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by Nadine Doolittle

  Elliot paused to examine the faces that were staring at him. “Is anyone hungry? Perhaps we should continue tomorrow at our regular meeting.”

  “I’d like to hear the rest,” Dennis said. “If everyone else is willing.”

  Josephine looked stricken. “I must hear it! I find this deeply disturbing. I’ve known Karen for years! We serve on the same committees. I just can’t believe she’s guilty, Elliot.”

  “One of the committees you serve together on is the Women’s Auxiliary, is that right?” Elliot fiddled with the buttons on his jacket. “Karen is one of the Battleaxe Brigade. She has been visiting Jesse at his camp. She gained his trust and he confided to her the guilt he still felt about that night. There was a ten minute delay before he biked to the Haggerty house. If only he’d left as soon as he got off the phone, she might still be alive.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He nodded to Helen and Dennis. “Mr and Mrs Potter have been successful in getting through to Jesse. It’s not easy to see an enemy up close, when she’s bringing you books and clothes, and talks about old times like you’re an old friend. Sometimes it takes an outsider to point you to the truth.”

  “Karen kept close tabs on Jesse for years,” explained Dennis. “Her interest could’ve been genuine. We didn’t jump to any conclusions, but she knew the guilt he carried about that night. She is the likeliest person to be gaslighting Jesse. I’m sorry Josie. I know you like her but you said it yourself—none of the other ladies knew Jesse very well.”

  “Shall I continue?”

  Subdued, they all nodded but a pall had come over the group.

  Elliot resumed pacing. “Keep in mind, none of this has been proven and it may never be, but it is what I believe logically to have occurred.” His hands moved through the air like a conductor with an orchestra. “Jenny threw the puka shell necklace at Duncan. Karen picked it up, possibly intending to return it to her. Perhaps Karen’s goal was to preserve Duncan’s reputation, to make her indispensable to him. Perhaps she genuinely meant to talk to Jenny after hearing how upset she was on the phone with Jesse. Whatever her intention, Karen caught up with Jenny on the Abbey grounds and something went very wrong. The necklace was in her hand. She wrapped it around the girl’s neck and twisted it until she was dead. A crime of opportunity as Miss Hansen observed. I believe it was over very quickly.”

  Avery peeked at Josephine Gaskell to see how she was handling the accusation. Her expression was cold, but at least she wasn’t crying and she didn’t seem to be angry either.

  Solomon ventured to speak. “Jesse would’ve seen Karen. He was on the porch and then he left the Haggerty house minutes later. The Abbey is a big ass building that butts up against the forest. There was only one way out and Karen would’ve been seen. She didn’t hide until the coast was clear because she was at the party around the time Jesse was calling police.”

  Elliot nodded his approval. “Excellent observation, Mr Brice, however, in 1975, there were two ways out. There is a high fence on the forested side of the Abbey, installed to keep wildlife from wandering the grounds. It was necessary when St. Ives was less populated and the nuns maintained an extensive vegetable and herb garden. It’s all there in the municipal records, as well as the historical society’s collection of photographs. The fence remained in place long after the Abbey was abandoned and the gardens overrun. It’s used now by the Spa to keep wildlife out of the ornamental gardens.”

  “I saw it,” Avery said. “I remember thinking you were absurdly interested in that fence.”

  “More importantly, I was interested in the little door that was cut into the fence. It’s sealed up now; a parking lot is on the other side, but in 1975, the door was still in use as a means to access the back gardens without having to go all around the building. After strangling Jenny, Karen laid her body on the stone table. Then hearing Jesse pushing his bike through the overgrowth, she realized her escape route was cut off. She ran to the fence and slipped through the door, a route she was familiar with, living kitty corner to the Abbey her whole life. An overgrown hedge concealed her from view of the street and she was able to rejoin the party a few minutes later. The hedge is gone now. Cut down when the Abbey was purchased.”

  “That is the how,” Helen said. “Now let’s hear the why. I’m with Josie—I don’t believe Karen Haggerty could’ve murdered a girl in cold blood. I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt with Jesse too. She’s the school secretary, for heaven’s sake!”

