An Anniversary to Die For (19 page)

“Ashley Marks?”

“Yup.”

“Damn. I knew we should have taken the carriage lamp in the foyer to Arizona with us.”

“You can. The Markses left it out for the garbagemen. But I picked it up and put it down in the basement. I thought maybe Chrissy and Stephen might like it someday. But it should stay with you.”

“Susan, how sweet.”

But Susan was interested in getting back to their subject. “You know, now that I understand that Doug picked out the house, what Ashley did makes sense. She just didn’t love old colonials the way you and I do. And she spent a huge amount of money trying to turn one into a modern trophy house— like the ones in that new development outside of town.”

“But just because she had no taste doesn’t mean she was poisoning Doug because he picked out their home without consulting her.”

“True. Although it’s an excuse many women could understand—if she had gotten a completely female jury . . .”

Both women laughed.

“Of course, she got off anyway. Apparently because the investigation was inadequate or something,” Susan said more seriously. “Brett said he wasn’t surprised that Ashley wasn’t convicted.”

“From reading the paper, I didn’t get the impression that there were any other suspects.”

Susan thought of Signe and decided not to bring her into the conversation. “No, the paper didn’t mention anyone.”

“What did they do once they moved in besides redecorate?”

Susan dropped the packet of Equal she had been playing with onto the tabletop. “What do you mean?”

“What church did they join? Did Doug play golf at the Field Club? Did Ashley join an aerobics class? What sort of connections did they make in the community?”

“Besides being the sole supporter of decorating firms without taste? To tell you the truth, I’m not sure.”

“Susan, that doesn’t sound like you. You lived next door to these people for almost a year.”

“I know. And we did our best to be neighborly. I was on their doorstep with freshly baked cinnamon rolls the morning they moved in—and Ashley explained that she and her husband had given up sweets years and years ago. I mean, she took them and said thank you and then made me feel as though I had shown up with a bag of heroin as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift. But we invited them over for a barbeque in the backyard the next weekend. You know, to meet the neighbors and all.”

“And?”

“Actually, that went pretty well. Ashley ate salads and ignored the meat. But Doug ate everything in sight and thanked me more than once for the delicious cinnamon rolls.”

“Who else did you invite?”

“Let me think. Kathleen and Jerry, of course. And our immediate neighbors. And Dick and Barbara from the Field Club. I thought the Markses might be interested in joining, and Dick is head of the membership committee now. Oh, and Brett and Erika. More because of Erika than Brett, though.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, Signe, the Markses’ daughter, works for Erika in the city. You know, they did have a connection to Hancock before they arrived here: Erika!”

“Which also means they had a connection to the police department. Erika and Brett have been together for years, right?”

“Yes. And Erika really seems to depend on Signe. I can’t imagine that Brett and Signe wouldn’t have met over the years—probably many times.”

“Which also means that her parents probably had met—”

“Not necessarily. Signe and her parents weren’t close, but I can’t imagine that the Markses didn’t know about Brett and Hancock. It’s certainly possible that Signe’s connection to the town is one of the reasons they looked for their new home here.” She didn’t think it was necessary to mention Signe’s tale of her mother’s reason.

“Do you think it means anything?”

“I don’t know. It is odd, though, isn’t it? I mean you look for good medical care, schools, public facilities, whatever when you decide to move. But there aren’t a whole lot of people who would look for a friendly police department, unless . . .”

“Unless you were planning on committing a crime . . . like a murder,” Martha finished Susan’s thought out loud.

“I guess.” Susan was having trouble imagining what—if anything—this might mean when Martha surprised her again.

“Of course, I’d be more inclined to accuse Doug of his wife’s murder if Ashley had been shot.”

“Why?”

“Well, he loves guns, right? At least that’s what he told me.”

“I never heard anything about that.”

“Then I guess the soundproofing does work.”

“Martha, what are you talking about? What soundproofing? And how do you know Doug loves guns? Did he just walk up to you and say, ‘I love guns’?”

