From the rear he is trim as Nancy Reagan and is nattily attired in white bucks and blue seersucker pants. Maybe there is a Bess at the Arlington restlessly checking her watch. Time for a massage and then, who knows? After Charlene he seems a little pumped. Her forearms resting against the bench, Charlene shakes her head.
“My mama and daddy had so many yard apes runnin’ around, I swore I wouldn’t never have a one, and I haven’t,” she says proudly.
“Good for you,” I say, wondering how she has managed it. Leon doesn’t seem the type to accept rejection well.
Though I doubt if Charlene was social chairman for the Saline County Planned Parenthood Board, I have detected a spunkier side to her than I thought existed. She may tell the truth about her husband in court yet. “He may come looking for you,” I say.
“The women at the bar may have told him I was looking for you.”
Charlene shrugs and says, more bravely than she surely feels, “I’ll worry about that when I have to.”
At exactly seven o’clock Kim Keogh, dressed in baggy jeans, a shapeless gray man’s shirt with the tail hanging out, tennis shoes, and white athletic socks, opens her door to me.
“God!” she exclaims. “Somebody didn’t just get mad-they got even, maybe a little ahead.”
Perversely, I am a little disappointed. Though I wasn’t expecting her to run down to a beauty salon this afternoon, I guess I wanted her to make more of an effort. After all, we did go to bed together, didn’t we? Instead, she has barely run a comb through her normally stunning hair and could stand some lipstick. Damn, I’m awful, I think. Presumably I’m here on business, and I want her to look as if this is our wedding day. I move on into her living room and still an urge to gather up the Sunday papers, which are scattered on the couch, and to pick up a dirty coffee cup and spoon and take them to the kitchen. The movie stars are still up on the walls.
dark, what do you think? I nearly ask aloud. Would your feelings be a little hurt by such casualness? He probably didn’t give a damn about that either.
Kim, shoving the Democrat-Gazette aside to make a space for me, doesn’t seem to be aware of the impression she is making.
“Have a seat,” she says absently. She sits down across from me on the one chair in her living room. I’m glad I’m not hungry or thirsty, since it doesn’t appear I’m about to be offered anything.
“Did you talk to your client?”
“Can’t get hold of him,” I confess, having tried three times before I gave up.
“I’m in though,” I tell her.
“And I’ll do my best to convince him this is in his best interest.”
I am afraid I will miss out on something important if I play this too cool. Kim is holding the only card available. If my only chance is Charlene Newman, I’m in deep trouble.
She is leaning forward on her knees as if she were a hungry animal trying to decide if the meat she sees is real or part of a trap.
“Why should I trust you when you wouldn’t even call me back?”
Good question. Why should she? My face warm, I begin to fold up her papers to try to stall for time.
“I’m much more trustworthy when the subject isn’t women,” I mumble.”
“Actually I’ve been involved with this other …”
She cuts me off.
“You don’t have to explain that.” Leaning back against the back of her chair, she folds her arms under her breasts.
“I’ve been given a tip that Olivia Le Master had a child taken from her several years ago because of child abuse, but since the records in juvenile court are confidential, I can’t get them.”
Another child? I touch my lower lip, measuring its puffiness. Olivia, to the best of my recollection, has never even mentioned another marriage. A lot could have happened since she had Pam. People don’t stop living their lives because of a single catastrophe.
“How do you think it’s relevant?”
I ask.
Kim, now slightly defensive that I’m not reacting more positively, says, “The word on the street is that the prosecutor would love to charge Olivia Le Master with murder but she needs more evidence. If she intentionally abused one child, wouldn’t that be relevant in showing her state of mind toward the one that died?”
I have my doubts about its admissibility. If it were admissible, it could be dynamite. Unfortunately, it might hurt Andy as much as Olivia if a jury believed he was a part of a plan to kill Pam. The one thing I know it will do is make Andy rethink the possibility of a plea bargain. Somewhere a noose is slowly being tightened around somebody’s neck: if it’s Andy’s, he’d better take the opportunity to slip his head out of it while there is still time. Simply screaming “racism” in this case won’t be enough.
“I don’t know whether a judge will admit it or not,” I say candidly.
“You can be sure Jill would try her damnedest.” As I watch Kim nod, a satisfied look on her face, I realize what she is doing does amount to blackmail. Probably Jill Marymount would find this information more useful in court than I would. As far as I’m aware, she might already know. Kim is way ahead of me, but I’m beginning to think it doesn’t take much.
“What year was this supposed to have happened?”
My inattentive hostess shrugs.
“I’m not sure, and don’t ask how I found this out. I can’t reveal anything.”
After a few more minutes during which I learn exactly nothing, I head back home, having promised my story in exchange for a rumor. What I have learned, however, is exactly how little I know about Olivia Le Master. I have assumed she was what she seemed: a woman caught in a seemingly endless nightmare that her desperate effort to end turned into a tragedy. Instead, for all I know she could be a sadistic bitch who has never blinked once in her life.
In the car on the way home I decide to verify this information before I tell Andy. I have a theory that he doesn’t know everything about Olivia either. Knowing Andy, he will discount it as gossip unless I confront him with some evidence.
As an old social worker for the Department of Human Services in Blackwell County, I have a friend who, if she will, can speed up my research.
20
'You', Sarah says, bringing me the phone from the living room, “It’s Mr. Bailey. I think something’s wrong. He sounds weird.”
Clan must be drunk, I think, putting down my pen to take the phone. I am working in the kitchen on direct examination questions for my Mississippi expert. With the trial only three days away, I have begun to panic. Though Olivia seems intent on testifying and not invoking the Fifth Amendment, that has been my only good news. Andy has become uncharacteristically morose and distant, which has had the effect of further convincing me that he knows more than he is telling me. While he continues to maintain his innocence, it is as if he realizes he has been fooled by Olivia but can’t quite bring himself to admit it. I put the odds at his implicating her at the last minute at fifty-fifty. It is still not too late to cut a deal with our prosecutor.
“Gideon,” Clan says in an agonized voice after I speak his name into the receiver, “I’ve been arrested, and I’m down here at the police station.”
I nearly drop the phone. Clan, I realize, is my best friend.
Despite his juvenile nature (or maybe because of it), he and I have become as close as brothers this summer. What on earth could he have done? He doesn’t sound drunk. An argument with Brenda that led to a shooting? Clan is a gun nut and has a workshop in which he makes his own ammunition.
“What’s happened?” I ask, trying to keep my voice normal, “They say I shoplifted a Twinkie!” he says, his voice screeching against my ear.
“Can you come down here?”
For God’s sake, I think, looking at Sarah and rolling my eyes back in my head to indicate this phone call is
