Sucker Punch (14 page)

As I saw it, I could start asking questions in one of two places: the Paradise Playhouse or the Victorian-style house on Lucky Strike Road that Vonetta had called home for the past thirty years. I timed my visit for an hour when I was pretty sure Vonetta would be at work, and even drove past the theater to make sure her Buick Regal was parked in its usual spot.

Setting my sights on Serena, I drove to Lucky Strike Road and began the search for a parking space. Paradise used to be a mining town, and these old streets are narrow. Ever since the town began growing a few years ago, parking has been at a premium. It’s hard enough to find a space when the weather’s good. In the winter, when the streets are lined with several feet of plowed snow and street parking is prohibited, people are forced to become creative.

After searching for several minutes, I managed to cram the Jetta into a few inches of space about two blocks away between someone’s garage and a No Parking sign. While Max and I walked back to the house, I ran through what I’d say when Serena found me on her doorstep.

The temperature had warmed to slightly below freezing, and the sun hung high overhead in a cloudless blue sky. Sunlight reflected off the snow, making the day look far warmer than it actually was. In spite of the chill, I turned my face to the sky and soaked up the sunlight as I walked. Fresh air and sunshine can always lift my mood.

It took me a minute to figure out the latch on Vonetta’s old-fashioned gate, but I finally climbed the steps to the porch and knocked on her door while Max nosed through snow piled up against the porch. Vonetta’s house is an original Painted Lady design, built in the late 1800s. It’s long and narrow, built into the hillside like most of the buildings in that neighborhood. Between productions, Vonetta had restored it to its original glory, and I’d been hearing rumors for years that it was about to be placed on the historical register.

Despite the precautions I’d taken to make sure I’d find Serena alone, I held my breath until she opened the door. If Laurence had gone to all the trouble to set up a clandestine meeting with Serena, I was betting Vonetta didn’t know anything about it. Considering how hard she’d tried to keep me from talking to Serena that night in the ladies’ room, I wasn’t sure how I’d explain my visit if Vonetta came to the door, or how I’d get past her for the answers I needed.

When the door finally opened, I found Serena wearing a faded terry cloth robe, which she clutched together with one hand. Her eyes were swollen from sleep, and she smoothed the back of her hand across one cheek, dimpled by the pattern of whatever she’d been lying on. She frowned when she saw me. “What are you doing here?”

“We need to talk.”

“I don’t think so.” She stepped back and would have shut the door in my face if I hadn’t moved in front of it and stopped it from latching. This isn’t a technique I’d recommend. When a fast-moving door meets flesh and bone, flesh hurts.

Serena glared at me as the door bounced open again. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

I resisted the urge to rub the spot where the door had made contact. “I just need a few minutes,” I said. “A friend of mine is in trouble, and I need your help.”

“What friend?”

“Richie Bellieu.” She grabbed the door again, and I steeled myself for another encounter. “I know he arranged a private meeting with you. Lunch. Today. To talk about your mother. And don’t tell me he didn’t. I can tell when Richie’s lying, and he’s not.”

Serena didn’t slam the door, but she didn’t let go of it either. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Now move.”

“What did Laurence want to talk to you about?”

“How would I know?”

“I’m guessing you know because he tried to talk to you on his own, but you refused to meet with him. That’s when he asked Richie for help.”

“Well, that just shows what you know,” Serena snarled. “I barely even knew Laurence. He had no reason to talk to me.”

“Really? That’s strange. It sure seemed like you knew him the night of the company meeting. Why did he automatically assume that you were the one who stole his music?”

“I don’t know.”

She stared right at me, trying to look as if she was telling the truth, but her eyes twitched rapidly, and I was pretty sure she was lying. I don’t think she could feel it, and the movement was subtle enough that I’d have missed it if I hadn’t been standing so close. No wonder her mother had always been able to tell when she was trying to hide something.

“Whatever it was,” I said, ignoring her answer, “Vonetta knew about it. That’s why she tried to fire Laurence, isn’t it?”

Serena had been about to shove the door against me again, but that made her pause. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t know about that?”

Serena shook her head.

“Before that meeting, your mother was thrilled to have Laurence as musical director for the production. Less than an hour after the meeting, I heard her threaten him.” I could sense her weakening, so I pulled out the big guns. “Twenty-four hours later, he was dead.”

Her eyes grew wide with shock. “You can’t think Mama killed him?”

“I don’t know what to think. That’s why I’m here.”

Serena chewed her lip for a few seconds, then stepped away from the door and waved us inside. “You can come in, but you can’t stay long. Mama’s coming home for lunch in about an hour, and I need to get everything ready.”

I’d take whatever I could get. “Fine,” I said, leading Max around the door and into the vestibule. “I’ll be quick.”

A long hallway stretched the length of the house to the kitchen at the back and branched upstairs to the bedrooms. The parlor opened off to the right, and it was into this room that Serena led the two of us.

This wasn’t my first time in Vonetta’s house, but I hadn’t been here since Serena and I were teenagers. Not much had changed in that time. The same green couch sat in front of the bay window, the same easy chairs flanked the fireplace. I was pretty sure she even had the same floor lamps and coffee table. In fact, the only concession to the new millennium was the familiar white box with gold trim sitting in the center of the coffee table. Even that could have come from decades past, if not for the big red hearts pasted all over it.

