Blowout

by Catherine Coulter

  She walked to the bed to make sure her mother was all right.

  The bed was empty.

  She turned on the lights, searched for a note, then walked to her own bedroom to look for one.

  She picked up the bedroom phone to call Bitsy when she saw the blinking message light. She pushed the play button. There was a call from her mother’s manager at the Tyson’s Corner store, one from the dry cleaner, a message to call her lawyer about Stewart’s will, and finally, the last message. “Margaret, this is Anna. Come to Janette’s house right away. It’s an emergency.”

  Anna had called an hour and twelve minutes before.

  What emergency? Callie started to call, then slowly laid the phone back in its cradle. It was no surprise they were meeting at Janette’s house because there was no family to juggle around at her house since her divorce some ten years before. The five friends frequently met there.

  What emergency? Callie didn’t pause, bundled back up in her coat and gloves, and headed out to her car.

  Janette Weaverton lived in Emmittsville, Maryland, not more than a twenty-minute drive this late at night.

  There weren’t many people on the road, and she made good time. She pulled into Janette’s driveway behind her mother’s Mercedes nineteen minutes later.

  Besides her mother’s Mercedes, Callie saw four familiar cars parked in Janette’s driveway.

  There were a lot of lights on in the house. Callie walked to the front door, quietly opened it, and stepped into the warm front entrance hall. She eased the door shut behind her. Janette was a minimalist, everything spare, utilitarian. She remembered as a child that Janette had loved girlie-girl stuff, but that had changed after her husband had left.

  Callie heard women’s voices as she walked toward the living room. She paused just outside the open door when she heard Juliette’s voice: “And just what are you proposing to do now?”

  Callie heard her mother say, “Calm down, Juliette. It won’t help if we all fall apart. It’s been a shock, but we’ll deal with it. Let’s talk about this. We’ll figure out what’s best.”

  “But Stewart was your husband, Margaret,” Bitsy said. “How can you be so damned calm about it?”

  “What do you want me to do? Shoot her for stupidity? Poor judgment in men? That’s nothing new, is it?”

  Anna said, “How can we be certain the FBI are convinced that he acted on his own? Don’t forget he wasn’t alone in that car—”

  Margaret said patiently, “Agent Savich said Günter told him it was a woman he’d picked up in a bar, for camouflage. That was the last door and he closed it. He never implicated any of us in any way.” She paused a moment, then said, “Günter told his grand lie to protect you, to protect all of us. It’s all in Callie’s headline story for the Post. He committed the murders to show how skilled and fearless he was, that he could even kill a Justice of the Supreme Court in the library itself.”

  Janette said, tears thick in her voice, “But he was crazy, deranged, just look at what he did—he should have been killed at the Supreme Court, at Quantico. He was completely out of control.”

  Callie stepped into the living room.

  Five pair of eyes stared at her.

  “Callie!”

  “Hello, Mother,” Callie said, then nodded at the four women. Anna, Janette, and Bitsy had been crying. Her mother hadn’t, though she was the one of them who had lost the most. Juliette looked to be in shock. Callie said slowly, “I guess there was a woman involved after all. Which one of you was it?”

  It was subtle and automatic. The five women all moved to stand together. For a moment, they all blended, standing shoulder to shoulder, as if they’d closed ranks against her. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  “Nothing that need concern you, Callie,” Margaret said. “Like everyone else in the country, we were just discussing that murderer, Günter Grass.”

  “He protected one of you, thus protecting all of you when he lied about being alone in this rampage?”

  Margaret shot a look at the other four women, watched each of them nod, then turned back to face her daughter. “Listen to me, Callie, because this is the most important thing I will ever say to you in your life.”

  Not my mother, please, not my mother. “I’m listening.”

  “One of us was involved with Günter. Naturally she didn’t know he was Günter. He told her his name was John Davis, probably another lie. She had no reason not to believe him when he told her he’d been born and raised in Maryland.” Margaret paused a moment, saw that Callie was closely studying all their faces. “Do you want to know the why of all this tragedy, Callie? All right, I’ll tell you. Did you know that it was Eliza Vickers herself who called me to tell me she was sleeping with Stewart?”

