Motion to Kill

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Pamela’s newspaper was still in the driveway and there were no lights on in the house. It felt as though more than twenty-four hours had passed since he’d last knocked on her door. Vernon’s Bible lay heavily against his side, protected from the rain by his jacket, as he leaned on the doorbell. Five minutes of chimes brought protesting footsteps that stopped on the other side of the peephole in the door.

“Lou, what are you doing here at this hour?” Pamela asked in a voice muffled by the thick oak door.

“I’ve got to talk with you. It’s very important.”

“I had a late night. Can’t it wait until later, or tomorrow?”

“Pamela, please open the door. I can hardly hear you.”

Mason hoped that it would be harder to send him away face-to-face than separated by the heavy door. The dead bolt slid back. Pamela pulled the door open enough to peer around the edge. Mason stepped sideways through the narrow opening before she could protest.

She had the same puffy-eyed, just-rousted-from-bed look as Anna Karelson had. He could taste the stale, smoky aroma that hung on her, and he could smell the booze in her sweat. She hunched her shoulders inside the velour red robe she had zipped to the neck. She was close enough to rock bottom to touch it with her tongue.

“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this. I know who killed your husband. I thought you would want to know.”

She slumped against the door, pushing it closed, as she covered her mouth with one hand, her eyes asking questions that she refused to speak.

“I don’t want to go to the police until I’m certain,” Mason continued. “There are a few details about Richard’s past that I need to clear up. Let’s talk in the study.”

Mason led the way, not giving her the chance to object. He hoped that taking charge in her own house would keep her off her guard. The study reeked of Pamela’s long night. She didn’t smoke. Mason wondered who did.

The sofa cushions had been left in casual disarray, with two of them piled at one end. Pamela sat on the sofa, holding a cushion in her lap, her arms wrapped around it. Mason chose the wingback chair opposite the sofa, setting his jacket next to the ornamental letter opener on the small table next to the chair, the Bible tucked inside the jacket.

A dark walnut butler’s table separated them, adorned with an empty wine bottle and two glasses turned on their sides. Two streaked glasses, one with lipstick on the rim. He pretended not to notice. It wasn’t any of his business if Pamela skipped the grieving-widow stage and jumped into friendly arms.

Pamela squeezed the cushion in her lap as if she were trying to pull herself inside it. She hadn’t uttered a sound since he’d told her why he was there. Not even a monosyllabic “Who?” The silence was so puzzling that he decided to wait her out and make her ask him who did it.

Smiling at Pamela, Mason stood and began a quiet survey of the books lining the shelves behind Sullivan’s desk. He had a theory that you could learn a lot about a person by the books they kept. Some people kept them for show, while others intended to read them someday, though they never would. Still others read them, loved them, and took comfort in being around them. The bindings on Sullivan’s books were crisp and virginal. Having them was what counted. Not knowing them.

Mason stopped in front of a volume half-hidden by the vertical molding at the end of the middle shelf. The top half of the letters in the title was visible enough along the book’s spine that he could read Rogersville H.S. 1973 Yearbook. He sat down in Sullivan’s desk chair and began leafing through the book. Pamela was still mute.

“Did you and Richard get back to Rogersville very often?” Mason asked, looking at Pamela as she rocked back and forth on the sofa. Her eyes bore down on the intricate pattern in the Persian rug as if the answer could be divined in the weave.

“Pamela, over here,” he said, breaking her spell. She jerked her head up and raised her lids halfway in his direction. “Did you and Richard get back to Rogersville very often?”

“Not in years.”

Mason found Sullivan’s senior class picture and index of achievements. Crew cut, shiny cheeks, cocked, arrogant smile, head tilted at a jaunty angle. Look out, world, here he comes. Lettered in track and cross-country. Choir. Junior Achievement.

“Why not?”

Flipping through the pages, Mason ran his finger under the names beneath the pictures, stopping at Meredith Phillips’s photograph. Pageboy, wide nose, wider face, crooked smile, square chin. Unremarkable, yet vaguely familiar. Home Economics Club.

“No reason to,” she said to the floor. “We wanted out.”

The girl in the photograph next to Meredith’s had long dark hair tucked behind her ears, bangs pulled across her forehead, oval face with perfectly aligned teeth, dimpled cheeks. Cheerleader, Homecoming Queen. Pamela Phinney. Mason looked up. There was no doubt. Pamela Phinney Sullivan lay back against the couch, her eyes raised to the ceiling.

“You knew Meredith Phillips?”

“We were best friends,” she said softly.

“And you didn’t know about the baby?” Some best friend.

“Best friends in high school-not later.”

“What happened?”

“She and Richard dated all through school. No one could figure it out. Great-looking guy and the homely girl.”

“No competition. Maybe Richard was insecure in spite of his good looks.”

“Maybe. Anyway, she was a small-town girl. Richard and I couldn’t wait to escape.”

“And you ended up with Richard.”

“I chased him for four years in high school. That’s why Meredith and I were best friends. She kept me close to Richard. Back then, he was loyal. But I got him in the end.”

“But not before he and Meredith had one last stroll around the park.”

“No-not before.”

“And you didn’t know about the baby until I told you yesterday?”

She hesitated an instant before answering. “Not before-”

“Not before what?” Diane Farrell asked, one hand on her hip, the other on the entry to the study. She was wearing a half-buttoned man’s pajama top that fell to mid thigh and, nearly as Mason could tell, nothing else.