Amy Patricia Meade - Marjorie McClelland 02 - Ghost of a Chance (33 page)

“No more lies, Vanessa!” Creighton roared, causing his friend
to wince. “What is it? Morphine? Opium?”

“Heroin,” she answered softly. “I don’t expect you to understand,
Creighton. That’s why I tried to hide it from you…”

“You’re right, I don’t understand. I don’t understand how my
best friend could have succumbed to this poison. What were you
thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking! I couldn’t think. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep.
That’s how bad the pain was. Do you know what it’s like, Creighton?
Do you know what it’s like to see your body deteriorate with each
passing day? To feel your life slipping away from you?”

“Surely the doctors-” he began.

“Ha! The doctors? I saw every physician from Switzerland to the
Mayo clinic. Each one said the same thing: multiple sclerosis-no
cure. I bathed in hot springs, drank herbal potions, allowed myself
to be covered with bees, all to no avail.”

“Until the heroin,” Creighton posed.

Vanessa nodded. “It doesn’t stop the disease, of course-nothing will-but with it, there’s no more pain, no more limitations. It
sets me free,” she explained, “all the while making me its prisoner.”

“So is this the ghost you spoke about? The one that keeps you
chained to the past?”

“Yes. And Stewart of course.”

“Is that all? Or are there other ghosts that haunt you?”

Vanessa’s blue eyes looked a question. “What do you mean?”

“I spoke with Detective Jameson this afternoon and it would
appear that Alfred Nussbaum was still on the Cullen brothers’ payroll when he started working at Alchemy. Actually, he was more than simply on the payroll. Cullen Chemicals cut him a check for
$7,000.”

“So? I don’t know what arrangement the Cullen brothers had
with Alfred Nussbaum. And frankly, I don’t care.”

“No? That’s strange considering the check was cut just a week
before Stewart died.”

“What in heaven’s name are you suggesting, Creighton?”

“I’m suggesting that $7,000 is a large sum to pay to an ordinary
salesman.”

Vanessa nodded. “Yes. Yes, it is. It’s little wonder Cullen Chemicals had to close its doors.”

“Is that all you think it was? Mismanagement? Poor business
sense?”

“Well, what other explanation?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Creighton rubbed his chin in an exaggerated gesture of deep thought. “Industrial espionage perhaps?”

“Industrial-” Vanessa started. “Don’t be ridiculous!”

“I’m not. That was Marjorie on the phone earlier. The Cullen
brothers gave a full confession.”

“Confession! What-what are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about you having a very good motive for killing
Alfred Nussbaum.”

Vanessa stared incredulously at her guest and then began to
laugh, quietly at first, and then louder. “Please, Creighton! Do you
really think I’d kill some salesman for smuggling out Alchemy secrets?”

“No, you wouldn’t. However, you would kill him for having
murdered your husband.”

The laughter ceased and the lines on Vanessa’s face seemed to
instantly deepen.

Creighton continued. “After I found the syringe, I went to the library to refresh my memory regarding the Alchemy fire. It wasn’t too
difficult, since all the major newspapers from here to as far north as
Maine, covered the story. All of them reported the same facts and the
same final verdict: death by asphyxiation due to an accidental fire in
the laboratory. But they also reported something else: the shock of
those closest to Stewart, their inability to believe that a man as cautious as Stewart could be so careless and their inability to believe that
a man as strong and resourceful as Stewart wouldn’t have made an
attempt to escape the blaze.”

The Englishman shrugged. “But, despite their disbelief, the verdict remained-accidental death. Looking back now, I can’t help
but wonder if that verdict wasn’t a bit too simplistic. However, the
police didn’t know about Alfred Nussbaum yet, did they? I got to
thinking: What if he had been present in the laboratory that evening? What if Stewart found him, they struggled, and that’s how
the ashtray got knocked over?”

“The police didn’t find any trace of a struggle,” Vanessa pointed
out.

“No, they didn’t. And that would have been an accidental death
as well. No reason for you to kill Alfred Nussbaum over that.”

“Creighton,” she scoffed. “You can’t be serious! You know I didn’t
kill Alfred Nussbaum. Not only didn’t I have a motive, but how
could I have done it?”

Creighton wandered to the opposite end of the table and placed
his hands upon the back of the chair. “The lady in white,” he stated
firmly.

“The lady in white?”

