Copycat Killing

33

“Call Marcus Gordon,” Sam said to me without turning his head, but before I’d punched the number into my phone, Marcus had arrived anyway.

I walked across the yard to meet him. All I said was that Sam wanted to talk to him about what had happened the night Tom Karlsson disappeared. Sam should be able to tell the story his own way, I figured. I owed him at least that.

I stayed where I was, out of the way, as Marcus walked over to Sam and Pearl. Roma had moved a few steps away from them. Pearl stood with one hand on Sam’s arm. They were talking. I had no idea about what.

Marcus stopped to say something to Roma. He looked back at me for a second. Roma turned as well and then she came across the grass to me.

“I can’t believe Sam killed my father,” she said.

I put my arm around her shoulders, the same way Pearl had. “I’m not making excuses for Sam,” I said. “But he was young. He loved your mother.” I tipped my head to look at her. “And you.”

After Marcus had talked to Sam and Pearl for a couple of minutes, he moved away from them and pulled out his phone. Roma went back across the yard to her mother and they walked back to me, arm in arm.

“Wait here with Kathleen for just a minute,” Roma said to Pearl. “I’ll be right back.”

I assumed she was going to speak to Marcus, but instead she returned to Sam, who was half turned, staring out at the field behind the carriage house. Roma touched his arm and he swung around to look at her.

“How did you figure it all out?” Pearl said to me.

“Roma told me about ‘driving’ with Tom,” I said. “It was one of the few memories she had of him. She was so specific: turquoise bucket seats. I’d seen a picture of Tom’s car. I was thinking about what Roma had said and I remembered that Tom’s car didn’t have bucket seats.”

Pearl nodded. “No it didn’t.” She held her hands out, studying them as though she was looking for answers in the fine web of lines on her skin. “How could I not know, Kathleen?” she asked.

“You had no reason to think Tom was dead,” I said, gently. “Let alone that Sam had killed him. And you most likely had some kind of a concussion that night that mixed up your memory a little.”

She looked over at Sam and Roma, just as Roma put her arms around the older man and gave him an awkward hug. “I wonder how things would have been different if I’d returned Sam’s feelings.” Pearl said.

I reached for her hand and enfolded it in mine. “I don’t know,” I said. “My mother always says that doing one thing differently isn’t like pulling a single thread on a sweater and having the whole thing unravel. Our lives are a little more complicated than that. And if you’d done things differently there would be no Roma.” She was headed back to us, shoulders squared, head held high. “I like the world a whole lot better with Roma in it.”

Pearl smiled at me. “So do I.”

Roma and Pearl drove down to the police station and I followed them, mostly because it made me feel better. Roma hugged me in the parking lot and I told her I’d be at the library later if she needed me.

Hercules was waiting for me in the porch when I got home. I picked him up. “I feel bad about Sam,” I said. “He shouldn’t have killed Tom, or covered it up, but it makes me sad that he never got past his first love.” The cat nuzzled my neck. Across the backyard I could see Everett’s car in Rebecca’s driveway. Susan was covering for me at the library so I had time to fit the last piece of the puzzle into place.

I went upstairs and found the journal I wanted. Owen was in the kitchen when I came down. “I’m going to Rebecca’s,” I said. “Want to walk me over?” He made a beeline for the back door. Hercules decided to stay inside the porch on the bench where he could look out the window. He didn’t like a lot of “out” in his outdoors.

Owen led the way across the grass, making noise all the way. I said, “Uh huh,” at intervals just in case he was talking to me, although it occurred to me that I could have been agreeing to a month’s worth of catnip chickens or wild salmon for breakfast instead of cat food.

Owen headed for a spot in the sunshine in Rebecca’s gazebo and I knocked on the back door. She smiled when she saw me. “Hello Kathleen,” she said. “Everett and I were just having coffee. Do you have time to join us?”

“I do,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” she said. Then she noticed the diary I was carrying. “Did you find something you want to use?”

I looked at the hardbound journal. “There’s something I wanted to ask you about.”

“Come in, dear,” she said. She glanced past me, caught sight of Owen on the gazebo railing and waved at him. He bobbed his head in return.

Everett was sitting at Rebecca’s tiny kitchen table. His jacket was hanging on the back of the chair and his tie was loose. He got to his feet when I walked in.

“Hello, Kathleen,” he said. His eyes flicked to the journal.

Behind me Rebecca was pouring me a cup of coffee and cutting a piece of her cinnamon coffee cake; coffee at Rebecca’s never meant just coffee.

Once we were all seated at the table I turned to Everett. “I should tell you that Marcus Gordon will be in touch. In fact he may have already left a message with Lita. He knows what happened to Tom Karlsson, and how his body ended up out at Wisteria Hill.”

Everett’s eyes narrowed, but otherwise there was no change in his expression.

