by Sherry Lewis
Celeste rubbed her hands together and set off the rattling of her jewelry again. “The first thing we need to do is make sure Douglas gets clear of this trouble. I’ll help you. . .”
He shuddered.
“. . . Nothing better to do until I have to start my next book and I’ve got absolutely weeks until I hear back from my publisher about the proposal I just submitted. . .”
“That’s nice, but I don’t need help.”
“. . . once we get Douglas out of this little bit of trouble we can work together on getting them back together. . .”
“No,” Fred said firmly. “Absolutely not.”
“It will be such fun spending time together, you and I. What should we do first?”
“Nothing.” He raised his voice almost to a shout to get her attention.
“Nothing?”
“He hasn’t been charged with anything, and I’m counting that he won’t be. Now if you’ll excuse me, Celeste, I’m going home.” He increased his pace.
She came after him. “Fine. I don’t mind. We don’t need to discuss this out here—”
He didn’t turn around. “I’m tired, Celeste. I don’t want any company.”
“You want to be alone?”
“More than almost anything in the world. Thanks for your concern.”
“But—”
“Give Alison a kiss for me.”
He walked faster, tensing as he listened for her footsteps to come after him, relaxing slightly when he heard her walking the other way. Whatever he decided to do for Douglas, he’d do alone. He’d have enough of a headache when Enos and Margaret figured out what he was up to. Adding Celeste to the total would equal infinite trouble.
No, the less said about his plans, the better. Especially since he had no clear idea what his plans were.
ELEVEN
Fred walked quickly in the dappled sunlight of early morning, checking the boardwalk in front of the sheriff’s office for signs of Celeste Devereaux before he came out of the cover of the trees on the corner. Enos had called him half an hour ago, finally giving him permission to speak with Douglas. He didn’t intend to waste any of his precious time dealing with that woman.
He hadn’t slept well, but he hadn’t expected to. Worry about his children always kept him awake, and the fact that they were all nearing middle age didn’t change anything. Phoebe had always been able to sleep in spite of any crisis, claiming she needed the strength sleep brought to get her through. But trouble gave Fred insomnia, kept his head from finding comfort on the pillow, and made his legs too nervous to lie still.
Sleeplessness took more of a toll at this age than it had when he was forty. It made everything hurt. This morning every muscle ached with the effort of walking and his eyes burned in the sunlight. But Douglas needed him and Fred wouldn’t have trusted this first visit to anyone else.
When he’d satisfied himself that Enos had no other visitors, he crossed the street quickly and ducked into the office. Enos sat at his desk before a jumble of papers, but his attention was focused on a half-eaten doughnut on a paper towel.
Fred pulled off his cap and unzipped his jacket. “What’s the matter? Jessica refusing to make you breakfast since you arrested Douglas?”
“Very funny.” Enos shoved the doughnut into his mouth and devoured it, leaving little flecks of glaze on his lips.
“You’re still insisting on doing this?”
“I have no choice, Fred. None. I wish you could understand that.”
“I might someday, but Margaret won’t. What are you going to tell her?”
Enos shook his head and looked miserable. “Me? I’m not going to tell her a blasted thing. What good would it do me to try?”
Fred couldn’t answer that. Margaret wasn’t unreasonable unless she felt a threat to the well-being of her family. Then nothing anyone said could make any difference to her. “Can I see him?”
Enos jerked his head in the direction of the back door. “He’s in the back.”
Without wasting any more time, Fred pushed open the door and stepped through. The back room consisted of two smallish cells separated by a narrow concrete walkway. Though not exactly cold, the place could have used more heat.
Douglas sat on the cot, his back against the wall. His eyes were bloodshot and dark-rimmed, his hair tousled, his skin pasty. He looked horrible.
Enos came in after Fred and snagged up the keys to unlock Douglas’s cell. “Have you called an attorney yet?”
“Not yet.”
Douglas kicked his legs onto the cot and looked away. “I don’t want an attorney.”
