Missing Marlene (20 page)

She carried her plate to the kitchen, returned to the dining room, and put on her coat. Then she went upstairs to Florence’s room and knocked on the door. Florence opened it. “Yes, missus?”

“Florence, I have to go out for a little while. Can you keep an eye on things?”

“Of course. I will leave my door open so I will hear Aaron’s mother when she comes.”

“Thanks.” Jane stopped at Nick’s room and peeked in. Nick and Aaron, a pleasant-looking sandy-haired boy, sat on the floor playing Clue.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hello, dear. Hello, Aaron.”

The boy looked up and smiled. “Hello, Mrs. Stuart.”

“I have to go out,” Jane said. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Where are you going?” Nick asked.

“Just out.”

She left the house by the front door. The wind had lessened, but it was colder now. The moon rode high in the sky, casting a pale glow over the small front yard within the holly hedge. Jane walked down the path and out to the road, turning right to follow it down the hill.

The roads here in the hills had no sidewalks. Jane kept to the grassy verge lest a car should appear around any of the road’s sharp turns. Her hands shoved deep in her pockets, she continued downward, along the way glancing at her neighbors’ houses with their warmly lighted windows.

Suddenly headlights lit up the road just ahead of Jane and a car appeared, coming up the hill. Jane pressed back into the trees so she wouldn’t be seen. She caught a glimpse of the car’s driver and thought it was a woman but couldn’t be certain.

When the car was gone she resumed her downhill walk. The houses disappeared, and there was only woods now, a wilder part of the neighborhood that had never been developed. From the dense undergrowth to Jane’s immediate right came a rustling sound, and she jumped. Just an animal. She kept walking.

Finally she reached the road’s lowest point, just before its intersection with Grange Road. She peered into the woods to her right. By her calculations, somewhere in there lay what she was looking for.

She began making her way into the woods. The trees were not especially dense, but the undergrowth was thick—prickly tangled bushes that caught at her shoes and stockings, causing her to lift her feet high as she walked. She was grateful for the moon, illuminating her way.

The woods seemed to go on forever. Her legs were growing tired. She began to doubt her calculations, to wonder if she had veered off in the wrong direction without realizing it. But she pressed on, knowing she could always turn around if she had to.

Then all at once the woods opened up and she found herself standing at the edge of a vast clearing. She gaped, barely able to believe her eyes.

Before her lay a veritable dump, a repository of piled-up refuse. There were heaps of what looked like crumbled pieces of Sheetrock. There were rocks. Tires, dozens of them, tumbled together like a giant’s toys. Lumber of assorted sizes and shapes. An upside-down baby carriage, one of its wheels bent sharply in half. A sofa with its springs bursting out. A card table with two rusty legs outthrust. A gashed green-and-white-striped patio umbrella. A jumble of rusted pipes. A massive old upholstered armchair lying on its side—perhaps Roger had managed to throw it over the cliff after all. She realized he’d never finished his story.

It was a sea of garbage, most of it lying at the base of the cliff to Jane’s left—Mr. O’Rourke’s cliff—which rose at an angle of perhaps forty-five degrees for about thirty feet. At the top she could make out the cliff’s edge, a dim jagged line in the moonlight.

When Jane had heard Roger’s story, when she had met the obnoxious Mr. O’Rourke, she had given no thought to what it must look like down here. Indeed, if someone had described this place to her, she would have thought that person was lying. Never, in a village as tightly regulated as Shady Hills, could such a place exist.

But here it was in front of her, a grim netherworld not meant to be seen. She recalled her brief conversation with Mr. O’Rourke. He had said he intended to clear this place for his luxury homes. Was that possible? Had he seen it? But of course he had.

Anyway, that was his problem. Jane hadn’t come here to worry about him.

Once more she gazed up at the top of the cliff. Then she imagined a line of descent, probably a roll-and-tumble down the cliff’s face of earth and gnarled low growth. Keeping her gaze trained on the spot she had fixed on at the cliff’s base, she worked her way slowly through and around the refuse, which close up emitted a strong rotting odor even in the October cold.

Her shoes and legs and the bottom of her coat were filthy by the time she reached her destination. Carefully, she scrutinized the area. Just to her right lay a television, a huge ancient console of dark carved Mediterranean wood. Behind it a computer monitor with a smashed screen lay still attached to its processor by a cord, reminding Jane of an umbilical.

