Cyanide Wells Read online

  The group returned to the ballroom as the band struck up a fanfare. Tom Clifford, class president, and Shannon Michaels, vice president, were preparing to announce the prom king and queen. Shannon, her face flushed and animated, took the microphone and, after the usual screeches and groans of the audio system subsided, spoke into it, her voice high-pitched with excitement.

  “Before we announce Ellenberg High’s royal couple of nineteen seventy-six, we have a special award to present. One that’s well deserved. It goes to Carly McGuire, our own lesbian princess. Come on up and claim your trophy, Carly!”

  She went ice-cold, her limbs numb. For a moment her vision blurred. When it cleared, she was looking at Eric, who wore a triumphant smile. The boys who had been in the group on the golf course were exchanging high-fives, and the girls were laughing and smirking. Her gaze swung to the bandstand, where Tom Clifford had produced a female mannequin with crewcut hair, dressed in overalls and a plaid shirt. A sign pinned to the overalls’ bib read DIERDRE DYKE. He extended it toward her, grinning.

  Not everyone was laughing, however. Some of her classmates stared at her in horror, others with startled recognition. Mr. Andrade, the principal, was white-faced and tight-lipped as he strode up to the bandstand and snatched the mannequin from Tom’s hands. The chaperones, also outraged, were close behind him.

  Carly whirled and ran.

  Out of the ballroom, down the hallway, across the lobby, through the front door. She smacked into the valet parking attendant, pushed him away as he tried to steady her.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  She started to cry, kept going.

  They set me up—Eric, the whole rotten bunch of them. Why would they do that? Why? And now what am I gonna do, where am I gonna go, can’t go home, that’s for sure. The school will call Dad and he’ll kill me, and Mom, oh, my God, Mom, can’t ever go home again…Dierdre—no, she said she didn’t want to see me anymore after I broke it off…Ms. Sherwood—I don’t even have a phone number for her…Alan…

  The thought of her brother calmed her. Although she hadn’t been able to tell him she was gay, she knew he wouldn’t condemn her. At the end of the club’s long driveway she slowed, turned right, began walking down the dark sidewalk. A few blocks ahead at Price Street was a convenience store with a phone booth. She had only a small amount of change in the little silk purse that matched the little silk dress that was de rigueur at high school proms that year, but enough to make a collect call. Alan would tell her what to do…

  “Call Aunt Nancy,” he said.

  Her mother’s sister, the crazy one, who lived in New York City. “She’s nuts. She can’t help me.”

  “Nan’s not nuts. She’s a very well-respected partner in a major stock brokerage, is about to set up her own firm, and is on the board of a half-dozen corporations. She also feels terrible about what Mom’s done to you and me.”

  “But Mom says she’s been in and out of institutions—”

  “The only institutions Nan’s been in are financial ones.”

  “Mom lied about her own sister?”

  “She lies about a lot of things, but she probably believes what she’s saying. When’re you gonna get it through your head that Mom’s a very sick person?”

  “…You don’t think I’m sick because I’m—”

  “Carly, you’re not. Who’s sick are the assholes who did that stuff to you tonight. Call Nan; she’ll help.”

  “Are you sure? She hardly knows me.”

  “Of course I’m sure! Who d’you think sent me my one-way ticket out of that hellhole four years ago? Who d’you think’s been paying my tuition?”

  After Aunt Nancy accepted Carly’s collect call, her husky smoker’s voice said, “I’ve been waiting years to hear from you, honey. What’s wrong?”

  It was difficult to tell her story to a relative stranger, and she kept breaking down, but Nan gently led her through it.

  “Okay, honey,” her aunt said when she’d finished, “here’s the way I see it. The school’s already reported what happened to your dad, and all hell’s about to break loose. I love your mother, but she’s never been emotionally stable, and your father…he’s a nice man, but he’s weak. I think you should come here to me.”

  “Come to New York? How?”

