Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 105, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 640 & 641, March 1995

The Last Rendezvous by Joan Richter

Joan Richter debuted in EQMM in August of 1962 with two Department of First Stories entries. The author had been a creative writing student of Frederic Dannay, then editor of the magazine, and she went on to write several other fine stories for EQMM before a job with American Express in the 1980s sent her “rocketing around the world for the next ten years.” She returns to us after this long hiatus with a story that is longer and more complex than her earlier stories...

Detective Kenneth Reid looked around, taking in the spring growth of the Connecticut woods, the ferns and mountain laurel, the wild honeysuckle and the layers of white dogwood blossoms overhead. His friends called him Kentucky. He still had relatives there, but he didn’t visit often.

He remembered a woods like this when he was a kid. The thought held him for a while, but then he glanced back down at the wet ground, to where the body lay.

“Well, I suppose you couldn’t ask for a more peaceful place to die,” he said, wanting to break the silence.

Beside him Charlie Player turned. His face was pale. Kentucky had never noticed the young man’s freckles before, but he saw them now, like spatters of chocolate across his nose and cheeks. Kentucky waited, giving him time to pull it together. He was betting Player hadn’t seen many bodies.

“There was no peace in the way this guy went,” Player finally said.

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“I didn’t know a body had that much blood.”

Kentucky had thought that himself at first, but then he remembered last night’s rain. With the layers of leaves on the ground acting like an oiled cloth, holding the rain, it looked like the man was lying in a deep pool of blood.

Kentucky didn’t want to make anything big of it, but it wouldn’t be fair not to point it out. “Head wounds bleed a lot,” he said matter-of-factly, “but some of what’s here is rain water.”

Player nodded.

They looked around, careful not to disturb the scene. The medical examiner and his crew were on the way.

Then, for the experience, and to help him collect his thoughts, Kentucky had Player make some notes.

Detectives Kenneth Reid and Charlie Player respond to call from patrol car two. Possible murder victim, male, found in woods behind West Hills Golf Club.

Kentucky figured the man had been dead about twenty-four hours, which meant the murder took place sometime Sunday afternoon, maybe early evening. If it was murder, there was no mystery about the weapon. It was there right alongside the body, a golf club. It looked like a number two iron.

This was Cranford’s second murder in a year. If things kept up, they’d have to add more than a detective unit. They might even get around to getting us an unmarked car, Kentucky thought. He and Player had been on the job three months. Cranford hadn’t had an investigative unit before.

Two men from the medical examiner’s office arrived, but not the M.E. himself. He was away for a long weekend. Kentucky and Player hung around awhile, to hear the initial reactions and wait for the body to be identified.

The dead man’s car was parked in a pull-off a hundred yards back, on the dirt road. An insurance card in the glove compartment and a driver’s license in his wallet identified him as James Fullerton, 122 Oak Lane, Cranford.

Kentucky looked at Player. “He’s been here all night. It’s a wonder someone didn’t report him missing. Let’s go over to the Fullerton house and see what we find there.”

Player drove. Kentucky was still learning his way around Cranford, having just moved over from Hartford. Player had gone to Cranford High and knew a shortcut behind the football field that would get them to Oak Street. “I used to have a girl that lived on Oak. I looked her up as soon as I got back here, but she’s moved away.”

Sarah Fullerton locked up her shop at five-thirty and headed for home, making a quick stop at the supermarket for some lemons. She’d decided to make the sponge cake tonight for her book-club meeting tomorrow evening. If Valerie was still sick tomorrow, she wouldn’t get home in time.

It was awhile since Valerie’d had one of those headaches. Sarah wondered what had brought it on, but she hadn’t asked. With as much time as they spent together in the shop, it would have been easy to get too intimate and too involved in each other’s lives. Neither one of them wanted that.

Sarah wondered about Val, how come she’d never married. Not only was she attractive, but she had a sweet temperament, and she was smart. Tall and blond, she had a terrific figure and played tennis like a pro. She coached at the indoor court near Essex, where she’d worked before they opened the shop together. She was thirty-six.

Sarah was forty-three. Maybe her question about Val’s not marrying could be answered by her own seventeen-year marriage. It hadn’t been what she’d hoped for. Having the shop had finally given her the courage to end it. That was only two months ago, so she was still getting used to the idea, but at the same time she wished she hadn’t waited so long.

There were other things she had been slow at discovering — like herself. She knew that her hair was her best feature. “The color of polished chestnuts,” her father used to say. It had a wave to it, so with a good cut and a quick blow dry, she could look like she’d just left the beauty salon. Between that and the eye makeup Valerie had persuaded her to buy on their trip to New York, Sarah knew she looked better than she had in years.

She was thinking about that, and smiling to herself, as she looked out the window over the kitchen sink. She had just finished rinsing out the mixing bowl when she saw a police car slow down and pull up in front of her house. She wondered what that was all about. Maybe the alarm at the shop had gone off.

They introduced themselves as Detectives Kenneth Reid and Charlie Player, Cranford Police. They were wearing business suits. They showed her their badges.

“Are you Mrs. James Fullerton?” the older of the two asked.

