“I’ll help if I can. It’s not like I have total recall of anything much beyond this dealership.”
“Understood. I’ve been digging and I’ve come up with something quirky.”
“That being?”
“Hairl Tanner’s will.” I went on to tell him what I’d discovered about the terms.
“I hadn’t heard about that. Sounds like the old man had a mad-on about something. Wonder what it was?”
“I think Jake and Violet had a fling and he found out.”
Some of the complacency faded from his eyes. “I don’t believe it.”
“What, that they had a fling or that Tanner found out?”
“Violet and Jake. I can’t imagine such a thing.”
“Why not? Jake must have been handsome. I mean, he’s not bad-looking now, and I can just imagine how he must have looked back then. His wife was dying of uterine cancer so his sex life couldn’t have amounted to much. If he ran into Violet at the Moon, what with all the drinking that went down, it wouldn’t be surprising if the two of them stumbled into a relationship. From what I’ve heard, she went after just about every man she saw.” I was so intent on persuading him that I hadn’t paid attention to his reaction. Now I caught a glimpse of his face and I flashed on the fact that he was married to a bloated Violet Sullivan clone. He had access to any number of pickup trucks and I had no idea what he’d been doing with his time in the days before she died. How dumb could I get? Here I sat, about to lay out the evidence I’d gathered, when for all I knew, he was as capable of killing her as anyone else.
“Go on,” he said.
I backpedaled. “That’s about it. I don’t have any proof. I was hoping you might’ve heard a rumor to that effect.”
“I did not and it would grieve me to learn it was true. Mary Hairl was a lovely woman, and if Jake fooled around on her he should be ashamed.”
“Well. I trust you’ll keep the notion to yourself. It’s pure speculation on my part and I wouldn’t want him to suffer your ill-opinion if he’s innocent.”
He straightened up abruptly, dismissing me with a wave. “I best get back to work. I’ve got things to do.”
“Sure. Sorry to keep you. I appreciate your help.” We shook hands across the desk. As I was leaving his office, I glanced back and noticed he hadn’t moved.
I went down the big staircase to the ground-floor showroom. I wanted to have a conversation with Winston to see if he had any reason to believe there was a link between Violet and Jake. He was in his office but so deeply engrossed in a telephone conversation he didn’t look up. I went out to the parking lot, where I unlocked my car and slid under the wheel. I was reaching for the ignition when the penny finally dropped. For days I’d been convinced I was missing something obvious, but the more I tried to pin it down, the more elusive it became. Now, without warning, I finally got what it was.
The dog.
Daisy’s car was in the drive when I arrived at the house. I’d returned the key to its hiding place beneath the flowerpot. Rather than walk in unannounced, I rang the bell politely and waited on the porch until she opened the door. I took one look at her and knew something was wrong. She was still wearing her work clothes. The pallor in her complexion had shifted to the gray end of the spectrum and her eyes were pinched with tension. I didn’t think she’d been weeping, but she’d suffered a shock.
“What is it?”
She put a hand against her mouth and shook her head. Like a sleepwalker, she crossed to an upholstered chair and sank down on the edge. I closed the front door behind me. I moved to the sofa and sat down with my knees nearly touching hers. “Can you tell me what it is?”
She nodded, but said nothing. I had to wait her out. Whatever it was, she’d been hit hard. A minute passed and she sighed. Was her father dead?
Another minute passed.
When she finally spoke, her voice was so low I had to lean close to hear. “Detective Nichols was here. He left a few minutes ago, and when you rang the bell, I thought he’d come back.”
“Bad news?”
She nodded and fell silent again. “They found two brown paper bags filled with my mother’s clothes in the trunk. It’s clear she was leaving us or at least she believed she was.”
“You must have guessed as much,” I said.
“That’s not it.”
I put a hand on her arm. “Take your time. It’s fine. I’m not going anywhere.”
“He said if there was any way to avoid telling me he would, but he was worried word would leak out and he didn’t want me to hear it from anyone else.”
I waited.
“The techs went over the car.”
I waited.
She took a deep breath and exhaled with an audible sound. “When the pathologist peeled the curtain away her body, they realized my mother’s hands were bound behind her back. They think she was alive for some time. It looks like the dog was killed with a shovel they found in the bottom of the hole once they got the car out. It’s possible the guy knocked her out and he put her in the car, thinking she was dead. At some point she must have come to and realized what was going on.”
She stopped, fumbling in her pocket for a tissue. She blew her nose. “Even tied up, she’d tried to claw her way free. Her fingernails were broken off and some were caught in the upholstery fabric. There were tiny shards of glass embedded in the bones of her heels. She managed to kick out the window, but by then he must have started filling in the hole.”
She paused, struggling. All I could do was look on, allowing her to take whatever time she needed. The air felt heavy, and I could sense the weight of the darkness Violet must have known. Why scream for help when the silence would have been profound, thick yards of soil muffling any sound? The blackness would have been absolute.
Daisy went on, addressing her remarks to the crumbled tissue. “I asked him. I asked… what it would have been like for her. How she died. He said carbon dioxide poisoning. I forget some of it… the technical stuff. He said basically, how deeply you breathe is regulated by your arterial oxygen pressure and carbon dioxide tension, some kind of pH that controls the reflexes in your lungs and chest wall. If there’s not enough oxygen in the mix your breathing picks up. Your body has to have oxygen so it’s compelling… this instinctive drive to take in air. Her heart would have started racing and her body heat would have spiked. She’d sweat. She’d be having chest pains that would only get worse. She’d breathe faster and faster, but every breath she took would use up more oxygen and produce more CO2. She’d start hallucinating. He said her systems would shut down, but eventually there might have been a kind of peace… once she resigned herself to her fate.
“Can you imagine dying like that? All I can think is how scared she must have been, how cold and dark it was, and how hopeless she felt.”
I found myself veering away from the images, searching for safety. I could understand the bind Nichols had been in. Once he laid out the facts, that’s the picture she’d carry for the rest of her life. But if word ever reached Daisy from an unofficial source, she’d be reeling anyway. Adding his betrayal to the horror would only confound any healing she might hope for in time.
Daisy blew her nose again and moved on to something else. I could see the shift. There was only so much she could process. Little by little she’d assimilate the information, but it was going to take a very long time. She picked up six round black circles that were lying on the table. She said, “He gave me these.”
“What are they?”
“My mother’s bracelets. Sterling silver. I’ll polish them and wear them, the last thing I’ll ever have from her.” She set them back on the table. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”
“Me too.”
“Are you finished?”
“Not quite. Let’s go sit in the yard. We need space.” I’d nearly said “air” but I’d caught myself in time. Daisy must have heard the unspoken word because she winced.