Chapter 33
Beatrice had just gotten into bed when the doorbell rang.
“God, who could it be at ten-thirty?” she muttered.
Bea felt a stab of fear and reached for her pistol. She pulled off the safety. She didn��t know much these days, but one thing she did know: that was no ghost at her front door.
“Who is it?” Beatrice called to the door.
“It’s me, Bea. Bill,” the muffled voice said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said, opening the door. “What’s going on?” Her heart was racing, wondering about her daughter.
When she saw the dejected look on his face, she knew it was serious.
“Beatrice, she’s fine. She just kicked me out. I wish there were someplace else I could stay, but the hotel is filled. Can I stay here tonight?”
Beatrice stifled a laugh.
Vera kicked Bill out?
“Well,” she said, clearing her throat. “C’mon in, Bill.”
“Thanks,” he said, bringing in his bag.
“Good Lord, how long are you staying?”
“Well,” he said, looking at his bag. “I was still packed for the business trip. You see, I needed to get home ... and ...”
Beatrice watched her son-in-law of almost twenty years tripping over his words. She saw the sick pallor on him.
“Can I get you a sandwich?” she asked.
“I don’t want to be a bother.”
“Oh, heavens, it’s no bother. Was just thinking of getting myself one,” she told him. “You know, a little snack before bed. I’ve got some chocolate chip cookies here, too. Fresh batch.”
“I sure could use a bite. I don’t know when I last ate today. Maybe it was breakfast ... I don’t know.”
He sat down at her turquoise table as Beatrice fixed him a ham sandwich with mustard and mayonnaise—just the way she knew he liked it. She knew him almost as well as her own daughter did. She knew him so well that she had an immediate sense of foreboding as she handed him the sandwich.
“Must be serious,” she said, sitting down on the chair next to him. He suddenly looked old. How long had he had those gray hairs, those wrinkles at the corner of his eyes, those droopy eyelids?
He swallowed his first bite and shook his head. His lip started to quiver.
Good gracious, is he going to cry while sitting at my kitchen table?
Bea shifted around in her seat, her eyes dropping to the floor. Maybe he didn’t need to know she saw him cry. Then came the sob. She reached out and grabbed his hand.
“Now, Bill, it can’t be that bad. What has Vera done?”
His hand was clammy.
He looked her straight in the eye. “It’s not Vera. It’s me. And I can’t talk to you about this. It’s very personal. I don’t think Vera would appreciate it.”
Without realizing it, he just told Beatrice everything she needed to know—except the details.
Suddenly she felt a cold air sweeping over her. She pulled her robe tighter around her. “It’s so cold.”
“It’s not cold in here at all,” he told her.
“I must have a chill,” she said; then she smelled the rotten smell again, briefly. Her hand went to cover her mouth and nose—what a putrid scent—was this Maggie Rae? This smell? This cold? Suddenly the cold went, as did the smell, and her son-in-law was crouched next to her on the floor.
“Are you all right?” he said to her. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine now,” she said. “Just caught a chill, I guess.”
He sat back in the chair. “Now,” he said after a moment, “this is a damn fine ham sandwich.”
She cleared her throat. “Now, Bill, I’ve known you a long time. I’ve also known my daughter since before she was born. I’ve always wondered about you two. You’ve always seemed mismatched to me, but it’s really not my business.”
“I knew you felt that way. We both did.”
“I know Vera well enough to know that there are only a couple of things that would drive her to throw her husband out of the house. Cheating or murder. Maybe both.”
His mouth dropped open.
“You don’t need to know the details, but I’ve been putting this together, sitting here, right now. How did you know Maggie Rae?”
The smell, the cold. Of course, it was Maggie Rae.
He sighed. “I’ve been seeing her off and on for a few years.”
“And you told Vera tonight?”
“Yes. I had to. I’m now a suspect in the suicide-turned-murder case. I figured it was best that she hear it from me.”
“That was mighty decent,” she said with a sarcastic tone. “How is she?”
“She’s in bed. She won’t let me near the room.”
Beatrice stood up and headed for the phone.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to call her.”
“Let her sleep.”
“Do you really think she’s sleeping? Her husband of nearly twenty years comes home, tells her he’s been cheating and is a suspect in a murder case, and you think she’s sleeping?”
Some smart lawyer he is,
she thought, and grunted. He knew what she was thinking.
She dialed the phone. “Pick up, Vera.”
