Deadly Grace

She closed her eyes, and immediately, gratefully, found herself sinking once more. The mattress seemed to be absorbing her like some great, downy mouth swallowing her whole. She was Jonah in the belly of a feather tick whale, floating on soft cotton waves, content to go where the flow carried her.

After her stunt in the ER she felt as if she had viscous muck flowing through her veins instead of blood. She didn’t care, as long as she didn’t have to think or remember. Maybe it was more than the drugs. Maybe it was some primitive instinct driving her to shut down rather than face the unbearable. Playing possum in the face of horror.

Her mother would be appalled to see her lying here like this, mute, stupid and filthy. Grace Meade was always at her best, turned out to perfection. In her entire life, she’d never so much as answered a knock at the door without first glancing in the mirror to check her lipstick, pat her hair and smooth down her dress. She’d tried to make her daughter into a miniature replica of herself, but it was hopeless, of course. Jillian had lost the genetic lottery. Had failed to inherit any of her mother’s fine features: her golden hair, her striking blue eyes, or her peaches-and-cream English skin. She was olive-skinned and brunette, like her father, apparently, growing taller and bonier than her mother had ever been.

Still, Jillian thought, she would have given anything, just for once, not to hear the note of hopelessness that always accompanied her mother’s chirpy words of encouragement. “Well, we just have to work with what we’ve been given, don’t we, dear?”

“What do you think, Jillian? Wouldn’t it feel good to get up and take a hot shower? Have a little lunch, maybe sit and talk awhile?”

It was the doctor again, Jillian realized with a start, not her mother. She opened her eyes. She was trying to please, but this was about as much as she could manage. Her mother would definitely have disapproved. Grace was unfailingly poised and polite in any public venue, no matter how trying the circumstances. She would have at least sat up when the doctor came in. But, frankly, Jillian thought, she just couldn’t be bothered. She didn’t mean to be rude, but she had nothing to say to this woman.

The doctor, in any case, seemed content to wait her out. The minutes ticked by. Jillian could feel her presence, but she remained silent—watching, perhaps. Observing. And what does she see? Jillian wondered. What kind of monster is this before her?

Suddenly, she felt the bed vibrate. She cringed as a hand reached across her, a hand at the end of a white sleeve. A soft gust of air brushed her cheek as the doctor laid something on the mattress next to her head. It was a notebook, Jillian saw. A thick notebook with a stiff, nubbled black cardboard cover. Then, the white-coated arm withdrew again and the bed was still.

“If you’re not ready to talk yet, Jillian, it’s all right. I’ll be here when you are. But I’m told you’re a writer and historian,” the doctor added—unnecessarily, Jillian thought. She wasn’t that far gone. She knew who she was. That was the problem, wasn’t it? “You know how to arrange facts into an understandable flow. I know you feel confused right now, but maybe it would help to sort out your thoughts if you wrote down what’s going through your mind.”

Oh, God…what’s going through my mind?

Jillian’s eyes closed once more, shutting out the light, praying for a miracle to shut out the sound of that woman’s voice and, mostly, to drown out the screaming of her own guilty thoughts.

What does she want me to say? That I’m haunted by the memory of my mother, her lifeless blue eyes staring up at me from the kitchen floor, as accusatory in death as they were in the moments before it arrived? That I don’t want to be alive anymore? That I don’t deserve to be? My mother won’t let me be. Her beautiful, dreadful face is an image I’ll carry to my death—which will come soon, if courage doesn’t fail me again.

62

CHAPTER 6

Havenwood, Minnesota

Thursday, January 11, 1979

Deputy Chief of Police Nils Berglund turned out to be one of those massively built Scandinavians who makes every man around him feel puny. From the moment Berglund finally showed up at headquarters and extended a reluctant hand, Cruz felt inclined to keep his distance, less out of intimidation (he hoped) than for a clearer view of this human mountain. He himself was five-eleven, but Berglund both overshadowed and outweighed him by quite a bit. Nor did anything about the deputy’s taciturn manner spell welcome, despite the easy goodwill Cruz had sensed over the phone from the chief of police. Berglund’s square features seemed permanently corrugated into a frown, and his pale, icy eyes defied reading.

