Until Proven Guilty (20 page)

“Why didn’t you tell me, Anne? You left me wide open to attack.”

Her eyes, fixed on mine, didn’t waver. “I didn’t think it mattered,” she said.

“But it does matter. You should have told me. Yourself.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about Milton Corley. Why did you marry him?” It was not a question I had expected to ask. It was the wounded cry of a jealous suitor, not a professional cop with his mind on his job.

“Because I loved him,” she answered.

“Loved him or used him?”

“Used him first, loved him later.”

Maybe she was being honest with me after all. “What about J. P. Beaumont? Is it the same with him?”

She raised her hands in a helpless gesture, then dropped them back in her lap. She nodded slowly. “At first I only wanted information.”

I felt my heart constrict. “And now?”

“I love you.” They were the words I wanted to hear, but I couldn’t afford to believe them.

“Why?” The word exploded in the room. “Why do you love me?”

“Because you found the part of me that died when Milton did. I told you that last night.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Yes. It’s the truth.”

My gaze faltered under her unblinking one. “Tell me about your book. I want to read it.”

“All right,” she said. “After I get it back from Ralph. I sent it to Phoenix with him. He’s having it typed for me. I have to revise the last chapter.”

“Why?”

“I made a mistake.”

“What kind of mistake?”

She looked at me as if puzzled. “The kind that shouldn’t be made if you’re any kind of writer. Why all the questions?”

“I wanted to hear this from you, Anne. You should have told me. I shouldn’t have had to read it in the newspaper. It makes you look suspicious.”

For several long minutes we sat without speaking. “What about us?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll have to give it some thought.” I got up to leave. I had touched the personal issue and skirted the basic one. I had to ask. I had to have the answer from Anne Corley’s own lips. “Did you have anything to do with Angela Barstogi’s death?”

She heard the question without flinching. “So that’s what’s bothering you,” she said in a monotone. She dropped her head in her hands. “No, Beau, I didn’t. I was in Arizona. Check with United. Check with anybody.”

“Do you know someone named Uncle Charlie?”

She shook her head. I went to the door and stood there uncertainly, my hand on the door-knob. I didn’t know whether to leave or apologize. “I didn’t think you did, but I’m getting some heat thanks to Maxey. I’d better go back to the office,” I said at last. “I’ve got work to do.”

W
ork was a tonic for me that day. I worked like a fiend. I dove into every statement and every file with absolute concentration, finding comfort in the necessary discipline. Anne had said she had nothing to do with Angela Barstogi. I wanted to prove it to the world and to myself. There was nothing I wanted more than for Peters’ suspicions to be dead wrong.

I put in a call to United. They said they’d call back with the information I needed. They did eventually, confirming Anne’s arrival in Seattle. It proved the point as far as I was concerned, but the rest of the world needed more convincing. I had to lay hands on Angela Barstogi’s killer. That was the only way to clear Anne once and for all. Who the hell was Uncle Charlie, and where was he? How could I find him?

It had been just over a week, but already Angela Barstogi’s file was voluminous. I read through it all—statements, medical examiner’s report, crime lab report—searching for some key piece that would pull the entire puzzle into focus. I had moved on to the Faith Tabernacle file when Peters came back about four o’clock.

“How’s it going?” I asked. It was a natural enough question, but I felt strange after I asked it. I didn’t know whether or not Peters would answer me. I didn’t know if I wanted him to.

“Maxwell Cole is a jerk,” he said. That was no surprise. It was something that found us in wholehearted agreement. Peters peered over my shoulder at the files. “Any luck?”

“Yeah. All bad.”

He waited, expectantly, but I didn’t volunteer any information. I wanted to see if he would ask. “What did she say?” he inquired finally.

“That she didn’t have anything to do with it.”

He shook his head. “And that’s good enough for you, I suppose?”

“As a matter of fact, it isn’t. If it were, I wouldn’t be going blind reading these reports, and I wouldn’t have called the airlines.”

