I stepped carefully along the cliff path. I’d waited half an hour after the gathering on the lanai broke up. The good nights were brief and constrained. No one had lingered. I’d returned to my suite and made notes, then changed to my navy blouse and slacks.
It would be shocking if I encountered anyone else on the path. And quite likely dangerous. Who is abroad in the night, except for nefarious purposes? And—I smiled wryly—those seeking hidden facts. There was so much I needed to know to plumb the hearts of those at Ahiahi.
In my right hand, I carried my rental car keys, the keys poked between my fingers. It was the next best thing to brass knuckles, an eye-gouging defense against an attacker, sharp as hell. A small Mace canister was tucked in my pocket. But I was wary, pausing every so often to listen. An occasional call of an owl added a mournful solemnity to the ever-present roar of the falls. Whoo-ooo. Whoo-ooo. Who, indeed, companion of the night?
I reached the steps leading up to the lanai where we had re-created CeeCee Burke’s last day. Or part of it. And had any of those moments had a bearing upon her murder?
The scarlet flames in the torches wavered above me. I climbed swiftly up the steps and moved across the lanai and through the huge darkened room to the garden. Now I must simply take my chance that I was unobserved. I darted from shadow to shadow until I was deep in the garden, my goal the cluster of ti shrubs where Keith Scanlon and a woman had quarreled bitterly the night before.
I found the shrubs. Moonlight silvered the huge waxy leaves. A nearby bougainvillea provided an inky shadow. I wormed my way well off the path but with a clear view. I dropped the keys into my pocket. I would wait a half hour to see if the bait had been taken: TONIGHT. SAME TIME. SAME PLACE. WE HAVE TO TALK. I’M SORRY.
I’d had only a glimpse of the angry figures the night before, but it seemed to me that I was overseeing—if not a lovers’ quarrel—certainly an encounter between a man and woman who knew each other well. And the woman was not Scanlon’s wife. There were only four young women at Ahiahi. I didn’t think it was a stretch to believe Scanlon would be involved with a young woman. Men with much older wives rarely have affairs with older women.
I ran over in my mind the possibilities for Keith’s clandestine companion.
Megan. Did she come to mind because she was strikingly beautiful, the kind of beauty no man could ignore? I could recall no hint of connection between Megan and Keith. Their interchanges were casual, friendly, unremarkable. But that would be the drill, wouldn’t it?
Gretchen. I can’t judge another woman as a man would, but today when Gretchen and I were at the beach, the vigorous young men near us had certainly noticed her. And Gretchen had a hard-edged, restless quality some men might find very appealing.
Peggy. Surely not. Anders found her attractive. But Anders sought reassurance, devotion, stability, direction. Keith Scanlon was a man who enjoyed women physically and wouldn’t waste an instant figuring their psyches. Or expecting them to figure his.
Elise Ford. Belle’s capable, competent, exceedingly attractive secretary. That was the old saw, a man and his secretary. It would be just a slight variation: a man and his wife’s secretary. This afternoon Elise had been distraught. Angry. Even a dream job in paradise doesn’t guarantee happiness.
Of course, it was possible Keith might take advantage of an employee. There were several maids. One was old and limped. Two were young, one plump and pretty, the other thin and plain with skinned-back hair and a turned-down mouth. But I was almost certain none of them stayed the night at Ahiahi, other than the housekeeper. My immediate response was, no, not Amelia. She seemed a woman of grave dignity. But I had no sense of the maids. For all I knew, the thin maid might have a light foot for dancing and a lust for passion. Neither requires a smile.
Was Keith the kind of man to exploit an employee? This morning when I was playing tennis, Keith had patted the arm of the pretty little pro with the bouncy ponytail. A more careful man would never touch an employee, male or female.
I simply didn’t know.
If no one came, it could be that I was wrong and it was a maid who—
Footsteps crunched on the crushed oyster shells. Elise Ford hurried around the curve in the path. She jolted to a stop, walked slowly to the ti bush, began to pace. She waited fifteen minutes. Then, her voice bitter, she said, “Damn you, Keith,” and whirled to leave.
I stared after her. Perhaps my note was a dirty trick. But I doubted either she or Keith deserved better.
CeeCee had spoken to her mother about an unfaithful lover.
