Dangerous

by Lee Magner

  He sat down next to her and put his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.

  “C’mon, Clare. I’ve got to do it this way,” he said evenly. “This isn’t easy for me, either, but I have to try. I can’t live with myself without trying to find out who killed Seamus… and, presumably, who killed Lexie and framed Seamus for it.”

  She picked her feet up off the floor and put her arms around her knees, resting her chin on them.

  “You might as well tell me, or I’ll follow you around until I figure it out,” she warned. “You know I got a lot of practice doing that a long time ago….”

  He groaned. “I remember.”

  “And don’t think I’m too shy and ladylike to do it now that I’m all grown up,” she said flatly. “I recently lost all my inhibitions and I can’t seem to find them anywhere.”

  He looked grim. “Well, I certainly helped with that,” he said regretfully.

  “So why are you buying that old white elephant?” she asked cajolingly. “The Crawfordsville Ladies Aid and Comfort Society will love you forever for restoring it, of course, but I, as your team member, as your partner in this affair…”

  He stared at her hard. He didn’t like the word affair.

  “Well, that’s what we’re having, aren’t we?” she asked innocently.

  “I would have preferred a different choice of words,” he muttered.

  “As your friend, then,” she said, more gently.

  He looked at her and his eyes were dark with emotion.

  “That and much more you are to me, Clare Browne,” he said seriously. He lifted his hand and brushed a golden strand of hair away from her cheek where the evening breeze had gently laid it. “And I don’t want you hurt.”

  “We’ve been through this before,” she reminded him, getting a little tired of arguing this particular issue.

  “Yes, but it’s a subject I’ve never been comfortable with, since you always insist on staying too close to the line of fire,” he said in frustration. “If anything ever happened to you…”

  Clare looked at him steadily. “Go on,” she said softly. “If anything happened to me…”

  He frowned and grimly looked away from her.

  She sensed the struggle within him. He was torn between his protective feelings for her and his desire to be free. Maybe it was the same with everyone, she thought. Man or woman. Loving meant giving up a part of oneself to become part of something greater. Did he love her? Would he ever truly love her? Enough to give up his freedom and form a lifelong bond with her? Sometimes she thought he was on the edge of admitting that he wanted that very thing. But other times, she wasn’t sure. Most of the time, she wasn’t sure; to be honest.

  She reached out and touched his hand gently.

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me,” she said with a soft teasing lilt. “I promise, Case.” And when he looked at her dubiously, she gave him her most charming elfin grin. He couldn’t help but laugh at her obvious effort to cheer him up and ease the awkward moment between them.

  “Look, we have a certain number of pieces of the puzzle,” he said after a moment. “And whoever murdered Seamus, assuming it’s the same person who murdered Lexie, is probably aware of that. He had to assume that when Seamus died, he took whatever he could have remembered with him.”

  Clare nodded.

  “But Seamus planted an ace in the hole for us when he made that last trip to the barbershop.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He suggested that Lexie had kept a diary or a letter… that there was something in writing that could be evidence about the person who killed her.”

  “Oh, I see,” she murmured. Since she hadn’t been at the barbershop, she hadn’t known that little detail. “But how can you use that as bait? I mean…how would anybody find it, with Seamus gone and not having remembered?”

  Case nodded. “That’s the problem.” He grinned slightly. “But not an insurmountable one. And I’m a troubleshooter by profession,” he reminded her in amusement.

  “And I’ve been meaning to ask you exactly what that is, a troubleshooter,” she added.

  “I’ll get around to explaining it,” he conceded. “But not now. I’ve got to take care of this business first.’’

  “So how can I help?” she asked enthusiastically.

  “Well, you told me that you’d gone through that stuff at the library, but refresh my memory—what things stuck out that might be related to Lexie Clayton?”

  Clare ran through several inconsequential mentions of high school events and awards and family anniversaries of cousins.

  “But there was that mention of the trip to Dayton,” she said, still perplexed.

  Case looked at her. “Dayton?”

  “Does that mean something to you, Case?” she asked. “You know, I keep thinking it should mean something to me, but I just can’t think what it is.”

  He looked away for a moment, and when he looked back at her again, she had the feeling that Dayton had rung a bell of some sort with him and that he wasn’t telling her what it was.

