“He did not tell me. I hadn’t seen him for three months.”
“You may not have seen him, but you spoke to him, didn’t you? You could have put up with Dartmouth getting half his fortune but couldn’t stand the idea of splitting his money with me. You hated me for the years I lived in this house, for the fact that he liked me, while you two always clashed. You’ve got that same vile temper he had.”
Lillian stood up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Cynthia slammed the drawer shut. “Oh, yes, I do. And every fact that convicted me will convict you. I had a key to this house. You had a key. There was no sign of a struggle. I don’t think you sent anyone to murder him. I think you did it yourself. Stuart had a panic button on his desk. He didn’t push it. He never thought his own daughter would harm him. Why did Ned just happen to stop by that afternoon? You knew Stuart had invited me here for the weekend. You knew that he’d encourage me to go out with Ned. Stuart liked company and then he liked to be alone. Maybe Ned hasn’t made it clear to you. That witness I found keeps a diary. She showed it to me. She’s been writing in it every night since she was twenty. There was no way that entry could have been doctored. She described me. She described Ned’s car. She even wrote about the noisy kids on line and how impatient everyone was with them.”
I’m getting to her, Cynthia thought. Lillian’s face was pale. Her throat was closing convulsively. Deliberately, Cynthia walked back to the desk so that the sunburst pin was pointed directly at Lillian. “You played it smart, didn’t you?” she asked. “Ned didn’t start pouring money into that restaurant until after I was safely in prison. And I’m sure that on the surface he has some respectable investors. But today the government is awfully good at getting to the source of laundered money. Your money, Lillian.”
“You’ll never prove it.” But Lillian’s voice had become shrill.
Oh God, if I can just get her to admit it, Cynthia thought. She grasped the edge of the desk with both hands and leaned forward. “Possibly not. But don’t take the chance. Let me tell you how it feels to be fingerprinted and handcuffed. How it feels to sit next to a lawyer and hear the district attorney accuse you of murder. How it feels to study the faces of the jury. Jurors are ordinary-looking people. Old. Young. Black. White. Well dressed. Shabby. But they hold the rest of your life in their hands. And, Lillian, you won’t like it. The waiting. The damning evidence that fits you much more than it ever fitted me. You don’t have the temperament or the guts to go through with it.”
Lillian stood up. Her face was frozen in hatred. “Bear in mind there were a lot of taxes when the estate was settled. A good lawyer could probably destroy your so-called witness, but I don’t need the scandal. Yes, I’ll give you your half.” Then she smiled.
* * *
“You should have stayed in Arizona,” Ned Creighton said to Alvirah. The gun he was holding was pointed at her chest. Alvirah sat at the dinette table, measuring her chances to escape. There were none. He had believed her story this afternoon, and now he had to kill her. Alvirah had the fleeting thought that she’d always known she would have made a wonderful actress. Should she warn Ned her husband would be home any minute? No. At the restaurant she’d told him she was a widow. How long would Willy and Cynthia be? Too long. Lillian wouldn’t let Cynthia go until she was sure there was no witness alive, but maybe if Alvirah kept him talking, she’d think of something. “How much did you get for your part in the murder?” she asked.
Ned Creighton smiled, a thin sneering movement of his mouth. “Three million. Just enough to start a classy restaurant.”
Alvirah mourned the fact that she had lent her sunburst pin to Cynthia. Proof. Absolute, positive proof, and she wasn’t able to record it. And if anything happened to her no one would know. Mark my words, she thought. If I get out of this, I’m going to have Charley Evans get me a backup pin. Maybe that one should be silver. No, platinum.
Creighton waved his pistol. “Get up.”
Alvirah pushed back the chair, leaned her hands on the table. The sugar bowl was in front of her. Did she dare throw it at him? She knew her aim was good, but a gun was faster than a sugar bowl.
“Go into the living room.” As she walked around the table, Creighton reached over, grabbed her notes and the beginning of her article and stuffed them in his pocket.
There was a wooden rocking chair next to the fireplace. Creighton pointed to it. “Sit down right there.”
