A Killer Past

by Maris Soule

  He pointed at her right hand. ‘I think that’s where you got those bruises, why you’re limping this morning.’

  ‘Oh, come on.’ She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest in a protective – or maybe defensive – manner. ‘I’m seventy-four years old. I have arthritis. Do I look like someone who could beat up two boys in their prime?’

  He had to admit, the woman seated in front of him looked more like a grandmother than a fighter, but he knew things weren’t always as they appeared. ‘Have you ever studied the martial arts, Mrs Harrington?’

  ‘I’ve done a little tai chi at the gym,’ she said. ‘They say it’s good for your balance.’

  ‘I’m not talking about tai chi. The way the boys said it went down, you were delivering kicks and karate chops like a pro.’

  ‘Well, I can assure you, I’ve lived in this town for forty-four years and not once have I taken a class in martial arts.’ She pushed her chair back. ‘Is there anything else, Sergeant? If not, I need to call my son and see if he can come over and get my car running.’

  ‘I told you the boys aren’t pressing charges,’ Jack said and stood, ‘but that doesn’t mean they don’t plan on retaliating.’ He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out his business card. ‘Keep your doors and windows locked and give me a call if you see anything unusual.’

  ‘Unusual like…?’

  ‘Like groups of boys hanging out on the street corner, or cars going by your house real slow. Whatever you do, don’t open your door for anyone you don’t recognize.’

  She took his card, gave it a glance, then slipped it into the pocket of her orange sweatpants. ‘There is one problem,’ she said and smiled.

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘It’s Halloween. I’m going to have lots of little strangers at my door tonight.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ he grumbled and grabbed his overcoat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ROBERT HARRINGTON DIDN’T arrive until 12.15. By that time, Mary had brushed her hair back into a twist, put on some makeup, and had downed enough tea to feel halfway decent. She didn’t, however, change out of her turtleneck, sweatpants, and slippers. Not only was the outfit comfortable, it covered most of her bruises.

  She smiled when she opened the door and saw both her son and granddaughter. ‘Trick or treat, Grandma,’ Shannon said. ‘Dad’s taking me to lunch. Do you want to come, too?’

  ‘Oh, honey, I would love to, but I had a late breakfast,’ Mary lied. No need to chance Robby or Shannon noticing her limp or bruises. ‘No school today?’

  ‘Just this morning,’ Shannon said. ‘Teacher in-service this afternoon … or something like that. Are you sure you can’t come with us?’

  ‘I’m sure.’ Mary looked at her son. ‘Did you see the car?’

  ‘Not yet. What I need to know is what do you want me to do with it?’

  For Mary, the answer was obvious. ‘Get it running.’

  ‘You know I don’t know anything about cars. That was Dad’s forte.’

  ‘Then have it towed somewhere where they can fix it.’

  ‘Mom, why beat an old horse to death? Get a new car. Or a new used car. They say that’s the wisest way to buy a car.’

  ‘Get something sporty, Grandma,’ Shannon added. ‘Something red, like mine.’

  ‘Or purple?’ she asked, knowing how her son would react.

  Robby rolled his eyes. ‘Please, no.’

  She grinned. The older Robby got, the more he looked and acted like his father. As the town dentist, Harry had always been aware of the image he projected, and their son had adopted the same attitude. At the moment, Robby was wearing a tailor-made pinstriped suit that emphasized his height and slender physique and gave him an aura of self-assurance. She knew, as a financial advisor, image was critical. If you were going to handle a client’s money, you needed to look like you knew what you were doing. And it undoubtedly helped if your mother appeared respectable.

  ‘OK, no purple cars,’ Mary said. ‘Let’s see if we can get the old Chevy fixed.’ She pointed the direction of Archer Street. ‘It’s just two blocks over. Call Triple-A, they’ll tow it somewhere.’

  ‘Don’t you have a Triple-A card, Grandma?’ Shannon asked.

