by Tim Tingle
“That’s really bad. He has pictures, and knows everything?”
“Well he did. I got the pictures and destroyed them. Lennie didn’t have a car, so I took him to Birmingham to see a doctor, and found out that Lennie had a brain tumor. He was dying. He knew he was dying, but he didn’t care. I tried to coach him as to what to say, if the police ever questioned him about the judge, but it scared me how easy it was to get information out of him. I knew that if the police ever questioned him, it was over! He would unintentionally tell them everything. I knew I couldn’t let him talk to the police. I offered to send him far away, on a vacation, until the search for the judge was over, but he got mad, and refused to leave home. He said he would tell the police that he had killed the judge, and hid the body, so I wouldn’t have to go to prison. But I didn’t trust letting him talk to the police, because I knew he would let something slip!”
“So where is Lennie now?”
“That’s what I’m getting to. We don’t have to worry about him talking to the police, because he’s dead!”
Travis’ eyes pierced hers, as he waited for her to explain, but he was afraid he already knew what happened. “You killed Lennie, to cover what he knew about the Judge?”
“No! I didn’t kill him! He was killed on the highway! A truck hit him! I hated it, but I had to admit, it solved a lot of my problems!”
“Yes. I imagine it did. Are you sure that you didn’t kill him? Because that sounds way too convenient!”
“Yes, Travis! I am sure! I did not kill Lennie!” But then she broke down and began to cry. “But I might as well had!”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I told him that I wanted to send him away on a long vacation, so he wouldn’t have to talk to the police. And well, it offended him, that I thought he was too stupid to talk to the police, and he said that he wasn’t going to leave home. He committed suicide, Travis! He knew he was dying with that brain tumor, and he knew that if he died sooner instead of later, that he would greatly help me out. So he deliberately steered his bike into that on-coming truck, and it killed him! He did it for me! I didn’t mean for him to kill himself, but I guess he took it that way!”
“Of course you didn’t mean for him to do it, and it wasn’t your fault he did it. You can’t beat yourself up for that.”
“Yes I can! I have to, because Lennie didn’t have the IQ of a rabbit! I should have known better than to say what I did to him!” She broke down crying again, as Travis tried to absorb all this.
“Are you sure it was suicide, and not just an accident?”
She wiped her nose and replied, “The driver that hit him said that Lennie deliberately steered his bike into him! And then I did something really stupid. While no one was looking, I knelt down to his body and slipped the judge’s wallet into Lennie’s pocket!”
“What? Wait a minute. Back up. Where did you get the Judge’s wallet?”
“Oh, before Lennie was killed, he and I went back into Leon’s house to be sure there was nothing there that I had overlooked before. And it’s a good thing I did, because I found all kinds of things that we overlooked before. While we were there, I deliberately had Lennie leave his fingerprints all over everything, so later the police would find them, and suspect Lennie. I found Leon’s wallet, and took it, so I could dispose of it elsewhere. But when I heard the truck hit Lennie, I quickly decided to plant it on him too. At the time I thought it was a stroke of genius, but later I regretted it, because it might get the police looking for the judge before his wife returns, But so far, nothing.”
“So you planted evidence on Lennie, after he was dead?”
“Yes.”
“Miranda, you are cold hearted, do you know that?”
“I did what I felt like I had to do, to throw blame away from myself! What would you have done?”
“I would have picked up the phone and called the police, and reported that Judge Leon Rosewood had died of a heart attack, and that would have kept all this other mess from happening!”
“I’m tired of hearing that! Hindsight is 20-20, Travis! Looking back now, so would I, but what is done is done!”
“Okay, so there is good reason to think that the authorities already suspect that something is wrong. Because when they found the wallet on Lennie, I’m sure they tried to contact the judge.”
“For that reason, and because the driver who hit Lennie said that he saw Lennie coming out of the Judge’s driveway. So I’m sure they have tried to reach the judge by now.”
“Hmm, that does throw a different light on things.”
“But it’s been almost a week since it happened, and I haven’t heard a word on the news. No hint that the judge is missing. Not a blessed word! I don’t think that they are looking for him yet.”
“So all we can do is wait and see what happens.”
“Is that what you recommend?”
“That’s what I would do. Anything you do at this point can only draw attention to yourself, and you don’t want that. It’s best to do nothing. Does that make sense?”
“Yes it does. Oh Travis! I wish you had been here while all this was going on! I wasn’t sure I was doing the right thing.”
“Let’s just wait it out and see what happens, okay?”
“Okay.”
She decided not to mention the bloody torso she had seen in her pool. She knew it was not some ghostly apparition. It was just a visitation from her guilty conscience. Next, she would probably be seeing Lennie on his bike, saying Miranda, I love you!
* * *
The days passed.
Mrs. Rosewood returned from Europe.
More days passed.
Weeks passed, and then months.
There was no mention on the news of any missing Federal Judge.