Alvirah sat down heavily. Ned’s gun was still trained on her. If she tipped the rocker forward and landed on him, could she get away from him? Creighton reached for a narrow key dangling from the mantel. Leaning over, he inserted it in a cylinder in one of the bricks and turned it. The hissing sound of gas spurted from the fireplace. He straightened up. From the matchbox on the mantel he extracted a long safety match, scratched it on the box, blew out the flame and tossed the match onto the hearth. “It’s getting cold,” he said. “You decided to light a fire. You turned on the gas jet. You threw in a match, but it didn’t take. When you bent down to turn off the jet and start again, you lost your balance and fell. Your head struck the mantel and you lost consciousness. A terrible accident for such a nice woman. Cynthia will be very upset when she finds you.”
The smell of gas was permeating the room. Alvirah tried to tilt the rocker forward. She had to take the chance of butting Creighton with her head and making him drop the gun. She was too late. A viselike grip on her shoulders. The sense of being pulled forward. Her forehead slamming against the mantel before she fell to the stone hearth. As she lost consciousness, Alvirah was aware of the sickening smell of gas filling her nostrils.
* * *
“Here’s Ned now,” Lillian said calmly at the sound of door chimes. “I’ll let him in.”
Cynthia waited. Lillian still had not admitted anything. Could she get Ned Creighton to incriminate himself? She felt like a tightrope walker on a slippery wire, trying to inch her way across a chasm. If she failed, the rest of her life wouldn’t be worth living.
Creighton was following Lillian into the room. “Cynthia.” His nod was impersonal, not unpleasant. He pulled up a chair beside the desk where Lillian had an open file of printouts.
“I’m just giving Cynthia an idea of how much the estate shrank after the taxes had been settled,” Lillian told Creighton. “Then we’ll estimate her share.”
“Don’t deduct whatever you paid Ned from what is rightfully mine,” Cynthia said. She saw the angry look Ned shot at Lillian. “Oh, please,” she snapped, “among the three of us, let’s say it straight.”
Lillian said coldly, “I told you that I wanted to share the estate. I know my father could drive people over the edge. I’m doing this because I’m sorry for you. Now here are the figures.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Lillian pulled balance sheets out of the file. “Allowing for taxes and then interest made on the remainder, your share would now be five million dollars.”
“And this house,” Cynthia interjected. Bewildered, she realized that with each passing moment Lillian and Ned were becoming more visibly relaxed. They were both smiling.
“Oh, not the house,” Lillian protested. “There’d be too much gossip. We’ll have the house appraised, and I’ll pay you the value of it. Remember, Cynthia, I’m being very generous. My father toyed with people’s lives. He was cruel. If you hadn’t killed him, someone else would have. That’s why I’m doing this.”
“You’re doing it because you don’t want to sit in a courtroom and take the chance on being convicted of murder, that’s why you’re doing it.” Oh God, Cynthia thought. It’s no use. If I can’t get her to admit it, it’s all over. By tomorrow Lillian and Ned would have the chance to check on Alvirah. “You can have the house,” she said. “Don’t pay me for it. Just give me the satisfaction of hearing the truth. Admit that I had nothing to do with your father’s murder.”
Lillian glanced at Ned, then at the clock. “I think at this time we should
honor that request.” She began to laugh. “Cynthia, I am like my father. I enjoy toying with people. My father did phone to tell me about the change in his will. I could live with Dartmouth getting half his estate but not you. He told me you were coming up—the rest was easy. My mother was a wonderful woman. She was only too happy to verify that I was in New York with her that evening. Ned was delighted to get a great deal of money for giving you a boat ride. You’re smart, Cynthia. Smarter than the district attorney’s office. Smarter than that dumb lawyer you had.”
Let the recorder be working, Cynthia prayed. Let it be working. “And smart enough to find a witness who could verify my story,” she added.
Lillian and Ned burst into laughter. “What witness?” Ned asked.
“Get out.” Lillian told her. “Get out this minute and don’t come back.”
* * *
Jeff Knight drove swiftly along Route 6, trying to read signs through the torrential rain that was slashing the windshield. Exit 8. He was coming up to it. The producer of the ten o’clock news had been unexpectedly decent. Of course there was a reason. “Go ahead. If Cynthia Lathem is on the Cape and thinks she has a lead on her stepfather’s death, you’ve got a great story breaking.”
