“Or if it were somebody he knew. A good friend.”
“Jimmy didn’t have any good friends. Any friends at all.”
“A family member then.”
Molly immediately felt guilty. Everyone at Gale Castle had been so kind to her, to Nell. Now she was thanking them by pointing suspicion in their direction. She was unable to stop herself, however.
“Look,” she raced on. “Jimmy was killed last Tuesday morning, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, before we went over to Gale Castle that afternoon nobody even knew we existed. They all thought Jimmy was the only heir to the Gale fortune. It seems to me that you should be looking at the person who believed he was next in line to inherit if Jimmy were dead.”
“Sorry, Miss O’Hara,” said Glickman, shaking his head. “If no bloodline Gales survive Dora, the Gale Trust will be divvied up among a dozen different charities. I’m afraid the American Medical Association, the Audubon Society, and the Salvation Army don’t make very good suspects.”
“Well, maybe there are other bloodline Gales,” said Molly, thinking furiously. “Maybe somebody walked away from the plane crash. Russell said all the bodies weren’t recovered.”
“Yeah,” said the sheriff. “This is the Agatha Christie theory, my wife’s favorite. Except I saw the wreckage of that plane and the condition of the bodies, such as they were. Believe me, Ms. O’Hara, nobody survived that crash.”
“Maybe someone didn’t get on.”
Glickman shook his head again.
“Sorry. The FBI has been investigating just that idea for the last month. They’re certain that everyone who was supposed to have boarded actually did. Besides, you’ve got to consider the gun. How do you explain the gun being the same one that killed your mother? The gun is the key to this whole thing. As things stand now, only Couvertie’s theory accounts for it.”
Molly sat in silence for a moment, then held up her hand.
“Wait a minute,” she said, trying to assemble the strands of thought that kept twisting through her mind. “What if it was Jimmy who killed our mother?”
“What do you mean?” asked Glickman, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe Jimmy killed our mother all those years ago. He kept the gun, had it in his house. Then someone came over. An acquaintance, maybe—I don’t know. But someone who hated him, had hated him for years, which could have been almost anybody from around here, according to you. Jimmy took out the gun to show off or something. Or maybe it was just lying there on the table, and this person saw his chance to commit the perfect crime. All his resentments came to the surface. He simply picked up the gun—that way there would be no struggle—and pulled the trigger.”
Glickman rubbed his chin.
“Now that’s interesting,” he said. “Nobody’s suggested that one before. It makes a strange kind of sense. Nobody up here could find your grandmother for that reunion, not even a private detective. So how did Jimmy come to show up there last month, unless he had been there before maybe, been there to kill your mother?”
“That’s right,” said Molly.
“But why would Jimmy have murdered your mother, Miss O’Hara? We know why he might have wanted you and your grandmother dead, but why your mother, way back then?”
Molly shook her head.
“I don’t know.”
“And I surely don’t, either,” said Glickman, fingering the butt of his holstered automatic. “I don’t understand practically anything about this case. Unfortunately, if Jimmy did kill your mother, it only strengthens Couvertie’s theory.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to get mad at me again?” asked the sheriff in a wary voice.
“What are you going to say?” asked Molly, folding her arms in front of her. Glickman folded his arms, too.
“My problem with Couvertie’s version of things rested on something you told me the first time we talked, Miss O’Hara. You said that you didn’t think your sister ever saw the red-haired man with the mustache who you thought was following you around. You only saw him from a distance, so how could Nell have gotten a better look? And if she didn’t get a good look at him in the first place, how could she have recognized him up here in Vermont? Even if Nell did think it was the same man, why would she have reacted so violently? You weren’t really sure that this man you saw a few times in North Carolina had killed your grandmother and your friends, were you?”
“No,” Molly admitted.
“Then your sister couldn’t have been sure either. It’s a bit much to swallow that she went chasing after the first red-haired, mustached man she saw, followed him to his house and shot him. How could she know it was the right man? And even if she were sure, how did she know he had really done those things back in your hometown?”
“That’s right,” said Molly. “How does Mr. Couvertie explain that?”
“He can’t. His answer is that mentally ill people don’t have to be totally logical.”
“My sister isn’t mentally ill,” said Molly angrily.
“I believe that,” said Glickman. “I can see there’s someone smart and alive in there. Your sister had to block out the horror of what she saw as a little girl and in so doing, blocked out a certain portion of herself. It’s a tragedy. But Nell saw your mother’s killer, Miss O’Hara. His face must have been burned indelibly into her brain. If she had seen this man again, this murderer on a Vermont street corner, then that’s something that might surely make her snap. The sight of him. The memory of what happened to your mother. Boom.”
“No,” said Molly.
“Yes,” said Glickman. “Nell would have had a real reason to want to shoot Jimmy if she remembered seeing him shoot your mom, a much better reason than what Couvertie suggested, a much better reason than your hypothetical acquaintance ready to commit murder on the spur of the moment.”
“But I was just making it up,” said Molly frantically. “About Jimmy being our mother’s killer. There’s nothing that connects him to her death. It could have been anyone.”
