Unreasonable Doubt (11 page)

Chapter Twenty

Walt Desmond flinched at the sound of the front door opening. He thought he'd be able to relax here at the B&B, a quiet house among friendly people. He'd been a fool. The cops weren't going to let him carry on as if nothing had happened—as if he were only another tourist, here for the mountain air and the great views.

A different officer, a detective, had come by yesterday, first thing in the morning. Asking him about some woman who'd been attacked in town the previous night. Oh, yeah, he made it sound as if he had Walt's interests at heart. “Thought you should be aware, sir, some people are saying it's not a coincidence this happened so soon after your return.”

Some people.
Meaning if folks weren't already thinking it, the cops would make sure they added two and two and came up with five. The guy had been friendly enough. Frankly, Walt would prefer dealing with the uniformed goons who'd threated him last night. Always better knowing exactly what you're up against, right off the bat. Another lesson he'd learned in prison.

Some of the tension drained out of his shoulders when he heard soft footsteps in the hall. Not the cops this time, but one of the women.

“It's a lovely day. You should be outside.” Carolanne came into the common room.

“Just using the computer,” Walt said. “Where's the rest of your gang?”

She threw herself into a chair. Her face was flushed with health and exercise, and her legs were brown from the sun. Her tight shorts showed muscles taut and sleek. “They have gone, hard as it is to believe, kayaking.”

“Why's that hard to believe?”

Carolanne groaned. “We were on the water at eight o'clock. Every muscle I own aches. Muscles I didn't know I owned ache.” She laughed, lifted her arms, took off her ball cap and ran her fingers through her hair. Her breasts were small and round. For some reason he thought of windfall apples. “All I wanted in the whole world was to finish the last run and get into the shower, and then Darlene proclaimed, 'I've got a great idea.' She's a maniac, that one. So off they've all gone to rent kayaks. Tomorrow's the open house down by the lake. We'll be having some fun,” she made quotes in the air with her fingers, “races and taking interested people out for a paddle. You should come, Walt.”

“I don't think I'd fit in,” he said.

“Everyone fits in. That's the great thing about dragon boating. There are men's teams, women's teams, mixed teams, teams of young people, seniors' teams. All ages can do it. I have to admit that as exhausting as I'm finding my teammates, I'm glad I've gotten into this.”

I'm glad you have, too
, he thought but would never say.

She jumped to her feet. “I'm hitting the shower. Then I'm going to walk into town. Browse the shops, have a coffee.”

“Have fun,” he said.

She stopped in the doorway, hesitated, and turned back to face him. “Come with me, Walt?”

Panic crashed into his chest. “I couldn't.”

“Sure you could. You need to get outside. If I might say, you could use some sun. Finish up what you're doing, and we'll go. I won't be long.” She dashed off.

He stared at the space where she'd been. The air was full of the scent of her. Sweat, not the rancid scent of sweat generated by bitter, angry, violent men doing hard time, but something light, almost fresh. The sweat of a hard workout on the water under a hot sun. Good sweat on a clean body. The sweat of laughter and fun. Not of desperation and rage and hate.

He'd stayed in all day, afraid of running into more cops or some of his old neighbors, who might be also thinking it was not a coincidence a woman was attacked only hours after Walt returned to Trafalgar. They wouldn't bother him, surely, if he was with Carolanne. Yes, a walk would be nice.

He turned back to the computer to check the e-mail account Louise had set up for him. He logged onto G-mail the way her assistant had taught him. He had one message. He read it quickly, and leaned back in his chair with a low whistle.

Five million bucks. This morning Louise filed the papers to sue the government of British Columbia for five million dollars on his behalf.

Chapter Twenty-one

Eliza was one of those people who didn't eat when they were upset, so Winters had gone home after his sandwich with Barb to make his wife toast and a soft-boiled egg. She was a stoic, largely unemotional person, and even after having been married to her for thirty years, Winters couldn't always read her. She seemed to be doing okay. Concerned about her appearance, for sure. Her lip was cut, her left eye swollen, and the tender skin around it turning purple, black, and yellow. But no bones had been broken, swelling would go down, cuts would heal, and skin would repair. Her stomach held a bruise the size of a fist and she grimaced when she laughed, but again, no permanent damage had been done. Human bodies are resilient.

Eliza was resilient.

She greeted him with a kiss, then caught a glimpse of herself in the hall mirror. “I hope no one is saying the police made me invent an attack by a stranger to cover for you knocking me around.”

“Don't even joke about it, Eliza.”

She ran her fingers over his cheek. “Don't mind me. I know how upsetting this must be for you.”

He couldn't help but give her a smile. “Look at you, trying to comfort
me
.”

“I'm hoping to go into the store on Monday. I feel fine, a bit sore, but no worse than if I'd put in too much time at the gym after a long break. I'd go in tomorrow, but I think it's better to let the town's conversation die down a bit first. In the meantime, I can do paperwork here as easily as there. It'll give me a chance to get the September exhibit organized.”

He didn't think she was feeling as blasé about the incident as she was pretending. But he gave her a kiss and didn't pry.

“I don't suppose you have any news?” she said.

