In the Event of My Death (30 page)

“Why, Crystal?” she asked, trying to keep her increasingly raw voice firm. “Why did you kill Angie and Denise? Why do you want to kill Monica and me?”

“Because the Six of Hearts mined my life!” Crystal screamed. “Everything was wonderful for me. Then you lured me into that club. You forced me to take part in all those Satanic rituals. You made me dabble in evil. Evil! And who suffered? Any of you? No.
Me
. Only
me
!”

In spite of her fear and dropping body temperature, Laurel glared at Crystal. “What in the name of God are you talking about?”

“Everything has gone wrong for me. My parents died. The money was gone. Chuck flunked out of college. He couldn’t hold a job. I lost four babies.
Four
. And after all that, Chuck left me like some old dog he’d drop off at the pound.” She drew a long, shaking breath. “I was trying to hold on to my pride, my sanity. Then Angie called and begged me to come to New York for a visit. And I did.”

“You went to New York?” Laurel asked in surprise.

“Yeah. No one knew. Why would they? I didn’t have any friends around here who kept up with me, even after everything I’ve been through.”

Laurel felt a little rush of shame. Maybe none of this would be happening if she’d reached out to Crystal sooner. Then her shame vanished. Crystal had killed Faith thirteen years ago. It wasn’t neglect that motivated that murder. The instinct to get whatever she wanted, even if she had to kill for it, had been present in Crystal even then.

“So you went to New York.”

“Yes. Angie looked gorgeous. She was the star of a hit play. She’d divorced a rich man who made her a wealthy woman. She was engaged to another rich man, this one as handsome as Chuck. Judson Green. I never met him, but I saw his picture, I heard her on the phone with him. She only lived in part of her house, but it was beautiful. She took me to fancy restaurants, introduced me to her high-class friends. You should have seen how they fawned over her! But the way they looked at me…like I was a bag lady. One night at a cocktail party I wore my good black dress and pulled up my hair. I thought I looked sophisticated. Then a guy asked me to get him a fresh drink. They thought I was the maid! Angie
laughed
when I told her. Damn her, she
laughed
! When we got home and I was crying, she turned all sympathetic and said it was a shame everything had turned out so rotten for me. She just kept hammering away. ‘Why do I have so much when you’ve lost it all?’ she said about five times. ‘It’s
tragic
, Crystal. Of course I never believed Chuck would stay with you so long after your parents’ money was gone. But you’re better off without him, honey. He didn’t really love you. Everyone knew that.’”

Crystal’s voice had begun to shake with rage and grief. “When I saw all she had, all she was in spite of what she’d done with the Six of Hearts, I felt sick. I felt…murderous.” She paused, her voice drifting away. “I couldn’t let her live. I just couldn’t.”

“But if Judson knew you were visiting her when she was killed…”

“He was on a business trip when I stayed with her. I asked her not to mention my name. She just said ‘an old friend from Wheeling’ was visiting. She hinted it was a man. She got a big kick out of him being jealous. You know how she was—always playing games. I sat and watched her flirting with him on the phone, wearing her exquisite negligees just to get my goat, flashing that huge diamond engagement ring around. I watched and I planned. While I was there, I had copies of her keys made. Two weeks later, when I knew Judson was going to be gone on another trip, I went back. It only takes four hours to get from here to Manhattan, you know.”

“So you killed her and you mailed the Polaroids of Angie and the photos of Faith from New York.”

“Yes. I even sent a set to myself. My mailman is so damned nosy. He goes through all my mail. He could swear
I
got an envelope of photos from New York if it was necessary.”

Laurel hesitated. Should she bring up this next subject in front of Audra? She had to. She needed to buy time. “And Denise?”

“Looking at Angie just got me started. She wasn’t the only one who’d done well for herself in spite of everything. There was Denise married to a successful doctor. Living in that big house. Having
her
.” Crystal stepped closer and touched Audra’s cheek. The child flinched. “I lost all my babies,
all
of them, but Plain Jane Denise gave birth to this
beautiful
little girl, this angel. Audra should have been mine. She
will
be mine.”

So that’s why she’d taken Audra, Laurel thought. She intended to keep her. “I’m not yours!” Audra cried.

