“And then their plane went down. How did you manage that?”
“But I didn't do anything,” said Dora. “That's what this has been all about, don't you see? God struck down their plane with a bolt of lighting. At first I thought He was just teasing me further, giving death to everyone around me, while I had to go on. Then suddenly I realized that maybe He was showing me the way to redemption. There were now only a handful of people left between Atherton's fortune and all the good it could do. There was James.
And the two of you, the little girls. You must be all grown up, now, I knew. And there was Atherton Gale's daughter, Margaret. Your mother had mentioned her in the letter. She might still be alive, too.
“So you decided to kill all of us?”
“No,” said Dora. “I just saw what was possible. And I began to hope again. Then one night, after the funerals for the Gales, I found myself alone with James. He was more insufferable than ever. So smug that he was Atherton's only heir. He even told me how he intended to spend the Gale Trust after I died. Trips to Las Vegas. Condos in Florida. It was sickening. So I told him about you and your grandmother. I told him your names and that you lived in Pelletreau, North Carolina. I told him that he'd have to split everything with the three of you, that he'd be only a quarter as rich as he had thought.”
“But there were millions,” said Molly. “There was more than enough for everybody.”
“Twenty-five million dollars is a lot less than a hundred million,” said Dora. “Especially to someone like James, who'd had hardly anything all his life, who'd had to watch his relatives live in the kind of luxury he could only imagine. I knew how bitter and angry James was, how greedy, how stupid. I played on all his weaknesses. I told him he wasn't much of a Gale or much of a man. If Atherton were in his place, I said, he would figure out a way so he wouldn't have to split the money with anybody. But that's all I did. I didn't know what James would do. I simply put it all in God's hands to do with as He would. I let myself be His instrument. We are all His instruments. I didn't have any real power over James.”
“No,” said Molly. “You just put a poisonous seed in his mind and hoped it would grow.”
Dora bit her lip and nodded.
“When James told us he was going on a hunting trip down South,” she said, “I began checking the Pelletreau
Times-Picayune
Web site on the computer Russell got me. A few days later I found the obituary for Margaret Jellinek. After another week, there on the front page was the story of how you and your sister had been killed in an explosion.”
“It ⦠was ⦠Taffy,” rasped Nell from the chair. “Taffy ⦠and her friend.”
“Yes, obviously it wasn't the two of you who had died,” said Dora. “But I couldn't know that. I didn't need to check the Pelletreau newspaper any more. Now there was only James left, and I knew he was a murderer. God had indeed given me another chance. Killing James, executing a murderer, would not only serve justice, but by doing so I would assure that Atherton's money would do good after I was gone. And best of all, the poor woman I had shot, your mother, wouldn't have died in vain, as I had believed she had all these years.”
“So you killed Jimmy.”
Dora nodded.
“I drove down to his house that morning. The door was open. He was sitting there drinking a beer, watching cartoons on the television. Drinking a beer at ten oâclock in the morning, can you imagine? He didn't even look up when I came in, just mumbled, âWhat do you want?' The boy had no manners at all. âI want to make up for what I did seventeen years ago,' I said. âLook at me when I speak to you, James,' I said. When he looked up, I shot him. I'm a very good shot. My first husband, Mr. Bowslater, taught me. I thought that was the end of it. I was so relieved. The burden of what I had done so many years before lightened for the first time. Then, that very night, you and Nell appeared right at my door. I thought I would die.”
“That's why you had your attack,” said Molly, turning and looking at her sister. “You recognized Dora.”
Nell shrugged her shoulders.
“I just didn't want your mother to have died for nothing,” said Dora. “You must believe me, Molly. I didn't want to harm anyone else.”
“No, but it was all right if Jimmy did.”
“He was God's instrument, just as I was. Don't you see? I acted the only way I could. I had to do something to make up for all the evil Atherton had done in the world, all the misery and hate he had brought to everyone. There are millions and millions of dollars in the Gale Trust. How could I let it go to feed the base desires of people who didn't need it?”
Nell had begun to sob again. Molly went over to her and put an arm around her shoulder.
“I'm not a bad person, Molly,” said Dora, smiling a horrifyingly benign smile. “I didn't mean for your mother and your grandmother to die. I didn't want to hurt you and Nell, but you're the only ones left between the Gale Trust and the greater good. Don't you see? If I didn't kill you tonight, then everything would have been for nothing. All those people would have died for nothing.”
“But no one had to die. You were the one who decided that they had to die.”
