Deadly Descent (22 page)

Chapter Forty-Five

Brian’s car was there. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care who heard what I was going to say. Not bothering to knock, I opened the front door.

Brian shouted at Fiona. They wouldn’t have heard me if I had used a battering ram to break in. From my vantage point in the foyer, I could see everything. Brian’s face was highlighted by the setting sun. His skin was sallow, his eyes yellowish and bloodshot. His hands trembled as he waved some pages at Fiona.

Fiona’s hands were raised, shielding herself from his anger. Blue eyes pleading for compassion as he spit out the words.

“I’ve found it. I know what you were trying to hide. What you’ve been hiding all along. I know what Aunt Zelda found.”

“Why couldn’t you have left well enough alone? You’ve been like a bloodhound snooping and snooping. I would have told you eventually. At the proper time.”

“Never. You’d have gone to your grave without saying a word. I kept digging because you hurt three people I loved. Uncle Max, Aunt Zelda, and Judy. They were the ones who loved me for myself. You trashed Judy every chance you got. You never missed an opportunity to belittle your own sister. And Max! Poor lonely old man.”

He wiped perspiration from his upper lip, and swatted back a lock of hair.

“I love my uncle Max. The forgotten person. You never gave him a thought, did you? Well, I visited him after you cleared out his attic. He tried to tell me it didn’t matter, what you’d taken. But he was sick. Sick to his bones. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I’ve lived with your intrigues all my life. I knew there was something you were trying to hide. That’s when I started to look in earnest.”

“Liar, liar,” Fiona said, her voice soft and taunting. “What a pretty lie. Someone who doesn’t know you as well as I do might believe that’s why you kept digging, but we know better, don’t we?”

Dazed, he shook his head and waved the letter.

“How could you have kept this from me? This is why you didn’t want Judy working at the historical society, isn’t it? You were afraid she knew about this. I could just kill you for this.”

“You don’t mean that, Brian. Please say you don’t have it in you to do that. Tell me you’re not a murderer.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His voice was low, dangerous. “What kind of lies have you concocted this time?”

Scarcely breathing, I moved behind the massive door leading from the foyer to the living room and peered above the middle hinge.

“The murder of your aunt, your cousin,” said Fiona.

I could hardly stand. The blood flamed behind my eyes.
Not Brian. Not Brian.
AngelChild had been covering for Brian all along.

“You’re crazy,” he blurted. “Absolutely nuts. You’re capable of anything, anything. Including smearing me. I know that now. Is there blood on your hands, Mom? Something too terrible for you to talk about? Even with me? Your darling fair-haired boy. The apple of your eye?”

“I’m your mother. How can you say such things?”

“You’re not my mother,” he shouted. “Not my mother. I’m holding the proof of that right here.”

“Brian, darling. That’s not true. Not true. I am your real mother as surely as if I’d given birth to you. There’s things you don’t know. Things you don’t understand.”

I was too stunned to feel fear. That’s why Fiona had been so hateful to Zelda after Judy’s birth. She was consumed with jealousy that her sister had produced a child and she hadn’t.

“I would have shown it to you some day. Son, everything I’ve done, was for you. Everything. Zelda saw that letter when she was snooping around and copied it. I should have burned it at the start. But I was so proud, so proud of what it had to say about you. About your birth parents. Then she tried to blackmail me. At first I didn’t think she had the nerve. I laughed at her. It would have been my word against hers, and everyone knew she was half-crazy.”

“I still don’t understand,” he said. “I can’t follow your schemes. Your plots. I never could. What would this letter have to do with Aunt Zelda’s story?”

Fiona’s voice was dull, heavy. Her magnificent face sagged. “When I saw her story, I knew my sniveling sister had actually copied this letter, just as she said. The one you are holding. The stationary has a watermark.”

Brian stared at the pages he held. “A rose?”

“After she copied the front of the letter, with all the details of your birth, Zelda turned it over and copied the blank back side. The watermark showed there too. It’s fainter. But it’s there.”

