Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate

by Sally Berneathy

  “Will a character witness help Paula’s case?” I asked in as sane and rational a voice as I could muster.

  Trent didn’t answer immediately. He was probably trying to decide if I’d hurt or help Paula’s case.

  “Not with us,” Creighton said, “but because of the complaint and the added complication of the way the boy disappeared yesterday, Social Services will be investigating in a few days. It probably wouldn’t hurt for you to talk to them.”

  Zach charged back into the room carrying his orange truck. I sat on the floor to play with him.

  “Someone called the police and said Zach was in immediate danger,” Paula said, her voice still soft and almost at the breaking point. “They said I’d been beating him on the porch, then dragged him inside and they could hear him screaming.”

  “He does have a bruise—” Creighton began.

  Paula interrupted him. “He fell off a swing in the park.”

  “But we don’t think he’s in immediate danger,” Creighton finished.

  “If he’s in any kind of danger, it’s not from Paula,” I snapped.

  “There seem to be a lot of strange things going on,” Rick said, and I cringed. Why had I told him everything? Anything, for that matter! Please, God, he wasn’t going to repeat the things I’d said. The man has been known to do that, just to prove he’s in the know.

  “What strange things?” Trent asked, taking a seat on the coffee table next to where I sat on the floor.

  “The mutilated bear is the only thing you don’t already know about,” I said hurriedly, then proceeded to tell him the story. Well, not all the story. Not the raspberry syrup part of the story.

  Rick insisted on inserting comments like how the un-Easter basket had special meaning for us as did the bear. Trent and I had another bonding moment as we both strove to ignore Rick. You know what they say about divorce making for strange bedfellows. Not literally, of course. Certainly I wasn’t thinking of Trent in that context. Most of the time I didn’t even like him. But he did have his moments. If he weren’t a cop, we might get along. Some of the time, anyway.

  “Do you still have this bear?” Trent asked.

  “Nope. I hung him from a tree in Rick’s front yard. Mr. Kramer has custody of the deceased bear.”

  Trent looked up at Rick. “I’d like to have a look if you don’t mind.”

  “I’m afraid it went out in the trash,” Rick said smoothly.

  “Scared Buffy,” I explained.

  “Muffy,” Rick corrected automatically, then clenched his lips as if he’d like to take back the word that put a different slant on his portrayal of the mistreated almost-ex-husband.

  “His roomie. She’s very sensitive.”

  Trent nodded. “Has your trash been picked up yet, Mr. Kramer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When I lived there six weeks ago it was picked up on Wednesday mornings. If you hurry, you can probably drag out the bear, dust off the coffee grounds, and fingerprint him.”

  “Is that true, Mr. Kramer? Your trash doesn’t go out until Wednesday?”

  Rick smiled. “Lindsay has a terrific memory. She’s right, as usual.”

  Trent stood. “Great. Then let’s go. Where do you live?”

  Rick’s smile faltered. “Right now? You want to go get it right now?”

  Trent checked his watch. “I got off work an hour ago. I’d really like to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible.”

  It was an interesting test of wills, but Trent had Rick moving toward the door in nothing flat.

  “I’ll be back later, Lindsay,” Rick called over his shoulder.

  “That wouldn’t be a very good idea! I didn’t get my nap this afternoon so I’ll be going to bed as soon as I get home, and you know what a raving bitch I am when you wake me up.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief when the three men left.

  “You might as well lock up,” I told Paula. “I’m not going anywhere until we have a talk.”

  She didn’t protest. I sensed she was completely drained. A good time to finally break through her defenses.

  While she locked the door, I extricated myself from Zach. “Okay, Hot Shot, you’re going to have to play by yourself for a little while. Aunt Lindsay needs to talk to your mommy.”

  I sat on the sofa, and he climbed up beside me, trying to entice me with the orange truck and incoherent promises of how much fun we could have. I smoothed back his soft hair and kissed his nose. “You little charmer. Don’t you dare grow up to be like your Uncle Rick.”

