Hollyhock Ridge (28 page)

“Were you one of Knox’s girlfriends?” Meredith asked.

“Certainly not,” Claire said. “I barely knew your husband.”

“He’s dead now,” Meredith said. “So it hardly matters.”

“I’m so sorry,” Claire said. “How did it happen?”

Meredith released an unsettling cackle from deep in her
chest.

“Money, honey,” she said. “Money was the root of all his
evil, and it was money got him in the end.”

“I don’t understand,” Claire said. “What do you mean?”

“Never mind,” Meredith said. “Listen, I’m leaving town
today. Are you actually interested in buying this place? Because I’d like to
sign the papers before I go. I don’t intend to come back here if I can help
it.”

“Where are you off to?”

“Back to New England, where I belong.”

“Won’t you miss the funeral and the reading of the will?”

“Nothing in it for me,” Meredith said with a shrug. “That
man was broke and headed to the hoosegow. Anything he owned will be sold to
settle his debts. So what’s it going to be? Are you interested?”

“I am,” Claire said. “I’d like to make an offer.”

Claire named a figure and Meredith laughed.

“Ridiculous,” she said. “I spent more than that on the
renovations.”

“The sewer’s backing up; I can smell it.”

Meredith waved her hand.

“Immaterial,” she said. “You’re wasting my time. The price
is set, and I’m not entertaining any low ball offers.”

“What were your sales like?” Claire asked, trying to keep her
distracted until Sarah arrived.

“This was a hobby for me, nothing more,” Meredith said. “The
price includes the building, fixtures, equipment, and the merchandise; what you
make of it is up to you. Although with no retail experience and your poor taste
in clothing, I can’t imagine you’ll do very well.”

“I’m going to tear everything out and make it into a dance
hall with a commercial kitchen,” Claire said. “My cousin, Patrick, runs the
Rose and Thorn next door; we’re going to open up a door between the two places
and have live music in here.”

Meredith’s face froze in a look of distaste and dismay,
which quickly turned to shocked realization.

“I do know you,” she said. “You’re Philip’s ex-wife, the
hairdresser.”

Claire felt a chill as the expression on Meredith’s face
turned from shocked to murderous.

“You’re confusing me with my cousin,” Claire said. “There
are a lot of Fitzpatricks in Rose Hill and we all look alike.”

“You let me out of the safe,” Meredith said. “You were there
that day, in Knox’s office. You accused me of running over that homosexual
friend of yours, what was his name? Toodles? Poodles? Something ridiculous like
that.”

Claire’s blood pressure shot up and she forgot to pretend to
be Rebecca.

“Tuppy,” Claire said. “His name was Lawrence Tupworth III
but we called him Tuppy. He was a lovely young man who didn’t deserve what
happened to him, and his sexual preference is none of your damn business.”

“I didn’t kill him,” Meredith said.

“I know,” Claire said. “Your son did.”

“Peyton was in the passenger seat,” Meredith hissed. “He was
an unwilling witness who was too afraid to come forward for fear of reprisals.
He has post-traumatic stress disorder. I have a report from a psychiatrist that
says he’s too fragile to appear in court.”

“I met Peyton,” Claire said. “He’s a spoiled, drug-addicted
snot-head who didn’t give the tiniest wee damn about the man he and his friend
hit with their car and left to die in the street.”

“Innocent until proven guilty!” Meredith screeched.

“Guilty, guilty, guilty!” Claire shouted back. “He confessed
it; I recorded it.”

“It was you!” Meredith bellowed.

Meredith grabbed the nearest thing she could use as a
weapon, which happened to be a pink and green floral umbrella. The end was
pointy enough that Claire knew it would hurt if she got stabbed with it. When
Meredith jabbed it at her, Claire stumbled backwards. She bumped into a display
of monogrammed stationary and it all fell onto the floor. Meredith cursed her
and jabbed again. Claire pushed a display of Beatrix Potter ceramic figurines
over between them, and they crashed into pieces on the floor.

“My bunnies!” Meredith roared, and then let loose a torrent
of expletives that would have impressed Claire had she not been in fear for her
life.

