Name Games (44 page)

Standing directly in front of her, I explained, “The morning I met you, the Thursday morning when you were preparing for Cantrell’s arrival, Glee and I helped you move some things out of the coach house. I carried a picture of a young man playing with a dog, a collie. You told me, ‘That’s Ward and Rascal.’”

Neil mumbled, “Oh, my God,” raising a hand to his mouth.

I continued, “A few days later, on Sunday morning, just before we found Cantrell’s body, I asked you about that obelisk under the tree, and you told me, ‘That’s Rascal’s grave,’ referring to Ward’s collie.”

Roxanne leaned to Neil, asking, “So what? I don’t get it.”

I told everyone, “There was a name game we used to play in college. You’d combine the name of a childhood pet with the name of the street where you grew up, and that would become your new stage name. Ward Lord had a collie named Rascal, and he grew up right here on Tyner Avenue.”

Grace sat speechless as the others voiced expressions of dismay. I silently chided myself for not having earlier decoded the porn star’s name. After all, Grace had told me the collie’s name at least twice. As for Tyner Avenue, I saw the street sign every day, driving from home to the office and back. The street was specifically mentioned in Glee’s article announcing Cantrell’s “royal” visit. When I drove Glee to The Nook that morning to meet Cantrell, I needed directions, and she pointed out the turn. Subsequently, I drove there myself, often noting the street. But it wasn’t until that very evening, minutes earlier, when Lucy had interrupted our video-viewing at the house, that I finally recognized the freeze-frame image of Rascal Tyner leaping in midair. He flashed a perfect smile, flexed a perfect body, exactly as Ward Lord had done in the old snapshot. And superimposed over that image was the name Rascal Tyner.

“Mark,” said Grace, mustering some energy, “I loved Ward like a son, but after he went away to college in California, I didn’t see him much. I haven’t heard from him in many years.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

Dr. Tenelli told us softly, “My God, I haven’t thought about Ward Lord in ages. What a beautiful baby he was—I delivered him some forty years ago, during the early years of my practice.”

I dropped to one knee, resting an arm on Grace’s chair, looking into her face. “Now, Grace,” I told her, “I’ve seen Ward’s picture—he
looked
like Rascal Tyner. And we can easily find out what Rascal Tyner’s real name was—it’s a matter of simple research. But that’s not necessary. We
know
that Ward and Rascal were the same person, don’t we, Grace?”

Leaning back her head, she glimpsed the circle of faces looking down at her. Then, with just a trace of defensiveness, she asked me, “What if they
were
the same person? What does that prove?”

It had to be said: “It proves that you killed Carrol Cantrell.”

“Mark! What? I…I,” she sputtered.

Pierce quietly cautioned me, “Hey, Mark. Easy now.”

Roxanne asked me, “That’s a bit of a leap, isn’t it?”

“No,” I told everyone, “it isn’t a leap. It’s a logical conclusion. Everything else fits.” Rising, I stepped away from the group around Grace’s chair, gathering my thoughts. From the middle of the room, I told them, “Consider this scenario:

“Grace doted on her nephew. She never married or had her own kids, and she just now told us that she loved Ward like a son. He went away to college in California, where his astounding good looks led to a career as porn star Rascal Tyner. Grace did not lose touch with Ward, but knew exactly what he was doing and expressed her disapproval. Their conversations revealed that a man named Carrol Cantrell was responsible for Ward’s unseemly video career.

“Then Grace’s worst fears were realized: Ward died of AIDS contracted from the unsafe sex practices he performed in Cantrell’s videos. Grace held Cantrell responsible for the death of her beloved nephew. Vengeance was an appealing notion, but she knew the possibility was remote, since she and the porn producer moved in such different circles, two thousand miles apart.

“Years passed. Grace’s career plans changed from pharmacy to miniatures, and she eventually discovered that a man named Carrol Cantrell had established himself as a big name in her little world. Along the way, she had gotten computer literate; she mentioned to Glee and me that she used the Internet to locate the inventory of miniature products for her Rexall roombox. Tapping this research knowledge, she easily determined that Carrol Cantrell was the same man who had produced Ward’s videos, and she further learned that Cantrell had become something of a free-speech crusader in pornography battles—the very same sort of legal battle that was shaping up here in Dumont. So she hatched a plan.

