Not Guilty (35 page)

Keely leaned over and looked through the cottage window. She couldn’t see anyone inside, but that didn’t mean anything. The only room she could see was the great room with its kitchen, fireplace, and chintz-covered sofas. She could see that there were lights on in the other rooms of the house, but the shades were drawn.

Keely frowned. Maureen could have gone out and just left the lights on, Keely told herself. After all, there was no car visible in
front. She could have run out to a convenience store or had a date or God knows what. Or the car could be in the garage and Maureen could be inside the house, in the shower, or wearing a headset in her bedroom.

The heels of Keely’s leather ankle boots crunched on the gravel as she walked back toward the garage. She would check to see if a car was there. As she got closer, she thought she heard a murmur of voices from inside the tiny, dark building. Keely stopped for a minute. She could hardly believe it. What would anybody be doing inside a dark garage with the doors closed?

“Ms. Chase,” she called out in a harsh voice. “It’s Keely Weaver. I want to talk to you.”

She expected that the speakers would at least stop to listen, but it did not seem as if there was even the slightest hesitation in their murmured conversation.

Get out of here,
warned a little voice inside of her. For a moment, Keely thought about heeding her instincts. But the thought of Dylan’s wistful expression, the note of defeat in his voice, the ugly red wound still visible on his neck, spurred her on. As she gingerly took a few steps closer, she was aware of another sound coming from behind the closed door of the garage—a loud, steady hum almost obscured by the murmuring voices, was coming from behind the door.

It took Keely a moment to recognize what she heard. A car engine was running in the garage.

Keely rushed to the side door and peered through the glass. It was dark inside, but in the moonlight through the window she could see the shape of a car. The driver’s door was open. The engine hum was louder. Keely rattled the doorknob, but the door was locked. She ran around to the front doors, which were crisscrossed with dark timbers, and turned the old-fashioned latch. It turned, and she was able to pull open the door a few inches. She recoiled at the smell of gasoline and exhaust fumes. Holding her breath, she tightened her sweaty grip on the handle and pulled. The right door swung out, and a billow of fumes enveloped her. Keely began to cough. She picked up one end of the foulard scarf she was wearing and pressed it over her face. She could see the black
BMW now. The front door was open on the driver’s side. Something white was spilling out the door.

For a moment, she hesitated. It couldn’t be a trap. Maureen hadn’t known she was coming. This was, Keely thought grimly, exactly what it looked like. She could hear the muted voices clearly now, and, suddenly, it registered on her that one of the voices was Mark’s. It was coming from inside the car. It was a tape. Maureen and Mark’s voices were murmuring to each other on the tape. A chill ran through her. She took a step backward, but she couldn’t run. If there was someone in that car . . . Pushing the other door to the garage open wide, Keely rushed in and cautiously approached the open door on the driver’s side, still holding the scarf over her nose and mouth.

Maureen Chase was behind the wheel. Her arms hung at her sides. Her head lolled back on the headrest. Her eyes were closed, as if she were sleeping, and her skin was cherry-colored. Pinned crookedly to her auburn curls was a veil. She was wearing a cream-colored satin wedding dress, the train of which was hanging out of the door on the driver’s side.

Keely stifled a scream.
Oh my God,
she thought,
oh my God.
She reached out to touch the other woman and felt the coldness of her skin. She wanted to turn and run, to try to forget she had ever seen this sight, but she couldn’t.
She might still be alive,
her shaky inner voice insisted.
You have to do something.

Holding her breath, Keely reached past Maureen and switched off the ignition. The voices on the tape, uttering sickening words of lovemaking, abruptly stopped in midmoan. Then, she reached into the now silent front seat of the car and grabbed hold of the woman in the wedding dress.

Come on,
she thought, as if the unresponsive woman could help her. Coughing from the fumes, she grabbed Maureen under the slippery satin arms of the dress and began to tug her free. The lace veil caught on the gearshift and dislodged from the red curls. Maureen’s body was leaden in Keely’s arms.

Keely felt sure that Maureen was dead, but still, she continued to wrestle her out of the car. She had to get her out of these lethal fumes.
Maureen’s rump and then her feet, still wearing house slippers, hit the oil-stained floor of the garage as Keely dragged her outside, into the brown grass beside the ivy-covered little building.

Calm down,
Keely thought.
Call for help.
She set Maureen down gently on the ground, and Maureen’s head lolled lifelessly to one side. Her arms and legs splayed out awkwardly on the grass. Keely reached into her bag with shaking hands, pulled out the red phone, and punched 911. When the operator answered, Keely tried to tell her what had happened, but her voice was torn by sobs.

“Help is on the way,” the dispatcher assured her. “Do you know CPR?”

“I don’t know,” Keely wailed. “I took a first-aid course once . . .”

“I’ll tell you what to do,” the woman said in a reassuring voice.

Keely fell to her knees beside Maureen, still clutching the phone. Then, following the dispatcher’s instructions, she leaned over the body and placed her own lips against the cold, cherry red lips of her rival.

