A Denial of Death (33 page)

"The secret will come out now." Helen prepared to make her move toward the door. "Even if I don't report it. The bank will freeze the account when it realizes Angie is dead, and they'll be looking for the correct owner of the account."

"Not necessarily," Charlene said. "It's not a local bank, so they'll probably never hear about it. Angie signed up for electronic statements, and I'm the only one who has the password now. As long as I don't tell the bank, they'll never know. Not before I withdraw all the money, anyway."

"I hope you'll reconsider telling the police what happened, but there's obviously nothing else I can say to convince you, so I might as well go on home. The cab driver is probably getting restless. I told him I was only going to be here for a couple minutes."

As soon as Helen took her first unsteady step toward the hallway, Charlene reversed direction around the coffee table and closed in on Helen. Helen automatically turned in the opposite direction, even as she berated herself for giving in to the instinct, and Charlene turned too. Being chased around a table wasn't as much fun in real life as it looked in cartoons, and the game wasn't going to last long, overmatched as she was by Charlene.

When Helen reached the end of the table closest to the hallway, she continued on toward the front door, but Charlene managed to get in front of Helen, forcing her to retreat until she bumped up against the coffee table.

"You can't leave yet," Charlene said. "Not until I'm sure you understand, so you won't go telling anyone about things that aren't any of their business."

Did Charlene really think Helen would remain silent? More likely, Charlene was assuming no one would believe Helen. Charlene might have been right about that a few months ago, when Helen had been new to town, but things had changed. Helen still went unnoticed by car salesmen and the police, but Tate would listen to her, and the police would listen to him. Visibility by proxy was better than being completely overlooked.

Better to let Charlene believe Helen was invisible and powerless, though. "I'm certainly willing to listen. If this is going to take a while, I need to sit down again." She raised her cane a few inches, drawing attention to her infirmity. She nodded at the two wingback chairs near the front window, where she might be able to pull back the curtain and get Barry's attention. "They look more comfortable than the sofa." Maybe Charlene had a neighbor like Francesca who kept an eye on everything. Even as she thought it, Helen realized that wouldn't work. Unlike the Deckers' neatly maintained and open front yard, Charlene's bungalow was all but invisible from the street, with the first floor completely obscured by overgrown hedges.

Charlene kept an eye on Helen, but led the way over to the two chairs. Helen lagged behind, pretending to be more tired than she was, and looking for something that would give her an advantage over Charlene's greater speed.

Close to Helen's elbow was the largest of the new glass sculptures. That was the answer, Helen thought. If anything would stop Charlene in her tracks, it was a threat to the glass sculpture.

 Helen reached out to it, mimicking Charlene's earlier action in stroking its contours, as if it were more important than what had happened to Angie "This really is a lovely piece. You must be very pleased with it."

"I am," Charlene said, confusion evident on her face. "No one else around here seems to understand how amazing the sculptures are."

"Martha Waddell understands." Helen gripped the sculpture, raising it a fraction of an inch to test how much it weighed. It was definitely heavy, but she could lift it with one hand, so she didn't need to abandon her cane. "I saw a lovely piece in her office the last time I was there."

"That's mine," Charlene said proudly. "I'm going to buy it back from her now."

Helen nodded sympathetically while she adjusted her grip to a lower part of the sculpture. "As a fellow art lover, I'm sure she'll let you."

Charlene shrugged. "One way or another, it will be mine again."

Charlene really was losing her grip on reality, Helen thought. Even if she hadn't killed her sister, it had to have taken a certain amount of cold-bloodedness to drag the body across a lawn in the middle of the night to a hole waiting to be filled with concrete. That sort of thing had to change a person. And it wasn't like she could have just tossed the corpse and run, acting on a spur-of-the-moment bad decision. Charlene had to have been in Ralph's yard for hours, finding a shovel among the abandoned tools, digging out a space within the foundation hole that was big enough for the body, then covering it up with dirt and smoothing everything out again so the disturbance wouldn’t be noticed in the morning.

