Benito yipped. Boris had just bopped him on the head with a questing paw. He looked like a kid on Christmas, given a fantastic new toy. “Boris,” I said, but he ignored me. When Benito growled, baring his little rat teeth in his little rat face, Boris hissed, huffed until he was easily twice Benito’s size, and then batted the dog clean off the chair. Benito ran under the chair, whereupon Boris dove after him. There was a loud noise of hissing, growling, and then Benito streaked out of the room with a shrill cry. Boris emerged from under the chair, preening.
“I should have that damn dog put down. It was a gift from that….man.” A careful look at me preceded the word man. Jack had the grace to look somewhat embarrassed by his father’s brush with political incorrectness. “Useless.”
“Lisa loved him,” said Jack, and I couldn’t tell if he meant the dog or Raymond.
Time to go, when thunderclouds appeared on Uncle Littlepage’s brow. I retrieved Boris, and was almost out of the room when Uncle Littlepage commented, “I am glad you came.”
Whip-whap went Boris’s tail. Not that I needed him to tell me Uncle Littlepage was lying.
As he saw me out, Jack said, “We are very glad you found out about Cynthia, you know.”
Boris’s tail twitched twice. I asked abruptly, “Why was your mother seeing someone at Sunrise?”
He stiffened. “How…”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Sources.”
He looked away from me. His jaw clenched. “Mother had trouble sleeping.”
You don’t see a shrink for insomnia, unless it’s psychologically related insomnia. I ventured, “Guilt, maybe?”
Now the pale blue eyes locked on mine. “I do not presume to know what was in Mother’s head.”
Whereas I desperately wanted to.
“What do I have a right to know?”
My cousin’s entire face tightened up. “I wanted Father to let you see the records. As a relative, at least. He won’t budge. I’m sorry. I should have tried harder.”
So should I, maybe, but I gave up for the moment. “G’night, Cousin Jack.”
“Good night, Cousin Lil.”
***^***
“You just don’t like her.”
That was true. I didn’t like Mary Littlepage. I stirred the tea Aunt Marge swore would boost my immune system. It was green. Beyond that, I didn’t dare guess what it might be. “Jack was trying to tell me something without saying it.”
Aunt Marge sipped daintily at her own tea. I take mine in a big mug emblazoned with a crime-fighting cartoon dog. She has hers in a bone china cup with a delicate pattern of little blue flowers, vintage 1880-something. Turner family heirloom, like the Waterford crystal and the handblown wine glasses, and a tiara from Cartier. Aunt Marge let me wear the tiara when I was little, and played at being Wonder Woman.
“It makes no sense, dear. What woman could kill her own child?”
“I don’t know. I’m not exactly familiar with the way they think.”
“Lil,” she said wearily, “I won’t deny the Littlepages have odd ways, but it’s over. Let poor Lisa rest in peace.”
That’s the problem Aunt Marge didn’t understand. My unknown cousin was resting in peace. I was the one who couldn’t.
***^***
It’s said a Littlepage can freeze a person with their eyes. They can also burn, like a laser. “Whatever you think…”
“I know what I think,” I spat, and spun on my heel, gravel crunching underfoot. Jack and I had decided to meet at my office, but we had less chance of being overheard standing in the parking lot than if we went inside. The last thing I wanted was for Kim to start a whole new tsunami of gossip about Lisa’s murder. “I think your mother gave Cynthia Biggs a financial reward for killing Lisa. I just don’t know if she hired her for it!” I glared at him, glad I had Eller height. I needed the advantage. “So tell me, dammit!”
“I can’t,” snarled my cousin, with what I took to be real agony. “I don’t know either!”
We stepped away from each other, each taking big deep breaths. At the FBI, I had been taught how to keep my composure under extremely trying circumstances, but my instructors had never visited my hometown. “Okay, what about your father? We know he must know something, or he would not have sent your mother to live in France. Have you told him I could get a warrant for her arrest if I have grounds?”
Cousin Jack kicked the ground. Gravel pinged off his Lexus. So much for the fancy finish. “My father insists he sent her away for her health.”
I stifled a scream of frustration. “And thanks to privacy laws, I can’t access her medical records with just his permission, so he can say whatever he likes on that score. Look, Jack, you loved your sister. He loved your sister. Between the two of you, can you think of something?”
