Commitments

by Barbara Delinsky

“He’s just as dead.”

  She put her lips to his ear and kissed him there, slid her other arm around him and held him tight. She wished she could do more, but just then, hugging him and letting him know that she was on his side was all she could do to help him fight his demons.

  Chapter 13

  I SPENT HOURS piecing together the parts,” Derek told Sabrina the next day as he sanded one of the captain’s table legs. “Hours and hours. Prison is great for that. Nothing to do but work yourself into a fury over things you can’t touch. I used to lie there drawing outlines in my head, turning little events this way and that, trying to make it all work. I kept telling myself that if I had a day, one day, to ask questions, make phone calls, study files and records, I’d have answers, because I was an investigator, as good as any damn cop. But I didn’t have a day. I was a carpenter without tools. And then I’d lie there picturing Greer grinning smugly behind his big glass desk, in front of his big glass windows that looked down on all of New York, and I knew that if he’d been in front of me that minute I’d have strangled him.” Lips compressed, he looked away. Then, with a small head shake, a silent personal order, he determinedly distanced himself from the anger.

  It was a cloudy afternoon. He and Sabrina had slept late, treated themselves to brunch in town, then returned. They were in the barn—this time wearing sweaters to ward off the nip in the air—but still they were barefoot, seated side by side on the floor.

  “Anyway, as I see it, Greer got scared when I approached him about Ballantine. He knew how I worked—that I went after stories with a vengeance—and he guessed that I might keep at this one even though he’d told me not to. He must have panicked when he found out I was doing that.”

  “But how could he have found out? You said you were doing it on your own time.”

  “One of the show’s associate producers was a nice girl, a little insecure but eager to get ahead. We’d worked together a lot. I could bounce ideas off her because she was bright. She was also a second cousin to Gerald Carruthers, the man who filled Ballantine’s spot on the bench. If there had been dirt floating around, Carruthers would have known it. Dori was going to see him at another cousin’s wedding, and I thought it would be great if she felt him out, maybe set up a meeting for me. Greer must have known that she and I had a close working relationship. He must have gotten to her.”

  “Did you ever ask her about it?”

  “David did. She denied it, but soon after she got a promotion. She’s been producing stories herself since then. And when I saw her last week—”

  “You saw her?”

  “At the studio. I stopped in to see what was happening, and she was one of the ones who wouldn’t look me in the eye.”

  “There were others?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “What was their problem?”

  “I don’t know for certain, but it sure looked like guilt.” He applied the sandpaper with greater force to the molded pine, That visit had been discouraging. A few of his former staff had greeted him with genuine smiles, others with less genuine smiles, still others with averted eyes and sudden errands to run. He’d felt like a pariah. “I got the distinct impression that I wasn’t welcome there. Some of it had to do with where I’d been, but it went beyond that. Even those people who talked with me seemed edgy, like they wanted to talk but didn’t dare. I’m assuming someone let it be known that I was persona non grata at the studio.”

  Sabrina, who was doing more listening than sanding, wasn’t sure what to say. She could only look at the line of disgust that thinned Derek’s mouth.

  The line moved. “Anyway, that’s probably how Greer found out I was still after Ballantine—and if it wasn’t through Dori, it could have been through a handful of others who had access to my files. None of the people I worked with was perfect. We all had places to go, things to do, and all it might have taken was a little boost from Greer to help one or another of them on his way.”

  “So,” he said, taking a breath, “Greer knew that I wasn’t letting the Ballantine matter go, and at that point he must have analyzed his options. He could have fired me, but I wouldn’t have taken that sitting down, and he would have ended up in a worse position, because I’d only have taken my story to another network and done it up with no restraints. He could have kept me on but tried to intimidate me—but he knew I wouldn’t stand for that, either. After all, I was his rebel. I was outspoken. Given the history of our relationship, I’d have jumped at the chance to accuse him of blackmail.”

  “So he decided to kill you,” Sabrina said in a very quiet voice.

