Death Gets a Time-Out (36 page)

I considered for a moment stopping the questioning and telling Lilly to get a lawyer there immediately. I’m of the firm opinion that nobody—guilty or innocent—should ever talk to the police without the help of an attorney. There is just too much that can happen, too many things that can be said and misinterpreted. And goodness knows there was a hell of a lot more here than met the eye. I didn’t want the detective stumbling on any of the story before Lilly had time to decide, with an attorney, how and when to disclose it all. On the other hand, I didn’t want to make the detective think that Lilly might have anything to hide. I decided just to listen closely and put a halt to things if I felt they were treading on dangerous ground.

“We were having breakfast. He got a phone call and said he had to go meet someone,” Beverly said.

“But he didn’t say who it was that called him?” the detective asked.

She shook her head. “No. I mean, he said he needed to meet someone who had some information about a wetlands reclamation project he was involved in. He didn’t say who.”

My legs were beginning to ache, and I inched down to a sitting position. Lilly still held my hands in hers, but she’d lowered her head once more.

“What time did he leave?” the detective asked.

“I told you. I think around nine,” Beverly said. “Lilly, it was about nine o’clock, right?” Lilly didn’t reply. “I think it must have been around nine,” Beverly said. “Because Saraswathi came at nine-thirty.”

“And that’s the yoga teacher?” the detective said.

“Yes,” I said. He looked at me sharply, probably wondering why I knew so much about what was going on. I tried to smile reassuringly, but he wasn’t buying any of it.

“She came at nine-thirty, we had a ninety-minute class, Lilly and I took showers, and then at about twelve we had lunch,” Beverly said.

“You and Ms. Green?” the detective asked.

“And my staff.” Beverly waved in the direction of a group of three young men and an even younger woman standing in a far corner of the living room. I hadn’t noticed them before. They were all, every one of them, talking intently into their cell phones. “And Lilly’s assistant.”

“And after lunch?” the detective asked.

“I had work to do, so Lilly left us in the dining room.”

“Did any of you leave the room at any time?”

“No. I don’t think so. Someone may have gone to the bathroom. I don’t really remember. But we were working until . . . until you came to tell us what happened.” Beverly’s voice caught in her throat.

Lilly lifted her head. “Don’t you dare,” she whispered.

We all stared at her.

“Don’t you dare,” she said again. “Don’t you dare cry. Don’t you dare pretend you care that he’s dead.”

“Be quiet, Lilly,” Beverly said in a low, firm voice.

In the sudden silence, the only noise was the detective’s pen scritch-scratching across his pad.

“Don’t . . .” Lilly began again.

“Enough,” Beverly said. Lilly’s head sank back on her arms.

“And you, Ms. Green?” the detective said in the direction of Lilly’s prone form. “What did you do after lunch today?”

She didn’t answer, but I felt her hands grip mine more tightly.

The detective tried again. “Where did you spend the afternoon, Ms. Green?”

“She was with me,” a voice said. We all turned and saw one of the uniformed assistants standing near us. “She was with me,” she repeated.

“And you are?”

“Rochelle Abernathy. I work for Lilly. We were in her office. She had a stack of photos to personalize, and then we had a live online chat set up. That lasted about an hour.”

“A chat?” the detective said, obviously puzzled.

“On the computer. Fans write in questions and Lilly answers them.”

“And you were there together the entire time?”

“Yes.”

“Are there other people who can verify that?”

“The nannies, I guess. And the rest of the staff. Oh, and a bunch of people called on the phone, too.

“Who?”

“Her agent. Her business manager—she called twice.”

“Were you and Ms. Green together the entire afternoon?” the detective asked.

“Yes,” Rochelle said. “Up until you got here.”

Suddenly, Lilly sat up. “Juliet, I need to talk to you. Now. In my bedroom.”

“I’m afraid I need to ask you a few more questions, Ms. Green,” the detective said.

I stood up. “Come, Lilly, let’s go to your room.”

The detective put out his hand to stop me. “We’re going to need to go over this one more time.”

“Lilly, do you want to keep talking to this detective or would you like your lawyer to be present for any further discussion?”

