by Sandra Brown
Van Durbin snapped his fingers. “Moody. Dale Moody.”
What Rupe was thinking was Shitshitshit!, but what he said was, “I think you’re right. I think it was Moody.”
“It was. My research assistant verified it and has been trying to run him down. She’s checked with the Austin PD, but he’s retired and they wouldn’t give her any information on him. He doesn’t have an Austin address. His name’s not on the county tax rolls. You wouldn’t by any chance know where I could find him, would you?”
“Until a few seconds ago, I couldn’t even recall his name.”
“That’s a no, then?”
“That’s a ‘Sorry I wish I could help you, but I can’t.’”
Van Durbin scratched something in his notepad. “So I guess if I wanted to ask him about his investigation and Strickland’s trial, I’d be out of luck.”
“I guess you would.”
Van Durbin propped his ankle on his opposite knee and jiggled his foot. “Unless you wanted to open up to me about it. Talk me through it yourself.”
Rupe gestured down at the book. “Ms. Price thoroughly covered it.”
Van Durbin frowned. “But did it seem to you…? This just might be me, understand. But it seemed to me that she left the ending open to interpretation. Did it seem that way to you?”
Rupe forced his expression to turn thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head. “No, I can’t say that it did.”
“Hmm.” Van Durbin skimmed over everything he’d written down before flipping the notepad closed. He replaced it along with the pencil in his shirt pocket and stood up. “Well, I guess that’s everything. I can’t thank you enough for giving me a few minutes of your valuable time.”
“You’re welcome. Although I don’t feel like I contributed much.” Smile in place, Rupe went to the door and pulled it open.
Van Durbin was almost across the threshold when he stopped, turned, and tapped Rupe’s silk necktie with his index finger. “If I were you, Rupe, you know what would eat at me?”
It took all Rupe’s self-control not to brush away that finger, with its loose cuticle and the fingernail chewed down to the quick. “What’s that?”
“It would eat at me that the murder weapon never turned up. You and Moody determined that she was choked to death with her underwear, right?”
Rupe gave a noncommital nod.
“But the panties never turned up, did they? And you looked every-damn-where for them.”
“Obviously the jury didn’t think having them in evidence was necessary to convict.”
“Obviously,” Van Durbin said, frowning. “But I hate loose ends like that, don’t you, Rupe?”
The topic of Susan’s underpants seemed to have raised the temperature in Bellamy’s kitchen. Introducing that vital element into their discussion of the crime had been inevitable, but now Dent wished he’d let Bellamy bring it up first.
Too ill at ease to sit any longer in a tense silence, he got up from the table and took another aimless tour of the kitchen until his attention was drawn to a ceramic jug on the counter that contained a variety of stainless-steel doodads.
Pulling one out, he held it up and twirled it between his fingers. “What does this do?”
“It cores apples.”
“You don’t just eat around the core?”
But, not to be distracted, she asked, “Was your house searched?”
He returned the apple corer to the jug. “If by searched you mean turned inside out, then yeah. It was searched. Moody and an army of cops showed up with a warrant to look specifically for a pair of Susan’s underwear.
“They ransacked the place. Even confiscated my motorcycle. They took it apart piece by piece. I had it reassembled, but it was never the same, and I wound up having to get rid of it.”
He looked over at Bellamy, who appeared to be hanging on every word, but she said nothing, so he continued.
“That pair of panties was the Holy Grail of Moody’s investigation. His thinking was that the man who was caught with them was the deviant who’d used them to strangle her.”
She stared thoughtfully into near space. “Of all the indignities, the cruelties, that Olivia and Daddy were subjected to over Susan’s death, I believe that aspect of it was the hardest for them. It was certainly the most embarrassing. It implied any variety of dreadful things. Either she’d been molested or…”
“Or,” he stressed, “she’d willingly let the man remove them. Or she had taken them off herself. Which I’m inclined to believe.”
“Why?”
He stopped pacing and gave her a meaningful look. “The first time we went out.” She dropped her gaze to the tabletop.
“Also, there wasn’t any other indication of sexual assault,” he continued. “She wasn’t bruised or torn down there. No bite marks. No semen. Whatever took place before she was killed was consensual. Even Moody thought so.”
“Nevertheless, the missing underpants added a salacious element to the crime and made it all the more horrible.”
“And yet…” Placing his hands flat on the table, he leaned down close to her and said in a whispery voice, “The girl in your novel is choked to death in the same manner.”
“Because that’s what happened.”
“But doesn’t it spice things up, which equates to selling more books?”
Her eyes flashed with anger. “Go to hell.”
“I’ve been,” he fired back.
She stood up so abruptly that her chair went over backward, making a slamming sound against the floor that reverberated and shocked them both into silence.
She turned to pick up the chair, but Dent stepped around the table and set it upright before she could. He’d made her temper flare. He was intentionally goading her, and he didn’t know why, but he knew he didn’t like himself for it. He’d begun to notice how weary she looked. Given her father’s condition, and the state of her house upon her return from Houston, he doubted she’d slept much last night. The violet half-moons beneath her eyes indicated that she hadn’t slept well for quite some time.