“You’d better get one,” Enos insisted.
“I don’t need an attorney. I didn’t kill Garrett.”
Fred lowered himself to the cot and touched Douglas’s knee. “Of course you didn’t. But maybe we should talk with someone anyway—just for the peace of mind.”
“I can’t afford an attorney, Dad. And I’m not going to let you pay for one.”
“What about a court-appointed defense attorney?” Enos asked.
Douglas waved his suggestion away and made a face. “I’m not a charity case.”
“Of course you’re not,” Fred agreed. “The family can take care of the expense.”
With a heavy sigh, Enos replaced the keys and crossed to the door. “Do me a favor, Fred. Don’t refuse to take this seriously. I’ll do everything I can, you know that, but most of it’s out of my hands. All I do is gather the evidence. If the county attorney decides to prosecute, there’s nothing I can do but testify.” On that cheery note, he pulled the door closed behind him and left them alone.
Tension radiated from Douglas, creating an almost visible barrier around him. Fred wanted to gather him into his arms and weep. He wanted to shake some sense into him and make him agree to talk to an attorney. More than anything, he wanted to promise him everything would be all right. But he couldn’t.
“All right,” he said. “Suppose we start over at the beginning. What happened when you left the house that night?”
Douglas blinked several times, looking confused. “What?”
“The only way to get you out of this trouble is to prove you didn’t kill Garrett. If we can find another witness, someone who saw you somewhere else, it might give an attorney something to work with.”
“No attorney.”
“You need to at least—”
“No attorney, Dad. Not unless it becomes absolutely necessary.”
“You’re about to be arrested for murder. It’s absolutely necessary right now.”
Douglas turned away, looking more like a stubborn little boy than a grown man.
“You left the house a little before nine. You didn’t come in until after two. What happened? I need to know everything.”
Douglas shifted toward the wall.
“We’re talking about five hours. You weren’t at Locke’s the whole time.”
Fred willed the boy to meet his eyes, but Douglas didn’t look up. A standoff. Battling the old nervous feeling in his legs, Fred pushed himself from the cot and tried to pace in the tiny enclosure.
Silence hung between them for several minutes until Douglas finally spoke, his voice so low Fred had to stop walking to hear him.
“I went to Locke’s that night, I already told you that. You know how upset I was. I didn’t start out to go there, but when I was walking along Main Street and I saw the lights on at the store, something snapped. I crossed the street and pounded on the door. Garrett was there and he let me in.”
Fred resumed is seat on the cot beside Douglas.
“We argued again, like I said. He’d been drinking—he had a bottle on his desk. Everything came out—Suzanne, Alison, things from twenty years ago. We fought, and this time there wasn’t anybody there to step in. This time, I got the best of him. I hit him, but only with my fist and he was still alive when I left, Dad. I swear it.”
“What about your fingerprints on the murder weapon?”
Douglas shook his
head, lost. “I don’t know. I might have touched it while I was there—I can’t remember.”
“Think,” Fred insisted.
“I’m trying.”
Fred drew in a breath and pulled back his impatience. “What time did you get there?”
“I don’t know.”
“How long did you stay? What time did you leave?”
“I didn’t check my watch. It never occurred to me that I’d need an alibi. Garrett was pretty drunk. We talked for quite a while, but I couldn’t say how long.”
“You talked? I thought you argued. How long could that take? As upset as you were, it was probably over in a minute.”
“We talked. We argued. I don’t know how long it took. I must have been there a while.”
“Five hours?”
Douglas didn’t bat an eye. “Maybe.”
“Then what?”
“Then I guess Albán saw me leaving. He says it was around midnight because he was on the way back to the Copper Penny to close up.”
“So we’ve only got to account for three hours in Locke’s and two hours afterward.” He intended his sarcasm to affect Douglas, but it didn’t.
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“He might have been mistaken. Maybe he saw someone else and just thought it was you.”