“Guess we’ll use the chief’s office,” he grunted, directing Cruz around the reception desk and through the door that led into the squad room beyond.

“Verna here tells me he’s in the hospital,” Cruz said.

Berglund was holding the door open, but his gaze shifted to the reception desk, where Verna had gone back to squinting at her mystery novel. His frown deepened, and it was impossible to tell which annoyed him more, her on-the-job reading or the fact that she’d been gossiping with a stranger. Verna, in any case, seemed oblivious. Cruz had a feeling she was more than capable of handling Deputy Berglund and anything else that came her way.

The deputy waved him into a corner office, then shut the door behind them. Shrugging out of his green nylon bomber jacket, he flung it over a chair. “Take your coat?”

“I’m okay, thanks.”

“Suit yourself. Have a seat.” Berglund moved around behind the big steel desk and settled into a brown, imitation leather chair that squeaked in protest at the sudden load.

“What happened?” Cruz asked. “To the chief, I mean.”

“He’s been feeling rough for a while, having tests. Doc called him last night, told him to check into hospital first thing this morning.”

“Which hospital?” Cruz asked, remembering how the chief had ranked the area’s medical options according to the severity of the patient’s condition.

“The Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis.” From that news and from Berglund’s tone, there wasn’t much doubt the diagnosis was serious, the prognosis iffy, and the deputy looking at imminent promotion.

“Sorry to hear it,” Cruz said. “He sounds like a good man.”

“Yeah, he is. Anyway,” Berglund said, “he told me you called. He also told me it was you who arranged for that arson team that’s crawling around over there at the fire scene.”

“They’re in town right now?”

“Working the scene as we speak. That’s where I was when Verna called up on the radio.”

“Maybe we should head over,” Cruz said. “I wouldn’t mind taking a look myself before I talk to Jillian Meade. I’d like to hear what those guys have to say about the cause of the fire.”

“Just hold on a minute,” Berglund said as Cruz made moves to get up. “We can do that, but first, I want to know why you called them in, to begin with, and why it is you flew out here all the way from Washington.”

Cruz settled back into his chair. “I’d been trying to track down Jillian Meade back in D.C. when I heard she was here visiting her mother. I tried to phone but the line was down. That’s when I put in the call to Chief Lunders.”

“Who told you she was at her mother’s?”

“Her boss at the Smithsonian.”

“And why are you looking for her?”

“Her name came up in an alert from Scotland Yard. I work in a section of the Bureau that liaises with foreign police forces on cross-border criminal investigations.”

“And…what? You think Jillian Meade’s some kind of international jewel thief or something?” Berglund snorted. “Get serious.”

“You know her well, do you?”

Berglund shrugged. “She grew up here. It’s a small town. Everybody knows everybody. So what is Scotland Yard claiming she did?”

“I don’t know that they necessarily think she’s done anything at all. She was over in England last month around the time some stuff went down, and—”

“What kind of ‘stuff’?” Berglund interrupted.

“A couple of homicides, as a matter of fact.”

“And they think Jillian had something to do with them?” The deputy’s expression was so incredulous that Cruz was beginning to feel a little foolish for even suggesting it, except that Jillian Meade’s mother had now turned up dead, too. At the very least, the woman was in danger of turning into the human equivalent of the Black Death, given the pernicious effect she seemed to have on those she visited. Berglund appeared intent on giving her the benefit of the doubt, however, and Cruz decided he could do the same, at least until he’d gotten the lay of the land.

“They’re not necessarily saying she had anything to do with the murders, but Miss Meade was in the vicinity at the time and had apparently been in contact with the victims. Scotland Yard was thinking she might have seen or heard something that would bear on their investigation. As far as I know, they simply see her as a potential witness at this point.”

“So you’re looking to ask her some questions, nothing more?”

“That’s right.”

“If that’s the case, how come you arranged for this arson team to come out? And,” Berglund added, “how come you asked Chief Lunders if he thought Jillian had murdered her mother?”

“I guess because it’s in my nature to play devil’s advocate. It may be coincidence, but there were fires set after those murders in the U.K., too. Look at it from my perspective. I talk to her boss, he tells me she’s here in Havenwood, then I talk to your boss, and he tells me about the fire. It does tend to raise a few questions in a person’s mind, you have to admit.”