On impulse, he said, “Want to get some air?”
She looked at him quizzically.
“Outside. Fresh air. Let’s go for a walk.”
She went to the window, moved aside the curtain, and looked up at the sky. “It’s overcast.”
“It’s hazy.”
“It’s muggy.”
“The climate is worse in here.”
He took her arm and propelled her out the back door, giving her little choice. Once on the sidewalk, they fell into step companionably. She even took a deep breath of contentment.
“See?” he said. “We needed to get out of there for a while. It was getting intense.”
“We rub each other the wrong way.”
Looking at her askance, he said, “We could rub each other till we get it right.” He watched for her blush and wasn’t disappointed. She’d needed that extra color in her cheeks. It flattered her. “I’ll let you go first,” he offered teasingly. “Unless you want me to. Which I’m happy to do.”
She rolled her eyes. “There’s a park a few blocks up.”
Five minutes later, they were seated in side-by-side swings with old-fashioned wood plank seats and heavy suspension chains. They were the only people near the swings. Some distance away, a middle-aged couple played catch with their young grandson. “Throw the ball to Paw-Paw,” he heard the woman say.
Farther away still, a quartet of teenaged girls in skimpy shorts and tank tops practiced cheerleading. Nearest him and Bellamy a pair of lovers lay on a blanket beneath a shade tree, lost in each other.
Dent moved his swing sideways to bump lightly into hers. “I’ve talked you through my experiences of that day and what came after. But you stopped at the point where Susan returned to the pavilion from the boathouse and started dirty dancing with Allen Strickland.”
She gave her swing a push. “What do you want to know?”
“Did you actuall
y see Susan leave the pavilion with him?”
“Yes.”
“Did you follow them?”
“No.”
“Okay…” He drew out the word in the form of a lead-in.
She continued swinging, going a little higher on each arc. “Okay, what?”
“What did you do?”
She started to speak several times before words actually formed. “I headed for the boathouse.”
“Why the boathouse?”
“I… I think I went to find Steven.”
“You think you went to find him?”
The swing made several pendulous cycles before she said, “The sky was getting darker. I’d seen Steven walking toward the lake and wanted to make certain that he was aware of the approaching storm. I thought he should come back to the pavilion.”
“But neither of you made it back to the pavilion in time. The funnel dipped out of the cloud, you both got caught at the boathouse and had to take cover there.”
She nodded.
“What about Susan?”
She turned her head toward him as the swing sailed past. “What about her?”
“You weren’t worried about her, too?”
“Of course I was.”
“But you didn’t chase after her.”
“She was with Allen.”
“All the more reason to check on her.”
“Maybe I did. I—”
“You said you went to find Steven.”
“Yes, yes, just like in the book.”
“Forget the friggin’ book.”
He set his swing to rocking crazily when he quickly abandoned it. He stepped in front of Bellamy’s swing and grabbed hold of the chains, bringing it to an abrupt halt and wedging his thigh between hers to hold the seat high off the ground.
“What are you doing?”
“More to the point, what are you?” he asked. “This makes twice today that you’ve stalled there. Why? How come your memory is so detailed about what you wore and shoulder straps that kept slipping down, but you go all vague and sputtery when recounting what you did and where you were between the time you saw Susan return from her drinking binge at the boathouse, to when they dragged you from beneath the collapsed roof of it?”
She gazed back at him, wide-eyed and apprehensive. “I testified at Allen Strickland’s trial that I went in search of Steven. I was in the boathouse when the tornado struck. I wasn’t that badly hurt, but I was traumatized by fear, in shock. That’s why I was one of the last people to be accounted for, hours after the storm, even after Susan’s body had been recovered. I heard people—my own parents—frantically calling my name, but I couldn’t respond. I was literally frozen from fear.”
“That follows what you wrote in your book.”
She bobbed her head once.
“So why don’t I believe you?”
Her chin went up a fraction. “Believe me or not, that’s your problem.”
“You’re damn right it is. I’ve got somebody trashing my airplane all because of you and the can of worms you opened. And this is a big, fat, juicy, squiggly one. You falter every time I ask whether or not you followed Susan and Allen Strickland.”
“I didn’t.”
“You’re sure?”
“No. I mean—Yes, I’m sure. No I didn’t follow them. You confused me before and you’re trying to now. When I left the pavilion I ran toward the boathouse.”
“Okay, so why did you choose to warn Steven of the storm, and not your sister?”
“I didn’t make any such choice,” she exclaimed.
“But you did, Bellamy. You just said so. You went toward the boathouse because you’d seen Steven going in that direction.”
“That’s right.”
“Is it?”
She wiggled forward on the seat of the swing, trying to reach the ground with her toes. “Let me down.”
Instead, he moved in closer, using his body to hold her in the swing and the swing off the ground. “Did you find Steven? Were you able to warn him to seek shelter?”
