“So, to quote someone’s maiden aunt, Robert Clay was quite a catch.”
“Robert Clay wasn’t Robert Clay.”
Jordan raised an eyebrow, the first indication of more than polite interest in her story. “What do you mean?”
She repeated. “Robert Clay was a work of fiction. The name I’d stupidly scribbled on pads of paper along with my own — Mrs. Bethany Clay — didn’t exist. Robert Clay was really Adam Scott. He was from Pacifica, not too far from here, and his Mustang wasn’t his Mustang. It belonged to some poor guy in Berkeley. Then there was a Corvette in Sacramento, an MG in Reno, a Thunderbird in Denver. I may have the cars and cities mixed up, but you get the idea.”
“Ah, Beth,” Jordan said, his facial features softening as he thought he gained understanding. “You fell for a thief. But you were seventeen. Being starry-eyed isn’t a crime. Still, what does this have to do w —”
“Starry-eyed is an understatement,” Beth’s voice escalated. “I was stupid, plain and simple. I followed my heart while my head took a holiday. Yes, Adam Scott was a thief. And Adam Scott was a very nearly a murderer. And everything that happened was my fault.”
39
In that moment, Beth glimpsed the return of the Jordan she’d come to care so deeply about. His face registered shock, sympathy, and concern that went beyond courtesy. He felt something — she knew it. Whether it was love or not remained to be seen, and for the briefest time, it appeared that he might rise up, rush to her side, and put his arms around her.
Then it was Jordan’s turn to inhale deeply. He remained where he was, took another moment to digest what she’d said, then spoke. “What do you mean it was your fault?”
She closed her eyes, trying to will away the hideous memory, but she knew Jordan was waiting for, and deserved, an explanation. After several deep breaths she still couldn’t meet his gaze.
“It was one of those perfect nights,” she began, staring at the ceiling. “Gentle breeze, plenty of stars — we were drinking lemonade on the front porch. How hokey it all must have seemed to him. But he played it for all it was worth …”
Beth paused again, sighed, then braced herself to continue. “The next afternoon, I came home from school, later than usual, to find my mother unconscious.”
“Jesus. This Scott guy?”
She nodded. “He’d hit her with the metal box full of money he was stealing.” She looked at Jordan then, his expression still not understanding the whole truth. “And who do you suppose let slip where we kept our money?”
Jordan seemed about to react then thought better of it.
“I was such an ass,” she said and hung her head. “I also told him that mom was going to meet with her garden club and would be gone for the better part of the day. The only way it would have been easier is if I’d just handed him the money outright. And the blood, Jordan — so much of it. I thought my mother was dead.”
Her voice caught, and she found it difficult to swallow. Jordan remained silent, giving her time to wrestle with the murky shadows of her past, memories of a fantasy gone horribly wrong. Eventually he asked, “What was this creep doing in your bed-and-breakfast? The whole image is ridiculous.”
“Would you go looking for a killer at a quaint Victorian establishment? Adam Scott was practised at the art of the unpredictable. He didn’t appear to be on the run. He planned to stay in Eureka Springs for a few days, take in some of the sights. In reality, he was scouting around for license plates to steal, or another car. Those few times I was with him, I never suspected that anyone might be in danger. All I could see was a dazzling smile, a hot car, the smooth charm —”
“Don’t torture yourself, Beth. You were all of seventeen. You were attracted to the things most young people go for. But why, so many years later, are you suspicious of me? Do I remind you of this guy? You seemed willing enough to trust me earlier.”
She nodded, feeling herself warm slightly at the thought of how quickly she’d jumped into bed with Jordan, how badly she wanted to be there right now. “I told myself never to follow my heart again, that during times of vulnerability, one’s heart as a guide is hopelessly inaccurate. So I became a champion workaholic. Queen of the Two-Date Quickstep. No involvement, no hurt feelings.”
“And?”
“Then I met you and all my sensible advice flew out the window. Everything felt so right.”
The soap-opera diva was back.
Jordan leaned forward. “Then why the turnaround?”
