Closely Akin to Murder Read online

  “I’m familiar with the name,” I said, “but I still don’t understand what’s going on.”

  “Perhaps I shouldn’t burden you with this. I chose to disappear all these years, and I have no right to pop up out of the blue and ask for your help. I’m sure you have a busy enough life with your bookstore and your daughter. I was just hoping that your admirable accomplishments in matters of crime—”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “I hired a private investigator. He didn’t delve into your personal affairs; but he found a few articles in the newspaper morgue.”

  “You hired someone to spy on me?” I said.

  “Only to find you,” she said in a reproving voice. “I need someone I can trust. Everything I fought for and attained is in danger. If you’ll allow me to finish my story, I think you’ll understand the gravity of my situation.”

  Not at all flattered to have been the subject of a PI’s report, I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the curtains were tightly drawn, then said, “I’ll listen to your story, but that’s all I’m promising to do.”

  “My father borrowed enough money so that we could stay at the Hotel Las Floritas, where Oliver Pickett was staying. I expected to be utterly miserable all three weeks. My parents were at ease with the Hollywood types, but I was shy and gawky and sadly deficient in social skills. At seventeen, I’d never had a close girlfriend, much less a date. Like many tall girls, I slouched and wore drab clothes to blend into the background. My mother kept enrolling me in cotillions and etiquette classes, but none of them helped.”

  “I always thought you were glamorous. You knew all the current slang and told risqué jokes.” I did not add that I’d never understood them, even though I’d laughed uproariously.

  “Younger cousins didn’t intimidate me,” she said. “To return to the story, the day we arrived, Oliver Pickett’s daughter came to our bungalow and introduced herself. Fran was a year younger than I, but much more sophisticated. She had streaky blonde hair, large hazel eyes, and the body of a model. My parents urged me to accept her invitation to go to the beach. From that moment until—until the tragedy, she and I whizzed around Acapulco in her father’s limousine, shopping and hanging out at the beach clubs. At night while the adults were partying in hotel bars and private homes, we’d have Jorge drive us to seedy bars in the Sona Roja, where we drank margaritas until we threw up in front of the pimps and prostitutes.”

  “Your parents allowed this?”

  “My parents did whatever Oliver said. If he’d told them to dive off the cliff at La Quebrada, they would have put on their bathing suits and started climbing. Oliver had divorced Fran’s mother years earlier, and was accompanied by his so-called secretary, an aspiring actress named Debbie D’Avril. She was quite the party animal, as was Chad Warmeyer, Oliver’s assistant. The five of them would start celebrating at sunset and stagger back to Las Floritas at sunrise to sleep until noon. Fran and I had virtually no supervision. Occasionally, we were deprived of the limousine when Chad was sent out to photograph a house or beach, but then we took taxis.”

  I grimaced as I imagined Caron and Inez in a similar situation. “You mentioned a tragedy,” I murmured.

  “On New Year’s Eve, the adults went to a party. A few days earlier, Fran had decided that we should have our own party in her bungalow. She’d invited a dozen kids from the beach, and by midnight, there were three times that many. I drank too much and smoked pot, and eventually passed out in the master bedroom. When I awoke, everybody was gone. My hand and shirt were smeared with blood, and I was holding a knife. Oliver Pickett’s body was on the balcony. Two days later I was arrested. Shortly after that, my parents rented a car to drive to Mexico City to get help at the American embassy. I was informed the next day that they’d been in a fatal car accident. A matron smuggled in a newspaper for me; I couldn’t read Spanish, but I could tell that I was presumed to have been in the car with them.”

  I was too shocked to attempt a response for a long while. The story seemed ludicrous, more suitable for low-budget movies and exploitative true crime novels. My cousin the killer? “I don’t know what to say,” I said inanely.

  “Few people would. I was convicted and sentenced to twelve years in prison. After serving eight, I was released, ordered to leave the country, and given enough money to take a bus to the border. I was too ashamed to make contact with any of the family, so I stayed in San Diego and worked as a waitress and maid until I’d completed my GED and put myself through college. My grades were good enough to get me into medical school. Between moonlighting and student loans, I earned a degree, did further graduate work, and went into research.”

