Camille leaned toward Meredith. “What about the time Tahir came back from the woods and said he was being followed? Did he make that up?”
Meredith shook her head. “Ah, that was to throw us off the scent. I was almost convinced, but then again I was certain this murderer was smarter than that, and wouldn’t risk being seen or even heard.”
Claire thought about her mad run through the woods, and wondered if maybe she was fleeing a deer after all. Now she would probably never know.
Meredith leaned back in her chair and took a cookie from the plate. “But what really got me thinking along the right lines was Stephen Hawking.”
Evelyn Gardner crossed her legs, and Claire heard the swoosh of expensive fabric. “What do you mean?” Evelyn said.
Meredith turned to Claire. “Remember what I said about atomic theory—about particles not existing but having a ‘tendency’ to exist?”
Claire nodded.
“Well,” Meredith continued, “I was thinking about the shadowy, hidden identity of the murderer . . . and then I was struck by the quantum theory of subatomic particles existing with both the properties of waves and particles.”
“Yes,” Gary said a little irritably. “I’m familiar with quantum theory. But how does that relate?”
“I didn’t realize that it did—until I had a conversation with Two Joe about shape-shifters.”
“Shape-shifters?” said Camille, her dark, kohl-lined eyes wide.
“Yes,” said Two Joe. “We have legends that speak of shape-shifters, spirits who can change their form at will. You saw the murderer as a kind of shape-shifter, then?”
“In a way,” Meredith replied, taking a bite of cookie. “Also helpful was Einstein’s theory of special relativity, which states that not only the object but the position of the observer determines how an object is perceived.”
“I don’t follow,” said Sherry.
Meredith leaned forward in her chair. “Consider: what if the murderer had another property—an existence, if you will—that we were unable to see? In other words, what if we perceived him as a wave but he was really a particle? In other words, an assumed identity of some kind.”
“Hmm . . . interesting, but where does that get you?” said Liza.
“Well, it got me thinking along the right lines,” Meredith answered.
“But why did you suspect Tahir?” said Camille.
“Well, actually, the first thing that put me onto him was when he didn’t know it was his birthday.”
“Really? When was that?” asked Sherry.
“Oh, wait—I remember,” Claire said. “We were getting ready for dinner, and someone wished him a happy birthday, but he didn’t seem to realize it was his birthday. He made some sort of excuse about not remembering because of all he had been through, but it was a little strange.”
“Right,” Meredith agreed. “Everyone knows when their birthday is. It started me wondering. And then I found this.” She held up a handwritten note.
“What is that?”
“It’s a note he wrote to Claire saying she had a phone call.”
“And what’s so strange about that?” Billy Trimble asked languidly.
“Because it doesn’t match the handwriting in the margins of the manuscript of his work,” Meredith replied smugly. “It isn’t even close. Whoever wrote the notes in the margin was left-handed, with that backward slant—and the writing is really different. So that’s when I figured Tahir wasn’t who he was pretending to be. So then I left him a note saying that I knew it was him, and that he was posing as someone else.”
“But how did you know he would follow you?” said Gary.
“I didn’t—and if he was innocent, then he wouldn’t, of course.”
Camille shook her head. “I just can’t believe you’d go out in the woods alone with someone you knew—”
“Suspected,” Meredith corrected her.
“Okay—suspected was a murderer. Still, what on earth were you thinking?”
“Well, I figured if he were innocent, he wouldn’t respond to my note; he wouldn’t care. But if he did come, then . . . well, it was the next best thing to a confession.”
“But why didn’t you just call Detective Hansom?” said Liza.
Meredith frowned and rolled her eyes. “C’mon; I’m just a kid! Who would believe me?”
“I would, after tonight,” Jack Mulligan responded. There was no hint of his usual cynicism; in fact, Claire thought she detected admiration in his voice.
“Well, whatever,” Meredith answered with a shrug. “Maybe I acted rashly…”
“Maybe?” Claire exploded. “Maybe? I think we can all agree to that!”
Sherry shook her head. “You’re a gutsy kid, I’ll say that for you.”
Meredith just shrugged, but she looked pleased.
“Gutsy or stupid,” Claire muttered. Now that the danger was over, her concern for Meredith’s safety was being replaced by anger at the girl’s foolish actions.
Claire heard the sound of car tires on gravel and looked out the window just in time to see a long blue Cadillac pull into the driveway below the house. “Aw, damn,” Meredith grumbled, putting down the plate of cookies.
Claire watched Meredith’s father walk up the flagstone path, noticing how like him Meredith was in so many ways: the same lanky build, the ungainly lope of a walk, the same long head and high cheekbones. Meredith got up from her chair and opened the front door.
“Hello, Father.”
