Wanita drew deeply on the cigarette. Exhaled. “Well,” she said, “that’s my story. I say it happened that way, there’s nobody alive who can prove it didn’t. Michael sure as hell isn’t talking.”
“Fine. Now I’m going to tell you my version of the story. Somebody wanted me out of the way. Wanted me out of the way very badly. Maybe he had something on you, something you were trying to hide. Or maybe he just paid you to lie in court. Dangled a carrot in front of your nose.” She looked around the cluttered living room. “I doubt you bought this house on the salary you make clerking at Winn-Dixie.”
Something sparked in the depths of Wanita’s eyes. “Interesting story. Now I’d like you to leave.”
“Who paid you, Wanita? Who paid you to lie in court?”
“Nobody! I’m tellin’ you, nobody paid me!”
“Look,” Kathryn said softly. “You and I both know that I didn’t kill Michael. Which means that whoever did kill him is still out there somewhere. We’re both in this mess up to our necks. If we don’t bring him down, we could both end up losing our heads.”
The fear that flickered across Wanita’s face was genuine. “Get out!” she shouted. “Goddamn crazy meddling bitch. Just get out!”
Her shouting brought two preschool-age children in from the backyard to see what all the ruckus was about. They stood in the archway to the dining room, eyes wide with curiosity and fear. Kathryn smiled reassuringly at them. “I lost my husband, and four years of my life,” she said softly. “And I will keep right on meddling until I find out why.” She reached into her purse and pulled out a pen and paper. “Here’s my phone number,” she said. “You can call me any time, day or night.”
She held out the slip of paper, but Wanita refused to take it. “You’ll end up dead,” the woman said. “If you don’t let it be, you’ll end up dead.”
Kathryn’s mouth drew into a grim line. “I guess that’s my problem, isn’t it?” she said, and set the slip of paper on the end table.
On her way home, she took a detour past the old Chandler place. To her surprise, the house was empty, deserted, the windows boarded up, the grass unmowed, and the garden, which had once been her pride and joy, overrun with weeds.
She parked the car in the driveway and sat there for a time, looking at the house. The last time she’d seen it had been the day Michael died, when she’d looked back at their home from the rear seat of a police cruiser. She’d expected that the memories, and the pain, would be unbearable.
But to her surprise, the pain she’d expected to feel wasn’t there. The memories would be with her always, but the pain had eased. She’d loved Michael dearly, but she’d stopped mourning him a long time ago. Perhaps because of the passage of time, perhaps because it all looked so different now, their home was only a house to her. A beautiful house that was slowly succumbing to time and the elements.
She wondered why the place was still empty. The bank had foreclosed a few months after Michael’s death because she’d been unable to keep up with the payments. But they’d put so much into the house, so much work, so much money, so much love, that she’d expected somebody would snatch it up the instant it went on the market.
Some people, she supposed, would have been frightened off by the fact that the house had been the site of a grisly murder. But other houses with violent histories were bought and sold every day. Michael’s murder might have slowed down the sale of the house, but it shouldn’t have prevented it.
Still pondering, she drove through town slowly, enjoying the summer afternoon, the shady, tree-lined side streets, the old houses set back behind broad green lawns. The ladies of the Elba Historical Society were holding a tag sale on the front lawn of the Methodist Church, and out in front of the five and ten, the Good Humor man was peddling his wares.
Kathryn pulled into her driveway and parked, gathered her mail from the box and meandered up the walk, riffling through the advertisements addressed to Occupant that were her only mail. She’d reached the porch before she realized something wasn’t right. The front door she’d left locked was ajar. She came to an abrupt halt when she realized that somebody had kicked it in. The lock dangled at an awkward angle, and splintered wood littered the floor.
Cautiously, she pushed open the door and stepped through. The living room looked like a tornado had torn through it. The three boxes of files had been emptied on the floor and the papers scattered everywhere. The coffee table had been bashed repeatedly against the stone fireplace until it was nothing but a pile of kindling. Plants had been overturned, the potting soil ground into the scatter rugs she’d bought just yesterday. The couch cushions had been slashed, their stuffing pulled out and strewn about the room.
