Vanessa caught the subtle compensation move. Aha. It’s the left eye.
“Do you think Rosie Harris held a grudge against Marly?” she asked.
“Rosie was a head case, but we weren’t on speaking terms,” Elaine answered. “I know Marly didn’t get along well with Rosie.”
“Oh yes,” Helen said. “I remember that day Marly first came to our house. She had a big black eye and her cheekbone was scraped. I knew right away that she must have hit trouble at home. I almost didn’t let her in. We had already had so much to worry about.”
Elaine rotated to her right to face her mother. Helen turned to study something out the window; her neck was covered in a red, blotchy flush that quickly rose to her cheeks. Vanessa studied the unspoken exchange between mother and daughter. Interesting. Had Helen talked out of school?
“It wasn’t unheard of for Marly to turn up with bruises now and again, but she never complained or asked for help,” Elaine said.
“David told us about your ordeal,” Vanessa said. “It must have been very hard.”
“To this day I don’t remember a lot about the actual incident, but I sure as hell do remember what came after. It was an awful, painful, confusing time. Out of the blue Marly came by and said we should team up.”
“Marlyfication. That’s what Paul Daniels calls it,” Jack said.
Elaine chuckled. “Absolutely. I was her first project.”
“Too bad that Laurie Harris wasn’t part of that escape plan,” Vanessa said, watching for Elaine’s response. “She was a lot like Marly.”
“It took a village to kill Laurie Harris. In fact, it took a couple of villages. It took a couple of villages’ worth of people looking the other way and trying to keep the Harris family penned up in Charon Springs. They ignored children like Laurie and Marly. Now it just eats at me to think how miserable Laurie’s life must have been. Much worse than Marly’s. I think it might be too much to ask a couple of teenagers to have saved her.”
Vanessa and Elaine locked eyes. She knows something, Vanessa decided. She’s helping now in ways she couldn’t years ago.
Elaine’s voice was soft and somber. “At the time I was too angry to be sorry for Laurie. It seemed to me that we were all entitled to some kind of bright future up until that point. Even Laurie had been a sweet little girl once upon a time. However, as I look back now, over half of our class from the Springs elementary school floundered within a few years after high school, all victims of bad decisions—theirs and others’. Laurie wasn’t the last one to die before her time, I might add, just the first.”
“Speaking of decisions, joining that startup was a stroke of luck for you,” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Elaine said, a faint, wistful smile on her lips. “That was part of the library thing. We wrote code like crazy.”
“And the rest was history,” Helen said. “Those girls just kept going. They left the Springs behind and didn’t see Louise or Troy ever again.”
Elaine blushed. “We’ve had an amazing run.”
“Elaine bought me this house,” Helen said. She sat up straighter and beamed at her daughter.
“I bought a place around the corner,” Elaine said, adding a laugh. “I love my mother, but we are not going to live together.”
Vanessa felt her throat tighten with Silicon Valley envy. She wished she could afford to do the same for her parents.
Jack consulted his pad. “Marly became the guardian of her sister’s children a year and a half prior to the dates in question, is that right?”
“Oh, that was quite a time,” Helen said. “Marly was so upset those children were in danger. No small thanks to the actions of their parents, of course.”
“Mother—”
“Well, it’s true, Elaine. The way Charlene put it, you’d think those children had wandered off into some deep dark woods all on their own or invited vampires into the house.”
“Our friend, Andrea Melville, was in law school by then,” Elaine said. “She and her father took care of custody issues in New York, and Mom helped Marly get ready back here.”
“Of course it was sad in some ways, but it was also very exciting,” Helen said. She tilted her head and she gazed at a point that seemed to sit halfway between Vanessa and Jack, as if a vision of that happy past were mounted in the fireplace. “Those kids arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs, I swear. We bought a house, furniture, curtains, clothes, bikes, computers, cell phones, a bigger car—two cars.” Helen stopped for breath. “Wow. That was so much fun. And the kids have done very well.”
“Now Charlene is out here too, is that right?” Jack asked.
