“I know,” I said. “I saw that firsthand.”
“So you did,” she said. “So you did. And I’m close enough, I can see her sometimes. We’re very careful about it. We meet on weekends. We make sure nobody follows her.”
“Randy wasn’t careful,” I said. “That white Cadillac, it belongs to a private investigator.”
“How do you know?”
“My partner ran the plate,” I said. “His name is Whitley. He works out of Detroit.”
“Harwood must’ve hired him,” she said. “He’s done that before.”
“Well, we could contact him ourselves,” I said. ‘Tell him to lay off.”
“He’d send somebody else,” she said. “Now that he’s found me again. Or he’d come himself…”
“Maria, why don’t you just sign away the full partnership money? Tell him you’ll take the twenty percent and forfeit the rest?”
She looked at me.
“You could stop running,” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what I should do.”
“You already have money. You said so yourself. The money your husband left you, right?”
She looked out at the lake. “It may be too late,” she said. “I should have done that eighteen years ago. Maybe even ten years ago. It’s an obsession with him now. After all this time, I don’t think he’d settle for less than everything. Every dollar, Alex.”
When she faced me again, I saw tears in her eyes. God help me, all I could think about was how lovely she was. That was the only word for her. Not beautiful, not pretty. Maria was lovely.
“Every dollar,” she said. “And my life, Alex. He wants me to die.”
I wanted to reach out and take her hand. But I didn’t. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m sure I can’t imagine what it’s been like.”
“And now Randy shows up,” she said. “It’s unbelievable.”
“Maria, you still haven’t told me why you said that stuff in the bar, about not remembering him.”
She looked down at the glass in her hand. It was empty.
“Maria?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Maria, what’s the matter?”
“It was me,” she said, her voice so low now, I could barely hear her.
“What do you mean?”
“It was me,” she said. “I shot him.”
CHAPTER 17
She opened the front door. She didn’t follow me out onto the landing, just stood leaning against the door frame, her arms folded across her chest. The landing was made of flat bluestone, with tall plants on either side that were nothing more than tangled bare branches at this time of year. The air was cold. I’d left my coat behind, somewhere in the living room. But I didn’t care. I stood there looking down at the landing while she told me what had happened.
“I came home three days ago,” she said. “As soon as I walked in, I knew somebody had been here. Everything was where it was supposed to be, and yet not exactly. Something was just… wrong. I could feel it. I called Chief Rudiger, but he swore he hadn’t come here. Even though he has a key, he doesn’t do that. Not without asking me. Then when I started seeing the white Cadillac around town, it didn’t take me long to figure it out. Harwood had found me again. Somehow. And the man in the Cadillac, he broke in here. He had touched everything in the house, Alex. Everything that belonged to me, he had put his hands on it. I called the chief again. He told me he’d keep an eye out for him but that he could only do so much. He’s the only full-time officer in town.”
“So I’ve learned,” I said. “One professional and a lot of amateurs with guns. So what happened next? Did the car come back?”
“Yes,” she said. “I saw it the next day. There’s a room up on the second floor; you can see out onto the road, through the trees. The car was just sitting there. I called the chief, but by the time he got over here, the car was gone. It came back later, just after dark. I was upstairs, watching for it. He pulled up there in the same spot on the road, just through the trees there where the fence starts. I was just about to call the chief again, when I heard somebody coming up the walkway.”
She stopped. She stood there with her arms still folded in front of her, staring out at nothing.
“What happened?” I said.
“I had a gun,” she said. “One of Leopold’s shotguns. He keeps one at the house, and he made me take the other one. I was sure it was Harwood, or somebody Harwood had hired to kill me. I got the gun, and when I looked out the little window by the door here, I saw something in his hand. It was dark, but I could see he was holding something. It’s a gun, I thought. It has to be a gun. He was coming to kill me, Alex. It didn’t matter if the door was locked. He had already gotten into the place before. Nothing could stop him. There was nothing I could do, except… open the door and shoot. I shot him, Alex. I threw the door open and shot him. Then I ran past him, got in my car, and drove away. As I was driving, I started seeing the man’s face. Like I looked at him but I didn’t really see him until later, when I had time to think about what had happened, you know what I mean? I could still see his face, just before the gun went off. And I knew him. I knew that face. He has a beard and mustache now, doesn’t he? He looks different. Yet he’s still the same. All these years later, he’s still the same. And I shot him.”
“Did he have a gun?”
“What?” She looked up at me.
“In his hand. You said you thought he had a gun. Did he?”
“No,” she said. “It was a flower. A lilac. That’s what he was holding. It’s supposed to mean something, isn’t it? When you give somebody a lilac? Something about the innocence of youth. If it did mean something, he never got the chance to tell me.”
I looked down at the stones. There were no lilac petals there now. There was no blood, no trace of what had happened.
“He was the first man I ever loved,” she said. “And I shot him.”
She didn’t cry. I didn’t know if she wanted me to hold her or if she wanted me to go away and never come back. I just stood there.
“You have to tell them, don’t you,” she said.
“Tell them what?”
“That I shot him. You have to tell the chief, and I’ll go to jail.”
I thought about it for exactly two seconds. “Not necessarily,” I said. “It was an accident. You panicked. What did you do with the shotgun, anyway?”
“I threw it in the woods.”
“Where?”
“Down the highway,” she said. “A couple miles outside of town.”
“Probably not the best place,” I said. “But there’s no sense trying to move it now.”
“Will you help me, Alex?”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Find out why he came here. If he found out I had money, or if Harwood was using him somehow. And then help me find Harwood. Somehow, I have to make him stop. Will you help me?”
“I don’t know if I can, Maria. How are we going to find him? What do we have to go on?”
“We have this man,” she said. “The man in the white Cadillac. I’m sure Harwood hired him.”
“We can’t prove he broke into your house,” I said. “Aside from that, he’s just following you around. The police can give him a warning, but I doubt they could charge him with anything. And they certainly can’t make him talk about who hired him. There are laws that protect that information.”
“Like a doctor and a patient,” she said. “Or a lawyer and a client.”
“Exactly.”
“Or a private investigator,” she said. “If I hire you, you don’t have to say anything, either. About any of this.”
I could see where she was going. I guess I didn’t blame her for wanting to protect herself, now that she had made her confession to me. And I didn’t blame her for wanting to find Harwood so she could put an end to it. I didn’t blame her for anything, not even for the shooting itself.