There was a flicker in Ruth’s expression now. She’d realized anyone with only a casual working relationship with a man with an extremely common first name should have asked,John who?“I know,” she said. “Is he okay?” Then, abruptly, her chin wobbled, just a bit. She was avoiding Sherry’s gaze.
“He’s not, dear,” Sherry said. “I’m afraid that he’s passed away.”
Another chin wobble, followed by a shiver, but not a trace of surprise.
“Are you cold, dear?” Sherry asked. Exactly as planned. “Here, take my shawl.” She got up to drape it around Ruth’s shoulders, then sat down to nudge the tea and cookies closer to Ruth. “Have some tea. It’ll warm you up.”
Ruth was clutching at Sherry’s shawl. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—sad.”
“I know,” Sherry said. “You and John were more than just friends, weren’t you?”
Ruth looked up at her. She was even paler than she had been when she walked in. “How did you—”
“Just a guess,” Sherry said. “Would you like to talk about him? You must have been very in love.”
An ugly mottled flush flooded across Ruth’s cheeks. “I thought that we were,” she said, and then looked away again.
“Oh, dear,” Sherry said. “Heartbreak after heartbreak. You know, when I was your age, lots of my friends were treated very badly by older men. Was he not very nice to you?”
“No,” Ruth said. “No, I mean—he was really romantic. Not like guys my age, you know? He drove me down to the city once. We got a hotel room in the West Village, and he introduced me to all of these really cool guys who ran art galleries and stuff and artists who wanted me to model for them.” Her expression lit up a bit as she talked about it. All those glamorous, sophisticated artists in the big city. All those men who Charlotte probably thought of as friends, flattering John’s young mistress and winking at John behind her back. Sherry didn’t have to feign her sympathy.
“It must have been so exciting,” she said.
Ruth shrugged, her expression dimming slightly. “I thought so,” she said. “I mean—yeah. It was great.”
“But it didn’t last,” Sherry said. “That must have been very difficult. But you must have known it would be difficult, hm? Because he was married.”
Ruth looked up at her again, her face suddenly transformed. She didn’t look like a lost little girl anymore. She looked like an avenging Valkyrie. “He told me he wasdivorced,” she said. “I’dneverdate a married guy. My biological father cheated on my mom for five years; it ruined our lives. I had no idea until I came up here to surprise him and I saw—” She stopped. Ruth saw a muscle in her jaw flex.
“It’s all right, dear,” Sherry said. “You don’t have to worry about giving anything away. I already know that you were here at the library. The police have the evidence, and they should be looking at it today. My friend also knows that I’m meeting you here tonight, and you’re on the security cameras again.” This last bit was Sherry being creative, but the broad strokes were true enough.
Ruth didn’t look angry now. She just looked tired. “What do you want?” she asked. “Why did you get me to come up here, if you think the cops are about to arrest me? What was the point? You’re just playing Sherlock Holmes? Or you like messing with people’s lives?”
The question hit strangely. Other murderers she’d encountered had sometimes been given to oddly dramatic pronouncements about her meddling. No one had asked herwhy. It took her a moment before she settled on an answer that she thought might draw Ruth out more. “John’s wife, Charlotte, is a dear friend of mine,” she said. “He’d cheated on her for years. It’swhy they moved up here, in part. It crushed her, and now she’s the prime suspect in his murder. The police weren’t interested in looking elsewhere. It’s always the wife’s fault, isn’t it? I wanted to help. Charlotte’s a wonderful woman. Beautiful and smart and artistic, just like you. I think that you’d like her very much, if you met her. And I think that she deserves an explanation of what happened to her husband, as awful as he was to the women in his life. Don’t you?” She paused. She was thinking fast. “And youarevery young. And pretty. I’m sure that if you went to the police of your own accord and explained all about the…mitigating circumstances, that might make a difference for you.”
Ruth stared down at her mug of tea for a long, long moment. “He asked me out after the session one night,” she said slowly. “He bought me dinner and we went to a couple of bars. It lasted about six months. I thought we were in love. I really did. I knew he lived in Winesap, but he never brought me up here. It never really seemed weird, since he was down in Albany for class, anyway. But he talked about the gallery sometimes, so I decided one Saturday that I wanted to come up here to see it and surprise him. When I got here he was out for lunch, so I went in and looked around. They had brochures about the gallery. They had this picture of him and his wife right on them. It talked about how they’d opened the place together. So I left.”
“That must have been such an awful shock,” Sherry said. She said it with real sympathy. It felt very much like any other conversation she’d ever had with a friend who’d just been through a bad breakup. “What did you do next?”
“Nothing for a while,” Ruth said. “We usually just madeplans after class. When I wasn’t modeling, I’d meet him somewhere after the class was over. So I just thought for a while, and then I came back up here again. To…confront him, I guess. I came late, because he said he normally painted at night, so I figured I could catch him. I had a couple of drinks at that bar down the street. Then after it closed I went to the gallery. I knocked at the door in the back and he let me in. He was pretty surprised to see me. I confronted him about being married and he acted like it wasn’t even a big deal. He said that he thought Charlotte was going to divorce him, anyway; she didn’t even like him anymore. I told him that sounded like bullshit, but he made it sound really real. Like they were really going to get a divorce. Then I saw that he had this big painting of me right there where anyone could see it. A nude one, I mean. And I was like,You just leave nude paintings of your mistress around where your wife can see them?And he said something like,It doesn’t matter, she doesn’t care about models. And I couldtell, I couldtellhe meanthedidn’t care, like he meantI don’t care about models. So I started cursing at him, calling him a pervert and a dirty old man and stuff, and it was like this switch flipped and suddenly he wassoangry. He got right up in my face, there was spit going everywhere. So I pulled out my knife I carry and told him to back off, and he laughed in my face.” There was a brief pause. Ruth gave a few rapid blinks. “And grabbed me by the throat. He started choking me. I thought he was going to kill me.”
“Then you stabbed him,” Sherry said. “To get him to let go. So it was self-defense.”
“Yeah,” Ruth said, looking right back at her. “Yeah. Self-defense.”
“You’re innocent of murder, then,” Sherry said. “Should I call the sheriff now to tell him what you’ve told me? We might catch him before he sees those security tapes.”
“Yeah, okay,” Ruth said. Then she looked straight at Sherry again. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Sherry said. Then she asked, “Just out of curiosity—why did you destroy all of those paintings?”
“Oh,” Ruth said. “I kicked the big one while we were arguing. The one of me. Then I thought that if there was one painting of me that was damaged with John dead right next to it, that that would look like a clue. So I ruined all of the ones of me, plus a few others to make it look like someone just trashed a bunch of different paintings for no reason.”
“I see,” Sherry said. “That was very clever of you.” Very clever, and cool, and calculated. “I’m going to call the police, now. To let them know.”
Sherry went into her office to make the call. She wasn’t worried about Ruth running off: she’d have to come past the front desk to do that. She dialed Sheriff Brown’s number without having to look it up. “I’ve found John Jacobs’s killer,” she said as soon as he picked up.
“Of course you have,” Sheriff Brown said. He sounded tired. “Where is he?”