  Callie shook her head. “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh yes. That bitch really wanted my husband. She wondered if I’d sensed he was having an affair, and of course I had. A wife always knows, they say, and it’s true. But I hadn’t asked Stewart for a divorce and she didn’t understand that. So she told me that Stewart had admitted to her that he’d married me because he wanted to be close to you, Callie. Ridiculous, of course, and naturally, I laughed at her.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Stewart for a divorce if you knew he was unfaithful to you?”

  “I probably would have, eventually. To punish Stewart I came on to Sumner Wallace. It was small of me, but I wanted to break up their friendship. But that’s not important now.”

  “I can’t believe—Eliza really told you that?”

  “Oh yes. She was getting desperate. She had only six more months in Stewart’s chambers, then she was gone.

  “Naturally, I told my friends. And one of them told her boyfriend. Günter. He was enraged that a Justice of the Supreme Court would sleep with a law clerk, that he would invite scandal and dishonor like that, hurt his wife and, in turn, her friends. She was angry as well, but she remembers now that he really seemed over the top about it. But then he didn’t say anything more.

  “Günter made his decision to kill Stewart. He didn’t tell her what he’d done, and naturally, none of us imagined it was he who had killed Stewart.

  “Then Danny O’Malley called me, saying he was going to tell the world about how Stewart had married me just to get at you if I didn’t pay him off. Evidently he’d overheard Eliza’s phone call to me. That was careless of her.”

  Callie said, “I don’t understand. Danny went into my stepfather’s office that Friday morning. Was he trying to blackmail Stewart as well?”

  “Oh no. He was warning Stewart that all of it was going to hit the fan. He did this not because he worshiped Stewart, but because he knew that he could give him recommendations that would get him into the finest law offices in the country. But after Stewart was killed, Danny immediately realized what he knew was valuable. He told me he was also going to call Eliza, get money from her as well. Of course I told my friends about it, and without hesitation she told her boyfriend. Then Danny was garroted, just like Stewart.”

  “And no one considered this murderer just might be close to home?”

  “Callie, you must understand. Günter never said another word about any of it to her. She had no idea if he’d even really paid any attention to her. Would you suspect your boyfriend of murder? Of course not.

  “I will be honest with you. My friends suspected I was behind Stewart’s death, though they loved me too much to openly accuse me. No, Bitsy, be quiet. It’s true and you know it. Didn’t I have the best reason?

  “The evening of Stewart’s funeral, your Detective Raven showed us all the photo of Günter, taken many years before. None of us recognized him, except the one who was seeing him, and even she wasn’t certain, she was more disbelieving than anything.

  “But she confronted him Friday morning. He changed, Callie, even as he told her it was the truth, she watched him change into a man she didn’t know. He made her believe that if she told anyone, he had
friends who would kill not only her, but the rest of us. She should have called the FBI, but she didn’t, and it’s too late now.

  “He didn’t tell her he was going to kill Eliza, but when Eliza’s murder hit the news on Saturday, she knew. Oh yes, she knew, and she realized she was dealing with a madman.

  “She was terrified, for herself and for us, and so she kept quiet. He kept telling her he was doing all this for her, for us, for me.”

  Callie said, “One of you was with him the night he shot up Agent Savich’s house trying to kill Fleurette.”

  Margaret said, “She was an accessory to Fleurette’s attempted murder, no denying that since she was in the car, waiting for him. Günter forced her to go with him. Again, he threatened to kill her if she didn’t do exactly what he told her to do. You can’t for one minute believe she knew what he planned, or that you were there, Callie.”

  “But she heard the shots. She knew something bad had happened.”

  “Oh yes, she knew, but she was also terrified. When she heard he’d been killed by the FBI, she called us. That’s why we’re all here. We didn’t realize until after reading your story in the Post, Callie, that Günter had lied about all of it, to protect us.”

