayne was on summer break from UNCW, and worked as a bouncer at a downtown club on Saturday nights. “He’s on the wrestling team at the college. He’s got the experience, and he’s big and sassy.”

“
Like his grandpa,” I joked.

Willie Hudson was an admirable man, a leader in his church and in the black community, and his extended family numbered in the legions. I counted him as a friend, and in fact, Jon had asked him to be one of the groomsmen at our wedding. Willie’s response had been, “You want an old guy like me?”

Jon had replied, “Ashley and I can’t get married without you in the wedding party. You are one of our best friends. Besides, we may need a bouncer at the wedding. Who knows how many of Melanie’s old lovers will show up? And when the minister asks, does anyone here know of a reason why these two cannot be wed, he may just get a chorus of yeses.”

I began my search in the room Laura Gaston had told me had been Lacey’s room when she was a little girl. The second floor had been built under the eaves with a minimum of attic space overhead. Lacey’s room had dormer windows and sloping walls. Where would a little girl hide letters, I asked myself. Antebellum houses did not have closets as we know closets to be today, but they did have cupboards fitted into spaces that otherwise would have been dead space. There were tiny cupboards tucked in under the dormer windows in Lacey’s room, but as I opened the knee-high doors and crouched down to look inside, I found nothing but dust bunnies. On her last trip to Wilmington, Laura had told me that when she was in medical school and after her father’s hit-and-run accident that forced him to move out of the house, she spent her free time sorting through generations of accumulated household and personal items, putting some in storage, disposing of others. Items of sentimental and historical value, like the Captain’s journal, she had taken with her to New York.

Laura was engaged to a coast guard officer stationed in Wilmington. They were conducting a long-distance romance but would soon live in the same town. I was eager for Laura to return again so that I could ask her many questions. But she was attending a conference of orthopedic surgeons in Toronto and would not return to Wilmington until next week. Until then, I was on my own.

Next, I crawled along the floor looking for loose floorboards. The space under a floor board would make a dandy hiding place. Unlike the floor downstairs, the second floor was in good condition and I could only assume it was because of all of the warmth and sunlight the top of the house captured during our long summers. Old houses and how they age are a mystery. No one knows precisely why one section holds up and another falls apart.

This was the room where I’d seen the flashing light last night. This room, and the adjoining room. So someone else had been up here searching, looking for another letter from Captain Pettigrew or another journal. The prowler knew what he was looking for; I did not.

Crawling along I did encounter a loose floor board. And from the looks of it - marks along the edges, disturbed dust - the prowler had beaten me to it. Prying the board up with the tip of a screw driver, I saw only an empty space between it and the sub-flooring. Empty and dirty. There were no ghost marks of an object having been hidden here, and no smears in the dirt from someone pawing around inside. Nothing.

I was poking around in the next room when Jon came up the stairs. He looked troubled. Something was wrong, his expression told me. “Ashley, Nick’s downstairs. He wants to talk to you.”

“
Well, I don’t want to talk to him,” I said. I had no desire to rehash our marriage and our breakup. I was happy these days. Why relive a failed marriage? I wasn’t a masochist. Then I had a second thought. Perhaps this had nothing to do with us. Perhaps he wanted to talk to me about the murders. “Oh, maybe it’s about the break-in last night. All right, I’ll talk to him.”

At my first sight of him, I felt nothing. And for that I was grateful. There was a time when just the sight of him took my breath away. Now that reaction was gone, and I knew I was completely over him. During the course of our separation I had wondered if some bit of passion might still be lingering. But that was not so. I felt nothing, only sadness for the failure. I don’t like failure. Those who love me tell me I am too hard on myself, and perhaps they are right. I was born with a Jiminy Cricket conscience. Melanie was not. A part of me wished I could sail blithesomely through life as Melanie did, with little regard for the consequences of my actions and the broken hearts I’d left in my wake.

“
Hello, Ashley,” Nick said solemnly. “I thought we could take a walk. I have something to tell you.”

So this was about the murders, I thought.

We strolled down the hill toward the river in awkward silence. What was he waiting for, I wondered. I decided to start the conversation since he was not. “What have the police learned about Hugh Mullins?” I asked.

“
Hmmmm? Oh, Mullins. The vic.” He gave me a pointed look. Nosy as usual, that look said. “He’s from London. Here on vacation. Traveling along the East Coast. And somehow got invited by Melanie to the investors’ weekend she hosted. She probably knows as much about him as the police do.”

“
No. No, she doesn’t. He got in touch with her and told her he was interested in acquiring a house in Wilmington. That he planned to spend part of the year here. She had room for one more in her group, so she told him to come along.”

We stepped onto Riverwalk at the foot of Ann Street. Morning sunlight glinted off the water and I put on my dark glasses. The air still retained a hint of morning freshness, but in an hour that would be gone, burnt off by the sun.

