Murder in Mystic Cove

by Daryl Anderson

  “I wonder if nice Mr. Lee needs a date for the Harvest Fest tonight.” Gigi’s eyes settled on a short balding man standing by a stone angel.

  Fairley flashed a knowing smile my way but spoke to Gigi. “I think Mr. Lee will most likely attend Harvest Fest with his wife Millie.” Then she frowned. “I’m still not sure that we should go out gallivanting so soon after the tragedy.”

  “Of course we should go,” Busy said. “Life must go on.”

  “I’m going as Cleopatra,” Gigi gushed. “What about you, Busy?”

  “Miss Havisham.”

  Gigi turned to Fairley. “And your costume?”

  “An angel.”

  “If you’ll excuse us, Addie, we were just heading for the Grub and Grog.” Busy herded her new friends across the street. Peculiar, the way Mel Dick’s death had brought those three women together, but maybe murder, like politics, made for strange bedfellows.

  But Pop was waiting at the apartment. His appointment with the hospice doctor in Newnansville was at three. I had to hurry if we were to make it on time.

  Without a backward glance I left Mystic Cove for what I thought was the last time.

  * * *

  Pop and Dr. Hazel Addison hit it off right away. She was a trim, attractive woman with kind brown eyes, but her most beautiful asset was her voice, a rich mezzo with golden tones. As she went over the differences between medical and palliative care, I slowly realized that hospice didn’t mean that the doctors and nurses had given up on Pop, which had been my greatest fear. Now the focus would be on Pop’s quality of life rather than the extension of days. I felt a sense of deep relief. The journey would continue, albeit with a change of itinerary. Dying wasn’t the same as dead.

  The consultation wound down and Pop and I were about to leave when, apropos of nothing, Pop mentioned the Mel Dick/Katherine Henderson case.

  “I read about it in this morning’s Sun,” Dr. Addison said. “You must be very clever, Ms. Gorsky.”

  Before I could answer, Pop said, “That she is—it runs in the family.”

  “Dr. Addison isn’t interested in this, Pop.”

  My father was undeterred. “This was a very interesting case, with many twists and turns—betrayal, fugitives, madness, a mysterious poison—what was the poison, Adelajda?”

  “Datura stramonium.” Seeing Addison’s puzzled face I added, “The victim suffered a fatal heart attack from untreated anticholinergic toxicity.”

  “Anticholinergic syndrome is not my area of expertise, though I still recall the mnemonic I learned as a young med student. Hot as a hare, red as a beet, dry as a bone, blind as a bat, mad as a hatter. It’s an easy way to recall the signs and symptoms. Are you all right, Ms. Gorsky?”

  “Could you repeat the mnemonic? Please, just repeat it.”

  She did so, slowly this time. A train of similes constructed as a memory tool, odd images that would stick in the mind.

  When Fairley Sable whispered them in Alan Rand’s ear, describing Mel Dick’s deterioration, the words had stuck in his mind so well that he unwittingly repeated them in his confession. His false confession. And she had brazenly repeated part of the mnemonic to me when she’d called Mel mad as a hatter. A true murder after all.

  From the beginning she had inserted herself into the matter of Mel’s death, a bottom-swimming stingray stirring up mud. I counted our meetings over the course of the investigation, her insidious helpfulness and her uncanny habit of popping up at every turn, like a fucking whack-a-mole.

  Then I thought maybe it wasn’t coincidence. Maybe Fairley Sable had had me in her sights all along.

  Chapter Twenty

  Hot as a Hare

  I made the calls while Pop was inside Walgreens, waiting for his prescriptions to be filled. He gave me a funny look when I told him I’d wait in the car, but my father knew when to ask questions and when to keep quiet.

  I called Brad first. “I need to see Tally Rand, Brad. Alan’s confession is cut from whole cloth. Someone else murdered Mel.”

  “Murder?”

