“That would be so nice of you, Miss MacLaren. I can’t tell you how much I’d appreciate that. We’ve got folks who can sure use all these fine suits and stuff.”
“Glad to help.” I was. It’s nice to be appreciated, and Tansy might be the only one to appreciate me that day.
I hung up and spoke with one of our drivers, then sat trying to figure out how justice could best be served without my hurting people I loved. I finally concluded it could not be done. What Skye had thought was his own private business was oozing all over the place now that he was gone, becoming public and very messy. The Bible isn’t kidding when it says the dark things we do in secret will one day be shouted from the housetops. The problem is, it is so often other people’s housetops.
The person who would get hurt the most, once more, was Gwen Ellen, so I wanted to see her soon. When I called a second time, Tansy told me, “Your truck came and we just finished loading. Miss Gwen Ellen says I should go with him, to help him unload and put the things on hangers so they’ll be ready for people who want them on Sunday. Then she says for me to go on home again. She’s got an appointment later anyway, and will be busy all day.”
“So she’s back? I want to run over and see her.”
“She’s upstairs right now, but I’ll tell her you’re coming.”
The courthouse clock chimed ten as I drove past. A minute later the Episcopalians chimed in with their spirited rendition of “Fight the Good Fight.”
“I’m doing my best,” I assured them as I drove past.
The truck and Tansy’s car were both gone when I got there. Gwen Ellen answered the door, lovely in moss-green pants, a creamy silk top, and a green tweed jacket that brought out green flecks in her eyes. I would have known without being told that she had just been to the beauty parlor, because the lovely smells that go with pampering wafted through the screen, and her hair had that silky sheen that is hard to get at your own bathroom vanity. “That style sure suits you,” I told her.
“Thank you. I can’t talk long because I have an appointment, but I think we have time for a cup of tea. I’ve just put the kettle on. Shall we sit out on the sunporch? It’s so pleasant today.” She moved to lead the way, but we both turned as a red Jeep Cherokee crackled up the gravel drive-way and pulled to a stop beside my car. Behind me, Gwen Ellen huffed daintily and muttered to herself, “She’s too early.”
I certainly never expected Marilee Muller to get out and head toward us. She looked like a blazing candle in pants and a jacket as red as her car, her hair the yellow flame. She had a determined set to her head and a charming smile on her face.
She was already talking as she approached us. “Hello, Mrs. MacDonald. Judge Yarbrough.” She added that as an afterthought, and gave me an odd, doubtful look. If she’d made this appointment for the showdown she’d threatened with Gwen Ellen, she couldn’t be pleased to see me.
“Do come in.” If Gwen Ellen’s welcome wasn’t warm, it was at least polite. The three of us went through the kitchen to the glass sunroom where Gwen Ellen had raised the bamboo blinds to catch the morning sun.
I claimed one of the green wicker chairs, took a deep breath of soft, fragrant air coming through a slightly open window, and decided to outstay Marilee. Surely she wouldn’t have the nerve to go through with a showdown with me right there. What could she hope to accomplish anyway? The person who said confession is good for the soul didn’t mean the confession of a mistress to her lover’s widow.
Marilee and Gwen Ellen each took a seat, and we sat there like the proper Southern ladies we were, all raised by mothers who sent us out into the world every morning with the warning, “Be sweet, now.” We talked about the weather, the new Mexican restaurant, and whether global warming had been causing all that rain. In a lull, Gwen Ellen put up her right hand to smooth her hair. Her new diamond sparkled in the sunlight.
Marilee stared. Her tongue darted out to lick her upper lip. “Where did you get that ring?” Her voice had almost no breath behind it.
Gwen Ellen steadied the stone with the fingers of her left hand and held it out for our admiration. “Skye bought it for me. Last Sunday was the thirtieth anniversary of the day we got engaged. Isn’t it lovely?”
“He never gave it to you.”
“No, Laura found it in his safe Sunday afternoon.”
Marilee lifted her chin. “He bought that ring for me.”
I felt a shiver of fear climb my spine. Things could go dreadfully wrong here.
