Trial By Fury

CHAPTER 33

Ames had talked to Mrs. Edwards while I was telling Heather and Tracie. By the time we came out to the kitchen, the housekeeper, red-eyed but under control, was busy making breakfast. She dished out huge bowls of oatmeal. "You've got to eat and keep up your strength so your daddy won't have to worry about you," she said. Then she went over to the sink and ran water to cover her sniffles.

None of us ate the oatmeal.

I was pushing my chair back from the table when the phone rang. It was Margie, Peters' and my clerk from the department. She sounded pretty ragged, too.

"Sorry to bother you, Beau, but there's a message here I thought you should know about. It's been here since last night. From Harborview."

"From Harborview! Why didn't they call me here?" I demanded. "Powell was supposed to tell them."

"I don't know what happened, but here's the number."

I took it down and dialed it as soon as I heard the dial tone.

"Emergency," a woman answered.

"My name is Beaumont. I had a message to call this number."

"One moment. Here it is. You're to call 5451616."

My frustration level was rising. I dialed the next number. "Maternity," someone said.

"Maternity? Why am I calling Maternity?"

"I wouldn't know, sir. This is the maternity wing at University Hospital. Is someone in your family expecting a baby?"

"No, I can't imagine…"

"What is your name, sir? I may have a message here for you."

" Beaumont. J. P. Beaumont."

"That's right. Here it is. Hold on. It's early, but I can connect you."

Ames, who had heard the entire conversation, looked at me questioningly. I shrugged my shoulders. Why the hell would Maternity at University Hospital have a message for me?

"Hello." At first I didn't recognize the voice.

"This is J. P. Beaumont. I had a message to call."

"Oh, Beau. Thank you for calling."

"Joanna?"

"…tried to get hold of you yesterday, but then my water broke, and they took me to the hospital."

I was so relieved it wasn't bad news about Peters that it was all I could do to make sense of what she was saying.

"You had the baby, then? What is it? A boy or a girl?"

She didn't answer. "I've got to talk to you. Right away. Can you come down here?"

"To University Hospital? Sure, I guess so." I held the phone away from my mouth and spoke to Ames. "She wants to see me."

"Go ahead. Mrs. Edwards and I will hold down the fort."

I drove to Harborview first. I went directly to the intensive-care-unit waiting room. Big Al Lindstrom, one of the night-shift homicide detectives, was sitting upright on a couch, his massive arms folded across his chest, apparently sound asleep. His eyes opened, though, as soon as I stepped into the room.

"Hi, there, Beau. Me and Manny are spelling one another. We'll be here all day."

I was glad to see him. "Any word?"

"It's touch and go. He's still heavily sedated. Understand you're looking after his kids." I nodded. "You handle that end of it. We'll take care of this."

"Thanks, Al." I didn't say anything more. I couldn't.

Leaving Harborview, I drove north to University Hospital. Joanna Ridley was in a private room at the end of the maternity wing. Her door stood partially open. I knocked on it softly.

"Come in."

I entered the room. Joanna was not in her bed. Wearing a white, gauzelike nightgown, she sat in a chair near the window, gazing across a still green, stormy Lake Washington.

"Hello, Joanna," I said quietly.

She didn't look up. "I read about your partner in the paper," she said. "Is he going to be all right?"

"His neck's broken," I told her. "If he lives, he'll probably be paralyzed."

"I'm sorry," Joanna murmured. She looked up at me. "I met her, you know. She had the nerve to stand right there and invite me to Darwin 's memorial service." Her eyes filled with tears. "I'm glad she's dead," she added.

I stood there awkwardly, not knowing quite what to say. "Why did you want to see me?"

She pointed toward the closet. "There's a box over there, in my suitcase. Would you bring it here?"

The box was a shoe box, a red Nike basketball shoe box, size thirteen. I handed the box to her and she motioned for me to sit on the bed. She remained in the chair.

For a time after I handed it to her, she sat looking down at the box in her lap, her hands resting on the cover. When she finally raised her face to look at me, she met my gaze without wavering.

"I never knew it was the same woman," she said softly.

"Who was the same woman? I don't understand."

"Candace Wynn and Andi Scarborough. Darwin never wanted me near school. I thought that was just his way. It was one of those little peculiarities. I never questioned it. I never knew it was because of her."

