Shadow Notes

by Laurel S. Peterson

  “Based on what? An affair? She can sleep with whomever she wants. There’s no evidence she committed or conspired to commit murder.”

  I had to tell him everything. “Yesterday, Mary Ellen threatened to kill us. Mother was there when she said it, so there’s a witness, and—”

  “Mary Ellen threatened to kill you?” It exploded from the phone. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “I haven’t seen you!”

  “You have no phone? You and that damn mother of yours, every time I turn around you hand me some piece of information I should have had weeks ago!” The phone went silent again.

  I said softly, “I’m sorry, Kyle. It’s been a difficult decision. It hasn’t been easy to learn I was a child of rape, and that Andrew Winters is my biological father.”

  “He what?”

  “Mother didn’t tell you?”

  “It gives her motive, Clara.”

  “I just found out myself.”

  “She never told you?” I said nothing. The sympathy and tenderness in his voice called up such sorrow and hurt in me. “Is there evidence?” he asked.

  I told him about the DNA report, reassured him it was locked in Mother’s safe where we’d put it after the Christmas break-in.

  “Where’s Constance?”

  “She’s gone to see Gary Hankin. She thinks he might testify against Winters about his blackmailing scheme.”

  The silence on the other end of the phone stretched across several galaxies, looped around and came back to swat me. Right. Mother hadn’t told him about the blackmail, either. Obviously, she hadn’t gotten around to that interview she’d promised. So I told him.

  “You have proof?”

  “That’s what she’s trying to get.”

  “Does Mary Ellen know about the blackmail?”

  “We think so.”

  “I need you to listen to me carefully. Are you?” He waited.

  “Yes, I’m listening.”

  “Good. Mary Ellen and I need to have a chat, but I can’t detain her. Go home and lock the doors. When your mother comes home, keep her there. Don’t go anywhere. Officer Munson will come stay with you. Don’t let anyone else in—even if he’s a cop. Call me on this number only. Don’t call the station. I think I can finally prove which of my officers is dirty.” He didn’t even let me reply, just, mercifully, clicked off.

  Chapter 27

  I turned the phone off and laid it face down on the passenger seat, then started to shake. One of my officers…Suddenly, Hetty’s wall of photographs made sense: Hetty, Pete Samuels, Mary Ellen—what a weird trifecta. Mary Ellen to direct, Hetty for psychic predictions, Pete to do the dirty work. Win, place, show. But what was in it for Pete? He must be the man in the black balaclava. He had access to Hetty’s dolls, and I figured all cops knew how to break into houses. Would he come after me and Mother? I could see Mary Ellen shooting off a deadly text as the cops arrested her.

  I called Mother’s cell, but it shuttled into voicemail. I left a frantic message. I called Hankin’s office and asked his receptionist if she’d seen Constance Montague that afternoon. She snipped about patient confidentiality and when I told her Mother wasn’t a patient but a friend of Dr. Hankin’s, she put me on hold and left me there. I disconnected and started toward home. Maybe Mother had already arrived.

  The house was empty. I double checked all the rooms, locking doors behind me. Then, as I put the tea kettle on, Mother walked through the back door.

  “Oh, Mother! I’m so glad you’re okay. The chief—”

  “You’re making tea?” She nodded at the kettle, shrugging out of her coat. “Would you make me a cup while I go change?” She had faded since her tart exit this morning. Even her suit had wrinkles in it.

  I relocked the back door, flopped teabags into two mugs and leaned against the counter with my arms folded, waiting, trying not to feel cranky and worried. Whatever discussion she’d had with Hankin would have been difficult at best.

  I sighed. The truth was, despite whatever reconciliation we reached, she would still be the same woman with the same flaws. They might soften and ease, but they wouldn’t disappear. And that went for me too. I had never been easy to live with.

  The kitchen was bright with harsh winter light. The heavy table gleamed, except where I’d left crumbs this morning. The broom closet door stood slightly ajar, in its shadows a chaos of mops and brooms. I crossed the room and shut the door.

