Phyllis thought about the conversation she intended to have with Melissa and came to a decision.
“Why don’t you just stay here and keep up with the game?” she suggested.
“You said you wanted some company.”
“Yes, but how often do the Cowboys actually make a comeback these days?” She smiled to take any sting out of the words.
“All right, but roll the window down so that if you need me you can just holler.”
Phyllis held the button down to lower the driver’s side window and then got out of the Lincoln to meet Melissa.
The first thing Phyllis asked was, “How’s Julie doing?”
“As well as can be expected, I suppose,” Melissa replied with a shrug. “I talked to her yesterday evening after I got back to the hotel. Your lawyer friend Mr. D’Angelo had been there to see her, and I think that raised her spirits some. He strikes me as a fighter.”
“He is,” Phyllis said. “He does everything in his power to help his clients.”
“I’m glad to hear that.”
“Is there anything going on with the others in the group?”
“Well, Jason and Deanne are getting a divorce. I don’t think that comes as a surprise to anybody. Deanne won’t have any trouble moving on. Jason seems to think that what he’s got with Teddy Demming is permanent, but I don’t expect that to happen. Girls fall for those artistic types, you know, but it hardly ever lasts because they’re such high maintenance.”
Phyllis shook her head and said, “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I’ve never been around an artistic type . . . other than Eve, of course.”
“And none of her marriages lasted, did they? Don’t I remember reading that she’s been married several times?”
“That’s true,” Phyllis said. She didn’t explain that various tragedies, including murder, had brought about the end of Eve’s marriages. Her being artistic enough to write a novel hadn’t had anything to do with it.
While they were talking, Phyllis and Melissa had been walking along one of the concrete paths toward the log cabin with the dogtrot where Lawrence Fremont’s body had been found. When they reached it, Phyllis said, “You told me you had some new ideas about the murder . . .”
“That’s right. I think I’ve figured out how Lawrence’s body got down here.” She pointed. “There’s the answer to that, right there.”
Melissa’s finger was aimed at a portable toilet about twenty feet away.
Chapter 23
At least a dozen of the green portable toilets had been brought in for the festival, and the company that provided them wouldn’t pick them up until Monday. Phyllis frowned as she looked at the one nearby that Melissa indicated.
“Are you saying that the body was hidden in the toilet first and then put in the dogtrot later?”
“No, I’m saying Lawrence walked into that thing—”
“With the scarecrow outfit in a bag or box or something,” Phyllis broke in as the scenario abruptly came into focus in her mind. “He was still alive then, and he dressed himself as the scarecrow, walked out, and sat down in the dogtrot before the cyanide he consumed in the motor home had had time to kill him!”
“That’s the way I figure it. Do you know why he did that?”
“He was going to play a practical joke on you and Julie. He thought he would wait until the camera was rolling and the two of you approached what you thought was a prop, and then he’d jump up and yell and scare you half to death. It would all be caught on film, too. That was the kind of prank he liked to pull, wasn’t it?”
“It sure was. He’d waste half an hour of everybody’s time like that, then chew somebody out if they delayed anything thirty seconds. He was a complicated guy. A real jerk, mostly, but a complicated one.” Melissa shook her head and went on in an admiring tone, “You really figured out that scarecrow business in a hurry once it started to click, didn’t you?”
“That’s the way it tends to work with me,” Phyllis admitted. “It’s like finding the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle, or pulling on one thread and having everything unravel.”
“Those are opposite processes, but I get your meaning.”
“It’s like yesterday evening, when I was looking at things on-line about Lawrence Fremont and his films, and I saw something that seemed to me like it ought to explain everything about the entire case, but I never could quite put my finger on . . . what . . . it was . . .”
She stared at Melissa as her voice trailed off. Melissa frowned, cocked her head slightly to the side, and asked, “Phyllis, what’s wrong?”
“Annie Richmond,” Phyllis said.
Melissa’s expression changed. Her puzzled frown went away, replaced by stony lines of determination.
