Written into the Grave

by Vivian Conroy

  Doug’s eyes were wide and frantic in his pale face. “You don’t understand.”

  “No, you don’t understand. You wormed your way into my newspaper with lies. I trusted you and gave you a lot of responsibility. You made friends with my friends; you used Vicky to get into the police station where you deceived Cash. You told lies to everybody. I can’t trust you and I don’t want you around anymore. You got that?”

  Doug struggled to be released. Michael held him pinned against the wall a few moments longer, then he let go and stepped back. “You got that?” he repeated but without real conviction.

  Doug nodded. “Sure.”

  The one word was full to the brim with bitterness. He reached up and straightened his disheveled clothes. Then with his head held high he walked off.

  Michael released a deep sigh. “And that was it.”

  Vicky said, “You should have asked him why he lied. What he wanted here in town. How he knows Goodridge and why he sent that cryptic message to somebody else. Now we know absolutely nothing.”

  “What does it matter? He lied to me. He used me, you, Cash. I’m going to the police station now to tell all I know.” Michael looked grim. “Cash will laugh at how dumb I’ve been but …” He started to walk away.

  Vicky caught up with him and said, “Michael, if you really cared so much for Doug and his plans, his career at the Gazette, if he was a friend to you, even close to a son, don’t you want to hear his story? Don’t you want to know why he did what he did? Don’t you think you have been a little harsh on him?”

  Michael looked at her. “What do you think?”

  “I think that … somehow Doug was hurting too, like you are. We need to find out why. We can’t just …” Vicky reached up and touched her forehead, closing her eyes a moment. She was bone weary and ached for her bed, but this thing was just all wrong. She knew it deep inside. “We need to understand the why before we just give up on Doug. Come on.”

  Without waiting to see if Michael responded at all to her suggestion Vicky turned and walked back, intending to follow down the path Doug had taken. Knowing he had a head start and she might lose him in the darkness, she began to walk faster, then even started to run.

  Michael was right behind her. “I think this is a bad idea,” he whispered.

  Vicky ignored him. Ahead of them she saw Doug, walking fast. He was leaving the path and going into the trees, lighting his way with his cell phone. She pointed and whispered to Michael, “Where’s he going now?”

  “I have no idea.” Michael pulled out his phone as well. “We should have a look. But be careful not to make a sound. We don’t want to spook him.”

  They followed the hurrying young man. There was little chance they’d spook him as Doug was making enough noise of his own, stepping full on small fallen branches that snapped under his weight. He didn’t seem to care at all for where he walked, or what he almost bumped into.

  Vicky’s breathing started to grate as they kept following into a clearing. In the distance was something bright yellow. A tent it seemed.

  Michael looked at her. “Camping isn’t allowed here. That thing’s put up illegally.”

  Vicky frowned. Suddenly she understood what Marge had told her about Doug telling different people different things about where he was staying. He had never had a place to stay.

  She asked Michael, “Did Doug tell you where he lived temporarily?”

  “He mentioned renting a room with someone.”

  “But have you ever been there?” she pressed.

  “No.” Michael stared at the yellow thing. “Do you mean … he has been living out here in a tent, all alone? Why? I’m paying him a full salary so he must have money for decent lodgings.”

  “About time we found out.” Vicky tiptoed over to the tent.

  Doug had opened the front and crawled inside.

  As Vicky closed in, she could hear voices. Voices, plural, meaning Doug was not the only one inside that tent. She stopped.

  A voice, high-pitched and most likely female, said, “See, it didn’t help at all. We should have left this morning. Right after you found out he’s dead now.”

  “Like we’re guilty? Involved? You do realize what will happen if anybody finds out? I can’t just run. I have to finish this assignment like nothing’s wrong.”

  “But you said that someone caught you looking in the police computer. They must think that’s suspicious.”

  Michael had come up behind Vicky and gestured at her with his fingers. Two people, inside.

  Vicky nodded. Michael held her gaze, making a not understanding expression, then forming with his lips, who?

  Vicky shrugged. Ms. Tennings had mentioned seeing Doug with a girl, both of them acting furtively as if they didn’t want to be seen together.

  She leaned over to the tent and said close to the flap. “Doug? It’s me, Vicky Simmons. Can I talk to you?”

  It was suddenly deeply, deafeningly silent.

  Both inside the tent and around them.

  Vicky could just imagine how shocked the two in there were now.

  But she wasn’t just leaving it at this.

  “Doug?” she repeated in an urgent tone. “I need to talk to you. Please come out of the tent.”

  The front opened, and Doug peeked out. “What are you doing here? Have you followed me? You had no right.”

  He spotted Michael and said in a low voice, “You just disowned me. You yelled at me never to show my face at the paper again. Why are you here? What do you want?”

  “The truth,” Michael said.

  Doug stared at him, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring. Many emotions raced across his expression: fear, panic, pain, disbelief, doubt.

  Vicky said quickly, “Michael gave you a chance because he believed in you. Don’t you think you owe him just a little bit of trust in return?”

  Doug laughed shortly. “He dismissed me. Why should I trust him?”

  “I dismissed you for a reason,” Michael said. “Don’t you think you were wrong?”

