Cold Rain (28 page)

‘No argument there. On the face of it, my story sounds incredible.’

‘Then change your story before it’s too late,’ Gail answered.

‘Even if it’s true?’

Gail looked away from us, swallowing whatever insult she intended. Finally, she said, ‘A woman called Denny’s. A woman, not a man. This was twelve, twelve-fifteen?’

‘Just after Lucy gets off the phone and before she goes down the hill and gets in the car with the son of a bitch.’

Gail smiled at me condescendingly. ‘The window of opportunity?’

‘What would you call it?‘

‘Unless Lucy made the call to Denny’s, you’ve still got a problem. You pick up the phone and it’s Buddy Elder. The only way he knows you’re at Denny’s is if Johnna told him, but he’s been on the phone with Lucy since ten-thirty.’

‘He has a partner who snatches her.’

‘While Buddy’s on the phone?’

‘The perfect alibi.’

Gail seemed dubious. ‘Who was the woman who called Denny’s, David? Another partner?’

‘Denise Conway. Why not?’

‘Why not? Well, for starters, Lucy comes out and gets in the car. Where’s Denise – in the backseat?’

When I didn’t answer her, Gail levelled her gaze at me as if she had caught me in a lie. ‘I didn’t like your story when it was possible. I’m sure as hell not buying it now.’

‘What if I’m not lying, Gail? Can you just consider that for a minute?’

‘It’s a waste of time.’

‘I know you don’t like it. I don’t like it, but I’m telling you what happened! What if she has a car parked out there, makes the call for Buddy, and then drives off before Lucy shows up?’

‘Why go to all that trouble?’

‘I don’t know, Gail! Maybe because I’ll look like a muddle-headed fool trying to explain how I got a phone call from Buddy Elder while he was seducing my stepdaughter!’

Gail shook her head angrily. ‘You’re convicting yourself with this story, David. You can’t stay with it!’

‘You tell me what I did then! You’re the attorney.

Pick a story that will float, because I don’t have a clue what you want to hear!’

Gail leaned back in her chair, looking exasperated.

‘You need another lawyer. I can’t handle this. I’ll stick with you until you get someone, but I can’t deal with you when you get like this.’

‘Like what?’

‘It’s like you want to go to prison.’

‘I want a lawyer who believes me.’

‘They don’t make lawyers that stupid.’ Gail looked shocked by her own response, but she didn’t back down. ‘Sorry, but it’s the truth.’

‘If David says—’

‘David says whatever he thinks people will believe.

You know that, Molly. You of all people! Fine, that’s David. Part of his charm, once you get used to it. The trouble is we’re not drinking cocktails and talking about cars and horses! We’re fighting for his life here, and he’s too stubborn to admit he’s lying!’

‘I guess you need to tell us what we owe you. For everything,’ Molly answered. ‘We’re going to find another attorney.’

‘I’ll get a bill out to you this afternoon,’ Gail answered with a touch of relief. She stood up, her eyes shifting between us. ‘I can give you some names if you want.’

Molly would not look at her. She said that wouldn’t be necessary.

In the truck, Molly said to me, ‘What now?’

‘Dalton,’ I said.

DETECTIVE DALTON, THE WOMAN in the sheriff’s department told us, had the morning off. I told her to call him. We had information about the Johnna Masterson case. She said I could talk to Lt. Gibbons or Detective Jacobs. I shook my head. Dalton.

When she got the detective on the phone, she relayed what I had told her. Hanging up, she looked at us.

‘One hour.’

I said we would be at the cafe down the street. ‘When he gets in, call us,’ I said, handing her my card with the cell phone number listed. ‘We’ll be here in five minutes.’

Forty minutes later Detective Dalton walked into the cafe where Molly and I were working on our third cup of coffee. We had been talking out our options again, the things we needed to do after the arrest.

‘Are you going to confess?’ Dalton asked cheerfully.

He was alone, dressed casually, a man pulled in from his morning off.

‘Only my innocence.’

He sat down and like a regular signalled the waitress for a cup of coffee. ‘Does your lawyer know we’re talking, Professor?’

I told him I no longer had an attorney representing me.

‘Well, that must mean you wouldn’t mind taking a polygraph.’

‘Two conditions,’ I said. ‘First, I need to tell you a couple of things about last Tuesday night.’

