Touch-Me-Not (20 page)

C
HAPTER
37

“Does this make sense?” asked Casey, studying the map once they were outside. “Let’s think before we go racing off in all directions. Fifty acres is a huge area.”

“Perhaps we should split up.” Victoria pointed out the paths on the map. “You go this way and I’ll go the other.”

“We stick together. You know the arboretum and I don’t. Is there an open area where we can look over the place?”

Victoria thought a bit. “There are two meadows, the North Field and the West Field. The West Field is somewhat more remote.” Casey held out the map so Victoria could show her the area. “There are dense plantings on three sides, so we can’t see much from there.”

“Dense plantings,” mused Casey. “What about the North Field?”

“It’s bounded on three sides by buildings and the road.”

“Then we’ll strike out for the West Field, stop there and give you a chance to rest. . . .” She glanced at Victoria. “I meant,” Casey continued, “we can stop to reconnoiter, decide where to go from there.”

On their way to the closer North Field, they passed through a picnic grove where trees and dense underbrush could have hidden two people, but it seemed unlikely that Amelia and Fran would stop so close to the visitors’ center and the rest rooms. The field was an easy stroll from the center. However, they strode briskly and Victoria was glad when they finally halted in the middle of the grassy area so Casey could catch her breath.

For most of the day, the wind had blown from the southwest, a warm, sweet-scented spring air, bright and dry. Now the sky had clouded over. As they stood in the center of the field, Victoria felt a slight bite in the air, as though winter hadn’t departed entirely. The walk had warmed her and the breeze was welcome.

Ahead of them and to their right, azaleas bloomed in masses of red, pink, and white, with a few clusters of orange and yellow. Tall rhododendrons, not yet in bloom, towered over the azaleas, their dense foliage forming a screen behind the azaleas.

To their left, a couple with two small children strolled toward the cow barn. A group of senior citizens, who’d apparently come on the tour bus, chattered.

The still air was full of birdcalls, cardinals, wrens, chickadees, tohees staking out their territory.

“It’s getting chilly,” said Casey. “Are you warm enough, Victoria?”

Victoria swept her arm in an arc that included half of the pasture. “We need to search behind the rhododendrons. Most of the visitors are heading toward the dogwood allée and the arbor.”

“I’m not familiar with this place,” Casey said again. “What’s behind the trees?”

“A screened-in area where Polly Hill grew special plants that needed protection from deer and rabbits.”

“Where visitors are likely to stroll?”

“I would think so, yes.”

“We’re looking for a place that’s not too public. With people around, Amelia won’t get in trouble. How about over there?” Casey pointed to their right.

“That’s off the beaten path.”

“A good place to start,” said Casey.

A gust of wind ruffled Victoria’s hair. “The wind’s backed around to the northeast. I smell rain in the air.”

“We’d better hurry,” said Casey. She folded the map to show the west side of the pasture. “Any thoughts on which end to approach from?”

“This is a good place for us to split up. I think we should. I’ll start from the north end, you from the south, and we can close in. We won’t be far apart and can call out if we need help.”

“I don’t like it, Victoria. Cops work in pairs.”

But Victoria was already heading off to their right, walking briskly toward the stone wall that fenced in the field. She waved at the opposite end of the wall. “You need to hurry,” she called over her shoulder. “The rain isn’t far off and neither of us has foul-weather gear.”

“Victoria, wait!”

“If we don’t find them here, we’ll have to look elsewhere.” Victoria strode off, flicking the tall meadow grasses with her lilac-wood stick.

Casey stood for a moment, then shrugged and headed for the far end. Victoria’s instincts were good, at least, almost always. She doubted they’d find Amelia and Fran this easily, and even if they did, she doubted the women would be doing anything other than appreciating flowers.

Even she could smell rain in the air. Not like Victoria, whose nose could sense smells on the slightest movement of air. Victoria was right. They’d better hurry. A lot of ground to cover and not pleasant when you’re soaking wet.

