The Magic of Murder (22 page)

I hobbled to the kitchen and opened what I call my utility drawer. In it were three spare sets of keys. As I pulled one out, I said, “When I’m writing, time isn’t the only thing I lose track of.” I handed her the keys. “It’s easier to have lots of these than to try and remember where I left them.”

Still laughing, she scooped up Elvira and followed me out.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Elusive Butterfly

            
 
S
now again fell. An inch or so of fresh white powder covered my driveway. In the southern part of the United States, half this amount could bring a city to a standstill. Not in Western New York. On almost every block, plows were at work. Between the plows, salt-spreaders, and heat from the friction of rubber tires on the pavement as cars sped past, the streets from my house to Niagara Falls were reasonably clear. In a quarter of an hour, we turned the corner onto Twenty-Third Street, then right onto Independence Avenue.

The brick ranch stood about a quarter of the way down the block. Instead of the Corvette, a green Chevy Malibu was parked in the driveway. It looked to be the car I saw across the street from the Woodwards’ house while I floated above Niagara Falls on a besom. Of course, I knew I hadn’t really ridden a broom across the night sky and into the day before. That was a dream I had when I fell asleep while meditating. The experience seemed real enough, though, to have been the kind of out-of-body flight Sarah Goode suggested in her
Book of Shadows
. Maybe, as Roger told me when this whole mess began, I actually had seen or heard something that remained just beyond the edge of my awareness. Maybe what I saw or heard was why, in a dream state, I placed the Malibu at the Woodwards’ house the night Amy was murdered. This was certainly a more logical answer—one Roger would leap for if I told him of my broom ride. Regardless of why, I recognized the car then and I recognized it now. It was the ’67 Malibu Sean Ryan had restored.

Rebecca saw a smile crease my lips. “What?” she said.

I pointed at the green car. “If Sean came here instead of heading for Buffalo, we can write an end to this story right now.”

At the moment, it didn’t occur to me if Roger’s solution
was correct, Sean would have the gun that had already killed two people, and desperate, he wouldn’t hesitate to use it again. I didn’t think of it because I was distracted when Elvira began to scratch at the window of my Valiant.

Clutching the amulet I’d put together while we drove, I opened my car door.

Elvira leaped out and made a beeline for the Osborns’ house.

“Let’s go,” I said.

Rebecca seemed as anxious as I. She slid from behind the steering wheel, and we chased after the cat—well, to be exact, she chased, I hobbled.

Marge’s front door stood open. Elvira now clawed the storm door. As we climbed the two front steps, I heard crying inside. Rebecca nudged the cat away from the door. I opened it a crack. Elvira shoved it the rest of the way and scooted in.

When we followed, I saw Marge Osborn on her couch
in front of the oriel window. Her arms were wrapped around
her daughter. I glanced at them, then turned and peered past the formal dining room and through the door to the dark kitchen.

“Sean, are you back there?” I called.

Jennifer let out a long wail.

“Is he here?” Rebecca said.

Except for Jennifer’s moans, nothing stirred in the house.

“Doesn’t seem so,” I said.

“Why did you come here?” Marge’s shrill voice bled into what sounded like two sirens somewhere on her block.

She wore the same floral housecoat she had on the last time I’d been at her house. Her face was strained, her eyes red. Jennifer was in a flannel bath robe. She had rubber boots over her bare legs. It was as if she’d fled from her apartment without taking time to dress. I didn’t need a degree in psychology to understand why she would have fled. Her cheek and left eye were bruised. I was sure her husband had beaten her.

Before I could ask if my assumption was correct, the storm door flew open.

My head snapped around.

Roger’s broad body filled the doorway. He had his pistol out. “Where’s Ryan?” he demanded.

Jennifer’s moan became a loud cry.

In a few long strides, he was near the kitchen. His gun held out in both hands, he slid along the wall, then rushed through the door.

“Ryan’s not out here,” a male voice called from the side
of the house.

“Clear on this side,” another voice called.