Peters settled on the corner of my desk. “Did you say you met Ralph Ames?” he asked.

“The attorney. Yes, I met him.”

“How did he strike you, hotheaded maybe? Prone to fly off the handle?”

“No, just the opposite. Of course, he could be schizo. Who knows?”

“I put a little pressure on Cole. He gave me the name of the girl he talked to in Ames’ office. I called right after I left Cole. Ames fired her fifteen minutes before that, for talking to Cole. That surprise you?”

“No. When I tried calling there I went through a screening process. It strikes me that Anne is a valued client.”

“Valuable, certainly. The lady’s loaded.” He paused. “I’m going down there, Beau, to Arizona.”

“Why?”

“I’ve picked up some information, enough to warrant the trip.”

I stifled the desire to demand the information, to get Peters in a hammerlock until he came clean. But I knew he was doing his job, holding out on me until he had something concrete. He was right, of course.

“You’ve told Watty, then?” I could feel my heart pounding in my chest.

“No. I’m going on my own nickel. It’s the weekend, and I want to get away from this drizzle. I’m feeling a yen for sunshine.”

It took a second or two for me to understand the implication behind what he was saying. Gratitude washed over me like a flood. “Peters, I—”

“Don’t thank me, Beau. You may not like what I find.”

There was more than a hint of warning in his tone, but I ignored it. I chose to ignore it because I didn’t want to hear it. “When’s your plane?”

He glanced at his watch. “A little over an hour and a half. Want to take me down and keep the car?” He thought better of it. “Wait a minute. My plane gets in late Sunday evening. That’s probably a bad time for you to come pick me up.”

“If you’re thinking about the wedding, we may go for a stay of execution.”

He grinned and tossed me the keys. “Good,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Late Friday afternoon traffic taxed my limited current driving skills. I had gotten out of the habit of fighting the freeway jungle. I had forgotten what it was like. Living downtown had liberated me from the tyranny of Detroit and Japan as well, to say nothing of Standard Oil. Peters winced at a tentative lane change.

“I don’t get much practice driving anymore,” I explained.

“That’s obvious.”

I dropped Peters in the departing-passenger lane and drove straight back to town. I didn’t know what to think. There was no way to anticipate what I might find at the Royal Crest. My best possible guess was an empty apartment with or without a note.

If Anne Corley did nothing else, she consistently surprised me. She was waiting in the leather chair. A glass of wine was in her hand. A MacNaughton’s and water sat on the coffee table awaiting my arrival. Anne was wearing a gown, a filmy red gown.

“Hello,” she said. “You look surprised to see me.”

“I am,” I admitted. I examined the gown. I was sure I had seen it before, but I couldn’t imagine where. At last it came to me—the hallway dream with Anne disappearing in a maze of corridors. I had dreamed the gown exactly, I realized, as the odd sensation of déjà vu settled around me.

“I’m a very determined lady,” she said softly. “Anybody else would have thrown in the towel after this morning. You didn’t want me to go, did you?”

I sat down on the couch cautiously, tentatively. I tested my drink. “No, I didn’t want you to go.”

She took a sip of her wine. “You asked me this morning if I’d had anything to do with Angel’s death. Does that mean I’m under suspicion?” I nodded. “And I’m being investigated?” I nodded again.

“That first afternoon we were together you said something that made me think Brodie was responsible. Yesterday the newspaper mentioned a man in a black van. Today you seem to think I did it. It reminds me of a game of tag with you standing in the center of a circle and pointing at people, telling them they’re it.”

“I have to prove they’re it,” I interjected. “In a court of law, beyond a shadow of doubt. That’s a little different from pointing a finger.”

“What if you make a mistake?”

“The court decides if they’re guilty or innocent. That’s not up to me. Where’s all this going, Anne?”

She held up a hand to silence me. She was working her way toward something, gradually, circuitously. “How do you feel about those people afterward?”