“My husband and I are separated,” she said. “Sarah Fullerton is what I use now.” The older one had an interesting rugged face and soft gray eyes. The younger one was tall and lanky, and looked like he’d be a natural on a basketball court. He called the senior man Kentucky.

When she thought about it later, she was sure it must have happened differently, but the way she recalled it, Kentucky said they had come with some bad news. The next thing she heard was that Jim was dead.

Something else must have transpired, she was certain, but all she could remember was hearing herself say, “Come into the kitchen. I have a cake in the oven.”

The three of them were sitting at the kitchen table. She looked from one man to the other. Something in their expressions made her think they’d been sitting there for some time.

The windows were open, and she could hear the kids next door playing in the driveway. She’d started telling them about Cindy Clarke.

“She’s a flight attendant, and lives near the airport in Providence. Jim told me that’s where I could reach him. I’ve talked to him once, but I haven’t seen him since he left two months ago.”

Jim had given her Cindy Clarke’s address and phone number. In case of an emergency, is what he’d said.

“What kind of emergency did your husband have in mind?”

“Something like the furnace giving out, I suppose, but I wouldn’t have called him for that, not anymore.” It was Kentucky who had asked her that. She heard the soft accent in his voice now, and realized that he was from the South. The nickname suited him. “I’m sure Jim hadn’t thought about this kind of emergency.”

She knew she had begun to ramble, and that her voice sounded uneven, as though she were in a car going over a corrugated road. She pressed her lips together.

Kentucky shifted in his chair. “Mrs. Fullerton, how did you feel about your husband leaving you for another woman?”

She stared at him, trying to think of how she wanted to answer that. If she told him the truth, she would sound pathetic. Well, she had been. But she wasn’t now. “It wasn’t all that new.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Jim had a history of going with other women. He had a magic touch with women. He would listen to a woman and ask her questions and make her feel that what she said and thought were important. Most men don’t know how to do that, and a lot don’t care to. Combined with those blue eyes of his... well, it was hard for a woman not to fall for him.”

The younger detective made a kind of clicking sound with his tongue, and Sarah turned to look at him.

“Sorry, ma’am. That’s a bad habit I have.” He pushed his hair back off his forehead. “I was hearing what you said. That’s a lot to tolerate in a man. How did you manage it?”

She guessed it was a question a lot of people might ask.

“It wasn’t easy. But it was different after I opened my business. I don’t mean that Jim was different. I was. I had something else to occupy my mind, and his... his infidelity... didn’t bother me the way it had before.”

She looked away then and thought about the shop, and how important it had become to her. How exciting it was to unlock the door each morning and step inside, knowing that it was hers, something she had built from nothing. Of course, without Valerie it wouldn’t have happened. With Valerie’s encouragement she’d taken a wild idea and turned it into a successful business.

“What kind of business do you have, ma’am?” Charlie Player asked.

“It’s a shop on Bellevue. It’s called Once Is Not Enough. You’ve probably seen it. It’s a consignment clothes shop, across the street from Pierson’s Drug Store.”

She glanced down at the table and saw with surprise that her hand was cupped around a coffee mug. There was one in front of each of the detectives. She glanced toward the counter and saw the sponge cake cooling on a wire rack. The timer must have gone off, and when she’d gotten up to take the cake out of the oven, she’d made a pot of coffee.

Her voice was thready when she spoke again.

“I used to think that if I knew who Jim was involved with, I could have some control over it.”

She stopped, as abruptly as she’d started, not anxious to think about that period of her marriage, when she had taken to following him. That had been her lowest point. It made her skin creep to remember it.

Kentucky was looking at her, his gray eyes thoughtful.

“When I was first married I had a job with a printing company in Middletown, but the company moved to Baltimore. It couldn’t have come at a worse time. Jim had just taken up with someone and I was too dispirited to look for another job. I helped out at a church and I did some volunteer work at the hospital. I did that for years, but it wasn’t enough. Then I began to think about opening my own business.”

“What kind of a business did you say you have?” Kentucky asked.

“Well, it’s selling women’s clothes. With consignments you don’t need much capital to start up a business. And with clothes all you need is hangers and a place to hang them. We started out in a small store on Spring Street, near the railroad station, but we have a larger shop now, in the center of town. It’s turned into a good business. There are a lot of shops like ours opening up, all over the country. There was an article in the Sunday Times last month. There’s one in New York on Madison Avenue that’s been there for more than thirty years. Women don’t hang onto their clothes the way men do. But they can’t afford just to toss them out and buy new things. In shops like mine, one woman’s discard becomes another woman’s treasure.” She stopped and smiled apologetically.

“That was a long answer about my business,” she said and turned away, toward the window. It was getting dark. A breeze ruffled the curtains. Why was she talking so much? Her cheeks felt strangely cold. She touched them and discovered they were wet.

“I gave you her phone number, didn’t I? Cindy Clarke’s? This is going to be hard on her.” She swallowed to get her voice under control. “She needs to know. You’ll tell her, won’t you? I can’t do it. I’ve never met her. Jim told me she was twenty-eight. He was fifty last year.”

