The Killing Club Read online

  BUT ROD DIDN’T BUY IT.And as it turned out, the state highway patrol had already hit a dead end on a similar shooting.There’d been another instance of a rifle’s being fired at a vehicle on the expressway; the shooting had happened just two months after Shawn’s accident.In the second occurrence the shot had gone through the side rail of a truck and knocked a chicken crate off onto the road, causing a few fender benders.

  That bullet wasn’t found.Rod said the state marshal to whom he’d spoken would look into it again but figured the shooter in both cases was just some sick kid getting his kicks standing on the overpass bridge, firing into the night.Rod told me flatly that I was insisting on connecting dots that weren’t there.

  But I kept at it.I had to put things together the right way so I wouldn’t have to listen to “accident” and “coincidence” any longer.According to Megan Tymosz, Ben wouldn’t have known a 7mm rifle from an Uzi machine gun.But there was one person in the club who presumably knew a lot about guns; he had a collection of them.Barclay.I didn’t even want to 1 2 7

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  ask Rod to help me persuade a judge to give me a warrant to check out that gun room at River Bend.So I fed Barclay some bullshit about how we were asking around about missing weapons, because someone was currently holding up convenience stores in the area with a 7mm rifle that had perhaps been stolen.Did Barclay have one? No he didn’t.He had a 30.04, but he was too busy to locate it for me. And he was too busy to let me come by now to look for myself.But he invited me to a Christmas cocktail party on Monday.Of “our crowd,” Connie would be there, he said.And the Morgans.And I could spend some time with Clay.I asked to speak to Clay now, but he wasn’t home.I figured the teenager could check the gun room—not that I was going to tell my nephew that I was considering the possibility that his father was murdering old friends.

  By the time Barclay and I finished our unsatisfying talk, Danny was waiting at the curb of my house in his Corvette, for me to take him to dinner at Deklerk’s.He even got out of his car, though he didn’t come up to the stoop.Just blew the car horn and then leaned on the door, which was what he did when he occasionally picked me up for work.He was wearing a huge orange Gore-Tex parka and very tight black pants.I sort of expected him to say, “Trick or treat.”

  Instead he said, “Giovanna Lucia.Looking good.”

  “Just for you, Donny.Hey, where’s my partner, Dan? You kill him? I really appreciate it, I gotta tell you that.I couldn’t stand him.”

  “Hey, you know it’s me.Don’t kid a kidder.”

  It was that sort of conversation for almost two hours.

  Danny had gotten a new tattoo, I guess for Christmas, of a small ea-gle on his right bicep that he showed off by flexing his muscles in his tight black polo shirt.

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  While my “date” was in the bathroom, combing his hair no doubt, I tried Clay at River Bend and this time reached him.“No problem” about getting into his father’s gun room and checking out whether there was a 7mm rifle in Barclay’s collection.He called back twenty minutes later to say there were three rifles in there but none of them was the sort I was describing.He blew up when I asked him if he was sure.

  That, and paying the check, would have made my lousy day complete, except that at home, as soon as I escaped Danny’s effort at my door to wrestle my keys out of my hand to show me “how you put a key in a lock, lady,” my phone started playing its cool jazz melody over and over as I fumbled for my purse.The caller was Amanda Morgan.

  Amanda wanted to give me a ride to Dante’s later tonight.“We need to talk,” she said.

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  A M A N D A

  IHAVE TO SAY THISabout Amanda.She is perfect.I mean physically.Perfect height, waist, bust, hips, legs, hands, feet.Perfect platinum hair (natural), perfect nose, chin, cheeks and lips and perfectly spaced large almond-tilted gray-blue eyes with long (natural) eye-lashes.Okay, she had perfect taste too, from her sable hat to her sable coat to her soft leather slacks, boots and gloves, all of them creamy brown as Godiva chocolates.And according to the Gloria paper, she did good works for the preservation of the environment.And she won blue ribbons for the perfection of her high jump at the Devon Horse Fair.

  Oh, one more thing.She is perfectly frank.Her directness was a real contrast to the soft, lush blandness of the Latin light jazz on her car radio.

