Twisted at the Root--A Jane Lawless Mystery

by Ellen Hart

  After her meeting with Brittany, Jane drove slowly through the dark side streets back to her restaurant. She needed time to think. Once back behind her desk, she attempted to get some work done, but was too keyed up, too worried about her brother. After doing a walk-through of the main dining room, the kitchen, and the downstairs pub, she opened the door to the Lakeside room and flipped on the light. Before she gave up and went home, depressed that it would be another night without Julia, she had one last thing to do. She called Marlo Wise.

  “What do you want?” came Marlo’s hushed voice.

  “Are you at the hospital?”

  “No, I’m in outer space. Of course I’m at the hospital. Where the hell else would I be?”

  “I have an important question I need to ask you, but first, please tell me how George is.”

  “Why should I? You’re not exactly a friend.”

  “I’ve been very concerned about him.”

  “Just gimme a minute.”

  Jane could hear noise in the background. And then all was quiet. “He’s awake. He’s in pain, but the meds seem to help—though in my opinion, not nearly enough. The doctors are most worried about the concussion. He’s going to be at greater risk for CTE—you know, what football players get.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that. What about his memory? Does he remember what happened to him?”

  “Nothing,” said Marlo. “It’s all blank.”

  Jane had been afraid of that.

  “On the positive side, he knows me and remembers our life together.”

  “Has his sense of humor returned?”

  “Huh,” said Marlo, sounding impressed. “I guess maybe you do know him a little. Yes, his sense of irony is remarkably intact.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I need to get back in the room. What’s your urgent question?”

  “Have you had a chance to go through his things, what he was wearing when they brought him to the hospital?”

  “Maybe,” Marlo said, her voice a study in suspicion.

  “Was anything missing? A piece of jewelry, for instance?”

  Silence. Then, “Actually, there was. I figured it got lost in the wreck. It’s a small gold pocket watch, belonged to his grandmother back in Kharkov, in the Ukraine. Her name was Yana Krochak. Her initials were in the upper part of the inside cover. You won’t be able to read them because they’re in Cyrillic. George always kept it in his pocket.”

  “You looked everywhere?”

  “Well, I mean, it could be in the car, but that’s basically just a wreck now. Maybe I’ll get a chance to look around inside, but more likely I won’t. It could have fallen out when he was lifted onto the gurney.”

  “Okay,” said Jane. “That’s helpful.”

  “Why? What’s going on? What are you after?” More suspicion.

  Jane decided to tell her the truth. “I don’t think an accident sent George off that hill.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean? If it wasn’t an accident, what was it?” Lowering her voice, she asked, “Are you seriously suggesting someone intentionally tried to hurt him?”

  “As soon as I find a few more answers, I promise I’ll give you a call and tell you everything.”

  “Is this related to my father’s murder?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  More silence. “Okay. George and I aren’t going anywhere. Hey,” she said. “If it turns out you’re not a nutcase and what you’re telling me is true, is my husband still in danger?”

  Jane thought of the calls the nurse had mentioned. “Let me ask a question: Does George have a cousin in Montana?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “Then honestly, Marlo, I think it’s possible. But I can’t go to the police with a theory. Neither can you.”

  “Then make it quick, Lawless. Figure it out.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Try harder.” She disconnected the call.

  * * *

  Peter sat on the bed in the Harlow bedroom, propped against a ridiculous array of furry pink and white pillows, thinking how glad he’d be to put these colors in his rearview mirror. He’d spent the last half hour browsing various cheap-ticket sites, figuring out how much it would cost him to hop a plane back to London. He wasn’t ready to leave just yet, though he couldn’t stay much longer. Jane was annoying the hell out of him, mostly because she was making points about the Chenoweths and his relationship to them that made him doubt Kit. He found that intolerable. His father’s texts had piled up without Peter making any attempt to answer them. Sigrid had texted him several times right after he’d talked to her, though she seemed to have given up. Good for her. She should give up on him. It would make things easier when he asked for a divorce.

