20

“YOU DO YOUR CALLS AND I’LL BRING UP A TRAY,” Constance said that morning. “It might take me a while since it’s raining and no one’s going to be eating out on the terrace.”

Raining, definitely cooler and, Charlie noted with satisfaction, the rain was expected to taper off late in the afternoon. He turned off the television. “Bacon and sausage,” he said as Constance was leaving. She gave him a not-on-your-life look and simply smiled at his crestfallen expression.

His first call was to Debra Rasmussen.

“Good morning,” he said when she answered the phone. “I got your message, and I must say I don’t blame you, not a bit. However, I’m arranging a little get together at the Bainbridge house later on, and it’s in your interest to be there. I know you’ve scheduled a reception for staff and others, so the time could be a problem. What’s the earliest you could make it?”

“Mr. Meiklejohn, I really don’t have time, as you know. Does this mean that you’ve found those checks?”

“It isn’t absolutely mandatory for you to join us,” he said. “More of a courtesy. What time would be good for you?”

There was a long pause. Then she said four thirty in a snappish way. She sounded very irritated.

“Great. I’ll see you at the house.”

He walked to the glass door and gazed at the lake under rain as he considered his next call. The water was gray and choppy and looked cold. Returning to the chair at the sofa, he placed his call to Dorothy Dumond.

“Mrs. Dumond, we haven’t met, but we have a common interest. My name is Meiklejohn and this concerns the Bainbridge house. As one of the trustees of Stillwater College, it’s in your interest perhaps to represent all the trustees, to attend a little gathering at the house this afternoon. Dr. Rasmussen will be in attendance also, I might add.”

“You found the checks? Is that it?” she asked. “How exciting! I’ve never set foot in that house, and if it’s going to belong to the college, or course it’s in my interest to attend. What time is your meeting?”

“Four thirty. And, Mrs. Dumond, please bring Mr. Marshall with you.”

Before he could continue, she cut in to ask, “Whatever for? He has no interest in this matter.”

“I understand that. However, in our investigations, we’ve come across some very interesting information concerning the death of his wife years ago. That certainly is in his interest.”

“Why are you bringing that up at this time?” she demanded, her voice suddenly shrill and strident.

“It came up,” Charlie said. “And, Mrs. Dumond, it very definitely is in his interest to be there and hear what I have to say and not get it second hand, or third hand. Four thirty.”

He could hear her breathing for a few moments. “Mrs. Dumond? Are you still there?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “I’ll see what I can do about bringing Earl with me.”

“All I ask,” Charlie said. “I’m looking forward to meeting both of you.”

When Constance kicked the door, he hurried to open it and take the laden tray from her. “You done good, babe,” he said, putting it on the table. “You brought croissants!”

“I can’t bear to see a grown man cry,” she said, removing various covers from dishes. “Did you reach everyone?”

“Not the chief yet. He’s probably in church. Want to bet his wife has him in church without fail every Sunday.”

“You know very well I don’t gamble,” she said. “Especially on a Sunday. Of course, she does. He’s the chief of police and must keep up appearances.”

“If we weren’t already married, I’d propose here and now,” he said happily. “Bacon and sausage!”

“The bacon is mine. Keep your hands off.”

Breakfast was unhurried and they lingered over coffee afterward. But finally Constance said, “I should go get Jenna. She may be cold. And Stuart surely is cold. He was wearing shorts yesterday.”

“Right-o,” Charlie said with a grimace after glancing out at the rain. “Let’s do it.”

#

That morning the lake had become a gray slate without a ripple. The park was deserted, and water still gleamed on the sliding board; a cascade had gouged out its own pool in the sand at the bottom, below. The swings were lifeless and the air was chill. The park looked frozen into silence.

The chill had extended to the Bainbridge house. Tricia met them in the hall and motioned to the television room. “Stuart and Jenna are in there, Lawrence is around somewhere, Ted… ” She shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you have any news, anything new happening?”

“Maybe another body to report?” Lawrence asked, coming from the den.

Tricia’s hands clenched and she ducked her head.

“All’s quiet on the western front,” Charlie said. “What we’re here to do is let Constance take Jenna back to the apartment to change clothes, whatever. And I volunteer to take Stuart to his camp to have a look around, see what mayhem the sheriff’s bad boys left in their wake.”

