Real Murders Part 6

Mr. Crandall was not eloquent about anything but guns, and finally I realized that if I was to understand the problem Teentsy was having with the washer, I'd better go along with him.

It wasn't right to feel put-upon; after all, this was my job. But I had been looking forward to eating without Lillian's voice droning in my ears, and since it was Wednesday, there should be a new Time in my mailbox. I sighed quietly, and trudged across the patio in Mr. Crandall's wake.The Crandalls' washer and dryer were in the bas.e.m.e.nt, of course, as they were in all four units. There was a straight flight of rather steep stairs down to the bas.e.m.e.nt, open on one side except for a railing. I clopped down the Crandalls' stairs, Teentsy Crandall right behind me telling me about the washer catastrophe in minute detail. When I reached the bottom, I saw a spreading water stain. With a sinking feeling of doom and dismay, I knew I'd have to spend my lunch hour tracking down a plumber.

Despite all the odds against it, I struck gold with my first phone call. The Crandalls watched admiringly as I talked Ace Plumbing into paying my tenants a call in the next hour. Since Ace was one of the two plumbing firms my mother used for all her properties, perhaps it wasn't totally amazing to find them willing; but to actually get them to commit themselves to coming right away-now that was amazing! When I was off the phone and Teentsy put a plate with country fried steak, potatoes, and green beans in front of me, I suddenly saw the bright side of being a resident manager. "Oh, you don't need to do that," I said weakly, and dug in. Calories and cholesterol did not factor in Teentsy's cooking, so her food was absolutely delicious with that added spice of guilt.Teentsy and Jed Crandall seemed delighted to have someone to talk to. They were quite a pair, Teentsy with her bountiful bosom and childish voice and gray curls, and Jed with his hard-as-a-rock seamed face.While I ate, Teentsy frosted a cake and Mr. Crandall-I couldn't bring myself to call him Jed-talked about his farm, which he'd sold the year before, and about how convenient it was for them to live in town where all their doctors and kinfolk and grandchildren were. He sounded unconvinced though, and I could tell he was spoiling for something to do.

"That sure was a nice young man we saw you with last night," Teentsy said archly. "Did you two have a good time?"

I was willing to bet Teentsy knew exactly when Robin had brought me home. "Oh, yes, it was fine," I said in as noncommittal a voice as I could summon.I glanced around their den and kitchen area. Mine was lined with books; Mr.Crandall's was lined with guns. I knew next to nothing about firearms, and was fervently content to keep it that way, but even I could tell these guns were of all different ages and types. I started wondering about their value, and from there it was a natural leap to being concerned about my mother's insurance coverage of these units; what would her responsibility be in case of theft, for example? Though it would take a foolhardy burglar to attempt to take anything away from Jed Crandall.

Thinking of hazards and security in general led my thoughts in another direction. I looked at the Crandalls' back door. Sure enough, they'd added two extra locks.

I laid down my fork. "Mr. Jed, I have to talk to you about those extra locks," I said gently.

Yes, he had read his lease agreement carefully. His tough old face went sheepish in an instant.

"Oh, Jed," chided Teentsy, "I told you you needed to speak to Roe about those locks."

"Well, Roe," her husband said, "you can see this gun collection needs more protection than that one lock on the back door." "I can appreciate how you feel, and I even agree," I said carefully, "but you know that if you do put on extra locks, you must give me a key, and you have to leave the locks in and give me all the keys if you ever decide to move. Of course I hope you never will, but you do have to give me an extra set of keys now."

While Mr. Crandall grumbled on about a man's home being his castle, and it going against the grain to give anyone else keys to that castle-even a nice gal like me-Teentsy was on her feet and rummaging through a drawer in the kitchen. She came up with a handful of keys immediately, and began sorting through them with a troubled look on her face.

"Now I've been promising myself I'd go through these and throw away the old ones we didn't need, and since we're retired I should have all the time in the world, but still I haven't done it," she told me. "Well, here are two that I'm sure are the spares for these locks ... here, Jed, try them and make sure." While her husband tested the keys in the locks, she stirred the others around with a helpless finger. "This looks like the key to that old trunk... I don't know about this one... you know, Roe, now that I think about it, one of these keys is to that apartment next door that that Mr. Waites rents now. I know you remember Edith Warnstein, she had it before him. She gave us an extra key because she said she was always locking herself out and it was always when you were at work."

