Beads of Doubt (34 page)

“Good morning, Kitzi darling. Did you sleep all right?”

“Fine, thanks. How about you?” Actually, she looked remarkably refreshed. I had walked down to the gatehouse with her right after the dinner ended to make sure she got to bed early; the weekend had been exhausting for her. I was happy to see that there was no sign of fatigue this morning, and I was glad we had managed to keep most of the upsetting news—the takeover of the Manse, the details of Andrew’s murder, and Houston’s gambling problem—from reaching her ears.

“The cleanup seems to be going quite well, and everyone I talked to seems to think the Tea was a big success.”

“That’s what Judy said. She told me they raised even more than they’d expected to.” I smiled at Beth. “And Ms. Fairfield here walked away with the grand prize.”

Beth smiled and stood up. “Speaking of prizes, Ron and Shannan are coming back into town. I promised I’d pick them up at the airport.”

“Weren’t they supposed to be gone a week?” I asked.

“Yeah. I don’t know what happened, but I suspect I’ll hear all about it from Shannan this afternoon.” She looked at me. “I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

Beth stowed her plate in the dishwasher and headed for the door.

“What did she mean by that?” asked Mother.

“Oh, she was talking about the bead sales,” I said, and changed the subject. “How is it coming out there?”

“It was fine a few minutes ago, but I’d better make sure none of the trucks end up in the begonia beds again.” A moment later, she followed Beth out the door, and I sat in the relative peace of the kitchen—disturbed only by the occasional growl of a diesel engine outside. I sipped my tea and toasted myself a bagel, trying to make sense of things.

Lauren had betrayed us, and might even have killed Andrew with the candlestick from the conservatory. The candlestick whose twin I had found under Beth’s bed.

I sighed. The whole thing felt like a scenario from Clue. Next thing I knew, someone would turn up shot by a revolver in the library. It was too bad we didn’t have Colonel Mustard pottering around the Manse; I could just pin the murder on him.

I was about to take the first bite of bagel when the thing that had been niggling at the back of my brain for the last twenty-four hours broke free.

 

Thirty minutes later, I pulled up outside the Yancys’
house. A dark blue minivan I didn’t remember seeing during my previous visit was parked in the driveway, and as I passed it on my way up the front walk, I noticed it had handicap plates.

Mrs. Yancy opened the door almost immediately, surprise in her gray eyes. Her hand flew up to her crepey neck.

“Miss Camden . . . Kitzi. What a surprise.”

“May I come in, Mrs. Yancy?”

“Of course. I have a visitor. I hope you don’t mind.”

As I stepped into the living room, the dark eyes of Keith Linder rose to meet mine. He wasn’t the company I was expecting—I was thinking it might be one of Mrs. Yancy’s golf partners—and I wondered why neither of them had mentioned they were in contact with one another.

“Hello, Keith,” I said.

He nodded.

I turned to Mrs. Yancy. “I didn’t know you two were friends.”

Mrs. Yancy’s eyes flicked nervously to the young man in the wheelchair. “Ever since the accident, we’ve been very close. Keith comes to visit a couple of times a week.” That was strange, I thought. Last time I was here, she referred to him only as “the other boy” in the accident. She turned to me. “Won’t you sit down? Can I get you something to drink?”

I sat down on the nearest sofa. “No, thanks, I’m fine. Is Mr. Yancy here?”

“Oh, he has a standing golf game on Mondays.”

“How nice.” I leaned forward. “Mrs. Yancy, I have a few questions about the investment plan Andrew put together for you, but I’m afraid this isn’t a good time . . .” I looked at Keith.

“Oh, it’s fine. Besides, Keith’s family is involved, too.”

This wasn’t how I pictured this conversation happening, but I went ahead anyway. “How much did you invest with Andrew?”

She shook her head. “About a hundred thousand, unfortunately.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“Oh, yes. When we got the statement, Earl was furious. Andrew tried to tell us it was an accounting error, but it didn’t make sense.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I was angry, of course, but what can you do?” She raised her hands in a gesture of resignation.

I glanced at Keith, then back at the older woman. “Mrs. Yancy, how did you know Andrew was hit over the head with a candlestick?”

