by Mary Bowers
The shadow was gone.
“Garrison Carteret was the only father Robin ever knew,” I said. “He was crushed when he disappeared. But of course, Barclay was his biological father.”
“They were cousins,” Wanda said with disgust. “She killed my daughter, the woman he loved, hoping to have him, and she was his cousin.”
“An old-fashioned notion,” Ed said, settling back down on the sofa. “The prejudice against cousins marrying is a fairly recent one, you know.”
“And to think she pretended to want to be my friend,” Wanda said. “She had me in tears. She had me feeling sorry for her, and all the time she was the one that killed my daughter. She was probably gloating the whole time she sat there drinking my tea. I bet she got a kick out of it.”
“I don’t think that was it,” I said. “She needed an excuse to keep coming back to the neighborhood after she moved to her apartment. After all, Clay lives right next door to you.”
“She still hadn’t given up hope,” Rita said. “She had no idea how hopeless it really was.”
“Clay hired Rita to get DNA from either Ginny or Robin, hoping it would show a blood relationship to him,” I explained to Wanda. “Members of his family had always been suspicious, but he wanted to know.”
“That’s what started it all,” Michael said.
“No,” Rita said. “It started when Clay fell in love with Alison. Ginny had been in love with him for years. Once she got rid of Alison, she also got rid of her father, packing him off to a nursing home, thinking he was standing in the way, too – that Clay wouldn’t want to be saddled with an elderly father-in-law, always needing his daughter’s attention.”
Barnabas put the sheet music down on a corner of the grand piano. “It started with the waltz,” he said. “The music stirred the unsettled dead and brought them back among us. Are they gone now, Taylor? I don’t hear the music anymore.”
“I don’t either,” I said, suddenly realizing that the theme that had hounded me for days was gone. I could almost hear the air around me, the silence was so profound. “But the waltz wasn’t the beginning, either. It started back in the ‘20’s, when Phoebe fell in love with a man who was willing to use her, but didn’t really want her. Now, finally, they’re all gone.”
Barnabas looked around at the corner where the shadow had been. “Yes. I have my building and my books and my real friends to myself again.” Ishmael the cat came out from under the piano and made a weightless leap into Barnabas’s arms.
“You’re free,” Wanda said to him.
Then the glazed look in Barnabas’s eyes went away. “I’ve got a lot of work to do, now that the mischief is over. My dear,” he said, looked across the room at me, “I can’t thank you enough.”
Ed stood up, looking disgruntled.
“And you too, of course,” Barnabas said warmly. “My dear friend, let’s not quarrel any more. Life is so short, and death is so long, as we’ve seen. Let’s not waste the living years.”
They crossed the room and shook hands.
The whole thing seemed to me to be finished, and I felt a weight lift off and float away.
I took a deep breath and started to tell Michael I wanted to go home when I noticed Rita staring at me.
“Sit down, Taylor. Quid pro quo. I brought the law. Now you tell me just what’s been going on in here. I couldn’t hear much of it. Kyle kept getting in the way.”
Chapter 27
Barnabas decided he was neglecting his duties as host. He suddenly snapped to and went to the kitchen to prepare tea – whether we wanted it or not.
I was weary by then, but the lightness I felt now that the dirge wasn’t dragging me down anymore made me almost giddy. I began to talk and talk and talk.
I told Rita everything that had gone on in the room while she’d been in the dining room, jostling for position against two big men.
I told Wanda and Ed about Gordon’s file and what Michael and I had made of it, and what Rita had added when she’d read it.
When I got to the part about Garrison’s murder, it took me a moment to let myself go and speak freely. But he was really gone, and I relaxed and went ahead with the story. “So we’ve deduced that the skeleton we found at Cadbury House must be Garrison, but I don’t think it can ever be proved.”
“Oh, it already has,” Rita said matter-of-factly. “Kyle told me at the diner.”
“How?”
“Photo superimposition. These days, everybody thinks if you don’t have DNA for comparison, you’re lost. We had nobody to compare the skeleton’s DNA to, but there are lots of other ways to make an I.D. There happened to be a good photograph of Garrison Carteret at the Historical Society. It’s been compared to the skull, and it’s a perfect match. Also, they’ve managed to run down the records of the tailor that made the suit.”
“Terreverde & Sons,” Michael said.
“That’s right.” Rita seemed surprised.
“My grandfather recommended them to him, I suppose.”
Wanda interrupted. She wasn’t interested in tailors. “What I don’t understand is, why did Ginny let us contact her mother through the séance if she had all these secrets? Wasn’t she afraid she’d spill the beans?”
“They were Phoebe’s secrets,” I reminded her. “And by having the séance in her house, Ginny could control it. If we started straying off into things she didn’t want us meddling in, she could have faked a contact of her own and steered us in another direction. She probably never expected real results anyway.”