Helen grabbed the sculpture and hugged it to her chest. "I'm leaving now. If you try to stop me, I'm going to drop the sculpture and shatter it to pieces."

Charlene gasped and jumped to her feet. "No. You wouldn't. It's a piece of art."

"I can, and I will." Helen backed away from Charlene, toward the hallway and the front door.

Charlene followed slowly, keeping her distance, but not letting the sculpture out of her sight.

Helen passed the stack of luggage with Angie's laptop perched on top. Cursing the cane that prevented her from snagging the computer, she shuffled backwards a few more steps to the door and fumbled behind her for the knob. It turned and the door moved freely, relieving her of the fear that a chain or deadbolt might slow her down.

All she had to do now was get to where Barry could see her. It wouldn't be easy, between the cane, her limp, and the weight of the glass sculpture. She could probably do it, but she'd have to leave the laptop behind and risk Angie destroying the evidence before the police could get here. Helen would be safe, and Tate might eventually get Ralph out of jail, but it could take months or even years to free him without the evidence of the laptop.

She just had to take the evidence with her. It was within her reach, but she couldn't carry both the clunky, heavy laptop and the art sculpture, which was the only thing stopping Charlene from attacking.

Helen pulled the front door open and hung her cane on the outer knob, freeing one hand. Moving out of the way of the door as it swung inward gave her an excuse to get a little closer to the laptop.

Charlene took a step closer, her arms reaching out for the sculpture.

"Stay back," Helen warned, raising the sculpture as if she were going to smash it on the floor.

When Charlene didn't move, Helen lifted the sculpture even higher. She ignored the strain in her muscles, while the wobble in her arm made it more credible that she might well drop the fragile piece of art if she wasn't obeyed.

Charlene finally took a step backward, her gaze fixed on the sculpture, apparently unaware of Helen's interest in the laptop.

"You want the sculpture back?" Helen lowered it, adding her other hand to the base. "Here. Catch." She sent the heavy glass sailing toward Charlene, counting on her struggling with its weight, magnified by the momentum of the sculpture's flight.

Helen didn't wait to see what happened to the glass. She snagged the laptop and rushed through the door opening, grabbing her cane from the doorknob on the way past.

There was no crash behind her, so Charlene must have caught the sculpture. Helen hurried down the steps as fast as her hip would permit, hugging the laptop to her chest and praying she wouldn't be the second woman to die while clutching it.

The tossed sculpture bought Helen enough time to reach the bottom of the steps, but then she heard footsteps behind her. She still had fifty feet of front yard to cross to the driveway before she had any chance of being seen by Barry parked in the street. Charlene was going to catch up to her before she reached the driveway.

Helen might not be able to run fast enough to reach the street before she was caught, especially in this heat, but her vocal cords were as strong and nimble as ever, and unaffected by temperature or humidity.

Helen started screaming.

Barry appeared at the base of the driveway, too fast to have been reacting to the sound, running toward her with Tate right beside him. Tate must have gotten her voicemail and realized Charlene was more dangerous than they'd initially thought.

Tate reached her first, while Barry continued to the front porch where he told Charlene in his chant-like speech pattern that the police were on the way and she should contemplate her sins while she waited.

Helen shoved the laptop into Tate's hands. "Here's the evidence you need to save Ralph."

"You just never listen to me, do you?" He took the laptop from her. "I told you to stay out of trouble, and what do you do but confront a desperate criminal all by yourself. Again."

Helen's legs gave out, and she sank to the brittle, dead grass. "Are you planning to tell my nieces I'm not following your advice?"

"I ought to." Tate looked past her at Charlene sitting on the front porch, sobbing. Barry stayed beside her with his eyes closed, holding her hand and murmuring what sounded like a prayer but could just have been him commenting on the weather. "But I won't. I don't want to take the chance they'll actually succeed in dragging you back to Boston to keep a closer eye on you. It's been…interesting having you around here. I'd miss that if you left."

"Does that mean you'll represent me if they try to have me committed for my own safety?"

Police sirens were approaching.