It wasn’t until I’d settled into one of the wingback chairs that I realized the box wasn’t the right size for the caramels Vonetta had purchased on her visit to Divinity. Were these the chocolates Geoffrey Manwaring had ordered for Laurence’s lady friend? It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, but I decided to check the store’s records instead. No sense pissing off Serena unless I had to.

Serena dropped heavily into one chair and curled her legs beneath her. “This is such an ugly mess. I don’t know what to do. Mama keeps telling me that everything’s going to be all right, but I had no idea she’d tried to fire Laurence—” She broke off with a shake of her head.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” I predicted. “I don’t know whether the police are aware of your mother’s argument with Laurence, but they’re bound to find out. Why do you think she threatened him? What did he do to upset her?”

Serena glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “What did she say?”

I debated how much to tell her. I didn’t want to feed her information that would color her answers, but I
had
barged in uninvited. I probably owed her something. “She told him to get the hell out of her theater, and she said something about him not caring who he hurt. I’m pretty sure she was talking about you, Serena. It’s the only thing that would explain such an abrupt change of heart.”

“No offense, Abby, but it’s really none of your business.”

“None taken,” I assured her. “Look, I know you don’t want to air the family’s dirty laundry. I understand that. But Richie Bellieu is a good friend, and I’ve known you and your mother a long time. I don’t want to see anyone hurt. That’s why I’m here.”

Serena slid an unhappy smile at me. “I know.” She shifted in her seat, this way and that, finally sticking one leg out from beneath the robe and kicking it gently. “But you’re asking about stuff that’s personal. I can’t talk about it.”

“Once the police find out about your mom’s argument with Laurence, you’re going to have to talk about it. She’s obviously trying to protect you, and the police will want to know why. They might even decide she’s covering for you.”

Her head shot up and her eyes filled with panic. “I didn’t kill him. My mother knows that.”

“How does she know, Serena?”

“She knows
me
.” The leg started to move faster. “Laurence Nichols was a bastard. Anybody who spent more than five minutes around him knew that. He probably deserved to die for the things he did to people. But
I
didn’t kill him, and neither did my mother.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” I said. “Just tell the police where you were when he was killed. If there’s somebody who can back up your story, you won’t need to worry. Your mother, though . . . She was the first one to find him. I’m the closest thing she has to an alibi, but even I can’t swear to how long she was in the auditorium before I got there.”

“But she’s innocent. And so am I. I only saw him once.”

I studied her expression for a long time, looking for signs of guile or deception. I’m not an expert in body language, but I’d learned a lot in my previous life as a corporate attorney and I was pretty sure she was telling the truth. I just didn’t see any reason to let her know that.

“I’d like to believe you,” I said, “but if you’re so innocent, why lie about the meeting Richie arranged?”

Her foot bounced faster still. “What makes you so sure I’m lying?”

Besides all the obvious “tells”? Gee, I wonder.
“I hate to break it to you, Serena, but you’re not a very good liar. I know I’m asking you to talk about something you’d rather not discuss, but I can’t believe you’re so determined to keep whatever your secret is that you’d let an innocent man pay for your silence.”

“I’m glad you’re trying to help him,” she said, “but why do you need to dig into my past to do it?”

“Because I have to understand Laurence to figure out what happened to him, and I don’t know what part your past plays in his death.”

“It doesn’t play any part.” She stood and walked to the fireplace. She kept her back to me, but I sensed that she was weakening, so I bit my tongue and waited for her to speak. “It was all so long ago,” she said after a lengthy silence. “It can’t possibly be related.”

“If your mother didn’t threaten Laurence because of you, tell me why she did threaten him.”

She closed her eyes and her head drooped. “It was because of me,” she said so quietly I almost missed it. “It had to be.”

Finally!
“What did he do to you?”

She turned slowly, and the pain on her face made my breath catch. “I met him after you left for college. I was just a kid. Eighteen, maybe nineteen. He was so handsome. Well, you know. He wasn’t really famous yet, but he was on his way. And he had that charisma. I was fascinated.”

“A lot of us were, just from seeing him on TV.”

Serena returned to her chair and curled up again. “He had this way of looking at me . . . I don’t know how to describe it, but he made me feel as if I was the only person in the room. I would have done anything he wanted me to do back then.”

“I think a lot of women have been in that boat,” I said. “I know I have been, especially when I was younger.”

Gratitude tinged the sad smile on her face. “Thanks, but you don’t know how bad it was. My mom knew there was somebody, but I wouldn’t tell her who it was. We fought all the time. I mean, she’s great. You know she is. But she can be kind of controlling at times. She saw me slipping away from her, and she grabbed on with both hands. I guess she thought that if she held on tight enough, she could save me.”

I’d never been a parent, but I’d seen my brother fight similar battles with his kids. Not on a big scale yet, but even so, he’d never gotten the results he was after. I wondered if any parent ever did. “Let me guess,” I said. “It didn’t work.”

Serena let out a brittle laugh and shook her head. “Not even close. I fought her. I rebelled. And eventually, I ran away.”

“That’s when you left Paradise?”

She nodded. “It didn’t feel like Paradise at the time. It felt like a prison, and I was determined to show my mother that she couldn’t call the shots for me.”

“Where does Laurence fit in all of this?”

“He and I left together. I was convinced he was my one great love, so where else would I want to be?”

I remembered feeling that way about Roger. My one and only. My soul mate.
Gag.
The worst part about remembering all that youthful romanticism was realizing that my nieces were heading straight into it. I’d give anything if they could get through it with fewer injuries than I had.