Текст книги "Crowned and Moldering"

Автор книги: Kate Carlisle

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Chapter Thirteen

A half hour later, after taking the shortest shower on record and dressing for work, I paced around my kitchen, wondering what to do. Cliff was dead, and my head was about to explode from the guilt of having yelled at him mixed up with burning curiosity. How had he died?

In the midst of all that, Lizzie called back.

“I’m sorry, Shannon!” she moaned over the phone. “Cliff isn’t dead after all!”

“What?” I stared at the phone, shaking my head. “What are you saying? What happened?”

“Hal heard on the police scanner that Cliff was dead, but the report was wrong,” she explained. “According to Hal’s friend Steve over at the medical center, Cliff is clinging to life in the intensive-care unit.”

“We can talk about Hal’s obsession with the police scanner later.” I slid into a chair and had to grip the kitchen table to take it all in. “Tell me what happened to Cliff.”

“He was hit in the head with a shovel.”

A shovel?

My mind was about to spin off into hyperspace now. I had a sinking feeling that I’d seen the shovel she was referring to.

“Who hit him?” I asked, afraid I already knew the answer.

“Denise Jones.”

I gripped my stomach. The past hour had been like a roller-coaster ride, with Lizzie calling three times, first to tell me that Cliff was dead, then to tell me that she wasn’t sure, and finally, just now, to say that he was alive. Honestly, I didn’t know whether to throw a party, have a drink, or pray. The good news was that whatever had happened to Cliff Hogarth, I didn’t have anything to do with it, thank heavens. But now I was worried about Denise. She’d admitted to me that she’d hated Cliff, but I wasn’t about to mention that to Lizzie or anyone else. Not yet, anyway.

“Tell Hal to toss that police scanner in the trash,” I grumbled. “This isn’t the first time they’ve jumped the gun with the wrong information.”

“I’ve begged him to get rid of it,” Lizzie said. “But he enjoys listening to it. He works so hard, I want him to have his hobbies. I just hope he’s not living vicariously through it.”

“I’m sure he’s not.” I sighed. Hal Logan was the most sensible man I knew. He balanced out Lizzie perfectly. “He probably just likes to keep his finger on the pulse of things around here.” I took a last gulp of coffee and refilled my cup with more. Not that I needed more of a jolt than I’d already received from Lizzie’s numerous phone calls.

“Lately, the town has been hopping with action,” Lizzie said. “Hal feels like he’s right in the middle of it all, thanks to the scanner.”

I could picture Hal getting excited about the latest buzz over the scanner. Lizzie’s husband was a darling man and he loved his wife to distraction—which was how Lizzie justified her relentless attempts to set us all up on blind dates. Their kind of true love was out there for all of us.

But I digressed.

“Tell me every detail, Lizzie.”

“Okay, but I don’t want you blaming Hal for thinking Cliff was dead. It’s the EMT’s fault for reporting that news in the first place.”

“Okay, but—”

“It took a while for them to report that they were able to revive Cliff. And now they say he’s clinging to life.”

Clinging to lifeis a heck of a lot better thandead, my guilty conscience assured me. Because, yes, I felt horribly guilty. Call me a hypocrite, but I was praying that Cliff Hogarth would survive. I’d ranted and raged in his face yesterday at lunch—in front of witnesses—and then later on to Denise. And over the past month to anyone who would listen, really. Even Chief Jensen had been subjected to my fuming tirades about Cliff.

I frowned at the thought. I was usually so even-tempered, but now I was tempted to sign up for anger-management classes.

“I’ve got to get Callie to school,” I told Lizzie, after taking a look at the clock. We hung up and I grabbed my stuff and went running outside to meet Callie.

I was surprised to see a sleepy-headed Mac waiting with his niece. “Do I have news for you,” I said as he pushed open the gate and we walked to my truck.

He pulled open the passenger’s door. Callie settled inside the truck and immediately started texting her friends.

Mac glanced at me from across the truck bed. “I think I might have bigger news.”

“So you heard that Cliff Hogarth almost died?”

“Yes. How’d you hear about it?”

“Lizzie called me.” I told him about Hal hearing it on the police scanner, and about the multiple phone calls from Lizzie. “So now he’s clinging to life.”

Mac nodded. “Yeah. He’ll probably make it.”

“I’m glad, I guess.”

“You guess?” he said with amusement.

“Sorry. Yes, sure, I’m glad.”

He studied me. “What’s going on, Irish?”

