by Linda Ladd
“Everybody grieves differently,” said a third, the more understanding sort. There’s one in every group. She probably didn’t know Mary Fern personally. “Mikey wasn’t her biological son, after all, and he did bring lots of trouble down on them.”
I remembered that Happy Pete had mentioned that out at Oak Haven. Maybe that might explain her lack of emotion. Then I wondered how many of the Murphy kids were not Mary Fern’s own children or if Mikey was her only stepchild. I hoped he was. Jeez, Cinderella had a better row to hoe with her Wicked Stepmom. I forked up a piece of honey-baked ham, a spoonful of potato salad, a crispy croissant, and some black olives. Black forked up everything else. We sat down at one of the round tables covered with white linen and arranged very close together around the edges of the room. Good, all the better to eavesdrop that way.
In time, I found the family. They were all sitting together at a rectangular table set off a little from the others. The kids were there, sitting mute and red-eyed from crying, some still sniffling. Joseph sat between the governor and his wife, no longer crying but looking like he wanted to. Mary Fern sat on the other side of the governor, all white and composed. Our eyes met, and she stared at me a second, then just barely nodded her head in acknowledgment. I had a feeling I was lucky to get that much.
Black said, “Are you going to try to talk to them again?”
“Oh, yeah, count on it. Especially Mary Fern.”
“She’s handling it well, it looks like to me.”
“Too well, it looks like to me.”
“Mind if I sit in?”
“No, but I have a feeling she might mind. She has to talk to me, but you don’t count.”
Black said, “Thanks.”
A young girl dressed in a uniform of black slacks and a starched white shirt with a black bow tie swept up to us and offered us a selection of iced tea, coffee, or a goblet of white or red wine off a silver tray the size of an extra-large Pizza Hut Special. I selected coffee; Black opted for red wine. I sipped the hot brew, savoring the caffeine and craving the whole pot, maybe two, as I watched and listened while Black enjoyed the food, which he said was exceptionally prepared. I thought the ham tasted okay but a little too clove-y.
When I got a chance, I motioned over one of the big Highway Patrol security officers standing around and trying to look unobtrusive. He was six foot, graying at the temples, and appeared like he could handle himself just fine. Probably a longtimer who’d earned the plumb governor’s detail and got to hang around this very comfortable house all day every day. I presented him my badge, explained my deal, and asked him to approach Mary Fern and ask her if she’d be willing to talk to me for a few minutes before I left. He said he would be delighted to be of service. I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not, but he did smile, so I guess he wasn’t.
Watching the officer move toward her, I expected her to get angry or freeze up in an even harder glaze than usual. Surprisingly, she listened to him, looked across the room, and nodded in the affirmative. She spoke softly to the guy and when he came back to our table, he said, “She said she’ll talk to you, but alone, just the two of you, up in the ballroom after the children are finished eating. But she told me to tell you that her husband is just not up to another interview, not yet.”
“Okay. Sounds good. Where exactly is the ballroom?”
“Third floor. She said she’ll seek you out when she’s ready and show you upstairs.”
Well, now, Mary Fern was awfully familiar with the governor’s mansion. “Thank you very much.”
The man nodded and moved away.
Black said, “Well, at least, she’s being cooperative.”
“Or pretending to be.”
“You suspect she’s got something to do with this?”
“I’m not saying she put the noose around Mikey’s neck, but she’s the type who could’ve driven him to do it.”
Black glanced over at Mom again, new interest in his eyes, like she was a rare, homicidal butterfly he’d caught in a net and was looking at through a magnifying glass. I wonder if she sensed there was a huge, magnified blue eye looking down on her. He had gazed at me like that now and again, like I was his newest head case, especially when we first met, sometimes he still did, like last night in the garage and this morning over coffee.
“Looks like you’re outta the picture again, Black, just like at Khur-Vay’s place. The lady wants to deal with me, up close and personal and one-on-one. Probably doesn’t want witnesses when she cusses me out.”
“You are wearing your weapons, right?”