  Derek frowned at the wood, brushed the dust aside. “It probably looked like the only way to silence me. Greer hated me enough to do it. He felt threatened enough to do it. And he was just arrogant enough to believe that he could pull it off.”

  That said, he sanded in silence for a time. Working by his side, Sabrina didn’t hurry him on. There was no rush, no prison guard to make her leave. Sometimes she forgot and felt the little knot in the pit of her stomach that had come at the end of each visit to Parkersville, and then she’d shake herself and look at Derek and know he was staying and smile. If her smile was inappropriate, given what he was telling her, he never said so. He was involved in his storytelling. It was a catharsis for him.

  “Somehow Greer found Padilla—a link to my past—and theoretically it would have worked well. Greer knew I was doing the eyewitness case; he could have had one of his lackeys contact Padilla and tell him just what to say on the phone to lure me to that parking lot. I don’t know what he offered Padilla. David’s investigator couldn’t find evidence that money was exchanged, but money can take different forms. Or it could have been promise of protection from something or someone. For all I knew, Padilla was told that I was after him because of what he’d done to my father and that he’d better kill me before I killed him.”

  The sound of his voice faded beneath the scratch of sandpaper. Sabrina found the subject matter nearly as abrasive.

  “The most incredible part of all this,” she complained, “is that Greer wasn’t caught. How could he know he’d get away with it? Even if he offered Padilla something he wanted, how could he know that Padilla wouldn’t go to the police and turn State’s evidence? Did he actually trust Padilla not to breathe a word of what he’d done to anyone?”

  “I doubt it. He probably planned on a double murder—and that’s where Padilla’s connection with my father was so neat. A double murder. Clean. No witnesses. The police would assume that to avenge my father’s death I’d gone after Padilla, who had then managed to shoot me before he died.”

  Sabrina’s shudder had nothing to do with the chill outside. “What if someone had gone with you that night?”

  Derek’s hand stilled, long fingers curling tightly around the wood. “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that question dozens and dozens of times, and I don’t know the answer. Most likely, if I’m right in what I’ve assumed, he’d have had both of us killed.” He resumed sanding with a fury. “Probably made a calculated guess that I’d go alone, though. That was more my style.”

  Sabrina tucked her feet beneath her for warmth. “If you’re right in what you’ve assumed, Greer must have had his own man there in the parking lot that night to make sure the job was done. Wouldn’t it have been a lot easier for that man to just kill you himself, without involving Padilla?”

  “But then there’d have been no explanation for my death, and Greer wouldn’t have wanted that. He likes things neatly tied up. He wouldn’t have risked some detective’s looking a little too deeply into the case. And since Padilla was a perfect pawn…”

  “Then things went wrong. You killed Padilla. Why didn’t Greer’s man just come forward and kill you?”

  “Because,” Derek said with a quick release of breath, “the cops came. The goddamned cops came while I was still standing there in shock holding the gun. At first, I thought that was part of the plan. I thought that they’d been given a tip.
I mean, their timing was like something out of a script. And I was furious. It wasn’t that I’d have left Padilla’s body and run. I’d’ve called the cops myself. But they denied me that show of integrity.”

  Sabrina ran her hand along the curved lip of the table, now down to its last layer of aged varnish. “And Greer’s man? What did he do then?”

  “I’m assuming he hightailed it out of there, got to a phone booth a safe distance away and called Greer, who began pulling strings to make sure that I was locked away and that no one looked too hard for the keys.”

  “But what about the kids in the parking lot? Wouldn’t the police have seen that they were there—or that they weren’t?”

  Derek stared at the sandpaper for a second, then tossed it aside. “We’re talking local cops here. You have to remember that. We’re not talking big-city cops or FBI or private investigators. We’re talking guys who don’t have a hell of a lot of experience dealing with murder. I don’t doubt that for some of them it was the first dead body they’d seen.”

