by Diane Capri
I leaned my side against the left door jamb and propped my right arm against the right jamb, effectively blocking her exit.
“I’ve discovered that your husband and your father were having an affair. I know who killed Andy.”
I watched her closely.
She was controlled. She hesitated, maybe trying to decide how to handle it. That she was deciding told me more than any instant reaction would have.
Robbie knew about the affair. And she’d known for some time. The information was no surprise to her, which made me wonder who she’d told about it. Even though Robbie was the keeper of other people’s secrets, I thought she wouldn’t have kept this secret of her own.
Secrets were something I now knew more than I wanted to know about. I had my own secrets, which I guarded carefully. But they were the tame variety. The kind a woman in public life has to be vigilant about. Over the past few days I’d learned that most people have secrets of one kind or another. And the lengths to which they’ll go to protect them were farther than one might think.
“That’s preposterous. If you’re through slandering my husband and my father, you can leave now. You’ll hear from our lawyer.” Robbie came toward me and I think she really expected me to let her through the door.
I braced my right arm hard against the doorjamb and she stopped before she ran into it. Now, she stood about eighteen inches from me.
“Is there something else? Surely you don’t want to continue with this?” She was still forceful, belligerent.
I had trouble keeping hold of the sympathy I’d felt for her last night. “Don’t you want to know who killed your father?”
I asked her softly. I didn’t need to get into a shouting match with her. Besides, if you’re quiet, sometimes they listen.
“Why would I believe you? You just lied to me and I already know you can’t be trusted. Get out.” Robbie started toward me again.
I stood up from my slouching position and filled the doorway as completely as I could. Since she couldn’t step through unless I moved, she stopped about two inches from my face.
To shake her up, I said, “I think I understand why you killed him, Robbie. He was a mean, vicious and vindictive man. He never loved you. He stole, in the end, the only thing you ever thought you had: Jack.”
As the words left my mouth, I felt the crushing weight of George’s arrest for murder and his impending indictment settle on my shoulders.
It’s simple to have principles and values when you live in a safe world, surrounded by people who love you and take care of you. Many of us never put those principles to the test. I resented Robbie and the whole damn situation for making me learn that lesson.
As I confronted Robbie, I became so filled with resentment that I actually wanted to hurt her. My entire body shook with barely suppressed rage. I wanted her to try to brush past me, to give me an excuse to hit her.
Since childhood, I’d never knowingly harmed another human being. The desire to do so now frightened me to my toes.
Robbie had turned my entire life inside out and upside down. I wanted to have compassion for her, but there was none in me.
Fortunately for both of us, Robbie didn’t try to move me by force. Instead, she just sat back down and cried, making her pathetic, the situation abominable.
And I really believed, in that moment, that a jury might have excused her if she’d done more.
My anger evaporated like dry ice.
General Andrews wasn’t just a lousy husband and a lousy father. Andy had never loved Robbie and he had taken from her everyone she ever thought had loved her: he had driven her mother to alcoholism, her brothers away from home and ultimately, he’d stolen the affections of her husband.
How much was a human supposed to withstand?
A colleague told me once that men are animals, civility just barely keeping their hostility under the surface. I’d scoffed at the time.
Life was just one big learning experience, wasn’t it?
“I didn’t kill my father, Willa.” Robbie sat down heavily in the chair across from me. “Not that I didn’t want to. I would have. I went out there that night to kill him. I even took George’s gun with me.” As I’d already guessed. “Only, I didn’t know it was George’s gun until later.”
“How did you get George’s gun?” At last, the thing I really came here to confirm.
Her answer seemed unresponsive. “I like antiques. You maybe noticed the ones I’ve collected?”
Her home was filled with furniture that even I recognized as valuable and quite old. I’m not a collector, but in the years we’ve inhabited Aunt Minnie’s house, I’ve learned a few things about antiques. I nodded.
“So, that night, I was looking at the sideboard at the restaurant. It’s got a very unusual carving on the back. I’d seen a similar one a few years ago, at an auction house, but I couldn’t afford to buy it at the time.”
I listened without interruption.
“I wanted to know who manufactured it. Sometimes, they stamp the drawers.” She looked down now, maybe, finally, a little embarrassed. “I opened the drawer and there it was.”
“The manufacturer’s stamp?”
She sighed and shook her head. “The gun. I picked it up and put it in my purse. I don’t know why I did it. I guess I just wanted to see if I could get away with it. And I did.”
Of course she did. George would never expect a guest to steal from him. No one at Minaret would have expected it.
But Robbie’s taking the gun was a piece of information I’d never have been able to prove without her admission. This last block of the case I had built finally fell into place.
I was still curious about a couple of things.
“Why had you decided to kill Andy that particular night?”
Any other time, and George would have had his usual alibi; he’d have been in the restaurant with half of Tampa to confirm his presence.
She looked up at me as if I’d finally lost my last marble. “You already know the reason. His affair with Jack. It had been going on for years. Even when we lived in Colorado. Jack only wanted to move here to be near Dad.”
“How long had you known?”
“A long time. I’d tried everything. I’d threatened Jack, argued, pleaded. I’d pled with Dad, too.”
