“This is the one you just pretended you didn’t already know.” My fingers were swiping my phone’s screen so fast, it was a wonder the dang thing didn’t catch fire. “Porter Vargas introduced you.”
“I think I know who you mean,” Brenda said, “but I can’t imagine what gave you the idea we were already acquainted.”
“This gave me the idea.” I shoved my phone in her face. The screen displayed the selfie Skye had taken in Brenda’s living room.
She gave it a brief glance. “I really don’t—”
“Look closer. Notice anything familiar about the background?”
I watched her face as she took it in. The white fireplace mantel. The bland seascape. The crystal sailboat figurine. Her eyes bulged. She snatched the phone out of my hand and stared at it unblinking.
“Check it out.” I pointed to the date displayed on the screen. “She posted this on June thirteenth. Seven months before the two of you ‘met.’”
Brenda’s face had leeched color, except for two deep red patches on her cheeks. “I... I remember now. Allison brought her over that day. Just for a few minutes. She didn’t even... I mean, we weren’t even introduced. It was so... and I mean, we were all so upset the day of Allison’s funeral, it’s little wonder I didn’t recall having met her before.”
“I know that Skye came alone to your place in June,” I said, “and I know it had something to do with your father’s death.”
It was an educated guess on my part. Details that had appeared unrelated were beginning to slide together in intriguing ways. The timing of Skye’s visit to Brenda, five days after Mitchell died. The Facebook message Skye had posted during that visit: It’s my turn now! The fact that Brenda had accused Allison of murdering Mitchell only after learning he’d left everything to his young widow. And let’s not forget Skye’s blatant greed. I could easily see her trying to devise a way to monetize Mitchell’s death.
Brenda pulled herself up. “You’re bluffing. You know no such thing.”
“That’s okay if you don’t want to talk about it.” I took back my phone and let her watch me pull up my contact list. “I’m buddies with a couple of police detectives. They’ll tell me how Skye was involved in the investigation into your father’s death. They can call the cops upstate and have the answer in five minutes.”
This statement had the advantage of being true. Brenda gaped at my screen, which displayed the words Detective Howie Werker, along with an image of his handsome, smiling face. I tapped the green Call icon.
She reached over and ended the call with shaking fingers. She slumped against her seat, eyes closed, clearly struggling to compose herself. I waited as the train rumbled to a stop at a station. No one got off. A middle-aged man in a gray windbreaker and tweed golf cap entered the car and sat in the aisle seat two rows ahead of us on the other side.
After a few moments the train jerked to a start again, causing Brenda to open her eyes. She still didn’t look at me. I was wondering how to proceed when she said, “Who else knows?” She sounded exhausted.
“About you and Skye?” I said. “Just me.”
She shook her head sadly. “I wish to God I’d never met that woman.”
“I’m guessing you’re not the first person to feel that way,” I said, and waited. It was a long train ride. I had time.
Finally Brenda said, “We met at my father’s funeral. Skye introduced herself as Allison’s best friend. Later I realized that was, well, an exaggeration.”
“To put it mildly,” I said.
“At that time I still believed the official finding that Dad’s death was an accident.”
I cautioned myself to tread carefully. “But then you found out he’d cut you out of his will and left everything to Allison.”
She faced me, her gaze drilling into mine. “Even then, Jane. Even after I knew he’d disinherited me, I still trusted the official conclusion, that it was an accident. I had no reason to doubt it.”
I noticed movement at the edge of my vision and glanced over to see the man two rows ahead reach into a pocket of his windbreaker. He appeared to be digging around for something. His ticket, I assumed.
I asked, “So what happened to change your mind?”
“Skye Guthrie happened.” She looked like she wanted to spit. “She called me a few days after Dad’s funeral, after the reading of his will, and asked to meet with me. She said she had critical information about his death.”
“Let me guess,” I said. “She told you not to mention your get-together to Allison.”
Her expression told me I’d guessed right. “It was very hush-hush. I had no idea what to expect, but I let her come over.”
The man in the windbreaker captured my attention again. He’d withdrawn something from his pocket. Cottage cheese, by the looks of it. Right about now you’re imagining one of those cute little containers and a plastic spoon. Think again. This man—in all other respects a normal, sane-looking individual—held a big glob of cottage cheese in his naked hand and was shoving it into his mouth.
When he reached back into his pocket for more, I managed to wrench my gaze away. Brenda couldn’t see him from her vantage point.
Where were we? “Um... so Skye came to your house,” I said. “What was this critical info she had?”
“She told me that Allison killed my father. She said he was planning to divorce her and that that’s why she did it.”
“So she could inherit his fortune rather than settle for whatever she could get in a divorce,” I said.
“Right. Skye claimed that early in their marriage, Allison had made him disinherit me and the kids, and leave everything to her.”
“Made him?”
“She, I don’t know, beguiled him,” she said. “Convinced him it was the right thing to do.”
“According to Skye,” I said.
“That woman played me. She knew it would be easier for me to believe he’d been bewitched by his gold-digging young wife than that he’d made the decision on his own. Because of how broken our relationship was.”
