Skeleton Key (32 page)

“Annabel, hello. I'm sorry. I'm afraid I'm a little distracted.”

“That's all right,” Annabel said.

“I wish I understood more about computers than I do,” Ruth Grandmere said. “And more about money. It seems odd to me, to get to my age and understand so little about money. Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Do you often take money out of your account here? In cash, is what I'm talking about. Do you take money out frequently?”

“I don't take it at all. I just charge stuff.”

“But what about when you've run short of cash?”

“I don't think I ever have. Not out of here. And in town you, can use the ATM.”

“Yes,” Ruth said. “Yes, you can.” She looked back at the console, tapped a few keys, and waited. Then she shook her head again and sighed. “You didn't take one hundred twenty-five dollars out of your account last August twenty-second?”

“On August twenty-second, I was in Martha's Vineyard. We're always on the Vineyard in August. We go to stay with my grandparents.”

“Do you? I didn't realize it was all of August. Good God, but this is a mess, isn't it? I don't know what we're going to do about it.”

“Do about what?”

Ruth Grandmere seemed to come to again. This time, she looked sheepish.

“Don't mind me,” she said. “I'm just rambling on. It isn't very important, really. We've just got a lot of computer mess-up in the records, and they'll all have to be straightened out. Was there something you wanted that I could help you with?”

Annabel shifted from one foot to another. The idea of Ruth Grandmere working on Sally Martindale's computer was intriguing. Where was Sally Martindale? How messed up could the records get, that Ruth would come in when she was supposed to be off-duty just to get them straightened out?

Annabel looked at the floor, and then at the ceiling.

“The thing is,” she said. “It's about Kayla.”

“Kayla?”

“I was going to ask for your advice,” Annabel said. “I mean, you know what my mother is like. She can't keep her head about anything, really. And so I didn't want to ask her. But I thought you might have an idea.”

“If there's something important going on in your life,” Ruth Grandmere said, “you should talk to your parents, no matter how hard it is. I know what it's like around here, Annabel. I know that it's sometimes very hard for young people to go to their parents with a problem when their parents have spent years, spent years—”

“Pretending that their children don't exist?” Annabel said. “Yes, I know about that, too. But that wasn't the kind of thing I meant.”

“What kind of thing did you mean?”

“It's just that—if you had some information, about
Kayla, that might be of some use to somebody, would you tell them?”

“What kind of information could you have about Kayla?”

Annabel really wanted to sit down. Now that she had started this, it didn't seem like such a good idea.

“It's just—something I came across. Something Kayla told me. And I keep thinking that Margaret Anson ought to know.”

Ruth Grandmere was no longer paying any attention to the computer console at all. She was turned around on her swivel chair, giving Annabel her full attention.

“If there's something you know about Kayla Anson that has to do with her murder, you shouldn't tell Margaret. You should tell the police. Or that detective, that Mr. Demarkian.”

“It's not that kind of thing. At least, I don't think it is.”

“What kind of thing is it?”

“It's hard to explain. But Margaret is the one who ought to know. Because Margaret is the—what do you call it? The heir. Isn't she?”

“I don't know,” Ruth Grandmere said.

“I don't see that the information has anything to do with her murder. I mean, it was months and months ago that we talked about it. But it was supposed to be—private, I guess. Nobody was supposed to know. So I thought that maybe Kayla hadn't made a record of it, and Margaret Anson wouldn't know.”

Annabel had been half-staring at the ceiling again while she said all this. When she turned her attention again to Ruth Grandmere, she saw that the older woman had become almost comically agitated. She was half-rising out of her seat. Her eyes had become very wide. Annabel stepped back, startled.

“Listen to me,” Ruth Grandmere said. “Make sense, for once in your life. Two people are already dead. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I know, but the thing is—”

“The thing is nothing,” Ruth insisted. ‘Two people are dead, and they were both found in Margaret Anson's garage. Both of them. If you don't know what people around here have been saying about that, you haven't been listening.

“I do know,” Annabel said. “But—”

“No buts. I'm not going to say that I think that Margaret Anson murdered her own daughter in her own garage, because I suppose you should treat people as innocent until proven guilty. But you must know as well as I do that Margaret is capable of it. If you've got some information, no matter how trivial you think it is, you should take it to the police.”

“Yes,” Annabel said. “Yes, I know.”

Ruth reached out and touched her shoulder. “I want you to promise me that you won't go hauling off to Margaret's house and laying this thing all out for her. You'll talk to the police instead.”

“The police really aren't going to be interested.”

“That's fine. After the police say they aren't interested, then you can go to Margaret Anson. But not before. For your own safety. Okay?”

“Okay,” Annabel said.

Ruth Grandmere relaxed back into her chair. “That's all right then. As long as you're going to be sensible.”

Annabel made polite little noises, but Ruth didn't hear them. She was back at the computer console again, concentrating as hard as if she were taking an exam. Annabel backed quietly out of the office and into the hall.

Of course she knew the sensible thing to do was to tell the police anything that might be relevant—or even anything vaguely odd, in case it might be relevant. And what she knew was definitely odd. The problem was, it really didn't concern anybody but Margaret Anson, which meant that it was Margaret Anson who ought to be told. She ought to be told soon, too, because the longer it went before something was done about it, the harder it would be to actually do anything.

Assuming, of course, that there was anything to be done. Assuming that Kayla hadn't taken care of it herself months ago. She had said that she was going to take care of it.

Annabel let herself out of the administrative hall and into the main body of the club. Then, on an impulse, she walked out of the club's front doors and into the parking lot. Even if Margaret had killed Kayla, it had nothing to do with her. This wasn't the kind of information you murdered somebody for. This was the kind that made you end up giving them a reward.

Annabel got into her car and started it up. Her jacket was still in the club. She'd have to come back for it later.

