Broken Strings

by Nancy Means Wright

  Was he accusing? Did he think she set the fire? He looked suspiciously at Willard, who’d come up to put a hand on Fay’s shoulder. The flames were dying down now. They’d caught the fire in good time with her call. They might save the house, though it would be uninhabitable for a time, unable to sell for a good while anyway. Alas, poor Cedric.

  “I just happened by,” she said, and Higgins glanced at his watch.

  “At 2:40 in the morning,” he said, “you just happened by?”

  She had to smile at the absurdity of it. “Well, I couldn’t sleep so I called Willard. We took a ride.” Willard was holding on to her. Possessively, she thought. But she didn’t mind.

  “Sure,” said Higgins. “And one of the firemen saw a bike with a can in it. Saw someone move it. Matched your description, Fay. Removing evidence, eh? Shall we talk about it down at the station?”

  “Why not,” she said. The thought of things coming to climax was exciting.

  All the suspects gathered together. Like the denouement in Sleeping Beauty when the Prince encounters Beauty for the first time in a hundred years.

  “We have our own car,” she told Higgins. “Up the road. We’ll see you down there.”

  “You’ll come with me. Both of you.” Higgins was obviously annoyed. He’d have been woken in the middle of the night. And walked into a pandemonium.

  But where was Sammy a.k.a. Honeysuckle? The true heiress, no doubt, with a fried and charred Cedric. Was she here in the crowd? “I think you’re missing somebody,” she said.

  “I don’t think so,” said Higgins.

  She let him have his way. He had the badge while she had only Willard and a veggie mobile that would keep for now by the vacant house. Anyway, her curiosity was getting the better of her. She wanted to see how things turned out.

  What was Ishtar doing there at the fire?

  * * *

  They were lined up like something out of an Agatha Christie novel when Fay and Willard arrived at the station with Lieutenant Higgins, though not an orderly sit-down-in-the-ornate-parlor-while-Miss Marple-puzzles-it-out way. No, this gathering was chaos, everyone hollering at once. It took Higgins to shut them up, seat them on those hard straight back chairs the cops love so you’ll make quick confessions. Mademoiselle was the only one who wouldn’t quiet so Higgins let her go first. Her face was deeply flushed from the heat of the fire, her hair was half in, half out of its silver barrettes, and full of ash. The room smelled of smoke and patchouli.

  “I was to sedate Cedric,” the French teacher was confessing. “It was all part of a plan.”

  “Whose plan?” Higgins interrupted.

  “Why, Harley Grimes’s plan,” the French teacher snapped, as though he should know.

  “Cedric thought…” She looked at Cedric and he smiled to encourage her.

  “Cedric thought that Harley and that woman were planning to kill him. You see, that woman – ”

  “What woman? Be specific.” Higgins was getting testy.

  “Why, Samantha, of course. She would inherit it all if he died, don’t you see? It was she who killed Marion.”

  “Slow down,” Higgins said. “Samantha who?”

  “Samantha Rule. She killed them all. Cedric thinks so and so do I.”

  “Go back please,” Higgins said. “To the plan.”

  “To start the fire!” the woman squealed. “When Cedric was knocked out and overcome.”

  “And you?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t be knocked out if I was the one to sedate him, would I? But I didn’t do it, you see.”

  “Didn’t start the fire?”

  “No. That wasn’t my job. I simply didn’t sedate him, that’s what I was trying to say. I worried I wouldn’t be able to drag him out if the fire caught on.”

  “But how did you become part of this plan?” Higgins asked.

  “It was Cedric’s plan for me.” She spoke loudly as if to get her point across more clearly. Fay’s head was starting to hammer.

  “Yet another plan?”

  “For me to get Harley back,” Mademoiselle said, her cheeks burning with impatience. “We were briefly married. Our daughter’s away at school now. The paintings haven’t sold all that well, too many expensive jewels on some of them. I told him so, but, well, he and I need the money to keep her there. I’ve been let go at the high school. They’re dropping half their French classes to add Spanish and Chinese. Chinese, can you imagine? I mean, everyone speaks Chinese around here, right? Anyway. I was planning to do private classes.” She looked at Chance and the girl’s eyes widened.