Stuart and Jenna had stepped into the hall at his words, and they both nodded silently.

“I’ll go with you,” Lawrence said to Stuart. “If they trashed your stuff we might have to go to my place to get you something to wear.”

“Speaking of something to wear,” Constance said, “I brought you a sweater, Jenna. It’s a bit cool out this morning.”

Jenna didn’t respond. Constance thought she probably was angry for being coerced into staying at the Bainbridge house overnight, sleeping in Howard Bainbridge’s bed, having nothing of her own at hand in the morning. “Well, we might as well get started,” Constance said. She tossed the sweater to Jenna, who caught it reflexively but didn’t put it on or even cover her head as she followed Constance out to the car.

When Constance pulled to the curb at the Hammond house, Jenna had her key out and hurriedly left the car and started up the stairs. She had unlocked the door and was opening it by the time Constance caught up with her, but inside the apartment, she came to a full stop and gasped. Constance pushed past her to see a kitchen that looked as if it had been hit by a tornado.

Drawers had been pulled out, cabinets opened, boxes of cereal and crackers, flour and sugar on the floor, pans on the floor, the refrigerator door standing open. Constance hurried past the young woman and went into the bedroom where drawers had been emptied, the bedding pulled off the bed, the closet door open, garments on the floor. She retraced her steps to the living room, which had been searched, leaving cushions off the sofa and chairs. The study had been ransacked also, papers and books on the floor, drawers emptied.

Jenna stood at the bedroom door, ashen-faced and shaking. When Constance came near, she turned. “You knew,” she whispered. “You and Charlie, you knew something like this would happen. What if I’d been here? What if—”

“We didn’t know,” Constance said. “We were being cautious. And you weren’t here. Do you think you can change your clothes in that mess?”

Without warning, Jenna flung her arms around Constance and clung to her, shaking, whispering, “Thank you. Oh God, thank you.”

Together they found clothes that hadn’t been touched and, when Jenna went to the bathroom to shower and change, Constance began to pick up scattered garments and sheets and stuff them into a pillowcase. She knew Jenna would not wear anything that the searcher had handled until after it had been laundered.

“There’s a perfectly good washer and dryer in the house,” she said when Jenna emerged from the bathroom. “This will give you something to do until our little get-together later this afternoon. Ready?”

Jenna nodded without a trace of dissent, and without a backward glance at the apartment they left to return to the Bainbridge house.

Charlie met them at the door. When he saw the stuffed pillowcase, he raised his eyebrows at Constance, who nodded. “Ransacked,” she said.

The others crowded around and Stuart made an involuntary gesture as if to take the pillowcase from Jenna, then pulled back awkwardly. “Are you all right? What if you’d been there?”

She nodded toward Constance and Charlie. “But I wasn’t,” she said. “They saw to that. Now I have a load of laundry to do. Where’s the basement?”

“I’ll show you,” Stuart said and took the pillowcase. They walked down the hall together.

“His place was left in an unholy mess by those deputies,” Lawrence said, “but deputies had no reason to go to her apartment. Is that what you expected to happen last night? Why didn’t you post a guard there?”

Charlie shrugged. “Why don’t you crack out the Scrabble or something to keep yourselves amused. We’ll be back in a couple of hours.” He jerked his head toward the door, took Constance by the arm, and they left together. No one protested. It was as if they had reached a point where they were incapable of it.

“Was it a break-in?” he asked her in the car. He had taken the passenger seat.

“No.”

“Interesting,” he said as she started the engine. “Time to call the chief.”

Chief Engleman sounded peeved when he answered the call. “Now what?”

“Remember our little discussion about questions without answers? You said when I had some answers to let you know. I have some answers, Chief. Today at four thirty at the Bainbridge place.”

Engleman argued some but in the end he agreed to be there.

#

Dorothy Dumond and Earl Marshall were the last ones to arrive that afternoon. She went straight to Jenna and said, “My dear, I am so terribly sorry about your loss.”

Jenna ducked her head a little and said nothing. When Earl Marshall drew near as if to express his condolence, she turned away and took a chair next to Tricia, with Stuart on her other side. He looked tense enough to lash out if Earl took another step toward her.

