The Girl at the End of the Line (21 page)

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl at the End of the Line
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“Are you saying …”
“Just let me finish,” said Glickman. “So now, seventeen years later you and your sister are in Vermont and you see Jimmy. Maybe it's just a coincidence—he's crossing the street or buying a pack of cigarettes, but there he is. We know that you believe that Jimmy Gale killed your grandmother, Miss O'Hara. You also think he blew
up your house and killed your friends, and it's very possible that he did. Revenge is a powerful motive. It would be understandable if an angry young woman followed Jimmy home, aiming to confront him about what happened in North Carolina. Maybe he just laughed. And maybe the young woman in a fury took out the pistol she had kept all this time, pointed it at his head and pulled the trigger.”
“I can't believe this,” said Molly, angrily rising to her feet. “Are you actually accusing me of shooting Jimmy Gale?”
“I'm not accusing anyone of anything,” said Glickman quietly. “This is Sergeant Couvertie's theory, not mine. But for the record, he wasn't talking about you, Miss O'Hara. He was talking about your sister.”
“I … he … you …” sputtered Molly. “It's insane to think that Nell could have killed anybody. And stupid. And ridiculous. I thought Sergeant Couvertie was on our side.”
Glickman removed his sunglasses and fixed Molly with his soft blue eyes.
“As I told you before, Miss O'Hara,” he said carefully. “I can't automatically accept your version of things just because I happen to like you. I may not get much challenging crime up here, but I'm no dummy. I have to look at the facts, and as things stand now one fact keeps jumping out: You and your sister are the ones who will profit most from Jimmy's death. Profit to the tune of millions and millions of dollars—oh, I know all about the Gale Trust from investigating the plane crash, believe me. And in my book money is an even better motive for murder than revenge.”
“So now we both did it so we could inherit? I suppose we bombed that plane, too?”
“I'm not accusing you of anything, Miss O'Hara,” said Glickman. “You don't see me here with any warrants, do you? I'm just trying to figure things out. If you have any thoughts, I'd really like to hear them.”
“Then what about this gun that Nell is supposed to have picked up when she was eight years old with our mother lying there dead on the floor?” said Molly, throwing her hands in the air. “I guess she hid it before she went into shock. Funny, but you'd think I would have stumbled upon it at some point over the last seventeen years with us living in the same room and half the time wearing each other's clothes.”
“Are you saying that both of you would have had to be involved for Couvertie's theory to be right?”
“Of course I'm not,” said Molly angrily. “I'm being sarcastic. And contemptuous. And what about airline security? I told you the other day, we were just in England. Aren't they supposed to be X-raying luggage these days? Wouldn't someone at one of the airports we passed through have noticed a gun in Nell's suitcase, even if I managed to miss it rummaging around for my hair dryer? Whoops, didn't mean to implicate myself again.”
“I'm just presenting one theory that seems to fit all the facts,” said the sheriff quietly. “Can you present another?”
“Give me a minute to think,” said Molly. “I'm sure there are plenty of people around here who didn't like Jimmy Gale.”
“Including yours truly,” said Glickman. “But I wouldn't have had access to the gun that killed your mother and neither would any of the people we'd naturally suspect in a crime like this. I've got to thank you for that gun, Miss O'Hara, even though it seems to be pointing in your direction.”
“Me?”
“Sure,” said Glickman. “If you hadn't put me in touch with Couvertie and he hadn't had what frankly I thought was the pretty oddball idea of comparing ballistics, then Jimmy's death might have been a perfect crime. I'd have spent the next six months running down the alibis of half the lowlifes and drunks in Vermont, trying to find somebody who'd had a fight with Jimmy or owed
him money or who had some other motive to kill him. We might have even decided it was just a botched burglary. But the gun changes everything. How do we explain the gun?”
“My God,” said Molly with a gasp. “It must have been the guy who shot our mother. He must have followed us here from North Carolina.”
“Yeah,” said Glickman, nodding his head. “This is the crazed-serial-killer-who-specializes-in-Gales theory. One of my deputies who watches too much television has already suggested this one. Trouble is, it makes no sense. What, our serial killer waits seventeen years, then all of a sudden he follows you over to England, back to the States, up to Vermont, and then blows Jimmy away for no reason at all, except for those crazy reasons that make sense only to serial killers?”
“Maybe he felt guilty for our mother's death,” said Molly, struggling to find some sense. “Maybe in his twisted brain, he wanted to do something to make up for things.”
“Excuse me, Miss O'Hara, but you couldn't even sell that one to the networks.”
“It makes as much sense as your theory.”
“Couvertie's,” said Glickman, holding up a correcting finger. “But it doesn't. Jimmy was a secretive, paranoid, combative man, the type who got into bar fights with guys who looked at him the wrong way. Even if your hypothetical serial-killer-with-a-conscience could find out where Jimmy lived, which is doubtful, why would Jimmy let him in, then just sit there in his chair and let the guy shoot him? Remember, there were no signs of a forced entry. No signs of a struggle. Jimmy was just sitting there in a chair, facing his killer. To me that indicates he wasn't afraid, which he probably wouldn't be if an attractive young woman like your sister came to his door.”
“Or if it were somebody he knew. A good friend.”
“Jimmy didn't have any good friends. Any friends at all.”
“A family member then.”
Molly immediately felt guilty. Everyone at Gale Castle had been so kind to her, to Nell. Now she was thanking them by pointing suspicion in their direction. She was unable to stop herself, however.
“Look,” she raced on. “Jimmy was killed last Tuesday morning, right?”
“That's right.”
