Suspicion of Madness

by Barbara Parker

Drawers opened and shut. There were footsteps back and forth over Gail's head. Gail sat huddled on the sofa and pulled a musty afghan around her shoulders. Finally Joan came clomping downstairs in white vinyl knee boots, green tights, and a psychedelic green-and-orange minidress. Green O-shaped earrings swung at her ears, and her blond wig swooped across her cheeks. She carried a brown, hard-sided suitcase with a handle. "How do I look?"

  Gail stared, then smiled. "Great."

  "The word is groovy." Joan set down her bag and searched through a white purse for cigarettes and lighter. "I haven't been to The Buttonwood Inn since God-knows-when. Yes, I do. Tom took me. Arnel didn't want me going out with Tom. If he was here right now, he'd start whining about it." Her lighter flared.

  Gail was shivering. "Joan, do you have a sweater or something I could borrow?"

  "Oh! I'm sorry!" She exhaled smoke. "Just grab one out of the hall closet upstairs. Want me to go up and get it for you?"

  "No, I can. Thanks."

  "I'll be on the porch." Joan pushed open the screen door. "Would you look at that rain? It smells nice, though. You know what? I've been cooped up in the house too much. I used to argue about that with Arnel, and he was wrong, wrong, wrong."

  The only hall closet was beside the bathroom, intended for a linen closet but crammed with winter clothes. Gail stuck her hand in and came out with a heavy white sweater with gold buttons and epaulets, size fourteen. With a sigh she put it on. It smelled of mothballs. On her way to the stairs she noticed an umbrella against the wall outside Joan Sinclair's room. She thought they might need it.

  The door was open. Gail looked inside. The red feathered robe lay across the bed. One of the candles was still burning, reflected in the triple mirror whose gold metal frames were pitted with rust. She went to blow it out. Aware that she should not be in here at all, Gail walked carefully across the threadbare faux-oriental rug.

  Her appearance in the mirror startled her. Her makeup was gone, and her hair was beyond belief. Combing it quickly with her fingers, she noticed a jewelry box on the vanity. It was green padded vinyl embossed with gold fleur-de-lis, and one of the small drawers was open. A gold medallion dangled over the edge. There was an inscription. Gail lifted it to see what it said. The name "Emily" had been neatly scratched through, and "Joan" incised above it. It wasn't even real gold; the plate was wearing off. It was fantasy, an illusion.

  A prickle of fear crept up Gail's spine as she sensed she was being watched. She raised her eyes and looked into the mirror. There was nothing. Behind her, the empty door. The red robe across the bed. And a face on the wall.

  It was one of the framed movie posters. Gail recognized the woman from the video box of Bride of Nosferatu.

  A heart-shaped face both innocent and evil, wide-set eyes, a small chin, and sharp little vampire teeth protruding onto her lower lip. Nosferatu standing behind her. In the distance, bare trees and a ruined castle.

  Slowly Gail turned around. She stared into a pair of dark, catlike eyes outlined in heavy black pencil. Joan Sinclair in her twenties, but... not Joan Sinclair. The nose was shorter. The face was more... delicate. Gail had the sensation of looking at a puzzle-drawing. She thought of the old black-and-white drawing of the young lady at her dressing table fixing her hair. Stare at it long enough, it becomes a drawing of a skull.

  As Gail continued to study the face in the poster it gradually began to make sense, even as her mind refused to accept it. Her heart did a dance in her chest, and her limbs felt weak.

  "Oh... my God." Sandra McCoy must have seen the poster. She had come in here looking around and had seen it. The face of the actress, Joan Sinclair, the same face on the video box that she rushed out to rent and show to Doug Lindeman. That face. Not... the face of... the woman who lived in this house. But how could that be?

  There were quick footsteps up the stairs. "Yoo-hoo. Did you fall in?"

  Gail let go of the medallion and hurried away from the vanity.

  Joan Sinclair came into view in her psychedelic dress and white knee boots. She looked quizzically at Gail. "Why are you in my room?"

  "I... saw a candle still burning." The reason seemed to ring with falsity and contrivance. Gail went to the dresser and blew it out. "We should go." Smoke curled up from the wick.

  But Joan's attention was on the jewelry box and its open drawer, from which the medallion was still swinging. "What were you doing?"