  “Uck-ick!” he mimicked happily.

  “You got that right.” I looked up at Paula. “Maybe he ought to play in the other room for a while. I’m not sure he needs to hear some of this.”

  Paula hesitated, then nodded. “He’s already heard a lot more than he should have. People think kids don’t understand just because they can’t talk.”

  “Kids and animals understand a lot more than we give them credit for,” I agreed.

  She lifted Zach. “Come on, sweetie. It’s close to your bed time anyway.”

  Zach protested, of course. He didn’t want to leave the place where all the action was.

  “I’ll let you watch your Sponge Bob DVD, okay?” She disappeared upstairs with Zach still protesting. In a few seconds I heard the low sound of a television, then Paula returned and sat beside me, hands clasped in her lap, gaze focused on her hands.

  I started to tell her about the hole in the hedge, but she interrupted to say Trent had already told her. When I brought up her false identity, she looked a little surprised that I knew, but admitted that Trent had also confronted her about that.

  “And?” I encouraged.

  “And what?”

  “How did you explain that you changed your name and your hair color?”

  “I told him I just wanted to start a new life and he couldn’t arrest me for using an assumed name as long as I didn’t use it for illegal activities.” She sounded as if she was quoting the last part.

  “What about using somebody else’s social security number?”

  She didn’t answer, so I gave it up for the moment. “Okay,” I said, “and we’ve already covered the bear thing, so we’ll move straight to Fred’s and my search of Lester Mackey’s apartment.”

  That got her attention.

  By the time I concluded with the hair-flushing incident, she was twisting her skirt and looking very agitated and anxious.

  “Lindsay, you broke the law!”

  “Ah, what are friends for?”

  She gave me a weak smile. “You are my friend. You really are.”

  “I am. And friends trust each other. I have trusted you not only with my raspberry syrup secret but now the secret of my illegal activities. I’ll do everything I can to help you through this, but you’ve got to trust me with the truth.”

  She lowered her gaze to her lap and resumed the skirt-twisting activity. She was well on her way to turning that cotton skirt into a broomstick skirt.

  “Is Lester Mackey your ex-husband?” I know she said he was dead, but I wasn’t sure that was the truth and thought I could bluff her into admitting something.

  She shook her head.

  “Is he somebody hired by your ex-husband?”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t have an ex-husband. I told you, my husband is dead.”

  “Do you have any idea who Lester Mackey is?”

  This time, reluctantly, she nodded. “Maybe.” The word was a barely audible whisper.

  “I feel like I’m playing twenty questions! Can you give me a clue? Who is Lester Mackey?”

  She didn’t answer, and for once I didn’t say anything to fill the void. In the silence, I could hear the faint sounds of Zach’s television and a clock ticking. I’d never noticed that clock before, but tonight it sounded very loud.

  “Did the apartment manager say what Lester Mackey looks like?” she asked.

  I nodded. “He said Mackey’s an older guy w
ith short gray hair and gold wire glasses, a little shorter than Fred, looks like he works out regularly, and he has a mole on his left cheek. Fred thinks the hair is probably phony.”

  There was another long moment of silence. Paula’s skirt-twisting had changed to clenching. Her knuckles were white. “That’s a perfect description of my father-in-law, right down to that mole and the hair piece. His name is Lester.”

  “Your father-in-law. So this is connected to your ex-husband.”

  “I’m not divorced.”

  “That’s right. You said your husband died.”

  “No, I said he’s dead. There’s a difference.” She unclenched her hands, looked me squarely in the face and drew in a deep breath. “I killed my husband.”

  Chapter Ten

  Flashbulb memory.

  When I’m ninety-seven years old and in a nursing home with no memory of my own name, I will remember the moment Paula told me she killed her husband.

  I don’t know how long I sat there just staring at her in total shock. A hurricane roared through my head, making so much noise I couldn’t hear Zach’s television or even that manic clock ticking.