P
hil Stratton snorted in disgust and replaced a stack of photos of Mark Weaver in the drawer of the bedside table. The more they unearthed in this little house, the clearer it became that Maureen had been consumed by her memories of Mark Weaver. The house was a shrine to his memory. And now, in some sort of desperate, bizarre proof of her love, Maureen had crossed the bar, perhaps in hopes of finding him again. Phil sighed, thinking of how hopeful he had been before their dinner date the other night. He’d indulged in fantasies of him and Maureen as a couple, imagined what a good team they would make. Well, at least he’d realized before he slept with her that he would only be a stand-in for Mark Weaver. Even so, he hadn’t realized the extent of it.

Phil walked out of Maureen’s bedroom into the living room, where Keely was seated, on the edge of a pink-and-green chintz sofa, drinking from a Styrofoam cup of tea that a young policewoman had gone out to get for her. The cup shook in her hands. Keely looked up at him.

“Feeling any better?” Phil asked.

Keely shrugged. “A little, I guess.”

“Mrs. Weaver, you want to tell me why you came over here tonight?”

Keely heaved a sigh. “I found out . . . I just found out tonight that Ms. Chase had been calling my husband frequently before he died—including on the night he died . . .”

Phil waited for her to continue. She thought about mentioning her suspicions of an affair but thought better of it. “I guess I just wanted to know why,” she said, sticking her chin up defiantly.

Phil shook his head. “Well, it’s pretty clear why. She was obsessed with him,” he said. “The bedroom’s full of pictures of him. Her closet—she’s still got shirts with his monogram that haven’t been washed in . . . quite a while. Tapes. Files with every scrap of his handwriting she was able to collect. She’s got receipts from his gas station credit card, for crying out loud. She was completely fixated on your husband. Did he ever mention to you that she kept calling him?”

Keely shook her head slightly.

Phil scratched his smoothly shaven jaw. “Maybe he didn’t want to worry you. It might have freaked you out to know she was stalking him.”

Stalking him. A wave of relief engulfed Keely as the term registered.
Stalking.
Keely thought about the phone calls. They were mostly from Maureen when she thought about it. She tried to recall what Betsy had said. Naturally, if Maureen had been calling Mark at work ten times a day, it would give rise to rumors. Maybe Mark had felt responsible for Maureen’s obsession, guilty over leaving her for Keely. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to expose her behavior and embarrass her. Keely nodded and looked around the room. Everything was neatly in its place, the ruffled chintzes, flowered rugs, and dried flowers indicating a woman’s orderly domestic life. There was no outward sign of Maureen’s secret mania, but there was plenty of evidence tucked away. Maybe Detective Stratton was right. Maureen had been stalking Mark. Keely would never be able to banish from her memory the grotesque image of Maureen in that wedding dress, listening to those revolting tapes as she took her last suicidal breath. Stalking. It made sense. Of course.

Keely shuddered, remembering that first glimpse of Maureen in the car, the limp, twisted body, the terrible sensation of touching those cold lips. “I tried to save her,” Keely said in a small voice.

“I know you did. The EMT told me about your call.” He sighed again. “It’s pathetic, really. She was completely stuck in the past. She couldn’t get Mark back, and she couldn’t get on with her life without him. I think she had a . . . morbid fixation on your husband, and it finally just drove her around the twist.”

Keely stared at the tea bag floating in her cup and thought about Maureen, still being so desperately in love with Mark. All those phone
calls. It would be flattering to a man—terribly flattering—to a have a woman like Maureen Chase, a cool, in-control sort of woman, who couldn’t get over you. She kept thinking of Betsy’s words—
We didn’t know anything for sure . . . We didn’t have any real evidence.

No,
she thought adamantly.
No.
Since reading Richard’s note, she had been plagued with doubts about why Mark had sought her out in the first place, even why he began to court her. But they were married and had a child together. After all that, there couldn’t be any doubt of his devotion to her—or of his love for Abby. Mark, the man who had wooed her so ardently and insisted he couldn’t live without her, would not have resumed an affair with his old lover. No, Mark wouldn’t have done that. It had to be stalking. There was no other explanation.

“I have to say, Mrs. Weaver . . .” Phil said, interrupting her thoughts,
“I think maybe I owe you . . . and your family . . . well . . .”

Keely gazed at him curiously.

Phil took a deep breath. “I began to think this the other night when I had dinner with . . . the D.A. I began to think that perhaps her desire to blame your husband’s death on Dylan might be motivated by . . . her unresolved feelings. I started to wonder if maybe I was participating in a . . . personal . . . a grudge situation,” he said.

“Are you trying to apologize, Detective?” Keely asked.

“I didn’t say that,” he insisted.

Keely smiled thinly. “I’m not going to sue your office, if that’s what you’re worried about. I understand that she was pressuring you.”

“There was a certain amount of . . . urgency to her . . . investigation,” he admitted carefully.

“Still, it would do my son’s heart good if you were to explain this to him,” she suggested. “He has suffered quite a bit.”

“Keely!”

