“She had her moments.”
“I can’t imagine what it was like to dedicate her whole adult life to looking after you. That shows some dedication don’t you think?”
Bella nodded, but there was nothing affirmative about the gesture.
“When did you find out that the drugs she was giving you were phony?”
For the longest time Bella simply looked into Cassy’s eyes, scrutinizing her. She then quickly looked away.
“I was ill, I think. At least at first. I remember being ill enough to have to go to the hospital. I was diagnosed with... I want to say cancer but I was young and I’ve had so much since then…”
“Except that you didn’t. Did you?”
“My mother was the one that was ill. Not me. I see that now. She needed help, real help.” Bella was looking intently at the floor as her memories flooded through her. “Ever since I met Joe I started to stand up to her. He gave me the confidence I needed to break away from her even in little ways, you know? I would wear things she didn’t like. I would watch things she didn’t approve of. Listen to loud music. But all the time, she would tell me she knew what was right for me and that I should do what she told me because I was so sick. But I wasn’t. I knew deep down that I was normal but she just kept telling me over and over again that I was ill; that I had this or that wrong with me. When the doctors stopped treating me she brought in private care. But they were more like prison wardens. Complicit.” She spat the last syllable. “I didn’t take my meds for a whole week and nothing happened. Hid them under my mattress, spat them out after my meal. Tossed them out on the sidewalk. That’s when I knew. Then I began to get stronger. Just the thought that there was nothing wrong with me made me get stronger. I knew one day I would have to escape her, but… I… I didn’t…”
She was shaking. Cassy shuffled up close and held her tight.
“Why would she do that to her own daughter?”
“I think she felt abandoned. When your father left she’d already given up so much of her life and that final injustice was too much for her. She found a way to control her life once more.”
“By pretending that I was sick?”
“Munchausen’s by-proxy they call it. Your mother needed to fill a void in her life and she saw a way she could have meaning once more.”
“I hate her.”
“In her own way she looked after you. This was her way of caring. In that situation someone like that doesn’t even think what they’re doing is wrong anymore. It becomes a pathology. It becomes normal.”
Bella looked up. Her eyes were ringed red, tears welling up, but her face remained stony and fierce. “How did you know it was me that did it. Me that smashed her head?”
There was a surprising amount of malice in Bella’s words but Cassy did not let go of her hand. Instead she held it tighter, reassuring her.
“When I first went in the apartment that night I saw something odd but I didn’t know what it was straight away. And when I returned it had gone. The tracks in the carpet from your wheel chair and footprints—or rather boot prints. Your boots.”
They both looked down at Bella’s shoes. She wore dainty little slip-ons.
“All the apartments in the four blocks that make up Nether Edge are pretty much the same. All built at the same time by the same architect. As you know, we live on the same floor, although you have a corner which is good, but you don’t own the space underneath you.”
“The florist.”
“The florist. But I do own the store below and I can get to it by some stairs that lead to a hatch in my floor. Some people have converted it into a main access, but I enjoy surprising my cat by popping out unexpectedly from the floor.”
This made Bella laugh, which in turn made Cassy relax. She let go of Bella’s hand and brushed her fingers through the girl’s hair.
“You wanted to make it look like someone had broken in. Perhaps Joe wasn’t up to it so you did it yourself. Wore some boots to leave evidence of a third party but stashed them under the trapdoor where the stairs would’ve been. I bet you had to lift up the carpet to get to it. If I went and had a look I’d still find them there wouldn’t I?”
Bella didn’t say anything, but by not refuting Cassy’s theory she all but acknowledged it as true.
“You took your time though didn’t you after she was dead? Was it to make sure that she died? When you knocked on my door it was over an hour after the time of death—I remember the late night news coming on and that’s the graveyard shift, the one they give to the rookie news anchors. Unless you took two hours to crawl to mine, but I don’t think so.”
