Her words finally got through to him. He looked at her, his eyes glassy with fury. She stared back, then pointed the flashlight beam downward and got her first look at the intruder’s face. “Tommy?” she said in disbelief. “Tommy Russell?”
Nick’s chest heaved as he struggled for breath. His shirt was drenched with sweat. “You know this piece of shit?” he said.
“He was one of my students, five or six years ago.” She knelt on the ground beside the terrified, gasping boy. “He can’t be more than fifteen or sixteen.”
“It weren’t my fault,” Tommy said. “Honest. She paid me! She paid me to slash your tires and put the snake on your porch. It weren’t my idea!”
Kathryn went cold inside. “What?” she said.
“She said she wanted to scare you, and I remembered that time Kenny Babcock brung that little bitty grass snake to school and you almost swooned. So I told her a snake would do it, and she paid me a hunnerd bucks to get one and put it there. A big one, she said. She give me another fifty to slash your tires. It weren’t my fault. I ain’t crazy enough to pass up easy money like that.”
Nick rocked back on his heels, and Tommy scrambled to his feet, his clothes torn and dirty. With the flashlight still trained on Tommy, Kathryn rested her free hand on Nick’s shoulder. He reached up and took her fingers in his much larger ones, and together they swayed back and forth in rhythm with his breathing. “She,” Nick said hoarsely. “She who?”
Tommy’s eyes grew wild, darted here and there as though he were looking for an escape route. And then he seemed to wilt. “Mrs. Pepperell,” he said. “Mrs. Georgia Pepperell.”
Chapter Fifteen
The house wasn’t quite as elegant as the McAllister place, but it ran a close second. There was a forest green Mercedes sports coupe parked in the circular drive, and when he rang the bell, the door was answered by a pasty-faced maid. She took one look at their uniforms and turned paler. “Good morning,” he said. “Is Mrs. Pepperell at home?”
The maid looked from him to Bucky and back again. “Come in,” she said in a stiff British accent. “I’ll locate the Missus.”
The entry hall boasted a massive crystal chandelier. Bucky gaped in awe at its thousands of winking crystals. “Hell of a dump, eh?” Nick said, looking around him.
“I never saw anythin’ like it,” Bucky said.
“You think this is something, you should see the McAllister place. Ah, here comes our lovely hostess now.”
Georgia Pepperell was dressed in tennis whites, and carried a racket in her hand. “Mr. DiSalvo,” she said in her genteel voice, “how nice of you to drop by.” She turned to Bucky and bestowed that siren’s smile upon him. “And Mr. Stimpson, I do believe?”
Bucky reddened. “Yes, ma’am. This sure is a lovely house you got here.”
“My husband’s great-great-grandfather built it in 1852, shortly before the start of the War. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places. What can I do for you gentlemen today?”
“We’d like to ask you some questions,” Nick said.
Her eyes warmed, and he thought he saw a flash of humor in their emerald depths. “Why, of course, Mr. DiSalvo. Anything I can do to assist Elba’s finest.”
“Do you know a boy named Tommy Russell?”
Something flickered in her eyes, but her cool never fluttered. She was a Southern lady, true to her genteel upbringing, a steel magnolia all the way to the marrow in her bones. “Is there some reason why I should know him?” she said.
“According to him, you paid him a hundred bucks to leave that rattlesnake on Kathryn McAllister’s porch. And another fifty last night to slash her tires.”
“Well, then,” she said, “I guess that means it’s his word against mine, doesn’t it?”
“Tell me again about Michael McAllister.”
A muscle twitched in her jaw. “What on earth does Tommy Russell and his lies have to do with Michael?”
“You filled me full of bullshit the first time,” he said. “This time, I thought you might want to take a stab at the truth.”
The warmth in her eyes cooled with amazing rapidity. “I’m busy, gentlemen. I have a tennis date with Neely in a half-hour. I don’t have time to stand here and listen to your preposterous accusations.”
“I’m afraid you do, Mrs. Pepperell. You see, Bucky here’s gonna put his handcuffs on you, and then he’s gonna drive you down to the station and book you.” He eyed her attire. “You might want to change first. No knowing what kind of mess you might meet up with in a jail cell.”
