Steamed Open

by Barbara Ross

  “Julia.” Binder brought me back from my speculations. “I need to talk to Mr. Orsolini. Sergeant Flynn will speak to Mr. MacGillivray in the chief’s office, and Officer Dawes will speak with Mrs. Orsolini. When one of us is done, we’ll squeeze you in.”

  The waiting clammers, who were clearly there by police “request,” booed and turned thumbs down on that. It didn’t really matter if Binder jumped me in the line. I wasn’t going to make it to the Jacquie II.

  When Will and Duffy went off for their interviews, Nikki moved to sit next to me while she waited for Jamie. “I’m so relieved,” she confided. “If Duffy hadn’t come forward, Will could have had some real trouble.” She sighed happily. “My mom’s got the kids. After this we’re going out to celebrate. We haven’t been out since, I don’t know when.”

  Jamie came back inside and took Nikki to the chair beside his desk. I waited with the rest of the clammers. Their fidgeting was contagious. I put a firm hand on my knee to keep my leg from jiggling.

  Lieutenant Binder finished with Will first. He walked him out the door, shook hands and said, “Please let us know if you remember anything else. Anything at all.”

  “I will, for sure,” Will responded. “I’ll wait here for Nikki and Duffy.”

  Binder looked at me. “Julia, enter.”

  I sat in one of the guest chairs, but he didn’t go around to the other side of the folding table. Instead, he stayed on my side and leaned against it, only a couple of feet away from me.

  “I found Elizabeth Anderson!” I could barely contain myself.

  “The missing heiress? How’d you manage that? Flynn’s been looking for days.”

  I talked him through the chain, starting with Vera French at Spencer Cottage, to Oceanside Realty, to the Town Code Enforcement Office, to Dunwitty, Moscone, Tyler and Saperstein, to Earl’s gas station and mini-mart, to Betty Reynolds. Flynn slipped into the room during my recitation, which only egged me on.

  “You’ve already talked to Ms. Reynolds?” Binder scowled.

  “Yes. I’m certain she’s the Elizabeth Anderson mentioned in Lou Herrickson’s will. And she’s Frank Herrickson’s daughter. When I told her, she showed me—”

  “Wait! You told her?”

  “Yes, and there’s even more I didn’t tell her because I wasn’t sure.” He frowned. “I admit, maybe I got carried away. But I haven’t hurt your case. She didn’t kill Bart Frick. She never knew about the will or the trust or Frank Herrickson. You should have seen the look on her face when I told her.”

  “And it didn’t occur to you that we would want to see the look on her face when we told her?” Binder folded his arms across his chest.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I was able to follow most of the story,” Flynn said. “But what I didn’t hear, because I came in late, was why you thought to go to Ms. French’s cottage in the first place. How’d you get on this path?”

  Ah, there was the rub. I took a deep breath. “I got on the path, as you say, because I found a photo of Frank Herrickson and a little girl. In Lou’s desk. When I was in Herrickson House.” I said it very fast. I hadn’t wanted to tell them, but there is no way to avoid it.

  “I don’t get it,” Flynn persisted. “You found it when you were in Herrickson House the day Frick was murdered? Why didn’t you tell us about this photo earlier?”

  “No, when I was in Herrickson House yesterday.”

  “WHAT?” They shouted it at the same moment.

  “What in world were you doing in that house?” Flynn demanded.

  “Do you realize what you may have done to the evidence?” Binder was still shouting.

  “I’m sorry.” I never should have gone into that house. Which I’d known even as I was doing it. And yet I had.

  “Okay. Tell us exactly what happened. Exactly what you did and where you went.” Binder’s face was slightly less red.

  I took a deep breath and talked them through it, and in so doing threw Quentin and Wyatt under the bus as well.

  Binder ran his hand over his smooth scalp. “We’ll need to talk to Mr. Tupper and Ms. Jayne.”

  “I figured.”

  “You didn’t go into the breakfast room?” Flynn confirmed.

