Redemption (A Joe Burgess Mystery, Book 3) (18 page)

She blocked the door, arms crossed, and glared up at him. "I do not wish to be disturbed," she said. "Please go away and stop bothering me."

Burgess flashed his badge. "Detective Sergeant Burgess, Portland police. I have some questions about Reginald Libby."

"I don't know any Reginald Libby."

Even good liars usually have some giveaway mannerisms. Eye movement. Word choice. Facial twitches or clenching hands. Star Goodall's body was veritable symphony of deception.

"You grew up with him," Burgess said, stepping into the room and forcing her back. "And you've been sending him these." He held up one of the black envelopes.

The room behind her was truly bizarre. On a basic platform of simple contemporary furniture and rugs, she had added layers of what he supposed she considered appropriate witch décor. There were paintings of owls and bats and spiders. Half a dozen hanging dream-catchers. Bundles of drying herbs hung from hooks along the beams above the windows. Flat surfaces were covered with crystals and tarot cards, arrangements of twisted sticks, and crystal balls on stands.

"I don't know any Reginald Libby," she repeated. "You must have the wrong person."

He took a step closer and pointed to the return address. "This is your name, right? Star Goodall? And this is your address? And the letter was sent to Reginald Libby. You saying someone else wrote these letters?" When she didn't respond, he said, "Why would you use this address on an envelope if you didn't want to be found?"

Her hands came up in front of her, clasping under her breasts like the paws of a small mouse. They tightened into a knot as she stared at the envelope, her face changing as she considered and rejected responses. Behind her, spread out on the tiled island that separated the kitchen from the open living-dining area, were several sheets of black paper. A cup of metallic silver pens. A basket of black envelopes. Maybe a whole raft of people were the recipients of her ugly missives.

She glanced to his right and his left, assessing her chances of escape. He was big and between her and the door and he'd had lots of practice blocking people bent on escape. Finally, she lowered her hands. "What do you want, exactly, Sergeant Burgess?"

"May we sit?" he said.

She turned slowly, examining her couches as though checking for contraband or explosives. Perhaps she was. He'd formed no impression of her yet except defensive, uncooperative, and a liar. He'd already known from her letters she was strange. Underestimating a person's dangerousness was risky. Maybe she did dabble in explosives.

Abruptly, she turned and led the way to a couch. "You sit here," she said.

She planted herself across from him, ostentatiously arranged some cards and crystals on the table, then nodded. "Okay."

"In your series of letters to Mr. Libby, you have repeatedly threatened him with physical harm, Ms. Goodall. Can you tell me why?"

"He raped me," she said. "He was fifteen and I was eleven. I couldn't help myself. Reggie and Clay took advantage of that." She said it without passion, almost with indifference, as though describing something that had happened to someone else, and she watched him for its effect. He'd interviewed hundreds of sexual assault victims, many of them distanced by trauma or pain. Her delivery didn't ring true.

"Clayton Libby says that never happened. So does Reggie."

"Well, they would, wouldn't they? It's in their interest to, isn't it, Sergeant. And those boys always stuck together."

"Both of them attacked you?" She nodded. "And what was done about it?"

"I don't know," she said. "I repressed those memories for years. It wasn't until I lost my husband and started seeing a therapist that it came back to me."

She touched a crystal, moved two of the cards. "I might have told my parents. We did move shortly after that. I would ask them but unfortunately..." Her slender fingers shifted the Death card, "by the time I recognized what had been done to me, they were both gone."

"Did you report any of this to the police?"

"I expect you know the answer to that, Sergeant. You probably wouldn't come out here without having done your homework. Quite frankly, knowing how much publicity can stem from such a complaint, and how the complainant is generally pilloried, I preferred to keep it within the family. Clay and Reggie got all the family land, you know, and I've been attempting to persuade them to do the right thing. To share it with me as a sign of their repentance."

Burgess unfolded another letter, one in which she told Reggie that if he didn't do as she wished, he would die a horrible death. He held it out so she could read it. "This is one of your attempts at persuasion?"

She glanced at it dismissively. "Oh, who knows? I must have been in an agitated mood that day. Reggie knew I didn't mean it."

"How would he know that?"

"Because the next time I saw him, I told him so."

"You saw Reggie?"

"He was my cousin. So of course he was in touch after I lost Nick."

She studied him with her amazing eyes. "I'm sorry, Sergeant. I'm forgetting all my manners. I usually have something around this time. Would you like some coffee? Some tea?"

He hadn't had his coffee with Chris, or at the office, and could use some. "Coffee would be good." Making coffee would also give her time to arrange the next phase of her story. Despite the reports he'd read about her difficulties with her neighbors, there was nothing spontaneous about this woman. If she'd called the police or filed complaints with the town, they'd been studied acts. Only the speeding tickets seemed unscripted.

He followed her into the kitchen, watching while she chose a canister and started making the coffee. "I'm sorry to hear about your husband," he said, irritated with himself for not having learned this. But he'd only searched law enforcement records. He hadn't checked the newspaper archives. "Was it recent?"

"Four years ago," she said. "Almost five. You've probably heard of him... Nicholas Goodall? Quite a well-known sculptor. Nick was a little manic, as many artists are. After too much red wine, he went roaring out of the sauna one night in late October, plunged into the river back there in the woods behind his studio, and the sudden cold stopped his heart."

