A Body to Die For (37 page)

I glanced surreptitiously at the door. I needed to get out of there somehow.

“You don’t have time for a cup of coffee, do you?” I asked, forcing a smile. “I mean, just to talk about this.”

“I don’t have time—at least right now,” he said. “I’ve got to be someplace. I just came by to pick up something I left here
last night. Maybe later, though. In the meantime, you need to be careful. We haven’t actually charged anyone yet with the
murders.”

The edginess was gone from his voice. He seemed normal Beck again. Had I let my imagination run away?

“I’ll be careful,” I said, inching toward the door. “Thanks.”

He stayed behind in the inn. As soon as I was in the Jeep, I locked the doors and fished my cell phone out of my bag. “Jack,”
I said, “are you there?”

The connection was dead. I hit redial and heard a busy signal. I would try again later. All I wanted to do was get out of
there.

I barely took my eyes off the rearview mirror the whole way back to Danny’s, but there was no one behind me. As I pulled into
Danny’s driveway, I was surprised to see that her car wasn’t there. She’d left the inn over an hour ago, so where was she?
I opened the door, trying to keep the key from jumping out of my hand. Once inside, I made sure I’d locked the door.

The answering machine indicated there were four messages, and without bothering to take off my jacket, I quickly hit play.
The very first one was from Danny. She was calling from her car, probably shortly after I’d left the house. She said she had
shut down work at the inn earlier than planned because Natalie’s parents had asked for her help in making funeral arrangements.
She suggested that I fix myself something for dinner using whatever I could find in the fridge. There was a frantic call from
an inn staffer, anxious to know what was going on. The last two calls were from George, begging for Danny to talk to him tonight.

I yanked off my jacket and put a kettle of water on the stove. While I waited I poured myself what was left from the white
wine bottle. My cold seemed to be gaining ground again, and I wanted to dull its force. After taking a large swig, I began
to pace the kitchen, trying to think through the Beck situation. I was almost positive that something I’d said about Anna
in the lobby last night had provoked a reaction in Natalie: a memory, or a certain realization. But I had no idea what it
all had to do with Beck. Natalie had mentioned that police had been around a lot in the summer, and surely she’d crossed paths
with Beck then, as well as on the night of Anna’s death. But that kind of intersection alone didn’t add up to much. I needed
to know if it went beyond that. What I wanted most was to rule
out
any deeper connection. I couldn’t bear the idea that Beck might be a killer.

I had been busy focusing on Natalie, but I also needed to consider the possibility of a connection between Beck and Anna.
Because whoever had killed Natalie had probably killed Anna. Certainly Beck knew Anna from the Litchauer investigation. He
had interviewed her back then, probably had her walk him through the spa. Had he become infatuated with her? Was he the date
Anna had been waiting for that night? Had Natalie seen the two of them together? But why would Beck
kill
Anna? Or had I gotten totally off-track? Maybe Natalie had realized something else entirely—that Eric or even another man,
a stranger, might have been stalking Anna once I raised the topic. A thought wiggled its way through my brain, and I held
my breath.

I walked over to the countertop where I’d dropped my purse and rummaged through it. What I was looking for was the scrap of
paper I’d written Carson Ballard’s phone number on. It was at the bottom, already crumpled. I sat at the kitchen table with
Danny’s cordless phone and pushed the buttons. This time a woman answered.

“Who is this?” she demanded after I’d asked to speak to Carson. She obviously assumed I was either a female predator or someone
wanting to upgrade her long-distance calling plan.

“It’s an old friend calling with some news.”

“Just a minute.” I heard her lay the phone down. Thirty seconds passed.

“Yes?” It was a man, and he sounded wary.

“Hello, I’m Bailey Weggins,” I said. “Are you the Carson Ballard who grew up in Wallingford?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m helping to put together a retirement party for Bob Kass, the guidance counselor from the high school. You were on the
list of students he wanted to invite.”

“Yeah, I remember him,” he said, his voice more relaxed. “He was a good guy. How’d you find me, anyway?” Okay. Carson Ballard
was definitely in California. Three thousand miles away and clearly not wreaking havoc in the Berkshires.

“Your name and number were on a list someone gave me. I’m not sure how they tracked you down. Does your brother live in California,
too? We’d like to reach him as well.”