  “Planes fly east from Cleveland several times a day. I can have a ticket for the next flight waiting for you at the airport. Just go home, pack your things, and leave.”

  A spark of possibility warmed her. “Mom’s down in Georgia with Grandma, but Dad—”

  “How long will it take you to get home?”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay, I’ll call him, keep him on the phone. While I’m talking to him, you sneak in and out. Do you have enough money to get to the airport?”

  She had over a hundred dollars hidden in her sweater box. “Yes.”

  “Good. Hurry, now.”

  She hesitated.

  “What?” Nan asked.

  “If I leave now, I won’t graduate.”

  “Oh, yes, you will. A school district that allows a student’s classmates to continually torment her—let alone do what they did tonight—owes her. And I’ll see to it that they pay.”

  Could Aunt Nan really do that? “Mom and Dad will come after me.”

  “Their treatment of you for all these years is the equivalent of child abuse—or neglect, on your father’s part. If they come after you, I’ve got a team of very good lawyers, and frankly, I’d enjoy watching them go up against Mona and Stan.”

  Someone wanted her. Someone cared. But…“Why’re you willing go to all this trouble? You don’t really know me.”

  “I know you well enough. And you forget, your mom and I were raised in the exact same kind of household as you. There was nobody to help me when I got out, and I wouldn’t wish that kind of experience on my own flesh and blood. Life’s tough enough as it is. You deserve a chance to make the most that you can of yours. But I do want something in exchange.”

  At the moment, Carly would have sold her soul to her. “What?”

  “The same thing I asked of Alan: Be strong; do your best; contribute something; be your own person.”

  “Even if that person’s a lesbian?”

  “You know what? I don’t give a rat’s ass if you love a woman or a wildebeest. There’re bigger issues in this world than who you sleep with, and I sense you’re a person who can tackle them.”

  And over the next four years, under Nan’s expert tutelage, she had learned the art of tackling—

  The phone rang, loud in the silence. Gracie levitated as Carly lunged for the receiver, her heart pounding with the alarm that a postmidnight call always provoked. She fumbled with the talk button, answered curtly.

  “Carly?”

  “Lindstrom, d’you know what time it is?”

  “Sorry. After I left my message on your machine, I had to go out.”

  “So why didn’t you turn yours on—your landlady’s, I mean?”

  “Sam doesn’t have a machine. She can barely afford a phone.”

  “Okay, I shouldn’t’ve snapped at you. You said we need to talk.”

  “Yeah. I found out some interesting things from Sam, and we followed up on our conversation with a visit to Meryl Travis. That led us to—Well, it’s too complicated to go into on the phone. Can we come over?”

  She glanced at the clock radio. Two thirty-eight, but who was sleeping? “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Try opening a bottle of brandy instead.”

  Sam D’Angelo, the woman Matt called his landlady, surprised Carly. She was twenty-five at most, thin to the point of anorexia, and her long dark hair fell limply to her shoulderblades. She wore a cheap cotton sweater and ragged jeans that were several sizes too large, and the toes that protruded from her flimsy sandals must have been freezing on this chilly night. As Lindstrom made introductions, Sam regarded her warily, clasping her hands behind her back as if to avoid a handshake. Lindstrom
looked tired but keyed up—the way Carly had often felt when working on an important story. He prodded Sam forward, and they went to the kitchen, where Carly had already set out a bottle of brandy and three glasses.

  “So what have you got?” she asked as she poured.

  “Let us relax a little before we get into it,” he said.

  “I’ll go first, then.” She related what she’d discovered at the Talbot house.

  Sam’s eyes grew wide, while Matt’s narrowed. When Carly finished, he said, “I can’t believe she went there, let alone spent the night.”

  “It’s occurred to me that she may have been going there all along.”

  “Why, for God’s sake?”

  “To get inspiration for her book, soak up atmosphere, commune with the dead.”

  “That’s morbid.”

