The Girl at the End of the Line (23 page)

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl at the End of the Line
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“But when we first got to Gale Castle nobody had ever heard
of my mother,” said Molly, trying to understand. “How can that be if Atherton had named her in his will?”
“Probably because Atherton had come to my father in secret,” David replied. “That's one of the reasons that Dad remembers this, it was all so odd. Nobody was supposed to learn about the new will until after Atherton was dead. And since Atherton relented a little and rewrote his will again three months later to include all of his natural relatives, the terms of the earlier document never came out.”
Molly took a deep breath. At least some things were beginning to become clearer.
“So somebody must have killed Mom to prevent her from inheriting the Gale fortune,” she said. “I knew this was about money. I just knew it.”
“You would think so, yes,” said David, “but that's the problem.”
“What problem?”
“As far as my father can recall, nobody would have been better off with your mother dead. Under the earlier will, if your mother didn't survive the Atherton Gale Trust was to have been divided among various charities upon Dora's death.”
“But then we're right back where we started from,” exclaimed Molly, crumpling back into the soft chair. “If nobody profited from Mom's death, then why did somebody kill her? And why did somebody kill Jimmy now? Nobody profits from his death, either. Except Nell and me. It's crazy.”
“I promise we'll get to the bottom of this, Molly,” said David gently. “There must be something about Atherton's wills that Dad has forgotten or something so mundane that nobody's even considering it. When I was an assistant DA our office once prosecuted a maid for murdering her elderly employer. The maid didn't care about the woman's million-dollar estate. She just wanted the five
thousand dollars she had been promised—big money to her. It could be something just as simple in this case.”
Molly shuddered. There was something horrible about speculating why someone had killed a person you loved. If it had been about money—whatever the amount—that somehow made it worse.
“Dad's having someone from his old firm dig out both of Atherton Gale's wills and overnight them to me,” David went on. “If there's anybody who could conceivably have gained something by your mother's death—or by Jimmy's—we'll know soon enough.”
“In the meanwhile Nell is still the prime suspect in Jimmy's murder,” said Molly, rising and beginning to pace back and forth again.
“Nell will be fine, you'll see,” said David. “You need evidence to prove a case in court. Witnesses. From what you've told me, all your sheriff has against Nell is conjecture.”
“But who knows what pressures he's under to do something?” said Molly angrily, all her frustrations boiling up to the surface. “Just because you were a lawyer doesn't mean that you can convince me that police never arrest innocent people. If Nell is the only suspect, they'll lock her up sooner or later. Or they'll turn her over to some shrink who doesn't know anything except how to fill people full of drugs. It would destroy her.”
“Okay, okay,” said David. “Calm down.”
“Don't tell me what to do! I hate it when people tell me what to do.”
“And I like a girl with a temper. It's nice that we're getting to know each other like this, don't you think?”
“No!”
“Look, I'm just trying to help,” said David. “I think I could do that better if you were here.”
“Where? New York?”
“That's right. It's going to be a lot harder for some back country sheriff to arrest your sister if she's in New York. If you leave now, you and Nell can probably be here in time for the show tonight.”
“You're crazy,” said Molly, sitting on the bed. “We can't leave.”
“Sure you can. And you should. There's still a killer running around up there, remember?”
“It's nice of you to be concerned,” said Molly, “but nobody has any reason to harm us.”
“Molly, let me point something out to you,” said David Azaria, his voice measured and concerned. “Your mother was the sole beneficiary of the Gale Trust and somebody killed her. Then everybody thought your cousin Jimmy was the only one left to inherit and somebody killed him, too. We may not yet understand what's going on, but you and Nell are now the sole beneficiaries of the Gale Trust. I'd really feel better if you were out of there.”
“But we don't have the trust. We won't have anything as long as Dora is still alive.” Molly stopped and put a hand up to her mouth. “My God, you don't think she's in any danger, do you?”
“Nobody's knocked her off so far, have they?” said David with what was obviously meant to be a reassuring laugh. Molly wasn't reassured.
“Look,” he went on, “if you're really worried, you can bring her along, too. I like old ladies, and I've got one of those big old Westside apartments. Dora can have the extra bedroom. Nell can sleep on the couch in the living room. You can sleep in my room. I'll curl up on the floor at your feet and guard you from all evil. Nobody will know where you are.”
“Nobody but you.”
“Still don't trust me?”
Molly didn't answer. David let out a sigh.
“You're probably right,” he said after a moment. “I don't know that I could trust myself. I'm pretty goofy about you, you know.”