The door at the far end of the car opened. The conductor, a skinny older woman with a graying blonde ponytail, entered and started collecting tickets. Meanwhile the guy in the windbreaker was still chowing down.
I said, “Did Skye claim to have proof? That Allison killed your father? You said there was evidence.”
“Evidence in the form of Skye’s testimony. She told me Allison admitted it to her. How she posed Dad in front of the ravine for a photo, made him back up...” She shuddered.
“You didn’t think it odd that she was ratting out her best friend?” I asked.
“She claimed she could no longer live with herself,” she said. “Keeping Allison’s terrible secret was eating her alive.”
“So why didn’t she go right to the police?” I asked. “Why sneak a meeting with you, the victim’s daughter?”
“The way she spun it was that she wanted to do the right thing, but this was her best friend, after all. She needed incentive.”
“Incentive for Skye can only mean money,” I said. “She wanted you to pay her for reporting what she knew to the police, right? How much?”
Brenda said, “Are you aware that if you murder someone, you can’t legally profit from their death?”
“I believe I’ve heard that.” Déjà vu. “So if Allison was convicted of killing her husband, she couldn’t inherit anything from him, will or no will. Which meant his fortune would then go to...” We both knew the answer, but I let Brenda say it, which she did without hesitation.
“Me. Skye knew that, and she also knew my dad had disinherited me, because Allison had told her. Even so, under the slayer rule, once Allison was convicted, his fortune would have gone to me.”
The conductor had reached the guy in the windbreaker. She didn’t react in the slightest as he passed her his ticket with his clean hand while continuing to feed his face with the other. Taking in her stolid expression, I could only wonder what marvel
s and oddities this woman had witnessed in her years as a railroad conductor. For her, seeing someone eat cottage cheese with his bare hand might very well rank one and a half on the official one-to-ten weirdo scale.
Brenda and I produced our round-trip tickets, which the conductor punched and handed back to us before moving on.
“I think I see what Skye was trying to engineer,” I said. “She testifies against Allison, who, as a result, is convicted of murdering her husband. Your father’s fortune goes to you, his next of kin, and you very generously share it with the woman who made it all possible.”
“Skye wanted a million dollars,” she said.
“A fraction of what you would have inherited if her scheme had worked. Did you agree?”
Brenda looked away. “Yes.”
“Okay, so what happened then?”
“She went to the police upstate, where Dad died,” she said. “Told them all about how Allison had confessed to her.”
“How long did it take them to realize she was making the whole thing up?”
“Not long,” she said. “Her story didn’t hold up under questioning. The details kept changing. The detective in charge of the investigation could find no one to corroborate any of her claims, including that my dad’s marriage was on the rocks. He figured Skye had it in for Allison and was just trying to cause her trouble.”
“So they dismissed her story,” I said, “and continued to maintain that his death was accidental.”
Brenda nodded. “That’s right.”
“And Allison never knew about Skye’s involvement in all this?” I asked.
“No. It never got that far. She only knew that I had accused her of murdering my father.”
“The cops rejected Skye’s story,” I said, gently, “but you didn’t, did you?”
She shook her head. She took a deep breath, her eyes moist. “No. I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. I was... in a confused state of mind. My relationship with my dad... well, we hadn’t gotten along for years, decades really, since he and my mom divorced. I saw him as the guilty party.”
“How old were you when they split?” I asked.
“Thirteen.”
“An impressionable age,” I offered.
“To me it was all black and white. He’d wronged my mother.”
“Had he cheated?”
“Oh no, nothing like that. They’d grown apart. Outwardly I blamed him, but inwardly I knew it was all my fault.”
“How so?”
“Theirs was a shotgun wedding,” she said. “Mom was pregnant with me when they married.”
“A lot of people get married for that reason,” I said. “Some stay together, some don’t. But it’s never the kid’s fault.”
Her smile was sad. “Intellectually I know that, but try telling it to a young girl whose life has just been turned inside out. My mom didn’t make it any easier, unfortunately. She was too busy ripping Dad apart to notice, or care, that I was hurting. She was too mired in her own pain.”
“You can tell me to take a hike if this is too personal,” I said, “but did you ever seek therapy?”
She shook her head. “Mom didn’t believe in it, and later, well, I grew up and figured I was over it.”
“And then he married Allison,” I said.
“That kind of brought everything to a head again. Mom had calmed down a bit over the years—about Dad, I mean. His ‘abandoning’ us, never mind that he was very generous with alimony and child support. But when he married this beautiful, talented, much younger woman, Mom couldn’t handle it. I was running over to her place almost daily, trying to talk her down off the ledge.”
“She never remarried?” I asked.
Brenda shook her head again. “I knew Dad and Allison were trying to have a baby. I have to admit, it brought all those old feelings to the surface again. The rejection. Once he had a child with her, what would that make me?”
“But you and your dad didn’t really have a relationship at that point, right?” I said.
“Right, but it seemed so final, somehow.” Brenda’s eyes were moist. “Like a new baby would... erase me.”