“Ray's on it,” had been all he could say.

***

Meredith Morgenstern ordered a glass of white wine. The man with her asked for a beer, and the waitress went to get the drinks.

“Thanks for seeing me,” the man said. Meredith knew he was forty-two, but he looked a good deal older. He was several inches shorter than her five-foot ten, and considerably overweight. He still had a full head of thick black hair, but he peered at her through coke-bottle-bottom glasses.

Meredith smiled. “Thank you. You have a story to tell. I'm here to listen.”

The interior of the Bishop and Nun was empty at this time of day. The few customers had taken tables on the small square of sidewalk out front. Meredith had chosen this place precisely because she knew they were not likely to be interrupted.

“My folks are getting old,” the man said. “Dad wants to fight, but I'm worried it will kill him. Mom's got one foot in the grave already.”

“Surely your parents understand they have nothing to fight
with
. Or against. The case is closed. Over. At least as far as Walter Desmond is concerned.”

“It's not over for them. It will never be over. Not for me, either. Sure, I've been able to get on with my life, more or less, but they're stuck in time. Not a single thing has changed for them since Soph died, except their rapidly aging bodies and deteriorating health.”

“What do you want me to do, Mr. D'Angelo?” Meredith asked. She kept her attention focused on his face. Her eyes were warm and soft, her expression one of sympathy and understanding. She'd practiced that expression in front of the mirror often enough.

“Call me Tony.”

She nodded. “I'm happy to, Tony.”

Tony D'Angelo, younger brother of the late Sophia, only surviving child of Gino and Rose, arrived in Trafalgar yesterday afternoon. He lived in Toronto, he told Meredith on the phone, but came home at this difficult time to be with his family. Friends of his parents had been in and out of the house constantly, bringing cakes and casseroles, paying condolences, digging for gossip, exactly as if there'd been another death in the family. To the D'Angelos there might as well have been. The man who'd murdered Sophia was not only out of prison, but he was here, walking the streets of Trafalgar along with decent, law-abiding people. Everyone said it was a disgrace. At least that's what they said to his parents' faces. What they said behind their backs was another matter entirely. A lot of people were saying Desmond was innocent after all. That the police had screwed up.

They were a pack of vultures, Tony thought, picking over the carcass, searching for the few last, juicy scraps. The people of Trafalgar had forgotten the D'Angelos and their tragedy a long time ago. They thought it was over when Walter Desmond went to prison. They carried on with their lives as Tony's mother and father sank into a premature old age. That Tony himself had fled the mourning-drenched home as soon as he was old enough, and over the years his visits had become increasingly infrequent, was something he tried not to think about. He'd overheard Mrs. Morgenstern (bearing a chicken casserole) breathlessly telling Father McIntyre, who had not been the priest back in Tony's childhood, that her daughter Meredith was home for a visit. Meredith had a very important job with a newspaper in Montreal, did Father McIntyre know? Meredith was doing very well for herself; she had a byline in the paper.

Tony's ears pricked up. He didn't know who Meredith was, but if she worked for a big paper maybe she could help him out. Someone needed to tell his family's side of the story. He'd later found her parents' number in the phone book and gave her a call.

He played with the beer mat on the table. He looked up, then back down again. “It's just…” He paused to stutter. Women liked that. “We're afraid my sister, the beautiful older sister who I adored, is being forgotten in all of this.”

The waitress brought their drinks. “Want anything to eat?”

“No,” Meredith said quickly. “Thank you.” The last thing she wanted was Tony munching his way through the conversation. The waitress gathered up the menus and left. Meredith pulled a small digital recorder out of her bag and placed it on the table. “Do you mind if I record what you have to say? Helps me remember when I write up my article.”

“Not at all.” Tony sipped his beer.

“You're a good deal younger than Sophia,” Meredith began.

“That's wrong,” Tony said.

“I'm sorry. I thought you said…”

“She was born five years before I was. But I am much older than she will ever be.”

Meredith dabbed at her right eye.

“I adored her,” Tony said, “What was not to adore? She was beautiful, smart, and, above all, kind. She looked out for me. She taught me about girls, about the proper way to behave around them. My folks were pretty old-fashioned, they couldn't teach me much about dealing with modern women. I'll always be grateful that Soph was there to do that.”

As he spoke Tony D'Angelo could almost believe himself. Sophia had never given him a minute of her time, and that had suited him just fine. One thing no one ever said about Sophia after she died was that she was a nasty-mouthed vindictive bitch. The first time he'd been interested in a girl, he'd been fourteen, awkward and shy, already wearing thick glasses and embarrassed about it. The girl herself—he didn't even remember her name—had been all bones and angles and equally shy. The first time he brought her around to his house, Sophia, who at nineteen should have had better things to think about than ruining his life, whispered to her that Tony liked to masturbate with the door unlocked, hoping she'd walk in. He'd come back from the bathroom to find the girl gone, his confused mother holding a tray of pop and cookies, and Sophia with a self-satisfied smirk on her face.

