He didn't even glance at her as she fell, but took two long steps and caught Karen in his arms.
"You hit her," Karen gasped. "You hit-"
"You're damned right I hit her. Are you hurt? Are you all right?"
There was no way she could answer, he was holding her so tightly she could hardly breathe, much less talk. But she dropped the poker and put her arms around him. That seemed to be the answer he wanted.
THE dress was never found. Cheryl had thrown it away, the trash had been picked up on schedule, and no one seemed interested in sifting through acres of garbage looking for its fragments.
"It doesn't matter," Tony said. "We have enough on her without resurrecting a decade-old crime, which could be a messy thing to prove after all this time. She'll never to go prison anyway."
"Why not?" Cheryl demanded. "Aren't two murders enough?"
"One. They think the Givens woman will make it."
It was later that evening and they were sitting in the parlor. Karen suspected the kitchen would not be her favorite room for a while; she would probably be compulsively scrubbing the floor at least once a day for days to come.
Cheryl, who had done the initial scrubbing, looked less distressed than angry. After finding that there was no such address as the one she had been given, she had driven straight back to Georgetown to find the street blocked by ambulances and police cars and a fire engine that had come by mistake. For several minutes thereafter she had required more attention from the medics than had Karen.
"Miriam'll end up in an institution," Tony went on. "Her husband can afford the best."
He appeared depressed for a man who had seen two outstanding cases closed, and who was supposed to be helping a friend celebrate her survival. In fact, it was a singularly quiet gathering for a celebration.
"She should have had help ten years ago," Karen said. "And he-her stepfather. It had been going on for five years when she… when she did it."
"It's a good defense," Tony began.
"Oh, no, it happened. I have no doubt it happened.
She wasn't trying to persuade me of anything, she was remembering-reliving it."
"It doesn't matter," Tony said again. "She's well around the bend how. Any halfway competent lawyer can get her off on the insanity plea. Her confession probably won't be admissible."
"She confessed?"
Tony's shoulders hunched as if he were repressing a shudder. Miriam's condition seemed to have affected him more than all the nauseating physical details he had seen over the course of his police career. "It wasn't so much a confession as a catharsis. They couldn't get her to shut up. If you could have seen her-bright and animated, perfectly poised-asking politely for a glass of water and explaining that her throat was dry from so much talking… Jesus."
"It's ironic, isn't it?" Cheryl said after a moment. "All our romantic ideas about long-lost treasures, and after all it wasn't a designer gown or a missing will or Dolley's jewelry-just a cheap, bloodstained dress."
"The real irony is that Miriam and Shreve brought the disaster on themselves," Karen said. "If they had left well enough alone, we'd have thrown the dress away and no one would ever have known."
"The guilty flee where no man pursueth," Tony said sonorously.
"I've never fully appreciated how true that is," Karen agreed. "When I remember the conversations I had with the two of them, I realize that every statement was misinterpreted-on both sides. When Miriam protested the price I asked for the dresses, she was really expressing amazement that I asked so little. And when I said I hoped she would buy more things, she interpreted it as meaning that there would be more demands for money, not only from her, but from Shreve. It would have been a rather ingenious blackmail method, actually; the merchandise was there, and as I kept telling everyone, the price depended solely on what people were willing to pay."
"I still don't understand why she killed Rob," Cheryl said, gazing at Tony with limpid blue eyes.
For once her attentive look and her appeal to his superior knowledge didn't improve Tony's morale. He answered almost reluctantly. "She-uh-explained that too. The house had been searched several times, without success; she thought Karen might have taken the dress to work and concealed it somewhere on the premises. She bribed Rob to let her in. They had been intimate-that's how she put it, intimate once upon a time-and she knew he'd do anything for money.
"What really killed the poor dumb bastard was a combination of curiosity and greed. Miriam told him Karen had something that belonged to her-implied it had been stolen. That wasn't good enough for Rob; he kept asking what it was. We'll never know whether he figured it out. Miriam thought he had-but as Karen has good reason to know, guilt makes people believe a lot of things that are false. Rob may well have had an inkling of the truth. After all, he had just written up that old murder case and he knew a lot about it. He knew Miriam was the girl whose parents had been killed; he may have suspected she did it. He wouldn't have been the only one to suspect her. However much he knew, he knew too much for Miriam. She believed she was already being blackmailed and she was not about to let someone else join the club.
"After they finished at the shop, he followed her in his car to that hamburger joint. It was closed by then; he left his car, and got in hers. She wouldn't tell us how she lured him into the woods. She just giggled and looked coy… God, it was awful. But he wouldn't, have been afraid of her. He was proud of his body and his muscles, and she was-is-a small woman."
"Maybe she forced him to go with her," Cheryl suggested. "At gunpoint."
"She didn't have the gun-not MacDougal's, at any rate. Mrs. Givens was the one who stole it. Both of them were in the house at different times; neither really trusted the other's honesty or competence. It was Miriam the first time, when Karen was attacked; she got in through a window, as I suspected. Then Mrs. Givens came to see if she couldn't retrieve the clothes by normal means, and Karen's reaction convinced her that Karen was aware of what she had and was determined to get as much money as she could for it. She stole the new house keys and had duplicates made; Miriam returned the originals next day, so Karen never realized they had been borrowed. Miriam was responsible for all the violence. Shreve-Mrs. Givens-didn't want that kind of trouble, she only wanted to find the dress and also play on Karen's nerves. I think she was always afraid of what Miriam might do. She knew only too well what her friend was capable of."
"Then Miriam was the one who almost ran Karen down?" Cheryl asked.
Tony couldn't stand it any longer. "Don't ask me, ask him!" He turned on Mark, who had not spoken a word, and who sat slouched in his chair, his eyes fixed morosely on the tips of his shoes. "He's the mastermind! The hero! Go ahead, buddy, enlighten the ignorant. Brag a little. Don't mind me."
"What?" Mark glanced up.
"You saved the day," Tony said bitterly. "Solved the case, dashed to the rescue, arrived in the nick of time-leaving the cops with egg all over their faces. Tell us how you did it. You're entitled to gloat."
Mark slumped lower and tried to push his chin into his chest. "Sure, rub it in. I don't blame you."
"Rub what in? You saved-"
"Saved nothing!" Mark yelled. "What saved Karen was that loony old lady! There's a gallant rescuer for you! If she hadn't gotten Miriam rattled and conned her into emptying the clip, I'd be dead. Me-not Karen. Karen was going for Miriam with a poker when I walked in the door. I was about as much use as-as that goddamn dog!"
Alexander, resting in his velvet-lined basket, lifted his head and growled. It was only a feeble echo of his old growl, for he was still full of dope and his ribs were confined by tape and plaster.