“Every life has its purpose, Molly. We're not here to judge one another. Please try to see the larger picture and you'll understand. There's a greater good involved here and that was what I was trying to serve. You think about it, and you'll see I'm right. I did it for only the highest, most noble motive possible. I did it for charity.”
“What gets me,” said David Azaria, sipping a Coke a week later in Ralph's, the actor bar in New York City, “is how they could let her out on bail. Dora Gale killed your mother and your cousin Jimmy. She was responsible for the deaths of your grandmother and your friends in North Carolina, and then she tried to murder the two of you in your sleep. She's a menace to society.”
“She's ninety-three years old,” said Molly. “What purpose would there have been to hold her in some jail cell until her trial? Where is she going to go? What more harm can she do?”
It was ten to five on a Thursdayâlong past lunchtime but still a bit too early for dinner in New York. Ralph's was almost empty. The jukebox was silent. Molly and David, who had been to the Metropolitan Museum, had joined Tuck Wittington, who was killing time at Ralph's after an afternoon of commercial auditions. It was too late for David and Tuck to go home, but too early to go over to the theater for the night's show.
“So she's ninety-three, so what?” said David “Why should she be treated differently just because she's old? Dora Gale is every bit as much a killer as some kid who pops a gas station attendant
during a holdup. More, if you ask me. This is one of the reasons why I got out of the legal business. There's no justice.”
“Well, I certainly wouldn't have granted bail,” pronounced Tuck Wittington. “There's magnificent justice in my court.”
“You're an actor, Tuck,” said David. “You don't have a court.”
“Be that as it may,” replied the old elf, “I have a pronounced sense of right and wrong, and Margaret Jellinek happened to have been a friend of mine. How on earth did that horrible woman ever think she could get away with such behavior?”
“If Nell hadn't been there to stop her, she probably would have, that's the scary thing,” said David. “As it was, the case against her is very weak. Basically there's just Molly and Nell's word against hers. If Fishwig hadn't let her confess, she'd probably walk.”
“Troutwig,” said Molly. “And if it had been up to Mr. Troutwig, Dora wouldn't have confessed. He kept telling her not to say anything, but she insisted. She said she couldn't go on with all the deaths on her conscience.”
“And so he pleads temporary insanity and gets bail,” said David, shaking his head.
“She is insane,” said Molly. “She was going to kill Nell and me for the sake of the American Cancer Society and the Salvation Army. Not that those aren't worthy causes, but still ⦔
“That old lady was about as insane as I am,” said David with prosecutorial indignation. “Talk about premeditation! She had laced the tea you all drank with that stuff Russell had given her ⦔
“Melatonin,” said Molly.
“Melatonin, right, a natural sleep hormone that would have left no traces in the body. She had planted the idea in the nurse's mind that the back door had been left open, so some unknown killer could have snuck in. She even waited until she was sure her sons had solid alibis so they wouldn't be suspects.”
“Well, I think that Dora is going to experience almost perfect justice,” said Molly. “Gale Castle was already like a prison for her. She might live another twenty years for all we know. That's what she's most afraid of, she told me, and I have a feeling that's what will happen. God will make her live for years and years, alone in that place she hates, shunned now by the friends who had always admired her, waiting for hearings and trials, being examined by shrinks right and left, with the burden of all she's done on her conscience.”
“Well, if she lives long enough,” said David, “maybe North Carolina will extradite her for your mother's murder. Of course, there's not much of a case against her there, either, except for her having possession of the murder weapon. Fishwig will probably be able to fight that for years, too.”
The table fell silent for a moment. Molly tried to put the horrible picture of the police leading Dora away out of her mind by focusing on the memory of seeing Troutwig and Mrs. McCormick that same night surreptitiously kissing in an alcove behind a suit of armor. David sipped his Coke. Tuck admired his reflection in the mirror above the bar twenty feet away.
“I should have suspected Dora much earlier,” said Molly. “When she answered the door, Nell had one of her attacks. I should have seen right then.”
“I thought you said that the others all came to the door, too,” said David.
“Yes,” said Molly. “But I should have seen the pattern. I should have understood long ago what was setting Nell off. It was always little old ladies. Nell was having an attack every time she was surprised by a little old lady. Obviously it was from the trauma of seeing Dora shoot our mother. I just never made the connection. Nell didn't understand, either; I actually had to explain to her what had been happening.”
“Where is Nell, anyhow?” asked David.