I had never expected to see any of my blood relatives as actual human beings, but just then, my Littlepage cousin was a pitiable example of the race. If he had not been born and raised a Littlepage, he would have openly sobbed. “I thought about going to France to kill her, but I don’t think that would really help.”
I decided I had one last chance. They say that solving a murder is all about knowing the victim. It is also about understanding the perpetrator. If I could make enough of the connection between Cynthia Biggs and Mary Littlepage, if I could find enough threads to tie together the pieces of this case, I might be able to sleep at night.
I didn’t know if my cousin would ever sleep again.
I considered asking one more time for access to the financial records. I couldn’t do it. Jack was suffering enough.
There was no way around it.
I was going to have to talk to Cynthia’s mother.
***^***
Mrs. Lorraine Biggs lived in Virginia Beach. She had a very nice condo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, and on the balcony, squeezed between boxes of geraniums, she had set up a telescope. It had nothing to do with astronomy. Plain and simple, Mrs. Biggs likes to spy on the people on the beach.
Lorraine Biggs viewed me apathetically. She sat in a very nice, cushioned rattan chair, her feet up on the balcony railing and cigarette smoke drifting from the stub between her fingers. On a tiny white painted metal table between us, she had placed a glass of instant lemonade for me, and a very large glass of wine for her. In a nod to the cool weather, she wore a hand knitted sweater in tropical colors that matched her flip-flops.
Wherever Cynthia had gotten her need for camouflage, it had not been from her mother.
“I don’t see why you want to talk about it,” said Lorraine. She waved her cigarette hand under her nose, inhaling deeply. “She confessed to a pretty big sin, and then she committed a bigger one. Nothing left to say.”
I pulled Boris back from the railing, right before a seagull came squawking near. “There is a little more to it than that, isn’t there?” I tried to smile at her but failed. “There’s Mary Littlepage paying off this condo. I don’t know many bosses who would do that.”
Mrs. Biggs pretended interest in the abandoned beach. “Maybe you just haven’t worked for very nice people.”
I didn’t quite laugh in her face. “Mrs. Biggs, if your daughter talked to you as regularly as her phone records indicate, you know Mary Littlepage isn’t a very nice person. Why don’t we both stop wasting time, and tell some truth. I think Mary Littlepage paid off your condo to reward Cynthia for killing her daughter.”
Most people in that situation pretended to be disgusted or surprised. I gave Mrs. Biggs credit for honesty. She didn’t even blink. “It was Cynthia’s idea to buy me this place. I had nothing to do with it.”
I petted Boris, nodding my belief in her statement. “I would like to know one thing, when exactly was the mortgage paid off?”
Without a word, Mrs. Biggs shuffled inside. I sat quietly with Boris, staring at sunlight bouncing off the cool gray ocean, until she returned. She handed me the notification from the bank that had held the mortgage. The date was one week before Lisa’s death.
<
br /> The condo complex had a fax machine and copier in the management office. I made a copy of the paperwork, faxed it to my office as well as the state police, and returned the original to Mrs. Biggs.
I went for the throat. “One last thing, ma’am. Do you think your daughter was capable of stabbing someone to death for money?”
Mrs. Biggs stared flatly at me. After what seemed a very long time, she replied, “I think it’s pretty obvious she was. But I got to say, I never would have expected her to use a knife.”
I refrained from correcting her. It had been a letter opener.
“I would have figured Cynthia would buy a gun or something clean. She never could abide a mess. Even when she was three or four years old, she had to have her room spick and span.”
I remembered Cynthia’s confession, the near-hysteria in her voice when she cried out that she hadn’t meant it to be that way. All of a sudden, her words made terrible new sense. It wasn’t killing Lisa she hadn’t intended. It was doing it messy.
I asked Mrs. Biggs a few more questions, along the lines of what Cynthia had mentioned about Lisa Littlepage, Raymond Gomez, but Mrs. Biggs had nothing more to say. And she didn’t say it, very loudly.