Her breath was a red-hot fire in her chest. She stepped gingerly around a broken Depression glass vase and walked into the kitchen. The cupboards had been emptied, dishes smashed, china that had belonged to Raelynn’s mother lying in shards on the floor. Kathryn put her fist to her mouth to stifle a sob, and then she spun around and marched directly to the telephone.
While she waited for the police to arrive, she sat on the front steps in the sunshine, quaking with fury. Somebody hated her, and that was one thing. But this house, this furniture, these damn dishes, belonged to Raelynn. Whoever had done this hadn’t cared, and that was what made her furious. They’d taken what should have been a personal grudge and aimed it at an innocent party.
She heard the siren as it turned the corner from Myrtle Street. Blue lights flashing on the dash, Nick DiSalvo’s Blazer came to a stop at the curb, followed closely by a police cruiser in full regalia. DiSalvo ambled across the lawn toward her, taking his time, in no particular hurry on this fine day. “Afternoon,” he said.
Kathryn was in no mood for his game-playing. “Inside,” she said, and buried her face in her hands.
The uniformed officer who’d been driving the cruiser followed DiSalvo inside. She heard them talking quietly, indistinctly, heard the crunch of glass beneath their shoes. A short time later, DiSalvo came out alone and sat down on the step beside her. “How’s the ankle?” he said.
“Fine!” she snapped.
He took a pack of Juicy Fruit out of his pocket and removed a stick of gum. Held the packet out to her. “Gum?” he said.
“No,” she said primly. “Thank you.”
He returned the packet to his breast pocket. “I quit smoking six months ago,” he said, unwrapping the gum. “It keeps me from losing my mind.” He popped the gum into his mouth, rolled the foil into a ball and dropped it in his pocket. “You do have a way of drawing trouble to you,” he said.
She didn’t know whether to cry or laugh at the absurdity of the situation. “It must be my magnetic personality,” she said.
He leaned back on both elbows and gazed up through the lacy foliage above them to the sky beyond. “I’ve been a cop since I was eighteen,” he said. “I spent nine years walking a beat for the NYPD before I made detective. Just about anything that one human being can do to another, I’ve seen. And I have to say that somebody out there has really taken a dislike to you.”
“Bravo, DiSalvo. You are one sharp detective.”
An electric-blue Mustang convertible pulled up in front of DiSalvo’s Blazer, and Raelynn climbed out. DiSalvo glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. “Any particular reason,” he said, “that you called your lawyer?”
“She also happens to be my landlady,” Kathryn said. “Most of the furniture and the dishes in this place, what’s left of them, belong to her.”
Raelynn clicked up the walkway in bright red shoes that would have been at home on a cocktail waitress yet looked smashing with her navy Donna Karan suit. “Afternoon, Chief,” she said, dimpling and holding out her hand.
In a courtly gesture that left Kathryn’s mouth agape, Nick DiSalvo bent and kissed the proffered fingers. “Ms. Wilbur,” he said. “I hear that some of the property destroyed belonged to you. My condolences.”
Raelynn waved him off and held out her arms to Kathryn. “Sugar, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe they’d do this to you.”
“I’m the one who should apologize,” Kathryn said wryly. “Those dishes were family heirlooms.”
“Better to lose a family heirloom,” Raelynn said, “than a friend.” She straightened her spine and sighed. “I suppose I might as well go in and survey the damage.”
“Better brace yourself,” DiSalvo said.
They both stood there, watching her go, and then Kathryn said quietly, “This wasn’t kids.”
“No,” DiSalvo said. “I don’t think it was. This wasn’t just random vandalism. It’s too savage. There’s a rage behind this, so strong you can feel it.”
So she wasn’t the only one who sensed the malevolence behind this act. She was absurdly relieved to know that he felt it, too.
“I’m assuming,” he said, “that this time you want to file a complaint.”