  “But how could you allow us to believe you were dead? Didn’t you feel any obligation to the people who cared about you? Couldn’t you have written from prison, or at least after you were released and were back in the country?”

  “I killed a man, Claire. I stabbed him in the throat, then tried to escape retribution by throwing his body off a cliff in hopes the police would believe he’d fallen to his death and cut his throat on a sharp rock. I spent eight years wishing I’d died with my parents. When I got out, I wanted nothing more than a new identity and a fresh start. A judge heard me out and allowed me to adopt my mother’s maiden name.”

  I licked my lips. “Why did you kill him?”

  “He came back unexpectedly—I think he’d fallen into a swimming pool and wanted to change clothes—and busted up the party. Fran managed to slip away. Oliver discovered me in his bed, and was attempting to rape me when I grabbed the knife and stabbed him. I kept stabbing him until he collapsed. I still have nightmares in which I’m screaming silently as my arm goes up and down and blood splatters my face. What I did was a monstrous thing. Oliver was too drunk to know what he was doing. He was a hero in Hollywood, and everybody worshipped him.”

  “Earlier you said that his body was on the balcony. If he assaulted you in the bedroom, how did you and he end up out there?”

  “I fought my way out of the bedroom, but he came after me. I grabbed a knife off the bar as I backed toward the balcony. Afterward, I stumbled to the bedroom and passed out again, I suppose this time from the trauma of realizing what I’d done. Fran’s scream wakened me. She’d started worrying about leaving me behind, and had Jorge bring her back to the hotel. She was clear-headed enough to point out that I had no scratches or bruises to back up my accusation of rape, and the police would believe I’d been in his bed to seduce him when he returned. It was such a sick idea that I was ready to throw myself off the balcony.”

  “But surely the police would have believed you. You were only seventeen, and as you said, unsophisticated. He had to have been at least twenty years older. He’d been drinking, and he was angry about the party. It seems reasonable to assume he might have turned this anger on you, since you were vulnerable.”

  “And very frightened and confused,” she said in a low voice. “Fran convinced me that my only hope was for his body to be discovered at the base of the cliff. Once we’d done that, I wiped up the blood while she disposed of my clothes and the evidence of the party. Then she gave me a sleeping pill, and I went back to my room.”

  “But the police arrested you?”

  “The body was found the next morning, and at first it was assumed that he’d fallen. My parents, Debbie D’Avril, and Chad Warmeyer all admitted they’d been drinking heavily at various parties, and that Oliver could barely walk. Fran went into shock. Her mother arrived that day and arranged for her to be sedated and kept in bed. Then my bloodied shirt was found in a garbage can behind the hotel restaurant. Details came out about the party, and Fran was forced to admit I remained there when everyone else left. The police searched my bedroom at the bungalow and found my diary. It was filled with accounts of sexual encounters, but the police refused to believe they were only the fantasies of an unhappy teenaged girl who’d never been kissed. I finally broke down and confessed. After that, everything was a hideous blur
of interrogation rooms, a filthy cell, hearings held in Spanish with no interpreters, and a mockery of a trial in front of a disapproving judge. I was not allowed to testify, and I don’t know if my lawyer believed me, either. I’m not even sure my parents did after they were shown my diary, but at that point I was too depressed to care.”

  “Where was Fran during all this?” I asked.

  “I wasn’t allowed to see her until the trial, when we were both found guilty. She was glassy-eyed and unwilling to speak to me, and I never saw her again after we were transported to the prison. I tried without success to find out what happened to her. She could have been transferred, released, or buried in the paupers’ cemetery just outside the prison wall. Dysentery and tuberculosis were rampant. I had pneumonia numerous times because my cell was so damp. Someone sent me packages of food and medicine every month; without them, I would have starved.”