Claire pulled over another display between them, this time a
large spinner rack of handmade lace greeting cards. Meredith stepped over the
broken figurines, but her umbrella got caught up in the spindles of the card
rack. While trying to disengage it, the umbrella opened up and further tangled
her in the display. As she struggled to pull herself free, her necklace caught,
broke, and pearls seemed to explode and soar in every direction.

Meredith screeched with rage, slipped on her pearls, and
collapsed in a heap.

Claire heaved a stack of candle-wick-embroidered bedspreads
over Meredith and scrambled to the front of the room. She made her way to the
front door and flung it open just as Trick arrived. He had his phone up to his
ear and pointed to it.

“Calling her now,” he said.

Underneath the writhing pile of bedspreads came the muffled
but distinct sound of a phone ringing.

Claire was in her father’s old office at the Rose Hill
Police Station, sitting on the green vinyl couch where as a child she used to
do her homework. Sarah and Laurie had Meredith in the break room, where she had
screeched abuse at them for twenty minutes but was now speaking in a more
normal tone, so low that Claire could not make out what she was saying. At the
top of the wall behind the couch there was a heating vent between the two
rooms, and Claire was considering climbing up on the back of the couch so she
could press her ear to it, the better to know what was going on.

She texted Patrick to say she would be late picking up her
dad, and Patrick texted back not to worry about it, that Melissa would take him
home and stay with him until she got there.

“Where r u?” Patrick texted.

“Jail,” she replied.

“Need bail?” he responded.

“No but thanks,” she replied.

Claire texted Ed next.

“Meredith in custody,” she wrote. “I’m in jail.”

“Be right there,” he replied.

Laurie came in and pointed to her phone.

“I should’ve had Shaggy or Scooby confiscate that,” he said.

“Did she confess to killing Knox?”

Laurie rolled his eyes.

“Like I’d tell you,” he said. “Why’d you call Sarah and not
me?”

“You know why,” she said.

“I don’t drink when I’m working,” he said.

“It wasn’t only because of that,” she said. “It’s more that
you don’t seem to give a damn about doing your job. Anytime something happens,
you either look the other way or you get someone else to do the dirty work. You
didn’t even care what happened to Diedre’s car after she died.”

He was silent for a few moments.

“Well, you’re right about all of that,” he said. “But
Diedre’s car, really? You’re still hung up on that?”

“You need to take a month, go somewhere they give
professional help, and get yourself sorted out,” she said. “If you ask the
Pendleton Town Council for it, they may give it to you.”

“They did,” Laurie said. “Kay and Scott got it all arranged.
Shep’s not going to retire for another month, and I’m taking what everyone’s
calling a much-needed vacation.”

“To rehab.”

“Heaven help them,” Laurie said. “They’ve got their work cut
out for them.”

“But you’ll do your best, right?”

“We both know how low that bar is.”

“Please, Laurie,” Claire said. “Not for anyone else, but for
you.”

“Oh, him,” Laurie said. “Why would I wanna help that jerk?”

“Because you’re worth saving,” Claire said.

“I’m touched you still think so,” he said.

The look he gave her was filled with longing and sadness.

“Where will you be in a month?” he asked.

Claire considered the question, which was both more
complicated and more meaningful than it might appear on the surface.

“I’ll be here,” she said, finally. “Trying to figure out
what to do with my life.”

“Good to know,” he said. “Turns out there
is
a step
where I have to apologize to everyone I’ve wronged, and try to make it up to
them, so I’ll be in touch. There’s a long list, so it may take me awhile to get
to ‘F’.”

Ed arrived, and Laurie gestured for him to come in.

“She’s all yours,” Laurie said, and winked at Claire.

“What’s going on?” Ed asked. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said, and closed the door to the
office behind him.

“What are you doing?”

“Hold this couch steady and I’ll tell you,” Claire said, as
she stepped up on it.

She climbed up to stand on the back of it and put her ear
against the grill of the heating vent.

“Claire,” Ed said.

“I know, I know,” she said. “It’s wrong.”

“No,” he said. “Use this.”

