The Codebook Murders

by Leslie Nagel

  “What? No!” Sawyer protested. “I hated Regan; I rejoiced when she got what she deserved. But I didn’t kill her!”

  “Yes!” The gun weaved back and forth as Kendall swayed, and the dark figures, who had begun to advance, halted. “Her death is your fault! You took my darling Regan away from me! ‘That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth.” Kendall’s voice had dropped into its singsong again. “ ‘Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me, T’ have seen what I have seen, see what I see!’ ”

  “No, Kendall,” Charley said. “He didn’t kill your darling. You did. Because you loved her.”

  Kendall froze. “I…loved her? How could you know that?”

  Charley kept her voice soft. “She called you ‘George,’ didn’t she? Just like the Nancy Drew character, you were tall and dark-haired and a bit of a tomboy. Well, more than a bit, as it turns out. And Harding was Bess, the chubby one. The three of you, putting one over on everybody, having a good private laugh, only you weren’t in on the whole secret. You told me Regan and Harding were dating, but you had to know it was an act, because you believed Harding was gay.” Charley hesitated, then took the plunge. “You thought Regan was pretending with Harding in order to hide another affair—the affair she was having with you.”

  Sawyer flinched and started to speak, but Marc clamped a hand on his shoulder. “Shut the hell up, pal.”

  “Harding wasn’t a threat,” Charley went on. “But then Regan confessed to you that she was still seeing Carter, that they were going to run away and get married. It turned out that Carter was the real threat, one you knew you could never compete with. I’m guessing she told you right before the big game. She was so excited about leaving, she had to tell someone. Why not her closest friend?”

  “We told each other everything.” Kendall kept the gun pointed at Sawyer but turned her attention to Charley. “I’ve had to keep our love a secret for so long. Tell me how you knew.” She pulled back the hammer with an audible click. Sawyer ducked behind Marc, and PJ squeezed his eyes shut. “Now.”

  “I will tell you.” Charley kept her voice calm with an effort. “Your friendship status was one of the first things that tipped me off. You insisted that you and Regan weren’t that close. But Carter told me you were bouncing off the walls about marching with your best friend. And then there was Harding. He said his game of pretend with Regan was a secret from everyone except Douglas and Doris Fletcher. So how did you know about it?”

  “I should have known hiring you was a mistake,” Kendall muttered. “You were always too smart for your own good.”

  Charley let that pass. “The second tip-off was from her journal. When Regan wrote that being with George ‘wasn’t really cheating’? I asked myself what that could possibly mean.”

  “To a young girl in 1979,” Marc said, “who’d only had one sexual partner, I guess fooling around with a girlfriend didn’t count as cheating.” Kendall paled, and the gun barrel drooped slightly.

  “Right after I read that line,” Charley continued, “I spoke to my friend Heddy. She reminded me of our earlier conversation about another love triangle, a fictional one that ended in murder. Heddy said, ‘It’s not the triangle you think.’ That one remark, the idea that there was more going on than appeared on the surface, opened my mind to the possibility.”

  Charley felt Marc’s strong presence just behind her, and she drew strength from it as she continued. “Frankie commented on how artistic all the Magellans are. You are especially talented, as an actress, as a worker in jewelry, and, I imagine, in drawing. You drew that incredible sketch in Regan’s yearbook, didn’t you?”

  “It was a secret message,” Kendall murmured, “just between us. Others might see, but no one else would understand.”

  “Except me,” Charley said. “I cracked your code. It’s the loft room over your garage, the one where Carter and Regan hooked up. While he was at college, you and Regan used it, too. I felt I’d been there before, and I was, in a sense. No one else could have drawn that picture, that love letter to Regan, but you.

  “I’ve also been wondering about Regan’s yellow backpack. What happened to it? Yousef Alsayegh was obviously lying when he said he took it; he didn’t even know what color it was. That meant the killer took it before Alsayegh found the body. Who, I wondered, would bother to take a bagful of clothing?”

  “I used to sleep in her uniform.” Kendall’s voice was clogged with tears. “It smelled like her.”