  “Back to the plan – both plans,” Higgins said, rubbing his forehead. Fay flashed a look of sympathy. He was a good cop.

  “It wasn’t easy,” Mademoiselle said. “I had to pretend I didn’t like Cedric.” She blinked at Cedric, and he patted her head.

  “All right.” Higgins glanced at Nova, who was running the interview tape. “What I need to know now is, who set the fire?”

  “It was Billy Kidde who was supposed to set the fire,” Mademoiselle said. “Not to kill, Harley said, just to, well you know. Frighten. Though I knew I’d never do it, sedate Cedric, I mean. I don’t trust Harley any more. He was involved with that blond woman, after all. But Billy…”

  “We found the can in his bike basket,” an officer said, holding it up. “Full of gas.”

  “Full, yes?” Fay cried out, lifting her chin to Higgins’s frown. “Not emptied. Billy didn’t set that fire. I saw. I was there when he rode up.”

  “We’ll get to that later,” Higgins said, staring her down.

  “But I went there to do it,” Billy admitted, his face flushed with his confession. “It was Sammy’s plan, and there’s more. You see, when I was twelve, I – ”

  “Yet another plan?” Higgins moaned. “Please, please, stick to the present.”

  “I set the fire,” declared Ishtar, thrusting both hands high in the air. A little soot flew from her gray-black braid as she got up to face the lieutenant. “When Billy and I spoke earlier on the phone, I knew I had to do it. It was my pleasure to thwart the bastard who killed my girl.” She pointed a finger at Cedric.

  “She’s crazy,” Cedric yelled, jumping up. “Don’t listen to the witch!”

  “That man who killed my baby,” Ishtar shouted. “My Marion. Who killed her so he could marry that one!” The finger swirled about to indicate Mademoiselle.

  “No!” the French teacher cried. “Cedric would never kill anyone!”

  “Unless you goaded him into it?” Higgins said triumphantly.

  Things were going too fast for Fay. Mademoiselle was the killer here? The brain behind all these deaths? Mademoiselle, who weighed in at one hundred-ten pounds max and reeked of patchouli?

  “No! No! I would never –” The French teacher flung herself into Cedric’s arms. He held her there, stiffly, like a protective shield.

  “You knew my daughter would kiss the controller before she began a show,” Ishtar went on, facing Cedric. “It was her way of bringing luck to the play. You had it made special. I have the proof.” She held up a bill of sale. “Oh yes, I found it in your drawer the day that man stole Marion’s rug. I left before he saw me. It was dated September 17. You wanted it full of sap, Cedric. Right from the tree.”

  “So?” Cedric’s face was defiant. He faced the lieutenant. “I wanted it fresh. A gift for my wife. The old controller was full of splinters.”

  “And the sister, um, Puss?” Higgins asked. “That was you, as well, Mr. Fox?”

  “Outrageous,” Cedric hissed. Mademoiselle backed away from him.

  “Samantha might have killed Puss,” Fay dared to suggest. “When Rudolph went in to steal the rug and portrait. When Sammy went in after he hit Puss with a boot, and then she gave Puss a bang on the head and strung her up like a puppet?”

  “Wait a minute,” Higgins said. “How in hell can you – ”

  “Rudolph said he threw a red platform boot at Puss. We all assumed it was hers.�
��

  “A red boot!” Willard cried. “I saw the red boots on the floor when I went in with the Beauty puppet. They were, well, kind of sideways – not the way my mother would leave them, and I thought – ”

  “You never told me they were red boots,” Fay said.

  “Didn’t I?” Willard said. “Well, I didn’t think it was so important, um, at the time.”

  “Sammy’s red boots!” Chance shouted. “I’ve seen her in them. And it was Sammy in those boots at that pagan dance. She was the leader – I mean, I didn’t know at first.”

  “You were at a pagan dance, Chance?” Ignoring the girl’s sigh, Fay went on. “They certainly weren’t Puss’s. I went through her shoes. I made a list. I have it at home. There are no red boots. I can show you that, Lieutenant. Oh, Puss was very organized! Anal might be the word.”

  Willard tightened his grip on Fay’s shoulder. She heard him cluck in her ear, her feathery white rooster.

