Murder in Mystic Cove

by Daryl Anderson

  “In Mel’s mind Fairley’s crime was compounded when she cremated Harry before a proper viewing of the body could take place. He whined to everyone who would listen, ‘I wanted to say goodbye to Harry.’ Fairley grew so agitated that she pointed to the cheap urn on the mantle and said, ‘Harry’s right there, Mel. Go say your goodbyes.’”

  “So the creep mouse found a voice,” I said.

  “It was astonishing!” Tally actually smiled at the memory. “At the time I was heartened that Fairley defied Mel, not an easy thing to do. But after that one courageous act, Fairley slipped back into her familiar role of going and getting along. She even volunteered to help Mel at his newspaper.”

  “Why?” I found it difficult to believe that anyone would volunteer to spend time in Mel’s company, at least not without an ulterior motive.

  “I’m not sure.” I could tell this wasn’t the first time Tally had wondered about this. “At the time I thought it was because she enjoyed the work, though why anyone would enjoy such drudgery is beyond me. Most of the time she answered the phone or made coffee.” Tally shifted in the hard chair. “Still, Fairley did have a busy sort of mind. Not deep, but very busy. Working on the paper would have kept her occupied.” Tally frowned and her eyes lost focus. “And to be honest, life in the Cove can be deadly dull. After Harry died, we all settled into familiar ruts. Other than the distraction of Gigi and Mel’s tawdry affair, everything seemed the same as before. We ate and drank together and talked about the things we had talked about forever.”

  “But it wasn’t the same.”

  “No it wasn’t. As with all friends, there had always been tensions in our little group, but when Harry was alive these irritations simmered below the surface and could be forgotten or at least minimized by a margarita or a joke. But now all the ugliness bubbled to the top, like a pot of stew turned to high. We were mean to one another. Not like friends anymore.”

  “If you were so unhappy why didn’t you break off with Mel and the others?”

  “I wanted to. I told Alan that we should consider quitting the group. But for once in his life Alan was firm. He told me, ‘They are our friends. We can’t turn against our friends.’ Friends!” Tally spat the word as if it were a curse.

  “Too bad Mel didn’t feel the same way.”

  “I put all my hopes on October when Alan and I would take our annual trip to New Hampshire. I was a New England girl, you know.”

  I remembered the picture of the smiling dark-haired girl and the endless snowcapped mountains.

  “At last it was October and there was one final celebration before Alan and I would leave for New England, Mel’s birthday dinner at the Grub and Grog, inside the restaurant proper rather than on the patio. The night started badly. There was a mix-up with the reservations so we had to squeeze into a table smaller than Mel liked. Mel had been drinking. He was puffed up on pride and Absolut, bragging nonstop.”

  “Isn’t that Mel’s natural state, with or without martinis?”

  “Yes, but it was worse than usual, and there was a sharpness to his words that put us all on edge. He kept boasting that he was about to publish the story of the century in next month’s Commentator.” She looked at me pointedly. “He actually called it the story of the century—can you believe it? I teased him mercilessly. I’d had my fill of Mel Dick’s ego.” Tally’s voice was razor sharp.

  “What form did this teasing take?”

  “Oh, I called him delusional, accused him of exaggerating, even dared him to let us in on the secret—those sorts of things. All the while I assumed he was talking about that ridiculous prostitution story.”

  “So you know about the hookers at the G and G.”

  Tally’s shoulders straightened. “Alan tells me everything.”

  “And vice versa?”

  Tally glanced at the guard, rubbed the side of her nose. “Alan and I have no secrets.”

  I nearly bit my tongue off that time. I wanted to ask Tally about that plane reservation for one—had Alan known of Tally’s escape clause? I didn’t think so, and yet despite the deception I believed she loved her husband. And to be fair, there was plenty Alan had kept to himself. It was a sad truth, but when disaster threatened, the Rands had spun off in separate directions—their love was no protection against Fairley Sable.