Her cell phone rang. Before she looked at it, she thought it must be Lucinda at the library, calling to say Amelia and Fran had returned. But the call was from Junior Norton, who said results were in on the Watts autopsy.

“Later, Junior. Can’t talk right now.” Casey closed the phone. She was at the edge of the field, where the map showed the stone wall making a right-angle turn. The rhododendrons towered above her, fifteen feet tall or taller, their leathery leaves a dense wall. She pushed through them to a sort of deer path that followed the stone wall, and headed to the right, the direction from which Victoria would come.

Victoria, too, had slipped behind the screen of rhododendrons. Here, the stone wall extended quite a distance to the west before turning south, then halfway down the field, it turned east before turning south again, forming an extension of several acres where the rhododendrons grew thickly.

She stopped to rest, leaning heavily on her stick, when she was out of sight of Casey. She didn’t want to sit down, only to have to go to the trouble of getting up again. Somewhat rested, she continued along the path. The rhododendron screen blocked out sound from the outside world. She could no longer hear cars on State Road or the voices of the sightseers or children calling to one another. If she weren’t so concerned about Amelia, she would treasure this place of silence. She moved slowly, trying to respect that silence. She took twenty steps, then rested.

She had almost reached her second twenty-step rest stop when she heard voices. She stopped. Was she entirely sure she’d heard voices? The sound was indistinct and might have been birds chatting or even wind in the treetops. She wanted desperately to hear Amelia and Fran.

The wind had started to move the leaves above her, making human sounds. She could feel the rain approaching. She moved ten steps and stopped. The voices had stopped, too. Perhaps they were in her imagination after all.

She moved another ten steps, and heard the voices again. People, not the voices of leaves moving in the rain-wind.

Another ten steps. She was no longer tired.

And another ten.

Women were talking, low, musical voices, like Amelia’s and Fran’s. She could see nothing ahead of her except the deer path. The branches over the path were low, and in places she had to crouch. She moved one step at a time, stopping to listen each time until she could make out words. She tried to peer through the rhododendrons but could see only more leaves and fat buds. The blossoms would be out in another week or two, she thought briefly.

Then she realized where she was and what she was doing and knew that she was frightened for Amelia, the caring young daughter who’d grown up to be a caring woman. Retired. How quickly that had happened.

Victoria heard, “I’ve never been to this part of the arboretum. It’s lovely.” Amelia’s voice, and Victoria’s heart skipped. “What a perfect spot for this bench, protected from the world.”

Victoria felt a rush of relief. Amelia was safe. She was about to call out, but stopped herself. Was Amelia really safe? Victoria told herself she was being overly protective, the very reason she’d been so critical of Amelia. Victoria leaned on her stick and waited.

“It is lovely here, isn’t it. Quiet and private. I come here often, summer and winter, to think.” Fran’s voice. A friendly voice, soft and mellow. Victoria felt as though she were intruding, and again, almost called out.

“I’m so glad to meet up with you again,” said Amelia. “What a surprise to find you here on the Vineyard, and my daughter working with you.”

“I must admit, I was surprised to see you at the library,” said Fran. “At first, I hadn’t connected Elizabeth Trumbull and her grandmother with you, for some reason. When your daughter said you were visiting, well, things snapped into place.”

“I’ve been away for too long, I’m afraid.”

“Two years, your daughter told me. But I do understand why you came back.”

Amelia responded. “Yes, of course. It was time for me to be with my mother and daughter. I thought my mother—”

Fran interrupted. “That’s not really the reason, though, is it?”

“What?” Amelia sounded puzzled.

Fran’s voice was clear. “You know precisely what I mean, Amelia.”

C
HAPTER
38

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Amelia.

“Professor Breznikowski. Does that ring a bell?”

Silence.

Victoria leaned on her stick to ease the strain on her leg muscles, which were beginning to cramp.

“Professor Breznikowski! You were there when the dean forced us to separate.”