Gwen Ellen’s eyes widened, and she pressed herself back in her chair. “I beg your pardon?”
“He bought it for me. He hadn’t gotten around to telling you, but your husband and I were planning to be married. Ask Judge Yarbrough—I told her all about it. He bought that ring for me. He showed it to me last Friday, then put it in his safe until he could tell you about us and get his divorce.”
Gwen Ellen turned so white I thought she’d faint, but she just sat there, staring at Marilee. Her eyes seemed larger and darker than usual.
I leaned toward Marilee and spoke firmly. “I think you ought to go. This isn’t helping anybody.”
She didn’t budge. “See how loose it is on her finger? It fits mine.” She held out her left hand with its large strong fingers. “It’s the last thing I have from Skye. I want it.”
Whatever Gwen Ellen was about to say, she was saved by the whistle. The kettle emitted a sound like an old-fashioned factory at quitting time. It was certainly quitting time for that conversation as far as I was concerned.
I started to stand. “I’ll make the tea.”
Gwen Ellen waved me back. “No, I’ll do it.” She rose unsteadily, putting out one hand to keep her balance.
“You don’t have coffee, do you?” Marilee asked. “I’ve never been a tea person. If you don’t, it’s all right. A glass of water will do.”
“There’s coffee. It’s no bother.” Gwen Ellen moved out of the room like a woman negotiating her way underwater. I felt a little at sea myself.
“That was very cruel,” I informed Marilee.
She gave a little shrug with one shoulder. “I didn’t mean to be, but there’s no point in pretending. If something is true, it’s true.”
“Honey, if Southern women hadn’t pretended for the last two hundred and fifty years, we’d all be snatched bald-headed by now. Pretending is the cornerstone of polite society.”
We didn’t say another word until Gwen Ellen came in with a tray holding a china teapot, the pot from her cof feemaker, and three cups. “I used the butterfly cups,” she told me, adding to Marilee, “The butterfly stands for resurrection.” She set the tray on the green wicker table and poured out. “Sugar?” she asked Marilee, holding a cube above her cup with silver tongs.
“Yes, please.” Maybe Marilee would be nice after all. She leaned back in her chair, crossed her long legs, and seemed prepared to pretend this was a normal tea party. She didn’t mention the diamond ring. Gwen Ellen had taken it off.
After Gwen Ellen dropped three sugar cubes in Marilee’s cup and offered milk, which Marilee refused, she poured our tea and handed me a cup with lemon. She squeezed a slice of lemon into her own and raised it to her lips. “Poor Tansy,” she said softly. “This past week has plumb worn her out. I told her not to bother coming back when she finishes at the church.”
Instead of sitting down, she fussed around the porch, carrying her cup and taking occasional sips as she pinched yellow leaves off the potted geraniums and dropped them into the wastebasket. She bent to straighten a stack of magazines. “These are so old. I need to go through things in this house and throw stuff away. We’ve been here so long that all the closets are crammed and all the window seats are full. Remember, Mac, how you once said you’d bring your extra stuff over here to store because we had so much storage space? We don’t have any extra space right now.”
“This past week has worn us all out,” I told her. “Sit down. Don’t fool with those right now.”
“I fe
el like I could sleep a hundred years,” she admitted. But when she sat, she merely perched, still sipping her tea. “More?” she asked.
Marilee took another cup of coffee, and Gwen Ellen poured herself more tea. I didn’t like this particular tea she was serving—it was one of those fancy new ones she was always trying—so I claimed that my cup was still half full, but kept sipping to avoid talking.
In all our years of friendship, I couldn’t remember feeling so uncomfortable with Gwen Ellen. Normally she was a restful person to be with. Now she kept watching Marilee as if afraid she’d burst out again.
Marilee sipped her coffee and frowned, as if trying to decide what to say next. I still wondered why she had come.
I crossed my legs one way, decided that wasn’t comfortable, and tried them the other. “Laura told me about what you are doing with the business, Gwen Ellen,” I said. “I think that is grand. She loves it as much as Skye ever did.”
Gwen Ellen nodded. “Skell never has, you know. I hope he’ll let her run it and find something else to do, something he really likes.”