  “Even Gigi begged Mel to tell us his secret story,” Tally continued. “Mel told her that like everybody else she’d have to wait until November to read his scoop. I said something like, ‘How big of a story can it be, Mel? This is Mystic Cove—nothing ever happens here.’ Well, he recoiled as if I’d struck him, glaring at me—you know how Mel could be.”

  I nodded. Mel Dick held tight to his anger. “What happened then?”

  “He smiled, and I knew from his smile that I’d gone too far.” Tally shivered. “That death grin would have turned Mystic Bay into a skating rink. Even Fairley saw the horror of that smile. She was sitting next to me. Her body tensed, and she gripped the edge of the table for dear life. I was so confused. Why was Mel so angry?”

  “Couldn’t you guess the cause?”

  “Maybe,” she whispered, “I felt a flicker of fear, like a worm crawling out of the earth. But I pushed it away, back in the dirt. How could Mel know about my past? I had been safe for so many years.” She twisted in her chair. “I was a blind fool.”

  “We see what we want to see.”

  “When Sheila returned with Mel’s fresh martini he greeted it like an old friend, drinking deep, not spilling a drop. I can’t forgive that steady hand. An executioner’s hand. Then Mel spoke those words that would change everything forever.”

  I bent forward, as close to the glass as possible.

  “He stared into me and said, ‘I know who you are and what you did. You won’t escape justice this time.’ There was nervous laughter, but I didn’t laugh, and neither did Fairley.”

  “And the next day the other shoe dropped,” I said.

  “Mel summoned Alan to his office and told him about Katherine. When Alan returned from the meeting he told me we’d have to postpone our trip north, managing a lame excuse.”

  “But you knew something was wrong,” I said.

  “I didn’t press. Maybe it was a presentiment of doom. I didn’t want to know the truth.”

  “Most people don’t, when it’s an unpleasant one.”

  “Even so, my husband is not a keeper of secrets, and not long after his conversation with Mel, he told me everything. That’s when the future died for me.”

  “How did Alan deal with it?”

  “Foolishly,” she said shortly. “Alan ran in circles, trying to find a way out. He was sure he’d be able to convince Mel to forget about Katherine, but I knew it was pointless. Even when Fairley told me about Mel’s mental deterioration, I knew it was hopeless.”

  “You saw a lot of Fairley during this period?”

  “Yes, we saw quite a bit of Fairley after Mel let her go from the Commentator.”

  “Mel fired Fairley? When?”

  Tally yanked the receiver from her ear and the guard glared—me and my big voice.

  “A few days before Mel’s birthday dinner—either October fourth or fifth—Fairley dropped by the house, upset that Mel had just fired her from the paper. She wanted to know if we had any idea why Mel had let her go. We didn’t of course.”

  My, but October had been a busy time in the secret life of Mystic Cove. On October second Mel bought his autographed copy of I Am Not a Witch. At that time, or shortly after, he discovered Katherine Henderson’s photo and put two and two together. Paranoid and secretive on his best days, Mel had probably given Fairley the boot so he could work on his big story in privacy. Somehow that thoughtless action had provoked a murderous reaction in Fairley.

  “You said Fairley became a frequent visitor—tell
me about these visits.”

  “Those awful days are jumbled together. But I suppose Fairley saw that Alan and I were going through a rough patch and wanted to cheer us. She often brought us news of Mel’s increasingly bizarre behavior, even made fun of Mel’s madness, which cheered me.” Tally almost smiled. “It cheered Alan as well, though for different reasons.”

  “How so?”

  “Alan hoped that in his madness Mel would forget about Katherine Henderson, but I knew Mel would never forget, never forgive. If anyone deserved madness, it was Mel Dick.”

  “You said Fairley made fun of Mel. Do you remember what she said? Her exact words?”

  “Yes, I do—they were so strange. Fairley had fallen into the habit of calling Mel the Mad Hatter and she’d say things like, ‘The Hatter was blind as a bat at lunch, he spilled half of his salad in his lap’ or ‘He was hot as a hare last night.’”

  “Dry as a bone and red as a beet,” I murmured.

  Tally stared long and hard. “Yes, Fairley said that as well.”

