Shadow Notes

by Laurel S. Peterson

  “They are impounding the car and checking the site for evidence. They have to do an autopsy, but we’ll get her back when the investigation is over.”

  “That could take weeks.”

  “DuPont says it won’t.”

  “How does he know?” It burst from Loretta, her terror and rage gunpowder fueling the verbal explosion. “They might never find who did this, and then what? We’ll never get her back! It’s two days to Christmas!”

  Ernie reached across the table and laid a hand on his wife’s knee. She grabbed it and squeezed. “Oh, Ernie.” She pulled away from my mother and slid to her knees on the floor by her husband. “I’m so sorry.” She put her head on his lap.

  “For what, my love? You’ve done nothing.”

  “I’m falling apart. My daughter, if I’d only…” She could barely get the words out between her sobs.

  “That’s okay, sweetheart. I’m here, Constance is here.”

  She laid her head in his lap and he stroked her hair. Her fingers, wrapped around a wad of tissues, pressed against her lips, as if she could stop herself from weeping. I looked at my mother. She was cradling her coffee cup in her hands as if for warmth. We stayed like that for a long time.

  Chapter 18

  What I really needed was some time to think. My vision of Hetty meant something; maybe I could make the link for Chief DuPont between my attacker and Hetty’s, but I had to figure out how to persuade him a connection existed. He would want empirical evidence. I didn’t have that, and sitting in Ernie and Loretta’s living room wouldn’t help me get it. I needed to find a way to get out and get quiet.

  We were talked out by seven. We’d tossed around theories all night, but none of us had anything more than supposition. Hetty had been scared of Andrew Junior, and scared we knew each other. Junior had seen her fear; could he have killed her? Had he telegraphed some kind of message in our conversation that caused her to bolt? Had he texted or called her later? But we’d stayed a good hour after Hetty had left—oh!—long enough that Bailey and I functioned as Junior’s alibi. If he needed an alibi. Plots of movies and TV shows swirled in my head, where murderers had just enough time, if…I reined in my thoughts.

  No, Hetty must have connected with someone after she left the restaurant, someone she thought would allay her fears. Hetty was a loner; who could she possibly have called at that hour? Who did Hetty threaten and was her death related to Hugh’s? We knew so little; even our speculations didn’t make any sense. Loretta, worn out with crying, had fallen asleep on the couch. Ernie was working on stable business, and Mother was reading a book she’d plucked off their shelves. I volunteered to make a breakfast run.

  “Maybe some cold cuts or soup for lunches and a few ready-mades so they don’t have to think about dinner,” Mother said.

  I headed out, glad to be free for a few minutes, and drove to Whole Foods, stepping into the smell of warm bread and coffee. Before I bought pastry, I filled a cart with cheese, sandwich bread, sliced ham, salad makings, bottles of fancy fizzy water, and several cans of soup. The fresh ready-made casseroles weren’t out yet, but frozen lasagna beckoned. I added two packages to my purchases. As I got into the line for pastry, a familiar voice called my name. I turned. Wendy Hankin, her hands on her hips, swayed slightly by a table in the café.

  “Why are you here?” she demanded.

  Startled, I said, “Why shouldn’t I be here?”

  “You’re everywhere!” she exclaimed. “I see you at restaurants, on the street, at my country club bar, now here. Isn’t anywhere safe from you? Stop stalking me!” she shouted.

  Embarrassed. I pushed my cart out of line and walked over to her. I l­owered my voice. “Wendy, I’m not stalking you. The last time I saw you was at the country club.”

  “That’s not the last time I saw you. You were at The Peak last night. You rode with Mary Ellen yesterday. I was at the stables, too, and I know you know it. You need to stay away from me.” With lightning speed, she moved in close and grabbed my coat sleeve. People stared at us as though we were an exhibit in the Natural History Museum: Neolithic Women Fighting. “I know you’re trying to pin Hugh’s murder on me.”

