The Guest List (29 page)

Panic rivered through Abby. “Damn it, how did Donovan get through the gates? What are we going to do, Mallory?”

“Quick, run into the other room and call Steve. Stop standing there like a ninny and do it! Now!” She grabbed Beemer. “Easy, boy. Easy, boy. Sit!”

The police dog sat on his haunches, his ears flat against his head, his tail tucked beneath him. Olivia grabbed the opportunity to eat the remaining food in Beemer’s dish.

Mallory sucked in her breath when she heard the knock on the door. Her movements were jerky as she undid the bolt and the dead bolt. So much for security. If he wanted to break in, all he had to do was smash one of the windowpanes, reach in, and unlock the bolts. “Donovan! What … it is
you,
isn’t it?”

Donovan looked down at himself. “I guess I do look a little out of character with this beard and these clothes. But, yes, it’s me. I’ve been away, trying to get a handle on things. Is Abby here?”

“I’m here,” Abby said, returning to the kitchen. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked for lack of anything better to say.

“I’d love some.”

Mallory ushered him inside and closed the door behind him. “I was just making breakfast. I’ll fix you a plate.”

“No thanks,” he said. “I’m not hungry.”

Abby looked him over from head to toe. She’d never seen him look so rough-and-tumble before. Clearly, he hadn’t been sleeping well. She motioned him to a chair. “I’m curious, how did you get in through the security gate?”

“It was ajar, so I just pushed it open,” he said, taking his seat.

Abby and Mallory could only stare at one another.

Abby sat down across from him. “Have you been home yet, Donovan? Carol and Bobby have been worried sick.”

“No,” he said, shamefaced. “I just got back from Mrs. Lascaris’s funeral and buying back the condo from her son.”

“Mallory and I saw the newspaper article about her death. Why couldn’t you have called us and told us what happened instead of letting us read about it in the paper, Donovan?”

“I’m sorry.” He rubbed his hand over his beard-stubbled chin. “All I can say is, I haven’t been myself. I just did what I had to do and didn’t think about anything or anyone else.”

“We would like to have paid our respects,” Abby added sullenly.

“Again, I’m sorry. Her death really rocked me. She was a nice old lady.” He took the cup of coffee Mallory handed him and gulped at it until the cup was empty. “I have something I need to say, and I want you both to listen to me.” He looked from one to the other, his expression grave. “It took me a while to figure things out, but then it dawned on me what was up with you two. You’ve gotten it into your heads that your parents were murdered and you’re going to use your book, Abby, to bring it all out in the open.” He stared at them as if expecting them to deny it, but they didn’t. “I can guess at how all this got started,” he said, his gaze turning to Mallory. “And I can guess at the reason. Revenge. Right, Mallory? You want to get back at us for sending you away to Argone?” He didn’t wait for her to answer before continuing. “I don’t blame you. What Carol and I did to you was unconscionable. I know now there were other things we could have done to try to help you.”

Mallory’s eyes filled with tears. “Yes, there were,” she said, her voice high and strained. “There were lots of things you could have done if only you’d cared enough to look into them. Instead, you dumped me, the same way people dump off dogs and cats they don’t know how to care for or what to do with.”

“You’re right,” Donovan admitted. “And believe it or not I’ve suffered for what I did to you. Guilt can be a vicious monster. It can eat you alive.”

“Which is why you gave such large contributions to Argone … to assuage your guilt.”

“Yes. But it didn’t help. Nothing did, and nothing ever will. It’s something I’ll have to live with for the rest of my life. I can’t change the past, Mallory, but I can shape the future, if you’ll give me a chance.”

“And in return, I suppose you want me to forget that you killed our parents, Connor, Constance Oldmeyer, and Mrs. Lascaris?” Mallory touched the pad of her index finger to her chin. “Have I missed anyone?”

Donovan stared at Mallory in astonishment. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m deadly serious,” she said. “The only question I have is how did you do it? Other than my father, whom you shot, how did you kill them so they all appeared to die of heart attacks?”

Donovan’s eyes dulled with disbelief. “When did Constance Oldmeyer die?” he asked, his voice shaking.

