Chapter Nineteen
Jase dropped me off at Pia's house while Pia stayed behind at the gallery with my mother and Giorgio who were trying to fulfill Jase's request to find any pictures of some of the stolen artwork. They intended to perform a search not only at Zoe's home, but at Cat's as well, along with the gallery that Cat was currently employed at. I'd just bet she was no longer employed. I'd also bet that even now the gallery owner was hiring a team of lawyers to protect him in the event of any lawsuit coming his way.
The house was still empty with Bernard away on his business trip, but I didn't mind. In fact, I was looking forward to a little peace and quiet. Assuming the resident ghosts gave me any. I was passing by the living room on my way to the kitchen when a light suddenly turned on in the room. As I hadn't flipped any switches, I was fairly certain that Cecilia was messing with me, but stepped in to investigate anyway.
That's when I realized Jase was right. All this investigation was going to get me killed.
An old man was sitting hunched in the chair only a few feet away from me, holding a gun on me. A very large gun. As in large caliber, large hole. I swallowed hard. I think my tonsils went with it. Possibly my tongue, too.
Forcing a bravado I didn't necessarily feel (or, rather, felt not at all), I ignored the gun and looked only at his face. He was a couple decades older than the last time I'd seen him, or at least seen a picture of him, but still, I was able to recognize him.
"Howard Martin," I said.
"So you know me then?"
"You were quite the icon in your day."
"Ah, so I have left my mark on society."
I felt it best not to continue following this hazardous path of the discussion, (no sense taunting the man with the gun) so I branched off in another direction, "What are you doing here?"
"I should think that would be obvious," he replied, waving the gun at me. "I'm waiting for you."
"Okay. I'll bite. Why?"
"You really haven't figured it out by now?" he asked. He gave a little laugh. "Somehow I expected more. I don’t know why I was so convinced. Could it be I've overestimated your intelligence? I want you to know, I never intended to kill you. It was all just an unfortunate set of circumstances."
"Good to know. Can I go now?"
"I said I never intended to kill you. Not that I won't kill you. But now, you leave me no choice."
What? This was like an episode of Scooby-Doo gone wrong. Now all I needed was Fred, Daphne, Velma, one chicken-hearted dog, and a brilliantly planned Rube Goldberg-like trap and I'd be all set.
"Just because I know you murdered Alex McDaniel?" I said, working hard to keep Shaggy's legendary squeak out of my voice. Zoiks. "But there's not even any proof of that. You're safe. You're a free man. You can go now."
He shook his head. "If it were only that easy. But, there have been too many mistakes. And none of them was killing Alex."
Wow! Talk about your cold killers! He wasn't even sorry he'd murdered poor Alex.
Poor Alex my foot. The man was a two-timing gigolo. He probably deserved what he got and then some.
Did I really just think that?
"All right then, so here's the deal. I promise not to tell anyone anything about Alex, and you promise not to kill me."
"No deals. Besides, weren't you paying attention? I didn’t kill Alex."
I narrowed my eyes at him. "If you didn't, then who did?"
"I did!" Cecilia suddenly popped into the room. "I followed the snake here and caught him with Howard's wife Alyssa. I shot his sorry ass for it, too!"
At the same time, Howard was saying, "I'm not sure really. My wife said some black woman broke into the house and shot him. She didn't know who it was. But then when the woman turned the gun on my wife, Alyssa was forced to defend herself. She pulled the gun from the nightstand and killed her. It was like the gunfight at the O.K. Corral in my bedroom."
"Then what on earth are you trying to hide? If you were completely innocent-"
"I never said I was completely innocent. We were forced into a corner, my wife and I. I had a choice. Either call the police and let them handle the matter, which would inevitably lead to an investigation, a lengthy and expensive defense trial, and a whole lot of scandal. Or, dispose of the bodies and pretend it never happened. Since Alex was little more than a drifter and no one even knew who the woman was, it was simple enough to do."
"So you dumped their bodies in the pool and filled it in," I finished for him. I was beginning to think there wasn't an innocent party among them.
"Then I altered all the recorded paperwork to reflect the fact that there never had been a pool. It was simple enough. Being an architect I had access to pretty much anything I needed."
"So, what's the problem then? You got away with it. Why come back now?"
"You really are a stupid girl."
"So everyone keeps telling me."
