Stumbling through weeds, I made my way around the side of the house. After scraping my shin climbing over a rickety fence, I was in the backyard. The light I had seen was coming from the kitchen. There was a gap in the kitchen window curtains, and I looked through it and saw Susanna Hawkins shrinking into a corner next to the stove, arms crossed and hands clutching her elbows, her head cocked in a listening attitude.
I called, “Susanna!” and tapped on the window.
She started violently. Her eyes darted to a drawer next to her, and she pulled it open and reached inside. Then she closed it again and buried her face in her empty hands.
“Susanna! It’s Maggie.” Even standing as far away as I was, I saw the shudder that ran through her body. Then she became instantly mobilized, as if I had thrown a switch. She dashed to the window, threw the curtains back, and stared out at me. The bones of her face seemed to stretch her delicate skin, and her eyes were wide. Only her hair retained the appearance of health. It mantled her shoulders, reflecting light from the room behind her.
When she saw me she sank to her knees, resting her forehead on the windowsill. “Let me in!” I called. She got up, looking dazed, and moved toward the back door. When she opened it, I said, “You see, you didn’t kill me after all.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” she whispered.
She stepped back and I walked past her. In a corner Curly eyed me sleepily, his tail thumping the floor. We walked to the living room, where a red wooden child-sized chair was lying on its side. Susanna righted it and sat down in it, knees together and feet spread apart. “I wasn’t trying to kill you,” she said. “I nearly fainted when I saw you fall down.”
“Why were you shooting, then?”
“Oh, you know,” she said almost absentmindedly, as if it no longer mattered. “I wanted to make sure you went to the police about Richard. I was afraid you were wavering.”
“You stole Richard’s gloves?”
“I had to. Once you decided somebody killed Larry, I wanted you to be positive it was Richard. You were on the brink. I left the boys with the neighbors…” She giggled. “Isn’t that funny? To have to worry about getting a baby-sitter so you can go out and steal and shoot at people?” She giggled louder, and I was afraid she would become hysterical, but she stopped with a choked gasp.
“How did you get the gloves?”
“Easy.” Her face started to collapse again, but she mastered it. “I made up a story about an insurance policy and called Richard’s office and found out what kind of car he drives. I hung around his building until he left and followed him. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. I thought I’d follow him to his place, and maybe there’d be a chance to break in, get something of his— I don’t know. I was wild.” She shook her hair back from her face. “His leaving the car unlocked at Pacific Bakery was sheer luck for me. I grabbed the gloves.”
“Tonight you came and waited at my house.”
“When I got there you weren’t home. I stood in the park. I thought I’d shoot and break a window or something, but you had to be there or it wouldn’t work. I had Richard’s glove in my pocket, and I had Larry’s gun. He kept one here, because he was afraid his enemies would come gunning for him in the middle of the night. I had no idea you’d run into the park. God, you were coming right at me. I shot, but I wasn’t trying to kill you. Not the way I was trying to kill Larry.”
“He was going to leave you.”
“That’s what the note was about. He was going to run out without saying a word, the lousy coward.”
I remembered the cryptic “Sorry to do this to you and the kids.” Not much in the way of a parting message. That afternoon, Andrew had confronted Larry and told him he knew Larry was blackmailing Corelli. Larry must have believed Andrew’s threat to expose him. Rather than face that, he was prepared to desert both the Times and his family.
“Why did you go there?”
She clenched her fists on her knees. “I was fed up. Things had been bad for a long time. No, that’s wrong. They were always bad. Larry never cared about anything but that stupid paper. I didn’t count, the kids didn’t count, he screwed everything female that crossed his path. For years, I thought— well, this is how it is. But you can only put up with something for so long. Lately, I got to thinking maybe I didn’t have to take this shit.
“I started bugging him to talk to me. At first, he barely paid attention. When I didn’t shut up, he started promising we’d sit down and thrash the whole thing out. He’d say yes, and then he’d put it off. He’d have to work late, or he wasn’t in the mood. I wouldn’t get mad. I’d just say, ‘Look, Larry, I’m going to have this out with you. When’s it going to be?’ We’d set another time, and it would happen all over again.”
I could hardly breathe, feeling the weight of her frustration. “That night was the last time he promised,” she went on. “I mean, here I was. Looking after the kids all day, zero money, while he went all over town playing big shot. Talking on the phone constantly, surrounded by girls telling him how great he was, while Zeke and Abner and I couldn’t even afford to go to the movies.
“I was thinking, this is it. Decisions have to be made. He said he’d be here by seven-thirty. I got the kids off to bed early and sat down to wait. I wouldn’t allow myself to do anything else. I sat here waiting.
“By eight-thirty, I knew in my gut he wasn’t coming. I could’ve called, but I had done that so many times before, so I said, fuck it, I won’t beg him to come home, but when he gets here he’d better watch out. And I sat and waited.”