"Joanna, I still don't understand."

"Darwin and Andi Scarborough went together in high school. Actually, they were in grade school when it started, back in those days when blacks and whites didn't mix at all, not socially. Their mothers broke it up, both of them. Darwin wrangled a scholarship to UCLA, a basketball scholarship. That's where I met him."

Slowly, the light began to dawn. "Darwin and Candace Wynn were childhood sweethearts?"

Joanna nodded. "I knew about her, at least I knew about a white girl named Andi Scarborough. His mother told me about her when Darwin and I were just going together. But I never knew her married name was Wynn. And I never knew she worked with him at school."

The lights came on. I began to fill in some of the blanks. "So they met years later and reestablished their relationship."

Joanna patted the box in her lap. "He kept her letters, locked in his desk at school. I found them yesterday when I started to sort through the big box the principal sent home."

"I'm sorry," I said.

She drew her chin up and squared her shoulders. "Don't be," she answered. "I'm glad I found them and read them. It makes it easier to go on. I didn't lose anything. It never existed."

A nurse poked her head in the door. She saw me sitting on the edge of the bed and frowned in disapproval. "You'll have to leave now. We're bringing the babies to nurse."

I started to my feet. Joanna caught my hand. "Don't go," she said.

The nurse glared at me. "Are you the baby's father? Fathers can stay."

"He's a father," Joanna said evasively. "I want him to stay."

The nurse clicked her tongue and shook her head, but eventually she gave in, led Joanna back to bed, helped her get ready for the baby, and then brought a tiny bundle into the room. I sat self-consciously on the chair by the window, unsure what to do or say.

I couldn't help remembering those first few tentative times when Karen had nursed Scott when neither of them had known what they were doing. That wasn't the case here.

When I glanced up at Joanna, she was leaning back against the bed looking down contentedly at the bundle nestled in her arms. "I've decided to name him Peter," she told me.

Without her having to explain, I knew why and was touched. It was a nice gesture toward Peters, one I hoped he'd appreciate someday.

"It's a good name," I said.

It was quiet in the room after that. The only sounds came from the lustily sucking infant. This part of parenthood made sense to me. It seemed straightforward and uncomplicated. Joanna Ridley made it look deceptively easy.

But still there was an undercurrent beneath her placid, motherly surface. I sensed there was more to the story, more she hadn't told me. I didn't know if now was a good time to ask her about it. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

"What was in the letters?" My question broke the long silence between us.

Joanna answered my question with one of her own. "Do you remember when Detective Peters asked me if Darwin had a separate checking account or credit cards?"

I nodded. "You told us no."

"I was wrong. There was a lot I didn't know, including an account at the credit union, a joint account with her, with Candace Wynn. I never saw the money. It was deducted from his paycheck before it ever came home, and he had all the statements sent to him at school. Between them they must have had quite a sum of money. Part of it came from Darwin, and part came from her. According to the letters, she had been systematically gutting her parents' estate for years. They used the money to buy a boat."

"A boat?"

"A sailboat. It was supposedly a partnership made up of several people. In actual fact, there were only two partners, Candace and Darwin. They planned to run away together until I found out something was going on. Then, even after she knew I was expecting a baby, she still kept talking about it in her letters, that eventually it would be just the two of them together."

Joanna paused and took a deep breath before she continued. "From the letters, it sounded like she understood about me, about the baby, but when she found out about the cheerleader, that Bambi whatever-her-name-was, she snapped."

The quote came unbidden to my mind. I repeated it aloud. "‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.' Isn't that what they say?"

Joanna didn't answer me. I watched as she took the baby from one breast, held the child, patted his back until he burped, then gently moved him to the other breast. Once more I was struck by her beauty, by the sudden contrasts of black and white, skin and gown, sheet and blanket, mother and child. Sitting there in a splash of morning sunlight, Joanna Ridley was the epitome of every Madonna I had ever seen.

Beautiful and serene, yet she, too, had been scorned, betrayed. Where was her anger, her fury?

"What about you, Joanna?"

She looked up at me and gave me a wry grin. "I wasn't scorned, honey," she drawled with a thick, southern accent I had never heard her use before. "I was suckered. There's a big difference."