A Death in Duck: Lindsay Harding Cozy Mystery Series (Reverend Lindsay Harding Mystery Book 2) (21 page)

              “I’ll grant you that you’ve been a bit…well, ass-like, this week, but generally speaking, you’re not a bad catch, life partner-wise.”

              Anna walked toward the back of the lobby, where a bank of windows looked out onto the beach. “I can’t believe I wrecked things with Drew.”

              Lindsay followed Anna and stood beside her. The winter wind had picked up once again, and even through the glass, they could hear it shrieking across the dunes. “Help me understand what’s going on with you, Anna.”

“I suppose I owe you that much, huh?” Anna said with a sad smile. “After all, I wrecked our friendship, too.”

“It isn’t wrecked,” Lindsay said. Anna shot her a skeptical look. “Okay,” Lindsay agreed. “You were a huge jerk. Like if there was Jerk Olympics, you’d probably have medaled in multiple events.”

“I’m sorry about the other night. Well, about the whole week. I’ve had my head so far up my own…nuptials that I didn’t even check to see if you were okay after your aunt was killed. I just threw my mother at you and let you fend for yourself. And I didn’t even know about you and Warren breaking up. I haven’t been there for you at all. I can’t believe some of the things I said to you. You know I don’t really think that stuff, don’t you?”

“What, like me being a Little Miss Perfect who never had any friends?” Lindsay said. The insults were still so raw that her words came out sprinkled with vinegar.

“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” Anna said, holding her hands up like an outlaw surrendering. “All that stuff was about me, not about you. I went to private school with a bunch of entitled brats and had parents who hooked me up with internships at Beth Israel and pulled strings for me at every turn. You’ve had to overcome all this horrible stuff with your parents. But you put yourself through school, bought a house, and made a life.”

Lindsay wanted to say that a big part of Anna’s problem was doubtlessly the interference of her fire-breathing harpy of a mother, but she held her tongue. If she had learned one thing over the past week, it was that, while you could criticize your own mother all you wanted, it was difficult to break the primal bonds of family.

“You know,” Lindsay said, cocking her head thoughtfully, “I wouldn’t trade with you. All I ever had to do to exceed people’s expectations was not end up behind bars. You seem to think you have to be perfect—doctor, tri-athlete, daily flosser... It’s no wonder you cracked under the pressure with this wedding.”

“It’s good that I cracked, though. Kind of a blessing in disguise.”

“How so?” Lindsay asked. Optimistic though she was, she failed to see the silver lining.

“It allowed me to realize that I’m too messed up to be somebody’s wife. I can’t even be a halfway decent friend. And if Drew and I’d had kids—heaven forbid—I could’ve actually been in charge of innocent little people.”

“You’d be a great mom.”

“I’m a self-centered, insecure, jealous control freak.”

“Not usually,” Lindsay said with a feeble smile.

“If I married Drew, I’d always have to know that I wasn’t his first choice. You were. He wants kids, and I’m probably too old to have them. I’d have had to live with that every day, and this all made me realize that I just can’t do it. I’d be trying and failing to get pregnant, and you’d be there, all smiles, with your perky little uterus,” Anna said.

Lindsay shook her head. “That’s nuts.”

“No it’s not. He saw you first. He didn’t even notice me until after you ended it with him.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Lindsay said. “He and I just don’t click. He loves
you
.”

“I practically threw myself at him, and he still went for you,” Anna said.

“Well, that can’t be because I’m a better catch. There’s a reason that ‘short and scrawny with a frizzy blonde afro’ isn’t a common look for actresses and models. Tall and gorgeous is. Being emotionally guarded and nerdy isn’t typically considered desirable in a partner. Being calm and decisive is. He was probably just intimidated by you. I know I was when I first met you. I thought you were going to chew me up and spit me out.”

“See?! I’m scary!”

“Right now you are! Because this isn’t you. You have a great guy who loves you and wants to marry you and you’re doing your best to torpedo it!” Lindsay paused and furrowed her brow. “Now I know how you, Geneva, and Rob must’ve felt all those times you tried to set me up on dates.”