“Hello, Meredith. Sorry I’m late. I got a late start and then I got a little lost on the way here.” He stood there blinking at the assembled company, which, Claire realized, must have been a strange sight to a Connecticut WASP like Ted Lawrence. There was Two Joe in his black shirt and leather vest, his long black hair hanging loose around his massive shoulders, shiny as sealskin. And Jack Mulligan, in his usual camouflage-and-khaki getup, looking like a Hemingway wannabe. And Sherry, with her set of earrings running all the way up her earlobe . . . Claire wondered what Meredith had told her father about the place.
Ted Lawrence cleared his throat. Meredith responded as if she had been handed a cue. “This is my father, everyone.”
“Hello,” Ted Lawrence said stiffly.
Liza rose and extended her hand. “Liza Hatcher,” she said warmly. “Pleased to meet you. Your daughter has just—”
Detective Hansom rose from his armchair. “Your daughter has just helped us find a murderer.”
Ted Lawrence looked at Meredith. “Well,” he said after a moment. “Has she really? Well.” He shook his head, as if the words needed shaking up before he could really understand them.
Meredith looked at Claire and rolled her eyes.
Chapter 25
Liza persuaded Ted Lawrence to stay the night. He slept in Terry’s old room; no one told him that it was the bedroom of a murdered man, but Meredith enjoyed what she called “the delicious irony of the situation.”
The next day Detective Hansom showed up just as the residents were having breakfast on the porch. Sherry and Liza had gone into town and bought bagels for everyone. There was no sign of Ted Lawrence yet, but Gary and Billy had already retired to their studios for the day, and Two Joe and the rest of the writers were still sitting around the picnic table when the detective’s car pulled into the parking lot. A flush came over Camille’s face as the tall detective made his way up the porch steps. He accepted her offer of a cup of coffee and settled himself in one of the director’s chairs, which, as always, looked too flimsy to hold his lanky body.
“Thought you might all like to know more about Mr. Hasonovic, as he called himself,” he said, swinging one long leg over the other.
“Sure would!” Meredith exclaimed, leaning forward on her elbows.
“Well, I just spent most of the morning on the phone with Amnesty International and the State Department,” Hansom said to her. “You were right; he wasn’t who he claimed to be.”
“I knew it!” Mered
ith crowed.
“Then who was he?” said Jack Mulligan.
“Well, Mr. Mulligan”—the detective fixed him with a cold gaze—“it seems he was operating under an alias.”
“Imagine that!” Jack exclaimed, and Claire couldn’t tell if he was being deliberately insolent or if he suspected that she had discovered his own alias.
“So who was he?” Meredith repeated impatiently.
“Well, he wasn’t Tahir Hasonovic, because the real Tahir Hasonovic was dead—because he killed him.” The detective paused for a moment to let the information sink in. “Best as we can figure it, his real name was Stefan Razdan, and he was a colonel in the Serbian army.”
There was another stunned silence, and then Sherry spoke.
“Wow. So that explains why he ate pork.”
“So he came to this country under the assumed name of the man he murdered?” Liza said, her big face blank.
“Right,” Hansom replied. “In fact, he was responsible for the massacre of an entire Croatian town—the same town Hasonovic wrote about in his story.”
“Let me get this straight,” Jack Mulligan said slowly. “This Serbian colonel kills Hasonovic after he writes about the massacre . . .”
“Right,” said Hansom. “And then, assuming his identity, he comes to America to escape retribution for his war crimes. Tahir Hasonovic was something of a celebrity among his own people in Bosnia, but Razdan escapes before his deeds catch up with him. Now, Hasonovic has already applied and been accepted at Ravenscroft, so Razdan must have figured what was the harm in showing up pretending to be him? He somehow managed to steal Hasonovic’s manuscripts, and it’s free room and board for a while.”
“Of course,” said Jack. “All he has to do is lay low—”
“And he doesn’t plan on running into someone who actually knew Hasonovic!” Sherry added.
“But Ms. Sorenson didn’t actually know him, as best we can figure it,” Hansom corrected. “She had visited the village and written about him, but evidently she never met the real Tahir Hasonovic.”
“Then why kill her?” said Camille.
“Because she was close to finding out his secret,” Claire answered. “For some reason, she was suspicious enough to confront him.” She told the others about the conversation she overheard between Maya and Razdan shortly after she arrived.
Liza sighed. “When Maya confronted Razdan, she probably never dreamed that here, in America, he would resort to murder to protect his identity.”
Sherry licked a spot of cream cheese from her paint-stained finger. “What about Terry? Did Razdan kill him because he knew Terry stole Maya’s journal, then?”
Detective Hansom nodded. “Looks that way. Of course, there are some things we’ll never know . . . why, for instance, he cut the brake cable on your car,” he said to Claire.
“He must have thought I was onto him, too,” Claire answered. The others stared at her.
“Claire!” said Liza. “You never told me!”