She paused, knowing no amount of diplomacy or subtlety would make what she had to say easy to hear.
He seemed to sense this. “Go ahead, Beth. You’ve come this far.”
“Part of it is the hysteria surrounding the Spiderman,” she admitted. “Jim Kearns, who is in charge of the investigation, is a friend of mine.”
Jordan looked surprised.
Beth nodded. “He kept reminding me about this lunatic at large. His obsession became my obsession. The Spiderman was jumping out from behind every bush, and some of the characteristics of the killer could have belonged to you.”
“Wait a minute. So all the questions weren’t really about my so-called mysterious past? You actually thought I could be some psycho killer?” He shook his head in disbelief. “Beth, the Spiderman’s profile could fit almost any guy between the ages of twenty and forty-five.”
“I know, but those letters I’ve been getting have me spooked, and Ginny casually pointed out that they first appeared shortly after I met you.”
“And here I thought she liked me.”
“You were so reluctant to discuss your past …”
“You didn’t tell me about Adam Scott. Doesn’t that qualify as part of your secret past? Look how what he did affected the way you see people. Everybody has a skeleton or two they feel should stay locked up.”
“You have to understand how Jim Kearns rattled my chain. He asked me loads of questions about you, and constantly reminded me of the Spiderman’s profile. So many things fit. The way we met — Jim made it sound like you’d been stalking me. The medallion you wear — the same symbol is connected to the killer. Then when I learned you’d dated Anne Spalding —”
He seemed genuinely confused. “How did you know I knew Anne?”
“Come on, Jordan.”
“You’ve lost me.”
She stared at him. If he lied to her now, would she recognize it? “Anne lived with me.”
“What?”
“She rented my spare bedroom. Brad told me you dated her. Your being with Anne was too much of a coincidence.”
“Suddenly, I feel the need for a drink. Be right back.” He got out of the chair and went into the kitchen, returning minutes later with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, some Evian, and two glasses. The action of uncorking the wine, filling the glasses, and pausing between sips relaxed the atmosphere and slowed the momentum of the conversation.
At length, he said, “I never knew.”
“Jordan, how is that possible? You two dated, you must have picked her up at my place, dropped her off —”
“Never. You see, Anne and I met for drinks after a flight, usually at a bar near the airport. We never went beyond that, and it was clear she guarded her privacy. I didn’t know where she lived. None of us did. She always insisted on taking a taxi home, and because I knew about her husband’s violent bent, I let Anne call the shots. She apparently didn’t want to entertain the possibility of her address leaking out somehow and getting back to her ex. She was petrified.”
It made sense. Anne would be cautious, and Jordan would respect that. “Then whoever killed her must have worked overtime to gain her trust. Poor Anne. And poor you. Jordan, I’m more sorry than I can ever tell you. Since I’m already in the confessional booth, I may as well tell you my ultimate sin.”
She explained her visit to Father Daniel Fortescue, how she pumped the priest for information about Jordan, thinking this would nail the coffin shut on their relationship permanently. Oddly,
Jordan seemed neither surprised nor angry.
“I guess with the emotional climate of the city right now, everyone seems guilty until proven innocent. If it makes you feel any better, the police questioned me about Anne, and they seem satisfied that I’m on the up and up. In fact, your buddy Kearns spoke to me the morning of Brad’s party.”
Beth remembered how exhausted Jordan had been. Her interrogation, on top of Kearns’s, had understandably angered him. “Oh Jordan, I’ve been just awful. Hell, you should be bouncing me out of here after what I’ve done. Can you forgive me?”
“Forgiving isn’t a problem, Beth. Forgetting will take a little time, but I’ll work on it.”
“Can I make a toast?” Beth held up her goblet. “To keeping a balance between head and heart.”
He stood, glass in hand, stepped around the table and sat beside her on the couch. “To new beginnings.” They clinked glasses.
Beth knew then that things would get better. Not only did her honesty feel liberating, but voicing her story about Adam acted like a kind of catharsis, too.
