Wild Heart (32 page)

"I want to apologize to you. What I did ... I know it's hurt you very much, Aunt. I'm truly sorry."

Nothing. She picked up her bucket and moved to the next rosebush.

"I didn't do it to hurt you—although I won't lie and say I didn't know it would."

Was that breathy sound an indignant puff, a stifled snort of derision? If so, Sydney probably deserved it. Running off with Michael had shocked Aunt Estelle to her moral core. Social ruin had yawned like a monster's jaws for five days and nights, and she was still trembling, figuratively, in reaction. Sydney had given her the scare of her life, and forgiveness was not going to come easily.

"I didn't go to the arraignment today because you asked me not to," she said, deciding to get the worst over with at once. "I respected your reasons for opposing it—the reporters and photographers would have exploited the situation, and even though it would have helped Michael, it might have hurt the family. But . . ." She girded herself and said it. "Tomorrow I'm going to see him. In the Cook County jail. Philip's coming with me. And so is Papa." When there was no reaction, she hurried on. "There won't be any press there, no one to hound us. No one will even know we're there except Mr. Osgood and a few policemen. So." Her shoulders drooped. "I'm going," she finished dispiritedly.

Aunt Estelle kept her back turned; when she moved her head, the floppy hat hid her profile. A bee landed on her right shoulder blade. Sydney flicked it off unthinkingly. Her aunt whirled at the touch. Anger and hurt blazed in her eyes—Sydney expected that. What she wasn't prepared for was tears.

"Oh, Aunt—"

She twisted around and went back to her spraying, attacking the pump with a jerky vigor that gave away her agitation as surely as sobs would have. Sydney watched in helpless misery for as long as she could stand it. Then, taking a chance she would never have dared before now, she went close, closer, so close Aunt Estelle had to stop pumping or risk spraying her with insecticide, and put her hand on her arm. For an awkward second, neither of them moved. "I love you, Aunt Estelle," Sydney said in a whisper. It was the first time she had ever said it—maybe the first time she had ever realized it. "I'm sorry for what I did because it hurt you. I've fallen in love with Michael. It's not infatuation, or—lust, and it's not some kind of rebellion. I love him. I couldn't let him go, and I couldn't let the police take him. I'm not ashamed of what I've done. I'm only sorry it's given you such pain."

Her aunt murmured, "Sydney," and looked away, using the back of her heavy glove to wipe her eyes.

"It looks like no one's going to find out," Sydney went on, striving for a lighter tone. "That should please you. It's hard for me, too—I've had to lie to Cam, my best friend, and that was awful." She took the older woman's hand and tried to turn her; but Aunt Estelle planted her feet and wouldn't move.

"Can't you forgive me? You and I are so unlike, but I always thought we'd be friends. I would hate to lose you." Now they were both weeping. Sydney took another chance. She leaned over and kissed her aunt's flushed cheek.

Aunt Estelle mumbled, "Oh, now," her face still turned away, and she gave Sydney a clumsy, one-armed hug. And then, with a loud sniff, she went back to spraying her roses.

Sydney's heart beat fast. Her emotions were raw; she wanted to cry, she wanted to dance with Aunt Estelle around the garden. Fumbling for her handkerchief, she blew her nose. "Well," she said, backing up a step, then another. Clearly she wasn't going to get anything more than "Oh, now" out of her aunt today. But what a wonderful start.

"Don't forget," she couldn't resist, though, from halfway across the yard. "He is an earl's son."

Aunt Estelle kept spraying and didn't turn. But Sydney caught a glimpse of her profile when she leaned down to add more poison to her bucket. She thought—she wasn't sure—that minuscule curve at the corner of her mouth was a smile.

* * * * *

John Osgood was short, broad-faced, stoop-shouldered, and balding; he smoked cigars and he smelled like it. He was more of a family acquaintance than a family friend. Dr. Winter had known him for years, from some university board or committee they had both served on, and Sydney occasionally said, "Hello, how are you?" to him at social functions. The family had never had a need for the services of a criminal attorney before, and Mr. Osgood was the only one they knew. Sydney hoped he was both smoother and shrewder than he looked.

