After Caroline Page 21

  “Joanna?”

  Turning toward the door, she paused and looked at him with a lifted brow.

  “You’re staying another week, right?”

  She nodded. “At least.”

  “Good.”

  She left the small office, feeling both pleased and unsettled by that last brief syllable. But her pleasure was short-lived. There were just too many things to worry about. The dream and her reaction to it had only intensified, and the more she found out about Caroline, the less she liked her, and now there were three deaths to be explained rather than the one she had come here to find out about. Joanna had been in town barely a week, and she was more concerned than ever.

  Tick. Tick. Tick.

  She stood out on the sidewalk in front of the Sheriff’s Department and bit her lip, trying to make up her mind. But she couldn’t stand still long and finally began making her way toward the main section of downtown stores. She wanted very much to talk to Doctor Peter Becket, but so far hadn’t been able to think of a good enough—innocent enough—reason. Griffin had introduced them behind The Inn the morning before as they had stood watching Amber’s body being put into an ambulance. But so far, Joanna hadn’t encountered the good doctor casually—which was how she seemed to acquire most of her information about Caroline.

  She wondered if she could develop something, maybe an upset stomach or some other fairly mild and inexplicable ache just worrisome enough to cause her to visit the clinic ….

  “Hi, Joanna.”

  “Oh—hi, Mavis.” She nodded at the young clerk from the drugstore as both of them halted near On the Corner. “Off early today?”

  “A couple of hours early, yeah. Um … been talking to the sheriff?” Mavis tried to ask the question casually, but only succeeded in alerting Joanna.

  “For a few minutes,” she confirmed. “He’s busy, though.”

  Mavis nodded quickly. “That poor girl falling over the cliffs Sunday night. I … uh … I heard it’s beginning to look like Mr. Barlow had something to do with it. That he lied to the sheriff about where he was that night.”

  News really does get around fast in this town. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Mrs. Norton came into the drugstore a little while ago—she’s my neighbor, you know—and said the sheriff had sent one of the deputies out to her house special just to ask if she’d happened to see Mr. Barlow leave on Sunday night. And she had. Just before midnight, when that poor girl was killed. And one of our other customers said he was at The Inn when Sheriff Cavanaugh was questioning Mr. Barlow, and he heard Mr. Barlow say he was at his cottage all night, so…”

  Deciding that Mrs. Norton must have nearly broken her neck getting into town so quickly to share her tidbit of news, Joanna said, “Whatever Mr. Barlow said, it doesn’t necessarily mean he had anything to do with Amber’s death, Mavis.”

  “Oh, but everybody knows how she was chasing after him,” Mavis said, her eyes glistening. “And he probably didn’t like it. I mean, he is involved with Holly Drummond, after all, and you can bet she didn’t like it. So he probably wasn’t at all happy with that poor Amber. I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt her, but maybe he just pushed her a little, because she was pestering him, and—”

  “It was nearly midnight,” Joanna said, making her voice as dispassionate as possible, “and stormy. Which is more likely, Mavis? That anybody would have planned a lovers’ tryst out behind The Inn? Or that Amber took advantage of a break in the storm to go outside and get some air after being cooped up in the hotel all day and just … slipped?”

  “Nobody was likely to see them together on a stormy night, and they would have wanted to keep it secret because of Holly,” Mavis said with a decided nod. “I don’t actually know that’s true, of course, Joanna, but the sheriff must have had a good reason to suspect Mr. Barlow. Everybody says so.”

  It wasn’t Joanna’s first lesson in the tendency of most people to believe the worst of others, but she found it every bit as painful and depressing as she had when the lesson had sunk in years before. She had been seventeen, still living in Charleston with Aunt Sarah, when an irresponsible young reporter with an interest in mysterious deaths and a leaning toward conspiracy theories had turned up in the neighborhood asking questions about Joanna’s parents.