That his parents had been old-fashioned was certainly true. He wondered now if part of the reason Sophia had turned out as mean as she was, was her way of getting out from under their control. Her curfew had been hours before her girlfriends', so she climbed out the bedroom window to head back to the party. She hadn't been allowed to date in high school, which meant she lied to the folks about where she was going and never brought her boyfriends home to meet them. Even he, the much younger brother, knew Sophia was a slut.

Everyone knew that.

Everyone but his parents.

Being a slut got her killed, Tony believed. She would have agreed to meet Desmond at the empty house. Probably said she needed to test out the bedrooms or even the kitchen floor before deciding whether or not to buy. And she ended up getting more than she bargained for. As for finding him creepy, the way her work friend had suggested? Ha, sweet little Sophia liked the creep factor, all the better to rub it into her parents' faces.

Although, try as she might, they never saw it.

He figured their old-fashioned ways caused her death. He'd told them so, on more than one occasion. He'd thrown it into their faces. They hadn't wanted her living in the big city, where she'd be away from their control, so they gave her money to settle in Trafalgar. If she'd stayed in Victoria, she would have settled down eventually. She would have married a nice Italian boy and had the pack of grandchildren his mother so desperately wanted.

“She was very popular at school,” Tony said to Meredith. “All the kids loved her.”

Well, the boys sure loved her. Not a word of that had come out after her death. Respect for the dead and all that. Tony had followed Walter Desmond's trial closely, his parents so wrapped up in their self-absorbed grief they didn't have a thought to spare for their surviving child.

He may have hated his sister. She might have been a slut and a thoroughly nasty person, but she didn't deserve to die; she didn't deserve to be murdered in the brutal way she was. At the hands of Walter Desmond. Now Desmond was out of jail and, by all accounts, back in Trafalgar.

And every emotion, of hate for his sister, contempt for his parents, even a deeply suppressed guilt that as her brother he should have protected her—every feeling Tony D'Angelo had bottled up all these years was also back.

He felt something touch his hand. He blinked. Meredith had reached out and laid her fingers lightly on his. He realized his fists were clenched. Embarrassed, he pulled away. “This must be so terribly difficult for you,” she said in her soft sympathetic voice. “I am in awe of the courage it must take to talk about it. I can see how deeply the pain still lies.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Let me digest all this, and put down some ideas for my story. I think it might have national appeal.”

“What does that mean?”

“I planned to write a little story for the local papers, sort of a tribute to Sophia. With Desmond getting off, there's potential for this to get attention all across the country, so I'm going to pitch it to my paper. People are interested in miscarriages of justice, but I'd like to remind my editors and the reading public that we mustn't forget the victim in all of this.”

“The only
miscarriage
, as you put it, is happening right now. That man killed my sister and he's walking free.”

“The appeal was very persuasive,” Meredith said. “A witness was located who put Desmond far away from the scene of your sister's killing at the time it happened.”

“Witnesses make mistakes. They can be bribed. They forget things. How come everyone's so quick to believe the cops screwed up twenty-five years ago, but this new witness must be on the level, eh? Tell me that.”

Meredith backtracked as fast as she could. “I
totally
see what you're saying, Tony. Good heavens, that might be something to look into.”

Tony saw the gleam in her eye. “Sorry. I shouldn't have shouted at you. I guess I get carried away when I think…”

“I understand.” Meredith lifted her hand and indicated she was ready for the bill. “I'd love to have a picture of Sophia. The paper ran one the other day, but it was small and blurry. Do you or your parents have a nice one I can use? I can't promise to get it into the paper, you understand, but I'd like to know what she looked like. I'd like to understand her better.”

“Sure.” The bill arrived. Tony put up a token protest but, as expected, Meredith insisted on paying. “We can go around there now, if you like,” he said.

“Your parents won't mind me dropping in unannounced?”

“They won't mind. We can walk. It's just a couple of blocks away.”

They stepped outside and Meredith put on her sunglasses. “I haven't asked about you, Tony,” she said. They walked up Elm Street and headed west on Front. “What do you do for a living?”

The sidewalks were busy with shoppers and those browsing and enjoying the day. The restaurant patios were full as people relaxed in the sunshine. The Mountain in Winter Gallery was open; the front window featured a single watercolor painting by Nelson artist Maya Heringa—sweeping strokes of blue and orange and green representing mountains and sky, trees and water.

“Did you hear what happened here Wednesday night?” Meredith said to Tony.

“No, what?”

“A woman was attacked in the alley. Thank goodness, a passerby ran him off, or who knows what might have happened.”

“That's too bad,” Tony said, not much interested. He stopped dead, the words caught in his throat. Up ahead a man and a woman were studying the menu outside a restaurant. The woman was middle-aged, tall and slim, but nothing worth a second glance.

The man, however…

If Tony D'Angelo had passed Walter Desmond in any other place at any other time, he wouldn't have given him a second glance. A lot of years had passed, and the man had changed. He was older, of course, but also much harder looking. His gray hair was cropped short and he was bigger than Tony remembered. Not bigger, as in fat, but in muscle.

“What's the matter?” Meredith asked.

“Will you look at that? As bold as brass. Walt Desmond himself.”

“Heavens. I think you're right. Tony, don't do anything foolish.”