My mind reeled. Fiona had seen the rose. Not at first, but the second time she read the story. I understood now that Zelda had copied the rose watermark from that letter onto blank white paper, then wrote her family history story on that paper. But I wasn’t any closer to knowing what was in the letter.

Fiona raged at Brian. “At first, I could hardly believe my eyes. For all I knew she had a whole supply of that paper stashed away. The blackmail would never end. My own sister was going to sell you down the river. That’s why I had to get all of her junk out of Max’s attic after Judy died. Before Lottie started snooping.”

She was right about the stashed supply. I recalled the box of blank paper with the rose watermark in Max’s attic. Judy had obviously found Zelda’s copy of the letter Fiona was protecting.

“Was it worth a murder? Two murders?” Brian’s voice caught.

Fiona shrieked and pressed her fingers against her throat. “I did not kill my sister or Judy. How dare you? How can you have lived in this house all these years and think such a thing? Brian. I know what you’re hiding. What you’re trying to cover up.”

He looked at her sadly and shook his head. “Still the actress, aren’t you? Still think you can manipulate anyone and everyone.”

“I’m telling you the truth,” she said slowly. “The truth.”

“There’s something else you kept from me.”

He walked over to a box on the sofa and opened the lid. He took a piece of cloth from the box, slowly unfolded one of the ancient yellowed pieces of old linen and pointed to the embroidered initials.

“Did my real mother make these? Do you know who she is? These initials, ECS. Who do they stand for?”

I swayed and clutched at the door frame.

Emily Champlin Swenson. The missing baby clothes.

“It’s your father’s fault. Your father,” wailed Fiona.

I slipped back to the open front door, started the Suburban, and drove back to town like I was pursued by demons.

“All your father’s fault,” she’d said. Edgar Hadley. Was Edgar the murderer? Was AngelChild a man as Josie suspected? A man? The uncle Judy had adored? Confused and exhausted, my mind whirled. The St. Johns, the Swensons. The murders were connected.

Brian was far too young to be the missing Swenson baby, but then where did those clothes come from?

I was suddenly jolted by another thought. Was Edgar the missing Swenson baby?

Panic stricken, I glanced at the clock. Just an hour left before my escorts arrived. But it was time enough to print out AngelChild’s confession, take it to Sam and tell him what I’d seen and heard.

I yearned for Josie’s wisdom and her wit, her ability to sort through complexity. Nothing made sense. I could think on the way to Colorado.

Back in my office, as I waited for the printer to warm up, Brian’s face swam before my eyes. His chin with the adorable cleft. His boyish freckles. Those earnest gray-blue eyes. And his mouth. His sensitive mouth. Everything about him said trust, trust, trust. I am integrity. I keep promises. I walk miles to return pennies. You’re safe with me.

He was not Edgar and Fiona’s son. Either Brian or Edgar or Fiona had murdered Zelda St. John to keep her from revealing this fact. Somehow, some way, Brian’s family was connected to the murder of Emily Champlin Swenson and my poking around into this old scandal would ruin him. I thought he wanted to conceal his drinking from me, but alcohol was the least of his problems.

The janitor stuck his head in door. “Time to close up, Lottie.”

“I need a few more minutes. I’ll lock up.”

“Don’t forget. Outside too.”

I finished, turned off all the equipment, snatched up the papers, ran out the office, and secured the lock on the front door. Five after five. Barely enough time to get these printouts to Sam before my escort arrived.

I jumped in the Suburban, turned the key and nothing happened. The battery was as dead. I looked at the light switch. I had left the lights on. I pounded the steering wheel in frustration.

I looked down the street, then thought I saw Edgar Hadley’s pickup passing through the intersection. My heart beat as fast as hummingbirds’ wings.

Had he seen me at his house and followed me? He could easily have been in the barn or another out-building. I had to stay calm. I couldn’t get back into the courthouse.

