Spin a Wicked Web (32 page)

"Did she ever come by when you were working on the police
cars?"

"Probably. It's not like I kept track, and we usually have one or
another of the city's cars in there at any given time." He glared at
Barr and Robin. "You guys are rough on those vehicles, and then
you don't even bother to take care of them," he spit out. The fury
in his tone had nothing to do with maintaining the police department's cars; it was directed at the detectives who sat calmly on either side of him while his mother led up to a horrible revelation.

"I'm sure you're right," Barr said, and flicked a warning at me
with his eyes.

I felt sure Ariel had been the one who sabotaged Scott Popper's
vehicle, and Zak had at least confirmed that she had had access.
Barr and Robin could follow up with him more on that later.

"Sorry, Irene," I said. "Please go on.,,

The interruption seemed to have calmed her. "I waited outside
the co-op for a few minutes. I just couldn't help it. All I knew was
that I wanted Zak to come out of there." She took a deep breath.
"And then he did. He came out and drove away."

Her pacing resumed. "But she didn't come out. She was still in
there. And I kept thinking about all the things we'd talked about
at Chris', about how disruptive that girl was." Now she sent a
pleading look her son's way. "I didn't know she'd broken it off with
you. I didn't know." Anguish laced her tone. "Sitting there in my
car in the dark, all I could think about was how she needed to go
away, and not in a week or so, when Chris would be up to facing
her." She stopped speaking for a few moments, but kept striding
back and forth. Finally, in a quiet voice I said, "You felt threatened.
She'd seduced Scott Popper, ruined the co-op for you, and then
went after your son. You didn't know what she was capable of."

Irene shook her head a couple of times, then paused, and
stared at me. She slowly nodded. "Yes. That's really it, isn't it? I
didn't know what she was going to do next, and I was afraid for
Zak."

A derisive noise came from her son's throat.

"You may not have known Ariel as well as you thought," I said
to him.

"Are you going to keep interrupting?" Robin asked. "Or can we
get this over with?"

I sighed. So much for greasing the wheels of Irene's confession.
"So what did you do next?"

"I went inside. It was dark, but I could see something on the
floor, to the side of the retail counter." Her eyes blazed. "It was one
of my sculptures. The one I call Athena, where she's in the warrior
yoga pose?"

I nodded, though I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Someone had knocked it off the table where it was displayed.
Her arm was broken. I just knew Ariel had done it, in the dark, too
lazy to turn on the lights, and too uncaring to bother picking it
up." She gritted out the words. "The light shone down the stairs
from above. I knew she was up there. So I took the sculpture upstairs to confront her. And you know what I found?"

We all shook our heads.

"I found little Miss Ariel Skylark going through Ruth Black's
things. She was taking some of that pretty, shiny fiber Thea Hawke
sells, right out of Ruth's case."

Hoo boy. I hadn't been expecting that. Ruth kept a portion of
her stash and fiber to use for lessons at CRAG in a small cupboard
in the corner of her work area. The northern lights fiber Ariel had
been clutching in her dead hand when I found her was indeed the
same stuff Gabi had in her spinning basket which had sent us on
such a wild goose chase. But Gabi had told the truth when she said
she got the fiber from Ariel-and I'd been right when I figured
Ariel wouldn't shell out the big bucks for a gift like that for her
sister-in-law.

Stealing from Ruth Black. Sheesh. The list in Ariel's "con" column just kept getting longer and longer.

"You confronted her?" I prompted.

"Oh, yes. And I told her we'd decided that she had to leave the
co-op. That she had a day to get all of her stuff out." Irene pressed
her lips together, the anger and fear on her face again as she
remembered. "She laughed at me. Said she had no intention of
leaving, and that I didn't have the authority to make her. When I
insisted Chris was on board with the decision, she got a nasty look
on her face. Told me she wouldn't go, and that if we tried to make
her, she'd take us to court. Sue the co-op."

"That's ridiculous," Zak said.

"I thought so, too," Irene said. "And I told her that. Plus, if she
didn't get her ugly paintings out of the building herself, we'd take
them down for her and set them in the alley so she could pick
them up. Well, that made her spitting mad, and she came at me."

Her lips opened again, but no words came out. She rubbed her
palm over her face and cleared her throat. When she managed to
speak again, her voice was quiet. "I hit her with my Athena sculpture, and she fell down." Her eyes welled. "She just wouldn't go
away. It didn't seem like we'd ever be rid of her. Thinking that
made me a little nuts, you know? I saw that hank of yarn hanging
over the back of the chair, and I grabbed it and wrapped it around
her neck."

She met Zak's horrified gaze, shunted her eyes toward mine
and whispered, "I kept it there until she was dead."

Not exactly self-defense, I thought. But an insanity plea didn't
seem entirely out of the question. Poor Zak. Poor Irene, for that
matter.

I kept my tone gentle. "You hit her with the sculpture first?"

She nodded.

Understanding registered on Robin's face. The official story
was that Ariel had been strangled. How could Irene have known
Ariel had been struck first unless she'd been there? She slowly rose
to her feet.

"Where is it?" Barr asked, also standing.

Irene licked her lips.

"Did you get rid of it?" he pushed.

She looked at Zak. "Would it prove that I was the one who killed
that girl, and not Zak?"

"I believe it might," Barr said, not committing to anything. But
the look he shot my way was triumphant.

"It's outside," she said. "In my workroom. I was going to try
and fix it."

And sell it in the co-op, no doubt. Nice way to get rid of a murder weapon-except she could have smashed it to pieces instead. I
had to wonder if there wasn't a part of Irene that wanted to get
caught.

