Point Blank

by Catherine Coulter

  “Do you know where she lives?” Dix asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe Uncle Chappy knows, but I wouldn’t count on him to tell you anything close to the truth. All I remember is Uncle Chappy didn’t like my mother. I guess my dad didn’t either, since he divorced her.”

  Savich said abruptly, “Did you know your father was sleeping with Erin Bushnell?”

  She was shocked and clearly appalled. She was either a remarkable actress or this really was news to her. “That’s a stupid lie.” She jumped to her feet, her palms flat on the table. “Why would you say such a thing? It’s ridiculous. Sure he slept with Helen, but she was closer to his age. A student? Erin Bushnell? No way.”

  Savich said, “It’s true, Marian. Ginger Stanford knew about it, and so did Helen Rafferty.”

  “Helen told you that? Are you sure, Dix? Erin was much younger than I am, for goodness sake. She’s Sam’s age. No, I can’t accept that, I simply can’t.”

  “You’re going to have to accept it,” Dix said. “Helen told us everything. What I find interesting is that you knew all about your father’s affair with Helen Rafferty, but you didn’t know about Erin Bushnell.”

  Marian slowly shook her head. “Not a clue. On the other hand, I doubt my dad knows about Sam Moraga. But for heaven’s sake, he’s my father!”

  Dix said, “Sam Moraga was really upset about Helen’s murder, more so than I thought a student would be about the death of an administrative assistant. Why?”

  She shrugged. “Maybe he thought of her as his mother, too, I don’t know. We never spoke about her. Actually, it was Helen who introduced Sam to me. He was in one of my music theory classes, but I hadn’t really paid much attention to him. Then at one of those interminable professor and student get-togethers my father insists on throwing every couple of months, she introduced us.”

  “Does anyone know about Sam?”

  She shook her head at Dix, worried at a fingernail. “We’re discreet.” She finished her tea. “If Sam hadn’t been at my house, you wouldn’t have known I was anything but the celibate everyone believes me to be. There were a couple of others before Sam, both of them out in the world now. My father called me a shriveled-up prude last year. I remember I’d gotten only two hours’ sleep the night before, so I simply laughed at him. He couldn’t understand that laugh and I didn’t enlighten him.” Her voice turned bitter and low. “Maybe I should have told him. It looks like we could have compared notes. We make quite a pair, don’t we?”

  Dix saw the tears in her eyes, and waited for her to recover. He’d known her since he and Christie got married, and yet . . . He shook his head. Who ever really knew what another person was about?

  Marian looked at the rest of them, her lips twisted at their carefully expressionless faces. “Were there others? Others besides Erin Bushnell?”

  Dix said, “You need to talk to your father about that, Marian. We’re going over to see him now. If you think of anything else, give me a call right away. I’ve got the same cell number.”

  “Is there some sort of serial killer on the loose here, Dix?”

  “What we’re thinking is that whoever tried to kill Ruth probably killed Erin Bushnell, and that opened Pandora’s box. He may be trying to do damage control.”

  “But why Helen? Does that make any sense to you?”

  Dix said, “Tying it together will be the key to all of this.”

  Marian walked to the window, turned, and looked back at them. “So much pain to bear now. I suppose I’ll have to deal with Sam’s pain, too. How can he possibly have loved her as much as I did? I wonder, Dix. Do you think my father cared at all?”

  “Yes, Marian. I think he did.”

  CHAPTER 24

  DIX CALLED THE deputy assigned to follow Gordon Holcombe when he left Tara.

  “Where is he, B.B.?”

  “Weirdest thing, Sheriff. When Dr. Holcombe left Tara, I thought he was going to Stanislaus, then he seemed to change his mind. He drove straight out to the Coon Hollow Bar. He’s been in there nearly two hours. You told me I shouldn’t try to keep out of sight and I didn’t. He knew I was following him, and it didn’t seem to bother him. Right now I’m tucked in a mess of pine trees across the street.”

  Dix told him to stay put, they’d be there shortly. He punched off his cell. “Gordon calls this place his sanctuary. It’s a pre-World War Two relic, all weathered wood, dark glass in the windows, and a rutted parking lot in front.”

  Coon Hollow Bar was only a mile or so out of Maestro.