  It had gradually emerged that he was convinced that Alan Flynn had worked secretly as an attorney for organized crime figures, and that the boating “accident” had actually been a mob hit. Flynn, the reporter claimed, had been about to turn state’s evidence, so he and his wife were killed.

  The story was so absurd that Joanna’s strongest emotion had been sheer incredulity. That had been followed by anger that this stranger had dared to attack her father’s sterling reputation. But then, as she spoke to a neighbor one day about the matter, she suddenly saw the glistening eagerness in the woman’s eyes, and was shocked to realize that she wanted to believe the story.

  And not only that neighbor, but many of them. People who had known her parents. Even relatives. They wanted to believe.

  Aunt Sarah hadn’t said much about it, but within a few weeks the house was on the market and they had moved to Atlanta. And anonymity.

  Now Joanna drew a breath and said, “Aunt Sarah always taught me to never assume anything, so I think I’ll wait until the sheriff arrests somebody before I waste too much time speculating about it.”

  “Is he going to arrest Mr. Barlow?” Mavis asked eagerly.

  “I doubt it,” Joanna replied dryly, wishing this conversation had never gotten started. “But since I hardly work for the Sheriff’s Department…”

  Obviously disappointed, Mavis said, “I thought maybe the sheriff had talked to you about the case.”

  Without batting an eye, Joanna said, “Sorry, but I don’t know anything. It’s been nice talking to you, Mavis.”

  “Oh, you too, Joanna. Drop into the drugstore sometime, why don’t you? I’ll buy you a cherry Coke.”

  “I will, thanks.” Joanna watched the younger woman hurry away—not toward her home north of town, but only a few yards down the sidewalk and into another of the town’s stores. Obviously, Mavis wanted further discussion on the probable guilt of Cain Barlow. “Damn,” Joanna murmured.

  “She’ll have him tarred and feathered by dark,” another feminine voice remarked. “Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

  Joanna looked around quickly and saw, leaning in the open doorway of On the Corner, the exotic blonde who had mistaken her for Caroline back in Atlanta.

  “Hello again,” the blonde said. “I’m Lyssa Maitland.” A beautiful woman somewhere in her mid-thirties, she was dressed with the same casual elegance Joanna remembered, this time in dark slacks, a silk blouse, and a tapestry vest, with her pale hair worn up. And those very green eyes, Joanna realized suddenly, owed nothing to contact lenses.

  “I’m Joanna Flynn.”

  Lyssa smiled. “Yeah, so they tell me. I must say, I’m glad you’re real and not a figment of my overwrought imagination.”

  Joanna took a couple of steps closer. “It shook me up a bit too. Being mistaken, twice, for a woman I’d never heard of, I mean.”

  “I imagine it must have.” Lyssa studied her with unhidden speculation. “Is that why you decided to come to Cliff-side? To find out just who you’d been mistaken for?”

  Opting for a brief explanation, Joanna replied, “I’m a research librarian. Shortly after you and Dylan mistook me for Caroline, I was researching and saw her picture in a Portland newspaper. Then I found her obituary. I had some vacation time coming, so I decided to spend it here.”

  A coincidence that she’d “found” Caroline after having been twice mistaken for her—but not one beyond belief, given her job. And it wasn’t a lie, after all; it just wasn’t all the truth.

  Lyssa apparently accepted the coincidence, because she nodded slowly. “I see. So you’re taking sort of a busman’s holiday. Researching Caroline.”

  “Informally, I suppose.”
Joanna shrugged.

  “I work for Scott, you know.”

  There was no use pretending disinterest to this woman, Joanna decided. “So I was told. Did you know Caroline well?”

  “I doubt if anyone knew Caroline well. Except for Scott, of course.”

  “She lived here all her life,” Joanna said. “How could the people around her not know her well?”

  Lyssa smiled slightly. “If you ask me, I think she didn’t want to be known. It appealed to her vanity to believe that she was an enigma to people. Caroline didn’t like her life here, in case nobody’s told you that.”

