Counting Tiffany and Mitzi and, God help us, Jodi, there were eleven of them. Going back all the way to the late eighties. Rebecca Sorensen was there too. Poor Jeff, I thought.
Wait till I tell Hal. He’s going to plotz.
Well, Hal didn’t exactly plotz, but his reaction was much like mine when I told him what Ruthie had told me.
“Not Jodi,” he said.
“Yes, Jodi,” I replied. “Ruthie thinks that Cody is Jay’s because he looks like Jodi instead of Elliott.”
Hal saw the flaw in that right away. “Bullshit. Cody has brown eyes.”
Right, I thought, and I’ll bet Jodi was relieved when Cody’s eyes changed color. “Ruthie says that all Jay’s children look like their mothers,” I continued. “She said that it was like Jay was trying to create a child in his image but didn’t seem to have any genes to pass on.”
At this, Hal simply shook his head. “Just wait,” he said. “They’ll probably all grow up to be swindlers, just like their old man.”
We set about the business of getting ready for bed, and I had just settled in with a copy of the newest Dick Francis, when I heard Hal mumble something from the bathroom where he was brushing his teeth.
“What was that?” I called out.
Hal came out of the bathroom and climbed into bed next to me. “I said, do you know who else wanted to create people in his own image?”
I fell right into it. “Who?”
“God.”
Well, be that as it may, I couldn’t believe that my best friend had had an affair with Jay Braithwaite Burke. She’s in the beauty business, for God’s sake; one would think she had better taste, not to mention better sense. But she had acted a little odd when I asked what all the other women saw in him.
Not that I’d hold it against Jodi if she’d had an affair; to each his or her own. But it might give her a motive to murder Jay. So I decided that I’d ask her about it next time I got her alone. Like tomorrow, maybe.
Kathleen had been affronted when I came right out and asked her why she’d bought such an old, run-down house, but I’d just met her. Jodi was my best friend whom I’d known for thirteen years. She wouldn’t be insulted.
On the other hand, if she had killed Jay, she could also kill me.
Did I need to know badly enough to take that chance?
I guessed I’d wait and see how brave I felt in the morning.
Sunday, December 14
Chapter 10
The jury, passing on the prisoner’s life
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try.
—Shakespeare, Measure for Measure
“A God complex,” I said to Jodi the next morning.
Jodi clutched her head. “A what?” she said. “And do you have to yell?”
Elliott, preparing Bloody Marys in the kitchen, didn’t seem at first quite as hungover as Jodi, but from the way he avoided looking at her, one would think that the canary-yellow robe she wore hurt his eyes.
“I told Hal about all the women Ruthie said Jay had children by, and that none of them looked like Jay. Ruthie said she thought Jay kept fathering children in the hope of creating one in his own image, and Hal said it sounded like he was trying to be God.”
Jodi swayed and went white. “I think I’m going to go lie down for a while. Toni, will you come and keep me company?”
It seemed like an odd request, but I shrugged, grabbed a Bloody Mary, and followed her up the stairs. I sincerely hoped she wasn’t going to throw up or anything, but I needn’t have worried. Jodi shut the bedroom door behind us. “Don’t worry. I’m not sick. I just need to talk to you in private.”
She stretched out on the king-sized bed. I put my drink on the nightstand and stretched out next to her.
Minutes passed in silence.
Finally I broke it. “What do you want to talk to me about?”
Jodi rolled over and faced me, propping her head on her hand. “Ruthie Brooks.”
“What about Ruthie Brooks?”
“You don’t know her, Toni, so you might be inclined to believe what she says. But you shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
Jodi rolled back onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “Ruthie likes to hear herself talk. She also enjoys creating a sensation. There’s nothing she likes better than being the center of attention, and she’s not above making things up to suit her purposes.”
“In other words,” I said, “she’s a gossip.”
“She’s a stone liar,” Jodi said, her voice growing hard.
“And has she told lies about you?”
“She told one last night. I heard her.”
“When?” I asked, even though I was pretty sure I knew what she was getting at.
“When she told you that I was one of Jay’s paramours and that Cody was his child,” she said.
“Oh, well,” I said. “I know Cody is Elliott’s child. He has brown eyes.”
“And you know I wouldn’t have an affair with the likes of Jay Braithwaite Burke, right?”
I sat up and piled pillows behind my back. “I keep telling myself that you have better taste than that.”
She sat up too, and turned to face me. “Well, I do.”
I picked up my drink and took a swig. “That sounds like there’s a ‘but’ coming.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “What do you mean?”
I put my drink down. “Jodi, there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“No, there isn’t,” she insisted.
“Jodi, I’m your best friend. You know I don’t gossip. You can tell me the truth. In fact, I think you need to tell me the truth. You did have an affair with Jay, didn’t you?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Then why did you turn white and almost faint when I told you about Jay’s God complex just now? Why did you get upset yesterday when I asked what all those women saw in him? If you weren’t one of them, why react like that?”