  I hadn’t been swallowed up in the luxurious bucket seat of her blue Jaguar for two minutes when she smiled that flawless smile of hers and said, “We don’t like each other.We never have.”

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  “Why do you think that is, Amanda?”

  On our way to Dante’s, we headed into downtown, along streets flanked by plastic Christmas wreaths that hung from all the lampposts.I was impressed and surprised by how well she drove; she seemed to enjoy it.She had manual transmission and downshifted as we approached the green.“Well,” she finally said, “you probably think it’s because I married for money.”

  I laughed, not expecting this.“And isn’t that what you did?”

  Her summary of her marital life was brisk and so blunt that I believed her.“Bob, yes.He got me out of the trailer.My mother with me.But I made him happy.He had a bad heart.He said I kept him alive.Not long, but it was something.” She made the remark without ego, just a fact.

  “No,” I agreed.“It wasn’t long.And then Shawn was gone awfully fast too.I don’t know, Amanda, maybe your third husband ought to worry.

  Maybe I ought to tell Jim to get regular checkups.”

  I hadn’t told her about the bullet I’d found in the tire of Shawn’s Chevy Tracker.I hadn’t asked her about her relationship with Barclay.

  Amanda was smiling as she said that her current husband, Jim Morgan, was fine; I needn’t worry about him.She glanced at me, then back at the road.“Losing Shawn broke my heart.I loved him.I really did.”

  “I’m not arguing with you.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  She was right.

  Then she laughed in a low conspiratorial way that was curiously intimate.“But, hey, Jamie, you didn’t like me before I married for money.”

  “That’s true.”

  “I know why.”

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  “I’m sure you do.”

  But she gave me a real answer.I didn’t expect it.“You didn’t like me because you were in love with Garth McBride and I didn’t like you because I was jealous of you for other reasons.So anyhow, I was just in a bad way a few days ago.When you saw us at the train station? All Garth was doing was saying, hang in there.Maybe I’m out of line here, but don’t let me stop you if Rod doesn’t.Besides, oh well, hell—” She stopped, shrugged, made the turn onto River Street.

  I thought about claiming not to know what she meant by her dis-claimer regarding Garth, but then, like her, I thought, what the hell.“Jealous of me for what other reasons?”

  She thought for a while.“I guess, that different things came easy to us.”

  Her reply was so unexpected it took me aback.Neither of us spoke again till she had parked.She squeezed into a place in front of the restaurant, right across from the Christmas manger, where a dozen carolers were singing “Silent Night.” We watched as they finished the song, then together headed into the dark stillness of Etten Green.There was a pecu-liar kind of closeness, sitting with Amanda in that warm closed space of her car, looking out at the colored lights on the town tree.

  Finally I asked her, “What do you think came easy to me?”

  Her gloved hands stroked the leather-wrapped wheel.Again she thought for a while.“You had a dad.He loved you.”

  Now I turned completely in the seat to look at her.Her profile was like the rest of her, perfect.“I thought everything came easy to you.”

  She laughed, honestly surprised.“Oh lord, no.Just boys.”

&n
bsp; “Just boys ...”

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  Rueful, she took off the fur hat, smoothed her platinum hair.“Like that stupid Killing Club.I never knew what the fuck that was about, except it was the first thing anybody had ever asked me to join.”

  When she said it, I had flashes of memories of an Amanda Kean that I’d never thought about before.I saw her painstakingly applying makeup in the girls’ bathroom at Hart High, copying the look from a photo in a magazine.I saw her carefully, slowly writing in her notebook in English class, pressing so hard the paper curled.Blushing when she mispro-nounced a word and the teacher corrected her.Trying unsuccessfully to think of a joking comeback when one of the in-crowd bitches asked her in the hallway where she’d gotten her sweater, Sam’s Club?

  As if she’d followed me through my memories, she said, “So anyhow ...I learned.And now I don’t make the same mistakes.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Actually,” she said with a kind of begrudging gratitude, “Barclay taught me a lot.He knows how things ought to look.I guess if you grow up in the middle of it, with a mother like that, you learn, even if you don’t have any ...talent for it.” She laughed.“And now I look so ‘right,’ I think he’d like to hang me on that trophy wall at River Bend.You know, between the Mercedes and the whitetail deer.”