  “I figured it was something like that.” Charley tamped down her sympathy for this woman who’d been her teacher and her friend, and focused on her tale. If they were going to rescue PJ, she needed to keep Kendall calm and talking. “The night of the Homecoming game, Regan told you about her rendezvous with Carter, maybe asked you to cover for her with the rest of the cheer squad. But in all the confusion, when she left the stadium, you followed.”

  “You don’t know that.” The words were almost inaudible. The gun now hung limp by Kendall’s side, and the dark-uniformed officers crept closer.

  “I do know,” Charley countered, “because of the victory bell. Everyone had such detailed memories of that night. The music, the songs, the honking horns. But only you, Kendall, mentioned the victory bell. I grew up in Oakwood. I’ve heard that bell, and it is loud. It fills the air; it rattles your fillings. Why didn’t anyone else mention that special, unique sound of celebration?

  “And then I remembered Merritt Vance complaining that vandals had broken into the school. He didn’t say what they vandalized, but he did say he needed a foundry specialist to fix it, someone expert in casting and repairing items in bronze. It turns out he was talking about the victory bell. Nobody else mentioned it,” Charley enunciated each word, “because it didn’t ring that night. But you didn’t know that. While Regan delayed in the tunnel, changing clothes and swapping backpacks, you ran like the wind. By the time the game ended, you were already inside Smith Gardens, and once inside, you couldn’t hear whether the bell rang or not. Afterward, when you suffered a nervous breakdown and missed months of school, you also missed the story about the victory bell.”

  “I didn’t want to lose her,” Kendall whined. “I told her I loved her. She laughed at me, called me sick, called our love sick and a mistake! She was going to leave me for my brother. My brother, who had already taken all of my father’s love, was going to take my Regan’s love, too.”

  “You let him go to prison.” Sawyer sounded dazed. “All those years, you let him sit in a cell, while—”

  “He deserved to suffer, like I suffered!” Kendall thumped a fist against her heart. “I lost everything! But I never meant to kill her.”

  “Oh, but you did,” Charley contradicted, anger adding an edge to her voice. “You dug up a rock and waited for her. Regan arrived, and while she sat on a bench, waiting for Carter, you crept up from behind and smashed her skull in. Then you took her backpack, and you left. You’re five foot ten, and forty years ago your hair was black, just like Carter’s. You were the dark-haired figure seen that night.”

  “I didn’t want to do it!” Kendall pleaded. “Can’t you see she gave me no choice?”

  “We always have a choice, just like you had a choice when you broke into my house,” Charley said, furious, scared, and heartsick, but determined to finish it. “I am sorry for what you’ve suffered: the mental breakdown, how you felt you had to hide your sexuality all these years, to stay in your childhood home, to remain a prisoner of your own guilt and grief. But you’ve killed twice, and nothing can excuse that.”

  “Twice?” Sawyer rasped. “What does she mean, twice?”

  Kendall hung her head. “I didn’t know what Regan might’ve written in her journal. No one knew about us. I couldn’t let anyone know about us.”

  “When you couldn’t find the journal,” Charley pressed on, “you tried to find me, but Berkeley Dye beat you to
it.”

  “I saw him,” Kendall sniffled, wiping her nose with the lacy sleeve of her gun hand. “I hadn’t seen him in years, but I recognized him. I pulled into the lot behind your shop and saw him sneaking out with the journal in his hand.”

  Charley felt no satisfaction at fitting into place another piece of the puzzle. “Dye was back in town, and he’d just grabbed Regan’s journal. So you called him and told him you’d located one of those dead letter drops, one nobody else knew about. He’d been searching for the Fletcher necklace for forty years. Did you tell him you’d seen something shiny?” she asked bitterly. “Let him get all excited, before you climbed into his van and crushed him against that tree?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Sawyer whispered in horror.

  “Ms. Magellan? Kendall?” Marc asked gently. “You need to let us have the boy.”

  “I had to see. Her words, her own precious writing…” Kendall’s voice throbbed with anguish. “I just wanted to see it, to touch something of hers, just one more time.”