Travis didn’t understand it, and neither did Miranda, but she was certainly not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
* * *
The damage that Travis’ boys did to the casket would not be found for years, after which time the statute of limitations had run out for any punishment. Yea, it is hard to punish adults for something they did as teens. At every family reunion, the adventure with the casket would be recounted again and again, as one of their greatest pranks.
* * *
Despite attempts by Penelope’s lawyer to get the murder and arson charges against her dropped, her trial went ahead. But the lawyer had done a good job of coaching her, and he did exactly as he said he would do. He painted Bob Deason as the most despicable piece of human trash imaginable. And when Penelope testified, under oath, (as they had previously rehearsed) about what really transpired at the Deason house that day, the jury’s decision was unanimous: not guilty.
This freed Penelope from the protective custody of the state, where she would have been better off, and could have gotten help for her problems. Instead, it released her back into the same world that had been so cruel to her, and it didn’t take long for her to continue her downward spiral through alcoholism, and drug addiction. She met her untimely death one rainy night, as she attempted to dart across busy highway 31 to reach the liquor store. There were no mourners at her funeral.
* * *
After Penelope was acquitted, any charges that might have been brought against Janice, as an accessory to the crime were also dropped. Miraculously, Travis never found out that his wife had been involved. But then, Janice knew that Travis was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. She loved him, but she knew how to keep things below his radar.
* * *
Travis signed the contract with Jester Books, giving them the right to publish his second novel, ‘Behind the Green Door’. As a bonus, they agreed to pay him royalties on any future sales of ‘The Relic’. ‘The Relic’ continued to occupy the #1 spot in Britain for 17 weeks. Less than two
months after its release, ‘Behind the Green Door’ would also attain the #1 spot, assuring Travis of success as a writer, and eventually providing him with a supplemental income while he turned out more and even greater literary works. This was good, because as it turned out, he would be needing a supplemental income. Coal mines have to make money to stay in business, and the price of coal was already starting to nose-dive on the world markets. Within a year, there would be massive lay-offs in the industry.
* * *
But the most surprising thing in all this, was that Judge Leon Rosewood never made the news. How does a federal judge just drop off the face of the earth, and no one miss him? In particular, a judge who was at one time nominated by the President of the United States to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court?
For one thing, the judge’s wallet, which Miranda had planted on Lennie’s body, was ‘lifted’ before the police arrived. The rider who was in the truck, when it hit Lennie, had removed the wallet while Miranda’s attention was elsewhere. He was intending to find out the dead man’s identity, but when he saw all the $100 bills, he instead slipped it into his own pocket. True, he could have removed the cash, and returned the wallet to the dead man, but the sight of so much free money, and the sound of a distant police siren caused him to not think clearly. Later, he and his buddy split the cash, and disposed of the wallet, not caring whose name was in it. Therefore, there was no reason for anyone to start looking for the judge before his wife returned home.
But even after Belinda Rosewood returned from her European vacation, there was still nothing in the news about Judge Rosewood. There was a news item two months later which mentioned him, but only in the context of saying that: “Judge Lewis Gibson was appointed to the position of federal Judge, after Leon Rosewood vacated the position by stepping down, citing ‘personal reasons’ . . .”
Really? He had stepped down? How could he have stepped down, after dying of a heart attack, and Miranda sawing him up like cordwood, and burying the pieces? Most of him was under her pool, but some of him was in Lennie’s well. Not much chance of him coming back to life, pulling himself together and ‘stepping down’ from his judgeship. Unless he had stepped down before he died. But no, he had not done that either.
So why was it that the Judge was seemingly not missed? Why was there no massive search for a Federal Judge who had once made the national news by being nominated to fill a slot on the Supreme Court? He was missing, yet there were no questions raised? No suspicion of foul play? Had he been kidnapped? Murdered? He had made a lot of enemies, by sending a lot of nasty people to jail for many years. It was a fact that in the past, he had been the target of death threats, and once even had a contract out on him by a professional killer, so there was ample reason to suspect foul play, if the judge had just inexplicably vanished. There would be FBI agents combing through his house, lifting fingerprints, questioning neighbors, searching for any lead to go on. And if there had been a thorough search of the Judge’s house, and his phone records, there would have been evidence found to point them to Lennie, to Miranda, and yes, even to Travis Lee. But there was no search, and so the evidence there was never found.
Miranda’s pool would never be dug up, so the body parts there would stay there, undiscovered and never seen, except in Miranda’s nightmares.
The body parts that were in Lennie’s well would never be found either. Lennie’s property would be eventually claimed by a distant relative from South Carolina. They cleaned out the house, which was a major undertaking by itself. Anything they deemed worthless, they threw down the old well and burned. It made a convenient burning pit. They painted the house inside and out, and improved the appearance of the property by landscaping. And part of the landscaping included filling in that dangerous old hand dug well, where they had disposed of most of the junk. The property was sold to a Hispanic family with 12 kids. So the Judge’s remains at the bottom of the well would never be found.