“She must not believe in the supernatural,” Wanda said. “If she did, she’d have been afraid my Alison would come back and accuse her.”
“I suppose so,” I said. It seemed strange to me that Wanda would think of such a thing, but I still didn’t quite understand Wanda.
“You’re telling me my daughter died for love.” Wanda jerked her head to the side quizzically. “I wonder if it was her shadow at my house, and now that we’ve sorted it out and found her murderer, she’s moved on into the light. I suppose I’ll know the instant I walk into my house.”
“Very probably,” Ed said.
“Well then,” she said, “I think I’ll go home and find out. Tell Barnabas we’ll have tea another time.”
“Will do,” I said. “Tell Teddy he can stand down, and tell him to concentrate on hiring that new producer. I’m done hauling his dirty laundry.”
When she was all the way down the stairs and out, I turned to Ed. “Do you think she’s really psychic?”
“I’m afraid not. But she does enjoy thinking she is. It doesn’t do to meddle with these wannabes. What would be the point? One doesn’t want to make them unhappy.”
“She said she heard the waltz,” I said.
“She never mentioned any waltz music to me, and I questioned her very thoroughly in our initial interview. There is one thing, though.”
“What?”
“She was psychic enough to realize that you have powers she doesn’t, and insist that you stay and help Teddy, who has no psychic powers at all, I’m sorry to say. Well, I think my work is done here,” he said, standing up as if it were a good exit line. Barnabas was just coming in with the tea tray.
“Not leaving, are you?” he said.
“I must. I always make my notes when events are fresh in my mind.” He paused as Barnabas locked eyes with him. Then he added, “I rarely share my dossiers with those outside the profession . . . .”
“That won’t be necessary. Naturally, I’ll be making one of my own. I think it will be of value. After all, you and I came into the investigation at different times and from different angles.”
Barnabas set the tray down on a table and the two men stood for a moment, gazing at one another silently.
Ed broke first. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.”
“That would be very satisfactory,” Barnabas told him.
* * * * *
“So it was Ginny all along,” I said to Rita afte
r Ed had left. “How long have you known?”
She consulted her watch. “Half an hour? Give or take.”
“Come on,” I prodded. “You had to have suspected her before.”
“Oh, I did. If Clay had been more forthcoming about Ginny’s attraction to him before he met Alison, it would’ve been easier to put two and two together.”
“He didn’t tell me about it directly, either. All he said was that her behavior was weird, and that she ran hot and cold towards him. Just like an adolescent with a high-school crush, in fact.”
“He said the same to me, but I didn’t pick up on it. I should’ve realized the woman had no experience with men, and would be awkward, but Clay didn’t seem to want to talk about that. He just wanted to know if she was a blood relative, or more to the point, if Barclay Lodge was Robin’s father. As for the murder, with Wanda being such a loon, I pretty much suspected her.”
“And with Clay being Alison’s lover . . . ? A lot of murders happen when the romance turns sour. I’m going to discount the fact that he hired you. After all, he hired you before the murder, to investigate something else altogether. After Alison’s disappearance and murder, it would’ve been extremely suspicious if he’d suddenly fired you.”
“I thought of that myself, of course.”
I cocked my head. “You must have met Alison when Clay hired you. Did she ever say anything to you about Ginny? I’m still groping here, trying to understand how the murder happened. Ginny’s bedroom suite overlooks the Wickert’s back yard, of course, so she could have seen Alison coming out of her darkroom before dawn, the day she went out to photograph the sunrise.”
“That’s what I think,” Rita said.
“When I was standing by the darkroom waiting for Wanda to open the door, I noticed the curtains moving on the second floor of Ginny’s house. She had a direct line of sight to the darkroom shed, and she kept an old pair of opera glasses on her dresser, near the windows. She was obsessed with Alison, and probably watched her all the time. She knew about Alison’s habit of photographing sunrises. After killing her, she took Alison’s keys, which are probably among the other evidence in the secret compartment of the armoire. She needed those keys to let herself into the shed to rifle around, the night after the murder. She gathered up some equipment to scatter at Marineland, and went through the file cabinet. Wanda almost caught her, you know.”
“Clay told me. He was pretty upset that she didn’t trust him enough to tell him about it. Maybe deep down inside she was afraid he’d try to deprive her of that last visit from her daughter. And of course, Ginny would have known about Alison’s habit of calling Wanda ‘Mother.’ It’s the kind of thing you say across the yard when you’re exasperated, loud enough for the neighbors to hear.”
“What did Ginny want in Alison’s files?”
“Pictures of Clay. She was in love with him, and when I did a more thorough inventory of the contents of the file cabinet –“
“The police took them,” I said. “How did you see them?”
“Kyle had me look through them. I knew about Clay and Alison’s relationship, and even non-photographers take a lot of pictures these days. But there weren’t any pictures of Clay. Just a lot of beauty shots of scenery and a few candids of Wanda. I bet when Kyle looks into that secret hidey-hole, he’s going to find a lot more photographs than just the ones Phoebe kept of Barclay Lodge.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s really sad.”