As I left, I noticed that Mrs. Biggs had a collection of signed photographs of a dozen prominent televangelists. I paused at the door to give the living room a much harder, better look than I’d given it on the way in. Despite the garish tropical theme of the decor, the room had a stern, cold feel to it, as if it was all steel and concrete. As my eyes scanned the room, the glittery picture of a smiling Jesus above the couch suddenly shifted, one of those three-dimensional trick images. Seen one way, it was a smiling Jesus; seen the other, it was a God of wrath.
I no longer wondered about Cynthia Biggs’s ability to commit murder. I was amazed she hadn’t done it sooner.
***^***
On the long drive home, I talked to Boris about the case. I took a lot of comfort from knowing that I was talking to another living creature, and not just to myself. Even though Boris fell asleep ten minutes after we left Virginia Beach.
My cousin Jack had been shocked to learn that his sister was romantically involved with someone of Hispanic descent. His father had seemed disappointed. Yet neither appeared to have any knowledge of Lisa’s extracurricular romantic activities before her murder. It raised a question or two. First off, how had Mary Littlepage learned about it? Second, how could the male Littlepages be so clueless?
The capacity of men to be without a clue preoccupied me until I got back to Crazy. It was safer than wondering how Mary Littlepage found out about Raymond Gomez. Men could only make me nuts. Mary Littlepage might just drive me to drink.
As I drove along Main, I ran down the list of those who knew the truth, or at least, knew more of it than I did.
Lisa, obviously, and she wasn’t talking.
Cynthia Biggs, ditto.
Mary Littlepage, and I’d see ice dancing in hell before I’d get a grain of truth out of that woman, presuming she ever came back from France.
Uncle Littlepage, who wouldn’t talk.
“Shit!” I yelled at the sky, a particularly dreary one, with low scudding clouds that, in a few months, would hold snow. “Shit, shit, shit!”
And just to top off my day, what did I see as I turned onto Piedmont? Eddie friggin’ Brady. With his idiot buddy Norm Spivey. They were creeping up the road behind WCZY that led to the tower. They were carrying a large wooden crate between them.
I parked quietly in front of the building, and slunk after them. Boris crept behind me, tail fluffed with pure excitement. Then, just as the men reached the trees, I shouted, “Police! Stop!”
Which was when something happened that only happens in Crazy.
They dropped the crate. Two planks popped off. As Eddie and Norm sprinted down toward Seventh Street, a snarling head emerged, followed by a lot of snarling body.
I like dogs. In fact, I’d like to have a dog. And I’m well aware that a bad dog is usually the product of a bad owner. But pit bulls aren’t my favorite breed, and this was a pit bull. A battle-scarred, growling pit bull who wanted to gnaw on someone for the indignity of being stuck in that crate.
Its mad little red-rimmed eyes fell on me. And Boris.
Boris rose straight into the air and came down facing the opposite direction. He fled to the nearest tree in an undignified full-tilt run, managing to get six feet up the trunk before I’d done more than gulp. I didn’t waste time cursing. There are some things I fear, and one of them is a dog with a grudge against humans. I started looking for a handy tree of my own.
Which was when the pit bull turned, sniffing and sort of slavering, and caught a fragrant whiff of Eddie and Norm, who’d stupidly stopped to laugh at Boris.
The pit bull didn’t run. It rocketed. It damn near left a vapor trail, it was moving so fast.
Pit bulls aren’t bred for speed. Neither, however, were Eddie and Norm. Norm being slightly brighter, he went for the chain-link fence around a backyard and hauled himself up and over it. The pit bull didn’t slow down. It merely changed its focus to Eddie, who continued to run. Eddie made it a good twenty yards before the pit bull got close enough to snap at his hindquarters, and then Eddie sprang, caught a branch on a cherry tree, and did something I’ve only seen Olympic gymnasts manage. He turned himself into a flying ball of humanity, and whipped himself skyward. Of course, Olympians usually land with some grace, and Eddie belly-flopped into the next branch, but he was out of reach of the pit bull.
The pit bull sat down under the tree. It didn’t bother growling. It simply sat there, staring at Eddie. Hungrily.
Very slowly, I got my radio off my belt. “Kim?”
“Yeah?”
“Get Dr. Mitchell. And whoever’s playing animal control officer today,” I added quietly. “I’m behind WCZY with a pit bull.”
