Partners In Crime (39 page)

Auntie Lil stood and tried her ankle. "Oh,
yes indeed. I'm a Hubbert, all right. Well, that's a little better.
Onward and upward." She hobbled toward the elevators, Frank
hovering at her elbow.

"Shall I call Mr. Hubbert and tell him
you're on the way up?" the guard offered.

"Oh, no," she reassured him. "He's expecting
me."

"Best take it easy on that leg," Frank
warned her. He pressed the fourth floor button for her and the
elevator doors glided shut.

Inside, Auntie Lil stared at the button
panel, deep in thought. Frank would be up to see T.S. in a moment
and, since T.S. had been unable to find Sheila all day, he was safe
for the time being. But who was protecting Edgar Hale? He needed to
be warned before anyone else. As was her habit, she did not
hesitate.

Had Frank not been distracted by the
entrance of the night guard, he might have noticed that Auntie
Lil's elevator car, instead of continuing up to Personnel, stopped
at the Main Floor first. This fact did not, however, escape the
attention of Herbert Wong. He watched the floor indicator with a
frown on his face, then hurried up the steps.

If he moved quickly, he could get there
first.

The Main Floor was dark. It seemed that
everyone had taken up Frederick Dorfen's suggestion to leave early.
It was now approaching 6:00 P.M., and no one had cared to linger
behind, working alone.

To search for a light switch in the
cavernous room was hopeless. Auntie Lil did not even know where to
begin. Desks and chairs stood eerily in the shadows like silent
ghosts. She limped carefully down the hall, her injured leg making
a peculiar scraping sound against the marble floor. She heard a
rustle in the darkness and froze, peering back toward the
elevators. Had it come from that clump of potted palms? She shook
her head briskly, banishing fear. It was only plants rustling in
front of the heating vent.

Ahead of her, light flowed from beneath the
swinging doors of the Partners' Room. She moved toward this beacon
gratefully.

Herbert Wong moved behind her, invisible in
the internal night. His natural grace served him well as he darted
from desk to desk, lost in the darkness. He had a duty to perform
and he would not fail.

It was most disagreeable and unfair to Anne
Marie, but T.S. simply had to ask Sheila to clear the air
completely. It was crucial to learn the truth.

"Sheila," he asked as gently as possible.
"Are you aware that you're adopted?"

She sat up warily and a new look crossed her
face. It was suspicion mixed in with confusion, gradually giving
way to something very near fear. "Yes. Dad told me ages ago..." Her
voice trailed off and she stared out the empty doorway, running her
tongue nervously over dry lips.

"Your father told you?" He had been certain
that Anne Marie did not know.

"Yes." Sheila looked back at him absently,
her mind elsewhere. "We didn't tell Mom because we knew she'd get
upset. It was no big deal. I found the papers once when I was going
through the desk in the study. Dad says they got me through the
Church." She sat up straight and stared at him intently. "Are you
telling me that this has something to do with what's going on?" Her
face betrayed such genuine fear that T.S. could not decide whether
to be relieved or frustrated.

Edgar Hale sat hunched over his huge desk,
shuffling through papers almost blindly. The truth was, he could
not seem to get a single thing done. Was there any way the firm
could be saved now? He just did not know what to do.

Auntie Lil's discreet knock interrupted his
anguish. "I'm so sorry to intrude, Mr. Hale," she said.

He stood immediately. "Come in. Come in,
Lil. I remember you well." He remembered her as a charming party
guest who could drink him under the table if he wasn't careful.
"Please, call me Edgar." He wondered how such a remarkable woman
could have a nephew like T.S. Hubbert. Perhaps she was unaware of
her nephew's extracurricular snooping activities. But wait, hadn't
T.S. said that she was involved? Oh, dear. He sighed. It was best
to get it over with now.

Auntie Lil stood tentatively in the doorway.
"I know this sounds ridiculous," she began. "But I understand that
T.S. told you the unfortunate story about Patricia Kelly
yesterday."

"He didn't have to tell me," the old man
said sharply. "I remember it well. It was nonsense. All
nonsense."

"Yes, yes. Of course it was." Auntie Lil
moved further into the room, her progress slowed by her injured
ankle. "I know what's done is done. That it's in the past. But I'm
afraid the story is not over yet."

