by Buffa, D. W.
"I didn't kill him," she insisted.
"But you were having an affair with him."
She denied it, as she had done so many times before. I held up my hand and shook my head. "Don't," I warned her. "It's too late for that now. You didn't suddenly remember there was something you wanted to talk to him about. You left because you didn't want anyone to know you were spending time alone with him. If you weren't having an affair with him, you wouldn't have thought anything about staying behind after everyone else was gone. Only a guilty conscience produces that kind of concern with appearances."
She stared at me and said nothing.
"That's the reason you didn't want to testify, isn't it? You didn't want it to come out, because you don't want Horace to know."
There was no reaction, no visible sign of what she felt, or that she felt anything at all. Nothing, just the look of someone who has slipped away to a place where no one can find her. I had known her for years. Now, I realized, I did not know her at all.
"You're going to be convicted of murder, Alma, and there isn't anything I can do about it, not unless you start telling the truth. You had an affair with Russell Gray, and you have to admit it, no matter how much it hurts. That's the reason you came back to the house, and you're going to have to say so when I put you on the stand. All right?"
She did not answer. Instead, she glanced at her watch. "I have to go," she said, as she rose from her chair. "Horace is meeting me outside."
She was not going to say anything more. Reluctantly, I got to my feet and, taking her arm, walked her out. "I've tried to call Horace three times this week. He doesn't take my calls."
"He's been very busy," she explained.
"I want him in court. He has to be there, sitting where the jury can see him. He has to show by his presence that he believes you're innocent. He knows how important that is."
We rode the elevator down to the lobby and I walked her out to the rain-slicked sidewalk. Horace was waiting in the car. Holding an umbrella, I opened the door and helped her in. When I said hello, Horace, looking straight ahead, nodded and said nothing in return. As they drove off, I stood on the curb, watching the taillights disappear into traffic, wondering what I had done.
I had hours of work to do, and as I walked across the lobby, my footsteps echoing off the dark red marble floor, I debated whether to stay in the office or take it home with me. The door to my office was open, just the way I had left it. Everything else on the floor was locked up for the night. Closing the door behind me, I stopped at Helen's desk and thumbed through the telephone messages that had been accumulating over the last week. Most of them I discarded, but a few looked important and I studied them more closely as I walked back into my office.
"I hoped you were still here."
Startled, I looked up. In the shadows on the other side of the desk, the same place where Alma Woolner had been sitting just a few moments earlier, a woman in a long dress and a black fur coat was staring at me. She laughed at my surprise.
"Have you forgotten me already?"
Settling into my chair, I looked at her, all dressed up, taunting me with her eyes."What can I do for you, Kristin? Or did you just happen to be in the neighborhood?"
"I thought maybe you'd like to take me to dinner," she said, her glossy black hair falling back over her shoulder as she tilted her head to the side. "I have a date, but I can get out of it."
"Your husband was just sentenced and you have a date. You didn't waste much time, did you?"
"He was sentenced a month ago." She made it sound like a lifetime. "And it really isn't a date. I'm just having dinner with a friend. You remember him. Conrad Atkinson."
I could not hide my surprise.
"I know what he said at the trial. He was angry with me. He deserved to be. But Conrad knows I could never have had anything to do with what Marshall did."
She read the skepticism on my face. Reaching across, she picked up the telephone and dialed.
"I'm not going to be able to make dinner tonight," she said into the receiver. Her eyes on me, she activated the speaker. There was no mistake. The voice at the other end was Conrad Atkinson.
"I'll call you later on," she promised, before she hung up. She was still watching me. "Take me to dinner. I'll tell you some things about Russell Gray you might find interesting."
We drove in her black Mercedes—the one she had taken when she broke off her engagement to Conrad— to a small French restaurant in the northwest section, five minutes from downtown. At a quiet table in a corner, with her glistening fur coat draped over the back of her chair, Kristin tried to convince me that she was one of the few people I could trust.
"What would you like to know about Russell Gray?" she asked as she sipped on a glass of red wine.
"You met him when you were engaged to Atkinson, right?"
"Yes, but I had heard of him when I was still handling misdemeanor cases in the district attorney's office." She dragged the end of her middle finger across her lower lip. "A teenage boy claimed Gray had given him a ride in his car and tried to molest him. I interviewed the boy. I believed him. Gilliland-O'Rourke told me to dismiss it. Insufficient evidence, she said. I'd prosecuted dozens of cases just like it. But this was different, because it was Russell Gray and Russell Gray was one of them."
