Sketch a Falling Star (31 page)

Rory drove to East Northport, stopping around the corner from Dorothy’s house. To be sure nothing else had happened to delay the actress’s departure, she keyed Dorothy’s number into her cell. This time the phone rang until the voice mail picked up. Rory didn’t leave a message. Everything she had to say was in the note she was about to deliver.

She pulled to the curb beside Dorothy’s mailbox, tucked the letter inside it and was on her way home in less than a minute. She’d originally planned to stake out the house all day and into the night if necessary until Dorothy returned, found the letter, and Paula showed up in response to what Rory assumed would be her mother’s frantic call. At least that was how Rory had envisioned the scenario playing out. But since Dorothy had mentioned she was on her way to rehearsal, Rory and her bladder had been granted a reprieve. Dorothy would be gone for hours. For a better idea of just how many, Rory placed a call to the theater.

“Stuart Dobson.” With just the few syllables of his name, the troupe’s director managed to convey his irritation with whoever had the audacity to interrupt his work.

Rory would gladly have called her aunt Helene’s cell instead, but she knew that Dobson forbade all cell phone use during rehearsals. Except, of course, his own.

“Hello,” Rory said, going for the flat, robotic voice of a thoroughly bored secretary chewing a thick wad of gum. “What time was it you wanted our cleaning crew to be there?”

“Cleaning crew? What are you talking about?” Dobson’s irritation was growing thicker by the second.

“I’ve got a work order here with your address.”

“I didn’t arrange for any cleaning crew.”

“Are you the owner of the premises?”

“No, I’m a tenant.”

“I guess your landlord made the arrangements,” she said, adding a good dash of testiness to her tone. Dobson always brought out the worst in her. “So when do you want the crew there?”

“Fine,” Dobson snapped. “Two. And not a minute sooner.” He ended the call.

Rory was sure he would have loved having an old fashioned phone at that moment, one with a receiver he could have slammed down in anger.

Figuring travel time from Bay Shore to East Northport, Dorothy wouldn’t be home until two thirty, at which point she’d look through the mail, read the anonymous note and immediately place a panicked call to her daughter. Although Rory had no idea how far away Paula lived, it was reasonable to assume that she wouldn’t make it to her mother’s side much before three. Rory planned to be there first. That way she and Dorothy would have time for a nice, private chat before Paula arrived.

Chapter 31

O
n her ride home after dropping off the letter, Rory called Clarissa to update her on the progress in her son’s case. Ordinarily, she would have waited to make that call after the day’s events played out, but she wanted to confirm something Clarissa had said when she’d hired her.

“I was going to give you a call today,” Clarissa said after they’d exchanged pleasantries.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t in touch sooner,” Rory apologized, “but I didn’t have much to report back until now.”

“That sounds promising.”

“As you’d anticipated, almost everyone on the trip with your son had a good motive to kill him. It was only yesterday that we had a significant breakthrough.” Rory went on to explain what she and Zeke had discovered.

“You’re certain it was this woman Dorothy Johnson?” Clarissa asked, the reservation in her voice hard to miss.

“I know it doesn’t seem possible that an elderly woman could take on your son and win, but you have to remember the circumstances were unique and chaotic.”

Clarissa still didn’t seem convinced. Not that Rory could blame her. She’d had difficulty accepting the unlikely scenario herself. It would be a lot easier to sell her client on the idea when she had all the facts and, more importantly, a confession.

“I expect to interview Dorothy later today,” she said, “and I’ll be in touch afterward. But I do have a question for you.”

“Sure, anything if it will help.”

“When we first spoke, you said you had no interest in asking the police to reopen the case or in prosecuting anyone. Do you still feel that way?”

Clarissa didn’t pause to consider her answer, and when she spoke, there was no reluctance in her voice. “Nothing’s changed. If Brian had lived, he would have hurt and defrauded more innocent people. Regardless of who killed him or for what reason, the case will remain closed. It’s just my heart that needs the answers. Why do you ask?”

“I can’t explain it all now, but if I need a bargaining chip that fact might be useful.”

