Thanks for Muffin, page 19
“You don’t know Glen,” Sandy said darkly. “He can be a real jerk when—”
“Sandy!” Brenda put up one hand to hush her friend. “My husband is surprisingly prudish for a Broadway director.” She slumped in her chair, and again wound her dark hair around one finger. In a low tone she said, “Telling him about my past was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do in my life. I’m not sure my marriage will survive it.”
“Why did you have to tell him? Was Andrew Ostler going to make it public, or tell Glen?”
The two women exchanged looks. Sandy shrugged and mouthed, It’s up to you.
“It wasn’t Andrew. I could handle him. To be honest, I wasn’t even going to come here this weekend. I love New York at Thanksgiving. I was going to give a Friendsgiving dinner for my old theater buddies.” She paused, swallowed with a sick look, and said, “It was Dan Sooner. He’s been bugging me for years too. He sends me a letter every once in a while, about the good old days. I never answered. The letters got more aggressive. I still didn’t answer. When he found out my husband was coming to this soiree, he messaged me that I should come too. I could explain myself when he took my husband aside and told him I was a bought and paid for tramp.”
I gasped but instantly thought, what a good motive to kill him.
She saw me make the connection and nodded, her brilliant blue eyes brimming with tears. “You’re thinking I might have wanted to kill him for that, right? But he never ended up telling Glen after all my worry.”
She couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t, though. “You have Glen to alibi you, right?”
She hesitated, then said, “Sure. Of course. And he never left the room either.”
I felt a twinge of uncertainty. Cam should definitely probe them and their mutual alibis.
“Brenda, are you sure neither of you left your rooms that night? I’ve been told that people did, maybe just to go out to smoke?”
Sullenly she said, “If you must know, I did go out . . . to smoke.”
“Alone?”
“I . . . I went with her,” Sandy volunteered.
“What time was that?”
The two women consulted. Sandy shook her head and met my gaze. “Who ever knows what time it is? I didn’t check. Why would I?”
“I tapped on her door,” Brenda said. “I needed to talk to someone, and she didn’t need an explanation. She understands what the business is like for a woman. And she knows my past.” Brenda sighed. “Anyway, with all of this going on I decided it was time to tell Glen the truth. And I have.” Airily, she added, “If he divorces me, I’ll go back to acting.”
“Did either of you see or hear anything while you were outside?”
They glanced at each other. Sandy shook her head. Brenda turned her steady gaze to me. “Not a thing.”
“Not a single thing,” Sandy echoed.
Interesting that they had to consult each other to come to that conclusion.
I glanced over and saw Margot staring at me. She waved with a jaunty smile. I didn’t smile back. Someone in this room killed Dan Sooner, I thought. But then I considered who was missing. Maybe that wasn’t quite true. This information had just given me an idea.
Maybe Dan Sooner had told Glengarry about Brenda’s past. And maybe Glengarry killed him to keep his mouth shut. That was a wild notion, but people had been killed for less. Polk was clearly a man who took himself and his name as a Broadway director seriously, exactly the type who would feel dirtied if someone besmirched his wife’s character. A little blood on his hands might be worth it, to keep his reputation unsullied. Was that why Brenda felt compelled to alibi her husband? Did she wake up and find him missing from the room?
Or had they killed Dan together to keep it all quiet?
Was the consultation with Sandy about what they did—or didn’t—see and hear outside necessary for that reason? Maybe Brenda went to Sandy’s room, tapped on the door, and got her friend to go with her, to follow Glengarry. Maybe they saw the two men meet, and violence ensue.
I could see that happening, but it was a stretch to imagine Glengarry Polk committing murder. It had been a physical task, killing Sooner and disposing of his body. Though Sandy and Brenda could have helped with that part. But if I considered Brenda and Glen as suspects, why tell me, and presumably Cam, what you had killed Dan to conceal?
To disarm suspicion, the exact effect it had already had. Was I being played by an accomplished actress, or was she telling the truth? I couldn’t be sure, either way.
