Tumbling Blocks (33 page)

“Gabe?” My lips formed the shape of his name, but no sound came out.

A soft hand touched my cheek. It smelled of sweet, toasty almonds. In the background I heard the rumble of voices: Daddy, Emory, Elvia.

“Dove,” I said in my soundless speech. Tears burned my eyes. If I was dead, then so was everyone I loved.

“Now, now,” she said. “You’re fine, honeybun. You’re going to be fine. You got a concussion and a broken wrist. Sam says he wants to be the first to sign your cast. You’re going to be fine.”

“Nola,” I said. This time I could hear my own voice, jagged and harsh as a thirty-year smoker. “She tried to . . . Pinky . . . she . . . where’s Scout . . .”

“Everything’s under control,” Gabe said, his wide, warm hand touching my face. “Scout’s fine. Go back to sleep. I’ll be right here.”

Knowing I was safe, I let myself lapse back into sleep. Every so often someone would arouse me, and I’d murmur answers to their questions and go back to sleep. I woke up again hours later with a splitting headache. It was dark outside my window, and Gabe was the only one left in the room sitting in a visitor’s chair close enough for me to touch.

“Scout?” I said, remembering what happened.

Gabe bent down to kiss the top of my head. “He’s at home with Mom and Ray. He earned his kibble for the rest of his life. His barking brought you help.”

“He’s a good dog,” I said and started to cry. Gabe moved to sit on the edge of my bed and pulled me into his arms. He didn’t say anything but just let me cry out my fear and relief.

Once I calmed down, he told me what happened after I was knocked unconscious by my fall down the basement stairs.

“You were lucky,” he said. “You could have broken your neck.” His face hardened, imagining the possibility. “Constance was probably right about what happened to Mrs. Edmondson. If I’d only listened to her.”

I placed my hand on his forearm. “There’s no way you could have known, Friday. It didn’t look like a murder. Even the medical examiner wasn’t suspicious. And, frankly, Constance has always been as loony as a . . .” My head throbbed and I couldn’t think. “A loon.”

His blue-gray eyes darkened in the pale morning sunlight. “Still, I should have . . . I don’t know . . .”

“Been able to predict the future?” I touched my aching temple. “Do you know how Nola killed Pinky?”

He shook his head no. “She’s in custody, but she’s not talking.”

My eyebrows went up, surprised. Then I flinched. Even that little movement hurt. “You caught her already? How?”

He smiled, touched my cheek with his warm palm. “You told us.”

“I did?”

He filled in the details of what took place right after my unplanned meeting with Nola Finch. Apparently, Scout had sensed that something was wrong when he came back to the house. It was luck or, I’d rather believe, God’s providence that Bobbie was still out hiking around the property. She heard Scout’s barking and came upon him scratching at Pinky’s front door. She saw my car and naturally assumed I was inside. She knocked and knocked, and when I didn’t answer, she took a chance and broke a window. Once she let Scout in, he ran directly to the basement door and barked. Bobbie unbolted the door, ran down and found me. Though I don’t remember, apparently I woke up for a few moments when Bobbie checked my pulse. As I lapsed in and out of consciousness, I managed to say Nola Finch’s and Pinky Edmondson’s names when Bobbie asked me what happened.

“My training as a cop’s wife,” I said, smiling.

“Thanks to you, she only had a few hours’ head start.”

He went on to tell me how Bobbie called 911, then immediately called Gabe, whose number she found on the cell phone still in my pocket. She told him what I’d said.

“We caught Ms. Maxwell attempting to cross the border into Tijuana,” Gabe said. “She was wearing a wig and carrying a fake ID.”

“Wow,” I said.

“After our APB, she was recognized by a sharp-eyed border patrol agent who, fortunately for us, happens to be a part-time folk artist himself. He’d just read the story that morning in the
L.A. Times
about your museum’s acquisition of the Abe Adam Finch painting. We were lucky enough that one of the newspaper’s photos showed Nola Maxwell. Which, by the way, is her real name.”

“Where is she being held?” I asked.

“Down in San Diego. I sent two detectives down there.”

“You said she’s not talking?”

He shook his head no. “Already has a lawyer. Did she say anything to you about killing Pinky Edmondson?”

