“Why don’t I let you off at the front door, Ronnie?” he asked over his shoulder. “That way you won’t have to walk so far.”
“That’s a good idea,” Ronnie said, in something that was fairly close to a normal voice. But her fingers closed over the front of Tom’s shirt as though she feared to let go.
“We’re all going in,” Tom said briskly, uncurling her fingers from his shirtfront. With a quick glance to make sure Kenny and Thea’s attention was elsewhere, he raised them unobtrusively to his lips. She smiled at him. It was a tremulous smile, but still a smile. “You can let Ronnie and Thea and me off at the front door, Kenny, and then park and join us.”
“Sure thing,” Kenny said with an unnatural degree of heartiness and another of those quick glances through the rearview mirror.
There was a huge black wreath on the door, Tom saw as they walked up the front steps, his hand decorously on Ronnie’s elbow. Even as they reached it, the door opened and an elderly couple stood framed in the entrance.
“You tell Dorothy that Sam and I were here, now, Selma, you hear?” the elderly woman said over her shoulder as she and the old gentleman with her stepped through the doorway.
“I will do that, Mrs. Cherry,” Selma said, coming into view behind them. Her gaze swept past them to Ronnie, Tom, and Thea, who had just reached the porch, and she said something to someone behind her.
Upon seeing Ronnie, Mrs. Cherry and her companion stopped at the top of the steps to express their condolences. Ronnie replied politely, and then they were inside the house.
A hushed air lay over everything, as though the house itself knew that its master was dead. Even the light from the huge crystal chandelier seemed dim.
Ronnie stopped just inside the door, staring up at the wide, curving stairway before her as though it were Mount Everest. Then she looked at Tom.
“Will you be here tomorrow?” she asked.
Tom nodded. She bowed her head, then turned away from him and started walking up the stairs, her body slender and fragile-looking in her black dress.
She looked so alone. It was all he could do not to go after her, to tuck her into bed and see that she got supper and was taken care of in general. His hands clenched at his sides from doing battle with the impulse.
Leaving Ronnie to the tender mercies of Sedgely was kind of like leaving Daniel to the tender mercies of the lion’s den, he thought savagely.
But he could not go with her, and he could not take her away. Not yet. Where before she had been the Senator’s wife, now she was his widow. For a few more days.
Then, maybe, they could begin again.
“Go up with her, would you, Thea?” he asked, turning away. “Just to see that she gets settled in.”
“Sure, Tom.” The look Thea gave him told him that, over the last hour or so, she had made a pretty fair deduction about the state of his feelings toward Ronnie. She hurried up the stairs in Ronnie’s wake.
Selma was standing near the door.
“Mrs. Lewis hasn’t had anything to eat since coffee this morning,” Tom said to the housekeeper. “You take her up some supper, Selma, would you please?”
Selma nodded. Her eyes were bloodshot, with puffy circles around them as though she had been crying. Tom remembered that she had worked at Sedgely for over thirty years.
She would grieve for His Honor too. Hell, they all would, even he, as crazy and mixed up as that sounded.
“I will,” Selma said. Then she lowered her voice. “The police are still going over the Senator’s office. They’ve been asking questions about you. When I told them you were here, they asked me to ask you if you would come see them for a minute.”
Tom frowned, then nodded and headed toward the east wing, his stomach tightening. He had a good idea of why the police might want to talk to him, though he prayed he was wrong.
If Marsden suspected he’d been sleeping with Ronnie, the police would have heard it first thing.
It turned out to be worse, much worse, than he had thought. The detective in charge was Alex Smitt, whom Tom knew slightly. Alex greeted him with a penetrating look, a quick handshake, and nary a smile.
“I’ve got something to show you,” Alex said, and ushered him into a room almost directly opposite His Honor’s office, the open doorway of which was barred with yellow crime-scene tape, making it off limits to everyone but the police.
A card table had been set up in the center of the room. On the vinyl top was a stack of photographs. With a gesture Alex indicated to Tom that he should look at them.