Roger’s shoulders relaxed. He holstered his gun.

Marge hissed, “That dirty bastard. Sean’s to blame for everything!”

Roger returned to the living room. He glanced at me then at Rebecca. “I should have known you two wouldn’t stay put,” he muttered. He reached into the pocket of his camelhair coat, pulled out two sets of car keys—Rebecca’s and mine—and looked questioningly at them.

Rebecca smiled. I shrugged. Elvira rubbed her back against his legs (I was sure if I looked closely, I’d see the cat’s nose was brown).

“I should run the two of you in for interfering with an investigation.” Roger didn’t sound amused.

“Your investigation was in Buffalo,” I said. “Rebecca and I came here to comfort my friend.”

He glared at me and gave a long-suffering sigh. “You and I are gonna have a long conversation later.”

Satisfied I’d been sufficiently chastised for the moment,
Roger brushed me aside and leaned over the couch. It seemed as though he wanted to leave no room for the two women on it to escape into a lie. Again he demanded, “Where’s Ryan?”

“Gone,” Jennifer groaned.

“Where?”

“Leave her alone!” Marge growled. “Don’t you see what that monster’s done to my baby?”

Her reaction to the bruises on Jennifer’s face, Sean Ryan’s car at the Woodwards’ house: the elusive last patch settled into place on the crazy quilt my imagination had stitched together. I knew how the last scene was intended to
play out. I wouldn’t let it. I’d already written the story’s end
my way.

I elbowed Roger aside and dropped down on the couch.
Gently, I touched the mouse under Jennifer’s eye. “He did this to you?”

She nodded, and sniffed.

“When?” Roger’s voice was still harsh.

I shot a warning glance at him. “You’re not helping.”

He huffed. For a second I thought he might lift me from the couch and toss me out the door. Thank goodness he didn’t act on such an impulse. Grumbling, he backed away.

I smiled a thank you. Then, stroking Jennifer’s cheek, I asked, “He hits you all the time, doesn’t he?”

I felt all her muscles tense.

Marge shoved me. “Stop it. Stop this right now!

I refused to be moved. “We need to stop Sean so he never hits you again.”

“It’s my fault!” burst from Jennifer.

Tears ran down Marge’s cheeks. She rubbed her daughter’s arm. “It’s not your fault.”

Jen leaned away from her mother. Her face in her hands, still crying, she said, “It is. They work him so hard at that newspaper. They insist he has to stay at it night and day if he wants to keep his job. Then he comes home, and just wants to rest up. But I won’t let him. I’m tired of being in the house all day, I tell him. I want to go out to dinner or…or to a movie…” Her voice quivered into another sob.

“He told you they work him hard?” Roger said. “I just came from the
News
. His editor told me Ryan was fired a couple of weeks ago because he stopped showing up.”

“It’s…it’s not true. It can’t be.”

I had no idea whether Roger had told her the truth. But, to draw out the admission we needed I knew I had to swear it was so.

“The paper let him go,” I said. “Half Niagara Falls knows it. Now you also have to let him go.”

Jennifer buried her face in Marge’s ample bosom.

I turned to Rebecca. “Is there any more of that balm you used on my leg?”

She dug into her shoulder bag and pulled out a vial. Then she reached for Jennifer’s hand. “Come with me, hon,” she said. “This will help ease your pain.”

I knew Rebecca and the brews she concocted. The pain her balm would ease was both the physical and the emotional kind. I pointed to the hall running next to the kitchen. Rebecca led the still crying Jennifer to a bedroom.

Roger dropped onto an armchair close to the sofa and leaned forward. Adopting my approach, he took Marge’s hand. In an intimate tone, he said, “I know what you and your daughter have had to put up with. Let me help you put an end to it. Tell me where Sean is.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Does Jen?” I asked.

“She only knows he burst into their apartment and then left again.”