  Flopping onto his stomach, he was about to bring up a favorite video game when he heard loud thumping on his door. “Just a second,” he called, crossing the room to open it.

  “Hey, man,” said Bolger, stuffing the last bite of a Rice Krispies bar into his mouth. “You got a visitor downstairs.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Woman.”

  “My sister?”

  “Nope. Never seen her before.”

  “Did you just make those?” he asked, pointing to Bolger’s mouth.

  “Hattie did.”

  “I didn’t know she cooked.”

  “It isn’t cooking, man; it’s mostly melting and stirring.”

  “Is Cordelia here?”

  “At the theater until late. I told your visitor to wait in the great hall.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah, no problem. Night.” He walked off toward the servant’s stairway.

  Peter checked his look in the mirror above the dresser and then trotted downstairs. Kit was standing by the Christmas tree, staring up at the lights. She looked beautiful, dressed in black leather ankle boots and a party dress made of an odd, abstract, red webbing with a tight red slip underneath. When she heard the floor creak, she turned and ran to him, pressing her body against his.

  Hesitantly, he put his arms around her. “You’re shivering. Are you cold?”

  “I’m scared.”

  “Of what?”

  “Everything. My whole life.”

  He held her for a few seconds, then walked her over to one of the couches. Drawing her down next to him, he held her hands. “You can tell me anything, Kit.” Her fingers were like ice. He tried his best to warm them.

  “My life is coming apart.” She pulled her hands away, wiped her cheeks, crossed and uncrossed her arms. “I’ve tried so hard to keep Eli happy, to just be friends, but he never—ever—stops pushing. I don’t want to be with him ever again, but when I pull away, he gets all agitated and clingy. And so angry. He wants me to leave John Henry.” She rubbed the fading bruise on her arm. “You thought my husband did that to me, but he didn’t. It was Eli.”

  Peter clenched his jaw.

  “I have to get away from him, Peter. And … my husband.”

  “What’s up with your husband?”

  She turned away. “This is all so awful.”

  He waited. She seemed to need some time.

  Facing him again, she said, “I use his computer for my coursework—you know, for my degree? One night, a few months ago, I found this file. I was just kind of noodling around and there it was. Child porn. Little girls. Tons of it. So disgusting that I ran to the bathroom and threw up. He’s a pedophile, Peter. Ever since that night, I can’t stand to be in the same room with him. But if I leave him, where would I go?”

  “You must have money. You have your salary.”

  She shook her head. “Because we’re married and because he’s paying for me to go to school, he said I shouldn’t take a salary. Not until I graduate. He’s very generous. He gives me an allowance, and beyond that, if I say I need—or want—something, he buys it.”

  “Without money of your own, you’re his prisoner.”

  Her eyes searched the room. “My li
fe is imploding, Peter, and I don’t know what to do. How to fix it.”

  “I’m glad you came here.”

  “Are you?”

  The conversation they’d had the other night about traveling to England together had stuck with him. In fact, he’d thought about it a lot. “Maybe I can help.”

  “How?”

  “Come to London with me.”

  “I can’t afford that.”

  “I’ll buy the tickets. Friends help friends, Kit. You’re my friend.”

  As the idea sank in, her eyes took on a glow. “You’d do that for me?”

  “Do you have a passport?”

  She nodded. “But where would I stay when we get there? I can’t exactly move in with you and Sigrid.”

  “I’ll rent a flat. We can stay together. No strings, Kit.”

  She touched his face. “What if I want strings?”

  Her touch felt like silk.

  “When could we go?” she asked.

  “I’ll buy the tickets tonight. There’s a flight that leaves around two tomorrow afternoon. We’d have to get to the airport by twelve or twelve thirty. I suppose you could stay here for the night.”

  “I have to pack. I can’t just leave with nothing.”

  “What about John Henry?”

