With a heavy heart, I disconnected. I contemplated calling David Wysocki and then decided that the very efficient Sondra Milton would probably do that. I scrolled through recents on my phone to find Kip’s number, and just as I was about to punch it in, my eerie ringtone blasted.
“Winter Snow?” came a male whisper.
“Who is this?”
“Mark Goodwin. I got the messages you left on my cell.” He sounded like he was calling from a library.
“Mark, everyone has been trying to reach you. Where are you?”
“Lying low. Mrs. A is dead.” I heard the pain behind his words. “Can you meet me at her house? I think I might know who killed her, and the proof has to be there.”
“Then you should call the police.”
“I can’t. Just meet me there in half an hour. Don’t get there before one forty-five, because they’ve got a cruiser checking the house every hour on the half hour. And Winter, I won’t show if you bring anyone.”
Click. He was gone.
He didn’t pick up when I tried to call him back.
Was he the bad boy who’d rifled through Lottie’s files, and if so, what did he want with me? Thank goodness Uncle Richard still had Diva, because I couldn’t pass up the chance to learn more about what was going on.
The short connector from Mamanasco to Old Sib could rival any of San Francisco’s hilly streets. The Subaru groaned as I gunned the engine, and I checked my rearview to make sure I wouldn’t hit another vehicle if I rolled back after the stop sign.
Catching sight of a black pickup closing in on my space, I got the same prickly feeling I had gotten this morning. Whoever had been watching me then might be following me now.
The truck stayed with me through the winding back roads until I turned right on Old West Mountain. I was relieved when it turned opposite toward town. I slowed to see if it would cut across Eleven Levels, which would also land it on West Mountain Road, another way to get to the Arlington estate. It did not.
I admonished myself for being so paranoid. Mrs. Arlington’s secrets were getting under my skin. Still, just in case, I put my phone on speaker and called Scoop. Someone should know that I was about to meet Mark Goodwin.
“Mrs. Arlington died. Call me in half an hour. If I don’t answer, send the cavalry,” I said.
“I’ll come with you,” he offered.
“Goodwin said he wouldn’t show if I didn’t come alone.”
“I’m going to park somewhere and hike up close—no one will see me, I promise. If you don’t answer, I’ll call the police, and I’ll at least have eyes on the house until they get there.”
The thought of Scoop close by helped to quell my queasy stomach. With Mrs. Arlington now dead, I was becoming more and more convinced that her fall had something to do with her urgent need for her obituary. Call it premonition, intuition, or maybe a downright threat, but she’d known she was going to die.
Someone had been inside her house either before or after she fell, and my guess was it had been both. Maybe Diva had alerted her to a trespasser and Mrs. Arlington had fallen while trying to escape. Or maybe she had been pushed, though as Kip pointed out, that would hardly be a reliable way of getting rid of her. Unless she had been pushed in anger by someone who wanted something from her. Someone with a size-seven shoe. Someone like petite Brittany.
Aside from looking for Diva’s dog license, which I could probably get at town hall, I had no good excuse for trespassing. Regardless, I had to hear Mark Goodwin out.
I debated choosing the service road and hiking back up to the house the way Goodwin had done the other day and then thought better of it. I didn’t have time to mess around in search of back entries. Besides, if I did get caught, I wanted to appear justified in looking for Diva’s license.
The key to the Arlington house was still in my car door pocket. I plucked it out and slid it into my jeans. I put the keys to the car on the dashboard, left my car out front, and followed the driveway to the side door I had entered through just days ago. It hugged the treescape and presumably connected to the service road. In the grand days of service entries, this was where deliveries would be made.
I was standing there, debating whether to go inside or wait outside, when Goodwin stepped out of the shadows, startling me so much that I jumped. He cranked his head to look over my shoulder and around the corner.
“I came alone. Now what is it you want to tell me that you can’t tell the police?”
“Mrs. A trusted you. She told me how she checked you out before calling you to do her obituary.”
“Well, that must have taken about five minutes,” I said. I couldn’t even imagine what she was checking.
“She was a thorough person. That’s why I’m trusting you.”
I held up my hand to stop him from talking and said, “Mark, whatever you want to tell me, you can tell …”
“No, I can’t.”
He ran his hand over his snowy buzz cut.
“There’s some things in my past—Mrs. A knew about them. By God, nothing could be kept secret from that woman,” he said, and I could hear the admiration in his voice before he grew solemn. “I’m sure that’s what got her killed.”
Mark again looked over my shoulder toward my car. I looked too, relieved. If Scoop had arrived on foot, he wasn’t visible.
“Maybe we should move your car,” said Mark. “The police will be checking again soon, and we won’t want them to see it.”
I pulled out my cell phone. It was exactly 1:45.
“Look,” I said. “I plan to be out of here by two fifteen. If whatever you want to show me takes longer than that, you can tell them when they drive by.”
Mark turned the outer door handle.
“Damn, it’s locked. It’s never locked,” he said. “Mrs. A keeps the key to the inside door over the doorframe in the mudroom.”
“The police locked it when they left,” I said.
“We have to get in there.” He banged his hand against the door. “The answer has to be in her files.”
I reached into my pocket, inserted the key, and opened the door. Mark looked at me as if reassessing.
“I had it in case Diva needed something. Turns out she needs her license.”
“That’s probably also in the files. Let’s hurry,” he said.
Once inside, I handed the key to Mark.
“Put this back on the doorframe when we leave.”
