Would he ever be able to tell his son that Kate was the woman he’d loved, still did?
CHAPTER EIGHT
“I’LL PAY for my own lunch,” Kate said.
“No, you won’t,” Dub said, reaching for her check. His hand brushed hers and lingered.
She removed her fingers. Since the cost of her lunch would eventually have gone on her bill for expenses anyway, she didn’t fight, although she felt a pang for David’s pocketbook. She’d have to check with her partners to see whether she could make some sort of accommodation on the grounds that David was, in a sense, family, and deserved professional courtesy rates.
She slid out of the booth, and waited while Dub stood as well. As he came to his feet, she saw a look of total confusion cross his face. He caught himself two-handed on the table, and stood blinking at her as though he had no idea who or what she was.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
He took a deep breath and was his old self. “Shoot, yeah. Sometimes when I get up too fast my blood pressure doesn’t catch up with me for a second.” He grinned and ushered her toward the front with his hand against the small of her back once more.
There wasn’t much she could do about that if she didn’t plan to be rude, but the moment Dub reached for his wallet, she ducked out of reach. “I’ll wait for you outside,” she said, and grabbed the front door.
As she stepped onto the sidewalk, Arnold called to her from his car, which was parked two slots down from David’s Navigator.
“Where have you been?” he demanded.
“Lunch. With Dub. Why?”
“Because your cell phone is either not turned on, or you left it in your room again.”
She made a face. “It’s in my purse, but I think it’s probably out of juice. I didn’t plug it in last night. Is there an emergency?” She realized that Dub now stood behind her, listening avidly.
So did Arnold. He smiled at Dub, took Kate’s arm and moved toward his car. “Come on. We need to talk.”
She slid in on the passenger side and waited until he’d settled behind the wheel.
“We have to ask for a change of venue,” he said without preamble.
“I agree.”
He continued as though she hadn’t spoken. “There’s no way in hell to impanel a jury in this county that hasn’t already made up its mind one way or the other whether Jason Canfield is innocent or guilty.”
“And what brought you to this conclusion?”
“I’ve spent the morning fighting with the coroner, the sheriff, the district attorney and half the city fathers to get Waneath Talley’s body moved to Memphis for the autopsy.”
“Were you successful?”
“Yes. She’s on her way. I am not going to be nominated for Rotary’s Man of the Year in Athena, let me tell you.” He wiped his forehead. “The coroner wanted to sign the death certificate as homicide, would you believe, and let her family bury her! I ask you! In the middle of the investigation.”
“Poor Arnold. I can certainly see their point. I know it’s hard on the family, but it’ll be doubly hard on Jason if we can’t get firm evidence about her cause of death. I have a witness to his loss of his tire iron, by the way.”
“Good.” Arnold leaned his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. “When I came down from Long Island, I thought one day I’d like to retire and become a small-town lawyer—you know, like Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird I am fast changing my tune. There is a great deal to be said for big cities. I prefer being anonymous to having small children dog my footsteps and hurl imprecations at me.”
“You’re joking, right?”
“Yes, Kate, I am joking.” He opened his eyes, but didn’t change position. “I see you managed to get rid of your ex, but retain his car. I do hope he’s not lying in a ditch somewhere.”
“Might be simpler if he were.”
Arnold raised an interrogative eyebrow. “Oh, really? Are we rekindling the flames of passion, old thing?”
Kate considered lying. She decided against it and opted for at least a portion of the truth. “He apologized for twenty years ago, did some fast explaining that made more sense than it probably should have. The thing is, Arnold, I still respond to him the same way I did the first time I saw him.”
“And how was that? You are the least impressionable female I’ve ever met. I certainly don’t impress you.”
She laughed and touched his arm. “Sure you do. Just not that way.”
“My luck, always the buddy, never the lover.”
“Lovers come and go, buddies go on forever. Besides, I’m older than you.”
“Not much.”
“At any rate, I don’t think anybody is allowed more than one love-at-first-sight per lifetime. Maybe per several lifetimes. The first time I laid eyes on David Canfield, I felt as though I had known him for aeons.”
Arnold dropped his head into his hands and groaned. “Oh, no, not one of those ‘old souls together’ things. I can’t stand it. Next you’ll be telling me you asked him about his sign.”
“No. I didn’t even speak to him. The first time I saw him was at the first read-through for Death of a Salesman my junior year. He was playing Biff. I was doing props. I got to the theater early for the first read-through and came into the door at the back of the house.” She leaned back and closed her eyes. The scene opened before her as clearly as though she were watching one of Jason’s movies.
“The theater was dark, the stage was bare and dark except for one naked worklight hanging down center stage on an extension cord. He was sitting cross-legged on a packing case dead center. His head was bent over his script, and the light turned his hair pure bronze. He couldn’t see me in the dark, but for some reason he raised his head and looked right at me out of those incredible eyes. I knew in that moment that I wanted to marry him. I didn’t even know his name.”
“Judging from what you said yesterday, this was not a good thing.”
“We had nearly three glorious years as lovers and spouses, which is more than most people have, I suspect.”
“Before he screwed it up.”