  “We had that art opening tonight. It’s why I’m dressed up. John Henry said he’s staying at the gallery because there’s so much to do, which is a lie. He’ll either drink too much, bunk there, and not get up until noon, or he’ll spend the evening with a woman. Either way, Eli’s supposed to open up in the morning.”

  “John Henry has a girlfriend?”

  “She has a house in Bloomington. He’s been cheating on me for months—or maybe years. I can’t live like this.”

  “You shouldn’t have to. Here’s what we do.” He put his arm around her as they stood up, and he walked her to the door, explaining how tomorrow would work. He told her to call in sick in the morning. That would buy her some time. He’d leave Octavia’s Maybach in the garage and take an Uber down to her house. They would go to the airport together. “You’ll have a lot of things to iron out when you get there, but at least you’ll be safe.”

  Looking up into his eyes, she said, “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

  As he stammered around inside his mind for a way to respond that didn’t make him sound like a total dweeb, she pressed a finger to his lips. And then she kissed him. “See you in the morning, baby.”

  40

  “I’m about to do something unethical,” said Jane, still in bed, under the covers. She’d called Cordelia, knowing her friend considered noon the break of day. Jane had slept in, so it was just after eight thirty.

  “Can’t you be unethical a little later in the day?” came Cordelia’s groggy response.

  “But you’re awake now, right?”

  “Officially, no.”

  “Come on. You want to save Peter from Kit’s clutches, don’t you? Just haul yourself into the bathroom, turn on the water in the shower, and stand under it for a few minutes.”

  “Be a good girl and check back after lunch.”

  Sitting up in bed, Jane said, “Don’t hang up. This is important. You have to help me.”

  “All right, all right. You don’t have to shout.”

  Jane heard a loud thump.

  “I am now up. Teetering badly, but up. What’s the plan?”

  “Get over to my house as fast as possible. I’ll explain on the way.”

  “The way? If I don’t know where I’m going, however shall I know what to wear?”

  “Wear clothes, Cordelia. And bring your binoculars.”

  * * *

  An hour later, they were speeding south on I-35W. Cordelia was at the helm of her shiny new Subaru, while Jane tapped an address into her Waze app.

  “Listen,” said Cordelia, glancing over her shoulder. “I put my purse behind your seat. There’s a paper plate covered with aluminum foil inside it. Get it for us.”

  Jane reached around. “What’s in it?”

  “Hattie made some Rice Krispies bars last night. I may be wrong, but I think a couple of little mouse banditos, one named Bolger and one named Peter, snuck in and made off with a few. Want one?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Okay, so while I enjoy my breakfast, fill me in on your ethical crisis.”

  “Breakfast?”

  “Rice Krispies? Duh.”

  What Jane hoped to do wasn’t just unethical, it was illegal. “I need to get inside the Chenoweths’ house.”

  Cordelia turned to her, one eyebrow raised.

  “I spent some time last night looking at the security footage from the parking garage in Gideon’s building. The person in the hoodie, the one you see walking up to the elevators, could easily be a woman.”

  “Kit?”

  “I think so.”

  “And you need to get into the house … why?”

  “We’ve talked about trophies, right? I spoke to Marlo last night. She said George always carried his grandmother’s pocket watch with him. After the car crash, it was missing.”

  “You think you’re going to walk in there and, poof, find all these murderous mementos? Where, Janey? If they do exist, they could be anywhere. And what happens if it’s not Kit? Maybe the man in the hoodie was Eli.”

  “Then I’ll have to get into his place, too. It’s somewhere on the same property.”

  “What if you find someone home?”

  “They all work at the gallery, which opens at ten. Nobody should be around. If someone is, we call it off.” She looked over at the plate of Rice Krispies bars. “Maybe I will have one.”

  “Help yourself.” Cordelia fiddled with the heat. “Okay, so back to Kit. I have a question. She’s not tiny, but I doubt she weighs more than one thirty. How did she drag a guy like Gideon into the bathroom?”