“No,” Rita told me, “that’s really sick.”
* * * * *
Once we got that all sorted out, Michael and I had a pleasant tea with Barnabas and Rita. He had even made dainty little sandwiches with different pasty spreads, and after he assured me that the green spread was vegetarian, I had some. It was pretty good, for pasty green stuff.
“Now that we’re such good friends,” I said to Rita, “I need you to do me a favor.”
“What?”
“You know that boyfriend of yours?”
“I’ve already thanked you for that.” She turned to Barnabas and became coy. “Taylor, here, has introduced me to the love of my life.”
“How charming.”
“I’m like that,” I said. “Now will you please tell your other boyfriend to stop stalking me?”
She should have asked who I was talking about, but I could tell she already knew. She smirked. “Oh, you mean Victor?”
“Victor the cyberfreak, yes. He’s not happy that you’re dating Dan. He popped up on my computer, making threats.”
“You didn’t tell me that,” Michael said.
“I didn’t want to worry you. And I wasn’t sure I wasn’t just being set up.” I looked at Rita expectantly and waited for her to react. When she finally did, I nearly melted out of the wingback chair with relief.
“All right, I confess,” she said, giggling. “You were set up. But you know you deserved it.” She turned to Barnabas. “Taylor, here, decided to match me up with this hunky guy she knows, after I had expressly told her I wasn’t looking for a man.”
“Oh, Taylor,” he said, “it simply isn’t done.”
Rita agreed, and went on. “She dragged me up to Anastasia Island with some preposterous story about using my profiling skills on a man with a broken heart. Can you believe it? It was so ridiculous I went along with it, just to find out what she was up to. And who should just happen to be there but this excruciatingly eligible bachelor, bouncing around in the driveway in running shorts. He goes out for a run at the exact same time every day, and she knew it.”
“I was pretty obvious about it all, wasn’t I?” I said.
“Painfully. So just to teach her a lesson, I pulled Dan off to the side while Taylor was busy with Teddy Force, quickly explained the situation, and got him to play along. He thought it was a hoot. So did I, incidentally. And just to drive the point home, I told Victor about it and got him in the game. He was able to up the ante for us quite a bit. He even sent a copy of his blood message to me so I could admire his work, by the way. Dan liked it too. Victor really is good with virtual blood, isn’t he?”
“He thinks it’s all a hoot too, doesn’t he?” I said with a sour smile. “It’s just his kind of lamebrained humor. But I’m surprised at you, Rita. I thought you were a better sport than that. That you had more – what’s the word I want? – dignity.” I stood up.
“Oh, now don’t go away mad, Taylor,” she said, managing to make herself heard through the laughter.
I sat down, composed myself, ate pasty green stuff, and eventually I managed to see the humor in it, miniscule as it was. We eventually parted as friends, with Rita, Michael and I all making promises to help reconstruct the bookshop. With a sideways glance at me, Michael volunteered to do the History Section. Those books do tend to be bigger, thicker and heavier, but I knew what he was doing. Without any overt references to little Wendy, I just nodded and said I’d take the Mystery Section. What the heck, if any of those guys are still around, I wouldn’t mind meeting them.
At least Bastet isn’t mad at me anymore. She’s back to fawning all over Michael, while treating me like a minion. Michael’s theory is that Bastet was trying to protect me from Ginny, who was definitely dangerous. My theory is that I was spending too much time helping my friends, and she decided I wasn’t paying enough attention to her.
And then there’s Ed’s theory, if you really want to go there. I made the mistake of telling him that Wanda hadn’t been able to go to the estate sale at Girlfriend’s, where we had sold Vesta’s Egyptian stuff. So get this: he believes that since Wanda had nothing that had belonged to Vesta, Bastet decided it was none of our business.
“But Barnabas has some of Vesta’s things,” I said. “Why didn’t Bastet want to help him?”
“Barnabas wasn’t technically in mortal danger,” Ed said complacently. “He was simply being haunted, and Barnabas usually manages to tolerate ghosts very well. Eventually, he probably would have made friends with this one, and convinced it t
o stop being so destructive.”
He really said that. I’m not going to argue with him. What’s the point?
Now if I could only figure out how to get rid of the enormous, scrolling lines of “HaHaHaHaHa” that come up every time I boot up my computer. Maybe Victor will get tired of the joke in a year or two.
Oh – and I’ve sworn off matchmaking. Seriously.
But I may just have the last laugh on Rita after all. Unless I’m totally tone-deaf to romance, something’s really going on between her and Dan. They still jog together on the beach. We’ve run into them in restaurants a time or two. I hear they even go to the shooting range together. Sweet, if you like that kind of thing.
I think there’s definitely a vibe there. Just a little arc of electricity. I’m just sayin’.
The End