  He gnawed on the inside of his mouth. He drew one knee up, set his forearm on it, let his hand dangle. Only it didn’t dangle loosely. Tension prevented that.

  “So they didn’t look around a hell of a lot,” he went on. “They had a body. They had a guy with a gun—a guy who admitted to the shooting. What more did they need? When David questioned them on the stand about whether they’d seen that third car, they said they hadn’t looked. Maybe someone got to them, too, but I doubt it. Greer was concentrating on the guys higher up, the ones who would see I went to prison.”

  Sabrina touched the scar by his eye. “Was Greer responsible for this?”

  “Probably.”

  Her fingers moved to his neck. “And this?”

  “Most likely.”

  “Then he was hoping you wouldn’t leave prison alive.”

  Closing his fingers around hers, Derek brought them to the warm spot at his throat where his pulse throbbed. “Guess I fooled’m, didn’t I?”

  With a groan, Sabrina leaned closer. She pressed her face to his neck and breathed deeply of the honest male scent that was his and his alone. She slid an arm around his body and, when he kissed her, she told him how glad she was that he’d been so clever. She slid a second arm around him when he eased her back to the floor; and, arching to his, her body repeated the message.

  Sabrina was forever amazed by the passion Derek roused in her. She’d lost track of the number of times they’d made love—not that the number counted, but the hunger behind it was very new to her. Needing to be with him, near him, touching him was an awakening. And she wasn’t alone in her need. Derek felt it, too. He told her that he was a plant and she his sun, and that without her he’d die, and they laughed at the imagery; but when they were in each other’s arms that laughter was soft and gentle, maybe a little husky.

  As it was this day. They kissed slowly, languorously. They touched each other in those special places they’d learned were the most sensitive. As they rolled over on the floor, taking turns bearing each other’s weight, Derek suggested that they had a thing for barns. They both chuckled about that, then kissed with their tongues; and when she’d taken her own back into her mouth, Sabrina said that it had something to do with animal behavior, over which prospect they chuckled again. The more he thought about it, between feels and kisses, Derek decided that animal behavior had its pluses. By the time he’d shared the insight with Sabrina, he was removing her pants, and by the time he’d opened his own, she was waiting to take him in.

  * * *

  The next morning, they sat in the kitchen with their legs entwined on the meeting-house bench that Sabrina had bought for the front porch but that had been reappropriated until the captain’s table and chairs were refinished. Sabrina was wearing her long terry robe, Derek a pair of sweatpants that matched the light gray of his eyes. The dishes that had earlier held eggs and toast now lay stacked on the floor nearby.

  Chin on her palm, Sabrina was deep in thought. The thought she entertained wasn’t a new one. It had come to her more than once since the afternoon before, and she’d tried to avoid it. But it had followed her like a mosquito, buzzing, annoying. She needed to share the worry with Derek.

  “Does that mean he’ll be after you now?”

  Derek looked up from the morning paper. “Hmm?”

  “Greer. Will he be after you now that you’re out of prison?”

  “I hope not.” He returned to the paper.

  “He’s tried to kill you three times. Why would he suddenly give up?”

  “Maybe he’s bored.”

  “Derek.”

  The paper rustled as he lowered it. “I don’t think he’ll come after me because, A, he knows I suspect him; B, he knows other people know I suspect him; and, C, he’s reached the stage where he has too much to lose. He’s running for the U.S. Senate.”

  “I know.”

  “It’d be another feather in his cap. He wants it bad. The slightest hint of a scandal could ruin it all. I doubt he’d risk that.”

  Sabrina studied Derek’s face. It was fully composed, but his eyes were darker now, his features set in stone. “You’re not going to let him win, are you?”

  With deliberate slowness, Derek shook his head.

  She hugged her knees to her chest and rocked slowly back and forth. “You’re going after the files.”

  With deliberate slowness, Derek nodded.

  “Don’t do it,” she whispered. “Let it be.”

  “I can’t. The man took two years of my life, not to mention that many more in mental anguish.”

