went black.
“There’s no more?” said Kelsey.
“Try fast forwarding a few frames.”
She hit the button on the machine, but the tape was blank.
“Looks like that’s the end of it,” said Kelsey. “Though figuratively speaking, I’m definitely starting to get the picture.”
“Me, too,” said Jack in a hollow voice. “And it isn’t very pretty.”
Twenty-six
Kelsey had an afternoon class, so Jack drove her to the University of Miami law school. They rode in silence most of the way, listening to the radio. According to “News at the Top of the Hour,” a suspected terrorist was detained at the Port of Miami and would face deportation.
“Ooooh,” said Kelsey, a tinge of sarcasm in her voice. “Deportation. Now they’re really getting tough.”
“Yeah,” said Jack, scoffing. “You’d think they’d caught a puppy peeing on the rug. ‘Bad terrorist. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Now go back to your training camp and don’t come out until you’ve learned how to sneak into this country properly.’”
She offered a little nervous laughter that was symptomatic of the times, and then they continued in silence down fraternity row, past the fields of suntanned and shirtless college boys playing flag football. It was as if they both needed a little time to absorb the videotape. Not until Jack pulled into the drop-off circle in front of the law library and shifted into Park did they seem ready to talk about what was really on their minds.
“Jack, what do you think happened when Rudsky turned off that camera?”
“I’m sure he threatened her. Obstruction of justice, accessory after the fact to murder, and anything else he could think of.”
“Right. He threatened to throw her in jail unless…unless what?”
“Unless she told him who killed her daughter.”
“That’s where it all falls apart in my view. Maybe it’s because I’m a mother, but it’s hard for me to accept that Sally would have refused to identify the man who killed her child, no matter how torrid the love affair. Assuming there even was a love affair.”
“What about Susan Smith?”
“Who?”
“The married woman from South Carolina who locked her two sons in her car and sent them to the bottom of a lake so that she would be childless and more appealing to her lover.”
“Do you honestly think Sally Fenning was anywhere near that extreme?”
“If Tatum Knight is to be believed, she was extreme enough to hire someone to kill her.”
“That was five years after her daughter was brutally murdered. You’re talking about a whole different time of her life. Before a tragedy like that, she was probably an entirely different woman.”
Jack glanced out the window, thinking. “That’s a valid point. But there are other reasons for Sally to have refused to identify her killer, reasons other than a sick sense of love.”
“Such as?”
“She might have been afraid to identify him. Like you said, he’d stabbed her already, murdered her daughter. Maybe she feared he would come back to finish the job.”
“Is that what Rudsky was driving at in the videotape?” asked Kelsey.
“It’s not clear. Maybe even Rudsky wasn’t sure if she was intentionally covering up for her lover or if she refused to identify the killer out of fear. Either way, he was clearly convinced by the polygraph results that, one, Sally was having an affair, and two, she knew the identity of her daughter’s killer.”
Kelsey shook her head and said, “If she was in fact covering up for her lover, then Sally was truly despicable.”
“Anyone would agree on that point. But if Rudsky had it all wrong-if she wasn’t covering up for anybody, and if she wasn’t even having an affair-then Sally was maligned in a way no mother should ever be maligned.”
“And if Deirdre Meadows was intent upon repeating those same accusations in her book, she was just as guilty as the prosecutor.”
“Which might explain why they both ended up on Sally’s list of beneficiaries. Her list of mortal enemies.”
Silence fell between them. Kelsey checked her watch, gauging her time till class started. “So where does this lead us?” she asked.
“It all comes back to the same question. Were they her enemies because their vicious accusations were false? Or because they exposed the ugly truth?”
“How do you suppose we get an answer to that?”
“The only way I know. Keep digging.”
Kelsey waved to three women walking past the car. Classmates, Jack presumed. “I’d better get going,” she said. “Call me if there’s anything more I can do.”
“I will. Actually, I’ll probably see you tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow night?”
“Yeah, when I pick up Nate. I promised to take him for pizza at the Big Cheese on Friday.”
She clunked her head like a dunce. “I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you. My mother invited him over to the condo for some kind of grandkids shuffleboard marathon or something.”
“Boy, is that going to cost you.”
“Oh yes. Big time.” She gave a little laugh, then cut her eyes and said, “I guess that means you’re free tomorrow night, huh?”
“Evidently.”
“So…”
“So what?”
She flashed a thin, mischievous smile. “Why don’t we do dinner?”
“You mean without Nate?”
“Yes, a date.”
Jack’s mouth opened, but his words were on a few-second delay.
“Something wrong?” asked Kelsey. “You suddenly look as if I just asked you to be the food tester for Saddam Hussein.”
“This just takes you and me to another level.”
“That’s sort of the idea.”
“And it probably would be a great idea, under different circumstances. But I thought we had sort of an unspoken understanding that this is something we’d never do. For Nate’s sake.”
“I thought the same thing, until you started teasing me at Just Books. You seemed so amused by the fact that I’d somehow given Martin the impression that we were dating. It got me to thinking, maybe it’s not such a crazy notion.”
Jack took a breath. He recalled the conversation, and he’d regretted it. At the time it had seemed innocent enough, just a divorced guy with wounded self-esteem having a little flirtatious banter with an attractive young woman. He hadn’t expected it to go anywhere, but in hindsight he could see where she might have misread it. “Kelsey, look, I’m sorry.”
“Just hear me out on this, okay? With most guys I date, being a single mom is a liability. First, we have to get to like each other, and then I have to hope he likes my son. You’re the opposite. Here’s this great guy who totally adores my son. And I’m not supposed to date you because-because why?”
“Because if it doesn’t work out…”
“I’m tired of living my life that way, Jack, afraid of what’s not going to work out. What if it does work out?”
Jack considered it, allowed himself the luxury of thinking that he wasn’t forever resigned to carrying around the battle scars of his divorce. “I can’t deny that I’ve wondered about it. In the abstract, anyway.”