Why was the Judge not missed? The answer to that, was in the letter he left to Belinda, his wife.
Yes, that was the same letter that Travis had noticed on the dresser, the night he broke into the judge’s house to free Miranda. But he was distracted before he could wonder what was in the letter.
It was the same letter that was still there on the dresser, the night Miranda and Lennie slipped into the Judge’s house to clean up evidence that she had been there. She did not open it, because it was sealed, and she was afraid that anything she did could raise suspicions.
The Judge had written a long letter to his wife, sealed it, and left it on the dresser, where he knew Belinda would find it when she returned from Europe. The next day, he and Miranda planned to leave on their ‘spontaneous romp’, as Miranda put it.
But the tiny blue pill had changed all that, by exploding Leon’s heart, and it left Miranda in yet another one of her ‘predicaments’.
Yet the letter was still on the dresser. If it had disappeared, everything would have changed. The FBI would have come in. Phone records would have been checked. Fingerprints, and DNA would have pointed to murder, and to Miranda. The phone records would have involved Travis.
But because the letter to Belinda was found, and verified, nothing happened, and the Judge was never missed, because they all thought they knew where he was.
Belinda, returning from her vacation, found the letter, and was shocked by its contents. Realizing that there would be big questions, if she did not do so, she took the letter to the proper authorities, who passed it on to the FBI, where a handwriting analysis was done, to verify that it was indeed Leon’s handwriting. The Justice Department was informed, but only for the purpose of replacing his seat on the Bench. Because of the letter to Belinda, there was no need to search for the Judge. Everyone thought they knew where he was, and no one was concerned with finding him, except his wife.
* * *
(The story should end here, but something tells me that you, the reader, would like to know the contents of the letter. Actually, it was a personal letter, addressed to Belinda, and is therefore, none of our business. But I know that I will get nothing but grief, if I don’t reveal the contents of the letter. Okay, you’ve twisted my arm, so here it is.)
* * *
“Dearest Belinda,
I hope you enjoyed your vacation. I am writing you this letter, so that you will know where I am, and why. After 32 years of marriage, I owe you at least that. This letter is intended for your eyes only, however, it may be necessary to show it discretely to certain authorities, should my whereabouts be questioned.
As you well know, since I was rejected by the Senate to fill the vacancy on the High Court, my mental stability has gone down-hill. All my life, I have been a moral and just man, and I considered a position on the High Court to be the greatest honor for an aging judge. And then to think that I was rejected from consideration from that position because I was deemed to be ‘too moral’! I know that there were devious political factors involved, but still, it has caused me to question my entire life and career as a judge.
As you know, we have both changed over the years. We started off in love, and nothing can be greater than two young people in love. I loved you with all my heart, and would have gladly given my life for you, and I know you felt the same. You raised our two children, while I built a career. I admit that during those years, I may have put my career ahead of my family, but I justified it by thinking that by furthering my career, I was making a secure future for our family. I now grieve for those lost years of bliss we could have enjoyed, had I not been so blind.
I know that you were starting to feel lonely, when our kids left for college, and you needed me there. But I was not there, because I was pushing to reach a higher goal in my career. I saw little signs of us drifting apart, but I kept my nose to the grindstone. For the last three years, I have watched in silence, as you drifted farther and farther away from me. I di
d not know what to do, because I didn’t want to believe that you were seeing another man.
Yes, I know about your relationship with the Senator, though I have said nothing. Like watching a house catch on fire, and burn to the ground, I watched our marriage turn to ashes. I wanted to blame you, but how could I? It was I who left you alone at times when you needed me. You cried out for me, but I was only looking at the cheap trinket of the High Court, when at home I had the real prize: A wife who was as good as gold.
But what is done is done. I understand that you and the Senator would like to continue seeing one another. And yes, I know that he was with you on this European cruise. You may wonder how I know? I have ways, and that is not important. If you love him, and he makes you happy, then you should have him.
In like manner, I have looked about, and found someone who makes me happy. No need to tell you who she is, because you do not know her. When you leave for Europe, I will also be leaving with her. We will drive west, while I convince her to move to Rio with me. She is independently wealthy, so I have no need for anything that we have accumulated here. When you apply for the divorce, you may have everything that we jointly owned. The savings, the stocks, the house, the beach property, everything. I will start out fresh with my new friend.
As I write this, my friend does not know of my intentions, but I am sure that she will gladly go along with me. By the time you return home and find this letter, my friend and I will be out of the country and long gone. (Should she reject my offer, this letter will not exist, as I will have returned home and destroyed it.) Once I have settled in my new home, I will contact my lawyer, and instruct him on where to send the divorce papers for me to sign.
Please honor my wishes, and do not try to contact me, other than through my lawyer. What is done is done, and life moves on. We both need a new start to our lives, and by me stepping out of the picture, we can both do this. Belinda, you were my first love, and I will always love you, and nothing will ever change that. Be thankful for every new day. I wish you a long and happy life.