Tom did, and felt his blood freeze.
They were pictures of him, and Ronnie, and him and Ronnie together. Lots of pictures. Some were downright erotic. All were damning.
The two of them kissing in the Yellow Dog. The two of them kissing behind his apartment. The two of them kissing in the parking lot of the Robbins Inn. Another one of them going into a room there, hand in hand. Him in his tux and her in her panties as he carried her out of the swimming pool on the night of the party. A full dozen of the two of them in the act of making love that same night on the gym mat in the pool house. Obviously someone had been taking pictures through the patio door.
Tom winced inwardly, then looked up to meet Alex’s steady gaze.
“Would you agree that it’s fair to say that you and Mrs. Honneker were having an affair?”
Though the truth was evident, right there on the card table in living color in a way no one but a blind man could mistake, Tom wasn’t stupid enough to answer that.
“Talk to my lawyer,” he said crisply, and, turning on his heel, walked out the door.
Chapter
39
September 13th
“THE FIRST THING FOR YOU to do is stay away from her.” From behind his desk, Dan Osborn pointed his pen at Tom, his expression admonitory. “I mean it, Tom. You stay away from her.”
It was Saturday morning. Ronnie knew that Osborn usually spent Saturday morning on the golf course. Today, however, he was in his office, taking her on as a client. He was the best criminal-defense lawyer in Jackson.
It seemed impossible to believe that she needed a criminal-defense lawyer, but Tom assured her that she did, and Osborn seemed to agree with him.
“There’s no reason for Tom to stay away from me,” she said. She was seated in a big burgundy leather wing chair, one of a pair pulled up in front of Osborn’s massive oak desk. Dressed in a dark gray suit, white shirt, and navy tie, Tom stood with his back to the big window that overlooked the new capitol building. Ronnie glanced at him briefly before returning her attention to the lawyer. “I did not kill my husband, Mr. Osborn.”
Osborn swiveled to face her. Gray-haired, in perhaps his midsixties, he was a rumpled, grumpy-looking bulldog of a man. Ronnie had met him on a few occasions previously, most recently at Lewis’s party. Tom he knew well. His gaze moved over her now, taking in her sedately styled hair, which was pulled back from her face and secured at her nape with a black satin bow, and her trim-fitting black pants suit and her crossed legs and high heels. The conclusion he reached after completing this appraisal was not apparent in his expression.
“Mrs. Honneker, if I didn’t believe that, I would not have agreed to represent you. However, being innocent of a crime and proving that you are innocent of a crime are two entirely different matters. Since Tom called me on your behalf last night, I have been in touch with some people I know in the DA’s office and the police department, and they feel they have quite a substantial case against you already. You found the body; your fingerprints are on the murder weapon; there is a lapse of some twenty-five minutes between the time the limo driver says he dropped you off at Sedgely and the time when you started screaming for help; you were having an affair with Tom here, of which they have photographic proof; according to his son, Marsden, Senator Honneker was planning to ask you for a divorce because of that affair; and there was a signed prenuptial agreement in place preventing you from collecting more than a pittance
in case of divorce. Your share of the estate upon his death is, however, substantial. There you have method, motive, and opportunity. I’ve seen people convicted on a lot less.”
“She didn’t kill him, Dan,” Tom said. His hands rested on the marble windowsill; his fingers curled around the edge. One leg was bent, with his foot flat against the wall.
“You, my friend, having been in California at the time, have no way of knowing that for certain. There is no witness that I am aware of who can provide Mrs. Honneker with an alibi.” He looked at Ronnie. “Is there?”
She shook her head, and then smiled faintly. “Davis.”
If she appeared to be having trouble taking this whole thing seriously, Ronnie thought, it was because she was. It seemed ludicrous that anyone could think that she had murdered Lewis. She was even having trouble accepting that he was dead. Murdered. Ronnie kept getting the feeling she was caught up in some kind of surreal dream. This could not really be happening.
