Tidal Kin Page 19

  46

  On her way to Bitty Buchanan’s office, Norma considered a call to Lieutenant Coigne, but hesitated. She relived the scene she’d just had with Anne. She’d had no right to scold her best friend and by telling Coigne about Anne’s visit from Buddy Todd, she would be subjecting her to another angry grilling, this time by the police.

  On the other hand, Norma had excoriated Coigne for holding back information from her. Wouldn’t she be guilty of the same if she didn’t call him?

  She wished she didn’t agonize over these quandaries. No one else did. She resolved the problem by making the appointment with Bitty her priority. After all, Bitty’s secretary, Donna, said she’d have to be leaving for court promptly at 11:00. Norma would catch up with Coigne afterwards, when she would have even more to tell him.

  Donna greeted Norma. She was a contented girl whose large, sleepy eyes and gently shifting jaw brought to mind a camel chewing gum. The walls of the reception area were covered in framed photos and headlines touting Bitty’s triumphs. One photo in particular caught Norma’s eye. Bitty was celebrating her election as president of the bar. She was standing arm in arm with other trial attorneys, all male, on a fishing boat. The caption read: “President Buchanan enjoys swimming with the sharks!”

  “Yes, and that’s not all she’s doing with them,” Norma said to herself. She wasn’t really shocked that Bitty had slept her way to the top, and to the top it was. Another more recent headline read, “Buchanan Throws Hat in Ring for Judgeship.” It didn’t even bother her that Bitty represented lowlifes in nasty divorce matters. In one case, “nasty” meant the ex-husband had strangled his wife. To hide the evidence, he decapitated her. No photo with that article. What bothered Norma was Bitty’s bad taste, in décor, fashion, and men. “Derek Dohnan? I rest my case.”

  “What brings you to my neighborhood, Norma?” Bitty swanned into the reception area with hand extended, head tilted back for a sleeker neckline. To Norma’s eye, the ambush impact of Bitty’s in-your-face cleavage was outgunned by her shoes, five-inch heels with black leather straps laced up her calves.

  “God, Bitty. Where’d you get those slave sandals, the Colosseum?”

  Bitty smiled, forgivingly. “Do come in, Norma.”

  “You look like Ben-Hur, dressed for success.”

  “You’re so funny. This way.”

  “Ah. The lion’s den.” Norma waved to Donna as she followed the bouncing ball of Bitty’s booty.

  “Make yourself at home.” Bitty motioned her to sit down.

  Norma looked around.

  “Like it?”

  Bitty had carried the decorating scheme from her reception area, “All about Me and My Success,” into her office. Everywhere you looked was a mirror or reflecting glass, and the few remaining blank spaces were filled with more news clips of Bitty’s victories. Norma noticed a picture of Bitty sharing a toast with a rough gangster type— unshaven, scowling, dark sunglasses, expensive suit. According to the caption, they were in an exotic hotel for the superrich. The gangster was surrounded by his toughs and there was a champagne fountain in the foreground. The toughs looked like they could really use a glass. Her eyes on the photo, she thought she could use one, too.

  Norma said, “It’s great. And I’m stunned by the scope of your practice.” She nodded toward the gangster photo. “But that’s for another day. I know you’re due in court, so I’ll forge ahead.”

  “Please do.”

  “I’m assisting the police with some loose ends in their investigation of Buddy Todd’s murder. Now, Todd’s daughter’s grandmother, Anne Sager, is your client.” Norma hesitated, unsure of how to ease into her request. “You’ve heard about her troubles. It’s all over the news.”

  “I’m just glad her granddaughter was found and they caught the kidnapper.” Bitty shifted a pile of documents already neatly stacked on her desk.

  “Right. I’m here about a different matter. It’s awkward, but I need to know what Anne consulted you about.”

  “Really, Norma. I know she’s your client, too. I didn’t poach, you know. I have no need, obviously.” Bitty looked sideways at her reflection in the wall mirror and smiled.

  As Norma explained her role in the police investigation, hoping to convince Bitty to open up, Bitty pulled an emery board from her desk drawer and gave some attention to Mr. Pinky.