She thrust her chin forward, and again he noticed how lovely her skin was. Like an airbrushed Cover Girl model. “And what, pray tell, are the charges?”
“Vandalism. Malicious mischief. Terrorizing. And that’s just for starters. We’re thinking about tossing in a little attempted murder charge to go along with the rest. A rattlesnake’s a pretty dangerous weapon to be playing games with.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” she said, “I wasn’t tryin’ to kill her. I just wanted to frighten her a little. Put the fear of God into her. Make her life a tad more difficult than it already was. I had high hopes that she might take the hint and leave town, but I obviously underestimated her.”
“Obviously. Care to tell me why you wanted her to leave Elba, Mrs. Pepperell?”
“You’re the detective, darlin’,” she said. “You figure it out.”
“She married Michael,” he said, “and you didn’t.”
Her eyes narrowed with fury. “He was mine,” she snapped. “Do you understand that? Mine! We were going to be married. Everybody thought I was marryin’ him for his money and his name, but that wasn’t it at all. I was crazy, absolutely crazy in love with Michael. And my daddy actually approved of the match. Oh, I knew that Michael’d had his days of cattin’ around, but I had my own methods for dealing with that. I knew I’d tame his wild ways once I got that gold band on his finger.” Her voice flattened. “And then she came along. Kathryn. That bitch stole him right out from under my nose. I was all set for a June wedding, and he came home from college wearin’ a wedding ring. Have you ever been betrayed, Mr. DiSalvo? Have you ever been hurt so bad it liked to rip the heart out of your chest?”
Thinking of Lenore, he said truthfully, “Once.”
“Then you understand how I felt. I wanted to die. I wanted her to die. I used to drive by their house every night, park at the end of the driveway and sit there in the dark, imagining what they must be doin’ behind those walls. I used to call on the phone at all hours of the day and night, just to hear the sound of his voice when he answered.”
“Did you kill him?” he said softly.
She raised those elegant eyebrows. “Why, everybody knows that Kathryn killed him in a jealous rage because she found out he’d been whorin’ around on her. Michael had a lot of his daddy in him, Mr. DiSalvo. More than anybody knew, except maybe me, and his momma. Michael had his weaknesses, and one of them was beautiful women. I loved Michael anyway. Even after he betrayed me, even after he married that cold bitch, I still loved him. I would never have done anythin’ to hurt him. But I wanted to hurt her. I wanted that power, that victory, over her. And I got it.” Her smile was thin and cruel. “One Christmas Eve at the country club, when Kathryn was home sick with the flu, I gave her husband a very personal Christmas present in the gazebo on the back lawn. It was the high point of my life. You can’t imagine how I felt, knowing I’d cuckolded that bitch.”
Nick looked at her for a long time, at the elegant sweep of her jaw, the almond-shaped green eyes, the flawless skin. She had the body of a goddess and the soul of a reptile. “Bucky?” he said. “You got the cuffs?”
“Right here, Chief.” Bucky held them up like it was show-and-tell day at school.
“Take her in,” he said curtly, “and book her.”
The FedEx envelope was waiting on his desk, sent overnight from the State Bureau of Records at Annapolis, Maryland. Timothy Ward Crumley’s birth certificate. Nick picked up
the package, looked it over, set it back down and brooded over a cup of coffee that was already going cold. He didn’t like what he’d learned this morning. The soft, white, decaying underbelly of this town was beginning to be exposed, and he wondered what other surprises lay in store for him.
He set down the coffee and ripped open the envelope. Turned it upside down and shook it, and the photocopied birth certificate fluttered out onto the desk. He picked it up, wondering why he should feel trepidation at uncovering one more rock and finding a snake under it, coiled and ready to strike. He was a cop, for Christ’s sake. It was his job to expose people’s secrets when it became necessary. And during a homicide investigation, it became imperative.
So why did he feel like a damn Peeping Tom?
He cleared his throat, unfolded the sheet of paper, and began to skim it. Name: Timothy Ward Crumley. Date of Birth: January 16, 1995. Place of Birth: Baltimore City Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland. Mother: Wanita Joy Crumley. Father—
“Oh, shit,” he said, and closed his eyes. “Oh, shit.”
