Blood Will Tell

by Mary Bowers

  So they hemmed and hawed over him for a while and screamed at him a little, but in the end he got a quick bench trial, a fine and lots of community service. I think he’d rather have done jail time. He became ever more lofty and noble as the trial went on. Sydney Carton on his way to the guillotine. I had to laugh when I heard what his community service was going to be: tutoring failing history students at the local high schools. Like he said about that article he’d been working on, he would have paid them to do it.

  Trixie, as usual, took over, as soon as everyone was seated. “So what was all that rigmarole about ropes hanging down from the balcony and daggers on the beach? Did Kip do all that? And why?”

  Willa had explained it in her final note, exonerating Kip of the murder and explaining the cover-up. The three of us who had found Willa’s body had never admitted we knew what was in the note, or that we had a copy. Some of the information in it had been leaked to the press, but nobody seemed to know what to believe. Ed and Michael left it to me, and I began to explain, cautiously.

  “Kip had come here in the first place to keep an eye on Willa. By then, he knew she was his half-sister, and as much as you can in a situation like that, he loved her. And he could see her falling apart under the pressure from Harriet. He was especially on guard after the stunt Harriet pulled at the Mystery Dinner. He kept a watch after Harriet got back from the hospital that night, expecting her to go to Willa’s house and harass her, or even plead with her to let her stay. He intended to put a stop to it if she did.”

  “He told me he had decided it was about time they knew they were related,” Linda said in a tired voice. “If he saw Harriet going to Willa’s house that night, he was going to go do it then. Otherwise, he was going to tell them both the next day.”

  I nodded. “So he watched. After Harriet’s bedroom light went off, he tried to turn in, but he couldn’t sleep. Finally, he got up again to have another look across the street and he saw Willa coming out of Harriet’s house. He knew then that something was really wrong. Harriet might be bothering Willa, but not the other way around. When he got outside to Willa, she was in a daze, and she still had the bloody knife in her hand. She tried to just walk away from him, but he stopped her and told her that he was her brother. He told her enough to make her believe him, and she was so stunned she just let him take charge. He told her she could trust him, that he was going to help her. And she let him. He took her inside her house and made her drop the knife into a plastic bag, told her to shower carefully, wash her clothing in bleach, and just go to bed. He’d take care of everything. She was so out of it by that time she just did what he told her to do and didn’t ask questions.”

  “But he kept the bloody knife with her fingerprints on it,” Dan said. “Was he planning on using it to exonerate himself, if it came to that?”

  “It must have been in the back of his mind, I suppose,” I said. “He claims there was no time for him to really make a plan, and he was going to just wait and see. He checked to make sure that Harriet was truly beyond help, which she was. Then he went into action, locking away the evidence where he thought it wouldn’t be found, even if they searched his house. He was really hoping they’d never even suspect Willa.

  “But there was still Sherman to consider. Kip couldn’t let an innocent man take the blame. And so, the cover-up. He went around the house and unlocked all the doors and windows, then attached a rope to the balcony, knowing a woman like Willa could never climb down it and she’d be eliminated as a suspect. He had a knife from his own collection with him, and he planted it on the beach, climbing over the dune to do it so he would avoid Dan’s security camera. It was the best he could do without having time to plan anything better. He wanted to protect Willa and he didn’t want to incriminate Sherman, so he just did his best to create a lot of confusion. Then he sat back and waited, ready to take Willa and run if the police got too close.”

  “Willa would never have gone with him,” Ed said.

  “No. She didn’t tell him so – Willa was never ungrateful – but she wouldn’t have left Santorini. She had decided that she needed to pay for her crime with her life, but she wouldn’t kill herself until I had her check in the bank. It was a point of honor with her, and it became a fixation. Kip was frantic, but he couldn’t do anything with her. So he waited, hoping the murder would never be solved. Or there would be time for them to flee.

  “Then the police took him by surprise. When they did go into his house with a search warrant, he counted on them not figuring out that his desk had a secret compartment. When that was exposed, he did the only thing he could do – he decided to take the fall himself, and leave Willa free.”

  “She’d never have stood for that,” Ed said.

  “I know. We all know that. But Kip lives his life as if he were the hero of an Errol Flynn movie. It’s how his mind works. That’s why he acted out that dramatic scene in the driveway for us, remember, Trixie? Where he did a pantomime of the murderer striking? He wanted us to suspect him, and not even think of Willa as a suspect. Of course, once he knew that Willa was dead, there was no point in heroics anymore. He told the investigators exactly what happened and why he’d done what he’d done. His story tracked with Willa’s letter exactly, and the physical evidence proved he was telling the truth.”

  Gretel had been quiet and detached all this time. Now she said, almost to herself, “I told her to throw Miss Frieda’s pills away. I should have done it myself. But I told her to get rid of them and the next time I went in, they were gone, so I thought she’d taken care of it.”

  “No,” I said. “She must have kept them. The prescription bottles were in the bathroom, with Frieda’s name on the labels. Willa had taken everything that was left in them, but all she knew was that they were addictive and dangerous. She wasn’t sure she’d . . . die quickly enough. She might even survive. So she brought a knife with her, just to be sure, once the pills began to dull the pain.”

