Murder on the Cape Fear (16 page)

“
It’s anarchy over there. In Ramadi, where I was assigned, they get electricity for two hours out of every twenty-four. And the temperatures are well over a hundred degrees. The Marines go on twelve day rotations and when they are on rotation they live in a fortress. You can’t imagine how bad the conditions are for them. They have no bathrooms so no showers. They have to defecate into plastic bags, then burn their garbage. And when they go out into the courtyard to burn stuff, they are sitting ducks for rooftop snipers. The most dangerous time is when they go out on patrol. Because there is no garbage collection, the streets are filled with garbage, and that provides the insurgents with hiding places for IEDs. They are hidden everywhere, in the carcasses of dead animals . . . everywhere.”

He shook his head in consternation. “When the Marines patrol a section of town and it’s dead quiet, that’s how they know there’s a bomb waiting for them. Because the neighborhood has been tipped off and the residents flee the bomb. Or sometimes they are not tipped off and the innocents die - children playing in the street, women at the market, men looking for work. Dead.”

He looked so sad, so beaten, that I reached out and took his hand again. “I’m sorry, Nick. It must have been awful for you. Awful for the ones still there, but that doesn’t explain the infidelity.”

Abruptly, he stood up. “You’re right. There is no excuse. That was just me running away from my feelings again. I thought if I could throw myself into a dispassionate affair, I could get back control of my emotions.”

He took my hand and pulled me up, looked me fully in the face. “Please remove your dark glasses. I want to be able to see your eyes.”

I did as he asked.

“
Ashley, I am truly sorry I hurt you. If you can find it in your heart to forgive me, if you can take me back, I promise you things will be different. I’m getting my old job back with the PD here. I’ll settle down. No more double shifts. I’ll concentrate on us, our marriage, our home. We’ll have another baby.”

Up until then I had been softening. But that did it. “You talk about having babies as if they are interchangeable, Nick. I only knew ours for a couple of months but already I loved it. You can’t have a baby to replace the one you lost. Besides, I don’t think I’m capable of having children.”

He grabbed me then and held onto me fiercely. “That’s doesn’t matter. I only want you. If we can’t have kids, that’s OK too. But I want you. I need you.”

The searing pain I experienced felt like my heart was being ripped out. “I can’t, Nick. I’m sorry, but I can’t. It’s too late. It’s over. I’m so sorry.”

And with that I pulled out of his arms and ran. Tears blinded me so that I didn’t see the wheelchair until I stumbled over it and was knocked to the hard wood decking of the promenade.

“
Ashley, are you all right?” Nick cried, lifting me to my feet.

“
Ashley?” another voice asked. “Are you injured, dear?”

The man in the wheel chair was Clarence Gaston, Laura Gaston’s father.

“
Mr. Gaston,” I said. “I’m OK.” I looked down to see skinned knees, just like a seven year old. “Did I hurt you when I ran into you?”

“
Oh, no, I’m quite fine,” he replied. “My steel chariot here protects me.” And he smiled ruefully at his reference to his wheel chair. The nurse behind the wheel chair said hello.

“
You’re just fine, Mr. Clarence. Just fine. No harm done,” she said. “But this young lady, she has skinned up those pretty knees, just like one of my grandchildren.”

I swiped at my knees. “I’ll just go home and paint them with Mercurochrome then,” I joked.

Nick was looking at us, wondering how we knew each other. I explained who Mr. Gaston was. Then told him, “We’re making good progress on the house, Mr. Gaston.”

“
Oh, I know that, young lady. I’m keeping tabs on you and on it. I do get out some, even for a crippled man. And I’m sorry your life has become so unpleasantly eventful recently. Let’s just hope the police can get to the bottom of these crimes. I don’t have a whole lot of confidence in them, unfortunately. They never did find out who ran me down. Ran me down and left me for dead,” he said bitterly.