He handed her his hand-held digital voice recorder.

“So when you came down through the woods behind Knox’s
house,” Sarah asked, “what was your plan?”

“I knew Knox had just left for the funeral home to meet with
Trick and Stuart,” Meredith said. “I thought while he was out I would collect
the things he stole from me.”

“How did you know where he was?”

“I was in his brother’s office when he called,” Meredith
said. “Trick is handling the sale of my tea room. We were discussing his
commission. I feel I am owed a family discount, but Trick does not agree.”

“How did you know what they discussed on the phone?”

“Trick put him on speaker,” Meredith said. “It’s so rude,
but both of those boys have terrible manners, so I wasn’t surprised.”

“What did Knox say?”

“He said he was leaving the house as soon as he hung up, and
that Trick should meet him in the parking lot before the meeting, so they could
go over their strategy.”

“Anything else?”

“He said Trick should leave immediately so he wouldn’t be
late.”

“Did Trick say anything about the call?”

“He said he needed to cut our meeting short, so I walked out
with him,” Meredith said. “He went down Rose Hill Avenue, and I went up Pine
Mountain Road, so I wouldn’t run into Knox.”

“Where did you go?”

“I walked up Pine Mountain Road until I reached the top of
the hill, behind Delvecchio’s house. There’s a deer trail up there that winds
around the top of the hill and ends up in the graveyard. I followed the trail
until I was behind our house, and then I walked down the hill. The housekeeper
was just arriving, so I told her I had accidently locked myself out, and she
let me in. She’s from a service, so she didn’t know anything about anybody.”

“What was your plan otherwise?”

“To use a brick from the flower bed border to break one of
the basement windows.”

“She didn’t question you were who you said you were?”

“I think I intimidated her,” Meredith said. “She could tell
I wasn’t taking no for an answer.”

“So she let you in; then what?”

“We found Knox together. She was a young woman, and very
emotional, and I told her just to go on home, and I’d call the police.”

“But you didn’t.”

“I did what I came to do,” Meredith said. “Knox had stolen
some very precious and valuable things from me, and I wanted them back.”

“Did it occur to you to call for an ambulance, maybe check
his pulse to make sure he was dead?”

“I know dead, honey, and that man was D.E.A.D. dead.”

“But did you check to be sure?”

“I may have poked him,” she said.

“What did you do after that?”

“Well, if you want to know the truth, I got a little
emotional,” Meredith said.

“You were upset that your husband had died.”

“I was only upset that Knox wouldn’t live to see the inside
of a jail cell,” Meredith said. “I got emotional because it reminded me of my
father and my first husband, the senator.”

“What did you do next?”

“I got a shopping bag out of the pantry and went looking for
my pilfered belongings.”

“What did you take?”

“I didn’t
take
anything,” Meredith said. “I restored
my possessions to their rightful owner.”

“What did you restore?”

“A few silver items, my mother’s tea service, and my
father’s coin collection.”

“What about the money?”

“Knox stole money from me, too; maybe not those exact bills,
but money in the larger sense, certainly. I was owed that money.”

“Even if it was covered in blood.”

Claire could not hear Meredith’s answer.

“Did you move the body?”

“Certainly not.”

“The money was soaked with Knox’s blood. It wouldn’t have
been if it was in his wallet in his pocket. I’m going to ask you again,” Sarah
said. “Did you move Knox’s body in order to get to the money?”

“I may have rolled him over a little.”

“When you found him, was he laying on his back or his
front.”

“On his back,” Meredith said. “I rolled him over toward the
wall so I could get to the money.”

“It was underneath his body, on the stairs?”

“Yes,” Meredith said.

“Did you remove anything else from his clothing or the area
around his body?”

“There wasn’t anything else to remove.”

“You didn’t remove any jewelry he might have been wearing?”

“I’m not a grave robber,” Meredith said. “I told you I only
took what was mine or what I was owed.”

“What did you take from the safe?”

“The coin collection,” Meredith said. “My father’s coin
collection. His name is engraved on the lid.”

“Was there anything else in the safe?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Meredith.”

“I only took items that belonged to me, to my family.”