In the distance, I heard the rumble of a motorcycle and moments later, I looked up to see Bennet roaring down the drive on Jack’s Harley-Davidson. I moved away from the truck, watching as he went through his parking ritual. His black leather gloves looked as clumsy as oven mitts. He pulled them off and laid them on the seat, placing his helmet on top. He didn’t seem that thrilled to see me. “What are you doing here?”
“Enid called, about Myrna. When did you last see her?”
“I saw her at breakfast. I didn’t see her at lunch. Enid told me she wasn’t feeling well. What’s going on?”
“I have no idea. Apparently, she’s disappeared. Enid called the police. They’ll be here shortly, I’d imagine.”
“The police? What for?”
“Why don’t you save the bullshit for the cops,” I said.
“Wait a minute. ‘Bullshit’? What’s the matter with you? I’m tired of being treated like a creep,” he said.
I started walking away.
“Where are you going?”
“What difference does it make? If I stand here another minute, I’ll just end up insulting you.”
Bennet walked alongside me. “That wouldn’t, be a first. I heard about your meeting with Paul. He was pissed as hell.”
“So what?” I said.
“I know you think we did something.”
“Of course I do!”
He touched my arm. “Look. Hang on a minute and let’s talk about this.”
“Go ahead and talk, Bennet. I’d love to hear what you have to say.”
“All right. Okay. I might as well level with you because the truth isn’t nearly as bad as you think.”
“How do you know what I think? I think you cheated the Maddisons out of fifty thousand dollars’ worth of rare documents.”
“Now wait a minute. Now wait. We didn’t mean any harm. It was just a prank. We wanted to go to Vegas, but we were broke. We didn’t have a dime between us. All we wanted was a few bucks. We were only kids,” he said.
“Kids? You weren’t kids. You were twenty-three years old. You committed a felony. Is that your rationalization, calling it a prank? You should have gone to prison.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It got out of hand. We never thought we could pull it off and by the time we realized how serious it was, we didn’t have the courage to admit what we’d done.”
“It didn’t seem to bother you to blame Guy,” I said.
“Listen, he was gone. And he’d done all that other stuff. The family was down on him and Dad just assumed. We were assholes. I know that. We were wrong. I’ve never felt right about it since.”
“Well, that absolves you,” I said. “What happened to the letters? Where are they?”
“Paul has them at his place. I told him to destroy them, but he couldn’t bear to do it. He’s been afraid to put them in circulation.”
I could feel my mouth pull down with disgust. “So you didn’t even get the money? You are a creep,” I said. “Let’s talk about Patty.”
“The baby wasn’t mine. I swear. I never screwed her.”
“Paul did, didn’t he? And so did Jack.”
“A lot of fellas screwed her. She didn’t care.”
“Not Guy. He never laid a hand on her,” I said.
“Not Guy,” he repeated. “I guess that’s true.”
“So whose baby was it?”
“Probably Jack’s,” Bennet said. “But that doesn’t mean he killed Guy. I didn’t either. I wouldn’t do that,” he said.
“Oh, come on. Grow up. You never accepted any responsibility for what happened, the whole lot of you. You let Guy take the blame for everything you did. Even when he came back, you never let him off the hook.”
“What was I supposed to say? It was too late by then.”
“Not for him, Bennet. Guy was still alive at that point. Flow, it’s too late.”
I looked up to see Enid standing by the hedge. I had no idea how much she’d overheard. She said, “Your partner’s on the phone. The police are on the way.”
I moved past Enid and walked down the short flight of stairs, crossing the patio to the kitchen door. I found the handset on the counter and I picked it up. “It’s me. What’s going on?”
“Are you all right? You sound bad.”
“I can’t stop to tell you. It would take too long. I should have fallen on Bennet and beat the man to death.”
“Catch this. I just had a chat with the private investigator in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This gal was at the courthouse when she called in to pick up messages. She went right to the clerk and filled out a request for Claire Maddison’s death certificate.”
“What was the cause of death?”
“There wasn’t one,” he said. “As long as she was at it, she made a couple more phone calls and got her last known address. According to the utility company, Claire was living in Bridgeport until last March.”
“How did the Dispatch end up printing her obituary?”
“Because she sent them one. No one ever asked for proof. I called the Dispatch myself and verified the whole procedure. They take down the information and they print it as given.”
“She made the whole thing up?”
“I’m sure she did,” he said.
“So where did she go?”
“I’m just getting to that. This PI in Bridgeport picked up one more little item. Claire never worked as a teacher. She was a private-duty nurse.”
“Shit.”
“That’s what I said. I’m coming over. Don’t do anything until I get there,” he said.
“What’s to do? I can’t move.”
How long did I stand at the kitchen counter with the phone in my hand? In a flash, I could see how all the pieces fit. I was missing a few answers, but the rest of them finally fell into place. Somehow Claire Maddison heard about Bader’s terminal illness. She shipped the Dispatch an obituary just to close that door. She turned herself into Myrna Sweetzer, packed her personal belongings, and headed back to Santa Teresa. Bader was difficult. As a patient, he was probably close to impossible. He must have gone through a number of private duty nurses, so it was only a matter of Myrna’s biding her time. Once she was in the house, the family was hers. She had waited a long time, but the chance to wreak havoc must have been something she savored.
I tried to put myself in her place. Where was she now? She’d accomplished much of her mission, so it was time to fade. She’d left her car, her handbag, and all her clothes. What would I do if I were Claire Maddison? The whole psychodrama of the missing Myrna was just a cover for her escape. She must have pictured the cops digging up the property, looking for a body that was never there. To have the disappearance play out properly, she had to make an exit without being seen, which ruled out a taxicab. She might steal a car, but that was risky on the face of it. And how would she leave town? Would she hitchhike? A motorist passing through might never be aware that anyone was missing or presumed dead. Plane, train, or bus?
She might have a confederate, but much of what she’d done to date required a solitary cunning. She’d been gone more than an hour-plenty of time to walk through the back of the property to the road. I lifted my head. I could hear voices in the foyer. The cops had probably arrived. I didn’t want to go through this whole rigmarole. Enid was saying, “It was just so unlike her so I called. . .”
I slipped out the backdoor, race walking across the patio and out to the driveway. I got in my car and turned the key in the ignition. My brain was clicking along, trying to make sense of circumstances. Claire Maddison was alive and had been living in Santa Teresa since last spring. I wasn’t really sure how she’d managed the setup, but I was relatively certain she was responsible for Guy’s death. She’d also gone to some lengths to implicate the others, setting it up so that Jack looked guilty, with Bennet as the backup in case the evidence of Jack’s culpability failed to persuade the police.
The gate swung open in front of me. I reached the road and turned left, trying to picture the way the property was laid out in relation to the surrounding terrain. I didn’t imagine she’d head into the Los Padres National Forest. The mountain was too steep and too inhospitable. It was possible, of course, that in the last eighteen years, Claire Maddison had become an expert at living in the wild. Maybe she planned to make a new home for herself among the scrub oaks and chaparral, feasting on wild berries, sucking moisture from cactus pads. More likely, she’d simply crossed the few acres of undeveloped land that lay between the Maleks’ and the road. Bader had purchased everything within range, so it was possible she was still trudging across acreage he owned.