I have found Angela’s boyfriend.
But somebody else found him first, which is why he is dead and can tell me nothing.
I cannot reach Agent Nunzio. Sergeant Ames refuses to listen to my theories, and I can hardly blame her. If I have actual evidence that she has the wrong man in custody, she suggests that I should share it with her. If I do not, then I should leave her alone and let her do her job. The trouble is, I am in the dangerous middle ground. Sitting in the kitchen of Vinerd Howse, trying to figure out how to get her to take me seriously, I run up against a wall. I think I know who tortured Freeman Bishop to death and what he wanted, but I am certainly in no position to prove it. Bonnie Ames, on the other hand, has a witness willing to testify that Conan bragged about what he did, a history of violent behavior on the part of her suspect, and evidence that Freeman Bishop was behind in money he owed Conan for drugs.
I do not know how Colin Scott manufactured all that evidence, but I have no doubt that he did so. Poor Freeman Bishop was not included in Jack Ziegler’s command that the family not be harmed. So Scott tortured him to learn what he was supposed to tell me, and, as the sergeant pointed out grimly when Mariah and I visited her, it is unlikely that the priest held anything back. And there is the problem, I reflect as I hang up the telephone and begin once more to wander the house. If Father Bishop told Colin Scott everything, why did Scott still see a need to follow me? If he was following me, he obviously had not learned where my father hid… whatever he hid.
Which means that Freeman Bishop never told him.
Which means that Freeman Bishop never knew.
I think he was a mistake. The bad kind.
Now I understand what Maxine was talking about. Freeman Bishop was murdered because Colin Scott thought he was Angela’s boyfriend. And he was, indeed, Angela’s boyfriend. He just wasn’t the Angela’s boyfriend my father meant.
Nevertheless, as far as I am concerned, it was the Judge who got him killed.
CHAPTER 35
“You’ll never guess what happened,” announces a gleeful Dana Worth, striding into my office uninvited.
“That’s right,” I tell her crossly, barely looking up from the galley proofs I am busily correcting with a broken red pencil. I have not had the emotional energy to do a lot of work since my return from the Vineyard. It is the end of the second week of January and Elm Harbor’s streets are choked with dirty snow. The spring semester formally begins on Monday, but the minutiae of law school life cannot hold my attention. Students have been coming in with excuses for not having their papers done on time. I have not wasted words scolding them. The library still wants the book I have misplaced. Earlier today, Shirley Branch called, still depressed about her missing dog. I tried to be comforting, as a mentor should, even though I was tempted to tell her-it was a near thing-that I can only look for one missing item at a time. On the Vineyard, Maxine begged me to continue the search for the arrangements, but I am not sure I will be able to do it. Too many ghosts now haunt me.
Last night around eleven-thirty, the telephone woke us, and Kimmer, who sleeps on that side of the bed, picked up the receiver, listened for about three seconds, and handed it to me without a word: Mariah again, calling to disclose a fact she had previously hidden. As my wife pulled the blanket over her head, my sister told me what she had wheedled out of poor Warner Bishop when the two of them finally talked over a cozy dinner in New York. In the telling, Mariah confirmed my fears. Warner, it seems, lied to the police. On the night Freeman Bishop died, just as Sergeant Ames said, he informed his vestry that he would be a little late for the meeting because he had to stop and comfort a distraught parishioner. But he told his son, who happened to call just before he left, a different story. Father Bishop said he would be late because he had to see an FBI agent who had dropped by the church earlier in the day, set up a clandestine meeting to talk about an unnamed congregant, and sworn him to silence. Why did Warner keep this fact from the police? Because he was scared, said Mariah. Of whom? Of whoever killed his father. She grew enthusiastic. I wanted to tell you earlier, Tal, when I was over at your house. But you spent so much time dissing me that I didn’t really trust you. Now I do. I tried to remember whether I was really so cruel. Before I could figure out whether Mariah expected me to apologize, she was on to the next point in her brief. See why I don’t trust the FBI? But she knew as well as I did that the real FBI had nothing to do with what happened to Freeman Bishop.
“Misha, come on, pay attention.” Dear Dana brushes aside a stack of papers-never mind where I want them to be-and hops onto the corner of my desk. Her feet do not reach the floor. She strikes her famous pose again, soles flat on the side. “This is good news. This is important.”
I lean back in my aged chair and hear the familiar crack of the broken bearings. In my experience, nothing but faculty politics ever arouses such exuberance in my occasional friend, so I steel myself for an interminable tale of triumph or tragedy, related somehow to the question of who will or will not be appointed to the faculty, an issue, although I have not informed Dana, about which I no longer actually care.
“I’m listening,” I tell her.
Dana flashes her pixie grin, the one she reserves for teasing old friends and baiting new students. She is wearing a dark sweater and a pair of beige pants that would fit a twelve-year-old, but the sharp crease suggests a product affordable only by twelve-year-olds who live in Beverly Hills. “It actually has more to do with that wife of yours than with you.”
“I’m still listening.” I cannot imagine what aspect of Kimmer’s life Dana would find so fascinating, but I am always willing to learn.
“This is a good one, Misha.”
“No doubt.”
“You’re no fun, you know that?”
“Dana, are you going to tell me or not?”
She pouts briefly, unaccustomed to this new, less playful Misha Garland, but decides, as Dana always will, that her gossip is too juicy to remain unconfided.
“Well, you’ll never guess who spent the last two hours in Dean Lynda’s office.”
“True.” I turn my attention back to the proofs.
“True?”
“True, I will never guess. So why don’t you just tell me.”
Dana makes a face and waits for me to notice, then plunges on. “I’ll give you a hint, Misha. They were using both of her telephone lines-this person and Lynda, I mean-and they were on the telephone to just about everybody in Washington, trying to persuade them that he didn’t plagiarize the world-famous Chapter Three of his one and only book.”
My chair tilts forward with a surprised crunch. For a marvelous instant, the worries about my father and his arrangements and Freeman Bishop and the roller woman evaporate.
“You don’t mean…”
“I do mean. Brother Hadley.”
“You’re kidding. You’re kidding. ”
“I’m not kidding. Chapter Three? The one he’s always quoting? The one everybody is always quoting? Well, it turns out he copied it from an unpublished paper by none other than Perry Mountain.”
“Marc plagiarized Theo’s brother? Marc? I don’t believe it.”
Dana is disappointed by my skepticism; she wanted my cheers. “Why do you find it so hard to believe? You think Marc is some kind of paragon? You think he doesn’t cheat and steal like everybody else?”
“Well, no, it’s just that I can’t believe Marc would ever think that somebody else’s ideas were good enough to
