Dark Tort

I couldn’t get my legs to move. I was stumbling forward, unable to see, unable to breathe, across the uneven ground between us and the lake.

You know I’m a generalist.

You know, I think she loved Mr. Ogden.

You know…

How was she keeping that rope so tight? I wondered even as I felt my consciousness bleeding away. She must have had some kind of knot on it. She was holding the rope with both hands and pulling hard. Was there any way I could get her to lighten up on her grip? My mind groped for answers, but my ability to think was fading, fading…

Julian had said, She thought Mr. Ogden would leave his wife, but he didn’t…

Dusty had written in her journal, “I’m afraid this is another Mr. O.”

Wait, I thought when we reached where the ground sloped down toward the lake. If I push mightily toward one side, that could create slack in the rope. Then I could try to slip away, call for help…

I stopped stumbling and leaped sideways. The rope went slack for a nanosecond. I managed to take a gasping breath, that was all, not make a cry for someone, anyone, to come to my aid…

You know I think she loved Mr. Ogden…

“Goldy?” a faraway voice called. Was it my mother, calling to me, beckoning me to the grave? “Goldy?”

And then there was a sudden loosening of the rope, and a thud. Nora cried out and broke away from me. There was another thwacking noise, and Nora shrieked and ran toward the lake. Hacking and coughing as my lungs remembered how to work, I looked in the direction of the Roundhouse. I saw a bird, a ball, a rock, what was it? And why was it sailing toward me?

Actually, it was headed for Nora, who was almost to the path that circled the lake. But the third toss of a baseball-size rock from star senior-softball pitcher Meg Blatchford landed just where the first two had been aimed: on the head of Nora Ellis. She collapsed to the ground and didn’t move.

Julian called the police.

CHAPTER 19

Why did she do it? For one of the oldest reasons: jealousy. And Nora Ellis wasn’t just envious of Dusty, although she certainly was that. She despised what Dusty could do to her, to Nora.

Dusty had been fifteen years younger than Donald; she’d been wonderfully pretty and optimistic; she’d hero-worshiped him, even though he was an associate with no money of his own. Still, Dusty had adored Donald, and he, in turn, reveled in her infatuation. Donald wanted to change his whole life, to have more of Dusty’s love. And Nora couldn’t stand for that.

Because Nora had also been jealous of her place in the community. She didn’t want to divorce Donald because she wanted to be married to him, to be an attorney’s wife, even one for whom she’d have to bring business, to ensure he made partner. And of course, there was that twenty million. She had loved Donald so much, she had insisted her inheritance be made marital property. Later, Nora told the police what I already knew: that she’d made it jointly theirs to show Donald how much she loved him. The downside to that was if Donald divorced her, which he certainly was prepared to do, he’d be taking half of that dough with him.

Which, in Nora’s mind, was all the more reason to be rid of Dusty.

But why did she have to run down defenseless Althea Mannheim? I kept wondering. Nora has now hired a criminal defense attorney, who has told her to keep her mouth shut, so I don’t know the answer. But I can imagine. Because Uriah Sutherland had seen Althea at Charlie Baker’s last show at the gallery. Uriah had watched Althea talk with a suddenly anxious Charlie Baker. And he’d been able to guess that the conversation involved Uriah’s stealing Althea’s family’s paten and chalice.

Now Uriah has told the police that of course he informed Nora of why Althea was at the gallery. Uriah said he’d guessed why Althea was so urgently talking to Charlie. In fact, Uriah had told Nora all this right there at the reception. He didn’t know Nora was going to run Althea over, he told the police, how could he?

So: at that same reception, when Uriah told Nora what Charlie Baker was just now learning, Nora saw Althea Mannheim as potentially spoiling her life. Because if Althea had succeeded in telling Charlie Baker about Uriah’s stealing, then she might tell the world. Then forget the Mountain Pastoral Center: nobody would hire Uriah. Nora would be taking care of her insufferable, thieving father for the rest of her days. The way she saw it, she had to get rid of Althea.

And she had to get rid of Charlie Baker, too. Because once Charlie Baker learned the truth about Uriah, he would inevitably change his will, which was precisely what he had tried to do. And if he changed his will, everyone would learn why he’d changed his will. Once again, Nora would be stuck with Uriah and be socially embarrassed in the community. So she paid Charlie Baker a visit. Everyone in town knew Nora had scads of money. Had she pretended to be interested in buying a couple of his paintings, to get him up to his studio? It would have been easy to push the frail, cancer-ridden Charlie down the stairs, a fall that would be sure to kill him.

Two other people had known that Charlie Baker was changing his will: Dusty Routt and Richard Chenault. Richard did admit to the police that Charlie had a new will drawn up that he’d never had the chance to sign and validate. He said he hadn’t tied Charlie’s desire for a new will to his death the next night. It had been none of his business, he told the cops. What he didn’t tell law enforcement was that Charlie’s sudden death gave Richard the idea to lift some of the paintings in Charlie’s house and create a fraudulent inventory to cover his theft.

For that is what he did. The dual inventories that Dusty kept, plus her journal, helped to prove that. “I am going to FIND OUT,” she’d written. And where had Richard hidden the paintings? Why, in Donald Ellis’s mess of an office, that’s where. People who work on oil and gas leases have to have those large, long, map-size drawers, the same ones Dusty had complained about in her journal.

Imagine Donald’s surprise, the morning after his wife was arrested, when he opened a drawer to check a map of the Wyoming gas fields Dusty had grumbled about not being able to find. Instead, almost three dozen unfinished paintings of Wedding Cake, Sponge Cake, and Cherry Coffeecake all spilled out. Unlike Louise Upton, when Donald Ellis discovered stolen goods, he reported them to the police. And right away, too. He didn’t even touch the paintings, he just left them on top of the mountain range of paper already decorating his floor.

Investigators took fingerprints from the paintings, and some matched those of Richard Chenault. With that evidence plus the dual inventories, the cops had plenty of evidence to arrest Richard Chenault for felony theft. He’d also sold stolen property: Nora Ellis was only too happy to finger Richard for stiffing her for forty thou, which was what he’d charged her for the unfinished Charlie Baker painting of Journey Cake. Betraying a client’s trust, felony theft from an estate, and selling stolen property: very dark torts, indeed.

But why had Richard stolen from dear, deceased Charlie Baker? Well, Richard was jealous, too. Jealous of all the things—cars, houses, vacations, women—his associate Donald had been able to have. Donald even had a wealthy, stay-at-home wife, which Richard had not had. No, Richard had been married to K.D., a successful professional woman who couldn’t abide his infidelity. I treasured K.D., whose care for a dying woman had led to the exposure of Uriah’s thievery and the motive behind the killing of Charlie Baker.

I’d always suspected the cops didn’t have their man, or woman, as the case was, when they arrested Louise Upton. As it turned out, Dusty had been wearing the bracelet the night she died. It had been an early birthday present, Donald Ellis told the cops later, because opals were the birthstone for October. Donald had given Dusty the bracelet because he really did want to marry her, and he’d wanted her to know the level of his commitment. Maybe the bracelet, Donald’s divorce, and their desire to marry had been what Dusty had wanted to tell me that last, fateful night. But never mind all that, the cops said, because the important thing was that Nora had ripped the bracelet off Dusty’s wrist, once she was dead.

I felt sorry for Wink Calhoun, because after Nora was apprehended, Wink’s conscience went into overtime. In one of their oh-so-friendly squash games, Nora had asked Wink if anyone in the firm was in dire financial straits. Wink had confided that Louise Upton needed money, and how. This was the data Nora had been seeking.