“You’d better believe I do!”
“Why don’t you come on down to the station? We can do it there.”
She hesitated, looked back questioningly at the house.
“Earl will be here for a while. And then you’ll be needing one hell of a clean-up crew. You might as well avoid it as long as you can.”
At the station, he gave her coffee that would probably grow hair on her chest, and ushered her into his office. His secretary looked up from her knitting long enough to glare at them, and then he shut the door in her face. “Sometimes I wonder if she has the place bugged,” he said, and Kathryn smiled politely over the rim of her cup.
He opened a drawer, pulled out a sheet of notebook paper, and picked up a pen. “Okay,” he said. “What time did you leave the house?”
“Around noon. Maybe quarter past.”
“And you got back when?”
“Two-ish.”
He wrote something on the piece of paper. “And where were you during that time?”
“Look,” she said, setting down the coffee cup, “is this really necessary?”
“These are standard questions, Kathryn. You can answer ‘em for me, or I can turn you over to Bucky Stimpson. It’s up to you.”
His use of her given name unnerved her. Perhaps that was his intent. “I suppose the devil you know,” she said acidly, “is preferable to the one you don’t.”
“Exactly. Now, where were you?”
She raised her chin. “I went to see Wanita Crumley.”
She could tell from his face that he knew who Wanita was. “I see,” he said, and steepled his fingers together on the desk. “Friend of yours?”
“Hardly. If you’ve read much about the trial, you’ll know what she did to me.”
“She testified against you in court.”
“She lied in court! She committed perjury.”
“Why did you go to see her, Kathryn?”
“To find out why she lied. I think somebody paid her. Somebody who wanted to put me away someplace where I wouldn’t be able to look too closely at what happened to Michael.”
He leaned back in his chair with a deep sigh and a pained expression. “Tell me you didn’t threaten her.”
“Of course I didn’t threaten her! Do I look like a complete fool? I gave her my phone number and told her to call me if anything of significance should occur to her.”
He looked up at the ceiling and said something in Italian that sounded suspiciously like a curse. “What the hell am I supposed do with you, McAllister? You’ve been in town for what
—
three days? Already, you’ve come within inches of being run down by a car, and now somebody’s trashed your house. What do you do for an encore?”
“For my encore,” she said, “I’m going to bag a killer.”
He gripped the edge of his desk. “I didn’t come to Elba, North Carolina, so I could spend my time baby-sitting some damn woman who’s too stupid to leave well enough alone!”
Incensed, she sprang to her feet. Swinging her purse strap over her shoulder, she said, “This interview, Chief DiSalvo, is over.”
“Sit down,” he said, “and shut up. It would be a damn shame if I had to go down to the morgue to identify your body, lying there on a cold slab like a piece of meat. I’m trying to prevent that from happening. But you’re making it damn difficult!”
She leaned over his desk. “What that woman did to me,” she said, “was unconscionable. In the midst of a media circus, she painted me as a cold, unfeeling harpy who drove her husband into another woman’s arms. It was a lie. It was all a pack of lies. Michael never touched her. He loved me.” She stabbed the tip of her index finger into her chest. “He loved
me
!”
Mildly, he said, “Nobody’s claiming he didn’t.”
“Wanita Crumley did. And the jury bought it. Hook, line, and sinker. The only possible reason she could have had for perjuring herself was if somebody put her up to it. And I intend to find out who that somebody was.”
“Even if it means putting yourself in jeopardy?”
“I’m on a mission, DiSalvo. They’re not going to scare me off.”
A half-hour later, he drove her home. The police had finished with the scene, and DiSalvo lingered until the locksmith arrived. “While you’re at it,” he said, “change the lock on the back door, too. I checked it earlier, and it’s a joke.”
He turned to Raelynn, who was standing with her arm around Kathryn’s waist. “Will you try to talk some sense into this crazy woman?” he said.
“Believe me, sugar, I’ve tried. But our little Kat is not a good listener.”