"Philip, nice to see you again. Harley, hello, didn't expect to see you! How've you been? And Sydney—well, well, it's been a long time. Awfully sorry about your husband, just awfully sorry. I didn't know him, but I heard only good things about him, nothing but good things."

"Thank you."

"Well! Are there enough chairs? Sorry the room's so small. This is all they'd give me, and frankly, I was only expecting Philip."

They took seats around a table that took up most of the space in the tiny, depressing room. Did the police do interrogations here, Sydney wondered, eyeing the dark-painted walls and the one small, streaky window with distaste. Had they questioned Michael in a room like this? Unbearable thought; she set it aside and asked Mr. Osgood the most important question.

"Is he all right?"

"He's fine. I've just come from a little chat with him myself, and he's just fine. Looking forward to your visit," he added, glancing at Philip. "It's all set for one o'clock."

Sydney sank back in her chair, shaky with relief. Now she could acknowledge how real her fear had been that something awful had happened, that they'd hurt him somehow, or decided he couldn't have visitors, or—this was the worst—that he had decided it was better not to see her.

"Good news," Mr. Osgood was saying. "They've dropped the grand theft charge, which never held water anyway. I thought they'd drop it eventually, and it's good that they've done it early; now we won't have to prepare for it."

The lawyer glanced occasionally at Sydney, occasionally at her father, but for the most part he directed his remarks to Philip. He had kind eyes, she noticed, light brown and fatherly, and a beautiful voice. Would they be enough to convince a jury Michael was innocent?

"I've convinced him, fortunately, that it's better if he doesn't testify. With luck, we'll have enough—"

"What?" She cut him off, too startled for courtesy. "Michael's not testifying? But why?"

Osgood looked down at his hands folded on top of the table and widened his lips in a sort of grimacing smile. "Two reasons," he said slowly and thoughtfully. "One, he's too inarticulate. Two, he's too honest."

"I beg your pardon," Sydney began, hoping she could hold on to her temper. "Mr. Osgood, Michael is
not
inarticulate. And how is it possible to be too—"

He held up one short, chubby finger. "Let me explain. I should have said he's too
direct
instead of inarticulate. If he took the stand, the prosecuting attorney would draw a full confession out of him in two minutes. No—less than two minutes. 'Mr. MacNeil, did you willfully and unlawfully break into four separate outbuildings on the grounds of the Lincoln Park Zoo, steal the keys to the cages of the deer, the wolves, the foxes,'—so on, I've forgotten the rest—'and set these animals free?' 'Yes, sir, I did.' 'And did you assault a zoo official in the process of this illegal activity, lunging at him and sending him to the ground, thereupon wrestling and grappling with him until you were forcibly subdued?' 'Yes, sir, I did.' "

"Yes, but Michael wouldn't—"

" 'And what was your motive, sir? Tell us why you committed these illegal acts.' 'Because I had to.' 'Thank you, Mr. MacNeil, you may step down.' "

Sydney closed her eyes and pressed her fingers hard against the beginnings of a headache.

"For better or worse," Osgood went on gently, "Michael doesn't even know how to shade the truth, Mrs. Darrow, much less lie. And if he were coached before he testified it would only be worse, because he would sound coached. He committed these acts, and yet his plea is not guilty. He isn't sophisticated enough to understand the difference between technical guilt and legal innocence. Which is a quality we may secretly admire, but for now it's also a vulnerability he needs to be protected from. Am I making myself clear?"

She nodded unhappily.

The lawyer reached across the table and patted her hand. "It's not as bad as it sounds, trust me. If we have some luck, I think there's an excellent chance we can get him off."

"What sort of luck?" Philip asked.

"Well, we've already had some. As I told you, the prosecutor didn't oppose my motion to move the trial date up, and the judge has agreed to it."

