A Most Curious Murder (24 page)

Fida barked from Jenny’s front porch. Zoe sat there alone, waiting in a rocking chair.

“Your mom went to bed.”

“Anything wrong?” Jenny asked and fell into the chair beside her.

Zoe rocked. “Ed’s questioning Johnny Arlen again. I think it’s a last-ditch effort. He doesn’t know who the real killer is.”

“That’s good. I mean about Johnny.” She was too tired to care.

“You ever think that maybe it’s not a man at all? Could be a woman. I would have thought Abigail for sure if somebody didn’t attack her right out there.” Zoe jabbed a stiff finger toward the street then turned to look at Jenny.

“You seem . . . funny tonight,” Zoe said.

“I’m not
funny
.”

“Anything happen you want to talk about?”

Jenny shook her head. “Nope.”

“Suit yourself. I saw Tony and Penelope. We’re going out to Aaron’s house first thing. Ed actually said he was glad for our
help. I can’t get it out of my head why the killer didn’t find the box. He must have searched Aaron’s place by now.”

“Maybe he found it after all.”

“Doubt it,” Zoe said.

“Then why hasn’t Abigail’s house been searched? Someone tried to kill her, same as they did the boys. Abigail might be in the hospital, but Carmen Volker lives there, along with a few servants. No break-in there.”

They listened to June bugs crash against the screens. An occasional mosquito buzzed their heads and moved on. The pines, nothing but a line of ragged silhouettes, moved slightly in a warm, southern wind as they sat in the quiet of early night.

After a while, Jenny thought Zoe was asleep and got up slowly. She needed rest. And some real understanding of what makes a man a coward. What allows him to leave another man to die? She hated Gerry, but she couldn’t remember the real Johnny well enough to hate him, too. Everything about him was gone.

In midtiptoe toward the house door, Zoe sat up and stopped her, “Something happened tonight, Jenny. Maybe I can help.”

“You’ll only quote nonsense at me.”

“It’s not always nonsense, you know,” Zoe said after a while. “Sometimes the most magnificent sanity sounds illogical at first.”

“I went to the beach.” Jenny held on to the doorjamb, talking without turning. “Cindy Arlen found me there.” She turned now. “Gerry Arlen killed my dad. He came back to Bear Falls to confess but can’t face us. Johnny knew about it and covered for him.”

Zoe had not a single word to say. Nothing came out of her—bright or dull.

“I have to tell Mom. But I want to talk to Lisa first. She’s a part of this, too.”

“There are no ‘parts,’ Jenny,” Zoe finally said. “There’s only one ugly secret to tell.”

Jenny took a deep breath that was half a moan. “I don’t want to hurt her all over again.”

And then she sat down and told Zoe about the phone call from Abigail.

The weeds in the clearing were taller and drier, the sun was hotter than it had been the day they found Aaron’s body.

Zoe, in the backseat of Jenny’s car, next to Penelope, shivered. “Wish we didn’t have to go in there again.”

“But we do.” Tony got out of the car. The others followed.

Jenny hesitated. She needed to tell her mother about Gerry but couldn’t yet. There was too much going on. Dora had been hurt from so many directions over the last few months. Nothing felt secure around them anymore. Attacks were coming from all sides. She didn’t want to hurt her mother any more than she had been. But she had to know. Sometime soon, when her cowardly daughter got up the nerve.

Penelope was looking around the clearing when Jenny joined the others. Penny had dressed for the outing in old jeans and a white T-shirt. She’d braided her lank hair and wrapped a red scarf around her forehead. She looked ready for scrambling in dirt or for a fight with a killer—or for anything that came her way: stiff, know-it-all Penelope.

“Think this is worth our time?” Zoe asked, a little of everybody’s nervousness rubbing off on her.

Nobody answered, all intent on the house and what might be in it.

“Looks like a sarcophagus, you ask me,” Zoe said, hanging back behind the others.