Kip Dalton didn’t really smile, but his expression seemed to relax. I knew then he already had the phone records and maybe a lot more. He expected me to recant. ‘I’ll listen.’

‘Second, when you’ve got me hooked up to that machine, I want you to ask about Denise Conway. I don’t care what you ask, but you cover the subject.

When I pass this son of a bitch I want you
and
my wife to know that diary she wrote is a lie.’

Dalton smiled at this. ‘You understand these tests aren’t one hundred percent. What they do—’

‘You’re telling me I’m still going to be a suspect even if I pass.’

‘I can’t rule you out if the evidence says you did it.

As far as what your wife thinks, I don’t know a woman alive who would trust a machine over her own instincts.’

‘Just ask the questions.’

Dalton gave me a grudging smile. ‘I’ll see that they’re asked. Now why don’t you tell me about last Tuesday night, the way it really happened.’

‘My stepdaughter Lucy tells me she’s been seeing Buddy Elder the past month or so without our knowledge.’ Kip Dalton’s eyes brightened momentarily.

‘Tuesday night, according to her, she was on the telephone with Buddy from sometime after ten o’clock until midnight. At that point she left the house and was with him until about three o’clock in the morning.’

Dalton seemed to expect me to adjust my story.

When I made no attempt to do so he seemed confused.

‘You still believe the call at Denny’s came from Buddy Elder?’

‘No belief to it, Detective. I talked to Buddy.’

‘And your statements to us are substantially accurate and complete?’

‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘They were entirely accurate and complete. Except that we don’t cook at the fireplace in the kitchen, and we never have folks out to the farm dressed up in costume.’

The detective stared at me for several seconds before he smiled. ‘I thought that was stretching it.’

‘Where did I go wrong?’

He shook his head. ‘You folks didn’t strike me as the kind of people who would throw a big fancy party.’

‘YOU’RE STILL GOING TO BE a suspect if you pass?’

Molly asked.

I shrugged my shoulders. We were in the truck driving back to the farm.

‘So what’s the point?’

‘Right now Dalton is sure I’m guilty. Come four o’clock he’s going to have to admit to himself that just maybe he’s wrong.’

‘You seem pretty confident.’

‘I’ve got nothing left to lose.’

Molly smiled. ‘You think they’ve got a setting on that machine for lying used car salesmen?’

‘Everyone knows when a used car salesmen is lying, Molly. They’re just like lawyers: their lips move. That’s why Tubs was the best. Tubs never lied. The man didn’t sell cars, he sold his own uncompromising honesty, and he taught me to do the same.’

‘But you lie all the time, David!’

‘Tubs made a big deal about keeping his word and never telling a lie, but it had nothing to do with honesty. He thought it did, but in the end it was just a sales technique. I got it up to here with never telling a lie.’ I settled my fingers just below my jaw. ‘I wanted to be honest without making a big deal out of it. I mean stories are fun! You make something up and people enjoy it! But I don’t break my promises, Molly.

I don’t back away from admitting mistakes. I don’t cheat people. I’m not perfect, I don’t mean that, but when I tell a wild-ass story everyone knows it’s a story!’

‘But they don’t, David. You’re so sincere about things that people think what you’re saying is the truth. Half of Lucy’s friends think there was a mass murder at our house ten years ago.’

I smiled. ‘Only half?’

‘Randy Winston asked me if we had gotten the farm from Chrysler stock you inherited. I asked him where he heard that, and guess where he got it?’

‘Okay. I get enthusiastic. But I don’t lie to you or Lucy about the things that count. You know that.’

‘You didn’t lie about Denise Conway?’

‘I broke your heart once, Molly. I swore to you I’d never do it again, and I never have.’

‘Nothing happened?’

‘Nothing at all. The whole thing was Buddy Elder’s game, just like Johnna Masterson disappearing while he’s driving Lucy around in the middle of the night.

He decided to ruin us. The diary was the catalyst to everything, and that’s all it was.’

When Molly didn’t respond, I took my eyes off the road for a second. Her face was set and brittle. I thought she was about to tell me what a liar I was, but suddenly tears welled up in her eyes.

I pulled to the side of the road, and for a long time we just sat there holding each other.