  “I stood in the doorway, but I didn’t go in. You’ll have to ask the others. I don’t think they did, but we weren’t together the whole time.”

  “And you removed this stone that propped open the cellar door when you left?” He continued to press.

  “But the door didn’t lock behind me. It has to be locked with a key. I saw what I thought was the impression of a key in the earth where the rock had been moved, but the key isn’t there now.”

  “Did you take anything besides the photo?” Binder asked. I shook my head. Flynn held his hand out. I slipped the framed photograph out of my tote and handed it to him.

  “Did you notice anything else different from when you were there with Frick?” Binder asked. “Anything at all?”

  “Besides in the breakfast room?”

  “Yes.”

  “The pile of letters was missing from Lou’s desk. I assumed you had taken them.”

  “Us?” Binder said. “Why would we have taken them?”

  “Because I told you Bart Frick was looking at them when I first saw him.”

  Binder shook his head. “We didn’t pick up any letters.”

  “Ida Fischer says the letters were from Lou’s daughter. They might help you find her.”

  “Julia, we’ve got this case about wrapped up,” Binder said. “Why don’t you leave the rest to us? I believe you have a tourist attraction to run.”

  “Dining experience,” I corrected, mumbling under my breath. I walked out of the police station hanging my head. The day that had started with the triumphant discover of Betty Reynolds and her parentage had ended in complete disaster. I had really screwed up.

  CHAPTER 26

  Chris was asleep when I slipped out the next morning. He’d come home late. There had been no time to talk. I was determined to put the one last puzzle piece of Lou Herrickson’s estate in place and then to be on the Jacquie II in time for work.

  I drove the Caprice to Ida’s sister’s house, even though I could have walked. I had somewhere I wanted to go afterward.

  Peg answered the door in a light-blue terry bathrobe, then called to Ida. When she arrived, she was in a pink polyester robe zipped up to her neck. “Julia? Peg said you wanted to ask me something more.”

  “The letters you told me about, the ones you thought were from Lou’s daughter. Did they come every month, all year long?”

  She shook her head. “It’s funny you ask, because there were no letters in the summer, not in July, August, or September.”

  “Why did you think that was?” I asked her.

  “I assumed because the daughter left Florida in the summer, as so many of them down there do.”

  “So there were letters in the summer, but not from Florida? Where did they come from?”

  “No, no. There were no letters in the summer. At least not for years.”

  I thanked Ida for the information and turned to go. She called me back.

  “I called my daughter,” she said in a hoarse whisper, as if she was telling me a secret.

  I laughed. “I knew you would. How did it go?”

  “She was shocked. She’d had a shocking day all around. Her daughter was there and I mostly talked to her.” Ida teared up. “My granddaughter. Mostly I talked to my granddaughter. We’re all meeting up next week.”

  “That’s wonderful, Ida. I’m so happy for you—and for Betty, too.”

  I gave her a hug, got back in the Caprice, and headed to Herrickson Point.

  * * *

  I parked up the hill opposite the gate to Herrickson House and looked down, over the boxwood hedge, toward the beach. I was relieved to see the chain link gate was still open and cars and pickups were parked in the lot. I’d worried my confession that Quentin, Wyatt, and I had been insi
de the house might have caused Binder and Flynn to demand the gate be closed again.

  But they had not. Clammers worked along the tide line. The Barnards’ RV was parked up by the lighthouse.

  I turned around, pushed through the gate to Spencer Cottage and entered its yard. Vera French was lying on the lounge chair on the open deck, in almost the same position in which I’d last seen her.

  “Ms. French?” I called. “It’s Julia Snowden.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Ms. French! Vera!”

  Still no movement. I ran to the stairs, taking them two at a time and hustled across the deck. “Vera French!” Her skin glowed with suntan oil. Was she breathing? Was she a second murder victim? My heart pounding, I reached for her shoulder and shook.