“Jeff? No, he’s back east. I’m not really in touch much with him.”

Fear rushed through me like water through a hose. My eyes pricked with tears.

“J-Jeff?” I stammered. “I thought his name was Harold.”

“No one ever calls him that anymore. Jeffrey’s his middle name—that’s what he uses.”

“So his name is Jeff Ballard?”

“No, Beck. He took my stepfather’s name.”

I put down the phone without even saying good-bye. The whistle on the teakettle blew shrilly, and I reached to turn off the
stove. I could feel my hands beginning to shake, and I knew there was no way to stop them.

Anna Cole had been responsible for the death of Beck’s sister. Then, over twenty years later, she had turned up in the town
where he lived. He’d arrived at the spa to investigate William Litchauer’s heart attack and had recognized her. A few months
later she was dead. Was it Beck who’d been watching and following her last summer? Was it Beck she had primped for at the
mirror? Clearly she had never recognized him, but then, when she’d known him previously he’d been only thirteen or fourteen
and going by a different name.

My mind blundered back to the night of the murder. Beck had seemed so focused on the fact that I might have seen something
of significance in the parking lot. What he might have been worried about was that I had seen
him.
And then there was that day in the woods. If he was actually the killer, he might have parked his car on the back road the
night of the murder and hiked through the woods to the spa. When I’d seen him that day, he wasn’t out looking for evidence.
He’d probably been retracing his steps, making certain he hadn’t dropped anything. He was the one who had probably followed
me that day, tracking me like a deer in order to learn what I was up to.

And what about the mouse? And the incident in the spa? And my room being searched? My money was on Josh for those, his way
of keeping me out of his territory. Cordelia suspected him of the towel stunt. And Beck had seemed genuinely surprised about
the mouse. Besides, Beck preferred subtler methods for dealing with me, like long, hard kisses, I thought with chagrin.

I realized, too, how delighted Beck must have been to discover that George had been calling Anna. And that Eric had dated
both Anna and Natalie. It gave him two viable suspects.

But how did Natalie fit into everything? Clearly she had seen something or known something, information about Beck that tied
him somehow to Anna. I had sparked the connection for her with what I had said last night in the lobby. Whatever it was, it
offered enough of a threat to Beck that he’d moved quickly to silence her.

My stomach was churning. I could feel the taste of bile. I had kissed Beck. I had fantasized about making love to him. And
he was a murderer. Or was there a chance that despite his connection to Anna, a connection he felt prudent to conceal, that
he hadn’t killed her, that the link between Anna and Natalie’s deaths came from some other person, like Eric, or the slick,
trick-playing Josh?

Out of nowhere, I heard a small rapping sound. It was the front door. The first thought that flashed through my mind was George.
On the answering machine he had sounded desperate to connect with Danny. Great, just what I needed. I walked from the kitchen
into the living room. I could see the form of someone through the sheer white fabric over the window in the door. The person
knocked again. I moved closer. To my total surprise it was Cordelia.

I glanced at my watch instinctively. It was seven-thirty. I had told her I would meet her half an hour ago.

“I’m sorry,” I said, opening the door. “I—Something urgent came up and I lost all track of the time.”

“I thought something like that happened. I decided just to drive by. Is Danny here?”

She was wearing a faux-fur-lined jeans jacket that with her large breasts made it appear as if she had a bulletproof vest
on underneath. No heavy-duty makeup tonight, however. I guess she hadn’t felt the need to knock my socks off.

“No, she’s helping Natalie’s family. Why don’t you come in.”

She stepped inside, rubbing her arms. A blast of cold air shoved its way in with her.

“I’d love something hot to drink,” she announced. “It’s freezing out there.”

“There doesn’t seem to be any fresh coffee, but I could make you tea.”

I was still reeling from my discovery about Beck, and the last thing I wanted to do was play tea party with Cordelia. But
she’d told me earlier that there was something important to share about Josh, and I needed to know how it all fit together.

I led her to the kitchen, and as I turned on the kettle again, she unbuttoned her coat and sat in one of the chairs around
the table. It was only a second before the kettle, already heated, let out a scream. I was so on edge already that the noise
made me want to jump out of my skin.