"Then do something to prove you're smarter!" he suddenly snapped. "I had gotten away with it. At least for a little while. But unfortunately, my wife couldn't seem to get past it. She sunk into a deep depression that she couldn't seem to snap out of. She was taking medications by the handful and still she couldn't forget about that woman. She talked about her all the time. She said she was haunting her. She would babble on for hours and hours about the black woman's ghost. It got so we could never have company over and I had to be very careful whenever I took Alyssa out. I was terrified she was going to tell someone. Naturally I told her she was nuts, but she wouldn't listen.
"And then one day I'd had enough. Something inside me just snapped. Alyssa was whining about the ghost, saying she'd never have a minute's peace so long as she was alive, and I told her I knew exactly how she felt. I knew I'd never have a minute's peace as long as Alyssa was alive. And so I shot her.
"Hiding her body was going to be far more difficult since I had already filled in the pool. So, instead of leaving her here, I drove out to her family's home and buried her in the family plot in the middle of the night. No funeral, no tombstone, but it was the best I could do for her. At least she was with her family. And I was feeling a little bad about what I had done.
"Of course, that put an end to my existence. There was no way I could stay and explain away her absence. Too many questions would be asked. So, I sold everything I could, packed up, and headed for the Bahamas. Enough years went by that I thought I could return and I was missing my home. I've lived here all my life. The islands are a great place to visit, but you really don't want to live there. And I was too old to party anymore, so what else was left me? So, I came back and not long after the letters started."
"The letters?"
"Blackmail. Someone knew what I had done. They were threatening to expose me. I did a little investigating and soon discovered who it was. My wife's son."
"Your son?"
"No. My wife's son. He may have been mine, but the way she slept around it was hard telling."
All the articles I had read on Google were all starting to come together. "The separation in seventy-three. She went away to give birth!"
"Her parents were wealthy in their own right. They owned a very successful construction firm and a decent amount of property. So they kept the baby and raised him. They never even told me about him. I can only assume that they either never questioned their daughter's disappearance, or they never realized she had disappeared. They had in fact written her off as a lost cause years before. They never approved of our social life. Still, they kept their grandson and raised him. They must have loved him because eventually they left their construction firm to him."
"Oh, my God! Mike Holbeck!" I was finally connecting the dots. Maybe everyone was right. I really am stupid.
"Precisely. His stupid grandparents had raised him believing that I was his father. They blamed me for taking their daughter away from them and ruining her. And then he grew up and spent a lifetime trying to reunite with his parents, only to find that all that was left was a man he wasn't even sure was his f
ather. So even though he had plenty of money on his own, he was blackmailing me for what was left of mine. His inheritance, he called it."
"How long were you paying him?"
"I don’t know. Four or five years. And then one day he told me Pia had hired him to do the remodel on her guesthouse. I knew she had inadvertently built the damn thing right over the pool and I could not possibly allow him to dig. So I tried to stop her the only way I knew how."
"It was you who drove the car into the building that day!" I was stunned. "But you were aiming for Pia, not me."
He shrugged. "What can I say? My sight's not what it used to be."
"But then, the police must know. Surely they've made the connection by now who you are? They have to know that you are connected to Pia through this house."
"You honestly think I came here using my own name? No, I use an alias. You'll like it. I call myself Alex McDaniel. It's not hard to find the right people to get you all the things you need to create a new identity. Not if you flash enough cash. And so I was reborn. So as far as the cops know, some old geezer lost control of his car and ran into a building. Innocent enough. But then, after they put me up in the hospital, I slipped out in the middle of the night. They’re probably still looking for me. Though not too hard I suspect. There are worse crimes than being old and addle-brained. Which is exactly what they thought I was.
"Then, I came back here and met Mike right after your party. He wasn't quite as tough as he looked. One swing of the shovel and he was pretty much a goner. I may not be able to stand up straight, thanks to the arthritis in my back, but I still carry around a lot of muscle. I dumped him in the hole, intending to bury him with some dirt, just enough that his body didn't show. I altered his task list for the next day, making pouring the concrete for the foundation the first thing for the crew to start with. If there's one thing I know, it's foremen. They get their crew to working right away 'cause they wanna be sure to get rehired. His foreman wasn't gonna hang around waiting for him to start the work. By the time anyone realized Mike was missing, his body would be well hidden and they'd find his car in Tecumseh, or whatever other faraway place I decided to drop it off at."
"But then I got in the way. So you had to kill me, too."
