“What did you learn?” Harry’s right eyebrow arched upward.
“Maybe I reconfirmed what I always knew.” The ambulance pulled into the driveway. “People are so damn self-centered they rarely see anybody or anything as it truly is because they’re constantly relating everything back to themselves. That’s why they’re so easy to fool. Think about it.” And with that his energy drained away. He could no longer hold his head up. Pain conquered even his remarkable willpower.
As the ambulance carried Tommy Norton away, Harry knew she’d be thinking about it for years to come.
64
The fire crackled, arching up the chimney. Outside the fourth storm of this remarkable winter crept to the top of the mountains’ peaks.
Blair, his arm in a sling, Harry, Orlando, Mrs. Hogendobber, Susan and Ned, Cynthia Cooper, Market and Pewter, and the Reverend Jones and Carol gathered before the fire.
While Blair was in the hospital enduring the cold probe to find the bullet, Cynthia had called Susan and Miranda to tell them what happened and to suggest that they bring food to Harry’s. Then she dispatched an officer to Florence Hall’s to break the news to her of her husband’s complicity as gently as possible. The state police might not find Cabell tonight but after the storm they’d flush him out of his cabin.
Orlando had stayed at the farm while Harry had followed the ambulance in the Explorer. He cooked pasta while the friends arrived. Tomorrow night would be time enough for him to see BoomBoom.
Rick organized guards for Norton while the doctors patched him up. He and Cynthia then enjoyed telling the reporters and TV crews how they apprehended this dangerous criminal. Then Rick let Cynthia join her friends.
While the women organized the food, Reverend Jones, after declaring himself a male chauvinist, went out and repaired the fence lines. His version of being a male chauvinist meant doing the chores he thought were hard and dirty. The result was that, behind his back, the women dubbed him the “male chauvinist pussycat.” Market lent him a hand and within forty-five minutes they had replaced the panels and cleaned up the mess. Then they attended to the horses. Fortunately, the blankets had absorbed the damage. Both Tomahawk and Gin Fizz were none the worse for wear and they patiently waited in their stalls with the doors open—in the hurry to get Blair and Tommy to the hospital, no one had thought to put the horses in their stalls and close the doors.
Sitting on the floor, plates in their laps, the friends tried to fathom how something like this could happen. Mrs. Murphy, Pewter, and Tucker circled the seated people like sharks, should a morsel fall from a plate.
“What about the tracks behind my house?” Blair stabbed at his hot chicken salad.
Cynthia said, “We found snowshoes in Fitz’s—I mean Tommy Norton’s—Range Rover. He dropped the earring back there. There wasn’t anything he could do about that mistake but it was the earring that rattled him. I mean, after the real Fitz initially shocked him. Anyway, he wanted to know how quickly he could get back here in the snow if he had to, if you or Orlando, most likely, proved difficult. He was performing a dry run, I think, or he was hoping to head you off before Orlando got here. He must have been getting pretty shaky knowing about Orlando’s visit. Anything to prevent it would have been worth the risk.”
“What would I have done?” Orlando asked.
“He wasn’t sure. Remember, his whole life, the plan of many years, was jeopardized when the real Fitz showed up. Ben Seifert used the event to extort more money out of him. He was getting nervous. What if you noticed something, which, unlikely as it may have seemed to you, was not unlikely to him? You knew him before he was Fitz-Gilbert. The impossible was becoming possible,” Cynthia pointed out. “And it turned out you did cause trouble. You recognized the face in the photograph. The face that must have cost a fortune in plastic surgery.”
“What about the earring?” Carol was curious.
“We’ll never really know,” Harry answered. “But I remember Little Marilyn saying that she thought it must have popped off when she took her sweater off in the car, the Range Rover. Tommy had the body in a plastic bag on the front floor, and the sharp part of the earring, the part that pierces one’s ear, probably got stuck on the bag or in a fold of the bag. Given his hurry he didn’t notice. All we do know is that Little Marilyn’s earring showed up in a possum’s nest miles away from where she last remembered wearing it, and there’s no way the animal would have traveled the four miles to her place.”
“Does Little Marilyn know?” Mrs. Hogendobber felt sympathy for the woman.
“She does,” Cynthia told her. “She still doesn’t believe it. Mim does, of course, but then she’ll believe bad about anybody.”
This made everyone laugh.
“Did anyone in this room have a clue that it might be Fitz?” Mrs. Hogendobber asked. “Tommy. I can’t get used to calling him Tommy. I certainly didn’t.”
Neither had anyone else.
“He was brilliant in his way.” Orlando opened a delicate biscuit to butter it. “He knew very early that people respond to surfaces, just as he said. Once he realized that Fitz was losing it, he concocted a diabolically clever yet simple plan to become Fitz. When he showed up at Princeton as a freshman, he was Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. He was more Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton than Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton. I remember when I left for Yale my brother said that now I could become a new person if I wanted to. It was a new beginning. In Tommy’s case that was literal.”
Blair took that in, then said, “I don’t believe he ever thought he would have to kill anyone. I just don’t.”
“Not then,” Cynthia said.
“Money changes people.” Carol stated the obvious, except that to many the obvious is overlooked. “He’d become habituated to power, to material pleasures, and he loved Little Marilyn.”
“Love or money,” Harry half-whispered.
“What?” Mrs. Hogendobber wanted to know everything.
“Love or money. That’s what people kill for. . . .” Harry’s voice trailed off.
“Yes, we did have that discussion once.” Mrs. Hogendobber reached for another helping of macaroni and cheese. It was sinfully tasty. “Maybe the road to Hell is paved with dollar bills.”
“If that’s the center of your life,” Blair added. “You know, I read a lot of history. I like knowing other people have been here before me. It’s a comfort. Well, anyway, Marie Antoinette and Louis the Sixteenth became better people once they fell from power, once the money was taken away. Perhaps somebody else would actually become a better person if he or she did have money. I don’t know.”
The Reverend considered this. “I suppose some wealthy people become philanthropists, but it’s usually at the end of their lives when Heaven has not been secured as the next address.”
As the group debated and wondered about this detail or that glimpse of the man they knew as Fitz, Harry got up and put on her parka. “You all, I’ll be back in a minute. I forgot to feed the possum.”
“In another life you were Noah,” Herbie chuckled.