Midsummer Murder (37 page)

She thought that she should feel sad, but she felt nothing—only Annie’s arm linked through hers and Bill’s presence close behind her, but not touching her. She could make out the individual shapes of the leaves of trees that encroached on the path—could hear the crunch of the gravel as it shifted under their feet. Funny how aware she was of everything but feeling; it didn’t seem right.

They passed the blinking lights of the rescue vehicles parked in the circular drive. Lindy narrowed her eyes against their painful brightness, blurring them until only an aura of red surrounded her.

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She felt the hardness of the stone steps of the house. Sandiman opened the door. He turned without a word and led her to the drawing room. He had forgotten his diamond stickpin, and his tie was askew.

She followed behind him, taking courage in this unprecedented display of human frailty.

She sat on the sofa, Annie molded to her side. Watched Bill cross to the window, leaving clumps of mud and leaves on the carpet.

Then the smell of coffee and Sandiman’s bony fingers placing a cup on the coffee table before her. The coffee was black and too sweet, but she drank it.

She felt Bill and Annie look toward the door and saw Abel White step silently into the room.

“It seems . . .” he said. The first word came out in a squeak, like an adolescent boy’s changing voice. He cleared his throat. “It seems,” he began again, “that I’m the acting sheriff.” He raised his eyebrows making the statement a question.

“Hell of a first case.” Bill came to stand beside him. His voice seemed to reassure Abel.

“I guess this could wait until the morning, but—”

“No,” said Lindy. At least she thought she had spoken. She must have. Abel had stopped talking and was looking at her with an expression that could have been embarrassment, but might have been pity. “The sooner we do this, the sooner Robert will be home.”

* * *

The sun wouldn’t rise over the mountain peaks until later, but the early-morning birds had begun to call to each other outside the window by the time Lindy had finished telling her disjointed story. Abel assured her that he would hear it again when she was

“feeling better.” As if she would ever feel better after what she had witnessed. She shivered.

Adele’s haggard face appeared before her. “I think that’s enough, Abel.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How are Ellis and Marguerite?” Lindy asked her.

“Sedated,” Adele said matter-of-factly. “And I suggest the same for you.”

Lindy shook her head.

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“Trust me, you do not want to dream tonight.” Adele glanced toward the window. “What’s left of it.”

“Connie?”

“A twisted knee—scraped and bruised . . .”

Lindy read the unspoken words in her pause.

“Body and soul,” Adele agreed. “But your friends are with him. He won’t be alone when he wakes up.” In an instant, Lindy understood Adele’s loyalty to Marguerite. He wouldn’t wake up alone, like the small, lonely girl who had not awakened alone, because an older school girl had become her friend.

Lindy felt the first stab of emotion she had felt since the horror of the night before. Maybe Marguerite would be there for Connie, too.

Tears sprang into her eyes. “Tired, I guess,” she managed to say and tried to smile, then burst into embarrassing, uncontrollable crying.

“I’ll just get back to the station,” said Abel White, backing away.

Lindy could only nod as she tried to stop the unstoppable tears that streamed down her face. She tried not to think about Bill’s reaction to this spectacle. She risked a look in his direction, but he was staring out the window, one hand braced against the frame.

* * *

Biddy opened the door when Adele and Annie led Lindy back to her bedroom. Then she was gone, and Lindy heard the sound of the bath being filled. That brought a fleeting smile to her lips. Leave it to Biddy to know that what she needed most in the world was to wash away the grime and the memory of that night.

She soaked for a long time, listening to the murmurs of the three women who waited for her in the bedroom. She finished off the bath with a hot shower, letting the water sting her skin and turn her flesh pink with its heat. Then she put on the tee shirt that Biddy had hung on the towel rack and stepped into the room.

Adele held a glass of water in one hand and a pill in the other. “No arguments,” she said. “I don’t make a habit of handing out sedatives.

These are unusual times.”

Lindy understood. She took the pill and drank it down with the water, climbed into bed, and kissed Annie good night. Then she watched Adele and Biddy accompany her daughter out the door.

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She immediately felt drowsy—almost missed the tap at the door.

