by Debbie Burke
Tawny blinked in relief.
Edward stepped forward. “Mrs. Lindholm, do you need anything?”
She shook her head. “Everything’s OK.”
He started to turn away.
“Edward?”
He faced her.
“Thank you for watching out for me. I didn’t know you were there but I’m glad you were.”
He smiled. “My pleasure, ma’am.”
Chapter 25 – A Father’s Love
Thirty minutes later, Tawny sat beside Eve Landes in a glass-enclosed conference room with a flat screen TV mounted on one wall. Bettencourt stood across the table from them, looking over the shoulder of an IT tech who was tapping on a laptop.
While they waited, two uniformed deputies passed in the hallway outside, escorting a prisoner with hands cuffed behind him. Frank Grand.
Tawny sucked in a breath.
Grand’s head hung down and his shuffling steps dragged. He raised his face and noticed Tawny through the glass.
For a frozen second, they stared at each other.
She couldn’t imagine his thoughts except that he probably suspected she’d set him up, although she hadn’t. At least, not knowingly.
Sympathy flickered for him. He was a criminal yet he was also another of Steve Zepruder’s victims, manipulated by the greedy lawyer. Grand had believed Steve, as Tawny had. He’d lost his husband as a result and now faced a long prison term.
The deputies moved him around a corner, out of sight.
The tech said, “OK, this is it.”
Eerie green video began to play on the wall monitor, as if seen through night vision goggles. Tawny squinted for a moment before she made out the contours of the ravine between the Spanish house and Tillman’s. The view zoomed in on the child’s playhouse where Mimi had attempted suicide.
The shot widened, panning to pick up a figure who came out of the playhouse, limping. Next, a cone of light beamed from the door and swept the yard. A second smaller figure appeared, evidently holding the flashlight. Because of the trees, neither could be identified.
The limping figure started down the switchback trail, disappearing then reappearing as the trail zigzagged through boulders and scrub brush. The flashlight beam bounced as the smaller figure ran ahead and blocked the path.
The body language of the ghostly greenish shapes indicated an argument. The limping one tried to move away but the small figure kept pursuing.
Tawny guessed the limping one had to be Steve Zepruder, whose knees were injured in the leap off the staircase to avoid being hit by the bronze statue. The smaller one appeared to be a woman with long full hair. Rochelle?
They moved down the steep trail in fits and starts, the silent argument continuing.
Tawny recalled one particularly treacherous area where the sandstone cliffs became nearly vertical at the same point where the path narrowed to almost nothing. When the two figures reached that spot, they stopped, arms raised. The flashlight beam jumped in wild gestures. The argument escalated.
They wrestled, stumbled. The flashlight moved in a sudden arc, striking Steve in the head. He tipped over the side of the cliff.
The video lost the shot for a few seconds, making jerky adjustments to follow Steve’s crashing fall down the Rimrocks. He tumbled and bounced off boulders, arms flailing, desperately clawing for purchase.
Then he disappeared, swallowed in a black crevasse.
The room was deathly still. No one breathed.
The camera panned back and forth, trying to locate its target again. After long seconds, it swept up the side of the cliff to zero in on the flashlight now lying on the ground. The woman stood unmoving on the path.
At last, the camera zoomed in, closer and closer, to reveal the green-tinted face frozen in open-mouthed shock.
Mimi.
Tawny gasped in horror. She turned to Eve. The judge’s features looked harder than the rocks that Steve Zepruder’s body had smashed into.
****
Tawny and Eve sat across from each other at a table in TEN and sipped brandies. The alcohol burned down Tawny’s throat into her chest. Her stomach would later regret the drink but, for now, she welcomed the fire inside.
“You knew all along, didn’t you?” Tawny said.