I fiddled with the zipper of my down vest, feeling foolish. “I . . . I sort of threatened him yesterday. In public.” I waved the incident away. “But I wouldn’t. I mean, I didn’t follow through. I’m not a violent person, despite my occasional rant.”

“Of course you’re not.”

I smiled at him. “Thanks. So, how did you hear about Cliff?”

He circled around the truck to stand closer to me so we could speak more quietly. It was still early enough to wake up some of our neighbors. “You know I’ve been doing ride-alongs with the police to research my next book, right?”

My eyebrows perked up. “Oh, of course. So, you were with Eric? You must know everything. What happened?”

Mac looked pleased by my enthusiasm. “We were just about to head back to the police station when we got the call that Cliff Hogarth had been hurt.”

“Where was he?”

“He was out at that nursery you took me to.”

“I wonder what he was doing out there.”

“He went to talk to Denise Jones.”

“Why?”

“Brace yourself.”

“Oh no. Please don’t tell me they were having an affair.”

“No.” Mac looked over his shoulder, clearly making sure that Callie was paying no attention to us. Of course, she wasn’t. A teenager with a phone couldn’t care less what adults were doing. “He was trying to blackmail her.”

“Wh-what?” I felt my jaw drop. I knew Cliff was a horrible human being, but blackmailing Denise? “Are you kidding?”

“Nope.”

“Oh my God. Poor Denise!” I paced in front of the truck. What could he possibly have on Denise? Not the point right now, Shannon, I told myself. “Cliff is so awful. Just when I think he can’t stoop any lower, he goes there. So, what happened exactly?”

“Denise was working late,” Mac said, setting the scene. “She had just dug out some old flower beds and was rolling the trash barrels out to the parking lot to be emptied in the morning. She was about to lock up the place when Hogarth showed up to talk. Apparently she didn’t like what he had to say, because she ended up bashing him in the head with her shovel.”

I had to lean against my truck to keep from falling over. This was all so hard to believe. Even though Denise and I had both voiced our sincere disgust with Cliff Hogarth, and even though I’d noticed how viciously she’d been pounding that shovel against the ground that time I’d been at the nursery with Mac, I still couldn’t picture Denise being so angry that she’d attack someone badly enough that they were now clinging to life. “I can’t believe it. I’d just visited her a few hours earlier.”

“Did she have her shovel with her when you were there? Because that thing is lethal.”

Immediately I felt obliged to defend my friend. “Any shovel is lethal, not just Denise’s. And if Cliff was trying to blackmail her, she must’ve hit him in self-defense.” I frowned, imagining it, then tried to brush it off. “Besides, she didn’t kill him. He’s still alive. So, really, he’s lucky, because he clearly had it coming.”

Mac’s eyebrows went up. “I think I like this tough-girl streak, Irish.”

I could feel my cheeks heating up at my bloodthirsty tone. “Is Denise okay?”

“She was hysterical,” Mac said. “I’ll try to remember everything she said, but it got complicated.”

“Oh, dear.”

“Denise told Eric that Hogarth kept goading her about paying him money to keep quiet—she never would say what it was exactly—and she finally got so angry, she started to swing at him with whatever she had. It happened to be the shovel. Hogarth was able to grab it and they tussled.” He shook his head and lowered his voice. “He pushed her down and lifted the shovel to hit her. She thought she was about to die, but at the last second she was able to roll out of the way and scramble to her feet. He got distracted by that and it gave her time to grab the shovel back and bash him over the head.”

“Wow. She’s really strong.”

“I know. I saw those arms of hers, remember? Anyway, she said she finally managed to swing the shovel blindly and nailed him in the head. He dropped like a big tree.”

I pressed my fingers against my mouth. I was shocked, of course, but also horrified for several different reasons. “Poor Denise. Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to say poor Cliff. I know I shouldn’t speak ill of the nearly dead, but it’s hard to pretend I feel bad for him.”

Mac raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, nobody deserves to be hit with a shovel, but he clearly provoked her. Pushed her to the limit.” I slapped one hand on the truck fender. “Heck, he had me pushed until I was a raving lunatic just yesterday. He has a gift for rubbing people the wrong way.”

“Sounds like it.” Mac checked his wristwatch, then covered my hand with one of his. I appreciated the show of comfort and solidarity. “Denise is being interrogated by Eric right now, so I guess he’ll have to figure out whether it’s all justifiable or not. My guess is that she’ll be released.”

“I hope so.”

“Think about it,” he said. “By the time she actually hit him with the shovel, it was a case of fighting for her life.”