“She decided to host a convention of the Midwest Miniatures Society at The Nook, inviting Cantrell to judge the roombox competition—she even offered to lodge him here in the coach house. Her letter of invitation, which was found among Cantrell’s things, made specific mention of the porn trial that was looming. She guessed correctly that this ‘coincidence’ would lure him to Dumont. Once he was here, under her own roof, the rest was easy.” Needing a breather, I paused.

Grace had listened silently, shaking her head lamely, sniffling. The others heard my scenario with less emotion, judging its plausibility. Tenelli, who had not been privy to the many turns of the investigation, told the group, “This is all just speculation. I’ve heard little that would actually link Grace to the crime.” He patted her shoulder.

I explained to him, “The known facts of the case fit together with unerring precision. We have, I’m afraid, ample evidence to accuse Grace of murder.”

Her sniffling mushroomed into a single loud sob, then subsided.

“Let’s review the rest of it,” I told the group. “Last Sunday morning, in this room, we found Carrol Cantrell’s body, apparently strangled. His extremities were blue; his neck was marked with abrasion wounds. A wrinkled silk scarf, the apparent murder weapon, was found snagged on the wooden banister outside. This pointed to Bruno Hérisson as the obvious suspect.

“Then, on Monday, a file was discovered on the victim’s laptop, an extortion note intended to cast suspicion on Doug Pierce. Since Doug
knew
that he didn’t kill Cantrell, we could assume the note was bogus—somebody planted it there. This development led us to suspect both Dan Kerr and Harley Kaiser.

“On Thursday, the coroner raised a new possibility—the victim may not have died from strangulation, but from anaphylactic shock triggered by an allergic reaction to nuts. Miriam Westerman shot to the top of our list.

“Finally, on Friday, the coroner raised the further possibility of poisoning by succinylcholine, which raised my suspicions of you, Dr. Tenelli.”

“Me?” said the doctor, astounded. “You’ve gone goofy, Manning. You’re running in circles like a dog chasing its tail.”

“Sorry, Ben. Not to cast aspersions on you, but everything fit. What’s more, the only other person we knew of who might have access to the drug was Grace, but we assumed she had no motive to kill Cantrell. Now we know otherwise. She was bent on avenging the death of her nephew. And here’s how she did it:

“A trained pharmacist, Grace was devastated decades ago when her family-owned drugstore succumbed to competition from the Walgreens chain and closed its doors. She helped oversee the dismantling of Lord’s Rexall, storing a garageful of paraphernalia directly beneath this room, where there’s a locked refrigerator, an old Kelvinator. Stowed within it, I’m sure, is a supply of succinyl, kept potent all these years.

“Enter Carrol Cantrell. His days were numbered when he arrived in Dumont on that Thursday morning. Within three days, Grace had had ample time to observe her intended victim and to fabricate an intricate web of confusion that would mask his true cause of death.

“So on Sunday morning, she entered the coach house on some pretext—perhaps to tidy up her guest’s room—and in the process, she pricked his thigh with a syringe she had loaded with a deadly dose of succinyl, downing him within seconds. When he was debilitated, helpless, and dying, she garroted him with a silk scarf from his collection, recognizing the scarf as a gift from his business rival, Bruno Hérisson. Producing Cantrell’s neck wounds when he was at the point of death, she created a set of symptoms that convincingly suggested strangulation.

“But Grace wasn’t through. She then injected him with his own EpiPen, casting double confusion on the cause of death and leading the investigation on another stray tangent.

“Finally, creating a third red herring, she called upon her computer skills to add a bogus extortion note to the files on Cantrell’s laptop, implicating Doug, whom she’d seen at the coach house several times. The document was oddly worded, referring to a ‘dalliance’ between Doug and the victim, a term that struck us as highly peculiar. I
knew
I’d recently heard someone use it, or a variant of it, and now I recall the incident vividly. On the Thursday morning when I first met Grace, she told Glee and me about the miniature drugstore she was building, and we asked to see it. ‘There’s no time to dally, not now,’ she told us, because Cantrell was due to arrive any minute.

“Even though we concluded from the beginning that the extortion note was a fake, a plant, it accomplished its purpose, deflecting suspicion from the real killer by attempting to frame Doug. More important, it wrenched the investigation itself, as Doug felt obligated to withdraw from it.”