The memory seemed to animate her, and she got up and paced the room. “It must have been horrible,” I said.
She turned toward me abruptly. “Horrible. It was horrible. About ten-thirty, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had reached the limit. So I went after him. I— this shows you the kind of mother I am. I left the kids here alone, asleep. They almost never wake up, you know, but suppose they had? Or what if the house had caught on fire? What a crazy, stupid thing to do!” There was intense anguish in the words. Susanna obviously felt more remorse for leaving her children alone at night than she did for killing Larry.
“But they didn’t wake up, did they?” I was trying to offer comfort, but also to keep her talking.
“The times I’ve thought about how dumb that was.” She sank to the floor and sat there, eyes tightly shut, clenched fist pressed against her mouth.
I crossed the room and helped her up. Her arm felt as thin as a child’s. “Would you like some tea?” I asked, and she nodded and followed me into the kitchen. The kettle was on the stove, and I put water on to boil and found the teapot and some mugs in a cabinet.
She sat at the kitchen table. “Anyway, I got there,” she said in a more normal tone. “I went up to his office and there he was. The window was open. He had some stuff on his desk. He was obviously feeling very hyper, and he wasn’t pleased to see me.”
I opened the tea canister. Lemon grass. No, Larry wouldn’t have been pleased to see Susanna when he was worried about getting out of town before being exposed as a blackmailer.
“He said, ‘What are you doing here?’ as if I had no business to be there, no claim on his time, and that just made me madder. I asked him who the hell was he to say that, when he had promised to be home at seven-thirty, and he said, ‘Oh, that,’ as if it wasn’t important at all. And then, sounding very preoccupied, he said that he was going to leave town right now, because he was in a lot of trouble. He’d been planning to send me a note. A note!
“I said, ‘What’s going on?’ and he said he didn’t have time to explain, and I said I’d had enough of that shit, he was going to tell me or he wouldn’t get out of there. I was standing in the doorway.
“He tried to push past me, and suddenly I felt so mad and so strong that I knew I wasn’t going to let him go, and I shoved him back. I guess it took him by surprise, because he stumbled backwards a little, and I pushed him again and he fell against the desk. I grabbe
d the metal lamp off the desk and hit him on the head. It made a cut. Maybe I hit him a couple of times. It was like, you know, I couldn’t stop myself. It felt good.”
Her voice creaked a little, and I handed her a mug of tea. She took it without noticing. “He was bleeding a little and really scared by this time, and he was sort of scrambling backwards to get away from me. I felt strong and huge, like the strongest person in the world. I grabbed him when he was trying to get up, next to the window, and I said, ‘Are you still leaving, Larry?’ and he looked at me with this hate— real hate— in his face and he said, ‘You bet I am, you bitch,’ and he was about half-standing—” Susanna broke off. She shrugged. “I shoved him out the window,” she said with a trace of surprise. “I shoved him and out he went, just like that. He didn’t make a sound as he went down, and I heard him bounce off the garbage cans below. I wiped the lamp off and put it back on the desk and left.”
I took my mug and sat down next to her at the table. She picked at its puckering, muddy yellow paint with her fingernail. “Let me ask you something,” she said.
“What?”
“How did you realize it was me? The sheepskin jacket? I got rid of it after you were here and told me Richard had seen me.”
“Not the jacket. The party hat.”
She frowned. “Party hat?”
“When I was here yesterday, the dog was wearing a hat that said ‘Pacific Bakery Anniversary Days’ on it. When Richard told me about his gloves being stolen, he said there was a promotion going on when he stopped at Pacific Bakery Mall. Once I realized the two of you had crossed paths, it seemed obvious.”
Susanna shook her head ruefully. “That silly hat was on the radio antenna of my car when I got back after taking Richard’s gloves. I was so nervous I don’t even remember, but I must have grabbed it and thrown it in the car. Bringing it in for the kids to play with was a reflex action.”
We sat in silence. Then she put down her mug. “Now what?” she said.
I had been dreading the question. Susanna and I were so much alike. Having been hurt, we had lashed back. Emotionally brutalized, we had discovered that we ourselves could be cruel. Would I perhaps have killed Richard, in Susanna’s circumstances? The answer wasn’t an unqualified no.
Yet Larry Hawkins had been alive. Death, I understood then, was more real than anything. More real than the table I sat at, the mug of tea I drank. I had felt it brush by me on three bullets tonight, and that had been too close. Bringing someone to that reality by force was wrong. I wanted to breathe, and move, and live out my time, and so had Larry.
“I’ll have to call the police. I’m sorry.”
She gnawed her lip. “You’re sure?”
“Don’t put me through this. It won’t do any good. I’ve already mailed a letter to Andrew Baffrey telling him the whole story. It’s too late.”
She got up and walked toward the stove, then turned to me pleadingly. “But a letter— a letter won’t get there till tomorrow or the next day. The kids and I could be gone by then. If we started tonight, we could get away. I know we could.”
