Deceived (A Hannah Smith Novel) (25 page)

From Venezuela, Marion Ford had written,
Sorry, delayed. I miss you. When I get back, interested in buying a place together? We’ll need more room.

Ten days after opening the note, I was aboard my tidy floating home, dressing to see Ford for the first time since his return, when I heard the ting of an incoming text. It was from Joel:

Found the shark mask, I know who it was. NOW will you talk to me?

I had been ignoring the man, true, but I had also spent my nights worrying about the identity of the person who had attacked me at the old Helms place. It wasn’t paranoia, or the aftershock of minor needle wounds to my throat and abdomen that caused me to be afraid. My reasons were all based on mistrust, but my mistrust was grounded in fact.

Harris Spooner had survived the shredding machine by the grace of his own body weight and the limits of even good anchor line, so now he was only chained to a hospital bed, which was the fuel of nightmares. Walkin’ Levi had also been added to my fears when he was transferred to a psych ward for “observation.” Mica Helms was safely behind bars, but there was a fourth suspect, too, who police had yet to find, let alone arrest: Delmont Chatham, collector of antique fishing gear.

The special prosecutor’s text message, however, was a bait too powerful to resist. I called him.

“It wasn’t Spooner,” I said when Joel answered. “I was right about not killing his own dog, wasn’t I?”

He replied, “How are you feeling?” sounding like he cared.

“Busy,” I said, “but a little nervous at night. That’s why I’d like to skip the small talk. Where’d you find the sun mask?”

“It wasn’t Harris,” Joel said. “You were right about Levi Thurloe, too. The guy’s got the IQ of a butterfly, but his face does brighten a little when your name’s mentioned. He says he—”

“Levi
likes
me,” I interrupted, “which is flattering, I’m touched. But I’d prefer you answer my question, then explain why you haven’t arrested Delmont Chatham. That’s who it has to be. A drug addict who collects antiques just doesn’t disappear into thin air.” I had come close to saying
arrested
your Great-uncle Delmont
but monitored my irritation.

Joel didn’t like my tone. “It might take a few days, but Delmont will show up. On the other hand, you’ve got nothing to worry about because the person who attacked you is dead. Her body was right beside you in the van.”

I was walking through my little boat’s galley but stopped when I heard that. He was referring to Crystal Helms, the childhood friend I had left behind in life and also in death.

I didn’t want to believe it. “If that’s where you found the sun mask, Mica could have planted it in her apartment—no, wait, you said Crystal lived in a trailer. A woman drug addict, that would make it even easier for someone to—”

“It was Crystal,” Joel said. “I know you grew up together, but—well, I’ll put it this way: children don’t recognize the signs of trauma in other kids. You believe that, don’t you?”

“Keep talking,” I said.

“Hannah, I’m telling you it was Crystal Helms. I had her medical files subpoenaed. Yesterday, I got a warrant and we searched her trailer. We found the mask, the one made by Patagonia, just like you described it. There were bloodstains. We got the results this morning. Remember when I didn’t want to discuss what seemed like an unrelated murder? It was an elderly man named Clayton Edwards. Crystal used a knife, then robbed him. But what ties her to the attack on you are bloodstains from the dog she killed.”

I felt a shudder while thinking,
Then put his head in the freezer,
but didn’t say it.

There was more to come.

Joel said, “Crystal had issues early on. She despised her mother and idolized her father. When Dwight Helms was murdered, Crystal told more than one prison counselor that she went off the deep end. Which could have been just an excuse—even the dumbest con is a genius at making excuses—but not in Crystal’s case. She had a thing for freezers. To her, it was a place homemakers used to preserve trophies. I’m not going to tell you what we found in
her
freezer, aside from one of her mother’s wigs. All I say is, thank god she’d been out of prison for only a few weeks.”

I asked Joel to repeat some of what he’d told me, then said, “It’s hard to grasp the idea of a daughter killing her own mother. Are you absolutely sure?”

The man hesitated for just an instant yet sounded confident when he explained, “No other reason for Crystal to be there wearing a mask. Rosanna had called Harney Chatham and asked him to come to the house but then canceled. The phone records mesh with what the old man told me. It’s a guess but, the day you were attacked, I think her brother, or Spooner, knew Crystal was having another spell and went looking for her. Brought the dogs along, too. Fortunately for you, they came by boat.”

We talked for a while longer. Joel wanted to use this opening to charm me and he did it by giving me credit for recent positive events and there were several. Courts had frozen all assets of Fisherfolk Inc. A local law firm, Carta, Smith, Taminoshan and Volz, had filed a class action suit seeking redress for commercial fishermen who had been bilked. An unknown party had fronted a multimillion-dollar offer for the twelve cottages of Munchkinville with guarantees to residents that were generous but vague—a car salesman’s finesse that Joel, as smart as he was, didn’t connect with his biological father. Something else Joel didn’t know was that same unknown party had entrusted me with monitoring financial emergencies in our community of aging fisherfolk.

After that, recent positive events became more iffy. Alice Candor
might
soon be indicted, but her team of attorneys had kept her out of jail thus far. The rehab clinics that she and her husband owned were under investigation, but the investigation would take months, even years.

“I wouldn’t get my hopes up,” Joel said. “The governor’s office is getting involved and, well . . . let’s just say the governor has a personal interest in who controls state medical contracts. The good news is, like I said, we found the shark mask. Mystery solved. How about we celebrate over dinner?”

I replied, “Even if I felt like celebrating, I don’t date clients.” After I hung up, I went forward to the master berth, where the note Ford had sent from Venezuela was lying open by the reading lamp. I sat and reread the note for the hundredth time, when, for no reason, an unsettling realization came into my mind—from the start, Joel had
known
my attacker was a woman. Early on, he had pressed me until I had admitted I wasn’t sure it was a man. Something else: Joel had no problem accepting the outrageousness of a daughter wanting to kill her own mother with an axe.

