Paper-Thin Alibi (28 page)
“Pat is going to be so surprised,” Meg said.
Jo glanced over and saw that Meg had quickly put aside her concern over the phone call and had taken on a dreamy look.
“It must have been so rough for him,” Meg said. “Poor Pat, married to that awful Linda. She probably told him terrible lies about me at the start, things that lured him away from me.”
“Yes, I suppose she did.”
“But I’m sure he eventually saw through those lies as he began to see through Linda. How he must have regretted his mistake. He must have thought about me so much.”
So much that he didn’t even recognize Meg when she came to his store, extra weight or not? But the last thing Jo wanted was to burst the bubble Meg was so contentedly floating in. How long, though, would it remain intact?
Jo had left the highway and driven into the farming area she recognized from her trip with Harry. Before long she spotted, with some relief, the narrow road Harry had pointed out as the site of his cousin Delroy’s boyhood home. She slowed considerably, scanning the roadside for the farm road that would lead to the barn. Everything looked different because of the rain and lower light, but eventually she found it.
“We turn in here,” she said.
“Here?” Meg asked, suddenly distressed. “How will Pat find this? You can hardly see it!”
“He must know this area,” Jo assured her. “He’s lived nearby for long enough. But I can help direct him if necessary.” Jo said this in as firmly soothing a voice as she could manage. Keeping Meg calm and positive, now that they had arrived, was Jo’s next priority.
They bumped along the road, Jo relieved to find its tamped-down surface still firm thanks to the overhead canopy of tree branches that deflected much of the rain.
But it also reduced much of the light, which gave Jo the feeling of driving through a dark tunnel—too much like her present situation. Jo brushed that thought aside and managed to keep her speed up, and they soon reached the area where the field opened up.
“There it is,” she said as the barn came into view—to their left and not far from the dense tree line.
“Oh!”
Jo glanced over to see a glow of excitement on Meg’s face. Instead of the weed-cloaked, rotting-wood barn that stood there, she seemed to be seeing an ivy-covered castle, the site of her long-awaited reunion with her lost love. Meg quickly fumbled through her purse to find her cell phone. “I have to call Pat. You have to tell him how to get here.”
That bubble was suddenly in danger of being smashed to smithereens. Jo quickly said, “Let me make the call, Meg. You’re so excited, and it will take so much explaining. I’ll hand it over to you as soon as Pat understands.”
Meg blinked at Jo. “No,” she said, frowning. “I can do it.” She scrolled through her list of numbers and Jo cringed, wondering what she could do if Meg became upset and erratic over Pat’s response.
Jo pulled up close to the barn and turned off the ignition as Meg put her call through. It seemed as though each of them held their breath while the phone at the other end—in Patrick Weeks’s furniture shop—rang. Jo thought she heard the faint sound of a voice answering, but Meg didn’t respond. Instead she closed her phone.
“He’s not there. I got his answering machine.”
Jo exhaled.
“I forgot this was Saturday,” Meg said. “He probably closes early on Saturday. We’ll have to go there after all. We’ll find someone who will tell us where he lives.”
“No,” Jo said. She had to keep Meg here. “I’m sure he’s open until seven. I saw his hours posted on his door when I was there. He must be working in the back, that’s all. He’ll come out and check his messages. You’ll have to leave one, so he can call you.”
Meg looked uncertain, but she called the shop again, saying, when the answering machine’s message came to its end, “Pat, it’s me, Meg. Call me back right away. I have to tell you where I am.” She gave her cell number and hung up.
“Maybe I should have said more?” she asked, looking doubtfully at Jo.
“You can explain everything when he calls,” Jo assured her.
“What if he doesn’t?”
“He will, Meg. Just give him a few minutes.” Jo glanced back at the dense part of the farm road they had just come through, which was too visible from where they sat in the car. “Why don’t we wait in the barn,” she said. “It’s getting steamy in here.” As she said it she wondered if her hopes of any help coming were futile. Was the message Jo tried to give Charlie too obscure to understand? Meg had both cell phones in her possession. Could Jo somehow get one of them away and call for help without Meg noticing?
Meg still looked fretful about not having reached Pat, but she opened her door. She grabbed hold of her gun and signaled to Jo that she should get out first. Jo climbed out and hurried through the rain to the partially open barn door. She heard Meg’s door slam shut and Meg’s footsteps behind her as Jo dragged the barn door farther open.
They entered into the dim interior of the barn, lit only by slivers of light that came through the slatted walls. The scent of tobacco seemed to have intensified in the dampness, and Jo could hear a few drips making their way down from the leaky tin roof above. The floor of the barn was dirt and weeds, and possibly—Jo thought, uncomfortably—hiding spots for all sorts of creatures. Meg, however, seemed unaware of the seediness of the spot, only caring about bringing Pat to it as soon as possible.
Jo rubbed at her arms in an effort to ward off shivering in her wet clothes. Wanting to get Meg’s thoughts off of Pat as much as possible, but also because she wanted to know, she asked, “Why did you poison Kevin, Meg? Why couldn’t you have just left him?”
Meg stared at Jo, looking as though she was having difficulty remembering who Kevin was, much less why she had tried to kill him.
“I had to,” she said finally, and when Jo waited for more, added, “You were trying to pin Linda’s death on Pat. I had to make it look as though that photographer had done it.”
“So you were willing to kill Kevin just to keep Pat in the clear?”
Meg nodded, apparently pleased to see that Jo understood.
“But,” Jo said, “since you were the one who killed Linda, the best way to protect Pat would be to simply confess, wouldn’t it?”
Meg scowled, impatient now with Jo’s turn toward denseness. “I killed Linda so Pat and I could be together! We wouldn’t be together if I was sent to prison, would we?”