  “Yes!” Doug cried with conviction. “I was wrong in every way. I … messed up everything.” He hung his head, his jaw tightening as he fought his emotions.

  Vicky looked at him. His dejection seemed real.

  She said, “Why don’t you try and explain it to us? We’re here to listen.”

  “Why?” Doug jerked his head up and studied her.

  Vicky chose her words with care. “This morning I met you for the first time, outside the Gazette’s building. You seemed a bright young man with a future ahead of you. I liked you right away. Now I see something totally different. Like the world has ended for you.”

  “It ended six months ago,” Doug said. He plucked at some grass, then looked at her again, his eyes dead and without hope. “I should have accepted it but I couldn’t. I felt that I had to do something about it. And now it has all gone wrong.”

  Michael stepped past Vicky. He leaned over to Doug and said, “You lied to me about who you are. You used the name of a close friend of mine to get into my life. I want to know why.” His voice trembled with suppressed emotion.

  “It had nothing to do with you or with your friend. I needed a reason to be around town. A job at the paper seemed ideal because people expect you to ask questions and poke about. I lied about never finishing my degree. I never even started my degree; I know next to nothing about journalism.”

  Michael said, “If that’s true, you did a really good job.”

  Doug scoffed. “What does it matter now?”

  Vicky said. “You needed a reason to be around town. What did you want here?”

  “I wanted to keep tabs on Archibald Goodridge.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Michael exhaled hard. “So you have something to do with his death.”

  “No, not at all.” Doug sounded horrified.

  Michael said, “You messaged to someone that he was dead and all was
well now.”

  Doug turned pale. “The police know that?”

  “Yes, thanks to your dive into their computer they got suspicious and checked your phone records.”

  Doug grabbed at his head. “I’m out of here.”

  “No,” Vicky said. “Don’t run. Tell us the truth.”

  Doug looked at her. “Are you crazy? That’s like knotting the noose for them to hang me. We have to leave.”

  He tried to crawl out of the tent, but it seemed someone was holding on to him, pulling him back in. The female voice said, “Don’t run, Doug, please. You’ll just make it worse.”

  “So you’re really called Doug,” Michael said.

  Doug tried to break free, crawling out, and then they could also see the girl clinging to him. A girl it was, as she could be no older than fourteen, fifteen. Her eyes were red-rimmed as if she had been crying for a long time. She clung to Doug telling him not to run.

  “Who’s this?” Michael asked.

  Doug looked up defiantly. “My sister, and nobody’s going to take her away from me.”

  “Nobody’s trying to,” Michael retorted at once. “What are you two doing here, living in a tent? Camping’s illegal on this terrain. It belongs to the resort.”

  “We have no other choice,” Doug said.

  The girl added, “They’re looking for us.”

  Doug hissed, “Don’t say that, stupid.”

  But the girl said, “What does it matter now? They’ll find us, they’ll separate us.”

  “Not if I can help it,” Doug replied in a grim tone.

  Michael arrested his shoulder. “Doug, listen to me. You’re out here in the woods, camping illegally, with a minor with you. A minor I understand who shouldn’t be here with you at all. The police are suspicious of you in connection with Goodridge’s murder. This can only get worse, for both of you. For the sake of your sister, tell us what’s up so we can help you.”

  “Help us? You told me never to show my face at the paper again.” Doug’s expression contorted a moment as if just thinking back on that moment hurt him again.

  Vicky hurried to say, “Michael didn’t mean that. He was just disappointed in you because you lied to him. You made up a story to be hired. You do admit that. Let’s get it out of the way. Why are you two camping here? It’s late summer so the nights aren’t cold yet, but still it can’t be comfy.”

  The girl sighed. “We’re on the run.”

  Doug threw her a vicious look but didn’t say anything more.

  Michael probed, “Because …”

  Doug threw up his hands. “Because they think I can’t take care of her. But I can. We want to stay together.”

  “Where are your parents then?” Vicky asked.

  “Mom died years ago. And Dad’s in jail. We can’t bail him out because we haven’t got a dime.”

  “Thanks to Archibald Goodridge,” the girl spat. “He took away everything we own.”

  Vicky looked at Michael.

  Michael looked at the young people. “You can’t stay here,” he said.

  Vicky added, “You’re coming with me to my cottage. There’s a spare bedroom you can share. Then you can tell us your full story.”

  The girl looked at Doug. “If it rains again, all the water will get into the tent like last night.”

  Doug rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a sissy.” But it sounded kind and concerned.

  Michael said, “Come on. I’ll help you take down this tent and carry the things over to my car. We must erase all traces that anybody ever camped here. We’ll just pretend you’ve never been here.”

  Doug looked at him with suspicion in his eyes. “Why?” he asked.

  “Because we all make mistakes and we all deserve second chances. Come on.”

  Doug hesitated one more moment, then he nodded and gestured to his sister to come out of the tent completely. Together they started to collect their few belongings.

  ***

  Back at Vicky’s cottage it was past midnight but Vicky asked if they were hungry and when they said yes, she started to scramble eggs.