"Well, when you find it, just bring it over sometime," I said. Mr. Crandall handed me his extra keys, which had proved to be the right ones, and I thanked Teentsy for the delicious lunch, feeling even more guilty that they'd fed me and then I'd "invaded their castle." It was h.e.l.l being conscientious, sometimes. I felt much better when my departure coincided with the arrival of the plumber.Judging solely by his appearance-two-day beard stubble, bandanna over long ringlets of black hair, and Day-Glo overalls-I wouldn't have trusted him with my washer, but he hefted his tool bag in an authoritative way and actually wrote it down when I told him to bill my mother's company for the repairs, so I left feeling I'd performed a service.

I almost literally ran into Bankston on my way out the Crandalls' patio gate. He was hefting his golf bag, and looked s.h.i.+ning clean, right out of the shower.He'd obviously been out at the country club having a few rounds. He looked surprised to see me. "The Crandalls having plumbing problems?" he asked, nodding towards the plumber's truck.

"Yes," I said distractedly, after glancing at my watch. "Your washer and dryer okay?"

"Oh, sure. Listen, how are you doing after your troubles of the past few days?" Bankston was being nice and polite, but I didn't have the time or the inclination to chitchat.

"Pretty well, thanks. I was glad to hear that you and Melanie are getting married," I added, remembering that I did owe something to courtesy. "I didn't have the chance to say anything the other night when we met at my place.Congratulations."

"Thanks, Roe," he said, in his deliberate way. "We were lucky to finally really get to know each other." His clear eyes were glowing, and it was apparent to me that he returned Melanie's strong feeling. I was a little envious, to tell the truth, and b.i.t.c.hily wondered what two such stolid people could have to "really get to know." I was also late.

"Congratulations," I repeated sunnily, and pretty much meant it. "I've got to run." I rabbited away to my place to put the keys to the Crandalls' apartment on my official key ring, and though I needed to hurry back to the library, I took an extra minute to label them.

I would've been late anyway.

I drove north on Parson Road to get back to the library. The Buckleys' house was along the way, to my left.

By sheer coincidence, out of all the people who could have been driving by when Lizanne came out that front door, it was I. I just glanced to my left to admire the flowers in the Buckleys' front yard, and the front door opened, and a figure stumbled out. I knew it was Lizanne by the color of her hair and her figure and because her parents owned the house, but nothing about her posture and att.i.tude was like Lizanne. She slumped on the front doorstep, clinging to the black iron railing that ran down the red-brick steps.

G.o.d forgive me, half of me wanted to continue on my route to the library and go back to work, in blessed ignorance; but the half that said my friend needed help seemed to control the car. I pulled in and crossed the street and then the lawn, dreading to reach Lizanne and find out why her face was so contorted and why there were stains on her hose, especially at the knees. .She didn't know I was there. Her long fingers with their beautifully manicured nails were ripping at her skirt, and her breath tore in and out of her lungs with a horrible wheeze. There were tear stains on her face, though no tears were coming now. From her smell she had vomited recently. The slow, sweet, casual beauty had vanished.

I put my arm around her and tried to forget the sour smell, but it made my own stomach begin to lurch uneasily. The Crandalls' delicious lunch threatened to come right back up. I shut my eyes for a second. When I opened them she was looking at me and her fingers were clenched instead of restless."They're both dead, Roe," she said clearly and terribly. "My mama and my daddy are both dead. I knelt down to make sure, and I have my own daddy's blood on my clothes."

Then she fell silent and stared at her skirt, and knowing I was inadequate, could not rise to this ghastly situation, I let my thoughts trace what they were good at: the pattern, the terrible impersonal pattern that real people were being forced to fit. This time it was Lizanne plus dead stepmother and father plus broad daylight plus b.l.o.o.d.y demise.

I wondered where the hatchet was.

"I just walked to the back door to eat lunch with them like I do every day," she said suddenly. "And when the door was locked, and they wouldn't answer, I unlocked the front here-this is the only key I have. They were-there was blood on the walls."

"The walls?" I murmured stupidly, having no idea what I was going to say until it came out.

"Yes," she said seriously, a.s.serting an incredible truth, "the walls. Daddy is on the sofa in there, Roe, the one where he sits to watch television, and he's just all... he's ... and Mama is upstairs in the guest bedroom on the floor by the bed."

I held her as tightly as I could and she bent and clung to me.

"I shouldn't have had to see them like that," she whispered.

"No."

Then she lapsed into silence.

I had to call the police.

I stood up like an old woman, and I felt like one. I turned to face the door Lizanne had shut behind her, and reached out like someone in a dream and opened it.