Her eyes widened, and her hand flew to her throat again. “What? Why, it was on the news, of course.”

“No,” I said. “No, it wasn’t. The police never released that information.”

“What are you trying to say?” Keith growled.

The skin of my arms prickled, but I pressed on. “What I’m trying to figure out is how you got him into the Dumpster.”

The room was silent for a moment, as if everything were in suspended animation. Then Keith’s voice exploded from the wheelchair.

“It was me, all right?” His eyes blazed. “I did it. When he told me how much money he’d lost for us, I blew up. I whacked him over the head and used the wheelchair lift to get him into the Dumpster. So leave Mrs. Yancy alone.”

Mrs. Yancy’s face paled, and she shook her head violently, her pageboy swinging. “Keith, no . . .”

“You killed Andrew?” I hadn’t considered that possibility, since he was in a wheelchair. But if Andrew had been sitting down, it would have been easy. I glanced at Keith’s upper arms. He certainly had the strength; his biceps swelled from years of propelling his body in the chair.

“The dear boy is trying to take the blame for my actions,” Mrs. Yancy said, her voice wobbling. “But the responsibility is mine. When Andrew told me how much money we had lost—and how much the Linders were losing—I just couldn’t take it. He got the greatest gift of all—he walked away from that accident with hardly a bump or a bruise—and we lost everything.
Everything.
” Her eyes shot to Donovan’s picture, smiling from atop the television. “And then, to turn around and ruin our lives
again
. . .” She took a deep, shuddery breath. “When he turned to leave, I grabbed the nearest thing and just hit him with it. I didn’t mean to kill him . . . I was just so
angry
. . . and that’s when Keith came in.”

“No.” Keith’s voice was low and cold. “Stop.”

I ignored him and focused on Mrs. Yancy. “So he helped you get rid of the body,” I said.

She nodded. “His van has a wheelchair lift.” She shuddered. “Keith draped him over his lap and wheeled him out into the back. We hid him behind a bush. I waited with . . . with the body until Keith got back with the van.”

Keith’s voice was low and menacing. “Mrs. Y . . .”

I pressed on. “How did he do it without anyone noticing?”

“He kept the lights off, and since the van is dark blue, you can’t see it. I don’t know how he did it, but Keith pulled Andrew up onto the chair with him, then he used the wheelchair lift to tip him into the Dumpster.” Her face was pale, and her voice shook slightly. “We figured he would be safe there, that no one would find him there . . .”

“What about the second candlestick? The one under my friend’s bed?”

Mrs. Yancy nodded at Keith, who had gone rigid in his chair. “That was Keith’s idea. I didn’t know whose room it was; I just ran upstairs and shoved it under the first bed I found. If one candlestick was missing, it might look suspicious. We were hoping that with two gone, it would take longer to figure out what had happened.”

“Does your husband know?” I asked.

She sighed. “I think he suspects something, but I don’t think he has any idea how bad things are.”

I shook my head. “What a mess. This must have been an awful couple of days for you.” I could imagine her rage at Andrew, the impulse that drove her to strike at him. It was yet another tragedy, piled on top of the others—Donovan’s death, Keith’s paralysis. I reached into my purse and flipped open my cell phone. “I think we need to explain what happened to the police. Considering the circumstances, they might go easy on you.”

Mrs. Yancy blinked at me. At the same moment, Keith’s wheelchair barreled across the room, and he smacked the cell phone out of my hand. I watched it skitter across the beige carpet.

“Who else knows?” he demanded. His dark eyes turned my stomach to ice.

I croaked, “Why does it matter?” A lump formed in my throat. Why hadn’t I told someone where I was going? I had done it again. Ready, fire, aim.

“Because I am not going to let you put Mrs. Yancy in jail,” he said.

“We have no idea how this is going to turn out,” I said. “She could just be charged with manslaughter. She didn’t plan to do it.”

“I’m not willing to take that risk,” he said.

I gauged the distance to the door. If I sprinted, I could make it. In one swift motion, I pushed myself to my feet and ran.

Three steps later, I tripped over an end table and tumbled to the floor, skidding to a halt on Mrs. Yancy’s living-room carpet.