Jodi rolled over on her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. Muffled sobs shook her shoulders. I reached over and rubbed her back. Finally she sat up and blew her nose. “I can’t get anything past you, can I?”
I put my arms around her. “Tell me,” I urged.
“Okay, okay, it’s true,” Jodi said. “Elliott doesn’t know.”
“He won’t hear it from me,” I assured her, “or Hal. But why? What was the attraction?”
“Oh, I know you weren’t susceptible, Toni; you have Hal and all the sex you want. But Elliott and I were having problems at the time, and he hadn’t touched me for weeks, and I was horny; so when Jay approached me, I thought, what the hell.”
Little do you know, I thought, but even as chronically horny as I was these days, the thought of Jay Braithwaite Burke as a lover still repulsed me. Bernie Kincaid, on the other hand …
“So, was he any good?”
“It was the best sex I ever had,” she confessed. “The man had a pecker the size of Texas, and he could keep going for hours. I couldn’t get enough of him.”
“What made you stop?”
“I got pregnant,” Jodi said. “When I told Jay, he dumped me.”
“He dumped you?”
“He wasn’t nice about it, either,” she continued, her voice growing hard. “He said that now that I was pregnant, he didn’t need me anymore.”
“Nice guy.” I made no effort to keep the disgust out of my voice.
“Elliott was delighted, though. About the baby, I mean, not Jay. So I spent the next nine months wondering whose child I was carrying. Can I have a sip?”
I offered her my glass, and she took a huge swig. “Wait a minute, I thought you said …”
She handed th
e glass back. “Thanks. I know what I said. But one night we went out dancing at the country club with Stan and Cherie, and Russ and Trish, and it was so romantic that when we got home we—”
“Oh.”
“Then, when Cody was born, he looked like me instead of Elliott and the other kids, so I still didn’t know whose he was until his eyes changed color.”
Just as I’d thought. “What an ordeal,” I said. “We were friends back then; why didn’t you talk to me?”
Jodi shrugged. “You and Hal had only been here a couple of years back then, and I didn’t know you that well. I do now, though. I’m talking to you now, aren’t I?”
She certainly was, I had to admit.
I went downstairs shortly after that, leaving my drink for Jodi, so I had to get Elliott to make me another one.
“Is Jodi okay?” he asked.
“Yup. She’s getting dressed.”
“Good,” he said.
Hal came into the kitchen. “We were just talking about wills,” he said. “I told Elliott that Lance had done a will for Jay too.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Which one is the real one?”
“That’s a good question,” Elliott said. “I wasn’t aware of another will. That’s fairly important. If there’s another will, it could turn the whole freakin’ thing upside down. I’ll call Lance tomorrow. Did you hear anything else I should know about?”
We hadn’t, but Jodi and I weren’t about to wait for Elliott to contact Lance on Monday. We went to Jim Bob’s and got a box of doughnuts and made our second visit to Kathleen’s house.
“We have to ask her about filling in for Betsy anyway,” Jodi rationalized.
When Jodi asked Kathleen why Jay had two wills, she looked confused. “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “I had no idea. He didn’t tell me. It was a simple enough will. He just left everything to me and the children. What’s so complicated about that? Why would he need two wills?”
Jodi and I looked at each other. Now we were confused. Kathleen gazed wide-eyed at each of us in turn and said, “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”
I shrugged helplessly. What could I say? If Kathleen didn’t know about all those trusts, I wasn’t about to be the one to break it to her, especially after pissing her off yesterday. Jodi came to my rescue.
“Elliott said it was a very complicated will,” she explained. “But I don’t know the details. Maybe you’d better talk to him. And speaking of which,” she went on, smoothly and skillfully steering us out of rocky shoals, “Elliott has a secretary that’s about to go on maternity leave, and he was wondering if you’d be available to fill in for her? I heard somewhere that you used to be a legal secretary, am I right?”
“Yes,” Kathleen said. “I worked for Jay before the kids came along. Why?”
“Would you be interested in working for Elliott?”
“That would be great,” Kathleen said. “There’s not much money left after the bankruptcy, and I was wondering what we were going to do, with Christmas coming up.”
“Perfect,” Jodi said. “I’ll tell him.”
Elliott was jubilant at the news. “I wish everything was that freakin’ easy,” he said. “So what did she say about Jay’s will?”
He and Hal had been outside in the backyard splitting logs for firewood and were only too happy to come back into the warm kitchen for some hot cocoa, which they laced generously with peppermint schnapps, creating something called a Peppermint Patty. By now we’d had so many hairs-of-the-dog that I didn’t know whether we were curing our hangovers or just postponing them until the next day.
“Apparently she doesn’t know about all those trusts,” Jodi commented. “And I wasn’t about to tell her.”
“We still don’t know which one is the legal will, either,” I pointed out. “Isn’t it supposed to be the most recent one?”
“I don’t know,” Jodi said. “Elliott’s is the most recent, I’m almost sure of it, because he did it just a few months ago, didn’t you, honey? I remember you grousing about it even back then. When did Lance do his?”