There was blood everywhere, sprayed in trails across the wall. Lizanne was right; blood on the walls. And the ceilings. And the television set.Arnie Buckley was visible from the front door, which opened opposite the doorway into the den. I supposed it was Arnie. It was the right size and was lying in Arnie's house, on his couch. His face had been obliterated.

I wanted to scream until someone knocked me out with a good strong shot. Nothing would get me to set one foot further into this house. More than I ever wanted anything, I wanted to walk back across the street, get in my car, and leave without looking back. It seemed I was always opening doors to look at dead people, hacked people, beaten people. I managed to shut this door, this white-painted suburban front door with the bra.s.s knocker, and as I plodded across the Buckleys' lawn to the nearest neighbors, I looked longingly at my Chevette.

I couldn't face calling myself, and I can't remember what I said to the lady next door. I only know that I plodded back to sit by Lizanne on the steps.She spoke once, asking me in bewilderment why her folks had been killed. I told her, honestly, that they'd been killed by the same person who'd killed Mamie Wright. I hoped she wouldn't ask me why it had to be her parents. Her parents had been picked because she had been named Elizabeth, because she was unmarried, because her "Mama" was not really her mama by blood. This was the pattern of Lizanne's life that loosely fit the Fall River, Ma.s.sachusetts, murders; the murders committed in 1893 in an ugly, inconvenient, atmospherically tense home in a middle-cla.s.s neighborhood, almost certainly committed by Mr. Andrew Borden's younger daughter, Lizzie.

But I don't think Lizanne ever heard anything I said, and that's just as well. I kept my arm around her so something human and warm would be there, and the smell continued to sicken me. I continued to do it because it was all I could do.Jack Burns got out of the squad car that pulled up on the lawn. He actually had a doctor with him, a local surgeon, and I found out later that they'd been having lunch together when the call came. The doctor looked at Lizanne, at me, and hesitated, but Jack Burns stepped around us and gestured his friend into the house. The sergeant of detectives looked inside and then looked down at me with burning eyes. I was not the object of this look, just in its path. But it scorched me, the fury in those dark eyes.

"Don't touch anything! Be careful how you walk!" he ordered the doctor."Well, of course, he's dead," came the doctor's voice. "If you just need me to p.r.o.nounce him dead, I can sure do that."

"Any more?" Burns spat at me. He could see Lizanne wouldn't answer, I suppose."She said her stepmother is dead, upstairs," I told him very quietly, though I don't think Lizanne would have heard me if I'd screamed it."Upstairs, Doc!" he ordered.

The doctor probably trotted right up, but I wouldn't have gone with him if a gun had been at my head.

"Dead up here, too," he called down the stairs."Then get your a.s.s out of there and let us go over this house," Burns said violently.

The doctor trotted out the door and after thinking for a moment, simply walked down the street. He was not about to ask Jack Burns for a ride back to the restaurant. Burns went inside but I could not hear him walking over the wooden floor. He must be standing, looking. At least he pushed the door partly closed behind him so there was something between me and the horror.Police cars were pulling up behind Burns's, the routine about to begin. Lynn Liggett got out of the first one. She immediately began giving orders to the uniformed men who spilled out of the next car.

"How did you happen to be here?" Lynn asked without any preliminaries."Did you call an ambulance yet for Lizanne?" I asked. I was beginning to shake off my lethargy, my odd dreaminess.

"Yes, there's one on the way."

"Okay. I was just driving to work. She came out of the front door like this. She spoke to me a little and then I opened the door and looked in. I went next door to call the police."

Lynn Liggett pushed open the door and looked in. I kept my eyes resolutely forward. Her fair skin took on a greenish tinge and her lips pressed together so hard they whitened.

The ambulance pulled up then, and I was glad to see it, because Lizanne's face was even waxier, and her hands were losing coordination. Her breathing seemed irregular and shallow. She was leaning on me heavily by the time the stretcher came up to the front steps, and she didn't acknowledge the presence of the ambulance drivers. They loaded her on the stretcher with quick efficiency. I walked by her down to the street, holding her hand, but she didn't know I was there, and by the time the stretcher was pushed into the back of the ambulance she seemed unconscious.

I watched the orange and white ambulance pull away from the curb. I didn't suppose I could leave. I rested on the hood of Lynn's car for what seemed like a long time, staring aimlessly ahead and thinking of as little as possible. Then I became aware Lynn Liggett was beside me.

"There's no question of Lizanne being blamed, is there?" I asked finally. I fully expected the detective to tell me to get lost and it was none of my business, but something had mellowed the woman since last I'd seen her. We had shared something terrible.