I fell silent, having stated my case exhaustively and, to my mind, conclusively. While I spoke, the group of listeners had drifted from the rocking chair, seating themselves about the room, pondering the facts. Only Ben Tenelli remained with Grace, whose tears had dried on an expressionless face. Tenelli told her, “Don’t worry, Grace. Manning tells a good story, but remember, he’s a writer. He may have crafted a clever plot, but what he still lacks is evidence. He has
nothing
to link you to this crime.”

Stepping toward them, I said flatly, “Doug can obtain a warrant—tonight—to examine the contents of the locked refrigerator downstairs in the garage. If that search reveals possession of succinylcholine, any featherweight prosecutor could build a winning case on the basis of strong circumstantial evidence.”

Grace looked at me, then at Tenelli, then her gaze fell to her lap. Tenelli retreated from the rocking chair, flumping into a seat at the table.

Again I dropped to one knee, leaning in close to her. She looked especially tiny and shrunken, surrounded by the maple spindles of the rocker. Taking her hands in mine, I said, “It might have worked, Grace, if we’d failed to fathom your motive. You hid your pain well all these years. Maybe it was just dumb luck that I crossed paths again with Rascal Tyner this week, but even if I hadn’t, the connection would have clicked eventually.”

She raised her head and asked, with genuine curiosity, “Why?”

“Something has been troubling me for days, and I just now figured it out. On the morning I met you, you were cleaning some things out of the coach house, getting ready for Cantrell’s visit. You explained that you didn’t think the king of miniatures would be interested in pondering ‘the Lord family’s sentimental old bric-a-brac’ So Glee and I helped you carry these things down to the garage—I carried the photo of Ward. Otherwise, though, the boxes contained what I’d call ‘junk,’ nothing of sentimental value.

“Two days later, when I visited Cantrell up here with Miriam Westerman and Harley Kaiser, I noticed the dresser—that one.” I pointed. Everyone in the room turned to look as I continued, “I noticed right away that something seemed to be missing, something that had been hanging on the wall above it. Naturally, I presumed that it was the photo of Ward that was gone. Still, the whole tableau bothered me, and now I know why.

“First, the dresser is cluttered with knickknacks, snapshots, and other memorabilia—stuff that certainly qualifies as ‘sentimental old bric-a-brac,’ which would have been removed if you’d been speaking truthfully on Thursday. In fact, though, the only item of sentimental value that had been taken from the room was the enlarged picture of Ward—because Cantrell would have recognized it.

“Second, the missing photo of Ward had hung there between candles, as if enshrined on an altar. It should have struck me then and there that your devotion to the boy had a passionate edge. And I’ll tell you this, Grace: though what you’ve done is wrong, I most certainly understand your passion.”

In the silence of the room, I smiled, trying to coax one in return.

Grace sniffled, flicking the crust of a dried tear from her lashes. “Thank you, Mark,” she told me, patting my hand, returning the smile. “All right,” she added with a wan little chuckle, “you got me.”

Roxanne rolled her eyes.

I stood. My knees were killing me.

As for Grace, the crisis had passed, and she now appeared serene—shot, but serenely so. She told everyone, “Yes, Mark got it right, the whole dismal story. I did indeed love Ward. I still do. With a passion—I guess that’s the right word. When Ward moved to California with my brother’s family, I grieved that I’d lost him. Little did I know how prophetic that grief would prove to be. Losing Ward was the worst chapter of my life, far worse than losing the drugstore. Because of the circumstances of Ward’s death—the AIDS, the pornography—the whole tragedy was never acknowledged by the family. My God, there wasn’t even a
funeral.
The wound just festered. There was no ‘closure.’ Well, there’s certainly ‘closure’ now—I killed Carrol Cantrell with an injection of succinylcholine, just as Mark said. I went too far. I know that. But what’s done is done.” She paused, then added, “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Both of my editors, Lucy and Glee, were engaged in some frantic note-taking at the desk, preparing tomorrow’s headline story.

Neil sat with Roxanne on the edge of the bed, his comforting arm slung over her shoulder as they listened to Grace’s confession.

Tenelli remained seated at the table, shaking his head in somber disbelief.

I reminded the little woman in the rocking chair, “You’ve cast suspicion on a number of people, Grace. But the person you’ve truly hurt is Doug.”