We climbed the back staircase, both of us being as quiet as we could, though I couldn’t think why. The house was tomb silent. A musty closed-up smell was beginning to permeate the place, especially with no AC.
On the opposite side, Mrs. Arlington’s bedroom was ajar.
“Wait,” I said, and hurried down the long expanse to peek inside, Mark trailing after. The small vestibule looked just as it had a couple of days ago.
Two steps in, and I stopped so short that Mark bumped into me. Clothes were strewn around the room; shoes were tossed randomly from the closet, and Mrs. Arlington’s bedside table had been ransacked.
“This changes things,” I said, pulling my phone from my pocket.
“Not yet,” said Mark, and like a parent leading a resistant child, he pulled me down the long hallway.
I wasn’t sure which was greater—his determination or my curiosity.
“Let’s see what you think killed her,” I said, vowing that the second he showed me, I would call Kip.
Mark gave the study door a hard shove before it opened. When it finally gave, I could see files piled like fuel for a bonfire.
“We’re too late,” said Mark, stooping in dismay and thumbing through them.
“What are we looking for?”
“She was writing her memoirs,” he said. “They told everything.”
“About what?”
He looked around in frustration.
“Her book club,” he said, brandishing an empty file with the label Great Dames Book Club. “She and her so-called book club members collected secrets about people. Then they used them as leverage to get something they wanted.”
“She told you that?”
“I put two and two together.” Mark abandoned his efforts and stood.
“Explain,” I said as I pulled my cell from my pocket. “You have one minute.”
Mark was quick. One swift slap, and the phone went flying to the floor. Surprisingly agile for his age, he got to it before I did. He then placed it out of my reach on the file cabinet.
“I’ll explain,” he said in what sounded like an agonized growl. “And then you have to give me time to disappear.”
My heart was trying to climb out of my chest. I must have read this man wrong. I prayed that Scoop had followed through and was outside watching the house, though that wouldn’t help me inside. I crossed my arms over my chest to disguise my shaking hands and tried to look in charge.
“Back then, I worked for Mrs. A,” Mark muttered.
“Back when?”
“In New York, before she got together with Mr. A. I helped the girls dig up information, the kind of information that people normally left off their résumés. She and these friends of hers …”
“What friends?” I interrupted again. Although I had a million questions, at the moment I didn’t trust my voice beyond two words strung together.
“Some women she used to hang with from the city,” he said. “That was what I was hoping to give you—the file with their names and the secrets they collected. Maybe even a copy of the memoirs. These women used the secrets to get things they wanted. It was how she got together with Mr. A.”
“They blackmailed people?” I asked.
“They never called it that,” he said. “It was more like trying to right a wrong. Then she tried to squeeze Mr. A—”
“Because he was gay and didn’t want anyone to know,” I finished. “Did she blackmail him into marrying her?”
“It wasn’t like that,” he said. “He did her a favor, and she did one in return.”
“Henry Harmless,” I said.
“Henry was Roth’s partner. Times were different back then. Not everyone was accepting. Hell, look at things today. There are still those who deny someone’s right to love who they choose.”
“Start from the beginning,” I said, eyeing my phone and wondering if I could go for it.
“Mrs. A was Roth’s protégé, and she figured out that he and Henry had a secret relationship.”
“What was it she wanted?” I asked.
“Mr. A had a lot of influential friends—she wanted him to use his contacts to right a wrong,” said Mark as he watched me through cautious eyes.
I waited as he leaned down and plucked a file titled Diva from the pile and handed it to me. I opened it and glanced through her pedigree. Four months old in a couple of weeks. Great Pyrenees, originally from Montana. Poor Diva. Had she come by her claustrophobia innately, or was it because she had been transported cross-country in a cage? A copy of her up-to-date dog license and a shiny blue tag were also inside the folder. I closed it, placed it on the desk, and stayed quiet.
“Mrs. A knew my secret,” he said, and then began his story.
As a bright young man with few opportunities, Mark had joined the army, hoping to take advantage of the GI bill. By the time boot camp was almost over, he was on a fast track to Vietnam.
“My buddy and I talked about deserting all the time. Every time we had a plan, my buddy backed out. His dad was former military, and my friend knew deserting would destroy him. We were both opposed to the war, and the closer to deployment we got, the more desperate we were, until he finally agreed. And then one day I found him, his face blown off in a training accident.”
“Accident?” I asked.
“Not sure.” Mark shrugged. “It took me only a second before I saw it as an opportunity. I switched dog tags and IDs, smeared blood on his uniform name tag, and took off for the East Coast.”
“How in the world did Mrs. Arlington find out?”
“When I took a job as a janitor in the building where she worked, she would always stop to say hello. I was flattered. A classy lady like that paying attention to me, a twenty-four-year-old janitor. We got to be good friends. I had a huge crush on the lady, and she knew it. Anyway, I kept my backstory as close to the truth as I could, because I didn’t want to trip over a lie. But I asked too many questions and she suspected I wasn’t who I said I was. By then I was worn down from carrying the burden alone, and it didn’t take much for her to pry my story out of me. I didn’t tell her my buddy’s name, but she figured it out. She was a relentless investigator. She should have worked for the CIA.” Mark paused a moment and smiled. “She was something.”
Mark explained that by the time he’d changed his identity and crossed to the other side of the country, it had begun to sink in how devasted his friend’s family would be over the desertion.
“It was in every newspaper. I died and he deserted. He was even a suspect in my so-called accident.”
“What was your buddy’s name?” I asked.
Mark smiled. “Mrs. A was right about you. You’re smart. You know how to put pieces together.”