I thought I knew what she meant, but I wanted to hear it from her.
"Them?"
Her mouth curled back at the corners and she looked at me, derision in her eyes.
"You don't understand these people—Russell Gray, Gilliland-O'Rourke, even Conrad—do you? They aren't like you or me."
"Because they're rich?" I laughed.
"Because they can do whatever they want so long as they don't embarrass each other. They protect their own—to a point. After that, if they can't cover things up, they abandon them as if they had never known them. Look at what Gwendolyn did to Marshall."
I was not sure what she meant.
"If it hadn't been for you," she explained, tracing her finger around the edge of the half-empty glass, "he would never have been charged in the first place."
The waiter appeared. After we ordered, I reminded her that Travis Quentin had confessed to the state police.
"Gwendolyn would have told them there was no case. Quentin was a murderer trying to save his life, and all the other so-called evidence was circumstantial. She wouldn't have done anything that would embarrass herself. Why do you think she's prosecuting the case against Alma Woolner? Because she thinks she did it?"
She shook her head. "She couldn't trust anyone else. She's afraid of what might come out. They're all afraid. Russell Gray was involved in things they don't want anyone to know about."
I barely touched my food, while Kristin was finishing nearly everything on her plate.
"What's the connection with Arthur O'Rourke?"
She put down her fork and leaned across the table. "Did you really have an affair with Gwendolyn?"
"No. Where did you hear that?" I replied with as much indifference as I could summon.
"I don't believe you," she said, pulling back. "It doesn't matter. She must have had a lot of affairs. What choice did she have?" Kristin took another mouthful. "They don't have a marriage," she said, as she wiped her mouth with a napkin, "they have an alliance. One of the richest families in the state and one of the most powerful political families. People must have thought it was the start of a dynasty. How was anyone to know Arthur O'Rourke was gay?"
Suddenly serious, and a little withdrawn, she looked down and etched a figure into the tablecloth with her nail. "It's too bad," she said. "Arthur is a very nice man. It must have been difficult for him, growing up when he did, knowing he could never let anyone know the way he really felt, the way he really was."
She looked up, reached for her glass, and took a drink, her eyes still on me. "Poor Arthur. Everyone used him. Gwendolyn knew what he was before she married him—she had to have known—but she did it anyway because she wan
ted the money and everything that went with it. Russell was even worse."
I sat across from her, an attentive audience, and listened to her describe the ways in which Russell Gray had exploited his friend.
"A long time ago, when they were both much younger, they were lovers for a while."
"Arthur O'Rourke and Russell Gray?"
"Yes. Arthur is ten or fifteen years older, and when Russell was a young man he was really quite good looking.: thin, blond, blue-eyed. Arthur fell in love with him."
She paused.
"Was Russell in love with him?" I asked.
"Arthur was always a very generous man, and Russell never did anything to discourage generosity."
"I thought Russell Gray was one of the wealthiest men in town."
"He wanted everyone to think so," she said, a shrewd glint in her eyes. "His family had been wealthy, though nothing like as rich as the O'Rourke's. But Russell had to split the inheritance with a brother and a sister. And then, of course, he spent a good deal of what he had. Without his good friend Arthur O'Rourke, I'm not sure what he would have done, especially in the last year or two."
She took another sip from her glass before she went on. "He was in serious financial trouble. He was borrowing money anywhere he could get it. He even borrowed some from Conrad. But of course he borrowed more from Arthur, a lot more. They were friends, but even with friends there is a limit. Apparently, Russell started making threats, suggesting that he hoped he could find a way out of his financial difficulties before he started talking about things he shouldn't."
She gave a short, dry laugh. "Even when they blackmail each other, the rich try to be polite."
I was not interested in their manners. "Are you telling me you think Gray was killed by someone he was trying to blackmail? Arthur O'Rourke?"
She laughed again. "Have you ever met Arthur?"
When I told her I had, she looked at me as if I had just answered my own question. "Arthur O'Rourke isn't capable of hurting anyone, but Gwendolyn may be," she said. "And she isn't the only one. There are a lot of people who would have wanted to prevent the kind of scandal Russell Gray might have caused. Although, when you think about it," she said, settling back against her chair, "Gwendolyn had the most to lose. What do you think it would have done to her political career if people knew her husband was involved with someone like Andre Barbizon?"