Reiterating that she would call Clarissa back later, Rory thanked her and said good-bye.

With several hours to kill before she went back to Dorothy’s house at one thirty, Rory spent the time catching up on paperwork for her smaller cases, paying bills, balancing her checkbook, more or less, and playing Frisbee with Hobo until they were both out of breath. Then they shared a tuna sandwich and a couple of Oreos—she had the chocolate wafers, Hobo had the creamy centers.

When she looked at her watch she was surprised to see that it was not yet one o’clock. Time seemed to be marching one step forward, two steps back.

For the fourth time, she checked to make sure her.45 was in her handbag, along with her digital recorder in case she was lucky enough to get a confession from one or both of her suspects. There was nothing left to be done. She sat down to read the newspaper, but couldn’t make it through a single article. Although she could generally count on the TV for some mindless distraction, she couldn’t find a program to hold her attention. She finally gave up and wandered restlessly from room to room.

What exactly was she hoping to find? As she passed through the kitchen on her third lap, it hit her—she was looking for Zeke. She imagined him leaning back in his chair at the table, dirty boots crossed casually on the glass surface, his mouth twitching with amusement or grim with a scowl. She could imagine him in every room of the house, haunting her more with his absence than he had with his presence.

Surely a day was enough time to come to terms with the name of his killer. Rory still didn’t understand why knowing who’d pulled the trigger was so important to him anyway. When so much time had passed, knowing changed nothing. And then, with a peculiar tug in her chest, she realized she was wrong. He’d said it so often that she’d stopped paying attention to the words. “I’m not going anywhere until I know the name of the coward who shot me in the back.”

Now, thanks to her efforts, he knew. Rory fell back against the refrigerator as if she’d had the wind knocked out of her. Was it possible he’d left the moment he had his answer? Had he rushed straight toward the light or whatever signpost led the way out of his self-imposed limbo? No, she refused to believe that. It wasn’t at all like Zeke. No way would he have left without at least saying “good-bye.” Unless maybe she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did. She was arguing both sides of the issue and getting nowhere. But since no one else knew about Zeke, there was no one she could go to for another, more objective opinion. No one except Eloise. And Rory had no doubt that if Eloise had important information to convey, she would have already come knocking on the door.

There was a time early on in Rory’s strange relationship with the marshal when the prospect of never seeing him again might have actually lifted her spirits. That time had long passed though, because the thought of his permanent absence was dragging at her heart. To counteract her melancholy, she made a mental list of all his irritating ways, his caveman view of women, his too easily wounded pride, his disgust with modern values. She told herself that life would be easier without him and that her business would do just fine without his services. And she almost managed to convince herself it was true. She was so locked in this internal dialogue that she jumped when the telephone rang.

“This is Eloise,” said the voice on the other end of the line. Speak of the devil.

“Hi,” Rory replied. It wasn’t her neighbor’s “little girl without a care” voice. It was her “I’m on a mission” voice, which generally didn’t bode well.

“You need to be very careful, or something terrible is going to happen.”

The last time Eloise had been so cryptic, Brian had drowned in the flood. But before Rory could ask for more details, there was a click on the line followed by dead air.

Rory started to call her back but stopped before she’d punched in all the numbers. Eloise had always been as forthcoming as she was able to be. If she didn’t say more, it was because she didn’t have more to say. Great—that sounded like one of Zeke’s pronouncements. She tried to relax the little knot of anxiety that was tightening in her chest by assuring herself that if she were careful, everything would be fine. Isn’t that what Eloise had implied? Rory just wished the warning had been less ambiguous.

She glanced at her watch. In spite of how busy her mind was, the hands on the watch were still barely inching their way around the dial. She felt like a hare living on snail time.

Ironically, when one thirty finally rolled around, it took her by complete surprise. Someone was messing with the space-time continuum, she thought as she grabbed her handbag, and there was no Captain Kirk around to put it right.

Chapter 32

W
hen Rory reached Dorothy’s block, she did another quick drive-by of the actress’s house to assess the situation. She recognized her pale blue Kia in the driveway. Okay, she was home, and there was no second car there, which meant Paula had not yet arrived.