  “She seemed to keep herself busy,” Joanna remarked neutrally.

  “Oh, sure. She served on committees and worked tirelessly for the good of the town and generally carved out a place for herself as Cliffside’s leading lady.”

  Joanna couldn’t help wondering if it was jealousy she heard in the older woman’s voice. “Yet she didn’t like her life here?”

  “Not much. She couldn’t wait to get out of here when she finished high school at seventeen. Went to San Francisco to go to college and didn’t last six months. Found herself a very small guppy in a real big pond where being Miss Caroline Douglas didn’t mean a whole lot. So she came back home. She’d met Scott there at some society do, though, and he followed her back here.”

  “She was the only reason he moved here?” So that was how they met. And the first San Francisco connection?

  Lyssa nodded. “All his family’s businesses were in San Francisco, and they pitched a fit when he sold his interest and moved up here. But he didn’t care. He bought the old lumber mill and had it turning a profit within six months when it had been in the red for years. Remodeled some old stores here in town and brought Dylan and me up from San Francisco; this was Dylan’s hometown and he was glad to come home; I was just eager to be put in charge of a promising business.” Lyssa shrugged. “In the meantime, Scott was courting Caroline. Offered her everything, just like a prince in some Cinderella story. As soon as she turned eighteen, she accepted him.”

  Lyssa, Dylan—more people from San Francisco. It’s beginning to look like Butler’s being from there as well could hardly mean anything important.

  Joanna hesitated, then said frankly, “I heard the marriage wasn’t all that happy. So what happened to the glass slipper?”

  “I guess it broke.” Lyssa shrugged again. “Or maybe it never really fit Caroline after all. She wasn’t happy. Didn’t like living in a small town but didn’t want to give up what she had here. She could have made a much bigger splash in San Francisco as Scott’s wife, but I think that bigger pond scared her. Scott was willing to stay here, so they did.”

  “You didn’t like her.”

  Lyssa appeared thoughtful. “Well, most women didn’t. She could be very charming, and there was something about her, a kind of vulnerability, that seemed to appeal to most men, but she didn’t waste her energy being anything but polite to other women. That’s why you’ve probably found that most of the clerks and other people here in town who knew her just to speak to her thought she was sweet, or shy—or just real nice. But anyone who knew her better than that most likely has mixed feelings about her.”

  Joanna hesitated, then said, “Do you think she might have been upset about anything in the last week or so before she was killed?”

  “Not that I noticed. Why?” Lyssa’s green eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at? That the accident was something else?”

  Joanna shook her head. “I heard she seemed uneasy or jumpy before she was killed, and I was just wondering if that was why she lost control of her car that day.”

  “I guess we’ll never know that.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Joanna felt uncomfortable, but summoned a smile. “Well, it was nice meeting you, Lyssa.”

  “You too, Joanna.”

  Joanna turned away from the other woman and continued along the sidewalk toward the far end of Main Street where she had parked her car. She paused on the corner and looked back to find Lyssa still in the doorway watching her, and something about her complete lack of expression made Joanna feel a sudden chill. She turned the corner quickly.

  Once out of Lyssa’s sight, she paused again, trying to think past her churning uneasiness. She felt as if things were speeding up, as if what had been set in motion months before was building toward a climax. Tick. Tick. Tick.

  But, dammit, she still didn’t know what had been set in motion, what it was all about. She didn’t even have a clue. All she had was her certainty that if she could only figure out why Caroline had died, she’d understand the rest.

  With or without a medical excuse, she needed to talk to Doctor Peter Becket.

  In his rather cluttered office in the clinic, Doctor Becket welcomed Joanna a bit abruptly, his perpetually tired blue eyes frowning a bit. “Marion said you wanted to talk to me,” he said, referring to his receptionist. “Is something wrong, Joanna? Medically, I mean.”

  She shook her head, sitting down where he indicated in a brown leather chair in front of his desk. “No, I’m fine.”

