Naked Once More (30 page)

“Yes. They parallel the ones I’ve had.”

Tearstains streaked Jan’s face, but she had stopped crying. “I don’t understand that. Someone tried to kill Kathleen and finally succeeded. But why would her killer want to harm you?”

“Why would anyone want to harm Kathleen? That’s the biggest stumbling block, Jan. Has Paul told you anything, anything at all, about Kathleen’s family that would suggest a motive?”

Jan shrugged helplessly. “No. I’ve asked myself that same question, over and over. She supported the lot of them, in a style to which they had never been accustomed—including St. John, who had walked out on them when they needed his help. He came running home as soon as the money started pouring in.”

“Supposing she found out that St. John, or one of the others, had committed some criminal or unethical act,” Jacqueline suggested. “He was her business manager, so-called; if she caught him embezzling…”

“He’s capable of it,” Jan said contemptuously.

“But from what I’ve heard about Kathleen, she wasn’t capable of sending him to jail. She wouldn’t have done that to a member of her family. The worst he had to fear was that she would fire him and cut him out of her will. She didn’t even do that. The second will was made only a few weeks before she disappeared.”

“You see it too, don’t you?” Jan’s hand continued its rhythmic stroking of the rounded furry back. “Paul and I arrived at the same conclusion. She knew those accidents were planned. She knew someone wanted to see her dead—but she didn’t know who. That’s why she made the second will. She was too fair-minded to cut them all off; that would have been punishing the innocent. But at least the second will reduced the financial incentive. I think the first will left the money to them directly, without the big charitable contribution.”

“You think, but you don’t know. Does Paul?”

Jan shook her head vehemently. “He wouldn’t… It wasn’t her money that interested him.”

So the barriers weren’t all down. There was one left, the highest and thickest of them all. Jacqueline hated to destroy it, but until it fell there was no hope of getting at the truth.

“She never told Paul, did she? He worked it out afterward, with your help; but he didn’t know, before she disappeared, that she was in danger. That’s what is haunting him, isn’t it? He was her lover, but she didn’t trust him—didn’t ask for his help, his protection. He was one of the people she suspected of trying to kill her.”

That brought the conversation to an abrupt and unsatisfactory end. Jacqueline hadn’t expected Jan to react favorably to her suggestion; people were so strangely reluctant to face unpleasant facts! But Jan’s white-faced, incoherent cries of anger and denial were more violent than she had anticipated. The best thing she could do was leave, and so she did. Even the cat growled at her.

She felt no sense of guilt, however. Jan had to face facts, for her own sake—for her own protection. Still, it had been uncomfortable, and after she had gotten back into her car, Jacqueline reached automatically for a cigarette. Then she stopped herself. Perhaps she had better try handwork again, to cut down on her smoking. The trouble was she had tried almost everything, and nothing had worked; in fact, she had cut off the circulation in her fingers trying to tat, stabbed innocent bystanders with ineptly operated knitting needles, and pricked herself so often while trying to embroider that the pattern showed more bloodstains than thread. About the only thing she hadn’t tried was crochet, because the hooks, with their wicked curl on the end, reminded her of dental implements. Ah, well, it was worth a try. Sighing, Jacqueline got out and headed for Woolworth’s.

The errand took longer than she had expected, because one of the salesladies had been at the Elite on the occasion of Jacqueline’s second visit, and she insisted on introducing the heroine of the affair to all her coworkers. Jacqueline finally extracted herself, but only at the price of promising to join the gang on Saturday night.

After her run-in with the president of the women’s club, she was becoming wary of marching boldly into the lobby of the inn. Instead she poked a cautious head around the corner of the door and looked before entering. Her precaution proved to be justified. The man strategically situated on a chair between the front door and the desk was big-city in his attire and professional in his demeanor; moreover, the balding head and protuberant ears were vaguely familiar. He was pretending to read a newspaper, but his eyes kept darting glances at the door.

Jacqueline tiptoed away. The new menace did not distract her to such an extent that she neglected to watch for booby traps at the gate or along the path. Nothing fell, exploded, collapsed, or smelled suspicious, so she settled down at her desk and reached for the telephone.

Mollie answered. “Oh, Jacqueline, there’s—”

“Don’t speak my name,” said Jacqueline between her teeth. “They all have ears like hawks. I saw him; that’s why I’m calling.”