“Ahhhhh . . .” said Amelia.

“ ‘Ahhhhh,’ ” mimicked Fran. “Comes back to you, doesn’t it? Professor Breznikowski. He was in love with me.”

Amelia cleared her throat. “I recall something about—”

Fran interrupted. “He was in
love
with me, did you know that? He was going to leave his wife and marry me.”

“I didn’t know that. It was a long time ago.”

“Forty-three years,” said Fran. “I haven’t forgotten.”

Victoria moved a few steps closer. She could see the edge of a small glade where the rhododendrons had been cleared away. She supposed Amelia and Fran were sitting on a bench within the clearing. She leaned on her stick and thought how nice it would be to sit. She was stiffening from standing still.

The conversation in the glade had become tense, and Victoria wasn’t sure what she could or should do at this point. Where was Casey?

“Let’s head back to the library,” said Amelia. “Do you have the time? I forgot my watch. It must be close to four o’clock. You probably want to finish up the last few—”

“The quilt can wait. I know full well why you came back, Amelia. You were jealous.”

“Jealous?” Amelia’s voice was incredulous. “Of what?”

“You don’t need to play dumb. Not ‘of what,’ Amelia. Of me. And my man.”

“I don’t understand, Fran.” Amelia’s voice had become unnaturally calm.

“You’re too intelligent to fake it like this, Amelia. You know perfectly well what I’m talking about. You even made that nasty comment when we met in the library.”

“What comment?”

“Don’t be coy, Amelia.”

Victoria felt a drop of rain on her face. Where was Casey? That utter calmness in Amelia’s voice meant she’d realized Fran was unbalanced. Did she realize her danger?

“Ahhhh,” said Amelia. “Your student. When I asked if you’d fallen in love with your student . . .”

“That was uncalled for,” said Fran.

“I apologize. I realize now how much he means to you, and I had no right to be so flippant. I’m sorry, Fran.”

“Meant to me,” said Fran.

“ ‘Meant’?”

“He’s dead. You know he’s dead.”

“I’m so sorry.” Victoria heard a movement, as though Amelia was getting up. “It’s raining. We need to go back to the library.”

“Sit,” said Fran. “We’re not going to the library.”

“Would you like to talk about him?” asked Amelia.

High up in the rhododendrons, the rain began to patter on the thick foliage. A few drops trickled through. Victoria moved closer to the edge of the glade, where there was more shelter and she’d be closer to Amelia.

“He was Professor Breznikowski’s son,” said Fran.

“I had no idea.”

“Lee was eight years old at the time. The professor was going to marry me and we were going to move to West Virginia with Lee to start a new life, but you—”

“Fran, I had nothing to do with—”

“—you and others like you at school—”

“None of us students knew you and the professor . . . Well, nobody knew anything until after you switched your major to math.”

“
I
didn’t switch. The dean forced me.”

“Whatever,” said Amelia.

Victoria’s leg muscles began to cramp.

“What about your man?” Amelia asked. “Does he live on the Vineyard?”

“I told you, he’s dead.”

“I’m sorry. When did he die?” Amelia asked, so softly Victoria wasn’t sure she heard.

“I killed him.” Fran’s voice was flat.

“
You
killed him? Your student . . .” Amelia’s voice trailed off. “Not LeRoy Watts? You killed LeRoy?”

“He wouldn’t listen to me. He denied knowing you.”

“But LeRoy Watts didn’t know me, Fran. I didn’t know him, either. I never met him.”

Victoria felt a sick lurch in her stomach. Casey ought to be here by now.

“He was LeRoy Breznikowski,” said Fran. “Not Watts.”

“The professor’s son . . .”

“Yes. The professor’s son. Lee changed his name to Watts when he changed his major to electrical engineering. He thought that was clever.”

“I see.”

“They wouldn’t let his father marry me. Lee was going to marry me instead.”

“But he was already married, with two children, Fran.”

