An Anniversary to Die For (8 page)

“Who else was in the foyer?”

“That’s just the problem. You know how the press have been swarming around looking for a story. Well, there were a half dozen reporters hanging around for a scoop—and they got one. There’s no way to keep this quiet now. That’s why Brett called me.”

“I’m glad he called, but I don’t understand,” Susan admitted.

“Brett says he doesn’t believe Doug killed Ashley. He didn’t go into the details.”

“So?”

“It’s Signe. Doug is afraid Signe is going to be arrested. That’s why he confessed!”

“Why would he do that?”

“He’s protecting me. My father thinks I killed my mother.” Susan and Erika spun around. Signe was leaning against the wall, sniffling.

Erika rushed to her side. “Signe . . .” She wrapped her arms around the young woman, and her embrace inspired a fresh bout of tears.

“Maybe you could get some us some tea or something?” Erika suggested, leading Signe back to the living room.

“Of course.” Susan hurried toward the kitchen. She could use a shot of caffeine, too. And some food.

Fifteen minutes later, when Susan returned to the living room, she was carrying a full tray and Signe seemed to have regained her composure. “I thought you might like something to eat,” she explained, pushing aside a pile of magazines with her foot and placing the tray on the large coffee table in front of the couch.

Signe looked up at her and almost smiled. “That’s sweet of you.”

Susan started to fuss with cups and saucers, cream, sugar, and artificial sweeteners. Once everyone had tea, she put out a wedge of Brie, a straw basket of water crackers, and a plate of Mint Milanos. Then she sat down and waited. Erika looked at Signe and raised her eyebrows. Signe took a deep breath. “Okay. If you think she can help.”

“Signe has a big problem,” Erika began.

Susan picked up her cup and sipped.

“You see, my father has—or thinks he has—a good reason to believe I killed my mother,” Signe explained.

“What?”

“It’s sort of a long story. And there are some things I don’t want people to know about me . . . about my life.” Signe looked over at Erika.

“Things have happened in Signe’s life that are a little . . . well, a little odd,” Erika said.

“And you’re afraid not everyone will understand,” Susan suggested quietly.

“Exactly.” Signe looked down into her cup as though expecting to find something fascinating there.

“I think you’re going to have to tell Susan if you want her to help you,” Erika said gently.

“I know. It’s so hard to talk about.” She looked up at Erika. “I don’t understand myself.”

Erika just nodded.

Susan waited, wondering what was coming. Drugs or some other sort of illegal behavior? Could this lovely young woman have been involved in a cult at one time? It was most likely an unwanted pregnancy, although that wasn’t usually as shaming as Signe’s hesitancy seemed to imply.

“I was almost arrested once for attempted murder.” The words were said so quietly that Susan wasn’t absolutely sure she had heard them.

“Attempted murder?” Susan repeated when Signe didn’t elaborate. “But that’s what your mother was arrested for.”

“You have to explain a bit better,” Erika insisted.

“You see . . . Well . . . there seems to be a theme of poisoning in my family. It started years and years ago. Back when I was a teenager. Back then, my mother came down with the same symptoms my father was suffering from. She . . . she kept going to the emergency room with stomach problems. Finally a doctor there realized she was being poisoned. There was an investigation, of course. The evidence pointed to me. But I . . . I wasn’t arrested,” Signe said, the words coming out so quickly that Susan had trouble understanding what she was saying.

“You said you were a teenager at the time.”

“Yes. I was sixteen. Barely.”

“Signe, I know you don’t want to talk about all this, but you really do have to explain more.” Erika’s voice was gentle, but firm.

Signe took a deep breath. “I didn’t get along very well with my mother.”

That didn’t surprise Susan. She had found it difficult to get along with Ashley, and she didn’t live in the same house as her. “Sixteen is a difficult age,” she said.

Signe brushed her hair off her face and began, haltingly, to tell the story. “It wasn’t because I was sixteen. It was because of the way I was raised.