“Glad you could all make it,” Charlie said. “I think there are enough chairs for everyone.” The only two vacant ones were well apart. Disdainfully Dorothy sat next to Dr. Rasmussen, and Earl sprawled between Ted and Lawrence without a glance at either of them. Chief Engleman was in an easy chair across the room, looking glum and very unfriendly.

Charlie surveyed the group and began by introducing everyone. “My wife and I were engaged to help find certain cashier’s checks, which we have done,” he said, taking a bulging envelope from his pocket.

There were gasps, and both Ted and Lawrence jumped to their feet as if to seize the envelope. Tricia said a fervent, “Thank God! You did it! You actually did it!”

“Where were they?” Ted demanded. “Just tell us where they were.”

“Doesn’t matter now, does it? There were other matters that we were asked to look into, and we did that also. So, consider this as simply act one of any ongoing presentation and be patient for the second act to start.” He glanced over them all and motioned for Ted and Lawrence to sit down, which they both did with some reluctance.

“Mr. Paley,” Charlie then said, “please verify that the checks are valid, the amount confirmed.” Charlie crossed the room to where Paley was sitting.

Paley’s hands were shaking hard as he took the envelope, removed the checks, and counted them. His voice was husky when he said, “Five million dollars,” without raising his eyes from the checks.

“Right,” Charlie said, taking them again. He returned them to the envelope and called, “Gus, will you please bring the box.”

Gus entered the room with a metal box that had a chain and metal cuff attached. Charlie introduced him as he put the box on a table at Chief Engleman’s side. No one moved as Charlie placed the envelope in the box and closed it. He turned on a small red light on the front of it.

“That box is locked now and Mr. Jesperson in New York City has the key to open it. If any attempt to open it is made without the proper key, a very loud alarm will sound. Mr. Paley, Gus, and Stan Leib, another employee of the Slocum Detective Agency, will leave us and deliver it to Mr. Jesperson. But before Gus attaches the cuff to his wrist, he and Stan will assist Mr. Paley with his boxes of books and other belongings. This may take a few minutes and I suggest that all of you help yourselves to coffee or tea or something on the dining room table. We’ll finish this act before we get on to the next one. Chief Engleman, will you please keep an eye on the box until Gus is ready to take possession?” Engleman gave him a murderous look and grunted.

Most of them stood up then and clustered in twos and threes. Jenna remained seated, and so did Earl Marshall, who looked asleep.

“Debra, let’s look over the house,” Dorothy Dumond said to Dr. Rasmussen, taking her by the arm. “So many possibilities! It’s a treasure… ” They left together.

Tricia embraced Constance and then Charlie. Tears stood in her eyes. “Thank God that’s over,” she said in a low, intense voice.

Stuart said something in a voice too low to hear. Jenna shook her head, but gradually they all moved out of the living room with the exception of Chief Engleman, who was guarding the box with the checks.

#

It wasn’t long before Gus and Paley returned, with Paley carrying a suitcase. The group that had dispersed came back and gathered near the table with the locked box. No one spoke as they watched Charlie put the cuff on Gus’s wrist.

“When will all this be settled and the money distributed?” Ted asked Paley.

“I’m sure the firm will expedite settling the estate and transferring the property deed to Stillwater College,” Paley said. “Very soon. I’m confident, it will be very soon. You’ll be officially notified as soon as possible.” He was edging toward the door as he spoke, and it was clear that he wanted to leave instantly. He avoided looking at Charlie or Constance.

Charlie made a shooing motion at him and Gus. “I’ll go to the car with them for just a word,” he said. “Won’t take more than a minute.” The three of them walked from the living room.

As those remaining began to move restlessly toward the hallway, Constance said, “He’ll be right back and act two will begin.” With reluctance Tricia reclaimed her chair, and with even more reluctance Ted and Lawrence seated themselves. Dorothy Dumond sniffed and said, “I want another look at that kitchen. My God, what a party you could prepare in such a kitchen. Debra—” She stopped when Dr. Rasmussen deliberately returned to her chair and sat down.