“Why? I wish you would tell me why.”
“It's mostly physical at this stage, I think. But I'm optimistic that we'll find other things in common besides Atherton Gale to sustain us over the years. For starters, look how easy it is for us to talk to each other.”
“I can talk to anybody on the face of the earth,” muttered Molly. “Perfect strangers. Garbage men. Brick walls.”
“You think about New York. I'll call you tomorrow. What's a good time?”
“It's not that I don't like you, too, David. I … I just can't leave Dora alone right now.”
“How about three o'clock?” he replied. “That will give me enough time to get the wills and look them over.”
“All right. I'll be at the phone at three. Thanks, David.”
“See? Aren't you glad you came to me for help?”
“I didn't come to you for help.”
“I like you, too,” answered David. “Good-bye, Molly. Be careful.”
“I will.”
Molly hung up the phone, lay back on the bed and stared at the now-familiar ceiling.
She wanted more than anything just to leave everything behind and go to David, but that was impossible. Nell was the prime suspect in Jimmy Gale's murder. If they left now it would look like they were just running away. Besides, after the way Dora had welcomed them into the family, they couldn't just up and desert her.
It was all Atherton Gale's fault, Molly fumed. Him and his
filthy money. Molly didn't want any part of it. The Gale fortune was like some kind of poison. Everyone who had stood to benefit from it was dead. Everyone, that is, except her and Nell.
Molly closed her eyes and watched stars wander across the inside of her eyelids. Unsettling questions resumed their chase across her mind. Were she and Nell in danger now that they would inherit the Gale Trust? Who stood to gain if they, too, were suddenly out of the way? Was she just making excuses about why she couldn't go to New York? Was she more afraid of David and what going to him meant than of whoever it was that had killed Jimmy?
After several more minutes of tying her brain into knots, Molly breathed a deep sigh and forced herself to open her eyes and sit up. Only one thing was clear: Nothing was going to be resolved today. Today was a day for burying the dead.
The birds had stopped singing in the garden. A sharp breeze coming through the window made the lacy curtain dance. Molly rose to her feet and went over to breathe in the summer before going back down to the strange gathering downstairs, the remembrance of a man whom no one wanted to remember.
Dora's garden was still and perfect, alive with tiny explosions of color that were roses. The two figures sitting on the garden swing looked almost like dolls that had been placed there for effect by a gigantic child. They were even holding hands and shyly looking off in different directions like young lovers sometimes do. It was a charming picture, yet there seemed to be something wrong with it. It took Molly a moment to figure out what it was. When she did she almost fell over backward.
The two figures were Mrs. McCormick and Henry Troutwig.
“Please pass the ketchup,” said Mrs. McCormick, rubbing her hands in front of her.
The ketchup bottle was sitting in a pierced silver holder that its English Victorian silversmith had undoubtedly meant to hold a bottle of claret. Molly pushed it to Nell who passed it along to McCormick who opened the bottle and drizzled the stuff over her hamburger with evident satisfaction.
“What a treat,” declared Dora, cutting her burger into neat little quarters. Molly had cut her own into halves. Nell hadn't bothered to cut hers at all and was already halfway through it.
The last guest had finally gone home. The telephone had fallen silent. Mrs. Prin and the hired girls had cleaned up and left hours ago. Dora, Molly and Nell, and Mrs. McCormick were alone in the house for the night.
People in Vermont were as neighborly in the wake of death as they had been in North Carolina, and the refrigerator was full of cookies and homemade casseroles. Mrs. Prin had dutifully been
serving up cookies and homemade casseroles every night, along with everything else she considered suitable for mourning: overcooked vegetables, dry biscuits, gray sauces. After four days of such treatment, Mrs. McCormick's hamburgers were a welcome change. The shoestring french fries she had engineered in the kitchen were practically a revelation.
“I hope Russell got back to Washington all right,” said Dora, staring at a neat little wedge of hamburger, a worried expression on her face. “Planes make me so nervous since … since what happened.”
Molly chewed fast in order not to reply with her mouth full. Gale Castle's elegant dining room and the gravity of events did wonders for one's table manners.
“I'm sure Russell's okay,” she said at last.
“He promised to call when he got in.”
Dora might be ninety-three, but she was clearly still a concerned mother. She had made George call, too. He had arrived at his New Hampshire hospital an hour ago.
“Den of iniquity, if you ask me,” said McCormick, licking a finger. “I wouldn't give you a dollar for all the senators and congressmen in Washington. Less if you throw in the wives. You really have to wonder about gals like that. What woman in her right mind would intentionally marry a politician?”