Kentucky cleared his throat. “We’ll be in touch with her, but we wanted to talk to you first. Do you know what airline she works for?”

“I think Jim said it was TransContinental.”

Sarah watched as he wrote that down, then looked up slowly and leaned toward her. “Mrs. Fullerton, you haven’t asked us how your husband died.”

She frowned. They had told her, hadn’t they? Had she just assumed it was a heart attack? “He was always worried about his heart. That’s the way his father died, and his older brother. I must have thought...”

Kentucky continued to study her, and for a moment it made her feel uncomfortable, but the feeling didn’t last long. His gaze was so steady she found herself wanting to hold onto it.

When he finally spoke, it was in a slow, even voice. “Your husband’s car was found early this afternoon on one of the roads in the woods near the West Hills Golf Club.”

She nodded. “He was a member of West Hills. He liked to play golf, and he liked the woods, especially when spring came. He used to park his car in one of the pull-offs and go to a place where there were a lot of dogwoods in bloom... He took me there before we were married.”

Kentucky interrupted her, his voice more firm than she had heard it before. “Mrs. Fullerton. This is going to be hard for you, but you have to hear it. Your husband died in those woods, the woods you just described, where all the dogwood is in bloom. But it doesn’t look as though he died of a heart attack. It looks as though he was murdered.”

She looked away from him and stared straight ahead. She closed her eyes. She wanted to shut out the scene — that secluded, special place where the dogwood bloomed. But there was nothing she could do to stop the images that moved across her mind. They were not new. She had lived with them for years. She had tried to push them down and layer them with other thoughts, but now they were fresh again. She brought her hand to her mouth and held back a moan.

“Ma’am.” Player’s voice startled her, her eyes flew open and her head jerked in his direction.

“Ma’am, what kind of work did your husband do?”

“He was an electrical engineer. He worked on contract.”

“Ma’am, did your husband have any men friends?”

“He got along with them in business. He golfed with some, but nobody close.”

“What about hobbies, ma’am? Was there anything special he liked to do?”

“He liked to repair things. He was a good carpenter. And he liked to read. Whenever he met somebody new, he would find out what they were interested in, or what kind of work they did. Then he’d go to the library and come back with books about it.”

“When you say somebody new, do you mean a new woman?” Charlie Player asked.

“Yes,” she said quietly, and looked toward the door, and realized she was seeing Jim right now, with a load of books in his arms.

There had been a wide range of subjects over the years — speech therapy, rocks and jewelry making, singing, genetics, pottery, nursing, and most recently the airline industry and passenger safety.

“Ma’am.” Player recalled her from her daydream. “Ma’am, your husband was killed sometime yesterday afternoon, maybe early evening.”

Sarah looked at the clock on the stove. It was six-thirty. It would be dark soon. Jim had been dead a whole day.

“We’ve already checked with the golf club. He hadn’t signed up to play yesterday, and no one remembers seeing him. Did your husband usually play golf on Sundays?”

“Usual isn’t a good word to describe Jim. Sometimes he played on Sundays.”

It was Kentucky who leaned toward her then, as soft-spoken as he had been before. “Ma’am, can you tell us where you were yesterday afternoon?”

Yesterday was Sunday, she had to remind herself. She’d gone to church in the morning. The service was at eleven. After that she and Pastor Bicks and his wife drove to Essex to a flower show. “We had planned to go to an afternoon movie, but Mrs. Bicks turned her ankle and we came back early. They dropped me off. I got home about four.”

“And what did you do then?”

“I stayed here, made some supper, watched Sixty Minutes, read the Sunday paper, and worked on the crossword puzzle.”

She was suddenly overwhelmingly tired. She leaned forward and rested her arms on the table, hugging her elbows. “I don’t mean to be rude, but I’d like to be alone now.”

Kentucky looked at Player and nodded. The two men rose. “Just one more thing. Do you know of anyone who would have a reason to kill your husband?”

She stared at him for a long moment and then shook her head. “I know what you’re asking me, but I didn’t know them all.”

It was almost dark when they pulled away from the Fullerton house. At the top of the incline of Oak Street Kentucky had to swerve to avoid a kid sailing out of a driveway on a skateboard. He thought of turning on the siren to give the boy a scare, but the kid was halfway down the hill already. There was no point in disturbing the quiet street.

“I’ll drop you off at the station, and then I’ll go on over to see the minister,” Kentucky said. “You give the girlfriend a call.”

“Sure. You don’t think the wife did it, do you?”

Kentucky shrugged. “You know the way it’s supposed to go. You start with the wife and then the girlfriend.”

“Yeah, I know that, but that isn’t what I asked you.”

“Well, the answer is I don’t know. The wife is always my first guess, and I suppose I’ll stay with that for now. It sounds like Sarah Fullerton had a whole harem full of reasons. But it’s too soon to tell. Let’s see what the minister and the girlfriend have to say. And there’s the lab we have to hear from.”

Player got out of the car, but didn’t close the door. He leaned back in, folding himself over the door. Kentucky stared, marveling at his contortion.

“What makes a nice woman like that stay with such a bum?” Player asked.