“He cut your brake cable?” Meredith said. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I told Ms. Rawlings not to reveal the information to anyone, since we didn’t know who we could trust,” Hansom replied.
“But you can trust me!” Meredith grumbled.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” Jack Mulligan rose and stretched. “It all proves something I’ve always thought. Politics is almost always, in the end, personal.”
Ted Lawrence chose that moment to appear at the front door, his eyes creased with sleep. “I apologize for sleeping so late,” he said, yawning. “Usually I’m awake with the birds. It must be something about the air up here.”
Maybe it was the release of tension after the stress of the past week, but for some reason this struck everyone as funny, and they all burst out laughing.
A look of bewilderment came over Ted Lawrence’s patrician face. “What? What did I say?”
This just caused everyone, even Detective Hansom, to laugh even harder.
“Oh, Father!” said Meredith, holding her sides. Claire had the sense that she was enjoying the chance to play the grown-up while her father stood there, barefoot, a look of puzzlement on his face.
Later, however, standing in the driveway in front of Ravenscroft, she looked vulnerable and childlike, dressed in one of Claire’s blue oxford shirts and her only clean pair of jeans. Meredith had neglected to do much laundry during her stay, and borrowed a shirt from Claire so she wouldn’t “embarrass her father” on the drive back to Connecticut. The shirt hung loosely on her bony shoulders, and clutched in her hand was Two Joe’s small brass statue of the rearing mustang; he had given it to her as a going-away present.
“Good-bye, Ralph,” she called to the cat, who was lurking under an azalea bush, sniffing at the ground. “He came to see me off,” she remarked to Claire as she climbed into the front seat of her father’s Cadillac. “Well, we’re even now,” she added, rolling down the window and looking out.
“What do you mean by that?” said Meredith’s father as he put her knapsack into the trunk of the car. The knapsack looked so small inside the roomy trunk, and the sight of it lying against an immaculate tire iron gave Claire a hollow feeling.
Meredith squirmed in her seat and fiddled with the seat belt. “I saved her life once, and now she’s saved mine.”
“Oh, I see,” Ted Lawrence replied, as though he were not quite listening to her.
“Okay,” Claire said, closing the car door as Meredith snapped her seat belt into place. “We’re even, okay?”
Meredith nodded. “Right. Even Steven. Good-bye, Redbird.” Her pale blue eyes looked misty in the thin morning light. Claire wondered if she actually saw tears or if it was a trick of the light. She leaned over and kissed Meredith on the cheek. Suddenly the girl wrapped her arms around Claire’s neck and pulled, hugging her so tightly that Claire had trouble taking a breath. Then, just as suddenly, Meredith released her and stared straight ahead, fingering the brass statue lying on the seat next to her.
Ted Lawrence closed the trunk and walked to the driver’s side of the car as Two Joe came out of the house.
“Good-bye, Lightning Flash,” he said, offering a large callused hand for Meredith to shake.
“Good-bye,” Meredith said. “Thanks for . . . you know.”
Two Joe nodded solemnly. “You are the one we all have to thank. Next time you must not take such a risk, however. Promise?”
Meredith sighed and shrugged her shoulders. “If there ever is a next time.”
Two Joe laid a hand on her shoulder. “Promise?”
Meredith let her head fall onto the seatback. “Okay. I promise.”
Ted Lawrence cleared his throat and extended his hand to Claire. “Thank you for . . . everything.”
“You’re welcome.” Claire took his hand. It was smooth and strong, with perfectly manicured nails. She was reminded of Wally’s beautiful hands, and was glad she was going to see him soon. Now, standing there saying goodbye to Meredith, she missed him with a sudden fierceness that surprised even her.
Ted Lawrence turned to Two Joe. “Thank you, too,” he said, “for looking after her.”
Two Joe nodded. “It was my honor. She is . . . well, you must know; you are her father.”
Ted Lawrence cleared his throat again, and his mouth moved, but no words came out. He squeezed Claire’s shoulder. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.
Claire watched the Cadillac pull slowly away, winding down the steep narrow curves of Guardian Mountain Road. A glint of sunlight flickered briefly off Meredith’s copper hair, and then the car disappeared around a bend in the road. Claire turned to Two Joe.
“I’m hungry.”
Two Joe nodded. “Me, too.”
He put his heavy comforting arm around her and together they went back into the house. A spray of sunlight fell on the honeysuckle bush next to the porch, yellow on yellow, and on a pile of fallen crumpled brown leaves beneath it. Claire inhaled the sweet smell of summ
er giving way to the crushed-leaf aroma of fall, and felt that it was good.
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by Carole Buggé
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any form. For information, address Writers House LLC at 21 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10010.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Print ISBN: 978-0-7867-5335-2
ebook ISBN: 978-0-7867-5334-5
Distributed by Argo Navis Author Services
Who Killed Dorian Gray? Page 28