  Mother came in again, wrapped in a fleece robe with thick slippers on her feet. She’d washed her face. I filled the mugs. “Are you hungry?”

  She shook her head. “I just need to sit with you. Is that all right?”

  “Sure.” I pulled out a chair, puzzled. She didn’t say anything for a long time, just sipped. I left her in peace, delaying my tale and Kyle’s. We were safe for the moment.

  After a while, she reached for my hand and held it. I practiced breathing, calming my anxiety, and watched the sun play with the shadows. My thoughts slowly stilled. Into that emptiness, an image slowly built of the woman sitting before me: I saw her lying on a raft, floating. A long thin cord tethered her to something outside my vision. She wept and her tears flowed off the raft and melded with the sea, raising her higher and higher, until the tether cut at her wrist and the cord began to pull her toward the deep water. She shifted in her chair and the image disappeared. “He said he would testify.”

  “That’s good, Mother. The chief can build a case.” The first nail—why didn’t she seem pleased?

  “It was awful.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “It brought back so much…of that night. He wouldn’t stop apologizing for the deal he’d made with Winters. He kept saying he was just trying to protect his family, and surely I understood that.” She pressed her finger over one of my breakfast crumbs and absently lifted it from the table. The tears spilled over, and she hunched a shoulder into her cheek to wipe them away.

  “I’ve never been angry at him. I always told myself I understood why he didn’t turn Winters in, but today, he seemed groveling and weak. I felt dirty demanding that he stand up and do the right thing, even though he should have done it years ago.” She frowned, sniffed. “I know that doesn’t make any sense.” She rubbed the crumb between her fingers until it was powder. “I did it anyway, and I made him sign a statement. I know it won’t stand up in court, but—oh God, Clara. I’m as bad as Andrew.” The tears came on again. I reached for a napkin.

  “You’re nothing like him,” I said, “and with Hankin’s testimony, the police can make Winters pay.” I paused, hoping she’d respond with a smile, but she just stared at the table top. Instead, I told her what I’d discovered about Hetty and Mary Ellen.

  “How could I not know Mary Ellen had a daughter?”

  “You’ve been gone a long time, Clara. You probably forgot. Mary Ellen is so relentlessly single, and Emma was born only a few months before they split. David hasn’t brought that child around, ever. Mary Ellen’s not allowed to see her, not after almost killing her.”

  “She almost killed her own daughter?”

  She looked up. “Hugh diagnosed postpartum depression, but who knows. David filed for divorce right after it happened, and Mary Ellen was so furious in court that the judge ordered therapy and gave David full rights and custody.” Mother allowed the glimmer of a smile.

  “David told me she filed for divorce.”

  “I’m sure that story was part of their agreement. Mary Ellen would want to leave, not be left. Anyway, Hetty and Mary Ellen were free to engage in…” she waved her hand vaguely, “…whatever they wanted. They were consenting adults.”

  I spoke slowly, tying the strands of the story together. “So we know Mary Ellen would do anything for Andrew, even create an opportunity for him rape you, to teach you a lesson. She also knew Andrew was blackmailing his friends for campaign funds. Maybe she e
ven came up with the idea; it sort of sounds like her. Then, she takes Hetty as a lover to persuade her to do readings for Andrew, and because, after I come home, she realizes she can use Hetty to get close to me and find out what I know. Well, at least before I got her to put me on Andrew’s campaign. Anyway, that didn’t work, but when Hetty saw Hugh and me getting cozy, she called Mary Ellen—who then called Pete to kill Hugh.” I sat back, a bit stunned.

  “Pete? I’ve known him since he was a boy.”

  “People change, Mother.” Although she did have a point. Why would a cop kill someone? What could be in it for Pete?

  She mulled it over. “Okay, so I can see the connections to Mary Ellen, but there’s no evidence Andrew was behind any of this. He could plead ignorance.”

  “That’s the hole we’ve got to fill. If the chief can get Mary Ellen or Pete to talk…”

  “Mary Ellen will never talk.” She scrubbed at her nose. “I suppose I should call Kyle, too, let him know Hankin will be a witness.”