“Come in.” Her voice already sounded far away.

Bill stood in the doorway.

“I don’t bite.” Her words were slurred, but she couldn’t seem to help it.

“I don’t believe that for a minute.” But he came to her side and smiled.

“What? You better hurry, I’m fading fast.” A yawn drove the point home.

“Get some sleep.” He pulled the covers up to her chin, and with a look that Lindy didn’t attempt to comprehend, he kissed her on the forehead and tiptoed out the door.

* * *

It was afternoon when she awoke with a start.

“Not to worry,” said Biddy. “The company is at the beach until the dress rehearsal tonight. Robert is back and the body is gone.”

“Life goes on,” Lindy croaked.

“You got a better alternative?”

Lindy shook her head. “Strangely enough, I’m hungry.”

“That’s my girl,” said Biddy and hauled her off the bed.

* * *

Later that day Lindy repeated her statement to Abel White. Annie had finally been pried from Lindy’s side to spend the day with Donald at Dr. Van Zandt’s cleanup effort.

They hadn’t seen Ellis or Marguerite, or Bill or Adele. Jeremy had shown up briefly, just to make sure she was okay, and then left them to closet himself with the Eastons. Robert and Chi-Chi had moved Chi-Chi’s things back to the bungalow and hadn’t been seen since.

That had brought a ribald comment to Biddy’s lips, and they had laughed, tentatively at first, then with real enjoyment.

Now, she and Biddy sat in the shade of the boulders by the lake, listening to the sounds of dancers determined to have fun. Connie had been carried out and was sitting in a beach chair under an umbrella, his thin shoulders covered by a striped towel. He was 255

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surrounded by his peers, who chatted and laughed and handed him sodas and pieces of fruit.

In the evening, Lindy would oversee the dress rehearsal just like any other day on tour. Even though none of them was sure they would be performing the following evening. Like inertia, they continued their activities until forced to stop. It was the only way to approach life.

And that thought brought her painfully back to Stuart Hollowell.

What had driven him to commit murder and betray his dearest friend? Just for the momentary excitement of building a ski resort or luxury hotel? Because it was there, he had said, right before he had plummeted to his death.

Self-assured and unrepentant, until that final cry of surprise and fear that still haunted Lindy’s memory. For an intelligent, energetic, life-loving man to come to that. It was such a waste. And though he had paid the ultimate price for his actions, it was those left behind, Marguerite and Ellis, especially Ellis, who would suffer most.

And Connie, a timorous boy, now showered with attention for a few minutes of one day. What would happen to him? How would he survive with the memories of what had happened to him that summer?

Lindy stood up, pulled her shirt over her head and walked across the beach to the water. She waded in until her legs were numb below the knee. Then she dove in, the freezing water taking her breath away, and she swam until she could swim no more. She came back to where Biddy sat, and stood over her, shivering, teeth chattering, and dripping onto the romance novel that Biddy held unread in her hands.

Then they gathered up their things and went to the house to get ready for rehearsal.

* * *

Lindy stood backstage watching as the company began the Mendelssohn symphony. She would eventually take her place in the audience, notebook at the ready, but not yet.

Connie Phillips sat on a stool near the wings. Rebo exited and gave the boy a thumbs-up sign.

“You seem to have made a conquest,” said Lindy.

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Rebo was counting under his breath, readying himself for his next entrance.

“Children are such a big responsibility.” He sighed dramatically, batted his eyelashes, and leapt back onto the stage.

She watched from the wings as the dancers moved deftly through the steps. Connie came to stand next to her.

“Pretty cool, huh?” she said without taking her eyes from the stage.

Rebo finished a turn at that moment and flashed them a grin.

“Do you think I can stay at camp?” asked Connie.

“If it’s okay with your parents,” she said. “I’m sure Robert and Marguerite would love for you to stay.”

“My parents won’t care,” he said.

No, Connie, I don’t think they will,
she thought. Maybe Connie could find the family he needed and deserved here. Jeremy had, and he had turned out all right. Robert and Chi-Chi would be at the New York school to guide him through the winter months. In spite of a horrendous beginning, Connie just might have a bright future ahead of him.