Twenty-one
“So what brought you here, to Wynter Castle?” I asked Sandy. The woman looked tired and drawn. This weekend had been hard on all of us, and I probably looked just as weary. “I’m surprised you returned to a place close to where you experienced so much tragedy.” Blunt, but I wanted answers. We were running out of time.
She didn’t reply for a long minute, frowning down at her bony ring-laden hands where they were folded together on the table. Brenda watched her with a tense gaze. Finally she said, tugging at a bracelet, “I’ve been a prisoner of my fears for a long time now. I wanted to face them. Slay them.”
“Is that fear why you lied to me about going to high school here?”
“I lied because . . .” She sighed and shook her head, making a face. “It’s a habit. I got used to lying. After a while, you forget to tell the truth. You forget you can tell the truth.”
I watched her. Were hers the eyes of a killer? I wondered. “I don’t think I understand why you needed to start lying in the first place.” The woman didn’t like me, so there was no point in being diplomatic. “Unless there’s something else you’re lying about? About a certain night so long ago?”
One of Cam’s officers, a sturdy young woman, entered and called out Sandy’s name. She was being summoned to her second interview with the sheriff.
“Do you think I’ll tell him the truth?” she said flippantly, tossing her hair extensions.
I watched her retreat, thinking if you don’t, I will.
“Don’t think ill of her,” Brenda said, her gentle voice holding the cultured tones of a trained professional actress.
I turned back and examined her winsome, regretful wisp of a smile. It was so practiced, so perfect. She was right, she could always go back to acting. “I’m not sure what to think.”
“This has been a stressful weekend for Sandy. It’s brought it all back, in a way. The pain. The grief. There is no grief like that suffered when you’re a teenager. It stays with you the rest of your life. You will always know how it feels to lose someone you love. Kids shouldn’t know that.” Her voice had become clogged and she cleared her throat and took a sip of tea as I wondered how much of her persona was performance and how much was real. She met my gaze, her blue eyes wet with emotion. “Lukas was my best friend, but for Sandy he was the love of her life.”
“I’m going to sound like a cynic right now. I remember my high school boyfriends fondly, but it’s pure nostalgia. The one love of her life at seventeen? I guess it’s possible, but unlikely.”
“Maybe it’s her way of avoiding another relationship,” Brenda mused. “One that would have interfered with her career.”
And I thought I was the cynic. “Have you stayed best friends all through the years?”
“Not at all. We lost contact in the aftermath of that awful event, Lukas’s death. Remember, I left town. Ran away, really. We haven’t seen each other for years, though I followed her career.”
“Why was she living here back then?” I asked. “She was a child star on TV. I remember her show, Everything’s Coming Up Sandy. And yet she went to high school in Ridley Ridge? Unwin MacGregor said that Sooner talked about high school being the best years of his life, and Sandy told him they weren’t the best years of her life, and it was his fault.”
“Sooner was a jerk!” she exclaimed. “He made her life miserable at school, always—” She stopped and shook off the burst of anger, taking a deep breath and returning to her practiced calm. “Her life hasn’t been easy. When Sandy was on her show she worked nonstop for three years and finally had a breakdown. She was washed up, everyone said. Her agent ditched her, studios didn’t want to see her. She had tantrums and she was difficult; all the regular stuff that happens to overworked and misunderstood child stars.”
Brenda had a point. There was notorious abuse of teen stars in the nineties. “So her family moved back to Ridley Ridge? Is that what happened?”
“Not exactly. Sandy came back at fourteen to live with relatives. Her parents stayed in Hollywood to promote her younger brother, who’s now a big star in the movies. He changed his last name, so you wouldn’t even know they’re siblings. Sandy has had to stage her comeback on her own, and she’s done a darn fine job of it.” Her voice throbbed with sincerity.
I didn’t think she was faking that admiration for Sandy. “You were friends with her then?”