  “Oh yes, it’s murder. I know who she is and a good idea of how she did it. What I don’t have is motive. Tally can help me with that.” I told him about the GPS tracker I’d found on the Crown Vic, attached to the inside right fender of my car like a damned leech. A true hunter, the bitch had tracked me from the beginning. Brad wanted me to bring the car in so the lab could check for prints.

  “A waste of time,” I said. “I’m sure the GPS tracker is clean—she wouldn’t be so careless—and any prints we found would have no probative value. She’s ridden in my car.”

  Brad had heard enough. He said he would do what he could to get me in to see Tally, but warned that it wasn’t his call. “And there is something you should know about Tally. Turns out she wasn’t going to take Mel’s threats lying down—she had plane reservations for Morocco, which coincidentally doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S.”

  “So she and Alan had a backup plan. They were going to fly the coop if Mel didn’t back down.”

  “Not exactly,” Brad said. “The reservation was for one.”

  “So while Alan was running after Mel, Tally had been making plans of her own.” This put a wrench in my plans. I could only move Tally by exploiting her love for her husband, and now I wasn’t sure if their happy marriage wasn’t just another Mystic Cove mirage. “Brad, there’s was one more thing I had to know—Does Tally know that Mel was dead when he was shot?”

  “A good question, but not one I can answer.”

  Next I called my sister Angelina. Angie had been on the fast track at the FBI until she married an Irishman named Michael O’Shaughnessy and started producing carrot-headed kids with names like Sean and Seamus at a prodigious rate. Nowadays she stuck to private work, usually when she needed the bucks—when the twins’ teeth came in crooked she kept pretty busy for quite awhile—but sometimes Angie helped somebody free of charge, just because they needed the help. I fit in the latter category.

  Angie picked up on the second ring. “O’Shaughnessy.”

  “Hey, O’Shaughnessy, what’s up?”

  “Addie!” Angie shouted and then, “Hey, kids, it’s Aunt Addie on the phone.” High-pitched squeals in the background—by all the screaming going on, it sounded as if she and Michael had added a few more to the brood.

  “Have I interrupted a party?”

  Angie laughed. “It’s Halloween, we got half the neighborhood at our house. From what I’ve seen on boob tube, you’ve got your own party going down there.” Since the Katherine Henderson story broke, cable news had been hot and heavy over it.

  I explained my involvement and told her what I needed. “And I need it ASAP—time’s not on my side.” Dead silence, so I added, “Get it to me when you can.”

  “It’s not that, Addie. It sounds like you’re swimming with the sharks down there. Stay safe.”

  “It’s Florida, after all,” I said with a show of bravado. “But I’ll be careful. Just get the goods on Fairley Sable.”

  * * *

  The visiting area was empty except for me, the guard and the woman on the other side of the glass. She was outwardly calm, sitting in the caged cubicle with her arms neatly folded on the narrow counter. The fluorescent light and orange jumpsuit gave her skin a jaundiced tinge, but her eyes had lost that clouded look. I took a deep breath and picked up the phone.

  “Hello...” I paused.

  “Call me Tally.” Her voice sounded hollow. “I’ve been Tally for so long. I can’t remember being anyone else.”

  “Thanks for seeing me.”

  Tally did a slow survey of the steel gray room. “Don’t thank me. I have no intention of answering your questions. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it, Addie Gorsky? To ask your questions.”

&nb
sp; I felt as if I had walked in on the wrong movie. I was prepared for Tally Rand, not this steely-eyed woman. Or was this Katherine Henderson?

  “In fact, I have a question for you,” she snarled. “Are you pleased with the results of your idiotic investigation? Are you pleased that you’ve destroyed two lives?”

  “Tally, let me...”

  “I wanted to tell you to your face that my husband is absolutely innocent.”

  “Innocent?” A spasm of anger fired in my gut. Though I agreed Alan was innocent of shooting Mel, he was far from innocent. “Your innocent husband almost got both of us killed.”

  “You pushed him to it,” Tally said.

