Killer Keepsakes (25 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

I

sat for several minutes gazing out of my window, seeing nothing, reviewing everything I knew about Morgan’s murder.

I went through everyone’s motives and came up with no surprise insights.

I considered means. Nothing new about the poker or the gun occurred to me.

When I thought about opportunity, though, I realized that an unchecked alibi was staring me in the face. And as far as I knew, the police were unaware of it.

Wes called as I was turning onto Islington, approaching the center of Portsmouth. I slipped my earpiece in and took the call.

“Were you there for the kill?” he asked hungrily.

“It was grisly, Wes. Really bad.”

“Tell me everything.”

The worse the situation, the more eager Wes was to hear about it. I pulled off to the side of the road, turned my blinkers on, and steeled myself. On balance, I owed Wes big, and it was time to pay up. I shivered, recalling Peter’s corpse awash with blood.

“Weren’t you there?” I asked, a safe bet since Wes was always where the action was.

“The police wouldn’t let me on the property. So tell me what went down.”

I spoke for fifteen minutes, describing Saturday night’s call with Detective Brownley and this morning’s events at Prescott’s, culminating with Chip’s death. Wes demanded details, only some of which I could provide. He wanted to know where the police sat in my building, what Chip said to Gretchen in the office, what the police did when he dragged Gretchen outside, how many snipers were in the woods, and who fired the first shot that hit Chip in the leg and the others that killed him.

“Thanks, Josie. This is great stuff. Did you hear about Mandy? She’s out already.”

“Really? That was quick. How come?”

“Her lawyer raised a ruckus, and they didn’t have enough to hold her. The ballistics report gives only a forty percent match to the weapon found in her kitchen. Apparently the bullet was nicked up pretty badly. But guess what? They found the dealer who sold the gun. It was purchased ten days ago at a gun show in Virginia for cash. The name on the receipt was Sal Briscoe.”

So Morgan had been killed with his own gun. The only question was who pulled the trigger.

We agreed to talk soon.

I parked in the Portsmouth garage and walked to Market Street.

From where I stood, I could see into the Bow Street Emporium. Mandy was waiting on a customer. She must have gone straight to work from jail. When she turned to pick up a bowl, she saw me and smiled.

I stepped into the shop, and she approached me.

“Oh, Mandy,” I whispered. “Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “They found the murder weapon in my house. I can’t understand how it got there. I don’t know what to do.”

“Do you like your lawyer?” I asked.

“Vince says he’s the best—very aggressive, which is what you want at a time like this. Vince is right, I guess, when you think about it. They let me go without charging me.”

I patted her arm, unsure how to respond. “Let’s stay in touch, okay?”

She nodded and tried to smile. I patted her arm again, and left, thinking,
Maybe she
is
the killer. It’s possible that Vince is protecting
her—
not the other way around. With any luck, I’ll know soon enough.

Standing in front of Elgin’s Hardware, out of sight of the Bow Street Emporium, I looked down Market Street in each direction. I could see Lavinia’s Day Spa. I knew the place. Ty had given me a half-day spa experience for my birthday. The spa was elegant, exclusive, and expensive. I couldn’t see a single girl on a budget as a customer. I turned up Bow Street, then Ceres, until finally I came to a shop so narrow that I almost passed it by. A small sign was mounted in the window: PORTSMOUTH SALON.

I’d never noticed it before.

The street-level window was covered by a silvery green curtain. I stood for a moment, rehearsing the part I was about to play, then entered. A menu board listing services and prices was mounted over a chest-high reception desk.
This is more like it,
I thought, noting the reasonable charges.

I smiled broadly and said hello.

A stylishly dressed woman old enough to be my mother standing behind the counter smiled back. Her soft brown hair was cut in a stylish bob. Her tweed blazer had been fitted by an expert.

“May I help you?” she asked with a practiced mix of warmth and diffidence.

“Yes, I’d like to make an appointment.”

“Of course. What did you have in mind?”