She looked at me blankly for a moment and then seemed to understand what I was doing. “I want my lawyer,” she said. “I’m not going to talk to you anymore without my lawyer.”

Beverly stood up quickly. “Right. Right,” she said.

“Are you asking for a lawyer, too?” the detective asked her.

Beverly seemed to consider this for a moment. One of her aides, a young man wearing jeans and a sweater who managed to look imposing despite his casual attire, walked quickly across the room, talking as he approached. “I think the Speaker has been very cooperative, Detective. But it’s probably time now for the family to be left to their private sorrow.”

The detective stood up. “I’m going to need interviews with everyone who was here today,” he said.

“That’s fine,” the aide said. “Why don’t we do that at our office downtown. Do you have any objection to that?”

The detective agreed, and then, with a troubled glance at us, pulled a card out of his pocket. “I’ll just leave my number for you,” he said. The aide plucked it from his hand and ushered him and the other police officers out the door.

Lilly grabbed my hand and dragged me down the hall and up the stairs. When we got to her room, she shut the door behind us and leaned against the closed door. I stood in the middle of the room, facing her.

“I remember,” she whispered urgently. “I remember everything.”

“What?”

“I remember what happened.”

Suddenly, I realized what she was talking about. “To your mother? You remember what happened to Trudy-Ann?”

She nodded. Her eyes were glittering and her chest was rising and falling with her fast, sharp inhalations.

“It happened when I heard about Raymond. One of the maids came to get me. When I got out to the living room, Beverly was already talking to the police officers. I couldn’t hear what they were saying as I walked across the room, but then I heard one of her assistants, the girl, cry out. She had her hands over her mouth. One of the men kept saying to the cop, ‘Are you sure? Are you sure it’s him?’ I ran up. I think I was screaming, ‘What happened, what happened?’ The girl said, ‘Somebody shot Raymond. Somebody shot Raymond.’ And then I looked at my mother, at Beverly. She was standing absolutely still, and then she crumpled to the floor. She just collapsed, like her legs couldn’t support her. That’s when I saw it.”

“What did you see?”

“Like a picture in my mind. Absolutely clear. I saw what happened to my mother—to my real mother.” Lilly’s breath was coming even faster than before. Her entire body was shaking so hard that it was thumping against the door. I grasped both her shoulders and led her over to the bed. She sat down and then toppled over to one side. She curled up
into a tight ball. I sat down next to her and laid my hand on her still-quaking shoulder.

“What did you see, Lilly? What happened to Trudy-Ann?” I said urgently.

Her voice was soft, almost a monotone, and her eyes were squeezed tightly closed. “Jupiter and I were playing in the fountain. I remember he splashed me, and I was mad. I went inside. I was looking for my mother, to tell on him. I was in the hallway leading to her room, when I heard the shot. Like the loudest bang in the world. I was so scared of the noise. I ran the rest of the way to her room and saw her lying kind of half on, half off the bed. I reached out for her and put my hands on her chest. I thought there was a flower there. Like a red flower. Except it kept growing. And it was wet. I had my hands on her, and red just kept spreading and spreading all over her white nightgown.”

“Who else was in the room, Lilly? Who was in the room when you got there?”

“They were,” she whispered.

“Who?”

“Raymond was on the other side of the bed. I think . . . I think he was getting dressed. He was pulling on his pants. Beverly was in the middle of the room. I remember I had to push by her to get to my mother.”

“What was Beverly doing?”

“She was standing there, with her arm stretched out, like this.” Lilly flung one arm straight out, away from her body. “She had a gun in her hand.”

“Be quiet, Lilly.” Lilly and I both leapt at the sound of the voice. Beverly was standing in the doorway. Somehow she’d managed to open the door without us noticing. I had no idea how long she’d been standing there.

“I won’t. I won’t be quiet anymore,” Lilly whispered.

“No one will believe you,” Beverly said coldly.

Lilly sobbed. “Yes, yes they will,” she said.

Beverly shook her head. “No they won’t. Your memory is as changeable as the tide, you foolish girl.”

I stepped toward her, but she held up a warning hand. “None of this matters,” she said.

I shook my head at her. “I bet the cops will disagree. And the voters, too.”