Eve swallowed more brandy, face still impassive and unreadable. “What I’m going to tell you is strictly confidential. Tillman gave me permission only with great reluctance. Between you and me, attorneys make terrible clients.” She folded her hands and leaned close. “That night, he got up to check on Mimi but she wasn’t in her bedroom. He went looking for her. Outside in the back yard, he spotted a glow down the trail—the flashlight. He found Mimi standing on the edge of the cliff, where we saw her in the video.
“She was shaking violently and repeating Steve’s name over and over. Tillman took her in the house, tried to find out what happened but she wouldn’t tell him. He put her to bed then went back outside and searched the property. He spotted Steve’s Jaguar parked behind some shrubbery at a neighbor’s house but couldn’t find him.”
Tawny asked, “Did he know Steve was dead?”
“He suspected it. After about an hour, he gave up and tried to question Mimi again but she still refused to talk. When he found the body the next day, he pieced together what he believed had happened.”
Tawny recalled how strange Tillman had seemed when he returned to the bedroom that night, how he’d made love to her in the shower with frightening intensity. But he’d walled himself in, not sharing with her his fear that his daughter had killed Steve.
She brushed a napkin across her stinging eyes.
Eve finished her brandy and motioned for another round. “Before the detectives arrived, Tillman told Mimi what he was going to do and made her promise to never say a word.”
Tawny thought back about Mimi’s stubborn refusal to speak to anyone—her parents, the psychiatrists, the counselors at suicide camp. She’d finally opened up to Tawny about her pregnancy then shut down again after Steve’s death.
“The flashlight?” Tawny asked.
Eve nodded. “Tillman picked it up. In the dark, he didn’t see the blood on it but he wiped off Mimi’s prints. He used it to search the property then set it on a shelf inside the house. The detectives found it—with Steve’s blood and only Tillman’s prints. Rochelle also told detectives he’d sworn to kill Steve.” The judge shrugged. “Just an angry outburst but she latched onto it. She probably really did believe he’d killed Steve.”
New drinks arrived. While Eve took a long swallow, Tawny stared into her snifter but Tillman’s face filled her mind’s eye.
Eve went on: “He’s the smartest attorney I’ve ever met but also the most stubborn. I tried to talk him out of it. The evidence against him was only circumstantial. Why sacrifice himself? As a juvenile, Mimi is unlikely to go to prison. He knows that.” She shook her head. “None of that mattered to him. It was as if a switch flipped inside him. His logic and rationality turned off. Only his determination remained. He wouldn’t budge. He wasn’t going to let her be arrested or go on trial.”
“Even if it meant he went to prison himself,” Tawny murmured. She couldn’t swallow the lump in her throat.
A father’s love.
Eve added, “I’ve known the man for years but never knew him.”
Tawny leaned back in the booth. Although Tillman had opened parts of himself to her, she, too, felt she didn’t know him. “Would Mimi really have let Tillman take the fall for her?”
“I don’t know. But he is one determined father. The legendary criminal attorney Tillman Rosenbaum would have intentionally gone down in flames to save his daughter.”
They drank in silence. The greenish images of the struggle and Steve’s fall replayed in Tawny’s mind.
Eve clasped her wrist. “Tawny, you know this video changes everything. Tillman is not going to be happy. You destroyed his whole plan to protect Mimi.”
Brandy rose in Tawny’s throat. S
he fought to keep the burning sickness down. “I know.”
“However, after seeing it,” Eve went on, “I have high confidence we can get Mimi off because of her age, the recent suicide attempt, and diminished mental capacity. We’ll argue there was no intent, it was an accident, maybe even self-defense. She’ll probably get probation and treatment. Even so, the process will still be grueling. In her unstable condition, Tillman wanted to spare her anything like that.”
Tawny stared at the ceiling. If she hadn’t pursued her dogged quest, Tillman would have gone to prison. But, because she refused to give up, now his daughter would suffer the repercussions instead. She felt as if she were drowning in a bottomless, gray sea between truth and lie, guilt and innocence. “Eve, please tell me, did I do the right thing?”
“I don’t know.” The judge squeezed her wrist. “But, Tawny, understand this—sometimes there is no right thing.”