“He was going to leave that wife of his for me.”

“He was ten or eleven years younger than you.”

“Age doesn’t matter.”

“But . . .” said Amelia, “but . . . why kill him?”

“To keep you away from him.”

“Me?” Amelia sounded astonished. “I didn’t even know the man. And you killed him before I got here!”

“I’ve known all along who you were. Your daughter told the knitting group you’d be visiting.”

“How did you kill him?”

“Victoria Trumbull figured it out. Your mother.”

“You killed him with a knitting needle? He was a big, strong, athletic man. How could you take him by surprise like that?”

“When I went to talk to him, I hadn’t intended to kill him. I tried to reason with him, to insist that he leave his wife, but he wouldn’t listen. He pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about when I mentioned your name. I had my knitting with me, of course. I pointed a needle at him for emphasis, simply trying to get his attention.” Fran’s voice had become shrill. “He laughed and I lost my temper. I aimed at his neck and lunged at him. . . .”

Victoria tensed.

“I could see his blood throbbing through his carotid artery. I focused on that artery, and he never saw it coming.”

Victoria heard a sudden rustle of clothing and she lurched into the glade, her cramped leg on fire, just as Fran shouted, “Like this!”

Victoria burst onto the scene, her lilac-wood stick held high in both gnarled hands.

Fran was lunging toward Amelia, a long steel knitting needle aimed at her neck.

Amelia was shrinking back on the bench, both hands held against her throat, staring in frozen horror at Fran.

Victoria uttered a horrendous, prolonged, primal shriek and slammed her stick down on Fran’s hand with a hideous crack.

Fran screamed and dropped the needle. Amelia leaped up and twisted Fran’s arm behind her back.

“Casey!” Victoria’s voice was a mere whisper. “Casey!”

Running footsteps pounded on the deer path.

“Casey?” Victoria could only form the word. No sound came out.

“Victoria!” Casey arrived, out of breath, gun drawn.

Casey called Junior Norton on her cell phone. Then Elizabeth at the library. Elizabeth’s car was parked in the library’s parking area, where Amelia had left it. She retrieved her keys from under the seat and drove, somewhat too fast, to the arboretum, where she found her grandmother sitting placidly on a stone wall under the shelter of the arboretum’s gift shop roof, her hands folded on top of the lilac-wood stick Elizabeth had made for her. Amelia hovered in the background like an unsure hummingbird.

Fran Bacon was gone. Junior Norton and Casey had driven her to the County of Dukes County jail, where they filled out reams of paperwork and left her.

“Mother,” said Amelia later that evening when they had dropped into their respective seats in the parlor, “what can I say?”

Victoria, her throat raw from that shriek, whispered, “Mothers take care of their young.”

Elizabeth carried drinks into the parlor. Victoria’s and Amelia’s were suspiciously pale, indicating a high percentage of rum to cranberry juice.

Elizabeth lit the fire and sat on the floor at Victoria’s feet.

“What made you suspect Fran, Gram?”

“Can’t talk,” Victoria whispered.

“I think,” said Amelia, “it was when I told your grandmother about Fran stalking Professor Breznikowski, right, Mother?”

“Erotomania,” Victoria whispered.

“What?” said Elizabeth.

“You said ‘erotomania’?” said Amelia.

Victoria nodded and took a large gulp of her drink.

Amelia said, “It’s when an otherwise-normal, usually intelligent person becomes obsessed with someone, is convinced that person loves her, and believes people are standing in the way of that love match, right?”

Victoria nodded.

“She’ll do anything to get the obstacles out of her way. It’s often a woman. Most other stalkers are men.”

“Why kill the guy she believes loves her?”

“She thought I was going to steal her man away from her.” Amelia looked down into her drink. “She had to kill him to prevent that. I was the cause of LeRoy Watts’s death.”

Victoria shook her head vigorously. “Nonsense,” she whispered.