"No," Detective Liggett said. "Her neighbor says she heard Lizanne hammer on the back door and then she saw her walk around to the front and unlock the house, something so unusual that the neighbor already considered calling the police. It would take more than seven minutes to do that and clean up afterward. And it's fairly easy to see that her folks had already been dead about an hour by the time she got there."

"Mr. Buckley was due to come in to work at the library today at 2:00, and we were going to share night duty tomorrow night," I said."Yes, it's written on the calendar in the kitchen in the house." For some reason that gave me the cold shudders. Her job included looking at dead people's calendars while they lay right there in their own blood. Appointments that would never be kept. I revised my att.i.tude about Lynn Liggett right then and there.

"You know what this is just like."

"The Borden case."

I jerked my head around to look at her in surprise.

"Arthur's inside," she explained. "He told me about it." Arthur came out of the house then, with that same whitey-green pinched look Liggett had had. He nodded at me, not questioning my presence."John Queensland-from Real Murders?" I said. Arthur nodded. "Well, he's a Borden expert."

"I remembered. I'll get in touch with him this afternoon." I thought about the sweet old couple I'd seen having a good time at the restaurant the night before. I thought about having to tell the Crandalls their best friends had been hacked to death. Then I realized I should tell the detectives where I'd seen the Buckleys last night, in case for some reason it was important. After I'd explained to Arthur and Lynn, and Lynn had written down the Crandalls' names and the time I'd seen them the previous evening, I wanted to reach over to Arthur, pat or hug him, establish warm living contact with him.But I couldn't.

"It's the worst thing I hope I ever see. They really don't look much like people anymore," Arthur said suddenly. He shoved his hands in his pockets. It was up to his fellow detectives to help him over this one, I realized. I was excluded from this bad moment, and truly, I was thankful.

I thought of a lot of things to say, but they were futile things. It was time for me to go. I got in my car and without considering what I was doing, I drove to work. I went to tell Mr. Clerrick that our volunteer wouldn't be coming in that afternoon.

The rest of the afternoon just pa.s.sed. Later, I couldn't remember a single thing I'd done after I returned to work. I remembered I'd felt good when I'd gotten up that morning and I couldn't believe it. I just wanted one day with nothing happening, nothing bad, nothing good. No excitement. Just a nice dull day like I'd had almost every day until recently.

Close to closing time, I saw one of the detectives whom I didn't know personally coming into the library. He went to Sam Clerrick's office on the ground floor, emerged in a matter of moments, and made a beeline to Lillian as she stood behind the circulation desk. The detective asked Lillian a couple of questions, and she answered eagerly. He wrote a few things down on his notepad, and left with a nod to her.

Lillian looked up to the second floor where I was again shelving books, and our eyes met. She looked excited, and more than that, turning quickly away. Soon when another librarian was in earshot, Lillian called her over. Their heads tilted close together, and after that the other librarian hurried to the periodicals room, where yet another librarian would be stationed. If the police kept coming here asking about me, I realized with a sick feeling, Mr. Clerrick might let me go. I could tell myself I'd done nothing, but I suddenly knew it wouldn't make any difference. This wasn't just happening to me, I reminded myself. Probably members of Real Murders all over Lawrenceton were being similarly inconvenienced, and many other people whose lives these murders had touched, no matter how tangentially.

It was the old stone-in-the-pond effect. Instead of stones, bodies were being thrown into the pool of the community, and the resulting waves of misery, fear, and suspicion would brush more and more people until the crimes came to an end.

Chapter 12 .

Though I didn't know it until I left work, that afternoon had been a busy one for the news media, as well as the police.