She hung up and dialed another number. “Scrapbook lady, you still partying over there? Can you come and pick me up? We need to go and see Vera. Well, now, don’t ask questions. Just come and get me, would you?”
“Now, Bea, does the whole town need to know about this?” Bill asked.
“I didn’t call the whole town, Bill. I called Sheila, who happens to be Vera’s best friend. I think she’s going to need us. Do you have something to say about it?”
“No, ma’am,” he told her.
“Now, Bill, this isn’t the worst thing to happen in the world,” she told him as she started up the steps. “She may be able to forgive you, someday. After all, she’s carrying your child.”
“You don’t understand,” Bill said. “Vera will never forgive me. She’s got too much pride. Damn. I just couldn’t help myself with Maggie. I didn’t love her. I swear. I just wanted ... sex ... to feel young and hot and sexy again. That’s it. It was just sex.”
Beatrice stopped in her tracks. “I hear you, Bill. I’m an old lady, so maybe my observations don’t mean a damn thing in this world. But it’s really never just sex, is it?”
“No,” he finally said. “I suppose you’re right. Things haven’t been right with us for a long time. There’s nothing wrong ... just not right. Do you know what I mean?”
Beatrice didn’t know what to say. Why did they stay together all these years? What held people in the same situations if they were not happy? If she could be blessed with another eighty years on the planet, she’d still never know. She loved her husband, and he loved her. Sex was never an issue. Neither was cheating nor murder.
“No, I can’t say as I know what you mean, Bill. But it seems to me that you’ve got bigger problems than my daughter if you’re under suspicion for murder.”
“That will resolve itself, I’m sure,” he said. “I’m innocent. I didn’t kill her. I left her around two. She died around four—just about the time I was getting on the plane. That’s a sound alibi. But they found my DNA on-site.”
Beatrice continued on her journey up the stairs. Sound alibi. Maybe he didn’t shoot Maggie Rae, but she had a feeling he may as well have.
Chapter 34
“Did you have to call him her
lover,
I mean right there in the newspaper for everybody and their brother to see?” Vera shot at Annie, who was sitting across the table from her. Annie’s first article had been published, both in the newspaper and online versions.
“Well, that’s what he was, dear,” Sheila spoke up. “You need to accept that. Everybody knows it. Just seeing it in print is hard.”
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Annie said after cutting a picture of Ben and reaching for the sticky dots to place on the back of the photo before sticking it on the paper.
“It’s humiliating,” Vera said, throwing her pen down on the table, which was covered in bits of paper, archival-grade colored pens, and photos.
“It’s more humiliating for him than for you. He’s made quite an ass of himself,” DeeAnn said.
“I never knew he wanted to ... you know ... ,” Vera began.
“Oh, now, don’t go down that road,” Sheila said.
“Yeah, really,” DeeAnn agreed.
“But I’ve been sleeping with the man for an eternity. He never once pinched me, slapped me, or asked me to let him tie me up. Nothing.”
Sheila smiled. “Listen to yourself, darling.”
Vera cracked a smile and laughed. “Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous.”
“It really does,” Annie said. “When it comes to human sexuality, well, it’s very complicated. I’ve been reading a lot about it. Part of the whole S and M thing is escape. We are different people with different lovers, that’s all.”
Still, Vera mused, why did Bill feel like he needed to sleep with Maggie Rae to wear that mask? Well, he knew Vera well—or at least he thought he did—and he knew she would not have submitted to him. But she would have at least liked to be asked—or even not asked—just for him to assert himself while in the act. That would have been decent.
Vera sighed. He was gone—out of the house, and almost out of her life, even as his baby grew within her. God, she hoped she was carrying a girl. She’d teach her to be strong and follow her dreams—no matter what fool of a man came along. Sort of like what Bea had tried to do with her.
But still, Bea knew nothing about the terminated pregnancy or how that unraveled her, nor how it had brought her and Bill together like two wounded birds, clinging for life. Or not for life. She realized recently that she’d been mourning the death of her first baby all of these years. Those right-to-lifers had no idea how difficult it was to go through an abortion, how hard it was to even come to the decision. But then once you did, how it haunted you. Tormented you. If they knew it, they’d realize, perhaps, how cruel they were. Still, if she hadn’t gotten the abortion, who knows what would have happened?