Jeff wasn’t interested in a great story. His only concern was Cynthia. Now he gripped the steering wheel with his long fingers. He had managed to get her address as well as her phone number from her parole officer. He’d spent a lot of summers on the Cape. That is why it had been so frustrating when he had tried to prove Cynthia’s story about stopping at the hamburger stand and gotten nowhere. But he’d always stayed in Eastham, some fifty miles from Cotuit.
Exit 8. He turned onto Union Street, drove to Route 6A. A couple of miles more. Why did he have the sense of impending doom? If Cynthia had a real lead that could help her, she could be in danger.
He had to slam on his brakes when he reached Nobscusset Road. Another car, ignoring the stop sign, raced from Nobscusset across 6A. Damn fool, Jeff thought as he turned right, then left toward the bay. He realized that the whole area was in darkness. A power failure. He reached the dead end, turned left. The cottage had to be on this winding lane. Number six. He drove slowly, trying to read the numbers as his headlights shone on the mailboxes. Two. Four. Six.
Jeff pulled into the driveway, threw open the door and ran through the pelting rain toward the cottage. He held his finger on the bell, then realized that because of the power failure it did not work. He pounded on the door several times. There was no answer. Cynthia wasn’t home.
He started to walk down the steps, then a sudden unreasoning fear made him go back, pound again on the door, then turn the knob. It twisted in his hand. He pushed the door open.
“Cynthia,” he started to call, then gasped as the odor of gas rushed at him. He could hear the hissing coming from the fireplace. Rushing to turn the jet off, he tripped over the prone figure of Alvirah.
* * *
Willy moved restlessly in the backseat of Cynthia’s car. She’d been in that house for more than an hour now. The guy who’d come later had been there fifteen minutes. Willy wasn’t sure what to do. Alvirah really hadn’t given specific instructions. She just wanted him to be around to make sure Cynthia didn’t leave the house with anyone.
As he debated, he heard the screeching sound of sirens. Police cars. The sirens got closer. Astonished, Willy watched as they turned into the long driveway of the Richards estate and thundered toward him. Policemen rushed from the squad cars, raced up the steps and pounded on the door.
A moment later a sedan pulled into the driveway and stopped behind the squad cars. As Willy watched, a big fellow in a trench coat leaped out of it and took the steps to the porch two at a time. Willy climbed awkwardly out of the car and hoisted himself to his feet in the driveway.
He was in time to grab Alvirah as she staggered from the back of the sedan. Even in the dark he could see the welt on her forehead. “Honey, what happened?”
“I’ll tell you later. Get me inside. I don’t want to miss this.”
In the study of the late Stuart Richards, Alvirah experienced her finest hour. Pointing her finger at Ned, in her most vibrant tones, she pronounced, “He held a gun to me. He turned on the gas jet. He smashed my head against the fireplace. And told me that Lillian Richards paid him three million dollars to set up Cynthia as the murderer.”
Cynthia stared at her stepsister. “And unless the batteries in Alvirah’s recorder are dead, I have both of them on record admitting their guilt.”
* * *
The next morning, Willy fixed a late breakfast and served it on the deck. The storm had ended, and once again the sky was joyously blue. Seagulls swooped down to feast on surfacing fish. The bay was tranquil, and children were making castles in the damp sand at the water’s edge.
Alvirah, not that much worse for her experience, had finished her article and phoned it in to Charley Evans. Charley had promised her the most ornate sunburst pin that money could buy, one with a microphone so sensitive it could pick up a mouse sneezing in the next room.
Now, as she munched a chocolate-covered doughnut and sipped coffee, she said, “Oh, here comes Jeff. What a shame he had to drive back to Boston last night, but wasn’t he wonderful telling the story on the news this morning, and all about how Ned Creighton is talking his head off to the cops? Buh-lieve me, Jeff will go places with the networks.”
“That guy saved your life, honey,” Willy said. “He’s aces high with me. I can’t believe I was curled up in that car like a jack-in-the-box when you had your head in a gas jet.”
They watched as Jeff got out of the car and Cynthia rushed down the walk and into his arms.