Tony pulled away the long, loose boards used to secure the house from the door, throwing them to the ground behind him. Jenny stepped easily through the open door into the long room where they’d found Fida alive and Aaron dead.

Zoe, behind Jenny, caught her breath. Penelope stepped in just as Tony swore. Nothing was in its place, or upright, or in cupboards where things belonged. The floor was littered with debris. The chair, where Aaron had been sitting when he died, was gutted, foam stuffing thrown around as if a storm had blown through.

“Would the police do this?” Jenny asked, looking around.

Penelope swallowed a comment and watched where she stepped.

“Look.” Tony pointed to where the kitchen stove had been pulled from the wall and overturned. Behind the stove, a hole was cut in the wall. More holes were sawed in other walls. Holes in the floor were left gaping.

The searcher before them had done a good job.

“Bet this wasn’t the police,” Tony said. “Ed would have warned us.”

Jenny couldn’t concentrate; she could barely bring her mind back to murder or a mythical box.

She desperately wanted to call her mother, needing to hear her voice to make sure she was okay, wherever she was that morning. They’d hardly spoken ten words to each other at breakfast. It was as if Dora intuited something and had shifted back to that terrible place she retreated when Jim died. That was the place where she’d pulled away from the people who loved her
and left her bewildered daughters to wonder if life would ever be the same again. Then the next summer came and the garden came alive and Dora thought about eternity. That summer, Dora dared to love life, and the people around her, again.

Jenny’d called Lisa first thing that morning and left a message for her to call back. She wasn’t going to let it go on one more day. If Lisa called back or not, she would tell Dora who killed her husband by that evening.

But not now. Not this moment, she told herself, and fell in line behind the others, zigzagging through the mess and around the holes and into the bedroom.

Here the damage was even worse. Nothing of the mattress remained. The box spring was ripped open, bare springs poking out. The small closet was emptied of pants and shirts and the winter jacket, tossed back as if over a maniac’s shoulder. Boxes were ripped apart and their contents of papers and old junk tossed everywhere. More holes had been cut into the walls and floor. There was hardly a square foot that hadn’t been touched.

“He must have found it. This much damage . . .” Zoe whispered as she stood behind Tony and Penelope. “Or ‘her.’”

“If the box was even here.” Tony shook his head and looked around.

“Aaron had the key and taped it to Fida’s collar,” Penelope said. “I can’t get that out of my head. We’ve got to keep looking.”

“There’s probably nothing.” Jenny stood behind them in the middle of the main room, hands at her hips. “Maybe it was all a terrible joke Joshua Cane set in motion. A promise to someone. A hint at riches to come. A lie to ruin his children’s lives from beyond the grave.”

Zoe, standing in front of the blackened woodstove, wasn’t listening. She opened the squeaking door to nothing but dead ashes. The black pipe snaking to a hole in the wall had been
pulled away and left to dangle, ashes trickling out when the floor and walls shook.

Zoe bent to run her hands over the base—three bricks high, built of pink and white reclaimed bricks. With her fingernails, she picked at the mortar holding the bricks in place. It came away easily. She scraped some more.

Without a word, Jenny joined her, kneeling and picking at the mortar until large pieces fell from between the front bricks. Tony joined them—using a knife he found in the kitchen. Penelope stood behind them, watching closely.

No one said a word. They gouged and picked and brushed until the front four bricks were loosened, only bits of mortar holding them in place.

Zoe stuck her fingers under one of the bricks and worked at it until it came loose. She set it on the floor behind her.

She attacked the next brick. Jenny sat back to watch. Tony helped Zoe, poking with the knife until the next brick came loose, too. They pulled it away.

Penelope knelt on the floor to watch.

They pulled brick after brick away until there was a large opening. Zoe leaned forward to peer into the dark place beneath. She sat back and looked from Jenny to Tony, her eyes huge. “I think there’s something in there,” she said.