“Quiet, baby,” Crystal said gently. “You’ll be happy with me. I’m a born mother.”

Audra shook her head vehemently. “You killed my mommy! And you’re the one that came in my room dressed like a ghost. I remember your voice. You’re mean!”

Crystal’s eyes hardened. Laurel didn’t want her angry with the child. She was unstable enough to do anything, even to this little girl she supposedly wanted. “So you blame the Six of Hearts for the troubles you’ve suffered,” she said quickly.

Crystal’s gaze shifted to her. “My troubles all started that awful night. That’s why I always put the six and the heart and a judgment card near the bodies. So the rest of you would know you hadn’t escaped judgment for what you’d done.”

“What
we’d
done!” Laurel cried. “You’re the one who deliberately kicked over the lantern.”

“But I wouldn’t have done it if all of you hadn’t pulled me into that awful club. Satanic rituals. Calling up spirits and devils.”

“So that’s your argument?” Laurel asked. “‘The devil made me do it’?”

“Don’t make fun of me!” Crystal snarled. “There
is
evil in the world and it overcame me because I wasn’t as strong or as smart as the rest of you. You all knew that. You should have protected me!”

“You, the person who has killed four women and managed to cover her crimes, isn’t strong and smart?”

“I wasn’t strong and smart
then
, not when I kicked over the lantern. It was an impulse, an evil impulse, caused by demons Monica called forth!”

“Bullshit!”

Everyone jumped as Monica’s voice rang out. Somehow she’d managed to get the tape loose from her mouth. It dangled from one cheek. “In the first place, I didn’t call forth any demons, you idiot. Didn’t you know I was just making up those chants? I don’t know anything about Satanism, demonology, or witchcraft, white or black.”

“That’s not true!” Crystal shouted. “The chants were real!”

“No they
weren’t
. But even if they were, they have nothing to do with what you’ve done. You’ve never wanted to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Even when we were in school you blamed your low grades on teachers’ dislike, not on the fact that you never studied. When you lost that stupid cheerleading contest, you said it was because a girl on the other team was sleeping with a judge. Now you commit
murder
and blame it on demons I called forth with a bunch of mumbo jumbo. It was
jealousy!
You killed Faith, Angie, Denise, and even Joyce out of jealousy!”

“It’s not that simple!”

“Isn’t it? You just said you saw all that Angie had and snapped. The same thing happened with Denise. Faith was pregnant with Chuck’s child and you were afraid he’d marry her instead of you. Later Joyce got Chuck. By the way, how did you pull off that one? Call her and ask her to come to your house?”

Crystal’s mouth twisted slightly. “No. I
was
baby-sitting. Then I remembered I’d rushed out in such a hurry I hadn’t turned off the coffeemaker. I was on my way back over to the house when I saw her go in. First she takes my husband, then she just uses his keys and walks into
my
house like it’s her own. I was ready for her when she came out dressed in
my
coat.”

“Then you called me from the cell phone in her car,” Laurel said.

“Phone records, again,” Monica said. “She had to make it look like the killer was afraid of going back in Crystal’s house after he realized he’d made a mistake and killed someone else. After all, Crystal might walk in on him.”

“Why did you call me at all?” Laurel asked.

Crystal looked at her. “
I
didn’t want to be the one to find the body. It was so much better to have you find it, then see my shock when I came in the house and didn’t seem to know why you were there or what was going on.”

“The police searched your place, Crystal. They didn’t find any clothes with blood or a murder weapon,” Laurel said.

Crystal smiled slightly. “The Grants had a dog that died a couple of years ago. It had a nice big doghouse at the back of their yard. I stashed my clothes and the tire iron there. The rest of the time I kept my robe and wig and tire iron at the Pritchard farm. It seemed only fitting since this is where all the trouble started.” A look of regret crossed her face. “I had no idea Chuck would turn up at our house that night, or that Joyce’s children weren’t home all evening to give him a perfect alibi. I never wanted him to be a suspect. I don’t want to hurt him, you see. I just want him back.”

“But you weren’t afraid of becoming a suspect?”