“We were wondering where Fran was,” said Elizabeth. “Casper and Jim had packed up the quilt and we’d called FedEx to pick it up. We chilled a bottle of champagne to celebrate and were waiting for Fran so we could pop the cork. That’s when Casey called and told me to get to the arboretum right away.”

It took time for Victoria’s voice to return to normal. During that time, Amelia waited on her, and Victoria welcomed the attention. Amelia soaked a facecloth in witch hazel for her mother to hold against her throat. She brewed cups of herbal tea laced with honey, offered scoops of soothing coffee ice cream, raspberry Jell-O. Victoria spent most of her time, when she wasn’t writing her column, in the garden, and Amelia worked with her, quietly weeding close to her mother.

Casey dropped by every day. On the third day, Victoria’s voice returned to normal, her deep, strong ordinary voice. She was out in the garden, weeding the touch-me-not that now had small flower buds. Casey knelt down beside her to help.

“What about LeRoy Watts, or Breznikowski, or whoever he was, Victoria? There are a lot of loose ends.”

“Be careful of the poison ivy,” said Victoria, pointing her weeder at a healthy patch next to the touch-me-not. “Fran was afflicted with erotomania, a strange disorder that can affect otherwise healthy people who function normally, except for that one obsession. You can pile the weeds there.” Victoria pointed. “I’ll cart them to the compost heap later.”

“Go on with what you were saying,” said Casey.

“In the case of erotomania, the obsession is usually directed at a single love object. Stalking can go on for years, as it did in Fran’s case, and can suddenly shift. Her love object was Professor Breznikowski, who was oblivious to his student’s obsession. When the university intercepted Fran, her attention switched to the son they called Lee. In her fantasies, he was her son.”

“But he was only eight at the time,” said Casey. “And she was, what, nineteen or so?”

“A big age gap when one is eight and the other is nineteen, but the gap closes. LeRoy enrolled in Northeastern, knowing nothing about Fran’s obsession with his father.” Victoria held the handles of her kneeler and got to her feet. “I’m going to pull that poison ivy vine out before you tangle with it. You’re getting awfully close.”

“But . . .”

“I’m not particularly suscetible to poison ivy.” Victoria tugged the shiny three-leafed vine out by its roots and dropped it onto the compost pile.

“But . . .” said Casey again.

“I’ll rub some touch-me-not on my hands, just in case.”

“Back to LeRoy Watts and Fran,” said Casey.

“From what I can gather, LeRoy intended to major in math and took a couple of courses with Fran—Dr. Bacon. Fran apparently had lost track of the Bresnikowskis. She, of course, recognized the name, LeRoy Breznikowski, and immediately targeted him.”

“Where did the Watts name come in?”

“That was partly in response to her unwanted attention. He switched his major to electrical engineering and changed his name. He thought Watts would be a easy name for customers to remember for his intended electrical career.”

Amelia came out to the garden with a pitcher of lemonade and poured cups for her mother and Casey. She’d heard some of the conversation. “His widow spoke about the phone calls he’d been getting. Were those from Fran?”

“I assume so,” said Victoria, sipping her lemonade.

“What puzzles me, Mother, is the fact that LeRoy Watts was also a stalker. According to everyone I’ve talked to, he was a pleasant, normal-seeming man.”

“I’m not sure anyone fully understands the psychology of stalking. Was the fact that he himself had been stalked by his professor a factor? Who knows.”

“He stalked with a video camera as well as with phone calls. Isn’t that unusual?”

“It’s not uncommon for a stalker to use more than one approach. Look at the paparazzi, who aren’t even considered deviates. They go to any length to capture a celebrity on film. Digital, now, I suppose.”

Amelia said, “As an object of a stalker, couldn’t he see what he was doing to others?”

“An obsession can be blinding,” said Victoria.

At the end of the week, Howland Atherton drove Amelia to the ferry. Victoria rode in the front seat. Howland carried Amelia’s suitcase to the baggage cart, and Victoria and her daughter parted at the gangplank.