Was Keith the lover she meant?
Click. Click.
A soft glow of light spilled down onto the pool table. Stan Dugan sighted along the cue.
I stepped through the archway. Just as last night. Except Dugan’s hair was damp, and his uneven face looked even more like a gritty block of broken-up cement.
He glanced toward me, held up his hand, then bent back to make the shot. As the ball rolled into the pocket, he nodded in satisfaction. He replaced the cue.
I joined him.
“I took a swim. Had the pool to myself. Then I stopped by your room.” His voice was casual. “There’s not a whole lot shaking around here tonight. Everybody scuttled off to their burrows after our session on the lanai. Except you.” He leaned against the table, pushed his thick-lensed glasses high on his nose. “Still sniffing around?”
I remembered Elise Ford hurrying to a nonexistent rendezvous. “I took a walk in the garden.”
“Solo?”
“Yes.” That was true.
The huge lens magnified his eyes, cold, probing eyes. “I expect you to ante up, Mrs. Collins. I’m hunting for a killer. Don’t hold out on me.” He folded his arms across his big chest.
“If I discover anything that will help you, I’ll tell you.” So far as I knew, an affair—an ending affair?—between Elise Ford and Keith Scanlon had no bearing on CeeCee’s kidnapping and murder. But if it was an affair, I had to wonder how long it had been going on. I felt a little pang of disappointment. Had Elise, who seemed to be an appealing young woman, been slipping around corners to meet Belle’s husband for years? I would not have thought it of her. I needed to know a good deal more about Keith and other women.
I didn’t dance around the question. “Your private investigator—did he find any extramarital flings by Keith?”
“Funny you should ask.” He looked at me curiously. “You carry around a mental fidelity monitor, slide it over people like a metal detector?”
I waited.
Stan turned toward the table, took the rack, and placed the balls in it. “Keith’s been married twice before. No kids. Each time the gal divorced him for screwing around. Always had a chick on the side. But Toby went over everybody’s life like an old maid checking the locks. With what he’d picked up on Keith, he expected to find a present-day chick. But Toby said Keith was being a very careful man if he was involved with anyone. Toby didn’t find a trace of a shady lady. Of course, when a man marries big bucks it encourages a little care. Who knows? It might even encourage fidelity.”
Ah, but it apparently hadn’t. At least not in recent times.
“It might,” I said mildly. “But let’s assume the leopard still had his spots. What would CeeCee do if she found out Keith was cheating on Belle?”
“Handle it. CeeCee wouldn’t have ignored it. Oh, yeah.” He nodded swiftly. “Maybe that’s what she was leading up to with Belle that morning.”
That had occurred to me, too. But there were other possibilities.
“CeeCee asked her mother’s advice about infidelity.” I stared up into cold, magnified eyes. “Had you been unfaithful to CeeCee?” There was no question I wasn’t willing to ask.
The silence between us was odd and dark. Dugan’s gaze moved away from me, focused on the photographs on the wall above the wet bar. “That would have made it simple. But sometimes things aren’t so damn simple, Mrs. Collins.”
He moved slowly to the gallery, stopped to look up at CeeCee, smiling, carefree, happy. He reached up, gently touched the frame. “She was so goddamn alive. Being with her was like skiing down a black-diamond trail, quick and fast, in air that made you gasp.” His hand fell. “But I told her, I’m a one-woman man—and I had to have a one-man woman. She had to choose. Me. Or Wheeler. I asked her to give me back my ring. And not to come back unless she dumped Wheeler for good.”
“Wheeler?” But even as I asked, the pieces slotted into place. Wheeler with his hungry eyes and sexual magnetism.
Dugan leaned against the bar. His big head sank on his chest. He didn’t look at me. Or at anything. “For a long time before we met. Wheeler. Then another guy. Then Wheeler. Then we came together. But she spent the weekend before she died in New York with Wheeler.”
“He was her stepbrother.” The pieces fit, but the shape was ugly.
“Yeah. He was, wasn’t he?” Dugan’s voice was harsh.
I left him standing by the gallery of photographs.
I walked slowly up the garden walkway, wondering about Stan Dugan and CeeCee Burke and Wheeler Gallagher. About Elise Ford and Keith Scanlon. Love and desire, despair and betrayal. Whose heart was broken, whose passion unfulfilled? I was even with the rooms where Dugan was staying when I saw that the lights were out on the next segment of the walk.