  “To you and me, it is. To Ard—who knows?” Carly glanced at Sam, who had leaned forward and was listening intently to the conversation.

  Matt said, “That house is up for sale, right? I wonder how Ard would’ve explained her presence to a real estate agent.”

  “She had good reason for being there; she’s executor of Ronnie’s estate.”

  “You didn’t mention that before.”

  “It didn’t seem relevant. So what did you and Sam find out?”

  “It’s pretty confusing. Sam, why don’t you tell Carly about your father?”

  Sam flushed and looked down at her hands. “No, you go ahead.”

  Carly said to her, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather hear it in your own words. I don’t know what…John’s told you, but this isn’t for the newspaper. It has to do with people I love who may be in trouble.”

  Sam raised her eyes; they were a gold-flecked gray and very disturbed. “What I’ve got to say, it has to do with somebody I love, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “I…Dad’s memory, it’s all I’ve got. When I told John, I didn’t understand that Dad might’ve done something wrong…Oh, hell, if it’s really all that bad, it’ll probably come out anyway.” She took a deep breath, clasped her hands on the table. “Okay, John asked if Dad had anything to do with your friends who were killed. He didn’t. But he was connected with Mr. Payne, from back when he managed the mill.”

  “In what way?”

  “He fixed things.”

  “At the mill? Payne’s house?”

  “No, it wasn’t like repairing machinery or…” Sam shrugged and glanced at Lindstrom.

  He nodded encouragingly.

  “Okay. I never knew about this till two days before Dad killed himself. After he got his layoff notice, he started drinking real heavy. Didn’t report to work, even though he knew we’d be needing the money. The second night, he told me that he didn’t like fixing things for Mr. Payne, because it sometimes got messy, but he guessed he’d have to keep on doing it, just like Mack Travis, because where else was he going to get a job at his age? When I asked him what kind of things he fixed, he yelled at me, told me to leave him the hell alone. And the next day he shot himself.”

  Sam’s pained, bewildered voice made Carly feel for her. She said, “I’m sorry. I know it’s been rough for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Carly turned to Matt. “So after you and Sam talked, you went to see Meryl Travis. What did she tell you?”

  “That her son was a good boy who never harmed anybody. He worked hard on construction and sometimes he ‘made deliveries’ for Payne and Milt Rawson. Often he had to drive as far as Sacramento and be home in time for his early-morning shift.”

  “She say what kind of deliveries?”

  “She claimed she didn’t know.”

  “Political payoffs?”

  “I suspect so.”

  “Well, maybe if I visit Mrs. Travis I can get more information out of her.” But she doubted it. The Travis woman had been widowed in her early thirties and never remarried; when Ard had interviewed her for her book, she’d said her home in Talbot’s Mills resembled a shrine to the dead husband and son. Surely she’d be averse to revealing anything negative about Mack.

  Matt said, “She also mentioned a Janet Tremaine, Mack’s former girlfriend. Claimed Janet could’ve given him an alibi for the time of the killings, but somebody ‘got to her first.’ So we decided to track her down. D’you know the Spyglass Road-house?”

  “Yes.” It was north, in the foothills off Spyglass Trail: a rambling log structure that featured country bands, hearty meals, and cheap drinks. Carly had only been there once, but she recalled stuffed animal heads, barstools shaped like saddles, and sawdust on the floor.

  “Janet Tremaine waitresses there, so we decided to stop in for a beer. I told her I was an old army buddy of Mack’s. Tremaine joined us on her break.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Good-looking, except for her hair; it’s an unnatural shade of red and chopped off like she cuts it herself without the aid of a mirror. Initially she was willing enough to talk about Mack, was surprised when I told her what his mother said about her having been gotten to before she could alibi him. Tremaine maintains she didn’t see Mack the entire week before your friends were murdered.”

  “You believe her?”

