The nurse's steely gaze matched my own. "Sir, if you don't sit down, I'm going to call security."
I threw the phone back behind the counter. "Fine. As long as that man in there is not sent to another hospital." I flopped into a chair.
The electronic doors parted, and Jess's wife, Carol, along with a burly police detective, ran through the door.
"Marcus!" She hugged me briefly. "How is he?"
Before I could answer, the detective extended his hand.
"Marcus Henning? I’m Detective Mike Berrocco of the Jubilant Falls Police Department. While Mrs. Hoffman fills out the paperwork, I need to speak to you for a moment. Julie…" My favorite medico behind the counter looked up and smiled familiarly at the cop. "Toss me the keys to the conference room over here, will you?"
"Sure, Mike."
Berrocco deftly caught the keys and ushered me down the hall to an adjacent room; a single table and five chairs were the only furnishings. Berrocco swept a ragged array of dog-eared and coverless magazines to a corner of the table and slapped a notebook down in front of him.
"You got some pretty big brass ones, Mr. Henning," he smiled, trying to put me at ease. He slipped out of his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. "Our suspect is probably going to need five or six stitches himself."
"How's everyone else down at the paper?"
"A little shaken up, but that's understandable. I've got a couple patrolmen taking statements." Berrocco pulled a pipe from his jacket, tamping down the tobacco inside with his thumb.
"Is that why you called me in here?"
"No, Mr. Henning," Berrocco casually lit his pipe, sucking loudly on the stem until the embers glowed. "No. Does the name Grant Matthews mean anything to you?"
"Oh my God, yes! His ex-wife and I, we're—we used to—" My heart constricted, within my chest.
"I get the idea. Was it a nasty divorce? Big custody battle, or property settlement?"
"No, nothing like that."
"You weren't named in the divorce? No adultery, no hanky-panky while she was married?"
Not this marriage, I wanted to say. "They were only married a couple years, but he’d been charged with domestic violence at least once. She and I didn't get together until after everything was final. Why?"
"He's the man who assaulted Mr. Hoffman."
Suddenly, three images came together in my head: the goon who slammed me up against the elevator doors at Aurora Development, the unconscious face of Jess's assailant, and, a lifetime ago, at a country club dance, the image of a man glaring at a beautiful redhead who held silver shoes in one hand and a glass of champagne in another.
"That doesn't make any sense! Why would he be after Jess?"
"Hey, the newspaper sometimes writes stories people don't like." Berrocco shrugged. "Tell me what happened."
"I was ready to walk off my job. Jess was trying to stop me. This guy came up behind Jess and just swung."
"Anything else?"
I was silent for a moment. "Yes. I had one other run-in with the man you say is Grant Matthews. About six months ago, on a story." Briefly, I told him Elizabeth's story and my encounter with Matthews at the Aurora Development office, how he was the head goon in charge of collecting rents for Marian James and Lovey McNair. Finally, I told him about Marian's relationship to Kay, her offer of stock in Aurora Development following the major's death, and how the
Journal-Gazette
got hold of the documents for today's story.
"What was your relationship to Marian James?"
"She hated me. She couldn't stand it that I was seeing her daughter."
"This may seem a little bit far-fetched, but is it possible that Grant Matthews’ attack on Mr. Hoffman was a hit meant for you?"
Oh, God. I thought of the brick through Kay's living room window, and the room began to swim. No wonder she didn't want to tell the police! I lay my head down on the table, wanting to vomit.
"Mr. Henning, if Mr. Hoffman dies, Matthews could be looking at murder charges. These two old ladies you're telling me about could be charged with conspiracy to commit murder. Will you come down to the station and ID this guy? It sounds like we've got enough to keep the prosecuting attorney busy on this one for quite a while."
Why was this happening? Why did Matthews even have a job with Aurora Development, considering that he beat the hell out of the owner's daughter? Why would she reward him? Why didn't it make any sense?