When Charlie came back, he was accompanied by Deke Hanson, who was carrying a black trash bag. Charlie introduced him. “Mr. Hanson will be joining us for the next part,” he said. Deke sat in a straight chair near the door with the trash bag at his side.

“Tricia,” Constance said as soon as Charlie had seated himself, “when we first discussed this, I suggested that I would have to learn something about Howard Bainbridge. I want to tell you all what Charlie and I have learned.” Dorothy Dumond whispered something to Dr. Rasmussen, and Constance turned her gaze toward her. Her eyes were like blue ice as she said, “This ultimately concerns all of you. Bear with me.” Dorothy Dumond shrugged, leaned back in her chair, began an intense scrutiny of her fingernails.

“After the tragic accident that killed his fiancée, Howard recovered from his injuries,” Constance said, “and he was coping with his bereavement. But in the spring of the following year, he changed and he withdrew from his family, as you all know. Also, in that spring he returned to Stillwater to give Andrea Briacchi a bicycle. She was the child who saved his life and he was grateful. We talked to Andrea’s mother, who was present when Howard gave Andrea the bicycle, and she described him as generous, kind, and gentle with the little girl. He taught her how to ride, and he bought her ice cream. The child was talking to him as they walked back to Andrea’s mother, and by the time they reached her, Howard had undergone a noticeable change. He had been laughing, enjoying being with the child, and he had become distant and sober. He thanked Andrea again as if she had done him a great service, the way one might thank an adult, and he shook her hand.”

Constance paused. All the Bainbridges were listening intently. Rasmussen and Dorothy Dumond were bored, and it was possible that Earl Marshall was actually sleeping. She had seen Chief Engleman looking at his watch.

Unhurriedly she continued. “Howard knew what was going on in his family even if he talked only with his sister, never his brothers. He knew when William married, when Ted had a live-in girlfriend, when Lawrence and Vicki were living together. He was a single man who traveled to car shows, to car-parts suppliers’ meetings and conventions, to various events. No one paid any attention to his travels. He was meticulous about keeping records, and he didn’t conceal his trips to Orlando, to New York City, to upstate New York. His travels are all meticulously detailed in his papers in the safe. His travels coincided with the hit-and-run death of Stuart’s mother, with the disappearance of Ted’s friend, and the drive-by shooting of Lawrence’s lover. He was on the scene each and every time, and we are convinced that he was responsible for those deaths and that one disappearance.”

Tricia cried out, “No! I don’t believe it! Why? He wouldn’t have done such a hideous thing!”

“You don’t know why, but his brothers know,” Constance said. “There was another little girl who saw that rowboat capsize. Alice Knudsen saw it happen. She was at the house across the lake earlier that day when she saw the brothers upend the rowboat and, in her mind at least, try to fix it. Alice told Andrea, who told Howard the day he bought her ice cream.”

Lawrence was sitting hunched over with his face in his hands, and Ted had drawn back in his chair staring at the floor.

Stuart looked at them, then at Constance. “You can’t know that,” he said. “What she told him, if anything. And there’s Pamela. Why not her, if he did the others?”

“Remember, she said she had a drink with him in Orlando. He was a shrewd business man, capable of sizing up people, no doubt, and he saw a woman who was self-destructing, a marriage already over. There was no need to kill her. Your father had already suffered whatever anguish losing her might have caused. She came here after she left Orlando, and Howard slammed the door in her face. He knew she was finished.”

“You don’t know what Andrea might have told him,” Stuart persisted. “That’s just a guess and it all hangs on that guess.”

“We know, and we’ll get to the how presently. But meanwhile, first, look at this house, then consider what Howard did when he knew he was a dying man. When he came here to buy property he wanted the old fishing campsite, but the resort is there now and he couldn’t get it. Then he tried for a lakefront property, and none was available. He settled for this, a beautiful house that he cared nothing about. Then, at the end, he forced his family back to Stillwater, made them revisit the past, as he must have done over and over through the years. He cared nothing about money or the luxuries it could have bought. No fancy watch, no jewelry, no art, nothing to show for the wealth he had accumulated. And he didn’t divide the checks into individual envelopes for his siblings to find. He wanted one person to find all five million dollars worth of checks. Think of the misery, the dissension that would have caused, to have one of you with five million dollars in hand, the rest with nothing. Or the even greater misery if the checks had not been found and the house had become the property of Stillwater College with the checks still in it. It’s obvious that he didn’t care if that happened. He made certain to provide for Tricia in his will. She had never done him any harm.”