  “It looks like a treat,” Sherlock said, admiring the old dark charm of the place. “A good number of customers,” she added, waving at four other cars in the parking lot.

  There was no sunlight inside Coon Hollow. It smelled of beer and salty pretzels and cigarettes. There was one glowing sign for Bud Light above the bathroom door on the far wall. Gordon Holcombe was bellied up at the bar, head down, shoulders hunched. There were maybe six other folks at the bar, either talking in low voices or as silent as Gordon.

  Gordon glanced up when the front door opened and sunlight poured in. He watched the four of them approach. Fact is, Ruth thought, he didn’t look the least bit interested in anything except the drink he was sloshing around in his glass.

  “Gordon,” Dix said.

  Gordon glanced at Dix briefly before looking back down. “Since you’re all cops, I doubt you know what this is.” He held up the glass, swirled the scotch around. “This is The Macallan, Highland scotch whiskey, eighteen years old. It’s considered the Rolls-Royce of single malts. Our barkeep’s father orders it special for me. My last bottle is low so I can’t offer you any. Dix, if you find out who murdered Helen, I’ll buy you a bottle of The Macallan for Christmas. Any of you want a beer?”

  “No, Gordon.”

  “Then perhaps, Dix, you can tell me why you’ve got B.B. following me? He’s sitting in his cruiser right across the street. Afraid I was going to take off since I’m so damned guilty?”

  Dix said, “Tell us what Helen said to you when she called you last night.”

  “Helen called me often.”

  “Last night, Gordon, or do you want me to get a warrant for the phone records?”

  Ruth thought she saw Gordon flinch, and then he stared down into his glass again and swished the scotch around, watching it film the sides of the glass.

  “All right, so she called me. I didn’t tell you in front of Chappy. He would have laughed his head off while promising to visit me in jail. He’d also volunteer to stick me with a lethal injection.”

  “Helen’s call, Gordon.”

  He suddenly looked old, and somehow smaller. He sighed so deeply it made him cough. “It was only a short phone call, Dix, nothing more. God in Heaven, I can’t believe she’s gone. There’s some maniac out there, some crazy man who hates me, who hates Stanislaus, who wants to destroy everything.”

  Ruth said, “How very odd, Dr. Holcombe. You believe it’s all about you, and no one else. Don’t you think that’s a rather narrow view? After all, you’re sitting here drinking your fine single malt scotch, quite alive, while Erin Bushnell, Walt McGuffey, and Helen Rafferty are dead.”

  Dr. Holcombe looked confused for a moment, then said, “Of course I care, dammit. I didn’t mean—Are you sure you don’t want something to drink?”

  Savich said, “No, thank you, Dr. Holcombe. Why don’t we all go over to that booth?”

  There were half a dozen ancient booths lining two sides of the room. The vinyl was slippery and cold, the cracks so large one could easily lose a wallet. Ruth allowed Dr. Holcombe to scoot in first, then essentially locked him in by sitting next to him on the outside. He didn’t appear to notice.

  “It’s going to start snowing soon,” he said into his glass. “I’m wondering when I leave here with all this scotch in me whether I’ll be able to get back to Stanislaus. You know the media are there, Dix. Soon our donors will be on the line, asking to talk to me. What am I going to tell them? That th
eir director is a murder suspect? I can’t even imagine Helen being gone, much less dead.” He raised pain-glazed eyes to Dix’s face. “She’s always been there for me, my guardian angel. After I left Tara, I was going to my office, but I couldn’t stand the thought of it. Helen wasn’t there, you see. You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t kill her.” He lowered his forehead to the table.

  Savich went to the bar and asked for four coffees and a cup of tea.

  “If that’s true, Gordon, you’d best start convincing me you didn’t. Tell us about Helen’s phone call.”

  “I want another drink first.”

  When Savich came back to the booth, he heard Dix say, “No more, Gordon. You need to stop with that stuff. Here’s Agent Savich with some coffee.”

  Savich handed him a cup. Gordon stared at it, gave a little shudder. He picked up his scotch glass, tipped it, but it was empty.

  “Talk to me, Gordon. Don’t even consider lying, or I’ll give Chappy a free pass to have a field day.”