“Oh.” Mollie lowered her voice. “I’m so sorry. I think he heard, he’s looking at me—”

“And don’t whisper! That’s a dead giveaway. Call me…” Under stress Jacqueline’s imagination was apt to turn whimsical. “Call me Jellybean.”

“What?”

“Jellybean. Say, ‘Darling little Jellybean, Aunt Mollie is coming to see you soon.’ ”

Mollie repeated the words. The giggles that blurred her speech might have been appropriate for a doting aunt addressing a moppet who would submit to the nickname of Jellybean. At least Jacqueline hoped so. “Now listen, Mollie. I’m going to avoid the lobby for a while—and the dining room. I want you to go to the kitchen. Fix a tray. It doesn’t matter what you put on it, cover it with a cloth and carry it upstairs. But—are you listening?—before you leave the kitchen, ask one of the workers to wait until the reporter follows you upstairs—which he will—and then grab my mail.… There is mail for me, isn’t there?”

“Yes, lots, Jac—Jellybean.” Giggle.

Jacqueline rolled her eyes. “Okay. Tell him to make sure the snoop is following you before he brings me my mail. Got it?”

“Yes.”

Jacqueline’s better nature triumphed over her annoyance. “Are you feeling better?”

“Oh, much, thank you. I was so touched when Tom told me what you said. It’s just in the morning…”

There goes Jellybean, Jacqueline thought resignedly. Oh, well. Her own need for privacy was momentarily submerged in her even more pressing need to give other people advice. “Crackers,” she said. “Saltines, on your bedside table. Eat a couple when you first wake up, before you even life your head off the pillow. Weak tea. Get Tom to bring it to you in bed.”

“You’re so sweet to care.…”

“Uh-huh,” said Jacqueline. “I’ve just thought of an emendation to the plan, Mollie. You’re wearing one of those shapeless—those charming country gowns and aprons? Good. Can you hide the bundle of mail under it without Clark Kent seeing you? Well, do your best. Take it to the kitchen, then the messenger can go straight out the back door. And Mollie, you might as well fix a second tray while you’re at it. I’m going to be stuck here for a while. I don’t care what you send, so long as it’s food.”

While she waited for the plan to be carried out, Jacqueline took the crochet hook and thread from the bag and looked through the pattern book she had bought. Doilies. What she would do with a doily, assuming she ever finished it, she could not imagine, but the project looked less formidable than a stole or shawl or afghan, and no more useless than a baby cap. She could give the cap to Mollie.… No, that would be a dirty trick to play on a friend.

Chain five. Jacqueline chained and went on chaining as her mind wandered. If only a criminal investigation were like crocheting—a straight-line progression of stitches, linked one to the next. It was more like braiding a rug, with strands of various colors and sizes that had to be twisted into a pattern.

St. John—a thick, lumpy strand. He had the means and the opportunity to plan the attacks on Kathleen, and he might well have had a motive. In Jacqueline’s view, however, the case against a suspect included one other factor in addition to the conventional triad: temperament. Not the will to commit murder, anyone could kill under certain circumstances; but had St. John the temperament to commit this particular crime? She found herself hesitating. The deviousness and absence of risk to the perpetrator apparent in the arrangement of the accidents suited his personality, but had he the ruthlessness to take a life? It would depend, of course, on how seriously he felt himself to be threatened.

The same could be said of Kathleen’s two sisters. Means and opportunity were there, but the motive was weaker; it was hard to imagine sibling rivalry driving adolescents to murder. Especially if Kathleen had been their surrogate mother and defender.

Jan was the dark horse, the unlikely suspect who would turn out to be the murderer in a certain type of thriller. Where had she come from, what had she been doing in the years before Kathleen disappeared?

Tom had left town before Kathleen disappeared. If Bill Hoggenboom could be believed—and there was no reason to doubt his story—Tom had spent some time in Philadelphia, but nobody seemed to know how long he was there, or where else he might have been. Philadelphia wasn’t land’s end or the South Pole. Tom could have visited Pine Grove. He could have come to see Kathleen. The rejected lover, scorned by his idol…

“Bah,” said Jacqueline.

Mollie’s name went on her list too, but only for the sake of completeness. She was not a local girl, and it would have been difficult, verging on impossible, for her to arrange those deceptive, domestic accidents of Kathleen’s.

