Ring of Truth (17 page)

I pause to look back at the incongruously pink building.

What if I had to write something really bad about them? Would they let me back in again? My portrayal of Carl Chamblin and the other detectives is pretty blunt in the new book; I hope there's enough oil left on the hinges of their good will to keep the door swinging open for me.

This is Franklin's domain: the state attorney's office.

The moment he spies me, Tony Delano launches right in. “I'll tell you why
he
got convicted and
she
didn't.”

I nod, even as I'm clearing off a chair on which to sit.

Tony is short, stocky, intense as his Sicilian forebears are reputed to be. The fingers on which he ticks off his points are stubby as sausages, but better groomed. “We got
him
on five points: the baseball bat, the semen, the uncorroborated alibi, and enough motive to choke a rhinoceros. After the testimony about the life-insurance payout, he was a cooked goose.”

I nod again. Tony's right: he had a strong enough mix of direct physical evidence and circumstantial evidence to convince any jury. The murder weapon was proven to be the baseball bat. The bat belonged to the preacher and it was found in his front hallway with her blood and tissue embedded in its cracks. The semen wouldn't have been convincing—they were married— except that the medical examiner thought she may have had forced sex before she died. The alibi was a farce. It amounted to, “I was with her,” the “her” being his codefendant, whose alibi was, “I was with him.”

Satisfied that I'm agreeing with him, Tony plunges on. “Now I'll tell you why we didn't convict her.”

“All right.”

“We didn't establish any physical evidence to tie her to the scene.”

I wait for him to go on, but he just sits there looking at me until, finally, he says, “That's it.”

“I don't agree, Tony. I mean, I agree it was bad that you only had circumstantial evidence on her, but I think you still might have convinced the jury. That's the impression I got from a couple of jurors.”

He winces like a man who doesn't want to hear bad reviews of his own performance in the courtroom. “Okay.” He sighs. “Hit me.”

“You lost her at three points in the trial, Tony. The first was when Tammi demolished those three witnesses of yours, the church women who said they knew about the affair. Tammi made them look like jealous gossips. The second was Artie herself, who sat there looking like the first angel at the right hand of God. Nobody could convict that woman of anything, Tony. She looks too damned sweet and innocent. They were never going to believe that she stood in that house and watched him force sex on his wife and they sure weren't going to believe she picked up a weapon of her own—which you never produced—to help kill Susanna. You're lucky they didn't convict
you
for saying all of those
nasty things about her. And the clincher was when Tammi put on that nurse from the retirement home who told about how all the old folks adore Artie.”

“Barf.”

“You might have tried that.” I give him a sympathetic smile. “That might have convinced the judge, but I don't think Franklin DeWeese himself could have brought in a conviction on Artemis McGregor. And where
is
your boss this morning?”

“He might drop by.”

“So what's the information you have for me that you couldn't bring out at trial?”

“Those church women.” Tony's looking serious now. “The ones that Tammi turned into petty, gossipy bitches?”

“Yes?”

“Marie, they're not.”

“That's
your new information?”

“Listen, okay? Think about the implications of what I'm saying, what they said, the telephone conversation they overheard. They really did hear it, I'm totally convinced of that, and I'm not exactly naïve, Marie. Maybe this sounds stupid to you, for me to say this, but they are not goody-goody hypocritical white-glove church ladies. They're kind, intelligent women, and their only sin was accidentally overhearing a damning telephone conversation between a husband and a wife, and then making the awful connection between it and her death, and then having the guts to go up against their beloved minister and the whole congregation who idolize him and say so. Marie, those women have been pariahs ever since it became known that they took their evidence to the cops. You saw how Tammi treated them in court, like they were dead fish and she was dangling them by their tailfins. They were crucified on the witness stand, and I feel damned bad that I couldn't protect them once Tammi got rolling.”

He pauses, takes a breath, which he blows out like he's winded.

“But this isn't even about how lousy this is for them and their families, Marie. This is about what it means if they really did hear what they said they heard. Now, you tell me—what would that mean?”

“That Bob and Artie really were having an affair.”