Keely looked up and saw Lucas, leaning on his walking stick, in the doorway of Maureen’s cottage. “Thank God you’re here,” she said. She rose shakily to her feet and went to Lucas, who drew her close, putting his arm around her.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “What happened?”

Lucas’s worried gaze searched her face. Keely felt herself breaking
down under the warmth of his concern. “I came to talk to her,” she said.
“I found her . . .” Her voice cracked.

Lucas murmured soothingly to her. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll take you home. Phil, is it okay for me to take Mrs. Weaver back home? Are you through with her?”

Phil nodded. “Yeah. Go on. We’re still checking out her story, but it’s a formality. This looks pretty open and shut. Anyway, I know where to find her if I need her.”

Lucas shook his head. “I still can’t believe it,” he said. “Maureen Chase.”

“There was a lot we didn’t know about Maureen. She had a dark side,” said Phil.

Lucas sighed. “Apparently. Come on, dear,” he said to Keely. “Let me get you home.” He turned to Phil. “Can you have somebody bring her vehicle back?”

“Sure,” said Phil. “I’ll get a couple of my men to bring it around tonight,” he said.

Keely handed him the keys.

Phil nodded. “I’ll be in touch, Mrs. Weaver.”

Keely let Lucas lead her out to his Lincoln. He opened the door, and Keely obediently settled herself in the front seat. Then Lucas went around to the driver’s side and got in.

“Put your seat belt on,” he said sternly.

Keely nodded and did as she was told.

“That must have been a terrible shock for you,” said Lucas, “finding her like that.”

“It was horrible. You can’t imagine. I tried to save her,” said Keely.

“I know,” said Lucas absently. “One of the cops outside told me. You did all anyone could.” He hesitated a minute and then he asked, “Why did you go over there in the first place?”

Keely shook her head, as if trying to clear the image of Maureen out of her mind. Then she looked over at Lucas’s handsome profile, ravaged by age. “I found out she was calling Mark all the time.”

“Well, they still had business together,” Lucas said.

“This wasn’t business,” said Keely.

Lucas raised his eyebrows and stared out over the steering wheel.
“I’m sure I don’t know what they talked about.”

“It’s all right, Lucas. I talked to Betsy. She told me what you two were thinking.”

Lucas was silent for a moment. “What did Betsy tell you?”

“She told me what you suspected. But it wasn’t that,” said Keely.
“Detective Stratton told me that Maureen was stalking Mark.”

Lucas remained silent.

“Thanks for trying to protect me, though,” said Keely.

Lucas frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. You thought he was cheating on me, and you kept quiet about it, hoping I wouldn’t get hurt.”

Lucas shrugged. “I guess I was making something of it that wasn’t there. I honestly didn’t know, Keely. He didn’t confide in me about it, and that’s the truth.”

“Oh, he was good at keeping things to himself,” said Keely.

They arrived at Keely’s driveway and pulled in. Lucas parked the car, and sat behind the wheel staring out the windshield at the large stone façade of the house. “Why do you say that?” He turned and looked at Keely.

Keely hesitated. She thought of telling him about Richard’s note, about Mark being implicated, but it would only hurt him and make him wonder about his son. And Maureen’s suicide put things in a whole different light. Maybe Mark’s death wasn’t about the distant past, but about his murky present. In any event, Maureen was gone now, and no one would ever need to know.

“Nothing. Never mind,” she said. Headlights blinded her as a vehicle pulled into the driveway behind them and parked. Keely turned around to look as the lights were switched off, and she recognized her own SUV. A car, a police car, pulled in behind it and sat idling. The driver of Keely’s Bronco, a young cop in uniform she recognized from Maureen’s house, got out.

Keely clambered out of Lucas’s front seat and walked toward the policeman. The night air was getting colder, and she shivered. The young cop held out the keys and put them in her icy fingers. “Thank you,” said Keely.

“No problem,” said the young cop, touching his hat. He walked back to the patrol car and slid into the passenger side.

Turning her keys over and over in her hand, Keely walked back to the window of Lucas’s car and leaned down.

“Do you want to come in?” she asked.

“If you’d like,” he said. His voice sounded drained and tired.

“No. You go on home,” Keely said.

“Are you sure?” Lucas asked.

Keely nodded. She stepped away from the car as Lucas turned on the ignition.

“Can you get around my car?” she asked.

Lucas nodded. “No problem.”

She hesitated, fiddling with the keys in her hand. Lucas waited, watching her. She frowned, then said, “Lucas, if somebody was stalking you, a woman, would you tell Betsy or would you keep it to yourself?”

“If a woman was stalking me, I’d probably be so flattered I’d tell the newspaper,” said Lucas with a gleam in his eye.

Keely smiled and shook her head.

“I know what you’re asking, dear. I just don’t know the answer. Don’t torture yourself,” said Lucas. “It’s all over now.”

She looked at him seriously. “You know what I think?” she said. “I think Maureen was here the night he died. I think maybe she pushed him into the pool. I mean, we know she was . . . unbalanced. I think she just snapped.”