He rose so quickly his chair slammed down to the floor. “No, dammit, you can’t leave me… Lily, no! It’s your brother. I wish my father hadn’t called him; I wish Savich hadn’t come here to ruin everything. He’s filled your mind with lies. He’s made you turn on me. There’s no proof of anything at all, just ask him. No, none of it’s true. Please, Lily, don’t leave me.”
“Tennyson,” Lily said very quietly now, looking directly at him, “what sort of pills have you been feeding me these last seven months?”
He howled, literally howled, a desperate, frightened sound of rage and hopelessness. He was panting hard when he said, “I tried to make you well. I tried, God knows, and now you’ve decided to believe this jerk of a brother and his wife and you’re leaving me. Dammit, I’ve been giving you Elavil!”
Lily nodded. “Actually, even though there doesn’t seem to be any solid proof to haul you to the sheriff. The sheriff is something of a joke anyway, isn’t he? When I remember how he tried so hard to apprehend Beth’s killer.”
“I know he did the best he could. If you’d been with Beth, maybe you would have made a better witness, but you-”
She ignored his words and said, “If we find proof, then even Sheriff Bozo will have to lock you away, Tennyson-no matter what you or Daddy say, no matter how much money you’ve put in his pocket, no matter how many votes you got for him-until we manage to get some competent law enforcement in Hemlock Bay. The truth of the matter is, I would leave you even if you didn’t kill your first wife, if you hadn’t, in truth, tried to kill me, because, Tennyson, you’ve lied to me; from the very beginning you lied to me. You used Beth’s death to make me feel the most profound guilt. You milked it, manipulated me-you’re still doing it-and you very likely drugged me to make me depressed, to make me feel even more at fault. I wasn’t at fault, Tennyson. Someone killed Beth. I didn’t. I realize that now. Were you planning on killing me even as you slid the ring on my finger?”
He was holding his head in his hands, shaking his head back and forth, not looking at anyone now.
“I found myself wondering today, Tennyson-did you kill Beth, too?”
His head came up, fast. “Kill Beth? Oh, my God! No!”
“She was my heir. If I died, then the paintings would be hers. No, surely even you couldn’t be that evil. Your father could, maybe your mother could, but not you, I don’t think. But then again, I’ve never been good at picking men. Look at my pathetic track record-two tries and just look what happened. Yes, I’m obviously rotten at it. Hey, maybe it’s my bookie genes getting in the way of good sense. No, you couldn’t have killed or had Beth killed. Maybe we’ll find something on your daddy. We’ll see.
“Good-bye, Tennyson. I can’t begin to tell you what I think of you.”
Both Savich and Sherlock remained silent, looking at the man and woman facing each other across the length of the dining table. Tennyson was as white as a bleached shroud, the pulse in his neck pounding wildly. His fingers clutched the edge of the table. He looked like a man beyond himself, beyond all that he knew or understood.
As for Lily, she looked calm, wonderfully calm. She didn’t look to be in any particular discomfort. She said, “Dillon and Sherlock will pack all my things while you’re at your office tomorrow, Tennyson. Tonight, the three of us are going to stay in Eureka.” She turned, felt the mild pulling in her side again, and added, “Please don’t destroy my drawing and art supplies, Tennyson, or else I’ll have to ask my brother or sister-in-law to break your face. They want to very badly as it is.”
She nodded to him, then turned. “Dillon, I’ll be ready to leave in ten minutes.”
Head up, back straight, as if she didn’t have stitches in her side, she left the dining room. Lily saw Mrs. Scruggins standing just inside the kitchen door. Mrs. Scruggins smiled at her as she walked briskly past, saying over her shoulder, “It was an excellent dinner, Mrs. Scruggins. My brother really liked it. Thank you for saving my life seven months ago. I will miss you and your kindness.”
8
Eureka, California
The Mermaid’s Tail
Lily swallowed a pain pill and looked at herself in the mirror. She’d looked better, no doubt about that. She sighed as she thought back over the months and wondered yet again what had happened to her. Had she looked different when she’d first arrived in Hemlock Bay? She’d been so full of hope, both she and Beth finally free of Jack Crane, on their own, happy. She remembered how they’d walked hand in hand down Main Street, stopping at Scooters Bakery to buy a chocolate croissant for Beth and a raisin scone for herself. She hadn’t realized then that she would soon marry another man she’d believe with all her heart loved both her and Beth, and this one would gouge eleven months out of her life.
Fool.
She’d married yet another man who would have rejoiced at her death, who was prepared to bury her with tears running down his face, a stirring eulogy coming out of his mouth, and joy in his heart.
Two husbands down-never, never again would she ever look at a man who appeared even mildly interested in her. Fact was, she was really bad when it came to choosing men. And the question that had begun to gnaw at her surfaced again. Was Tennyson responsible for Beth’s death?
Lily didn’t think so-she’d been honest the night before about that-but it had happened so quickly and no one had seen anything at all useful. Could Tennyson have been driving that car? And then the awful depression had smashed her, had made her want to lie in a coffin and pull down the lid.
Beth was gone. Forever. Lily pictured her little girl’s face-a replica of her father’s, but finer, softer-so beautiful, that precious little face she saw now only in her mind. She’d just turned six the week before she died. Beth hadn’t been evil to the bone like her father. She’d been all that was innocent and loving, always telling her mother any- and everything until… Lily raised her head and looked at herself again in the mirror. Until what? She thought back to the week before Beth was killed. She had been different, sort of furtive, wary-maybe even scared.
Scared? Beth? No, that didn’t make any sense. But still, Beth had been different just before she died.
No, not died. Beth had been killed. By a hit-and-run driver. The pain settled heavily in Lily’s heart as she wondered if she would ever know the truth.
She shook her head, drank more water from the tap. Her brother and Sherlock had just left, after she’d assured them at least a half dozen times that she still felt calm, didn’t hurt at all. She was fine, go, go, pack up her things in Hemlock Bay. She hoped that Tennyson hadn’t trashed her drawing supplies.
She drew a deep, clean breath. Yes, she wanted her drawing supplies today, as soon as possible. She wanted to hold her #2 red sable brush again, but it would be foolish to buy another one just to use today. No, she’d just buy a small sampler set of pens and pen points, inexpensive ones because it didn’t really matter. Maybe she’d get a Speedball cartooning set, just like the one her folks had given her when she’d wanted to try cartooning so many years before. Those pens would still feel familiar in her hand. And a bottle of India ink, some standard-size, twenty-pound typing paper, durable paper that would last, no matter how many times it was shoved into envelopes or worked on by her and the editors. Yes, just some nice bond paper, not more than a hundred sheets. Usually, since she did political cartoons, she used strips of paper cut from larger sheets of special artist paper, thicker than a postcard-bristol board, it was called, well suited for brushwork. And one bottle of Liquid Paper. She could just see herself-not more than an hour from now-drawing those sharp, pale lines that would become the man of the hour, Senator No Wrinkles Remus, the soon-to-be president of the U.S., from that fine state of West Dementia, where the good senator has managed to divide his state into halves, to conduct the ultimate experiment with gun control. One half of the state has complete gun control, as strict as in England; the other half of West Dementia has no gun control at all. He gives an impassioned speech to the state legislature, with the blessing of the governor, whom he’s blackmailed for taking money from a contractor who is also his nephew: “One year, that’s all we ask,” Remus says, waving his arms to embrace all of them. “Just one year and we’ll know once and for all what the answer is.”