The False-Hearted Teddy Page 22

  Assuming that Ash was there, I went inside and moved along the rear outskirts of the crowd, looking for her blond hair and the pink sweater I’d last seen her wearing. I also kept an eye out for Todd, but didn’t see him. One or two people glanced at me as I moved past and I found myself scrunching my shoulders in anticipation of the hue and cry, but no one seemed surprised at my presence. Then again, Ash and I were still such newcomers to the teddy bear artist community that no one really knew me, so it’s likely they didn’t connect my face with the reports of my arrest for Jennifer’s murder.

  Meanwhile, up on the stage, Lisa announced Anne Cranshaw’s bear as the winner in the “Undressed, Over Five Inches and Under Fourteen Inch” category. I recognized the artist’s name because we had several of her mohair creations on our shelves at home. There was enthusiastic applause as Anne went up to receive her trophy.

  As I stood there scanning the crowd, a buxom someone came up from behind, slipped her arms under mine, and hugged me tightly. I felt the brush of her hair against my neck, smelled the faint clean scent of her Pure Grace cologne, and knew it was Ash.

  She gave me a kiss on the cheek and said, “Honey, I’m so glad to see you.”

  “Not as glad as I am to be here.” I turned to face her. “Hey, I just came from that direction. Where were you?”

  “Over in the exhibit hall. I came in behind you and I also saw the detectives out in the hallway. What’s going to happen?”

  “Once the event is finished, they’re going to have a warm and fuzzy chat with Todd.”

  “So, that means you’re all done?” Ash asked hopefully.

  “They can talk to him. I sure as hell don’t want to.”

  Up on the stage, Lisa had moved on to the next teddy bear award group: “Dressed or Accessorized, Over Five And Under Fourteen Inches,” the category in which Jennifer’s Cheery Cherub Bear was nominated. Ash realized this also and we both turned to watch Lisa as she read off the list of five nominees. There was a scattering of spontaneous applause as Jennifer’s name was mentioned. Then Lisa opened a business envelope and pulled out an index card.

  “The winner is…” Lisa’s voice was larded with pathos and there was an understated yet dramatic sob. “Jennifer Swift’s Cheery Cherub Bear.”

  The ovation was deafening and I felt badly for all the kind and decent people who’d been deceived into thinking that Jennifer deserved such applause. There was a ripple of movement to the right of us and closer to the stage and I saw that several people were encouraging and actually gently pushing a seemingly reluctant Todd toward the stage. He had a yellow Cheery Cherub Bear under his left arm and appeared a little chagrined at all the attention. At last, he shyly acquiesced and plodded through the crowd to accept the award.

  Once he was on the stage, Lisa handed him the trophy, a nine-inch pewter figurine of the teddy bear in the Cap’n Crunch uniform on a marble base and gave him a chaste hug. Todd looked down at the prize in his right hand and then squeezed his eyes tightly shut. The applause continued and he held the trophy up while looking heavenward. Then Todd set the trophy on the podium and leaned toward the microphone.

  When he began to speak, his voice was throaty with emotion. “I don’t know why you’re clapping for me, so please don’t. Jennifer should be here for this, but…she’s gone. But I want to share some thoughts about her, if you don’t mind, because I loved her very much. She was the kind of person that people just naturally wanted to love. And the one thing I’ll regret to my dying day was that I couldn’t save her.”

  During the burst of clapping, Ash noticed that I’d suddenly become tense. She whispered, “What?”

  “Do me a favor and go out and get Mulvaney and Delcambre. Tell them to come in and follow my lead.” My eyes were locked on Todd like targeting lasers.

  “What lead? What are you talking about, honey?”

  “Promise me that you aren’t going to be angry.” I kept my voice low.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m about to roll this guy,” I said as I began to slowly move through the throng toward the stage.

  “You’re what?”

  “Please, go get the detectives. Don’t run, but hurry, honey.”

  “I will, but for God’s sake be careful.” Ash gave my hand a squeeze and began walking quickly toward the door.

  “Most of you only knew Jennifer Swift as a superb teddy bear artist.” Todd held the Cheery Cherub Bear up. “But she was much, much more than that. To those of us who were privileged to know her, Jen was warm and kind, thoughtful, caring—”

  “And a two-faced, lying, manipulative thief who broke your heart,” I announced in a loud voice as I pushed my way through the front of the crowd. “Which is exactly why she died.”

  Twenty-two

  I was fairly certain now that I understood what had happened and, more importantly, why.

  Public safety professions such as firefighting, police work, and emergency medical service attract all sorts of people. Some are actually committed to serving the public. Others—like me—signed up primarily because the jobs are full of excitement and challenges. Unfortunately, there are also a few folks who embrace these vocations because they obtain an unhealthy emotional fulfillment in the role of a hero. They’re “rescuers” and they secretly revel in the glory and adulation. In fact, they can become addicted to being admired as badly as a crystal freak is to meth. They’ve even been known to stage emergencies so that they can step in at the last moment and save the day.