“Sure. I was a grade down from her, but I hero worshipped her at first. Followed her around like a puppy when she was in tenth grade and I was in ninth. I thought she was so cool! Her show is what made me want to be an actress. I had already started going to auditions for local theater. We became friends. By the time she was a junior and I was a sophomore, I had begun to see the real Sandy, what her day-to-day life was like. Sooner bullied her in school. Jealousy, I always thought. He was a vicious jerk.”
“What transpired the night Lukas went missing?”
Her lips quivered and one tear welled over the bottom rim of her eye and trailed down her cheek. “He was my best friend, the kindest person I’ve ever known. I met him at his mom’s store when I was there for a modeling shoot.” She glanced over at Margot with a trembling smile. That woman blew her a sympathetic kiss. “I was just twelve that year, and he was fourteen, helping his mom out.”
I was aware of the clock ticking. I didn’t have time for the whole story of their friendship. George Bartholomew was called in to talk to Cam. That would be an interesting and potentially testy conversation. “That night, Brenda, the night Lukas went missing. What happened?”
She told me the story, staring fixedly at Margot the whole time.
They had all been together that evening—Brenda, Lukas, Sandy, Dan, and Jillian, a girl Dan had been dating—but scattered gradually as ill feeling festered among them. “It was one of those nights. You know the kind; they start out like any other, and then something happens and it all goes sour.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing in particular,” she replied. “Honestly, it was Dan being Dan, as usual.” He was drinking. Sandy, Lukas’s girlfriend, got angry because Lukas kept trying to get Dan to give him his keys. Sooner was being a jerk, Brenda said, like always, and he was never going to surrender his car keys. So, angry at Lukas for wasting the evening on Sooner, Sandy stormed off and went home. Rumors circulated that she was hooking up with another guy that night, but Brenda didn’t believe it. She, though, stuck around while Lukas argued with Dan Sooner. Brenda tried to convince Jillian to get out of the car, but the girl wouldn’t.
“She was a sweet girl, but completely under Dan’s thumb,” Brenda said. “I’ve always thought that’s why he liked her. He couldn’t deal with a girl who had her own mind.”
I considered Heather Baker; Brenda might be on to something. Heather had stayed with Sooner through what sounded like multiple affairs and bouts of ill treatment.
When their efforts failed, Lukas gave Brenda a lift home on his scooter, a short ways away, she said, but he was worried about Jillian. From what others who were on the scene later said, he tracked the two down and again tried to convince Jillian to get out of Sooner’s car.
I recalled what Hannah had told me about the accounts she had read in the paper; this was not mentioned. Jillian finally said she’d get out of the car, Brenda told me, but before she could, Dan took off, with her still in the car, her seat belt unlatched. “I could never be sure of all the details, though it was what I always believed. And Sooner admitted this next bit, the night of the gala,” Brenda said, her tone dreamy and disconnected in a most disconcerting way.
Alarm bells clanged in my head. She had cornered Sooner into admitting his part in the tragedy? Interesting. Margot rose and drifted toward us to listen, sitting in Sandy’s vacant seat. Tears dripped down her cheek. “So, the next bit?” I urged.
“I’ll tell you exactly what Sooner admitted to us the night of the gala,” Brenda said. She reached out and took Margot’s hand, squeezing. “Lukas followed on his scooter out to the highway and along it. He fell behind. Dan, with poor darling Jillian screaming at him to stop, made a U-turn and roared down the highway toward Lukas.”
“He admitted it?” Margot whispered.
Brenda nodded then looked away, muttering, “He said he was sorry, that he never meant it to happen.”
“Too late!” Margot exclaimed, her tone agonized.
So Margot hadn’t known about Sooner’s confession! I looked between the two, surprised Brenda hadn’t told Margot earlier. Maybe she felt it was too painful. Or maybe she could only say it now, with Sooner dead. Brenda went on with what else Sooner confessed; he hit Lukas’s scooter, sending it crashing off a cliff. He later learned that it ended up down the ravine, crashing into a tree. Dan was scared. Jillian was screaming at him to stop and help Lukas. He took off down the road but lost control and hit a tree. When the cops came, he kept saying the accident was not his fault. Cops figured he was talking about the accident they had just been in. Jillian was badly injured.