“I’m beginning to think I was as much at fault in the screwup as he was.”
“Oh, come on! Kate! The guy was an unfaithful louse! You said so yourself.”
“He’s changed.”
Arnold groaned again.
Kate laughed. “I am not going to hop into bed with him. But I’ve made a bargain with myself. I’m going to try to see him as the man he is today, and try not to think of what he was like when we were married. That way, maybe we can at least be friends.”
He sat up and turned a serious face to her. “Kiddo, you are out of your mind if you think that guy intends to settle for friendship.”
THE LATE NOVEMBER afternoon was already shadowing toward evening, while the sky darkened with scudding clouds as Kate headed for the junior college. She’d stopped off to shop for warmer clothes, and now had to drive around for several minutes before she managed to slide into a visitors’ parking space as someone else drove away. The temperature had dropped twenty degrees in the last thirty minutes. For the first time, she remembered that they were drawing a bead on Christmas.
She shivered in her thin wool blazer, and walked quickly into what she assumed must be the building that housed administrative offices, since it was closest to the visitors’ parking area.
After one false start she located the office of the dean of admissions. Behind the counter that ran the length of the office stood a bored girl with elaborately braided hair and turquoise fingernails that would have been excessive on a Mandarin. She glanced up from the latest issue of People magazine, popped her gum and regarded Kate with basilisk eyes.
Kate smiled politely and introduced herself. “I need a list of the classes Waneath Talley has taken here and the names of the professors who taught them.”
The girl shook her head. The beads in the ends of her braids clacked. “That’s private.”
“Actually, it’s not,” Kate said. “Her grades would be, of course, and her transcripts and things, but the classes she took—that is a matter of public record.” She pointed to the blinking computer terminal at a desk behind the counter. “I’m sure you can call them up and print them out for me in five minutes.”
“Uh-uh. Not without the dean telling me I can.”
“Ah. Well, then may I see the dean, please.”
For the first time, a small smile played over the girl’s lips. “Uh-uh. She’s in a staff meeting.”
“And where might that meeting be?”
The girl raised her eyes. “Upstairs with the president.”
“Thanks.” Kate turned away, then turned back. “You know, I can get a judge to issue a subpoena for those records, and I can certainly depose you if I have to. And your dean. I’m sure she’ll be delighted to drive downtown to the sheriff’s office to spend four or five hours giving me a deposition. Pity, when you could have saved us all so much time and trouble.” She walked away.
“Hey,” the girl called. “You really gonna make my dean give a deposition?”
Kate shrugged. “If I have to.”
The gum popped. “Oh, shoot. What was her name again?”
Five minutes later Kate had a list of Waneath’s classes, the room numbers where they were held and the names of the professors teaching them this semester. She stopped at the information desk for a campus map, then realized that people were streaming out of offices all around her. She checked her watch. Four twenty-five. Drat Obviously nobody believed in working late. She checked Waneath’s schedule. One of her classes met at six in the evening and another at nine. Unfortunately, they met Tuesdays and Thursdays, not Wednesday.
Since she was here, she decided to take a chance on finding at least one of Waneath’s professors still in his office. Three of the offices were in the same building on the third floor. She hurried across the darkening quadrangle toward the largest of three ugly buildings, entered, and was struck by the universal campus odor of cigarettes, paper and sweaty bodies.
She found the first two offices dark. As she rounded the corner toward the third, she walked straight into David. He caught her arms, while she caught her breath. She shook him off and backed two steps away outside the torrid zone that seemed to surround his body when she was near him.
“Kate?” he said. “What are you doing here?”
She felt her heart turn over at the flash of sheer delight in his eyes at seeing her. She took a deep breath. Keep it professional, kiddo.
“Checking out Waneath’s classes and trying to speak to her professors. What are you doing here?”
He fell into step beside her. “I’m an adjunct. I teach two courses in agribusiness.”
“I didn’t know.” She turned to him. “Did Waneath take any of your classes?”
“She wouldn’t have been caught dead designing flowcharts on pig farming.”
“Did you see her?”
He hesitated. “I ran into her from time to time.”
“Do you know whether she started dating somebody after Jason left for college?”
He shook his head. “Never saw her with anyone. I think she was just marking time so that her daddy wouldn’t make her get a job, or worse yet, give her one at the dealership.”
“Why didn’t she go away to school?”
“I doubt that she saw much point in college, except to be able to answer that she was a student during the question-and-answer sessions at her pageants.”
“Here’s Professor Gregson’s office,” Kate said, checking the number above the door. She felt David’s breath on the nape of her neck and shivered. “Damn,” she said and sidestepped. “Dark as pitch. Don’t these people actually work for a living?”
“Come on, Kate. You grew up on a campus. You know how college professors moan if they have to teach three classes a semester and hold office hours once a week.”
“I assumed junior colleges would be different.”
“Nope. They still tell everybody they’re going to the library to do research when they’re on their way home for the first martini of the day.”
“Yeah. My daddy did a lot of so-called research,” Kate said acerbically. David had done his research as well. Have to keep that in the forefront of her mind when he was this close in a darkened hallway. “I wonder if any of these guys was researching Waneath.”