Kentucky shrugged. He used to ask those kinds of questions. He didn’t anymore. He’d gotten tired of not knowing the answers. “A lot of things. Security. Habit. Who knows?” He smiled. “Just because I’m at the half-century mark doesn’t mean I have all the answers.”

“Somehow I thought you did.” Player grinned, straightened, and was about to close the door.

“Hold it a minute,” Kentucky called out. “That was nice work you did back there, coming in with those questions about what her husband did for a living. I thought she’d frozen up on us for good. Changing the subject right quick like that got her unstuck and going again. Where’d you learn to do that?”

Player kept grinning. “I’ll tell you over a beer sometime.”

“I’ll remind you,” Kentucky said with a chuckle. “Get onto that stewardess now, and don’t forget to check her story with the airline.”

“Flight attendant,” Player said and shut the door.

The Presbyterian church was a red-brick building with a white steeple on Sycamore Avenue. Reverend Bicks and his wife lived in a small wood-frame house across from it. Kentucky hadn’t met them before. The minister came to the door.

“I heard Cranford had gotten itself a detective squad,” the minister said after Kentucky had introduced himself. He led the way into a small living room where there were lace curtains at the windows.

“Not a squad, exactly,” Kentucky said, hiding a smile. “There are just two of us. It’s something new Cranford is trying out. We just came on board three months ago.”

“So I heard. And it’s a good idea. Too bad, though. A few years ago there wouldn’t have been anything for you to do here. But with the city elements creeping in, things are different. Everyone locks their doors and windows now, and if you’re going to be away, you make sure somebody cuts your lawn.”

Kentucky nodded politely and then went directly to explaining the reason for his visit.

The minister shook his head. “I can’t say I was ever very fond of Jim Fullerton. My wife and I often wondered how Sarah put up with him. But murder, that’s something else again. Sarah’s a fine woman. She sure doesn’t deserve this kind of trouble.”

“Mrs. Fullerton said she spent yesterday afternoon with you and your wife.”

“Yes, that’s right. We went over to Essex. There was a flower show the ladies wanted to see. They were hoping to get some ideas for some new plantings for the front of the church. My wife tripped and sprained her ankle, and we came home early. She’s still resting it. The doctor strapped it up and told her to keep it elevated for a few days.”

“What time was it when you took Mrs. Fullerton home?”

“It was about three o’clock when we got back, but we didn’t take her home. She had her car in the parking lot behind the church.”

Sarah had watched the detectives drive up the hill, and then she closed the windows and drew the blinds. When she’d rinsed out the coffee mugs, she went into the living room and flipped the switch that turned on the lamps at each end of the sofa.

She wanted to go back over everything they had said, but she knew she would have trouble remembering it all.

She’d meant to ask them sooner than she had about just how Jim had died, but after she heard where his body had been found, her mind just shut down. It was Kentucky who told her. “Our guess is that it was a blow to the head,” he said.

It seemed he was going to leave it at that, but she pressed him for details.

“We’ll know more after the autopsy, but it looks as though it was a golf club.”

It had taken all the strength she had to control herself then, but now she sank back against the sofa pillows and closed her eyes and allowed herself to see it all. It was like opening an album of photographs that had been carefully framed, snapped, and then neatly pasted in proper sequence. No, it was more than that. Her memory had none of the limits of a camera lens.

It began with Jim driving her along the dirt road behind the golf course. It wasn’t much more than a fire lane, with woods on both sides. When he came to the pull-off, he braked slowly and then eased into it, careful not to get too close, not wanting to scratch the car. Then, with the engine stopped, the hush of the woods engulfed them, magnifying the sound of the car doors opening and closing. Louder still was the slam of the car trunk. Jim had gone into it to take the number two iron from his golf bag — in case of snakes. They would walk along the dirt road then, looking for an opening into the woods. All sound was muted by the soft moist earth, except for the occasional high note of a bird or the rustle of a squirrel. Around them was the heady scent of honeysuckle.

Jim chose a different way into the woods each time, not wanting to beat a path and mark it for someone else to find. When he found a place that suited him, he would take the lead and part the way, careful not to break any branches and leave telltale scars. In the spring the sap was running and the new growth was supple, but even so their movements were deliberate and slow, adding a high charge to the counterpoint of their racing pulses, eager to reach their destination.

Finally, they arrived at the secret place, that small protected glade encircled by dogwood in white bloom. Jim would take his final step and then, like an actor on a stage, turn and toss the golf club to the ground, reach out, and invite her into his arms.

The memory rose and swept over her with the force of a hurricane. She felt the tremble begin and tried to stop it, but it swelled and went on, rolling over her, out of control. She clutched herself and waited for the awful turbulence of longing and regret to pass, helplessly reliving the moment when their bodies touched. She cried out, and then at last began to sob.

At police headquarters Player dialed Cindy Clarke’s number for the third time. “Damn! She’s probably off on a trip.” He’d wanted to talk to her before he called the airline. Then on the fourth ring she answered, a throaty voice, breathing hard.

He almost said he liked her voice, but decided he’d better not. Instead he told her who he was and asked how come she didn’t have an answering machine.