  "Joan, I was just looking at one of your—"

  "You—you were... s-stealing my jewelry."

  "No, I wasn't. Everything is here. I'll put it back." Gail closed the little drawer. "I wouldn't take anything of yours."

  "I saw you. Y-y-you're stealing her j-j-jewelry."

  "No!" The word became a cry of horror as the truth finally crashed through the defenses in Gail's mind and forced her to see the truth. How could she not have known? Behind the mask of makeup and movement and voice, it was obvious.

  Gail knew as she ran for the door that it would be too late, that someone else was faster, stronger; that she would be dragged to the floor, and that hands would go around her throat.

  In the moments before Gail saw nothing else, she noticed the face above her, the lashes glued to the eyelids, the carefully lined and painted lips, and the platinum blond hair swinging on cheeks that had reddened with rage.

  And the eyes... how strange. They were dark brown with a thin rim of palest blue.

  Gail smelled dirt. Leaves. Wet, rotting wood. She could taste dirt, feel the grit between her lips and her teeth. Something tapped steadily on her back, her legs. She felt it on her outstretched hand.

  Rain.

  She struggled to open her eyes. She focused on... logs. Landscaping timbers. A stack of them near where she lay. She saw a wheelbarrow leaning against a tree. Beyond the wheelbarrow, a small concrete block building with a tin roof. Rain washed down the gutters and flowed into the yard.

  A strange ringing noise. Something going into earth, coming out again. Someone breathing. Grunting with effort. Two people. They were talking to each other.

  Gail remembered this place. It was the garden compost heap near Joan Sinclair's house. The landscaping logs enclosed it. The voices came from inside the rectangle of logs. There were two people standing in the mulch.

  Something sharp went into the pile. A rake, a shovel. She could hear the slight crunch of dead leaves and small bits of wood.

  A woman said: "They're going to come looking for her."

  Then a man: "Please b-be quiet."

  The woman: "Her boyfriend won't like this one little bit."

  The man: "He w-w-won't find her."

  They went on arguing like this as Gail lay still as the earth itself for a minute more, putting the pieces in place. There weren't two people up there. Only one. Arnel Goode.

  Gail tensed her legs, released her muscles, and found nothing broken. She decided to get up slowly and see where he was. It seemed that the voices moved away from her. Gail slowly picked up her head. Joan Sinclair was jamming a pitchfork into the mulch, throwing the mulch to one side. Not Joan Sinclair. Arnel.

  Crouching, Gail saw what he had unearthed. The details mounted gradually in terrible impact. An odd curve of yellow plastic, a hand at the opening: a sleeve. Her eyes raced up the arm to find the dirt-encrusted face of a man with white hair. In the next split-second she realized she was looking at the body of Tom Holtz in his yellow raincoat. Not only Tom. Beside him lay a woman with blond, frizzy hair. Arnel picked up her arm in its navy-blue sweatshirt and moved it out of the way. Her face was hidden, but with increasing horror Gail knew it must be Lois Greenwald. Arnel bent to move another leg, and it didn't belong to either of the other bodies. There were three. And Arnel was preparing a place for another.

  Arnel must have heard a small noise behind him. He turned around— It was Joan's face, still in full makeup under a blond wig.

  Gail was fifty yards down the path before Arnel grabbed her around the waist. Gail tried to knee his groin,
to go for his eyes, to bite anything she could get her teeth into. They fell into the bushes.

  He hit her in the back of the neck, and blue flames seared her nerves.

  She awoke lying on her back in the mulch pile. Decaying leaves and wood chips were in her face, her eyes. A weight landed on her chest, then another. Gail freed her arms from the weight and frantically brushed the mulch off her face and sucked in a breath. She strained against the weight on her legs. She was pinned.

  A woman in a green-and-orange dress was looking down at her.

  "Joan! Please don't. I won't tell anyone. I won't—"

  Joan went out of sight for a moment and came back with the pitchfork. She spoke, but it was not her voice. It was Arnel Goode's voice, and then it was not.

  "You st-stand out of the way, Miss Sinclair, let me take care of it. Put that pitchfork down, Arnel. I have to do it!" Five sharp tines were suspended over Gail's chest.

  Gail clawed to get out of the mulch.