Abruptly Ted rose and walked from the room, and Lawrence raised his head. “You nailed it,” he said in a low despairing voice. “It was supposed to be a joke. They’d be in their fancy city clothes, and they’d just get a little wet. That’s how it was supposed to turn out. They’d get a little wet.”

“If you had confessed, expressed horror, remorse, told the truth, it might have changed everything,” Constance said flatly.

Lawrence jerked up from his chair and walked out. Constance watched him sadly without speaking. He had been the youngest of them, had just turned nineteen, had sought religion and it had failed him. His lover had been killed. He and his brothers had paid a very high price for a joke that misfired.

“Time for a break,” Charlie said then.

“He killed Andrea!” Dorothy Dumond cried in a high-pitched voice. “He came back and killed her, too! Just like all the others!”

“No, Mrs. Dumond, he did not kill Andrea,” Charlie said, getting to his feet. “After a little break we’re going to get to Andrea Briacchi Marshall.” He walked past her and out to the kitchen, where he went to the door and gazed for a moment at the two brothers standing at the table under the umbrella. Lawrence had his arm around Ted’s shoulders.

Engleman came to Charlie’s side and said roughly, “I’ve had about enough, Meiklejohn. There’s no way on God’s little green earth to pin those deaths on a dead man, and you know it.”

Charlie looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t think you’d even consider it,” he said. “But they had to know, and the curse had to be put to rest. Patience, Chief. Third and final act coming up.”

Engleman snarled something that sounded very much like, “Bullshit!” and moved away as others trailed into the kitchen.

Tricia went straight to the door and out to her brothers. The rain had stopped and steam was rising from the terrace stones. The three stood close together.

Jenna and Stuart had entered the kitchen and Charlie left the door as Stuart approached it. He watched as Jenna put her hand on Stuart’s arm and said something in a voice too low for him to hear the words. Stuart looked at his aunt and uncles, then to Jenna, and after a moment he turned from the door and they walked together to the dining room, where the coffee urn and other drinks were on the table.

Charlie caught Constance’s eye and saw her slight nod of approval. Stuart was not part of that particular Bainbridge history. He looked at his watch, then at Constance, who held up three fingers. Give them three more minutes, then get on with it. He nodded. Message received.

When he returned to the living room, he saw that Earl Marshall had a glass of bourbon and water, and Dorothy Dumond had helped herself to wine. Debra Rasmussen was in a conversation with Chief Engleman, who looked as if he was being given an order he had no intention of carrying out.

“She wants to know how much longer we’re going to be here,” the chief said, and he moved away from Rasmussen, having passed the implied order over to Charlie.

“Not much longer,” Charlie said. “Stuart, you want to let your family know we’re ready to start?”

Earl Marshall watched Stuart leave with poorly veiled hostility, then turned a more speculative gaze toward Jenna and took a long drink.

Finally they were all seated again and Charlie began. “No matter where we started asking questions and getting some answers,” he said, “we kept coming up with Andrea Briacchi’s name, first as the child, then as the recipient of a valuable scholarship, as Earl Marshall’s wife, as the victim of a fatal accident, and finally, as Eve focused her research on Earl, which ultimately led to Eve’s death.

“It all ties together,” he said, “and we were compelled to follow up with all the hints and suggestions that we kept stumbling across. First, as the child. She saved Howard’s life, and she learned that the brothers had done something to the rowboat that certainly did not fix anything, since until then nothing had been broken. She gave up her scholarship when she learned that Howard had been her benefactor. Mrs. Dumond had told her about the deaths of the young women, and no doubt Andrea had verified what she had been told. She was a good student. She would have known how to do enough research to learn about the deaths of women connected to Bainbridge men. She came to realize that the innocent remark of a child, herself, had quite likely put Howard on the path to vengeance. Tragic, unintended consequences followed her remark, and she accepted responsibility for causing them.”