  I tried disengaging my coat from her fingers, but she was locked on like time-release vault doors. “Why would I do that?”

  “You know why.” She stabbed a finger at me. “So yeah, I had a little drug problem. So yeah, my husband shouldn’t have helped me out from time to time, but just because Hugh threatened to report us if Gary didn’t clean up his act, and Gary had to move his practice into the city and be supervised and go to anger management classes because of that time he hit Hugh, and I had to dry out at Betty Ford, which nearly bankrupted us even though some people think we’re made of money, well, that doesn’t mean I’d kill him.” She shook my sleeve a little and my arm bones rattled.

  Sounded like a pretty good motive to me.

  “Besides it was years ago, and you’re not going to prove anything following us around. Oh, and,” she snapped her fingers in my face, “that sorry story about your mother and her medical records and what not, she’s out of jail now, so you can cancel that appointment with my husband. Your mother has to ask him. He’s not going to give it to you.” She spat this last at me. “Besides,” she muttered, almost to herself, “I know she kept a copy. Don’t think you’re going to blackmail us, too. There’s nothing left.”

  She suddenly became aware that her behavior was attracting attention and picked up her coffee, but her hand shook so badly that she couldn’t get her lips and the edge of the cup to meet. I wondered if she had raided her husband’s stash this morning.

  “Someone is blackmailing you? Who? And there’s a copy of Mother’s ­medical report?”

  “Don’t play innocent with me. I know Hugh told you about the DNA tests at your mother’s Christmas party. It’s all over town. Why do you think all this is happening?” She gave up trying to drink and put the cup down. The front of her blouse was decorated with little brown splatters. Her other hand was still locked onto my coat. Again, I gently attempted to disengage it.

  “Wendy, I don’t know anything about DNA tests.” My mind was racing. I needed to get back to my mother. “Hetty Gardner was murdered this morning, and I have to take food to the family. You need to let me go.”

  She backed into a table, then sat down so fast I thought she would miss the chair and land on the floor. “Not another murder.” At least she’d freed my sleeve. “You came here to ask me if I did it, right? That’s why you’re here. I know that’s why you’re here.”

  “Why would you kill Hetty?”

  “I wouldn’t kill Hetty and I don’t know anyone who would. Gary certainly wouldn’t. He doesn’t have a motive either, and anyway, he was with me.”

  “He was with you when?”

  “When Hetty was killed.”

  “Do you know when Hetty was killed?”

  “No, but it doesn’t matter because Gary is always with me.”

  I looked around. No Gary anywhere. “Where is he right now?”

  “At work.” She seemed to realize what I was saying. “Except when he’s at work and then his tarty little nurse is his alibi.”

  That likely explained her affair with the podiatrist. “Gary’s having an affair with his nurse?”

  “Who told you that?” She nearly shrieked it.

  “Calm down.” I stepped back to my cart, grabbed a bottle of expensive water, and tried to get her to drink a little. “I inferred it from what you said.”

  “Oh.” She sipped like a compliant child. “You’re not a cop!” She crowed it loudly.

  This was a revelation? “No, I’m not.”

  “I don’t have to answer any of your questions.”

  “You never did.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “Are you going to be okay? You seem a little agitated.
”

  “Agitated, smagitated. I’m fine. Skedaddle.” She waggled her fingers at me like anemone on a coral reef.

  Maybe she still had that drug problem.

  It would be a motive to kill Hugh, especially if he’d discovered Hankin was still dealing drugs to his wife. Maybe he was passing out “free samples” to other women, too.

  I dropped off the food and headed out again. I had one advantage no one else had and it was about time I used it, before anyone else got hurt. Maybe actively engaging the intuition would make the dreams stop—an added plus. Having physical contact usually sparked an image, but I hoped the intuition might activate from being at the murder scene.