She was standing in the corner where I had first seen her tonight, and again I saw her reach for the drawer. It came to me that she kept the gun there— a deadly weapon jumbled in with the napkins or the silverware. Her hand was on the knob. I had believed she didn’t want to kill me, but now my body tensed, preparing to run for my life.
I stood up, holding my breath. She pulled out the drawer, almost casually.
A second later, she breathed deeply and closed the drawer with a thud. “It wouldn’t work anyway,” she said. “Both Zeke and Abner get miserably carsick on long trips. If you’re going to call, you might as well do it now.”
I went to the telephone.
Thirty-five
It was three in the morning when I got home. The past hours had been a blur of waiting, making sure somebody was looking after the Hawkins boys and the dog, drinking bitter coffee, and having a long session with Inspector Bosworth. The session included a chastening tirade on the value of allowing the police to do their jobs without being hampered by ex-wives and investigative reporters. Having already dealt with Andrew’s accusation of Richard that evening, Bosworth was decidedly fed up by the time I came on the scene.
“Look, Mrs. Longstreet,” he said. “If you get any more flashes like this, give me a call. Me personally. Don’t try to do it yourself. You’re goddamn lucky you aren’t dead, you know that?”
I knew that. I also knew there was a constricted feeling in my throat whenever I thought about Susanna Hawkins.
It didn’t look as if anybody’s friendship with the commissioner was going to prevent a complete investigation of the machinations surrounding the Golden State Center. Richard’s phoenix would not rise, but would remain a stack of architect’s drawings, cost analyses, and press releases.
I went over my story for the fourth or fifth time. I drank coffee. I signed the forms. At last, they told me I could leave. The sky was black, and a cold wind surged down the empty streets. Tears of depression and fatigue spilled out of my eyes and, too tired to wipe them away, I drove home with everything looking wavy and indistinct. Under the circumstances, it wasn’t surprising that I had put the car in the garage and started up the front steps before I saw Andrew sitting at the top.
His legs were stretched out. In the dim glow from the streetlights almost all I could see were whitish blobs denoting his face and hands, and a glimmer from the dingy white laces of his running shoes. “Hi,” he said. “I thought you were never coming home. Thought I was going to have to sit here all night.”
I got out a tissue and blew my nose. “I see you made yourself comfortable.”
“As best I could. I even caught a little nap, about half an hour ago.”
“I was at the police station. Susanna killed Larry. I wrote you a letter telling about it, in case something happened to me.”
“Actually, I heard. Part of the fallout from my proclaiming that Richard did it. I don’t think Bosworth is too pleased with me.”
“I don’t think Bosworth is too pleased with either of us.” I had reached the top step, and Andrew moved his legs out of my way. Sighing, I sat down beside him.
“You may be wondering what I’ve been thinking while I waited for you,” he said.
“I assumed you might be thinking about how cold your rear end was getting.”
“That, too. But mainly, Maggie, I was thinking how to apologize for being an unmitigated ass.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Surely being a mitigated ass is the worst you can claim.”
“Will you forgive me for being a mitigated ass, then?”
“Sure.” I hesitated. “Maybe I should ask you to forgive me for something, too.”
“Great. I always hate it when the fault’s all on one side. What have you done?”
I couldn’t look at him. “Well, tonight— after we had our fight and everything— I was casting around in my head for people who might have killed Larry, and I thought—”
“You thought maybe I did it?” He chuckled. “I was at a meeting of the Streets Committee that night. It started at eight and yawned on till past midnight. I was sitting in the front row. In other words, I’ve got a cast-iron alibi.”
“Good. Now I won’t have to be afraid to be alone with you.”
He draped his arm around my shoulders. “I don’t care what Bosworth says. If it weren’t for us, none of this stuff would’ve come to light. We did a damn good job, even considering a few blunders here and there.”
I leaned against him. “Damn good.”
We sat for a while. The wind had died down to a breeze that ruffled our hair and stirred the branches of the Japanese magnolia. At last, we stood up, and I fumbled in my purse for my key.
The End
Dedication
TO COLLIN WILCOX
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If You Enjoyed This Book…
Try Hurricane Season, another great book by Michaela Thompson.
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Other Books by Michaela Thompson
Hurricane Season
The Fault Tree
Venetian Mask
Magic Mirror
A Temporary Ghost
Riptide
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About the Author
MICHAELA THOMPSON is the author of seven mystery novels, all of them originally published under the name Mickey Friedman. She grew up on the Gulf Coast in the Northwest Florida Panhandle, the locale described in Hurricane Season, and still spends a significant amount of time there. She has worked as a newspaper reporter and a freelance journalist, and has contributed mystery short stories to a number of anthologies. She and her husband, Alan Friedman, live in New York City.
Paper Phoenix: A Mystery of San Francisco in the '70s (A Classic Cozy--with Romance!) Page 18