She snorted. “You really think the death of some druggedout slut who slept with anyone who asked, some nasty little piece of work who couldn’t keep her hands off other women’s husbands, will make any difference at all to anyone?”

Her face was flushed now, and I stared at her. Thirty years later, she still hated the woman whom Raymond had been unable to resist.

She shook her head, as if shaking off her rage, and replaced it with a calm certainty that was all the more terrifying. “Anyway, whom do you think the police will believe? My stepdaughter with her history of mental illness, memory loss, and instability, or me? I’ll tell the police that she’s simply mistaken. That she’s remembering it all wrong.”

Lilly shook her head, but her eyes seemed to grow muddy and confused. “I remember . . . I do . . .” she said.

“How can you be sure?” Beverly asked, and laughed.

I put a protective arm around Lilly. “She’s sure,” I said.

“I am,” Lilly said again, but this time it was a question.

“No you’re not,” Beverly said, and this time her voice was soft and almost wheedling.

“I remember,” Lilly said, but all the certainty had drained from her voice. I had to put an end to it, before Beverly worked her malevolent magic on Lilly’s memory . . . again. I leapt to my feet, grabbed Beverly’s arm, and hauled her out of the room.

“Here’s my professional advice, Speaker. Get a lawyer,” I said.

She stared at me, and then turned and walked quickly down the hall.

I ran back into Lilly’s bedroom. Once again she lay curled up on her bed. I sat down and began stroking her back, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that the trauma of her father’s murder had caused Lilly to recover her memory of her mother’s death.
What she remembered was absolutely accurate—I was certain of it. Beverly had killed Trudy-Ann. But I would never be able to prove it.

I had watched Lilly’s confidence in her own memory dissipate like vapor when confronted with her formidable stepmother. Beverly would blame someone else for the murder, perhaps Raymond, who was conveniently unable to defend himself. Had she killed
him
, too? Had she killed Chloe? Given that she had rock-solid alibis for both murders, had she paid someone to kill for her? I considered the possibility. She’d committed one murder thirty years ago; she was the obvious suspect for the later ones. A murder-for-hire was the neat and easy solution to this puzzle. So why didn’t it seem like the right answer?

I wasn’t having any doubts about Beverly’s
emotional
capability to have paid someone to do her killing for her. Whatever moral compass she possessed quite obviously had profound self-interest as its true north. This was, after all, a woman who not only let a small child live a lifetime of crippling guilt, but also stepped into the shoes of the woman she’d murdered, even calling herself Lilly’s mother. No, Beverly Green was not a woman who would balk at murder to keep her secret. But neither was she a woman who would take the risk of hiring some unknown person to do the deed for her.

It may be easy to find some lunatic to kill for you—
Soldier of Fortune
magazine is available online, after all. But Beverly would know that one’s cyberfootsteps can be traced. She would understand that it was virtually impossible to hire a hit man without that person figuring out the identity of his employer. I couldn’t believe that she would have been willing to risk placing her secret into unknown—and untrustworthy—hands.

That left the possibility that she’d convinced someone she knew to murder on her behalf. Perhaps. I considered the aides who hovered around her, running her office and doing her bidding. But keeping the Speaker of the Assembly’s schedule was a far cry from helping her shoot her husband. No, I
couldn’t believe one of her employees would provide this service. A lover, maybe? Beverly was the least passionate, the coldest of women. Would she have a lover? None of this made any sense to me. But if it wasn’t Beverly who killed Chloe and Raymond, then who was it?

I looked down at Lilly. To my astonishment, she seemed to have fallen into a deep sleep. I tiptoed out of the room and down the stairs. I found Rochelle sitting alone in the living room.

“Where is Beverly?” I asked.

“The Speaker and her assistants left.”

I glanced around the silent, empty house, and raised my eyebrows.

“The kids are having dinner out in the pool house with the nannies,” she said. She bit her lip. “I hope it’s okay, but I called the bodyguards.”

“Bodyguards?”

“Lilly sometimes uses this firm of bodyguards. You know, like when there’s some weird fan parked outside the house or something? Anyway, I called them.”

I sat down next to Rochelle and said, “Good idea.”