My mind narrowed in on one thing. “This must have something to do with Lily’s death.”

His eyes lit up and he gave my hand a squeeze before letting go. “Of course it does. Let’s discuss.”

I had to laugh. Mac loved tossing around murder theories. It was more grist for the mill. Or research for his books. “Okay,” I said. “Why would Cliff be blackmailing Denise? She was Lily’s best friend.”

“Keep talking,” he said.

“So you never heard what it was about?”

“Nope.”

Bummer, I thought. I’d have to theorize some more. “Okay. What if the two of them had been fooling around behind Lily’s back?”

“Which two?”

“Cliff and Denise.” I made a face. “I can’t believe she would ever be interested in him, but it could happen. So what if . . .”

“What if . . . ?” he prompted.

“Well, Cliff could’ve been threatening to tell Mr. Jones.” I frowned at that idea. “But if they were having an affair back in high school, it’s all in the past. Why would Mr. Jones care? This is weird.”

“Weird and wonderful,” he said, energized. “Let’s take Callie to school, then come back home and I’ll interview you some more. This will be more great background for my article.”

I sighed, torn between obligations and having fun. “I’d love to, but I really have to work for a few hours. But I can come home at lunch and we can talk then. Does that sound good to you?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

*   *   *

I drove Callie to school and talked to the guys for a while. They had everything under control with the parking-lot demolition, so I jogged back to the truck and drove out to the lighthouse mansion to work with Carla and her crew.

Carla greeted me with a look of puzzled concern on her face.

“What’s up?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“Aldous Murch was here when I arrived first thing this morning.”

“Aldous? Did he drive himself?” I hoped not. The man was in his eighties and a little too fragile to be driving his own car.

“He said he took the Northline bus.”

“The bus? Was he looking for me?”

“No.” Her forehead creased in worry. “That’s the weird thing. He stood right here on the front porch and shouted that the truth needed to come to light. Then he pushed me out of the way, marched into the house, and started climbing the stairs. He had to stop on every step to catch his breath and was worn out by the second floor.”

“I hope you convinced him to go back downstairs.”

“Since he couldn’t breathe, it didn’t take much convincing. But while he was on the second floor, he walked back and forth down the hall, stopping at every doorway, mumbling about something. ‘It’s here somewhere,’ I think he was saying. And he kept coming back to the stairway, kept staring up toward the attic.”

“The attic?”

“Yeah. I finally asked if he wanted me to look for something in the attic for him.”

My stomach started its nervous twitching again. “What did he say? Did he leave something up there?”

“He wouldn’t tell me,” Carla said. “He continued to mumble to himself, so I finally called his daughter, and she drove out to pick him up.”

“Good.” I shook my head, befuddled by Aldous’s strange behavior. What was he looking for? And why was he staring up at the attic?

Those questions led me to wonder, Did Aldous know Lily Brogan fifteen years ago? Had he seen her hiding out in the lighthouse mansion?

“Oh, God.” Was it possible that Aldous had something to do with Lily’s murder? Impossible. But I couldn’t let it go. Fifteen years ago, Aldous would’ve been in his late sixties. Maybe he was frail now in his eighties, but he would’ve been a strong man back then. Strong enough to pick up a woman and shove her inside a dumbwaiter? My mind started spinning at the thought. It wasn’t possible, was it?

“Absolutely not,” I muttered immediately. I was grasping at straws. But a tiny niggling doubt remained.

After all, from the very beginning when Mac first bought the mansion and then applied to the Planning Commission to rehab the place, Aldous had been dogging the process. Was the old man more concerned about the house itself or what we might discover inside?

There was only one way to find out. I would have to track him down and have a conversation with him. For now, though, I was here and ready to work off some of these worries with good, hard labor. I glanced at Carla, who still looked anxious. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll talk to Aldous.”

“Okay, good. Thanks, Shannon.”

“For now, let’s go over the stuff you guys have been doing all week.”

“Sounds like a plan. Let’s start out here.” We circled the front porch, and she pointed out the items on my list they’d taken care of. “We’ve taken down all the shutters. I’m storing them up on the porch because it keeps threatening to rain.”

“Good thinking.” Two dozen pairs of shutters were neatly piled under the front window. Also, a number of wooden planks were chalked to indicate that they needed to be replaced.

“This header will have to come down, by the way,” she said, reaching up to slap the head beam that ran between the two main posts that stood on either side of the front steps. “Water damage.”

“Yeah, I had that on my list. The roof over the porch is warped, so I know water’s been leaking into those beams for years now.”