The nurse said, “Now Mr. Clarence, don’t you go getting yourself worked up over that. What’s done is done. And you know better. Now let’s let this young woman go home and attend to those knees, and you and me are going to finish our stroll. Then it’s time for lunch, and have I got a lunch planned for you. We’ll be having . . .”

With a cordial wave of a hand, she started off, the wheel chair in front of her, her patient influenced by her good nature. If I ever got sick, I wanted a wise, caring nurse just like her.

Mr. Gaston turned his head and called, “My girl will be home next week. Home for good.”

Nick took my elbow. “That nurse is right. We need to go to our house and wash those knees.”

Our house? I let that one go by. “I can’t,” I said and felt frustrated and furious. “I can’t get into my house.” I emphasized the word “my.” “Your old friend Diane Sherwood has made herself my worst nightmare and will not let me back into my house.”

“
I think I can do something about that,” Nick said. “Let me take care of it.”

18

The following Monday I was allowed to move back into my house. I’d spent a quiet and recuperative weekend with Jon, but by Monday I was champing at the bit to get home again. By then the kitchen smelled bad, really really bad. The food on the unwashed dishes had hardened, spoiled, and stank. The kitchen was filthy. If it were not for being so mad, I would have cried. Instead I pulled a large black plastic garbage bag from the box I’d purchased on my way home, and began to fill it, my fury giving me the endurance to confront Patsy’s rotten food.

I dumped the plates in the bags along with the food. They were Patsy’s fiesta ware and I wanted no part of them. All I wanted to do was purge my home of what I was coming to think of as “the Patsy karma.” Spoiled food in the kitchen, her soiled clothes dumped on my bed, long gray hairs in my bathroom, face powder on my great-grandmother’s rosewood dressing table, and dirty junk furniture in the parlor.

Where was Jimmy? If the police were looking for him, they had not confided that information to me. I had learned through Candy Murray, whom we’d had dinner with at Blue Water on Saturday evening, that Patsy and Jimmy were not actually from Charlotte, but from Lincoln County. Was Jimmy hiding out there?

The black plastic garbage bags were lined up precisely along my curb like shiny soldiers. What must my neighbors think? I was in the process of setting out the seventh bag when the locksmith’s truck pulled up. Within the hour I had new locks and new keys and as I have four outside doors to my first floor, I also had a sizeable hole in my checking account.

Melanie’s cleaning crew arrived - three strong women who looked like they harbored a personal hatred for dirt and a love for the smell of cleaning products - and they set to work cleaning the entire house. Meanwhile, I continued to fill garbage bags with “pickins” from the parlor. The broken picture frames, the cracked crockery, a decades old faded flower arrangement. What in the world had Patsy intended to do with this trash?

The furniture was too large for me to move myself, but Jon, Cam, and Melanie were coming over at five and together we’d waltz the pieces out onto the porch and down to the curb. I just hoped the city would pick up everything without ticketing me. And that my neighbors would not get up a petition to have me banned from the street.

The cleaning women were incredible, moving with the speed of light, anxious to be on their way to someplace better. In their wake, they left the aroma of strong chemicals. I turned on ceiling fans and threw open windows.

But everything was nice and clean. In my bedroom, the bed had been made with fresh sheets, the comforter turned down neatly. Patsy’s clothes had been loaded into plastic bags as I had requested. I picked up the bag with the idea of toting this too to the curb when something occurred to me. As much as I loathed touching her clothing, I opened the bag and dumped the articles of clothing out into the middle of the rug.

I went through the pockets of her clothing. Tortoise shell combs that she’d used to secure her long braid to the top of her head. A pale pink lipstick. Chocolate crumbs. Every tee shirt had a food stain but as they had no pockets I swiftly stuffed them back into the plastic garbage bag. Garbage to garbage, dust to dust.

Dust to dust? A funeral? Of course. Jimmy would have to return to Wilmington from wherever he was hiding. He would have to claim her body for burial. Would the police be waiting for him when he showed up?