  Paula returned my stare unflinchingly, not taking back what she’d just said or admitting it had been a really bad joke.

  The room started to blur, and I suddenly realized I’d forgotten to breathe. I figured it would be a good idea to start again.

  “Do you have any chocolate?” I asked. I needed a fix to help me deal with this.

  She nodded and left the room then returned immediately with a piece of Brownie Nut Fudge Pie and a Coke.

  I took a couple of big bites of the pie and tossed down half the soda really fast, then, thus fortified, turned to Paula who once again sat beside me with her hands in her lap. But this time her hands weren’t twisting or clenching. She was strangely calm as if the worst was over. As far as I was concerned, it had just begun.

  “Okay,” I said, “so I guess we’re not talking killing as in Killing me Softly with His Song, or that joke just kills me or any of that kind of killing?”

  “No. We’re talking killing as in shooting someone in the heart with a gun, killing as in that person lying on the floor bleeding and not moving.”

  I had another bite of pie. “That’s one heck of an ending. I’d sure like to hear the beginning and the middle of that story.”

  She began to talk, quietly but without faltering. The words spilled out, as if she’d held them inside too long.

  “I was born Paula Roberts,” she said. “My dad was a Baptist minister in Ft. Worth. He was kind and gentle, and he always had a smile. My mother took care of him so he could take care of everybody else. They were the only family I had, and it was enough. I was happy. I grew up thinking the world was a beautiful place.”

  She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, and her eyes took on a faraway look. “After high school, I started college at the University of North Texas in Denton. It was close enough I could come home every weekend. But then during my junior year, my parents went on a missionary trip to South America. I was lost without them and counted the days until they’d come back.”

  She paused as if gathering the courage to continue, and I found myself leaning forward, anticipating what I knew must be coming. “They never came home.” Her voice as she spoke those words was flat, without emotion. “Their small plane crashed somewhere in the jungle. I was alone.” Those last three words, I was alone, held a hollow echo.

  I tried to imagine losing both my parents. They drove me crazy sometimes. Most times. But I didn’t want to think about not having them around. I was devastated when my grandmother died.

  Paula drew in a deep breath and went on with her story. “I was pretty much lost for the next two years, but I managed to graduate with a degree in art history. I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I got a job at a museum in Dallas, and that’s where I met David Bennett. He was a Dallas police officer, working a second job as security for the museum.” She gave a wry smile. “I thought I’d found somebody to belong to. I thought he was like my father. He was strong. I could lean on him. He took charge of my life, and I let him. We got married two months later, and I was part of a family again. I wasn’t alone.”

  This must be the husband she killed. Apparently he was not the knight in shining armor she thought.

  She shook her head slowly. “Then I learned what being alone really means. He asked me to quit my job as soon as we got married. He worked irregular hours, alternating shifts from month to month. If I worked, we’d never see each other. That sounded logical. Mother never worked outside the home, and I saw this as a sign that I was going to have the same kind of happy marriage my parents had.”

  I wanted to have another bite of pie, more chocolate to get through Paula’s story, but I didn’t move. I was afraid if I distracted her, she’d realize what she was saying and clam up again.

  “I thought I’d be a part of David’s family, but his mother barely spoke, and it wasn’t just me. She sat around all the time with her eyes on the floor, only spoke when spoken to. His father, an over-the-road trucker, either ignored me or criticized me. He never had a kind word to say to me or to his wife. And David changed.” She sat straighter and looked me in the eye. “Or maybe I just saw him for who he really was.”

  I knew only too well how the things you once loved in a man could turn into the things you hated about him.

  “Nothing I did pleased David. The house was never clean enough, the meals were never good enough, I didn’t iron his shirts right, I wore too much makeup, I didn’t wear enough makeup. He shouted at me, called me names, accused me of horrible things. He said I had a lover, that I was talking about him to my friends behind his back, that I was plotting to leave him. When he dressed for work, his anger was worse, as if that uniform gave him the right to abuse me. The sound of his gun belt creaking became a warning.”