  “All right. Helen was whispering on the phone—it was absurd, really, her whispering like that. She told me she was worried for me, that I had to be careful. She told me you and Agent Warnecki and the other two FBI agents were snooping around, asking her about our affair.”

  No one spoke: They simply waited. Gordon sipped at his coffee, unaware of what he was doing.

  Ruth finally said, “This is a nice quiet place, Dr. Holcombe. I can see how you could view it as a sort of sanctuary, a place where you can be by yourself, away from students and colleagues. Do you always come here alone?”

  “Sure, always alone, Agent Warnecki.”

  Dix asked him, “What else did Helen tell you, other than to be careful and that we’re snooping around?”

  “She said you told her that you knew about my relationship with Erin and some of the other students, that she’d already given you some names but you wanted all of them. She said she didn’t have a choice but to help you. She started crying, begging for my forgiveness.”

  There was only the soft sound of Dr. Holcombe’s palms rubbing the sides of his scotch glass.

  “That’s a pretty sturdy motive, Gordon,” Dix told him. “Your ex-lover spilled the beans, starting a scandal that might get you fired from your prestigious job, and giving parents an excellent reason to yank their kids out of Stanislaus. I could arrest you right this minute.”

  Gordon nearly knocked over his glass. He grabbed it, righted it. His breath was coming hard and fast. “I didn’t do it, Dix, I swear to you. I couldn’t kill Helen. I loved her, in my way.”

  “What is your way, sir?” Ruth asked.

  “She was my anchor. She knew people, understood them in ways I couldn’t begin to; she gave me comfort and advice. I’ll never forget how I was interested in this viola student, and Helen told me she wasn’t stable, that she’d cause scenes and probably hurt me, so I stayed away from her. A couple of months later, she accused a boy from town of rape.”

  “I remember that,” Dix said. “Kenny Pollard, but he had a rock-solid alibi. Seems clear to me now, Gordon, that Helen actually helped you seduce your own students.”

  He shook his head back and forth, obviously shaken.

  “When you realized she had told us about you, you killed Helen for revenge, didn’t you? That, and you couldn’t stand the world knowing you’re a philandering old fool.” Savich’s voice was so hard, so brutal that Gordon froze like a deer in headlights. Savich sat forward, grabbed Gordon’s wrist and squeezed. “You will tell me the truth, you perverted old man. Why did you kill Erin Bushnell? Did she of all the music students see through you? Did she threaten to tell the world what you are, want to see you humiliated and run off campus, stripped of your power and prestige?”

  Suddenly, the man who’d hunched over his drink, desperate and pleading, was gone. In his place was Dr. Gordon Holcombe, director of Stanislaus, back in all his dignity, his patrician face set in arrogant lines again. He looked at each of them in turn with disdain and a superior’s patience. “I will tell you the truth about Erin. I first became involved with her on Halloween when she showed up at my house to trick-or-treat, dressed like Titania from Midsummer Night’s Dream. She called me her Oberon later that night.”

  The expression on Ruth’s face never changed, although Dix fancied he saw her shudder.

  “Erin was the most talented violinist I’ve heard in a very long time. Gloria Stanford was convinced she’d be known the world over someday. She had glorious technique, could make you weep listening to her play. The three violin sonatas composed for Joseph Joachim by Brahms—she was transcendent. I was blessed by her company, I reveled in it. But I did not kill her, there was no reason. I didn’t kill Helen Rafferty, either. I loved both of them, in different ways.

  “Whatever you may believe about my personal ethics and behavior, none of it concerns you unless I did something criminal, which I did not. Dix, you are the sheriff of Maestro. Everyone says we are lucky to have you. Well, prove it. Find out for all of us who killed two citizens of our town in under a week.”

  “You forgot Walt McGuffey, that kind old man who never harmed a soul in his life.”

  “I heard about him. You want to lay the old man’s death at my door, too? Fact is, I didn’t know him well, he meant nothing to me. Why would I kill him?”

  “His house is on the way to Lone Tree Hill and the other entrance to Winkel’s Cave. Ruth’s car was hidden in his shed. That’s why someone murdered him.”

  “I don’t know anything about her car! I haven’t seen Walt in months.”

  Dix said, “When did you last see Erin alive?”