  “So Rudolph knocked Puss out with Sammy’s red boot,” Fay said. “She got scared, took off with his loot, and Sammy – who might have been hiding somewhere – strung the woman up!”

  “Not an easy job for a woman,” said Higgins, looking skeptical.

  “She’s tough, she takes karate,” Chance said. “Right, Billy?”

  Billy nodded.

  “Sammy?” Higgins was looking around as if he might discover a strange woman sitting in a corner, waiting for him to slap on the handcuffs. “Find her,” he told Nova. “Bring her in. Let’s hear what she has to say. And her partner? The skull artist? Where is he?”

  “Taking a plane,” Chance said. She turned to Billy, who was staring at the floor. “What time, Billy?”

  Billy coughed, then spewed out facts, times and meeting places, his face flushed with color, eyes huge and dilated. Was he on something? Probably. He had to be, Fay thought, to plan a fire. The officers, at Higgins’s nod, were moving in on Cedric.

  “You can’t say I killed Marion!” Cedric cried. “I only made the control stick!” He appealed to Mademoiselle, but she just stared at him. Then he turned to Ishtar, who was already in handcuffs for setting the fire. She refused to look at him. Billy was watching Chance, who in turn was slowly moving back between Fay and Willard. Fay saw her moist cheeks, felt the girl’s warm hip pressed against her own.

  “We’ll send a man to the airport,” Higgins said. For the first time, Fay noticed the bags underneath his eyes. The man looked exhausted. He’d been working hard to get to the bottom of things. She admired him for that.

  “You three are free to go, for now,” Higgins told Fay. “The others will spend the night. We’ll need more facts, more questioning.” He pointed at a female officer. “Officer LeDuc will drive you to your car. But you still haven’t explained exactly why you were there, Fay, before the fire. Or why you moved that bike – if it was you.” She kept a blank face. “And we’ve more questions to ask him.” He pointed at Willard, whose eyes were fixed on Fay.

  “Why do you think we were there?” Fay said, looking into Higgins’s haggard face.

  “Because you knew I was right. It was Cedric all along.” Higgins licked his lips, like a cat in the cream.

  “There were three murders,” Fay reminded him. “Cedric – if he was the killer, for you have no definitive proof – was only one. Sammy’s a prime suspect for the second. She had means, motive, opportunity – all that sort of thing you officers wax on about. Now it’s up to you to find who killed the old lady.”

  “Tomorrow,” Higgins said. “Tomorrow I’ll have the answer. One of them will own up to it.”

  “Wait!” Ishtar shouted, flinging off her black cloak, and everyone turned to stare. “I was there when she died. That scheming, manipulative Gloria, who would never let me walk on her polished floors. Ashamed of me, her stepdaughter’s mother. Ashamed of my black face. Unclean! You could see it in her eyes. What have I to lose now? I – I killed her.”

  The room was hushed as Ishtar went on. So Marion’s birth mother killed Gloria? What next?

  “For years,” Ishtar said. “For years, I waited for my chance. Me, the unclean, interfering birth mother. I wanted her dead. No, it wasn’t Sammy, Lieutenant. I killed her, I said. The window was open and I stepped in – just to pick up the witch puppet, but when I saw her lying there I…”

  Oh my God, Fay thought, unable to catch all the words flying past her ears. Poor Gloria. And where was Sammy? Already at the airport, she bet, ready to fly off, unscathed, unaccountable for her treachery. Pushing Chance and Willard ahead of her, she hurried out and hooked her arm into LeDuc’s. “Run us back to our car, would you, please, officer?”

  “Higgins only assigned one cop to the airport,” Fay said to Willard when the officer had dropped them off by the vacant house. “As if one man could subdue that wildcat, red-booted Sammy. And what if Skull Man is there, too? Taking the same flight. Or just seeing Sammy off?”

  “You’ll have to trust them,” Willard said. He yawned, then looked embarrassed to be seen giving in to it.

  “I can’t. I won’t,” she said.

  “Not tonight, though, Fay. They’ll send an experienced officer to take care of it. You’ve done real well. It’s time for a rest.”

  “A rest? Look, I’m charged up, full of adrenalin. You go to bed, Will, I’ll borrow your car and head north to Burlington.”