“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?” she said.
“Oh, I knew yesterday you were the only one who could have killed Lawrence Fremont,” Phyllis said as her heart started to pound. She could tell from the look in Melissa’s eyes that there was no point in trying to lie. They understood each other too well, even though they had been acquainted for only a short time. She went on, “What I hadn’t figured out until just now was why you killed him. Annie Richmond is your daughter, isn’t she? I knew she reminded me of someone when I saw her picture and read that she’d been cast to play the young paralegal in The Bancroft Inheritance, but it never struck me who she looked like until now.”
“She’s my daughter, all right,” Melissa admitted, “but she doesn’t know it. I gave her up for adoption when she was born. Hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I figured she’d be better off.”
“Why?” Phyllis asked, driven to understand, even under these potentially dangerous circumstances. She glanced toward the parking lot where Sam was waiting in the car. So close, but he had no way of knowing what was going on down here. “There were plenty of single mothers by then. An unmarried woman raising a child didn’t have anywhere near the same sort of stigma it once did.”
“Because I knew I couldn’t be a good mom to her and keep building my career! I had a chance at a part in a picture that was going to film in Rome. I wanted that, and the next part, and the one after that . . .”
“So you were better off without a baby.” Phyllis knew it was a cruel thing to say, but she wasn’t that worried right now about sparing Melissa Keller’s feelings.
“I did what I had to,” Melissa snapped, “but when the time came, I was a good mom. I protected my daughter.”
“By killing Lawrence Fremont.”
“You’ve seen her! Pictures of her, anyway. You know Lawrence would have gone after her. She’s young and ambitious, she would have given in. I couldn’t allow even a chance of that happening—”
“Because Lawrence Fremont is her father,” Phyllis said as the last of it clicked into place.
“I never told him,” Melissa said. “Not that he would have given a damn if I did. Lawrence never cared about anybody but himself. Don’t you get it, Phyllis? He deserved to die. Not just for what he might do to Annie, but for all the terrible things he’s already done. The way he’s treated people over the years. He just wasn’t a good man.”
“That doesn’t mean you can get away with killing him.”
“I think it does,” Melissa said, and she took a gun out of her jacket pocket.
Phyllis had known she was coming to the park to meet with a killer. That was why she had accepted Sam’s offer to come with her. But she’d never intended to reveal that knowledge to Melissa. The sudden realization that the actress whose picture she had seen on-line was really Melissa’s daughter had surprised it out of her. But even then, even knowing that the secret was out, she hadn’t been terribly afraid of Melissa. Melissa had poisoned Fremont and gone about it in an elaborate way. Phyllis certainly didn’t plan to eat anything Melissa might offer her.
Now it seemed that Melissa was willing to resort to more direct methods of accomplishing her goals, too.
“You can’t shoot me,” Phyllis said as she tried not to sta
re at the small, black, semi-automatic pistol.
“I don’t want to,” Melissa said. “I don’t suppose you’d give me your word you’ll never say anything about this?”
“I can’t do that. And I can’t believe you’d let a good friend like Julie be sent to prison for something you did.”
Melissa made a face. “That was never part of the plan. I figured with as many suspects as there would be, as many people as Lawrence had harmed or just rubbed the wrong way, the police would never solve his murder. I never expected them to try to pin it on Julie, and for sure not this fast.” She shrugged. “But the DNA evidence will clear her. They won’t be able to prove she ever actually handled the slice of pie the poison was in, because she didn’t, and I’ve seen enough of Jimmy D’Angelo already to know that he’ll be able to sell the jury on reasonable doubt. Julie won’t go to prison.”
“But her name won’t actually be cleared, either, so she’ll always have that shadow of suspicion hanging over her.” Phyllis paused. “Unless the DNA evidence is going to convict you.”
“Don’t hold your breath waiting for that,” Melissa snapped. “I was careful when I—” She stopped short.