"It depends." He looked toward the sound of approaching sirens before offering her a hand to stand up. As they walked down the driveway to where they could intercept the police and have them contact Detective Peterson, he said, "What kind of exotic wood are you offering as my retainer?"

A week later when Jack picked her up to attend the next Charity Caps Day, he held the Subaru Forester's back door open for her, a clear sign he still hadn't forgiven her for letting someone other than him drive her to Charlene's house.

They made the trip in silence. Helen knew from recent experience that when he was in this formal chauffeur mode, he wouldn't talk to her while the car was in motion. At the nursing home Jack jumped out and opened her door before she could do it herself. He knew how much that irritated her.

She slid out of the seat but blocked him from closing the door. "Are you ever going to forgive me and let me sit in the front seat of my own car?"

"I don't know what you mean, Ms. Binney."

She'd promised never again to take a ride from a stranger and that hadn't placated him. He'd acted as if she'd been out hitchhiking in the hunting grounds of a serial killer rather than hiring a well-respected local cabbie who spent his free time in cloistered meditation. She'd even arranged for Ed Clary to install a game console in the Subaru's back seat, which had soothed some of Jack's ruffled feathers but apparently not all of them. She was willing to give him a little more time to get over his snit, though. She knew it was displaced fear or perhaps irrational guilt that he'd been busy with his pottery business while she'd been in danger. He'd get over it eventually, and until then her new car's back seat was perfectly comfortable and easy to get into and out of. She didn’t even miss the powerful front air conditioning vents, since the heat wave had finally broken, replaced by a dry, somewhat cooler than usual stretch of weather.

Helen grabbed her yarn bag and went inside. Martha Waddell was talking to a nurse in the foyer and broke off when she caught sight of Helen. "How do you like the Subaru?"

"I should have listened to you from the beginning." Helen signed the guest register. "It's just right for me."

"I'm glad you like it." Martha turned away to answer her phone and then rushed off to deal with some crisis she would undoubtedly resolve better than her boss ever could.

Helen proceeded to the activity room where, as expected, Betty and Josie were presiding over their cap-making volunteers. What she hadn't expected was the sight of a new addition to the group: Ralph Decker.

He was in the wingback chair near the fireplace where Betty usually sat. Helen claimed Josie's usual spot next to him. Even though it was Ralph's first day here, he was already getting the hang of knitting, using a cheap pair of plastic needles. Helen's latest cap, made with the special, hand-turned, exotic-wood crochet hook Tate had made to celebrate Ralph's release from jail, was yet another misshapen mess.

"Hey, look," Geoff Loring said from near the entrance to the room. "If it isn't our very own Miss Marple."

Some people would never take her seriously.

Helen waited until Geoff came to stand beside her before saying, "Are you back on the criminal beat now, coming to me for a lead on a new story?"

He rubbed the spot where his arm had been broken and shuddered. "Never. I'm here to cover a wedding proposal." He looked around the room and pointed at the elderly couple who'd been alternately cuddling and feuding and going into cardiac arrest and cuddling some more. "There they are now. I hear he's going to pop the question today."

"You'd better hurry on over, then," Helen said. "You don't want someone else to get the scoop."

Fortunately, Geoff was about the only person in town who wasn't taking her seriously now. Even the sales representatives at Wharton Wheels had come running over to see how they could help her on the day she finally tested and then bought the Subaru Forester. They'd been more interested in how she'd solved Angie's death than in helping her buy the car, but they'd all helped her with that too. In the end, she suspected the commission had to be divided a dozen ways.

That experience at the car lot was the first time she could recall, at least since her high school graduation, when she'd been the center of public attention. Throughout her marriage she'd always been in her husband's shadow, working behind the scenes. By the time she'd moved to Wharton, she'd been in the shadow of her lupus.

Solving one murder hadn't changed anything, but now that she'd solved a murder and whatever crime Charlene was guilty of, even Detective Peterson thought Helen's opinions might just be worth listening to. She was expected to be the main witness at Charlene's trial, if it ever happened. Tate had told her the case would likely be pled down to a lesser charge than murder, now that the autopsy had confirmed Angie's death was from natural causes.