The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel (14 page)

“Dolan.”

“Right. The old fellow here claims that Jack Dolan is dead, but trustworthy people in Virginia—people who are not mental patients—can testify that Mr. Dolan is alive and well and living in a house in Danville. That seems fairly conclusive.”

Elizabeth nodded. “That’s what Bill said.”

“This person who says Dolan is dead may be mistaken. He’s an old man. He’s talking about events that took place forty years ago. I don’t say he’s lying or trying to deceive you. I’m sure he means well. I simply think his memory is faulty.”

“That does seem to be the logical conclusion,” said Elizabeth meekly.

“Well, good! I’m glad we’ve cleared that up. Now let’s talk about me. When they told you someone was here to see you, did they simply say ‘a young man’? Not a distinguished young man, or a handsome young man?” He fingered his silk rep tie, wondering what error in fashion had caused him to be so slighted.

Elizabeth did not reply. She sat silently staring at the oatmeal-colored carpet, looking, Geoffrey thought, like someone waiting for a bus. He allowed a few more minutes for her to say something. Elizabeth always filled silences if you gave her
enough time. She considered it a form of courtesy. This time, however, no remarks were forthcoming.

“You don’t buy it, do you?” he said at last.

“No.”

“You actually think someone is impersonating a ninety-year-old man. Are you cra—”

“Yes!” said Elizabeth a shade too loudly. “Yes, I am. Crazy. Officially. A certified resident of the Cherry Hill Psychiatric Hospital. Quite demented.”

“Well, don’t be touchy about it, Cousin. Some of my best friends are crazy.”

“All of your best friends are crazy, Geoffrey. It is the chief requirement for the position. Never mind my feelings, though. Sane or crazy, what if I’m right? What if the old man in the house in Danville isn’t Jack Dolan?”

Geoffrey shrugged. “He’s ninety. Pretty soon the problem will solve itself.”

“But Jack Dolan owned that house. Or he did until his children lost it in a land deal. At least that’s what Bill was told. Suppose it isn’t true. Does that mean Bill doesn’t own the house? Could he lose all his money in the deal? And then there’s the real Mr. Dolan. What happened to him, and when? Was he swindled out of the house? Murdered for it? Is he dead?”

Geoffrey tried again. “Have you thought of calling the Danville police? It sounds like their business, not yours. Surely they could root around in the courthouse records and come up with something.”

“Of course I can’t call the police, Geoffrey! What could I say?” She mimicked speaking into the receiver. “Hello, I’m Elizabeth MacPherson. I’m a mental patient, and I was wondering
if you’d check out a statement about a crime made to me by another mental patient.…”

“I see your point. Of course, you could investigate it yourself.”

“I’m in here, Geoffrey.”

“Ah.”

“Voluntary commitment. Mandatory stay of one month, to be extended upon the recommendation of the attending physician. Now if I start babbling about wanting to investigate geriatric impersonators in Danville, Virginia, how likely is it that they’re going to turn me loose at the end of the month?”

“Did you tell Bill about this? It is his house, after all. And his little old man.”

Elizabeth frowned. “Of course I told him! He made soothing noises to humor me. He would have agreed to anything I said, but he doesn’t really believe a word of it. He won’t even think it over. He’ll just think they need to adjust my medication.”

“I don’t suppose—”

“I am not delusional! It’s just that at present I have no credibility.”

“But you thought that I might believe you?”

She waved aside the implied compliment. “Oh, you! You don’t care. You don’t set any great store on normal, or plausible, or even ethical, as far as I can tell. You’d probably investigate Jack Dolan for the novelty of it. Or to test your acting skills. Or to have a tale to dine out on. But at least you would do something besides humor me. And in your own twisted way, you are undeniably clever, so while you were larking about, you just might find out the truth.”

“What fulsome praise!” said Geoffrey, smirking. “When
the time comes for my eulogy, I must leave instructions that you be the one to deliver it.”

“Oh, shut up. Will you do this for me or not?”

