by Jane Haddam
“I’m no fucking backwoods yahoo,” Stu said, almost pleasantly, “and as for Michael Houseman, who the fuck cares? The guy was a Boy Scout. And a snitch. Anybody breathed wrong, he went running right to the fucking faculty. Everybody hated him.”
“I didn’t hate him,” Kyle said.
“Yeah, well, you were a Boy Scout yourself back in high school. That sure fucking changed, didn’t it? You get some pussy off the girls you put in the tank for being high? If you don’t, you’re a fucking fool. Everybody else does. Christ, I can’t believe the crap we swallowed when we were kids. Friendly Mr. Policeman. Be just like Dudley Dooright. And all the time the fucking faculty was screwing around, the fucking police were screwing around, everybody was screwing around except Michael fucking Houseman and he was trying to get himself made some kind of fucking saint.”
“Yes,” Demarkian said, “well. What I wanted to know was this, did you see Mr. Houseman on the night he was murdered?”
“I saw him on the day he was murdered,” Stu said. “Everybody did. He was sitting in that fucking lifeguard’s chair out at the lake most of the day. The great god Michael on his throne.”
“Did you see him at any other time?”
“I saw him out by the outhouse, if that’s what you mean.” Stu’s eyes had gone dead flat, but it was impossible to tell if that was emotion or the drugs. “Even Kyle here was out by the outhouse, Betsy Wetsy screaming her head off inside. It was hysterical. Doesn’t that motherfucking cunt think she’s hot stuff these days?”
“I don’t know who you think you saw,” Kyle said stiffly, “but I wasn’t out at the outhouse that night. I wasn’t anywhere near it. I mean, for Christ’s sake, if I had been, don’t you think I’d have let her out?”
“Nah,” Stu said. “Nobody was going to let her out until the cops got there and you know it. I mean, who the hell cared? And they were all scared to shit about the cunts,” Stu said to Gregor. “You’ve got no idea. That bunch of bitches got together, and everybody in school shook like they were in an earthquake.”
“Was Michael Houseman out near the outhouse?” Gregor asked.
“No, Michael Houseman wasn’t near the outhouse,” Stu said. “If he had been, he would have let her out. He was a fucking Boy Scout. I told you that. He was up near the river, in that clearing where everybody got laid in those days only you pretended you weren’t doing it. Christ only knows what he was doing there. He didn’t get laid. Maybe he was going to search through the underbrush for fucking couples and turn them in to the state police.”
“In the rain?” Kyle said.
“I don’t know fucking anything about the rain,” Stu said.
Gregor cleared his throat and looked around again. There were no pictures in this room. He’d gotten so used to pictures in Hollman, the lack of them felt significant. Stu was leaning against the wall and flicking the ashes from his cigarette indiscriminately on the floor.
“Well,” he said, “I think that’s all I really need. Thank you for being so helpful.”
Stu Kennedy laughed. “I haven’t been helpful. I’m never helpful. I make a fucking point of it. Christ, you don’t want to know about Michael. You want to know about the cunt. But she was a cunt even in high school, you know that? One of Peggy’s best friends, and the whole time we were going out, she couldn’t stand me. Couldn’t stand Peggy going out with me. Couldn’t stand to be in the same room with me. Christ, they were all cunts, though. Weren’t they, Kyle? Every last one of them.”
“Well,” Kyle said, “they weren’t very pleasant.”
“Yeah, and now Betsy Wetsy is going to marry a rock star. An old, broken-down, washed-up rock star, but a fucking rock star. That must make them just want to spit.”
“They’re taking it better than you are,” Kyle said.
“Well, if you and your Mr. Demarkian have everything you want from me, you should get the fuck out of here,” Stu said. “You don’t have a search warrant. You don’t have any right to be here. Get up and get the fuck out of here.”
“Right,” Kyle said.
Gregor stood up. “Thank you again, Mr. Kennedy,” he said, holding out his hand.