  That explained why she’d freaked out when Officer Creighton’s gun belt made a noise.

  I sneaked another bite of chocolate, fortifying myself for the part where she killed him.

  “David never apologized or admitted he’d done anything to apologize for, but after the biggest explosions, he sent me roses—yellow roses. He said I was his yellow rose of Texas. Then for a while, he’d be his old self, treating me like a delicate, treasured child. But he was like a volcano with the pressure building and building until it finally explodes. We never had more than a few days of peace. I tried to do everything right. I tried to make him happy. My mother used to comfort my father when he’d feel overwhelmed by the troubles of the church congregation.” A single tear slid down Paula’s cheek. She made no effort to wipe it away, as if she didn’t realize it was there.

  “I tried so hard to be like my mother, but it seemed like the harder I tried, the more angry David became. It was all my fault, he said. If I was a better wife, he wouldn’t have to blow up.” She touched the scar on her cheekbone. “One day one of the women I’d worked with at the museum called to invite me to lunch. When I hung up, David smashed his fist into my face. I didn’t go to lunch with my friend. I never talked to her again. From that day on, yelling at me wasn’t enough for him.”

  Paula rolled up her long sleeves and showed me scars, then lifted her skirt to her knees and showed me more scars. I cringed at the thought of the pain and betrayal those scars meant.

  “Did you call the police?” I asked.

  She laughed bitterly. “He was the police.”

  “Oh.”

  “To be honest, I never even thought about telling someone. I guess a part of me believed it really was my fault. Then one night when he was drunk, he told me his father had physically abused him until he became big enough and strong enough to fight back. I recognized that he was doing to me what his father had done to him. I thought I could help him. I thought I could save our marriage. I could show him what real love was, and he’d be able to heal from what his dad did to him.”

&nbs
p; “Didn’t work, did it?”

  “No. It got worse. Then I discovered I was pregnant.” She looked up the stairs, toward Zach’s room. “That changed everything. I had to leave him. I couldn’t risk his hurting my baby. One night when he was working, I packed a suitcase, called a cab and left. I got a clerical job, found a one room apartment and was able to hide until after Zach was born.” She smiled. “The first time I held that precious baby in my arms, I knew I’d do whatever it took to keep him safe.”

  Including murder. “David found you,” I guessed.

  “Zach was a month old when David found us. He broke down the door in the middle of the night, came in and started screaming at me. He was wearing street clothes, but he had a gun in his jacket pocket. Said he’d bought and registered it in my name, and if I didn’t give him his son, he’d shoot me and claim it was suicide. Then he’d have Zach.”

  She swallowed hard and looked at me, her eyes as full of terror as they must have been on that night.

  “I couldn’t let him have Zach. I tried to get to the phone, call 911, but he hit me, knocked me down. I got up and fought, hitting him, scratching him, but he just laughed at me. Then Zach started to cry. David threw me against the wall, went to the bedroom and snatched Zach out of his crib. I ran in to see him shaking Zach, bellowing at him to stop crying. I flew across the room and flung myself on him. I had to save Zach. I grabbed that gun out of his pocket and pointed it at him. I told him to put my baby back in his bed and leave immediately or I’d shoot him. He put Zach down and came toward me. He said I wasn’t going to shoot him with the safety on. When I looked down, he lunged toward me and grabbed for the gun, and the whole world exploded. It was a revolver. It didn’t have a safety.”

  My hand lifted to my throat. “Omigawd. You really did kill him.” Yes, she’d said in the beginning that she had, but that’s a hard concept to grasp.

  “Yes. I killed him. He fell backward, blood spurting from his chest, collapsed on the floor and just lay there. I dropped the gun and picked up Zach who was crying at the top of his lungs by this time.”