Joanne Dobson - Karen Pelletier 05 - The Maltese Manuscript (24 page)

Somewhere in a tall oak, a crow cawed. I started and screeched.

“Karen! What?” Rachel remained in the cover of the woods. “Is she there?”

“No, she isn’t.” I reached for the door handle, then halted just before touching it. Better not. Fingerprints. I’d tampered with evidence enough already.

Trouble continued his olfactory investigation. When he paused at the rear of the car, Rachel gasped. “What if she’s in the trunk?”

“I think we’d…know.” But I pivoted and followed my footprints back to the librarian. “You have a cell phone?” My hands were still shaking as I pressed the buttons.

“Piotrowski.”

“It’s me.” I sucked in a deep breath. “Look, Charlie, I know you’re pissed at me, but this is very important.” Heavy silence. I waded through it. “I’m really worried. I found Peggy Briggs’ car—”

“Huh?”

“It’s in the woods near Elwood Munro’s house. It’s an old Citation. Orange. I’ve seen her in it a hundred times, but she’s not in it now.” I swallowed. “At least I don’t think so.” I gave him details of the location.

“Okay. We’re on our way.” There was a long pause, and then a heartfelt, “Thank you.” Another pause, and again, “Thank you for letting me know. And, Karen, I’m not even going to ask what the hell you’re doing up there.”

***

A person savvy about her health shouldn’t eat General Tso’s Chicken. And she shouldn’t feed it to a fine pedigreed dog. But it was Saturday evening, and we were both alone. Trouble lay on my living-room rug with his muzzle on his paws. Every five minutes he gave vent to a mighty sigh, longing for Sunnye. I sat in the old recliner, dipping chopsticks into my cardboard carton long after Trouble had gobbled the contents of his. I was longing for…God knows what.

Within minutes, a patrol car had arrived at the field where Rachel and I had found Peggy’s car, and I told my story to a hefty red-faced trooper who looked uncomfortable in a too-tight winter uniform. After a lengthy phone call, he returned to where we sat in the BMW. “The lieutenant says you can go now. He knows where to find you.”

Now, back at home, when I pushed the power button on the TV remote, the Six O’clock News flashed on the screen with as much urgency as if it actually had something crucial to impart to viewers. Voices and images flashed by in an impressionistic montage. My full attention was triggered only when the camera focused on Ms. Blow-Dry standing on the steps of Enfield College’s Emerson Hall. “Professor Karen Pelletier, is it true that you have been assisting investigators in the bizarre case of the murdered book thief?”

The screen switched to the image of a startled dark-haired woman in a long wool coat. “N…no comment,” she stammered. She looked guilty as hell.

I groaned. Any minute now the phone would start ringing, friends and colleagues on the scandal alert, making sure I didn’t miss my fifteen seconds of infamy.

The phone rang. I grabbed the cordless by my chair. “I know. I saw it.”

“Mom?
What
did you see?” Amanda sounded disconcerted.

“Sweetie! Nothing! Nothing at all. How
are
you?”

“Not so great.”

My heart sank. “Baby! What’s wrong?”

“I just got back from the infirmary. I have mononucleosis.” She dragged the word out to eight syllables. “That’s why I’ve been feeling so lousy this past couple of weeks.”

“Honey! I’ll come and get you! I’ll leave right this minute!”

“No, Mom. You don’t have to. Luke is gonna drive me home. He’s already gone to get the car.”

“Luke? Who’s Luke.”

“Just a guy.” I heard the call-waiting signal click. I ignored it.

“Just a guy? Or just a
guy
?”

“Mom, don’t start. I feel like shit.” The signal clicked again.

Another maternal failure. “I bet you do. I’m sorry. So, okay, you’ll be here by, what, midnight?”

“Around then. Oh, and Mom?”

“Yeah?”
Click.

“Can Luke sleep on the couch?”
The couch. Whew!
“I’ll get everything ready,” I assured her. “I love you, Sweetie.”

“Yeah, me too. You.”

