But…”
This was the moment I’d gone to the prison for, and now that it had come, I felt butterflies flutter through my stomach. I reminded myself that all Morgan could do was get mad at me for what I was about to say. In comparison with someone trying to kill me and someone murdering Sammi, it was small potatoes.
“I was hoping that maybe you would know something about the murder,” I told him. “Like maybe who did it.”
Except for his gaze, which darted left and right, he went as still as a statue. “Who told you?”
“Then it’s true? You do know about what happened?”
“Didn’t say it was true. I asked who told you.”
“Nobody.” It was the truth, and somehow, I think he appreciated me admitting it. Or maybe I was just hoping. “But I know you respected the warden, and you’d want to see justice done. I might be able to prove he was innocent. If I could, it would give his widow peace, and it would put a murderer where he belongs. If you know anything-”
I saw him signal for the guard who would take him back to his cell, and yeah, I panicked. I was too close to the truth. Maybe. I’d never know if Morgan wasn’t willing to talk.
“You can’t just walk away,” I blurted out.
He laughed. “You’re right. I can’t walk away. Not from this place. But I’ll tell you what, it sure gets lonely in here. I hardly ever get any visitors, you know what I mean?”
I did. I gulped and nodded. “You want me to come back.”
“Tomorrow.” Morgan stood. “And you could dress a little nicer, you know?” He glanced at the woman who sat nearby. “Like that lady over there,” he said, and he hung up the phone.
Maybe it was just as well, because I was just about to tell him to stick it.
Then again, like I said, I was shameless, and too close to the truth to walk away now.
I wondered if there was a Frederick’s of Hollywood nearby.
I may have been desperate, but I am not completely without pride. I skipped Frederick’s of Hollywood and opted for Kmart. Which, of course, is just as embarrassing in its own special way. When I walked into the prison the next day, my outfit lacked style-not to mention class-but if the head-turning looks I got from the guards meant anything, it did its job.
I had Sammi to thank for teaching me to dress like this.
Short, short red skirt. White tee with a V-neck that plunged way more than anything should on a woman with a 38C chest. It was sleeveless and had one of those crisscross backs that meant it was impossible for me to wear a bra. But then, that was the whole point. Shoes with skinny heels and chunky soles added another couple inches to my height.
I had stopped just short of being the girl-on-the-street-corner. But not by much.
Dale Morgan was not disappointed. When he walked into the visitors’ room, I stayed on my feet long enough for him to look me over. When he picked up the phone on his side of the glass, his smile was oily. “If I ask you to come back tomorrow, what will you wear then? Because I’ll tell you what, honey, I could spend the rest of my time in here just dreaming about what you were going to show up in every day.”
I might have looked like a bimbo, but I didn’t have to act like one. I dropped into the chair on the other side of the glass from his and glared at him in a way that said there was no negotiating room in what I was about to say. “There will be no tomorrow. You’ve got this one chance and this one chance only to look long and hard and enjoy this tacky little outfit that I put together in the tacky little town where I stayed last night. So, you talk now, and if you do, I’ll stick around until visiting hours are over. You clam up or beat around the bush and I’m out of here, right now. Am I clear?”
I was. He didn’t have to tell me. He looked over as much of me as he could see from where he was sitting. “You went out yesterday when you left here and you bought that outfit?”
“Yes.”
“Just for me?”
“I certainly wouldn’t have bought it for myself. Clear reds do not look good on natural redheads, but this was the shortest skirt I could find, so I made the sacrifice. And the shirt is two sizes too small.”
His eyes went dreamy. “The shirt is perfect!”
I pinned him with a look. “Talk.”
Morgan leaned back in his chair. “What do you want to know?”
I didn’t let him see how relieved I was. “You were in Central State at the time Vera Blaine was killed. I want to know what the other prisoners were saying, how they felt about what happened. Did anybody have any theories… you know, about Lamar’s arrest and conviction?”
“Theories?” He laughed like maybe I was a bimbo after all. “Nobody’s got any theories in a place like this. They only got secrets.”
“What’s your secret, Mr. Morgan?”
“Mine?” He grinned. “Word is going to spread through gen pop that you visited me two days in a row, and everybody but everybody’s going to be talking about what a fine-looking woman you are. They’re going to be all over it, wondering how Dale Morgan got a babe as gorgeous as you, speculating about who you are and what we’re saying to each other and when you’re coming back. My secret is that I’m never going to say one thing about why you’re really here. That will make them keep wondering, and that will make me look like a big man, you know?”
“And what was Warden Lamar’s secret?” I asked, and at the same time, I hoped he didn’t know the secret that I hoped only I knew. I wasn’t there to gossip, and it would serve no purpose for anyone to know about Lamar’s affair with Vera.
He pursed his lips. “I don’t think the warden was a secrets sort of man. He was up-front. Regulated, you know. He had high expectations for all of us. And he kept them, even when we were released and came back, again and again. The warden was noble, and I let him down.”
“You don’t mean by just ending up back in here. You knew something about Vera Blaine’s murder.”
He hesitated. “Knowing something he shouldn’t know can get a man killed in a place like this.”
I had no doubt of it. I didn’t press the point.
“If Lamar didn’t have any secrets, then who had secrets about him? Reno Bob Oates? Or Bad Dog Raphael?”
Morgan’s eyes widened. We were the only ones in the visitors’ room that afternoon, but he still took a careful look around before he spoke. “Why those two?”
“Why not? They both hated Lamar. Either one could have-”
“They didn’t both have those kinds of connections, if you know what I mean. A man inside, he needs connections on the outside to make something big like that go down.”
“Something big like a murder and then framing the warden for it?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
I thought about Reno Bob and Bad Dog. “You’re saying Reno Bob didn’t have the chops. He always worked alone. Mack Raphael was the one with the gang connections. You’re saying it had to have been Bad Dog.”
“Didn’t say that. Wouldn’t.” He looked around again. “A man like Bad Dog has friends in lots of places. I know this for a fact, see. I was his cellmate at Central State.”
This was something I didn’t know. I tried not to look too interested. “And you may have heard something. Or overheard something. Is that what you’re saying?”
He shook his head. “I ain’t saying anything of the sort. Like I said, I couldn’t. I value my life too much. Makes me wonder why you aren’t so smart.”
It was a logical assumption. But then, Morgan didn’t know that Helen Lamar had been her husband’s staunchest supporter all these years, and he certainly didn’t know that Lamar had done her wrong and that she deserved something for her misplaced trust in him. He didn’t know that someone was out to get me. He didn’t know about Sammi, either, and I told him about her and about how we’d started out on the opposite sides of a lot of issues (like taste and fashion, not to mention the law), but how Sammi and I had ended up understanding each