“Keeping bad company, I see,” said Tuck, for at that very moment a group of dancers had entered Ralph's. You could tell they were dancers not only by their costumesââleotards, tight jeans, and dance bagsâbut also by the easy, athletic way they carried themselves. For a moment Molly couldn't pick Nell out among them, so well did she fit in.
The group made for a big table at the other side of the room, laughing and talking. Nell broke away and came over to the booth where Molly, David and Tuck sat.
“Guess what?” she said, beaming. “I got a job.”
Molly looked up, stunned.
“What job?”
“Road company revival of
Barnum.
I'm an actor.”
“You have lines?” said Tuck, incredulous.
Nell smiled and walked over to behind where Molly was sitting.
“A few,” she said happily. “Mostly I just juggle and do acrobatics. And dance.”
Her voice was stronger now, less raspy, but just as low. Molly didn't know why she should be surprised by Nell's soft North Carolina accent, but she was.
“It's a road company?” asked Molly, alarmed. “How long are you going to be gone?”
“Eight weeks, and maybe another eight after that if things work out. We're going to play at least twenty-two cites, some of them for only one night. Isn't it great?”
Nell threw her arms around Molly from behind.
“Yes,” muttered Molly. “That's really wonderful. I'm very happy for you. When do you leave?”
“Three weeks. We start rehearsals on Monday.”
“Ah, the actor's life for me,” said Tuck. “Pack plenty of reading
matter and a game of tiddlywinks is my advice to you. Life gets very boring out on the road. And the food is usually wretched.”
Molly tried to think of something clever to say, but couldn't speak. Something was ending here, something that she had never thought would end.
“I gotta go over and sit with my friends,” said Nell happily. “Hi, David.”
“Hi, yourself,” he replied, raising his Coke. “Congratulations.”
“Don't wait up for me tonight.”
“Where are you going?” asked Molly automatically, managing to find her voice. Since they had arrived in the city she and Nell had been staying at David's apartment, which wasn't nearly as big as he had claimed. The two sisters were sharing the bedroom and David was camped out on his sofa. It was a situation that couldn't continue, Molly knew. Apparently it wasn't going to if Nell was to leave in three weeks to go on tour. Molly felt a lump in her throat. It would be the first time the girls would have been separated since they were little. It would be the first time Molly would be alone with David.
“We're all going out to a club downtown,” said Nell, grinning broadly. “I'll be back real late. Maybe not at all.”
Molly wanted to stop her, to protect her from all the dangers that had to be waiting for a beautiful young woman out in the city, out in the world, but somehow that was no longer her job. It was time to let go.
“Have fun,” said Molly.
Nell winked her eye and trotted off, looking so vibrant and full of confidence that Molly could barely recognize her.
“Ah, youth,” said Tuck with a sigh. “I was young once, too, a hundred years ago. Happily, we elder statesmen have our charms, and if we're lucky we have gotten ourselves a steady Broadway gig
so we don't have to go out on the godforsaken road. Twenty-two cities in eight weeksâand she's excited about this! I think I'll go have a pee.”
Tuck rose solemnly from the table and floated off in the direction of the restrooms.
“Hi,” said David softly when he was gone.
“Hi, yourself,” Molly answered back.
“I liked how you handled that with Nell. I guess you've decided that the two of you can have lives of your own, after all.”
“I guess,” said Molly.
“She's a smart girl. And talented, obviously. She'll be fine.”
Molly nodded.
“So what are you going to do with all the money?” said David, staring at her with his big earnest brown eyes. “We haven't talked about that yet, and I don't want it to be a problem between us.”
“What money?”
“The Gale millions.”
“I don't ever want to see a nickel of that money,” said Molly, frowning. “My mother died because of it, and so did my friend, Taffy. I'll give it all to charity.”
“No, you won't. That would justify everything that Dora Gale has done. Maybe you could set up a little antique shop on Madison Avenue or something. You probably wouldn't be able to afford anything too big, though, not the way rents are in this town. Or you could become a Broadway angel, invest in shows. You'd go through the whole bundle in no time at all.”
“Well, I'm not going to worry about it now,” said Molly. “We won't have anything as long as Dora is alive.”
“You'll inherit sooner or later, though, and I think you should start thinking about ways to get rid of it. I don't like the idea of being a kept man.”
“What makes you think I'd keep you?”
“Oh, I just have a hunch,” he said. Under the table he gently placed a big hand on her knee.
Molly froze for a minute, then relaxed. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore. She placed her hand over David's and smiled in a way she didn't remember ever smiling before.
“You could be right,” she said quietly. “Anything is possible, I suppose.”