I picked up my cell, touched
Redial
, and before Joel could inquire about my health, I said, “You lied to me from day one, didn’t you! Why?”

“Christ,” he stammered, “I thought you’d changed your mind about dinner. Now what?”

“You suspected it was Crystal all along! That means you still haven’t told me everything. Answer my question:
Why?
”

There was a long, long silence that gathered a chilly edge before the special prosecutor replied, “Once you get your teeth in something, you don’t quit, do you? Did it ever cross your mind I might be trying to spare your feelings?”

“Spare yourself, more like it,” I responded. “Harney Chatham is your father, not mine.”

Seldom in my life had I said anything so cruel. Instantly, I regretted my words, but there was no taking them back. When Joel replied, it was in his attorney’s courtroom voice. “Let’s be perfectly clear, Hannah. This is what
you
want—not me.”

“I deserve to know,” I said, oblivious to the spider’s web that awaited.

“Okay—I warned you.” Joel cleared his throat, then made me a part of it all by saying, “The women who murdered Dwight Helms have one powerful protector left. You just mentioned his name. But think about your Uncle Jake. He didn’t want the women arrested, Hannah. Why would you?”

•   •   •

ROSANNA HELMS
had endured one beating too many and had sent her husband to hell instead of prison . . .

Joel didn’t say that, nor had he divulged any names, but what else could explain his dark insinuation that more than one woman had played a role?

I finished dressing, put Ford’s note in my purse, then sat outside on a deck chair to think it through. It was early evening, the first week in May. Not dark enough for the automatic dock lights to come on yet late enough that across the street Loretta and her friends had gathered on the porch, awaiting the courtesy van that would take them to Friday-night bingo. The burble of their conversation filtered through the mangroves, interrupted by an occasional caw of laughter and the distant hooting of a great horned owl.

Four old friends—minus one—the women were still pressing ahead, enjoying their lives.

Sweet, perky Mrs. Helms killed her abusive husband with an axe, then one or more of her friends helped cover it up.

I had to repeat it several times in my mind just to establish the possibility. It was a difficult concept to grasp. Mrs. Helms had fussed over her clothing and wigs after surviving cancer; her dresses had shared the perfume of peach snuff when I, as a child, had sat on her lap in church. In the privacy of the mangrove homestead, however, the woman had lived in fear. Dwight Helms was a wife beater. So one long-ago night, young Rosanna Helms, mother of two, had fought back . . . was possibly fighting for her life when it happened and had grabbed the first weapon handy. Or she had been terrorized into insanity and had finally snapped.

In the scenario I was creating, what followed was easy enough to believe. Panicked and in shock, the woman had contacted her best friend, Loretta Smith, who then got Harney Chatham, the future lieutenant governor, involved, as well as my late uncle. For two decades, their secret had guarded the truth.

But wait . . . Joel had said,
The
women
who murdered Dwight Helms.
He hadn’t said,
The woman
and the friends who covered up for her.
He had been in attorney mode and intentionally vague yet had said that plainly enough.

Loretta helped swing the axe?

I sat back and tried to imagine the scene. Couldn’t do it, though. Impossible! Yet . . . it was slightly easier to imagine four tough women, all hardened by island life—Epsey Hendry, Becky Darwin, Jody Summerlin,
and
Loretta—gathering to intervene on behalf of one of their own when something had gone terribly wrong.

Then, and only then, did it seem plausible, even justifiable, when viewed from
an eye for an eye
, Old Testament perspective, and that’s the perspective I chose to embrace—until I was shaken by a horrifying possibility: Crystal Helms, not yet school age, had witnessed what her mother and friends had done to the father she had idolized.

No . . . I couldn’t allow myself to believe it, despite Joel’s earlier warning that children seldom recognize signs of trauma in their playmates. Crystal had been quiet, true, but a shock so terrible would have left her catatonic, not soft-spoken.

Catatonic . . .

My thoughts shifted to Walkin’ Levi and the rumors of fever or injury that had traumatized his brain. Had he, too, been a secret witness? Levi had been so terrified that afternoon on Pay Day Road, he had jumped from the truck rather than visit the old Helms place. I thought back to my earliest memories of Levi, trying to make the time line work, but couldn’t convince myself of that either.

He was afraid of the pit bulls,
I concluded, and couldn’t blame him. Nor could I blame Mrs. Helms or my mother, or their friends, for doing whatever was required to survive—not after being assaulted by the likes of Harris Spooner.

Those were different times,
Mr. Harney Chatham had told me.
People tended to look the other way. Women tolerated unhappiness for the sake of their children.

Tragic . . . and also admirable, but the saddest form of admiration because, in fact, it only rationalized looking the other way.

Enough of this!
I told myself.
Drop it for now.

Ford would be arriving soon. I didn’t want the upset I was feeling to taint the excitement of our first date since his return from South America. So I got to my feet, locked my boat, and went to tell Loretta good-bye. Before I stepped off the dock, I spent a few seconds staring at the concrete mansion that had displaced a shell pyramid and many tons of Florida history.

Doom with a View,
Birdy Tupplemeyer had suggested as a name. “What about the
Bone Throne
?”

This was two nights ago when she and my bodybuilder friend, Nathan Pace, had surprised me with a bottle of champagne and gifts to celebrate the completion of my boat and my first night aboard amid the luxury of my own possessions—including a toilet that worked and a shower that sprayed warm water.

The Bone Box,
I had countered rather than risk saying her suggestions were too cute for a building that had already attracted so much misery.