I had an overwhelming urge to put my arms around her. Her pain was so close to the surface. But instinctively I knew she’d balk. I settled for patting her shoulder.
“I shouldn’t...” She swiped at her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“No apology necessary.” I pulled a tissue out of my purse and handed it to her.
“Allison was—” She choked back a sob. “She was always nice to me. To my kids. She tried to heal the rift between me and Dad. It took me a long time to admit to myself that the rift was mainly my fault. I pushed him away for so long, even after I was an adult and should have known better. Finally he just—” She broke off for a moment to collect herself. “Finally he just gave up. I can’t blame him.”
I waited while Brenda took a few calming breaths and wiped her eyes. “And then he died,” she said, “and it was too late to make things right.”
“It must have hurt when you found out he’d cut you out of his will,” I said.
“It hurt, but I wasn’t surprised, all things considered.”
“Until Skye paid you a visit,” I said.
Her expression hardened. “I know now that she was lying about Alison getting him to disinherit me and my kids. But Dad had just died and I was still reeling and...”
“And you believed her.”
She nodded. “I believed all of it. That his marriage was on the rocks, the murder accusation, everything. Even after the cops upstate dismissed Skye’s claims. I thought it was lazy police work, that they were letting a killer go free.”
“That must have been tough for you to live with,” I said, “the thought that Allison had gotten away with murder.”
“It ate me up for months,” she said. “It was practically all I could think about.”
“So you decided to do something about it,” I said.
She jerked as if burned. “What do you mean?”
I’d been thinking about that day I’d visited Brenda in her home, about the scattering of children’s toys I’d spied in a corner of her living room. A couple of Matchbox cars. A red plastic cell phone. And a teensy-weensy pink doll purse, barely bigger than a postage stamp. I recalled Brenda saying she had two sons and a six-year-old daughter.
“Did you buy Meghan a new Barbie after you decapitated hers and left it in Allison’s mailbox?” I asked.
Her mouth hinged open to deny it—and stayed open as she stared at me for long moments. Something in my expression must have told her the jig was up. She sagged in resignation. “I still can’t believe I did something so stupid and immature.”
“What were you hoping to accomplish?”
“I wanted to rattle her,” she said. “To let her know there was someone out there who knew what she’d gotten away with.”
“But since she hadn’t actually gotten away with anything,” I said, “all you succeeded in doing was to freak her out. She didn’t make the connection between the headless doll and your father’s death.” Before she could ask how I knew all this, I added, “You still believed she’d gotten away with murder when I came to your house last week to bring you the pocket watch.”
“I was confused, trying to work through everything,” she said. “At that point I still bought in to Skye’s story. A part of me clung to it, needed it. It’s hard to explain. But Allison had just left my kids all that money in her will. A third of her assets. And she’d left a life insurance policy that paid me a million dollars.”
“You told me she did it out of guilt,” I said.
She grimaced. “Like I said. I was trying to work through it, to find an explanation that fit with my preconceived ideas of this woman who—” She looked away, pulled in a deep breath. “Who’d never done anything bad to me. Who’d made my father happy.”
“When did you realize the truth?” I asked.
“When I confronted Skye about it a couple of
days ago,” she said. “I asked her point-blank why, if Allison had murdered my father, she would have provided for me and my kids in her will.”
“What did she say?”
“She laughed. At me. At my gullibility.” Brenda’s color rose. “She admitted it was all fabricated, everything she’d told me. Part of her plot to make money off Dad’s death. She manipulated me, took advantage of my confused feelings. Out of greed.” She faced me squarely. “Jane, I don’t want you to think that’s what motivated me, that I went along with her for the money. My only thought was to avenge my father’s murder.”
“I believe you, Brenda.” I patted her hand.
“Skye convinced me I couldn’t do it without her, without her testimony. I was so mixed up, I didn’t see her for the heartless, moneygrubbing schemer she is.” She closed her eyes briefly, shook her head. “I’m so ashamed. I made it too easy for her.”
“Don’t blame yourself,” I said. “She saw an opening and took advantage, like you said.”
“Naturally, after her scheme fell through, she decided I was to blame, that I’d messed up somehow. She refused to recognize her own incompetence.”
Her words reminded me of what Skye had said to Nick yesterday while the padre and I eavesdropped from our hiding place in the under-stairs closet. She’d said it was just her luck to rely on “a couple of gullible nitwits.” Nick was, big surprise, Gullible Nitwit Number One. I’d assumed the other one was Allison, but now I realized she’d been referring to Brenda.
I’d avoided looking at the man in the windbreaker, but now I couldn’t help noticing that he was done with his snack and in the process of licking his hand clean. Well, that was it. No more cottage cheese for me. Not that it was high on my list of favorite foods, but up until that point I’d at least been able to pass that section of the supermarket without gagging. Those halcyon days were over.
Brenda said, “Skye’s fallback scheme didn’t work out any better.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, although of course I knew.
“Well, her affair with Nick,” she said. “Not that I knew the two of them were involved until that nasty scene at Allison’s funeral reception.”
Icing Allison Page 17