What she needed to do now was to drive out to Margaret's house and lay it all out on the table. She didn't have to worry about Margaret Anson getting violent, because she was sure that Margaret would never do anything conspicuous in front of all those reporters parked in front of her house.
There
was a trait that all the Litchfield County ladies shared. They all hated publicity.

Of course, Zara Anne Moss had been killed in Margaret's garage and at a time when Annabel supposed that there must have been reporters in the road, but for some reason that fact didn't seem to change the equation in any way that mattered.

Martin and Henry Chandling were waiting on their front porch when Stacey Spratz drove up with Gregor Demarkian, and Martin thought immediately that he'd never in his life seen a less foreign-looking man than this one with the big shoulders and the much-too-heavy coat. It made him a little peeved. He had been expecting something a little more definite, someone like Peter Lorre, maybe, or like Yakov Smirnoff. He had most certainly been expecting an accent, which only seemed natural for a man with a name like Gregor Demarkian. If Gregor Demarkian was a real Amerlean
instead of an Armenian, why hadn't he changed that name? Any normal person would have become Gregory Marks by now.

The state police cars were a little larger than the ones the towns in the hills used for their local police department Gregor Demarkian didn't have to unfold himself too thoroughly from the front passenger seat. Still, he was a large man, much larger than the ones Martin was used to. Martin guessed that he was at least six three, and he didn't have to guess about the gut. It was pitiful, the way some men went to seed.

“Doesn't look like much, does he?” Henry asked, as they watched the two men walk toward them. Neither of them moved. Neither of them would have moved even if they'd been offered money. There was a standard to maintain.

“Martin? Henry?” Stacey Spratz said. “This is Gregor Demarkian.”

“We see that,” Henry said.

“We were just up at the Litchfield County Museum,” Gregor Demarkian said.

“He brought that thing down here himself, that's what we think,” Henry said. “That Jake what's-his-name. He brought it down here just to make a fuss so that his museum would get in the newspapers. Then somebody came along and murdered that rich girl, and that took care of that.”

“We want to go up the hill and see where the Jeep tipped over,” Stacey Spratz said.

Martin tipped his chair back a little farther. He had to be careful, because he'd tipped himself over backward once or twice already this year. Now he thought, uncomfortably, that the rumors they'd been hearing were true. The Jeep was involved in the death of Kayla Anson, somehow. Whoever had brought it here had been dumping it after he'd used it to—what? Martin wasn't very clear on that He thought Kayla Anson had been killed in a different vehicle altogether, possibly in her own car. He only knew that the Jeep had to fit in one way or another.

He let all four feet of his chair hit the floor and heard Henry do the same.

“Come on up,” Henry was saying
as he
got to his feet. “It's right up the path. It isn't far at all.”

“It seemed far on the night,” Martin said. “In the dark.”

“We thought it was kids,” Henry said. “We're always getting kids. Kids like to muck around in graveyards.”

“They like to overturn the gravestones,” Martin, said helpfully.

In the full light of day, it wasn't a long walk up to the cemetery at all. It didn't seem treacherous, either. The path was well-packed and broad enough not to be claustrophobic. When you could see it, there was nothing to stumble over.

They got to the top of the hill. Martin and Henry stood back to let Stacey Spratz and Gregor Demarkian go before them. There was really not very much to see. The Jeep had been a heavy vehicle, so there was still some impression in the dirt, but not much. The grass had sprung back into place.

“If we'd have known it was going to have something to do with the murder,” Martin said, “we'd have been more careful. We just thought it was kids.”

“This was at what time?” Gregor Demarkian asked. “Do you remember?”

“Sure we remember,” Henry said. “It was just after midnight. That was part of the point. They always wait to midnight to get going. They think it's funny.”

Gregor Demarkian was circling the few indentations in the ground that were left as evidence of what had happened to the Jeep. Martin thought he looked like a dog trying to get comfortable enough to go to sleep. He stopped and looked back in the direction of Martin and Henry's house. Then he did another circle of the area and looked down the hill.

“What's down there?” he asked.

“Capernaum Road,” Henry said. “Town-maintained dirt. Except I think it's Watertown, not Morris.”

“It is Watertown,” Martin said.

“All these towns up here sort of wrap around each other,” Stacey Spratz said to Gregor Demarkian.

Gregor Demarkian was looking at the ground again.

“Does anybody have any idea of how the Jeep actually got here? Did it drive up from the house?”

“It couldn't have,” Henry said. “We would have heard it. We were sitting right there in our front room.”

“How about down from the Litchfield County Museum?”

“It couldn't have gotten through,” Martin said. “There's a path to that but it's a footpath. It's not wide enough for a Jeep.”

“Trees,” Henry said solemnly.

“All right,” Gregor Demarkian said. “That seems to leave two possibilities. Either in from the road out front, or up from down there. There was no indication?”

“It's all rocks,” Stacey Spratz said apologetically. “There's nothing to leave tire tracks in. Everybody likes gravel drives.”

They all looked down at the hill that led to Capernaum Road. That was rocks, too, but bigger ones than what would be on a gravel drive. Martin thought this was really pitiful. On television, when the police conducted investigations, they used state-of-the-art equipment and mobile crime labs. They were able to find microscopic cloth fibers on blades of grass.

“I don't know what you're going to find up here, just looking around,” Martin said. “They took the Jeep away the next morning. That was Saturday. And then we tidied up some. That's what we're paid to do. Keep the cemetery tidy.”

“The cemetery is not in use any longer?” Gregor Demarkian asked.

“Well, of course it's in use,” Martin said. “We've got dead people up here. Dozens of them.”

“He means in use by people today,” Henry said. “They don't bury anybody new up here, that's what he wants to
know. They haven't buried anybody new up here for a long time.”