People kept coming in and going out. Several uniformed police officers passed through; others not in uniform appeared to be police employees. It was the other people I saw who made the place depressing. Some were there to report problems to the officer at the counter. Others came to talk to inmates, as I did. They looked worried or bewildered or upset. Family members clung together. None of them smiled.
When my turn came the officer instructed me to pick up the phone. I pressed it to my ear and said hello. Although the noise in the waiting room wasn’t overly loud, conversations between the desk officers and civilians created a constant hum and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear Mark. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.
“Hello, Lillian,” Mark said. “Burt told me you were here. It was nice of you to come.”
He sounded all right; Burt must have given him encouragement. I said, “I wanted to let you know that we’re working for you.”
“At least you are. You’re my most faithful friend.”
I hoped that wasn’t true. I would make sure that Sandra came here tomorrow. I couldn’t talk long so I had to get to the point. I said, “When do you think the knife was put in the trunk?”
“I don’t know. I had the trunk open the day before-that’s the day you and I went to Bethany-but I didn’t see the knife. However, the police found it in the wheel well underneath the mat so I wouldn’t have looked there unless I had noticed something suspicious, such as the mat being out of place. But everything looked all right to me.”
“Have you kept your car locked for the past few days?”
“I lock it when I’m working at the restaurant. I never lock it at Silver Acres because that’s such a safe place.”
“How about at the college? For example, when you and I were there.”
“No, I didn’t usually lock it there.”
That corresponded with my memory. Donna-or somebody-could have placed the knife in the trunk at the college. Mark had parked the car in the faculty parking lot where it would have been easy to find. He still had a sticker that allowed him to do that.
“What about this new story of Donna’s?” I asked.
“It’s a complete fabrication. I don’t know why she told it, unless she’s trying to protect herself.”
I knew that already, but I wanted to hear Mark say it. We chatted for a few more minutes until our time was up. I promised to get him out and tried to raise his spirits. He thanked me for caring.
As he drove back to Durham in his leased Lexus, Burt told me that the stains on the knife and the towel had definitely been identified as the blood of Elise.
“So that’s the murder weapon,” I said, abandoning a ray of hope I now realized I had been clinging to, subconsciously.
“It appears that way.” Burt glanced at me, having heard the disappointment in my voice. “But don’t let that get you down. There were no fingerprints on the knife. We can use the fact that Mark rarely locked his car as evidence of how easy it would have been to plant the knife in his trunk. The case against him is circumstantial, at best. I hope you wouldn’t mind going on the witness stand to verify that he didn’t usually lock his car.”
“Of course not. But I hope it never gets that far. How did you find out that the blood was Elise’s?”
“I ran into Detective Johnson and waylaid him long enough to get him to tell me that.”
“Speaking of Detective Johnson, I need to talk to him too. But I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me when he finds out what I want him to do. You’re going to have to help me with him.” “Anything for you, Aunt Lillian. And to help prove that Mark is innocent.”
Chapter 21
The temperature soared on Sunday as we gathered at Albert’s farm for brunch. After several weeks of cool and sometimes rainy weather, I welcomed the change. The heat and humidity of the North Carolina summers get to me after a while, but I like an occasional hot day in the spring. Spring had officially sprung, as we had just passed the spring equinox.
I had invited Burt to come, thinking that this was an ideal opportunity to hold a family conference about Mark, with Burt’s input, and hopefully agree that we would do everything in our collective power to clear Mark of the murder charge. Sandra and Albert had driven to Bethany the day before, Saturday, at my urging, and talked to Mark on the internal telephone at the police station. That was a step in the right direction.
After arriving at the farm, I released King from the back seat of my old Mercedes so that she could play with her friend, Romper. Winston trotted down the sidewalk as I retrieved the rolls and pies I had baked from the car.
“Hello, Great Grandma,” Winston said as I gave him a kiss. Always one to keep his relationships straight, he eschewed use of the name Gogi, which is what Sandra called me.
“How are you, Pumpkin?” I asked, wondering how long he would allow me to call him that. He certainly didn’t look like a pumpkin, having lost his baby fat. He would grow up to be tall and thin, like most members of the family, except Sandra, who was short and thin. Albert was tall, but his thinness had thickened in recent years, in spite of his exertions on the tennis court.
“How are your tires?” Winston asked, surveying them with a practiced eye. He had been born at the age of 40 and already had the cares of the world on his shoulders.
“They’re fine. I had them checked recently.” I couldn’t remember how recently.
“Look, there’s a car,” Winston said, pointing to the edge of Albert’s woods, where Burt’s Lexus had just appeared out of the trees. Cars were Winston’s staff of life.
“That’s Mr. Brown’s car. What color is it?”
“White,” Winston said, with the assurance of one who has long known his colors. “There’s another car.”
Sure enough, right behind the Lexus came a less flashy model, one I didn’t recognize. As Winston announced that this car was green, I was more concerned about who was inside it since I had hoped there wouldn’t be any extra people to interfere with our discussion.
We waited for the two cars to negotiate the long driveway and pull up beside mine. Burt got out first and gave me a hug. I introduced him to Winston and they gravely shook hands. A good-looking blond woman, prematurely wearing a short summer dress, got out of the other car. She showed a lot of leg as she did so, but if Burt saw the show he diplomatically didn’t let on. She was somewhere in her thirties, an age range Albert preferred for his women, so I assumed that he had invited her.
“Hi,” she said, brightly, to the three of us. And zeroing in on me, “You must be Dr. Morgan, Albert’s mother. “I’m Daisy Templeton. I work with Albert.”
We shook hands and I introduced her to Burt and Winston. After a brief hello she ignored Winston, leading me to infer that she probably didn’t have any children of her own.
Albert appeared from the house and after kissing me and shaking hands with Burt, reintroduced Daisy to us and reinformed us that Daisy and he were colleagues. Apparently not yet kissing colleagues, at least in front of other people. Albert took my pies and Daisy my rolls and he and Daisy led the procession along the sidewalk to the front door. Winston, Burt and I followed. By the time we entered the house Winston had Burt’s key case and had identified the key to the Lexus.
The remaining member of the party, Sandra, met us in the kitchen, with kisses, hugs and handshakes, as appropriate. At one time I had had visions of Sandra and Burt getting together, but that had never happened. Sandra hadn’t met Daisy before, and I saw her surreptitiously eyeing the graceful newcomer as we prepared brunch, probably wondering the same things I did: How much older than Sandra was her father’s new girlfriend and was she wearing any kind of support beneath the spaghetti-strapped top of her dress, because, if not, she had a lot going for her.
We sat down at Albert’s round table, the six of us fitting snugly, and ate a delicious meal, the main course consisting of an omelet concocted by Albert, which had some ingredients that you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find in an omelet, but which tickled the palette. He was a good cook.
Daisy, it turned out, was an associate professor in the Women’s Studies program at the University of North Carolina. Albert looked hard at me when he gave us this information because I sometimes make inappropriate comments on subjects like women’s studies.