Edgar Hale looked up at her and in the
curious light cast by his old-fashioned brass lamp he looked like
an animal trapped in the headlights of a speeding car. "What do you
mean by that?" He smoothed the front of his wrinkled shirt
nervously, as if afraid Auntie Lil was going to accuse him.

"You needn't look quite so alarmed," she
assured him. "We've found out in time and now we can prevent any
more killings. I have evidence."

Edgar Hale opened his mouth and shut it
abruptly . His eyes widened. If Auntie Lil had been worried he
would not take her seriously, she worried no more.

"I'm afraid she has a daughter who appears
mentally unbalanced and—"

"Don't do it!" Edgar Hale suddenly cried,
almost leaping across his desk.

He was too late. Auntie Lil's words were cut
off in mid-breath by a length of blue silk twisted tightly around
her neck, choking off all air.

"Sit down," a strident female voice
commanded, the echoes of a Brooklyn accent rising with each word.
Edgar Hale immediately sat. "If you make one move," the voice
continued, "I'll kill her and then I'll kill you."

Anne Marie Shaunessy held a gun in one hand
and pointed it calmly at Edgar Hale. The sleeve ripped from her
dress was now wound tightly around Auntie Lil's throat. Her bare,
pale arm almost shone in the dimly lit room, in vivid contrast to
her flushed cheeks. Never had her Irish coloring been more
striking. She was a strong woman made stronger by anger.

"It's you," Edgar Hale said faintly. "You've
known all along. T.S. was right. It's this Patricia Kelly
thing."

"No, I didn't know all along," Anne Marie
replied angrily. "If I had known all along, you would have been
dead years ago. She kept it from me. Even from me." She smiled
suddenly, her aim held steady as any policeman's wife would have
been taught to do. "This thing as you call it, this minor incident
in your life, destroyed the person I loved more than anyone in the
world."

A gust of wind blew through the room and the
curtains rustled in front of a slightly open window. A shadow moved
among the shadows behind Anne Marie. Unaware, the secretary tensed,
tightening her grip on the blue silk sleeve. Auntie Lil kept
perfectly still and tried to keep from choking. She watched Anne
Marie and Edgar Hale out of pained but still determined eyes.
Auntie Lil had no intention of giving up just yet.

"She never told me," Anne Marie repeated.
The sickly smile had faded from her face. "She was too ashamed. She
never told anyone. Not after Ralph Peabody. That taught her a
valuable lesson. She trusted him like a father, he'd been the one
to give her a job. But when she went to him with her story, what
did he do? He turned it against her. Destroyed her with it."

She looked up at the painting of Samuel
Sterling and his sons, then quickly leveled her gun back at Edgar
Hale. "You men. Playing in your houses of money. Thinking you can
buy the world. I told her to stay away from men like Robert
Cheswick. Men like you. I warned her you were only interested in
using her before you married someone more suitable. That's why she
wouldn't tell me. Because I turned out to be right." Anne Marie's
grim self-control only made her more frightening.

"She kept it inside her all those years,"
she said quietly. "Lied to me about Sheila's father. I don't know
why. Maybe she wasn't sure. Maybe she still wanted to protect
Robert. But where was he when she needed protecting? Who was there
to protect her? Who?" She screamed her last question and raised the
gun higher.

"For god's sake," Hale said. "The old
woman's done nothing. Let her go."

"No," Anne Marie answered, dragging Auntie
Lil forward. "I really don't think so. She's the one person who
seems to have figured this whole thing out."

"It won't do you any good. T.S. knows
everything." Hale stuttered in his fear.

"Then I'll kill him, too," she told him
calmly. "Do you know what it did to her to keep that inside? Did
you ever visit her when she was locked away for years, staring at
walls, hardly blinking her eyes? Never laughing. Never talking. Not
even looking at the one person closer to her than any other person
in the world? Not even looking at me."

Edgar Hale put a hand out and gripped the
edge of his desk tighdy.

"And all that time it was killing her, I was
right here working for you. Smiling good morning. Answering your
phones. Asking you about your families." She took a step forward,
dragging Auntie Lil beside her. The sleeve slackened momentarily
and Auntie Lil gulped in a quick burst of fresh air, then kept as
still as she could.