“I hate coming back to a string of messages. I shut it off when I’m gone. If anyone really wants me, they’ll call again.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Say, who did you say you are? This is the kind of call I don’t need.”

“Sorry,” he said and told her again, “Detective Charlie Player.” He was glad Kentucky wasn’t hearing any of this. “I’m with the Cranford Police.”

“Are you collecting for the policeman’s ball or something?”

He laughed, but not too hard. He had to get on track and fast. “Say, I’ve started us off in a wrong direction. I’m afraid I’m calling with some bad news. It’s about James Fullerton...”

She went off like a rocket. A redhead, he’d bet. “What about Jim Fullerton? I kicked him out last Thursday. So whatever you have to say about him, I’m not interested.”

He took a breath and hoped she was ready for it. “I’m afraid the bad news is that he’s dead.”

For a moment all he heard was silence and then the throaty voice in a higher pitch. “You’re kidding. What happened to him?”

She sounded all right, but you could never tell. He’d take it slow. “We found him in the woods near the West Hills Golf Club. It looks as though he died sometime yesterday afternoon.”

There was a slight gasp that turned into a sour laugh. “Tell me if I have it right — all moss and ferns and mountain laurel and dogwood trees?”

“You’ve been there?”

“I’ve been there, and so has half the female population in the Northeast, probably. That’s where Jim tried to take my best friend while I was away. She told me when I came back. I kicked him out.”

Smart girl, he said to himself, and decided to go straight to the point. “Miss Clarke, where were you yesterday afternoon?”

“In San Francisco,” she said without a flinch. “My flight got into Providence an hour ago. Why are you asking me that?”

“Well, you see, it looks as though Jim Fullerton was murdered.”

“Murdered! And you think I...” He heard the beginning of another laugh, but it stopped midstream. For a while all he got was silence, and then he realized she was crying. He waited, giving her time. Even a louse deserves a tear, he supposed.

When she came back on the line, her voice was steady. “I’ve been acting like this is some kind of joke.”

“That was my fault,” he said.

“Well, maybe, but I gave you some room.” She paused. “Jim’s dead. I mean dead. Murdered... Don’t ask me why, but I suddenly thought of his wife and I just started to cry. I didn’t know he was married, not at first. I met him three months ago. He was on one of my flights from Chicago. He’d been at a convention. He really didn’t mean that much to me.”

Player listened to her take a deep breath and wondered if she was going to cry again, but instead she said, “I don’t know if his wife is going to want to hear this from me. But would you tell her how sorry I am?”

“I’ll do that,” he said. “Tell me, what was it about this guy that had you fall for him?”

“He was smart. He seemed to know about a lot of things. He was good at asking questions and then listening. I think maybe it was the listening that got to me. Not many people know how to listen. Men, particularly, aren’t good at that.”

Player had just finished checking out Cindy Clarke’s story with the airline when Kentucky walked into the room. He could tell from the brightness in his eyes that he had some news.

“I just talked to the lab. There were no identifiable prints on the golf club, except for Fullerton’s. Too bad, but no surprise.” He settled himself into the chair alongside Player’s desk. “His car made up for it, though. Enough prints and hair and makeup for a beauty parlor. That Fullerton was one busy boy.”

Player shook his head. “I don’t get a guy like that. All he was interested in was scoring?”

Kentucky shrugged. “Don’t look to me for answers on that. How did you make out with the girlfriend?”

“She wasn’t exactly bowled over when I told her he was dead. But she’s in the clear. She was in San Francisco. And that checks out with the airline.”

Kentucky nodded. “So that eliminates her. Did she have anything else to say?”

“It seems she and Fullerton parted company. She threw him out last week when she found out he’d been making moves on a friend of hers.” Player frowned. “I asked her what was so special about him. She said he was a good listener, and that most men weren’t. That gave me something to think about.”

“And what did you come up with?”

“Hell, I don’t know,” Player said, and leaned back in his chair. “What did the minister have to say?”

“The three of them all went to Essex together, just like Sarah said. But they didn’t bring her home. The pastor said her car was at the church, and they left her there at three o’clock.”

Player took a deep breath and blew out his cheeks. “So you think she lied to us?”

“We’ll have to find out about that,” Kentucky said, and Player wondered if he was disappointed. He’d had the feeling the old blue-grass bachelor might have been ready to strum his guitar for the lady.

Kentucky looked at his watch. “Let’s get on over there. If she still has her lights on, we’ll ring her doorbell. If not, we’ll wait until tomorrow. I’d sure like to hear what she has to say about this.”

Sarah had made herself some scrambled eggs for supper and was watching the news when Pastor Bicks called a second time. He asked her if she was sure she didn’t want him to come over. She thanked him, but said she’d rather be alone.

“If you change your mind, let me know,” he said and went on to talk about his visit from the police. “It’s the first time I met anyone from that investigation unit Cranford has now. I’d heard about it, but I hadn’t expected to be meeting them so soon. Detective Reid said there are just two of them. He seemed like a likeable fellow.”

“They were both here,” Sarah said. “The other one is very young. He looks like he could still be in high school.” They said goodbye soon after that and she sat by the phone, trying to decide whether to call Valerie. If it was one of those bad migraines, Val wouldn’t be out of it yet. Sarah decided to wait until the morning.