Rory parked farther down the street so as not to give Paula a heads-up that someone else had beaten her there. The more unexpected Rory was, the more control she’d have over how the meeting played out. And given Eloise’s dire warning, “caution” was the watchword of the day.

Before ringing Dorothy’s bell, Rory turned on the recorder. When the actress asked who was there, she cheerfully called out her name.

“Rory?” Dorothy sounded perplexed as she opened the door. “What are you doing here?”

It was a good bet she’d read the mystery note, because the Dorothy that Rory had known up until then had always been a model of politeness. She would never have been so abrupt and unwelcoming unless she’d recently been thrown for a double-wide loop. Dorothy’s eyes were flitting all over the place. They lit briefly on Rory again before jumping past her to scour the street as if she were expecting someone else. Rory had a pretty good idea who that might be.

“Dorothy,” she said firmly to reel in the older woman’s attention. “I need to talk to you about something. May I come in for a minute?”

“Come in?” Dorothy repeated as if it were a concept she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around.

“It’s important or I wouldn’t bother you.”

Dorothy’s eyes focused briefly on Rory. “No, no this isn’t a good time. It’s not a good time at all.” Then her gaze darted back to the street again.

“We really do have to talk,” Rory said crossing the threshold into the house and effectively forcing Dorothy to step back out of the way.

“But I’m waiting for—” she started to protest.

“I know, you’re waiting for Paula.”

Dorothy looked at her as if she’d just pulled a rabbit out of a hat along with its extended family. “How did you know?”

“Come sit down, and I’ll explain everything,” Rory said more gently. She closed the door and took hold of the actress’s forearm to help her into the living room, since she hadn’t taken her cane when she’d gone to answer the bell.

Dorothy allowed herself to be led to the sofa, with its bright country plaid and softly ruffled skirt. Rory took the matching armchair to her right and set her handbag on her lap, unzipped to provide better access to her gun, even though she didn’t think she’d need it, and better clarity for the recorder.

“First of all,” she said with complete sincerity, “I want to tell you how terribly sorry I was to learn that you’d lost your daughter Jill. No mother should ever have to lose a child. It doesn’t matter if they’re five or forty-five.”

Tears instantly sprang up in Dorothy’s eyes. She shook her head, clearly too choked up to speak. Rory was sorry she’d had to broach such a difficult subject, but since it might well be the reason Brian was dead, she’d had no choice. While she waited patiently for Dorothy to regain her composure, she did an in-depth study of her cuticles, which looked as if they could benefit from some moisturizing the next time she had nothing to do. After a minute or two, Dorothy plucked a tissue from the decorative box on the end table between the couch and armchair and loudly blew her nose.

“Thank you for your kind words,” she whispered, as if her throat was too constricted with emotion to permit the passage of a louder sound.

“Until the other day, I had no idea what you’d been through or that Jill had been one of Brian’s victims,” Rory said, proceeding gently.

Dorothy exhaled a shaky sigh. “She and Daniel—that’s her husband—lost most of what they’d worked so hard to save for the past twenty years, and Jill took complete responsibility for it. You see, Daniel teaches high school music there in York. He’s a great guy and a talented musician, but he never had much of a head for finance. Jill always took care of that stuff. She was good at it too. She invested in the market and built up a nice portfolio, from what she told me. Then Brian came to town with his tricks and promises. Back then he was using the name Thomas Kent.”

“How awful,” Rory said, trying to imagine how deep Jill’s despair must have been for her to take her own life. Brian had essentially loaded the gun, handed it to her and dared her to pull the trigger. “Did you know who Brian was when he joined the troupe?” Rory asked.

Dorothy shook her head. “I’d never met him before, and when he joined the troupe he was using the name Preston so I had no way to put the two together.”

“Then how did you figure out who he was?”

“My daughter Paula did. She’d met him once when she was in York visiting her sister. Then when she came to see our last play, there he was on stage right smack in front of her.”