“Mm. Mrs. Hodgkin, a lovely elderly widow in Ridgebury, reported seeing a mysterious woman at the fair around the same time
that Alfred Nussbaum was killed. The woman, a smoker by the way,
was dressed in a long-sleeved white suit-hence the nicknamea wide-brimmed hat with a veil, and a pair of kidskin gloves. An
elaborate costume for a church fair, particularly since the temperature that day rose to over 80 degrees.”

“It would seem that she was trying to disguise herself;” she offered.

“Yes, it would.”

“And what does this woman have to do with me?”

“The lady in white is you.”

“Creighton, don’t be daft,” Vanessa chortled. “You’re really beginning to frighten me! Why, you know I can hardly get out of this
chair, let alone traipse about a carnival!”

“Ah, but I think you can walk. The other night you made a slip
of the tongue. You said that you `marched straight into your doctor’s
office.’ I grant that perhaps you can’t walk for long distances, but I
think that you’re ambulatory enough to get around a fairground.”

“Creighton, you’re being ridiculous,” she chided, her voice growing more shrill by the second. “What about the smoking? You said
this woman smoked, and I, as you know, do not.”

“Yes, I was just about to get to that. A poisoned dart killed Alfred
Nussbaum, but the police have no idea as to how that dart made it
into Nussbaum’s neck. While I was talking to Natalie outside the funeral home, Herbert Nussbaum appeared on the scene with a peashooter. The combination of Natalie’s cigarette and Herbert’s toy
blowgun got me thinking. When I came home, I called Mrs. Hodgkin and she confirmed what I had suspected. Namely, that even though
this woman held a cigarette in her hand, she never actually smoked
it. In fact, the cigarette wasn’t even lit, but placed rather decoratively,
in a cigarette holder.” Creighton mused aloud, “An interesting thing,
a cigarette holder. The hollow opening enables the user to draw in
smoke, but if one were to exhale rather than inhale, the concentrated
force of the air flowing through this tube could propel a small object,
like, say a dart for instance, for several yards.” He glared at Vanessa.
“As I recall, you were a crack shot as a girl-such a crack shot that
neither the effects of disease nor opiates could cause you to miss a
sitting target. And, I believe you possess a cigarette holder, don’t you
dear?”

“Me and hundreds of other women.”

“Yes, but hundreds of other women don’t fit the profile of our
mysterious woman in white. The hat and veil to mask a face which
had been splashed across the newspapers.” Creighton walked back
to Vanessa and lifted her hand to his face. “The kidskin gloves to
hide the gnarled, bony fingers” He rolled back the elbow-length
sleeve of her dress. “The long sleeves to conceal the marks made by
the hypodermic needle.” He dropped her arm in disgust. “The motive to kill Alfred Nussbaum.”

“What motive? All you’ve done is spew some wild theories about
Stewart’s death. You haven’t proven anything!”

“I don’t have to. Nussbaum’s treachery gives you ample motive.
There’s not a court in the world that wouldn’t convict you on it.”

“If you’re trying me for murder, Creighton, you’ll have to come
up with a better reason than that!” Vanessa’s jaw set in indignation.

He stared her squarely in the eyes. “Then give me a reason.”

The woman rose from her chair, slowly. “Revenge. Justice. Not
for spying but for taking my life away. You’ve known me since we
were children, and you’re right. If I had killed Alfred Nussbaum, it
would have been remuneration for an offense far worse than spying. Who cares if he stole company secrets? I have no emotional attachment to Alchemy Industries-I run the business because it was
Stewart’s business, and he loved it. And I … I loved Stewart. I loved
him more than anything else on this earth, until Alfred Nussbaum
took him away from me!” She walked slowly around the table, her
eyes glazed over with grief.

“Weeks before he died, Stewart began to suspect that there was
a leak somewhere in the company. Highly sensitive files kept disappearing from the lab only to reappear again a few days later in a
place that had already been thoroughly searched. Likewise, on several occasions, Stewart would enter his office in the morning, only
to find that the door was unlocked, after he was certain of locking
it the night before. Guessing that the spy was working after hours,
he decided to camp overnight at the Alchemy laboratory.