We shared the wooden boardwalk that bordered the river with strollers and joggers and dogs on leashes. Still Nick did not initiate a conversation, and I began to wonder what this was about. He was thinner than the last time I had seen him, looking almost gaunt. And he seemed weary, defeated.

“
Do you have information about the murders?” I asked, reminding him that it was he who had called this meeting.

“
The murders? No. Ashley, I want to talk about us.” He paused for a moment and regarded me intently. As was his habit, he was immaculately dressed in a summer weight tailored suit. Nick had always dressed beautifully.

“
I’d rather not talk about us,” I said, and began to walk swiftly and furiously. In a few long strides he caught up.

With a gentle touch on my arm, he stopped me. By then, we had reached Riverfront Park at Water and Market streets. “Let’s sit down,” he suggested and led me to a bench on the promenade that overlooked the river. Behind us loomed the Alton Lennon Federal Building, which in the Matlock series had been portrayed as Matlock’s court house. The Henrietta III was docked at the foot of Dock Street where tourists lined up for the river cruise. Across the river, the mighty World War II battleship North Carolina was tethered and anchored, another tourist attraction.

Nick sat hunched forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands ready to spring into action, to help him explain himself to me. For now I realized that was what was coming. His head was turned toward me, taking me in fully. I could feel myself growing twitchy as I repressed the urge to jump up and run. I did not want to hear this.

He took a deep breath and began. “Everything you’ve thought about me was right, Ashley. I see that now. I really let you down. I let us down. You came into my life too soon, that was the problem. I wasn’t ready to experience the love of my life. I had my life planned out. First my career. Then later when I was established, I’d have time to fall in love. Not now.”

He looked at me despairingly. “But my heart had other ideas. That first year, when we were dating, I could feel myself growing close to you and the feeling terrified me.” His hands sprang into action.

“
I had my plans all laid out. Build up a solid career first. Then find someone and get married. But you came along and you are not the kind of woman a man uses for a casual fling. You are the kind of woman a man marries.”

I stilled my body and I stilled my mind. I didn’t say a word. Didn’t want to interrupt the flow of his confession. On some level I think I knew all this. I knew these things about myself. I had never been capable of Melanie’s “the grass is always greener” approach to romance. If only Nick had opened up to me while we were married, we might have . . . What?

He went on. “That first year, while we were dating, I tried to forget you by joining Atlanta PD’s cold case task force. I thought if I put some distance between us, I’d meet someone else, you’d meet someone else, and I could continue with my game plan. But it didn’t work out that way. I tried not returning your calls, not answering your emails. But I couldn’t forget you. So I came back.”

He held up a palm, forestalling my protest. “Oh, I know. You thought I came back because Wilmington PD had offered me the Homeland Security liaison position. Well, yes, that was a part of my decision. But the main reason I returned to Wilmington was to be near you, to resume our love affair.”

He shook his head as if to reaffirm his words. “It was never just dating, Ashley, it was a love affair from Day One. Was for me, anyway. The first time I saw you in that dusty old house, dirty and sweaty and covered with plaster dust, I still saw who you were. I recognized you instantly as the love of my life.”

He looked down at his feet. “So there, now you know how I’ve always felt about you. Do I have a chance?” He reached over and took my hand. “Do we have to get this divorce? Can’t we work this out?”

“
Oh, this is so unfair, Nick. You are the one who kept leaving. You were always traveling for Homeland Security. And then you told me you were going to Quantico and instead you went off to Iraq. And I didn’t even know you were out of the country. I had the best news for us: that we were expecting a baby and I couldn’t find you to tell you. No one knew where you were.”

He started to say something but I pushed his hand away. “Oh, I know, military wives go through this all of the time. But I never signed on to be a military wife, Nick. You lied to me about what you were doing. I didn’t have a clue about which organization you were working for: the CIA, Blackwater? I still don’t know. Don’t want to know now. You never gave me the choice of becoming a brave military wife. At least those women get to send emails to their husbands.”

He started to say something. “No, don’t interrupt. You started this. Now you are going to hear me out. When I lost our baby and you weren’t there to grieve with me, to help me through it . . . well, I just thought, if I can make it through the dreadful experiences of my life without Nick - losing my mother, losing my baby - then do I really want him around for the happy times? And the answer was no.”

I started to say something about how Jon had stood by me, but decided that wasn’t a wise course. Leave Jon out of this.

“
But the straw that broke the camel’s back was your having an affair with that Blackwater Security woman. And you’re joining that dreadful mercenary outfit. How could you?”

He had the decency to look contrite. “I really learned my lesson about that one, Ashley. I’ve learned a lot in the past six months. Doesn’t that mean that it’s not too late for me?”

When I did not reply, he went on, hoping to convince me. “Going to Iraq was such a mistake. The invasion of Iraq was the policy error of the century. You can’t imagine what I saw firsthand.” His eyes got a haunted look as he remembered.