And then in the pocket of a pair of size 18 jeans, I found something of interest. A tiny tape from a tape recorder. Hadn’t Melanie said that Patsy wrote her books by speaking into a tape recorder? I wondered what was on the tape. I recalled that she had said she was onto a sensational story. Got me a humdinger of a plot for my next book, had been her exact words.

But I did not own a tape recorder that recorded on tapes. My tape recorder was the digital kind that recorded without a tape. I’d have to buy or borrow a tape recorder to find out what Patsy had been working on when she’d been routed from the literati forever.

And what did it matter? Did her next book have anything to do with her death?

I had brought a duffel bag full of dirty clothes with me from Jon’s and as I spent the next couple of hours doing laundry I had time to think. The first thing I thought about was how grateful I was to be back in my own house. The second thing was how grateful I was that Patsy had been killed outside and not inside. Living in a house that was 147 years old, I had no expectation that there had never been a death in my house. In fact, I knew better. People had died here. And people had been killed here - murdered in my house. Those from the past I did not know. But two of my friends had been recent victims of homicide, and I grieved their passing. Patsy had not been a friend, to put it kindly, still it was a relief to me that she had not been murdered inside. How much worse would the Patsy karma have been if that were the case?

19

“
I can’t believe how colorful it is,” Laura Gaston exclaimed. “I’ve seen old photos of the house, but those were in black and white. And you say these were the original colors?”

We were standing on Front Street directly in front of the Captain’s house: Laura, her fiancé Jack Connelly, Jon, and I.

“
The Victorians went in for exuberant colors,” Jon said.

“
We had scrapings of paint analyzed in a lab,” I said. “The analysis revealed that the house had been painted this olive green, the window frames and sashes were a creamy white. The shutters were dark red, and trim work like the bullets were a bright yellow. Exactly what we will be applying soon.”

The wood siding had been repaired, and the base coat had dried, allowing a crew of painters to begin the final painting.

I continued, “These front stairs are broad, so we will borrow a side section and that is where we will construct the ramp for the wheel chair.”

“
Daddy needs to have his room and bath on the first floor,” Laura said.

“
Yes, we know that,” Jon said agreeable. “Come on inside and I’ll show you what we are doing to accommodate your father and his needs.” And he led the way across the porch and into the house. We moved to the rear parlor where the flooring had been replaced and felt good and solid under our feet. A plasterer was applying the last layer of plaster to the parlor walls. He said hello then went back to work.

“
We’ve converted this back parlor into a bedroom for your dad. And by knocking through this wall,” and he pointed to the addition, “and borrowing space from the kitchen side that used to be a pantry, we have made room for a bathroom. The doorways that he will be using will be wide enough to accommodate his wheelchair. The shower comes with a seat so he can have his shower sitting down. And the door opens in such a way to allow him to be transferred directly from his wheelchair into the shower, and out again.”

“
You’ve thought of everything,” Jack Connelly said. Jack was a warrant officer at the Oak Island Coast Guard Station. The station conducted search and rescue missions, plus provided Homeland Security patrols. He and Laura had met at Ashley High School. They had been younger than Melanie and older than I, so neither of us knew them when we were teens.

Laura was a large-boned but spare woman with black wavy hair, a crisp no-nonsense manner - must be her doctor’s training, I assumed - but was basically a kind person.

Jack was her opposite in looks. He appeared round, although there wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. His face was round, and his glasses were round. And all the freckles on his face and arms were round. With short orangey-red hair he seemed friendly and approachable. He was not dressed in a uniform but wore casual clothing.

Theirs had been a long distance romance for several years, with Laura in med school in New York, and Jack here at Oak Island.

“
The stairs to the lower level were closed off, as you know,” I said. “We had them opened and repaired so you can now access the lower level from within the house.”

“
When I was a kid we had a tenant renting out that space,” Laura said, “so that was when the stairs were sealed off. Then later, the place was just too big for Daddy and me so we never bothered to take down the wall and reinstall the door.”