She thought about tomorrow. Kentucky had said they should have the autopsy report in the morning. After that the body would be released to the funeral home. She should stop thinking of him as Kentucky. It was too familiar. She’d have to close the shop for a few days.

In the living room she turned on WTFM, knowing she could get something soothing and soft there, then took the pad and pencil out of the desk drawer and looked at the list of names she had begun earlier.

She had stopped caring about Jim and his women, or at least that’s what she convinced herself she had to do. But it was always there — the knowing, hovering like a dark cloud, accompanied by wondering who it was. Who would be next?

Who had it been this time? Who had he taken to the woods yesterday? Had someone met him there? Or followed him?

She looked at the names she had written down. There were probably others that she didn’t remember, and some she had never even known about. She leaned back against the sofa and tried to think.

When the doorbell rang, she sat up with a start and realized that she had dozed off. It was almost ten o’clock. She was surprised they were coming this late. The pad and pencil slid off her lap onto the floor. She retrieved them and put them into the drawer. On her way to the door, she turned off the radio and stopped at the hallway mirror to smooth her hair. She was glad she’d thought to wash her face after supper and freshen her makeup.

“Sorry to bother you so late, Mrs. Fullerton,” Kentucky said. “We wouldn’t have, if your lights hadn’t been on, but since they were, we decided not to wait until morning.”

She led them into the living room, and motioned them into the two chairs across from the sofa.

After she had settled herself, Kentucky cleared his throat. “I’ll get right to the point. We talked to Cindy Clarke.”

She nodded. “I hoped that you would.”

“Actually it was Player who talked to her. He’ll tell you about it, but first I want to talk to you about the Reverend. You told us he and his wife dropped you off at your house at four.”

Sarah shook her head. “Did I? I’m sorry, I don’t exactly know what I said. I said a lot of things.” She felt herself flush.

“He told me you got back from Essex at three, that you had your car at the church.”

“That’s right. I drove there for the eleven o’clock service. We went to Essex in Pastor Bicks’s car. It was a good thing. We’d never have made it in mine.”

“How’s that, ma’am?” Player asked.

“I had no trouble getting it started, but I hadn’t gone a block when it began to lose power. I managed to get it to Jerry’s, on the corner of Bellevue and Maple. They’re open on Sundays, but only for gas, and only until four. The attendant said I could leave it there overnight and one of the mechanics would look at it in the morning. They had it fixed by nine-thirty today.”

“You were without a car the rest of Sunday?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

She saw the two of them exchange glances, as though they were surprised by her question.

“I guess we need to be more direct about this,” Kentucky said. He leaned forward, his gray eyes holding hers. “Did you kill your husband?”

She stared at him. “Kill Jim?” She sank back against the cushions. “I won’t say I hadn’t thought about it. But contemplating something is a long way from doing it. No, I didn’t kill him.”

She watched the expression on Kentucky’s face change, and she wondered if she was reading something into it that wasn’t there. He looked relieved. He turned then and nodded to Player, inviting him to take over.

“I talked to your husband’s girlfriend,” Player said. Ex-girlfriend, he thought, but he wouldn’t get into that. “She was in San Francisco yesterday, so we know she’s out of the picture.”

Sarah started to say something, but stopped when she saw Player move to the edge of the chair and awkwardly bend forward into the open spread of his bony knees, leaning toward her.

“Ma’am, you said the two of you never met — you and Cindy Clarke.”

“That’s right. She didn’t say we had?”

He shook his head. “Ma’am, there’s something I don’t understand. Your husband left you for Cindy Clarke. And yet you were concerned about her. You asked us to make sure we let her know what happened. Can you explain that to me?”

Sarah frowned. “I’m not sure what you want me to explain. I assume she loved him, or thought she did. He’d probably given her enough reason to think he felt the same way about her. He was good at that, making a woman feel like she was important to him. The only thing is, it never lasted. I knew that, but Cindy Clarke didn’t.”

She caught Kentucky studying her again. She didn’t quite understand the look on his face. It wasn’t Player’s puzzlement she saw there. He just seemed thoughtful.

“I just felt sorry for her,” she said, looking back at Player. “You see, she had nothing to do with Jim’s leaving me. That was Jim.”

She glanced at Kentucky. The lines around his gray eyes were more pronounced than earlier. It was late. She was tired. He must be, too. The younger man was still wound up. He had listened hard to what she had said, as though it were some complicated equation she was explaining.

“Ma’am, I hear what you’re saying. But I can’t imagine any women I know not wanting to claw each other’s eyes out in a situation like this.”

Sarah smiled. “Maybe you just watch more TV than I do.”

“Could be,” he said and smiled. “By the way, Cindy Clarke asked me to tell you she was sorry.”

Sarah took a deep breath and swallowed hard, holding back the threat of tears. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said. “The only thing I can say is Jim always seemed to pick nice women.”

They left soon after that, saying they would be in touch with her in the morning. She locked the door, returned to the living room, and stood there for a moment, looking around. The room felt empty. She turned on the radio again.

