A Star-Spangled Murder Page 23

  “What … How did she ever get that idea?” Ted asked.

  “We can ask Titania, of course, but there’s more than one incident that led me to come to this conclusion. In the first place, Tricia’s response to the news of Humphrey’s death puzzled me. I think now that she came over to my house that morning to make the point that Humphrey was still alive—even though she had killed him the day before. Practically the first words out of her mouth were that she knew Humphrey was looking forward to meeting Jed and Jerry. She wanted us to think that she thought that he was still alive at that point. She had already made a mistake in asking Halsey to come to the house Thursday morning to clean. It’s not surprising that Halsey thought Tricia was strangely nervous. She had, after all, just murdered her husband. And she had probably planned an elaborate cover-up, but it turned out to be unnecessary—in fact, it was impossible to carry out. Because, you see, Titania found the body and moved it.

  “That explains why Tricia was so shocked when Janet told her that her husband was dead. She thought Janet was talking about Ted—she thought that Ted had been found dead in my living room.” Susan turned to Ted Taylor. “And I think that, despite everything she had done, Tricia still had some feelings for you, otherwise she probably wouldn’t have been so upset when she thought you had been killed.”

  Ted nodded, but didn’t otherwise acknowledge what she was saying.

  “Tricia must have been very confused to hear that Humphrey had been found here,” Susan continued. “Titania had found the body and the bait bag. I think the fact that he was on your property, along with the knowledge that among Theresa’s many collections was one of bait bags, convinced Titania that her sister had taken the pranks one step too far and killed the man they thought was their uncle.

  “You see, everyone keeps thinking of those girls together—almost as though they were one entity. I think it’s because they look so much alike and they have such similar names. But they’re very distinct individuals.…”

  “That they are,” their father agreed. “Always have been.”

  “Titania is the mothering one; she takes care of the others,” Susan began, thinking that the girl’s maternal skills had probably developed early because her own mother was so deficient in them. “And Tierney is the very sweet younger child. But Theresa is more complex than that. She’s jealous of her older sister at the same time that she’s proud of her. She has to find her own identity—maybe that has something to do with all the collections she has. And she’s the angry child.

  “You see, the pranks weren’t all the same. There was more than one mind at work here. I think you knew that.” She looked to Ted, who sadly nodded his agreement. “Putting pudding in someone’s pockets is a long way from pulling out a cellar step and hoping someone will fall to the bottom. And doctoring a Scotch bottle with a harmless substance is different from altering the brakes on a car. Someone was even walking around the island talking about death threats to Humphrey—this was serious stuff. Titania saw that what Theresa was doing was dangerous. And when she found her uncle dead, she assumed Theresa had carried out the ultimate prank. So she moved the body.…”

  “Humph … Arthur Deed … was a pretty big man,” Sally Harter said.

  “Yes. That’s why Titania used a wagon to get him into my living room.…”

  “The wagon that Theresa and Tierney made into the float for the parade yesterday!” Kathleen said, understanding at last.

  “Exactly.” Susan nodded. “I called Jed, and he told me that the girls had never found that wagon in our boathouse. Jed is very, very neat. I should have realized immediately that he would never leave such a thing around over the winter. Titania probably stuffed it in there and then didn’t know how to get it out without someone catching her—so she suggested that her sisters turn it into a float. There may even be bloodstains on it if anyone bothers to look.

  “So after she moved the body into my house, she closed it up again as well as she could—putting up the downstairs shutters and covering up the rest of the furniture, even the chairs that didn’t have anyone in them. She had been spending a lot of time in the house over the past few months, and she knew how it should look. But it didn’t matter terribly much. The main thing was for the body to be away from the Taylor house, away from Theresa. And the longer it was before someone came up and stayed here, the better.

  “But trying to make everything look normal at my house wasn’t all there was to do. Titania was worried that someone would put all this together and assume Theresa had done it. She was probably worried that Theresa would say something that would give herself away—and she didn’t want any witnesses around if that happened. That’s why she thought it was so important for Judy and Sally to be out of the way when Tricia told the younger girls about Humphrey’s death. So she insisted that I take Judy and Sally to Acadia. She took that opportunity to throw the rest of Theresa’s bait bags into the ocean. But she was in such a hurry that she dropped one under her bed. I knew it was Theresa that she was trying to protect because Tierney had already told me about the girl’s collections. Anyone who wanders the beach collecting lobster buoys and beach glass in Maine is going to find a lot of bait bags—it just made sense.”

  “Then Titania ran away so that we would think she had done it?” Ted asked.

  “Like a good mother, she was ready to trade her life for the girls that she loved.” Susan nodded. “And she hid at my house so she could keep an eye on her sisters—so she would be around if she was needed. She even managed to get a message to me about the mantel, which she thought was the missing clue.”

  “She’s taken on a lot of responsibility for a child her age,” Ted Taylor said slowly, sadly. “It’s going to take us all a lot of time to get over this, but I think maybe Titania is going to have the most difficult time of all.”

  No one argued with him.

  SEVENTEEN

  Susan joined Titania down by the same rock where they had first met. “It’s been a sad day,” she commented, sliding down to sit by the girl. “How are your sisters?”

  “They’ll be okay. It’s going to be harder on Theresa than Tierney, don’t you think? I mean, Tierney will probably have forgotten all about this by the time she grows up, won’t she?”

  “Maybe.” Susan agreed because the girl so obviously needed for her to do so.