  “But it’s over. You’re out. You can start again.”

  “Easier said than done, and, damn it, I shouldn’t have to start again. I worked too hard to build what I had. Noel Greer knocked it down with a deliberate sweep of his hand, and he’s going to pay for that.”

  “It’ll only bring more trouble.”

  “Not the way I’ve planned it.”

  “You could end up dead.”

  “We all end up dead, Sabrina.”

  Her eyes continued to plead while she held up a hand. “Let me write it. Just write it. You can tell your story to the world.”

  “What story?”

  “The one you’ve been telling me.”

  “That’s no story. It’s my supposition, and it isn’t worth shit without proof. I can’t go public with accusations about a man like Noel Greer without evidence to back them up. No one would publish a book like that. I would be a sure target for a libel suit.”

  As a writer, Sabrina could easily see his point. As the woman who loved him, she was less easily swayed. “What, exactly, do you plan to do?” she asked quietly.

  “Find those files.”

  “Where?”

  “Wherever they are, and don’t ask me where that is, because I don’t know. They were Lloyd Ballantine’s files, and there has to be a clue to them somewhere in his life. I’ll use your research as a starting point and go on from there. If Ballantine was corruptible, it had to be because he had a weakness. Greer found it and used it. I have to learn what it is if I want to locate those files.”

  “And when you do?”

  Derek held her gaze with one that was formidable. “Then you write, but not a book. That would take too long, and if my hunch is correct, what we find will be hot news. Noel Greer can go ahead and campaign for the Senate, but when my find hits the newsstands, his campaign will be shot. And that’s what I want, Sabrina.” His tone was low and vengeful. “I want him ruined.”

  His words seemed to echo in the air, tapering gradually to a thundering silence. Sabrina didn’t move, other than to swallow hard once.

  “Are you okay?” he asked cautiously.

  She nodded.

  When he talked about Greer, Derek lost himself to his anger, but Sabrina’s pale face and worried eyes led him back. He needed to know where he stood. “Do you think I’m wrong?”

  “No.”

  “You don�
�t sound sure.”

  “I am.”

  “I hear skepticism.”

  “No. Maybe sadness.”

  Derek’s brows lowered. He tugged at a rip in the knee of his sweatpants. “Sadness for me? Or for you?”

  “For us.”

  “I was hoping … wishing … we could be happy for a while.”

  “We can be.”

  “But there’s that shadow. There’s where you’ve been—”

  His eyes shot to hers, suddenly hard and probing. “I thought you didn’t mind that. I thought you accepted the fact that I’ve done time.”

  “I do. But everything that’s happened to you is so real that it’s almost unreal, and that frightens me. I listen to you and watch you and I’m frightened. I can forget that you’ve been in prison, but you can’t.”

  “Damn right I can’t,” he said with a vehemence that made her point.

  She tried to see it from his side, but it was hard when she loved him so much. She wanted him safe. She wanted them together and happy. “This isn’t fair. It should be over.”

  “What isn’t fair is that it happened in the first place.”

  “You won’t be happy until you get your revenge.”

  “Correction. I won’t be satisfied until I get my revenge. I can be very happy in the meantime.” He was facing her on the bench; his position hadn’t changed; but there was an alertness to his body, a caution to his expression that hadn’t been there earlier. “What do you think, Sabrina? Can you handle it? Can you handle being with me, knowing what I’ve got to do?”

  “I don’t have a choice.”

  “You do. I’m giving you one. If it’s going to be too rough, I can leave. I can go back to New York. You don’t deserve this. I’ve known it since the first time you came to Parkersville, and it’s still true. You’ve had enough to live with in the last three and a half years. You’re just beginning to emerge from that other nightmare. Maybe my being here is the last thing you need.”

  “Or the first.”

  He barely heard her soft rejoinder, so intent was he on baring his concern. “You wrote that you wanted to be alone. That you needed to be alone. You wanted to find out who you were and where you were going. I haven’t given you much time for that.”