She was exhausted, but there were things she had to think about. She couldn’t go to bed yet. Where would the detectives go with their investigation? She imagined how long it might go on, and all the people they would want to question. One person would lead to another. She shrank at the thought of it. Cranford was a small town. How would she be able to stand the scrutiny, all the innuendo? And what about Valerie?

She went to the desk and took the pad from the drawer and tore off the top sheet. She stood there looking at the names she had written. There was one she hadn’t put down, even though it belonged there. So many of Jim’s love affairs had involved women she had known, and liked. Some had been her friends, whom he’d set about seducing.

With Valerie it had been different. Sarah had hardly known her. Val had lived in Saybrook then. They’d met briefly in the half-day orientation class for volunteers at Middle County Hospital, but afterwards they were assigned to different days. Sarah might never have known about Jim’s involvement with her if it hadn’t been for the books on pottery he had brought home. The one thing Sarah knew about Valerie was that she was an accomplished potter.

A few months after that, Sarah found herself sitting next to Valerie in the hospital van. They’d been asked to accompany Elvira Morris, a sweet, elderly woman, in her transfer to a nursing home.

If it hadn’t been for the pink volunteer jacket Valerie was wearing, Sarah would hardly have known her, and would have mistaken her for a patient. She was drawn and hollow-eyed. Sarah didn’t even have to guess at the cause. She knew. Jim had moved oh.

Fortunately she and Valerie had Mrs. Morris to deal with that day. The poor woman had been in the hospital two months, and was confused by having to move. Her closest family was a son living on the West Coast. The nursing home had suggested the move would be less traumatic for Mrs. Morris if someone she knew accompanied her to the home. As it turned out, Sarah and Valerie were her two favorite volunteers.

It was six months before Sarah saw Valerie again. But during that time she learned that the director of volunteers had noticed how bad Valerie looked, and had taken her under her wing and seen to it that Valerie got some counseling. Word was that Valerie was on the mend.

Then Sarah received a note from Mrs. Morris’s son. He was coming East for his mother’s eighty-fifth birthday and was having a small party. He hoped that Sarah could come.

Sarah went. Valerie was there. After that, they began visiting Mrs. Morris together. It was on their drives to the nursing home that Sarah began talking about wanting to start a small business.

They’d opened the shop three years ago. Sarah had never let on that she knew of Valerie’s affair with Jim, and as a result she talked about him as little as possible. They saw one another every weekday, but went in different directions on weekends. Valerie played tennis and Sarah had her own things to do. A few times a year they went into New York and stayed the weekend. They went to the theater and window-shopped along Madison and Fifth Avenues, staying in touch with the latest fashions. This August they were planning to take a trip together to Bermuda.

The shop was doing well and they enjoyed working together. Everything seemed to be going along fine, and then Jim had come after Valerie again.

Sarah saw it first in Valerie’s eyes, that drawn and haunted look of torment and despair. It was in Valerie’s face on Saturday, after they had closed the shop and stood in the parking lot behind the bank. There were no customers to distract them, only the intermittent glare of the sun in their faces as it shifted through the branches of a tall oak tree.

Sarah leaned her head back against the sofa cushions and wondered when Valerie had decided to do what she had done. Had it just happened, or had she made a careful plan? Had she gone with Jim or had she followed him there?

None of that mattered. What did was what would happen now. Would the detectives turn up evidence that would lead to Valerie? Sarah shuddered to think what that would mean.

The questions kept piling up and Sarah felt as though her head was about to burst. There was Jim’s death to deal with. She’d already told Pastor Bicks she wanted a simple burial, no service in a church that Jim had never attended. The minister hadn’t tried to persuade her otherwise.

What she needed now was sleep. She rose and went into the kitchen and stood by the sink. She switched on the garbage disposal and turned the water on. Then she tore the sheet of paper with all the names into tiny pieces and pushed them down the drain.

In Tony’s Pizza Palace, across from the police station, the two large pies Player had ordered arrived and took over the table. Kentucky surveyed them. “Any chance I get to take a slice home?”

“Only if I hold back,” Player said with a grin, popping a can of beer. “What do you think? Will we find out who did it?”

“It’s hard to tell,” Kentucky answered.

“Well, what would you guess?”

“I’m not much good at guessing. I talked to the lab. They said they’ll have something interesting to tell us tomorrow morning.”

“That’s cute. Why not tonight?”

“They’ve got their own way of handling things, and besides, the big boss is away. They may feel a little insecure.”

Player reached for a slice of pizza and Kentucky saw the steam rise. “Count to twenty,” he said. “My sister always did. She never burned her mouth, not once.”

“Thanks. I wish I’d had a sister. Three brothers is what I had, all bigger than me. They played football.” He let the slice dangle in his hand. “Any guesses on what the lab has?”

“I told you, I’m no good at guessing, but that doesn’t stop me from thinking. I don’t know how they could find much in those woods, not with all the rain last night. I suppose that love nest will be just like Fullerton’s car — another beauty parlor. Only God knows how many women he took there.”

Player tipped back his head and opened his mouth. Half the slice disappeared. When he’d, finished the rest of it, he looked at Kentucky. “Let me ask you something. Have you ever done it in the woods?”

