Until Proven Guilty

“Tell me again why she came to Angela’s Barstogi’s funeral.”

Peters is single-minded. I have to respect that; I am too, usually. The only way to get him to drop it was to tell him what I knew. So I told him about Patty, about how much Anne had loved her, how Patty’s death had upset and hurt her, how being unable to attend her sister’s funeral as a child was something Anne Corley was doing penance for as an adult. It was a sketchy story at best, lacking the depth of details that would give the story credibility.

“How did she die?”

“I don’t know.”

We were walking north along the water-front with a fresh wind blowing in across a gunmetal harbor. Peters listened thoughtfully as I told him what I could. Even as I told the story, I didn’t need Peters’ help to plug it full of holes.

“Just supposing,” Peters suggested, “that she did have something to do with Angela Barstogi’s death.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Now wait a fucking minute.”

“You wait a minute, Beaumont. You’re too embroiled to see the forest for the trees, but that doesn’t mean the rest of us are. All I’m doing is asking questions. If Anne Corley isn’t hiding something, it’s not going to hurt anything but your pride. Maybe there’s a connection between Anne Corley and Uncle Charlie.”

“Peters, Anne Corley had nothing to do with Angela Barstogi’s death. She wasn’t even in town until after the wire services had the story.”

“It shouldn’t be hard to prove, one way or the other. You owe it to yourself to get to the bottom of this. You can’t afford to accept her presence at face value, particularly if she’s not being up-front with you. You’re a better cop than that.”

Unerringly Peters hit the nerve where I was most vulnerable. Cops want to be right, one way or the other. They have to prove themselves over and over. Usually it’s less personally important to them. Conflict of interest walked up and smacked me right in the face.

“I’d better ask Powell to pull me from the case,” I said.

“Don’t be an asshole. That’s not necessary, not yet. If we come up with something definite, then it’ll be time to bring Watkins and Powell into it. In the meantime, I think some discreet questions to your old friend Maxwell Cole are in order.”

“Me talk to Cole?”

“No.” Peters laughed. “Not you. I will.”

“And what am I supposed to do while you do that?”

“Go back over every shred of information we have so far to see if you can find anything new.”

We had reached the Hillclimb, a steep flight of stairs that leads from the waterfront up through the Public Market and back into the heart of the city. I felt beaten, defeated. I had turned on her, given tacit approval to Peters to go ahead and scrutinize Anne’s past. Suddenly I was more than a little afraid of what he might find there.

We climbed the stairs without speaking. The market was jammed with vegetable and fish merchants setting out their wares. The boisterous activity was totally at odds with how I felt. We came out of the market at First and Pike. Peters turned right and started back toward the Public Safety Building.

I stopped. “I’m going to go talk to her,” I called after him.

Peters came back. “Why?”

“I have to. I have to give her a chance to tell me. I want to hear it from her.”

“Suit yourself,” Peters said with a shrug.

I didn’t go directly back to the Royal Crest. Peters’ questions hadn’t fallen on deaf ears. Why hadn’t she told me? More to the point, what had she told me? Very little, I decided. She had said she had been married once, but she hadn’t mentioned her husband’s profession or his subsequent suicide. That’s not surprising. Suicide is something that hangs around forever, dropping load after load of guilt on the living.

Anne had divulged little of her family background, other than bits and pieces about Patty. And she certainly hadn’t mentioned being institutionalized; but then, that’s hardly something you go around advertising. I know I wouldn’t.

Come to think of it, there was a lot I hadn’t told her, either, gory details in the life and times of J. P. Beaumont. I had touched briefly on my relationship with Karen, but that was all. It was as if Anne and I had an unspoken agreement not to let the past taint our present or our future. On the one hand, I could rationalize and justify her not telling me her life story. On the other hand, I was angry about it.

I walked for a long time, trying to think what I would say to her. There wasn’t the smallest part of me that accepted the idea she might have been responsible for Angela Barstogi’s death. I finally turned my steps homeward. I stopped and bought a P.I. from a vending machine on the corner. I remembered her reaction when I had asked her about Patty. I had an obligation to be there when she read the article. After all, it was because of me that she was drawing Maxwell Cole’s fire.

The halls in high-rises are less well soundproofed than the apartments. As I approached my door, I could hear Anne’s voice from inside the unit. That surprised me because I expected her to be there alone. I paused before fitting my key in the lock. Listening through the door, I could hear she was on the telephone, that she was finishing a conversation. I turned my key in the lock and pushed the door open.

I expected to find her on the couch next to the phone. Instead, she was halfway across the living room, eyes frantic, face ashen. She looked at my face blankly, with no sign of recognition. All I could think was that she had laid hands on the article before I got there.

I moved across the room quickly and grasped her by the shoulders. She was shaking, quivering all over like someone chilled to the bone. “Anne, Anne. What’s wrong? Are you all right?”

For a long second we stood there like that, with me holding her. I don’t think my words registered at all. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“I came to check on you. I was afraid you’d read it by yourself. Have you read it?” She was struggling, trying to escape my grasp. Her eyes stared blindly into mine. She didn’t answer.

“Who was that on the phone?” I demanded. “Who were you talking to?”

My words finally penetrated and she seemed to focus on my face, to hear what I said. “No one,” she stammered. “It was a wrong number.”

I shoved her away from me, sending her reeling into the leather chair. “Don’t lie to me, Anne; for God’s sake don’t lie to me!” I wanted to shake her, force her to tell me the truth. I started toward the chair, but the look on her face stopped me. In seconds her face had been transformed. She might have put on a mask. A calm, cold mask.

“It was business,” she said, her voice flat and toneless.

“Yours or mine?”

“Mine,” she said.

“Why did you tell me it was a wrong number?”

“I was upset.”

I turned back to the couch and sat heavily, the weight of the world crushing my shoulders. When I looked at her again, she was under control and so was I, but something was dreadfully wrong. I forced my tone to be gentle, made the words come slowly, the way you might if you were speaking to someone who didn’t know the language. “Was it about the newspaper article?”

She blinked, puzzled. “What article?”

“Maxwell Cole’s. In today’s paper. It talks about Milton Corley. Tell me about him.” I handed her the paper, open to Maxwell Cole’s column. She read it quickly, then dropped it in her lap. She looked up at me.

“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?”