“So who told you that Josh put the towel over my face?” I asked, skipping the chitchat.

“One of the other therapists.”

“Yeah, but which therapist?”

“What difference does it make?”

“I’m not interested in playing games, Cordelia.”

“All right, it was Eric. He saw Josh go into your room. If Josh tried to hurt you, maybe he did that to Anna.”

As we’d been talking, I’d found two English Breakfast teabags in the cupboard. I slipped the bags into a pair of mugs and
poured the steaming water over them, then set the mugs on the table. Cordelia grasped one in a hand that seemed as large as
the end of a boat oar.

“You know they brought Eric down for questioning, don’t you?” I informed her. “He apparently dated Natalie as well as Anna.”

“Eric?” she asked, almost in a shriek. She’d clearly
not
known. She rose from the table as if she were about to go into a tailspin. “What do you
mean?
”

“I mean that Eric is being questioned about Anna’s murder—and Natalie’s, too.”

She grabbed my arm, pinching it. She was strong, strong as a man, really. I didn’t like what was happening.

“Let go of my arm, Cordelia,” I said. “You’re hurting me.”

“Tell me what you know!” she demanded.

She still had my arm, and I snapped it away as if I were yanking a curtain down from a window. She reached out, trying to
grab me again, and when I stepped back, she staggered forward. An alarm bell went off in my head. What was going on with her?
I thought suddenly of how jealous she’d seemed when she’d found me with Eric the other day. I thought of her insistence on
meeting me tonight. And I thought of her hands.

Suddenly, from the other room, we heard the sound of the door opening. We turned in unison to the doorway. Danny, I thought
in relief.

Jeffrey Beck walked into the kitchen and stared at us.

The sight of him made the bones seem to fall away from my legs, so that they felt instantly rubbery. Cordelia regarded him
dumbfounded, as if he were an actor who’d just entered the wrong scene in a play.

“What are you doing here?” I asked feebly.

“You should lock your doors,” he said. “It’s dangerous out there.” I realized then that I’d never put the lock back on after
I’d let Cordelia into the house.

I glanced from Beck to Cordelia and then back to Beck. I wasn’t sure whom I should be more afraid of.

“I just told Cordelia about Eric being arrested,” I said. I needed to force the attention onto something other than me. “She’s
very upset.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Cordelia screeched at him. “He couldn’t harm anyone.”

“Just calm down,” Beck told her, moving closer to her slowly, like you would with a nervous horse. “Eric is simply helping
us with our investigation.”

As I stood there, frozen in place, my eye fell onto the kitchen table. The paper with Beck’s brother’s name and number was
lying there in clear view. Beck caught the slight movement of my head and turned toward me. I tried to hold his eyes with
mine, but they slid toward the table and I saw his body tense.

He raised his head and chuckled oddly. “I
knew
something was the matter,” he said. “I knew back at the inn that you’d figured something out—but I wasn’t sure what, or how.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t be coy with me, Bailey.”

“I—”

“I said don’t be coy,” he snapped, his voice filled with quiet wrath.

“I want to know about Eric,” Cordelia interjected shrilly, oblivious to his rage, to the danger we both were in. “What are
you doing with him?”

Beck pivoted sideways and in one swift movement smashed his fist into the side of her head. She toppled over, crashing onto
the kitchen floor and lying there motionless.

“Look,” I said to Beck, attempting to hold my panic at bay, “I know what happened in Wallingford. I can understand why you
hated Anna.”

“Oh yeah? You think so?” he asked mockingly.

I tried desperately to think of a plan, but fear was flooding my brain, short-circuiting everything. Just keep talking, I
told myself.

“My father died when I was young—so I can imagine what the loss was like for you. Was it just a coincidence—meeting up with
Anna again?”

“I’d say it was more like
destiny,
” he said. He glanced absentmindedly down at Cordelia’s unconscious body, as if he were looking at a trail of mud on the floor.
“I walk into the spa this summer and there she is. She didn’t even recognize me, but I knew it had to be her. The person who
let my sister die. You don’t have any idea what it was like to know that she just went on with her life all these years. She
never had to face up to what she did. There were people back then who actually felt
sorry
for the bitch. And then it all fell into my lap. I had the chance to finally bring her to justice.”