“Yes. What else?”

“That she's probably guilty.”

“Yes, at the very least of being a coconspirator or an accessory. And, therefore, a guilty woman—”

“Got off. To which I still say: Sorry, Tony, you lose. You're the lawyer, you tell me—isn't that how our judicial system works?”

“Or doesn't,” he says, looking glum.

“Right. Or doesn't.”

“So that alone,” he says with a challenging air, “doesn't inspire you to correct in print the egregious wrong that has been done to those nice women, those good citizens? You don't even want to raise the possibility in your book that they did overhear what they said they did? And at least let your readers draw their own conclusions. Or, are you going to be satisfied with portraying them in the way the defense manipulated them to appear?”

I give him a look as if to say, “Well, when you put it that way . . .”

“What if I told you where you could get your hands on new evidence?”

I smile at him a bit smugly. “If you mean the canvas bag, I've already got it.”

His eyes widen. “You do? How the hell—?”

“They brought it to me when you didn't want it. Why didn't you?”

“Too late. Besides, the chain of evidence is fatally compromised by now. But you'll mention it in your book, right?”

“I'll do better than that, Tony. I'll even put in a picture of it.”

He smiles happily at me. “All
right.”

“In fact, when I leave here, I'm taking the bag out to the mansion
to have some pictures taken of it right where Jenny found it.”

“I knew you cared about the right things.” Tony picks up a ballpoint pen and clicks it a couple of times. “Would you go to a movie with me sometime?”

I blink in surprise. Where'd
this
come from? The universe seems to have heard about my desire to go to a movie with a grown man, but it has gotten the fulfillment of it a little confused. Usually, I can see these things coming, but Tony has blindsided me here. I'm suspicious. Is this a test? To see if I'll confirm some gossip?

“Why do you want to take me out, Tony?”

It's his turn to blink, then to smile. “That's a new one. I've heard ‘No’ in all its permutations, but I don't believe I've ever had a woman actually question my motives.” He makes a show of thinking it over. “I want to take you out because you're shorter than I am.”

“I'm not, actually.”

“Close enough.”

“I suppose I've been asked out for worse reasons. I can't, Tony.” I decide to tell part of the truth and see if he reacts to it. “I'm busy getting my heart broken by another man. Believe me, going out with you would be a lot more fun, but what can I do? I have an opportunity to be really miserable, and I'm determined to take it, by God.”

He's shaking his head in amused sympathy.

I can see nothing in his face that shouldn't be there.

“Tell me who he is, Marie. I'll have him arrested for something. What charge would you like? Felonious mischief? Leaving the scene of a romance?”

That makes me laugh, though I still wonder what he knows.

“We could probably keep him in jail until he comes to his senses.”

“Thanks, but he's already arrested, Tony.”

Tony doesn't miss much, including my little pun. “Arrested
development? I hear it's epidemic among American men. Not me, Marie. I may not look it, but I promise you I'm a grown-up. My heart is mature.” He places his right hand over his chest dramatically, making me smile again. Suddenly he takes his pen and scribbles on a slip of paper, which he then hands to me. “Here. If you ever need cheering up, use this coupon that's good for one night out with a man who guarantees that he will appreciate you.”

“What a deal.” I take it, smiling, and make a show of putting it in a safe place in my purse. “Thank you. You are an honorable but devious man, Tony.”

“Kinder words could never be said to a lawyer. Who's going to play me in the movie?”

“Who do you want?”

“Well, I'm pretty much the spitting image of Russell Crowe.” I throw him a kiss as I leave. “I'll see what I can do, Russ.”

The gate to the property that Artemis still owns is padlocked. The
NO TRESPASSING
signs are more numerous than ever. If Tammi does call her and tell her what I'm doing, and she objects to my being here, there's no way to tell me now. And if locks, signs, and a fence couldn't keep out two ten-year-olds, it certainly can't keep out Bennie, George, and me. One of them is playing professional photographer, the other is playing photographer's assistant, and I'm carrying the bag. Like the girls, we have to leave our vehicles outside and then clamber over, equipment and all. Together we walk up the overgrown driveway, playing our roles, talking of the weather, the trees, our fears of crawly things. Then, cautiously, we climb to the tower, stand in the windows and admire the views, then set up our pictures, which I may in fact use, and take them. George, our “photographer,” gets carried away and starts snapping pictures right and left, trying for “artistic” shots, until Bennie and I pull him away.