“When you took the last slice of pie from my house Friday night?” Phyllis asked. “That’s what you started to say, isn’t it? What did you do, wrap it up in some plastic wrap you found in the cabinet, or something like that?”
“How in the world do you know that? You said you solved the case yesterday. How? How could you have known any of it?”
“Pie crust,” Phyllis said. “The edges of the one I brought here yesterday were crimped differently than the one I baked for our dinner Friday. All that pie was eaten except for one slice . . . that you offered to take into the kitchen for me. Then later when I saw it was gone, I figured you must have given in to temptation and eaten it after all.”
“I gave into temptation, all right. As soon as I saw how much Lawrence liked it, I realized I could slip him the poison that way. I’m still not sure how you figured it out, though.”
“Fremont left a little piece of the crust,” Phyllis explained. “Detective Largo showed me a picture of it yesterday. As soon as I saw it and realized it came from the pie I baked Friday, I knew you were the only one who could have taken it and used it as a murder weapon. And now I know why you did it. But the business about the scarecrow and the practical joke . . . that still baffles me.”
“Phyllis Newsom, the brilliant detective! The crime-busting grandma! And I fooled you, didn’t I” Melissa laughed, but it wasn’t a particularly pleasant sound. “I knew if I was going to get away with it, I’d really have to muddy the waters. That’s why I suggested the joke to Lawrence. I knew he’d think it was funny. I was in on it, you see. He thought he was just going to scare Julie. So he ate the pie when I brought it to him. He was looking over the script and was so distracted he never even noticed anything different about it. Then he took the scarecrow outfit in a bag, like you said, and changed over there in the portable toilet, and then it just took him a second to walk into the dogtrot and sit down. That was when the cyanide hit him.” She shook her head. “I wish I could have been there to see the expression on his face.”
The wheels of Phyllis’s brain were still turning. She said, “After that, you volunteered to ‘help’ me solve the case, but only so you could keep feeding me different suspects, like Earl Thorpe and Teddy Demming and Mr. Sammons. You thought you’d keep me off-balance that way and make sure I never figured out what really happened. It worked, too.”
“But only for forty-eight hours,” Melissa said with a shake of her head. “Actually just twenty-four, since you said you knew yesterday I killed him. Damn, Phyllis, you really are as good as your reputation. I believed I could outwit you, though. I told you, I studied you. I know how to get into the characters I play. I figured I could make Peggy Nelson just as good or better than Phyllis Newsom.”
Phyllis realized then that Melissa wasn’t completely right in the head. She said, “This is just a game to you.”
“No. Not a game. Not where my daughter is concerned. But the rest of it . . . recreating that earlier murder, matching wits with you, running rings around the cops . . . I’ve got to admit, it was a pretty good acting exercise.”
“You fooled me into thinking you were actually a decent human being,” Phyllis said. She didn’t even try to keep the note of bitterness out of her voice.
“That’s why they call it acting,” Melissa said coldly as she lifted the gun a little more. “Now walk on down to the lake.”
Phyllis was scared, no doubt about it, but she wasn’t going to cooperate with a killer. People who tried to do that almost always wound up dead themselves. Instead she asked, “What are you going to do?”
“It’s a real shame, but after I leave here, you’re going to fall in that lake and drown. A tragedy that will keep Lawrence’s murder from ever being solved. I know I can’t trust you to keep our little secret.”
“I’m not going to just let you drown me.”
“They say it’s an easy way to die. Easier than cyanide, anyway. But I will shoot you if I have to.”
“People know I was meeting you here.” She didn’t say anything about Sam being in the car. Maybe Melissa hadn’t noticed him . . . Maybe he would look this way and see the gun . . .
Phyllis’s heart sank a little when she realized that she and Melissa had moved around enough that the corner of the cabin obstructed most of the view from the parking lot. Sam might notice what was going on, but there was a better chance that he wouldn’t.