“That’s the downside of having a two-hundred-year-old house next to the ocean,” she said, shaking her head.

“Sad but true.” I pulled out my tablet and consulted my handy list of projects. “Did you get started on the kitchen yet?”

“Sure have,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”

We walked through the foyer into the dining room and pushed open the kitchen door. The sink and the entire counter and the cabinets above and below it were gone. “I had the guys put the old cabinets in the garage for safekeeping until you’re ready to do something with them.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d like to salvage them somehow. Maybe Mac has some ideas of ways to use them. The wood is so beautiful.”

Carla gestured toward the tools leaning against the wall where the sink used to be. “I’ve got a sledgehammer and a pickax sitting here, just in case you feel like attacking something.”

I laughed. “How did you know?” I crossed the room and lifted the ax. “Tell me what to work on next.”

She pointed to the other side of the room. “That pantry closet needs to come down. It’s all yours. Billy and I can start tearing apart the mudroom.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I stared at the south end of the kitchen, where a floor-to-ceiling pantry had been built out from the wall, taking up half the space on that side of the room. On the wall next to the cabinet was nothing but a faded, boxy outline, indicating that an old refrigerator had once stood there.

The wood cabinet was old and had been picked apart from the inside by termites, so I had no intention of salvaging any of it, except to use as kindling.

I slipped on my safety goggles and did a few practice swings before I slammed the ax into the side of the pantry. Splinters and chunks of wood went flying. I continued swinging until the doors and sides of the pantry were scattered in pieces across the floor.

I could feel my muscles thrumming, and I don’t know why the thought came to me, but I remembered that Denise Jones had strong arms, too. Swinging an ax or a sledgehammer—or a shovel—every day could do that for you.

The entire pantry had been attached to the wall by one-by-two-inch wood slats. I used a regular hammer to claw off the slats, and part of the wall came off with them. I wasn’t concerned, because we would have to take the entire room down to the studs, anyway.

But instead of the usual layer of lath beneath the surface plaster, there was a sheet of old drywall. I knew drywall had been around for almost a hundred years; that wasn’t the problem. It just didn’t match the rest of the walls of the house, which had been constructed using the traditional lath and plaster. Had this wall been built later?

Since we’d be rebuilding it anyway, I used the pickax to dig through the drywall and break it up. But instead of finding two-by-four studs beyond the drywall, there was only empty space.

“What in the world?” It was too dark to see anything, so I tore down more of the drywall and then grabbed the big flashlight from my tool chest.

“How’s it going?” Carla asked, strolling over to my side of the room.

“We’ve got a little mystery in here,” I muttered, shining the light through the hole I’d opened in the drywall. I really hoped I wouldn’t find another body. Or rats. Please not rats. I stepped back to give Carla room to look. “Can you see anything?”

“What’s back there?” She peered into the space for a long moment. “Huh. Looks like a staircase.”

“Oh, my God.” A tingle of excitement mixed with fear shot across my shoulders and down my arms. “It is a staircase.”

I grabbed the sledgehammer and slashed away at the rest of the wall. Carla used her gloved hands to tear off a few chunks and toss them on the floor.

Within minutes, we were able to step through the wall and get a closer look at the impossibly narrow, rickety set of stairs that led up to a second-floor landing and then continued up to the third floor. I could see from where I stood that the landing came to an abrupt end at a blank wall. There was no doorway. The entire staircase had been completely blocked off and enclosed by walls.

“This must’ve been the servants’ stairs,” Carla marveled. “I don’t understand why they would cover them up.”

“I don’t, either,” I said, gazing at the dark wooden bannister that wobbled when I touched it. “But I owe Aldous Murch an apology.”

*   *   *

The guys and Carla were happy to clean up the remains of the demolished pantry while I drove back to town to track down Aldous and tell him what we’d found.

I stopped at the Planning Commission offices first, but he wasn’t there. One of the secretaries came over to the counter and said, “You’ll probably find him strolling somewhere between here and the Historical Society office down on the square.”

I decided to walk the same route and finally caught up with him. He was seated on a park bench in the tree-lined grassy center of the town square. His head was bowed and I wondered if he was dozing.

“Hello, Mr. Murch,” I said.

He blinked and sat up straighter. “Well, hello, there. I haven’t seen you in a while, young lady.” He coughed to clear his throat.

“I’ve been pretty busy. But I heard you were out at the mansion, and I was wondering if you needed any help looking for something.”

“I didn’t . . . I wasn’t. . . .” His lips curled down in a frown. “I forget what I was looking for.”