“Yep. All of them. I’ll be safe. I’m bigger than she is, anyway.”
Black smiled at that but then a good-looking young thing with flat-ironed, ultra-straight red hair who happened to be sitting at the table on his other side touched his sleeve. “Pardon me, but aren’t you Nick Black, the psychiatrist who’s on Larry King so often?”
Black nodded in the affirmative but looked a bit wary. “Yes, I am. Have we met?”
“No, but I can say I really enjoy listening to you on television.” She tossed that fiery mane and her big brown eyes added, At which time I stripped you down to the buff and played out all my secret sexual fantasies with you. You see, I’m observant that way.
I stopped listening to their conversation, getting used to women admiring Black’s sex appeal, I guess. Just so she didn’t touch him, I’d be cool. They were now chatting about her weird uncle Sammy, who was bipolar and threw boiled peanuts at her cat, so the conversation wasn’t exactly one so titillating that I had to hang on every syllable. I leaned back in my chair and observed in my keen-eyed, policewoman way. Mikey’s brothers and sisters were talking some now but they all looked white and haggard and like they were living in a horror movie. I needed to talk to them, too, maybe the two oldest ones, but I doubt if Mamma Mia would agree to that. Unless they weren’t her biological kids like Mikey, then she probably wouldn’t care if I traumatized them or if they hung themselves under a bridge.
My observational endeavors ended after about eleven minutes, to be exact, because I started watching the big antique clock swing its pendulum at 3:30 P.M. Not that I’m a clock-watcher but at precisely 3:41 P.M., Mary Fern Murphy approached me in a rustle of white linen. Leaning down close, she gave me a dose of Red Door perfume and said, “Are you ready, Detective Morgan? Vi’s given us permission to retire to the ballroom.”
“Okay,” I said, the easy-to-please detective but nowhere close to retiring.
TWENTY
The ballroom was on the third floor and Mary Fern didn’t even look for the elevator but took the stairs, three long flights of them, to be exact, and at a clip that was impressive, if not ridiculous. Mary Fern obviously wanted to get this done and rid herself of the pesky police person dogging her. She was in pretty good physical shape, too, probably had a personal trainer and everything, but hey, I wasn’t breathing hard, either. We didn’t say a single word on the way to the top, didn’t smile warmly at each other, didn’t hold hands or kiss cheeks or share ditties, either.
When she led me into the ballroom, I was mightily impressed. It was vast and massive with another set of pricey antique furniture. She walked over to a table and some chairs and sat down. Wondering if that was allowed in this museum, I sat down two chairs away from her, not that I didn’t like her, or anything, but sitting that close to ice might give me a brain freeze.
Mary Fern said, “Now, in here where it’s quiet, we will have some privacy.”
“Yes, it does looks that way,” said I.
“I know you don’t like me, I can tell.” Gazing at me, she dared me to reject that naughty notion.
“Not at all.” I realized she could take that a couple of ways, and I did mean it the worse way, so there you go.
“I know you don’t like me.”
Hey, didn’t she just say that? “My personal assessment of you, Mrs. Murphy, isn’t the issue here. I want to find out who killed your son and why, because I’m not co
nvinced he was alone under that bridge.”
“Stepson,” she corrected quickly.
Now she tells me. And alas, she had no comment on my theory that Mikey was murdered. “Yes, I am aware that Mikey was not your biological son.”
Mary Fern looked down at her hands. Her fingers were long with nails painted a pearly pale pink, manicured to perfection. I wondered if they were real or applied by an expert manicurist. I’d bet on the latter. She wore a large black-faced watch with a black leather wristband. She had on a big diamond wedding set that sparkled under the chandelier like all get-out but no other jewelry, not even earrings. Her ears weren’t pierced, either. Her hair looked great, lots of layers, all precision cut, every single hair in place and highlighted beautifully.
“I gave him every opportunity, I really did, Detective.”
“What do you mean by opportunity?”
“To be a member of our family. To fit in with the other children.”