Relieved, I saw Minerva in the back parking lot. I hollered at her.

“Trouble?”

“You’d better believe it,” I said tersely. “I left my lights on.”

“Need a ride?”

“If you don’t mind.” I struggled to sound normal. “Margaret told me you bounced right back.”

She shrugged. “I was out three days. It seemed like a lifetime.”

“Let me grab my purse and briefcase then drop me off at the Sheriff’s office.” I wanted Sam. Right now.

I got in her pickup. Hearing a familiar noise, I turned, then froze. Edgar was driving toward us, just three blocks away. He wouldn’t be looking for me in Minerva’s Toyota, but I couldn’t put her at risk. We’d have to pass him to get to Sam, or drive in the opposite direction and circle back. Remembering the gun rack in the window of his pickup, I played it safe.

“On second thought, take to me the Total station first.” They’ll jumpstart me.” I willed her to hustle. Drive away. Anywhere. Before Edgar arrived and realized my car was dead. I’d call Sam from the station, and he could pick me up.

She glanced at her watch. “I have an errand to run.”

“I really am in a hurry.”

I looked through her rear view window at an assortment of fertilizer, lime, and shovels.

Edgar’s pickup pulled into the curb at the front parking. I ducked out of sight until I heard him pass.

“Dropped my keys,” I mumbled to Minerva.

She drove to the east edge of town and kept going.

“Told Doc I would drop these things off at his garden. It’s on the way.”

We would damn sure be safe there. Silently swearing at her adherence to lists, I tried to smile. I reached for my cell phone to call Sam, but it was out of service range.

I kept looking behind us, checking for Edgar, as she drove on for three miles out to the area known as Groendyke’s Woods. I thought of what Josie had said “Look for the person who has not turned in a family history.”

Edgar Hadley. Not one word had been turned in about the Hadley family and they had lived in the county since homestead days.

Suddenly, I heard his pickup in the distance, coming up fast. Someone must have seen me leave with Minerva, and told him we headed east.

We were coming to the turnoff, the lane sloped sharply in a deep draw. The area was hidden from the road. I risked a glance at Minerva. We would soon be out of danger.

Please God
, I prayed.
Just a few more yards.

We turned into the heavily rutted, winding path that bumped into this area. I took a deep breath. Groendyke’s Woods was like a little hidden valley and Doc’s garden was famous. She drove past the little incline, which led over the ridge onto his ground.

“Missed my turn,” she said. “There’s a place on up a ways where I can back in and out.”

She was driving too fast. We hit a large rut. It was like falling into a trench. The jolt knocked off her glasses.

I saw her eyes. They were a brackish yellow. Like a swamp. Foul and diseased.

I couldn’t swallow, couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t look away from her eyes.

With the eyes revealed, the features intact, I knew I was looking at Brian Hadley’s mother.

I knew who had murdered Zelda and Judy St. John.

Chapter Forty-Six

Frantic, I reached for the door handle. My stomach plunged. She pulled me back with hands strong enough to rip the pelt right off a rabbit, then quickly snapped the automatic childproof locks.

My head swam. I had to think. Had to act. My redheaded valedictorian, right here all along. I could not look away from those terrible, brackish eyes. Brian’s eyes. Brian’s eyes were a lesser version of whatever was wrong with this woman. But they were the same.

“Take a good look,” she snapped, pulling me closer to her. “It’s a pretty sight, isn’t it? Jaundiced like an old decaying turnip. Under a microscope you’d see the Kayser-Fleischer Rings. I had to look at eyes like these most of my life. They’re my mother’s eyes.”

“I don’t understand.” I choked back sour liquid coming from my stomach. The taste of pure terror.

“I have Wilson’s Disease. So does Brian. These eyes are just one of the symptoms. Wilson’s can make you crazy. Brian was doing fine with treatment. Just fine until you kept him under your spotlight, day and night. The press dogged him until he couldn’t even go to the doctor when he was supposed to.”