“And maybe I’ll be a suspect. But it’s more likely the cops will think somebody came along and robbed and killed you. After all . . .” Melissa smiled. “You and I are friends, right? I’d never hurt you. And there won’t be anybody smart enough to see the truth—”
A rush of footsteps came from the dogtrot behind them. Melissa started to turn, but before she could, a burly figure slammed into her from behind with enough force to send her flying off her feet. The pistol sailed out of her hand as she crashed heavily to the ground.
Phyllis moved fast, running to where the gun landed and snatching it up. She held it in both hands and pointed it at Melissa. She expected to see Sam, coming to help her as he had numerous times in the past, but instead it was Earl Thorpe who loomed over the fallen actress, breathing hard from exertion and probably emotion, too.
“Do you want me to . . . take the gun . . . Mrs. Newsom?” he asked.
“I’ve got it,” Phyllis said. “You should call 911, Mr. Thorpe, and then you should tell me what you’re doing here.” She smiled faintly. “Although I’m very glad that you showed up when you did.”
Chapter 24
“Deus ex machina,” Eve said.
“What?” Carolyn asked.
“It translates from the Latin as ‘god from the machine’, but it’s actually a literary term for the plot technique where some unforeseen character or incident pops up at the end to totally change things. Some people regard it as a cheat, but I’m not sure it actually is, because goodness, things that we don’t foresee happen all the time in real life, don’t they? And if art is going to properly reflect reality, then such things could occur sometimes in fiction, too, couldn’t they?”
The five of them—Phyllis, Sam, Carolyn, Eve, and Ronnie—were sitting in the living room Sunday evening, after Phyllis had spent several hours being questioned by Detective Isabel Largo and Chief Ralph Whitmire. The district attorney had shown up fairly late in the conversation, and after being filled in, he had assured Phyllis that first thing Monday morning, he would file a motion to have all charges against Julie Cordell dismissed. He’d practically been gritting his teeth when he said it, but after looking at the video Earl Thorpe had recorded on his phone from where he was hiding just around the corner of the dogtrot, there hadn’t been any other choice.
“Well, Earl had a good reason for being there,” Phyllis said in response to Eve’s comment. “He was arou
nd on the other side of the lake figuring out how to set up some shots from that perspective when the filming started again. He saw Melissa and me, even though we never noticed him, and came around the lake to talk to us. But then he saw her pointing the gun at me and heard what she was saying, and luckily he had the presence of mind to record the rest of the conversation.”
“And the bulk to bowl her over and knock the gun out of her hand,” Carolyn said.
“Yes, that certainly was lucky for me.”
“What gets me,” Sam said, “is how I never even noticed what was goin’ on, all because I was payin’ attention to some danged old football score.” “You couldn’t have known. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I didn’t plan on letting her know that I’d figured it out. That was just an unfortunate slip on my part, possibly because I’d been so frustrated about not being able to pin down what was bothering me. I know now it was the resemblance between Melissa and this Annie Richmond.”
“Who’s nowhere near Weatherford and never has been, as far as we know,” Eve pointed out. “That’s why I said it reminded me of a deus ex machina. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, the ancient Greeks used it all the time in their plays, and those are classics.”
Carolyn said, “Yes, because they’re full of murder and perversion and appeal to people’s baser instincts.”
“What are they gonna do about the movie now?” Sam asked. “I can see how they might be able to replace the director, but Melissa’s the star and she’s locked up.”
“And half crazy, to boot,” Carolyn added with a snort.
“I imagine they’ll have to cancel it, or at least postpone production for a while,” Phyllis said. “They’re bound to have some footage without Melissa in it that they could use if they recast her part.” She looked over at Eve. “Does this affect how much you get paid?”
“Not really, at least not yet. I’ve already been paid for the rights. I’m supposed to get a tiny percentage of the profits, but from what I’ve been told, the studios and the production companies have such creative accounting departments that technically it’ll never make much of a profit, if any. So that’s not really a consideration. However . . .”
Death Bakes a Pecan Pie Page 18