"Thank God," said Sydney. That meant Michael would spend less time in a prison cell.
If
he won the case.

"Yes, well." Mr. Osgood pulled a cigar halfway out of his pocket, remembered himself, and pushed it back in. "That's good news and bad news combined, actually."

"How can it be bad?"

"The later the trial, the better our chances of locating the MacNeils."

"Does that really matter so much?"

"It might. A well-connected defendant always has a better chance than a loner or an indigent. Not fair, but there is it."

"But Michael's not—"

"Plus his story's romantic, just the sort of thing to capture a jury's imagination. But only if it's true, and only if they can
see
that it's true."

"In other words," said Philip, "only if they
see
Michael's rich, aristocratic family."

"See them, or even just hear about them in some reliable, unimpeachable way."

"But we don't even know if they are rich," Sydney pointed out. "We're not even absolutely certain, not really, that they're aristocrats."

"True, but at this point we don't have much else to use. If the case comes down to character, finding the MacNeils is probably the best we can hope for." He slipped his watch out of his pocket and flipped it open. "Almost one. You don't want to be late; they don't let visitors stay long." Everybody stood up. "Unfortunately, only one of you can see him," he said apologetically.

"Only one?"

"I'm afraid so. Since you're not family. Which, by the way, is a lucky thing in another way. If you
were
family, the zoo would undoubtedly be suing you for monetary damages in a civil case. So—who's Michael's visitor to be? You, Harley?"

Sydney's father scraped his thumbnail across the tooth marks on the empty pipe he'd been holding for the last ten minutes. "Hm," he said decisively. "Hmm."

"You, Philip?" Osgood guessed next.

Philip rubbed the back of his neck and squinted into space.

Sydney cleared her throat. "I'd like to see him."

"Oh." Osgood rounded his eyes at her and rocked back on his heels. "Oh, I see."

She wasn't sure if he did or not." Sometime during the course of this meeting, though, she had decided to trust him. If he really
did
see, she no longer feared the consequences.

"We'll wait for you outside," Philip told her. He and her father shook hands with Mr. Osgood, who said he would be in touch.

The lawyer took her arm in a kindly grasp and escorted her down the dingy hallway, up a flight of steps, and then down another narrow corridor, and into a large, crowded, poorly lit waiting area. A uniformed policeman sat behind a desk at the front of the room. "Take a seat," Mr. Osgood suggested, motioning. "I'll get you set up with the sergeant here, and then I'll be on my way. Shouldn't be long."

She thanked him for his kindness. She found an empty chair in a corner of the room, and sat down to wait for Michael.

Ten minutes later the policeman at the desk read out a list of names, hers among them. She stood up. As she was ushered with the others through a doorway, a policeman asked for her pocketbook, her shawl, and her hat. For an awful moment she thought he might search her, but he didn't. "Through here," he directed. "The visitors' room," he added when she hesitated.

"But I thought. . ."

"Move along, lady, you're holding up the line."

Sydney sat down in the chair she was directed to, mentally reeling from the contrast between this meeting and the one she had constructed in her mind. They would have a small room to themselves, she had thought, or at worst, she would hold his hand through the bars of his private cell while a guard tactfully looked the other way.

This was dreadful. A double row of.long, back-to-back tables divided the room approximately in half, and between the two rows stretched a floor-to-ceiling screen, a dense metal grid resembling a one-sided cage. Behind the tables, families huddled around the one chair allotted to them, parents and three children on Sydney's left, four adults on her right, and beyond them more people, in pairs, threes, fives—six seemed to be the allowable limit. Everybody was talking at once, so that the noise in the room was almost intolerable. The tables were three feet deep; doubled, that made six feet—so leaning across to touch the hand of a loved one through the wire barricade was impossible. Even
seeing
through the mesh wasn't easy. Sydney had to squint to make out which man in the group of shuffling, identically dressed prisoners being ushered through the door in the back wall was Michael.