  “Oh no, ” Willard said. “You don’t know my veggie mobile. I mean, she doesn’t know you. No, no, if you’re taking my car, you’re taking me as well.” He climbed in and clamped his two hands on the steering wheel, as if he’d glued them to it.

  “That makes three of us,” Chance said, slamming into the back. “You’re not leaving me behind either. Sammy’s got a debt to pay me.”

  Willard’s sigh would sink a ship, Fay thought. But he made a noisy spin in the center of the road and headed north.

  * * *

  They arrived at the airport at five-twenty-five and found Sammy already through security and into the Gate 1 waiting area. She was sitting alone with a magazine, her profile to the window Fay and Chance, who had no tickets, were peering through. She had no idea how screwed up her plan was, Fay thought, and smiled. Willard had been in the men’s room for a while, and she worried he’d fallen asleep on the toilet. He’d been asked to bring coffee – it might be a long wait before they could move in on Sammy. The officer Higgins had assigned was evidently in plain clothes – if he was there, although a young man with the fresh face of a college student sat opposite Sammy, peering over a newspaper now and then. He had a cellphone clipped to his belt, a good sign. And a briefcase at his feet. He could be a cop, waiting for Harley Grimes to show up as well – or simply a young professional. The bulge in his right hand pocket could be a gun – or a banana. At any rate, she was glad he was there.

  Who would make the first move?

  Sammy looked up, her face alert. She’d seen Chance, who’d edged close to the window between the corridor and waiting area. Chance was doing sign language with her hands and mouth, signs of fire – oh, smart girl – appearing as though she was on Sammy’s side now, Billy’s accomplice. Fay shrank back. Sammy was getting up, and the young professional looked up from his newspaper. “Need to talk to you,” Chance mimed through the glass.

  Now Sammy was moving purposefully out of the waiting area. When Willard arrived with bagels and coffee Fay motioned him back into the corridor. Chance and Sammy were talking through the glass. At first Sammy was smiling. But as Chance went on, gesticulating with her hands, the smile turned to a scowl, then to anger. She knows the truth now, Fay thought, that the fire didn’t hurt Cedric, that Mademoiselle didn’t sedate the man. “Bitch!” Sammy mouthed.

  The young professional was hustling back through the gate, his hand in his right pocket. Sammy lifted her chin and sniffed as if she smelled something, then bolted. She ran back through the gate, down the corridor toward Fay and Willard. Fay put out a foot and Sammy stumbled. Willard grabbed at Sammy’s arm as she
struggled for balance but she shook him off. When she couldn’t penetrate a group of laughing Boy Scouts coming towards her, she veered into an observation room. There was no way out except the outside window where she stood uncertainly, until the cop charged in and shouted out his arrest speech. He whipped out a pair of handcuffs. For a moment it appeared that Sammy would hold out her arms, let him snap them on.

  Instead, she seized a metal stanchion from the floor and with three blows of its steel base smashed the glass into a thousand bits before she leaped through with a piercing cry. She fell two floors to the pavement below, and lay there, motionless . Then there was Chance – how had she gotten down there so fast? Chance, falling on Sammy, appearing to weep – as if for a lost sister, a runaway self. The girl was so complicated, Fay couldn’t figure her out.

  Sammy stumbled up and staggered across the tarmac. But the cop grabbed her. The pair struggled in a slow embrace and the woman went down again – caught in his arms like a fallen lover. He slapped on the cuffs just as the paramedics arrived. They looked her over briefly before loading her into the ambulance. Fay watched them drive away, red lights flashing and siren blaring.

  Thirty minutes later, halfway home to Branbury and half asleep in Willard’s veggie mobile, Fay’s cell phone rang. It was Sergeant Nova. “Bad news,” he said. “I mean, depending on how you look at it.”

  “Oh?” Nothing would surprise her at this point.

  But it did. “She’s dead,” Nova said.

  “What? Sammy?”

  “Not Sammy, no. She’s at Fletcher Allen Hospital. Our man is with her. It’s the black woman, Ishtar. She hanged herself in her cell. No one thought to restrain her. It’s a shame really, we had more questions for her.”

  Fay fell back against the headrest. “I’m sorry for that,” she whispered into the receiver. “I’m so sorry.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  A Rose by Any Other Name…