“You never said, Beth. Whatever happened to Scott?”
She shrugged. “Adam Scott is probably on his twentieth alias somewhere, duping some other poor fool. If I could erase one thing from my past —”
“But you can’t. And neither can I. But since you’ve gone to so much trouble to learn about my past, I may as well tell you.”
Jordan refilled his wineglass, took a deep breath and began. “I was thirteen. I had this brilliant idea to jump on a bus and surprise my mother for her birthday. We hadn’t seen each other in awhile, so I thought she’d get a kick out of it.”
He paused, his voice tinged with bitterness. Beth waited in silence while Jordan wrestled with a memory. He took several gulps of wine before he could continue.
“The long bus ride left me bagged, but I was so excited I almost forgot how tired I was. I ran the last three blocks home, flowers in one hand and a birthday card in the other. I could already imagine how happy my mother would be when I raced in hollering ‘surprise!’ But of course it didn’t go like that.
“I stood in her bedroom doorway like a prize idiot, holding a bouquet of wilted daisies while some fat, naked creep lay on top of her, pounding away.”
His face was frozen in anger, his mouth a tight straight line.
“It seems there was a long list of naked creeps willing to pay significant sums of money for the pleasure of mother’s company.”
At once, the wineglass shattered in his hand, the contents forming a dark circle on the rug. Jordan stared, transfixed by a rivulet of blood running between his thumb and index finger.
“Oh, Jordan, I’m sorry.” Beth reached across to examine his injured hand, but Jordan dismissed the gesture. He gazed a moment longer at the blood before pressing the cut to his lips. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he replied, his eyes focused on the stain on the carpet.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am,” she repeated, hoping he could somehow forgive her. “I never should have pried.”
“Nothing to be sorry for. Besides, the past doesn’t matter. It’s the future that counts. See? The bleeding’s stopped.” He showed her his hand, then stood up and beckoned to her. “Follow me,” he said. “I’ve got something for you.”
He led her, not upstairs to the bedroom, but into the kitchen and toward a narrow door to the left of the refrigerator.
She laced her fingers through his, loved the feel of his hand, the strength of his grasp. “Where are we going?” she asked.
“A project I’ve been working on,” he said with a smile. “I want you to see it. It’s in the basement.”
Jordan clicked the light switch, but the stairway remained dark. “Damn,” he said. “Must have blown a bulb. Don’t worry. There’s another light on a pull chain down there. Just be careful.”
Beth let him lead the way. She put one hand on his shoulder. Her other hand clutched at a wooden railing. They descended the steps to the cellar, and behind Beth, the narrow door closed, enshrouding them in darkness.
40
Sondra Devereaux sat opposite Kearns, the media maven’s dressing room at the cable station little more than a walk-in closet with two chairs, a cluttered table, and a mirror. There was space on the pink walls for one piece of framed art — a botanical poster in a mélange of candy colours that made Kearns think of Smarties. Devereaux wore a tailored royal-blue suit. A boldly-patterned scarf was tucked into the round neckline. Kearns thought the woman had good skin, underneath the pancake makeup, though the crow’s feet were cracking through the layers. As for her teeth, he couldn’t tell. Devereaux wasn’t smiling.
“You look like you’re sizing me up for a ribbon at the county fair,” she said. “But I’m sure that’s not what brings you by.”
“You don’t like me much, do you, Ms. Devereaux?” Kearns asked.
She laughed from deep in her belly. “You’re kidding! Instead of catching killers, you’re here because your feelings are hurt? Oh, that’s rich.”
“We’re working our tails off on this case.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. ‘Pursuing countless leads,’ isn’t that what you keep telling everybody? Spare me. You and your Keystone Kops have got diddly. What are people supposed to say — thanks for trying, guys? No matter what cop jargon you try to shovel, it still translates to six dead women, doesn’t it?”
“No one knows that more than I do, Ms. Devereaux. You think a little piece of us doesn’t die too when we visit a crime scene?” Kearns bit his lip. This wasn’t going as planned. He was exhausted, edgy, and re-entering the realm of the perennially pissed off. Devereaux was getting to him.