"Barbizon? The one in charge of the household?"
Her eyes opened wide. "I suppose that's one way of describing what he did." The look of derision passed. "Arthur O'Rourke was a decent, lonely man, and his friend Russell introduced him to people who were willing to provide him comfort." She paused and considered what she had just said. "Yes, that's perhaps the most charitable way of describing what Russell did for his friends."
We ordered coffee, and while she stirred her cup I asked her about Russell Gray and Alma.
"They were having an affair," she reported matter of factly. "Everyone knew."
"Conrad Atkinson told me he didn't know if they were or not," I retorted, interested in what her reaction would be.
"They take care of their own," she said, casting an indulgent look at me. "Conrad didn't lie to you. He just didn't tell you the truth."
"So everyone knew?"
"It wasn't a secret."
I had to ask. "Do you think her husband knew?"
She held her cup with both hands, elbows on the table. "He wouldn't have been difficult to fool. Horace Woolner is a straight arrow if there ever was one." She put the cup down, folded her hands together, and rested her chin on top of them. "And who would have told him? He doesn't exactly move in the same circles, does he?"
I placed a credit card on top of the bill and waited until the waiter took it away.
"And what about you, Kristin? Why did you decide that wasn't the circle you wanted to be in?"
"Marshall was exciting," she said, her eyes perfectly still. "Conrad and his friends are all a little too predictable." A slow smile started across her mouth. "You wouldn't fit in there either. You'd be bored out of your mind. Under the surface—" she said, and broke off. Tossing her head back, she laughed. "There is no under the surface."
She took my arm when we left the restaurant and kept holding it while we walked to the car. As we drove across town, I asked her why she had told me.
"I wanted you to know that I trust you," she replied, her eyes on the road. "And because I want you to trust me." She glanced over. "I didn't have anything to do with what Marshall did. You have to believe that." She pulled up in front of my building and turned off the engine.
"Tell me something. Did Marshall really admit to you that he had his wife killed?"
A brief, enigmatic smile floated across her mouth. "It's what you wanted me to say, wasn't it?"
"I wanted you to tell the truth."
"And I just thought you wanted to win. That's what I always liked about you. The way you do whatever you have to do."
"I wanted you to tell the truth," I insisted.
"The truth is that Marshall did it, and I had nothing to do with it. That's the only truth worth talking about."
I opened the door and started to get out.
"You've never seen my house, have you?" Her voice was a soft whisper. "We could go out there for a while and talk. It might be good for both of us."
I looked back at her. "I'll be up half the night, getting ready for tomorrow. You remember what it's like, preparing for trial."
I stayed in the office just long enough to gather up everything I needed and then drove home, trying hard to convince myself that liars sometimes told the truth and that Marshall Goodwin might be guilty after all.
Chapter Twenty Three
I reached Andre Barbizon just in time. When he answered the door, he thought his cab had arrived and began pointing toward the bags on the floor of the entryway before he realized his mistake.
"Taking a trip?" I asked, as I stepped inside. He remembered my face, but he could not quite remember my name.
"Antonelli," I reminded him.
"Yes," he replied, a look of impatience flickering across his mouth. "What can I do for you, Mr. Antonelli?"
"You can tell me all about your relationship with Arthur O'Rourke, and then you can tell me about everything else you did for Russell Gray."
His eyes darted toward a dark mahogany grandfather clock.
"I'm afraid you'll have to change your travel plans. You're coming back to court."
He refused to believe it. "I've already testified. I finished with that. The judge excused me."
I handed him a subpoena. "You're coming back to testify for the defense."
He still did not want to believe it. He tore the subpoena out of my hand and began to read it.
"You're making a mistake," he said after he examined it. "Arthur didn't have anything to do with this. He was with me when it happened. We had dinner together that night. Remember I said I was having dinner in town with friends?"
A car pulled up in front, and a moment later the doorbell rang. It was the cab Barbizon had been expecting. He gave the driver a few dollars and explained he did not need a ride after all. I spent an hour with Andre Barbizon, and at the end of it I was convinced that Kristin had been right. There were a lot of people who would have wanted Russell Gray dead, but Arthur O'Rourke would have been the last person to kill him.