  “Let’s move to that last night at the G and G.”

  “The last act,” Tally said, her jaw clenched. “It was Alan’s idea to go to the G and G that night to see Mel. To beg him to see reason.”

  “How did Alan know Mel would be there?”

  Tally blinked. “Why, I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of it.”

  I had a pretty good idea who had blabbed to Alan of Mel’s whereabouts.

  “Alan said that Mel would listen to the both of us,” Tally said, “but when we saw him even Alan had to accept that it was no use. As we hurried home, he kept saying that Mel was raving mad, beyond reason, though he didn’t care much for my response.”

  “How’s that?”

  She met my gaze, her eyes hard. “I told Alan that he was right—one can’t reason with a madman. A madman must be stopped.”

  “And someone did stop mad Mel that night.”

  “But it wasn’t Alan and it wasn’t me. You know the rest of the story. I took a Xanax and fell asleep on the sofa. The next thing I know, Alan wakes me with the news that I was safe. Mel was dead, murdered. He couldn’t hurt us anymore. That night Alan went to the Commentator office and deleted the file on Katherine Henderson.”

  “How did he get inside?”

  “With a key he had from the time he was editor,” Tally said, backing up Alan’s story.

  “Did anyone else have keys?” I asked.

  “Absolutely not,” Tally answered.

  “Not even Fairley?”

  “Not even Fairley. For the last weeks of his life Mel was locked up alone in that office. If he had known that Alan still had those old keys, Mel would have changed the lock.”

  “And the incriminating files on Mel’s home computer?”

  Tally’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know about that. All I know is that when Alan returned from the newspaper office, he held me in his arms and told me that I was out of harm’s way. The nightmare was over.”

  “But it wasn’t over.”

  She shook her head. “After that, it was different between Alan and me. Mel Dick’s ghost stood between us and he wasn’t going anywhere. It wasn’t long before we could barely look at one another for fear of what we would see—a murderer.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Devil Sends a Woman

  “And when you appeared on our doorstep the other night,” Tally said, “I knew it was over.”

  “When I showed up, it was almost as if Alan knew I was coming. Is it possible someone warned Alan about me?”

  “A little before you arrived, the phone did ring, and Alan answered.”

  “Does Alan always answer the phone?”

  “Recently he has. Even...even before all this I would let Alan answer. There was nothing sinister or unusual about Alan taking the call.”

  I wouldn’t bet on it. “Tell me about this phone conversation. Did he take it in front of you?”

  Tally’s brow furrowed. “We’d been in the living room, watching TV. After Alan took the call, he walked into the kitchen. But Alan is thoughtful that way—he didn’t want to disturb my television viewing.”

  “How long was the call, Tally?”

  “A minute at most.”

  “And what did Alan do after?”

  “He went upstairs. I heard him moving around. I even muted the television and listened for a moment. I almost asked him what he was about. Oh no—he was getting his gun!”

  “Any idea who called Alan?”

  “Alan didn’t use a name and as I said the conversation was brief. You think it was the murderer on the phone, don’t you? The real murderer.”

  “Did you hear the voice on the other end of the call? Was it female?”

  “You think the murderer is a woman?”

  “Why not? Women kill for the same reasons men kill, though we may go about it differently. I thought you understood that.” I stopped myself just in time. I had almost called her Katherine. I steered Tally back to her story.

  “After several minutes Alan rejoined me on the sofa, but he was restless. He kept jumping up and looking out the window. Believe me, if I’d known he had the gun I would have called the police myself.”

  I kept my trap shut for once. Over the past weeks she’d had plenty of opportunity to call the police and hadn’t. All this death and mayhem might have been avoided if she had. “How much time elapsed between the phone call and my arrival?”

  “Fifteen minutes, twenty at most.”

  About the time it took to walk from the Grub and Grog’s parking lot to Admiral Street.

  The killer’s eyes had been on me from the start and that night was no different. Alerted by the GPS device she’d planted on my car, she’d known I was back in Founder’s Cove. When she saw me slip into Birnam Wood, she knew where I was headed. A quick call to Alan to warn him that Addie Gorsky was coming his way, bringing doom and destruction to his door.