“Fuck,” Stu Kennedy said. Then he walked over to the front door and pulled it open. “Get the fuck out,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”
3
By the time they got down the front walk to the car, it was raining again, not the lunatic pelting that had been going on for most of the morning, but a deep, steady, heavy fall that was almost silent.
Gregor got into the car. Kyle got into the car and started it up.
“What was that about?” Kyle asked. “You didn’t mention Peggy. You didn’t mention what happened to her.”
“There was no need to.”
“Well there was maybe one need to. Eventually this is all going to come out in the wash. Stu is going to know where Peggy was earlier this afternoon. Either it’s going to be on the news, or the hospital is going to call, or Peggy is going to tell him. And then what? I’ve got my ass in a sling for withholding information on the medical condition of a—”
“There’s a record of all the times he’s beaten her up?”
“I don’t know about all of them. There’s probably a record a mile long about some of them, though. We’ve got them in the police department. They’ve probably got them in the emergency room over at Kennanburg. Why?”
“Because that’s all you’ll need not to get your ass in a sling. Some states have mandatory arrest laws—”
“We’ve got one here,” Kyle said. “But they don’t do any good, Mr. Demarkian. Oh, they sometimes do, when the woman really wants out and she’s got no way to get out herself, but in a case like this—” Kyle shrugged.
Gregor shook his head. “We should get going.”
“Get going where?”
“Out to that hospital. I’d like to talk to Mrs. Kennedy for a while.”
Kyle put the car in gear and began to pull away from the curb. “Do you think she’ll be in any position to talk? She looked like she was sleepwalking the last time we saw her.”
“I need to know a few things from her, especially about the death of Michael Houseman. Does Mr. Kennedy always behave like that? With the language. Or did he put it on for my benefit?”
“He always behaves like that to me,” Kyle said, “but he could be putting it on for my benefit. Why are you still so interested in the death of Michael Houseman? Did the same person who killed Michael Houseman kill Chris Inglerod Barr? And try to kill Emma?”
“Let’s say that the same person who murdered Michael Houseman was responsible for the death of Chris Inglerod Barr and the attempted murder of Emma Kenyon Bligh. And for the death of the dog, of course, although that was something in the way of an accident.”
“How do you eviscerate a large part-malamute, part-shepherd dog by accident?”
“You find it in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Marvelous. Wonderful. I can see the prep sheet I’m going to make up for the town prosecutor right this minute—”
“You know,” Gregor said, “you’ve got nothing to worry about. The fact of the matter is, this case is going to have a Gordian knot solution. Sooner or later, Emma Kenyon Bligh is going to wake up, and when she does she’s going to hand you your solution on a plate, and hand you a star witness, too, in the person of herself. And that’s going to be enough to go to trial on.”
“That’s going to be enough to go to trial on for the attack against Emma,” Kyle said, “but does that mean it’s going to be enough to go to trial on for the death of Chris Inglerod Barr?”
“You’re going to have the linoleum cutter,” Gregor said. “That will be a start. With any luck, what I’m doing now will get you the rest of what you need. It’s odd to think, though, that Chris Inglerod would be alive and Emma Kenyon Bligh wouldn’t be in the hospital with a slash wound in her abdomen if Elizabeth Toliver hadn’t decided to take her younger son to McDonald’s.”
“Wha
t?”
“She wasn’t home, you see,” Gregor said. “She was supposed to be home. She had a nice set schedule that day. She was driving her mother to one set of doctors in the morning. Then she was leaving her mother and the nurse at the ob/gyn clinic in the early afternoon so that the doctors could run some tests. While that was going on, she was supposed to be having lunch with Maris Coleman at the Sycamore, and when that was over she was supposed to pick up her older son at the town library and her mother at the gynecologist’s and go straight home. She should have been home by two o’clock. But she wasn’t.”
“We know she wasn’t. Emma and Belinda brought Mark home from the library and they got to the Toliver house at three and there was nobody home.”
“Exactly. Because Elizabeth Toliver and Maris Coleman had an argument at the Sycamore, and Liz took Geoff out to the Interstate to the McDonald’s there, and she didn’t get home until after four. And that’s why the dog died. Because nobody was home.”