I almost shook my head, then remembered how much it hurt. “Not really. She confessed to the art fraud, and she seemed very angry that Pinky was going to reveal their secret.”

His expression was slightly confused. I realized that he didn’t know the details about why she killed Pinky, or at least what it sounded like to me. Slowly, I told him about discovering the picture of Lionel the cat on Abe Adam Finch’s painting.

“I really didn’t think I was doing anything dangerous by going out there,” I said. “Since I thought I hadn’t done anything to make anyone suspicious about the painting.”

“Obviously, something you did or said worried Nola Maxwell.”

I thought for a moment. “I don’t know what.”

“When did you recognize the cat in the painting?”

“At the opening. I was studying the painting, and that’s when a lightbulb went on.”

“She was obviously watching you and, as I’ve told you before, you aren’t the best poker player in the world.” He softened his comment with a smile. “After that, it is likely she followed you, waiting to see what you’d do with the information.”

I inhaled deeply, causing a sharp pain in my side. “I’ve been stalked enough in my lifetime for ten people. I hope this does it.”

“You and me both,” Gabe said.

“Maybe it just came down to greed. Or envy. Or both. She really liked the social position being Abe Finch’s niece gave her and didn’t want Pinky to end it. Do you think she’ll ever confess?”

“Doubt it. She was smart enough to hire a lawyer as soon as she could. Because of what she did to you, we can charge her with aggravated assault, assault with a deadly weapon, maybe even kidnapping. The DA’s figuring all that out. And anything you’ve figured out is just speculation. Since we don’t have any physical evidence on Mrs. Edmondson, there’s not much we can do now.”

“She’ll get away with murder.”

The edges of his lips turned down in a frown. “Not the first person who has and won’t be the last. But she’ll do the most jail time possible under the law.”

“I wonder how she did it.”

Gabe shrugged. “I asked the medical examiner, and he said if he had to speculate, he’d guess that she used Mrs. Edmondson’s own medicine against her.”

“What medicine?”

“Digitalis. Pinky Edmondson had a heart condition. She also, apparently, had trouble sleeping, because she had a prescription for sleeping pills. Our guess is that, somehow, Nola managed to trick Mrs. Edmondson into taking too much of her own heart medication. Maybe gave her some sleeping pills, then convinced her she hadn’t taken her heart medicine when she actually had. We’ve checked with her pharmacist, and Mrs. Edmondson had a prescription filled two weeks before for a month’s worth. The detectives found the bottle of sleeping pills but not the digitalis. Nola Maxwell likely got rid of it, since it would have shown more pills missing than was logical.”

“So many ifs. I guess we’ll never know for sure.”

“Not unless Nola confesses, and though I don’t underestimate the interrogation experience of my detectives, Ms. Maxwell sounds like she is not one who can be easily tricked.”

“Not as easily fooled as the rest of us,” I said, meaning me.

“Don’t beat yourself up, sweetheart. These kinds of people are walking geniuses when it comes to using people.”

“I wonder what will become of the painting? And what it makes the rest of his . . . or rather, their work worth.”

“That’s not my field of expertise,” Gabe said. “For right now, since there isn’t a charge of murder against Nola Maxwell, you can keep the painting.”

“I suppose I need to make an official announcement. We’ll get media coverage, all right. Just not the kind I’d hoped for.”

“You know what they say,” Gabe said cheerfully. “All publicity is good publicity.”

“Who says that?” I said.

He laughed and kissed me. “I don’t know. The people who don’t get publicity? But if what you wanted was for your museum to become known, that’s in the bag now.”

“Except we’ll be a laughingstock.”

“Not as much as the people who paid thousands of dollars for a fake Abe Adam Finch painting.”

“You’re right,” I said, feeling a little better. “At least this didn’t cost us anything.” Then a feeling of sadness swept over me. “It cost Pinky Edmondson her life.”

Gabe’s face was more thoughtful than sad. “Yes, that’s a tragedy, but one she could have prevented by simply not perpetuating a lie.”

“It’s still tragic,” I said. “To die for something so small.” I groaned. “Do you realize what my life will be like once Constance Sinclair finds out she was sort of right about Pinky being murdered?”