"So how did you convince Chris and Ruth to give you an alibi
for the time of the murder?" I asked, not moving from the recliner.
I wanted to get as much on tape as possible.

Irene, looking paler than ever, covered her eyes with one hand
for a few beats. Then she dropped her arm and said, "After I realized what I'd done, I panicked and called Chris. I told her what
had happened, and she told me to get back to her place as fast as
possible. I know I shouldn't have done it, that I should have just
called the police and confessed right then, but I did what she said.
When I got there, she told me Ruth would be there any minute,
and that I should say I'd been at Chris' the whole time, hadn't left at all. That way I'd have an alibi, and both Chris and Ruth could
back me up."

Ruth had told me she went back because Chris had broken
down the night before the funeral. But when I was in the smithy
with her, Chris had told me it was the first time she'd really cried
since Scott's death. Now that made sense.

I leaned forward. "Only Chris knew she was lying. You tricked
Ruth."

Irene sighed. "She could've said she'd left and come back, but
after you found Ariel, she was afraid for Chris. She didn't want her
to be blamed. So she fudged a little on the truth-on her own, not
because I made her, or even asked her to-in order to strengthen
Chris' alibi. But you have to understand, she really thought I'd
been there the whole time, so she believed Chris had an alibi."

Ruth's heart had been in the right place, but she'd ended up
protecting someone who'd actually killed Ariel. Chris, on the other
hand, had intentionally aided and abetted. She'd had good reason
to hate Ariel, too. No wonder she'd protected Irene.

"Worked out pretty well for you, didn't it?" Robin said, her lips
drawing back in disgust.

Defiance flashed across Irene's features. "Until now."

"Show me the statue you hit her with," Robin said.

Irene hesitated then nodded toward her son. He'd run through
the gamut of emotions as he'd listened to his mother confess to
murder, and now sat stunned on the sofa with his hands still behind him. "Take the handcuffs off of him."

Robin narrowed her eyes, but after a long moment complied,
pulling Zak to his feet. Metal scraped against metal as she removed them, sounding loud in the room. He rubbed one wrist, still staring at his mother.

We all filed upstairs behind Irene. Barr smiled his approval
when I grabbed my tote bag off the coffee table on the way. We
went through the white and beige kitchen to the back door, and
outside. A small building stood in the far corner of the backyard. It
was little more than a glorified shed. Together we crossed the yard,
and Irene opened the door. A table and chair took up most of the
interior. Shelves lining the walls held figurines in various stages of
completion, as well as neat packages of clay waiting to be shaped
into something more. A variety of shiny, clean tools lay in a row on
the tabletop. Even here, where Irene made her art, there was little
color and no decoration.

She took one of the chunky statuettes down from the shelf and
held it out to Robin, who told her to put it on the table. Then she
put the handcuffs on Irene and started the whole Miranda thing
over again. Zak looked on with a mixture of sadness and repulsion
on his face.

Irene met my eyes, and I saw that the fear she'd been carrying
around seemed to be gone. Then she mouthed something at me,
and nodded. I blinked.

Barr and I went outside. I gave him my tote bag, and he removed the tape recorder and turned it off. "What did she say to
you?"

"She said..." I shook my head. "I think she said, `Thank you.'
Can you believe that?"

The corners of his eyes crinkled, and his look was tender. "Guilt
is a hard thing to carry around."

I thought about things I'd done in my own life. Not murder,
but still. "Yeah. I guess you're right."

As we walked toward the patrol car, Barr sighed under his
breath.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"This was such a fiasco, and it could have been avoided if my
partner wasn't so pigheaded. Do you have any idea how much paperwork we're going to have to fill out now?"

"Well, at least you got your killer," I said.

"At least one of them."

"Meaning ... you think Ariel killed Scott?"

He nodded. "It sounds like a possibility. I'll talk to Zak and to
the other mechanics at the shop and see if I can find out anything
more. It won't make him any less dead, but Chris might like to
know what really happened. Might make a difference with his life
insurance payout, too."

"Except Chris might be looking at some jail time, too. Don't
you think?"

A rueful expression settled on his face. "What the hell was she
thinking, covering for Irene like that?"

"My bet? She was thinking that in the same situation, she
might have done exactly the same thing. Ariel had a real talent for
inciting love and hate. Which one depended on your gender."

BARR SPENT THE REST of the afternoon at the police station with
Irene, processing and doing paperwork and whatever else you have
to do when someone confesses to murder. We'd agreed to meet at
his house that evening, and as I made the short drive in Meghan's
Volvo, I kept replaying the events in Irene's basement in my mind.
What kept coming back to me over and over was the look in Zak's
eyes as he'd watched his mother confess to murder. As with so many
others involved with the case, his life was now changed forever.

I guess I should have been surprised to find Hannah's rental
car parked in front of Barr's house, but I wasn't. I was beginning to
wonder if she'd ever leave us alone. What had Irene said about
Ariel? That it seemed like she would never go away.

And look what had happened to her.

The door was open, and I walked right in without knocking.
Hannah stood in front of the sofa. She turned her head, and fury
filled her eyes the instant she saw me. She'd cut off her long braid
and now sported a short, tousled mop that mimicked my own. A wave of distaste washed through me when I saw it. Words of protest on my tongue, I turned toward Barr, who stood across the
living room from her. They died when I saw the expression on his
face, at once surprised, fearful, and pleading. The skin on the back
of my neck tingled. Tension crackled in the space between them,
and I could feel it extending toward me.