Alvirah pushed her chair back. “I’ll run over and say hello. It’s a real treat to see how they look at each other. They’re so in love.”
Willy placed a gentle but firm hand on her shoulder. “Alvirah, honey,” he begged, “just this once, for five minutes, mind your own business.”
Plumbing for Willy
If Alvirah Meehan had been able to look into a crystal ball and watch the events of the next ten days unfold, she would have grabbed Willy by the hand and raced out of the green room. Instead she sat and chatted with the other guests of the Phil Donahue show. Today the subject was not sex orgies or battered husbands but people who had messed up their lives by winning big in the lottery.
The Lottery Winners’ Support Group had been contacted by the Donahue show, and now the worst-case guests had been chosen. Alvirah and Willy would be a counterpoint to the others, the interviewer told them. “Whatever she means by that,” Alvirah commented to Willy after their initial interview.
For her appearance, Alvirah had had her hair freshly colored to the soft strawberry shade that softened her angular face. This morning Willy had told her that she looked exactly the same as she did when he’d first laid eyes on her at a Knights of Columbus dance more than forty years ago. Baroness Min von Schreiber had flown to New York from the Cypress Point Spa in Pebble Beach to select Alvirah’s outfit for the broadcast. “Be sure to mention that the first thing you did when you won the lottery was come to the spa,” she cautioned Alvirah. “Since that damn recession, business is not so brisk.”
Alvirah was wearing a pale blue silk suit with a white blouse and her signature sunburst pin. She wished she’d managed to lose the twenty pounds she’d regained when she and Willy went to Spain in September, but still Alvirah knew she looked very nice. Very nice for her, that was. She had no illusions that with her slightly jutting jaw and broad frame she’d ever be tapped to compete in the Mrs. America contest.
There were two other sets of guests. Three coworkers in a pantyhose factory had shared a ten-million-dollar ticket six years ago. They’d decided their luck was so good that they should buy racehorses with their winnings and were now broke. Their future checks were owed to the banks and Uncle Sam. The other winners, a couple, had won sixteen million dollars, bought a hotel in Vermont, and were now slaving
seven days a week trying to keep up with the overhead. Any leftover money was used to place classified ads trying to dump the hotel on someone else.
An assistant came to bring them into the studio.
Alvirah was used to being on television now. She knew enough to sit at a slight angle so she looked a little thinner. She didn’t wear clunky jewelry that could rustle against the microphone. She kept her sentences short.
Willy, on the other hand, could never get used to being in the public eye. Even though Alvirah always assured him he was a grand-looking man, and people did say he looked like the late Tip O’Neill, he was happiest with a wrench in his hand, fixing a leaking pipe. Willy was a born plumber.
Donahue began in his usual breezy, slightly incredulous voice. “Can you believe it; after you win millions of dollars in the lottery you need a support group? Can you believe that you can be broke even though you have big fat checks still coming in?”
“Nah,” the studio audience dutifully shrieked.
Alvirah remembered to tuck in her stomach, then reached for Willy’s hand and entwined his fingers in hers. She didn’t want him to look nervous on the television screen. A lot of their family and friends would be watching. Sister Cordelia, Willy’s second oldest sister, had invited a whole crowd of retired nuns to the convent to see the show.
* * *
Three men observing the program with avid interest were not Donahue’s usual viewers. Sammy, Clarence and Tony had just been released from the maximum security prison near Albany, where they’d been guests of the state for fifteen years for their part in the armed robbery of a Brink’s truck. Unfortunately for them they never got to spend their six-hundred-thousand-dollar heist. The getaway car had blown a tire a block from the scene of the crime.
Now, having paid their debt to society, they were looking for a new way to get rich. The idea of kidnapping the relative of a lottery winner was Clarence’s brainchild. That was why they were watching Donahue today from their seedy room in the shabby Lincoln Arms Hotel on Ninth Avenue and Fortieth Street. At thirty-five, Tony was ten years younger than the others. Like his brother Sammy, he was barrel chested, with powerful arms. His small eyes with hooded lids disappeared into folds of flesh. His thick dark hair was unkempt. He obeyed his brother blindly, and his brother obeyed Clarence.