On top of everything else, this was just too much. Wanita could have lied. She was, after all, a whore and a junkie who’d lied under oath. Or had she? If what the birth certificate said was true, her sister’s suspicions had been way off target. Whoever Wanita’s sugar daddy was, he wasn’t the father of her child.
He crumpled up the piece of paper and hurled it at the wall. “Damn it all to hell!” Furious, he got up and stalked over to it, picked it back up and smoothed it out, then read those damning words again, just to be sure he hadn’t imagined them. Father: Michael Jeffrey McAllister.
How the hell was he going to break the news to her that her husband really had been unfaithful to her, not just with one woman, but with at least two different women? He thought about how he’d felt when he’d learned that Lenore had cheated on him. It had been like taking a size thirteen combat boot hard in the gut. How the hell could he do that to her? How the hell could she get through something like that?
The same way she’d gotten through prison. By calling up that steely reserve she had in her spine and forging ahead, without looking to the right or the left. Kathryn Sipowicz McAllister was one tough lady. He wasn’t sure he could have been as tough in her place. Her toughness had gotten her this far; it would get her a little farther. But he’d be damned if he was going to be the one to tell her.
The phone rang, and he picked it up absently. “DiSalvo,” he said.
“I know,” Kathryn began haltingly, “that you have every right to be furious with me. But you have to understand how long this has been eating up my insides. I can’t let anything get in the way, Nick. Not until it’s over.”
He straightened slowly, let Timmy’s birth certificate flutter to the desktop. “I’m not mad at you,” he said. “Not anymore.”
“Don’t lie to me, DiSalvo. I can hear it in your voice.”
He cleared his throat. “No,” he said. “Really. I’m just tired. Rough morning.”
She hesitated, then said, “What about Georgia Pepperell?”
“We arrested her. I figure she’ll make bail by noon at the latest, but it put a serious crimp in her plans for the morning. She had a very important tennis match scheduled with your former mother-in-law.”
“What did she say?”
He picked up a pen and began to doodle. “She put up a tough front for a while, but then she crumbled like a cookie and admitted everything. You’re not exactly on her top ten list.”
“I just bet I’m not. She thought she had Michael all sewn up. It really threw her for a loop when he came home with me tagging along behind him.”
He cleared his throat again. “Yeah,” he said, “she, ah—she told us that.”
“Nick? Are you sure you’re okay? You sound funny.”
“I’m fine.” He doodled a three-dimensional picture of a box. In each of the four corners, he wrote a name: Ruby, Kevin, Michael, Wanita. What was the common denominator that brought them together? Where was the intersecting line where their lives collided?
“You sound so distant,” Kathryn said.
“What? Oh, sorry. I’m just thinking. Trying to puzzle it all out. It’s driving me crazy. I have this feeling that I’m missing something. Something so simple that I’m not seeing it, even though it’s staring me in the face.”
“We’ll find it. We have to.”
“We’re getting close. The back of my neck is itching like crazy. Listen, Kat? I’m sorry for coming down on you like that last night. I had no right.”
She paused. “I’d like to think,” she said, “that you had every right.”
His heart began to thud in a rapid, irregular motion. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that when this is over, when we’ve put it all to rest, we’re going to talk about us, Nick. There’s a lot that needs to be said.”
“I would like to see you tonight,” he said. “I would like to spend an evening with you, a nice, normal evening, one that doesn’t end with a visitation from the entire Elba police force. Do you think we could accomplish that?”
“I don’t know, DiSalvo. We could try.”
“Janine’s going to Sylvie’s tonight to spend the evening trading Leonardo DiCaprio pictures. Why don’t you come over to my place? I’ll throw a steak on the barbecue, we’ll put on some music. I have some great jazz CDs. Do you like jazz?”
“I love jazz.”
“Great. We’ll put on some jazz, and then we’ll turn out the lights and sit on the couch and make out like a couple of teenagers.”
“You do know how to tempt a woman, DiSalvo. What time should I be there?”
“Seven-ish okay?”
“Seven-ish is fine. I’ll see you then.”