“Perhaps,” said the sheriff with a sad smile. “But why would someone want your mother dead, Miss O’Hara? What was the motive? And why would that same person want to kill Jimmy? It’s his death that we’re investigating, after all, and right now we have only two theories that give us suspects with plausible motive, method, and opportunity. One, that you and your sister conspired to kill Jimmy for the Gale money. And two, Couvertie’s theory that it was Nell, acting alone, out of revenge. Frankly, that’s the leading contender, considering the fact that your sister doesn’t have an alibi for the time Jimmy was shot last Tuesday morning.”
“I told you last week,” stammered Molly. “Nell was with me. At the motel.”
“Well, I checked that story, Miss O’Hara. Eustace Cubby at The Yankee Clipper says that you were in your room all morning, which frankly is why Couvertie and I didn’t zero in on you. After all, it could just as easily have been you who picked up that gun when you were a child, then brought it to Vermont and killed Jimmy with it. But Eustace says your sister was off somewhere.”
“She was just gone for a few minutes.”
“I don’t think so. Eustace says he saw your car drive off at ten o‘clock, and thought the two of you might be skipping out. He came over, looked through the window and saw you still in bed. Then you called the desk at about eleven-thirty that morning and asked for a later checkout time. You said your sister had gone out, you didn’t know where. She didn’t come back with your car until after two o’clock.”
“She was just out buying me this watch,” said Molly, holding up her wrist. “It was my birthday.”
“Mazel tov, but it doesn’t take fours hours to buy a wristwatch, Miss O’Hara. Look, I know your sister’s been through a lot. If Couvertie turns out to be right I doubt that Nell would be held legally responsible, considering all that’s happened to her. I’m sure that there are plenty of good lawyers who could—”
“My sister didn’t kill anybody,” insisted Molly, though her voice cracked and tears threatened to form in her eyes. “It had to be somebody else. Wasn’t there anybody else who knew Jimmy and who didn’t have an alibi?”
“Oh, I’ve got people without alibis coming out the wazoo,” said Glickman. “Dr. George hated Jimmy from childhood. Tuesdays are his days off. Last week he was tooling around the White Mountains without any witnesses. Russell Bowslater didn’t like Jimmy, either. He says he was off alone fishing somewhere that morning and of course didn’t bring anything home to show for it. Mrs. McCormick, who is probably capable of anything, was out picking up some things for the dinner you all had that night, leaving poor Mrs. Gale alone in the house except for the cook. Even Troutwig the lawyer won’t tell me who he was with that day, claims client-attorney confidence. Now all you have to do is tell me how any of these people stands to profit from Jimmy’s death as much as you and your sister do, and we’ll be in business.”
They stood in silence for a moment. Fifty yards away the door of Gale Castle opened and an elderly couple came out, giving Molly and Sheriff Glickman a curious look before heading up the drive toward their car.
“I’ve got to go back inside,” said Molly. “I appreciate how hard you’ve been working on this, Sheriff Glickman. Thank you.”
Glickman’s big hand went to the brim of his hat.
“You’re welcome, Miss O’Hara. You are planning to stick around for a while, aren’t you?”
“Do I have any choice?”
The tall sheriff shrugged, then reached into his breast pocket and produced a little white card with his phone number, which he handed to her.
“If anything occurs to you,” he said, “if you hear anything or just want to talk, please give me a call.”
“I will.”
He stood by his car and watched Molly walk slowly back to the door of the castle.
It seemed dark inside after the summer sunshine. The living room was large enough not to seem crowded, but there were still a lot of people milling about. The noise of their laughter and conversation was irritating.
Molly suddenly felt trapped. A few days ago the future was a blank book. Now the Gale money, the Gale fortune, the Gale name were like weights strapped to her as she was drawn inexorably down into the whirlpool of Jimmy’s murder.
Molly couldn’t stop thinking about all Glickman had said. There were too many threads, too much uncertainty to work it out logically. All the sheriff’s theories and methodology meant nothing. You had to trust your instincts in a situation like this, and Molly’s whole being told her that Nell couldn’t have hidden a gun for seventeen years, much less used it; Nell was innocence itself.
If Nell didn’t bring the gun from North Carolina, however, it could only mean that someone from here, from Gale Island, had come down to Pelletreau seventeen years ago, shot Molly’s mother, and then returned home. Perhaps it had been Jimmy, but more likely it had been somebody else, somebody who last week had used the gun again.
It all meant that something connected Jimmy and Evangeline O’Hara Cole. But what?
Molly’s instincts practically screamed the answer at her. The reason for both deaths was right here in this room—from the walnut Queen Anne chairs to the malachite table ornaments to the gigantic oil painting of strutting peacocks above the fireplace. It was about money. The Gale Money. The grasping fingers of Atherton Gale controlling all of them from the grave. Molly suddenly knew it as certainly as she knew the markings on the bottom of oyster plates.
Nell had gone over to the back window, and was gazing out into the rose garden behind the house. George had joined an elderly couple at the other side of the room, leaving Russell alone on the sofa. Molly walked over and joined him.