Burned out?
Turned off?
I’m not a fool. I had no intention of walking into the spider’s parlor. I shook my head, turned and moved swiftly through Dugan’s open rooms to his lanai and the steps leading down to the cliff path. The lights along the trail illuminated the path. I hurried, eager to gain my own lanai.
When I looked up, I looked up into darkness except for the flicker of the torches and the star-spangled sky. I reached the steps to the empty quarters, the rooms I’d declined in favor of the last suite, where Richard had stayed.
I don’t know what warned me. A rush of sound. Perhaps stockinged feet slapping on the tiles. Or perhaps it was more basic than that, the atavistic instinct of terrible danger. But I knew, knew even before I saw the black mass hurtling down at me, knew and jumped forward and caught hold of the waist-high rope along the trail, caught and held and pressed myself against the cliff, felt the crumbly ridges of dirt against my cheek, smelled the sharp, green scent of a plant springing from a crevice.
The plummeting mass—and it was big, big enough to gouge a chunk from the path behind me—didn’t make much noise. Not enough to rouse anyone, bring anyone. I clung to the rope for a long time, while my heart thudded in my chest.
I clung and listened and waited.
It was a long time—five minutes, ten?—before I crept forward. When I reached the steps to my lanai, once again I waited. I had my keys spread through my fingers and the Mace canister clutched tight in the other hand as I eased up the steps.
But my lanai held no dangers. It took me only a moment to search the suite, make certain it was empty. My opponent wanted an accident. Only an accident would do.
Thank God for that small advantage.
But when my door was closed and locked and the louvered shutters drawn with the bolt slid shut, I sank into a chair and began to shake.
I must be getting close. So close.
The next morning I walked along the lanai by the empty suite. Sharp marks, perhaps made by a chisel, left angry scratches on the pedestal where a huge Chinese vase had sat. I looked over the railing, shaded my eyes, and saw the torn patches where the vase had bounded down the canyon.
I carried that image with me to breakfast. I drank coffee. I wasn’t hungry. The fear curdled in my stomach, cold and hard and indigestible. I glanced around the beautiful, empty room. The buffet was in place. But the bright fruits, the silver serving pans with their quiet elegance and hospitality did nothing to lift the feeling of menace. I was frightened. I supposed I would move in fear every moment I spent at Ahiahi. No one else arrived. Last night Stan Dugan said everyone had scattered to their burrows. Apparently, they intended to stay there.
I set out in search of company. The tennis courts were empty. I didn’t take the path to CeeCee’s grave. I planned to avoid canyon trails. No one splashed in the pool. But I saw a graceful hand trailing over a chaise longue. Not a vestige of sun reached the pale white limbs beneath the huge orange-and-purple-striped beach umbrella. The ever-present breeze ruffled the canvas, stirred Megan’s long blond hair as it would be rustling the leaves of the ohia tree by CeeCee’s grave.
Such a thin body. The scarlet bikini—two strips of flame-colored cloth—revealed Megan’s malnutrition. Without the latest Paris creations to clothe her gauntness, she looked ill, as indeed she was, her body deprived of sustenance, all in the pursuit of chic. The too-thin face turned toward me, oversized sunglasses hiding her eyes.
“Good morning, Megan. Have you been in the pool yet?” I dropped into a cane chair beside her.
A faint—very faint—smile. “Chlorine’s verboten. Can’t hit the runway with green hair.”
I scooted my chair into the circle of shade. “No sacrifice too great?” I said it lightly.
A languid hand—the scarlet nails glossy and perfect—lifted the sunglasses. Huge cobalt blue eyes looked at me without pretense. I saw a flicker of anger overlain by pride and defiance and sorrow.
“What price freedom, Henrie O?” She studied me, as if I were a column of sums to be added. “I suspect you’ve counted some costs. Haven’t you?”
Honesty compels honesty. Sometimes. “Yes.” Oh, yes, I’d counted costs. More than I would admit, more than I wanted to recall, more than I was willing to tot up until the final accounting came.
She slid the sunglasses down, pushed back a silver-blond curl with no taint of green. “I will not be dependent on Belle.” Her unaccented voice was as clear and unequivocal as the crack of a rifle shot.