It was Jenny who stuck her bare hand into the hole they’d made—no thoughts of spiders or other crawling things. She felt around the hole until she found the smooth surface of what lay inside toward the back of the space. Wiggling her hand, she got ahold of the item and pulled it out.

A plain box, dust and mortar coating the wood surface except for where Jenny’s fingers left clean places.

Jenny was disappointed. Nothing but a plain box, after all. Flat on top, not humpbacked. The wood was darkened with age
and covered with scratches. A wooden handle was set in the flat top. On the front was a brass keyhole.

Jenny set the box on the floor and took in a long, strangled breath.

“My God,” Penelope said. “What do you know? It’s real.”

Jenny couldn’t turn her eyes away. “So ordinary . . .”

Tony looked at Zoe. “Did you bring the key?”

She nodded. She pulled her shirt up and pulled the duct tape away from her skin, tape and key falling into her hand.

Zoe was about to put the key in the lock when Jenny held up her hand, her body saying what she felt.

“No,” Jenny said to Zoe. “It’s not ours.”

“We found it.” Zoe was ready for battle.

There was something going on inside her that Jenny couldn’t name. “Call Abigail.”

Zoe opened her mouth to object, looked hard at Jenny’s face—remembering—then pushed the key down into her pocket.

Jenny called her mom from the car on the way back from Aaron’s house.

The phone rang a long time. She expected the answering machine and had a new message ready. Dora answered on the fifth ring, out of breath.

“Mom?” Jenny demanded. “Oh, Mom. I’m so happy to hear your voice.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear yours, too, Jenny. The trouble is, I can’t talk right now. I have visitors.”

“I didn’t know you were expecting anyone.”

“I wasn’t. It’s Johnny Arlen, of all people. He and his brother, Gerry, are here. They dropped over to see me.”

“Oh, Mom. You have no idea . . .”

There was a long pause.

“I think I do, Jenny.”

When Jenny said nothing back, Dora asked, “What do you want me to do, dear? They both have paid with their lives. What more can I get from them?”

Dora quietly hung up.

Jenny said nothing to the others.

When they were almost to town, Tony called the hospital and asked if he could talk to Abigail.

He looked over at Jenny as he said “Thank you” to the person on the phone.

“You okay?” he asked after he clicked off.

She said nothing. Any kindness right then could dissolve her. All of that would have to wait.

He turned to the others. “Abigail’s not there,” he said. “She went home.”

“Let’s go to her house,” Zoe said. “Right?”

“I’ve got the feeling I should call Ed.” Tony looked worried.

“And tell him exactly what?” Penelope asked from the backseat. “We’ve got nothing but the box. And that belongs to Abigail.”

They agreed to get to Abigail’s house and put an end to all of it.

The Cane mansion stood high on its hill of grass and trees, a ship captain’s house like so many in Northern Michigan towns: a widow’s walk and turrets. Everything around the house was summer still: trees barely moving and geraniums blooming in perfect pots set in perfect places—all of it looking fake.

Three cars stood in Abigail’s drive.

“She’s not alone,” Tony said.

“That’s what I was afraid of.” Zoe climbed out, stumbling over Penelope then hurrying toward the front door.

Tony pulled out a shopping bag he’d found in the trunk and handed it to Jenny.

Jenny couldn’t move at first. Her instinct was to get home as soon as possible. Mom had nobody there with her. There was no knowing what Johnny and his brother would say. It felt like leaving Dora alone to drown.

Still, what was ahead of them here could clear up so much. And maybe put an end to what everyone was going through.

She took the bag and set the wooden box inside. She followed the others up the walk to the mansion door, stopping only
when Zoe had an uncontrollable bout of sneezing and had to pinch her nose to stop it.

***

As they’d expected, Carmen Volker opened the front door. She peered out, holding the edge of the door with two hands. Her plain face showed alarm. “Ms. Cane is just out of the hospital. She can’t see anyone.”