“He may have been alive,” Margot whispered. “If that terrible man had told them what happened, and they rescued him, Lukas may have lived.” Brenda nodded as Margot wept.
If I could believe Margot’s reaction, this was her first time hearing the whole story.
“Jillian was unconscious. Later, I understand, when she awoke in the hospital paralyzed, she didn’t remember anything,” Brenda said as Margot wiped her eyes and looked away. Price was watching her with a worried look. “Dan Sooner was arrested for reckless driving. He was over the legal limit and underage, but he was young, so he was able to plead down, and it didn’t stay on his permanent record.” Brenda sniffed. “It wasn’t until almost a week later, with Jillian unconscious and in the hospital, that poor Lukas’s broken body was found. No one could ever prove that Dan was responsible.”
“They didn’t try because Dan’s daddy was a bigwig, too important to cross.” Margot stuck out her hand, cradling Brenda’s free hand in hers. They were linked across the years. “Thank you, my dear,” she said. “For finding all of that out before it was too late.”
Was that tale enough to send Brenda over the edge, into a murderous rage, at how Sooner had treated her best friend? Or had it affected Sandy the same way?
Or both of them together?
Cam’s officer entered and motioned to Margot to follow. The woman did, gliding away, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. Price rose out of his seat, looking like he wanted to follow, but sat back down.
“Did you . . .” No, I couldn’t ask Brenda outright, could I?
“What is it? What were you about to ask?”
Steeling myself, I asked, “Did you and Sandy kill Sooner?”
“Of course not,” she said.
“How do you know Sandy didn’t do anything? You were in a room with your husband, went outside with Sandy, but then returned to your own room, right?” She nodded. “After you and Sandy talked, she would have been alone again.”
She looked disconcerted, but shook her head and said, politely but firmly, “Sandy would never take a risk like that. But then, I don’t think she loved Lukas as much as I did, you know? Even though she says he was the love of her life, I know I loved him more. He was my best friend. I would have done anything for him.”
Watching her, those lovely cold blue eyes, dry of tears now, I was chilled and not convinced she wasn’t lying. We were fairly sure that a woman alone would not have been able to kill Sooner, transport his body and manhandle him into a garbage bin at the Bartholomew residence. But she could have enlisted help.
“Excuse me, I have to go make sure my husband is okay.” She drifted from the room on a sugary cloud of Delina, from Parfums de Marly.
I sat alone and thought. A persistent nagging worry kept tickling my brain; how odd was it that so many people from Sooner’s past were in the castle that night? Was it an Agatha Christie–style conspiracy? Everyone gathered together to kill him? That was beyond ridiculous. Impossible.
Or at least improbable.
Cam must be telling those he’d questioned not to return to the dining room for now, because there were far fewer people in the room than there had been. I moved over to sit with Price Wharton. As one of the few I had spoken to who had no personal quarrel with Sooner, his insight might be valuable. After greeting him, I said, “We haven’t had a chance to talk much. I understand from Patricia (who had also been called by Cam into the investigation room) that you’re from around here. Batavia?”
“My family is. I left when I was young.” His voice was cool and dry, quiet, calm. He was the antithesis of his wild and willful wife.
“I understand you and Margot met at a local fundraiser?”
He nodded. “I run an annual campaign to raise money for a local charity that provides support to the disabled. I’ll send you an invitation for next year if you’d like.”
“We’re looking for local charities to support. I’d be happy to help. Do please send me the details.”
He took out his phone, donned a pair of reading glasses and squinted at the screen. “I’ll text you the details.”
He sent the text and my phone binged. “I’ll bet you never thought a weekend in the country would go like this,” I said.
He smiled, a dimple winking beside his mouth. “Can’t say Patricia didn’t warn us!”
“What do you mean?”
His smile died. “I’m sorry, that was tactless. Patricia told Margot about the troubles you’ve had here. My wife joked about a murder mystery weekend when we were getting ready. But I realize it’s not a joke to you, the difficulties you’ve had.” His tone was sympathetic.