While she wrung a tissue, Marge told us Sean had gotten to his apartment nearly two hours ago. Without a word, he threw clothes into a suitcase. When Jennifer asked where he was going, he smacked her. He didn’t have time for her stupid questions, he said. A friend waited for him downstairs. He told Jen if anyone asked, she was to say she
didn’t know anything, hadn’t seen him in days. If she didn’t,
he said, he would come back and kill her and Marge, too. Ryan said he’d killed before, Marge told us,
and would do it again. Just to be certain Jennifer understood, he punched her three times and left her
crumpled on their bedroom floor.

“For all Jen knows,” Marge said, “he’s across the border
in Canada by now. He has family in Toronto.” She let out a wail. “Jimmy! That bastard killed my Jimmy.” She closed her eyes and fell against the arm of the couch.

Roger sat back in his chair. “I doubt Ryan’s gotten over the river yet,” he said. “There’s a Homeland Security alert at the border crossings. All the bridges to Canada are backed up for hours.

He stood, pulled out his cell phone, moved to the dining area, and leaned against the china cabinet. With his back to us, he made a call. In a few minutes, he returned to his chair.

“Sean won’t get far if Canada’s where he’s headed,” Roger said.

The hope such news would ease Marge’s concern was misplaced. She sat up and again twisted the tissue. If I were right about all that had happened, I knew why: she didn’t want Sean to be caught.

I held out the amulet I’d had in my hand since we
arrived. “Mom taught me to make these things,” I said. “It’s
supposed to help you feel better.”

She stared at it.

Roger’s eyes narrowed. It was as if he asked what I was up to.

I held the amulet out. “I don’t know why,” I said, “but these things Mom made always helped me.”

Marge sighed. “Your mother’s always been a little strange.”

I nodded and laughed. “Don’t I know it?”

Now was the time to find out if my theory proved right.

Elvira scampered onto the fireplace mantel and brushed
a paw on one of the photos. While Marge concentrated on the amulet, turning it over in her hands, I examined the family pictures: Marge and Jennifer, Jennifer and Sean. I had remembered correctly. There wasn’t a single picture of Jimmy in the room. It was as if Marge had tried to erase the memory of her husband.

Betrayal, Sarah Goode had written. She hadn’t been thinking of the way teenage girls in Salem had betrayed her. No, it was a true betrayal of the heart, and in the end she’d accepted the blame for her betrayal of the marriage vows she had made to William Goode. When William learned she had given her heart to George Burroughs, longed only to be with him, and would run to him if she were able, he swore the oath that figuratively shoved her off a tree limb to dangle on Gallows Hill.

I turned back to Marge. “The police will have Sean soon. When they get him, they’ll turn him over to the DEA. He’ll spend a lot of years in jail. But you don’t want that, do you?”

Jennifer and Rebecca came back into the room. Rebecca took the chair next to Roger. Jen sat on the couch on the other side of her mother. The bruises on her face had lightened a bit. This wasn’t the time, though, to wonder how Rebecca’s potion accomplished that.

“I was just saying,” I told Jennifer, “the police will have Sean soon. You’ll never have to worry about him hitting you again.”

Her smile was small and sad. It’s strange how a woman
who’s so badly mistreated, could still love the man who hurt her. The story I’d begun to write just before I learned of my heritage—the one about a maltreated woman who flees into a northern swamp? At last I understood what the story was truly about. But again, this wasn’t the time to consider how my fictional plot would play out. At the moment I had to write the end to a different, real life drama.

“Sean’s a miserable human being,” I told Jennifer, “and you’re better off without him.”

I looked into Marge’s eyes. “Yes, he’s a poor excuse for a man—a drug dealer, a wife beater. But like Kevin Reinhart, he hasn’t got the stomach for murder.”

Her hand tightened on the amulet.

I shifted on the couch to look at Roger. “You see, everything
is
connected.”

“I know it is,” he said. “Sean Ryan—”

I stopped him. “Yes, Sean was in the middle of it all. But he wasn’t the beginning or the end. This story actually started with Jimmy. I’m right, aren’t I, Marge?”