“How quickly they forget, don’t they, Abby?” Mallory looked down at her sister then at Donovan.

“Was there an autopsy?”

“Yes.”

Donovan nodded. “I’m sorry, Mallory, I didn’t know. She was a kind, decent woman. She made you what you are today.”

Abby felt the need to say something. “I didn’t want to believe any of this, Donovan, but in every instance you had a motive.”

“What are you talking about? What reason would I have to kill your parents or anyone else? Tell me,” he demanded, looking from one to the other.

Mallory flipped the bacon in the frying pan. The six strips sizzled as she turned down the flame. “You killed our mother because you were angry that she had sex with Daddy and produced Abby. And you killed Daddy because he found out about you and Mama and me.”

“Jesus Christ, Mallory. Listen to what you’re saying. You’re not making sense.”

“Oh, yes I am, Donovan,” she flashed back. “You had an affair with Mama for what, seven or eight years? On the nights John went bowling, I would watch you come across the lawn to the house, and then I would sit outside the bedroom door while you and Mama made love. Of course, back then, I didn’t know that’s what you were doing. Apparently I buried those memories, and they didn’t resurface until Dr. Oldmeyer started hypnotizing me, which of course you knew and killed her to prevent her from talking about it. Did you destroy her files, too? Is that why no one can find them?”

Donovan stared at her, then closed his eyes. “It’s true that I had a long-term affair with Harriet. I loved her, or at least I did until she changed and became such a shrew.”

“When did she become a shrew, Donovan? When you told her she couldn’t have sex with John? Or when you found out that she not only had sex with John but that Abby was his child and not yours?” She took the frying pan off the stove. “Blood tells, Donovan. And in this day and age, it tells the absolute truth,” she said putting the bacon onto a paper towel to drain. “Let’s take DNA as an example. You remember that Keyman life-insurance policy Steve Franklin took out on you? The insurance company required you to give a blood and urine sample at the time you filled out the application. I had been working for the insurance company for more than a year by then, though you didn’t know that, of course, because you so seldom inquired about what I was doing. Anyway, I’m the one who took the samples to the lab, and while I was there, I had the tech take a sample of my blood and asked him to run a DNA test on the two of them. And guess what? They matched …
Daddy.
”

Donovan’s eyes narrowed as he studied Mallory. “I should have guessed,” he said, staring at her as if seeing her for the
first time. “I’m sorry, Mallory. I didn’t know. As God is my witness, I didn’t know.”

“Why should I believe you? You’re a consummate liar, Donovan. You even lied about Mama’s ashes and told Abby you’d given then to me,” Mallory charged.

“Carol and I went to the school and …”

“The
institution,
” Mallory corrected him.

Donovan threw up his hands. “We took the urn to Argone and tried to give it to Dr. Malfore. He said you were having a discipline problem and were being punished. He refused to take it from me, so we took it home, and Carol promised to take it another day.” He stared at her as if expecting some sort of confirmation. “She never got it to you, right?” He leaned his elbows on the table, then dropped his head into his hands and took deep breaths.

It was Abby who answered. “We went into your house while you and Carol were in New Jersey visiting Bobby, and I found the urn hidden behind some other things on the top shelf of Bobby’s closet.”

Suddenly Beemer’s ears stood at attention. He jumped up and ran to the door.

Steve stormed into the kitchen, his eyes wild, his body rigid. A clear indication he was looking for a fight.

“Who the hell are you?” Donovan snarled.

“This is … my neighbor,” Abby said before Steve could speak. She didn’t want to take any chance of Donovan knowing they were engaged. When she’d called Steve to come over, she’d taken off her ring and put it in a box in the great room. “Dr. Steve Carpenter. He’s the vet I mentioned. I think it’s time for you to leave, Donovan.”