“You just said Mark was home.”
“I know. Essentially, nobody was home, because he went to sleep in that room in the basement. You can’t hear somebody knocking on the front door from there, or on the back door, either. So, you see, she got to the house expecting to find Elizabeth Toliver, and as far as she could tell nobody was home. She probably walked around the yard a couple of times, with the linoleum cutter in her hand, and nobody to use it on—”
“Wait. Are you saying that whoever this is was intending to kill Betsy? I mean, Liz?”
“Of course. Didn’t you know that? The thing is, it’s very difficult to kill somebody in Liz Toliver’s position with a knife or a razor. It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult, because those people usually have other people around them. It’s much easier, if you want to murder a celebrity, to use a gun, because you don’t have to worry about getting physically close. Either our murderer didn’t have access to a gun or she didn’t know how to use one and was afraid to try.”
“Right,” Kyle said. “Who the hell doesn’t have access to a gun in a place like this? There are guns all the hell over the place. Half the town hunts.”
“All right,” Gregor said. “I’ll give you three people who didn’t have access to guns. One, Peggy Smith. There are no guns in that house. I’ll guarantee it.”
“Why? How could you know that?”
“Because you haven’t said a single word about his shooting her, and if he’d had a gun he’d have shot her at least once by now. I don’t care about background checks or laws that say you can’t own a gun if you’ve ever been charged with domestic violence, people like Stu Kennedy have guns if they want them, and if they have them they use them.”
“Hell,” Kyle said. “He did shoot her. Or tried, anyway. He missed by a mile. About eight months ago. I went through the house and picked up a pistol and two rifles and read him the riot act.”
“And he listened to you?”
“I’d like to think so,” Kyle said, “but I have a feeling it was more a matter of finances. Stu spends a lot of money on chemicals. There doesn’t tend to be a lot left over to buy guns and ammunition with. The guns I confiscated had all belonged to his father.”
“Fine,” Gregor said. “Now I’ll give you another one. Belinda Hart Grantling. Or are you going to tell me that she keeps a pistol in her bedside drawer?”
“No. No, as far as I know, she’s never had a gun in her life. Her family never had them either. There are families around here that hunt, and there are families around here that shoot at gun ranges, and there are families around here that are just plain whacko, but the Harts never were any of those things.”
“Two down and one to go. Maris Coleman.”
“Oh,” Kyle said. “Funny, isn’t it? I don’t usually think of her as a suspect. I mean, it’s not like she’s here anymore. She’s just sort of all over the place. Visiting. Like the tooth fairy.”
“She also is extremely unlikely to have a gun,” Gregor said. “I suppose it’s possible, and I could always check the New York gun registry, but the fact is that I’ve been watching her for days. I’ve seen her do all kinds of things, I’ve seen her empty her handbag on a table, and there’s been no sign of a gun, no sign of ammunition, and no talk from anybody around her—Liz Toliver, for instance—to indicate that Maris ever even had a gun in the city. Of course, if I had to pick one person who might decide to stab instead of to shoot even if she had a gun, Ms. Coleman would be that person. The one thing she’s very, very good about is knowing what she’s capable of when she’s drunk, and she’s nearly always drunk.”
“I wouldn’t call it drunk,” Kyle said. “I’d call it not exactly sober.”
“Call it what you will. That linoleum cutter was most likely the best weapon available, better than a knife, for instance, because it’s sharper.”
“Do you know where the linoleum cutter came from?” Kyle asked.
“I’m about ninety-nine percent sure. We’ll have to check. It won’t matter, though, the fingerprints will be clear enough and a good lab analysis ought to get a lot more.”
“Do you intend to tell me where it came from?” Kyle asked. “Are you going to let me in on this? And if you think you know where it came from, why haven’t we gone there and checked it out?”