AT THREE O’CLOCK I WAS back at the sheriff’s office. The examination took about an hour-and-a-half. We went through a number of warm-up questions in which I lied and told the truth at the examiner’s whim. By the time we got to matters relating to Buddy Elder, Johnna Masterson, and Denise Conway I was relaxed. Actually, I didn’t care. I had finally passed the only test that mattered.

When it was finished, I found Molly and Lucy waiting for me in an interview room. Lucy was impatient to know the results. Molly was different. She already knew how I had done and simply wanted to go home and get on with our lives, if that was possible. When Kip Dalton walked in about thirty minutes later, he had the look of a man who just can’t believe what he’s seen. ‘You ever take one of those things before, Professor?’

‘Are you trying to tell me I passed?’

‘You knocked it out of the ballpark.’

‘We need to talk about anything else?’

Kip glanced at Lucy but shook his head. ‘For now I’ve got what I need.’

Molly, Lucy, and I were already at the door when I stopped, as though remembering to ask something of no great importance. Tubs called it his Colombo Close, after the TV detective who always had just one more question. The pitch finished, the decisions all apparently made, he would come back at the point folks thought they were free of him. Detective Jacobs had worked it masterfully against me at the farm.

‘I’ve got a question for you,’ I said.

Kip Dalton appeared mildly curious, nothing more.

‘The sheriff’s department looked at the deaths of Walt and Barbara Beery?’

Dalton frowned slightly. ‘We did. The case is closed.

Why do you ask?’

‘You were involved in the investigation?’

‘I was lead investigator.’

‘As I understand it, Walt used a knife. Is that correct?’

Dalton didn’t react overtly, but tipped his head so slightly I might have imagined it. Yes.

‘Did you have a problem with the blood splatter?’

Splatter, I knew from various researches into murder over the years, resulted when blood initially exited a wound. Police used it to determine the position of the victim and killer. Crime scenes without splatter frequently indicated staging. If Walt Beery had stabbed Barbara in the back there ought to have been distinctive streaks and droplets of blood on his clothing from the initial wound. I was betting no such splatter existed.

Kip Dalton said nothing. Even his eyes were inscrutable. ‘You want to tell me what you’re getting at, Dr Albo?’

‘Just a question. You don’t want to answer it, that’s fine.’

‘What kind of problem are you talking about?’

‘Oh, I don’t know. Like it wasn’t there.’

‘You were a friend of Walt Beery’s, weren’t you?’ he said after a moment.

‘I got drunk with Walt more times than I care to think about. The man didn’t have a mean bone in his body, Detective. Suicide? Possible. But I’ll tell you something. He’d have gone off alone to take care of it. He wouldn’t have hurt Barbara for the world.’

‘We never want to believe the worst in the people we know, Dr Albo.’

‘Take another look at the blood splatter, Detective.

That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Mrs Beery’s blood was all over Dr Beery’s shirt.’

‘I don’t doubt it for a minute, but splatter’s something else altogether, isn’t it? You can’t fake splatter.’

Dalton was calculating my possible source, not even thinking about the splatter. ‘Where did you get your information, if you don’t mind my asking?’

‘About blood splatter?’

Kip shook his head irritably. ‘About there not being any.’

I smiled, my theory confirmed. ‘I started from the premise that Walt didn’t do it. From there, I just worked through it.’

I was fairly sure Dalton assumed I was lying to protect my source, but he didn’t accuse me of it. What he said was this: ‘The kid and his wife had a solid alibi.’

I gave the detective the look I used to deliver when it was time to sign a contract, followed by a glance toward my wayward stepdaughter. ‘Sure is a lot of that going around these days.’

THAT EVENING LUCY HELPED me in the barn because I asked her to, but she wasn’t comfortable being alone with me.

‘Everything okay?’ I asked her.

She answered without much enthusiasm. Everything was fine.

‘You sorry you made the decision you did?’

Lucy slammed the lid of the feed barrel. ‘Drop it, will you?’

‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘Just drop it!’

In the house I told Molly, ‘I’m not sure Lucy is happy with her decision.’

Molly asked me what I was talking about. I tried to describe her daughter’s mood in the barn. Molly listened distractedly, not especially worried. ‘She’s seventeen, David. Anything could be bothering her.’

‘I expect Doc and Olga had just about this same conversation eighteen years ago.’