I hung up, and the phone rang. I ignored it. Claudia Nestor was on the TV screen. Ms. Blow-Dry asked, “Can you tell our viewers how you feel about the detention for questioning by state police investigators of the crime novelist, Sunnye Hardcastle?” I thumbed the set off in the middle of some old footage of Sunnye doing an interview on Book TV.

Chapter Twenty

The Stop ‘N’ Shop was semi-deserted, and I sped through aisles, throwing food into the cart. Ginger ale, sherbet, crackers, noodles. Chicken: mother-love in plastic wrap. What was the recommended diet for mononucleosis, anyhow? I added chocolate-frosted cupcakes with cream filling to the cart. Those were for me; my daughter doesn’t eat junk food. I stopped at the mall and bought Amanda a Gap sleep shirt, then, when I got to the car, turned around, went back, and bought two more; it takes
weeks
to recover from mono. I went to Video Heaven and picked up her three favorite films, even popped into Bed, Bath, and Beyond for two new pillows. Still it was only nine o’clock when I arrived home.

What to do? Put the groceries away? Make up Amanda’s bed with fresh sheets? Run the vacuum? Clean the bathroom?

Mononucleosis? Mononucleosis? I didn’t know a damn thing about mononucleosis. Why hadn’t I become an M.D. instead of a useless Ph.D.?

Trouble met me at the door. He allowed me to pat him on the head. “Good dog,” I told him. What else can you say to one hundred and twenty pounds of tooth and muscle? I dumped the bags on the kitchen table and headed for the computer: Maybe I could learn something about mono on the Internet.

The phone rang before I could log on. I snatched it up. “Amanda?”

“No. It’s Sunnye.” The novelist was uncharacteristically subdued. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you all evening.”

My daughter’s illness had driven Sunnye Hardcastle from my mind. “Where are
you
?”

“I’m back at the Enfield Inn, but I’ve got to get out of here. Can you come get me? Those damn journalists are swarming the place.”

“The police let you go?”

“For now. But, Karen…” She paused. I could hear her swallow. “I’m in deep shit. They really do think I killed Elly. They told me not to leave the county.”

“God, Sunnye, I’m sorry.” Charlie and his team don’t make unfounded accusations. Was I crazy, helping her out? “Do you have a lawyer?”

“He’s on his way out from L.A. right now. And Merry will be up from New York in the morning.”

“Who’s Merry?”

“She’s my publicist. I’m gonna need big-time damage control. Can’t you see the headlines?
Hardcastle Gets Hard Time
.”

“Hmm.” The police suspect this woman of homicide, and she worries about P.R. What’s wrong with this picture? Then, all of a sudden, over the telephone line, I could hear the tough cookie crumble. “But for tonight…you said I could use your daughter’s room?…” She sounded like a homeless waif.

The silence on my side of the line must have gone on too long. Charlie’s admonition to stay out of his case was all too fresh in my mind.

The waif-like voice faltered. “Look, I can go to a motel.”

Her plaintive tones melted my resolve. “Actually, Sunnye, Amanda’s coming home, but I can put you up anyhow.” My house has three small bedrooms, and I’d converted one into a study. It has a lumpy futon. I could put Sunnye and her dog in my room, make up the futon for myself. Amanda could sleep in her own room, Luke—whoever he was—on the couch. What had been earlier this evening an empty shell of a house was quickly being transformed into Home Central.

I suppressed any qualms I might have about harboring a suspected murderer. Charlie doesn’t know everything. He’s skilled at what he does, but he’s not infallible. Sunnye might be abrasive, even obnoxious, but she was a good person. I’d read all her books. The creator of Kit Danger was no killer.

Right?

“Don’t worry, Sunnye. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Thanks. You’re a pal.” Her voice seemed to creak, as if she hadn’t said “thank you” in a long time. “When you get to the Inn, come around to the kitchen door. The staff’s going to smuggle me out that way.”

“Okay,” I said, “see you there.”

But Sunnye wasn’t ready to hang up. “And, oh, Karen… how’s my big boy?”