Rebecca’s face grew serious and she shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It turns out it was Sam.”

Rebecca looked at me, clearly surprised. “Sam? Sam Ingstrom?”

“Yes.”

“You’re certain?” Everett said.

I nodded.

I could see Everett relax, just slightly. “I’m glad it’s over,” he said. “For Roma and for Pearl.”

I could hear my heart pounding in both my ears and for a moment I thought about just drinking my coffee and going home. Then I thought about how Wisteria Hill’s secrets had hurt Roma.

Sam, Ellen, Anna, and who knows how many others had kept the secret of what happened to Tom to protect Roma and her mother. But it had hurt Roma when the truth was uncovered. The truth had a way of working itself to the surface, no matter how carefully it was buried, just like those bones had.

“What your mother was doing is going to come out,” I said to Everett. I had to put my hands in my lap because suddenly they were shaking.

I was never going to play poker with Everett Henderson, I promised myself. He had no tells. “You know about the knitting circle,” he said, picking up his coffee.

Rebecca looked from me to Everett. “What are you two talking about?”

He gestured at the diary, on the table between us. “I think Kathleen figured out that my mother was doing more than running the house and knitting blankets for the orphanage.”

“She was helping women whose husbands were hurting them,” I said.

Rebecca smiled again. “Oh that sounds like your mother,” she said. “And it explains some things my own mother did.” She looked at Everett. “She was involved, wasn’t she? She had to have been.”

“Yes,” I said, before he could answer.

“There’s something else, isn’t there?” Rebecca asked, her smile fading.

I waited for Everett to speak. To say no. To say yes. To say anything. But he didn’t. It seemed as though I was the one doing all the talking today.

I swallowed because there was suddenly a lump in my throat. “Rebecca, your mother helped Sam. She helped him bury Tom’s body and clean up. And she drove Tom’s car up to the highway. Sam had put a nail through his foot and he couldn’t manage the clutch.”

“I’ll talk to the county attorney,” Everett said immediately. “And Sam’s lawyer. It doesn’t have to come out.”

Rebecca shifted to look at him, her head on one side. “I want it to come out,” she said.

Everett’s mouth tightened and she reached across the table for his hand. “I’m proud of my mother,” she said. “Not that she broke the law, but for trying to help the people she cared about: Pearl, Roma, Sam.” She turned to face me. “There were no women’s shelters then. If your husband hit you, that was just part of life.”

She patted Everett’s hand. “I don’t need to be protected from what my mother did—good or bad.” She gestured at the journal. “I’m looking forward to reading what she wrote about it all.” She turned her attention to me again. “She did write about it, didn’t she?”

I didn’t look at Everett, but I could feel his eyes on me. “There are some pages missing,” I said.

“How did that happen?”

When I didn’t answer right away, Rebecca repeated her question.

“I cut them out,” Everett said.

She looked at him across the table. “Why?” There was nothing but curiosity in her voice.

He hesitated and I realized his reasons, even though I was pretty sure I knew what they were, were none of my business. I pushed my chair back from the table. “I’ll let you talk,” I said.

Rebecca touched my arm. “You don’t have to go anywhere, Kathleen,” she said. “I don’t have any secrets. Not anymore.”

Everett took a deep breath and let it out. “I found the journals after my mother died. I read them.” He pulled a hand over his face. “I missed you,” he added softly. “I’d heard rumors about my mother and I knew that she’d never said no to anyone in need, so it wasn’t that hard to figure out what she’d been doing and that she’d gotten your mother involved.” He stared down into his coffee, running one finger around the rim of the cup. “It took me a long time to read them all.” He looked up at Rebecca. “Ellen loved you.”

“You thought my mother killed Tom,” Rebecca said.

He nodded. “She wrote about burying the body, but nothing about Sam being involved. I was going to burn the journals, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. They were my connection to you. I put them back in the attic. I thought if I left everything the way it was, you wouldn’t ever have to know.”

“Were you going to leave Wisteria Hill empty forever? So no one would find Tom’s body?” she asked.

“If I had to,” he said.

“You could have told me the truth.”

Everett pushed his cup away and shook his head. “Tell you your mother killed someone? No. I wouldn’t hurt you that way.”

“No more secrets,” Rebecca said. “Do you understand? A secret kept us apart for a long, long time. I’m not ever going to let that happen again.”

She covered the hand on his coffee mug with hers and she turned her head toward me. “No more secrets, Kathleen,” she said. “Tell the whole story.”

“All right,” I said. “We’ll go through the journals together. I’ll call you later.”

“Thank you,” she said.

I nodded, touching her shoulder as I left.

I walked back across the yard to my house. Everett and Rebecca had looked at each other with so much love I couldn’t help feeling just a tiny pinch of envy.