  “The hand of Frieda,” Gretel said.

  Ed’s head turned sharply toward her, and I tried to stare her into silence. Nobody knew what the note had said about Frieda being in the bed, waiting for Willa, but I suppose it wasn’t too big of a leap for Gretel.

  “The hand of Frieda gave her those pills,” Gretel went on, “and took hold of that knife and slashed her wrists.”

  “That’s enough!” Trixie cried. “We all know what happened. There’s no need to talk about it like that.”

  Gretel, eyes downcast, didn’t respond.

  After a moment, Dan said something nobody had thought of before then – not even me. “Willa made a point of seeing each of us before she went to Frieda’s house. Did you notice? We could go for days without seeing her, but that morning, most of us saw her, one way or another. She said her last thanks to Taylor as she was leaving her house. She saw me, earlier, as I was on my way to the beach. Trixie, you said she dropped in on you that morning, early?”

  Trixie nodded.

  “Was she in the habit of doing that?”

  “No,” Trixie said. “First time. But after I’d stayed in her house with her a couple of nights, I didn’t really wonder about it. I thought she just wanted to show me she was okay. And you’re right – she thanked me, too.”

  “And she came to my house with Taylor,” Carr said, “told me hello and went in to spend some time with my uncle. We figured it was because she knew he’d been asking about her. What about you, Linda?”

  “I saw her right after you went off to the beach, Dan. I saw you going over the walkover just as I came out for the morning paper, and there she was with a bunch of flowers in her hand. She told me . . . oh, dear.” She stopped and misted over. “Sorry. It’s just that I didn’t think of it until just now . . . she told me to be sure to say hi to Kip when I saw him. There were a few cars at his house, and we figured the police were there, poking around again. She said she hoped the investigators would be done soon and leave us all in peace. She must have known exactly what was going
on.”

  “And she would have known she shouldn’t wait to say good-bye to him herself,” Dan said.

  Linda was nodding. “I suppose it was her way of having a final word for Kip. I don’t think she would have actually gone to him, though, even if the police hadn’t been there. He was the only one who knew what she’d done. She knew that if she made a point of visiting him, he might realize what she was planning to do and stop her. I thought it was odd at the time, but not really strange. Willa was always a little strange, wasn’t she? Shy. That’s what I mean. She didn’t go out of her way to socialize. What about you, Ed? Did she come to see you, too?”

  “No,” he said huskily. “I didn’t see her that morning until . . . it was too late.”

  There was an awkward silence, and Trixie kindly said, “You’re the only one she couldn’t face leaving.”

  He seemed so upset about it that nobody commented further. Trixie was probably right. Remembering the last line of Willa’s suicide note, I knew it. Her last thoughts on this earth were of Ed, and I could tell that Ed was thinking the same thing. When he looked up at me, I tried to smile.

  Linda recovered herself and said, “We all thought it was about money, but it wasn’t. It must have been pride. Harriet looked down on Willa, and kept telling people she wasn’t really a Strawbridge.”

  “No,” Dan told her, “it was self-preservation. She knew she could never defend herself against Harriet, and once she’d drained her dry, she would have abandoned her.”

  But I was shaking my head. Frankly, I was surprised to hear them talking like that. Of course, they didn’t know what was in the suicide letter, but if you considered Willa’s character, it was obvious.

  “No. Don’t you see?” I said. “It was loyalty. To us. She couldn’t defend herself against Harriet, but she defended us against her. That’s why she killed her the night of the Mystery Dinner. When Harriet pulled that stunt about the food allergy, she realized Harriet was going to file phony lawsuits against us, and she knew she was the only one who could stop it. She felt responsible that Harriet was even here. And Harriet was hungry for money. She was going to take it from anybody she could get it from. When Willa thought she was only after her own money, she didn’t mind. But when she realized she might victimize the rest of us, she ended it the only way she knew how. She’d never have been able to throw her out, change her mind or make her leave us alone. So she killed her. To protect us. She even went on living an extra week, just for the sake of a friend – me. She wanted to make sure her check to Orphans was in the bank. After that, her business in life was done.”

  There seemed to be nothing left to say, and they left soon after that. On his way out, Carr managed to get close to me and whisper, “About that envelope . . . .”

  “I’ll bring it over before we leave. It’s in my car. Unopened.”

  He nodded without making eye contact. “Thanks.”

  * * * * *

  “And now,” Ed said, once it was just him, Michael and me, “for the real questions.”

  “Uh oh,” I thought, “here we go.” And I was right.

  He began spinning a theory about why Bastet hadn’t interfered, hadn’t saved Willa or even prevented Harriet’s murder in the first place.

  I’d had a dream about that, during those muddled days after we found Willa’s body. I wasn’t going to tell Ed about it; I’d decided that as soon as I awoke from the dream, before the strange music that always came with her had even left my head. Instead, I gave her reasons to Ed as if I were just thinking them up.