  Levittown Road was several miles northeast of Mother’s place, almost at the border with the next town. The acreage there used to be cheaper, which is why Hetty’s not-enormous inheritance from her father had been sufficient to buy her farm. Levittown Road ran a couple miles west of the farm road and didn’t connect directly with it: she could have chosen two or three more direct ways to get home from downtown. That fit with the idea of someone in the car making her drive an unusual and slightly more secluded route.

  Unsure where she’d been killed, I drove until I saw police tape, a couple of cruisers, and a tow truck, onto which a group of men were maneuvering Hetty’s car. I pulled off to the side of the road, well away from the action.

  As I pushed the car door open, the chief, in another nicely-cut suit, turned to look. Pete Samuels was helping the tow truck driver, and Joe Munson sipped a coffee, feet planted wide apart in that macho stance cops seem to learn in cop school.

  As I walked closer, the chief said, “Nice of you to show up. I wanted to have a chat about your dinner last night.” He watched as the driver hopped in his cab and turned on the winch. The car jerked slowly up the ramp.

  “You’re welcome, but I don’t know anything.”

  Like much of Connecticut, the murder site was wooded and quiet. A heavy cover of trees bordered both sides of the long gentle slope, and the next house sat a good half mile away. I was surprised she’d been found here in the middle of the night. It was a pretty deserted stretch of road.

  “Did you find other car tracks?” I asked.

  “You doin’ my job for me now?” The chief was still watching the car.

  Pete yelled and the operator shut the winch down. He hopped out of the cab and began to secure the car to the truck and draw up the ramp.

  “Just curious.”

  “Remember the relationship between curiosity and the cat?”

  With the car secured, the driver jumped back in the cab, gesturing to Pete, who opened the opposite door and got in.

  “Well, that’s that. It’s up to the forensics guys now,” Munson commented to the air. He walked to one of the cruisers, got in, and pulled out to follow the truck. The chief gestured to the second cruiser. “Care to take a ride to the station?”

  “I don’t have anything to tell you. Bailey and I had dinner at The Peak last night, and Hetty arrived partway through our meal.”

  “Do you know when she left the restaurant?”

  “About eleven-thirty. I wasn’t paying much attention to time.”

  “How’d she seem?”

  “Her emotional state?”

  He nodded, his eyes hooded and watching.

  “She was wary of us…there was, um, an incident when we were younger.”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  I did.

  “You apologized?”

  “I did.”

  Something softened, almost as if he approved of me, and I suddenly felt happy.

  “Why do you think Bailey chose this particular night to apologize?”

  “We’d been talking about it, then Hetty appeared. We’d waited far too long to say something: carpe diem.”

  “How did Hetty react?”

  “She got angry, told us we couldn’t make the hurt magically disappear. She was right and we started to talk about it, but Andrew Winters Junior interrupted us.”

  “What did he want?”

  “To be social, I think.”

  “Have you been seeing a lot of Mr. Winters?” He folded his arms across his chest.

  “We went to dinner once,” I said. “He wanted to complain about his father.”

  He grunted. “How did Hetty and Mr. Winters get along?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Junior was talking about his father’s campaign and how loyal some of the campaign workers had been, and that’s when Hetty freaked out, grabbed her stuff and ran out.”

  “Where were you between midnight and three a.m.?”

  “I’m a suspect?”

  “I have to ask.” His brown face gleamed in the sunlight.

  “Bailey and I hung out with Junior for another hour or so. Then I drove home and crashed on the couch, where my mother woke me at two to chat.”

  “No wonder you look like hell.”

  “Gee, thanks.”

  “Any time. So there’s an hour-and-a-half window when your time is unaccounted for. Did your mother see you come home?”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “Not that she’s the most reliable witness,” he muttered under his breath.

  I stifled a laugh. “Trust me. I wasn’t doing anything that took thought or planning during that ninety minutes.”

  He acted as if he hadn’t heard me. “If we need anything further, we’ll be in touch.” He slid into his car, all business.