“Yes, I’d like to make a manicure appointment with whoever did Lina’s nails last week. Lina Nadlein? Her nails were so perfect! She was here last Wednesday.”

She smiled again as she consulted her computer. “Wonderful! Let’s see now . . . yes, here it is. Ms. Nadlein’s manicurist was Toby. I’ll be sure to pass on the compliment. Toby will be very pleased. When were you thinking of coming in? Toby works every day but Thursday.”

I flashed a thousand-watt smile. “I might as well channel Lina! I’ll take the same appointment this week that she had last week!”

“That would be four o’clock. Were you interested in a pedicure, too?”

Four!
I thought.
Four!
I could hardly believe my ears. Lina had told Gretchen that she got a manicure Wednesday morning because she had a hot date, but it wasn’t true. She might have had a hot date, but her manicure wasn’t until the afternoon. Or was it?

“Really?” I asked. “Are you sure? For some reason I thought it was in the morning.”

She took another look at the computer, shook her head, and smiled. “No, we keep careful records. It was at four. Shall I put you down with Toby at four or would you prefer a morning appointment? She’s available at eleven.”

“Actually, I just realized that I ran out without my calendar. Can you believe it? I’m completely scatterbrained! Do you have a card? I’ll call you later today.”

“No problem!” She jotted Toby’s name on a business card and handed it to me.

I thanked her and left, thinking that in another life, I must have been a con woman. I walked a few paces down the street and paused to consider my next move. I didn’t want to make trouble for Lina or upset Gretchen, but as I thought about it, I realized that I had no choice. I had to report my discovery to the police—I’d unearthed what appeared to be evidence in a murder investigation.

I called Detective Brownley. “Lina told Gretchen that she had a manicure the morning of the murder,” I explained. “I figured that Lina must have picked a salon that was within walking distance of her work. I found the salon.” I paused. I hated having to tell tales. “Lina was here that day, but she wasn’t here in the morning. Her appointment was at four in the afternoon.”

There was a long pause as the implications sank in. “Stay where you are. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Detective Brownley pulled up in an unmarked vehicle. She didn’t smile as she approached me. She had me recount my conversation with the receptionist, then said, “One of these days you’re going to get yourself in a boatload of trouble going off on your own. I’m serious, Josie. You could get hurt.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound defensive or disingenuous, so I stayed quiet. I felt abashed.

She pushed open the salon door and disappeared inside.

I left. There was no point in hanging around. No matter what Detective Brownley learned, there was zero chance that she’d tell me anything. As I retraced my steps toward Market Street, I felt sad and mad and confused all at once. Had Lina lied on purpose? Maybe it was just a misunderstanding.
Right—and maybe pigs can fly.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

I

drove toward work, then pulled to the side of the road and put on my blinkers. I called the office. Cara answered and transferred me to Gretchen.

“Can you call Lina and arrange for the three of us to meet? Now?”

Gretchen, sounding a little worried, said, “Sure. She’s at home. Do you want to go to her place?”

I needed to talk to Lina before the police picked her up for questioning. They might arrive at any minute. “No, tell her to leave now—right away. You, too. Let’s meet at my house. Okay?”

I called Wes, and as I listened to the phone ring, I felt the knifelike tension in my shoulders ease a bit. I could smell it—I was confident that I was close to knowing the truth.

“I just left the Portsmouth Salon,” I told him and explained what I’d learned. “I left as soon as the police arrived.”

“Why? You should have taken a photo of Detective Brownley interviewing the receptionist. That would have been something!”

I didn’t reply. Wes was inexorable.

“Don’t get me wrong, Josie. This is good. Really good.” With a brisk “Talk later,” he hung up.

Lina arrived first, and I led her into the kitchen.

She looked harried. Her hair was stringy. She wore a faded green sweatshirt with jeans. Purple-brown smudges under her eyes made her appear ill. She kept fussing with her ankle monitor.

“Are you okay?” I asked her, concerned.

She met my eyes and shrugged. “It’s hard, you know? It’s really hard, but I’ll be all right. Thank you so much for paying for my lawyer. I’m very grateful.”