He took a long breath and forced himself to relax in the stiff chair. “We need the public’s support,” he said. “Someone out there knows something, and we want them to feel they can approach the police. You, Ms. Devereaux, are turning people against us.”
“So it’s co-operation you want, is it?” the media queen huffed. “Well, let me tell you a little story about what happens when people cooperate, Lieutenant Kearns. And after you’re done listening, if you still want to whine about no one wanting to play in your sandbox, then you’re not the man I want in charge of this investigation.”
Devereaux crossed her legs, and Kearns tried to avoid staring at her shapely calves. She leaned back in her chair and propped her elbows on the table behind her.
“It was July,” Devereaux began. “1992. I had a lunch date and had just unlocked my car door when this goon comes charging out of nowhere, shoves me onto the seat, holds a knife to my throat, and tells me to drive. I don’t need to spell out what happened next, do I? Or how many times?”
Kearns shook his head.
“As if what he did to me weren’t bad enough, I got victimized all over again at the hospital. Cop number one asks me what the guy looked like, what he wore, what he said. Cop two takes my underwear. Cop three asks me the same questions as cop one. It was a freak show. Come see the victim! Seventy-five cents!”
Devereaux uncrossed her legs, leaned forward, and stared hard at Kearns. “So you see, Lieutenant Kearns? I co-operated. And guess where it got me. Fucking nowhere.”
Manuel Fuentes gobbled the remains of a spicy capicollo on a kaiser. His current food craze was deli meats, which suited Jim Kearns just fine since that was his own lunch of preference. He had previously observed Manny’s fibre phase, where lunches alternated between multi-grain bagels and spinach salads. Then there’d been the fruit phase, the protein phase, and the no-mixing-carbos-with-protein phase. Fuentes fervently embraced each new dietary quirk inspired by the latest article Rosa would find in a woman’s magazine, aware that a week or two hence, he’d be off on some other food detour. Kearns knew too, that Manny could be on a mastadon-and-whipped-cream diet and still fit into the tux he wore at his wedding.
Kearns caught Fuentes’s glance at his rare roast beef sandwich, only two bites missing.
“Diet?” Fuentes asked him.
“No thanks. I like it the colour it is,” Kearns answered, smoothing a hand through his red hair.
“That line’s as old as you. No appetite?”
“Not much.” He shoved the sandwich toward Fuentes. “Go ahead. Be my guest.”
Fuentes hesitated, as if he suspected Kearns might regain his appetite in a half an hour or so, then reconsidered and took the sandwich.
“Does it taste funny to you?”
“Nothing wrong that I can tell.” He swallowed loudly.
He watched Fuentes devour his sandwich. Kearns never needed to diet. Bouts of chronic depression melted the weight off him like a rubber straightjacket. There was a rhythm to the illness that Kearns could count on. Whenever his pants started fitting snugly, some event, something his therapist called part of his “toxic environment” would emerge, then close in and suffocate. Neither Kearns nor Fuentes spoke about their recent argument, though today, Kearns noticed that their voices were more subdued, almost wary, as if any change in the volume or tone might upset the equilibrium both were trying to regain.
“Never thought I’d say this, but I’m starting to understand where Sondra Devereaux is coming from. She’s got her own issues to work through.” Kearns chuckled at his own psychobabble, then explained the meeting he’d had with the prima donna of the cable set.
“Did they ever catch the guy?”
“Nope. Any wonder she hates us all? We couldn’t do our job then, and we can’t do it now. I tell you, crazy as that woman makes me, I do feel sorry for her.”
Fuentes took a final bite and followed the mouthful of horseradish with a gulp of Diet Orange Crush. “Wasn’t that long ago you wanted her dead.”
“Now I only want to murder her evil twin, you know, the persona Devereaux’s created.”
“I guess you never really know someone, huh? Wonder what we’ll learn about our arachnid friend when we catch him?”
Every Wickedness Page 18