  "Arnel, stop. I mean it! B-But, M-Miss Sinclair— No! You don't give the orders, I do, and I'm telling you to leave her alone!"

  He jerked off the wig and threw it. His face was lopsided with one blue eye and one brown.

  Gail rose to her elbows. "No! Joan! Please don't let him kill me. Joan!"

  "Let her out of there. No! She—She was t-trying to steal— Don't be ridiculous, Gail was taking me to dinner at the hotel. They all wa-want to steal from you and... and send you away! Arnel, don't you think four is enough? If you kill her it will be five, and that's going too far."

  "Please, Joan, tell him not to." Gail screamed, "Please!"

  Arnel raised the pitchfork.

  Gail twisted away, and the tines sank into the mulch where her head had been. "Joan! Please stop!"

  "Put down that goddamn pitchfork, Arnel. Put it down! Now!"

  Arnel dropped the pitchfork and started to cry. "But I was only trying to help— When you left for Key West, I thought you'd be gone for days, and I was glad! Glad! I'd never been so riotously happy in my life! Then you show up again, dripping on my carpet! I—I'm sorry. Get out of my sight. I never want to see you again, do you hear?" He sat on the logs with his hands over his face. His shoulders shook. "W-w-where am I g-going to go? I don't give a damn, just get out."

  Arnel Goode's sobs finally tapered off to a sigh. He was silent for a while. His thin hair was slick with rain. He stood up. The green tights had a hole in one knee. He crouched gracefully to pick up the wig. He put it on and smoothed the blond curls forward along his cheeks.

  He looked around at Gail, who lay trembling in the mulch. "Are you ready to go?"

  Gail stared up at him.

  "To The Buttonwood Inn. For the party, darling." A penciled eyebrow rose. "What's the matter with you?"

  "Joan?"

  "Are we going or aren't we?"

  "Going?"

  "You said Teri was waiting. She's going to open some champagne."

  Gail's voice creaked in her throat. "You go. I'll stay here."

  "Why on earth would you want to stay here? Where's my phone? I want Tom to join us. Teri won't mind, will she?" Arnel stepped onto the mulch pile and pulled Gail out by her elbows. "Oh, look, the rain is stopping. It's about time."

  They walked to the cart. Arnel put Gail in the passenger seat, then went up on the porch and picked up the suitcase and the white purse. He popped up a bright blue umbrella and came down, picking his way carefully in the white knee boots. He put the suitcase in the back, got in, shook the umbrella, and stowed it on the floor.

  He withdrew a compact from the purse and looked into it.

  "Oh, my God" The compact clicked shut. "On second thought, you drive. I have to fix my face. Tom can't see me like this."

  30

  It annoyed Jack Baylor no end that when he and his team got to Lindeman Key in the police boat, after two miles of having his kidneys slammed against the seat and salt water thrown in his face, Billy Fadden wasn't home. His lawyer had taken him in the direction that Jack Baylor had just come from, and Martin Greenwald was gone too. No one was there except for Mrs. Greenwald, who got close to hysterical trying to explain what had happened. She wanted them to wait until the other lawyer arrived from picking up Ms. Sinclair, but Baylor went ahead and served the search warrant.

  Mrs. Greenwald showed them where Billy's apartment was, and they got started. Baylor ignored the pirated videos and the marijuana stuffed into a cereal box. Other than that, they found nothing but the junk usually found in a teenager's room.

  Billy's mother stood outside the door telling him that Douglas Lindeman had killed Sandra McCoy, and Lindeman's law partner, Thomas Holtz, was going to tell them about an affair those two were having. To shut her up, Baylor had someone try to reach Holtz, but he wasn't answering his phone.

  Then he got a message that Anthony Quintana wanted to talk to him, and he dialed the number. Quintana said that Kyle Fadden had implicated Lindeman in McCoy's death, but Fadden could have been deflecting suspicion from himself. One or the other had murdered Sandra because she had put pressure on Lindeman for a cut of the cash that his cousin Teddy Lindeman had left in the cistern under their aunt's house. Teddy had died in prison before his release date. Whether Joan Lindeman knew about the money was unclear, but Quintana had taken a quick look in the box, estimating at least a million dollars in neatly banded hundreds.

  The point is, Quintana concluded, Billy Fadden is innocent. The boy had nothing to do with Sandra's death. His confession had been the product of a severe psychological trauma.