Huh? Her big boy? “Trouble’s fine. He’s right here.” The Rottweiler was panting at my elbow.

“Let me talk to him.”

“Talk to Trouble?”

“Yes. Please.”

I put the phone to the big dog’s ear. I could hear Sunnye’s voice echo faintly through the receiver: “Hey, sweet boy. Mommy’s coming home. See you soon.”

The dog’s muscular body quivered. “Ruff! RUFF!”

When I spoke into the phone again, Sunnye was gone.

***

The rescue operation went without a hitch. I drove my nondescript Subaru down the Enfield Inn’s rear drive, picked up a nondescript individual in dark-green work clothes toting a nondescript black plastic garbage bag. Trouble almost wriggled out of his skin greeting Sunnye. We exited the service road under the blind surveillance of the press.

“Thank God!” Sunnye exclaimed, as we turned north out of town. “And thank
you
, Karen. I won’t forget this. What can I do to repay you?” Sunnye looked exhausted, her fine features drawn and haggard. I wondered if she’d had any sleep at all since she’d left my house in police custody the night before.

“You can tell me what’s going on.” I flicked the turn indicator for a left onto Route 138.

She closed her eyes and sighed. “The police have physical evidence that places me at the scene of the crime.”

“But they know why you were there. I heard you tell them.”

“Why should they believe me? I don’t make a very credible witness, do I? Hardened scofflaw that I am. Unrepentant criminal trespasser.”

“Oh, Sunnye, speaking of trespass?” I recalled the notes I’d made about looking into her association with Munro. How could I ask her about other members of the Urban Explorers without letting her know what I was up to? I made the question as casual as possible. “Who else was in that explorer group?”

She didn’t bite. “Confidential. We take an oath.”

Dead end there.

She was still musing over her encounter with Massachusetts’ finest. “One of those cops asked me if I thought I was above the law. Like Kit Danger, he said.” She pulled down the visor, checked herself in the lighted mirror, then slapped it back up. Nope—not Kit Danger. “It didn’t help any when I said Kit wasn’t
above
the law, she was simply
outside
the law. That the law to her was a set of fictional constraints by which she chose not to imagine herself bound.”

“Jesus! Who’d you say that to? Piotrowski?”

“Yeah. The big guy that was at your house. The lieutenant. You know him, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes. You could say that. We’ve been…together…for a while.”

She regarded me soberly. “Karen, if you’re involved with this guy, I don’t want to get you in hot water with him. Just drop me off at some motel. I’ll register as Jane Doe.”

“No, for Chrissake! I do what I want to. You’re coming home with me.”

We drove through the Enfield outskirts. Smoke rose from chimneys. TV screens flickered in windows. Porch lights glowed. A peaceful evening in the New England countryside. Then I blurted out, “But, Sunnye, what on earth possessed you to smart off to Charlie Piotrowski about the law being a fiction!”

She grinned at me, sheepishly. “Well…I was quoting verbatim from one of the talks I heard at the conference—something about the
cultural imaginary
. The author said the law was a complex set of agreed-upon conventions by which we choose to imagine ourselves safe.”

“Ah, social constructivism.”

“Yeah? Well, the idea took my fancy, and, I thought, what the hell, it’s just scholarly claptrap, how much trouble could it get me in?” She checked herself in the mirror again. The lighted frame lent her tired features a greenish cast. She was not now Kit Danger, nor had she ever been. “Stupid, I know.”

I could picture Charlie’s reaction to her banter: The intelligent brown eyes widen for a mere second. The full lips purse. Then the official mask falls: The strong face negates all response. I sighed. A tidal wave of longing almost knocked me over.

“Well, Sunnye, you
are
a bit of a renegade.”

She took it as praise. “Damn right, I am.” She slapped her thigh in emphasis. In the confines of the small car, the impact sounded like a gun shot. Trouble jumped up and poked his dark muzzle into the front seat uneasily. She patted him. “And, Goddamn it, Karen, you should be, too. What good is life if you have to follow every fucking rule?”