I laughed, not a laugh so much as a mirthless chuckle. “In the best of all possible worlds, the innocent would go free and the guilty would be punished. In the real world, it doesn’t always work that way.”

“Supposing…” she started. She paused as if weighing her words. For the first time I noticed a tightness around her mouth. Whatever she was working up to, it was costing her. She had been looking out the window as she spoke, uncharacteristically avoiding my eyes. Now, she turned away from the window, settling her gaze on my face. “Supposing someone was guilty of something but the court set them free. How would you feel about that?”

“If the court sets them free, I have no choice but to respect the court’s decision. My feelings have nothing to do with it.”

“That’s not true, they do!” She jumped up quickly and hurried to the kitchen to replenish the drinks. I watched in fascination. Her movements were jerky, as though she changed her mind several times in the course of the smallest gesture. Where was her purposeful manner, her fluid grace? She came back with the drinks.

“Have you ever been around someone who’s retarded?” she asked?

The question was from way out in left field. “No,” I replied, “I never have.”

“Patty was retarded. I loved her and I didn’t mind taking care of her, but she didn’t have any control over her bowels. My father hated her for it.” Anne stopped abruptly and stood by the coffee table, staring at me as though she expected me to say something. I didn’t know what. I reached out and took her hand, drawing her toward the couch.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Her body was like a strung bow. I pulled her down beside me, a question formulating itself as I did so. “Who killed Patty?” I asked. I expected her to rebel, to shy away from my hand.

“My father,” she whispered. “I saw him do it, but no one would believe me. The coroner ruled it an accident. I tried to tell people, but that’s when they started saying I was crazy.”

“Who said that, the people you told?”

“Yes,” she said quietly. “My mother, her friends.”

“And that’s when they wouldn’t let you go to the funeral?”

A single tear brimmed over the top of her lower lash and started down her cheek. “Yes,” she answered. “She wouldn’t let me go.”

She turned to me for comfort from an old but open wound, burying her head in my chest. Wracking sobs filled the room, the kind of sobs that leave you exhausted without bringing relief. I held her, imagining a helpless eight- or nine-year-old battling alone against injustices perpetrated by adults. Injustice is hard enough to handle as a full-grown man, as a homicide detective. To a child it must have been overwhelming.

I let her cry. There was no point in my saying anything or in attempting to stop her tears before the pent-up emotion had run its course.

At last the sobs subsided and she pulled herself away from me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I never can talk about it without that happening.”

“Don’t apologize. It’s not necessary.”

She leaned her head back against my arm and closed her eyes. “I wanted to tell you this morning, but I couldn’t. It took me all afternoon to work up to it.”

“Thank you,” I said, and meant it. I looked at her as she lay with her head thrown back, the strain of the last few hours and moments still painfully etched on her face. She had opened the door a crack and let me see what was inside. It helped me understand her complexity a little and her reticence. I leaned down and kissed away a smudge of tear-stained mascara from her cheek. “Stick with me, kid. We’ll make it.”

She lifted her head and looked at me. “What makes you say that?”

“I love you, Anne. That’s what makes me say it.”

The kiss I gave her then was not a brotherly, comforting kind of kiss. I felt the exhilaration you feel after you step off a roller coaster and know you haven’t died of it. I wanted to affirm our loving and our living. I wanted to put the ghosts from her past to rest once and for all, and she did too. She responded willingly, hungrily.

The gown was fastened by a single tie. She was naked beneath it, naked, supple, and ready. I slipped out of my own clothes and fell to my knees before her, letting my hands roam freely across her body, letting my tongue pleasure her with promise and torment her with denial. I reveled in the power of control, the feel of her body’s aching need awakened at my touch. Several times I brought her to the brink, only to back off, pulling away before she crossed the edge, leaving her writhing, pleading for satisfaction.

“Please, Beau,” she begged. “Please.”

I drew her to the floor and onto me, my own need no longer held at bay. Her body folded around me and I was home. She gave a muffled moan of pleasure and release. I was complete and so was she.