There were a lot of building scraps here—Sheetrock, powdered plaster, tangled wire, pieces of plywood and two-by-fours. How recently had these items been thrown over the cliff? That was important. Perhaps very recently, Jane thought, and resigned herself to ruining her gloves as she began lifting wood and jagged shards of plaster to peer underneath.

Her search was soon rewarded, but as it turned out she hadn’t needed to lift anything to find what she sought. For rising from the scraps like some bizarre signpost was a human arm, sticking straight up as if planted at the elbow. The hand, relaxed in death, was beautiful in its way, though not perfect. Its index finger had been roughly severed, leaving a white spur of bone surrounded by blackened crusted blood.

Jane fought down a rising wave of nausea and tried not to look at the arm even as she tugged at a triangular piece of plywood in an effort to uncover the body the arm belonged to. The plywood wouldn’t budge, and she realized that one of its corners lay beneath a large rock. With a great effort Jane pushed the rock away, sending it rolling down the side of the junk heap. Then she returned to the plywood, which now lifted quite easily, revealing a shoulder and torso in a plaster-whitened sweater. The head was concealed by another piece of plywood, this one large and square. Jane lifted its edge and looked beneath it.

Marlene’s teeth were drawn back in a hideous grimace that looked almost like a smile. Plaster dust filled her nostrils and coated her open eyes.

That beautiful face ...

Poor Marlene. Poor Ivy. Tears came to Jane’s eyes. Gently she lowered the plywood back into place.

A crunching sound came from the far side of the mound. Jane looked up sharply, her breath catching in her throat.

Not six feet away, at the foot of the cliff, a figure stood in the shadow of the trees.

“Happy now?”

Helen stepped from the darkness into the moonlight, her face its usual blank.

“I was just about to go see you,” Jane said.

“Really? Why?”

“To ask you a question before I went to the police. I know
how
you killed Marlene. What I want to know is why.”

Helen shrugged. “Because she found a way to keep Gil. Money. Lots of it. Money’s all Gil cares about.”

“And you couldn’t let her have him?”

Helen’s expression grew intense, as if she were willing Jane to understand. “Of course I couldn’t. I love him. I’ve loved him since I was ten years old, since we were in grade school. Can you understand that, loving someone that way?”

Yes
, Jane thought,
I can understand that. Love did exist before you were born.
She nodded.

“He’s the most exciting man I’ve ever known. But you’ve met him, seen what he’s like, seen what he
looks
like. And look at me. Do you think he’d ever be interested? Of course not. Not without money. Till now he’s barely noticed me. But I have the money now.”

“Marlene’s money.”

“Yes.”

“She was your friend.”

“My friend! She knew I wanted Gil; she knew I loved him. Marlene, the most beautiful girl anyone had ever seen, the girl who could have had any man she wanted. And who did she decide she wanted? Gil! My ‘best friend’ took the man I wanted, picked him like an apple off a tree,
and then told me everything that happened between them.”

Helen snorted, screwing up her face in contempt. “She wasn’t my friend. She was a sick, sadistic girl who manipulated people to get what she wanted. The only reason she buddied up to me in the first place was because she wanted Gil and knew that I knew him better than anybody. Hell, I’ve been obsessed with him for half my life. Marlene figured I could advise her on the best ways to get and keep Gil. She told me so.”

“And did she know you loved Gil?”

“Hell, yes! That’s what I mean by sadistic. She got off on it big-time. She knew he’d never be interested in me. So she said she’d tell me what he was like—you know, as a lover—so I could enjoy it vic—vic—”

“Vicariously. I’m surprised she knew the word.”

“She was smarter than you think.”

“And you stayed friends with her, even though she’d taken the man you wanted?”

Helen looked close to tears. “I
wanted
to hear those things she told me. I
liked
hearing what he was like in bed, what his body looked like, what he did to her. It was the closest I’d ever get to him ... unless I could find a way to get a lot of money.”

“And you believed that if you got a lot of money, he’d want you?”

“Yes,” Helen said simply. “At least for a while. You don’t know Gil. He hates it here. He wants to get away. He’ll tell anyone that. I knew if I could get enough money to get us away from here, he’d go with me.”

“But even if you’d found a way to get the money,” Jane said, “he was with Marlene.”

Helen nodded. “I stayed up nights trying to think of ways to get them to break up. I thought about telling Gil some of the things Marlene had told me, about all the guys she slept with back in Detroit, how she’d used every drug there was—what a total bitch she really was. But nothing she’d done was as bad as the things Gil had done. And he knew what she was.”

“But then they did break up,” Jane said.

“Yes.” Helen’s eyes widened. “It was like a miracle.”