“Nice party,” he said contentedly, putting down his empty glass and absently exploring his somewhat hairy ear with a somewhat hairy finger. “Jimmy would have gotten quite a laugh if he had known how many people would turn out to see him off.”
“You didn’t like him much, did you?” said Molly.
An image of her mother flashed into Molly’s mind. A picture of her in the yard, smiling, happy for a change. And then someone had just reached out of nowhere and taken her life. Molly’s life had stopped that day as surely as had Nell’s. And the killer had gotten away with it. Was he here in this room now? Maybe even seated right beside her?
“Jimmy?” asked Russell. “Sure I liked Jimmy, pathetic thing that he was. Man, you should have heard him go on about how screwed up things are in Washington. I’m surprised he hadn’t gone off to Idaho and joined one of those militia things or become a talk radio host. The boy was a kook, but funny as hell. Did an imitation of old Troutwig that would have you rolling on the floor.”
“Who do you think killed him?”
“Hard to say,” Russell declared, picking up his empty drink and examining the ice cubes. “Hard to say.”
“Somebody told me that if we hadn’t turned up, the Gale Trust would have gone to charity,” said Molly.
“That’s right.”
“Would you have gotten any? Your charity, I mean.”
“Cancer Answer? No, Atherton was too much of a bastard to let my little outfit get any. Not that we couldn’t have used it, mind you. Can’t have too much money for cancer, you know, millions of people depend on it. Doctors. Nurses. Hospitals. Insurance companies. Medical products people. Get-well-card manufacturers. If they ever find a cure for our friend the Big C, the unemployment rate will probably go up six points. Hey, I don’t mind you and your sister inheriting, if that’s what you’re getting at. No skin off my nose. I wouldn’t have gotten anything personally, no matter what happened.”
“Yes, I remember you said last week that the will was pretty airtight.”
“Man, it’s like a steel drum,” said Russell.
“I guess Mr. Troutwig’s a good lawyer, then.”
“Oh, Troutwig didn’t do the Gale Trust. He did do a few wills for Atherton over the years—Atherton was always proving what a big deal he was by disinheriting somebody or other. But I guess at the end Atherton decided he needed somebody more highpowered. He got the top lawyer at the top firm in Boston to write up the Gale Trust, make it unbreakable. The man’s now a federal judge.”
“A federal judge from Boston,” repeated Molly. Why did that sound familiar?
“Yeah,” pronounced Russell with a smile. “The guy was a goddamn legal wizard. Azaria was his name. Martin Azaria.”
Fifteen
“That’s wonderful,” said the warm voice of David Azaria on the other end of the telephone. “Didn’t I tell you we would find we had things in common?”
“You mean that it’s a coincidence that your father wrote my great-grandfather’s will?” exclaimed Molly.
“Sure. What else could it be? And not coincidence. Synchronicity. Just as I said when we first met: The universe is full of synchronicity for people like us.”
Molly tried to picture him, sitting there in his apartment in New York where she had reached him, all earnestness and big brown eyes. She paced back and forth in front of the bed, tethered by the cord of the old black rotary telephone, hoping that no one downstairs would miss her.
“I’m sorry,” Molly said. “I’m not as naive as you may think. I just don’t believe it.”
“What’s not to believe?” asked David with a mild little laugh. “You say your great-grandfather was a millionaire living in the middle of Vermont. Well, my father was one of the most prominent lawyers in Boston, the nearest major city. Why is it so unbelievable that your great-grandfather might have come to him? If the guy had money and wanted the best, Dad was a logical choice.”
“You don’t understand,” said Molly, feeling like she would explode. Her eyes filled with tears. She collapsed onto the bed.
“No, I don’t understand. Tell me.”
“They’re all dead. Everyone’s dead. And the same person who killed Jimmy killed our mother, and …”
“Wait a second, wait a second,” said David. “Who’s dead? What are you talking about?”
Molly fought down the panic that had welled up again inside her. She took a deep breath. Then, as calmly as she could, she told him for the first time about everything that had happened: the suspicious death of Margaret Jellinek; the explosion of their house and shop; the red-haired man; the reunion of the Gale family and the plane crash that killed them; seeing Jimmy Gale’s picture, then finding him dead with a bullet hole in his head, shot with the same gun that had killed Evangeline O’Hara Cole; the sheriff’s suspicions about Nell, and the fact that she and Molly would now inherit the Gale Trust.
“You poor kid,” said David Azaria finally when Molly was finished. “I didn’t understand the message you left me the other week. I thought you were just flustered because you liked me.”
“I don’t like you,” declared Molly. “I don’t even know you.”
“Then why are you calling me for help?”
“I’m not calling you for help! I just want to know why your name keeps coming up in my life.”
“Well, I didn’t have anything to do with killing any of your relatives, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
Molly didn’t say anything. She didn’t know what she thought anymore.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” murmured David. “Am I really so awful?”
Suddenly all that Molly had been trying to hold in burst loose. Tears were running down her cheeks. She tried to stifle an audible sob, but couldn’t. David let her cry.
“You’ve had a pretty tough time of it, haven’t you?” he said gently after she had quieted down and blown her nose.
The Girl at the End of the Line Page 21