  ‘I do, but you have to be with the car, and I don’t feel like walking over there.’ She didn’t want to chance someone recognizing her from the night before, and her ankle still hurt.

  Robby caught her hand as she brought it back to her side. He gently pushed her sleeve back from her wrist, but Mary couldn’t help flinching as the bulky knit rubbed over her bruise. ‘Now what have you done, Mom?’

  ‘I sort of ran into something.’

  His gaze immediately went to the stairway behind her. ‘You didn’t fall down the stairs again, did you?’

  ‘No … I … I just sort of hit something.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Something. It was dark.’

  Her son gave a deep sigh. ‘Mom, what are we going to do with you?’

  ‘You don’t have to do anything.’

  Again he looked behind her, at the stairway leading to the upstairs bedrooms. ‘It’s not safe for you to live here alone.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She grinned, remembering her experience the night before. ‘I just ran into something I didn’t expect.’ To change the subject, she turned to her granddaughter. ‘I see you’re wearing the pin I gave you. Do take care of it.’

  Shannon looked down at the small, diamond-encrusted gold box pinned to her sweatshirt. ‘Oh, I will. I love it.’

  ‘That was quite a gift,’ Robby said. ‘After you left last night, Clare looked it up on the Internet. You were right. It is called Pandora’s Box, but it’s not made by that company that makes the charms.’

  ‘Mom was really impressed,’ Shannon added. ‘She said it’s quite valuable.’

  Robby looked at the pin on his daughter’s sweatshirt and then at Mary. ‘I don’t remember ever seeing you wear it.’

  ‘I haven’t. Not for years.’

  ‘Did Dad give it to you?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted, remembering the day her former partner gave her the pin, along with a passionate kiss. ‘It was a gift from a man I knew years before I met your dad.’

  ‘I’ll take good care of it,’ Shannon said. ‘I promise. I’ll treasure it for the rest of my life.’

  Mary smiled. Those were almost the same words she’d said more than forty-four years ago. Back then, after that kiss, she’d wondered if she’d been a fool to keep David Burrows at arms’ length, if there might have been a chance for them. Two years later, she met Harry Harrington and knew she’d made the right decision. David would have given her passion and excitement; Harry gave her love and security, along with a child … and years later, a granddaughter.

  Such a precious grandchild.

  In many ways Shannon reminded Mary of herself. Whereas Robby had his father’s brown hair, brown eyes, and lean physique, Shannon had inherited Mary’s ash-blonde hair, blue eyes, and willowy figure.

  Well, Mary thought, her hair used to be blonde and her figure used to be willowy. Over the years the color had faded to white and gravity had caused some of those curves to sag. Not that she cared at her age.

  ‘Did you two want to come in for a minute?’ she asked and took a step back.

  The moment she put weight on her bruised ankle, pain shot up her leg, and she grimaced.

  ‘Are you OK, Mom?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she lied, forcing herself not to groan. ‘It’s just my arthritis kicking in. And I suppose you two do want to get going so you can have lunch.’

  Robby glanced at his watch. ‘It is getting late.’

  ‘So will you have time to call Triple-A today? I hate to leave the car parked on the side of the street for long. Especially tonight. Who knows what might happen to it.’

  ‘I’ve taken the afternoon off,’ he said. ‘After we have lunch, Shannon and I will take care of the ca
r.’

  ‘Just let me know where it’s towed, and I’ll take it from there.’

  Her son sighed. ‘Mom, why don’t you simply move into Shoreside? Then you wouldn’t need a car. They have vans that take residents wherever they want to go.’

  They’d had this argument before. ‘I am not moving into a nursing home and taking a van wherever I want to go.’

  ‘It’s not a nursing home, it’s a—’

  ‘Forget it.’ They could call it a residential facility if they wanted, but she knew what Shoreside was, and she didn’t want to go there.

  ‘Mom, if it’s the idea of riding in the van that bothers you, one of us could always drive into town and pick you up.’