“Why you?” A jacaranda blossom drifted past me, touched my arm with feathery lightness. “Of all the children, why you?”
Megan smiled at that, a cool, amused smile. “I’d like to say it’s because I have more character. It may just be that I’m luckier. What if I didn’t make pots of money? Would I be so damned independent then? Or would I be like Gretchen?”
The breeze freshened and a flurry of blossoms swirled around us. Megan reached out and caught one, cradled it in her hand.
“Gretchen strikes me as pretty independent.” Certainly she’d minced no words on our picnic yesterday.
Megan’s lips curved into a sly smile. “Does she? Well, I can tell you that Gretchen’s dancing to Belle’s tune these days. She doesn’t have any choice. Why, she may even have to slink out here to live if she can’t get another job.” She tossed the lavender bloom away.
“I thought she worked for a wire service. In D.C.”
“Downsized.” She said it matter-of-factly. “A couple of weeks ago. Belle wants her to stay here.”
“I doubt if Gretchen’s eager to do that.” This could account for Gretchen’s irritability. “Wouldn’t Belle like Joss to stay, too?”
Megan nodded. “Oh, yes. Mom’s golden boy. Yes, she’d like that. She’s starting to come out of her shock and grief. And she misses us. But no one wants to move here. Especially not Joss. But he’s no dummy. Hollywood pays like crazy when you’re working. He lives carefully between gigs.”
“And Gretchen hasn’t been so careful?” Gretchen was the one who skipped shopping in Hanapepe. She preferred glitz over funk. Glitz costs a good deal more.
“Gretchen can spend money faster than the mint can print it. And even Belle’s largesse has limits. Generous, yes. Indulgent, no.” A dry smile. “And I don’t loan money to relatives. Sink or swim.”
Megan pulled herself erect, reached for a towel and began to pat her cheeks. I didn’t see even a faint erosion of her makeup, but I suspected her sense of beauty was too well-honed ever to let perspiration go unchecked.
“So you don’t accept any money. But you come when Belle calls?”
Megan patted the back of her neck with the towel. “I almost didn’t come this year.” Her face turned toward me. “After last night I’m not sure I’m glad I did. Is Stan crazy?”
“He seems very rational to me.”
“Because”—her tone was puzzled—“if you think about it, why should it matter what we all said to CeeCee that last day? What matters…”
I worked a loose piece of rattan back into the arm of the chair. “Yes? What matters?”
But she didn’t continue. Her face looked wan and pinched. Megan was nobody’s fool.
“Henrie O…”
I wished I could see past the opaque lenses of her sunglasses. I felt that her gaze was intent upon me. But why? What did she need of me? Or want of me? I waited, alert and hopeful. I had a feeling that this moment mattered, that Megan was balancing options.
“…is it true that you and Belle had never met before?”
Her question surprised me. And disappointed me. Was I grasping at meaning in every encounter simply because I knew there was so much that was hidden beneath the glamorous surface of Ahiahi?
Megan’s face was as still as a deep lake on a windless day. The sunglasses hid her eyes, but once again I felt certain she was watching me, trying to read my face, divine my thoughts.
I picked my words carefully, the way a cat delicately tiptoes through dew-damp grass. “Belle and my husband were great friends.” And more? “But she and I hadn’t met until now.”
“Then why did Belle ask you to come here? Why now?” Her voice was sharp.
A dozen answers slid through my mind, like goldfish glimmering in a murky pool. I sorted through them in a flash, hoping this wasn’t—from Megan’s point of view—the wrong answer. “I don’t know,” I said bluntly. “Do you?”
Megan took off the opaque glasses and looked at me with anxious, somber eyes. “I wondered if it had to do with her accident last year.”
Belle’s accident last year.
Belle walking with a cane.
Belle’s accident!
And the message that brought me here, ensured my presence here.
“What happened to Belle? When?” I’ve asked questions in a shout at news conferences, run alongside moving trains and called out, flung words at the backs of striding politicians. I’ve cajoled and pled and demanded. But I don’t think ever in my life I’d asked in a voice that absolutely brooked no evasion, no refusal, no denial.