  “No. At that point she got very jumpy. So I mentioned Mack’s deliveries for Payne and Rawson, to see what kind of a reaction that would provoke. Tremaine blew up at me, told me I’d better be careful about repeating what I’d just said. Claimed it could get me into bad trouble. I asked her why, and she said, ‘Obviously you don’t know who and what you’re dealing with.’ Then she got up and disappeared into the crowd on the dance floor.”

  “So she was angry?”

  “More afraid, and using her anger to cover it.”

  “She said, ‘who and what you’re dealing with.’”

  “Right.”

  “So we have Sam’s father ‘fixing things.’ Mack Travis ‘making deliveries.’ And a warning from his former girlfriend. I’d say the what is something major, and Ard stumbled onto it in the course of her researching. As for the who, Rawson and Payne are the obvious choices.”

  Lindstrom said, “What were you arguing about with Payne at the newspaper the other day?”

  “He and his partner want to buy the Talbot property by the Knob. God knows why; the Meadows hasn’t turned out so well, and I hear another project on the sea north of Calvert’s Landing is stalled. But they’ve been after Ard to sell to them, and she doesn’t want to. Payne was trying to persuade me to get her to change her mind.”

  “Why doesn’t she want to sell? I’d think she’d be glad to get that place off the estate’s hands.”

  “She dislikes both Payne and Rawson, to put it mildly. They’re homophobes and have gone out of their way to be unpleasant to both of us. Payne even went so far as to talk about asking the district attorney’s office to investigate improprieties in Ard’s handling of the Talbot estate. I suppose he thought that if he could have her removed, the bank’s trust department would be more reasonable about selling the property.”

  “But he didn’t act on the threat?”

  “He may have talked to the D.A., but his claims are groundless. Ard’s handling of the disposition of assets has been strictly accounted for.”

  “So then he had to come up with another game plan.”

  Carly’s eyes met Matt’s, and she could tell he was thinking the same thing she was: that the new game plan had involved an anonymous phone call to British Columbia. As she opened her mouth to speak, he shook his head and glanced warningly at Sam, who still knew him as John Crowe.

  Sam had been silent, her eyes remote, since she related what her father had told her, and Carly assumed her thoughts were far away, but now she spoke. “My mother used to do house-cleaning for Mr. Payne’s wife. She liked Mrs. Payne, but she said he was one mean son of a bitch. Mom could be pretty mean herself, but Mr. Payne actually scared her. Maybe he scared Ms. Coleman into running away.”

  Carly looked at Matt. “Maybe i
t wasn’t you after all. Maybe Payne and Rawson were the ones watching her. To tell the truth, I felt like somebody was watching me tonight. Maybe one of them, or somebody they hired, really did break into the house.”

  She closed her eyes, thinking back to Thursday night. At the dinner table, in front of Natalie, Ard had made her claims, and Carly had cut her off because she could see they were scaring the little girl. Later, in the living room, she and Ard had argued.

  “Carly, we’ve got to talk about what’s going on.”

  “No, we do not. And I never want you to mention it in front of Nat again. You frightened her.”

  “If something’s going on, isn’t it good for her to be aware of it?”

  “If the something’s real, yes. But I think you’re on edge and over-reacting.”

  “It is real, I tell you—”

  “I don’t want to discuss it!” “But I have a plan—” “I don’t want to discuss it. What part of that sentence don’t you understand?”

  Ard’s face had crumpled at the harsh words, and she began to weep in her eerie, silent way. God, it was unnerving when she did that! Carly would do most anything to get her to stop. So she’d comforted her, and they’d gone up to bed early.

  Why didn’t you listen to her, McGuire? Why didn’t you pick up on that single word—“plan”?

  Because you stopped really listening to her years ago, when she came home with Natalie, offering excuses for the inexcusable.

  “Carly?” Matt said.

  She shook her head, returned to the present. “Sorry. I was trying to remember anything that would point to Payne and Rawson as the trigger for Ard’s disappearance. I’m too tired to think logically, I guess.”