They ate in silence. Dora looked tired after the long day. Nell didn't seem to be paying much attention to anybody, off in a world of her own. Mrs. McCormick chewed noisily as though she didn't have a care in the world.
What was going on between the surly nurse and the perpetually indignant attorney? Molly wondered again, as she had been doing ever since she had seen them together in the garden. Why were McCormick and Troutwig keeping their relationship a secret?
Molly was bursting to know but couldn't figure out how to broach the subject. Finally she couldn't stand it any longer.
“I actually saw Mr. Troutwig smile this afternoon,” said Molly, taking the indirect approach. “I didn't know he could do that. You know, he's not altogether a bad-looking man, don't you think, Mrs. McCormick?”
“Henry Troutwig? I've seen better faces on grandfather clocks.”
“Oh, I don't know,” said Dora. “Henry isn't exactly a movie star, but he has a certain presence. He carries himself very confidently. He was quite handsome when he was younger.”
“That old lunch pail?” snorted McCormick. “I've got bunions more attractive than him. And the man is as dim as grass. He's stubborn, opinionated, egotistical, intransigent, and an all-around pain-in-the-petunia.”
“Why, Mrs. McCormick,” said Dora with a smile, her wirerim glasses magnifying her pale blue eyes into saucers. “If I didn't know better, I might think you were actually sweet on Henry.”
McCormick's face turned nearly as red as the ketchup on her plate.
“Sweet on Troutwig? Sweet on that insufferable … that detestable … Why I'd sooner be hung up by my dainties above a boy scout campfire, or trapped in an elevator with a toothache and an insurance agent, or thrown into the Nile while a marine band—”
A loud telephone bell rang far off in the direction of the kitchen.
“Maybe that's Russell,” said Dora hopefully, rising from the table and placing her napkin on her chair. “I'll get it. Please excuse me, ladies. I'll be right back.”
She quickly disappeared through the archway to the kitchen.
Molly exchanged glances with Nell, who looked pensive. McCormick
took a huge bite of her hamburger, her eyes as bright as two nickels in a wishing well. If she didn't want to talk about Troutwig it didn't seem right to invade her privacy, Molly decided, but perhaps she could fill in some of the blanks about Atherton Gale.
“You took care of Atherton Gale during his final illness, didn't you?” Molly asked.
“Yep,” said the grizzled housekeeper, her mouth still full.
“What kind of man was he?”
McCormick chewed for a while and swallowed before answering.
“He was a maniac,” she announced unceremoniously. “He liked to tear off his clothes and make me chase him naked around the upstairs to give him his bath. Said he'd leave me a million dollars if I'd have sex with him. Doctor said it was probably the cancer going to his brain, but the man was serious as oatmeal, believe me.”
Molly almost choked on the food in her mouth, remembering David's story of the murderous maid. She knew she was probably more than a little paranoid after all that had been happening, but could McCormick have been going around, murdering people, because Atherton Gale had left her some money? Molly drank half a glass of water before she was able to speak.
“Did Atherton end up mentioning you in any of his wills?” she asked conversationally. “I understand he changed them a lot.”
“Well, I didn't sleep with him if that's what you're getting at.”
“No, of course not,” said Molly. “I certainly wasn't trying to suggest—”
“I have my standards,” said McCormick, raising her nose into the air and making a little sniff. “Besides, you couldn't trust the
old bastard to keep his word or I might have been tempted. A million bucks was real money back then, even to Atherton Gale. He haunts the place, you know.”
Nell had finished the food on her plate a while back and had been staring off into space. Now she turned to Molly, her eyes wide.
“She's just kidding,” Molly assured her. “Aren't you, Mrs. McCormick?”
“I've seen him plenty of times,” said McCormick, pokerfaced.
“No, she hasn't, Nellie,” said Molly, placing her hand on her sister's. Nell had turned dead white.
“Have, too,” McCormick pressed on. “I think he's still panting after yours truly.”
“I thought you were already spoken for,” snapped Molly.
McCormick's gray eyes narrowed into slits.
“What's that supposed to mean?” she said angrily.
“I saw you and Henry Troutwig in the garden this afternoon,” Molly replied. To hell with McCormick's privacy if she was going to frighten Nell like this.
“What was there to see?”
“You were holding hands.”
“No, we weren't.”
“I saw you.”
McCormick looked for a moment like she might explode. Then she relaxed, a sickly smile crossing her face.
“Oh, yeah,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Now I remember. I was feeling a little light-headed and went into the garden for some air. Old Troutwig came out at one point and took my pulse. That's what you saw.”