Elaine spoke for the two of them. “Marly was adamant that Charlene was still their mother and she needed to have a relationship with the children. A supervised relationship, I might add. She told Charlene to study programming and computer classes while she was in prison. I have to say that she’s worked out well for us as an employee. I had my doubts, but I guess there were some neurons firing in there after all.”
“Did Marly ever confide in you that she’d been involved with the deaths of Zeke and Del?” asked Vanessa.
Elaine’s body jerked as if she’d touched a live wire, but to Vanessa, Elaine’s face appeared composed.
“What? No way. She definitely never said anything to me. I don’t believe she knew anything about it. Like I said, she didn’t talk about her family much when we were growing up.”
“Doesn’t it seem odd that she wouldn’t have talked about them? She must have hated Del. Wouldn’t she have been thrilled when he died?” Jack asked.
Elaine stared at the rug. “She was relieved that he was gone in some ways but she was sad that he was dead. I think her feelings about Del were complicated. He was complicated. He was an asshole but he did keep a lot of the Harris clan crap away from Denise’s family. Compared to most of that bunch, he was a step up. When he disappeared, Marly was more exposed. That was when she came to find me.”
“Ms. Fardig, is it possible that Rosie Harris sent Louise and Troy Rasmussen to take revenge on Marly Shaw?” Jack asked.
Helen shot to her feet. “What a lot of hogwash.”
“That seems bogus,” Elaine said at the same time, her voice sharp and emphatic.
“And you would be willing to swear that Marly Shaw showed no signs of injuries or seemed unusually upset or nervous in June of 2009?”
“Yes!” the two answered in unison. Glaring, Helen resumed her seat and wiggled her backside into the cushion.
“I saw Marly every day of the week in that time. We were getting our company off the ground. I would have noticed,” Elaine said.
“Would you be willing to take a lie detector test to answer these questions?” Jack asked.
Before Elaine could respond, Helen answered. “What is this? A movie? Lie detector tests are a bunch of pseudoscientific bullshit and you know it. Not even admissible in court.”
Elaine set down her cup of tea on the coffee table. Her lips curved into a smile, but her eyes were unblinking and cold. “Detectives. I am happy to help your investigation, but I am not interested in participating in a fishing exercise that uses an approach that I consider to be specious. You know perfectly well that I had my own run-in with Louise and Troy years ago. The mere mention of their names makes me break out in a cold sweat.”
Vanessa stared in reluctant admiration. Before her eyes, Elaine had transformed from an agreeable daughter to a focused, incisive leader—a young woman with hidden talents. And perhaps a few secrets about her friend as well.
Elaine handed a business card to Vanessa. “However, if you are serious about pursuing this, please contact my lawyer.”
Vanessa studied the card. “Andrea Melville. Your old high school friend? This card is from your company.”
Elaine handed another card to Jack. “Andrea moved out here and is working for us with our corporate counsel team, but she has experience in criminal law. I will rely on her judgment.”
Jack and Vanessa said their good-byes, slipped on their coats, and headed for the door. Helen Fardig moved in behind, herding them onto the porch.
She wasn’t going to let them go without having the final word. “I’ll have you know that Marly Shaw is a very special young woman without a dishonest or vicious bone in her body. I am as fond of her as I am of my own daughter. If you tangle with her, you’re going to tangle with me.” Helen turned on her heel and disappeared into the house. The door shut with a thud.
“That went well,” Vanessa said once they were seated in Jack’s car.
“I feel like I came to question Goldilocks and got my hand bitten off by Mama Bear,” Jack said.
“Overreaction? Maybe Marly did see Louise and Troy, and Helen knows that. Elaine’s no Goldilocks. I think she’s quite capable of fighting her own battles.”
“You know what I think? I think they all did it. Helen, Elaine, Marly, their lawyer friend, those kids . . . They all ganged up on Louise and Troy, drove them to that cliff, and kicked them off. As if we’ll ever prove it.”