  “Eeeeek!” She sat up faster than I thought possible, knocking me backward as she did. As I double-stepped to regain my footing, she removed an ear bud from each ear. “You scared me to death!”

  “I’m sorry.” I felt the heat of an embarrassed flush creep up my throat. “I called from the path, but you didn’t hear me.” Even through the tiny speakers I could hear the music that had been pounding in her ears, more appropriate to aerobic exercise than lying in a deck chair.

  “Well, now that you’ve got my heart beating, what did you want?” Vera demanded.

  There were four chairs around a glass-topped dining table on the deck. I grabbed one of them, “Mind if I sit down?” I was in the seat before she could answer.

  “Very well. Now, what is it?”

  There was nothing to do but to go for it. “The morning Bart Frick was murdered, when I went in the house, he was in Lou’s study, standing at her desk.”

  “What has this to do with me? Out with it.”

  “He was reading a letter from a pile of envelopes. Sealed envelopes. A very big pile.”

  Did she grow a little paler behind the deep tan? “I’m still waiting.”

  “I went back to the house the day before yesterday. The envelopes weren’t there.”

  “What on earth were you doing in Herrickson House the day before yesterday?”

  “Let’s leave that for a moment. I was there. The envelopes were not.”

  She threw up her hands. “Then I suppose the police took them. Maybe they are germane to the murder.”

  “I thought that as well. So I asked them. They didn’t.”

  Through her sunglass lenses I saw her eyes roll. “Very interesting tale, but I still don’t understand what it has to do with me.”

  “You took them.”

  She pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head. “Why on earth would you say that?”

  “You took them because you wrote them. To your mother.”

  This time there was no mistaking. The color drained from her tanned face, leaving a thin ring of bright white skin around her lips. Would she deny it? Order me to leave?

  She sunk back in the chaise. “How did you know?”

  “I put bits and pieces together. You rent this house every summer, yet you said you’d never been in Herrickson House. Lou was a famous hostess and as neighborly as they come. Ida Fischer told me the letters stopped coming for three months every summer. You told me you were here for three months. There was one explanation that made all the pieces fit.”

  “I see. Did you tell the police what you figured out?”

  “Not yet. They’re not interested in the letters, but I think they’d like to know you were in the house the day Bart Frick was murdered, which you denied. And that you’ve been in the house at least once since then. If they knew all that, I’m sure they’d want to talk to Lou Herrickson’s daughter. The woman who was cut out of Lou’s will.”

  She stared at her lap, not looking at me. “Exactly what I was afraid of. That’s why I took the letters. They all had my return address in Florida on them. I was afraid they would lead right to me, and combined with me being in the house at the time of the murder, I was afraid the police would jump to the wrong conclusion.”

  “You knew your mother had cut you out of her will.”

  “I assumed. She’d cut me out of her life.”

  I still couldn’t get my head around it. Generous Lou, open and welcoming. “Why did she cut you out? It’s so out of character.”

  “The short answer is, I deserved it. I know you all loved Lou, but she wasn’t much of a mother. She spent her life pursuing men, falling in love with men, and then falling out of love again. I was a product of her first marriage, before she got smart enough not to have any more kids with any of the other husbands. I was a plaything to dress up when she felt like it, an inconvenience to be raised by maids and then sent away to school when she didn’t.

  “Despite the way she treated me, I was desperate for her love. If we couldn’t be close like mother and daughter, I wanted us to be close like girlfriends, to get our nails done and play tennis together.

  “For a few years in my early twenties, I had that. We were both single, a coincidence of timing. My mother’s habit of chasing and discarding men had made me the opposite. I was a clinger. I could never let go, never say die, no matter how awful the man was, or how clear he made it that I had to move on.” She paused and lit a cigarette. “The most recent man had just pried my fingers loose when Mom divorced husband number four.

  “So we had this period when we did everything together. We went to dinner, danced at discos. All the old flirts asked if she was my sister. I positively basked in her attention.” Vera took a long pull on the cigarette and then pushed out the smoke. “You realize it’s taken me years of therapy to be able to tell you this.”