  I wondered what he would think if he knew what I planned to do the moment he left. I might have to tell him, if we ever got further than growling at each other. I turned from his disappearing taillights and walked back to my car, feeling some trepidation. I hadn’t tried this before, no matter what I’d told Bailey about scoping out Winters that night at his party. Asking for visions implied I had control, and I wasn’t convinced controlling them was possible or desirable. How did I know my unconscious mind wasn’t merely serving me up the answer I wanted?

  I leaned against the door and shut my eyes, inhaling the cold dampness of snow vaporizing, the mud, the exhaust fumes. I tried to empty my mind, as Paul taught me, to let in other images. As I got quiet, I felt the cold metal seep through my jacket, the door handle press into my back. I let my breath slow, and tried to forget that I felt a little dumb standing with my eyes closed by my car on a deserted country road.

  Then, it worked. I didn’t get an image, as in the past. Instead, I got color: dark green, like the inside of a forest. It swirled around Hetty like a cloud in a fairytale, like ink in water. A thin strand of lighter yellowy green slithered through the cloud and disappeared. I opened my eyes. Colors. What the hell did they mean?

  My cell phone rang. It was Mother.

  Chapter 19

  A half-hour later, I was seated in Ernie and Loretta’s living room, chafing at the bit to get to my own agenda: the vision, the DNA report, Winken’s strange accusations. But before I could, I had to deal with Mother’s agenda.

  Loretta looked completely washed out. Her hair hung in black and silver strands along her face, framing the pale freckles from her Irish heritage. The lines on her forehead and around her eyes were accentuated by the long shadows that stretched across the room from the front windows, where the sun was disappearing through the trees in early winter twilight. Mother sat by her side, holding her hand. Ernie had gone to make more coffee. We waited until he got back with the tray, mugs and a pot, and more of the sliced sweet bread.

  “Zucchini,” he said when he saw me looking at it. “Loretta grows about eighty pounds of it in the summer.”

  “Oh, Ernie.” Loretta looked at him with a tired half-smile. “Don’t exaggerate.”

  He shrugged and gave me an insider grin.

  Loretta said, “I’m sorry to drag you back here, Clara. You must have ot
her things you’d rather be doing, but Constance thought you should hear this directly from me.” She’d been staring into her mug, but now she looked straight at me. “I know things have been difficult between you two for some time.”

  Oh, no. Not the make-up-with-your-mother talk. Not now.

  Loretta used one hand to push her hair behind her ear. “Hetty and I had that kind of falling out, too, and we never got a chance to make it up before she…” She stopped.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  “It’s not okay—you and Constance need to fix what’s wrong between you.”

  I looked at Mother. She looked at me and said, “I didn’t tell her to say that.”

  “I’m saying it all on my own. I’ve watched this between the two of you for a lot of years, and you, Constance, are not without fault here.” She shook her head. “But that’s not why you’re here.”

  This time, she looked at Ernie and he smiled her some encouragement. “Constance mentioned that she’s worried about your working on the Andrew Winters campaign. Those Winters…I want to tell you about Hetty, so you can see why you need to be careful.

  “Hetty had been seeing someone,” she said and I snapped to attention. “We probably never would have found out if old Uncle Roland hadn’t died suddenly of a stroke in the middle of the night. He was her favorite uncle. She didn’t answer at the house or on her cell and I was worried sick. She found all the messages the following morning, said she’d been out with a friend and had turned off her phone. Very unlike her: Hetty always wanted to be disturbed. It gave her a sense of belonging.” She sipped from her coffee mug, made a moue of distaste and set it down.

  “It was also surprising that she didn’t want to tell us who he was. Hetty hasn’t had—didn’t have—many boyfriends in her life. She could have been pretty, but she had no social graces. I showed her, but nothing stuck.” She twisted her wedding ring around on her finger. “After her father died, she needed attention so badly. Ernie tried, but she never recovered. I guess one doesn’t, but some people manage to go on better than others.” She smoothed her skirt across her lap, plucking at a thread near the hem.