Jean spoke like someone whose mouth had been frozen by the dentist. “Anyway, it didn’t stop her. She failed Grade Ten because she skipped classes to ride her bike.”
“That’s true. She loved the freedom, the speed and the feel of the wind in her hair. Did you ever wonder what it felt like to be nineteen and have that freedom taken away? To be sentenced to twenty-five years? Be deprived of a chance to marry and have a family? Would it surprise you to learn Elizabeth became a model prisoner and holds two degrees? It was hard at first, of course…” Alice’s thoughts veered to her turbulent early years in prison and to her saviour, Edie-Rose.
Edie-Rose, staring at her with compassionate brown eyes set in a scarred face.
“Ain’t no use fighting the system, little girl,” she’d said. “We’re all here for a reason. Maybe you didn’t commit no murder, but if’n you’d been a nice p’lite girl no one would’ve fingered you.” She’d stroked the bruises on Elizabeth’s arms. “You make a plan for what you’re gonna do when you get out. Me, I’m gonna do murder, and ain’t no one gonna guess who done it.”
It had been the goad Elizabeth needed. How to take revenge and get away with it? Under the wing of Edie-Rose, her life in prison had changed. Inmates didn’t dare touch her. She was Edie-Rose’s protege. Never a lover, although some thought they were. Edie-Rose had become her mentor, teacher and comforter.
Twenty years they had worked together on plans for the perfect murder. Along with courses in French language and literature, Elizabeth had soaked up Edie-Rose’s knowledge of the underworld. In the mornings, Elizabeth studied French verbs. In the whispered quiet of the night she learned where to get false identities and the art of simple disguises. They’d created “Alice” together. No one, Edie-Rose had asserted, really looks at a cripple.
Edie-Rose had favoured a Ford pick-up for a get-away vehicle, but she never got the chance to use it. She had died of a heart attack three weeks before her release. Elizabeth owed it to her to succeed.
But right now she was Alice. She spread the cards face down on the table and looked directly into Jean’s dulled eyes. “Ruth Sullivan always believed her daughter innocent. It broke up her marriage, and she spent all those lonely years waiting for Elizabeth’s release. But Elizabeth always kept track of you. Elizabeth wanted to know where to find you. Ruth died at sixty-six. The year after Elizabeth came out. It doesn’t seem right you should live longer than she did.”
Alice chose a card. “It’s time to read your future.” She turned the card over. “A skeleton in black armour astride a white horse, Miss Mayhew. The Death card.” But Jean Mayhew wasn’t listening. She sat with her head slumped against her chest.
Alice studied her own feelings. Edie-Rose had thought getting back at those who had destroyed them would exorcise the anger and the hatred boiling within them. Looking at Jean, Alice felt no sense of triumph, only the realization that this was something she had to finish in order to start her own life.
She fetched the wheelchair from the hall. Spreading open a plastic bag from the mattress she’d bought, she laid it on the chair. Manhandling Jean’s sleeping form into the chair wasn’t easy, but she and Edie-Rose had practised this manoeuvre using a prison chair. Getting rid of the body couldn’t be planned; it depended on the circumstances. Alice wished she could tell Edie-Rose how cleverly she’d arranged it.
Leaning down, she zipped the bag up as far as Jean’s waist and tucked a blanket around her. If anyone were to see them, Jean would look like a sleeping woman. Alice would close it completely before she slid Jean into the big sewage pipe laid to service the new development.
Leaving the parlour, Alice went to the kitchen. She knew the shoe wasn’t there. She’d scrubbed the place after she got back from the construction site. There would be no trace of Jean Mayhew and no fingerprints from Elizabeth Sullivan.
It must have fallen off, gotten caught between the plastic bag and the footrest and dropped somewhere en route. It wasn’t on Jean’s foot when Alice had pushed her into the pipe. She could picture the body perfectly as it lay face down in the clear plastic bag, could remember thinking Jean would have a peaceful death, suffocating long before the sleeping draught wore off. Why hadn’t she registered the missing shoe then?
Alice looked out of the window. Daylight was fading. She could at least check that it hadn’t fallen somewhere between the house and the old logging road at the back.
Head down, searching through grass grown long in the wet spring, Alice suddenly heard voices coming from the front of the house. She had time to reach the shed, duck under the cobwebs and scoot behind the door before the voices got closer.
“She may be out doing a reading, Andy.” Alice recognized Constable Blain’s voice.
“Reading?” That must be Andy.
“Yes. She tells fortunes. Has done ever since she rented this house. Makes a good place for the church ladies who don’t want to be seen.” Constable Blain laughed. “Keeps the place spotless, doesn’t she?”
Alice imagined them standing, faces pressed against the window.
“Odd how she went white when she described the body. She hasn’t done that before. That’s why I want to see her face when I ask her what the shoe looked like.”
Goose bumps rose on Alice’s arms. She listened intently.
“Yeah. You often see old sneakers lying about, but a woman’s brown leather shoe…how would that suddenly appear on a road construction site?” Andy asked. “Any missing women reported?”
“Not yet.”
“What’s the background of this Hartley woman anyway?”
“That is something I’m about to look into.” The voices fading. “I’ll run a check before I return.”
God, how stupid she’d been. Why hadn’t she listened to Edie-Rose? “Girl, you got a talent for bringing attention to yourself. Keep quiet, and ain’t no cop gonna think ’bout you.” And what had she done? Been in and out of the police station all year.
Jean was supposed to have gone on holiday today, so she wouldn’t be missed yet. And they were unlikely to come across the body. That section of the road had been covered with six feet of fill before she’d reported the murder. But as soon as they started looking into Alice Hartley’s background, they would discover she didn’t have one. She waited in the shed until she heard the car turn onto the main road.
In the house, Alice climbed the stairs to her room. Going to the closet she knelt down, moved her winter boots and pulled out a cardboard box. From it she took a black nylon fanny-pack and a pair of black leather running shoes. She didn’t need to look into the fanny-pack; it had been ready from the moment she arrived. Now she would stow it with her get-away vehicle. Then she would clean the house and be ready to leave in the morning. She had no fear that Blain would discover her non-existence before then. Alice Hartley had no police record, and all bureaucrats would have gone home by now.
The phone rang, and Alice paused. Should she answer it? It could be Blain. Better to talk on the phone than have him come round. She went down to the parlour and lifted the receiver.
“Is that Miss Hartley? Jack Lee here.”
“Hello, Mr. Lee.” Why would he be calling? A warden of the Anglican Church wasn’t likely to be wanting his cards read. “How can I help