  He folded his tall length into the chair behind the desk. “I see. My turn to answer questions about Caroline?”

  His voice was mild, but Joanna nonetheless felt awkward and uneasy beneath his steady gaze. “Not if you mind,” she offered finally. “It’s just that somebody told me you had known her as well as anyone had, and I thought you might be able to tell me something helpful.”

  “Helpful? In what way?”

  Joanna had the idea that Becket was being deliberately obtuse, and it put her on guard. With a slight shrug, she said, “I’m trying to understand her. Who she was, what she was like. I can’t really explain why, it’s just something I feel I have to do.”

  “I see,” he repeated.

  “So, if there’s anything you can tell me, I’d really appreciate it.”

  “I don’t think there is anything, Joanna,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Oh, I can tell you she was allergic to ragweed and pollen. I can tell you she tended to have one bad cold each year and never got the flu. I can tell you she had a difficult pregnancy but an easy delivery. Does any of that help?”

  “Every snippet of information helps, if I feel I understand her better because of it,” she told him. “Some people have told me she was shy. Was she?”

  “Reserved, I suppose.”

  “Even with you?”

  He shrugged. “I was her doctor, but not her confidant.”

  Joanna was certain now that the doctor intended to keep whatever intimate and nonmedical knowledge he might have of Caroline to himself, and she was reluctant to push him. Instead, she asked, “Did you talk to her during the week or so before she was killed?”

  Becket picked up a pen from his desk and turned it between his long fingers, glancing down at it. “No.”

  He was lying, and he wasn’t very good at it. “Then you wouldn’t know if she was upset about anything just before she died,” Joanna said.

  “No, I wouldn’t know about that.” He smiled pleasantly. “Sorry I can’t be more help, Joanna.”

  “That’s all right.” She returned the smile. “Snippets. I get them here and there; most everybody has had something to say about Caroline. The pieces are coming together.”

  “And what’s the picture?” he asked.

  “If I had to title it,” Joanna said, “I’d call it ‘A Complicated Woman.’ The usual labels don’t seem to fit her very well.”

  “Usual labels?”

  “Yeah. Rich man’s wife. Small-town matron. Pillar of her community. Devoted mother. They all fit—but not well.”

  “Do labels fit any of us well?”

  “I suppose not.” Joanna felt frustrated once again, but she silently conceded defeat, at least for the moment. She got up. “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me, Doctor.”

  He rose as well, his pleasant smile not quite reaching his eyes. “It’s just Doc, Joanna; I haven’t answered to anything el
se in years. And I’m sorry I couldn’t be more help to you.”

  She lifted a hand in acknowledgment, then left the small office and made her way back down the hall to the receptionist’s desk. There were no patients waiting, and Marion was taking the opportunity of a slow afternoon to enter data into the clinic’s computer system. She stopped her work and looked up, however, when Joanna reached the desk.

  “Any luck?” She was a brisk middle-aged woman with dark hair and very sharp eyes, and practically wore a sign that said she didn’t suffer fools gladly.

  By now, Joanna simply assumed that everyone knew she was asking about Caroline; it seemed reasonable, given the gossips of Cliffside—and her experience so far. So she merely shrugged. “Not really.”

  “I suppose he quoted you chapter and verse of a doctor’s responsibility to keep his patient’s business to himself?”

  “I guess I didn’t push hard enough to get that,” Joanna confessed. “He just basically said he didn’t know anything about Caroline that would be helpful to me.”

  Marion nodded, unsurprised. “To call him discreet is to disparage the word.”

  Joanna wasn’t about to ask this woman to gossip about whether Becket had seen Caroline outside this office, so she merely said, “Caroline came in here because of her allergies, I hear. Did you know her?”

  “To see her, to speak politely to her—yes. But Caroline McKenna didn’t have much time for other women.”

  “I’ve heard that,” Joanna murmured. “Didn’t she have any female friends?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Did you see her during the week or so before she died?” Joanna asked.