“The dog,” Tom answered Osborn’s unspoken query. He straightened. “Who took the pictures?”
Ronnie hadn’t seen them. From Tom’s brief—very brief—description, she preferred to keep it that way.
“Apparently the Senator’s son hired a private detective some months ago to gather evidence that would allow the Senator to obtain a divorce in which he was, in the eyes of his constituents at least, clearly not at fault. By which I mean evidence of his wife having an affair. He came up empty—until you came on the scene.” Osborn’s voice took on a certain dryness as he said that last.
Tom grimaced. “Isn’t that some sort of invasion of privacy?”
“Probably.” Osborn inclined his head. “But does that mean the pictures will get thrown out of court? Under the circumstances there’s no chance at all.”
“Just because we were having an affair doesn’t mean she killed him.” Tom moved to stand beside the other wing chair, his arm resting along its top, one hand in the front pocket of his trousers. He’d been sitting in the chair earlier, but was obviously too much on edge to stay still for long.
“You’re right,” Osborn said. “And that’s the tack we have to take. I don’t see any sense in denying that the affair took place—that would be pretty stupid in the face of the overwhelming evidence that it did. So we need to paint it as just that: an affair. A quick, meaningless fling that has ended, and was certainly nothing to kill over. So like I said, Tom, you stay away from her.” He swiveled to look at Ronnie. “Mrs. Honneker, I don’t want him within half a mile of you, you hear?”
Ronnie glanced at Tom. He met her gaze. Telling her not to see him was like telling her not to breathe; she thought she would die if she didn’t.
“For how long?” she asked Osborn quietly.
Osborn glared at her, then glared at Tom, then glared at her again. “Mrs. Honneker, I don’t think you fully appreciate the gravity of your situation. The crime they are considering charging you with is a capital offense: first-degree murder with aggravating circumstances. They are serious enough about the case against you to ask me to tell you not to leave the state. The prosecutor may very well—no, he most certainly will—ask for the death penalty if you should be so charged. In which case we will have to convince twelve jurors that you did not kill your husband. We are starting a campaign right now with those jurors in mind. The motive the prosecutors will almost certainly assign to you is that you wanted both your lover—and your husband’s money. Given the pre-nup, there was no way for you to have both unless you killed your husband. Forgive me for saying so, but you must know that you are not exactly beloved by a lot of people in this state. In fact you have a certain—reputation. The revelation that you had an affair with Tom while you were married to the Senator will almost certainly have a negative impact on the jury. There’s no getting around that. The Senator is not yet in his grave. We certainly don’t want pictures of you with Tom here popping up all over the place. Jurors don’t come into trials as blank slates. They come in with all their foibles and prejudices intact. I don’t want them any more prejudiced against you than they have to be.”
There was a moment’s silence. Both men looked at Ronnie. She glanced from Osborn to Tom and back.
“I’ll stay away from her,” Tom said. He moved back to the window. “But she is going to need somebody who’s on her side with her at the funeral and so forth. At this point I wouldn’t leave her at the mercy of any friend or relative of the Senator’s any more than I would leave a canary in a roomful of cats.”
“I understand you dragged her out of Sedgely last night after she had already gone upstairs to bed.” Osborn’s voice was dry again. They were talking to each other now as if she weren’t even present, Ronnie thought. Surprisingly it didn’t bother her. From the beginning she had not felt like an integral part of the meeting. She just could not seem to fully process the fact that Lewis was dead and that she was suspected of killing him.
“I didn’t feel like I had much choice,” Tom said. “Between Alex Smitt and his damned pictures and the family and friends who were coming and going, Sedgely just didn’t seem like a good place to leave her. Hell, I wouldn’t have put it past them to have hauled her out of bed to question her again. Or Marsden to go berserk and attack her. At this point I feel like anything’s possible with them where she’s concerned.”
“I see your point.” Osborn looked at Tom with some speculation.
“I took her to my mother’s,” he said abruptly in response to that look.