“You want to sit out front with me?” she asked.

“No, I think I’ll just stay here.”

She left him gazing raptly at the stage, and felt a flicker of warmth as she made her way to her seat in the house. Just tiny at first, but growing larger and warmer, pushing away the horror. By the time she opened her notebook, she had lost her dread of touching it. She began to write, and Stu Hollowell and his schemes of empire slipped away like the slow fade of stage lights at the end of a dance.

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Twenty-Four

Saturday after lunch they gathered in the drawing room—the tech members of the Jeremy Ash Dance Company, the teachers, Adele, and Robert and Chi-Chi—to hear Marguerite’s pronouncement of whether the show would go on or not.

“It will be our new beginning,” she said. And so they filed out the door: Peter and Rose to ready the theater, the teachers to inform their students, Adele to her infirmary, and Robert and Chi-Chi to prepare the programs.

And the reporters. They had arrived early that morning. Abel White had given them a statement, blushing against their rapid-fire questions and clicking cameras. Then he sent them off to view the accident site, accompanied by two hulking state troopers with the order to clear the area by afternoon.

Lindy, Biddy and Jeremy sat around Marguerite’s chair trying to make sense of the events of the last two weeks.

Marguerite sat frail as paper as she listened once more to Lindy’s story of Stu’s final minutes, the chase through the woods, Grappel’s realization that it had been Stu who killed Larry Cleveland and not Robert.

“He’ll stay here of course,” said Marguerite, when Lindy brought up the subject of Connie’s future. “I’m not turning him over to that secretary, and God knows when the parents will deign to return. Can you imagine parents not bothering to cut their vacation short when their child was almost murdered?” Then her indignation dried up. “But I don’t suppose we know the whole story. One seldom does, does one?”

It was a question fraught with meaning, and the interruption brought about by Sandiman entering with a tray of lemonade was welcomed with relief.

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Bill entered on Sandiman’s heels, having finished questioning Abel White about Byron’s condition and White’s plans for pursuing the inquiry. Lindy just hoped that Bill had not overwhelmed him.

“Byron is awake, more or less.” His voice filled the room. “He was able to make a statement. He admitted to setting off the dynamite and typing the computer message. He swears he thought that Robert had killed Larry and was just trying to make things easier for the prosecution.”

He took a glass that Sandiman handed him, eyed it, and then put it down on the coffee table. He started to pace. “With what Lindy and Connie verified about the events of Thursday night, and the fact that they found a bottle of tranquilizers among Stu’s possessions, I’d say he’s probably telling the truth.”

“But why do such a horrible thing?” asked Marguerite. “Making up that terrible note, it’s unpardonable.”

“Well, we don’t need to worry about him being par doned. Byron Grappel will be living off the taxpayers’ money for a long time to come.”

“They would have realized it was a fake, wouldn’t they?” asked Biddy. “I mean, what if they had believed it?”

“It was a stupid thing to do, Biddy,” said Bill. “But I don’t think Grappel really cared whether it was used as evidence or not.”

“Then why go to all that trouble?” asked Lindy.

Bill shrugged. “A wild guess? He wanted to destroy Chi-Chi’s love for Robert. It was a good thing you discovered Robert when you did. Grappel might not have tried to kill him, but I bet anything he wouldn’t have attempted to save him.” Bill sighed. “The agonies of unrequieted love.”

“Do sit down, Bill,” said Marguerite; the hint of a smile hovered at the edges of her mouth.

Lindy fought for control and then burst out laughing. “Unrequited love?”

Bill looked embarrassed. “I don’t know where that came from.”

Marguerite patted his knee. “Shakespeare, I believe. It’s quite okay, Bill. The retreat has that effect on people.”

Sandiman opened the door and held it open in his most imperious fashion. Behind him, Annie and Donald stood side by side, mud-splattered and grinning. Abel White ushered them into the room.

Annie was holding a package that dripped murky water onto the carpet.

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“Look!” she exclaimed and rushed forward to Bill, presenting the disgusting object like a frolicsome puppy. Lindy rolled her eyes and leaned forward to see.