  I handed her the house phone just as the doorbell rang and she disappeared into the other room with the phone.

  By the time I reached the front door—after checking the steps and yard from behind the curtains in the front rooms—Bailey was stamping her high heels free of snow and squirming out of her cashmere coat. I shut, locked and bolted the door behind her and set the perimeter alarm. She followed me into the kitchen, tossed the coat over a chair and flopped sideways into another. “You can not believe what is going on. The cops took Mary Ellen in for questioning. Right from the campaign office! They said—and I quote, ‘In connection with the murder of Hetty Gardner.’ Winters flipped out. When Jennifer tried to calm him, he slapped her hand so hard he almost ripped it off. She cowered, literally, and it didn’t seem like a new pose.”

  “You didn’t go to the station with her?”

  “She didn’t ask for me. I bet they use John. He’s got more experience.” She rubbed her finger across the remaining breakfast crumbs.

  I brought her up to date on what I’d discovered. Each time I told it, it made more sense, except Pete’s motivation.

  “Maybe Mary Ellen was paying Pete off,” she said, “or maybe she was sleeping with him, or maybe she was paying him off and sleeping with him.” She grinned.

  “It’s not funny. Hetty and Hugh are dead.”

  “You’re right.” She wiped her hand across the table, and my mother came back to hang up the phone. She greeted Bailey, walked to the back door, and put on her boots.

  “Where are you going? We have to stay inside. I’ve even set the alarm.”

  She turned it off. “I’ll only be a minute. I’ll stay on the property.” She stepped out into the cold. In her bathrobe. I cocked my head at Bailey, and she shrugged.

  “Who was she talking to?”

  “The chief.” I filled her in on Mother’s meeting with Gary Hankin.

  “Why would Hankin talk now? Winters must have the same hold over him as always.”

  “Guilt, apparently.”

  “Doesn’t make sense. You sure Hankin’s not playing her?”

  “She says he signed a statement.”

  “Mmm.” Bailey wasn’t convinced.

  I twisted to look out the back door for Mother, but she wasn’t in view. What could she be doing out there?

  Bailey coiled herself forward. “Listen. Mary Ellen isn’t doing this alone. Somehow, Andrew is behind it, and making that connection is key. If she doesn’t confess, you got nothin’.”

  “Mother says she won’t confess. Why would she drag Andrew into it? He’s her reason for living. Do you think she’ll confess?”

  Bailey went sideways in her chair again, crossed her legs. “No way. She’ll take the bullet for him.”

  “Of course, she is crazy, so maybe she did do it all by herself, thinking Andrew would reward her, or she’d be the power behind the throne, or whatever.” I shook my head. I told her about the boy who’d defied Andrew and ended up in the hospital when his car crashed. “He’s the sort of man who would pimp his sister to the highest bidder to get into office.”

  “You’re babbling.”

  “I know. I think I need a glass of wine.” I stood and crossed to the wine rack.

  “Oh yeah, that’s going to help—but while you’re up…” She gestured that I should bring her a glass, too. “Who’s your weak spot?”

  I took the bottle to the counter where I could see out the window. Mother was nowhere in sight. I put down the corkscrew and went to the door. I could feel Pete out there, like a prickle at the ends of my fingertips. Kyle had said there was a dirty cop.

  Bailey persisted, oblivious to my concern. “Who’s the person most likely to give if you press on them? The one who has the information you need?”

  “Is this how lawyers think?”

  “All the time. C’mon, Clara. Who knows what’s going on inside the Winters clan?”

  I turned and breathed it out in a sigh. “Jennifer.”

  “Right.” She smacked the table, startling me. “How do we separate her from the herd?”

  “I’m a sheep dog now?” I began putting my boots on, distracted.

  She rolled her eyes. “Stay with the program. What’s the next campaign party sort of thingy?” She drummed her fingers against the wood, red nails clicking. “New Year’s Eve. Right. I’ll get a couple of invites.”

  “If they hold it with Mary Ellen in jail.”