“I’m sure he will.”
We could have been actresses sitting on a stage. I just wished somebody had handed me my script ahead of time, so I’d know my part. I was so unaccustomed to sunshine that I was getting drowsy, too—or maybe that was my antihistamine kicking in. But I was determined to outstay Marilee. Was she hoping I’d leave? I crossed my legs again and prepared to wait her out.
At last she came to a decision. “Could we get to the point? I have an appointment this afternoon.”
I looked from one to the other in surprise. Gwen Ellen had called this meeting?
She set down her cup with a dainty click. “Very well. You went with my husband to a ranch for a week, didn’t you? You went as Mrs. Fergus MacDonald.”
Marilee was startled but bold as brass. “Yes, I did. Did Skye tell you?”
“No. I saw an envelope in his office addressed to both of us, so I took it with me. I read it in the beauty parlor while I was waiting to get my hair cut. It said they hoped we enjoyed our week with them and would come again. But I’d never been there.” Her face was very pale. “Can you imagine what it was like to have to sit there pretending my world hadn’t just ended?”
For once, Marilee seemed embarrassed. “I’m real sorry about that. Skye and I wouldn’t have hurt you that way for the world. He wanted to explain . . . to make it easy for you.”
“To make it easy for me.” Gwen Ellen did not make a question out of it, but Marilee answered anyway.
“He honored all the years you’d had together. He didn’t want to hurt you. But we were so much in love, you see.”
I put out a hand to stop her, but Gwen Ellen put her hand over mine. “No, I want to hear. When did you meet my husband?”
“We were on a committee together for the college. To raise funds from alums, you know?”
“Yes, he told me.”
“We didn’t mean for anything to happen, but it was like—electric.” Her face lit up and she gave a happy little laugh; then she pressed one hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be saying things like that to you. But you asked,” she added defiantly, “and we were going to get married. He’d bought me the ring.”
“You think he would have actually married you?” Gwen Ellen’s voice was remote, as if she were asking about two strangers. “He’d have lost the business, you know. MacDonald’s wasn’t his; it was mine. I made him put it in my name after Nicole was born.” She saw me jump, and spoke to me. “I knew about Nicole’s mother. I just pretended Saturday for Laura’s sake. Skye was so ashamed, he had to tell me. It made him feel better, I think.”
She didn’t say how it had made her feel. I stared at her in astonishment and admiration. Never in twenty years had she betrayed him, even to me, who knew her so well.
“Did you also pretend that Skye wanted Laura to have half the company?” I asked, hoping it wasn’t true. Laura had been so touched by her daddy’s change of heart.
“Oh, no. He really did change his mind. He told me on the way to the Mexican restaurant that he’d finally accepted that Laura would be better at running the business than Skell. He said he thought I should leave it to them jointly. Laura could run it and let Skell do something else.” She turned back to Marilee. “Do you understand what I’m saying? If Skye married you, he’d have had to give up the company. Do you really think he would have done that?” She stifled a yawn.
Marilee leaped to her feet. “He was going to marry me. He was. You’ll never make me believe otherwise.” She stormed out of the room. “He loved me,” she called back.
“He loved that motor company,” Gwen Ellen called after her.
The back door slammed.
Only then did she turn to me, her eyes full of pain. “He was going to marry her, MacLaren. When he got home that evening after work, I showed him the letter and asked who he’d gone with. He admitted it was Marilee, and he said he couldn’t help himself, he loved her. He wanted to marry her. You didn’t know, MacLaren—nobody knew—but Skye’s had other women through the years. He thought I didn’t know, but I did. I put up with it because he always played out of town. This time, though, was different. He said he was real sorry to be hurting me, but he just had to be with her. He said she made him feel alive and young again.” Gwen Ellen lightly touched the haircut that hadn’t made her young enough. “That’s why he told me on the way to the restaurant what he thought I ought to do with the business. He was giving it up. He was planning to leave.” Tears filled her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
“Oh, honey!” Tears stung my own eyes and clogged my throat. “I saw the letter, too. You left it on your dresser, and I was up there looking for Skell’s ferret. But I didn’t realize at the time that the dude ranch trip was the same week Skye was supposed to be in Denver and you and I went on our weekend retreat. Laura said she couldn’t reach him there to get his approval for a new radio ad. That’s because he was in New Mexico, I guess.”