  Ronnie’s recitation had been unemotional and devoid of details, but it evoked such repugnant images that I felt nauseous. At seventeen, I’d not been obsessed with creature comforts or expensive toys. I wasn’t at all sure, however, that I could have survived for eight years in a cell in a foreign country, with no one on the outside to fight for my freedom. Caron wouldn’t have lasted eight hours.

  “You were very brave,” I said. “I don’t know if I could have gone through it.”

  “I didn’t call you to start a fan club,” she said drily. “What I did in Acapulco was unforgivable. Not a day goes by that I don’t say a prayer for Oliver Pickett. I stole his life from him when he was at the peak, and I deserved to be punished. I never married or took a vacation, and I work eighteen-hour stints at the lab. Now, when I’m close to something that will have major significance in the field of drug-resistant viruses, someone’s trying to snatch it all away by exposing me. I’ll lose my position, my grants, and my credibility in the medical community.”

  “You’re being blackmailed?” I said.

  “A week ago I found a message on my answering machine. The voice was so raspy that I wasn’t sure if it was male or female. The message was intelligible, though. If I don’t deposit half a million dollars in a shielded bank account in Grand Cayman within the next thirty days, copies of the court transcript will be sent to my colleagues, along with a photocopy of my passport and other proof of my previous identity. I can’t let that happen.”

  Surely the private detective had reported on my financial status, I told myself. “I don’t see how I can help,” I said. “I barely earn enough at the bookstore—”

  “I’m not asking for a loan, Claire. I could borrow the money in a matter of days, but I know it won’t stop there. I’ll never be sure that this person won’t send the evidence out of spite, or make further demands. I can’t live with that kind of tension pervading my every thought. I want you to find this person and reason with him—or her. Make some kind of deal in exchange for the money.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, trying not to gurgle, “I’m a bookseller in a small college town. I have no idea how to deal with something of this magnitude. I may have assisted the police on occasion, but this is way out of my league. Why don’t you talk to the private detective? He has the training and resources to track down people. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

  “Acapulco, I should think.”

  I went ahead and gurgled like a coffeepot. “Call the private detective. He has cohorts in Mexico who can determine who got hold of the court transcripts.”

  “I don’t trust him,” she countered, clearly having assembled her arguments in advance. “He knows I’m wealthy. How can I be sure he won’t decide to blackmail me, too? You’re the only person I can trust, Claire, and as far as I’m concerned, my only relative. I sent that magnifying glass on your eighth birthday; now I’m begging you to dust it off and use it.”

  CHAPTER 2

  “Think of it as the vacation we can never afford,” I said to Caron as the cabin steward removed our untouched lunch trays. “We’ll have a suite, a chauffeur, unlimited expenses, and a balcony with a view of Acapulco Bay. All you have to do is lie by the pool or play volleyball on the beach. I’m not going to drag you around with me.”

  “I am missing the homecoming game,” she said, not for the first time, her sullenness having had a distinct impact on my appetite (the appearance of the food itself running a close second). When I failed to respond with adequate compassion, she added, “It was possible that I would have had a date to the dance afterward.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” I said. “Ronnie offered to pay for you to come along and I thought you’d enjoy it, but you certainly weren’t under any obligation. You could have stayed with Inez.”

  “I said it was possible, Mother, but the boys at school are hopelessly infantile. I have such a load of homework that all I’ll do is sit in some dreary hotel room reading Dickens.”

  “It’s a very nice hotel,” I said. “You were going to have to read Dickens anyway. At least you can do it in an exotic setting.”

  “And if this cousin had been arrested in Bosnia would we have reservations at the Sarajevo Hilton?”

  “Buckle your seatbelt, dear.”

  “I’m serious, Mother. You haven’t heard a word from her for thirty years, then all of a sudden she strolls out of the cemetery and you end up agreeing to take up her cause. For all you know, she’s totally crazy and made the whole thing up in order to lure you out of the country.”

  “So she can sneak into the Book Depot and steal a million dollars from the cash register?”

  “How should I know? If this is so critical, why is it that she couldn’t even bother to come along?”