Jo saw that all actions were judged justifiable by Meg by the higher good of she and Pat being reunited. “What did you give Kevin?” she asked.
Meg’s face closed down. “It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does, Meg. Kevin could still pull out of this if the doctors know what to treat him for soon enough. There’s no reason to hide it anymore, is there? By the time Kevin recovers, you and Pat will be long gone.”
“I’m going to call Pat again.”
Obviously it had been a mistake to mention Pat. He was the only one Meg wanted to think about. Don’t bother her, she seemed to say, with lesser problems. She called the furniture shop’s number but apparently got the answering machine again.
“Pat, are you there? Pat, it’s me, Meg. You have to call me right away. We don’t have much time.” She paused, then added, “You can bring your little girl too. She can come with us—it’ll be all right.”
Jo could only imagine what Pat would feel once he heard those words and understood all that was behind them. Bring his cherished daughter to meet up with a madwoman? Jo looked at Meg. Not quite mad, perhaps, but on the brink. Clear thinking had obviously left her long ago, though she’d managed to camouflage it for the most part. The few people who’d encountered Meg in Abbotsville might have thought her odd, but had probably blamed it on her abusive husband. Meg had, in effect, used Kevin as an alibi for all her shortcomings.
“You were very clever, Meg, making Kevin look like a terrible person.”
Meg looked up from her phone, once again appearing to have to work at understanding who Jo referred to.
“I mean,” Jo said, “all those subtle hints you dropped to Ruthie that convinced her Kevin was abusing you.”
Meg nodded then, her lips turning up in a small, self-satisfied smile. “It wasn’t easy. I had to make it seem like things slipped out accidentally.” Meg’s expression turned defensive. “Maybe Kevin didn’t actually beat me, but he never made me happy either! Not like Pat would have.”
Poor Kevin, Jo thought. He was, in fact, the one being abused, just for being who he was—or wasn’t. First Meg had chipped away at his reputation, then she’d made an attempt on his life. Which might yet prove successful—a thought that appalled Jo, and about which she could, at the moment, do nothing. Had she done the right thing, luring Meg away from the hospital to this remote spot? In the heat of the moment it had certainly seemed necessary. Meg had been ready to kill herself—which meant never giving up the secret of Kevin’s poison—plus she was more than ready to shoot anyone who got in her way. Innocent people.
At least Jo had taken her away from the many hospital workers and patients—including, most important, Russ. But what could she do next, to save Kevin, and possibly herself?
Chapter 30
Meg had begun to pace, gun in hand, as the wait for Pat to call her back stretched out. Jo eased close to the wall facing the farm road and peeked through a slit. She couldn’t see any sign of life out there, human or otherwise. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, but the light was fading. Jo began to worry that once it grew too dark Meg would insist on leaving and tracking down Pat in person.
Meg stopped and called out to Jo, “What made you call Emmy?”
Jo quickly turned away from the slit. “Emmy?”
“Yes, Emmy, my high school friend. What made you call her? Was it just from what Rick Gurney said—about Kevin?”
Jo shook her head. “No, Rick and the other neighbors weren’t confirming my impression of Kevin, but I was willing to believe it was simply because they hadn’t seen both sides of him. Abusers, I’ve heard, can be quite charming to those outside their household. It was when I went to the Abbot’s Kitchen the second time and glanced again at your job application that I caught my major clue. I’d missed it the first time.”
“Missed what?”
“How you had filled out your address. The first time I read it, I was focused on your street address, and the fact that you misspelled ‘Abbottsville’ didn’t catch my attention. But when I looked at it later on—after talking with your neighbors—that misspelling popped out at me like a spatter of hot grease.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How you spelled ‘Abbottsville.’ With two t’s, just like in the anonymous letter I got that told me to get out of town. How did you put it? ‘We don’t need your kind in Abbottsville. ’ The words stuck in my head. The misspelling too.”
Meg stared at Jo. “I never could get that straight. It always seemed like if Abbotsville had two
b
’s , then it should have two
t
’s.”
b
’s , then it should have two
t
’s.”
Jo stared back, taking in the fact that the problem of spelling “Abbotsville” correctly was more interesting to Meg than the hurtful message she had used it in.
“I guess that was you who called me too,” Jo said, “telling me much the same thing as was in the letter.”
Meg actually smiled. “You didn’t recognize my voice, did you, Jo? I practiced that for a while. I wanted you to think it was a man. Did you think I was a man, Jo?”
Was Meg really expecting Jo to say what a good job she had done? It seemed so, and, galling as it was to do so, if it helped keep Meg from rushing off to Patrick’s place, Jo could manage it.
“You fooled me, Meg. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, much less that it was you.”
Meg nodded, apparently satisfied.
A cracking sound from outside made both their heads swivel toward the door.
“What was that?” Meg asked.
Jo shrugged. “A tree branch must have fallen.”
Meg turned suddenly wary. She rushed to the door and peered out carefully around the edge. “Did you let someone know where we were?”
“Of course not. How could I do that?”
Meg stared back at Jo, thinking. “That phone call! Did you tell Carrie?”
“Meg, you heard everything I said. It was all about the shipment. Nothing else.”
“I don’t believe you. Someone’s out there! I’m sure of it.”
“It was just a tree branch. Or maybe an animal.”
“I saw something moving. Something big.”
Meg leaned her head against the inside of the door, looking at Jo but listening to what might be outside.
“Whoever’s out there, stay back!” she shouted. “I have a gun and I will use it!”
Jo heard nothing but silence for several moments, broken only by the sound of Meg’s and her own breathing. Then a voice called out sharply, causing both of them to jump.
“Meg Boyer, this is the police. Throw out your weapon and come out with your hands up.”
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