I sat down next to him on the bench. “Maybe this will help you remember.” I held out my tablet so he could see the photograph I’d taken.

He stared at it for over a minute and finally looked up at me. I was shocked to see tears blurring his eyes. “I told you,” he whispered.

“You did.” I felt terrible that I hadn’t taken his word about the staircase. Especially when it seemed to mean so much to him. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you. You were right. We found this staircase behind the kitchen wall.” I slid my finger across the screen and showed him the next photo. “Beyond the stairs we found a little room with this small fireplace. But this whole area was completely closed off on all three floors. And you can’t see this chimney from the outside of the house, so they must’ve taken it down, brick by brick.”

“It was the servants’ parlor,” he murmured, and curled arthritic fingers around the edges of the tablet.

“But why did they close it off? They even went to the trouble of changing the blueprints so nobody knew it was there.”

He pressed one hand against the bench seat and seemed to brace himself before speaking. “A young girl was attacked on those back stairs.” He took another breath and kept talking. It was painful to listen to him struggle for words. “She was a sweet girl, and pretty. Betsy was her name. They hurt her, you see. Badly. She wasn’t the same after that.”

“Did they punish the person who hurt her?”

“No,” he uttered in disgust. “She would never say who did it, but we knew. We knew.”

“You couldn’t do anything about it?”

“Not without her testimony. Frankly, even if she’d testified, they never would’ve prosecuted the evil man who did it. The navy decided to close off that dangerous passageway rather than discipline the man who did those horrible things.”

I patted his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

Aldous shot me a sideways glance. “The man was untouchable back then. He was a high-ranking officer. The one who did all that bad stuff. You understand.”

“I’m afraid so.” The navy wouldn’t want to risk receiving negative PR over one insignificant housemaid.

“I’d like to say times have changed,” he said, “but they haven’t, have they?”

“Some things are changing,” I said lamely, unable to think of anything that would make him feel better.

He reached over and I felt again the crepe-paper-thin skin of his hand as he patted mine in sympathy. “Perhaps you’re right, dear. Things do seem to be changing. Altogether too fast sometimes, if you ask me.” He pursed his lips tightly, and then slowly he seemed to make a conscious effort to smile. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out it was the first time he’d done so in months.

“It’s good you uncovered those stairs,” he said. “Betsy deserves to be remembered, not shut away behind walls and deaf ears.”

I got a chill, but he was right. Finding the stairs would allow us to shine a light on the past.

“My offer to show you around the mansion still stands,” I said. “Whenever you’d like me to drive you out there.”

“I appreciate that. And thank you for showing me the pictures, Shannon, dear. I’ve got to admit, I thought I might be going a little senile for a while there.”

“Not you, Mr. Murch,” I said, chuckling. “Not you.”

*   *   *

On my way home, I stopped to visit Lizzie at Paper Moon on the square. “Any word on Cliff?”

“Let’s go get a latte,” she whispered. We both waved to Hal, who smiled and shooed us off. “I can take fifteen minutes.”

We didn’t speak as we walked three doors down from her shop to the coffeehouse, where I bought two lattes. We found a quiet corner and sat to talk. Lizzie took a sip first and then said, “Cliff is still in intensive care but not quite as critical as earlier.”

“Have you heard if they arrested Denise or not?”

“I haven’t heard, which is sad, because why have a stupid police scanner if you can’t get the latest updates?”

“Why, indeed?”

I filled her in on everything Mac had told me about Denise bashing Cliff with the shovel and the interesting detail of him trying to blackmail her.

“Blackmail?” Lizzie repeated. “What could she have possibly done that would cause someone to blackmail her?”

“I can’t figure it out. Is it something that happened back in high school or is it more recent?”

“I wonder if it has something to do with Lily.”

“That was my first guess.”

“I’ll talk to Hal. He might know something.”

“Okay, and if you see anyone else who might have a clue, ask them. I want to know what the heck Cliff was thinking.”

“And we don’t know if Denise has been arrested,” she said. “I hope they let her go.”

“Me, too,” I whispered. “It sounds like Cliff would’ve killed her if he’d had the chance.”

I walked Lizzie back to the store and drove toward home. We had both promised to call each other first thing if we heard anything. Because that’s how our small-town world operated.

It bothered me that Cliff had told Denise something so outrageous that she’d taken a lethal swing at him. I supposed the story would leak out eventually, so I would just have to wait. Patience, sadly, was not my greatest virtue.