“Of course not! But when he was looking at the house that very first day, he said he needed to have a practice range built in the basement. In fact, he was very enthusiastic about the basement. You know we never finished it the way so many in the neighborhood did and it is—or was— just an open space with a small laundry area at one end and pool table and Ping-Pong table at the other. Doug told me he was going to have the entire room soundproofed and a shooting range installed.”

Susan was stunned. “Next door? There is a shooting range in the house next door and I didn’t know a thing about it? Is that legal?”

“I assume he has a permit to own the guns, and we’re talking about the inside of his home. It’s perfectly legal.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“Susan, you’d be amazed what people have in their homes.”

“Like what?” Susan asked, momentarily distracted.

“Well, like bomb shelters full of survival gear, or walk-in safes full of original artwork.”

“But a shooting range?”

“That’s what he was planning on. Have you ever been in the Markses’ basement?”

“No.”

“Then I’d bet it’s there. He was really enthusiastic about the possibility.”

“He never mentioned guns to me. I wonder if Jed knows.”

“Did they become close?”

“No. Jed invited him to play some golf at the club, but I don’t think they ever actually arranged a game. Apparently for men, saying let’s have a game of golf is like when we say let’s get together for lunch sometime—just politeness unless someone actually works to make it happen. Anyway, a shooting gallery in the basement next door is definitely something Jed would have mentioned if he’d known about it.”

“Probably.”

Susan thought for a moment. “You said the money for the house came from the sale of their farm.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So you don’t know what Doug did.”

“You mean professionally?”

“Yes.”

“Not really. For some reason I got the impression that he was a lawyer. Maybe he mentioned going to law school or something. Because, come to think of it, I don’t know. They lived abroad a lot, though. I do know that.”

“Me, too. Martha, you don’t think he could have been CIA, do you?”

“Something like a secret agent?”

“Maybe. What do you think?”

“It’s possible.”

“It would explain everything: The travel. Us not knowing what he did professionally. I know the CIA hires lawyers.”

“I think you’re thinking of the FBI. Why would the CIA need lawyers? They don’t worry about whether or not what they do is legal, do they?”

Susan dismissed this with a wave of her hand. “The guns in the basement! A CIA operative would have guns in his basement!”

“I suppose. But if Doug was a secret agent, he wouldn’t tell people about the guns, would he?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that world. I don’t even read spy novels. But it all fits together, doesn’t it?”

“It might,” Martha said slowly. “But . . .”

“Oh, damn!”

“What’s wrong?”

“Peter Konowitz just walked in the door.”

Martha turned and peered over her shoulder. “Who is Peter Konowitz? Do you mean that nice-looking man in the chinos?”

“He’s the chief of police in Oxford Landing and a major pain in the butt. Every time I run into him he seems to feel obliged to detain me on some silly charge. Let’s get going before he sees us.”

The women paid their bill and hurried from the room, moving too quickly to see the slow smile cross Chief Konowitz’s face as he spied their departure.

TWENTY-ONE

^“
SO, WHAT’S FOR LUNCH?”

Susan took a deep breath and decided not to kill her only son. But for the life of her, she couldn’t understand how Chad could live on his own for ten or eleven months of the year, go to school, get decent summer jobs, have an active social life, and apparently take care of himself. Then, when he bothered to reappear at his family home for short periods of time, he forgot everything he knew about selfsufficiency and needed to be cooked for, cleaned for, and have every single piece of his laundry washed, folded, and put away by his mother. She mentioned none of this. “What would you like?”

“I don’t know. What about those sandwiches you make, the ones with cheese and tomatoes and that green sauce? They’re pretty good.”

Susan rightly interpreted this to mean Brie and tomato topped with homemade pesto broiled on a sliced baguette. It was one of her summer favorites, so even though she wasn’t particularly hungry, she agreed to make one for him. At least he had become sophisticated enough to request something other than hot dogs, she reminded herself before noticing that he had just pulled a can of Mountain Dew from the back of the refrigerator. So much for sophistication.