  She shook her head. ‘Honey, I’m just not ready to go into one of those homes. They say today’s seventies are yesterday’s fifties.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ he said, ‘but you weren’t bumping into things in your fifties, and now that Dad is gone, I worry about you.’

  Mary appreciated his concern, but thinking of the night before, she smiled. ‘Thank you, Rob, but I think I can still take care of myself.’

  Back at the station, Jack tried to put Mary Harrington out of his thoughts. No charges had been filed by the two teenaged gang members, so there was no case to follow up on. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t have anything to do. As the town’s one and only special investigator his caseload didn’t allow time for pet projects.

  But something wasn’t right.

  Call it a gut feeling, intuition, or the result of thirty-four years of interviewing people, but Jack couldn’t shake the idea that Mary Harrington was involved in what had gone down the night before.

  But how?

  In a fight, guys in their teens or twenties could easily inflict the damage those two gang members had suffered, but a woman Mary Harrington’s age and size? It didn’t make sense. Yet she had those bruises, and her car was in the area where the boys had been attacked, left there according to her, just prior to the attack. Add in the testimony of Cora Black – iffy as that might be – and the evidence certainly pointed to Mary Harrington being involved in some way or another.

  During his lunch hour, just out of curiosity, he started searching through his computer for information about Mary Harrington. That’s when he came across the article and pictures of her in the Kalamazoo Gazette. She was one of three women profiled in the article. At age seventy-four she was the youngest of the three, the other two in their eighties. The picture of Mary showed her in Spandex shorts and a halter top lifting barbells, and Jack realized the bulky black sweater and orange sweatpants she’d had on when he interviewed her had hidden a well-toned body. Maybe gravity had added a sag here and there, and time had turned her hair white, but looking at the picture, he would have taken her for a much younger woman. Maybe not a twenty-year-old, but someone around forty or fifty. A well-conditioned forty or fifty.

  The article touted how exercise could slow the aging process and ward off dementia, and how senior citizens who regularly exercised had fewer medical problems. There were quotes from each of the three women. The one attributed to Mary Harrington caught his attention. ‘Working out with the weights has improved my balance, as well as my strength.’

  He grunted and looked back at her picture. She’d said she’d fallen down the stairs, that the fall had caused the bruising on her arm and was the reason for her limp. ‘You lied to me,’ he murmured to the picture.

  ‘What?’ the officer in the cubicle across the aisle asked, leaning back in his chair to look at Jack.

  ‘Nothing,’ Jack said and bookmarked the article. ‘Just talking to myself.’

  He continued his search into Mary Harrington’s background by checking for a military record. Lifting weights wouldn’t have given her the skills to take down the two last night, not with her being a good six inches shorter than one of the boys and the other twice her weight, but military training might have.

  He found no record of her ever having been in any branch of the service.

  He also found no record of any arrests, no outstanding warrants, and her driving record was clean, not even a parking ticket. Going back two years, he found an article announcing the death of Harry Harrington, a retired dentist. It listed Mary (Smith) Harrington as his wife, Robert Harrington as his son (married to a Clare Worthington), and one granddaughter, Shannon Harrington, all living in Rivershore. Harry also had a sister in Montana, and an uncle in Chicago.

  The next mention of Mary Harrington was in a short article announcing that Robert (Rob) Harrington, son of long-time residents Harry and Mary Harrington, had joined a brokerage office in Rivershore. As far as Jack could tell, that was the last mention of Mary’s name until forty-two years earlier, when he found the record of her marriage to Harry Harrington. As in her husband’s obituary, Mary’s maiden name was listed as Smith.

  Mary A. Smith.

  Again he grunted. How common a name could you get?

  Using her social security number, he narrowed his search for Mary down to the Mary A. Smith who opened a bookstore in Rivershore forty-four years ago. He found only one article about the store’s opening. There were quotes from Mary Smith, a picture of the storefront and another picture showing a mother and child looking at shelves of books, but there were no pictures of Mary herself. Six years later, a blurb appeared in the paper stating the store had been closed. Again, no pictures.