“I did love her,” Bella said so softly that Cassy almost missed it. “When I saw her there, sliding down the table leg, then just stopped. I wanted to scream, but I knew I couldn’t. I wanted to hug her but I knew I couldn’t do that either.” She took a deep breath. “I wanted to hit her and hit her as if that would take back the life she stole from me. I was a prisoner in that place for my entire life. Sure we went out and had vacations and she never mistreated me in any traditional way—” Bella laughed, a sudden staccato jolt. “It was all charity, and welfare and just the misplaced kindness of strangers. That’s what she craved and that’s what we lived on. Like parasites. And none of it was real. Any good memory I have of that time is false now that I know the truth. Cassy, you have to understand it was the only way I could get out. She had me locked away mentally as well as physically. That chair— that damned wheelchair was my cell. But you know what?” Her fingers drummed nervously against her thigh, “I think I freed her as well. After all those years, I think she wanted a way out but there was no going back. You know she handed me that pig. I had a hammer. You’ll find that with the boots too, or the cops will when you call them. But it’s her pig that I used, her newest acquisition. And she handed it to me, as if she knew.”
Bella let in a long breath and held it.
“She said ‘sorry’. It was as if she knew what was coming.”
Cassy had called Deputy Jones earlier and asked him to come to the store. He would arrive shortly but Cassy wanted to set everything straight with Bella first. As she looked at Bella now, she saw someone who felt released. Free at last not only of the life her mother had subjected her to, but the burden of guilt.
“Joe took the money, didn’t he? Were you going to run away with him?”
“That was the plan. Mom had booked two tickets to yet another vacation—you see that was her escape. Little pockets of freedom, once maybe twice a year. I’d still be in the chair though, seeing all these new places, but still trapped. In fact, you helped me get the tickets when we went back to my place.”
Cassy recalled Bella picking up that morning’s mail. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time.
“When I saw Joe down at the lake,” Cassy said, “I wanted to go over and smack him in the head. I was so angry that he would betray you like that. Because the girl he was with was loved and cherished. The girl on that beach was happy and most of all made him happy. It broke my heart that you wouldn’t get that love from him. But you were that girl.”
“He does love me, doesn’t he?” This was the thing that finally broke Bella. Her mouth crumpled like a breaking dam, the lower lip unable to contain the emotion anymore. She let out a pained sigh and sobbed haltingly. Tears flooded her face and she pulled herself close to Cassy, who held her tight.
“I’ve ruined everything,” she said between sobs, “I’ll go from one prison to another. There’s no escape for me.”
With her head still buried in Cassy’s shoulder Bella didn’t see Sheriff Noyce, Deputies Jones and Wolinski arrive in the courtyard. Cassy lifted her hand to hold them off momentarily. Like true gentlemen, they held back while Bella recuperated. For all they knew she couldn’t run away.
“Is she okay?” the sheriff asked to which Cassy gave a short nod.
“What is it you called us here for Cass?” Jones said stepping forward. He came to Bella’s sid
e and angled her face towards his without waiting for a response from Cassy. “We’re going to get the man who did this Bella, believe me.”
“Now that we have a full description it won’t be long, just you wait and see,” added Wolinski. “Was there something else you needed to tell us? Every little thing helps you know.”
It took Cassy a moment to process what had just happened. There had been no description of the attacker. Only someone who’d left a partial foot print. Bella had given no clue, citing that she just didn’t remember. But of course how could there be a description - nobody had left the building because by Bella’s own admission Minerva Donnington had been killed by her daughter. Cassy briefly considered that Bella was taking credit for something she hadn’t done, but Cassy had no doubt that Bella was capable of doing what she admitted to. So then who…?
As if he understood what Cassy was thinking, sheriff Noyce volunteered the information.
“The night of the murder we didn’t get to interview everybody as thoroughly as we’d have liked. Thankfully Mr. Frowd came forward. Saw the perpetrator running out through these very gates. The man has exceptional descriptive skills, but he would I guess, being a writer and all. It was as surprising to me as it would be to anyone. I don’t recall the last time that old fella has shown his face outside of his house, let alone all the way up to the station.”