  “As Dr. Vera Gray, she made a commitment a year ago to speak at a symposium in Brussels. From what I could determine at the library, she’s one of the preeminent figures in her field. She’s been director of a research facility in Chicago for more than ten years. She’s won all kinds of awards and been nominated twice for a Nobel prize.”

  Caron yawned. “I don’t see how that’s going to help you. Your Spanish vocabulary is limited to the menu at the restaurant up the street from the bookstore. Do you honestly think you’re going to say ‘Enchilada,’ and Pancho Villa’s going to leap out of the bushes to confess to blackmail?”

  I turned my back on her and gazed out the window at the landscape below. The mountains were barren and unfriendly; roads slinked through them like dried tendrils. The pi lot had mentioned a volcano, but as fate always decrees, it was visible from the opposite side of the plane. It seemed appropriate.

  Peter had been furious when I told him what I intended to do. He’d tried to control his temper, but by the time he’d stalked out the door, bristling like a hedgehog, I had a much keener understanding of the concept of nuclear winter. He’d relented enough to confirm through professional channels the rudimentary facts of the story: Oliver Pickett had been murdered on January 1, 1966; two unnamed American girls had been charged with the crime. Subsequent legal proceedings had been closed because the girls were minors. The Los Angeles newspapers had run a lengthy obituary, but it alluded only fleetingly to a tragic accident and focused on Pickett’s cinematic career. His only survivor was a daughter, Franchesca. A much shorter obituary of Arthur, Margaret (nee Gray), and Veronica Landonwood cited the automobile accident; there was no mention of a memorial service or survivors.

  Ronnie was picking up the tab, as well as the small salary I was paying the bewildered retiree (aka the downstairs tenant) to mind the bookstore in my absence. She’d mentioned a fee, but I’d changed the subject and refused to return to it. Accepting money for a doomed mission went beyond the pale, even mine. I was much more likely to end up with an infamous traveler’s malady than with any inkling of the blackmailer’s identity.

  Thirty minutes later we stepped off the airplane into blistering white sunshine. My guidebook had stated that the average temperature in November was ninety degrees, and every one of them was ricocheting off the tarmac. We followed worn yell
ow stripes into the airport and wended our way through the cattle chutes of immigration and customs without undue delays.

  “What does that sign say?” asked Caron as we waited by the luggage carousel. “How are we supposed to know what to do if we can’t read the signs? We’ll accidentally break some law and be locked up in jail. I’m supposed to take the SAT next month.”

  “This is a tourist-friendly city,” I said uneasily. As a devotee of the written word—any written word—I was discomfited by my inability to immediately comprehend the sign under discussion. “Mexico’s government is not a repressive communist regime with top-secret defense facilities tucked between scenic photo opportunities.”

  “Oh, yeah? What about that guy over there by the door? He’s been staring at us ever since we entered the airport, and if he’s not sinister, then I’m the Farberville High School homecoming queen.”

  I took a quick look. “You’re exaggerating, Your Highness. He’s just a businessman trying to remember his schedule. No one has any reason to think we’re anything more than tourists on a four-day jaunt. Peter and Ronnie are the only people who know why we’re here, and neither would alert the local version of the CIA.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Caron said, already distracted by a group of college boys who’d clearly begun their vacation on the airplane.

  We collected our luggage and went out to the street. Everyone else seemed familiar with the drill as they piled into vans, taxis, or cars crammed with beaming relatives. Several drivers held up cardboard signs with names, none of them mine. Within a matter of minutes, the sidewalk was uninhabited, except for a few airport employees sharing a cigarette. In terms of auspicious beginnings, this was not notable.

  “I am about to Pass Out,” Caron said as she sat on a bench and took a tissue from her purse to wipe her forehead. “If I don’t have something cold to drink in the next minute, I’ll keel over right here. You’d better look up the Spanish phrase for ‘heatstroke,’ because you’ll need it at the hospital. Maybe the food’s better there than on the airplane.”