Geoffrey appeared to consider the matter. Actually, he was reflecting on the fact that a number of minutes had gone by without any discussion of the late Cameron Dawson. This new obsession of Elizabeth’s was surely nonsense, but it might also be therapeutic. As an amateur psychologist, he thought her interest in so trivial a matter was a classic case of displacement: Elizabeth’s brain was focusing on an inconsequential puzzle to distract her from the real source of her misery. A psychiatrist might try to talk her out of her obsession and urge her to focus on working through her grief instead, but Geoffrey, who was a firm believer in the avoidance of pain, thought that distraction was about all the healing that most people could ever expect. Anyhow, it was worth a try.

“All right,” he said at last. “Since you cannot persuade anyone else to take this tale seriously, you are left with me: humanity’s professional gadfly. And you want me to do … what?”

Elizabeth opened her mouth and shut it again. “I hadn’t thought that far ahead,” she said. “I concentrated all my efforts on convincing you to do something, without concerning myself at all about what that something ought to be.”

“You realize that I think this whole thing is a mare’s nest?”

“Yes, but you will look into it, won’t you? With an open mind?”

Geoffrey sighed. “In lieu of sending you flowers, I suppose I could give it a couple of days.”

“Good. Now … what should you do? You might begin by
finding out everything you can about Jack Dolan, and trying to get an accurate description of him as a young man. We can find out his eye color, the shape of the ears—things like that.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “You know, with all due respect for Jeremy Brett, I have never had any desire to play Sherlock Holmes.”

“Good,” said Elizabeth. “Because if you go prancing around Danville in a cape and a deerstalker, you’ll be back in here before you know it, and then I’ll have to get somebody else to do the research.”

A
. P. Hill was back in her hotel room by six forty-five, enough time to check her messages, shower, change clothes, and order a salad from room service before she sat down to review her notes and to wait for the arrival of Lewis Paine. She had one less thing to worry about now. The court case that had brought her to Richmond was now on hold, if not permanently abandoned. The two sides had wearied of the legal battle, and now they were going to take a break for a week or so, presumably to catch up on all the business matters that had been let slide while they whiled away the hours in the courtroom. After that, they wanted to meet to try to reach an out-of-court settlement. That was fine with A. P. Hill. She had already cleared a few days’ absence with the office, and now she would make the most of them.

When Lieutenant Lewis Paine knocked on the door at 8:57, A. P. Hill was ready. She was calm and composed, cell phone switched off, and a manila folder of photocopied pages was tucked away out of sight in the bedroom of the suite.

“Hello,” she said with a perfunctory smile. She motioned for him to sit down on the sofa next to the window. “Would you like a drink? There’s a soda machine down the hall.”

He shook his head. “I’m fine. I think I should tell you that I’m not officially on duty at this time. Let’s just say that I dropped by for a friendly chat. Strictly off the record.”

Powell Hill nodded. She sat down in the desk chair and stared past him at the lights of the city. Off the record and out of your jurisdiction, she thought, but she smiled encouragingly, because only very stupid people were rude to law enforcement officers.

“I was just wondering about our conversation the other night. The one about the lady lawyer and her fugitive girlfriend. I seem to recall your asking me how I’d go about catching them—if they happened into my territory, I believe we said.”

Powell shrugged. “Just making conversation.”

“Well, that’s what I thought. Right up until the time that the police inquiry came in from northeast Arkansas, asking if we have any information on a Virginia attorney named A. P. Hill. They say their suspect is a small, blonde, well-spoken woman in her late twenties. Imagine my surprise,” he said in a sarcastic drawl. “In fact, the only reason I’m not falling all over myself to fill out your extradition papers for those good people in Arkansas is because you have such a damned good alibi: me.”

Powell nodded.

“It seems that at the time Mr. Jenkins the banker was being fleeced by the two classy ladies at his country club, you were at dinner in Richmond with Katy DeBruhl and me. Or did you already know that?”

“No, Lewis. I really didn’t. What did they do?”

He shrugged. “The usual. You know about the previous cases?”

“Yes, but only from what was printed in the newspapers.”

“Well, it’s pretty much the same, except that this time they went after a better class of victim. I guess they figured he’d have more money on him than their previous marks.” He smiled. “It sounds like the banker told the police a highly edited version of the truth, but the upshot is that the two women sweet-talked the old goat into going off to a motel with them. He dances pretty lightly over the sex part, of course. Claims they’d got to talking about investments, and that they invited him back to their place for drinks so that they could continue their discussion of the stock market. Very cozy.”