  Charley took another step toward the pond and held out her hand. “PJ doesn’t have the journal. I do, and I will let you see it. Please, give me the gun. There’s no need for anyone else to get hurt.”

  The tension was unbearable. For several long, agonizing moments, all the players in this tragic final act were frozen in place.

  “I miss her,” Kendall whispered. She stared at Charley, her huge dark eyes seeing but not seeing, her pale face suddenly transforming with a mad joy. “You. Still so beautiful. Your red hair, your perfect skin. You are so beautiful, my love. My only love.” She raised the gun. “Mine, as I am yours. We will be together again at last. Just you and I, forever and always.”

  “No!” Charley screamed and threw up her hands as the gun went off. Marc leaped, but he was too late.

  There was almost no splash. Kendall Magellan slid down and floated among the flowers as the water turned red, her hair fanning around her ruined face, finally at peace.

  And while Mitch Cooper rushed to free PJ, Charley walked into the safety of Marc’s arms, and she wept.

  Chapter 25

  Charley stood on the deck overlooking the Carpenter backyard, surveying her birthday party with satisfaction. Twinkle lights festooned the shrubs and privacy fence. Tree branches stripped bare by the tornado now held colorful paper lanterns. Candles flickered in red glass holders on half a dozen round tables rented for the occasion. More candles lined the deck railing, wrapping her in a warm cocoon of flickering golden light.

  She pulled out her hair tie and shook her red curls free. For the first time in days, Charley felt cool and relaxed. Instead of a sundress, she had opted for a pair of vintage pink and yellow seersucker pedal pushers and a yellow sleeveless silk shell, the perfect outfit for a hot summer night. Based on the many compliments she’d received, she made a mental note to redo Old Hat’s display window with end-of-summer casual wear as soon as possible.

  One guest who’d ignored tonight’s casual dress code was Vanessa. She’d purchased something from Old Hat’s “special occasion” line, a pure white silk frock with a wide skirt, square neckline, and red patent leather belt. The white glowed against Vanessa’s olive skin. She’d styled her glossy black hair in a becoming updo, leaving a few strands to brush her cheeks, then added dangling red earrings and strappy sandals. It was a major change from her usual cargo pants and combat boots, and Charley could guess the reason why. Vanessa kept glancing toward the driveway as guests arrived, fiddling with a red bangle bracelet until Heddy laid a gentle hand on hers, stilling her fidgets.

  The yard hummed with a dozen conversations as friends and neighbors sipped cool drinks and nibbled on snacks. Fortunately the daily late-summer rainstorm had veered north for a change. Even better, a soft breeze had sprung up an hour ago, holding the mosquitoes at bay. Most of the fifty or so guests had begun arriving promptly at six. However, several Hawthorn Boulevard neighbors had attended the tree planting earlier that afternoon.

  Marc had taken Bobby to a tree nursery and had him pick out a replacement for the hawthorn tree lost in the tornado. Bobby had selected another hawthorn, a healthy five-year-old specimen with a sturdy trunk and an enormous root ball.

  “I’m too darned old to be planting saplings,” he’d declared. “I haven’t got time to wait for it to grow big enough for the birds to find.”

  Lawrence and Marc had filled in the hole. Then Charley had hung a thistle seed feeder on a branch where Bobby could see it from their front porch.

  She turned her gaze to where her father held court next to the beer keg, a location that ensured him a greeting from the men, as well as a kiss from the ladies, the rascal. Dressed in an outrageous orange Hawaiian shirt covered in purple and green hula girls (a tribute to Berkeley Dye), Bobby had good color, and his eyes were clear and bright. Charley’s heart swelled with love, tinged by melancholy. Her father wouldn’t always be here to share her milestones. But he was here tonight, and she decided that was all that mattered.

  Assisted by Dale Penwater, Lawrence manned a phalanx of propane grills lined up on the driveway. The irresistible combination of fire and meat had attracted most of the male guests, a siren call to their inner caveman. Dale was taciturn as ever, stoically taking care of business, but Lawrence was in his element, joking and instructing his audience on the finer points of grill mastery as the ribs and chicken headed into their first flip.