He didn’t move a muscle. “Not until you two listen to reason. I don’t know how I can convince you that I didn’t kill anyone. You’ve made me out to be the killer in that damn book of yours, haven’t you, Abby? There will be an investigation. Even though they will find me innocent, the publicity, the speculation,
and the conjecture will ruin me and ruin everything I’ve worked my entire life to achieve. Please, I beg you to think about what you’re doing. Please don’t ruin people’s lives for a few lousy dollars in book sales. I’ll give you any amount of money you want. A million, two, ten … I don’t care.”

“But I do care, Donovan,” Abby said.

“The truth will win out, Abby, and you’ll be the laughingstock of your profession. Why are you doing this to me?”

“For Connor, damn you,” Abby cried out. “For Connor. He was too young to die. He had his whole life ahead of him, and you took that life away from him and from me as well. Don’t ever ask me why again.”

Steve walked over to the door. “Here’s the door, Mr. Mitchell. I think you’d better leave.”

Looking old beyond his years, Donovan marched out of the kitchen, down the driveway to his car, and didn’t look back.

“How the hell did he get in here?” Steve asked, closing the door and locking it.

Abby melted into her chair. “The same way you did. Through the
open, broken
security gate. It’s about as useful as Olivia being a guard dog.”

“What’d he want?”

“You heard him. To stop us from publishing
Proof Positive,
” Abby said. She felt so miserable she wanted to cry. She
was
crying.

Steve sat down and took Abby’s hand. “The book can’t really hurt him, can it, Abby? I mean you changed the names, the places, everything, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t know that. We wanted him to think the book would expose him, so he would make a stupid mistake and expose himself.”

Steve frowned. “I may be out of my depth here, because all I really know are animals. I know what they are capable of. Like Olivia here. She’s a lover. Her greatest love is Beemer. She’s placid and lazy. You wouldn’t think she’s a scrapper,
but she is. You put her in a situation where she has to fend for herself and she could do it, has done it. Now, Donovan, he’s a rugged, whip-cracking kind of guy. You know by looking at him that he makes people jump when he gives orders. But underneath that rough exterior, there’s a heart of gold. He could no more commit murder than I could abuse an animal. That’s just my opinion, of course, for whatever it’s worth, which probably isn’t much if your expressions are any indication,” he rambled.

“I wish I could agree with you, Steve,” Abby said, then excused herself and went to her office to be alone. She kept to herself the rest of the day, reading her mother’s diaries. The first one began the year after Mallory had been born, and the last one ended just days before her death. Donovan was mentioned often, though always with anger. She wrote that she thought Donovan had far too much influence over John and wished she could do something to stop it. She often told her diary how unhappy she was and how she wished she had someone to confide in.

Abby cried when she read the entries following her own birth. “She’s a freak. I can’t stand to look at her. This is God’s way of punishing me for what I’ve done,” her mother wrote.

Abby cried until there were no more tears, then went back to reading. She was determined to finish the diaries no matter what it cost her emotionally.

In the last diary, her mother wrote, “Donovan’s new womanfriend called on me today. I felt sorry for her, so I invited her in and fixed her a cup of tea. She seemed nice but naive, like I had been once. She told me how much she liked Donovan and that she hoped he liked her, too.”

Abby read on; there were only a few pages left. “She came over for tea again today. It seems I have become her confidante though until today I never confided a single thing about myself to her. She told me she thinks Donovan is in love with her. I
couldn’t help but laugh. She wasn’t amused and asked me why I laughed, and I told her …”

The writings ended with a bold, slashing line across the page, as if something had startled her. Abby sat looking at that line for a long time, wondering what she would have written if she had continued. Wondering, too, who Donovan’s woman-friend was. Carol?

It was late afternoon before Abby felt confident enough to take a break and relax. She had spent the whole day working on a synopsis for a new book—a murderless mystery this time. She’d had enough murder, real and fictitious, to last her a lifetime.

She turned over the engraved invitation and smiled. “These really are pretty impressive-looking, don’t you think, Mallory?”

Mallory gazed at her sister. “Not half as impressive as this guest list. There’s a cool fifty names here: local book reviewers, the head chain store book buyers, the local bookstore managers,
Newsweek, USA Today, TIME
magazine, your editor and publisher. Wow!”