  “On Thursday afternoon, at Stanislaus. She was working hard rehearsing for the upcoming concert, and we had no plans to see each other over the weekend.”

  “But you did see her on Friday, didn’t you, Gordon? You took her to Winkel’s Cave, to murder her.”

  Gordon looked like he might faint. He paled, and his eyes nearly rolled back in his head. Ruth stuck her coffee cup under his nose. “Drink.”

  Gordon was babbling now, waving his hands at them like a drunk conductor. “I didn’t, really, there’s no way I could do anything like that. I didn’t—”

  Dix splayed his hands on his seat cushion and leaned toward his uncle. “Let me tell you what you’re going to do for us, Gordon. You’re going to give us written permission to search your home, your office, and your studio. If you cooperate, we’ll do it discreetly as part of the investigation. If not, we’ll get search warrants and post flyers on every tree on campus about the women you slept with, then subpoena each of them to come back to Stanislaus and talk to us—and the board of directors.

  “You know now that you can’t expect to keep your affair with Erin under wraps for long, but they might let you keep your job, or help you get another one somewhere, if you tell them yourself. Think about it.

  “And you’re going to tell us all about your other affairs—the names of the students and how we can reach them. We can turn the records at Stanislaus upside down to find them if we have to. Don’t make us do that, Gordon.”

  Ruth pulled out a pen and a small notebook. “All right, I’m ready, Dr. Holcombe. Tell us about your talented Lolitas.”

  “It wasn’t like that! You make them sound like teenagers, and they weren’t. They were all accomplished musicians. No, it was never like that. I loved all of them, in their time.”

  “In their time,” Savich repeated slowly, his eyes steady on Gordon’s face. “Who lasted longest, Dr. Holcombe?”

  Gordon froze. “I don’t want to talk about this. Dix, make them stop. I haven’t done anything.”

  “Ruth has her pen ready, Gordon. Give her names. Who was before Erin Bushnell?”

  There was a moment of tense silence. Gordon drew in a deep breath and said to Ruth, “Before Erin, there was Lucy Hendler, pianist, lovely long reach, incredible technique and passion, perfect pitch.”

  A litany of attributes, nothing about Lucy Hendler t
he woman, the individual. “What were the dates?”

  “What do you mean, dates?”

  Ruth said, “Dr. Holcombe, surely Lucy wasn’t all that long ago.”

  “She performed Scarlatti exquisitely in a recital a year ago February. She got a standing ovation, difficult to do, let me tell you, in an audience of accomplished musicians. She told me later she actually hated Scarlatti, that he was dated and boring, far too predictable. I thought it amusing and sweet, her lack of historical context. I mean, how could anyone dismiss Domenico Scarlatti, for God’s sake? She was only twenty-one. What did she know?”

  Ruth said, “So you booted her because she wasn’t a Scarlatti aficionada?”

  “No, of course not. Our relationship deepened. I remember we got a little cross with each other before she graduated. It was May Day and we had a Maypole on campus. I thought it would be lovely if we had a choral group seated around the Maypole singing Irish folk songs, and other students could dance around the pole, dressed up in peasant costumes. She laughed at me. Can you imagine that?”

  “Where is Lucy Hendler, Dr. Holcombe?”

  “She graduated in June. She was accepted into our performing graduate program, but she didn’t stay.”

  “Let me guess, she changed her mind after the Maypole.”

  “No, I’m sure that had nothing to do with her decision to leave Stanislaus. She had a friend up in New York she went to visit and decided to stay. Last I heard she was enrolled at Juilliard.”

  Ruth nodded. “And do you feel responsible for Stanislaus losing a graduate student?”

  Dix kept his mouth shut. Ruth was handling this like a pro, reeling Gordon in, getting him to spill information Dix doubted he’d ever be able to get out of him.

  Gordon went on to tell them about Lindsey Farland, a student about two and a half years ago, a soprano with incredible range he met when she sang the role of Cio-Cio-San, the betrayed young wife in Madama Butterfly. She hardly looked the part, since she was black, but when he heard her sing and she hit the high C in “Un bel dì,” he fell in love.

  “That is one of my favorite arias,” Ruth said, and everyone at the table knew she meant it. She paused, then asked, “Where is Lindsey now?”