Dizzy with shock, I stared at her eyes. They were the reason she wore dark glasses. His eyes were why Brian had started wearing dark glasses. Not to cover up his grief over his aunt’s death, not to disguise what I had mistaken as drunkenness. The glasses were to hide this hideous color.

“You’re AngelChild, and you’re the Swenson baby.”

“Oh, yes, I’m the Swenson baby, the infamous Swenson baby. The woman I called mother was really my Aunt Rebecca. I hated her even more when I went through the trunk and found out what my life should have been like.”

I swallowed and recalled the trunk I’d seen in Minerva’s bedroom. Josie had told me to look for a person who was disintegrating. I had ignored all the signs. Minerva’s dizzy spells I had assumed was flu, her weepiness the night I took her home. The things she’d said that weren’t like her at all. The missed work.

At last, I knew what had been wrong with Rebecca Champlin. It was Rebecca, Minerva’s aunt, who had had this disease, not Emily. I remembered Rebecca’s eyes had been veiled or concealed in some manner in all the pictures I’d seen after she stopped her activities in high school.

“It’s why you doctor in Denver, isn’t it?” I blurted. “Not because you don’t like the doctors here, but because you need very special medical treatment.”

I started thinking again. I had to keep her talking.

“It’s why I do everything. Everything. It’s why I have to have a hairstyle that makes me look like an old hag. I can’t have a beautician cut my hair because I don’t dare take off these glasses for a cut and a shampoo. It’s why I type everything. I can’t trust my hands to write a decent note. They shake.”

“And Brian, poor Brian has the same problems,” I said. I knew now why Brian didn’t sign the autograph for that little kid the night I thought he was drunk! He had missed treatments and couldn’t trust his handwriting. So many pieces were falling into place.

I recalled Judy telling me about Brian’s clumsiness, the dropped balls, his aversion to sports when he was in grade school. His jaundice. This disease was why Fiona had him flown to Denver the night Sam and I went on the 911 call. Our local doctor would have known at once he wasn’t having DTs.

“But Brian couldn’t have hidden it forever,” I said.

“Oh, yes, he could. He could nowadays if you had left him alone. My son. That marvelous man is my son! I saw to it my son had the best. The best adoptive family, the best education, the best medical treatment. I spent my childhood with a crazy woman, a murderess, but I saw to it that my son had the best.” She was quiet for a moment. “It’s hereditary. Although Rebecca actually had the disease, Emily was a carrier.”

Twilight now. Furtively I glanced around, saw no escape.
Delay, delay
, I thought.

“Brian’s wonderful,” I said.

“At first, it broke my heart when Fiona claimed my wonderful son was her own flesh. She was not the prize I thought she was. I worked for Kansas Adoption Services after I got out of college. I was pregnant when the Hadleys’ application came through. They were from Carlton County. The county where I should have been raised. They were rich. She was a Rubidoux. I saw to it that Brian was placed with this family. Then I moved here, where I could keep an eye on them.”

“If Fiona had said he was adopted from the beginning…”

“If. But she didn’t. She was too proud to admit she couldn’t conceive. I attended his school activities, watched him debate, heard him speak. Heard her claim it was due to his heritage as a Rubidoux. I learned to content myself with standing in the crowd watching, whispering in my heart, my son, my son.”

Abruptly, she opened the door on her side and dragged me outside. When my feet hit the ground, I tried to twist away, but she hooked her arm around my head in a choke hold and yanked my arm behind my back.

Dizzy with pain, I tried to think. She would kill me.

“You can’t possibly get away with this, Minerva.”

“You wouldn’t listen,” she said. “You would
not
listen. I tried to tell you, tried to warn you. I couldn’t even get the board to fire you.”

Shocked, I sagged against her.

“You’re the one who stole the Custer letter. The one who set me up. You made that so-called New Mexico phone call, didn’t you? How?”

“I have a phone mechanism that disguises voices.”

