Dead Letter
Page 22
I looked over at O’Hara. His face was calm now.
“What did she bargain for in return for the letters, O’Hara?” I said to him. “What did she want you to do?”
But he wasn’t listening. “I’ll never get away with this,” he said in a quite reasonable tone of voice. “Not here. They’ll find out, won’t they, Mr. Stoner? Why you’ve probably seen to it that they’ll find out.”
I knew what was going to happen. I got out of the chair and walked toward his desk. “Don’t,” I said as calmly as I could. “Don’t, please. It’s not worth it. He wasn’t worth it.”
But he still couldn’t hear me. A moment later, he couldn’t hear anything at all.
28
I DIDN’T see Sarah Lovingwell for almost a month.
McMasters dropped the case against her when he saw the letters and examined the trust fund account. I didn’t tell him what Sarah’s role had been in securing those letters. Partly because I wasn’t sure. Partly because, at that point, I just didn’t care. Daryl Lovingwell was dead. O’Hara and his son were dead. Lurman, Sturdevant, Lionelli. Lester Grimes. There had been enough death in that lean, vicious man’s wake. He had hired me to protect his daughter and to find the document she’d stolen from him. I’d done both. I’d done my job. The only thing that stuck in my throat was the fact that no one would ever know what a monster he’d been. No one would ever know the evil he had planned. No one would ever know how it had gone wrong. Daryl Lovingwell.
One Sunday afternoon, deep in February’s ice, with the church bells ringing outside the windows, she’d come to my apartment to pay me for what I’d done. It wasn’t hard to see that she was hurt that I hadn’t visited her in the hospital or, later, when she’d gone home.
After a long silence in which we’d looked at each other in that tender, tentative way that old lovers look, she’d asked me in her soft, musky voice why I had abandoned her.
I stared at that prim, pretty face and couldn’t tell. And knew that I never would know. For just a second I wanted to ask her if she had killed him. If she’d killed him that Tuesday afternoon after O’Hara had left in a funk. Because O’Hara hadn’t really confessed to anything but a miserable and helpless confusion. But I didn’t ask her and I didn’t tell her that I knew about the letters, either. I knew what she would say—that she hadn’t stolen a government document. Which, I suppose, was technically true. Her father had said she believed in equivocation. In a way, that’s what I ended up saying in answer to her question—that she was just too clever for me.
She smiled that inscrutable little smile and said, “I’m truly sorry for that.”
She walked to the door, looked back once, fondly, at me and my little apartment, and walked out. That was the last time I saw Sarah B(ernice) Lovingwell. The girl who didn’t look like she’d caused the trouble.
THE END
Enjoy all of Jonathan Valin’s HARRY STONER series, as both Ebooks and Audiobooks!
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The Lime Pit: Harry Stoner Series #1
Final Notice: Harry Stoner Series #2
Dead Letter: Harry Stoner Series #3
Day of Wrath: Harry Stoner Series #4
Natural Causes: Harry Stoner Series #5
Life's Work: Harry Stoner Series #6
Fire Lake: Harry Stoner Series #7
Extenuating Circumstances: Harry Stoner Series #8
Second Chance: Harry Stoner Series #9
The Music Lovers: Harry Stoner Series #10
Missing: Harry Stoner Series #11