The bag stays behind in the cabinet in the tower.

No way was I coming in here alone, not even in daylight. And
when we come back tonight, from a hidden side path, without any baggage, my ex-military bodyguards will flank me all the way.

But first I have an appointment I have to keep at home.

Bennie drives me back so that he can relieve his substitute at our own gate. George, meanwhile, glides into the shadows, to watch the property until we join him later.

I doubt the fish will jump until dark, if she rises to the bait at all.

Susanna
10

“You must hear about hundreds of murder cases every year,” the young reporter exclaims. Her startling light-blue eyes are open wide and staring at me as if she thinks I'm the ninth wonder of the world; she's way more impressed with me than is good for my ego. Her name is Deborah Dancer, and she's a feature writer for our local daily newspaper, the Bahia Beach
Sun-Journal.
She's here to interview me and to apply for a job as my part-time research assistant. God knows, I need somebody around every now and then; I'm spending far too much time talking to myself. Deb, as she tells me she likes to be called, is several inches taller than I am, skinny as a lamppost, with an energy so intense she looks as if somebody threw a switch and lighted her from the inside out. Her shoulder-length hair looks electrified, too; she's got it dyed a pale blond that doesn't flatter her complexion. Young is how she looks; untested; eager as a lamb and twice as bouncy. She's wearing clunky high-heeled shoes and a red-and-white striped sundress. It appears she is too young to have developed any taste; is she old enough to have any sense?

She's perched on the edge of a cushioned porch chair at my patio table overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. I've just served us iced tea and sandwiches, and now I'm sitting back across from her in a matching chair, brushing crumbs of whole
wheat bread from my lap onto the ground for the palmetto bugs to clean up. (There's a flip side to Florida, and it's disgusting, huge, and brown, and it flies.) There is something so fresh and ingenuous about her that I feel like Lillian Hellman, by comparison; any second now I'm going to whip out a cigarette and gripe about Dashiel Hammett.

“With so many cases,” she continues enthusiastically, her ballpoint pen poised over a notebook, “how do you ever choose which ones to write about, Ms. Lightfoot?” She's only six months out of journalism school, I have learned, but I have noted a more mature desire in her face as she looks around my property, a look of, “Some day, this will be me.” I doubt that; so far, she hasn't asked me anything interesting. I know what I would ask me, and it isn't these predictable, safe questions about my work. I'd ask, “Why don't you ever talk about your personal life, Ms. Lightfoot? Is that your real name? I've heard it isn't, I've heard you changed it, is that true? Why can't I find out anything about your family in any of the interviews you've given, or any place on the Internet? Is there something you don't want the world to know? Are you hiding your own secrets, while you investigate everybody else's?”

I smile, quite happy to avoid that line of interrogation, and I try to give her what she thinks she wants. To be fair, I've got to admit those aren't the questions most people would ask on an employment interview. But then, this isn't just any job. I need somebody sharp enough to catch my mistakes, and bold enough to point them out to me.

“When I pick a murder case, I look for certain qualities,” I tell her, choosing that last word with care. The bald truth is that I have certain cold-blooded criteria, but phrasing it that way wouldn't look tactful in print in her newspaper. “I want a killer who is unique in some way. I want a sympathetic victim, heroic police work, and an unusual or glamorous setting, like here, where it's beautiful and glittery.”

She is scribbling, so I slow down.

“I look for murder cases that have at least one shocking twist to them, although I'd prefer two or three.”

I pause, to let her ask the question.

“What kind of twist?”

“Oh, like a prison escape.” You'd think we were trading recipes, so congenial is our conversation. “Or a surprise witness who alters the outcome of the trial, or a hidden motive that makes everybody gasp when they hear it.”