“You’re welcome. I’m glad I can help.”

The doorbell rang. It was Gretchen.

“Lina!” Gretchen exclaimed as soon as she saw her, clutching her in a bear hug, dancing around the kitchen. Her smile lit up the room. After they broke apart, she said, “So, Josie, why are we here?”

We sat at the round table. “I have a lot of questions.”

Lina looked at Gretchen.

“Josie—is this necessary?” Gretchen asked.

I closed my eyes again. I couldn’t get the horror of this morning out of my mind. The blood. The staccato quick-fire shots. The hunted look in Gretchen’s eyes. The stone-hardness in Chip’s. We needed this to finish.

“Yes. You’ll have to trust me,” I said to Gretchen.

She met my eyes, nodded, and said, “Okay, then. What do you want to know?”

I took another deep breath. “On October 1, 2002, you, Lina, under your birth name of Iris Gibbons, were a full-time employee of the Rosebud Antiques Shoppe. The owner, and your direct supervisor, was Amelia Bartlett. A co-worker was also there. That’s you, Gretchen, except that your name then was Marie Boulanger. Your husband, Morgan Boulanger, came into the shop.” I turned to Lina. “What were you doing when he showed up?”

“What does it matter? How can it possibly matter?”

“Please,” I said.

Gretchen turned to Lina and said, “Tell her.”

Lina covered her eyes with her hands for a moment, then straightened her shoulders and looked at me. “We were polishing silver. Gretchen had just gone into the back room for more paper towels.”

“What did he say when he came into the shop?”

She grimaced. “He was furious.”

“What was he mad about?”

“I don’t know. Morgan was always angry, so that was nothing new, but on this day he was especially horrible.”

“Why was he mad, Gretchen?” I asked.

She looked away. “I didn’t call the credit card company about a mistaken charge. I was busy and hadn’t had a chance. The bill was due—and I hadn’t called them. I forgot to tell Morgan, so when he went to pay the bill that morning, he just lost it! He called me irresponsible and said I was a terrible wife, a complete waste. I ran out of the apartment, hoping he’d cool down. He didn’t. He just got madder.”

I shook my head. “Okay, then. Morgan showed up at the store, and . . . ?” I asked Lina.

“He slammed the door,” Lina said, wincing at the memory. “He was barely inside when he yelled, ‘Where’s Marie? Get that bitch out here!’ ” She shook her head. “Without waiting for any of us to say anything, he pushed past Mrs. Bartlett to get to me, grabbed my shoulders, and began to shake me. He was so strong,” she said, choking a little, lifting her hand to her neck. “He picked me up off the ground like I weighed nothing. I was so shocked I couldn’t say a word. Mrs. Bartlett did, though. She punched at his back, screaming, ‘Stop it! Leave her alone! Get out of here!’ He ignored her completely. After a minute, he tossed me aside. I nearly fell over. I didn’t know why he let me go until I looked up. Gretchen was walking toward him, and once he spotted her, we were all irrelevant.”

I touched Gretchen’s arm and looked at her profile as she sat, gazing at Lina. She seemed oddly unaffected by Lina’s words, as if she were hearing a mildly interesting story about someone else, someone she didn’t know. She didn’t respond to my touch, and I withdrew my hand.

Lina went on with the story of that terrible day.

“ ‘What’s the matter with you?’ Gretchen asked him. ‘Have you gone crazy?’ He leaped at her, slapping her face and chest and arms, over and over again. He just wouldn’t stop. Gretchen was screaming at him and fighting back, and he punched her and sent her flying into a wall. She managed to stay upright, but you could tell she was kind of woozy. I didn’t move. I didn’t know what to do. I was so scared. All at once, it was quiet. Quiet enough so Morgan could hear Mrs. Bartlett calling nine-one-one. He spun around, grabbed a chair, and slammed it onto the floor, snapping off a leg. He roared as he attacked Mrs. Bartlett.”

Lina looked up and met my eyes.