  And here’s the really interesting part: If you look up the listing for “loser” in an encyclopedia, you’re liable to find a picture of a “rescuer.” They devote themselves to saving other people because it allows them to minimize or even overlook their own huge personal problems. Often, they’re lonely, vain, and immature, with tendencies toward monomaniacal relationships—which is just a fancy way of saying obsessive unrequited infatuation—and even stalking. As you’ll have gathered by now, these behaviors were also a disturbingly accurate description of Todd’s relationship with Jennifer.

  The foregoing facts also confirmed my earlier advice to Mulvaney about how to approach the interview with Todd. The classic rescuer’s self-image is of a modest and misunderstood knight-errant. If I could deftly shepherd our conversation along a path that allowed Todd to admit to an innocent error, while permitting him to preserve his aura of chivalry, there was an excellent chance he’d tell us what really happened to Jennifer. However, in order to do that, I’d have to give him someone to blame for being misled.

  All these thoughts were racing through my brain as I mounted the stage with a grunt.

  It was pandemonium for a few seconds. The air was full of stunned voices, gasps, and several calls for the police, which I suspected were for me to be arrested and not Todd. Meanwhile, Lisa and the other two teddy bear judges had edged away from us, but not too far. It was obvious they were apprehensive over the prospect of being at ground zero of a violent showdown, yet didn’t want to be so removed that they’d miss the exciting details. Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Ash come back into the room, with Mulvaney and Delcambre right behind her. I shifted a little to the right, hoping to block Todd’s field of vision and prevent him from seeing that the detectives were present.

  “What are you doing here?” Todd did his best to sound outraged, but it came out as just loud and petulant.

  “You mean, why am I not in jail? That isn’t important now.” I paused to tuck my cane under my left arm and hoped that Todd didn’t realize I’d done it so that I could use it as a bludgeon if things suddenly went to hell. “Let’s talk about why Jennifer died.”

  “You killed her.”

  “Did I? Why?”

  “Because…you were jealous of her success with the bears. The police have proof you did it.”

  “You and I both know that I didn’t fill Jennifer’s inhaler with superglue. And since that information about the evidence found in my room was never released to the m
edia, how do you know that?” I asked gently.

  “I, uh, heard some detectives talking.”

  “Then you may have also heard that a forensic expert can retrieve fingerprints from latex gloves. But, again, that’s not important right now. Some mistakes have been made and we need to do the brave thing and own up to them like men.”

  Todd blanched slightly at my mentioning the gloves, but recovered quickly. “I don’t know what mistakes you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do and I’m saying ‘we,’ because I feel partly responsible for what happened. Do you recall last night at the cocktail reception when you asked me why Jennifer stayed with her abusing husband, Tony, when she could have a happy life with you?”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “But it’s what you meant. It’s obvious you were very much in love with Jennifer.”

  “I loved her as a friend.”

  I gave him a bittersweet smile. “There’s no shame in admitting it now, besides anyone with a set of eyes could see how much you loved her. Anyway, I wonder if I unintentionally misled you with my answer to your question.”

  Todd’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How do you mean?”

  “I told you that Jen probably stayed with Tony because she’d gotten used to the beatings and couldn’t envision a better existence. Unfortunately, I also think I might have caused you to believe that she’d leave Tony, if she could just somehow see how good you were to her. Is that possible?”

  Todd looked lost in thought. He barely nodded.

  “God, I’m sorry. That’ll teach me to psychoanalyze people I know nothing about, especially since it played a role in the decision you made.”

  “I didn’t murder her.”

  I went on as if I hadn’t heard him. “But in my defense, I’m not the only one that misled you and at least I didn’t do it deliberately. But that wasn’t the case with Jen, was it? And to make it worse, she forgot that she owed you her life.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Tony told me about how he’d choked her and collapsed her windpipe and how you saved her.” I paused as a buzz of unpleasant surprise from the audience swept the room. “It was an ugly story, except for your part. You did something that most of us only dream of doing: you were a genuine hero.”

  Todd swallowed hard. “I did save her life.”

  “And I wish you could have seen how envious Tony looked when he talked about the way Jennifer was gazing at you once she’d recovered consciousness.”

  “He was always jealous of me.”

  “With good reason. And because Tony was such a violent pig, you felt very protective toward Jennifer, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, because I knew—hell, everyone knew—that he abused her. She deserved a better life than that.”

  “Was that why you kind of inserted yourself into their lives? To keep Tony from hurting her again?”

  “From killing her,” Todd corrected me.

  I nodded. “And the relationship also offered you the chance to help some other people, too, didn’t it?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Your children’s books. You wrote and illustrated them to teach kids how to behave like decent human beings. This was a way to get the books where they were needed most.”

  Todd’s face brightened for a moment. “That’s true.”

  “And as you worked together, you fell in love with Jennifer.”

  There was a long pause. “Yes.”

  “But being an honorable man, you never said anything. Did you?”

  “No. That…that would have been wrong of me.”

  “Do you think she knew how you felt?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Actually, I think she did and what I’m going to say next is going to really hurt. Jen knew that you were head-over-heels in love with her and she couldn’t have cared less. Believe it or not, she truly loved Tony.”