Tawny’s phone chimed with an incoming text. She put on her glasses and read a message from Rabbi Weintraub: Mimi in ER. Miscarriage. Rochelle and I are with her. Tawny gasped.
“What is it?” Eve asked.
“Mimi miscarried.”
Eve’s already-taut mouth tightened even more.
Tears that Tawny could no longer hold back seeped from her eyes.
Did the overdose of Valium cause it? Or maybe the beating at Rochelle’s hands? Or guilt for causing Steve’s death?
Whether or not Mimi wanted the baby, the trauma would still leave her wounded.
Eve handed Tawny a napkin. “She’s barely sixteen and already she’s endured the two greatest losses a woman can experience—the death of the man she believed was the love of her life and the death of her child.”
Tawny blew her nose. “I’d go to the hospital but I don’t dare, not with Rochelle there.”
“Mimi trusts you a helluva lot more than her mother but…” Eve shrugged. “Better you stay clear, at least for now.” She finished her drink, signed the charge, and rose. “The paperwork will be processed in the morning to release Tillman.”
“I’ll pick him up.”
Eve’s lips pressed together. “Are you sure?”
“I have to.”
The judge gazed at her for a long, silent moment. “Prepare yourself.” Then she left the bar.
Chapter 26 – So What Else Is New?
At noon the next day, Tawny parked the Mercedes in front of the court building and peered through the tinted glass of the lobby where reporters, lawyers, and cops milled. For the next half hour, she paced the sidewalk, while conflicting emotions battled inside her. She felt pride that she’d proved Tillman innocent and saved him from prison but also dread for his reaction.
At last, she glimpsed him inside. He wore the same clothes he’d been arrested in—the black silk funeral suit, dusty and wrinkled. Stubble darkened his face. He spoke a few words to a man in uniform, maybe a jailer, and they shook hands. Then he ignored several reporters who approached him as he elbowed his way through the exit.
Jail had left him badly needing a shower and shave. New lines of strain scored his cheeks. His eyes were sunken in dark circles.
But he was free.
Tawny reached up to hug his neck.
His dead, cold stare stopped her. He didn’t speak but walked around the Mercedes and climbed in the driver’s side.
The key fob turned to ice in her hand. She got in the passenger side and offered it to him. He took it, careful not to touch her.
They drove in nerve-wracking silence to Deaconess Hospital where he parked, got out, and came around to her side. When she opened her door, he thrust the fob at her. “Take the Mercedes and go back to Kalispell.”
“Don’t you want me to help? With Mimi’s defense?”
“Thanks to your help, she’s likely to be arrested as soon as she’s out of the hospital.” He started toward the entrance.
She followed him. “Tillman?”
He stopped. “Take the Mercedes and go. It’s your company car now.”
“I don’t want your Mercedes.”
Exasperation huffed in a loud sigh. “If you don’t take the goddamn car, you’ll have to figure out some other way to get home to Kalispell. Just go. I need to take care of my daughter.”
His expression went beyond his usual harsh demeanor. Way beyond. She stammered, “I-I didn’t mean to…” She reached for his hand but when she touched it, his glare scalded her.
The deep rumble of his voice sounded like it came from a tomb. “You fucked me up. Goddammit, why didn’t you let it drop?”
She gasped for breath. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His slow, hard, cold words spooled out: “Because I didn’t want you to know. Because you’d start meddling with your Pollyanna, truth, justice, and the American way bullshit. Your goddamn good intentions destroyed my little girl’s life. I can’t forgive you for that.”
Her knees wobbled. She had saved him and he hated her for it.
He exhaled. “Go home. Both my partners are dead but I’m still practicing, at least for now unless the State Bar decides to go after me. There will still be work for you. I’ll call when there’s another assignment.”
How long ago it seemed when they’d first skirted around their attraction, the teeter-totter between good sense and the unstoppable bond growing between them. When she’d voiced worry about losing her job if their relationship didn’t work out, he’d promised he would never do that to her.