  “She knew, but she told no one.”

  “If she had, that crazy man might have killed her. He was crazy, Callie, you know that, regardless of why he did anything, he was crazy. He figured he had nothing to lose. What would you have done, Callie?”

  I would have killed him myself, but she held herself quiet. “I don’t know.”

  “No, no one could ever guess what she would do in such a situation. But the fact remains, crazy as he was, he protected her and the rest of us last night before he was killed. He lied to Savich and Sherlock and Ben, and they unwittingly lied to you and the world.”

  “You can’t expect me to keep quiet about this, Mother.”

  “Yes, I can and I do, Callie. Think a moment. She didn’t know what he planned, none of us did. She didn’t know what he’d done until after she saw that photo and began to wonder, and then he killed Eliza. She was terrified, nearly over the edge herself.

  “And she was terribly worried about me. I was a basket case, and she had to pretend that everything was all right, she had to protect me. As I said, it wasn’t until we got word that Günter had been killed by the FBI that she told us the truth.

  “What good would it do if you told your friend, Detective Raven, about this? What good? She might be prosecuted though she committed no crime. What would be the point of that? It could only result in the truth coming out. I loved your stepfather, Callie. I don’t want his name going down in history as the Supreme Court Justice who screwed a law clerk and was murdered for it, along with two other law clerks. I know that you cared for him too. It’s not much of a stretch to believe I would be implicated as well.

  “She has suffered enough. All of us have. Leave it alone, Callie. I’m asking you to leave it alone.”

  “I’m very sorry about the affair between Stewart and Eliza, Mother. I’m sorry you knew about it. I’m very sorry Eliza wasn’t the fine woman Sherlock believed she was.”

  Margaret shrugged. “As I told you, a wife always knows.”

  Callie said, “Would all of you like to know something? Günter was dead wrong. Fleurette didn’t know a thing about Stewart and Eliza. Regardless, one of you aided and abetted a murderer.”

  Margaret said, “Not knowingly, not willingly. She couldn’t control him. He kept her a prisoner. She was as much a victim as the others.”

  “No, she’s still alive, isn’t she?”

  Margaret said, “Günter was a madman when all was said and done. She was not responsible!”

  Callie looked at each of them in turn. She’d known them all her life, loved and respected them. They were always there for each other. Even though one of them had kept quiet about her stepfather’s murder, her mother had no intention of exposing her. None of them did. To tell the police would mean exposing her mother as well as the others.

  “I don’t know,” Callie said. “I’ve got to think about this, Mother.”

  “While you’re thinking, remind yourself what your own newspaper would do with this story. I want Stewart’s name protected.”

  “I understand that.”

  He mother stepped back into the circle of women. “Think hard, Callie.”

  Four of them had hair long enough to fan out. Any of the four could have been in the car with Günter. Any could fit Mr. Avery’s description.

  Except for her mother. Thank God.

  Callie looked at them one last time, wondering which one had slept with Günter, which one had been threatened by him, which one had lived with his madness, with the knowledge of what he was doing. And had done nothing to stop him in the end.

  CHAPTER

  38

  BLESSED CREEK,

  PENNSYLVANIA

  THE FOLLOWING TUESDAY AFTERNOON

  MARTIN THORNTON WALKED into Sheriff Doozer Harms’s office. No one was inside except Doozer, sitting behind his big wooden desk, working the New York Times crossword. He looked up when the door opened. “How can I help you?” He laid down his pencil, but didn’t rise.

  Martin said, “I guess you don’t remember me, do you Sheriff Harms? Actually, I remember you even though the last time I saw you I was only six years old.”

  Sheriff Doozer Harms grew very still. He looked behind the man standing in front of him out the glass windows that gave onto Main Street. He saw no one. He smiled and kicked back, put his booted feet up on his desk. “Well, well, if it isn’t Austin Barrister. Imagine you of all people turning up on my doorstep this beautiful, snowy day. It is you, isn’t it? It’s hard to tell, you haven’t aged well. Fancy you showing up here, after so many years.”