  “That cloak of respectability has shielded her for a long time," Elliot replied. "You recall Jesse Sutcliffe’s remarks upon finding the body. He said he thought she was asleep. There was no fear in her death mask. Jenny Blake wasn’t afraid of her assailant. That could only mean she knew her assailant and had no reason to be frightened.”

  “She was taken by surprise,” Hector observed. “There was nothing to alert Jenny her life was in danger. It was a sneak attack.”

  “All right, all right,” Avery cut in. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Jenny wasn’t afraid of her assailant. That doesn’t point the finger specifically at Karen.”

  “Recall what has been said about her. Karen Haggerty is the ambitious daughter of social-climbing parents, competitive and driven, capable of intense attachment and deeply felt grievances. Mrs Wakefield-Brice offered us insight into Mrs Haggerty’s psychological profile. Criminals don’t reveal themselves through what they say but through what they do.”

  “What did she do?” Helen asked, baffled.

  “She invited Duncan Carmichael into her bedroom. While her party was in full swing downstairs, Karen Haggerty was in bed with her ex-boyfriend. Why?”

  “She never got over him?” Pearl volunteered. “He was drinking; she took advantage of the situation to try and win him back.”

  “That’s what I thought too," said Elliot, "until Frank Zwick offered up another perspective. He told us Karen terminated their relationship just before the party. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? A girl is dumped by her boyfriend for another girl. She retaliates by dating his best friend and the move works—her ex-boyfriend is jealous! Why kill the golden goose?”

  He tapped the end of his nose. “And then I figured it out. I’ll ask the mothers in the room. How soon after conception did you suspect you were pregnant?”

  “The first day I was late,” said Helen promptly.

  “For me, I was at a week and I knew something was different.”

  Avery consulted the minutes. “Karen said she was regular as clockwork and she knew the first day which would have been around beginning of August.”

  Elliot’s head bobbed up and down. “That’s right. She knew she was pregnant—or strongly suspected she was on the day of her party two weeks later. And that confused me even more, because now this teenage girl is ending her relationship with the father of her child? An ambitious young woman, she knows as soon as her parents find out, they’ll insist on marriage. But Karen doesn’t want to marry Frank Zwick. She wants to marry Duncan Carmichael. Aha, the penny drops! She decides to seduce Duncan in order to pass the baby off as his. Once her parents find out about the pregnancy, Carmichael will be forced to marry her. Karen has no qualms about this plan. She knows Duncan wants children. She rationalizes that she’s giving him what he wants. She’ll get pregnant with his baby a few years down the road. No harm. No foul. Duncan and Jenny arrive at the party and she sets her plan in motion.”

  “How did she seduce him?” Josie demanded. “I don’t see it. He was with Jenny. I thought wooing her from Jesse was supposed to be a notch on his belt.”

  “A notch, nothing more,” Elliot said. “He had no feelings for Jenny Blake. Once she was conquered, Carmichael lost interest. I can see why. Jenny was beautiful but that sort of boy wouldn’t find her exciting. In the meantime, his best friend was dating his ex-girlfriend and he didn’t like it. Karen was desirable again now that another man wanted her. Duncan welcomed Karen’s attention at the party, but
she was clever enough to keep her distance until she could get him alone. You recall Ida Greb’s story of hearing voices in the back yard.”

  “She heard Jenny’s boyfriend, Duncan, talking with another girl. He was consoling her.”

  “Yes, that part of the story threw me off for awhile. I assumed there must be a third girl in the mix, which meant another unidentified suspect. Frank Zwick cleared up the mystery. The girl crying on Duncan’s shoulder that night was Karen.”

  The wind rose suddenly and portentously. Rain flung against the windows. Dusk had settled over the living room. Avery rose to turn on the lamps, feeling weary and a little sad.

  Josephine Gaskell dug in her purse for a tissue and pressed it to her eyes.

  “I’m hungry,” she said with a sniffle. “Who’s up for pizza?”

  Chapter Twenty

  SOLOMON SHOOK out his writing hand. “I’m getting a cramp. Why was Mrs Haggerty crying on Duncan’s shoulder again?”

