Driving back down Coast Highway toward my home was a journey of silence and bad conscience. Yes, I owned my secret life now, the very one I was hoping to begin on that awful night of July 3. But what a price to pay. I felt as if I had overdrawn my emotional accounts, that there was no way to finance this latest, wildest of expenditures. It was a perfect correlative to my actual financial quandry, the thought of which sent me further into a dismal spiral. What would I do when the bills came due? I became sullen and remorseful. And surprisingly-perhaps not-I found myself longing for the bed I used to share with Isabella, for the proximity of even her absence, for the darkness of the room in which we had loved each other and would, with some helpful nudge from the fates, love each other again.
Worst of all was my knowledge that Grace had almost certainly been in Amber's room on that night. Martin Parish had not been lying, after all. A thought came to me: What if Martin and Grace had planned this together? What if Martin had cajoled and helped to terrify Grace, perhaps even hired the men to burn her, used all his considerable influence as Grace's former stepfather to widen the already-gaping chasm between mother and daughter? He could certainly have done so. But to what end? Vengeance for Amber throwing him over? Doubtful. The money due him in Amber's will? Possible. A chill fingered through me as another scenario presented itself: What if Martin and Grace were secret lovers, planning to marry each other's fortunes when Amber was gone? Could this explain Grace's many absence, her frequent phone conversations, her evasiveness? Yes, but so, then why had Martin sworn to seeing Grace on the July 3? Was it as simple as self-protection, having been surprised by a unforeseen factor-myself? A simpler explanation might have been this: Grace's arrival at Amber's was every bit as coincident as my own, and Parish, latching onto an opportunity to throw my curiosities a monstrous curve ball, admitted Grace's untimely entrance to me for the sake of pure confusion. But the overriding question was this: If Martin and Grace had been there together planned the murder together, and killed the wrong woman together, why was Parish building a case against his own accomplice and turning it over to the DA? It made little sense. Had I heard Karen correctly?
I picked up the car phone and dialed Karen's home number, even though it was close to 2:00 a.m. She answered groggily. I hit a low spot in the canyon and the line went fuzzy for moment, then snapped back into clarity. I asked her simply whether Martin's complaint to DA Peter Haight named Russell Monroe as the killer of Alice Fultz, or Russell Monroe and Grace Wilson.
"You promised," she said.
"I know, and I'm sorry. My ass is very much on the line here, Karen."
"You know how easy these cellular things are to tap?"
"I'm looking at death row. Tell me, Karen-is Haight going to indict me, or Grace and me?"
A long silence ensued, then another patch of static as we dipped behind a hillside, then the voiceless clarity again.
"Grace won't be named," she said finally. "Just you. They're banking she'll work with them and testify."
Whatever will was driving my body at that moment seemed to diminish to almost nothing. I was floating, as if in the horse latitudes, bereft of power.
Amber took my hand. "Martin plans to have Grace testify against you?"
I nodded.
"She was in on it. It's pure Grace. Damn, Russell, if you could only see her as I have."
"We'll both be seeing her in about five minutes."
She was asleep in the guest room when we walked in. My father sat beside her, shotgun across his lap, drinking coffee and reading a magazine. In the limited light, Grace looked more like a child than a woman, her wavy dark hair hid her face and, in spite of the heat, she lay bundled to the neck in the blanket. The ceiling fan whirred above. Theodore examined us, and I sensed his understanding of what had just happened, then realized I hadn't bothered to so much as dust off my clothes or run a brush through my hair.
"Looks like you three have some business here," he said, rising. "I'll get lost for a while."
With this, I turned on the light. Grace stirred, whimpered, then opened one dark eye on me.
"What?" she whispered without moving.
"Get up," I said. "We need to talk."
I took her robe from the foot of the bed and handed it to her, turned my back for a moment, and closed my eyes. Let me find her innocent, I thought. Let there be an explanation for this. I heard the rustling of terry cloth on skin, then Grace's perturbed sigh. When I turned, she was sitting up, wrapped in the robe, both eyes trained, rather malignantly, upon Amber. The color had fallen from her face and her mouth was slightly open-half astonishment, half anger.
"I'm in hell," she said.
"Wonderful to see you, too, Grace."
Grace's eyes seemed to lose their focus for a moment and I sensed in her the desire to run. For a moment, I thought she would.
But when she sprang from the bed, it was not to escape but to charge Amber. I intercepted her, caught her strong wrists in my hands, and threw her back onto the bed. I beat her to the pillow and removed the. 32.
"You hateful thing," said Amber.
"Russell," Grace said, training her fearful eyes on m "Can you please make her go away?"
"No. But you can listen."
I came right out with what we had discovered: the ripped nail at Amber's, the nine matching it in Grace's wastebasket. I saved Brent Sides's recanted testimony, should it be needed later.
"Explain," I said.
Grace moved her disdainful eyes from her mother to me "Twin horrors," she said. "It's like being raised by wolves."
"We were talking about July the third," I said.
"If you're accusing me of murder because you think nails in my bathroom match one found at her house-you're even dumber than I thought, Russ."
'Funny," I said. "No one mentioned murder at all. I was just wondering what you were doing at Amber's that night."
"I was not at Amber's that night. I was with Brent."
"We just came from his apartment. He said you didn't show up until real late. You were frightened. You smelled bad. He was afraid to ask where you'd been. So, now I'm asking- where were you?"
Grace colored deeply but not with shame. It was anger that showed through her skin and fueled a tiny fire in each eye. "I hate you both."
"That's nice," I said. "Where were you? And if you weren't at Amber's, how did your fingernail manage to get there without you? Grace-I'm tired of your crap."