“You’re spinning fairy tales,” Dorothy Dumond said. “You’re assuming too much with no evidence whatsoever to back up anything you say.”

“During Andrea’s final year,” Charlie said as if he had not heard Dorothy, “she no longer had her living expenses paid and hardship was the result. Earl had little or no money of his own, and Dorothy Dumond controlled whatever money there was available. Andrea gave an ultimatum during that year. Earl was to graduate and get a job and then they were going to move into their own place, out of the old Marshall house.”

Earl cursed and jerked up from his chair.

“I don’t intend to sit and listen to this a minute longer!” Dorothy Dumond said, jumping to her feet. “Come on, Earl, let’s get out of here.”

“Oh, sit down,” Charlie said. “Let’s talk about the night Andrea died.”

Earl had turned and started toward the door, but Deke Hanson was blocking it, standing with his arms crossed over his massive chest. His three-hundred-plus-pound body looked as immovable as a mountain.

“You might as well sit down and hear me out,” Charlie said. “I’m going to say what I have to say whether you’re here or not, and Chief Engleman will hear it all.”

Dorothy Dumond’s face was rigid with anger, and for a moment Earl looked ready to try to force his way past Deke, who smiled slightly. Abruptly Earl wheeled about and returned to his chair. He picked up his glass and drained it. Dorothy Dumond perched on the edge of her chair.

“There were a number of things about that night that didn’t make sense,” Charlie said. “Why the time lag if they were ready to leave at the same time for her to drive to town and for him to take the dog out? Five or six minutes, maybe longer before Wasserman saw the taillights. Why was the car pointed straight down? Why didn’t she put on the hand brake? Why take the station wagon?

“Let’s take them one at a time,” he said. “They did leave the house together. It’s easier to move an unconscious person across a bench seat than to maneuver that same person out of the car and into the driver’s seat. So the station wagon was used. Wasserman saw the taillights when the car began to roll down the slope, not on the road. Until it started to roll down, the lights would have been obscured by undergrowth in the woods, but once it tilted more, they were visible, and from where he was standing the assumption would have been that the car was on the road. A car on a slope will start to roll and it will roll faster and faster as the slope gets steeper, exactly the condition of that spot. I suppose if Wasserman hadn’t been outside, the dog would have been released and might have gone after a bone or something tossed into the woods. And the dog walker would have whistled and called out, made his presence known. But luck would have it that a witness was at hand.”

“You’re full of shit!” Earl yelled. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! I loved her! We were going to move out and be by ourselves! I wouldn’t have hurt her!”

“Earl, stop talking!” Dorothy cried. “Don’t say another word. I’ll get you the best lawyer in the state, and we’ll sue this bastard for all he’s worth. This is criminal defamation! He can’t prove a thing.”

“And the motive,” Charlie said, again ignoring Dorothy’s outburst. “Earl was going to steal Andrea’s novel and claim it as his own. That’s what Eve Parish learned after she found Andrea’s notebook and put two and two together. That’s what her expression of revulsion made you realize when you confronted her at the supermarket. So she had to die. And Pamela saw you and was going to shake you down for all you’re worth, and she was next on the list.”

Dorothy jumped up and ran to Earl, clutched his arm and shook it. “Earl, let’s get out of here! Now! That man is a maniac. They can’t prove a thing. I want to call a lawyer. I won’t let you suffer from this madman’s raving.”

“But you know we can prove it, don’t you?” Charlie asked softly. “You know you’re cooked. We have Andrea’s notebook containing her handwritten novel. Handwriting experts will verify that the handwritten notes were made by Andrea, and experts will prove that she was writing and rewriting her material in the notebook before making the changes in the manuscript. You know we can prove every bit of it.”

“Get up, Earl! For God’s sake, get up and let’s get out of here! You need a lawyer!”

Suddenly he threw his empty glass against the wall and shook her hand off his arm and yelled at her, “Just shut the fuck up! You think I’m going to let them charge me with murder? You really think I’ll take the fall for you, you bitch! She did it!” he yelled at Charlie. “She killed Andrea. She told me to say I wrote the novel, no one would ever know. Now that Andrea was gone, what difference could it make? I wanted to sell the house, have enough money to get a place for Andrea and me, and she wouldn’t do it. She wanted me right there under her thumb, the way it always had been. She killed her!”