At the station, Berrocco showed me into a small room with a one-way mirror, where we could observe Matthews being interrogated by two plainclothes detectives. Still handcuffed, Matthews was trying to sign a piece of paper in front of him. Once he had, the two detectives stepped out of the room. Looking around his surroundings like a caged baboon, he raised his handcuffed wrists to scratch his face. The black hair on the back of his knuckles triggered memories of me meeting the Aurora Development elevator doors up close and personal.
"That's our suspect, Mr. Henning. Can you identify him?"
Before I could answer, one of the plainclothes cops stuck his head in the door.
"Hey, Mike, this guy has just confessed to everything, and it's one hell of a story. ‘Course, his lawyer is on the phone screaming duress, but you know how that goes." The cop shrugged.
"Oh, yeah?"
"Yeah. He says it was a hit, meant for another guy. Claims two little old ladies wanted it done."
"Who?" I whirled around.
"Who's this?" The cop jabbed his thumb in my direction.
"I'm the other guy."
Berrocco nodded.
"The suspect claims it was two women named Marian James and Lovey McNair, who ordered the hit because of a story you were doing. They both wanted you off, but one of them wanted to also make you stop seeing her daughter, this guy's ex-wife."
I'm going to destroy her,
I thought.
So help me God, I'm going to ruin her. Nothing will stop me now.
* * *
This time, the big-city television stations wanted a piece of my story. Remote trucks from all three networks were right behind the two squad cars, as they pulled into the jail with Marian and Lovey. By that time, Martin Rathke was waiting to meet them there, along with some lacquer-haired TV news babe.
Marian was horrified, twisting her wrists against the handcuffs and cowering against the side of the escorting policewoman as photographers and cameramen closed in.
"Cower, you bitch," I hissed under my breath. "Cower and hope that I don't get hold of you before anyone else does."
Only McNair held her head high, whispering to Rathke as he fell in step beside her.
“Mrs. James, are you responsible for the condition of the apartments on East Grand?" The TV reporter stuck the microphone in Marian's face.
Rathke jumped in front of his client and shoved the microphone away. "Mrs. James and Mrs. McNair have no comment, at this time."
"Are you aware—" the reporter shoved her microphone at Marian again.
"I said no comment!" Rathke shoved her, knocking her against her cameraman and onto the hard cement. Rathke grabbed Marian by one arm, McNair by the other, and swept into the jail.
The reporter got up, dusted off her very attractive behind, and looked straight into the camera. "Did you get that Gordon? Are we rolling? Okay," she launched into her script. "There you have it ladies and gentlemen. Two of Jubilant Falls’ best-known philanthropists, charged with contempt of court for allegedly ignoring a court order and who police are now saying are responsible…"
I turned away in disgust. Jess was right. I didn't have the guts for this business.
Chapter 9 Marian
Ellen Nussey was at the house when I was arrested.
I was standing before the mirror in the foyer, adjusting my scarf when the bell rang, ready to drive to one of the Cincinnati malls for a day of shopping, a little reward for myself.
Despite a terrible scene with Kay over our investment property, she was seeing the stock gift for what it was: security for her and her children. I felt calmed and self-possessed all day, thinking how wonderful my plan had been working. I was protecting everyone's interests and providing for my daughter's financial stability.
Kay had said that that awful Marcus Henning was threatening to do a story exposing everything, but I didn’t see anything. Come to think of it, I didn’t see the newspaper yesterday afternoon at all.
"Novella, did we get a newspaper yesterday?"
The door chimes sounded before she could answer, their sonorous tones echoing around me.
"Novella, the door, please." I searched through the bottom of my handbag for a lipstick.
Novella appeared from the dining room, her feather duster tucked under her arm. She glared at me, as she opened the wide, front door.
"Mrs. James, Mrs. Nussey is here to see you."
I turned around again.