A hint of a smile crept into Anna’s eyes. “You are pretty good at torpedoing romantic relationships.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Lindsay said. “Well, this figures. I have that one thing that I do way better than you, and now here you go trying to steal it.”

The two women looked at each other, teary-eyed but smiling.

Lindsay looked down at her rumpled clothes. “Hey, since we’re friends again, is there any chance I could use your shower?”

“Sure,” Anna replied. “And they have toothbrushes at the front desk, too. I’m just saying.”

###

An hour and a half later, Rob and Lindsay sat in the Sandpiper’s plush bar. Lindsay’s curls were still damp from her shower. She had changed from her rumpled “daughter-in-law material” outfit into jeans and a nearly threadbare Elon College sweatshirt. Rob was sipping on a Dr. Pepper; Lindsay was working her way through a bowl of complimentary peanuts.

“So you and Anna are okay?” Rob asked.

“I think we’re going to be,” Lindsay said. “Is it terrible to admit that I’m secretly kind of excited to know that Anna was jealous of me?”

“It’s like finding out that the captain of the cheerleading team envies some pimply kid in the chess club,” Rob said.

“Don’t burst my bubble. I was never on the chess team.”

“And you have a lovely complexion,” Rob said, pinching her cheek.

She swatted him away. “Let me have my moment.”

“You’re right,” he said. “You’re definitely pretty enough to ruin a wedding and destroy people’s lives.” Ignoring her glare, he moved onto a new topic. “Do you think she and Drew are going to be able to patch things up?”

Lindsay slowly crunched a peanut. “I think they really love each other,” she answered.

“So is that a ‘yes’?”

“That’s a maybe. Loving someone is easy. But showing it?
Living
it?”

Lindsay told Rob that after she and Anna had had a long, difficult talk, Anna still hadn’t decided whether or not she could go through with the wedding. Worse still, she wasn’t sure that, if she changed her mind, Drew would be willing to take her back. He had been heartbroken and angrier than she’d ever seen him. He’d stormed out of the hotel that morning, and despite Anna’s repeated calls to his cell phone, he hadn’t been heard from since.

“Speaking of missing people, where’s your mom?” Lindsay asked.

“She’s up in our room resting,” Rob said.

“Has she talked to you about…anything?”

“You mean about marriage and kids? Only in a kind of roundabout way. She keeps telling me about her friends who have the cutest, smartest, healthiest grandchildren and about how my sister has disappointed her by deciding not to settle down until after she finished nursing school. You know. Typical Asian mother stuff.

“But she also told me a funny story about when she met my dad,” he continued. “She didn’t like him at all. She thought he was too old and not her type—he had a comb-over and he always wore the same shirt. But she knew that it would make her parents happy if she married him, so she did, and it turned out to be the best decision of her life. She never talks to me and Connie about personal stuff like that. I hardly know anything about her younger days. She’s been so open with me on this trip.” Rob paused and took a sip of his Dr. Pepper. “You know what? I think I’m going to tell her the truth.”

“What?” The proposal took Lindsay completely by surprise. For a moment, she just sat there, looking at Rob as if he’d just sprouted feathers and a beak. “After all this?”

“It’s kind of because of all this. I mean, look at you and Anna. Your relationships are sort of a mess. No offense. But really, you’ve had fights, breakups, tears, drama. And for almost 10 years, I’ve had this amazing, reliable guy by my side. He’s always there for me and for his friends and family. I’ve never had a day’s worry about whether I loved him or he loved me. I think my mother will be able to see that that’s better than choosing someone just because they have lady parts under the hood.”

“Are you sure?” Lindsay asked, grimacing. “It seems like the moral of her story about your dad is that you should do what your parents tell you to.”

“What do you mean, am I sure? You’re the one who’s been on my case this whole time to come clean!”

“That was before.”

“Before what?” Rob demanded.

“Excuse me,” the bartender said, interrupting Lindsay before she could answer. “Are you Lindsay Harding?”

“Yes,” Lindsay answered, perplexed.

“There’s a call for you at the front desk. I’ll have them transfer it here.” He said something into the receiver, and a moment later handed her the phone.

Lindsay took the cordless receiver and walked over to a quiet section of the bar. She realized that she still hadn’t located her cell phone, so anyone trying to reach her would’ve had difficulty tracking her down. She hoped this was Claire calling with some break in the case. “Hello?” she said.