“For the same reason you didn’t search Mr. Kennedy’s house back there. Because we didn’t have a warrant. Eventually, you’re going to have to get a number of warrants and search a number of places—if I were you, I’d search that house, too, on general principles—but at the moment it would just waste a lot of time, and there’s no hurry. It doesn’t matter where it came from much now that we have it. The trick is to get all our ducks in place so that nobody can claim we’ve got a case shot full of holes. I’m mixing metaphors. Bennis would kill me.”
“Look,” Kyle Borden said, “do you know who killed Chris Inglerod and attacked Emma Kenyon Bligh?”
“Yes.”
“And it was the same person in both cases?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And the same person killed Michael Houseman?”
“No,” Gregor said, “but the same person was responsible for all three deaths. That’s not quite the same thing.”
“It’ll be enough if I’ve got the person locked up for the death of Chris Inglerod. Was the death of Chris Inglerod a mistake, too? Is this woman—and I assume you’re talking about a woman—”
“Right.”
“Was this woman going around slashing people just because she wanted to slash Betsy and Betsy was never available? Because I’m going to have a hard time selling that to the town prosecutor, and he’d never be able to sell it to a jury.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Gregor said. “It’s nothing that odd. Just let’s go see Peggy Smith Kennedy, and then let’s hunt down Maris Coleman and insist she sit still for a talk for once. And when we do find her, let’s make sure she can’t go anywhere.”
FOUR
1
In the end, it was Liz who drove Bennis Hannaford’s tangerine-orange Mercedes. It was easier not to have to give directions every other minute. You could drive on automatic pilot if you knew where you were going, and Liz did know where she was going. She could have driven these streets every day for the last thirty years instead of not seeing them in all that time. She could have walked this landscape. She remembered things it made no sense to remember, like where old Mrs. Gorton lived and how to get there. Old Mrs. Gorton had been her fifth-grade teacher. Then there were other things. When they were all seven years old and in second grade, Chris Inglerod had started coming to school in black velvet hair bands. Soon they all had black velvet hair bands, even Liz herself, and some people, like Belinda, had started to claim that they wore them even to bed. When they were all eight and in third grade, the fashion was sleepover parties and Polaroid photographs. Girls who had sleepover parties took Polaroids and brought the photographs in on the Monday after the weekend for show and tell. For eight months straight,
all Liz had wanted in the world was to have a single Polaroid photograph of herself at a sleepover party, any sleepover party, anywhere. When they were all ten and in Mrs. Gorton’s class, Liz had gone from the first of October until the last week of school sitting by herself at lunch with nobody on either side of her and nobody to talk to, because—well—because. By then they had begun to be explicit about how much they didn’t want to have her anywhere around. That year was the year that Harry Spedergelb planted the maple tree in his front yard. Driving by it now, it seemed to dwarf the small lot and the small house that was on it, and to menace the other houses on the street, one of which was Chris Inglerod’s mother’s house, except that Chris Inglerod’s mother no longer lived there. Harry Spedergelb had died of lung cancer in 1974. Liz’s mother had sent her the news while she was at graduate school. Liz never knew why. Mrs. Gorton had died of blood poisoning in 1986. She was ninety-two years old, and the picture in the Hollman Home News made her look even more like the Wicked Witch of the West than she did in person. Liz’s mother had sent her that article, too, or rather that copy of the Home News, the way she’d sent a copy of the Home News every week for eleven years, on the assumption that Liz would eventually get homesick enough to want to come for a visit. Liz had not come to visit. For a while, everything in the Home News had seemed to be an obituary. Dave Grieg and Tom Bellson both dead together in a car crash. Jimmy Strand, Nelson Harvey, and Tim Stall all dead in Vietnam. Cathy Conway dead in the crash of a prop plane outside Omaha, Nebraska.
In the other front bucket seat, Bennis Hannaford seemed to be trying very hard not to panic. Liz would have put some music on if she could have, but although the tangerine Mercedes had a CD player, the CDs Bennis had were restricted to one Charles Mingus album, one copy of the Chicago Philharmonic’s rendition of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and the Three Tenors. Liz hadn’t believed anybody really listened to the Three Tenors.
“So,” Bennis said finally. “Are we going anyplace in particular? And do you know how to get there?”