There was no mistaking her pride, her smugness. What had Josie told me repeatedly? That I was dealing with a diabolically clever person. High I.Q. Very, very organized. Very, very ruthless. Capable of compiling exquisite plans.

“And Zelda’s story? The missing story?”

“I burned the goddamned thing, what do you think? Should have been the end of it. If it hadn’t been for you and Judy, it would have been.”

She started dragging me toward a enormous three-acre thicket of dead tree branches and brambles.

She was going to kill me! Did she think I was just going to let her kill me without a struggle?

I braced my feet and gasped when she jerked my arm high. I had to use my brain. I was no match for her physically.

Delay, delay.
My escorts would be at the courthouse soon. “Why didn’t Rebecca get help?” I yelped with pain as she yanked my arm tighter.

“They didn’t have good treatments back then. And she was a single woman with a baby to explain. She was crazy, not stupid.”

We were nearing the thicket. The men would see my car. I knew, of course, I had been set up. Minerva had turned my lights on, run down the battery.

“You won’t have enough time. Keith will be worried. Someone will come.”

“Shut up.”

“You won’t have time to dig a grave.”

“I know exactly how long it takes to dig a grave. It took much longer to dig Rebecca’s than yours. She was a very large woman.”

She had already dug my grave
. A person capable of executing detailed plans, Josie had said.
Somewhere in that macabre skeleton of trees was my grave.

We were at the very edge of the bramble woods now. She stopped to catch her breath. I tried to shut out the pain, gather my wits. I had enticed her into emailing me for the sake of setting the record straight. Perhaps the same appeal would work again.

“Before, before you do this, I want to know. What was in the letter you sent with Brian?”

“I wanted Fiona to know that this baby’s mother was quality,” she said. “When I knew the Hadleys would be adopting Brian, I searched all of Topeka for stationary worthy of that letter. Back then, I didn’t have this tremor. I wrote it with my finest penmanship on stationary by Eaton called
Love Letters
. It was perfumed and exquisite and had this lovely rose watermark.” Minerva’s voice quivered.

“I told them I was very intelligent and extremely talented. Not that starkly, of course. I chose each word with great care. Then I added that Brian was actually a descendent of one of the Lees of Virginia. I wanted them to raise Brian as a very special child. I put all my expectations into that letter.”

“A Lee! With Fiona being Southern, no wonder she raised the child like he was next to the Almighty. No wonder she kept that letter.”

“Then God help me, I could not resist sending the collection of the baby clothes my mother had embroidered for me. My real mother. The clothes she had intended for me.” Her voice caught. “Rebecca had kept them all in a special trunk.”

“And Judy found the letter?”

“She found the copy Zelda had made. Judy intended to give Zelda’s copy to you and Sam. My original was safe with Fiona. God knows that bitch would never show it to anyone, but she’d kept it, of course, because it said her son was a Lee.”

There was little daylight left. Soon my escorts would arrive, find the Suburban and notify Sam. Soon people would be searching. I had to keep her talking.

“Why did you kill poor Zelda? I understand that you killed Judy to keep her from taking the copy to Sam, but why Zelda?”

“That day Fiona went running out of the courthouse I knew something was wrong.”

“We were watching the clouds,” I said. “And I had left my office unlocked.”

“Zelda’s story was lying on the floor where Fiona dropped it. I saw the watermark. I knew Zelda printed her story on copied sheets from the backside of that letter. To Fiona, it was simply proof that her sister had the guts to go through with the blackmail. But I had notarized deeds, signed hundred of documents for the county. I was afraid Zelda had recognized my handwriting and knew I was Brian’s mother. My son was running for the senate. Everything would come out then. Everything.”

A coyote howled in the distance, sending a shiver up my spine.

“That’s when I made my stupid, stupid mistake.” Minerva’s voice softened with remorse. “I went to her house that evening after Max had left for the Lion’s Club. On impulse. It wasn’t like me. But I had to know! She let me in and I could tell she hadn’t connected me to the handwriting, the letter, anything. So I just told her I was there to get a contribution for Sunny Rest’s literacy program.”

