Much as Dru Perry instinctively disliked Marcella Williams, she had to admit that Marcella was a golden source of information. She insisted that Dru have coffee with her, and even had miniature Danish pastries which Dru unsuccessfully tried to resist.
At Dru’s hint that Audrey Barton might have been involved with Ted Cartwright during her marriage, Williams was adamant that she didn’t believe it. “Audrey loved her husband,” she said. “Will Barton was a very special guy. He had real class, and Audrey loved that. Ted’s always been an exciting guy. He still is. Would Audrey have left Will for him? No. If she was free, would she marry him? Proof in the pudding—she did. But she never took his name. I think she kept the Barton name to appease Liza.”
Marcella had a stack of pictures that she thought might interest Dru. “Will Barton and my ex liked each other,” she explained. “That’s the one place where I thought Will’s judgment was lacking. Then after Will died and Ted started coming around all the time to see Audrey, the ex and I would stop at her house and have a cocktail with them. I think Audrey didn’t want Liza to realize that she was becoming involved with Ted, so having us around took a little of the pressure off. I always liked to take pictures, and after Liza went on her shooting spree, I got them all together and gave some of them to the media.”
I’ll just bet you did, Dru thought. But as she went through the pictures, and studied the close-ups of Will and Audrey Barton, she could barely hide her emotions from Marcella’s inquisitive eyes.
I’ll still ask Bob to do the computer-aging she thought, but I think I know the result. Celia Nolan is Liza Barton. She’s a combination of both her parents. She looks like both of them.
“Will you use all the pictures in your feature story?” Marcella asked.
“Depends on how much space they give me. Marcella, did you ever meet this Zach guy, the one who gave Will Barton riding lessons?”
“No. Why would I? Audrey was furious when she heard that Will had been taking lessons from him without her knowledge. Will tried to explain that he didn’t want to take them at the Peapack club because he didn’t want to look like a fool. He knew he wasn’t any good, and probably never would be, but he wanted to try to learn to ride so that he could keep his wife company. My guess is he wasn’t thrilled to see Audrey riding so often with Ted Cartwright.”
“Do you know if Audrey blamed Zach for the accident?”
“She really couldn’t. Everyone at the stable told her that Will insisted on starting out alone, despite Zach’s asking him to wait.”
Marcella’s phone rang just as Dru got up to go. Marcella rushed to answer it, and when she did, it was clear that she had received disappointing news.
“That’s the way it goes,” she told Dru. “My lunch date was with Ted Cartwright, but he’s been with his contractor all morning and now he has to see someone on an urgent matter. Maybe it’s just as well. Sounds to me as though Ted is in one of his ugly moods, and I can assure you that is not the time to be around him.”
After Dru left Marcella, she drove directly to the reference room in the county library. She submitted her request for the microfilm of the Daily Record which included the day after Will Barton’s death. The reference librarian smiled. “That day is mighty popular this morning. I released that same segment to someone else an hour ago.”
Celia Nolan, Dru thought. She’s been talking to Zach Willet, and may suspect something about the accident. “I wonder if that could have been my friend, Celia Nolan,” she asked. “We’re both working on the same project.”
“Why, yes it is,” the librarian confirmed. “She did several printouts from that issue of the paper.”
Several, Dru thought, as she turned to the May 10th issue. I wonder why several.
Five minutes later, she was printing out the account of Will Barton’s death. Then, to see if she had missed anything, she kept going through the paper until she found the sports section, and, like Celia Nolan, reasoned that Ted Cartwright might very well have been in the vicinity at the time of Will Barton’s accident, and could have been carrying a gun.
Desperately troubled by what Celia’s state of mind might be, Dru made one more stop, this one at the police station in Mendham. As she had hoped, Sergeant Clyde Earley was on duty, and was delighted to be interviewed by her.
With considerable embellishment, he gave her the step-by-step account of his visit to Charley Hatch, and his growing suspicion that Charley had changed to corduroy pants because, as he put it, “That fellow didn’t want me to see him in those jeans with the red paint on them.”
After he wound up his story with the discovery of the evidence in the trash bag with the garbageman as witness, Dru nudged him onto another subject. “It all seems to be connected to the Little Lizzie case, doesn’t it?” she mused. “I bet that night is still clear in your mind.”
“You bet it is, Dru. I can still see that little cool-as-a-cucumber kid sitting in my squad car, thanking me for the blanket I wrapped around her.”
“You drove off with her, didn’t you?”
“Did she say anything to you in the car?”
“Not a word.”
“Where did you take her?”
“Right here. I booked her.”
“You booked her!”
“What do you think I did? Give her a lollypop? I fingerprinted her and we took her picture.”
“Do you still have her fingerprints?”
“Once a juvenile is cleared of any wrongdoing, we’re supposed to destroy them.”
“Did you destroy Liza’s fingerprints, Clyde?”
He winked. “Off the record, no. I kept them in the file, sort of like souvenirs.”
Dru thought of the way Celia Nolan had tried to run from the photographers that first day she’d met her. She felt sorry for her, but knew she had to finish her investigation. Two people were dead, and if Celia was indeed Liza Barton, she now knew that her father’s death might not have been an accident. She might soon be in danger herself.
And if she is the killer, then she has to be stopped, Dru thought.
“Clyde, there’s something you have to do,” she said. “Get Liza’s fingerprints to Jeff MacKingsley right away. I think Liza has come back to Mend-ham and may be taking revenge on the people who hurt her.”