Megan shook back that shining hair. Something moved in that mournful gaze, an acceptance, a realization. Megan, the sensitive, who felt emotions, calibrated them, absorbed them. She gave one small, reluctant sigh. “Last year when we were here, the brakes went out in her car. Going down the mountain.”
Going down the mountain, down that twisting road with no guardrails and a drop to eternity.
Megan folded her sunglasses, slipped them into her woven carry-on. “You didn’t know about it?” Her voice was thoughtful.
“No. How in God’s name did Belle survive that drop?”
“She slid across the seat, opened the passenger door and flung herself out. Her right hip shattered when she landed on the road. She’s had three operations. But to think that quickly…” Amazement and admiration lifted Megan’s voice.
“The car?”
“It bounced down the mountain and exploded. All that’s left is a burned-out hulk. You can still see some of the scars it left on the way down. But now ferns have covered it. Like it never happened.” Megan pulled on a cerise cover-up without disturbing a single strand of hair. “But it made me wonder about Ahiahi. Your husband fell off the cliff. Belle’s brakes went out. That’s why I came. I wanted to see if anything was going to happen this year.” Her eyes locked with mine. “Then you arrive. I thought Belle asked you to come. I know who you are. You’ve been involved in big stories. Crime. I thought maybe she asked you to come and find out about the brakes.” She looked at me levelly. “Oh, I know the car’s rusted out. There’s nothing to be found there. But I can tell you one thing. Those brakes were all right the day before Belle’s accident. I drove her car down the mountain. The brakes were fine. But the very next day, Belle steps on the brake pedal and nothing’s there.”
Megan’s face was somber. She clasped her hands tightly together. “The car exploded. We heard it and hurried down the road and found her. We got an ambulance. They rushed her right into surgery. We didn’t get home from the hospital until real late. But the next morning I went out early, before anyone was up. Belle always parked in the same place. There was a spot or two of oil, but no pool of brake fluid. Full of fluid one day, gone the next without a trace? I don’t think so.”
“You believe someone sabotaged the brakes?”
“What do you think?” Her tone was sharp.
The Socratic method. Work it out yourself. Add up the numbers. Tally the column.
Megan gathered up her bag, slipped into her thongs, stood gracefully.
I rose and faced her.
She hesitated, then said, “I don’t know why you’re here. But if you can help us, I hope you will. Before something else happens.”
I watched her walk away, graceful, lovely, and worried. What else could happen? I knew the answer to that question.
Belle could die.
I’d traveled halfway across the world to try and discover what had happened to my husband. I’d come resenting the claim Belle Ericcson had on Richard’s life.
I’d met Belle, a fascinating, vulnerable, grieving woman. I liked her. I admired her. And why should that surprise me? Richard had cared for her. I knew she’d cared deeply for Richard, the Richard I had loved so long and so unreservedly.
Now it was clear to me that my task was twofold. I would avenge Richard. And protect Belle. And I felt, despite fear and stress and daunting challenge, a curious sense of peace.
I’d left the rental car unlocked. I glanced over it. When the motor was running, I eased around and went a few feet, then jammed on the brakes. Call me spooked, if you will. Certainly call me careful.
I slowed at the first curve. Now that I was looking for it, it was easy to see where Belle’s car had crashed over the side. Last year, when everyone gathered to remember CeeCee.
The timing mattered, of course. So many things mattered.
CeeCee’s character. Johnnie Rodriguez’s call to Richard. Richard’s arrival at Ahiahi. Belle’s accident. The challenge bringing me here.
Megan urged me to figure it out. That’s just what I intended to do. I had some sums in mind as I drove cautiously down the twisting, curving road. But the equation still needed to be proved. Was someone trying to kill Belle? Was I decoyed here to protect her? To serve as a scapegoat? Was I right that someone in the family circle had arranged for CeeCee to be kidnapped?
I wondered if Lester Mackey would show up at Spouting Horn. No matter. I would find him there or at Ahiahi. I did not intend to be deflected. Not now. Because the strands were coming together.
Tourists wandered about, sunburned and cheerful, pausing to look over the stalls of the flea market. Coral and shell necklaces, koa and monkeypod bowls, silk leis and ukuleles, something for every taste. I hurried past the booths, up the sloping sidewalk.