  I slid out of the Jaguar.I’d laughed too, and I needed some air to decide whether or not I was being seduced.I needed to get out of space that she owned.

  “So is Garth what you wanted to talk to me about that was so important?” Amanda nodded yes.“Okay.Because I thought maybe it was Ben.

  About what happened to Ben? Were you and Ben ever involved?”

  If she wasn’t puzzled by my question, her expression was a good 1 3 3

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  imitation of surprise.“Sexually? No way.I liked him though.I’m sorry he’s dead.It looked like he was a good father.” She walked nearer the manger in order to see the Christmas tree better.“Anyhow, I just wanted to tell you that about Garth.It was nothing.”

  “Well, that’s what Garth told me too.Actually, he said he thought you’d been having an affair with Barclay.”

  “Did he? Barclay probably couldn’t resist saying so.” She smiled, pointing at the green.“Those lights on the tree are pretty.I think this is the nicest tree in a long time.”

  “Amanda, is there anybody in Gloria you aren’t sleeping with?”

  She smiled.“You.” She dropped her car keys in her purse.“You’d probably be disappointed if you knew how low the numbers really were.”

  “Did Shawn ever think you and Ben were involved?”

  She took the question in stride.“He never said so.And he would have, if he’d thought it.Shawn had a problem with jealousy.Real problem.But I don’t think it was ever about Ben.”

  Amanda seemed not to mind standing out on the town green at night answering my questions.Maybe sable kept you really warm.

  “How about the night he died? Did Shawn have a problem with jealousy that night? Amanda, I’m trying to get at why you and Ben let him drive off by himself if he was so drunk.”

  Her answer seemed both serious and regretful: The morning of the accident, Shawn and she had had a huge fight after he’d accused her of flirting with the riding instructor at the local stables.(She hadn’t been, she said; she was just trying to learn how to ride.) He’d stayed angry with her all day.He’d remained angry in Atlantic City at the casino that night where they’d gone by prior arrangement with Ben and Megan Tymosz.

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  Yes, it was possible Shawn hadn’t eaten all that day.Yes, she’d been surprised that he was acting so intoxicated, but knew he’d had only two drinks and had attributed his behavior to his mood.He’d said some ugly things to her.That’s why she’d let him drive off alone and that’s why she had accepted a ride with the Tymoszes.“I never would have let him go if I’d thought he was drunk enough to lose control of the car.When they told me he was dead ...I think I died too for a long time.We’d been hoping to have a baby ...” She stopped herself.“Why are you asking me about this?”

  “I’m wondering if Shawn’s death is somehow connected to Ben’s.

  You know, Pudge thinks somebody killed Ben.”

  She looked at me, then shrugged, lifting the shoulders of the sable ef-fortlessly.“Do you?”

  “Maybe.” I turned toward her, looked at her. “Just for the record, it wasn’t you, was it?”

  “Oh, Jamie.” She actually laughed out loud, and put her arm through mine as we crossed the street.Her boots had heels; she was a good four inches taller than I was.I felt like a child in my parka and jeans and sneakers.She added casually, “But I will tell you a crime I did commit, since we’re being so chummy here.”

  I pulled free as we reached the curb.“A crime?” I waited to hear what she had to say before opening the door to Dante’s.

  “I’m the one,” she confided, “who stole Mary Beth’s pearls.You remember that, how she freaked when she lost them?”

  I did remember.Connie’s girlfriend, Mary Beth O’Faolain, had been hysterical at the loss of her confirmation pearls, which she’d claimed had been stolen from the zip pouch of her purse.They were never recovered.

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  Almost everyone, including the school authorities, thought she’d lost them and had tried to fob off the blame on an imaginary thief.

