Daughter of Ashes

FIFTEEN

‘On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates.’

Alexander Pope, ‘Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady,’ 1717

After Sheriff Andy Hubbard and two deputies arrived, nobody was allowed to go home until somebody – perhaps Tina, the young woman in charge at the gate – pointed out that there was a complete guest list.

The main gates to the Barfield estate had been closed, and an officer posted at the end of the dock to prevent anyone who’d come to the party by boat or jet ski from leaving the same way. Paul and I had been herded into the area near the bandstand, supernaturally quiet now, the instruments returned to their cases, the musicians sprawling in lounge chairs around the swimming pool, smoking and talking quietly.

Only the police and the bartenders were busy.

‘What were you and Kendall taking about?’ I asked Paul as we drank club soda with lime and waited for official instructions.

‘She was apologizing for the snafu over the Wicomico house,’ he said. ‘Laid the confusion right on Caitlyn’s doorstep. Blamed it on her failure to communicate. Caitlyn’s always going off half-cocked, it seems. This has happened before – she wonders why she even keeps the woman on, yadda yadda yadda.’

‘Did you believe her?’

‘Not for a moment,’ Paul replied. ‘All the time she was talking to me, I was studying her eyes. I’d seen that look before, on the faces of midshipmen trying to explain why their papers were going to be late.’

As Paul talked, I’d been scanning the yard. For the first time, I noticed the security cameras – on the top of the main gate, on the corners of the house near the downspouts, behind one of the cabanas overlooking the swimming pool, in a tree aimed at the dock. I pointed at that one, my heart hammering. ‘They’ll see you talking to her, Paul.’

‘But they’ll also see that it was an entirely friendly conversation.’ Paul smiled, then put on his Humphrey Bogart voice, ‘I’d do just about anything for you, sweetheart, but bumping off a pesky real estate agent isn’t one of them.’

‘I feel bad about all the snarky things I said about her, and now here I am at her party, drinking a dead woman’s wine, and I never even talked to her. Not even once.’

‘Well,’ my husband said reasonably. ‘Now you won’t have to.’

Eventually, after asking us the briefest of questions: ‘When was the last time you saw Kendall Barfield? Did you notice anything unusual?’ the police let us go.

As partygoers trickled out the gates, far more somberly than they had come in, Tina stood on one side, ticked names off the list and – incredibly – continued to hand out the bags of party favors. Just past the checkpoint, a deputy passed out business cards, instructing us to call if we thought of anything important.

As we walked together down the drive toward the field where our cars were parked, Paul took my hand. ‘Who do you think hated Kendall enough to do that to her?’

‘I wasn’t serious about wanting Kendall dead,’ I said.

‘I know that, Hannah,’ he replied.

I paused and looked sideways at my husband. ‘Do you think the police will hear about my rantings and take them seriously?’

‘No, I don’t. But maybe the next time somebody pisses you off you will be more circumspect when discussing the extent of your displeasure with relative strangers.’

We had reached the parking lot. Stepping carefully over the ruts that countless tires had torn into the turf, we wound our way through the sea of cars, looking for ours. ‘Where the heck…?’ Paul began, then remembered the car keys and fished them out of his pocket. He punched the unlock button and was rewarded with a beep and a flash of headlights from our Volvo several rows away.

‘We can safely eliminate Rusty,’ I said, returning to Paul’s earlier question. ‘He’s still in a coma. Grace is probably out as well. As far as I know, she’s still sitting at Rusty’s bedside, and that certainly would be easy to check. Caitlyn has a good motive, but honestly, I talked with her a lot today, off and on, and I don’t see how she would have had the time to slip away and strangle her boss, much as she may have wanted to.’

As we walked, I had the creepy feeling I was being watched. Paul was several steps ahead of me by this time, aiming the keys at the trunk, jabbing the button to pop it open. I glanced around uneasily, but all I noticed were other party guests streaming out of the gates, making their way toward their vehicles.

‘Did you see Dwight at the party?’ I asked as I tucked my goodie bag into the trunk next to Paul’s. And then I froze, realizing what had been staring me down, boring into my subconscious with its chrome headlights: a lean, mean, black sports car in the next row over.

I pointed the car out to Paul. ‘What kind of car is that?’

‘A late-model Mustang. Why?’

I flashed back to the day of Rusty’s ‘accident.’ To the black car that had borne down on me, filling my rearview mirror with menace. This vehicle had tinted windows, too. I lowered my voice. ‘That’s the car that hit Rusty.’

It wouldn’t have taken much force, perhaps only a tap, for a sports car like the Mustang to knock a motorcycle off the road. And the evidence was there, too, if you were looking for it. I moved in for a closer look.

‘Are you sure?’ Paul asked.

‘Positive.’ I pointed out the damage to my husband: a dent in the right front quarter panel, a scrape of black paint on the bumper. ‘Don’t you think it’s odd that the car that ran Rusty off the road is parked here at Kendall’s on the very day that she gets murdered?’

Paul wrapped an arm around my shoulders. ‘But who would want both Rusty and Kendall dead?’

‘From what I’ve been hearing, Rusty barely talks to his biological mother…’ I paused, leaning into him. ‘There’s a link, I feel it.’

‘Find out who owns this vehicle, then perhaps all will be made clear,’ Paul said.

All around us people were climbing into their vehicles and driving away. Before long we’d be the only car left in the row. Quickly, before the driver of the Mustang could return and see me doing it, I jotted down the license number.

‘I’ll be right back,’ I said and jogged away, back through the gates of the Barfield estate, looking for Sheriff Hubbard.

When I returned, Paul was waiting for me in the car. ‘Success?’ he asked as I slid into the passenger seat.

‘Step one,’ I said. ‘Now for step two.’ I convinced him to sit in the car with the air conditioner running, hoping to identify the owner of the Mustang when he – or she – left the party.

Twenty minutes later, though, even the van carrying the band had packed up and gotten out of Dodge. The parking lot stood empty of all but the police vehicles and a dozen private cars, including the Mustang. Paul convinced me it was time to go. ‘Sorry that hanging around longer didn’t answer your question,’ he said.

‘Au contraire,’ I told him as he aimed the Volvo down the drive toward the main road. ‘It tells me that whoever was driving that Mustang was either family, or an employee.’

‘Or both,’ Paul added.