  “I came to see you because I remember now, Sheriff. I’ve been out to the house. It all came back to me when I stepped into the bathroom.”

  “So,” Sheriff Harms said slowly, his fingers caressing the pistol butt on his belt, “you finally remember stabbing your mama, do you, boy?”

  Martin smiled. “Nice try, Sheriff. But that isn’t what happened. As I said, I remember, all of it. Clear as a bell.”

  Sheriff Harms rose, spread his palms on the desktop. “You were six years old when your mama died, Austin, a hysterical little boy who couldn’t even say who he was or where he was. What you think you remember, Austin, it’s all from your child’s imagination.”

  “That’s another good try, Sheriff.”

  “Nope, there’s nothing for you to remember, but here you are, standing here in front of me in my office, all straight and defiant. Sometimes there’s just no rhyme nor reason to life, is there? Hey, sometimes there is no big, bad wolf.”

  “And sometimes there is. That’s what you are, Sheriff. You murdered my mother.”

  Sheriff Harms pulled the gun out of its holster. “You’re not threatening an officer of the law, are you, Austin? Now, it isn’t that I’m not glad to see you, but it’s time for you to go away now. Don’t come back.”

  “I saw you plunge the knife into her chest. It’s as clear as anything now.”

  “What do you want, Austin?”

  “The truth. That’s all.”

  “You want the truth, do you? I wonder, are you devious enough to be wearing a wire, you little pissant?”

  He laid his gun on the desktop, walked to Martin, jerked open his coat, and patted him down. No wire. And no gun. “Why are you really here, boy?”

  “I want the truth, just like I said. I want to know why you did it.”

  Sheriff Harms stepped back, picked up his gun, and held it loosely in his hand.

  Martin said, “I know you won’t kill me, at least not here. In case you’re tempted, though, my wife is down at the Blue Bird Café, expecting me in an hour. Nope, you can’t kill me here, right in your office.”

  “Me kill you? Nah, I like to have my gun handy when I’m with people I don’t trust, keeps them hone
st. No matter what you think you remember, I didn’t do anything wrong. Now, why don’t you get out of here.”

  Martin said, “I know you killed my mother. I also know there’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not stupid. A little boy’s testimony about something that happened over thirty years ago against the revered Sheriff of Blessed Creek—who would pay any attention?”

  “There you go again, making accusations.” He brought his gun up, aimed it at Martin’s head. “You know, I could take you out and your wife too, if you screwed with me.”

  “I have no intention of screwing with you, Sheriff.”

  Sheriff Harms took a step back, leaned against his desk, the gun still in his hand. “Like you said, Austin, no one would pay any attention to you if you shot off your mouth. But if you did, it would really piss me off. I’ll bet you it’d piss me off enough to come after you and kill you dead. You know that, don’t you, Austin?”

  “Is there anything you’d flinch from doing, Sheriff?”

  “I’m a lawman, and I’ve had the guts for thirty years to keep myself and this town safe from people like you. Don’t you think to fuck with that, Austin.”

  “I’m asking you to tell me why you killed my mother.”

  Sheriff Harms walked to the door, opened it, looked up and down Main Street. A few people he’d known for years, but not a stranger in sight. He turned, shut the door, locked it. He leaned once more against his desk and grinned. “You know, it’s just the two of us here. All my deputies are out patrolling. Grace is having her lunch.”

  “Then tell me the truth. You said it wouldn’t matter.”

  “You want the truth? All right. Why the hell not? You really surprised your daddy.”

  “My father? Don’t you try to bring my father into this. It was you I saw.”

  The sheriff laughed. “You really believe that? You lived another twelve years with your mama’s murderer, at least with the guy who paid for it. Don’t be stupid, Austin, of course your daddy was in on it. You know what else? After he left, Townsend called me once a week, told me how you didn’t have a clue, not even an inkling of what had happened, didn’t even seem to remember your mother, didn’t seem to care. I stewed over it, worried about it, but after a few years, ended up letting it go.