  Michael helped her, and as they shared the narrow space in front of her sink, Vicky didn’t feel her exhaustion anymore but just a sort of quiet happiness like everything was suddenly all right.

  It wasn’t of course with Doug at the table looking distant and his sister beside him, just a girl leaning on the table with her elbows, resting her narrow chin in her palm. Vicky wondered if she was fifteen or even younger. No mother anymore, a father in jail.

  As Doug and the girl had both eaten some bread with eggs, and Vicky was making coffee for Michael and her, Michael said to Doug, “Now out with the whole story. What did Goodridge do to you that got you into all of this trouble?”

  Doug took a deep breath. “Dad and Goodridge were best friends since college. Goodridge came to our home often and played with us. He was great at card games. Later I found out he was because he was always cheating. That was the only way he knew how to live, by cheating. He tricked my father into investing ever more money into their business, and he funneled it away into projects of his own. In the end Dad was left with virtually nothing. Goodridge said it was all his own fault because he had made the wrong choices and he should have been more careful or asked for more information. He laughed at Dad when Dad begged him to give back some of the money. He even threw him out of his house here in Glen Cove.”

  Vicky said, “And when driving off, your father almost hit a cyclist.”

  Doug nodded. “Dad doesn’t remember that it happened; he must have been too upset to notice much. But a witness reported the incident to the police. The cyclist doesn’t seem to have been hurt, because nobody showed up to report damage or injuries. But the witness was taken very seriously. On top of that, Goodridge also reported Dad for doing damage to his other home. He claimed there were broken windows and damage to the garden that Dad had caused out of spite. It was of course not true. Dad has never been near that property but he still got into trouble because of it. Legal costs, even more bills to pay.

  “Then Goodridge’s wife claimed someone had assaulted her on her way home in the dark. His second wife. Goodridge remarried, you know. Dad’s baseball cap was found near the spot where she claimed to have been assaulted. He was charged with assault and even attempted murder. But I know the bitch was lying. Dad never went near her. But he is locked up now awaiting his trial.

  “Because Mom died, some social worker said that Kyra here should go to a foster family. But we want to stay together. So we took off. And came here. We lived on the resort. It’s fairly easy to use the bathroom in the cabins that aren’t rented. And my job at the newspaper got us money for food. Just the basics as I was saving every dime to get Dad’s bail money together.”

  Doug hung his head. “It didn’t work out though.”

  Kyra put her hand on his. “You did what you could.”

  The sight of these two young, forlorn people tore at Vicky’s heart.

  But a man was dead, and Doug had just admitted they had every reason to resent him for what he had done to their family.

  “This morning when you heard Goodridge was dead …” Vicky said carefully.

  Doug sat back. “I got the scare of my life. That’s why I dropped all of my things on the floor. I sent Kyra a message to let her know it was all over. I thought that with him dead, the case against Dad would collapse and he would be set free soon.”

  “Why?” Michael asked. “I thought you just told us Goodridge’s wife was allegedly assaulted. If the case rests on Gunhild’s testimony …”

  “Yes, but she made up her testimony, under his orders. Goodridge could make people do anything he wanted. We were sure that with him dead she’d drop the charges at once. Maybe would even admit she had never been assaulted at all? It was just a lie to get Dad in jail.”

  Michael looked at Vicky. The confusion was clear in his face. She felt the same way. What part
of Doug’s story could they believe? Perhaps he thought the best of his father because sons naturally do.

  And the hope that the case against his father would be dropped provided an excellent motive for murdering Archibald Goodridge. It was a terrible thought, but she couldn’t afford to ignore it.

  Vicky focused on Doug. “So the mention of Goodridge’s death gave you a start. And when you were at the police station, you wanted to learn more about the way in which Goodridge had died exactly. So you were tempted to look in the computer to see how serious the charges against your father were.”

  “Yes, if they could make it stick. I’m just so worried about him and about what will happen to Kyra if Dad gets convicted. I know it was wrong what I did. And I’m sorry.”

  Vicky said, “You honestly have nothing to do with Goodridge’s death?” She tried to see right through his eyes into the very heart of him.

  Doug wet his lips.

  The fact that he didn’t reply at once seemed to suggest some sort of involvement.

  Vicky’s heart sank.

  Michael leaned on the table. “Now isn’t the time to be lying about things, Doug.” His voice was calm and persuasive. “You have to tell us the full truth.”

  Doug sighed. “I did … I wanted to talk to Goodridge one morning. I wanted to ask him why he had gone so far to destroy Dad, our family. So I waited for him along the route he usually took while jogging. But at the last moment I chickened out and ran off before he appeared. I never did confront him.”

  Doug fidgeted with his hands. “But I’ve been along his jogging route. Not this morning maybe, but will that really matter to the police? If I just mention that I’ve been there once, it will look bad for me, right?”

  Michael sighed. “It doesn’t plead for you, no, but then again the case is muddled as it is. Do you know Kaylee, Goodridge’s daughter?”

  “Of course. I’ve been avoiding her. I was worried she might recognize me. We played together in the past.” Doug wet his lips again. “I saw her picture with the piece about the writing group. She has become a real beauty.”

  “You like her,” Kyra said, giving him a playful push with her elbow.