But Douglas shook his head in resignation. “Albán knows me too well. You remember the year he and Kenneth were on the high school ski team together—I was around them all the time. I thought Albán was so incredibly cool. He’d survived the Hungarian revolution and escaped from a communist country—I couldn’t get enough of him. If he says he saw me, he did.”
“Of course he did. I’m grasping at straws, that’s all.” Fred leaned his elbows on his knees and battled the weariness that threatened to overtake him.
Douglas frowned and looked miserable. “I’m sorry, Dad.”
This time Fred gave into instinct and pulled the boy to him. He told himself Douglas’s story would fall into place later—when he wasn’t so upset. And he tried to make himself believe that.
The muffled sound of raised voices in Enos’s office reached Fred through the closed door. Patting Douglas’s shoulder, he pressed the boy away from him a second before the door flew open to reveal Margaret in the opening. Shoulders stiff, face set in a mask of disapproval, she came to the door of Douglas’s cell. “Do you realize we can’t get Douglas out yet?”
Enos followed her inside, equally stiff, equally disapproving.
Fred forced himself to his feet. “What do we have to do to get the ball rolling?”
“You’re just going to have to be patient,” Enos said.
“But I thought we could get him out this morning.”
“I promised to let you see him. I didn’t say anything else.”
“Have you arrested him? Officially?”
Enos shook his head. “Once Ivan gets here I’ll send him after the warrant.”
“I can’t believe this,” Margaret snapped.
“I can’t ignore the evidence, Maggie. I have to do my job. If I could do anything else, I would.” Enos fumbled with the key and opened the door to let Fred out.
Fred put an arm across Margaret’s shoulder. “We’ll work something out. There’s no way Douglas is going to spend another minute in jail once bail is set. I promise you that.” Fred looked over his shoulder at the figure of his youngest son. He ached for him, and his determination to find the person responsible grew. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, son. Are you going to be all right?”
Douglas nodded, but with little conviction.
Enos pulled the cell door closed and the clang of metal on metal sent a jolt through Fred. Forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other, he led Margaret into the outer office. He’d only felt this helpless and hopeless once before—when he’d walked away from Phoebe’s grave after her funeral.
Neither he nor Margaret said a word until they stepped outside and closed the door behind them.
“Nobody’s going to believe this nonsense,” he said softly.
A tiny spark of hope lit her face. “You don’t think so?”
“Not for a minute.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “Come on back to the house with me. We’ll put on a pot of coffee—decaf—and everything will look better.” He tried to force a smile to his lips, but they wouldn’t respond.
“This is all just so unbelievable.” Hope faded and tears filled her eyes.
“Look,” he said, forcing steel into his voice, “Douglas did not kill Garrett. You and I know it, the rest of the town knows it and, in his heart, Enos knows it. We just have to believe that truth will come out. We have to believe that Enos will find the real killer and that Douglas will be home in no time.”
“I hope you’re right.” She wiped the tears away with the tips of her fingers. “I keep thinking I should be able to do something.”
For about half a second he considered telling her what he wanted to do, but thought better of it. “All we can do right now is try to find him an attorney, whether he wants one or not.”
They walked toward the end of the boardwalk where Margaret had parked her car. Just before they stepped down, the sound of a horn interrupted them.
“Fred— Yoo-hoo, Maggie—”
Cringing at the sound of Janice Lacey’s high-pitched voice, Fred weighed the odds of ignoring her successfully.
“Fred—”
Her car door slamming shut and her feet tapping in their direction helped him decide. As co-owner of Lacey’s General Store with her husband Bill, Janice had access to the ears of everyone in town. Those who didn’t visit the store when she had information to impart were treated to a telephone call. Ignoring Janice would only postpone the inevitable.
With her short gray curls bobbing in the early spring sunlight and her stretch pants doing exactly what they’d been invented for across her ample middle, Janice ran toward them. “I just heard. My gracious, what a horrible thing for the two of you to bear.”