“Be serious, Jack. What about Angela Rodriguez? We like her for this too, right? Angela was a big, tough broad, like Louise, and her brother Mike could handle himself. Besides, I rather think this could be standard operating mode for Helen.”
“Yeah. You could be right about Helen. You could sell tickets to watch her take on Louise. The problem with Angela is that she’s dead and I hate dead suspects. Plus, her brother has an ironclad alibi.”
Vanessa picked up Jack’s right hand and turned it around in her own.
“Your hand looks okay to me. You’ll live. I think Helen’s reaction is kind of sweet.”
“Excuse me?”
Vanessa squeezed Jack’s hand and released her grip. “Helen loves Marly like a mother bear. Poor kid never had anyone in her corner, let alone a proper mother. Now she has Helen.”
25
Marly: Operation Rosie
June 16, 2009
The sound of crickets and tree frogs woke Marly at nine. What a racket. She had forgotten how noisy night could be in these woods. She climbed out of her car and the tree frogs fell silent. She smothered a laugh, remembering how hard it was to catch those cagey little buggers. She knew they’d start up again as soon as she walked away.
Slapping at mosquitos, she hiked over the ridge in the fading twilight to gaze at her mother’s house. With Louise and Troy dead, would her mother be safe now? The house looked so vulnerable.
All the lights were out and her mother’s car—the one Marly had bought—was gone.
Marly let herself into the small barn. In recent decades it had held tools and general storage rather than animals, but these days it also served as a halfway house for furniture that Denise still held dear.
Upstairs, Marly located the locked cupboard where her father stored his hunting guns. As usual, the keys hung in plain sight next to the cupboard. Marly kept the guns clean until she went away to college, but she doubted they had been cleaned since. Pulling on disposable gloves, she retrieved the shotgun and several handfuls of shells. The shells looked clean and intact, but she felt a nagging concern that the gun might blow up in her hands. She hoped she wouldn’t have to fire at anything or anyone.
Marly eased open the back door to the house and stepped into the rebuilt lavatory off the kitchen. She would have to remind her mother to lock her doors.
As Marly had hoped, Denise hadn’t thrown out any of her third husband’s diabetes paraphernalia. Elliot’s blood testing kits, syringes, and insulin continued to crowd the shelves of the medicine cabinet. Would the insulin still be good after almost two years? She took two syringes and four insulin ampules and put them into a fresh plastic bag.
Rosie’s place was thirty minutes away on foot, which gave Marly time to think—not that she hadn’t been thinking constantly since Sunday evening—strategizing, fuming, grinding her teeth, finalizing her plan. She wanted to punish Rosie over and over, but the woman could only die once.
Marly hoped Rosie would be alone. Based on information that Denise had relayed from time to time, she assumed that Rosie was still more or less bedridden or at least weakened by cancer treatments.
If Rosie was up and ambulatory, Marly planned to use the shotgun to get her old nemesis into some sort of chair and secure her to it with the plastic ties. She would show Rosie the trophies: Troy’s watch, ring, and earring; Louise’s pendant. She might even show Rosie some video of the action on the cliff. No. Too complicated.
Once the gloating was over, she would inject Rosie with a large dose of insulin. Or a painkiller if that was handy. Or both. Presumably, Rosie had a shunt in her chest for easy administration of drugs and chemo. That location would be ideal.
Picking her way through the woods, Marly felt as though she had stepped back in time. Only she had changed. Twilight gave way to night, and stars emerged, fireflies darting in imitation. At her home in California, the nightly fog, compounded by ground lights, obscured stars much of the time. As her feet hit rocks and roots, they stirred the leaves and rich earth. She inhaled the damp smells she so missed in the Bay Area. For better or worse, this was the land that had raised her.
She heard a sharp snap behind her and stopped. Animal? Human? The tree frogs were silent. What or who is back there?
Her teeth chattered and she shivered despite the warm night. After a few deep breaths she flipped on her flashlight and probed the woods behind her. The light caught the red eyes of a skunk who stomped his feet and raised his tail. She turned off her flashlight and backed away, picking up her pace with new caution.