"Marian, I do hope you don't mind this intrusion." Ellen blew gracefully through my door, her gauzy skirt flowing behind her and her thoroughbred smile pasted perfectly in place. A heavy turquoise necklace lay on her artificially browned neck. "I was just in the neighborhood, and I simply couldn't pass by your house without telling you I don't think I can make it to card club next Tuesday."
Ellen fingered the turquoise stones, as if to call my attention to them. Ellen's ludicrous presumption of some kind of California casual lifestyle here in Ohio turned my stomach.
"It's not anything serious, is it?" I feigned concern. Most likely it was Ellen's youngest brat, Jameson. Nearly as old as Kay, he was still living at home, at least when he was sober. Jamie, as Ellen cloyingly referred to him, was always doing some sort of damage, to himself or his parents' property, or other peoples’ property. He had been in and out of detox units all his life. I was convinced it was Ellen's inability to control her son; she claimed he had a chemical imbalance.
"No, heaven's no.” Ellen smiled insipidly. "Jamie is bringing his children home for a short visit. Since he's been sober, the courts are allowing supervised visitation again. We just got word today."
Wonderful. The drug-abusing hoodlum bringing home his little bastards from the last slut he lived with outside of marriage, I thought. Let's have a celebration.
"Have you found someone to replace you?" I snapped the clasp on my purse. I didn't need to hear anymore about this illustrious brat. "We can't play without a fourth."
"Well, I was wondering if you knew anyone? Maybe Kay?"
"Kay doesn't play bridge."
Ellen's gaze wandered to the living room window. "Why, there's a police car pulling up your drive!"
"What? I wonder what's going on?" Two policemen stepped from the squad car and headed up the walk. "What could they want?"
"You know, it's funny how things run through your head at times like this, isn't it?" Ellen began to babble in fear, fingering the turquoise necklace nervously. "I was just thinking, ‘What could that boy have done now?’ But, of course, no one knows where I am. So the police couldn't know to come looking for me here, unless they were looking for my car and—"
The doorbell rang again, cutting her short.
"Novella!"
"No, no, I'm closer." Ellen jumped for the doorknob. "It probably really is about Jamie, anyway. Oh, I had such hopes of seeing my grandchildren today. Yes?"
Two policemen, one tall and lanky, the other squat and muscular, stood side by side on the stoop. "Mrs. Marian James?" The tall policeman asked, his Adam's apple bobbing.
Ellen sighed, visibly. "Oh my, no, I'm not Mrs. James. Please come in. I do hope it's nothing serious. Marian?"
My stomach sank to my feet, and my hands went numb. They've found you. After all these years, you've been hunted down like the demon you are, and they've found you. I straightened my shoulders and held my head high. "Yes, officers? What can I help you with?"
"Are you Marian James?"
"Yes, I am."
"Ma'am, we have a warrant for your arrest."
"What?"
"Yes ma'am. You've been charged with conspiracy in the attempted murder of Jesse Foster Hoffman."
Jesse Hoffman? The editor of the newspaper? My mind reeled with the impossibility of it. The voices always said they would find me. I have done terrible things, awful frightful things that would ruin everything I have ever worked so hard for. I deserved to be sent away forever for that.
But Jess Hoffman?
"You must be joking." Ellen's nervous laugh echoed through the entryway. "Mrs. James isn't a murderer, much less a conspirator. This must be some sick joke."
"No mistake, ma'am. The editor of the
Journal-Gazette
was assaulted in the newsroom early this morning, and the suspect in question fingered Mrs. James in the plan."
"I didn't, couldn't kill Jess Hoffman!" I stammered. "I killed—" then stopped.
It struck me: the confrontation with Lovey before Christmas. Lovey's plan to get Marcus Henning had not been called off. I needed to see Martin Rathke. Martin could fix this. Martin had gotten me out of scrapes before, quietly, and usually with a minimum of cash. This would certainly take more, but I had to protect my secret. If only Montgomery was still alive, none of this would ever have happened.