“Why did you kill her then? If she didn’t know?” I blurted out the question, hoping the agony in my voice wouldn’t stop her from telling me the rest.

“We chatted. She went to the bedroom to get her checkbook. I waited next to her piano with all those pictures of Judy. And Brian. She and Max were always crazy about Brian. She came back into the room. Looked at me like she was seeing a ghost. It was the picture. If I hadn’t been standing with my head at the same angle as Brian’s in that picture, she would never have known.”

I closed my eyes, opened them. Waited for her to go on.

“I’ll never forget her words. Never. ‘So it’s you,’ she said. ‘You. A Virginia Lee, my foot. Well, I’m calling a halt to this whole charade. I’m going to the paper tomorrow morning.’”

Minerva’s voice faltered.

“Fiona had been there earlier that evening, you see, and they had gotten into this flaming fight. Zelda was so angry she’d lost all thought of blackmail. She wanted revenge instead. Wanted to get even with Fiona for years and years of slights. I tried to talk to her, but she just laughed. I started toward her and she got scared and ran into the bedroom and I guess you know the rest.”

“Does Brian know you’re his mother? Does Fiona know?”

“No.” There was a new weariness to her voice. “Only Zelda. Only I knew the horror of the story the press would uncover if they started digging.”

“Fiona wanted to cover up the adoption,” I said, seeing it all now. “Brian wanted to cover up Wilson’s Disease. You knew the stakes were much larger. You wanted to hide old murders.”

Minerva was breathing harder now. She was seconds away from dragging me into the woods.

“Herman Swenson is your father. Your own father. Don’t you care? How can you stand to let that poor man go to his grave letting everyone think he killed his wife and his son and his baby?”

At last I had hit the spot I had been probing for.

“Don’t you think I know that?” Her voice sank to a whimper, as though she were drained of all energy. “He’d have been a wonderful father. Emily would have been a wonderful mother. Instead I was raised by that creature.”

“No wonder he’s the one you read to in the nursing home”

“I wanted to know what he was like. What I would have been like.”

“It’s not too late.”

“Shut up. It’s too late for everyone but Brian. I’m not going to let you ruin Brian.”

“Brian’s father. Who was Brian’s father?”

“Just a man I met. I wanted to lose my virginity. I wanted to know if I could feel. Be normal.”

“And were you?” I asked cruelly. “Are you?”

She gave another vicious tug on my arm. I was close to passing out from the pain.

“Shut up. What do you know about doing without a mother and a father? You know nothing. Do you know what I did first? The very first thing after I shoveled the last load of dirt over Rebecca?”

“No, Minerva. I’m trying to understand. Really trying to understand,” I sobbed.

“I looked in the trunk. The forbidden trunk.”

“The trunk that’s in your house?” She kept coming back to it. Now, and before as AngelChild.

“Yes. She had never let me see inside that trunk. But I knew where she kept the key, and I looked. And I found my baby clothes. Layer after layer of baby clothes. And newspaper clippings. Then I knew where she had gotten me. She killed my mother. Her very own sister. I was robbed of a real mother who would have loved me. And a big brother. I would have had a real brother.”

She’s talking, talking. Wants me to know.
Hope flickered. Perhaps at some subconscious level she didn’t want to kill me.

If I could just find the right words.

“Minerva, don’t do this. For Brian’s sake, don’t do this.”

I had found the wrong ones.

“This
is
for Brian’s sake,” she cried with new determination. “Don’t you know that yet? It’s for his future.”

“Oh, Minerva, he’s already struggling to keep himself together. I thought he was an alcoholic.”

She whirled me around and slapped me hard across the face. In that instant, when she let go of my arm, I tried to run, but she grabbed my arm again before I could turn, then kicked me in the stomach. This time I fell to my knees, dizzy with pain.