“Oh, really?”
Molly didn't say anything, just stared.
“Oh, all right. The old idiot and I are involved. So what?”
“Why are you keeping your relationship with Mr. Troutwig a secret?”
“Because I want to keep him, damn it,” barked McCormick. Then her face softened. “Look, you don't know how it is for a woman like me. I was never a basket of looks, and I'm not young anymore. Even up here a man like Henry could do a lot better for himself. If word ever got out that Henry was seeing me, fraternizing with Dora Gale's help, he'd be a laughingstock. He'd have to dump me just to save face.”
“I'm sure that's not true.”
“Shows how little you know,” said McCormick, waving a bony hand in the air. “The winters are awful long up here. And cold. I'm sick of being alone. Some women can take it, like Dora. Not me. You won't tell her about Henry, will you?”
Molly hesitated. Was that all there was to this? A lonely woman? Cold Vermont nights?
“It would kill her, I tell you,” insisted McCormick. “Down she'd go like a little sack of potatoes. Thump. Sssh. Here she comes.”
“Well, I'm very relieved,” said Dora with a sweet smile, emerging from the kitchen. “Russell is home safe. And he's going to have lunch with the vice president's wife next Thursday.”
She took her place at the table again.
Everybody murmured congratulations except for Nell. Molly took a handful of her french fries and put them on her sister's plate, but Nell ignored them.
“The back door in the kitchen was wide open,” said Dora. “We have to remember to close and lock it, Mrs. McCormick, now that Russell is gone and we're alone in the house. You can't be too careful these days. Someone might sneak in and murder us all in our beds.”
“Don't remind me,” said McCormick. “Do you want me to heat up your burger in the microwave, Mrs. G?”
“Thank you, Mrs. McCormick, but I'm not very hungry,” said Dora, regarding the remains of her now-cold supper. “I put up the kettle in the kitchen, though. Maybe you could bring us all a nice pot of tea?”
“Why not?” said the nurse. “Save any interesting gossip until I get back.”
She gave Molly a meaningful look, then marched through the door to the kitchen.
Dora, Molly, and Nell sat in silence for a moment. Molly's thoughts began to turn from McCormick and Troutwig to her and David Azaria before she managed to push it all from her mind. How to clear Nell of the suspicion the sheriff had focused on her was the only thing she should be thinking about. Suddenly it seemed more important than ever to find out what had happened between Atherton Gale and his two sons seventeen years ago. What had set in motion the events that were still unfolding? If anyone knew the truth it was Dora.
“I'm glad Russell is okay,” said Molly, trying to lead into the subject naturally. “You must be very proud of him.”
“Oh, yes indeed,” said Dora. “When Russell was younger I used to worry that he'd never find his place in the world, let alone become involved with such a wonderful charity. He went from job to job, never seemed to connect with anything. George was different. George always knew he wanted to be a doctor, to help people. Of course, Atherton hated that. He'd wanted George to come into the business with him, but George had other plans for his life.”
“Why did Atherton cut them both out of his will?”
Dora shook her head and shrugged her shoulder.
“I don't suppose we'll ever know what went on in poor Atherton's mind. Atherton was always redoing things, changing his
plans. He thrived on confusion and uncertainty. It was difficult to know where you stood with him from one day to the next.”
“Even you?”
“Oh, yes, indeed.”
An unhappy look passed across Dora's sweet open face. She took a nibble of her cold hamburger, chewed, and executed a dainty swallow before continuing.
“Atherton kept me so off balance for the first years of our marriage that I really didn't understand the kind of man he was. I was too busy trying to defend myself, please him, figure out what he wanted. Felicity had told me about some of the problems she'd had with Atherton, but the man who courted me seemed like a different individual—so kind and thoughtful, so charming and shy. It was only later that I began to see who he really was.”
“He was cruel to you?”
“He was cruel to himself,” said Dora. “Yes, Atherton often humiliated me verbally in front of what few visitors we had here. But it wasn't like he had singled me out; Atherton was horrid to everyone. He would fly into impossible rages from one moment to the next and everyone would have to scramble to figure out what they had done wrong. But it was all a distraction, Atherton's ploy to prevent people from looking at him and seeing the frightened, selfish, unhappy little man he really was. It was himself he hated, you see? All he had really was his money. That's why he kept accumulating more and more. He never saw that he couldn't buy the self-respect he craved. It was very sad.”
“But surely Russell and George must have done something terrible for Atherton to have cut them off so completely.”

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