“What kind of question is that?”

Player shrugged. “It’s just a question. It’s hard not to think about it, considering what we’ve been dealing with all day.”

Kentucky reached for his beer. “Well, suppose I answer you this way. You’ve got kind of a short season up here in the North. Where I come from the dogwoods bloom earlier and the season stays warmer a lot longer.”

Player let out a guffaw.

Sarah had awakened at six. She’d had her breakfast, taken a shower, and blown her hair dry. She listened to the weather report and decided on a dark-green suit and a silk blouse. She was putting on a pair of gold earrings when the phone rang. She picked it up on the second ring, trying to anticipate who it would be — Valerie, the police, or Pastor Bicks.

His voice had a deeper twang on the phone than in person. He started out by apologizing for calling so early.

“It isn’t so early,” she said. “I’ve been up for some time.”

He said he had something to tell her, and that she might want to sit down.

Sarah took his advice and sat on the edge of the bed. For the next two minutes she listened and didn’t say a word. When Kentucky was finished, her heart was racing so fast she thought it would fly right out of her chest.

She didn’t know where she managed to find her voice, but it came from somewhere. He’d said he couldn’t come over right then, which is why he called, but he wanted to stop by in the afternoon. She told him three o’clock would be fine.

When the phone was back in its cradle, she kept looking at it, taking deep breaths and trying to get herself under control. She had to get to Valerie, and fast.

She took a minute to think through what she had to say and then dialed her number. When Val answered, she plunged right in.

“Val, I’m not even going to ask how you feel. You’ll understand as soon as I tell you. Jim’s passed away.” She almost bit her tongue at those words. Somehow they didn’t quite describe what had happened. “He died of a heart attack.” It was important to get that out right away. “The police found him yesterday, in the woods behind the golf course. At first they suspected foul play. There were some bruises on his head, but the autopsy showed they weren’t the cause of his death. It was his heart.” She wanted to take a breath, but she didn’t dare.

“I’m going to need some help, Val. My head’s in a muddle. I need you to come over here. We need to close the shop for a few days. Then I want to go away. I thought instead of waiting until August to go to Bermuda, we could go now.” She stopped then, having said all she could think of saying. She hoped she’d covered it all. If Val started crying and talking about what had happened, she didn’t know what she would do.

“Val?” Sarah waited.

Then Val’s voice came on. “I’m on my way, Sarah.”

The sun was shining, and as Player pulled into the parking lot behind police headquarters, he was humming to himself. When he walked into the station house, the hum turned into a whistle. The desk clerk looked up and pointed toward the back room. “Your buddy’s been looking for you.”

He found Kentucky bent over his desk, studying a report. “What’s up? It’s only quarter to. We agreed to meet at nine.”

“I couldn’t sleep. Must have been all that pepperoni.” Kentucky motioned to the chair alongside his desk. “Have a seat. I’ve got a message for you.”

“What’s that?”

“That stewardess called this morning, early. She said she had to fly to San Francisco, so she can’t meet you at the Moonlight Mile tonight.”

Player slid down in the chair, clasped his hands behind his head, and stretched his legs out as far as they would go. “Say, why are you doing this to me? I thought we did okay yesterday.”

Kentucky nodded. “We did.”

Player sat up straight. “Well, then, I’ve had enough of your Southern wit. What’s the word on Jim Fullerton?”

“You’re not going to believe me when I tell you.”

“Try me.”

“They decided that the golf club didn’t do the damage. It was a rock, a sharp piece of Connecticut granite.”

“You mean someone hit him on the head with a rock?”

Kentucky shook his head. “The rock was in the ground. He fell on it and hit his head.”

“Jesus, Kentucky. Give me a break.”

“According to the medical examiner, the cause of death was a heart attack.”

“Say, cut it out. This isn’t funny anymore.”

“I’m serious. I said you wouldn’t believe me. Look for yourself. It’s right here in the autopsy report. Have a look.”

Player took the folder Kentucky handed him and read the top sheet. “I don’t believe this.”

“Well, I didn’t either, at first. But I do now. They figure Fullerton had the attack standing up and then fell forward. Under all those soft leaves was this sharp rock poking up. The head bruise didn’t kill him, although that’s the way it looked at first. The lab almost told us last night, but since everybody had been thinking murder, they wanted to be sure.”

“So that’s the end of it?”

“Yup. That’s it. Case closed. Of course, you might have some loose ends to tie up.”

“Me?”

“I was just kidding about the Moonlight Mile, but Cindy Clarke did call you. Here’s the number she left. She said she’d be at home tonight. She’s got a nice voice. Ask her if she ever sings blues.” Kentucky got up and stretched.

Player stared at him. “Did you tell her what the autopsy showed?”

“No, I thought I’d let you do that, just in case you run out of conversation.”

“Boy, are you on some kind of roll this morning. What about Mrs. Fullerton? Shouldn’t we go over and tell her?”

“I’ve already talked to her. Told her we couldn’t come over this morning. But I’d stop by this afternoon.”

“Just you?”

“Well, I thought so. Doesn’t take two of us, does it? Besides, I need some practice listening.”