“Oh, thank goodness!” Simmy said. Her voice was stretched thin with anxiety. “Honey, your mama’s missing.”

“Calm down, Simmy. She can’t be. They transferred her to the mainland this morning.”

“They just came by here looking for her. I guess they’ve been calling your cell phone, but they couldn’t reach you. Sarabelle never made it to the mainland. She’s gone.”

Chapter 22

In violation of every speed limit between Duck and Corolla, Lindsay managed to reach Simmy’s house in less than 10 minutes. From the hotel phone she’d spoken to Claire, who informed her that Sarabelle had indeed slipped out of their grasp. Earlier that evening, she was being transported alone in the back of a prison transport van, which had been forced to a stop along Highway 12 just south of Duck. A burning car was blocking both lanes of traffic. The officers jumped out of the van to ensure that no one was trapped inside the car, and when they got back into the van a few minutes later, the rear door had been forced open. Sarabelle was gone. An hour later, a truck matching the description of Leander Swoopes’s had been sighted on the mainland near Elizabeth City.

Lindsay let herself in the unlocked front door and found Simmy pacing back and forth like she was trying to wear a groove in the oak floorboards. Kipper rushed up to Lindsay and pressed his body against her legs. She gave him a comforting rub between the ears. Simmy reached her a moment later and clutched her arm. “I’m so glad you came. I’m just beside myself.”

“It’ll be okay, Simmy.”

“The policeman who came here said they’re sending some people over to gather up all her things as evidence,” Simmy said, pulling Lindsay into the spare room. Sure enough, amongst the upended couch, the broken piano bench, the row of dead plants, and the armoire that Sarabelle had used as a hideout from the police, stood Sarabelle’s open suitcase. Her clothes, shoes, and toiletries spilled out of it onto the old futon mattress she’d been sleeping on. “I’ve just been cleaning a little bit so they can find their way around.”

“I don’t think you should touch anything,” Lindsay said. But no sooner had the words left her mouth than she kneeled down in front of the suitcase. Something furry poked out from underneath a copy of
Us Weekly
that had been tucked in the side of the suitcase. “Is that a cat?” she asked, reaching forward to pick it up. The object turned out to be a short, tightly-curled gray wig. “One of yours?” she said to Simmy.

“Goodness, no!” Simmy exclaimed, putting her hands to the glossy blonde hairpiece perched atop her head. “I wear a wig because I don’t want to look like an old lady. And I wouldn’t have that cheap polyester thing within a mile of my head. It looks like road kill.”

“Why would Sarabelle have a wig, though?”

Simmy furrowed her brow. “Maybe she wore it to hide from Leander? You know, so he wouldn’t recognize her? Or maybe she used it for a Halloween costume?” she posited.

Both explanations jarred. Sarabelle hated the idea of looking old. Lindsay could imagine her mother going to a costume party as a French maid, a vampire temptress, or Catwoman. But as an elderly lady? And if she’d chosen to disguise herself, Sarabelle would never have chosen such an unglamorous persona. An image in Lindsay’s mind suddenly came into sharp focus: Sarabelle crouched under the stairs at the Sandpiper. Without her makeup, she’d looked far older than her 50 years.

“Swoopes’s mother,” Lindsay said, springing up from the mattress. She raced to the kitchen and dialed Warren’s number on Simmy’s phone.

Warren picked up his cell phone on the first ring. “Lindsay?” He seemed simultaneously amazed and delighted to hear her voice.

“Warren, you were right. I’ve been so stupid,” Lindsay began frantically.

“Me, too,” he cut in. “I’m a bona fide idiot. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I should’a never let you go.”

“Oh.” Now it was Lindsay’s turn to be surprised. Her train of thought was momentarily derailed as this new information was laid out before her. But there was no time to pause and consider his words. “That’s actually not what I meant. I’m calling because you were right about Sarabelle.”

“Sarabelle.” Warren repeated, his voice sinking like a stone.

“Yeah,” Lindsay continued. “I think I might know who Leander Swoopes’s mother is.”