“Ma’am, if you’ll cooperate with us, we’ll let you walk to the squad car without cuffs.“
“I certainly will not!” I stood straighter and looked the flatfoot right in the eye. “I don’t know you, young man, but I know your boss, and he certainly would not allow this gross miscarriage of justice to be perpetrated on someone of my standing in the community.”
“Have it your way, ma’am.”
The short, squat officer grabbed my wrist and spun me around sharply, slapping handcuffs on me. He pulled a laminated card from his shirt pocket and began to read. "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can, and will, be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you."
I managed to gather myself together to present an imperious front, although I was shaking inside. "I demand that you remove these handcuffs! This is some sort of sick joke, some kind of perverse crank, and I demand that you release me this instant!"
"C'mon grandma, cut the act. We're going downtown." The muscular cop grabbed my arm and pulled me out the door.
"Ellen! Have Novella call Kay and Martin Rathke! Immediately!" I called out, as the policeman laid his heavy hand on my head and pushed me into the cruiser. The car door slammed shut, as Novella and Ellen stood slack-jawed at my front door. The car backed down the drive and into the street. I fell against the seat cushions in despair.
What was going on? Why hadn't Lovey listened to me?
My God, all of this in front of Ellen Nussey; she is to the Jubilant Falls Country Club what CNN is to the nation. I'll never be able to show my face again. I'm ruined! Martin, yes, Martin will fix this! He's got to! This has all got to be one big mistake. I never knew any specific details, so they can’t make anything stick. I got a thinly veiled threat over the phone, and I went right to Lovey with it.
Yes. That's it.
I had nothing to do with this.
Nothing at all.
Grant Matthews was responsible for all of this. Grant Matthews and Lovey McNair; it was all their doing, not mine. How could I ever get myself out of this mess? This is all one big mistake.
One horrible mistake.
Martin will see to it that everything gets ironed out.
The cruiser slowed down. Oh God, don't let me be seen by anyone I know. I lowered my head in mortification.
"Looks like they've got the other one," the shorter cop said, pointing.
I looked up to see the McNair's Tudor monstrosity to my left.
There, in front of the house, was another black-and-white police cruiser. I snapped to attention as the front door opened and two officers escorted an undaunted and imperious Lovey McNair to the squad car.
Editor Jess Hoffman. Had that vile reporter Marcus Henning been the target? Had he been injured? If he had, could it be tied to me?
Why hadn't I said anything to Kay? The more you know, the more it can be tied to you, Lovey had said. I really had known everything and done nothing about it. A silly letter, that theatrical conversation in Lovey's bedroom. If only Montgomery was still alive! Yes, Monty could have fixed it. He would have made sure all the charges were dropped, made sure everything was smoothed over with a minimum of fuss. But he wasn't; he was dead. Paul Armstrong was dead, too. Had my scheme to reconcile Kay and Paul succeeded, this would never have happened. And my parents, my parents! I loved my mother so much. I had to do it, though. I had to do it.
Why did everyone I love have to die?
Ma, no! It's not your fault. It's all mine! He told me it was! Said I made him! No Ma, put the gun! Put down the gun!
The police car slowed almost to a stop, long enough for me to watch Lovey regally survey her realm as she stepped into the police car. Her gaze extended to the street, blinking in sudden confusion as she recognized me. Suddenly, she lost her footing on her slate steps and stumbled. The two police officers on either side of her caught her before she fell and slid her bulky frame into the back seat. I turned my head away, in shame.
My cruiser accelerated gently, moving the car back into the line of traffic as the tall, thin driver picked up the radio microphone. "Dispatch, eleven-oh-one.”
"Eleven-oh-one, ten-two." The dispatcher's voice crackled, in response.
"We're ten-nineteen, ETA ten minutes, with a ten-fifteen, one Marian James. "
"Eleven-oh-one at oh-nine-forty-five hours.”