Abby set the invitation down on the kitchen table. “I’m also inviting all of Steve’s staff, some of the neighbors, Bobby, Bunny, and Mike. Maybe Mike will get the assignment for
TIME.
”

“You’re not planning on inviting Donovan and Carol, are you? Please tell me that’s a no.”

“I’ve been wondering what to do about that, then it occurred to me they wouldn’t come anyway. I mean, jeez! We’ve accused Donovan of murdering five people. I can’t imagine he would want to come. So the answer is no,” Abby confirmed.

Mallory brushed her hand across her forehead. “I’m glad to hear that.” Her relief was palpable.

“It’s been over a month since Donovan was here, and as upset as he was about the book, I thought for sure he would call or come by or something. He gave up too easy. It’s just not like him to do that. Donovan will fight till he takes his last breath if he thinks he’s right. He just isn’t the giving-up type, and that’s what’s worrying me right now.”

Mallory’s expression went from questioning to apprehension. “He knows the book isn’t coming out until March. He’s probably trying to establish an alibi for each murder. That’s what I would do if I were walking in his shoes.”

“Umm. Maybe so,” Abby said, looking out the window to see Harry digging a hole. “Something’s been nagging at me, Mallory. Remember the day we went to the dedication ceremonies for Donovan’s retirement community? Both of us were looking forward to seeing Mrs. Lascaris and asking her if she would bake us her famous raisin cookies.” Abby turned her gaze from the window to Mallory. “We went back to the clubhouse ahead of Carol, and Donovan introduced us to Mrs. Lascaris. She was so glad to see us, remember? She had a big smile on her face. Then Carol came and Donovan introduced her, and Mrs. Lascaris’s smile disappeared. She said something to Carol like, ‘I didn’t realize it was you,’ or ‘I didn’t realize you were the one.’ Do you remember?”

“That doesn’t stand out in my mind. What’s the importance of what she said?”

Abby looked deep into Mallory’s eyes. “I remember wanting to get her alone to ask her if something was wrong, then she
turned to Donovan and told him she needed to sit down. He spirited her away, and I never got another chance to talk to her.”

“What do you think was wrong?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know
if
anything was wrong. She just looked so … strange.” Abby shook her head. “It was probably just all the excitement or maybe … Let’s think about this. She was just fine until Carol came on the scene.”

“Well, I was, too, until Carol came on the scene. Then I turned into Monster Mallory, the evil one!”

Abby waved her hand. “Would you be serious, please? I’m trying to play detective, and you’re making jokes. Why would seeing Carol frighten, alarm, or unnerve that sweet old lady?”

Mallory pondered the question, then rattled off an answer. “Because she remembered Carol from the old days in New Jersey, didn’t like her then, and was disappointed to learn Donovan had married her. That would also explain what she said.”

Abby favored Mallory with a look of disgust. “Take it a step further and tell me why Mrs. Lascaris didn’t like Carol.”

Mallory looked up at the ceiling. “Because … Because Carol is controlling and manipulative.”

“That works,” Abby agreed. “And she said what she said because until Donovan introduced Carol as his wife, she didn’t know he had married her.”

“All right, now that we’ve got that settled …”

Abby waved her index finger. “There’s something else. You said Donovan’s motive for murdering Mrs. Lascaris was because she must have known something about our parents’ deaths that could hurt him. You said you thought he brought her here to keep tabs on her. Come on now.
If
she knew anything,
If
she suspected him of something as sinister as murder, don’t you think she’d be afraid of him? She wasn’t afraid of him. She was
afraid
of Carol. And why, if she thought he was a murderer, would she let him move her here? She wouldn’t,
Mallory,” Abby said, getting into Mallory’s face. A moment later she sat back looking smug. “Now, turn all that around and look at it from Donovan’s standpoint. If indeed Mrs. Lascaris knew anything about the murders, she’d kept it to herself for over twenty years. Why wouldn’t he let sleeping dogs lie? Why would he want to visit her, bring her here … stir things up?”

Mallory squeezed one eye nearly closed. “So what you’re saying here is … that you don’t think Donovan murdered Mrs. Lascaris, that she died of natural causes?”

