No Place Like Home (38 page)

“One of the kids in my class said that I live in a house where a kid shot her mother. Is that right, Mom?” he asked.

My mind leaped ahead to the day when he might find out that
I
was the kid who shot her mother. I took a deep breath and said, “From what I understand, Jack, that little girl lived in this house with her mother and father, and she was very, very happy. Then her father died, and one night someone tried to hurt her mother, and so she tried to save her.”

“If someone tried to hurt you, I'd save you,” Jack promised.

“I know you would, sweetheart. So if your friend asks about that little girl again, say that she was very brave. She couldn't save her mother, but that was what she was trying so hard to do.”

“Mommy, don't cry.”

“I don't want to, Jack,” I said. “I just feel so sorry for that little girl.”

“I'm sorry for her, too,” Jack decided.

I told him that if it was okay with him, Sue was
going to come over and stay with him, and I'd go for another riding lesson. I saw a shadow of doubt across his face, so I hurried on: “Sue is teaching
you
to ride, and I'm taking lessons so that I can keep up with you.”

That explanation helped, but then Jack finished his sandwich, pushed back his chair, came around, and lifted his arms to me. “Can I sit on your lap for a little while?” he asked.

“You bet.” I picked him up and hugged him. “Who thinks you're a perfect little boy?” I asked him.

This was a game we played. I saw a hint of a smile. “You do,” he said.

“Who loves you to pieces?”

“You do, Mommy.”

“You're so smart,” I marveled. “I can't believe how smart you are.”

Now he was laughing. “I love you, Mommy.”

As I held him, I thought of the night the limo hit me, and how, in that scary moment before I lost consciousness, all I could think was, What will happen to Jack if I die? When I woke up in the hospital, it was my first thought as well. Kathleen and Martin were his guardians, but Kathleen was seventy-four, and Martin was a full-time responsibility. Even if she remained healthy for another ten years, Jack would only be fourteen when she reached eighty-four. That was why it had been such a vast relief to see Alex there, to know he was going home to my apartment to be with Jack. In these six
months, I have felt so secure knowing that Alex is Jack's guardian. But suppose Alex leaves us when he finds out about me? What will that do to Jack?

My little boy fell asleep in my arms, just a nap for about twenty minutes. I wondered if I gave him the same sense of security my father had given me that day the wave crashed us to shore. I prayed to my father that he would help me learn the truth about his death. I thought of what Benjamin Fletcher had said about my mother and Ted Cartwright. I thought of my mother falling to her knees at my father's funeral, wailing, “I want my husband. I want my husband!”

You told me when you were drunk. You killed my husband. You told me Zach saw you do it.

That was what my mother had screamed that night! I was as certain of it as I was that my little boy was in my arms. The pieces had finally fallen into place. For a long time I sat there very quietly, absorbing the import of those words. It explained why my mother threw Ted out. It explained why she was afraid of him, and of what he might do to her to save himself.

Why didn't she go to the police? I wondered. Was it because she was afraid of how I might judge her if I learned that another man killed my father because he wanted her?

When Sue arrived, I left for my final riding lesson with Zach Willet.

M
uch as Dru Perry instinctively disliked Marcella Williams, she had to admit that Marcella was a golden source of information. She insisted that Dru have coffee with her, and even had miniature Danish pastries which Dru unsuccessfully tried to resist.

At Dru's hint that Audrey Barton might have been involved with Ted Cartwright during her marriage, Williams was adamant that she didn't believe it. “Audrey loved her husband,” she said. “Will Barton was a very special guy. He had real class, and Audrey loved that. Ted's always been an exciting guy. He still is. Would Audrey have left Will for him? No. If she was free, would she marry him? Proof in the pudding—she did. But she never took his name. I think she kept the Barton name to appease Liza.”

Marcella had a stack of pictures that she thought might interest Dru. “Will Barton and my ex liked each other,” she explained. “That's the one place where I thought Will's judgment
was lacking. Then after Will died and Ted started coming around all the time to see Audrey, the ex and I would stop at her house and have a cocktail with them. I think Audrey didn't want Liza to realize that she was becoming involved with Ted, so having us around took a little of the pressure off. I always liked to take pictures, and after Liza went on her shooting spree, I got them all together and gave some of them to the media.”

I'll just bet you did, Dru thought. But as she went through the pictures, and studied the close-ups of Will and Audrey Barton, she could barely hide her emotions from Marcella's inquisitive eyes.

I'll still ask Bob to do the computer-aging she thought, but I think I know the result. Celia Nolan
is
Liza Barton. She's a combination of both her parents. She looks like both of them.

“Will you use all the pictures in your feature story?” Marcella asked.

“Depends on how much space they give me. Marcella, did you ever meet this Zach guy, the one who gave Will Barton riding lessons?”

“No. Why would I? Audrey was furious when she heard that Will had been taking lessons from him without her knowledge. Will tried to explain that he didn't want to take them at the Peapack club because he didn't want to look like a fool. He knew he wasn't any good, and probably never would be, but he wanted to try to learn to ride so that he could keep his wife company. My guess is
he wasn't thrilled to see Audrey riding so often with Ted Cartwright.”