Dorothy pulled back from him, ashen faced. She shook her head hard, then harder, and clapped her hands over her ears. “No! Earl! No! It was for you! She was bad for you! I promised Momma I would take care of you. I’ll get you the best lawyer there is. I promised Momma! She was going to take you away and I had to take care of you!”

Constance stood and went to Dorothy’s side, took her arm, and guided her back to her chair, where Dorothy sat shaking with her hands covering her face.

“Chief, what I have in that bag that Deke’s been guarding is a length of rebar wrapped in a towel. I got it under the seat of Mrs. Dumond’s car with three witnesses watching. I have their signed statement about what they saw me do. I did it myself because you would have needed a search warrant and probable cause and I didn’t. The first time she used the rebar, she didn’t have a towel to wrap it in, and forensics should find traces of blood, DNA, hair on the floor of the car. I suggested to DeLaura that pathology might find those same traces in Pamela Bainbridge’s head wound. I wore gloves when I handled the rebar, and it’s been in that trash bag ever since.”

Chief Engleman looked as shaken as everyone else, but he stood and walked across the room to stand before the shaking woman. “Dorothy, please come with me to another room where we can wait for the sheriff.” He glanced at Earl Marshall and added, “You, too, Earl. We’ll wait for the sheriff to talk about all this.” He paused, turned, and said, “You’ll all have to stay until the sheriff gets here. He’ll want statements from you.”

Charlie told Deke to show Engleman where the library was and tilted his head toward Earl Marshall. Chief Engleman held Dorothy Dumond’s arm and led her out, and Deke, carrying the trash bag, kept close to Earl Marshall and went after them.

There was a prolonged silence in the living room following their departure. Then Lawrence said, “You knew it was her. You made a good case for him, but it was her.”

“We knew,” Charlie said. “No one was ever going to prove she killed Andrea, but Marshall went into real shock when he was told she had died. You can fake a lot of things, but a doctor attended him, and he was in shock that night. I kept coming back to the time lag. What happened during those minutes after Earl left and Wasserman saw the car lights? Why the station wagon? Dorothy Dumond needed time to knock Andrea out and get her into the wagon. Dorothy kept him on a leash after their mother died, but maybe he would have left with Andrea, maybe not. Anyway, we thought or, I should say, Constance was certain that it would break him to start with that tragedy and make him see that Dorothy was quite willing to let him take the heat, accused of murdering Andrea, Eve Parish, and Pamela.”

“But how did you figure out that she killed Eve and Pamela?”

“Remember I talked to Pamela before the police did, before she had a chance to change her story about what she saw that night. She saw Eve cross the street and go into the park, and she saw Dr. Rasmussen and Dorothy Dumond, and that’s all. But that was enough. Dr. Rasmussen said she went into the house and out to the back porch to hear the concert, and that Dorothy got into her car. She didn’t see her leave in the car, only get into it. But Pamela had a seat that would have let her see taillights come on, and then go off. And very likely she saw Dumond again heading into the park at the far end. I don’t know that, but I can assume it. When she learned that Dumond claimed to have seen a hand waving Eve over, she knew it was a lie, or she would have seen a guy waving. Dr. Rasmussen didn’t see it, and Pamela didn’t, only Dorothy Dumond made the claim, and she was the only one who benefitted to say that. She was an opportunist who took advantage of the conditions. Eve was alone in a dark area of the park and the rebar was under the seat. She wouldn’t have had anything to wrap the rebar in that night, so traces must be in the car. Possibly she tried to clean it and believed that she had done so, but you can’t clean rebar of blood easily.

“The night Pamela got killed, she made a call. I could see a partial imprint on a telephone pad in the motel room, and later I confirmed that four of the numbers matched Dumond’s cell phone number. Pamela called her, no doubt to make a deal, to back her up that a man had waved Eve over, and possibly to identify that man as Stuart. Earlier that day Pamela said to hell with the checks. She had a different deal in mind after talking to the sheriff. Throw Stuart to the cops, deal with Dumond, that was enough.”

“I just don’t see how Dorothy Dumond knew that Eve was a threat,” Lawrence said after a moment.