  Norma persevered. “Anne’s consultation with you may help the police determine—”

  “Don’t you really think you should be talking to Anne?”

  “I did already, you numbskull. Why else would I be here?” Norma said to herself.

  “As a matter of fact, Norma, Anne called before you arrived.” Bitty again reached into her desk, for nail polish—Deluscious Lollipop. “She said you might contact me. I was instructed not to discuss her affairs with you.” Bitty had unscrewed the cap and was wiping excess polish off the brush tip. “Anne seemed to think I needed a refresher course on my professional responsibilities. I explained I would never breach the attorney-client privilege by speaking with you about her private matters. I found the implication that I might quite offensive. I hope you had nothing to do with that.” Bitty held up her hand for a good, long look at her achievement. Then, “If that’s all?”

  “Almost.”

  Something wasn’t right. Bitty’s hand, when she held it up, was shaking. That was not in character at all. And that privilege lecture? Bitty didn’t want to talk about Anne, but it wasn’t because of professional responsibilities. Norma had to find out what was behind that reluctance. Time to be bad.

  “I’m in total agreement with you, Bitty. It is vitally important to protect our clients’ confidences and secrets.”

  Bitty nodded, pleased with teacher’s pet.

  “Of course, you’re not my client, Bitty. I don’t have to keep your secret.”

  “And what secret would that be?”

  “It’s not such an exceptional secret. Trite, in fact. What’s important is who would care to know the secret.”

  “Who?” Bitty’s smile began to slip.

  “Linda Dohnan, for one. You know, wife of Derek Dohnan for twenty years, bearer of four little Dohnanettes.”

  “I don’t know what—”

  “You’re right. Linda won’t care. She’ll jump for joy to be relieved of her wifely duties to that mouth-foaming pig. On the other hand, did I hear you’ve decided to run for judge and expect to be endorsed by the bar? I’m sure they’d like to know—”

  “You wouldn’t dare.” Bitty looked ready to break a few nails across Norma’s face.

  Norma placed her thumbs together like a frame. “Picture those headlines, honey.” She rose and got as far as the door.

  “Wait.”

  Norma stopped but kept her hand on the doorknob.

  “I can’t tell you what Anne wanted. You know I can’t, Norma. Believe it or not, I do have ethics.”

  “Screwing someone else’s husband certainly supports that claim.”

  “Sit down, Norma, for God’s sake. Please.” In the last sixty seconds, Bitty’s face had lost all color and luster. Even Mr. Pinky looked pale.

  “It wasn’t the nature of the advice Anne sought that was unusual,” Bitty explained. “I think you can figure out why laws on custody interested her, especially since she dotes on that grandkid and Buddy Todd wanted her back. And by the way, I’m not violating the privilege by merely stating the law: Natural parents are always going to have priority over a grandparent in a custody dispute, all other things being equal.”

  Norma knew the law, and Anne had already told her Buddy Todd wanted custody of Laney. “Go on, Bitty. You say that’s what I can figure out. Now what is it I can’t figure out?”

  “Anne wanted me to contact someone for her. I can’t tell you who and I can’t tell you why. And you’ll never figure it out. Even the judgeship isn’t worth my telling you, so don’t push.” Bitty crossed her arms, a note of triumph creeping back into her voice.

  Bu
t Bitty was wrong. Norma did figure it out and it broke her heart.

  47

  Norma feared she’d be too late. She’d been blind from the start, but never before with such dire consequences. She’d failed to interpret her best friend’s disheveled clothes and uncombed hair. As always, she’d been too wrapped up in her own agenda.

  That Anne had killed Buddy Todd was the only scenario that made sense. Norma even understood why, fear for Laney. But Bitty’s disclosure that Anne needed a contact meant only one thing, and that one thing outdistanced the farthest reaches of Norma’s imagination. How could Anne do it? Enlightenment came while she sat in Bitty’s parking lot. It left her paralyzed when she should have been rushing back to Anne.