*   *   *

When I got home, I dashed up the stairs that led to the apartment over the garage to look for Mac. After a few seconds of my pounding on the door, he answered, looking as though he hadn’t slept all night. He wore a ratty old T-shirt with holes, an ancient pair of cargo shorts, and flip-flops. Despite all that, he looked ridiculously sexy.

“Are you working?” I asked, recognizing his usual writing attire.

“No, because someone was hammering on my door so loudly I couldn’t concentrate.” He said it with a gleam in his eye, so I didn’t feel too awful for interrupting.

“Sorry, but I have to talk to you.”

He swung the door open. “Come in. Talk to me.”

The large studio apartment was neater than I’d thought it would be, given that Mac was in writing mode. Yes, his desk was a mess, but that was to be expected. The king-sized bed was made, though, with all the pillows stacked in an orderly fashion. The small dining table in front of the bay window held only a thin vase with a sprig of flowers from my garden.

“What’s up?” he said.

“There’s a secret room behind the kitchen wall with a fireplace and a staircase going to the second and third floors,” I told him.

He pulled out one of the chairs next to the table. “Sit. Breathe.”

I plopped down, realizing for the first time how fast my heart was beating. It was no wonder. I had discovered a secret room!

Mac pulled out the other chair and joined me at the table. “So, Aldous had the right of it after all.”

“Yes, and I felt so bad. I tracked him down a while ago to show him pictures and tell him about it. He had tears in his eyes, and it almost broke my heart.”

“Can I see the pictures?”

“Oh yeah.” I pulled my tablet out of my bag and handed it to him.

As he gazed at the photographs, I related the entire story to Mac, of poor Betsy’s attack on the back stairs and the cover-up that followed. When I was done, Mac took my hand and we sat in silence for several long minutes.

“I admit I’m fascinated by the hidden staircase,” Mac said. “But its history is so dark, I wonder if the whole thing should be walled up again.”

“You should look it over before you decide, of course. But maybe you could hang a plaque in there. And maybe your story could be a tribute of sorts to Betsy.” I shrugged, feeling a little silly for telling a bestselling author how to write. “Or not, if that isn’t your style.”

He squeezed my hand. “I’d like to think I have it in me to do her justice.”

“Oh, Mac.” I rewarded him with a bright smile. “I know you do.”

Eventually the subject changed back to Lily. Mac brought his computer over to the table and typed rapidly as I told stories of those days back in high school. I switched to Denise’s attack on Cliff and conjectured here and there, wondering if Denise had been sleeping with Cliff and speculating on which other girls Cliff might’ve been dating. I knew he had asked me out, and Whitney, too. But not Jane. So who else had Cliff Hogarth been interested in? Did he make some girl so jealous that she stalked Lily and killed her? And what about the present day? Was Cliff spreading lies about other people besides Denise? And me? I’d almost forgotten my desire to sue him for slander. The lawsuit would have to wait until he was healthy enough to be dragged into court.

I told Mac what Denise had said about Dismal Dain and his weird attraction to Mr. Jones’s biology rats. I told him more about Sean and Lily’s father, and wondered aloud if Hugh Brogan had had something to do with Lily’s demise. I didn’t mention her pregnancy or anything else that Eric had told me in confidence. I knew that detail would be revealed eventually and it would be important to Mac’s article. But for now he had enough ghoulishly useful information to begin setting the scene for Lily’s death.

*   *   *

I drove back to school to finish up the day with my parking-lot crew. As I watched the backhoe scoop up big chunks of asphalt into its loader, Whitney approached. I braced myself for her latest insult, but she was too shaken to verbally abuse me.

“What’s wrong with you?” I asked.

“I’m just so upset about Cliff.” She sniffled into a tissue, seeming genuinely distraught. “Just when he was getting his life back together, this had to happen. It’s not fair.”

“Well, if you really want to be fair, you must admit he had to have said something pretty awful to Denise if she was driven to try to hit him like that.”

Whitney uttered a sound of contempt. “It figures you would have no sympathy for him.”

“Hey, I’m glad he’s not dead. But my real sympathy is for Denise. And yours should be, too. I thought you guys were good friends!”

“We are! Of course we are,” Whitney insisted. “But Cliff’s the one in the hospital.”

“I’m sure Tommy told you the whole story. Denise was fighting for her life when she finally hit him.”

“Whatever. I still feel for Cliff,” she said. “And if Denise hadn’t confessed that she hit him, I would suspect you. You hate him and I don’t know why. Wait. Yes, I do. It’s because you’re jealous because he liked me so much.”