“Do you know if Audrey blamed Zach for the accident?”

“She really couldn't. Everyone at the stable told her that Will insisted on starting out alone, despite Zach's asking him to wait.”

Marcella's phone rang just as Dru got up to go. Marcella rushed to answer it, and when she did, it was clear that she had received disappointing news.

“That's the way it goes,” she told Dru. “My lunch date was with Ted Cartwright, but he's been with his contractor all morning and now he has to see someone on an urgent matter. Maybe it's just as well. Sounds to me as though Ted is in one of his ugly moods, and I can assure you that is not the time to be around him.”

After Dru left Marcella, she drove directly to the reference room in the county library. She submitted her request for the microfilm of the
Daily Record
which included the day after Will Barton's death. The reference librarian smiled. “That day is mighty popular this morning. I released that same segment to someone else an hour ago.”

Celia Nolan, Dru thought. She's been talking to Zach Willet, and may suspect something about the accident. “I wonder if that could have been my friend, Celia Nolan,” she asked. “We're both working on the same project.”

“Why, yes it is,” the librarian confirmed. “She did several printouts from that issue of the paper.”

Several,
Dru thought, as she turned to the May 10th issue. I wonder why several.

Five minutes later, she was printing out the account of Will Barton's death. Then, to see if she had missed anything, she kept going through the paper until she found the sports section, and, like Celia Nolan, reasoned that Ted Cartwright might very well have been in the vicinity at the time of Will Barton's accident, and could have been carrying a gun.

Desperately troubled by what Celia's state of mind might be, Dru made one more stop, this one at the police station in Mendham. As she had hoped, Sergeant Clyde Earley was on duty, and was delighted to be interviewed by her.

With considerable embellishment, he gave her the step-by-step account of his visit to Charley Hatch, and his growing suspicion that Charley had changed to corduroy pants because, as he put it, “That fellow didn't want me to see him in those jeans with the red paint on them.”

After he wound up his story with the discovery of the evidence in the trash bag with the garbageman as witness, Dru nudged him onto another subject. “It all seems to be connected to the Little Lizzie case, doesn't it?” she mused. “I bet that night is still clear in your mind.”

“You bet it is, Dru. I can still see that little cool-as-a-cucumber kid sitting in my squad car, thanking me for the blanket I wrapped around her.”

“You drove off with her, didn't you?”

“That's it.”

“Did she say anything to you in the car?”

“Not a word.”

“Where did you take her?”

“Right here. I booked her.”

“You
booked
her!”

“What do you think I did? Give her a lollypop? I fingerprinted her and we took her picture.”

“Do you still have her fingerprints?”

“Once a juvenile is cleared of any wrongdoing, we're supposed to destroy them.”

“Did you destroy Liza's fingerprints, Clyde?”

He winked. “Off the record, no. I kept them in the file, sort of like souvenirs.”

Dru thought of the way Celia Nolan had tried to run from the photographers that first day she'd met her. She felt sorry for her, but knew she had to finish her investigation. Two people were dead, and if Celia was indeed Liza Barton, she now knew that her father's death might not have been an accident. She might soon be in danger herself.

And if she is the killer, then she has to be stopped, Dru thought.

“Clyde, there's something you have to do,” she said. “Get Liza's fingerprints to Jeff MacKingsley right away. I think Liza has come back to Mend-ham and may be taking revenge on the people who hurt her.”

I
sensed that there was something different about Zach Willet when I met him at the stable. He seemed somewhat tense, guarded. I knew he was trying to figure me out, but I didn't want him to become wary of me. I had to get him to talk. If he had witnessed my father's “accident,” and was willing to testify to the truth of what had happened that day, I was sure that the only way to get him to do it was to make it worth his while.

He helped me tack the horse up, then we walked the horses toward the spot where the trails begin to snake through the woods. “Let's take the trail that leads to the fork where Will Barton had his accident,” I said. “I'm curious to see it.”

“You sure are interested in that accident,” Zach commented.

“I've been reading up on it. It was interesting that a groom insisted he heard a shot. His name was Herbert West. Is he still around here?”

“He's a starter at the Monmouth Park Racetrack now.”

“Zach, how far were you behind Will Barton that day? Three minutes? Five minutes?”

Zach and I were traveling side by side. A strong breeze had blown the clouds away, and now it was sunny and cool, a perfect afternoon for a ride. The leaves on the trees were showing the first sign of fall. Tints of yellow and orange and russet were beginning to streak through their summer green shading, and they made a canopy of color under the vivid blue of the sky. The smell of the damp soil under the horses' hooves reminded me of the times when I would ride on my pony with my mother at the Peapack club. Sometimes my father would drive over with us and read the newspaper or a book while we were on the trail.

“I'd say I was about five minutes behind him,” Zach answered me. “And, young lady, I think we better have a showdown right here and now. Why all the questions about that accident?”

“Let's discuss it at the fork up ahead,” I suggested. Making no further effort to conceal my ease on horseback, I pressed my legs against my horse's sides. He broke into a canter, and Zach followed me. It was six minutes later that we drew rein and halted at the fork.