“No.”
“You’re sure of that?”
“Of course I’m sure. That’s why I was alone when they found me in the rubble.”
“You didn’t go after Susan? You didn’t see her after she left the pavilion?”
“No and no.”
“Did you also testify to that under oath?”
“I didn’t have to.”
“Because?”
“Because no one ever asked me. Until now,” she said with vexation.
“So if you didn’t swear otherwise, you might’ve followed her and Allen into the woods.”
“But I didn’t.”
“No?”
She set her chin stubbornly and refused to answer.
He joggled the chains of the swing. “A.k.a?” he said in a singsong voice. “Cat got your tongue?”
“Why are you bullying me about this?”
“I’m only trying to get to the absolute truth.”
“I’ve told you the absolute truth.”
“You didn’t chase after Susan.”
“No.”
“I’m not convinced.”
“Too bad.”
“Why does this point trip you up?”
“It doesn’t.”
“Yeah. It does. How come? There’s gotta be a reason.”
“Let me down, Dent.”
“Did you run after Susan?”
“No.”
“You didn’t?”
“No!”
“Bellamy?”
“I don’t know!”
She gasped in stunned surprise at her own admission, and for several seconds they stayed frozen, their faces inches apart, staring into each other’s eyes. Then her head dropped forward and she repeated miserably, “I don’t know. And that’s the absolute truth.”
He’d pressured her for clarification, but hadn’t really expected it to be this consequential. If he had it to do over again, he might have relented sooner. As it was, he needed to get a grasp of the worrisome implications.
He pried his fingers from around the chain and, with that hand, tipped her head up. Tears were sliding over the freckles on her cheekbones. Her eyes were wet, deeply troubled, haunted.
“I can’t remember,” she said hoarsely. “I’ve tried, God knows. For eighteen years I’ve tried to bridge the gap. But that span of time is blocked out in my memory.”
“Specifically, what do you remember?”
“Specifically? I remember going down to the boathouse and seeing Susan drinking with her friends. Specifically, I remember her coming back, dancing with Allen Strickland, and making a spectacle of herself. I remember watching them leave the pavilion together.”
She looked at him and said helplessly, “But it’s like… like the broken center line on the highway. Sections of time are missing where I don’t remember what I did, or what I saw.”
She hiccuped a soft sob. “Yesterday I told you that I wrote the book so I’d be able to throw it away and forget it. But that was a lie. I wrote it in the hope of remembering.
“And what I think… what I’m afraid of… is that someone read the book, and knows what I left out. He knows whatever it is that I can’t remember. And he doesn’t want me to.”
Chapter 9
Dent wished he could dismiss her fear, but he’d come to the same unsettling conclusion. Someone was afraid that the constant retelling of the story would unlock a memory that had been sealed deep inside her subconscious for almost two decades.
Bellamy the child with a faulty memory hadn’t represented much of a threat to that individual. But Bellamy the woman with a best-selling book definitely did. You’ll be sorry now seemed less of a warning than a vow.
Also Dent feared that this elusive memory she so desperately wanted restored was one better left in the vault of her subconscious. Her psyche had blocked it for a reason. She might later regret learning why she’d been protected from it.
But
he had selfish reasons for wanting her to recapture it, primarily his own vindication. So for the time being, he would keep his concerns to himself and continue to help her.
With the pad of his thumb, he wiped the tears off her cheek, then, using his thigh to hold the swing steady, cupped his hands in her armpits, lifted her off the seat, and lowered her to the ground. Even then, he withdrew his hands with reluctance.
He took a cautious look around. It had been five minutes since the lovers had come up for air. Paw-Paw and his wife had given up on the ball toss and had packed their grandson into their van and left. A forty-something man in shirtsleeves and slacks had parked his dusty sedan, gotten out, and walked straight to a picnic table, where he sat down and immediately opened up both his collar and his cell phone. While talking into his phone, he ogled the cheerleaders, who were doing flips. Dent figured the guy had timed his visit to the park when he knew they’d be there.
No one was interested in him and Bellamy.
Coming back to her, he asked, “Who-all knows about your memory block?”
She looked at him with an expression that spoke volumes.
When he realized what she was telling him, his jaw dropped. “You’re shittin’ me.”
“No,” she said softly. “You’re it. I never told anyone. My parents were so upset over losing Susan, over everything, I didn’t want to add to their anxiety. When Moody talked to me, I told him the version that I ultimately wrote in the book, and for all I knew that was true.
“I tried to remember. I swear I did. But then Strickland was arrested. Moody and Rupe Collier were confident that they’d solved the mystery, so it seemed less important that I recall everything.
“During Strickland’s trial, all I was required to testify to was how suggestively he and Susan had been dancing, and I could truthfully answer those questions. I couldn’t point the finger at Strickland and positively identify him as Susan’s killer. Nor could I deny that he was. But neither could anyone else in that courtroom.”
“He was convicted with only circumstantial evidence.”