She wasn’t paying attention to me. Her dark head was bent toward the window, listening. When we heard Marilee’s car start, she gave a remote little smile. Then she turned to me and said the oddest thing. “MacLaren, I really wish you hadn’t stayed so long.”
“You killed Skye, didn’t you?” I asked gently. “After you all left the restaurant, he went by some property he was thinking of buying for Hands Up Together. When he got out to look at it, you ran over him.”
The tears that had stood in her eyes welled up and rolled down her cheeks. Slowly she nodded.
She started to talk in a dreary, toneless voice. “I didn’t care a thing about that land, but he just had to show it to me. He was so excited about that project. But when he got out of the car and I saw him standing there looking at the fields, all I could think of was the letter in my pocketbook, and how no matter what he did to me and the children, everybody was still going to say what a fine man he was. Skye MacDonald, benefactor of Hopemore. They wouldn’t care if he left me and married Marilee—not for long, they wouldn’t. They wouldn’t care if he had more children. He was killing our family, MacLaren. Yet people would still think he was fine.” She pressed a hand to her mouth to stem the torrent.
Do not destroy. That’s what the last six commandments are all about. Don’t destroy yourselves by working too hard. Don’t destroy trust, love, life, natural boundaries, and truth among you. The commandments aren’t heavy-handed Keep Out signs. Joe Riddley calls them “the manufacturer’s operating instructions for this computer we call life.” Skye violated those instructions. But oh, my dear God, so had Gwen Ellen.
She spoke in a whisper. “I couldn’t let him destroy us. I slid over into his seat, put the car in gear, and ran right over him. Then I backed up and drove away. The whole time I drove back to town, I thought, ‘I can’t live without Skye. I can’t. God, let me die; let me die!’ But I didn’t have the courage to kill myself. When I saw I was on Oglethorpe Street, I decided to go to
the church. I don’t know why.”
I did. Sanctuary. The refuge of lost and desperate souls for centuries. “Oh, God, you are our fortress.” The Psalm left my lips in a murmur. I half rose in my chair, wanting to take her in my arms like I used to when she was little, but she waved me back to my seat.
“Let me finish. I have to tell you. I parked in back so nobody would see me, and I wiped the steering wheel real good. Then I slid to my own side, because my prints were supposed to be there. I got out and started for the door, but just then it started to rain. Buckets and buckets, all at once. I didn’t want to track muddy water all over the church, and I was already soaked, so I decided to walk home. This may sound silly, but that walk in the storm felt like a cold, cleansing shower. And I had lots of time to think exactly what I would do and say the next morning. If it had just been me, I’d have gone straight to the police station. But I didn’t want the children to suffer any more than they had to.” For the first time I saw remorse and uncertainty in her eyes. “After I got inside, I threw my clothes in the dryer and took a sleeping pill. When I woke up the next morning, I truly didn’t remember for a few minutes what I had done. I thought Skye was just down at the motor company. And then, I remembered—”
Sobs finally came, terrible racking sobs that wrenched her shoulders and heaved up her grief. “I worked in the yard all morning and felt like I was burying my love under chicken manure. He did bad things, Mac, but I loved him. I truly loved him.”
Finally I could go to her. Kneel down and hold her, murmur senseless things that seemed to comfort and quiet her.
“How did you know?” she whispered into my collar. “How did you figure it out?”
“The ground wasn’t wet under him. It started pouring rain just as we got to Maynard’s, and we left Casa Mas Esperanza not too long after you did. There wasn’t time for Skye to come home, come inside the house with you, receive a phone call, and get back out there. When I thought about how little time anybody had to kill him, it had to be you.” I shivered as I remembered that what had worried Gwen Ellen the day after Skye died was not who could have killed him, but that he had lain all night in the rain.
Who Left That Body in the Rain? Page 26