  Avery had brought out plates and napkins, a bottle of red wine and a bottle of soda water for Pearl. The pizza boxes from Liberto’s were soon emptied. Dennis shoved them in the fireplace where they shot up in flames. Avery polished off the last slice of Tuscan margherita and sat back with a glass of wine and a contented sigh. The rain had escalated to a deluge.

  Elliot examined the pizza slice on his plate with deep frown. Firelight gleamed over his lean features. “I imagine it went something like this. Knowing Carmichael’s penchant for rescuing girls from undesirable boyfriends, Karen approaches him at her party, distraught. He ex-boyfriend follows her outside and she tells him about her break up with Zwick. Privately, Duncan is glad. He tells her he’ll be there for her—or whatever it is boys say to girls. Karen asks what about Jenny? And so on and so forth. Carmichael’s ego can’t resist her need for him. An illicit kiss follows and the most popular boy in the school is hers again.”

  “Pure nonsense,” Josie said. “I’ve known Karen for years. She isn’t manipulative.”

  “She was at seventeen, pregnant and in love with a boy who was not the father. She seduced Duncan by whatever means at her disposal and she was very near to getting everything she wanted when Jenny Blake barged into the room.”

  “Tipped off by Ida Greb who witnessed the whole thing in the back yard,” Helen said with a heavy sigh. “Ida has a mean streak, but she’s one of those people who are always so nice that we tend to overlook it. If she only knew how much damage she caused.”

  “For Karen, the moment is serious. She needs him to be the father of her baby and Duncan will not have sex with her now, not with Jenny off telling the whole world what an ass he is. Karen has to fix it. She has to soothe Jenny’s feelings at the same time she has to keep Duncan on the hook. She offers to go after her, necklace in hand. I don’t think she meant to kill her. Ida Greb’s story about Jenny Blake shows us a girl who is capable of pushing someone to violence. What happened between them, I can only speculate. By the time the shells were around her neck, it was too late. Karen had to kill her or go to prison for assault.” He paused, touching his finger to his forehead thoughtfully. “The placement of the body on the stone table suggests Karen felt some remorse about what she had done. She has that in her favour.”

  “I don’t like all the speculation we’re doing here,” Josephine said. “You have a vivid imagination, Elliot, and the gift of making it all sounds so plausible. I don’t like Jesse as the killer, but I like Karen even less. She was attacked. Remember that? Are we forgetting that someone tried to strangle her?”

  “Frank did that,” Avery said confidently.

  Elliot wiped his fingers on a napkin. “No, that too was Karen Haggerty. She cannot resist the theatrical and it has been the undoing of her.”

  “Are you saying Karen strangled herself?” Avery’s mouth fell open. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “We were there, Elliot! I saw the marks on her neck! We stopped the attack before it could go any further. What about the note? Karen didn’t write it and it was sent to the wrong house! She could have easily found out where I lived. Someone else sent that note—someone who doesn’t live here—Frank Zwick. On a sub-conscious level, he wanted someone to stop him.”

  “The note was not delivered to the wrong house,” Elliot said. “It was not delivered at all. The note was written by Francesca Murphy. I think we’ll find her handwriting sample is a perfect match. The woman didn’t know what Mrs Haggerty had in mind when she asked her to write it. Mrs Murphy has three children in St. Ives School. She’d returned from vacation and was in the office, getting her children set up in their classes. Mrs Haggerty said she was part of a murder mystery club that Francesca’s neighbour belonged to. The note was a red herring. Francesca Murphy thought it was all part of the fun.”

  “But why go to all that trouble?” Avery was dumbfounded.

  “I can answer that,” Pearl piped up. “She intended to frame Mrs Carmichael for the attack. She more or less directed the police in Penelope’s direction. She said she smelled freesias that reminded her of Mrs Carmichael’s perfume.”

  Freesias! Avery shot a glance at Elliot wondering if he knew then that Karen was lying.

  “That explains why his wife is filing for divorce,” Hector said gruffly. “She’s trying to protect herself from prosecution. I’d call that a form of blackmail.”

  “So would I,” said Dennis.