From the stiffening in Margaret’s spine, Fred knew she welcomed Janice about as much as he did. Janice’s urgent little eyes darted from Fred’s face to the spot on Margaret’s shoulder where his arm rested. Knowing Janice could interpret it as proof that Margaret needed comfort, he pulled his arm away.
“I was on my way to the store when I saw the two of you, and I just had to stop and let you know that if I can do anything, I’d just love to help.”
Margaret smiled sweetly, though how she managed it Fred couldn’t imagine. “That’s very thoughtful.”
“The worst part of this whole thing is the talk. You know how people in this town can be. And I want the two of you to know that if I hear one word of gossip I intend to nip it in the bud. There are a few women in this town,” her voice lowered as if she were sharing a secret with them, “Emma Brumbaugh for example, or Cleo Winkler— Well, you just don’t want either of those two to get started talking.”
She had a point there. Unfortunately, both Emma and Cleo usually got most of their information straight from Janice.
“So, is he here? Is Enos keeping him in our jail? What about bail? Is Enos going to release him?”
Margaret smiled again, but some of the sugar had melted. “I’m sure you can understand that we just can’t talk about it right now.”
Janice’s eyes clouded, but cleared quickly. “Well, of course you can’t. And I’m not trying to pry, you know me better than that.”
Yes, they certainly did. Fred touched Margaret’s elbow and she responded eagerly. “If you’ll excuse us, Janice, we were on our way home.”
“Well, of course you were. Is there anything I can send over?” She followed them a few more steps toward Margaret’s car. “I should talk to one or two of the ladies from the church and ask them to bring dinner for you tonight, would that be good?”
“Unnecessary,” Fred said sharply, then added a tight smile. “But thanks.”
“Any time. That’s exactly what friends are for.
Why it could be any of us in this situation,” Janice said in a tone that suggested she believed otherwise.
Fred wanted to get out of there, to still the sound of Janice’s voice, and to sit for a while in the silence of his own living room. He wanted to convince himself that the situation wasn’t as dire as it seemed. He wanted to believe Enos would find Garrett’s real killer, and that Douglas would be home by tonight.
He tugged at Margaret’s elbow again.
“This whole thing is such a tragedy,” Janice said. “I heard that Olivia is absolutely prostrate with grief. She isn’t taking this well at all. And the funeral. Do you know when the funeral is going to be?”
Garrett’s funeral was the furthest thing from Fred’s mind.
“Because I think we should provide a luncheon for afterward, don’t you? I’m assuming Yvonne and Jenny will come back. Have you heard anything about that? Surely Yvonne will come back for the funeral. You can’t just ignore the murder of a man you were married to for that long. Besides, she’d have to bring Jenny back for her own father’s funeral, wouldn’t she?”
Fred didn’t think there were any laws governing it.
“Yes, I think a luncheon would be perfect. How many salads do you think we should have, Maggie?”
Margaret’s eyes met Fred’s and for a second he thought she was going to laugh. She looked as if she were about to speak, to give some answer to Janice’s question, when the sound of another car door and more footsteps behind them caught their attention.
Ivan Neeley, Enos’s other deputy, lumbered across the boardwalk in the direction of the Sheriff’s office. He wore a look of self-importance and tossed Fred an almost hostile glance before he stepped inside.
Fred tried to cling to his belief that the town would rally to Douglas’s defense, but already he could see the handwriting on the wall. Some would stand by Douglas. Some would indulge in idle gossip and speculation. But some would be eager to believe the worst. And those were the ones who frightened him.
Well, he wouldn’t just sit back and wait like some helpless old man. No matter what Enos said, no matter what anyone said, Fred had to do something. He’d never been one to let someone else bail him out of trouble, and he wouldn’t start now. Somehow he had to help Douglas prove his innocence, and talking with Albán Toth about what he saw the night of the murder sounded like the most logical thing he could do.