“At about five that evening when Dr. Rasmussen was on her way to a meeting with the trustees, Eve caught up with her at the door of the conference room. The door was partway open. Eve told Dr. Rasmussen she had to know something before the program on Monday. At that time the college was going to present an achievement award to Earl Marshall. The door was opened wider and there was a roomful of trustees, including Dorothy Dumond. Putting together what she heard then, and what Earl no doubt had told her about the supermarket incident, she knew or at least suspected that Eve had discovered that Earl had not written the novel at all.”

“He didn’t know she killed Andrea? Didn’t he suspect?” Lawrence asked.

“I think he came to that conclusion some time during the next week or two, and when he did he packed up everything he had and left. After the success of the novel, the shoe was on the other foot. He was the one with money, and his consent was needed to sell the house. He said no. Probably the investigators will learn that Dorothy was dependent on him, and that he doled out just enough for her to keep up appearances, and not a cent more. She needed to consult him about maintaining the house, hiring things done, keeping up appearances. She had to pretend disdain for travel to Europe, travel to anywhere. She couldn’t afford it. Payback time.”

“Vengeance,” Tricia said in a hoarse whisper. “Howard, Earl, both vengeful, punishing.”

Charlie had avoided glancing at Jenna as he talked about the death of her sister. He turned to her and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t soften it.”

Huddled in her chair, she looked small and vulnerable, wounded. “I had to hear everything,” she said. “I had to know.”

“Constance,” Tricia said then, “you were going to tell us how you knew or guessed that Andrea told Howard… You know, about the rowboat.”

“I read her novel,” Constance said. “It’s a fictionalized autobiography. In it a young girl tells her mother something that leads to the murder of two people, and later, as a young woman she comes to realize that her innocent remark made her mother know the truth about her husband’s death, that he had been killed deliberately, although his death had been called accidental. Eve came to know that it was an autobiographical novel after she found Andrea’s notebook. She hadn’t known it yet when she interviewed Earl Marshall the first time, but when he said he loved the movie that was made, she was appalled. He said then that the book was about a homicidal mother, murders, and that it made a ton of money, which made him happy. Eve protested that the novel had those things in it, but it wasn’t about death and murder, it was about guilt, conscience, the struggle with responsibility. About the inhuman decision a girl had to make, to denounce her mother, whom she loved. About the terrible consequences of her remark, about justice. And that was Andrea’s struggle when she came to realize that her own chance remark to Howard had resulted in tragedies. The chance remark had to have been about the false boat repair that Alice had told her about. In the novel, this is what the child told her mother, ‘I’m sorry that Uncle Jim didn’t fix Daddy’s car right.’ I suspect that Andrea said something like that to Howard, ‘I’m sorry they didn’t fix the boat right.’”

“Hardly like having to betray your own mother,” Lawrence said. “She didn’t even know Howard.”

“She was fatherless,” Constance said. “He came along and gave her a bicycle, bought her ice cream, played with her, laughed with her. A child that age might well have fantasized that he was her father, the idealized father she yearned for. It was enough of a struggle to allow her, or perhaps to compel her to write a beautiful novel about that struggle with her conscience, her guilt feelings, betrayal.”

For the first time Ted spoke up. “Charlie, how much of this has to come out?” He looked old and tired, and there was no trace of hostility in his voice, which sounded more like that of a man who had been defeated.

“I’m not a reporter looking for a scoop,” Charlie said. “The family had to know and now you do. Separate issue from the murders of Eve Parish and Pamela. The only thing that ties it all together is Andrea Briacchi’s novel and her murder.”

Ted turned to Debra Rasmussen, who had tried to merge with the back of her chair again, the way she had done before on the back porch of the house in upstate New York the day they had come to consult with Charlie and Constance. Debra shook her head. “It’s none of my business,” she said. “I’ll have enough questions to field concerning Dorothy. When that becomes public, the talk of a curse will be gone.”

She stood and added, “Chief Engleman said we have to wait for the sheriff, but we don’t have to wait in here. I’m getting a drink, if there’s anything left to drink.”

“I’m with you,” Charlie said, then added to himself, I knew she’d take charge, given the chance. She had just dismissed the class.