  “You’re doing great,” I encouraged her.

  “Right. Where was I? At last I had the mom I wanted and what happened? Frank Herrickson. We met him at the Bath and Tennis Club in Palm Beach, both of us on the same day. She started missing agreed-upon activities. I’d show up at the nail salon for our appointment. She never would. She’d be gone overnight, then all weekend. It was the nightmare of my childhood all over again. Finally, she told me they were engaged to be married.

  “I stomped. I cried. I reminded her that she hated being married. I listed every rotten thing every husband had ever done to her. When none of those things persuaded her, I lied.” Vera took a drag on the cigarette. “I told her she couldn’t marry Frank because I’d slept with him. ‘I slept with him first,’ I said.”

  The breath whooshed out of my lungs. “What did she do?”

  “She slapped me across the face, accused me of lying, which, of course, was accurate, and said she never wanted to see me again.” Vera stubbed out the cigarette with more force than required. “At first, I wasn’t too worried. I thought she’d come around. Even if she married Frank, I assumed it would be for her usual two or three years. And then she’d be back. I was the constant in her life. Palm Beach was the constant in her life. And yet, she left us both.” Vera spread her hands in front of her and examined her fingernails, which were painted a glossy red. “I was sad, but I got on with my life and waited for her return. When I married, I invited her. I called and called the house in Palm Beach. I’d always pictured us shopping for my gown. She never returned my calls, never acknowledged the event was happening. My father was long dead by then, so I had my own money. I walked down the aisle alone, sobbing the whole way.” She sighed. “That was the beginning of the end of that marriage.”

  “Lou didn’t divorce Frank.”

  Vera looked at me. “How was I to know he was the love of her life? And that Maine would be, too. Their time in Florida got shorter every year and after Frank died, she never returned. So I took things into my own hands. I wrote to her every month. At first, the sole purpose of each letter was to beg her forgiveness. But later, my letters became like a diary, or a journal. I wrote about what I was doing, how I felt, my most intimate thoughts. I had no idea if she was reading them. I knew she never wrote back, but the letters weren’t returned. I wasn’t positive she hadn’t read them until I saw them u
nopened in her desk.”

  “And eventually, writing letters wasn’t enough,” I pressed.

  “It certainly wasn’t working. So I found this house through a rental agent in town. She showed me lots of places, but I rejected them. ‘Can’t I get closer to Herrickson Point?’ I kept saying. In the end, she showed me this place. It hadn’t been rented in ages, had never been updated or improved. But the location couldn’t have been more perfect.”

  “So you rented it.”

  “Every summer.”

  “Which is why you didn’t send the letters in the summer.”

  Vera’s hands shook as she lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply. I couldn’t tell what she needed more, the nicotine or the time to gather herself. Probably both.

  She continued. “Every Wednesday, as soon as the housekeeper—”

  “Ida Fischer.”

  “Yes. As soon as Mrs. Fischer would leave for her afternoon off, I would go over and ring the bell at Herrickson House and wait on the porch for a half an hour. My mother must have known it was me. She must have seen me walking over from across the road. She never answered.”

  On the one hand, would Lou, with her old eyes, staring at the figure of a woman she hadn’t seen in decades, have recognized her? Did a mother always recognize her child, no matter what? It seemed more likely that Lou, with her deep tentacles in the town, would have asked someone at Oceanside Realty the name of the woman who had rented across the road. Lou undoubtedly knew it was her daughter standing on her porch every Wednesday. I kept this thought to myself. “You never gave up.”

  Vera waved the hand holding the cigarette. “Not until the day my mother died.” Her deep voice grew even deeper. “I always thought there’d be more time.”

  Lou had been a hundred and one. Vera was well into her seventies. How much more time could she have thought they had? But the picture of a senior citizen child, standing on her mother’s porch, waiting for her to come to the door, to acknowledge her, to love her, made my throat tighten and my chest hurt.