“Not as bad as mine.”

Within the next hour, the rest of my family had come back: Dove, Isaac, Daddy, Sam, Emory and Elvia. I had an entourage to help me check out. As Dove and Elvia helped me dress, Gabe filled out my paperwork. In the next hour, I was back home sitting in the living room holding Boo in my lap, Scout at my feet.

“You’re the best dog in the whole world,” I told Scout, bending down to scratch him behind his left cheek, a favorite spot of his. “Extra premium dog treats for the rest of your life.”

“He already gets those,” Gabe said, bringing me a tray with a grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup, hot chocolate and homemade butterscotch pudding, compliments of Kathryn.

“Yummy,” I said, digging in, thankful it was my left wrist broken rather than my right. I’d taken a pain pill about an hour ago and was feeling hunger for the first time today. “This meal is almost worth what I had to go through.”

“I hope not,” Kathryn said, walking into the living room. “I’d be happy to make you those things any time you like without you risking your life.” She smiled at me, then at Gabe.

Gabe smiled back, which relieved me. They’d obviously come to some kind of truce. Had they talked about the past or just silently agreed to let it go? I looked from Gabe to his mother and back to Gabe. Nothing on their unexpressive faces told me. Ray came in, and for the next couple of hours we sat around chatting about a lot of nothing. For the first time since my mother-in-law had arrived, it felt like the air between Gabe and his mother wasn’t thick with resentment and anger.

In bed that night, after taking an awkward shower with my wrist wrapped with plastic wrap and taped to keep it from getting wet, I asked Gabe about his mother.

“Are you two okay?” I crawled awkwardly under the covers. I watched Gabe pick up Boudin and hold him in his arms, stroking his puppy fur, his face visibly relaxing.

“We’re fine,” he said.

“Did you talk?”

He bent down and put Boo in his crate, taking his time to settle him in, fixing the soft blanket around the puppy, stroking him again, murmuring assurances before closing and locking the gate.

“Things are fine,” Gabe repeated, not actually answering my question.

I almost pursued it, discouraged that they hadn’t confronted the issues between them. What had happened with me had obviously eased things between them, but it hadn’t solved the deeper problems. Maybe that wasn’t possible. My husband carried so much anger inside him, so many questions, so much sadness, but, it seemed, this was not the time that things would be resolved between him and his mom. All things had their season. Perhaps this was not the season for that.

The pain pills brought me wonderful, painless sleep, but they only lasted four or five hours. It was dark when I woke. I sat up, looked over at Boo to see if he was awake and waiting to go outside. He was fast asleep. Scout, sleeping next to my side of the bed, sat up, alert. As always, he was ready to accompany me wherever I needed to go at two a.m.

“I’m fine,” I whispered to him. “Down.” He obeyed with a grunt of relief. “Go back to sleep.” I leaned down from the bed and stroked the warm top of his broad skull.

By this time, I was awake enough to realize I was alone in bed. Where was Gabe? The master bathroom door was open, and in the dim light from the half moon, I could see it was empty.

I struggled out of bed, worried. Gabe rarely wandered the house at night. Though he often had troubled dreams, insomnia never plagued him. I pulled on my robe and slowly made my way downstairs.

I was at the bottom step when I heard it, the sound of two voices talking, the timbre of anger obvious even before I could hear the words. I froze where I was, knowing that me walking into the living room at this point might halt something that had been coming for a long time, something that needed to happen.

“You should have told me about your MS.” My husband’s voice was low and angry. “Being the last to know was humiliating.”

“That wasn’t my intention,” Kathryn said, her own voice tight, controlled. “You know that.”

“I don’t know anything apparently. I am your son. I am your oldest child. Even Benni knew before I did.”

“Perhaps it’s because she pays more attention,” his mother said, her voice now just as angry as his.

“How can you say that?”

His mother’s voice softened. “Gabe, honey, I’m sorry. Is that what you want from me? I’m sorry. You’re right; I should have told you immediately. I just didn’t want to ruin our Christmas.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice sounding adolescent now. “If that were true, you would have called and told me about Ray over the phone. You wouldn’t have sprung it on me in public.”