  Amanda looked into my eyes.It was a disconcertingly direct stare.“I had some fake pearls.I loved to wear them.But then Mary Beth wore hers one day.They were the first real pearls I ever saw.” She reached the door to Dante’s, turned back to me.“And I could tell the difference.” She held open her coat for me to look at; the lining was deep green silk.“That’s one thing I can say about me.I could always tell the difference.So, no, I didn’t love Bob and I don’t love Jim.And, between you and me, God knows I don’t love Barclay Ober.But I was nuts about Shawn.”

  WHAT AMANDA SAID to the five of us seated at one of Pudge’s large round tables was equally surprising.As Pudge placed plates of gelato and pastries on the green-checked cloth, he told everyone that he’d spoken tonight with Wendy, who managed a “natural remedies” fran-chise in Portland, and with Jeremy, a cruise agent in Atlanta.He’d up-dated them on “the situation.” They’d both said hello to us all but felt they really had nothing to add one way or the other about how Ben might have died.It was no doubt true.

  Then Pudge pulled up his chair and raised his glass of wine.“Merry Christmas.Now, can we get serious?” He said he had called this meeting because not only was he certain Ben’s death was a murder, but he was more and more convinced that somebody might try to kill the rest of us too, although Pudge admitted he couldn’t imagine a motive except craziness.He added that I agreed with him, which he believed ought to mean something to them because I was a police detective.

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  “That true?” Barclay asked me with a smirk.“You really think Ben was murdered, Jamie? Because I think that’s completely insane.”

  Debbie and Connie looked at me as if they wholeheartedly agreed with Barclay, but neither said anything.

  “So why are you here then?” I asked Barclay.Actually it looked like he was here to get close to Amanda, who unobtrusively foiled every effort he made to sit next to her, or even to make eye contact.

  “To support Pudge,” he replied.“He’s upset and we thought it would help.” Debbie and Connie nodded in agreement.

  Pudge then turned to Amanda, who sat with her sable flung open over her chair like she was waiting for a plane in a VIP lounge.“Come on, Amanda, you knew Ben.You and Shawn liked him.Don’t you think we ought to do something for him?”

  Amanda thought about it.Then she said, “Well, I think if anybody did kill Ben, it was Lyall Hillier.”

  We all just s
tared at her.Then I pointed out that Lyall had drowned himself in the Deep Port River.He’d been dead for more than a decade.

  She shrugged.“Maybe not.”

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  L Y A L L

  PUDGE’S PARTY,as Debbie oddly called the reunion at Dante’s, went on until midnight.We drank two bottles of a great Torcolato wine, ate a lot of blue cheese with pears and argued with each other.

  There was a kind of consensus, I suppose: Barclay, Debbie, Connie and Amanda thought it was crazy for Pudge and me to think someone might have murdered Ben.They agreed that whoever was leaving spooky movie quotes for me was sick but harmless.

  If someone had murdered Ben, then Barclay, Debbie, Pudge, Connie and I thought it was insane of Amanda to suggest that the murderer might be Lyall, still alive after all these years and out for revenge against the Killing Club for undisclosed reasons.

  Connie and Barclay were almost jostling to get next to her, both saying the idea was “nuts.”

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  Debbie agreed.“Amanda, you were kidding, right? You don’t seriously believe Lyall climbed out of the river and hung around Gloria for the next ten years without letting anybody know about it, and now he’s pretending to be Michael Myers in Halloween and is murdering us all for no reason?”

  Amanda looked at us, one by one.“I didn’t say there was no reason.

  And I don’t think Ben was murdered.I’m just saying, if he was murdered, maybe Lyall did it.”

  Even Pudge, already upset because no one seemed to agree with his theory that some local sociopath had fixated on the Killing Club, had gotten hold of our old murder stories and was acting them out and had sent me the notes to say so, even Pudge, impatient with no one, was impatient with Amanda.“Lyall? Oh, come on.Lyall’s dead.”

  She pulled her long fur coat in front of her body like a shield.“Fine, guys.But nobody ever found Lyall’s body, did they? And he had a lot of reasons to be pissed.”

  That puzzled me.“What reasons?”

  Connie yanked his chair over next to Amanda and spoke to her quietly, leaning toward her the way priests get in the habit of doing, I suppose.“Lyall drowned himself in Deep Port River.It’s not something we ought to joke about.”