  “The attack served a dual purpose,” Elliot said. “It reminded Duncan of what he owed her—the alibi that had protected him all these years—and it threw suspicion on an unknown assailant. The coup de grȃce was turning Mrs Carmichael into a person of interest. After being told to ‘die bitch’, Mrs Carmichael finally decided to take Karen Haggerty seriously.”

  “You think Karen painted the same words on the wall that Jesse painted on Jenny’s locker?”

  “Initially I thought the locker culprit was Ida Greb, but the truth is simpler. There was no defacement of Jenny’s locker. That was pure fabrication.”

  “I’m sorry?” Helen shook her head as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

  “The vandalism was not reported, Mrs Potter.” Elliot smiled. “I have every confidence in Missy Hilroy’s stalking skills. She would have seen it or at least heard about it. A thing like that is not kept under wraps. Threats of that nature are taken seriously by faculty and no report was made. Jenny’s locker wasn’t defaced in 1975, but a few years later the wall outside of the Regency was with ‘Die Bitch’ scrawled in red paint.” Elliot cocked his head to one side. “Mrs Haggerty couldn’t resist bragging about it, even though she tried to hide her accomplishment in the story about the locker. A stupid mistake. So easy to verify and once it was proven to be a lie, then nothing she said could be trusted. I might never have made the connection otherwise.”

  Solomon threw down his pen. “I have no idea what’s going on anymore. I just did a whole story on the attack on Karen Haggerty. She told me she was taking a walk as she usually does and someone came up behind her and tried to choke the life out of her. If you and Avery hadn’t come along to scare off her attacker, she’d be dead.”

  “I don’t understand how it was done,” Avery cried. “I was there! I was right there. I saw the marks—the puka shell necklace—where did that come from, pray tell?”

  “From Karen,” Elliot said, seemingly baffled by her question. “I’m sorry. I thought that was self-evident. Karen kept the necklace all these years. Killers frequently do hold onto symbols of their crime. She orchestrated the timing of the note, waited until we were in range and then hooked the necklace on a rusted bolt in the stone. Kneeling down, she leaned forward until she was close to blacking out. It was vital that she stop in time in order to hide the necklace before her rescuers arrived. The night was misty, it was dark, and in the confusion of saving her life, we didn’t see Karen slip the necklace inside the inner pocket of the padded jacket she was wearing. At the hospital, she removed the jacket for the examination. The police didn’t
find the necklace at the scene. It had to be on her person, but where? When I saw her wearing the same jacket the other day, I knew.”

  “Wow. Just—wow.” Solomon whistled. “That could’ve ended so badly for her. Was it worth the risk of nearly dying?”

  “Karen Haggerty is a risk-taker. I believe there is a part of her that is profoundly enjoying the resurrection of this case. It must have been disappointing to have everyone forget. It’s harder to refrain from bragging about committing murder than you think.”

  “You said theatrics were her downfall. What did you mean by that?”

  “Karen re-enacted Jenny Blake’s murder.” He looked from one blank expression to another. “Well—how did she know? How did she know the manner in which Jenny was murdered unless she was the murderer?”

  Avery, Helen and Josie fell back with a collective moan. Dennis and Hector exchanged a rueful glance. “No one knew about the puka shell necklace,” Dennis said. “Not even Jesse recognized it. He had to ask me what they were.”

  “As soon as Mrs Holmes identified the marks on Karen’s neck as being the same as Jenny’s, I knew Karen was our killer but how to prove it? That was the problem.” Elliot frowned. “When we spoke to her a few days after the attack, she said she was cursed. We assumed she meant the attack but what if it was something else? Something had changed....”

  Hector cleared his throat. “Before we go any further, this has to be said. Carmichael has told us to drop it. He singled out Elliot but where he goes, the murder club goes. Karen has given him an alibi and that’s the end of it.” He shifted uncomfortably. “If it were just me, I wouldn’t care, but my wife’s happiness is on the line. Carmichael didn’t say it out loud—he didn’t have to—he’ll make trouble for Joyce at the Little Theatre. We’re new here. We haven’t built up decades of goodwill like the rest of you.”