Mamie's death had not aroused much interest in the city, though it had been front-page news in Lawrenceton. The box of candy had rated a couple of paragraphs on an inside page locally, and had failed to register at all in the city. But the murder of Morrison Pettigrue was news; the strange and off-beat murder of a strange and off-beat man, spiced with Benjamin's charge of political a.s.sa.s.sination. Benjamin may have been a local butcher who very obviously desired attention of any kind in the worst way, but he did deserve the t.i.tle "campaign manager" and he was quotable. The two local stringers for the city papers enjoyed a couple of days of unprecedented importance.As Sally had told us so indignantly at the meeting at my place, she'd been asked by the police to keep the Julia Wallace speculations out of the paper. An account of the Julia Wallace murder would have little appeal for twentieth-century American newspaper readers, the police told Sally and her boss. And it would hinder their investigation. Sally was on an inside track with the Wright murder, no doubt about it, being a club member and actually present when the body was found, so she was furious to see her exclusive knowledge stay exclusive. But her boss, Macon Turner, agreed with the local police chief that it should be withheld for "a few days." It was from Macon Turner I pieced all this together later; he'd been wooing my mother for some months before John Queensland gained ascendancy, and we'd become friends.Sally became frantic after the Pettigrue murder; the minute she'd learned from her police sources that there had been paper scattered on the surface of the bathwater, and that Pettigrue had been placed in the tub after death, she mentally scrolled through the a.s.sa.s.sinations of radicals and easily came up with Charlotte Corday's stabbing of Jean-Paul Marat in revolutionary France. Corday had gained entrance to Marat's house by pretending she would give him a list of traitors in her province. Then she killed Marat while he sat in the bath to alleviate a skin disease.

After Sally had thought it through, she exploded into Macon Turner's office and demanded to report the full story. She knew it would be the biggest story of her career. Turner, a friend of the police chief, hesitated a fatal couple of days.Then the Buckleys were slaughtered, and Sally, instantly drawing the obvious conclusion, prepared her story with full disclosure of the "parallel" theory, as it became called.

Turner could no longer resist the biggest, best story that had come along since he'd bought the Lawrenceton Sentinel. By chance, the two stringers were not acquainted with any Real Murders members, who at any rate had not been doing a lot of talking about Mamie Wright's murder especially since the Sunday night meeting at my apartment. For example, LeMaster Cane told me later he'd decided even before the meeting that the murders in Lawrenceton were too much like old murders for it to be coincidental. But as a black man, he'd been too scared of being implicated to come forward. He'd already found by that time, too, that his hammer- with initials burned into the haft-was missing. He figured it had been used to kill Mamie.

The same afternoon the Buckleys were found slaughtered, the state lab phoned the local police to say that though the report was in the mail, they wanted Arthur and Lynn to know that what was in the candy my mother had received was a product called "Ratkill." If my mother had swallowed the candy without noticing the taste in time to spit it out, she would have been very sick. If by some wild chance her taste-buds had been jaded enough for her to eat three chocolates, she might have died. But the Ratkill had a strong odor and flavor by design, to prevent just such a thing happening; so the poisoning attempt seemed half-hearted and amateurish.

Then Lynn Liggett found the open box of Ratkill in Arthur's car.The officer who had taken the telephone message from the state crime lab to relay to the detectives was a man named Paul Allison, and he was the brother of the man Sally'd been married to years before. He was a friend of Sally's, and he didn't care for Arthur. Paul Allison was standing in the police station parking lot when Lynn, reaching in Arthur's car to retrieve her forgotten notebook, found an open box of Ratkill under it. Lynn a.s.sumed that Arthur had gotten a sample for some reason, and lifted it up where Paul Allison could see it, before she sensed something was wrong and instinctively tried to conceal it.After Paul Allison had seen the Ratkill, there was no possible way to conceal its finding, and Arthur had a lot of explaining to do; so did Lynn, who had been riding with Arthur off and on.

Paul Allison decided to do his own explaining-to Sally. He called her an hour later, and her full story was in print the next morning.Sally's story created a sensation, which it fully deserved. Sally Allison, middle-aged newswoman, had finally gotten the story she'd hankered for all her life, and she went for it, no holds barred.

The stringers had not known about the "parallel theory," but they did know something strange was happening in Lawrenceton, which normally had a very low murder rate.

When the Buckleys were killed, one of the stringers was listening to her police band scanner. While the police cars converged on the Buckley house, she was loading her camera. She stopped at the gas station to fill up her car, then drove slowly up Parson until she spotted the house. In front of the house was slumped a tall, lovely woman with blood on her legs, and sitting with her arm around that tall, lovely woman was a little librarian with big round gla.s.ses and a grim expression. I had been trying to ignore the heave of my stomach, because Lizanne smelled of vomit.

Her picture of us appeared on the front page of the Metro/State section of the evening city paper. Her sources in the police department had not been silent in the meantime, and the caption read: "Elizabeth Buckley sits stunned on the steps of her parents' home after she discovered their bodies. She is being comforted by Aurora Teagarden, who discovered the body of Mrs. Gerald Wright Friday night."