The woman’s voice was high and alarmed. Her eyes were slightly bugged. She started to close the door on them.

“We’d like to talk to her.” Tony pushed back, taking Carmen by surprise.

Jenny, holding the precious bag, stepped back out of the way.

“How dare you? Ms. Cane says she doesn’t want to see people.”

Zoe stuck her head in as Tony pushed the door wider. “Ms. Cane!” she called. “Ms. Cane!”

“In here,” a faraway voice called back. “In the library.”

Tony gave Carmen a look that dared her to object.

“We’re coming in,” he said as Zoe, Penelope, and Jenny pushed around him and headed down the wide hall.

Carmen stumbled behind them, complaining as they called Abigail’s name again and ran toward her voice.

They turned along another hall and then hesitated outside an ornately carved door. Tony put his ear to the door. He was about to knock when Zoe, after giving him a disgusted look, pushed him aside, opened the door, and hurried in.

“I’m calling Alfred,” Carmen screamed behind them. “You aren’t allowed . . .”

She pulled a cell phone from the pocket of her misshapen dress.

The four of them stepped into the shadowy, high-ceilinged room. Penelope, clearly awed, stopped to look nervously at the
darkened bookshelves covering all four walls. Chairs and reading tables and unlighted lamps stood around the room as if a throng of readers might walk right in.

It was a dark, unwelcoming room. There was nothing of the cheerful sickroom to the place.

“Over here,” Abigail said, her voice weak, one arm up, hand waving from an overstuffed chair drawn close to the cold fireplace.

Jenny was the first to reach her, to kneel beside the chair and swallow her shock at the woman’s drawn face. Her eyes were barely focused.

“I thought you were going to call when you got out.”

Abigail leaned forward, her hand trying to grasp Jenny’s. “I remembered . . .”

“Alfred’s coming,” Carmen insisted behind them. “Abigail’s not to be disturbed. Alfred said none of you have any business being here. The doctor has ordered that she be kept perfectly quiet.”

They ignored her. “What’s going on?” Jenny bent toward Abigail.

“I remembered . . .” She looked up with unfocused eyes.

“Remembered what?” Zoe asked.

“My next phone call will be to the police.” Carmen got loud as she tried to thrust her body between the visitors and Abigail, knocking Zoe aside as she pushed through.

Zoe, expanding like a blowfish, pushed back, sending Carmen staggering away.

Jenny took that moment to put the package she carried under Abigail’s chair, out of sight.

Penelope, her skinny body drawn up into a dart, bent over Carmen. “The police chief told us to check on her. You better stay out of our way.”

Carmen scurried back, eyes wide open. She put a hand to her mouth and looked from face to face.

Jenny, ignoring Carmen and the others, took Abigail’s hand in hers. “What do you remember, Abigail?”

The woman shook her head. “I . . . they’ve given me so many shots . . .”

“Try.”

“I remembered why I was coming to your house.” She looked into Jenny’s face. “I think . . . it was about . . .” She stopped talking and shook her head. When she was in control again, she searched Jenny’s face. “It was about my brothers’ money.”

“Money?” Jenny looked skeptical. “Your brothers didn’t have any money.”

Abigail almost smiled. Her mind was clearing. “Of course they did. They wouldn’t take it . . . something they held against our father. Refused, even after his death. I never understood, but my brothers were very principled men, you know. Even if those principles were often misguided. They were obstinate while my father lived and worse after he died.”

She stopped to gather strength. “I never understood their actions, so I put the money into bank accounts for them despite their refusals to take it. I always thought there might be a day when they would change their minds.”

She lay back and rested. With one limp hand, she rubbed at her forehead.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Jenny asked.

Abigail smiled. “I can’t. They won’t let me . . . Alfred’s too busy hunting for something. I hear him hour after hour . . .”

Carmen tried again to breach the wall Zoe, Jenny, Penelope, and Tony formed around the woman. “That’s enough of that. Time for an injection, Abigail. You’re rambling.”