"And that's what I'm going to have to do now."
Cecilia suddenly screamed. She had been so silent I had forgotten she was even in the room. The wind picked up as it had done before, spinning wild circles all around us, flinging knickknacks and pictures and other small objects with it.
Alex suddenly appeared and quickly assessing the situation, presumably recognizing Howard, and hopefully seeing the gun, he joined in the melee, picking up everything he could lay his hands on and pelting Howard with it.
The old man jumped from the chair, scared witless. "What the hell is happening?" he cried.
I ducked down behind the sofa as Olivia had done not long before. "I believe that is the ghost of Cecilia, the woman your wife killed, coming back to seek her revenge! Your wife wasn't so crazy after all. And oh! Look! Your wife is with her."
Okay, so that last was a lie. But who cares. It doesn’t count when you're lying to a murderer.
"Alyssa?" The old man looked wildly about the room, ignoring the objects that were still pelting him. "Alyssa? Is that really you, baby?"
I could barely hear him over the sound of the wind and Cecilia's screeching.
"Alyssa, I'm sorry, baby! I'm so sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you! I just lost my temper, that's all. I was so scared you were going to give us away! I had to stop you!"
Cecilia's screeching continued, if anything, it got louder, even as the whirlwind grew. Curtains flapped so hard against the windows I expected the rods to tear clean off the walls. Furniture was actually beginning to scoot under the pressure of the wind and I suddenly had an idea of what it must feel like to be caught inside a tornado. Lamps crashed, the broken glass of which joined the rest of the objects flying about the room.
Bits of the glass impaled Howard's face but he ignored it as he went on pleading. "Please, baby, tell me you understand! Tell me you forgive me!" He sunk to his knees.
At first I thought it was a pleading gesture, but when he dropped the gun and I saw he was clenching his chest, I realized he was having a heart attack!
I jumped out from behind the couch. "Cecilia! Stop! Please, stop! Let me help him!"
Alex immediately quit, but Cecilia didn't give in as easily. She didn’t slow the wind, but she did stop screaming. "Why you wanna go and help that fool for?! He's a murdering SOB, that's what he is!"
"Maybe so, but I can't watch him die and do nothing!"
I hurried over to him, flipped him on his back, and tried desperately to remember everything I'd ever been taught in my CPR class. Open restricted airways. I loosened his shirt. Tilt head back. He hadn't been kidding about the arthritis, even over the wind I heard the bones of his neck grind as I tried to force his head back. Fifteen compressions to one breath, or was it ten to one? I couldn't remember, so I just did the best I could.
I don't know how long I worked over him before I realized Cecilia had stopped everything. There was no more wind, no more flying objects, just silence. Still, I kept going.
Finally Cecilia crouched beside me. "You can stop now, honey. He's gone. I saw him leave a second ago."
I pressed on.
"Do you hear me, girl? I said he's gone. You can stop!"
I looked over at her. "Are you telling me the truth, or are you lying? Because if you are lying and I stop, I'll never forgive you."
"I ain't lying. He's gone."
All the energy went out of me and I sat back on my heels.
And bawled like a baby.
"Why you cryin' over him, girl? He wasn't worth the spit on your shoe! You did the best you could, which was far more than he ever deserved!"
She was right of course. I cried anyway. Maybe it was a release of the stress of everything, maybe I had finally lost my mind, maybe I was just tired. Whatever the reason, I sobbed as if my heart were broken and would never heal again.
By the time I got myself together again, Cecilia was kneeling beside me and had one of her hands cupped over mine, as if she were holding it. The iciness that I'd felt from her before was gone. Oh, the sensation was still cold, but not that god-awful bone chilling sensation I remembered from before. On her face was an expression of concern, something I was not used to getting from her. And that's when I noticed the strange glow around her. A light formed something akin to a halo around her entire form and it seemed to be growing.
"Cecilia?"
"I feel strange," was all she said. Then she tipped back her head and smiled, an exultant smile as if she were experiencing the greatest form of ecstasy a person could feel. The light continued to grow brighter and suddenly it seemed to be coming not just from around her, but from inside of her as well. Beams of brightness flashed from every orifice, eyes, nose, ears and mouth. And then, within seconds she had faded into nothingness and was gone. Somehow I knew she was gone forever. She had moved on to wherever it was that ghosts went next.
I picked myself up off the floor and began making phone calls.