  “Willa was guilty, after all. And gods and goddesses don’t make us do things, and they don’t try to stop us from doing things. What we do is up to us, and then we reap the rewards or suffer the consequences. Willa had made the decision to kill, and whatever your beliefs are, to kill is a sin. Afterwards, Willa’s soul was in sadness, and the only thing left for her was to be guided through the passage we all have to make. Being there for that was all that could be done for her.” I looked at Ed and hoped it would be enough for him. “Make sense?”

  “I suppose so. You figured this out for yourself? Or have you had an experience? A feeling.”

  “Call it an intuition.” And a prophesy, I thought. I suddenly remembered the dream I’d had at Willa’s house. The silent voice, saying “There will be pain.” Pain for me, and also for one other. I’d known even then that the other would be Ed. Maybe just letting him analyze what had happened through his paranormal lens would distract him from the pain of losing Willa.

  Michael stayed out of it.

  Ed was still puzzling it out, deeply intent, trying to make the facts fit his narrative. “And that’s why Bastet – the cat – stayed with Willa, I presume.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Now. What I really want to know is what you’re going to do with those houses you inherited. Are you going to move into the big one?”

  Willa’s Last Will and Testament had had very few bequests, but one of them had been to leave both her Santorini houses – her own and Frieda’s – to Ed, to live in or sell as he chose. She must have been absolutely sure he’d keep the big house, because she knew that he believed, as she did, that her dead aunt was still there. But, always considerate, she’d given him the option of selling. The only thing in the house that wasn’t to go to him was a portrait of her Aunt Frieda that was hanging in the master bedroom. She donated that to a gilded age museum in downtown St. Augustine.

  Sherman Frey, on behalf of the Strawbridge Foundation, had shown up at Willa’s lawyer’s office with his tongue hanging out, but he didn’t get a dime.

  Other than that, she’d left a nice, round sum to Orphans of the Storm, with the rest to be divided between her good friend, Edson Darby-Deaver and her half-brother, Christopher “Kip” Stanley.

  Ed looked at me, distressed. “That enormous house, all to myself? Oh, Taylor I don’t know. It’s a lovely house, but you know I wouldn’t appreciate it. I’m hardly aware of my surroundings most of the time. Besides, the hassle of moving would take considerable time and energy away from my research.”

  “And of course,” I said quite seriously, “there’s the ghost.”

  “If I can’t cleanse the house, it would be unscrupulous of me to sell it. Perhaps I’m stuck with it after all.”

  “Maybe it’s doomed to stay empty,” I said. “Frieda would have liked that. To be the only one in the house. Forever.”

  “You can always hope the Strawbridge Foundation will go after it,” Michael said. “That would tie it up in the courts for years, and it would be nobody’s house for a while.”

  He wasn’t serious, but Ed actually brightened up at the thought.

  “Anyway,” I said, “with the money you’ve inherited, you can afford to quit that stupid show that you hate and devote yourself to paranormal research on your own terms.”

  “No I can’t. I signed a multi-year contract.”

  “So? Break the contract. Or use your new wealth as leverage to threaten to quit all the time. You’ll enjoy that.”

  He was shocked. “I’m a man of my word, Taylor. You know that. One doesn’t play games with the integrity of one’s word. Besides, Teddy has promised to move the show toward a more serious, scientific viewpoint.”

  “Oh?” Michael said. “What’s your next project?”

  “We’re doing a general sweep of Key West. There’s an enormous amount of paranormal activity there.”

  I managed not to burst out laughing. “That should be serious and scientific,” I said, and I left it at that.

  Apparently, Ed had never been to Key West. There’s an enormous amount of all kinds of activity there.

  Epilogue

  The Strawbridge Foundation never did sue for a share of Willa’s estate. That left Ed in a quandary. He still doesn’t know what to do with those houses he inherited.

  Trixie lives in hope and Ed lives in dread, both of the same thing: that she’ll finally wear him down.

  Despite Sherman’s shel
l games, the Foundation folded by the end of the year. As the saying goes, he’d only been rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Still, he hung on till the bitter end, then announced his “retirement” and threw himself a formal ball. A few weeks after that, he sold his mid-town brownstone and moved in with Carr. I hope Carr will be happier now that he’s the head of the household and not just the idiot nephew anymore. However Sherman treated him in the past, he’d stood by Carr, his only family.

  So now Kip is the last of the Strawbridges. He’s still living in Santorini and still working on that book about Homer’s Iliad. I don’t know if he’ll stay in Santorini, but it wouldn’t surprise me. With the rest of his family gone and even the Foundation in ruins, he’s kind of alone. Even his nannies are dead, and he never had a real home. But having come from a famous family is a connection of some kind, I guess. To be a Strawbridge! Swept aside as he was, it’s still his only way of having an identity.

  And so, his noble gesture. And Willa’s sacrifice. She took responsibility for her cousin, and he took responsibility for his sister. Blood is thicker than water, after all, and their Strawbridge blood told in the end.

  The old sayings are always true: blood will tell.

  The End