“Stray?”
I looked at the dog, which was settling in for a long vigil. “I think it belongs to Eddie Brady.”
Kim’s exasperation came clearly over the radio. “So call Eddie.”
I edged carefully closer to the tree where Boris perched twenty feet up in a spiky fur-bundle, all eyes and fear. “He’s busy,” I told her, and with a great deal of caution, I worked my way into the tree with Boris. Dignity’s fine, but I’d as soon have my body parts intact.
***^***
A pity dogs can’t testify in court. I suspected Eddie and Norm were trying to start a dog-fighting enterprise, but they both claimed they were just heading up Elk Hill to let the dog stretch its legs on the woodland trails. Given the way the dog reacted to them, nobody bought it, but we lacked evidence. And there’s a name for cases where you lack evidence. Lost.
Like the Lisa Littlepage Hunter murder case.
“It’s not lost, honey,” sighed Bobbi as she trimmed my hair with quick, practiced motions. “It’s just not the way you wanted it.”
That was true enough.
She spun my chair a little. Boris, parked on my lap in drowsy contentment, sank in his claws but otherwise didn’t move a hair. He liked Bobbi’s now. It was always warm, and someone always gave him a saucer of half-and-half. Technically, he was a health department violation, but as Bobbi pointed out, Dr. Hartley wasn’t likely to call them. He kept his ancient dachshund in his office at the Emergi-care.
We exchanged gossip for a while. I hadn’t known the kid playing Rhett Butler on the float had knocked up the girl playing Melanie, but Bobbi hadn’t known that I’d spotted Tom giving Kim little lovesick glances when Kim had her back turned. She told me all about the latest problem at the Taylors—true to my word, I’d bought Mrs. Taylor her own TV, and now Mr. Taylor complained about his microwaved dinners. I told her about the town council’s push to close the Food Mart on Sundays. All in all, a good session, especially since my new haircut accommodated my desire to never use a blow dryer.
“Y’know what’s funny?” she commented, as we played our little charade with
the tip. “This town’s called Crazy and we ain’t got a single psychiatrist.”
I didn’t think it was funny. Pathetic, maybe, but not amusing.
“You hear about Norm Spivey?” she asked me, which wasn’t that much of a non sequitir. Norm could probably use a good psychiatrist.
“The pit bull? I was there,” I told her, as Boris yawned, stretched, and ambled toward the door with feline insouciance.
“Oh, that,” she said, airily waving a hand. “No. He’s moving to Charlottesville, he says. Got a girlfriend there, he says.” She waggled her eyebrows unnecessarily. Nobody thought Norm Spivey had a girlfriend. The whole town knew, without saying they knew, that Norm was gay. Yeah, I know, the stereotype is a skinny well-dressed she-man who reads Glamour. Norm’s 200 pounds of hulking muscle and beer gut, but the fact he can run a front-loader doesn’t change the fact he’s gay. Which, if you think about it, is a great disguise, since everyone assumes you can’t be gay if you can run a front-loader.
“Good for him,” I replied. Bobbi and I shared meaningful looks. Charlottesville would be much better for Norm, and not just because of his sexuality. Stuck in Crazy—hell, stuck in this county—he’d turn meaner than that pit bull. Crazy’s a great place to live, as long as you fit the mold. If you don’t, it can be pure torture.
Believe me, I know.
CHAPTER 17
In a perfect world, Uncle Littlepage would have cracked and told me all the gruesome facts I’d need to get Mary Littlepage charged with her daughter’s murder.
The world’s not perfect.
Like everyone else, I had to put all the blame on Cynthia Biggs, at least in public. In private, I could think what I wanted. What I thought, after a sleepless night, was that I needed to let it go. If ever Mary Littlepage returned to our humble county, I’d worry. Until then, I’d have to remember what I was taught by Aunt Marge a long time ago. Learn to be a good loser, because you’ll never win them all.
A couple days after I talked to Mrs. Biggs, I’d almost talked myself into being reconciled to the whole mess when Nelson Hunter walked into my office. I was so surprised to see him I nearly fell out of my chair. He sat down with consummate poise, remarking, “I almost missed the place.”
Crazy, VA Page 17