  “Like hell,” I shot back. Then the guard caught my eye. I got his message loud and clear—the interview was dangerously close to being terminated before it even got started. I took a moment to tamp down my anger before it blazed into full-blown rage. I had to get this woman to talk to me. “You’re a smart lady, Tally,” I said in a low voice. “You know I didn’t put that gun in Alan’s hand. The gun that was pointed at my heart.”

  Once more I saw Alan Rand’s mad face and the shaking pistol in his hand. By the look on Tally’s face she saw it as well.

  “If you and Alan had leveled with me in the beginning, it might not have come to this. I was never interested in Katherine Henderson. I was only trying to get at the truth of Mel’s death—I still am.”

  “My...my husband’s confession is a pack of lies. He didn’t murder Mel. I’ve been trying to tell that to the police, but no one will listen.”

  She said murder, so I was still in the game—Tally didn’t know her husband had confessed to shooting a corpse.

  “How can you be certain that Alan didn’t kill Mel?”

  A sharp laugh bounded off the concrete walls. “I know what you’re thinking. I see it in your eyes. I didn’t kill Mel and neither did my husband. I now know he’s incapable of killing.”

  “But you didn’t always know that, did you? You suspected Alan of murdering Mel.”

  Tally examined the scarred counter, which bore carved mementoes from previous occupants. “Only for a moment.”

  “Damnation only takes a moment, Tally.”

  She looked up. “But I never believed it in my heart. I know my husband is not a murderer.”

  “Too bad he doesn’t return the favor.”

  For a beat I’d thought I’d blown it. The woman leaned close to the glass partition, her face a lethal mixture of hate and respect. “You know then.”

  I nodded.

  “Then you must go the police, tell them that Alan is innocent...”

  I held up a hand. “I need proof to bring to the cops, Tally.”

  “What good are you then?”

  “I may not be much but I’m all you got right now. I know that Alan confessed to a crime he didn’t commit to protect you from being charged with murder. And just to be clear, I’m not talking about the dead policeman from the sixties.”

  Tally tried to glower, but then exhaled and slumped into the hard chair. “Alan is convinced I shot Mel,” she said in a tired voice. “Nothing I say or do can persuade him otherwise. He’s sacrificing himself for nothing.” She shaded her eyes with her hands; her nails were bitten to the quick. “Oh, if only I’d gone to bed that night!”

  “What do you mean?”

  She started, as if she’d forgotten I was there. She was putting on a good front, but inside she was crumbling. “The night of Mel’s murder I took a Xanax as usual. Since this nightmare began that was the only way I could rest. But that night I fell asleep on the couch instead of going up to our bedroom. If I had, Alan would know I couldn’t have murdered Mel.”

  “Why is that?”

  “My husband’s a light sleeper. I could have never snuck out of our bed without waking him. The sad thing was neither of us could alibi the other.”

  My suspicion was right. Tally and Alan had each believed the other guilty of Mel’s murder. The Rand home had been a compost pile of deceit, a perfect environment for Fairley’s treachery. Poor Alan and Tally never had a chance.

  “When I woke the next morning on the couch, I found Alan standing over me, a queer expression on his face, as if he were stuck somewhere between heaven and hell. That’s when he told me I was safe, that Mel was dead. That’s when I thought he...” Tally shook her head, shaking off the memory. “Why can’t the police see through Alan’s lies?” she hissed, anger bubbling up. “Or is it simple expediency? They have their confessed murderer, no matter that he’s innocent.”

  “As it turns out,” I said in what I hoped was a soothing voice, “much of Alan’s confession fits with the facts of the murder.”

  “I don’t believe that!”

  “I’ve read Alan’s confession. He knows certain details that only the murderer could know.”

  “So you lied before. You do believe Alan is the murderer!” Her face was as hard as the glass that separated us.

  “I want to help you and Alan, if you’ll let me.”

  “Liar! You don’t care about Alan or me!” The guard had unlocked his arms—eyes and ears open wide.

  “You’re right, okay? I don’t give a fuck about you or Alan. I want the truth and you can help me find it.”