“When I was a kid, I didn’t know my mother all that well. I grew up on my grandfather’s farm—he raised tobacco and dairy cows. The closest town was tiny—and a fifteen-mile drive away. I went to school by bus and was driven to church on Sunday. It sounds isolated, but it wasn’t. My grandparents were from Norway, and they kept in touch with their roots. I learned to dance at the Sons of Norway Viking Hall. My Girl Scout troop’s leaders were from Norway, and we learned to cook Norwegian dishes for our cooking badge. My 4-H project was raising goats. You get the idea.” She smiled for the first time since entering the house. “It was a wonderful way to grow up. I was surrounded by people who nurtured and cared for me.”

“What about your parents? Did they live on the farm, too?” Susan asked.

“No. My father’s job kept him overseas, and my mother went along with him. Most summers, they had a one-month leave, but my mother always insisted that being home wasn’t what my father needed to relax from his stressful occupation, and anyway, she preferred Paris or London to a farm in upstate Connecticut. As a result I didn’t see much of them—at least not when I was young. But when I was fourteen years old, my grandfather died and my parents came home. My father left whatever project he was working on, moved into my grandmother’s house, and planned to run the farm. It was a bad idea. My mother hated the farm and didn’t like caring for my grandmother, whose health was failing. It turned out that my father wasn’t very good at farming, so when my grandmother died, he sold the place and they went back overseas. By then I wasn’t living at home, of course. I’d gone to college—NYU—and I was living in the city. I’ve never been one of those kids who return to the nest. Of course, in my case, there wasn’t any nest.”

“But back at the farm—when you were all living together. You said your mother was poisoned.”

“Yes. It was creepily like what happened last summer,” Signe continued. “That’s why Erika knows about it all. I went a little—a lot—nuts when my mother was arrested.”

“I followed the case in the papers,” Susan said slowly. “You father was poisoned with insecticides, right?”

“Yes. He still has traces of it in his blood.”

“And your mother?”

Signe nodded. “It was exactly the same. My mother became ill and went to the hospital. She was diagnosed as having food poisoning. It happened three times in two weeks, and finally a doctor insisted on some tests. Those tests revealed that she was ingesting poison.

“At first, everyone assumed she had picked up something on the farm. My father was worried and hired a company to come out and do tests in and around the house to discover exactly where my mother was coming in contact with the poison.” Signe paused for a few minutes and then, looking straight at Susan, finished the story. “There was poison in the house. It was in my bedroom closet—a bag of it as well as a cup and a whisk, which had obviously been used to mix the insecticide with other ingredients. I was taken into custody that evening.”

“I don’t understand. You didn’t poison your mother, did you?” Susan asked.

“No.”

“But . . .”

“But what was that stuff doing in my closet, right?”

“Yes.”

“I can only tell you what I told everyone at the time: I have no idea. My room had two closets. I used one for clothing and one for stuff. You know, sports equipment, school things, teenage junk. The poison was found in the back of that closet. It could have been there for months and I wouldn’t have noticed. Or it might have been placed there the day of the search.”

“They found the poison in your closet, and you were taken into police custody?”

“Yes, and released almost immediately.”

“Why?”

“Because my mother claimed to have put that poison there. I really had no idea where it had come from. And my mother stuck to her story. She said she used it on house-plants. Since she wasn’t suicidal, the police really had no choice but to let me go.”

“What about your father? Your grandmother? What did they think?” Susan asked.

“My grandmother was wonderful. She believed me absolutely. She made an unusually critical comment about my mother, and that was it. My father—back then I didn’t know what he thought. But he suggested I go into therapy. I did. To tell the truth, I seriously needed someone to talk to. My therapist was wonderful—and a graduate of Columbia. She’s the reason I went to college in the city.

“Of course today my father seems to have decided that I’m a murderer,” Signe said sadly.

“Do you think your mother put that poison in your closet? Do you think she knew who did?”

Signe’s smile disappeared. “Now you know just a few of the questions I’ve been asking myself for the past ten years.”

“Any answers?” Susan asked.

“There are a few things I do know and a few things I’ve guessed,” Signe answered.