Carmen tried smiling as she spoke to Abigail.

No one paid her any attention.

“What was it that turned them against your father?” Jenny asked. “You said ‘after his death.’ What happened then?”

Abigail blinked, seeming to have forgotten what she was saying. After a short while, her eyes opened wide. “Nothing that I knew of. But there is something else. My reason for coming to your house, Jenny.”

Jenny took her icy hand and held it tight.

“I went into the bank the other day. Before everything got so bad. It was about the boys’ money. I was going to take it out, write a check to each, and have it over with. They lived like paupers for absolutely no good reason. They needed new cars. They needed better houses. I was sick and tired of their stubbornness.”

“Did they take the checks?” Penelope asked.

Abigail blinked up at Penelope, trying to recall who she was. She shook her head. “There was almost nothing left in either bank account when I got there. Where there should have been at least a few million, there were only a few dollars.”

“They must’ve changed their minds. They took it out themselves,” Jenny suggested.

Abigail shook her head and closed her eyes at the pain. “When I got back home, I went through the books. I rarely looked at them. I didn’t have to. Alfred had found me such competent people for things like that.”

“What was in the books?” Zoe leaned close, then jumped back at the sound of a loud male voice behind them.

“What on earth do you four think you’re doing in here? This woman’s ill.” Alfred, behind them, stood with his hands on his hips, shoulders pushed forward.

Abigail ignored the man and put a clawing hand out to Tony. “Stop him, please. I remembered something else,” she said. “I remember who attacked me.”

“You’re all getting out of here,” Alfred grabbed Tony by his arm, pulling him backward, off balance. He next grabbed Zoe, pushing her aside, and then reached for Penelope, who swatted back at him. He reached for Jenny. She struck the man’s hand hard, forcing him to let go of her.

“Time’s up on this nonsense! You’re all nothing but a pack of lying, grasping cheaters. You’ve got to go. This in unconscionable.
This
is a very sick woman here.”

Zoe let out a sudden whoosh of air and pointed a wildly shaking finger at Alfred. “There it is!” she cried.

She looked at the others. “He’s fallen into my portmanteau! Time. Time. Time. It’s him. Oh, it’s him. He wrote the letters to the boys.”

Blank faces met hers.

“Don’t any of you get it? ‘Time.’ ‘Time’s up on this.’ Am I the only one who pays attention? ‘Time’s up on that,’ the letter says. And ‘A pack of cheaters.’ A suitcase word to pack a lot of people in.” She pulled the letter from her jeans pocket and began to read.

“‘You boys can’t cheat us anymore. I hear you’ve got what I’m after but you’re hiding it. All three of you
are
cheating us, just like him. A pack of cheaters. Time’s up on that. You cheated her way too long, and now you’re cheating me. I’ll get it, you know. One way or the other . . .”

Alfred screamed and pulled the letter from her hands. “Get out! All of you. You are doing damage to Miss Cane. There will be a lawsuit. I’ll guarantee it.”

Zoe hunched her shoulders, drew herself up as tall she could stretch, and went on talking to the others.

“You see? ‘The three of you.’ Three tongues together. I’ve told you this before. Abigail, Adam, and Aaron.”

“I’d forgotten,” Abigail stared at Alfred. “Adam brought the letter to show me, and then I didn’t see it again.”

“‘
All three of you are cheating us, just like
him,’” Abigail repeated from memory. “Oh, but we weren’t, you know. We never cheated anyone, if that’s what this is all about. My father tried many times to get the boys and me to sign papers we knew were false. Once he demanded I change the name on a deed. I wouldn’t and paid dearly for it—as I always did. He wasn’t an honest man.” She looked at the faces around her. “But my brothers and I cheated no one.”

“This ‘him’ . . .” Zoe tapped the paper. “He’s your father?”

“It has to be. He hurt so many.”

