Ames was talking about my taking on Peters’ kids with the kind of casual aplomb that comes from never having raised kids of his own. People talk that way about kids and puppies, about how cute they are and how little trouble, only when they’ve never pulled a six-year-old’s baby tooth or housebroken an eight-week-old golden retriever.
Ames spoke with the full knowledge and benefit of never having been in the trenches. His naiveté was almost laughable, but he’s one hell of a poker player. He had an unbeatable wild card—my sense of responsibility for what had happened. And the son of a bitch wasn’t above using it.
“So what do we do?” I asked. He read my question correctly as total capitulation.
“I’ll draw up a temporary custody agreement,” he replied. “As soon as Peters is lucid enough for us to talk to him about it, we’ll get it signed and notarized.”
“Signed?” I asked.
“Witnessed,” he corrected.
“And what if that’s not possible? What if he never is lucid enough to agree to it?”
“We use the same agreement. It just costs more money to put it in force, that’s all,” Ames replied grimly.
I knew from experience that Ralph Ames had the moxie to grease the wheels of bureaucracy when the occasion required it.
It was one-thirty in the morning when we finally called it quits. The decision had long since been made to wait until morning to tell the girls. There was no sense in waking them up to tell them in the middle of the night.
For a long time after Ames went to bed, I lay awake on the floor mulling our conversation. Ames was right, of course. I was the only acceptable choice for taking care of Heather and Tracie. I had the most to offer. And the most to gain.
It was probably just a sign of fatigue, but by five-thirty, when I finally fell asleep, it was beginning to seem like a perfectly reasonable idea.
Heather bounded into my room an hour later. “Unca Beau,” she squealed, climbing gleefully on top of me. “Did you find him? Did you?”
It was a rude awakening. Tracie, more reticent than her younger sister, hung back by the door. I motioned to her. With a kind of delicate dignity, she sat down beside me.
I swallowed hard before I answered Heather’s question. “Yes, I did,” I said slowly.
“Well, where is he, then? Why isn’t he in his bed?” Heather’s six-year-old inquisitiveness sought answers for only the most obvious questions.
“He’s in the hospital, girls.”
Tracie swung around and looked up at me. “He’s hurt?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Will he die?”
“I don’t know. Neither do the doctors.”
“I don’t want him to die,” Heather wailed.
“He can’t. I won’t let him.”
Tracie continued to look up at me, her eyes wide and unblinking. “What will happen to us?” she asked.
Bless Ames for asking the question first, for coming up with a plan. “We talked about that last night,” I assured them. “If your father approves, maybe you can stay with me for a while. Downtown.”
“But you’re moving.”
“To a bigger place. There’d be more room.”
My heart went out to Tracie. She was very young to be so old, to carry so much responsibility for what was happening around her.
Heather’s sudden outburst quieted as suddenly as it had come. “Would we ride in a elevator?”
“Every day.”
I reached over and tousled Tracie’s long brown hair. “We’ll take care of things, Tracie. Ames and Mrs. Edwards and I will do the worrying. You don’t have to.”
Tears welled in her big brown eyes. She turned around and launched herself at my neck, clinging to me like a burr.
I’m glad she didn’t look up at me right then. I was busy wiping my own eyes.
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 rig
ht 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.”
Epilogue
The next few weeks were a blur. I camped out in Kirkland with the kids and Mrs. Edwards until school got out.
I took a leave of absence so I could look after the kids and run back and forth to the hospital. The girls kept wanting to go see their dad, but he was far too sick for visitors. Peters’ health remained precarious, and the doctors told us it would be months before he was entirely out of the woods.
Before Ames returned to Phoenix, we spent hours trying to second-guess what the long-term implications were, but other than sorting out the custody arrangement, we decided to hide and watch and not make any other plans until we had some clear direction from the doctors. Mostly, they weren’t very informative, but they did hint that the fact that Peters had been unconscious at the time of the wreck was probably the only thing that kept him from being killed. The doctors vacillated between saying he’d never be able to live on his own again and voicing cautious hope that he might recover.
There were occasional times when Peters was fairly lucid. During one of those periods, I asked him if he remembered anything about his time with Candace Wynn. He said no. The doctors tell me that it’s not unusual for a person who has suffered a traumatic injury to totally forget the events surrounding the injury.
Considering what I discovered, his amnesia was probably a good thing. Joanna let me read Candace Wynn’s letters. In the last one, one written the Thursday before Darwin Ridley died, she raged about Bambi Barker. She had somehow gotten hold of Molly Blackburn’s negative. Alternately threatening Darwin and pleading with him to run away with her, she ended the letter with the impassioned statement that if she couldn’t have him, nobody would.
She must have gone over the edge then. From what the homicide detectives were able to piece together, she somehow convinced Darwin Ridley to come home with her, slipped him so
me of her mother’s morphine, put a noose around his neck, and pushed him off the second-floor landing over her truck. All she had to do then was cut him down, hose him off, cover him up, and haul him away. The crime lab found bits of trace evidence in the truck that indicated she had used it to transport Ridley back to the dumpster where he was found. No one ever figured out for sure why she went to the trouble of stripping him, unless she used his clothes in a futile attempt to frame Joanna.
Eventually, Maxwell Cole came forward with the envelope and his copy of the Ridley / Bambi photo. The typeface on his envelope matched that on Joanna Ridley’s envelope. It was also the same typeface on Candace Wynn’s love letters to Darwin Ridley. The remains of the typewriter were found crushed in the wreckage of the van, along with a suitcase of small bills and Molly Blackburn’s missing negatives. Peters’ .38 was there, too.
Candace must have sent the pictures to the Barkers, Joanna, and the press, just as she had planted the evidence in Joanna Ridley’s trunk in hopes of throwing us off the track.
She and Peters hit it off like a couple of star-struck kids. Maybe she was on the rebound. Maybe she liked playing with fire. Somehow, while he was at her apartment, Peters must have discovered something that alerted him, something that told him Candace was behind Ridley’s death. Since she went to the trouble of painting the rail, he may have discovered the chafed place on the upright where the noose was tied off.
Whatever it was, when she overheard him trying to call me, she stopped him. That explained the cryptic message on my machine.
Ned Browning resigned on the first of April under a cloud of Chief Marilyn Sykes’ making. His case won’t come up for several months, but when it does, I doubt he’ll be involved in the educational system anymore.
As for me, I’m beginning to get used to being a parent again. According to Ames, who just called from Phoenix, it’s just like riding a bike. Once you learn how, you never forget.
He could be right about that.
About the Author
J. A. JANCE is the New York Times bestselling author of the J. P. Beaumont series, the Joanna Brady series, three interrelated thrillers featuring the Walker family, and Edge of Evil. Born in South Dakota and brought up in Bisbee, Arizona, Jance lives with her husband in Seattle, Washington, and Tucson, Arizona.
Trial by Fury (9780061754715) Page 23