“Get up.” Keith’s voice was hard and cold. I got to
my knees, brushed myself off, and looked up to face the dark void of a gun barrel.

“Keith.” Mrs. Yancy’s voice quavered. “This isn’t necessary.”

“I was afraid this would happen,” he said. He was talking to Mrs. Yancy, but his dark eyes never left mine. “Ever since she showed up at our place, I’ve been waiting.”

“Is that why you’ve been by so much since . . . since the accident at the Manse?” she asked.

“I didn’t want to worry you, but I wanted to be around. Just in case.”

“Keith, I’m not sure this is the right thing to do . . .”

His eyes flickered to her. “We’ll do what we have to.”

My stomach did a flip-flop. Mrs. Yancy sucked in a breath and nodded toward the gun. “Is that really necessary?”

“I refuse to let you go to jail because that rat bastard screwed us over.”

“Keith!”

“Sorry about the language, Mrs. Y.” In my opinion, it seemed a bit much for him to be apologizing for his language when he was holding a gun on an innocent woman, but unfortunately, Mrs. Yancy didn’t object. Keith glanced at his watch. “We only have a half hour,” he said. “Earl will be back at eleven thirty.”

Mrs. Yancy’s voice wobbled. “What . . . what are you going to do?”

“Take care of the problem.”

My eyes skittered around the room, looking for something to defend myself with. Hummel figurines, gold drapes, blue couches . . . nothing I could lay my hands on. “Get up,” he said.

My knees shook as I rose to my feet.

“Go that way,” he said, waving the gun toward the kitchen. My brain struggled to kick into gear. The kitchen wasn’t a bad place. Kitchens have knives. As I moved in that direction, I dragged my feet a bit. If I stalled, maybe Earl would get home in time to save me. A butcher’s knife was better than nothing, but I wouldn’t want to lay odds on it against a revolver. Or whatever it was Keith was pointing at me. “Get going,” he said. “We don’t have all day.”

I didn’t have a chance to pick up a knife. Mrs. Yancy didn’t even have any on the counter, and the only thing small enough to pick up was a plastic banana from the fake fruit display on the kitchen table. There was no time even to grab that; he rolled up right behind me, herding me through the utility room and into the garage.

“Keith, I don’t know about this,” Mrs. Yancy was saying as I stepped into the cluttered garage. Lumber, rope, garden hose, dented metal toolboxes. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Damn.

“I’m not crazy about it either, but what choice do we have?” I glanced back at him. His face was pale, but his eyes were hard little stones. “Lie down,” he barked.

I sent a last desperate glance around the garage before I did what he asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted a pair of hedge clippers, just a few feet to my left.

As soon as my body touched the concrete, I tucked myself into a ball and rolled to the left. At the same time, a thud sounded behind me, and Mrs. Yancy shrieked, “No!” My hand groped for the clippers. A shot ricocheted past me. I whirled around to face Keith, and something clattered to the concrete.

Keith slumped in the wheelchair, his head lolling to the side, the gun on the floor beside him. Above him stood Mrs. Yancy, a yellowed two-by-four clutched in her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I had no idea it would come to this.”

I dropped the hedge clippers, and my whole body started to shake.

 

 

Two hours later I was back in the Manse kitchen, nurs
ing an iced tea while Nate rubbed my shoulders. I had called him right after dialing 911, and he had driven to the Yancys’ as fast as his Navigator could go.

The police cruisers had been first to arrive, and Granger appeared fifteen minutes later. As men and women in blue suits swarmed the living room and garage, I pulled the sergeant into the kitchen. I didn’t know how much the Camden influence would sway him, but I did the best I could. “I hope you’ll be easy on her,” I said. “I don’t think she meant to kill him, and she saved my life.”

He smiled grimly. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”

I tilted my head to one side. “By the way, why were you at that Texas hold ’em tournament the other night?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “How did you know that?”

“A friend told me.”

“I was following a lead,” he said gruffly, and stalked out of the kitchen.

I walked back into the living room as Mr. Yancy burst through the door, demanding to know what was going on. When one of the officers explained the situation, his ruddy face turned deeper red. “Nonsense! I’ll have my attorneys hang you out to dry!” he roared.