  They sat silently for a while, watching two gulls fight over a half-opened clam.

  “It’s pretty here, isn’t it?” Susan said finally.

  “Hmmm.” It was an agreement. “Do you think …” Titania started to ask another question and then stopped.

  “Go on.”

  “Do you think that there’s anything to heredity? That people are predetermined to become just like their parents?” Titania asked, avoiding Susan’s look.

  “Are you thinking about your mother?” Susan asked.

  “Yes. She killed those people, didn’t she? Mr. Briane as well as … as Uncle Humphrey?”

  Susan didn’t see much point in lying to the girl. “No one is ever going to know what happened out in those kayaks last night, but she did kill the man pretending to be your uncle.”

  “You knew that I was protecting Theresa, didn’t you?” Titania asked. “But I don’t understand how you found out.”

  “The next time someone tells you to clean your room, you might consider listening to them. You left a bait bag on the floor under your bed. I picked it up and put two and two together.”

  “We shouldn’t have started pulling those pranks,” the girl admitted.

  “They did go a little far,” Susan agreed.

  “Yes. But … well, my father almost encouraged us to do them.”

  “He was caught in a trap,” Susan said, not adding that it was one of his own making and that’s usually the worst kind.

  “I think it’s better if Theresa and Tierney don’t know about Mommy,” Titania said seriously, avoiding Susan’s eyes. “They won’t be so hurt then. Or so worried,” she mutt
ered.

  “There’s nothing that’s going to stop the hurt except time,” Susan said, resisting an urge to put her arms around the child. “What your mother did can’t be excused, and I don’t think we’re ever going to understand why she did it now that she’s dead. It just has to be accepted. But you don’t have to worry about you or your sisters inheriting some sort of bad gene that would make you kill someone. It just doesn’t happen like that. Remember, you had two parents.”

  “And my father wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Titania said proudly.

  “That’s right.”

  There was a longer silence before the child spoke again. “My father’s going to sell the house.”

  “I thought he might. It doesn’t hold pleasant memories for him now.”

  “I think he should keep it. It’s the house he’s always wanted, and if we stay here and don’t sell it, we can make other memories, happy ones, that will cover up some of the bad things,” Titania added earnestly.

  “Have you told him that?”

  “No. I didn’t think he would want to hear what I had to say. He’s made up his mind.”

  “It may not change his mind, but you should tell him how you feel anyway,” Susan suggested. “And maybe he’ll decide to stay. I sure like the idea of having the three Taylor girls as my next-door neighbors in Maine.”

  “We like being here, too.” Titania smiled. “Do you hear something? Like someone yelling?”

  “I do hear someone.” Susan stood up. “It’s Kathleen!” She shaded her eyes and looked across the cove at the group that stood on and around her porch. “It looks like she’s holding Bananas … and maybe Jerry.… There’s Jed and my son, Chad.” She turned to Titania. “I think my family’s here. Come on over and let me introduce you.”

  Titania followed Susan as she hurried across the cove, waving her hands and calling out to her husband and her son. “I think they’ve already met Karma,” the girl said. The dog was racing around and around, in and out of the water, soaking the happy gathering each time she shook her fur.

  “I’m so glad you came up early,” Susan said, handing her husband a glass of Samuel Adams ale.

  “Thanks. I just wish we’d been here before. It sounds like you’ve had quite a long weekend.”

  “Sad,” Susan commented, sitting down in the porch rocker next to her husband’s. “Those poor girls.”

  “You mean the ones in the canoe in the middle of the cove that the dog is working so hard to turn over?”

  “I guess they’re going to survive,” Susan said, watching the pandemonium. “If they had to lose one parent, it’s best that it was their mother. She never seemed to have their interests in the, uh, forefront of her life.”

  “Is their father going to get out of this without any legal difficulties? After all, he did ignore the formalities of his brother’s death in a foreign country.”

  “I talked to Janet about that. It was over five years ago. She thinks it will just be overlooked. Arthur Deed will be buried here. It turns out that there are people on the island who remember when his family rented my aunt’s house. He wasn’t very popular. It will be a pauper’s grave.”

  “Maybe …” her husband began.

  “I’ve already taken care of it.” She smiled at Jed. “After all, he lived here for a short time. I thought we should do something. And I made a donation to the fishermen’s wives’ fund. There was a lot of work done to retrieve the bodies by people who didn’t have to pitch in. Ted Taylor is going to do something for the volunteer firemen who spent so much time looking for Titania. They all deserve to be remembered.”

  “Good.” Jed approved and then changed the subject. “Chad’s sure happy to be back on the island, isn’t he?”

  They both watched while their son paddled his kayak in circles around the girls and their pet.

  “Yes, but it’s sad that Chrissy isn’t here this year.”

  Jed took her hand. “They grow up, hon. In a few years, she’ll probably be sitting here watching her own children out there.”

  Susan blinked. “Not too soon, I hope.”

  “The house is going to be getting lonely with Chrissy going off to college in another year, and then Chad just a few years later,” he commented.

  “You know, Jed, I’ve been thinking about that,” Susan began in a serious tone of voice. “And I have a solution.…”

  Susan looked down at the floor where her husband had fallen when he pushed the rocker too hard.

  “Why don’t we—” she began.

  “Hon, think of the diapers, nursery school, another college tuition to save for.…” he began seriously.

  “Jed,” she laughed. “I just wondered what you’d think about getting a dog!”

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