Her busy hands never hesitated as she assembled her equipment, measured, and brought out cups. "I dragged him out on the bank—not an easy task, as Nick was a large man—and gave him CPR. Then I ran inside and called 9-1-1. But I don't think I ever had a chance. He was lost at the hospital. I couldn't accept that for a very long time. My therapist has been helping me to understand that everything that happens is not my fault."

She poured hot water into the small French press, then more into a teapot. "I'm not a coffee drinker," she said. "That will be just a few minutes. Do you take cream or sugar?"

"Black is fine."

"It's been a fascinating process of discovery, learning that I'm not always responsible." She shrugged. "I do try to take responsibility where it's warranted. It seems that others aren't as far down that road. Clay and Reggie, for example. When I spoke with Clay about what had happened, he acted like I'd lost my senses. Even after he came to one of my sessions, he wouldn't accept—"

She spotted something out the window, falling silent as she walked toward the glass and peered out, twisting her head to get a better view. "Vultures," she said finally, stepping back. "Amazing birds. There must be something dead back there in the woods."

There was a cold fascination in the way she said it. If he hadn't been there, she probably would have gone out looking for whatever it was. He wondered what she would have done then. Waited until the birds had picked it clean and collected the bones? At the end of the room, a shadowbox on the wall held what looked like bones mounted on black velvet.

She returned to the kitchen and finished making his coffee, pouring a cup for him and tea for herself. She pushed his across the counter toward him and remained standing on the kitchen side of the island. "Reggie didn't ask you to come and see me." It wasn't a question. She was sure. "So why are you here?"

"How long have you been sending Reggie those letters?"

Her shoulders shifted under the gauzy fabric. "A few years."

"How did he react?"

"Reggie? He never said much about them. When I would see him, he'd always be worrying about how I was. How I was adjusting to Nick being gone. Whether I was lonely, doing okay financially. You know how Reggie was."

How Reggie
was
. "When did you last see him?"

She tapped her jaw with a finger. Her nail was painted black with some elaborate white design on it. "What's today? Monday? So I saw him on Friday. He wasn't working that day, so we met for coffee. Someplace down by the waterfront where we could sit outside. The kind of dingy place where you wouldn't have wanted to sit inside, but outside was okay. It was almost his birthday. I had a present for him."

"New shoes?"

"That's right."

"What time?"

"Around eleven, maybe."

"You remember the name of the place?"

"I don't," she said. "Why? What does any of this have to do with my letters to Reggie?"

"I don't know yet. What did you and Reggie talk about?"

His coffee smelled delicious and tasted awful. After the first few sips, he gave up. Maybe her water was bad. Maybe she was trying to poison him.

"About his job," she said. "About the land. He said Joey had been pressuring him to convey it, and wouldn't believe him when he said it was in trust and he didn't have control."

"You said you were also pressuring Reggie about the land. So, did you believe him?"

"What an interesting question." She had picked up a deck of tarot cards and was idly shuffling through it. "At the time, I really didn't think about how it applied to me. Later, I wished I'd asked more questions. It just didn't seem like Reggie to be that organized, though. To have been able to take the steps to set up a trust, even if he was afraid of Joey. You know how he was always talking about planning for the future and how he never followed through."

"I don't get it," Burgess said. "You're writing him these ugly, threatening letters and you believe he's responsible for causing you serious harm, and yet you get together for coffee, you give him presents, and you chat?"

"The letters are part of my therapy," she said. "Reggie was okay with that."

She'd done it again. Referred to Reggie in the past tense. Suddenly, she thrust the deck toward him. "Here," she said. "Shuffle these and I'll do a reading for you." Reggie's eyes, right down to the demented gleam, flashed at him from her stranger's face.

"Thanks," he said, "but right now I'm not very interested in my long-term future, and in the short term, it's pretty clear."

"Is it?" she said. "Are you sure?" She brushed the deck over the back of his hands and started laying out cards.

"Pretty sure. I'm sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Goodall," he said, "but your cousin Reggie is dead."

His words didn't interrupt the pattern of her deal. "I know," she said. "He died on Friday night. I saw it in the crystals. He went in the water, like Nick." Then she corrected herself. "No. Not like Nick. Because Nick was an accident. Reggie wasn't ready to go, was he? It's so sad."

She looked down at the cards on the table. "I see some interesting developments for you involving a child?" She studied the cards. "Or children? A close friend in trouble. A major life change for you."

He focused on something she'd said—that Nick was an accident. "Reggie's death wasn't an accident?" She shook her head, then looked down at the cards again, frowning. "What about finding Reggie's killer?"

She touched a card, still frowning. "That," she said, "is a little less clear."

A sudden, tearing pain in his stomach almost took his breath away. He looked over at her. She smiled a knowing smile. "Your immediate future," she said. She pointed toward a doorway in the corner. "The bathroom is just there."

As he rose, fists pressed against the pain, she said, "I told you I was not in the mood for company. Not even company as charming as yours."

When he came out of the bathroom, feeling like he'd been scoured from top to bottom with a rough file, Star Goodall and her car were gone.

Chapter 13