And, Ronnie reflected, Sally McGuire had been warmly welcoming, too, providing her with supper and a bath and bed without asking any questions—at least not of her; Ronnie had little doubt that Tom had filled his mother in after she had gone to bed.
“To your mother’s? Sally’s?” Osborn sounded faintly appalled. Ronnie got the impression that he knew Tom’s mother well.
“I knew it wasn’t a good idea for her to stay with me, and that was the only other place I felt comfortable leaving her,” Tom said. “In fact if she can’t leave the state, I think that’s where she ought to stay while this whole thing is going down. The press won’t find her there, and my mother will make sure she eats and so forth.” He glanced at Ronnie with a frown. “I don’t think she’s quite—hitting on all cylinders right at the moment.”
“Are you saying that you think I am out of it?” Ronnie asked him with a hint of heat.
He smiled at her. “Something like that. It’s the shock, I think. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m perfectly fine.”
“I’ll take her to the funeral myself, and to anything else connected with this that seems necessary,” Osborn said abruptly. Though he didn’t say it in so many words, his response told Ronnie that he agreed with Tom’s assessment.
Maybe they were right. Maybe she was suffering a little bit from shock, Ronnie thought. That would explain the weird, disconnected feeling that kept stealing over her.
She hadn’t loved Lewis, but he had been her husband. To find him like that … Ronnie shuddered, remembering.
Tom was watching her. There was a hint of suppressed violence in his voice as he said, “Dammit, Dan, I think we ought to hire our own investigators. The police want to solve this: Pinning it on Ronnie makes it easy for them. Why should they even bother to look elsewhere? But the fact is she didn’t kill him. If he was murdered—and I have to say, having known him and the family for a long time, I don’t think he committed suicide—there’s a murderer loose out there. Somebody needs to find out who it is.”
“I agree with you about hiring our own investigators,” Osborn said. “But you do realize, once they look beyond Mrs. Honneker, who the next most likely candidate to have murdered the Senator is, don’t you?” Osborn’s voice grew testy. “It’s you, Tom, for pretty much the same reasons they will ascribe to her. In fact if you hadn’t been in California at the time with fifty witnesses to prove it, I’m sure they’d be looking at you every bit as hard as they’re looking at her. Of course they
may still think you could have hired somebody to do it. Or they may be thinking you conspired with Mrs. Honneker. You need your own lawyer, Tom. I can’t represent both of you, since if it comes to a trial, we may have to put on alternate theories. And you are certainly a viable alternate theory.”
Tom stared at him. “J didn’t kill him. She didn’t kill him. Neither of us hired anybody to kill him, and we didn’t conspire.”
Osborn sighed. “I am just telling you what is going through the investigators’ minds.”
“What about a polygraph?” Tom asked. “If Ronnie took a polygraph and passed, wouldn’t that put her in the clear?”
“I do not advocate my clients’ taking lie detector tests.”
“So what do you suggest?” Tom’s question was impatient.
“I suggest that we sit tight,” Osborn said very precisely. “And nothing more, until we see which way the wind is going to blow. You never know, they may still rule it a suicide. Mrs. Honneker, you are not to talk to police, reporters, anybody without my being present, is that clear? Any questions that may be put to you, refer the questioner to your lawyer. Tom, I was very serious about you having your own representation. I suggest Brian Hughes.” He scribbled a number on a piece of paper and passed it to Tom. “Now, Mrs. Honneker, there is one point I want to clear up: You say you went for a walk after the driver dropped you off at Sedgely. That would be approximately ten thirty-five to—what? eleven or so?”
Ronnie nodded. “Approximately yes.”
“Then, when you went inside, you went directly to your husband’s office, is that correct?”
“Yes.” Ronnie tried not to remember what she had found there, but she couldn’t help it. Lewis’s head in a puddle of blood—she forced her mind back to the present.
“Was it customary for you to do that? Go to your husband’s office upon coming in from an engagement? Or otherwise seek him out?”
“No.”
“Then why, on this particular night, did you do so?”
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