“At least ten years ago,” I said. “Ruthie said that she and Bill Bartlett were the witnesses.” And when I said that, another thought came to mind. “Hey, was Ruthie working in that office back then?”
Jodi looked thoughtful. “I think so. Yeah, she did, because she worked for Lance before he joined Jay’s firm. Why?”
“Was she there at the same time as Kathleen?”
“I’m not sure,” Jodi said. “I think Kathleen quit when Bryan was born. That’s probably when Jay made that will.”
“I wonder if she knows anything,” I mused. “Maybe the cops should talk to her when they talk to all those other women Jay had children with.”
“If they can find them,” Jodi said. “I’m pretty sure some of these gals on the list have left the area and have probably remarried by now.”
“So anyway,” I said, “the will Elliott drew up last summer should be the legal will, right?”
“Unless there were extenuating circumstances,” Elliott said. “As far as I recall, Jay was of sound mind and not under any duress when he made that will, so it should be the legal will.”
“So, if that will is the motive for Jay’s murder, we’ve got a choice between Kathleen and any one of eleven other women,” I said.
“Jesus,” Jodi said. “It sounds like Murder on the Orient Express. You don’t suppose all twelve of them were in cahoots, do you?”
“I doubt it,” Hal said. “Most of them don’t live here anymore, and I imagine most, if not all of them, have remarried and are no longer eligible to inherit.”
“Unless they know they’re in Jay’s will,” I argued. “Maybe they all stayed single so they could inherit.”
“In that case, they’d have to have known how much money Jay had and how much they stood to inherit,” Hal argued back. “It’d have to be a pretty significant amount for a single mother to stay single on purpose, wouldn’t you think?”
“I wonder if they know that Jay declared bankruptcy and that there’s supposedly nothing to inherit,” Jodi said.
“I wonder if they know he’s dead,” I countered.
“If they still keep in touch with friends from Twin Falls or read the Clarion online, they do,” Elliott said sourly. “They’re probably gonna start coming out of the freakin’ woodwork now.”
Maybe. I wasn’t so sure. Jay might possibly have reassured them that they and their children by him would be taken care of in case of divorce, but what if they had other children? Jay’s money wouldn’t do anything for them. Not much of a motivation to stay single, unless Jay had been dumb enough to tell them all how much money he had.
And did any of them know about the others? So far, that information had not been made public. And if it was made public, would any of them be moved to eliminate the competition by systematically killing off the others?
Especially if one of them had murdered Jay in the first place to get at his fortune. If that were the case, that person would also have to eliminate Kathleen and her children too. Which brought up, oh God, the children. That person would also have to eliminate the children.
Elliott was right. It would be a freakin’ hell of a mess.
I fervently hoped the police would have the sense to keep the terms of Jay’s will to themselves.
I sincerely did not want to have to deal with the kind of person who would systematically kill off eleven other women and their children for money.
Such a person would not hesitate to kill off Jodi or me, should we get too close; and I knew we would get close. Snooping seemed to be embedded in our DNA. We couldn’t help it; we just had to know.
Curiosity killed the cat.
Nice kitty. Pretty kitty. Here, kitty-kitty. Here’s a nice treat
.
I shivered.
Monday, December 15
Chapter 11
Accidents will occur in the best-regulated families.
—Charles Dickens
At four o’clock Monday morning by the illuminated dial of my trusty clock radio, the frantic ringing of the doorbell and pounding on the door woke us from a sound sleep.
The dogs leaped off the bed and raced downstairs, barking. Hal went downstairs, and I burrowed under the covers—but not for long. I heard voices and children crying, and Hal hollered at me to get myself downstairs, posthaste. I jumped into my old black sweats and went downstairs to pandemonium.
Kathleen and the children huddled in a forlorn little group in the living room, wearing coats over pajamas. Kathleen, with her arms around Megan and Angela, was crying, and so were the children, except for Bryan, who was tight-lipped and white. Tiffany carried Emily, who sucked her thumb. A sad little pile of personal belongings sat on the floor by the door, consisting of assorted clothing, stuffed animals, and school backpacks.
Halfway down the stairs, I caught sight of the living room window framing the horrifying spectacle of the old house across the street in flames. Plumes of smoke billowed from the upstairs windows, while the downstairs windows glowed with an unearthly orange light. Flames shot out of the open front door. As I looked, the dry, skeletal branches of the trees overhanging the roof caught fire. This was going fast.
Hal called the fire department. I didn’t think they’d be able to save it, but they might prevent it from spreading to any other houses.
I went to the kitchen and made coffee. Hal built a fire in the fireplace.
The fire trucks arrived almost immediately, sirens screaming. Two police cars and an ambulance followed. Everybody went out on the porch to watch, except me. I prepared a thermos of hot chocolate for the children and gave them Styrofoam cups and then poured cups of coffee for the adults, who were all out on the porch watching. I stayed there myself for a few minutes, until I got too cold; then I went back inside and settled myself in a chair by the window with my coffee to watch in relative comfort.
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