Marly headed for a faint glow in the distance like a moth drawn to a flame. She looked over her shoulder every few paces. The light grew brighter until it became individual lights from Rosie’s windows. Flood lights on the kitchen porch and barn lit up the yard and parking area. She counted three cars.
From her mother’s reports, she knew that Betty, Carl’s wife, and Diane Connor, Rosie’s sister—both nurses—had taken on the task of providing care for Rosie. Diane worked nights at a nursing home closer to Syracuse and should be leaving very soon. Betty would stay a bit longer and go home to Carl in an hour or so. Marly could wait.
She drew closer and spied Betty and Diane talking in hushed tones on the side porch. Marly stood out of sight around the corner, straining to hear.
Diane was a bit of an unknown. Marly knew that Diane had played a minor part in the beatdown of Elaine but little else. Betty—Mark and Pammy’s true grandmother—was a bit of a wallflower in the tough and raucous Harris crowd. She never raised her voice or made a fuss. A wimp, in Marly’s opinion.
“I’d say it was a panic attack,” Betty said in a soft voice. “Of course, it is so hard to tell. She is still a sick woman, plus all that chemo. She’s surprised us before.”
“She’s waiting,” Diane said. “For Louise and Troy. She keeps saying they’re supposed to be home tonight.”
“Sometimes things like that make a difference. You can leave for your shift. I’ll make sure she’s comfortable.”
Diane headed to her car, and Betty returned to the house.
Marly circled the building, looking in windows. She hoped Rosie wasn’t in an upstairs bedroom.
The sound of a television pulled Marly along the back of the house to an open sliding-glass door into the downstairs parlor. The room was dimly lit from a single lamp that sat on a bedside table next to the sliding door. She couldn’t see the head of the hospital bed on the other side of the table, but she could make out a pair of spindly legs stretched out on the white sheet.
How fitting. This was the same room where Marly had taken a beating from Rosie, Louise, and Troy, years before. The addition of assorted modern medical equipment—monitors, tubing, an oxygen tank, and the hospital bed—made the rest of the room look even shab
bier by contrast. Along the ceiling, faded wallpaper hung in loose flaps, breaking away from the wall. An ancient TV rested on top of a battered bureau. A chair with a caved-in seat sat by the bed.
Marly waited until she heard Diane’s car pull away from the house before she inched forward to stand outside the screen door.
Betty stepped into Rosie’s room. “Hi, Rosie. Diane has gone to work. I need to swing home for a bit. I’ll be back in about an hour.”
Marly heard a low murmur from Rosie, and could see Rosie’s left hand rise and fall back to the bed.
Marly backed away to the edge of the woods, where she leaned her shotgun against a tree and set down her backpack. Leaving the shotgun behind, she pulled out the sealed plastic bags and her supplies, and tiptoed back to the house. She teased open the screen door and slipped into Rosie’s sickroom.
Absorbed in her television show, Rosie didn’t shift her gaze until Marly sat down on the rickety chair beside the bed. As the older woman moved her focus, Marly’s throat tightened. Always skinny, Rosie was a skeleton now, every bone visible under the thin summer nightgown, her lank black hair plastered against her head.
“You,” said the gaunt figure through cracked lips. Her black eyes glittered.
“Hi, Rosie,” Marly said. “This is your night to die and I’ve come to make sure you do.”
Rosie hissed and sat up straight.
Marly held up Louise’s Iroquois pendant, dangling the chain between her fingertips. “Louise and Troy aren’t coming back. See this? Just for the record, those two were as dumb as sticks.”
She had so much more to say. What’s happened to my fine speech?
Rosie choked and struggled over her words. “You fucking bitch. You will pay for this.”
“Maybe so, but not tonight.” Marly stood and pulled out a syringe from the second bag.
Rosie froze, her face covered in a sheen of sweat. Marly leaned closer. She removed the cap that protected the needle tip and put her left hand on Rosie’s chest, searching for the shunt.
A Short Time to Die Page 24