Montgomery would have never allowed this to happen.
Arriving downtown at the police station, I was photographed, fingerprinted and searched by a big lesbian-looking deputy, who patted me down in an all-too-familiar way. Afterwards, she led me down the hall to a plain, gray, cinder-block room. It was empty, except for a small, medical examining table.
"All females charged with felonies have to submit to a body cavity search, before being placed in a cell," she said flatly.
"What? You must be joking!"
"You heard me." The deputy folded her arms and stood beside the door. "The doc will be in here in a minute. Take off everything from the waste down, and get up on the table."
"Can't I have some privacy?" I pleaded.
"No, ma'am."
I cringed and turned my back, old familiar feelings of being hunted and trapped rising from deep inside me. Behind me, the door opened and closed. I heard the snap of a rubber glove. "What are you doing?" I asked.
"Relax, honey. This won't take long." A man's gruff voice, raspy from too many cigarettes, filled the room.
Someone nearby started screaming. I felt myself drift to the ceiling, free and child-like. Who was that lady on the floor? Ma, can you tell me? Why was she making all that noise? Why was she all curled up in the corner like that? Ma? Ma?
* * *
Everybody turned out for the funeral in that scrappy little West Virginia coal town where even Mr. Roosevelt's New Deal never seemed to reach far enough.
One by one, the mourners filed past my brothers and me at the churchyard gate, shaking our hands in turn, congratulating us on what a wonderful service it had been.
How wonderful and how sad.
Such a nice woman, your mother, they all told my brothers.
No one spoke to me, though, sixteen years old and painfully self-conscious in my borrowed, ill-fitting, black dress and the pair of heavy brogans that had belonged to my brothers.
Each person who passed looked at me as if I were some animal at the zoo, awkwardly taking my hand as if I would give him or her a disease, or something. Numb and alone, I heard my brothers respond with nods and thank-yous. Only the pastor looked me in the eye.
"Time will heal your wounds, Marian. Pray to God, and he will heal your heart."
I hung my head in shame. Only he knew the truth, that Ma had shot herself with Pa's big pistol when I told her what he been doing to me while she worked third shift at the cannery down the road.
"Thank you, Rev'rund. I'm sure she'll be just fine in a few days." My oldest brother Conrad, tall and lanky like Ma had been, looked so funny in Pa's best suit, his muscles bulging through the shoulders of the jacket, his sleeves rolled up to cover the shortness of the sleeves. Pa would have worn it, if he’d been sober enough to come. Since he hadn't, it was up to Conrad to stand up for him, and he done it real good.
The pastor laid his hand briefly on Conrad's shoulder and walked back into the white, frame church.
My other brothers, Jarred and Otis, older than me by two and three years, stood sulkily beside Conrad in the dirt road flecked with coal dust as the last of the mourners filed out. Jarred pointed down the road at a clump of women, gray as the coal town that surrounded them, standing together and whispering.
"Ole bitches. Ole two-faced bitches." He picked up a rock, ready to heave it at the group.
"Stop it, damn it," Conrad yanked the rock away from Jarred. "Just ignore 'em."
"Why you hafta tell?" Jarred turned on me. "If you o’ just kept your mouth shut, we still have her. She’d still be alive, if it wasn't for you!"
"Shut up, Jar…you doesn’t know what you're talkin' ‘bout!" Otis grabbed his shirtsleeves, swinging my brother around to face him. "You ain't laid there, night after night, hearin' what I heard!"
"We all heard it, Otis. We all heard it." Conrad, always the peacemaker, yanked my brothers apart with his strong hands. "I don't recollect either of you-uns ever doin' anything ‘bout it either, so just shut up."
"He’d killed all of us, Con, and you know it!" Jarred turned his anger on our brother. "We all know where he is now, too. He's down at Flagler's, drunker'n a skunk, if ole man Flagler hasn't already thrown him out."