  Chewing for a few seconds, Jane said, “Let me paint a scenario for you. It might not be accurate in every detail, but in the main, I think it’s what happened. Kit—”

  “Or Eli.”

  “Let’s concentrate on Kit for the moment. She lets herself into the condo with the key code, not expecting to find anyone there. Gideon was probably upstairs. I bet she thought the whole thing was a lark. Maybe, after she set the tote bag in the living room, she went into the kitchen in search of something to snack on.”

  “I can see her doing that.”

  “So she walks around, enjoying the relative splendor. Maybe she envisions herself living in a place like that one day. She figures she has at least half an hour, so she’s not in any hurry. I think she may even be the one who turned on the music. And that’s what alerted Gideon. Rashad wouldn’t be home for at least another hour. I’ll bet he came downstairs to see what was up. Maybe they both saw each other at the same time, but more likely she could see his legs on the open stairway before he could see her. I think she picked up something heavy, something she could use to defend herself, and hid in the downstairs bathroom, hoping he’d leave.”

  “The bronze figure.”

  “Exactly,” said Jane. “Gideon must have started looking around. She may have been hiding behind the door in the bathroom, or perhaps in the tub itself, behind the shower curtain. When he came in, she brought the sculpture down hard on the back of his head. It might be too much to think he fell directly into the bathtub, but it is possible. Whatever the case, her adrenaline was really pumping by then. If she had to lift him into the tub, in that moment, I believe she found the strength to do it. There would have been a fair amount of blood. If she looked in the medicine cabinet, she would have found razors. Maybe she thought that when his body was finally discovered, if the police saw the cut marks on his wrists, they would see it as a suicide attempt. Because of the blow to the back of his head, she probably hoped they’d think Gideon changed his mind and tried to get up, fell back, and that’s how the injury happened. It was quick thinking on her part. She had no way of knowing that his head wo
und couldn’t be explained that way. So she waits for the bathtub to fill. She cleans the blood off the statue with toilet paper and then flushes it away. As soon as she shuts off the bathwater, she hightails it out of there. She never thinks about the tote bag again. Blood wouldn’t be visible on black clothing. When she gets home, with Eli in heroin-induced la-la land, she could take all the time she needed to get rid of the bloody clothes. In the end, she got away with it.”

  “Until now. You should have told me we were going to do a little breaking and entering. I would have worn black.”

  “I’m the one who’s going in. You’re my lookout. I need you to park somewhere along the highway where you can see in both directions. If you see someone pull into the Chenoweths’ drive, you call me, and I’ll get the hell out. There’s a patio off the back, so there must be another door.”

  “I don’t like it,” said Cordelia. “You shouldn’t go in alone.”

  Jane checked the time. It was going on ten. “I’ll look around first. Make sure nobody’s inside. Maybe I’ll even ring the doorbell.”

  When Jane saw the sign for the county highway off ramp, she pointed. Her hands were beginning to sweat. As they approached the Chenoweths’ mailbox, Jane asked Cordelia to pull over so she could get out. “Your phone’s turned on, right?”

  “Yes, Janey. It’s on.”

  Jane pointed to another spot farther up, on the other side of the road. “Why don’t you back in there?”

  “Wait, wait. I just thought of something.”

  “What?”

  “It’s so Edgar Allan Poe. Where do you hide something when you want to keep it secret?”

  “I give up. Where?”

  “In plain sight, Janey. If I were you, I’d look for her jewelry box.”

  It was a thought. Jane slammed the car door and headed up the narrow road toward the house. Walking up to the garage, she peered through one of the high windows. Seeing a car inside, her spirits sank. Someone was home. Looking a moment more, she saw that the car was a silver Dodge Charger with white racing stripes. Could it be the same one that had been parked outside her house on New Year’s Eve? It seemed like too much of a coincidence to think it wasn’t. The next question was, who did it belong to—John Henry, Eli, or Kit? She was pretty sure Eli had a truck. So, was John Henry home, or Kit?