“I see.” I got out my pad and pen, set them on the table, which always gave me a second or two to think of ways to harpoon her. “And he couldn’t do that to your satisfaction, I take it?”
“He was a strange boy, haunted by things, I guess, just a very different and disturbing kind of individual.”
“Disturbing in what way?”
“He did things. You know, hurt people on purpose, was generally a bad influence on my own children.”
“How many of them are yours?”
“The three youngest are mine. The other three are Joseph’s with his first wife. Plus Mikey.”
Poor Mikey, even now an afterthought.
“Do any of your other stepchildren disappoint you?”
“No. None of them display Mikey’s rude behavior.”
“You said he was a bad influence? How is that?”
“He was a terrible role model in every conceivable fashion. He hurt them.”
“By that, do you mean physically?”
“Sometimes, but he always blamed it on accidents. I hate myself for saying these things about Mikey, now that he’s gone, but I can’t help it. You want the truth, and I want to give it to you. I couldn’t stand him, detective, I really couldn’t. Before when you and Detective Davis were questioning me, I couldn’t tell you the absolute truth, not with my husband sitting right there listening to my every word. He loved that boy, did everything he could to make him grow up and act responsibly. But nothing he did helped, nothing.”
I watched her face. Now it was actually emoting. That was progress. “Were the two of you, Mikey and you, openly antagonistic?”
“Sometimes, it just couldn’t be helped. He was a constant irritation in my life, from the moment I married Joseph. He was like a thorn under my skin that I couldn’t work to the surface and dispose of.”
Nice way to describe a child. Mary Fern wasn’t gonna get Mother of the Year with this kid, uh uh. “Did Mikey ever get into serious trouble?”
Mary Fern presented me with a look that could only be described as wry and patronizing. “Not that his father couldn’t get him out of.”
“And you’re talking about…?”
“Well, one time he stole some money out of my friend’s house when we were there for a dinner party. Georgia’s husband caught him up in the master bedroom, going through their bureau drawers.”
“And the police weren’t called?”
“No, Joseph handled it. Smoothed it over and blamed it on Mikey’s breakup with his girlfriend. That’s when we finally made him go to Oak Haven.”
“And he improved at Oak Haven?”
“Yes, or I guess he did. Everyone thought so, or they wouldn’t have let him out, I suppose. I never believed it, not for a single second. Not since he tried to drown our baby kitten once in the swimming pool. I was shocked and appalled and never trusted him again.”
“You saw him drowning a cat?”
“Well, I didn’t really see it, but I saw him hanging around the pool just before the other kids found the kitten struggling in the deep end.”
“So you didn’t actually see Mikey do it?”
Omigosh, such offense rising in her patrician face, such disbelief that I had questioned her veracity. She also huffed. “No, but I know he did it.”
“Okay.”
“I hope you believe me. Nobody else ever seems to.”
I decided to change tacks. “Okay, Mrs. Murphy. Let me ask you this. Do you believe your stepson committed suicide? As I said, I’m not sure he died at his own hand. I think maybe he was driven to it, maybe even helped along the way.”
Her answer was immediate, her expression unswerving. “No, I don’t, and I never have. I think somebody killed him for something terrible he’d done to them. Probably one of the drug dealers he hung around with.”
“Can you give me their names?”
“No. They all went by street names.”
“Do you remember any of their street names?”
“No. But when I realized he was dealing and having these low-life bottom-feeders come to our house, to my house where my other children lived, that’s when I asked him to get out and find someplace else to do his dirty business. I will not have drugs exchanged on my property in front of my own children. And for once, Joseph agreed.”
“Others have reported that he seemed to do better after he opened his pizza place.”
“Yes, better, but I don’t know how much better. Like I said, and I’m sorry to say it, I really am, but I never trusted him.”
“What about his girlfriends? Would any of them have a motive to kill him?”
“I don’t know. I refused to meet them, so he never brought them around after he left.”
“And you never met a girl named Li He?”
“No, never.”