The anger in Grace's eyes looked, for a moment, almost flamelike. I had never seen this in her, and yet it didn't surprise me. My own temper was a fierce, though temporary, thing. Amber's was, too. And as I looked at my daughter then, I saw that she was, both literally and figuratively, up against a wall.
Amber, silent throughout until now, turned to look at me. "Welcome to your girl," she said.
"You're the thing from hell," said Grace.
"I know, dear," answered Amber. "I know. But I'm trying hard to be something else. What were you doing in my house that night, Grace? You may as well tell us, since we have proof that you were there. Let me guess-you came to apologize for not talking to me for six months, for acting like I was dead."
"To beg your forgiveness and take your money, as suggested by those big oafs you sent. Here, Mother, do you like their handiwork?" Grace lifted a foot bottom toward her mother.
I heard the slight intake of breath as Amber understood what she was seeing.
"It worked," said Grace. "That is exactly what I was doing at your house on July the third. I was there to surrender to you.
I had had enough. I was scared enough of you by then to carry that gun in my purse. I admit that the idea of shooting you came to mind, and it wasn't a totally unpleasant thought. But what I wanted that night was to tell you I'd given up. I was done. You had won. I didn't want any more burned body parts. I didn't want your money, either. All I wanted was to be able to sleep at night without worrying who might be outside my door."
Grace looked steadily at me, then at her mother. The fires of anger were gone. "What I saw in your bedroom terrified me. I thought it was you. I called Martin, but he wasn't home, called Russell, but you weren't home. Then I went to Brent's and tried to sleep. I wasn't going to call the police and talk to some rookie patrolman about my own mother's murder. Why? Because when I looked down at you, Mother; the terror didn't come from what had happened to you; it came from how.. fitting it seemed to be. Looking at your dead body made me a little bit happy. And I knew by the time all the news of our bad blood got out-Grace Wilson would be the number-one suspect So I hid out, then came here to Russell."
I listened to the motor of the ceiling fan, the gentle whoosh of the blades. "The nail, Grace."
Grace looked down now, at her knees still covered by the blanket. Her voice was suddenly weaker. "And I'll tell you some thing I have never told another human being, Russell and Amber. It almost hurts me to say it, but I will because it explains why I was there, and why my nail stayed behind."
She looked up at Amber now with an expression so different from before, I could hardly believe it belonged to the same person. Tears welled in her lovely dark eyes and her lips so capable of scorn and sarcasm, simply trembled.
"I… I have always… in a way… I have always loved You, Mother. And when I saw you lying there, after I felt the relief of knowing you were dead and I was safe, and after I felt that horrid… satisfaction at what had happened to you, I fell down to the floor on my knees and cried and prayed and cried and prayed and I dug my fingers so hard into your carpet, the nail broke off. I didn't notice it until I was leaving. I looked for it but couldn't find it. Back home, I took off the others and threw them away so that if the police came to me, they'd see I didn't wear nails. I was too upset and too afraid to realize they'd be as easy to find in the dumpster as they would have been on my fingers. I think I probably left a fresh pack around, anyway. I'd make a lousy criminal."
Amber took a step toward Grace, then stopped. "When Russell told you it was Alice, why didn't you call me, Grace? Why didn't you… weren't you at least relieved I was still alive?"
"Mother," said Grace, "I believed you would blame it on me, as you and Russell are trying to do right now. What I wanted, more than anything, was a few days' rest with Russell-or anywhere, really-then a long vacation somewhere alone. You can't believe how horrible it was… seeing what I saw and feeling what I felt. I love you. I hate you, too, but not enough to kill you like that. Believe what you want."
Amber stared at Grace but said nothing. There was more damnation in her silence than in any words she might have said.
Grace looked back down at her knees, sighed deeply, and rested her head against them. "And you, Russell?" she asked quietly.
"I've always believed you, girl. How much of this have you told Martin?"
"All," she answered, still not looking up.
Of course, I thought, it explained Parish's initial fingering of Grace at the scene, and his final decision to frame me-not her.
"Did you know he's going to charge me with Alice's murder?"
She looked up then, with a look on her face as close hopelessness as I had ever seen from her. "I had no idea that what he was doing. He told me very little. I thought Martin was a decent man. He always was-to me, anyway. But you should know, Russell, I'll do whatever I can to help you."
"I'm going to need your help. Parish killed Alice. Do you understand that?"
She shook her head. "Why?"
"Because he was in line for money if Amber died, because, quite frankly, Martin Parish hates your mother more than you ever did. He hates me, too. And he found a way to knock us all down with one shot. He thought he could pull off a perfect crime."
"I'm so sick of everything," Grace whispered. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Amber, I love you, but I still hate you. Russell, I'll do whatever I can to help you with Martin. I'll testify. I'll to the police."
"You already have."
"Then what can I do?"
Audacity, I thought. Meet Martin on his own turf, not sure yet," I said.
Amber had already left the room.
I walked past my father in the living room, fully unconscious on a couch. I caught up with her on the deck outside. She was lighting a cigarette and her hand was shaking. I lighted it for her.
"She needs you," I said.
"It wasn't clear to me until now."
"You can go to her."
"You don't understand. She's in it with Martin. She's his partner. I'm positive. Nothing on earth interested her more as a child than my men. It's her and Martin, working together. With me out of the way, it would have been millions for them both. And all the jolly good fun they could have bashing my brains all over my bedroom. I think I'm going to puke, Russell."
She ran up into the brush of the canyon and vomited.
A few minutes later, she came back down, her shape materializing from the darkness. "I'm going home with Theodore," she said. "And in the morning, I'll see the State Attorney General again. Now that I understand Grace's role, it makes all the more sense. I will not allow Martin Parish and my loving daughter to get away with this. Not at your expense, and most certainly not at mine."