  Other than the photos in the article on aging and exercise and on her driver’s license, Jack found absolutely no pictures of Mary A. Smith or Mary A. Harrington. And when he looked for anything about Mary prior to opening the bookstore, he came up empty-handed.

  It was as though Mary A. Smith, later to become Mary A. Harrington, sprang to life at the age of thirty.

  Witness Protection, he wondered.

  Jack leaned back in his chair and considered the possibility. Forty-four years ago Rivershore was primarily rural: blueberry, apple, and grape crops were the area’s main source of income. Over the years the town had grown, but it was too far away from Lake Michigan to attract many tourists, and too far away from any major interstate to lure major industry. Only recently had an environmental group cleaned up the river, bringing kayakers and canoers to Rivershore.

  If Mary A. Smith did indeed witness a mob murder or political corruption, the government might have decided Rivershore was a safe place to hide her. She’d certainly kept a low profile. If he hadn’t stopped by her house that morning, he never would have known she existed.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BY MID-AFTERNOON, MARY had downed a half-dozen pain pills, taken another hot bath – laced with Epsom salts – rubbed arnica lotion on her bruises, and used a heating pad on her back and hip. Nothing truly took the pain away, and she couldn’t relax. Her mind kept replaying the events of the night before along with the questions Sergeant Jack Rossini had asked. She could tell he didn’t believe her story. For all she knew, someone had seen her leave her car, had watched the boys approach her, and had seen what happened. He’d said the boys weren’t pressing charges, which was probably why she hadn’t been arrested, but it didn’t mean she was home free.

  Damn, she should have let them take her keys and credit cards. Ella had a spare key to the house and once home she could have reported the cards stolen. Within a day she could have had the locks changed, and the car keys wouldn’t have done the boys any good. She wouldn’t have been there to begin with if the Chevy had been running.

  If only the tall one hadn’t grabbed her arm.

  Mary closed her eyes and leaned back in Harry’s old recliner, letting the heat from the pad behind her warm aching muscles. Who would have thought she’d still remember the moves? It had been at least forty-five years since she’d been in a situation where she’d had to defend herself physically. More than half a century since she’d been taught how to use her body as a weapon. Her instructors had told her repetition was the key, that once her body knew the routine, she would never forget it. Over and over
they’d made her practice the kicks and blows, forced her to spar with men and women of all sizes. ‘Use their weight against them,’ Carl had preached. ‘Get them off balance. Keep them off balance.’

  Evidently they’d been right. She hadn’t forgotten the moves. What she’d forgotten was how much bone against bone could hurt, that inflicting pain didn’t mean you avoided pain. Back then she’d hurt like this, but then pain had been a badge she wore with honor. ‘No pain, no gain.’ My God, how many times had she heard that old cliché?

  Every night that first month after she’d arrived at the training compound, she went back to her room sore and exhausted. More than once she’d told them where they could take their damn program, and more than once she’d thought they would tell her she’d failed. Some nights she wished they would tell her to leave.

  But after a while, the bruises disappeared and her muscles grew stronger. Slowly she began to understand the purpose behind her training. As her body changed into a lean killing machine, her daily instructions expanded to include foreign languages and customs, proper protocol, international business, cooking lessons, and wine tasting. They gave her cosmetics and clothes that accented her beauty, along with lessons on how to walk and talk. Little did the men who gazed at her shapely legs realize one strategically placed kick could end their sex lives … or their lives altogether.

  Should she have killed the boys?

  Sergeant Rossini had said the two she took down were members of a gang. He’d as much as come out and said she was in danger, and she understood why. No gang member could let it be known he was beat up by a little old lady. She would have to be taught a lesson. Someday, some way, they were going to get back at her.

  She should have let them have their way with her.

  Mary chuckled. What a quaint phrase: ‘Have their way with her.’ Gads, when did she get so old?

  What would her granddaughter say today?

  Shannon would probably use the F word and a few more expletives. Those boys certainly had.