She could not have imagined these circumstances.
But Tillman meant to keep his promise.
Her voice barely rose above a whisper. “That’s how it is?”
“That’s how it is.” He strode toward the hospital entrance.
Tawny watched him, hugging herself, praying he’d turn around. But he didn’t. He went through the front door without looking back.
****
A half hour later, Tawny checked out of the Northern and left Billings, driving across the prairie into a rolling wall of thunderheads as dark and turbulent as her heart. For the next three hours, wind buffeted the tall, boxy SUV as she wrestled the steering wheel to stay in her lane. The high-speed wipers couldn’t keep up with the noisy rain hammering the glass.
The cloudburst kept her focused on driving. She resolved to go to Yellowstone, even without Tillman. By late afternoon, the rain slowed to a drizzle as she turned south toward Gardiner.
She held herself together until she reached the Roosevelt Arch. There, she parked the Mercedes and finally gave in to her grief for everything that would never happen. For Mimi’s road to hell that Tawny had paved with her good intentions of freeing Tillman.
She hadn’t killed Zepruder. Mimi had. But that didn’t matter to Tillman—he blamed Tawny. His unfairness angered her but, more than that, it hurt her. Didn’t he understand she was trying to help him?
What would happen to Mimi? A psych facility might treat her depression but incarceration could worsen it. She was smart and determined. If she tried to kill herself again, she would succeed.
The lonely bleakness of Tillman’s family broke Tawny’s heart. No matter how deep his love for his children, it didn’t seem to be enough to overcome their problems. Tawny had glimpsed tiny lights of hope with Arielle and Judah. Could they rise above their toxic mother? Would they ever recognize the goodness in the father they resented?
She wept for his children, the children she had tried to avoid but who were now bound as tightly to her as her own.
She wept for Tillman and the bitter loss of his love.
A tapping on the driver’s window startled Tawny. A female ranger stood beside the SUV, her skin leathery from sun and wind. Concern showed in her pale blue eyes. Tawny lowered the window.
“You OK?” the ranger asked.
Tawny wiped her nose with a tissue. “Yes. Am I parked illegally?”
The ranger shook her head. “No, stay here as long as you need. It’s better not to drive when you’re upset.”
Tawny nod
ded. “Thanks.” She glanced at the rustic stone arch as dusk settled over the landscape. “Is it too late to go into the park tonight? I have an annual pass.”
“You’re fine.” The ranger cocked her head to one side and studied Tawny. “In a place as magnificent as this, you’ll discover there isn’t a man on the planet that’s worth bawling over for two hours.”
Had she been there that long? “You’re probably right.”
Except Tillman was worth it. A man who loved his daughter so much he’d take a prison term for her.
****
Tawny spent the night at the Mammoth Hotel inside Yellowstone Park. Dawn light woke her from fitful sleep that had barely dented her exhaustion. Heavy with sorrow, she packed her duffel, checked out, and headed toward the parking lot, dreading the long drive still ahead of her, home to Kalispell.
Misty fog dampened her face and penetrated her light jacket. She couldn’t wait to turn on the seat warmer in the Mercedes.
A tall, broad-shouldered, lanky figure leaned against the front of the SUV. Mimi’s red pickup was parked beside it.
Tawny jerked to a halt. The aching knot in her chest tightened.
Tillman wore a fleece-lined suede coat, hands thrust deep in the pockets. He watched her as she struggled to keep her expression blank. A flush started up her neck, giving away her feelings.
She forced herself to approach. “How did you know where to find me?”
He shrugged. “You don’t think I’d drop a hundred and twenty grand on a rig without location tracking.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” She clutched the duffel with both hands, pulling it to her chest like a shield. “Do you want your Mercedes back?”
“No.” He pushed off from the fender. “Want to grab some breakfast?”
Sit across a table while he stared at her? No way. Too much chance she’d break down crying. “Let’s walk instead.”