  “But, he…”

  “Routinely brutalized her like some Nazi concentration camp guard? Yeah, he did, but she still loved him and don’t ask me to explain why, because I can’t,” I said sadly. “And then on Friday morning, Carolyn Fielding broke the news to you that the woman you adored and whose life you’d saved was dumping you like last week’s trash and stealing your books. You must have felt as if your heart was being cut out with a rusty chainsaw.”

  “Tony made her do it,” Todd said in half-whisper.

  “You and I both know that isn’t true. Be honest. I’ll bet Jen had begun to start freezing you out about two months ago, hadn’t she?”

  “She was worried that Tony might realize how I felt about her.”

  “No, that’s when Tony’s probation was up. But being in love with her, you didn’t want to face the truth that she’d strung you along to keep Tony out of prison.”

  “She told me that everything was going to be all right.” Todd clutched the teddy bear against his chest.

  “And yesterday morning you realized that was just the latest in a long string of lies. God, it must have hurt. But you loved her and you were willing to forgive her. Then, at some point, you came up with the idea that if you could only just make her understand how good you’d been to her, that she’d return your love.”

  Todd cast a panicked look in the direction of the door.

  “Oh, don’t do it, son. Don’t run. All that will do is make a jury believe you did it deliberately and that isn’t what happened, is it?”

  “Please. I…”

  “You wanted to be her hero again. You’d saved her life and maybe if you did it a second time, she’d come to her senses and realize that you were standing there offering her all the love in the world. Isn’t that right?”

  “Why couldn’t she see?” There were tears running down Todd’s cheeks.

  “We’ll never know why.” I heaved a huge sigh. “But I do know one thing: an honorable man acknowledges when he’s made a mistake.”

  “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “I know that. All you intended was for Jen to get sick, so that you could step in and handle the medical emergency, while Tony stood there looking helpless. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you stole Jen’s card key, broke into their room and loaded her inhaler with superglue.”

  “I thought I only put a little in.”

  The crowd was beginning to become agitated and I hoped that didn’t mean the detectives had decided it was time to move in, because I wasn’t done yet. When I spoke again, my voice was tinged with disappointment. “You misjudged. But what’s worse, in the end, you failed her by not being there.”

  “I was scared and you said that you could handle it,” Todd sobbed accusingly as his shoulders slowly sagged forward.

  “Nobody could have handled it. You put enough superglue in there to kill a freaking rhino.” I allowed my voice to become a little sterner. “But you could have prevented it. All you had to do to stop Jen from sucking death into her lungs was to say something. Why didn’t you?”

  “I just couldn’t. My brain was frozen.”

  “No, it wasn’t. You didn’t say anything because you were ashamed of what you’d done and admitting that you’d tried to poison her would have meant giving up any chance to be her hero. Right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Better she should die, I guess. But hey, I don’t mean to sound judgmental. I’ve never been a hero, so I don’t know what it’s like.” Now that I had an admission of guilt, I could drop the constricting Father-Brad-there’s-no-such-thing-as-a-bad-boy persona and really burrow for the truth.

  Todd cringed. “I panicked.”

  “But you apparently weren’t so paralyzed with fear that it stopped you from grabbing the inhaler while we were doing CPR—thanks for the help by the way.”

  “I just couldn’t watch what was happening to Jen.”

  “Especially since you’d done it to her. However, it did occur to you to trot up to Tony’s room and plant the
evidence there.”

  “That son of a bitch deserves to be in prison for the things he did to her! It wasn’t my fault it turned out this way! It was his!”

  “Maybe, but he never poisoned her. And why drag me into it by planting the evidence in my room?”

  “I was so scared.”

  “Of me? What did I ever do to you?”

  “Of being arrested. When I was at the hospital, I started wondering if I’d hidden the inhaler too well. Tony hadn’t been arrested. What if the police didn’t find it?” Todd was blubbering.

  “And you knew that once they expanded their search for suspects, they’d eventually find out about the Wintle contract and how Jennifer and Tony screwed you out of the profits. That would lead the cops to take a closer look at you.”

  “Then I overheard the detectives talking to Tony. He told them about what happened in the parking lot and it seemed as if he’d convinced them that you’d killed Jennifer.”

  “So you went into my room while the maids were cleaning, dropped the evidence in the wastebasket, and then put in a call to the cops.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  I waved my hand in disgust. “Gee, that makes everything all better. As long as you were trying to frame somebody, why didn’t you plant all the stuff in Tony’s room?”

  “I was going to, but, but, but…there wasn’t enough time.” Todd sniffled and began to pant for breath. “After I put the inhaler in Tony’s room, I went down to mine to get the gloves and superglue tubes, but I got sick.”

  “And by the time you’d finished barfing your guts up, it was too late to finish the job. So you rushed to the hospital, hoping to give yourself an alibi for the murder of the woman you loved and then came back to pin the blame on an innocent man. And let me get this straight: You wanted to be what? A hero?”

  “Oh, God, I didn’t mean it! I loved her and I’m so sorry!” Todd howled as he slapped his right hand over his eyes. Then, while continuing to clasp the Cheery Cherub Bear to his breast, he slowly slipped to his knees and began rocking back and forth as he wept.