“Mark off Gregson. J.T. stands for Janice Theresa. I don’t think Waneath swung that way even to cadge herself an easy A.”
“Here’s the list. Any of these people possibles?”
“I think Mike Ballard is gay. Thomasson is married, but he’s the pipe-and-tweeds type that attracts women like flies. I have no idea whether he takes advantage of the offers. Vasquez I’ve seen, but not to speak to. He’s unmarried and what Waneath would probably consider a hunk.” He handed the list back. “Sorry I can’t be more help.”
She folded the paper and slipped it into the side pocket of her purse. “You’ve been a great help.” He followed her down the hall to the central staircase. Kate wondered suddenly whether his arrival had been entirely fortuitous. “Where’s your office?’ she asked.
He pointed vaguely down the hall in the opposite direction from which Kate had come. “Down there around the corner. I don’t have an office as such. I have a desk, a file cabinet and access to the department secretary if I’m desperate.”
“And you are here because...?”
They reached the stairs. He put a hand on her arm and turned her to face him. “I wasn’t following you, if that’s what you think. I haven’t been near my office since this thing happened, and I’ve got a class tomorrow at ten. I had to check to be sure the secretary had dropped off my handout.”
She avoided his eyes—those crazy blue eyes. “Plausible.”
“Almost everyone’s office is either on the third or fourth floor of this building. We’re not spread out over a fancy campus.”
“Coincidence bothers me.” She started down the stairs and he followed. Over her shoulder she asked, “So you don’t know anyone Waneath was dating?”
“As Jason’s father, I’d be the last person she’d tell.”
“We badly need another suspect. So far there’s no evidence anyone but Jason was angry at Waneath. If we can prove that Waneath was having a hot and heavy affair with someone else, someone who might have been infuriated when Jason came home and snatched his girl out from under him—probably literally, from what I have heard about Waneath—then we may be able to shift the focus of the investigation onto someone other than Jason.”
“I wish I could be more help,” he said as she hurried down the stairs. “Wait up, you don’t have to run away from me. These stairs can be treacherous.”
“I’m the cat who walks by herself, or hadn’t you noticed?”
He said under his breath, “I’ve noticed, all right.”
“We’ve barely started,” she continued as though she hadn’t heard him. “A good P.I. could find out more in twenty-four hours than I’m likely to discover in a month. Which is why we need to bring somebody in so that I can go back to Atlanta and prepare Jason’s defense.”
He caught up with her. “You think they’ll take him to trial?”
“Frankly, unless the sheriff has more than we know so far I don’t think it should get to trial, but I think because of the people involved it will. Unless we can give the district attorney a better scenario.”
“What about DNA testing to discover who fathered Waneath’s baby?”
“We can probably eliminate Jason, but unless we have a suspect, we can’t actually tell whose baby it was. Besides, DNA testing takes three months on average.”
“Three months? What about all these television shows where they come up with DNA evidence overnight?”
“Doesn’t happen in real life, David. I’m sorry, but it simply doesn’t. Jason will be lucky to come to trial before next Thanksgiving.”
“My God, he’ll g
o nuts. And I’ll be broke long before then.”
“Don’t worry about the money. We’ll work something out. You could be considered entitled to a discount as family.”
“I wish I were still your family.”
She caught the softness in his voice and strode off ahead of him, deciding not to respond to what he’d just said. “The system does not work the way it does on television,” she repeated. “Unless we can plea-bargain him down and plead him guilty...”
He caught up with her and put his hand under her arm. “I thought you said you didn’t think he was guilty.” She drew away from him, but didn’t break the contact. “Nobody can outguess a jury. Three years for voluntary manslaughter is infinitely better than life in prison without possibility of parole. We have to consider all the options.”
“Prison would destroy him.”
“It tends to destroy everyone.” She sat down on a long wooden bench beside the staircase, leaned back and stretched her legs in front of her. “Is he serious about making movies?”
David sat beside her, his shoulder just brushing hers. She suddenly felt as though she could lean against him and stay that way forever. The rough texture of his jacket felt wonderful against her shoulder, and the scent of male in the cloth made her nose tingle.
She hadn’t needed his sandalwood soap to identify him at the jail. She still recognized the scent of him. Almost a year after their divorce, she’d found an old sweatshirt of his in the back of her closet, and had buried her face in it, hoping to find the smallest trace of him in the cloth. When she couldn’t find it, she’d burst into tears—the first serious tears she’d cried since the night she found out about his infidelity.
“Jason’s very serious about movies,” he said, and stretched his arm along the back of the seat behind her, for all the world like an adolescent boy on his first movie date. She willed herself to slide away, but her body refused to move. She compensated by straightening her spine so that her shoulder didn’t touch the back of the seat.
“I bought him his first video camera when he was barely old enough to hold the thing,” David continued. “He’s seen practically every movie ever made, some of them a dozen times. He started a video club in school when he was in the seventh grade, and for years nobody in the family was safe—he videotaped everything from Neva fixing breakfast in the morning to me stepping out of the shower.”
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