Sure, it might have helped. It might have done me some good to admit my sins. To explain what I was doing at the Lake View. But maybe it would have just made me look more guilty. And it surely would have broken Helen’s heart. I couldn’t do that. I’d done enough to hurt her.”
I took all this in, processing as I went. “So when you left Vera that night, you’re telling me she was still alive?”
“It’s the God’s honest truth. It was…” He cleared his throat. “It was supposed to be another of our usual dates. But that night, Vera told me it was over between us. She was going back to her old boyfriend.”
“Steve.”
“She said she’d done a lot of thinking and come to realize there was no future for us. She said she was tired of the sneaking around. She wanted me to divorce Helen so we could be together, but… well, I couldn’t do that. I told Vera. I told her I never could.”
“So she gave you the old heave-ho and you-”
“I didn’t kill her.” He looked away. “We fought. I know it’s impossible for you to understand, but Vera… she made me crazy from wanting her. I couldn’t think straight. When Vera said she didn’t want to see me again…”
I thought about the crime scene photos. “You’re the one who gave her that fat lip.” When he didn’t deny it, my anger came back, full force. “You slapped her, you creep.”
He hung his head. “I’ve regretted it. All these years. I wished it had never happened, that her last night on earth wasn’t filled with pain and violence.” Lamar lifted his head to look into my eyes. “You do believe me, don’t you?”
I met him look for look. “What happened after you hit her?”
He swallowed hard. “She cried. And I begged her to forgive me. I told her how much she meant to me, how I couldn’t live without her. She wouldn’t listen.”
“So you…?”
“I left. That’s all. I just walked out. I swear it’s the truth.”
Was I buying his story? Not lock, stock, and barrel (whatever that means). But I wasn’t going to dismiss it, either. At least not until I knew more.
“When you left, what was Vera wearing?” I asked him.
He cleared his throat. “Nothing. Not when I walked out. When we met that evening, she was dressed in the outfit she wore to work that day.”
“That’s why she didn’t care about your blood on her blouse. There was no use her changing clothes. You knew about the bloodstain. She knew you wouldn’t care.”
“The police never picked up on that.” He sounded grateful. “I was so devastated when I left the motel… about Vera leaving me… about how I’d lost control and hit her… I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought… I thought about killing myself. I would have done it, too, if I didn’t realize that Helen would wonder what had gone wrong. She’d never have the answers, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. I drove home in a fog. The next morning when I got to my office, the police were there to tell me that Vera was dead. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t tell them that when I saw her last, she was getting ready to get dressed.
“So she was getting ready to leave, too. By the time the killer showed up at the door of the room, she was already dressed. And-”
“Maybe when he knocked on the door, maybe she thought it was me.” There was so much hope in his voice, it turned my stomach. “Maybe she opened it because she’d changed her mind and-”
“You’re pathetic. Do you know that?” I was in no mood to spare his feelings. “We’ve got two dead women on our hands, a marriage that self-exploded, and someone who wants to kill me because I’m looking into what really happened, and all you’re worried about is if your little love puppy wanted you back? ”
“It’s been my curse. I’ve spent all these years wondering. All these years obsessing about Vera. And I’ve come to realize that I’ll spend all eternity this way if I don’t do something to give Helen some peace. I’m a sinner, Pepper. I was a bad husband. But I’m not a murderer.”
He looked so miserable, I actually believed him.
Go figure.
18
I’m not exactly a fan of prison movies, but I’ve seen my share. When I visited Dale Morgan at Northern Ohio Correctional, I saw that those movies were pretty accurate. Just like in the movies, I sat on one side of a glass wall, he sat on the other, and we talked to each other on telephones.
Or more accurately, I talked on the phone, and he sat there pretty much not saying much of anything. Then again, he was too busy looking me over and salivating.
“You do remember Warden Lamar, don’t you?” When I entered the room, I was told not to touch the glass, but I looked over my shoulder to make sure the guard who stood near the door wasn’t watching and took my chances. I tapped on the glass to get Morgan’s attention. “You were at Central State when he was in charge.”
“He was a good man.” It was the most I’d gotten out of him since the gruff, “What’ya want?” he’d shot my way when he walked in.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t allowed to bring my purse into the visitors’ room (and the guards who’d taken it from me and put it in a locker better be handling it with kid gloves since it was a Juicy Couture), but I’d tucked the silver dollar from Lamar’s grave in the pocket of my khakis. I pulled it out so Morgan could see it. “You buried this at the warden’s grave.”
Dale Morgan was an I-don’t-know-how-old chunky, short man with eyes as dull as the gray linoleum at our feet. He had hair that was thin and too long, a tiger tattoo on his left arm, and the kind of desperate, hungry look I imagined most of the men in prison wore like a second skin, as if he were starving for anything even remotely related to the outside world. It was the only reason he’d agreed to see me in the first place, and I knew it. I was shameless enough not to care.
He squinted to get a better look at the silver dollar. “How would you know that about me burying that coin at Lamar’s grave?” he asked me. “I did that ten years ago or more. Between being at Central State and coming here. And what difference does it make, anyhow?”
“It makes a difference to you.” I didn’t know this for a fact, but if nothing else, I was getting good at throwing a line. “You could have taken him a bunch of flowers. You didn’t. You buried this coin because you were part of the warden’s coin group at Central State. And it’s a Morgan silver dollar, after all. That was your way of letting him know who left it there for him. The coin was significant to you, and it is to him, too. Or at least”-I added this before he could ask any questions-“it would be significant to him if he were alive to know about it. I think you did it to thank him for trying to help you turn your life around.”
Morgan’s smile was as lean and as sleek as the rest of him wasn’t. “Doesn’t look like it stuck, does it?”
I couldn’t argue with him there, and agreeing seemed tacky. Instead, I stuck with the plan I’d made in the hour-and-a-half drive from Cleveland. “You can still show him how much you appreciate all he tried to do for you,” I said. “You might still be able to help Warden Lamar.”
Morgan darted a look around the room. It was a Thursday, and there weren’t many visitors around. The closest prisoner to him was three chairs away, and that man was so engrossed with talking to a woman with bad hair, a way-too-tight miniskirt, and a blouse with a plunging neckline, he wasn’t paying any attention to our conversation. Morgan lowered his voice, anyway.
“How?”
For the first time since I walked into the prison, I felt some of the tension inside me uncurl.
I scooted forward in my chair. “I don’t think Warden Lamar killed Vera Blaine,” I said. “And maybe you don’t think so, either. Is that why you buried that coin at his grave? Did you feel you owed him something? If you’d spoken up sooner-”
His look was as fierce as the tiger on his arm. “You trying to pin something on me?”
“No. Not at all.” I tried for a smile, but let’s face it, it’s hard to smile in a place that frisks you when you walk in. “I don’t think you did it. In fact, I’m sure you didn’t. If you did, you never would have left that coin for Lamar.