So that afternoon while I worked in a daze at the library, newspeople were watching my apartment and my mother's office. It didn't occur to anyone that I might just go on to work after "comforting" Lizanne. Of course, the paper was not yet out and I had not yet seen the picture, but by the time I got back to my apartment after leaving work, a television news crew was parked in my slot in the parking lot. They'd gotten early wind of the story, and since Lizanne was incommunicado in the hospital and Arthur and Lynn were embroiled in the Ratkill discovery at the police station, my mother and I were among the few remaining targets.

That is, until the news crew spotted Robin, who was arriving home from the university. The newsman was an avid mystery buff who recognized Robin, having read of his stepping in for the stricken writer who'd had the heart attack. The camera was trained on him in a flash, and the newsman came up with some hasty questions. Robin, used to being interviewed, handled it well. He was agreeable, without giving them much information. I saw him that night on the news.Unfortunately, they weren't looking hard enough at Robin to prevent one of them spotting me when I got home. I might think it my duty to talk to the police, but I didn't have to talk to these people. One of them was holding an early copy of the paper, and as I got hesitantly out of my car, stupidly determined on going into my apartment and taking the longest, hottest bath on record, he held it out to me. He said something, I didn't know what, because I was so appalled at seeing the picture of poor Lizanne I couldn't listen. I felt surrounded, and I was, though the three men of the news team were in my mind magnified to thirty.I was just worn out and couldn't deal with it.

"I don't want to say anything," I said nervously, and I could tell the camera was running. The newsman was a looker with a beautiful smile, and I wanted him out of my way more than I'd ever wanted anything. I felt I was teetering dangerously on the brink of hysteria.

Robin decided to rescue me. He loomed up behind them, and motioned me to just walk between them. I wondered for a moment if they'd let me, but they parted and I scuttled by straight for Robin. He wrapped his arm around me and we turned our backs on the news team and headed for the patio gate.I knew the camera was running still (the mystery novelist and his librarian landlady have adjacent apartments) and I had a flash of sense and a jolt of guts. I swivelled to face the camera.

"This is private property. It belongs to my mother and I am her representative here," I said ominously. "You do not have my permission to be on it. This is against the law." I said that like it was a magic charm. And indeed, it seemed to be. For they did pile in their van, and left! I was incredibly pleased with myself, and I was surprised on looking up to see Robin beaming like a fond daddy.

"Go get 'em, Aurora," he said admiringly.

"I appreciate your sheltering me out there in the parking lot, Robin," I said, "but dammit, don't you patronize me!" I did a little independent swivelling and got in my back door without bursting into tears.That night Arthur called me, to tell me the gloomy story of the Ratkill."Whoever this a.s.shole is, he's playing games and he just went too far," Arthur said savagely.

I would have thought murdering the Buckleys was going too far, myself.After I'd commiserated as much as I decently could, I told him about the media problems I was having. I'd gotten several phone calls during my wonderful hot bath, effectively ruining it. Only the chance someone I might want to hear from would call me was keeping me from taking the phone off the hook. For the first time in my life, I was wis.h.i.+ng I had an answering machine."I'm getting calls, too," Arthur said gloomily. "I'm not used to being the direct subject of all this news attention."

"Neither am I," I said. "I hate it. I'm glad librarians don't have to have press conferences as part of their job. Do you think you're clear now of any suspicion?"

"Yes, I'm not on suspension or anything like that. At least I've built up enough respect here for that."

"I'm glad." And I was. I felt like I had someone on my side in the police force as long as Arthur was there. If he'd been suspended, not only would I have felt bad for his sake, I would have felt powerless.

"Go on and take the phone off the hook," Arthur advised me now. "But first call your mom and get her to put a big sign at the entrance to your parking lot that says in great big letters, 'Private Property, Trespa.s.sers will be Prosecuted.'" "Good idea. Thanks."

We said goodnight uneasily. We were both wondering what would happen next, and who it would happen to.

My mother woke her handyman up with a phone call that night and told him she'd pay him triple if he had the sign in the parking lot by 7:00 the next morning.She begged me to leave town, or come to stay with her, until somehow this situation ended. She'd known the Buckleys, and was horrified by the sheer terror they must have experienced before they died; the Buckleys were her age, her acquaintances.

"John had to go in to talk to the police," she said. "If he can help them, that's wonderful, but I hated for him to go. I wish you'd never joined that d.a.m.n group, Aurora. But there's no point talking about it now. Won't you come stay over here?"

"Are you going to defend me, Mother?" I asked with a weary smile.

"With my last breath," she said simply.

Suddenly I felt my mother was safer if I stayed away from her.

"I'll manage," I told her. "Thanks for taking care of the sign."