Constance 's gaze grew distant again. "I didn't cut his throat. I didn't poison him. I just reminded him, day after day, that his son was dead. That his son had blown off his head with a.38 revolver. That his son had still been alive after losing half his brain, and on some level had been aware of what was happening to him on that operating table where your father butchered him."
Tears had been welling in Paige's eyes. The child was frightened of Constance and horrified by what she was hearing. Natalie didn't know how much longer the remarkable control she'd shown so far could hold. Enough of grisly details. "What did you do after your husband died?" Natalie asked quickly.
"Hugh had a heart attack. I could have called the emergency squad and probably saved him, but I didn't. I watched him writhe and moan until he was gone." She shook her head. "Then I had a nervous breakdown. I spent nearly a year in a psychiatric ward. At first my sister and her son Jeff came to see me, but only out of curiosity. They thought it was just a temporary little 'spell.' That's what my sister called it. When she realized it was much more serious, the visits stopped. Insanity in the family was embarrassing.
"When I was released, my family would have nothing to do with me. I had to hire a woman to stay with me because I wasn't up to being on my own. That woman was Ruth Meadows. She'd been an aide at the hospital. Her husband had died and left her with a pile of debts. My stingy Hugh, however, had made us live like poor people while he tucked money away. So much money that could have made life so much happier for Eugene and me. And there was a large life insurance policy." She gave a brittle laugh. "There I was, all alone, crazy, and wealthy. At least wealthy by my standards. And Ruth's. She was desperate and not burdened with any high moral sense. So I made a deal with her."
"To trade identities."
"Yes. When I first dreamed up the plan I thought it could never work. But the more time I spent thinking about it, working out every detail, planning for every contingency, the more convinced I was that it would work." She frowned. "Where is your father, Natalie? You don't suppose he's gone to the police, do you?"
"No. He knows you're serious about killing us if any police show up. He's probably just rattled, running around looking for his car keys or something, but he'll be here soon. Tell me how you pulled off the identity switch, how you became Ruth Meadows."
Constance smiled. "It didn't take a genius to come up with the plan. I didn't have a driver's license, but Ruth did. It was the only picture I.D. we had between us. I'd already lost seventy pounds during my illness. I had my hair cut short, had it colored silver, and got aqua contacts so I'd look as much as possible like Ruth. You know how bad those license photos are, anyway. It was a pretty good match."
Yes, Natalie had always been struck by "Ruth's" eyes. They were aqua, a shade she'd never seen in nature but one she'd seen in ads for colored contact lenses.
"The houses in Port Ariel and Knoxville are rented," Constance went on. "That way we avoided any in-depth checking involved with getting mortgage loans. We didn't use credit cards. We stayed in constant contact so that all correspondence dealing with my husband's estate, as well as any other important correspondence, could be forwarded to me, then returned bearing an authentic signature, not a forgery.
"I wrote letters to the few relatives with whom I remained in touch and sent them to Ruth, who forwarded them so they would have a Knoxville postmark. Ruth also made certain to be seen every day by her neighbors. She walked her dog. I never appeared in Knoxville. Ruth is the only woman neigh bors and business people in Knoxville have ever seen." She shrugged. "There are recorded cases of this kind of scheme being pulled off for years, but I wouldn't have risked it. I only needed a few months, long enough to move here and establish myself before I began my work."
"Your work being the murders," Natalie said flatly.
"Yes, of course. I made a few friends, including little Paige's sitter, Mrs. Collins. We attended the same church, were on the same committee. I was just dropping by some leaflets to her tonight when unfortunately Paige recognized me from that night at the Saunders house. She tried to hide it, but those expressive eyes gave her away."
"You didn't go to the house to get her so you could use her to lure me here?"
Constance gave her a genuinely innocent look. "No. I'd been led to believe she couldn't possibly identify who was at the Saunders house that night. Besides, I thought she'd be in bed, and I only planned to hand the leaflets to Mrs. Collins and leave. I wasn't going in the house."
"But you had a gun."
"I always carry a gun these days," Constance said offhandedly. "Really, this wasn't how I planned things, Natalie. I didn't intend to shoot you. I intended to slash your throat, like I did to the others. But when I saw that Paige recognized me, I didn't have any choice but to make my move."
"Then let Paige go," Natalie begged.
"I can't. Not now. You don't seem to understand, Natalie, that I'm forced to do things I don't always want to do."
"Such as killing Tamara. You said you liked her."
"And so I did. But Oliver Peyton had bungled my son's case. Any fool could see that a first-year lawyer could have put on a better defense. So he had to pay by losing one of his children, just like I lost mine. I knew Tamara from the suicide hotline. She even told me about her evening walks. Choosing her instead of Lily was simply a matter of convenience."
Rage, hot and bitter, rushed through Natalie. Gentle, loving Tamara had been killed because she was a convenient target for this lunatic. Natalie wanted to rush at the woman, screaming and clawing, but that would only result in the death of Paige. Instead she clenched her fists and tried to force down her fury and disgust. "And then there was Charlotte and Warren."
"Oh, I had no qualms about killing them. Awful people. The children of awful people. Max Bishop hounded my poor boy over a couple of hundred thousand dollars, as if he'd ever miss it! And that lout Richard Hunt. My husband knew him! But he still pointed the finger at Eugene. He could have covered up the embezzlement so easily! But no, he had to show off."
To Constance, everything was personal. Her son had not been brought to justice-he had been persecuted. "I understand why you attacked Alison," Natalie said. "She's the child of Viveca. But what about Jeff? He was your nephew."
Constance smiled. "Exactly. My no-good nephew. He was fired from his job at the newspaper, you know, so he decided to hit up good old Aunt Constance for a loan. He went to Knoxville and found not me, but Ruth." She shook her head. "I'm afraid Ruth didn't handle matters well. She should have stopped him, but she has no stomach for killing. At least she did warn me about him.
"Apparently during my early days in the hospital I'd raved about getting back at the people who'd hurt Eugene by hurting their children," Constance continued. "And of course the murder of Tamara was in all the Ohio papers. Jeff was bright. He figured it out and decided to find me by tracking the people in Port Ariel that he thought I'd be tracking."
Her eyes narrowed and her voice turned vicious. "He found me through you, Natalie. He watched outside your house the night of Tamara's viewing and followed when your father took me home. He did nothing then. I didn't even see him until the day of the funeral. That's when I dropped my purse in the church. Andrew rushed me home. He waited until your father left, then he came to my door, brazen as sin. He planned to blackmail me." She laughed harshly. "He got a nasty surprise. I dragged him to the basement and kept him a prisoner until the perfect time to kill him."
"A time when you could safely leave him in front of my house so I could find the body. Why?"
"Why you?" The gun shook slightly in her hand. Even her voice trembled. "Of everyone who hurt my Eugene, I hold your father most responsible. My son could have pulled through that operation. That nurse Dee Fisher said so. But Andrew botched it because he hated Eugene for stealing that tramp, Viveca. And after he'd murdered my son, he came into the waiting room with his matter-of-fact expression and said Eugene hadn't made it. That's it. 'Sorry. We did all we could.' So blase." Her voice rose shrilly. "There wasn't an ounce of feeling, of compassion, in his eyes."