“Made threatening phone calls?”
It was the only explanation I had for the messages Deborah Andrews had told me she heard on the answering machine. Anonymous phone calls seemed to be Robbie’s speed more than anyone else involved in this mess.
Her eyes widened, then narrowed.
“I told you to stay away from my mother,” the snarling Robbie had resurfaced. She’d changed as quickly as flipping a light switch. It was hard to feel pity for the snarly one.
“So, why that night? If you’d known about the affair for years, why kill him now?”
She sighed and her shoulders drooped. “You already know we were all arguing that night?”
I nodded.
“We fought over my threats to tell the world about Andy being gay. The family was outraged with me.” She waited a couple of beats. “Families keep a lot of secrets, Willa, for a lot of dysfunctional reasons.”
She sighed and blew out the air through her mouth. “When the limo dropped us off at home, Jack called my bluff. He told me he loved Dad. More than me. And if I told the world Andy was gay, they’d be free to be together. And he said they would.”
I made a mistake, then, I let my pity blind me to her instability. I let my guard down.
She continued, “I could live with a bisexual husband. But, the only way to keep him was to eliminate the competition.”
“What happened when you got to Andy’s house?” I asked her. I remembered the snakes and the gators in the back yard. There was no way Robbie would have followed Andrews out to that fishing boat in the dark, no matter how angry or threatened she’d felt.
“I went around to his den. He was getting ready to go fishing. I
knocked and he looked up and waved me in. I took George’s gun out of my purse and went in pointing it at him. I had every intention of killing him. I wanted him dead. I’m glad he’s dead.” She’d started to tremble now, remembering the confrontation.
Robbie’s face suffused red and tight white lines stood out on either side of her pursed lips. Her emotional state was volatile and unpredictable. My pity seemed sorely displaced now.
“But I wanted to tell him what I thought of him first. That’s where I made my mistake,” she said, defiant as any teenager.
“What did you say?”
“I told him to leave my husband alone. I told him he was a lying, despicable person and a worse father. I said everything to him I’ve ever wanted to say. Everything I’d said in therapy for years. And do you know what he did?”
She became even more enraged.
Her memory of the confrontation took on a life of its own. I suspected that she had relived this humiliating scene at least a hundred times since the night Andy died.
“What did he do?” I whispered into the void.
“He laughed. He said, ‘Put the gun on the desk and go home, Robbie.’ Just dismissed me! Went back to his fishing tackle! I wanted to shoot him. I wanted to. I really did.”
She started to cry, then. Huge, wrenching, uncontrollable sobs that shook her entire body.
“What did you do with the gun?”
I needed to know. This was perhaps the most important part of her story to George. Merely removing the gun from the sideboard and taking it to Andy’s house wasn’t enough. Someone had used it to kill.
“I put it on the desk, like he said. I left the suicide note I’d written for him there, too. I just left. I didn’t do anything to him at all.”
The mental cost of not following through on her desire to kill her father might have been more than Robbie could cope with. She might kill herself instead, I thought. I couldn’t leave her alone because I had no idea what she might do.
While I was trying to figure out what to do next, she pushed right past me. I had my guard down. I hadn’t realized that while I was feeling empathy for her, she was intent on getting away from me. I wasn’t prepared.
She pushed past me, shoving me so hard that she knocked me to the floor. My body fell awkwardly. I landed somehow on my ankle and felt a sharp pain shoot up my shin.
I rolled over in time to see her run, more quickly than I’d believed possible. I tried to jump up. When I got to my feet, pain pierced my leg and I cried out with the shock of it. By the time I righted myself, Robbie had made it down the hallway and out the front door. Belatedly, I realized what she had in mind.
I hurried out the door, limping after her, fresh pain shooting up my shin with every step. I cried out, “Stop! Robbie stop!”
The next time I saw her, she was in her car with the door locked, backing down the driveway.
I hobbled after her, pounded on the hood and shouted again for her to stop the car. Robbie turned her face to me then, and I saw tears still streaming down her large, round cheeks and mucus pouring from her red nose. She glared at me as if pure hatred could strike me down, as her car backed out into the street.
Limping quickly down the block, calling after her, I tripped on one of Tampa’s damned uneven sidewalks. I got up, still limping on my sore ankle, ignoring the bleeding scrapes on my arms that burned as if I’d scooted about fifty feet along the concrete. I pulled out my key and managed to get into Greta.
Next time I looked up, Robbie was gone. I had no idea where she went. I pounded my hand on the steering wheel and said a few very unjudicial, not to mention unladylike, words. It didn’t help me find her, or ease my burning limbs.
Guilt ridden, afraid I’d pushed her so far that she’d hurt herself, I picked up the phone and called Chief Hathaway.
Not in his office.
Why is it that you can never find a cop when you need one?
Not knowing what else to do, I left Hathaway a long voice mail, explaining that I’d had an argument with Robbie Andrews, she’d left me very upset and I was concerned that she might hurt herself. And I told him where I was going next.
I hung up feeling impotent to prevent another tragedy.
But I now knew what I needed to finish the General Andrews business, once and for all.