“Did you know why they broke up?”

“No. And I didn’t care.” Helen’s face darkened. “But then, that Monday morning, she called me at the store. She was all excited. She said she had enough money to get Gil to take her back. She wanted my advice on the best way to handle him, what to say.”

Helen looked close to tears. “I drove to your house. Marlene was all fidgety and excited. She wanted to get out and take a walk while we talked. So we walked around the neighborhood. It was so quiet, no one around. She showed me the money, right there in her purse.”

She put her hand to her forehead. “I’d never seen so much money. I knew it was enough to get Gil back, no matter what he said about never wanting to see her again. I was so upset I could barely talk. I—I couldn’t let it happen.”

Helen glanced upward. “We got to the cliff. Suddenly I knew what to do. It was so simple! Marlene was so happy she was laughing—you know how she laughed, with her head thrown back, all that hair flying. She was practically jumping up and down. I pretended to be excited, too. I laughed and jumped up and down with her, and at the same time I moved toward the edge of the cliff so she’d move with me. When I had her at the edge I grabbed her purse. She gave me this angry look, angry and surprised. And then I pushed her, right over the edge.” She let out a hearty laugh. “She screamed all the way down. I was surprised no one heard anything, but like I said, there was nobody around.”

She smiled slyly. “Now I had the money—and a key to your house. I walked back and parked my car in your garage. Then I let myself into the house and carried out all of Marlene’s things. I stuffed everything into my trunk.”

“So it was you,” Jane said.

Helen nodded. “I drove back to the store. I’d done it. I’d gotten rid of Marlene, I had enough money to get Gil, and I was going to get away with it.” She gave Jane a fiercely resentful look. “Then you started snooping around. And every time you came to see me I could tell you were getting closer to finding out what really happened. I had to do something. So I decided to frame Vernon. The little creep was the likeliest suspect anyway.”

Poor, hapless, besotted Vernon,
Jane thought.

Helen continued. “I came down here this morning and found Marlene’s body. I brought along a pair of pruning shears from my mother’s gardening shed. I cut off Marlene’s finger. Then I drove to Harmon’s in Boonton, where Vernon works, and when no one was looking I put the finger in his car. I also took a pair of Marlene’s panties from my trunk and shoved them under Vernon’s backseat. Then I went to a pay phone, so I couldn’t be traced, and called the Shady Hills police. I told them Vernon had the hots for Marlene and they should check him out.”

Helen grinned proudly. “To make extra sure they thought Vernon did it, I drove to his house and got into his garage. I found a piece of rope. That’s what I used when I attacked you. I was going to plant that in Vernon’s car, too.” She laughed. “I wasn’t really going to kill you. I just wanted to scare you, make you stop nosing around. Anyway, that other car pulled into the parking lot, so I figured I’d better get out of there.

“Later I realized I’d better come down here and make sure Marlene’s body was all covered, because if anybody found it, my framing of Vernon might not stick. So here I am. And here you are, still nosing around.” She regarded Jane thoughtfully, the way one might look at a particularly stubborn stain on a shirt.

“Your timing was off,” Jane said. “When you attacked me, the police had already arrested Vernon.”

“Yeah, I know. Who knew the cops would get their act together and search Vernon’s car so fast?” Helen shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. They’ve got Vernon, and they’ll make it stick.... How’d you finally figure it all out?”

“My train ...” Jane said.

“Your what?”

“My cat knocked over my wedding picture. I was looking at the train on my wedding gown and
train
got me thinking. Then I remembered. You told me you’d driven Marlene to the train station on Monday and seen her off.
But no trains ran that day because of the derailment.”
How, she wondered, could she have missed it for so long?

“Just the same,” she said, “you were seen visiting Marlene that morning. I knew someone other than Marlene had cleaned out her room, because something had been left behind that Marlene would never have forgotten.”

“Oh, really? And what was that?”

“None of your business. You also let our cat out while you were moving Marlene’s things to the garage. We’re all very careful about not letting the cat out. Even Marlene was good about that.”

There was no more to say. She would go to see Detective Greenberg, tell him everything. She cast a sorrowful glance at the mound of debris in which Marlene’s body lay—poor Marlene, whose deadly sin had been to want the wrong man. “God help you,” Jane said softly to Helen. Then she turned to start back through the woods.

“Stop,” Helen said, and there was a faint metallic click.

Jane stopped and looked over her shoulder. Helen, her face a pasty blank, held a gun straight out before her, its muzzle aimed directly at the center of Jane’s back.