Lester Mackey leaned on the bright green chain-link fence, looking out at the huge spume of water as it exploded forcefully from the lava tube, making an unearthly sound like an asthmatic giant’s wheeze. From a distance he looked boyish, once again in a checkered shirt and faded jeans. But when I came closer I saw the flecks of gray in his faded-blond hair. The bright, midday sun showed the deep lines on his face as clear and distinct as the crevices in the lava shelf that harbored Spouting Horn. He continued to stare out over the slippery, wet black lava, taking no notice as I gripped the fence beside him.
“You love the children,” I said softly.
A lacy column of seawater rose, white as Grecian marble. He waited until the moan of the expelled air subsided. “They’re my kids,” he said simply in his light, whispery voice. “I helped raise CeeCee and Anders and Joss. I helped them with their schoolwork. I took them to their lessons—swimming, dancing, horseback riding. I packed up their stuff for camp. And I did my best for Wheeler and his sisters when Belle married Quentin. Wheeler went off to college the next year, but he was still a kid, he still needed somebody to care about him, especially after his dad died.”
“Wheeler says you’ve always been there for them.”
He squinted against the bright sun. “I covered for them when they came in drunk. I loaned them money. I cheered when they won.”
“And encouraged them when they lost.” I understood. I’ve been there.
He reached back, pulled out his wallet. Pictures of each of the Burkes when they were little: CeeCee playing jacks, Anders cradling a puppy, Joss kicking a soccer ball; and of the Gallaghers as teenagers: Wheeler playing drums, Megan pouring tea, Gretchen climbing a tree.
He smoothed a finger gently over the picture of CeeCee. “I went to work for Belle when CeeCee was five years old. She had a lisp. She couldn’t say Lester. She called me Wethter. The last time—” He broke off, bent his head forward, squeezed his eyes shut.
His pain pulsed between us.
“CeeCee called you Wethter, didn’t she? That Friday. At the lake.” I spoke gently. No matter how many wrong choices this man had made, he’d made them because of love.
Slowly his eyes opened. He looked at me and I saw emptiness and torment and terrible sorrow.
“Oh, Jesus God, I thought it was a joke! The next day, when the ransom demand came, I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t know what to do. I went to the cabin. It was empty. No CeeCee. Not a trace of her. I got sick in the woods. But it didn’t help. I was shaking and my insides felt like I’d eaten acid. I ran back to the house, but Belle wouldn’t see anybody. She sent for your husband. I tried once to talk to her, but she sent me away, said not then, later. And what did I have to tell? I was ashamed, I didn’t want to tell her what I’d done. And I didn’t understand what had happened, how anything like this could have happened. I thought it would all come out and Belle would know it wasn’t my fault. When they found CeeCee in the lake, it was too late. And then I was scared. I decided it was some clever crooks. They could have found out about the jokes the kids played from the newspapers.” He looked at me in plaintive appeal. “They could have, couldn’t they?”
“It was all in the newspapers,” I agreed. And it had been, the pink flamingos and the computer tricks and the scavenger hunts. “You got a letter or a note—”
“I found the note in my car Friday afternoon. Down at the lake.”
“Telling you to ‘kidnap’ CeeCee as part of a joke to celebrate her birthday?”
He’d lived with the memory of that cloudy spring afternoon for a long time. He nodded wearily. “Just a joke. Toy guns. But CeeCee was always a sport. She laughed when Johnnie and I held her up, told her she had to come with us. She let us blindfold her. All part of the joke. The letter had a map in it, to a shabby little rental cabin about a mile away, up a narrow dirt road. We took CeeCee inside—the front door was unlocked and there was a chair with handcuffs fastened to one arm. We were supposed to handcuff her to the chair, but she said no. She promised she’d stay there and then she grinned and pointed to a picnic basket. She said, ‘Must have been planned by Joss. He never misses a meal. And a bottle of Dom Perignon. Okay, Wethter, I’ll play the game. But the picnic better be damn good.’”
“Why did you involve Johnnie?”
“To make it more fun. We wore handkerchief masks like bad guys in the old cowboy movies. CeeCee got a kick out of that.”
“Later, did you and Johnnie ever talk about what happened?”
“Just once. I told him it must have been planned by some crooks who knew all about the kids. We decided we couldn’t go to the police. We didn’t think anybody would believe us. And we hadn’t done anything wrong. We didn’t know anything that would have made a difference to the police.”