  Baylor didn't tell Quintana what they had found. His officers had gone to the marina and searched the vehicles belonging to The Buttonwood Inn. In the back of a panel van they had found long red hairs consistent with those belonging to Sandra McCoy. One of the marina employees had seen Billy Fadden driving that van on many occasions. Unfortunately, the man couldn't swear he'd seen Billy driving it the night of the murder.

  When Baylor's partner on the case asked what next, Baylor told him to round up the men and wait in the lobby. Mrs. Greenwald offered to make some coffee. Baylor went out on the porch for a smoke. He was sitting in one of the rocking chairs with his foot on the railing, watching the rain move across the water, when a golf cart came along the road from the north side of the island. It went past the porch and turned in under the portico. There were two women in the cart.

  Baylor got up and walked to the end of the porch. He recognized the skinny blond from two days ago, but she looked like she'd crawled ashore after a shipwreck. He assumed the other one was Joan Sinclair. Last time he'd seen her, she'd been a redhead. It was strange she had on sunglasses on a day like this. She was fixing her lipstick.

  Connor saw him, then said something to Sinclair and got out of the cart. Her pants and shirt were filthy, and her hair was hanging in her eyes. She pushed it back and looked over at him.

  Baylor took a final drag on his cigarette and flicked it into the bushes. "Ms. Connor. I hear you've had an interesting time of it."

  She came up the side steps. "Where is everyone?"

  "I'm here. I've got four officers inside. Your law partner is on his way with Martin Greenwald. Mrs. Greenwald is making coffee, and your client is with his father at Mariner's Hospital."

  "Kyle is alive, then."

  "Barely. He's in the ICU." Baylor said, "Would you mind telling me what's going on? I heard it from Mr. Quintana, but let's have your version."

  She turned to glance at the golf cart as if making sure it was still there. "Detective, I think you should go over to Miss Sinclair's house and look in the compost heap in the yard. You'll find three bodies. Tom Holtz, Doug Lindeman, and Lois Greenwald."

  Baylor stared at her. "What?"

  "Arnel Goode killed them. He also killed Sandra McCoy. It wasn't Billy. It was Arnel. He did it to protect Joan Sinclair. That's why he killed the others too. Give me a few minutes to get cleaned up, all right? Then I want to call Anthony, and I have to tell Teri Greenwald about L
ois. After that, I'll explain everything."

  "Hold it. Arnel Goode? Where is he?"

  "Arnel is... in the golf cart."

  Baylor wondered if Gail Connor's mind was slipping. "That's Joan Sinclair."

  "No, It's Arnel."

  "Who was that in my office yesterday?"

  "Arnel. But he thinks he's Joan."

  Baylor took another look at the woman in the wig, and his mind did a little turn and settled down in the other direction. "Uh-huh. If that's not Joan Sinclair, where is she?"

  "I asked Arnel, but the question doesn't make sense to him. Joan Sinclair—Joan Lindeman—probably died two years ago, but I don't know where her body is. I don't know if he killed her too, or she died of natural causes, but she's gone, and he's been impersonating her ever since."

  Baylor watched the woman in the cart check her face in the mirror of her compact.

  Gail Connor said, "Take Joan inside and find her a place to sit. You should assign an officer—two officers—to stay with her. I don't think she'll be a problem, but I can't guarantee that. And one other thing, Detective Baylor, if you could—"

  "Hold it." He walked closer to the cart. The woman—the person in the cart looked back at him through her sunglasses and smiled. She slid a cigarette out of a silver case and leaned toward the railing.

  Her voice was a low purr. "Hello again, Detective." She brought the cigarette to her lips. "S'il vous plait?"

  Baylor took a good look as he slowly reached for his lighter. He held it out and thumbed the wheel. She—he—whoever it was cupped her hand around his and drew in some smoke. One of her fake fingernails was missing. Her dress was a crazy mix of green and orange, and she was wearing white plastic boots with high heels.

  The smoke came out on a smile. "You are too kind."

  He walked back to Gail Connor. She waited for him to say something. Baylor said, "We're going to need a psych wagon."

  "Do something for me, though, will you, Detective? Tell them to be nice to her. I think you'll get more cooperation that way."

  "Be nice?"