“Mrs. Gordon called about half an hour ago,” Chad announced, plopping down at the kitchen table without bothering to get a glass.

“Oh, thanks. I’ll give her a yell when I’m done here.” Susan took a deep breath. “You know, Chad, your father and I were wondering . . .”

Half an hour later, Susan was explaining to Kathleen how a poorly timed phone call had saved Chad from what might have turned out to be an intimate conversation with his mother. “He was out the door and on his way to the pizza parlor in less than five minutes. From the speed of his departure, you would have thought he was fleeing an interrogation by a member of the gestapo rather than a chat with his mother.”

“Kids,” was Kathleen’s only comment.

Susan smiled. Kathleen’s children were six and ten years old—ages when their demands for attention were more annoying than their avoidance of them. “At least Chad gave me the message you had called. For years I didn’t think that was possible.”

“I’ve been talking to Erika, and she said something I thought might interest you.”

“About Signe?”

“Nope. About Doug.”

“That he was a spy for the CIA?”

Kathleen’s eyebrows shot up. “He was? I didn’t know that! He told me he was a clean-water expert. Was his job a front for something more interesting?”

“He told you he was an expert in clean water? When?”

“I don’t know. Probably when we first met. At that party you gave. I’m sure that’s true, because we were looking at your pool and there was some algae growing along the edge. I said something about clean water and . . . and, well, he told me water was his field. It’s funny; I got the impression that he loved his job. He talked on and on about the challenges of producing water fit to drink in underdeveloped countries and how an adequate water supply was the key to surviving global warming. It sure was a good act. It never occurred to me that he wasn’t telling the truth.”

“He probably was. The CIA idea was mine,” Susan admitted. “He didn’t say anything about guns to you, did he?”

“You know, he did. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but he told me he collected guns. He’d actually been given his first one when he was just a kid. He grew up on a farm upstate, and he’d always hunted. He said he was planning on building a shooting range in the basement of his new home. I don’t know if he actually did it, though.”

“I think he did,” Susan told her, slightly chagrined. Kathleen had found out more about Doug the first time they met than Susan had known until just a few days ago. Any more revelations like this and she was going to be forced to stop thinking of herself as a good neighbor. “So what did Erika say?”

“She says that Brett told her that he believed the reason Doug supported Ashley—you know, insisted that she was innocent in the press and turned up in court every day— was because he knew who was poisoning him.”

“You’re kidding! Then why didn’t he just tell the police, and then they could have arrested the correct person?”

“I don’t know. Erika says that Brett didn’t understand, either, but of course, you know what this could mean, Susan.”

Susan took a deep breath before saying what she didn’t want to say. “That Doug was protecting Signe.”

“Exactly.”

Susan was silent for a moment.

“Erika is really worried,” Kathleen said.

“Can’t say I blame her.” Susan thought for a moment before asking a question. “What about her mother? Is it possible that Signe poisoned her?”

“Apparently Signe has no alibi. And she was in Hancock that day. Her mother called asking her to join the family for dinner—but then decided to go to your party apparently.”

“It looks worse and worse for her, doesn’t it?” Susan said.

“Yes.”

Kathleen and Susan exchanged a few more words, but neither of them was in the mood for casual conversation. Kathleen was dropping stitches instead of making progress with her knitting, so they hung up.

“How are we going to help Signe?” Susan asked, looking down at her dog, who was lying on the floor by her feet.

Clue thumped her tail, then got up and ran from the room. Susan followed. She didn’t have any ideas; maybe the dog did. But Clue was in greeting mode, she realized, hearing the doorbell ring. From Clue’s enthusiastic tail wagging, Susan could assume there was a friend on the other side of the door. She opened it to discover Erika there, the worried expression on her face changing into a smile as Clue leapt up onto her.

“Clue! Down!” Erika was a good friend. Susan wasn’t even going to try to pretend that this was unusual behavior for the dog. On the other hand, Erika was wearing a hand-woven turquoise tunic over black raw silk slacks, and Susan knew a liberal coat of dog fur wouldn’t enhance her outfit.