“I don’t see a motive, Mallory.”

“What about our parents, Connor and Dr. Oldmeyer? Do you see motives there?”

“Yes and no. I think there are a lot of ways of looking at a situation, and your anger toward Donovan has prejudiced you.” She reached across the table and took her sister’s hand. “Why don’t you feel that same prejudice against Carol?
She
was the one who pushed Donovan into putting you in Argone. Why don’t you suspect her?”

“Because she didn’t have the motives.”

“Are you sure? How long were Carol and Donovan an item before our parents’ deaths? Weeks? Months?” She told Mallory about the last entry in their mother’s diary. “What if Mama laughed in Carol’s face and told her she was crazy to think Donovan loved her? What if Mama told Carol Donovan loved her, had loved her for years? And what if she told Carol about you? That would certainly explain why Carol hates you so much. It would also give her a motive for murdering Mama,” she said, surprising herself that she was actually making sense.

“And Daddy?”

Abby shrugged. “Daddy got in the way. Carol shot him and made it look like suicide.”

Mallory crossed her arms. “Okay. Fine. I agree you’ve presented a good case, Sherlock. But what about Connor?”

“All right,” Abby said with more bravado than she felt. All
she wanted to do was prove her point … that there was more than one way of looking at a situation. “As it stands right now, we have Donovan’s motive for murdering Connor as jealousy. But we also know that Carol felt the same way. She admitted it.” She took a deep breath and said the first thing that came to mind. “I remember Connor didn’t like them, either. He was sure Carol hated him. He told me he had a gut feeling that something about her wasn’t quite right.” Her voice dropped an octave when she said, “He never did figure out what it was.” She stopped to think and had a mental flash of the last time they’d all been together at the hotel café. She saw herself getting out of her chair to walk Connor to the door so he could get his cab. Donovan stopped him, handed him a small paper bag with a Danish and some coffee to take with him. Abby felt her breath catch in her throat. It was
Donovan
who gave him the bag with the Danish and coffee. If there was poison in the coffee, then it had to be Donovan, not Carol. Right? But wait a minute. Donovan never paid attention to who ate and who didn’t. That was the kind of thing Carol did, always knowing who did what and what they needed. That was part of her controlling, her method for manipulating people. So even if Donovan gave the bag to Connor, that doesn’t mean Donovan was the one who killed him.

“Mallory,” she said breathlessly, “that day you told me Donovan murdered Mama and Daddy, you said you thought Donovan might have poisoned Mama … poisoned her with something that would simulate a heart attack.” She got up, ran to her office, and came back with the two books Bunny had given her. The cover illustration on the writer’s guide to poisons was of a hand dropping a teacup. Abby went to the back of the book, checked the appendix, and found a section that listed the poisons by the symptoms they caused. “Heart attack,” she said, flipping pages. It wasn’t there. She went back to the beginning and read, “Blood. Brain. Ah, here, Cardiovascular.” She went down the list to find the symptom. “Cardiac arrest,”
she said, then in a column to the right were the poisons that could cause it. She read off the ones she recognized. “Cocaine, ergot, insulin, oleander, sodium …”

“Oleander?” Mallory cut in. “I didn’t know oleanders were poisonous. What a shame. They’re so pretty.”

Abby looked up oleander in the index and turned to that page. “It says here it’s a cardiac stimulator. All parts of the plant are poisonous, the leaves, the nectar from the flowers, even the twigs.” Marking her place with her finger, Abby closed the book to look at the cover. “Would you know a dried, crushed tea leaf from a dried, crushed oleander leaf, Mallory?”.

“No.”

“But Carol would. She knows all about teas and tisanes. Doesn’t it make sense she’d know which plants are poisonous?” She stared at her sister, her eyes narrowing as her thoughts compounded. “Donovan gave Connor a cup of coffee for the road the morning he died, but I’ll bet Carol was the one who gave it to Donovan to give to Connor. And according to what we read in Mama’s diary, Mama and Donovan’s new womanfriend had tea together at least …” She placed her hand over her eyes as she saw a scene out of the past … Mama and Carol sitting at the dining-room table sipping tea. “It
was
Carol having tea with Mama. It just came to me in a flash. I could see Mama pouring the tea and Carol looking up at her.”