  The envelope with Norma’s name was propped against Anne’s bedside lamp. Norma sat beside her on the bed, held her limp, pulseless wrist and smoothed her baby soft hair away from her face. This way, when the first responders arrived, they’d see Anne’s beauty, intelligence, and goodness even in death.

  Norma was tempted to shred the letter without reading it. Better not to know for sure. But her thoughts were on Laney. She didn’t even know where Laney was and hoped the letter would tell her. She had five minutes before others arrived.

  Dear Norma,

  I know you will determine the right thing to do once you read this letter. As bumbling and awkward as you think you are, you’ve always been able to figure out right from wrong and act accordingly. I may have had that same ability at one time.

  To set a course of action, you’ll need to know everything, though you’ve probably pieced it together by now.

  Buddy came to see me and, like I said, demanded custody of Laney. Can you believe it, at this late date? After all his trips to rehab? He expected to take her with him when he left the Cape in a few days and I was to have her ready. Gin would side with him, he said. He’d gotten in touch with her about Old Man Todd’s bequest. He had the infamous letter that proved Old Man Todd intended the beach access property for Laney but had been swindled out of it. Buddy said they’d be wealthy and Laney would be better off with her natural parents anyway, and why he’d ever agreed to allow me to raise Laney in the first place he didn’t know. I thought he was high, the way he was spewing nonsense, but decided to check out his claims by talking to the toughest family law attorney in the state, according to the Internet reviews.

  Norma thought of Bitty and could guess who wrote the reviews.

  You can imagine how I felt when I learned that degenerate might actually win custody, or maybe you can’t. What I didn’t tell you about Buddy when you asked why I never told you about him is that he tried to sell Laney. Yes, like a used bike. When Laney was three, he tried to exchange her for a bag—that is, one dose of heroin. But for the interference of a nosey old woman, a neighbor, who spied Laney in the back alley with a stranger, kicking and crying for her mother, he would have gotten away with it. By the time I learned of all this, Buddy was in jail for something else. I couldn’t prove any of it had happened.

  Ms. Buchanan convinced me that if Buddy were clean and persuaded Gin to join him in the custody battle, he stood a reasonable chance. The rights of the natural parents are second only to the best interests of the child.

  I’d rather die than leave Laney in his care and told him so the next time he came. Surprisingly, the fool was prepared with an answer. He tried to blackmail me. He trotted out a theory I’d murdered my own husband. It wasn’t true. I knew Gordon through and through and had he been conscious during those final days, he would have begged me to euthanize him. How Buddy got the notion I’d increased his meds when Gordon’s own oncologist suspected nothing, I don’t know. Gin must have said something that got him thinking. Whatever Gin suspected, she never mentioned it to me. But it wouldn’t have mattered if Buddy had gone to the police. No one would have believed him. An autopsy was out of the question since Gordon had been cremated.

  So why did I kill Buddy? I realized it wasn’t that I’d rather die than see him take Laney, it was that I’d rather he die. And he’d just given me the opportunity to do it. When he arrived to get Laney—the night you took her to the ball game and kept her overnight—he came on foot, so there was no car to dispose of. He had no friends, no contacts on the Cape. If he’d told anyone he was coming to see me, I’d have had a story ready as to how he was fine when he left. The sod had even put into my mind Gordon’s old meds. Your pal, Lieutenant Coigne, knows Buddy was drugged. If you choose to go this way, you can tell him Buddy was out long enough for me to bind him in duct tape—I had it handy from repairing Gin’s tail light over a year ago—and haul him down to the beach in Cockle Cove. When there’s no moon, it’s pitch black at 2:00 a.m. I dragged him onto someone’s beached dory and rowed him pretty far out. He weighed a ton but I was desperate and that gave me near-Herculean strength. But taking him there was my first mistake, forgetting that the tide flows north. It brought him right back to our doorstep on Samoset Beach, where Laney found him. I told you earlier today I had no idea it was Buddy’s body Laney found on the beach and that is the truth. I had so dissociated myself from what I’d done that I was shocked when Coigne told us it was Buddy.

  Norma heard a siren in the distance but kept reading.