  She waved her long fingers in the air. “She’ll be out in a couple of hours. No way John lets her stay there. Can’t have the sister of a Senate candidate locked up. And this time, there’s no convenient photo of her at a crime scene, as there was with your mother.”

  “Right. And since the police have likely told Mary Ellen that I reported her death threat, she’ll throw me out of her party on my butt.” I shoved my arms into a sweater I’d grabbed off the hook by the door.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Mother’s been outside in her bathrobe for, I don’t know, ten minutes? It’s really cold out there, and the chief said to stay in the house. Pete Samuels could be on our property for all I know. I’m going out to make sure she’s okay.”

  I yanked open the broom closet, looking for a weapon. Buried behind the mops was an old shovel, something the gardener probably disdained in favor of a new, less rusty version. It would do.

  Bailey looked alarmed. “I’ll come with you.”

  “Stay here, please. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, call the chief.” I dropped my cell phone into my pocket. “I’ll call if I find her. Arm the house after I’m out. He got in twice before because I forgot.” I gave her the code.

  I opened the door and followed Mother’s footprints in the snow across the kitchen garden to the gate in the wall. It was propped open with a sturdy stick, which I appropriated as an easier weapon to wield than the shovel. To the left a hill sloped toward the pond and, to the right, the back meadow abutted the road. The grounds spread across three acres, and my father’s garden, its graceful shrubs, sculptures, and carefully designed private nooks, created enough quirky hiding spots that she could be anywhere, as could anyone who wanted to harm her.

  Her footprints led toward the right. I stepped through the open gate and walked quickly, hugging the wall to its end, where a hedge screened the driveway. I paused, listening, but heard nothing except the whisper of car tires on the road. I closed my eyes, letting the silence soak in, hoping the intuition would tell me if I were out here alone or not. Nothing concrete, but something didn’t feel right.

  I took a deep breath and ran across the open expanse, following Mother’s footsteps. I was the perfect target against all that white. A red shadow flitted at the edge of my vision and I snapped my head to look. A hawk, above me, cruised for small prey. As I looked ahead again, I heard a high-pitched whine by my ear. I dove for
the gazebo, landing by Mother’s feet and dropping my stick. It was useless against a gun. She fell to her knees next to me, and I yanked her to the floor. “Get down!”

  “Clara, what is the matter?”

  “Someone just shot at me.” Staying below the benches, I scrabbled out of sight of the meadow, dragging her with me. Surrounded by trees on three sides, the gazebo made a cool spot on a warm summer day. Now, those three sides of trees protected us from the shooter. He could only come from one direction if he wanted to aim with any accuracy. I dialed the chief.

  “Sit tight,” he said. “We’ll be there in five.”

  Five minutes was a long time. Another bullet pinged off the metal roof of the gazebo. I said, “Probably Pete and Mary Ellen think killing us will eliminate the evidence against them. Maybe they think the police will conclude you killed Hugh, and then killed yourself.”

  I listened, hard. Was that a footstep, crunching in the snow?

  I looked at Mother. She huddled, shivering, tears running down her face. “So many lives I’ve destroyed, Clara—all for a stupid principle. If I’d just told Andrew what he wanted, anything, I could have made it up—how would he have known?—none of this would have happened.”

  I didn’t believe that, but I had come to understand regret. I shrugged out of the sweater and draped it around her shoulders. “He wouldn’t have let you stop—and if you lied, or your predictions weren’t true, he would have harmed you—as he did.” Besides, if anyone should sacrifice, it should be me. If the only way to save my remaining parent was to give Andrew Winters what he wanted, then I would do that. The gazebo seemed to tip, as if in a storm.

  A crackle startled me. A foot stepping on leaves under the snow? I peered around the corner of the bench, but I couldn’t see anything, except another sudden rush of red.

  “Oh, Clara, we’ve wasted so many years. I didn’t know how to love you when your life had started in such a…terrible way. Your father was so gentle and kind. I wanted to be like him but I couldn’t let go of the rage and fear I felt every time I looked at you. If I let go, if I loved you, Andrew would have a wedge to use against me, so I drove you away.” Her shivering intensified.