“If murdering someone is as easy as using oleander leaves to make tea or squeezing the nectar of the flower into coffee …” Mallory took a quick breath. “Carol and Donovan have oleander bushes all over their yard. And when you and I were little, we had an oleander bush at our house in New Jersey.”

“Where?”

“Under my bedroom window, on the sunny side of the house. Daddy had to cut it down so it wouldn’t cover my window.”

“My God,” was all Abby could say.

* * *

Early the next morning Mallory caught the thirty-eightminute flight out of Charleston to Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport. She didn’t really expect to find her records, as she was sure Donovan or
someone
had taken them and destroyed them, but she had to know for sure. All she could hope for was that one of the staff would remember who they had been given to.

Abby spent the day puttering around the house, getting ready for the new carpeting that was to be installed the following day, along with the new draperies and furniture the day after that. Throughout the day, every time she thought up a new reason why Carol might want to murder anyone, she wrote it down. She also wrote down things Carol had said and done over time that now seemed suspicious.

At the top of her list was what Donovan had said to Carol on Christmas Eve before last … the night they’d broken into her house. Abby remembered his words verbatim. “You thought that damn birthmark of hers would tie her to you for the rest of her life, didn’t you? You didn’t think any man would ever bother to look beyond that birthmark to find out what kind of person our Abby was. When things looked like they were getting serious between her and Connor and that Abby might move to New York, you started pressuring me to build this house.”

Abby chewed on the end of the pen as another flash of memory rose to the surface. She committed it to the paper in front of her. Carol not delivering her mother’s urn to Mallory and hiding it in the top of Bobby’s closet. Then she asked herself a question: What kind of person would do something that mean and cruel? “A sick person,” she jotted down in answer.

She scribbled, “Mallory’s flat tire” and put a question mark next to it. And last, she made a note about the day she and Mallory had delivered Christmas presents to Carol’s house.
Carol had said she was upset about Donovan’s absence, but she didn’t act upset.

Did any of these things mean anything? Or was she doing the same thing she’d accused Mallory of doing—speculating and conjecturing?

By the time she was ready for bed she was exhausted.

“This is ridiculous, Donovan,” Carol said. “Why you want to go to Abby’s party is beyond me. Abby and her crackpot sister think you murdered their parents, and Abby is going to tell the world in that damn book of hers. Did you hear me, Donovan?” Her face contorted in rage, Carol threw a heavy cut-glass bowl across the room. She didn’t blink when it shattered into hundreds of long, slivered shards.

“We have to go,” Donovan said tightly. “I’ve never run from a fight in my life, and I’m not going to start running now. I’m going with or without you.”

“This is all Mallory’s doing. Plain and simple, all she wants is revenge. First, she wormed her way into Abby’s house, then ingratiated herself into Abby’s life, and now she’s convinced Abby … Oh, God, how I hate that girl! There are no words to tell you how much I hate and despise her. We should have sent her to another continent. She’s going to stand there in front of all those newspaper and magazine people and tell how she solved an old murder case. What the hell are you going to say to that, Donovan?”

“The burden of proof is on the police and the district attorney,” Donovan said. He watched his wife out of the corner of his eye as she put on the diamond earrings he’d given her on their fifteenth anniversary. “Furthermore, we don’t know she’s going to do that, now do we, Carol?”

“This is going to destroy Bobby, not to mention us and everything you’ve worked for your entire life. Is it because
Mallory is your own flesh-and-blood daughter that you refuse to see how evil she is?”

Donovan stopped in mid-stride before turning around to confront his wife. “What did you just say?”

“You heard me. Don’t pretend you didn’t hear what I just said, and don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about either.” The ugly look on Carol’s face told Donovan his ears hadn’t deceived him. “I’ve known about Mallory for years. When we first got married, you talked in your sleep,” Carol stormed as she stomped across the room to her dressing table. She sat down at the table, her shoulders shaking with rage.