“He roared,” she repeated, and I saw that she was trembling. “He pummeled her. Gretchen and I tried to stop him. Oh, my God, we tried!” She began to cry, then angrily brushed aside her tears. “Gretchen broke a vase over his head, and I kicked and kicked at him. Nothing had any effect. It was horrific! Finally, he just stopped. He turned to Gretchen and said, ‘See what you made me do, bitch?’

“Gretchen was screaming and throwing things, and he grabbed her arm, twisting it backward, and said, ‘Come on, we’ve got to get out of here. What the fuck did you expect, bitch? The old lady called the cops.’ He began pushing Gretchen toward the door, saw me, and said, ‘You, too.’ He was still holding the chair leg. Blood dripped from it. He tossed it down and grabbed us and propelled us out of the store.” She paused and took a breath. “His car was parked at the curb. He made Gretchen drive to his job, a restaurant. He said he had a paycheck waiting for him. He told us to wait while he ran in, but Gretchen floored it.

“She drove straight to my apartment. She said that he’d look for us there, but we had the car, so we had a few minutes’ head start. She said she was scared to go to her place but she’d be damned if she left without her vase. You know about her vase, right?”

“Yes.”

“She kept it at my place so Morgan wouldn’t destroy it during one of his tantrums.” She shook her head again.

“Was it Henrietta Howard’s?” I asked Gretchen.

“How can you possibly know that?” Gretchen asked.

“We’re pretty good at research,” I said, smiling a little.

“That’s the understatement of the century!” she said. “Mrs. Bartlett gave it to me for my birthday. She said it was from a remarkable woman named Henrietta Howard who managed to survive an abusive marriage and become the toast of London, and if Henrietta could do it in the eighteenth century, I could damn well do it now.” Tears ran down her cheeks as she spoke.

“Mrs. Bartlett was a phenomenal woman,” Lina added. “She was like a mother to Gretchen. I had my grandmother, and Gretchen had her—and we lost them both.” Lina cleared her throat. “We went to an ATM machine to get money. Gretchen got five hundred dollars, the most the machine would allow. I got three hundred, all I had in the bank.” She cleared her throat again. “Gretchen—do you want to take over from here?”

She shook her head. “No. You tell her.”

“Gretchen said we had to break all ties with the past, and we did. We drove to Colorado Springs, thinking Morgan wouldn’t think to look for us to get on a bus from there. We decided to go to Chicago, a big city, a good place, we figured, to start over. Gretchen knew that Morgan would never stop looking for her, so we didn’t just get a bus ticket straight to Chicago, we bought tickets to Omaha, and from there we took a bus to Lincoln, and from there we went to Chicago. Am I giving too much detail?” she asked me.

“No. This is perfect. What happened in Chicago?”

“It was easy to get new IDs. We went to a cemetery and found names of two women who were born about when we were. The public library had microfiche birth records.” She shrugged. “It was easy. We stayed at a cheap motel and used that address to get replacement birth certificates. We had new driver’s licenses, jobs, and an apartment in ten days.”

From my call to the town clerk in my hometown, I knew that was completely realistic. All it took was a request and a rush fee.

“After about three years,” she said, “Gretchen decided that she wanted to move. She said she was always looking over her shoulder, that Chicago was the nearest big city to Denver and she couldn’t stop thinking that Morgan would come looking for us there. She said that when Morgan was a kid, his parents had sent him to stay with some cousins for the summer. They had a cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee here in New Hampshire. He hated it. He told her about how one of his older cousins used him as a football and drop-kicked him across the dock, into the lake. So she said, ‘Let’s go there. Let’s move to New Hampshire. He’ll never in a million years move there, and he’ll never think of looking for us there.’ ”

She looked up at me again and gave a small smile. Gretchen was smiling, too, just a little.

“So we did, and it was great. Everything was fine, until he found us.”

“You and Mandy discussed bringing some milk over to Gretchen’s on Wednesday, the day she was due back from vacation, right?”

“Right.”

“Why?”