“I thought I’d be cleared immediately. But Monica said the police are still suspicious of me. They think because I was just next door, I had plenty of time to kill Joyce and be back at the Grants’ to get their call at seven-thirty.” She shrugged. “The police are right. That’s why I had to act quickly. I don’t have time to be arrested.”

“How did you know she was with me?” Laurel asked.

“Wayne told me at the visitation. I did go, you know, just like I did to Angie’s. It was the proper thing to do.”

“You mean it
looked
like the proper thing to do.”

“Not just that. It was sort of fun to know they were lying in those closed caskets, never able to enjoy their wonderful lives again, while I was moving around talking, full of life, full of hope.”

“You make me sick,” Laurel spat.

“You should be nicer to me. I
had
planned to spare you.”

“To what do I owe that honor?”

“Because your life wasn’t a whole lot better than mine. Thirty. One big, broken romance. Finally another, obviously going nowhere. No children. Living in your parents’ house running their crummy little flower shop. You’re not even beautiful. Just a plain woman living alone with her two mongrel dogs. Pathetic, really.” Crystal paused. “But you were always nice to me.”

“Apparently not nice enough.”

“You were until you started messing around with Neil Kamrath. Even I can see his attraction to you. He’s famous, probably wealthy. And then you began asking too many questions, taking your job as amateur detective a little too seriously. You’re shrewder than I thought. You would have figured out things eventually.”

“But you tried to scare me earlier.”

“I had to. I couldn’t make you seem like the only Six of Hearts who wasn’t being terrorized so I started out by driving an old Chrysler New Yorker Chuck left in the garage out to Wilson Lodge and ramming your car on the way home. It’s what I brought you here in.” Crystal sighed and rubbed a hand across her forehead, as if she were clearing her thoughts. “I’m getting really tired of all this explaining. I’m cold, the child’s cold. I think it’s time to get on with things.”

2

Neil rolled over, punched his flabby feather pillow, and looked out the window at the snow. Or what he could see of it. His father had been too cheap to buy storm windows. Cobwebs of frost grew, blocking his view. He’d offered a hundred times to refurbish the old house, but his father refused to take money from the “trash” Neil wrote. His mother had sat here with him in this damp, cold place with her arthritis getting worse every year until she’d become a cripple. Then she died quickly in her sleep, no doubt in a bed as uncomfortable as this one. When his father went, Neil didn’t intend to sell the place. He would take the few mementos in it that mattered to him, then have the house demolished.

But it wasn’t thoughts of his parents, his dreary childhood, or his plans for the house that kept Neil awake. Something was wrong, something he couldn’t put his finger on. It wasn’t that Laurel hadn’t attended Denise’s visitation. Wayne explained she was taking care of Audra, which Neil thought was a good idea. Not seeing Kurt had seemed a bit odd because Kurt knew the Prices. But it wasn’t that, either. It was something someone had said, something strange, something “off,” something that didn’t add up. What the hell was it?

He tossed to the other side, beating on the pillow again. Good God, how long ago had geese lost these feathers? The turn of the century? He liked thick, fluffy pillows. He liked the sound of the ocean over the cliffs beside his house in Carmel. Dammit, he liked his house with all its windows and bright spaciousness. Minimalist, the decorator had called it. A perfect place for a woman and two frisky dogs.

Wait a minute, Kamrath, he thought. Just because he’d always liked Laurel and now found her the warmest, most interesting woman he’d ever known didn’t mean anything. She was attached to Kurt Rider. Besides, his wife and son had been dead less than a year. Still, the only times in those ten months when he’d felt really alive were his meetings with Laurel. He grinned. Two scandalous meetings in a fast-food restaurant. There was their talk at her shop, and another at the little cafe down the street. Then there was their rip-roaring evening at the Lewis sisters’ house when they had met Genevra Howard. That had been shocking and disturbing. It had also been exciting.

Funny, he thought. In some ways he felt like he knew Laurel better than he’d ever known Ellen. Ellen was like a spun-sugar figure—all pretty and dainty on the outside, hollow on the inside. But she had produced a miraculous child, a child Neil would miss until he died.

Who was it at the visitation who sympathized with him over the loss of Robbie? he wondered suddenly. He squinted, trying to see her face. “Always so tragic,” she’d said. “Sometimes I think it’s worse on the father than on the mother. Why, I remember…”