The same applied to the peripheral suspects, like Brunnhilde and Booton. By her own written admission, Brunnhilde had been “in the neighborhood” on several occasions. Ordinary police routine could discover the dates of those visits, but Jacqueline knew the futility of trying to enlist the aid of a certain Manhattan homicide detective. O’Brien would laugh himself silly and accuse her, not without justification, of trying to railroad a rival. Brunnhilde had absolutely no motive. She couldn’t possibly have anticipated that there would be a sequel, or that she would get a chance to write it.

Booton’s motive was even less convincing than Brunnhilde’s it was nonexistent. He might have had the opportunity, he had probably visited Kathleen. When a writer was important enough, editors and agents came to her. But he had every reason to keep Kathleen alive and writing. He wouldn’t inherit anything from her. His ten percent—or was it fifteen?—stopped when she stopped.

Mrs. Darcy? Cold-bloodedly, Jacqueline added her name to the list. Perhaps Kathleen had planned to marry and leave her dear old mum without a slave. The money would go with her; husband and children would take precedence over all others. Mrs. Darcy had collapsed into premature old age, but she was only in her mid-sixties. Seven years before she would have been physically capable of doing everything that had been done, including the disposal of a hypothetical body. Kathleen had been a small woman.

It was possible that the disappearance of Kathleen’s body had not been part of the original plan. If inheritance was the motive, the killer would want Kathleen visibly and legally dead, not hovering in the limbo of indecision along with her estate. O’Brien had suggested that after taking an overdose, she might have revived and staggered off into the woods before collapsing. The same thing could have happened if someone else had administered a fatal dose of some drug. Someone she knew and trusted, someone who had gone for a drive with her and waited until the substance in the innocent cup of coffee or soft drink started to take effect. He—or she—would then have driven the car to the end of the forgotten track and walked away, replacing the brush at the entrance; back to the road, where he had left his own car, or some other means of conveyance such as a bicycle. Overconfidence or squeamishness had driven him from the scene before the job was finished. Kathleen had struggled back to consciousness…

Once Jacqueline had favored that interpretation. Now she wasn’t so sure. Since coming to Pine Grove she had learned to know Kathleen Darcy, not only as a writer of consummate skill, but as a woman who was not deficient in courage or good sense. Could that woman have been naive enough to put herself in the power of one of the people she had already come to suspect of attempted murder?

If I were a horse, where would I go? Jacqueline had never had much faith in that method of analysis. She wasn’t a horse. Nor was she Kathleen Darcy—devoted daughter, loving sister, willing martyr to the demands of others. Kathleen was far from stupid, though. What the devil would she have done once she had faced the horrifying fact that one of those she loved and trusted had designs on her life? What would I have done? Jacqueline thought, forgetting her reservations about methodology. I couldn’t go to the police, the evidence was too amorphous. I could…

The crochet hook slipped from her fingers and dropped to the floor. Jacqueline looked at her work. She had just created a single chain three and a half feet long.

She tossed it aside, hearing footsteps without, and went to the window. It was Mollie’s messenger, one of the boys who worked in the kitchen. From his broad smile and the suspicious glances he kept casting over his shoulder, she deduced he was enjoying the role of James Bond. She waited until he had slithered out of sight before she opened the door and collected the loot.

Mollie had sent a basket, not a tray. It was filled with containers, some of which had anxious little notes taped to them. “Heat at 350 for twenty minutes.” “Be sure to refrigerate for at least one hour.” No wonder the delivery had taken so long to arrive, Jacqueline thought, half irritated and half touched.

She put the food away per instructions and turned to the mail. She was particularly interested in one hoped-for letter, but her attention was attracted by two Federal Express envelopes, identical in size but not in origin. One was from Chris, the other from Sarah.

The contents were also identical: the most recent edition of one of the nation’s leading sludge magazines, which must have been hot off the press the day before. The first thing Jacqueline saw was her own face glaring back at her, with a fixed stare that might have been prompted by fury or terror. It formed part of one of the
Sludge’s
famous composite photographs; behind her shoulder, looming, was a hooded horror that menaced her with skeleton hands. The accompanying headline ran:
CURSE OF
NAKED
RETURNS! KATHLEEN’S AGENT FELLED IN NEAR FATAL FALL! WILL JACKIE BE NEXT????