I wrote some of this down, thought about it, realized I wasn’t getting much out of her except vitriol venting about the young boy she loathed in a gargantuan manner. “Is there anything else you’d like me to know? Anything you don’t want to say in front of your husband or children?”
“I just want you to know that Mikey wasn’t normal. Something wasn’t firing right inside his head. He was depressed a lot and had these bursts of anger sometimes that really frightened me. And once, the worst thing—”
She stopped, and for the first time looked more than a little hesitant. I watched her face, saw the conflicting emotions flicker inside her eyes like forked lightning in the night sky. It took a long time for her to decide if she was going to tell me, but she finally blurted it out, voice low, eyes downcast.
“There was one time, just after he turned eighteen. Joseph was on the campaign trail with Ed. It was really late, well after midnight, when Mikey dragged in. All the other children were sleeping.”
I waited some more. This was coming out hard. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear it, either, but she went on, and I had no choice.
“He came up to the bedroom and told me he wanted to say good night but he wanted more than that. He’d been drinking heavily. He reeked of alcohol and some kind of drug he’d been smoking.”
I cringed, pretty sure now I knew what was coming. I was right.
“He came on to me, sexually, I mean, and when I refused, he pushed me onto the bed and got on top of me and held me down. He said he loved me, was in love with me, all kinds of awful things like that. He tried to kiss me and rip off my robe, but I slapped him in the face, and he slapped me back, hard. I’d never been slapped in my life, Detective. I panicked then and managed to fight loose and lock myself in the bathroom. I was terrified.”
For good reason. Now, finally, I had a good reason for her hatred of her stepson. Providing her story was true, and there was no other witness to the alleged attack except for Mikey Murphy, and he was dead and buried. “Did you call the authorities, Mrs. Murphy?”
“No, I heard him get in his car and squeal the tires all the way down the driveway.”
“What about your husband?”
“I told him about it, but h
e said the boy was just drunk. That he’d talk to him.”
Well, that was big of him. “And did he?”
“Yes, of course, but Mikey denied every word of it, and nobody else was awake that night to verify my side of the story. All I had to prove it was a little bruise on my cheek.”
Thinking it interesting that she denoted it as her side of the story, instead of the truth, I jotted some more notes, my mind racing. I just didn’t know where it was going, was all.
I said, “That must have been very difficult for you.”
“Lots of things in my life have been difficult for me. I despised Mikey after that and made sure we were never alone in the same room, but it was harder to forgive my husband for blowing off the fact that his son had attacked me in my own bed.”
We stared at each other for a long moment. I could hear the traffic outside, and a squirrel chittering to his bushytailed friends high in a giant tree right outside the window. Mary Fern was right, that was one hell of a difficult thing to overlook. I looked for tears and subdued emotion, but her eyes remained dry. On the other hand, her eyes held mine in an honest, unblinking gaze that didn’t usually lend itself to lies and damned falsehoods.
As our eye lock continued, she said, “I was afraid he’d try to molest my girls. I couldn’t allow that. I didn’t sleep easy until he was out of our house and into that psychiatric hospital. I thought the doctors there could help him. Especially his cousin. They were always very close friends. Mikey looked up to him, I think. They became even closer after they worked together at Oak Haven for a while. He told us he thought Mikey was going to be all right after he bought the restaurant and settled down a little. He said the girl Mikey was dating then was also a resident at the clinic and was good for Mikey.”
“I see. You are talking about Martin Young, right?”
“Yes, Marty’s a nice man, really wanted to help Mikey get well. I hope you believe me, Detective. I am telling you the truth, I swear to God.” She waited for me to reply, but I didn’t, because nearly all the people I interrogated swore to God, so she said, “I suspect Mikey made lots of enemies among his drug addict friends. And again, I agree with you, I don’t believe he’d ever commit suicide. That was my husband’s biggest concern, that Mikey would kill himself rather than go on living, but I don’t think Mikey ever even considered it. He was very self-absorbed and egotistical. It was his good looks and intelligence. He always thought he was smarter than everybody else.”