  The trap was baited and set, only foiled because Brad Spooner had been worried about me. Poor Alan Rand—Fairley Sable had played him the way Paganini played the fiddle, convincing him of Tally’s guilt, feeding him lies and half-truths as she had fed Mel Dick jimsonweed.

  “Oh, Alan,” she might have said, “I saw Tally follow Mel into the woods and she had a gun! What does this mean?” Alan would believe her; Fairley had no reason to lie. From that moment Alan’s life would have been in her hands.

  “You know who the killer is,” Tally said. “Who is this stranger who’s ruined my life?”

  “Not a stranger, Tally, but a friend.”

  * * *

  After the interview, I touched base with Angie. As I learned of Fairley Sable’s true identify, I formulated a rough theory. At last count Fairley was three times a widow, with each husband dying unexpectedly and all quickly cremated. I’d assumed Harry Sable’s sudden death was natural. But nothing about Fairley was natural.

  “You’ve got to talk to Pete Santos,” Angie said. “He’s retired from Phoenix Police Department, but he worked a case back in the eighties involving Fairley. Talk to Santos.”

  Pete Santos picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been waiting for the call—and maybe he had. His voice was hoarse and cracked with age, but the years had not dimmed his memories of Fairley Nixon. “Fairley was working as a home health aide for Mrs. Blair, an elderly widow. A couple weeks after changing her will in Fairley’s favor, the old gal passed away in her sleep.”

  “A lot of money involved?” I asked.

  Santos chuckled. “Depends on who you ask. From a detective’s salary it was a quite piece of change, but not a fortune. The medical examiner found high amounts of calcium oxalate crystals in body tissue, but that wasn’t enough for a finding of murder. Fact is, I only put it toget
her later, when I learned about the others.”

  “Fairley poisoned Mrs. Blair.”

  “I believe Fairley fed Mrs. Blair a cocktail of lemon-lime soda and antifreeze, though I could never prove it.”

  We talked for over an hour—or rather he talked and I listened. Fairley Nixon was Pete Santos’s case, the one he couldn’t forget. After retiring, he’d taken the case files home, still searching for the thread that would bring Fairley Sable to justice.

  I started to call Brad, but what did I have to bring him? If Fairley was a black widow, with Harry her latest victim, how did Mel get ensnared in her web?

  Mel’s birthday dinner had provided the spark. Fairley must have been in a strange mood, her defenses aroused after Mel inexplicably threw her out of the Commentator office a few days earlier. She must have brooded on it, searching for the reason.

  When Tally described Mel’s threat she’d said that Fairley was extremely nervous. Fairley nervous? The woman was ice and steel, not flesh and blood. What had Mel said? I know who you are and what you did. You won’t escape justice this time.

  Mel had been talking to Tally, but what if Fairley thought his words were meant for her?

  It was possible—Fairley had been sitting next to Tally.

  I know who you are and what you did. You won’t escape justice this time.

  To my mind, there was only one interpretation a vicious creature like Fairley could put to those terrible words. She must have assumed that Mel had learned of her murderous past. If I was right, Mel’s murder was a mistake, a miscalculation made by a guilty mind.

  Not a bad theory, but it hung on a tissue of innuendo and guesswork, and I had nothing close to probable cause to bring to Brad. I needed evidence. I had to get inside the murderer’s lair.

  Tonight Founder’s Centre would be crowded with revelers for Harvest Fest, including a mummified Queen of the Nile, a deranged old woman who could not leave well enough alone, and an angel of death.

  Fairley Sable’s home would be empty and I knew where she hid her key.

  * * *

  I parked on a dead-end street on the outer edge of Founder’s Centre, foregoing my usual space at the Grub and Grog. It added to my walk but was a small sacrifice. Harvest Fest was underway and I could not chance running into familiar faces. Tonight I would pass unnoticed through the paths and byways of Mystic Cove; tonight I was the ghost of Birnam Wood.