“Well, before we went over to Gale Castle that afternoon nobody even knew we existed. They all thought Jimmy was the only heir to the Gale fortune. It seems to me that you should be looking at the person who believed he was next in line to inherit if Jimmy were dead.”
“Sorry, Miss O'Hara,” said Glickman, shaking his head. “If no bloodline Gales survive Dora, the Gale Trust will be divvied up among a dozen different charities. I'm afraid the American Medical Association, the Audubon Society, and the Salvation Army don't make very good suspects.”
“Well, maybe there are other bloodline Gales,” said Molly, thinking furiously. “Maybe somebody walked away from the plane crash. Russell said all the bodies weren't recovered.”
“Yeah,” said the sheriff. “This is the Agatha Christie theory, my wife's favorite. Except I saw the wreckage of that plane and the condition of the bodies, such as they were. Believe me, Ms. O'Hara, nobody survived that crash.”
“Maybe someone didn't get on.”
Glickman shook his head again.
“Sorry. The FBI has been investigating just that idea for the last month. They're certain that everyone who was supposed to have boarded actually did. Besides, you've got to consider the gun. How
do you explain the gun being the same one that killed your mother? The gun is the key to this whole thing. As things stand now, only Couvertie's theory accounts for it.”
Molly sat in silence for a moment, then held up her hand.
“Wait a minute,” she said, trying to assemble the strands of thought that kept twisting through her mind. “What if it was Jimmy who killed our mother?”
“What do you mean?” asked Glickman, raising an eyebrow.
“Maybe Jimmy killed our mother all those years ago. He kept the gun, had it in his house. Then someone came over. An acquaintance, maybe—I don't know. But someone who hated him, had hated him for years, which could have been almost anybody from around here, according to you. Jimmy took out the gun to show off or something. Or maybe it was just lying there on the table, and this person saw his chance to commit the perfect crime. All his resentments came to the surface. He simply picked up the gun—that way there would be no struggle—and pulled the trigger.”
Glickman rubbed his chin.
“Now that's interesting,” he said. “Nobody's suggested that one before. It makes a strange kind of sense. Nobody up here could find your grandmother for that reunion, not even a private detective. So how did Jimmy come to show up there last month, unless he had been there before maybe, been there to kill your mother?”
“That's right,” said Molly.
“But why would Jimmy have murdered your mother, Miss O'Hara? We know why he might have wanted you and your grandmother dead, but why your mother, way back then?”
Molly shook her head.
“I don't know.”
“And I surely don't, either,” said Glickman, fingering the
butt of his holstered automatic. “I don't understand practically anything about this case. Unfortunately, if Jimmy did kill your mother, it only strengthens Couvertie's theory.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to get mad at me again?” asked the sheriff in a wary voice.
“What are you going to say?” asked Molly, folding her arms in front of her. Glickman folded his arms, too.
“My problem with Couvertie's version of things rested on something you told me the first time we talked, Miss O'Hara. You said that you didn't think your sister ever saw the red-haired man with the mustache who you thought was following you around. You only saw him from a distance, so how could Nell have gotten a better look? And if she didn't get a good look at him in the first place, how could she have recognized him up here in Vermont? Even if Nell did think it was the same man, why would she have reacted so violently? You weren't really sure that this man you saw a few times in North Carolina had killed your grandmother and your friends, were you?”
“No,” Molly admitted.
“Then your sister couldn't have been sure either. It's a bit much to swallow that she went chasing after the first red-haired, mustached man she saw, followed him to his house and shot him. How could she know it was the right man? And even if she were sure, how did she know he had really done those things back in your hometown?”
“That's right,” said Molly. “How does Mr. Couvertie explain that?”
“He can't. His answer is that mentally ill people don't have to be totally logical.”
“My sister isn't mentally ill,” said Molly angrily.
“I believe that,” said Glickman. “I can see there's someone smart and alive in there. Your sister had to block out the horror of what she saw as a little girl and in so doing, blocked out a certain portion of herself. It's a tragedy. But Nell saw your mother's killer, Miss O'Hara. His face must have been burned indelibly into her brain. If she had seen this man again, this murderer on a Vermont street corner, then that's something that might surely make her snap. The sight of him. The memory of what happened to your mother. Boom.”
“No,” said Molly.
“Yes,” said Glickman. “Nell would have had a real reason to want to shoot Jimmy if she remembered seeing him shoot your mom, a much better reason than what Couvertie suggested, a much better reason than your hypothetical acquaintance ready to commit murder on the spur of the moment.”
“But I was just making it up,” said Molly frantically. “About Jimmy being our mother's killer. There's nothing that connects him to her death. It could have been anyone.”
“Perhaps,” said the sheriff with a sad smile. “But why would someone want your mother dead, Miss O'Hara? What was the motive? And why would that same person want to kill Jimmy? It's his death that we're investigating, after all, and right now we have only two theories that give us suspects with plausible motive, method, and opportunity. One, that you and your sister conspired to kill Jimmy for the Gale money. And two, Couvertie's theory that it was Nell, acting alone, out of revenge. Frankly, that's the leading contender, considering the fact that your sister doesn't have an alibi for the time Jimmy was shot last Tuesday morning.”
“I told you last week,” stammered Molly. “Nell was with me. At the motel.”
“Well, I checked that story, Miss O'Hara. Eustace Cubby at
The Yankee Clipper says that you were in your room all morning, which frankly is why Couvertie and I didn't zero in on you. After all, it could just as easily have been you who picked up that gun when you were a child, then brought it to Vermont and killed Jimmy with it. But Eustace says your sister was off somewhere.”

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