“We already know who his mother is,” Warren said, with irritation creeping into his voice. “Didn’t you get the message I left you? Swoopes’s mother lives in Plano, Texas. There’s no question. All the medical records are there—birth certificate, blood type, everything. Lots of people were able to vouch for being there when she was pregnant and even when she delivered.”

“That’s not what I meant. I know the guy who bought the gun ID'ed Leander Swoopes as the son, but did anyone check to make sure that the woman who went with him, the mother, was actually Patricia Harding?”

“What do you mean? I saw a copy of her gun license myself...” Warren stopped short. He was a careful investigator and rarely overlooked even unlikely possibilities. However, his long pause let Lindsay know that, as she'd feared, this time he'd missed something.

“I don’t think that was Aunt Harding. It was Sarabelle. She’s been helping Swoopes this whole time. They’ve been in this together.”

Lindsay quickly explained her theory—that the pair had been working together to steal from Patricia Harding for months. She told Warren for the first time about Sarabelle’s admission that she had supplied Leander with the weapon he used to kill Lydia Sikes. She suggested that either their scheme had been discovered, or encountered an obstacle, and they were forced to kill their golden goose.

“Stay where you are, okay?” Warren said. “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”

###

Warren, Claire, Lindsay, and Simmy sat at Simmy’s kitchen table, going over the details of Sarabelle’s movements the previous week and trying to figure out if and when she could have been in touch with Leander to plan their escape. Shortly after Warren and Claire had arrived, Warren had received a call confirming that Lindsay’s hunch had been correct. The New Albany police had showed Sarabelle’s mugshot from the previous summer’s shoplifting “misunderstanding” to the gun dealer, who confirmed with certainty that the woman pictured was the same woman who’d pretended to be Leander's mother.

Simmy was the only one who insisted that Sarabelle couldn’t be involved in any kind of plot. She swore that there was no way the pair could’ve been in touch to arrange Sarabelle’s daring escape from custody. She could vouch for every minute, she said, and Sarabelle never left her sight until the afternoon when she turned herself in. Claire and Warren exchanged a skeptical look.

But no sooner were the words out of her mouth than a worried look passed across her face. “Well, maybe not
every
minute. But she’s a good person and she’d never be in league with that murderer!”

Lindsay turned to Warren. “I’m so sorry. You can yell at me all you want for not telling you about Sarabelle right away. I deserve it. Just find them, please, and stop them from hurting anybody else.” Lindsay spoke frantically, her eyes wide and pleading. She felt an almost suffocating guilt for not acting on her initial instinct that Sarabelle was not to be trusted. In spite of everything she knew, she had once again become tangled in Sarabelle’s spider web.

“Calm down,” Claire said reassuringly. “You didn’t know the extent of her involvement. We still don’t know all the details. And you’re the one who helped us bring her in. It’s not your fault she escaped.”

Lindsay continued talking directly to Warren. “You were completely right. I lose my grip on reality when it comes to her. I should've called you the second I laid eyes on her and told you she was there—on Christmas Eve. If I had, maybe none of this would’ve happened.”

“It’s really not your fault, honey,” Simmy said. “It’s mine. I was the one who led you out there and begged you to help me protect Sarabelle. I should’ve told her before…” her voice caught in her throat. “And now she’s gone. I just thought we’d have time when this was all over. Time to all be together.” Simmy pulled her shawl more tightly around her. “There’s more to the story,” she said quietly. “You know, about me and Patty and Peter Hunzinger?”

“Who’s Peter Hunzinger?” Warren asked.

“He was a German submariner,” Lindsay explained. “My aunt and Simmy hid him during the war. You know the cloth I left at the front desk for you guys to look into?” Warren continued to stare blankly at Lindsay.

Lindsay shot a questioning glance at Claire, who cast her eyes down to her notebook. “I’ve been meaning to send someone out there to pick that stuff up,” she mumbled.

“Lindsay can catch you up on that part of the story later,” Simmy said to Warren. “It’s not as important as what happened next. Well, young and stupid as we all were, one thing was bound to lead to another. One day, Patty came in and caught me and Peter…together. She was madder than a stump full of yellow jackets. I guess I shouldn’t’ve been surprised that she’d fallen in love with him, too, but in a way I was. Any time I saw her during those weeks since we’d found him, I’d go on and on about how dreamy he was, how funny, how smart. But she’d never said anything. Still, I should’ve known. Why else would she have gone through so much trouble for him?