“Frowd?” Cassy looked to Bella who seemed to have frozen as if caught in Medusa’s stare. The reclusive writer who lived on the top floor of the building would have the best view of the comings and goings in Nether Edge. It would be plausible that he might have been looking out from one of the long windows that ran the length of his apartment and witness the entire attack. He might even have been able to see through the windows into the hall outside Cassy’s place. He may even have seen Bella slowly crawl her way along the floor away from the attacker. He would certainly have spotted a mysterious figure arriving then leaving again, shortly after midnight. All but for the fact that there had been no such person.
“Would you believe it? Mr. Frowd. Havenholm’s very own celebrity author, a key witness.” Noyce said.
“But the drugs—?” Bella said meekly, already picking holes in the case, “What about the drugs?”
Deputy Jones looked to Cassy for an answer.
“She means the prescription Mrs. Griffith gave her.” Cassy said.
“Last time they gave you anything it didn’t turn out so good,” said Wolinski, looking concerned. He adjusted the brim of his hat and looked about culpably. The drugs that had been administered at the hospital were real and had had an adverse effect on Bella, but how were they to know?
Right then Cassy had a choice to make. She could play along with Frowd’s game, this blessing that he’d bestowed upon them for some unknown reason, and allow the sheriff and his men, including James, to pursue this mysterious but accurately described man. Or she could relate to them everything she’d uncovered. The placebo drugs that Gwyneth had been supplying to Minerva to convince her daughter that she was an invalid to be confined to her home, except when it took her fancy to go on vacation. She could tell them about the disused stairs in the apartment under the carpet, under the floor, where they would find incriminating evidence. It wouldn’t be just Bella that she’d implicate, but Joe too, her accomplice. The police had been searching for a motive and Bella could give them one, as well as a cast iron confession.
But this was Bella’s chance to escape. To live the life that she’d been denied. She’d been given a way out.
“What do you want to do Bella?” Cassy asked.
Epilogue
“So…” purred Herzog, “did you talk to Frowd? Did you find out why he did what he did? Seems he likes playing God with the lives of the people who live below him.”
The cat had come in through the window and was now padding out a nest in the center of Bella’s bed, meaning she’d have only the edge. She’d grown used to this contempt from the feline.
“He’s a recluse and part of that means that he doesn’t let people into his home much.”
“Did he go to the station and confess?” Herzog was now nibbling on his back foot and spoke like he had cotton in his mouth.
“I think that was his social interaction for the year. Good luck getting anything more out of him.” Cassy leaned against her pillows. “You must be right. It was a game for him. Misleading the police like that. A power trip.”
“Or perhaps he just liked Bella. Maybe he knew the truth all along about the munch house by-election.”
“Munchhausen By-proxy,” corrected Cassy. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“Of course, the real power to decide that girl’s fate was with you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Frowd only presented a possibility. You figured out the rest of the mystery.”
“But I didn’t do anything. I didn’t say anything.” If James ever found out the truth— Cassy didn’t want to think about it. She pulled the covers up to her chin.
Herzog collapsed, becoming a puddle of fur, his long tail wrapped around the outside as if to hold his body in.
“In my opinion--and remember this is coming from a creature that has no qualms about killing small creatures just for sport--but doing nothing was the best thing you could have done.”
Joe Smith’s parents would be getting a shock the following day, thought Cassy. They’d wake up as usual only to find a note from their son. It would say he was going away for a week . He and his girlfriend would be going on vacation together, all prepaid, so they shouldn’t worry about that, and they had spending money too, so they shouldn’t worry about that either.
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About the Author
Wendy Meadows is an emerging author of cozy mysteries. She lives in “The Granite State” with her husband, two sons, two cats and lovable Labradoodle.
When she isn’t working on her stories she likes to tend to her flower garden, relax with adult coloring and play video games with her family.
Get in Touch with Wendy
@wmeadowscozy
AuthorWendyMeadows
www.wendymeadows.com
[email protected]
Where Pigs Fly (Nether Edge Cozy Witch Mystery Book 2) Page 7