Susan leaned back and waited, expecting the story to continue. She was wrong, There was a knock at the front door, and when she answered it, Susan discovered three policemen and a woman in uniform. They had come to ask Signe to accompany them to the police station. They had, they said, a few questions to ask her.

NINE

SUSAN AND ERIKA HAD NO IDEA WHAT TO DO.

“Do you think we should follow her to the police station?” Susan asked, watching the two marked police cruisers pull out of the driveway.

“I think she already has an entourage,” Erika replied. “Look.” She pointed to the Markses’ house, where a phalanx of TV microwave vans was lining up behind the police vehicles. “If we follow along, they’ll just turn to us for information when the official sources don’t provide what they’re looking for.”

“We could call a lawyer,” Susan suggested, feeling they should do something.

“Do you know the name of a good criminal defense lawyer?” Erika asked.

“What about the woman who defended Ashley? She won.”

“She won because the investigation was messed up by the prosecutor. Signe may not be so lucky.” Susan and Erika turned around to see who was speaking.

“I came in the back door,” Kathleen explained. A large straw tote, yellow yarn trailing from the opening across its top, dangled from one hand.

“Signe is not guilty,” Erika insisted.

“We believe that, but this is a terrible mess, isn’t it?” Susan asked a rhetorical question.

It was one of the many things the three women standing at the window watching the parade of cars could agree upon.

“I suppose Brett already knows about Signe’s arrest,” Erika said quietly.

“Probably,” Kathleen agreed.

Susan turned away from the window. “How well do you know Signe?” she asked Erika. “I know she works for you, but . . .”

“I know her better than I do most of my employees,” Erika answered. “She’s a remarkable young woman. She applied for a job in the city while she was still in college. I needed good salespeople in my SoHo shop, but I needed them on Friday and Saturday nights. Customers flock into my store while they’re out gallery hopping, so it’s open until eleven. Then the final tally on the computer as well as all the cleanup has to be completed before everyone leaves for the night. Not many college students are interested in working that schedule. Signe swore it was just what she was looking for, and she was telling the truth. She’s smart, well educated, and has sensational taste. She started that year, graduated the next, and she’s now managing both that store and the one on Madison Avenue.”

“What sort of background does she have?” Kathleen asked. “What was her college major?”

“She was a fine arts major—she makes sensational jewelry and has produced some nice tapestries—and she had a minor in marketing. She had planned on working in an art gallery rather than someplace as commercial as Twigs and Stems, but we handle more and more craft items—high-end stuff. Signe went with me on my last buying trip to Brussels, and she was a huge help. She has quite an eye as well as a head for business. In a few weeks she’ll be taking her first solo buying trip to Milan.”

“If she isn’t arrested,” Susan said.

Erika frowned. “Yes, of course. If she isn’t arrested,” she agreed sadly. “Susan, you have to do something. I can’t believe Signe murdered her mother, but who knows what that chief of police might do.”

“What do you mean?” Kathleen jumped in to ask.

“Look, I know neither of you would repeat this, but Brett has a very low opinion of Peter Konowitz.”

“Does he think he’s incompetent?” Susan asked.

“Did Brett fire this guy?” Kathleen asked.

“No, but I don’t think he encouraged him to hang around Hancock, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Susan said quickly. “Are you saying that Brett tried to get rid of him, or was glad when he left, or what?”

“I can’t tell you. I didn’t know Brett when Peter Konowitz worked in Hancock, so I don’t know the entire story. But Brett didn’t get home until the sun was coming up this morning, and he got a call from this Konowitz guy almost as soon as he walked in the door. After he hung up the phone he said something about PK screwing it all up again and suggested I head over this way in case Signe needed my help. I’ll find out more tonight—or whenever Brett has a free minute to talk.”

Susan looked at Kathleen. “I don’t suppose you know anything about this guy?”

“I may. I think he came to Hancock around the time I left to marry Jerry. I may have met him. I know I heard a lot about him. He was the talk of the department for much of the time he was here.”

“Why? Was he incompetent?”

“Nope. Just a bit overly enthusiastic for a department like ours. That and a vivid imagination made him a lot more trouble than he was worth in some people’s opinion.”