He hung up the phone, feeling good for the first time since he’d left Georgia Pepperell’s house. He picked up Timmy Crumley’s birth certificate and looked at it again. And then he crumpled it up and tossed it in the trash.
The less she knew about Michael McAllister’s sordid past, the better.
* * * * *
She and Elvis went running, along her favorite route, around Lake Alberta and up the County Road, circling back along Myrtle Street to home. Elvis was the ideal running companion. He always stayed at her heel, and he kept his mouth shut. It was a perfect combination. When they got back home, she collapsed on the couch, and he lay his head in her lap and worshipped her with those big, yellow eyes. “What a good doggie you are,” she said, rubbing at his ears and his chin. She bent down and he raised his broad snout and lapped her ear, a kiss that was amazingly dainty for so large a dog. “I love you, too, sweetie,” she said, and then wondered what kind of twisted priorities allowed her to admit tender feelings for a dog but not for Nick DiSalvo.
“It’s complicated,” she argued aloud. Christ, she barely knew the man. Had known him for all of two weeks, two weeks that they’d spent alternately sparring with and lusting after each other. It was too soon for tender sentiments. Not to mention that, after last night’s little exchange between Nick and his daughter, she suspected he was still harboring feelings toward his ex-wife.
“Christ,” she said, “what a mess.”
Elvis tilted his head and looked at her. “You’re lucky,” she told him. “For you, love is simple. Be grateful you’re not human.”
He smiled at her, tongue lolling halfway to the floor. “Get out of here,” she said, shoving at his massive chest. “You’re drooling all over me.”
The phone rang, and she hurried to answer it, grateful for the distraction. She didn’t want to examine too closely her feelings for Nick. Not yet. “Hello?” she said.
“Stop asking nosy questions, or you’re going to wind up dead.”
The voice was low-pitched, muffled, deliberately disguised. She couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman. Her fingers tightened on the telephone receiver. And then fury bubbled up through her. “Go to hell!” she said, and slammed down the phone.
She
was still trembling five minutes later when Elvis let out a short, sharp bark, and somebody knocked on her door. She went to answer it, Elvis by her side. “Who is it?” she said.
“Francis Willoughby.”
It took her a moment to recall the name, and then she released Elvis’ collar and opened the door. A stubby, balding man stood on her porch, ball cap in hand. “Mr. Willoughby,” she said, surprised. “What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, ma’am. I mean, I need to do somethin’ for you.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a slip of paper. “This here’s for you,” he said. “I never shoulda kept the money. It was yours. Yours and Mr. McAllister’s.”
She stared in amazement at the check he held out, made out to her in the amount of two hundred and fifty dollars. “I always figured I’d pay it back some day,” he said, “and now’s my chance.”
“You don’t have to do this,” she said.
“Well, yes, ma’am, I do. Will you please accept it?”
She softened. “Of course I will. Come in.” And she opened the screen door for him. “Can I get you a glass of lemonade?”
With his sleeve, he discreetly wiped a bead of sweat from his face. “I sure would appreciate that, Miz McAllister.”
She hung the check on the refrigerator with a magnet, and got out the lemonade pitcher. “Nice little house,” he said from the living room. “Squarely built.”
“Yes,” she said. “I’m renting it from a friend.”
“Not like that Chandler place,” he said. “Never saw any place such a mess. Crooked floors, saggin’ ceilings, bulges in the walls. Doorways all off-kilter. If it’d been built plumb in the first place, it wouldn’t have settled that way.”
She returned to the living room and handed him the lemonade. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said, and downed half of it in one long swallow.
“So the Chandler place wasn’t exactly a contractor’s dream?” she said.
“Hell—I mean heck no,” he said. “And that kitchen was straight out of the nineteenth century. Mr. McAllister was insistent that everythin’ be new and modern for you. Said he didn’t want to see you working so hard. And that crooked little wall between the kitchen and the dining room just had to go. It wasn’t a bearin’ wall, so it really wasn’t necessary, and all it did was block the light from the dining room windows. Somebody’d replastered it a few years back, and they didn’t have a clue what they was doing. It was an eyesore, all lumps and bumps and bulges. So we was gonna take it down when we gutted the kitchen. It woulda opened that space up right nice.”
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