“He didn’t need to wait very long, for around ten o’clock he
caught Alfred Nussbaum picking the lock to the laboratory door.
Stewart confronted the man and accused him of theft. Mr. Nussbaum assaulted Stewart and broke a heavy glass bottle over his head,
thus rendering him unconscious. Realizing that he needed a more
permanent answer to his problem, Mr. Nussbaum took the cigarette
Stewart had been smoking from its spot in the ashtray, threw it into
one of the beakers, and then left. The chemical solution inside the
beaker ignited and the fire quickly spread throughout the laboratory.” She turned and gazed at Creighton. “Stewart didn’t have a
chance to escape.”

He stood, his mouth agape. “How do you know this? Stewart
couldn’t have told you, and Alfred Nussbaum wouldn’t…”

“I learned it from Natalie Nussbaum. Her father had confided
in her, in hopes that she would understand, but Natalie was quite
disillusioned by her father’s indiscretions, both business and domestic. She caught wind of her father’s meeting with the Cullens to
exchange the formula for the money-I don’t know how, but she
did-and she came here out of vengeance. `My father must pay’ she
told me. And pay he did.”

“With his life,” Creighton presumed. “So that explains Natalie’s
behavior today. She realized that by telling you about the fire, and
the exchange, she had sealed her father’s fate.”

“She didn’t know I was going to kill him. I didn’t know myself at
first. I told Natalie I would arrange for plainclothes police officers
to be at the fair at eleven the next morning, to witness the exchange
and give her father a chance to turn himself in. But jail didn’t seem
a harsh enough punishment-not for what he had done…”

“And the curare? Did you get that from the same source from
which you get your heroin?”

“No, I got that from my ranch in Argentina. I spent a lot of time
there when Stewart was alive and I was well. After Stewart’s death,
I bought some curare and kept it on hand in case I ever found the
person responsible for his death. I remembered reading about South
American natives using poisoned darts-from one of Marjorie’s
novels actually, but you’d best not tell her that-the poor dear will
feel responsible.

“When I found out about Alfred Nussbaum I thought about
how I would administer that curare. And then I realized `a dart!’ The
dart allowed me to use Stewart’s cigarette holder. It was an artistic touch, I thought. I put a call through to the caretakers of the ranch
and they sent it along with some orchids for my bedroom. Quite
simple,” she stated matter-of-factly. “The next morning, I rented
a car and drove to Nussbaum’s address in Hartford, but he wasn’t
alone, so I followed him to the fair. The rest, as they say, is history,
except … except Natalie was there. I don’t know if she had a change
of heart and wanted to warn her father or if she wanted to see the
police put the cuffs on him, but whatever her intention, she watched
him die instead.”

“She knew you did it! That dirty look she gave at the funeral
parlor-that was meant for you, not me. And that’s why you were
so eager to go outside and speak with her-you were afraid she’d
spill the beans. You’re lucky Herbert interrupted us when he did.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it. I sent Herbert to look for you.
The thing I didn’t realize until then was that Herbert had actually
seen the murderer and had mentioned it to his sister. Fortunately,
Herbert didn’t know enough about his father to put two and two
together, but his description of the murderer would certainly confirm Natalie’s suspicions about me.” She shook her head. “No, I
couldn’t allow her to speak with you.”

“And to be sure she wouldn’t try to contact me later, you sent
her the poisoned chocolates,” he filled in the blanks. “That’s where
you were this afternoon. Making a very special delivery.”

“I had to do something,” Vanessa replied.

Creighton’s heart pounded so hard he thought it might leap
out of his chest. “You … you …”

“Settle down, Creighton! I only put in enough poison to make
her ill. What sort of monster do you think I am?”

“The kind capable of murder,” he answered flippantly.

“Alfred Nussbaum was different. He was a traitor, a scoundrel,
and a murderer. He got what he deserved. Natalie, on the other hand,
is innocent. She’s just a child. I could never bring myself to kill her.
However, I’m not above frightening her into silence.”

“Good lord!” Feeling dizzy, he sat down upon one of the side
chairs. “I can’t believe I’m hearing any of this.”

“I’m sorry, Creighton. Did you hear from Marjorie or Jameson?
How is Natalie? Is she okay?”

“What do you care?”

“I do care.” She gazed at him beseechingly and made her way
back to her spot at the head of the table. “I’m not an evil person,
Creighton, despite the wicked things I’ve done. But now-now you
know why I couldn’t marry you … why I can’t move on … why I’m
trapped. But you, my dear, you can move on, and you shall.”