  The letter wasn’t on Buddy when he came that second time. He said he’d hidden it. I had to find and destroy it. You’re the only one who will believe that I was not interested in the wealth it represented. I knew that if Gin ever found the letter, she’d pull the same stunt as Buddy and try to get Laney back. She tried anyway, even without the letter in hand. But she obviously knew about it.

  I asked Ms. Buchanan for the name of someone who could help me, a private investigator maybe, who would stop at nothing to find that letter. She said she knew someone, if I didn’t mind engaging a guy from out of town. She said, “Way out of town.” She conveyed my instructions for me. What I didn’t know, and how could I, was that the contact would take my instructions literally. He kidnapped Laney, thinking she’d lead him to the letter.

  I didn’t suspect Bitty’s out-of-town contact was the kidnapper, Rahul Singh, until I examined that imported pack of cigarettes that Laney found on the beach and we talked to Coigne. Even then, I couldn’t be sure.

  There it was, confirmation of Norma’s worst fears. As soon as she’d seen Rahul Singh’s face among the toughs in the hotel fountain photo in Bitty’s office, she’d suspected there was a connection between Anne and Singh that predated the kidnapping. It was incomprehensible. Anne had risked Laney’s life, exposed her to naked savagery, and indirectly killed her own daughter. Anne knew why Laney had been kidnapped and even by whom, and yet had not come forward.

  After our meeting with Coigne when he gave us Singh’s name, I contacted Ms. Buchanan immediately and she admitted Rahul Singh was her contact. I told her to have Singh stop his search and release Laney immediately. She got back to me and said he was now working for himself; he had a business interest in finding the letter. Singh had as much financial interest in destroying that letter as Buddy had in preserving it. Singh told her if I said anything to the police about what I knew, Laney would be tortured and dumped on the beach. I know you’re judging me, Norma, but I was terrified for Laney.

  I am sorry for the long-windedness. I’m coming to a close. Laney is safe now, at least from Rahul Singh. I am not. Even if you don’t go to the police, Ms. Buchanan may, although she’d be implicating herself. Or Singh may try to “cop a plea” and “spill his guts” as they say. Or you will figure it out—you almost did—and you may fight your conscience, but you’ll end up going to Coigne. One way or another, there will be a sensational trial and Laney will find out my role in her kidnapping and her mother’s death. She’ll have to live with the certainty each member of her family was a criminal, including me. Most of all, me. She’ll never forgive me, and I can’t face that.

  I’m now doing what I should have done in the first place. I’m asking you to find that letter. I’m also asking you to t
ake care of Laney. My own will asks that you be granted legal guardianship. She’s staying overnight with Isabella Miller. Please tell Laney my death was accidental. She may believe it until she’s old enough to handle the truth.

  My only hope for getting your cooperation is that you love Laney too, and will shield her from pain as I would.

  From here to eternity, you are my best friend-

  Anne

  48

  Laney stood on a kitchen chair, Norma close by, and strung colored lights around the top of the Christmas tree. Earlier they’d dragged the tree into the alcove, fit it into its stand, and tethered it to the wall. It was now visible to beach strollers below and made a cheerful contrast to an otherwise foggy Christmas Eve.

  “Cheerful contrast” had been Norma’s mental mantra throughout the fall. Laney would withdraw for long spells and Norma worried she’d sink into a debilitating depression. A bright smile and gentle squeeze of the girl’s shoulder was usually the best Norma could do to signal there were brighter days ahead. She’d learned that Laney’s quick nod in response meant she’d gotten the message.

  Others tried to help Laney through her cascade of losses. Isabella Miller remained her good friend, and because she was one of the cool kids, she could ward off ignorant and nasty gossip surrounding Laney that fall. Coach Cummings introduced her to gymnastics. She got good at it and even became something of a school phenomenon, for reasons other than her role in the summer’s drama.

  Coigne was a regular at music performances and sporting events, and for that matter, at dinnertime. It rattled Norma that Laney sometimes turned to him for propping up and advice, but she was also grateful Coigne was there to help.