And Belle would have been furious.
“You had the letter, setting it up,” I said sharply. “That could have helped—”
He was shaking his head. “The last part told me to put the letter and the toy guns in the rowboat by the boathouse.” He kneaded his temple with his fist. “Somebody stole the rowboat that night. The police found it drifting near a public boat ramp.”
As Dugan said, somebody had been clever, very, very clever.
Lester Mackey’s faded blue eyes pled with me. “It could have been anybody, anybody at all.”
But he and I knew that wasn’t true. Maybe he couldn’t have known it then, but he knew it now.
“Richard.”
Mackey’s eyes slid away from me. “I thought he fell.”
“Richard talked to you when he came to Ahiahi.” I tried to keep a dangerous edge out of my voice. I needed this man’s help.
Slowly, Lester nodded. “Just for a minute. Late that afternoon. He said he’d seen Johnnie and Johnnie’d told him how we staged the kidnapping. He asked me if Johnnie’d ever talked to me about later that night, the night CeeCee disappeared.”
The night that Johnnie went for a walk in the woods. Back to the cabin where CeeCee waited for the joke to continue.
I waited for Lester’s answer as Richard must have waited. Richard was looking for confirmation. I was looking for a name.
I knew the answer before it came, knew and raged within.
Lester massaged one temple. “But I told him I’d only talked to Johnnie once and he hadn’t said a word about that night. Not a word.”
So only Richard knew whom Johnnie saw with CeeCee.
Richard was dead.
Johnnie was dead.
I was suffused with despair. I’d come so far, certain I would know the truth of Richard’s death when I discovered who had sent me the poster.
Now, I knew.
But I didn’t know enough. And this man couldn’t really help me. I stared out at the tower of water wavering in the limpid air.
Lester gripped the green knob of the fence post. “Ever since CeeCee was killed, I wake up in the night scared to death. Something’s wrong, dreadfully wrong. At first I don’t know what it is, and then I remember, I remember.” Spouting Horn gave its mournful moan. “But I couldn’t believe it was one of the kids. I couldn’t believe it.”
Wouldn’t believe it.
He put his hands together, cracked the knuckles. “Your husband could have fallen. Anybody can fall. But Belle’s accident last year—I kept thinking about it. At first I was just so glad she was alive. But I kept thinking about the brakes going out. And then I thought about your husband and the fact that everyone was coming now. And I was scared.”
“So you sent that poster to me.” Lester with his artistic talents and his reluctance ever to be noticed.
Defiantly, Lester met my eyes. “I thought if you came, maybe you could prove it one way or the other. I thought maybe I was crazy, making it all up, because everything’s been so weird since the lake. But when you said Johnnie drowned, just a couple of weeks after your husband came here, then I knew. Johnnie never stumbled off his pier. I don’t care how drunk he was. Somebody killed Johnnie. That means somebody here killed your husband, and that means…”
Someone in the family killed CeeCee at the lake. And tried to kill Belle here.
Add up the column. Tally the figures.
“Lester,” my voice was insistent, “the letter you found in your car, the letter setting up the joke. Who signed it?”
He licked his lips. “It had to be forged.”
“Lester, who signed it? Who did Johnnie Rodriguez see at the cabin?”
“It’s all so tangled. It doesn’t fit together. And why the hell didn’t Johnnie tell me if he saw anyone at the cabin? I’m the one he should have told.” His voice was sullen.
“What would you have done?” I asked bitterly.
“I’d have done something. And now, now I don’t know what to do.”
“You’ve got to tell Belle everything. We have to warn her.”
He stepped back, glared at me. “We can’t tell her. Listen, let me see what I can find out.”
“What do you know?” By God, he knew something!
“I don’t know anything. I can’t blame somebody if I don’t know.” His anguish was clear. He turned away, hurried down the sidewalk, his head lowered.
I ran after him. “Lester, tell me who signed that letter.”
He shook his head. “That’s not the answer. I know it’s not.” He walked faster.
“Lester, damn you,” and I shouted it, “tell me!”
He broke into a run, loped to his car. I followed as fast as I could. I didn’t care that curious faces turned toward me. But the car peeled out of the lot, leaving me standing in its dust.