As it was, it seemed as if she’d wasted half her life with the wrong man, in the wrong town, with the wrong dream. Nothing left to do but move on and hope that her child would learn something from her life and not make the same mistakes. Maggie Rae’s husband, at least, knew who she was. After all these years, she found that Bill was a different person altogether. But Vera found out—quite by accident—that Robert supported Maggie Rae—up to a point.
It was the morning she’d gone for a drive after a restless night. She ended up at Harmony Bakery, on the outskirts of town, and bumped into Robert, who asked her to join him. She was too tired to argue and figured there was nothing wrong about sharing doughnuts and coffee with the man whose wife cheated with her husband.
“I knew she had boyfriends,” he told Vera after they started commiserating about their cheating spouses.
“Didn’t it bother you?” Vera asked him.
He shrugged. “I figured as long as she kept coming back to me, it was okay. It was better to be honest about it with each other than to lie, you know? She had this incredible drive. And that had nothing to do with me.”
“I think I admire your attitude, though I’m not sure I understand it,” Vera said after sipping her coffee. She wished she could find a way to change the subject gracefully. “I mean, the way I was brought up, sex is about love.”
“It should be,” he said, looking at her shyly. “Now,” he continued, “the only thing we ever really fought about was her writing.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I felt that she could really write. You know, Maggie Rae was gifted. Why she used her gift that way, well, it used to bother me,” he said.
“Still, it was what called her to write, yes?”
“Oh, yeah, I guess so. I just wish I could find her papers, cards, and things. Maybe it would explain some things to me.”
“Robert, we have them,” Vera blurted out.
“What? How?”
“We found them on the street the day she died, along with her scrapbooks. We rescued them and have been working on putting books together for your kids. We figured you didn’t want them.”
He looked perplexed. “I had no idea. How did they get on the street? I didn’t put them there.”
Vera shrugged.
And so the plot thickened.
“Why would you meet with him?” Sheila wanted to know. “He probably killed his wife.”
“We met to discuss Grace, at first. Then I felt more comfortable with him at the bakery. I mean we were out in public. After getting to know him, I don’t know about him killing Maggie Rae,” Vera said. “I’m not so sure anymore.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I can’t say, really. It’s just a feeling I have.”
“At least now we know he didn’t put her scrapbooks on the curb,” DeeAnn chimed in.
“Well, if he didn’t—and I’m not so sure I believe that—then who did?” Sheila asked.
“Perhaps the killer put them on the curb, but why?” Annie wondered. “Is there something in all that stuff that would implicate the killer?”
“Maybe it was Maggie Rae, herself,” Vera said.
“Or maybe it was Bill,” Annie said.
Vera looked daggers at her. “Okay. A week ago, I never would have imagined my husband in bed with another woman, I’ll give you that. But I know there’s no more surprises with Bill. I know he doesn’t have it in him to kill someone.”
“Maybe the S and M thing got out of hand. Not that people who are into S and M are also into guns and killing. But maybe the emotions of it all just sort of exploded,” DeeAnn said. “I’m sorry to say that, Vera. But it’s something you need to think about. Once the trial opens, who knows what they will dig up. Prepare yourself for anything.”
Vera’s blue-lined eyes grew wide with disbelief to hear such a thing coming out of DeeAnn’s mouth.
“That might be best,” Sheila said. “You know I’ve always loved Bill, like a brother. But I’ve always wondered about him.”
“What do you mean?” Vera asked.
“He was always a bit too placid. I always wondered what would happen if he lost his temper. You know, what’s underneath that calm, composed self of his.”
“That’s just who he is,” Vera said. “I’ve only seen him lose his temper once or twice the whole time I’ve known him.”
“Really?” Annie chimed in. “How long have you been married?”
“Almost twenty years, but I knew him all through college,” Vera said. “All right, now, I’m beginning to resent this line of questioning. How many of you could kill someone?”
She was met with an awkward silence.
“I think if we are all pushed hard enough, we are capable of murder. If someone hurt a member of my family ... ,” DeeAnn began.
“Now, that’s not what I’m talking about. Whoever killed Maggie Rae meant to do it. It was very personal. Bill doesn’t have it in him,” Vera said as the other women turned back to their scrapbooks.
“So, if Bill couldn’t kill someone, and you think that her husband didn’t do it, who did it? Leo? Zeb? I don’t know. The police questioned them, but were not able to hold them. They both have solid alibis. We are missing a huge piece of the puzzle,” Annie said.