  “Why should I?” She started to put the phone in its cradle.

  “Don’t hang up! I believe that the truth, in this case at least, will set Alan free. If you really love your husband, you’ll talk to me.”

  I feared I’d gone too far, but when she put the receiver against her ear, the anger had left her eyes. She was mine now, hooked and landed.

  “There is another explanation for Alan’s knowledge of the murder. Someone could have fed him details.”

  “But that would have to be...”

  “The murderer.”

  “You know who the real murderer is,” Tally said.

  “I have a pretty good idea, but I need your help to know for sure. Will you help me?”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about the first time you met Fairley Sable.”

  Surprise flickered in her eyes but was replaced by weary compliance. She took several deep breaths and cast her mind back to the past. “It was April. The weather was still nice. We were at our regular table on the patio, having mimosas. We were all curious about Harry’s new bride, who we were about to meet for the first time.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Mel and Anita, Alan of course, and Gigi. For a change, Gigi was alone. She had just broken up with Paul Bergman and was casting about for her next victim.” Tally frowned. “I don’t think any of us dreamed that her next conquest would be Mel.”

  “They did make an odd couple.”

  “I used to think so, but now I’m not sure. Maybe it was just a matter of time before they...found one another.”

  Tally had a point. Maybe it was fate that Mystic Cove’s ageless coquette and its most famous Lothario had wound up together.

  “Harry didn’t waste any time in remarrying,” I said.

  “Personally I wasn’t all that shocked that Harry remarried.” Tally frowned at a fingernail, bit off a cuticle. “I told Anita at Ellen’s memorial that it wouldn’t be long before Harry started looking for a replacement. Harry was the kind of man who required a wife. It wasn’t a sexual thing, but Harry needed someone to keep his life in order, a role most cheaply and efficiently filled by a wife. It was his haste that was disturbing.”

  “Let’s move on to Fairley.”

  “The first time I saw them, they were holding hands, something Harry and Ellen never did. But it looked very sweet.”

  “What was your first impression of Fairley?”

  “Not much. I saw an attractive petite woman with white hair that was hacked in an
unattractive bob. I remember thinking that a short crop would be much more attractive and vowed to get her into the salon as soon as possible, which I did. Gigi called Fairley a creep mouse and that’s as good a description as any.”

  “A creep mouse? What did Gigi mean?”

  “I took it to mean a frightened creature that kept out of everyone’s way, which seemed to describe Fairley. An old-fashioned kind of woman who listened much and spoke little.”

  “Like Anita?”

  “In the beginning Fairley was careful not to tread on toes or speak out of turn. A bland little woman who would fill her new role as water fills a glass. Mel said Fairley was the kind who goes along to get along. Later I wondered what Fairley got out of all that going and getting along, but not at first. The doubt came later.”

  “Doubt?”

  Tally grimaced. “Doubt might be too strong a word. It’s just that after a time I noticed certain oddities in our new friend. The excessive cleanliness that bordered on OCD for one, and then I caught her lying to me—not once, but several times. Stupid, meaningless lies that served no purpose that I could see. But I wasn’t concerned, not really.”

  “No?” I didn’t bother to hide my skepticism.

  “We all do stupid things that can’t always be easily explained. I thought Fairley’s lies and quirks were harmless eccentricities. But after Harry died I changed my mind about her.” A short laugh. “In fact, after Harry was gone, everything changed.”

  “Including Fairley?”

  “On the day of Harry’s funeral Mel had too much to drink. He was angry over the way Fairley handled Harry’s remains, along with the funeral arrangements. I agreed with Mel on this point. Fairley didn’t do right by Harry.”

  “In what way?”

  “She cremated him, for one.”

  “Maybe Harry wanted cremation.”

  Tally shook her head. “Harry had a perfectly good plot in Lady-in-the-Hills Cemetery, next to Ellen, his wife of forty-seven years.”

  “That sucks.” I felt bad for the first Mrs. Sable, condemned to an eternity of lonely nights by the villainous Fairley.