"You thought I knew, didn't you?" Anne Marie
wagged the gun at him. "That's why you always gave me so much
money. That's why I earned so much more than anyone else. Not
because I was good but because you thought you were buying my
silence. You thought I could be bought just like everyone else."
Anne Marie shook her head lightly and let out her breath in a slow,
deliberate stream as she steadied her aim. "I can't, you know," she
told him quietly. "I can't be bought and it makes me angry to have
people think I can. But before you die, I think there's something
that you should know."

Frank was whistling as he stepped into the
near darkness of the Personnel Department. He knew that Mr. Hubbert
would take care of things for him. Make sure that awful lieutenant
didn't put a note in his file like he'd threatened. Why, he was
telling the truth about the sign-in log. Was it his fault the
lieutenant didn't believe him? When he noticed the light on in
T.S.'s office, Frank thought nothing of simply pushing open the
door. "Mr. Hubbert, I wonder if you'd speak to—" He stopped and
looked at Sheila in surprise. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, backing out
the door. "I didn't know you were busy. I thought it would just be
you and your Aunt Lil."

"Auntie Lil?" T.S. turned to Frank. "My Aunt
Lil's arrived?"

Frank touched his hat briefly. "She said she
was on her way up to see you. sir. About five minutes ago."

Sheila was staring at T.S. wide-eyed,
unmindful of the guard. "I've answered your questions. Now you have
to answer mine. I need to know some things. I need you to tell me
what—"

"Sheila, please, as my friend." T.S.
pleaded, "I just have a few more questions. Understand that I'm
only—"

"You're the only one I can turn to, I need
your help—"

"I want to help, but I can't unless—"

"Listen to me. You have to let me talk."
Sheila's voice grew louder. She fumbled in her pocketbook urgently,
searching.

"No. First, you must answer all of my
questions. You can't avoid them any longer." T.S. raised his own
voice and leaned forward toward her.

Frank had listened quietly to the exchange
but now he interrupted. "Mr. Hubbert, sir," he pointed out,
twisting his hat nervously in his hand. "I think she's trying to
tell you something. Why won't you let her?"

"I am. I am trying to tell you something,"
Sheila cried, bursting into tears as she pulled a small oval box
from her purse. The lid tumbled to the floor and a rope of light
slid into her palm. She held it up in the room. It dazzled as it
swung slowly back and forth between them.

T.S. sat, stunned, behind the desk, staring
at the bracelet. He had not been listening because he was afraid of
what he would hear. Because he did not want a confession to come
tumbling from her mouth. Because he wanted someone else to be
Patricia Kelly's daughter. And now the evidence was literally
dangling before his eyes. The bracelet that John Boswell had
bought. What a lousy detective he was. Here was a murderer trying
to confess, and he couldn't bear to hear it.

"Mr. Hubbert, please," Sheila pleaded
through her tears. "You have to tell me. What does Patricia Kelly
have to do with the murders? Why did Auntie Lil go out to her grave
today? I know who Patricia Kelly is, I've seen her before. When I
saw her photo on her personnel file that day in the conference room
with Mr. Hale and the lieutenant, I remembered her from when I was
little. I used to call her Aunt Patricia. She would come and bring
me toys. But now my mother is lying to me about her. She says she
never knew her, but I know that's not true. I remember her." She
stared at T.S., wide eyes pleading for an explanation. "I called my
friend at Creedmoor yesterday. She told me where Aunt Patricia was
buried. I went to her grave. I brought flowers. I thought,
maybe..." Her voice trailed off, then regained strength. "I thought
maybe if I prayed there, everything would be all right. I would
understand what this all had to do with my mother lying. But when I
went out there this afternoon, Auntie Lil was already there. And
this was on Aunt Patricia's grave."

Sheila offered T.S. the bracelet and he took
it slowly, turning it over in his hands and rubbing its links
nervously. It was cold and hard.

"I know that bracelet," she told him in a
voice dulled by fear. "Mr. Boswell used it to try and get me to go
out on his boat with him last Sunday afternoon. He tried to buy me
with it. How did it get on Aunt Patricia's grave?"