“And this ‘I’? That’s you, Alfred?” Penelope turned slowly toward him.

Alfred’s thick hair stood up on his head. He looked wild and dangerous. “Of all the preposterous . . .”

Tony watched Alfred closely. The man’s eyes were crazed.

Tony turned away and signaled something to Jenny. “Maybe we better get out of here.” His loud voice was toneless. “The man’s right. We have no—”

Abigail gasped and put out a hand. “Don’t leave me alone with . . .”

Tony snapped his head around at the women. “Let’s go,” he ordered.

“Are you crazy?” Penelope said, unwilling to move from Abigail’s side.

Tony pulled Jenny by the arm and grabbed Zoe. He shot a look at Penelope, who sputtered but, seeming to read something in Tony’s face, followed, not without protest.

At the door to the library, Tony turned back to Alfred, who followed close behind, smiling oddly.

“Could I talk to you for a minute? I’m an old cop, you know. Got a question.”

Alfred made a face and seemed about to refuse. After a few thoughtful seconds, he nodded and stepped over to stand closer to Tony. He sniffed. “What is it now?”

Tony kept his smile until the man stood in front of him. He reached forward, as if about to shake Alfred’s hand, but instead grabbed his arm and twisted it—bringing a pained howl from him.

“Take your hands off me,” Alfred screamed. He kicked at Tony, who secured his arm tighter, then swiveled the man around, pushing the arm as far up Alfred’s back as he could go.

At Alfred’s high scream, Carmen scurried up behind Tony, beating at his back.

Zoe grabbed Carmen’s dress, heard a satisfying rip, and pulled with all her might.

Jenny was about to dive in and grab anybody she could grab when Tony yelled to her.

“Get his gun! Holster. Left side.”

Jenny did as she was told, moving around to reach inside the jacket of the writhing man. His free arm hit out at her with as much force as he could muster.

She got a hand inside his jacket and felt the holster.

“Get away from me!” Alfred screamed and squirmed. “You don’t know who I am.”

Jenny pushed Carmen off and pulled the gun from the holster. She stepped back, gun held in both her hands, and pointed it at the group centered around Alfred.

“Not at us,” Tony yelled at her as surprised noises came from Abigail behind them and tortured screams came from Carmen.

“Please!” Carmen begged and tried to pull their hands off Alfred. “Don’t hurt him. He has a right!”

Ed and his two deputies ran in with their guns drawn. It didn’t take long for the group to fill Ed in, falling over each
other to describe what took place, that Alfred was the killer with help from his mother, Carmen.

“Mother?” Ed stood back and looked from one harried face to the other.

Alfred, standing in handcuffs between the two officers, ranted at all of them, one direction to another. He spewed the worst of his venom on his cowering mother.

Abigail, a single hand in the air, struggled up from her chair and over to confront the man she’d made a trusted advisor on Carmen’s recommendation. “What did you want, Alfred? Why couldn’t you come to me and ask?”

Alfred’s eyes had closed to slits. He licked at his lips.

“Tell her.” He spat the words at Carmen, her arm held tight by Ed.

“Tell her who I am, Mother.” Alfred snarled the word.

Carmen looked over at Abigail, a hand out, pleading. “I didn’t mean . . .”

“What a liar!” Alfred laughed, then turned to the surrounding circle. “She’s the one who found me. She called me to come here. Said I could get millions.”

“But you did, Alfred. You did get millions, just as I promised. You got the boys’ money.” Carmen stood taller, her eyes only on Alfred. “That’s what I meant. That’s all I meant. Money that was doing no one any good. You shouldn’t have wanted everything.”

Alfred’s voice bloated with anger. “
You
are irrevocably stupid. Joshua Cane walked all over you. I wish to heaven I’d known he was my father when he was still alive. Mean, sick bastard. I’d have fixed him.”

Abigail, beginning to take in what they were saying, choked out a single word. “Father?”

Carmen folded in on herself as if she’d been kicked.