“Gretchen’s a bear without her morning coffee, and she had to be at work the next day,” Lina said, smiling.

“Why didn’t you do it?”

“I had a manicure appointment that morning.”

“Except you changed it. You went at four that afternoon.”

Lina froze.

“At the Portsmouth Salon. Your manicurist is Toby.”

Lina didn’t speak. I glanced at Gretchen. She was watching me, uncertain of where I was heading.

“You went to Gretchen’s that morning, didn’t you?” I asked Lina. “You can tell me the truth, Lina. I promise I’ll never repeat it.”

“No,” Lina whispered, shaking her head. “I can’t.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” I said. “You’d planned on sneaking in a manicure before picking Gretchen up from the bus, but you changed your mind and made the appointment for four that afternoon, I don’t know why. Mandy brought the milk, but at the last minute you decided to go over to Gretchen’s just to make sure everything was okay. Am I right?”

Lina’s eyes were Ginevra de’ Benci big. “How did you know?”

I didn’t answer her question. Instead, I continued my story. “When you got there, you noticed the Chevy because it was so out of place. How could you not? I mean, Gretchen lives in a well-tended apartment, and the Chevy was a junker. Probably you were at her door when out of nowhere, Morgan jumped you from behind. I don’t know where he hid himself or whether he stormed up the stairs in back of you. Do you?”

Lina took a deep breath, then said, “No.”

“He ripped the keys from your hand and said . . . what did he say, Lina?”

She looked at me flat on. “He said, ‘Remember me, Iris?’

” Gretchen reached across the table and touched Lina’s elbow, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“What did you do?” I asked.

“I nearly died. He shoved me into the apartment. ‘Where’s Marie? Where’s Marie?’ That’s all he said to me. He slapped at me and kept asking where she was. I told him I didn’t know, that she was away, that I was only here to water her plants. He didn’t believe me. He pulled a gun out of his jacket pocket. It was black. I don’t know anything about guns.” She gulped. “It was so black.” She paused, clenching and unclenching her fists. “I was petrified. I was sure he would kill her. I
knew
it.” She stopped talking.

“What happened next?” I asked.

“He pushed me toward the living room, shoving his gun in my face the whole time. As we passed the fireplace, without thinking, I reached down and somehow found the poker. I swung at him and missed.” She paused again and looked at me. “He roared. It was the same roar he gave just before he killed Mrs. Bartlett. I didn’t hesitate. I swung again. Thank God, I connected—he fell backward onto the couch, but I didn’t knock him out.” She shook her head, shaking off the memory. “I managed to get across the coffee table and knock the gun to the floor before he sat up. He tried to get it from me, but I shot him before he could. It’s the first time I’ve ever held a gun.” She met my eyes. “Can you believe that? The very first time I’ve ever held a gun.”

I shook my head empathetically. “Then what?” I asked.

“Then I cleaned up. I wiped everything down, including the milk carton. Except that I missed a fingerprint.”

“What about the gun?” I asked.

“What about it?”

“It was found at Mandy’s. Morgan bought it. You used it, and you took it with you. You put it in Mandy’s apartment, right? The night Vince hung the stained glass window.”

She stared at me, then looked down at her hands. “I couldn’t leave it at Gretchen’s—I was afraid that it would implicate her somehow. Then when Gretchen came to stay with me, I couldn’t risk keeping the gun at my place either. I figured Mandy’s place was safe.”

“Why didn’t you just get rid of it?” I asked.

She looked up at me. She was breathing hard. “I didn’t know how.”

I glanced at Gretchen. Her eyes were fixed on Lina. “Why didn’t you tell the police the truth?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I were crazy. “As soon as I shot Morgan, the very next thought I had was that Peter, his brother, would come after us. I wanted to get away, to leave that day, but Gretchen said no. She said it would be all right, that Peter wouldn’t know where we were, that Morgan had come on his own. I thought it was wishful thinking, but I wanted it to be true, too, so I went along with her. But go to the police? I might as well put bull’s-eyes on us both. If Peter were still alive, I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”