“When she stormed in on us and started yelling, Peter tried to apologize to her. He hadn’t meant to hurt her. How can you cheat on somebody you didn’t even know had feelings for you? She didn’t listen. Told me to get out of there and stay away or she’d turn one of her daddy’s shotguns on me.” Simmy paused and sighed. “You see, that’s why what Wynn Butterworth told you wasn’t true. She didn’t love him. If you love somebody, you want what’s best for them, even if it hurts you. If she really loved Peter, she wouldn’t have betrayed him. That very day, she marched over to the patrol station and reported that she’d discovered a Nazi hiding out in the dunes. They came to take him away, and I never even got to say goodbye. It was only after the war that I found out that he’d died.”

Lindsay inhaled sharply through her nose. Simmy inflected the story with such emotion that Lindsay felt like she was there herself, watching the young soldier be dragged away to his doom.

“I know that this doesn’t paint Patty in a very good light,” Simmy continued, “but one thing I’ll say about her—she could’ve pinned the blame on me for hiding him, but she didn’t. She tried to take full responsibility. I guess that even as she stabbed me and Peter in the back, there must have been a small part of her that wanted to protect me. But the civilian patrol found me out soon enough. There were too many times when I’d been unaccounted for, and too many of my things were found in the shack. But the real proof came a few months later, because I’d gotten myself in the family way.

“My parents sent me to live with my aunt in Virginia Beach. They told everybody it was to keep me safe in case the Germans attacked the Outer Banks. No one said a word about it; that’s what people did those days when girls got in trouble. But my situation was even worse—I was still only 15, and I was carrying a half-German bastard. When the baby was born, I gave her up to a family my aunt knew. I’d like to say that it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but to be honest, it was a relief.”

“Oh, Simmy, I’m so sorry that had to happen to you.” Lindsay reached out and squeezed Simmy’s hand.

Simmy returned the gentle pressure and then took a meditative sip of her tea. “It was a long time ago, honey. It seems like another lifetime.”

“What happened after you came back to Corolla?” Warren asked gently.

“I moved on. Patty and I didn’t speak for more than a year, but eventually we patched things up between us. I was never much good at holding a grudge, and I knew she was sorry. She was never the same after that. She never went to parties. She hardly smiled. I could see that she was punishing herself for what happened, so I decided I didn’t have to punish her by cutting her off. Besides, she was the only one who knew exactly what happened with Peter and the baby outside of my family, so she was the only one who understood how I felt.”

“Did you ever find out what happened to the baby?” Lindsay asked.

“As the years passed, the baby was always in my mind, like a wound that wouldn’t heal over. I thought maybe I’d get married and have my own children—that that would help me forget. But my time came and went, and I never did. So sometime in the early 60’s I decided that I had to find her. I knew her name, so it only took me a couple of weeks and a phonebook to track her down. The family’s last name was Lutz, and they’d called the baby Rita.”

“And Rita Lutz is Nancy Mix,” Lindsay said. Although she’d suspected it all along, it wasn’t until that point that her suspicions were confirmed.

Simmy’s mouth dropped open. “You knew?”

“There was an old news clipping about Rita Lutz’s death in Aunt Harding’s safe. I knew it had to have some meaning.”

“Well, it does. A lot of meaning,” Simmy said bitterly.

“Who’s Nancy Mix?” Claire asked.

“My grandmother,” Lindsay replied quietly.

If Lindsay had believed that the revelations about Aunt Harding’s betrayal and Simmy’s pregnancy would be the most shocking elements of the story, she’d been sorely mistaken. This elderly woman, sitting within touching distance of her, was Nancy Mix’s mother, Sarabelle’s grandmother, and her own great grandmother.

Up to that point, Simmy’s words had come rushing out like water from a breached dam. But now she paused to let the new information sink in. When she began again, her voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “I know you must be so mad at me for keeping all this from you, honey.”

“I’m not mad. I’m… I don’t even know what to feel. What happened? How did Rita Lutz become Nancy Mix?”