“It sounds plausible,” A. P. Hill conceded.

“Except that the banker is the one who rented the motel room. The night clerk not only remembers him, she has the credit card slip to prove it. Besides, the next morning the chambermaid found the victim handcuffed to the bathroom sink pipe, and, believe me, he wasn’t dressed for a sober financial discussion.”

“He’s from a small town, isn’t he? He’ll have a hard time living that down.”

“I thought of that,” said Paine. “Has it occurred to you that these outlaw pranksters seem to delight in embarrassing people? Sure, they take the victim’s money and his car, both of which they need to stay on the run, but they seem to derive a lot of pleasure out of humiliating their victims. I thought that fact might lead somewhere, which is why we need to talk to people who knew them before the crime spree began. People like you.”

A. P. Hill felt her face redden. “I know you think I was being evasive,” she said at last. “But I knew I couldn’t be of any
help to you. Believe me, if I had told you that I knew P. J. Purdue, it would have misled you in the opposite direction. You would have thought I knew more than I actually did. In fact, I haven’t seen Purdue since we left law school at William and Mary. We were never close. All I know about her present circumstances I read in a supermarket tabloid.”

“Then why after all these years did she suddenly start using your name as an alias?”

A. P. Hill considered the matter. She blushed a little as she spoke. This was delicate ground. “Oh … spite, I think.”

“Spite? Really? After all these years?”

A. P. Hill sighed. “My friends may be a fickle bunch,” she said, “but apparently when I irritate someone, they remember me forever.”

“I see. And what did you do to annoy Patricia Purdue?”

“Nothing that I recall. I suppose my very existence was enough to enrage her. I was the good little girl. I studied all the time, turned my assignments in early, and I never participated much in the social life on our hall. Purdue was a great one for parties and pranks, and I just didn’t go in for that kind of thing.”

“What kind of pranks?”

“Oh, sometimes it was simple ones like fake phone messages leaving a number and telling you to call, say, Mr. Lyon, and the number would turn out to be the zoo. But every so often she’d outdo herself and spend hours on some elaborate scheme just for the hell of it. She liked to pick on the people who would be the most annoyed by it.”

“Can you give me an example of one of her elaborate pranks? Were any of them directed against men?”

“Not that I recall.” A. P. Hill frowned at the memory of
college life, trying to choose an accurate but neutral recollection. “Well, she did make a list of bad blind dates and post it by the hall telephone to warn the other girls.”

“Fair enough,” said Paine. “I wouldn’t call that a prank, though. More of a public service really. Anything else?”

She nodded. “I was on the receiving end of one of her major efforts. My term paper got the only A in our lit class, and Purdue was pretty annoyed about it. She wrote brilliantly, but she never turned in anything except a first draft. Her intellect probably got her through high school with straight A’s despite her laziness, but at the university, there is too much competition to get away with that. So she got a C.”

“Not your fault.”

“No. But I got the A by spending two days in the library and rewriting my paper three times. By Purdue’s lights, such behavior was unsporting. So she decided to take me down a peg. She must have worked all night.”

“What did she do?”

“I woke up the next morning about six, and when I opened the door to my room to stumble out to the bathroom, there was no way out. The doorway was blocked by a thin wall of newspaper sheets taped to the door frame from top to bottom. I couldn’t even see out.”

“That’s a lot of work for a brief inconvenience.” Paine grunted. “You can go through a wall of newspaper in two seconds.”

“I did. I took a running start and plunged right through it. The resulting crash woke up everyone on the entire hall. You see, on the outside of the door, behind that curtain of newspaper, Purdue had stacked up a pyramid of Coke cans and glass
bottles, most of which broke when they hit the floor. Some of them weren’t empty, either. I spent the next hour cleaning up the mess.”

“You didn’t insist that she do it?”

“No. I had a test that morning, and at six
A.M
. I had neither the time nor the inclination for a shouting match. Purdue would have protested her innocence, of course. So I cleaned it up myself. She probably thought I was a Goody Two-shoes for that, too.”