  Confident that both food and drink were being expertly supervised, Charley turned her attention to where Vanessa, Heddy, Afiya, and Sharon shared a table with Katie, PJ, and their parents. Charley squirmed. That had been a tense conversation, to say the least.

  Two days after the events at Smith Gardens, she’d gone to the Konduru home to check on PJ, and to apologize. She’d been met by a wall of hostility. His mother and father flanked their son at the dining table, while Charley cowered on a chair opposite and meekly accepted a scolding she richly deserved.

  “The days of Priyesh involving himself in your…investigations are over.” Dr. Konduru kept her arm firmly around her son’s shoulders while she fixed Charley with a withering glare. “He will devote himself to his real studies.”

  “Mommy, Poppy,” PJ ventured. “Please, I am fine. Charley saved me. And I like investigating and code breaking. I’m good at it.”

  “Bah!” his mother exclaimed. “And why did you need saving in the first place?”

  His father rapped the table with his knuckles. “This foolishness of majoring in criminology? No. Just, no. The subject is closed.”

  At this pronouncement PJ stirred, and a glimmer of his old spirit flashed in hollow eyes that reflected his recent trauma. But he said nothing more, only sat looking pale and exhausted, while Charley drowned under a tidal wave of remorse.

  And whereas Katie had been much more vocal in her protests, Mrs. O’Malley’s displeasure had been equally fierce. Charley was surprised either family had actually attended tonight. Perhaps, she thought hopefully, their presence indicated at least a partial acceptance of her heartfelt apologies.

  It hadn’t been easy on any of the kids. The shocking death of their beloved teacher had rocked this city to its core. The play had been canceled, of course, as had the remaining sessions of the drama class, with each student receiving an automatic A. Charley watched them chatting quietly and wondered whether they’d ever truly get over it.

  “They’re going to be fine, you know.” Marc came up behind her and nuzzled her neck.

  “They are amazing.” She sighed. “I’m disbanding the Irregulars. Not that I formed the group in the first place. But it was only a matter of time before something like this happened.” Charley paused. “Feel free to say ‘I told you so.’ ”

  “The thought never crossed my mind. Well, maybe once.”

  She laughed, then shivered as Marc nipped at her earlobe.

  “Get a room.
” Dmitri St. James and Trent Logan climbed the steps, looking drop-dead chic in matching white slacks and black silk T-shirts. The two couples greeted one another with pleasure. Dmitri grabbed Charley, dipping her nearly to the ground before planting a loud kiss on her laughing mouth.

  She gave his sleek black ponytail a yank. “I missed you, D.”

  “Back atcha, cupcake.” Dmitri plunked her back on her feet. “Happy birthday. How many does this make? Forty-two?”

  “I’m twenty-nine, you graceless boob.”

  “Sorry,” he said, sounding anything but. “Little sister tells me it’s been pretty boring around here.”

  “You know,” Charley said airily. “Same old, same old.”

  Dmitri tsked. “Catching killers without me? I should be pissed. Vanessa claims it was quite the team effort. And that Heddy, of all people, pulled the answer out of the mystery novel your book club was reading?”

  “Dame Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile,” Charley confirmed. “It’s all about jealousy and an unexpected love triangle.”

  “After forty years,” Marc said, “when most of the physical evidence was long gone, we knew motive would be the key to finding Regan’s killer.”

  “Later,” Charley concluded, “when I learned about Regan and Harding’s sham relationship, I wondered if that lie might have been what drove someone to commit murder.”

  “So Kendall thought she was in a Regan-Kendall-Harding love triangle,” Dmitri said slowly, “a contest she’d easily win. But when she learned the real triangle was Regan-Kendall-Carter—”

  “Exactly,” Charley said. “If not for Heddy’s remark about its not being the triangle we thought it was, I might never have discovered the truth.”

  Marc chuckled. “You know your book club’s going to be more relentless than ever about getting in on your sleuthing.”

  “No kidding. For our next meeting, Frankie asked Sharon if we could get a tour of the morgue for training purposes.” Charley sighed. “I guess this means we are the Oakwood Mystery Club in more ways than one.”