I dialed Olivia on my way. When she picked up, I got straight to the point. “What’s the status now?”
“One witness left, then Drake’s summation.”
“Can you stall him?”
“How long?”
I glanced at my watch. “An hour?”
My cell phone started to crackle and sputter as I drove through a dead spot in the invisible airwaves that connected us. I couldn’t hear all of what she said.
Just the one word: “Doubtful.”
CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR
Tampa, Florida
Tuesday 4:30 p.m.
February 1, 2000
I DIDN’T WANT TO catch him at home. I wanted a nice, public place and some fresh air. I’d asked Jason where I could find the senator this afternoon and, to his credit, Jason had told me. Conveniently, Senator Warwick was playing golf at Great Oaks. Alone.
The symmetry appealed to me. I’d been playing golf at Great Oaks the day I learned Andrews had died.
Now, if I handled him correctly, I might collect enough evidence to prove my theories. I’d battled wits with Warwick several times recently and I’d come out the loser. This time, I planned to change that.
I parked Greta myself and limped over to the pro shop where I picked up a driver, a five iron, and a putter. I held the clubs across my lap as I drove one of the carts toward the ninth tee.
Sheldon Warwick stood on the fairway of the ninth hole, just in the middle of his backswing on what was probably his second shot. The ninth hole was a straight par three. The idea was to keep you playing, so your last hole on the first nine should be a fairly easy one. The senator was a good enough golfer to get on the green in one from the tee. Since he hadn’t done so, he must have flubbed his drive. Something on his mind, maybe.
As he was walking back to his cart, his second shot having landed on the green where the first one should have been, I drove up to Warwick and stopped.
“Hello, Senator. Mind if I join you?”
He glanced up and noticed a foursome behind him and a pair of male golfers in front, realizing he was effectively stuck in the middle with me. “Is there any way I could stop you?” he asked.
He was a fast learner, anyway. “We could go into the clubhouse to have this conversation,” I offered.
“Not likely.”
We drove both carts, me following him, up to the ninth green. He took his putter and I limped along without a club, just to watch. After three putts he managed to sink his ball. Neither of us said anything.
We approached the tenth tee. I took out the driver I’d borrowed from the pro shop and put a ball down. I hadn’t hit a golf ball since the day of the Blue Coat. Usually, I take some warm-up shots, but I wasn’t here to impress anybody.
I swung and hit the ball a respectable 150 yards, straight. Warwick took his time and hit his ball a little further. As we walked back to the carts, I said, “I thought you’d want to know that I’ve figured out who killed General Andrews. I’m on my way to Michael Drake’s office.”
“Are you now?” he responded, as he got into his cart and headed off toward my ball, which was about twenty yards from his.
“Either that, or Frank Bennett,” I told him. So I’d offered him the choice: tell me the truth or I’ll tell the media what I know and let the public sort it all out.
Apparently Warwick was unwilling to get out in front of me on the fairway. Wise man. He sat in his cart, and after I hit the ball with the five iron, he sped off, leaving me standing there.
I caught up to him as he walked back following his second shot, pulled in between him and his cart and got out. “Here’s the time for us to talk about this and get it over with.�
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“Willa, for God’s sake. First you invite yourself to join my game. Then you get in the way. And now you want to hold up that foursome behind us, too? Where’s your professionalism?”
He stepped around my cart and got into his. As he’d done before, he sped away and stopped at my ball in the fairway. His shot had landed on the green.
I followed him.
When I got within hearing range, he said, “Hit the ball, Willa. We’ll talk at the pin where we’re not making a public spectacle of ourselves.”
I hate it when men act so condescendingly to me. Who the hell did he think he was anyway? I had a pretty good weapon in my hand and he didn’t know I wouldn’t hit him with it, knock that attitude out of him.
When we reached the green, he putted his ball in first. Then he stood by waiting for me.
He said, “It was just a matter of time before someone killed Andy. He had cheated death a hundred times and there are at least that many people who are not sorry he’s dead. Maybe Andy’s not even sorry. He was a twisted, unhappy guy.”
Takes one to know one, I thought.
“If he’d been the first one out of his limousine the last Thursday of the hearings, he’d have been shot instead of Craig Hamilton right then. What difference does it make now who killed him?”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I put my ball down in two strokes and we drove separately to the eleventh tee.
Again, Warwick arrived before me. I had beat him on the last hole, but he swaggered up and went first anyway, putting himself ahead of me, just like he’d put himself ahead of George and Deborah Andrews and Jason and everyone else.
Gripping my club tightly, I felt a little of the way Robbie Andrews had felt the night she hadn’t killed her father, but wanted to.
“It makes a difference to me, Sheldon.”
I could have gone straight to Drake or Bennett, but I didn’t have enough to nail Warwick. I needed more. I glanced at my watch. Most of the hour Olivia had estimated had already elapsed.
“Why? You know George didn’t kill him, don’t you? Drake will never be able to convict him. Let it alone. Justice has already been done.”
That much, based on everything I’d heard, was mostly true. “Not good enough. I don’t want my husband to go through a trial or risk a conviction. Things go wrong when cases are put to a jury, you know that.”