  He disarmed her with a slow smile. “Maybe we should get you some of that memory medicine,” he teased. “Anything else?”

  “Well, yes… but really, it all seems so trivial. I can make a list for you.”

  “That’s probably a good idea. Sometimes you don’t know what you have until it’s staring you in the face.”

  There was a hard undercurrent in his voice that hadn’t been there a moment ago. Clare looked at him warily. What was he keeping from her?

  “Did you have, any luck tracking down Dr. Graybond’s widow?” she ventured.

  “Yeah. But she wasn’t a big help. She doesn’t have any of his old records. Deceased patients’ records were sealed at his request and are under the control of the attorney who settled the doctor’s estate. I’ve got a lawyer talking to them about Lexie’s records, but it could take a very long time before we even know whether there is still a record in existence, and if so, if there’s anything in it.”

  “I see,” Clare said, disappointed. “He might have the key to the entire mystery. Somehow, that pregnancy has got to be related to it.”

  “I agree. I did ask the widow if she remembered if the doctor had ever sent Lexie anywhere for further treatment. She recalled that he’d sent her to a doctor in Columbus, a woman physician. That doctor happened to also be a friend of the family to some extent, and so Mrs. Graybond remembers her pretty clearly. Unfortunately, it’s one of the few things Mrs. Graybond remembers clearly,” he said dryly. “She’s been in a nursing home for the past year with some chronic neurological problem.”

  “What kind of doctor was the lady in Columbus?”

  “A gynecologist.”

  “Well, did she remember Lexie?”

  “My lawyers are conferring with her lawyers on that subject.”

  “Oh, back to that. Well, if the records provide any help…”

  “I have found out something about that doctor’s practice, though,” he said. “She doesn’t perform any abortions. So if Lexie got a legal abortion, it wasn’t from her.”

  “Back to a dead end,” Clare said in frustration.

  “Hey, troubleshooting ain’t easy. That’s why you pay big bucks for it.”

  She laughed.

  “There are some other ways I can get information about Lexie,” Case said slowly.

  “How?”

  “Well, I knew her. And I can sit down with a calendar and an old newspaper and try to reconstruct what I know of how she spent her time that last month or two or three.”

  “That would leave a lot of gaps.” Clare’s face fell. “Wouldn’t it?” she asked weakly.

  He came over and sat down next to her and put his arm around her then. She put her feet down on the floor and they slowly began to rock the swing. Back and forth.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “It would leave a lot of gaps.”

  She laid her head against his shoulder and though
t.

  “Well, I might be able to add a little bit,” she said. “I didn’t see her lots, but I might remember something.” Clare snapped her fingers. “Or I could ask her mother…”

  He gave her a dubious look.

  “Her mother’s into deep denial on Lexie,” he reminded her. “She was blind to things she didn’t want to see back then. Why would she remember anything now?”

  “Sometimes people let slip little facts and keep the big illusions in front of them at the same time,” Clare argued. “It happens all the time in historical research, if you’re not careful.”

  He sighed. He could tell he wasn’t going to turn her away from this avenue of investigation.

  “All right. See what you can find out. But don’t upset her too much, Clare. If you can avoid it, anyway.”

  Clare nodded.

  “I’m going to take a couple of other people aside myself,” he explained. “And we’re going to have a man-to-man talk about Lexie, something we should have done fifteen years ago.”

  “Peter and the Reverend Lightman?” she guessed.

  “Right. If they can add some information about her comings and goings, and suggest who else she might have been seeing on the sly, I might get lucky and come up with a serious candidate for killer.”

  The cold, hard tone of his voice sent a chill down Clare’s spine. She put her arms around him and hugged him close.

  “You be careful, though, Case,” she told him urgently.

  He pulled her jaw around with one hand and pulled her close to him with the other. Then he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her very, very tenderly.

  “I promise,” he murmured.

  Chapter 14

  Case asked Reverend Lightman and Peter to meet him at the canoe-and-small-boat marina on Lake Iroquois.

  The dilapidated boat slips once had been a centerpiece of a thriving summer vacation mecca. But over the years, families had stopped traveling there to go boating for the day or for the week. The local campground had been closed by the state park service for needed refurbishment, but the money required was lacking and the temporary closing became permanent. Cottages rented by the week fell into disrepair as business slacked off and families sought vacation spots with more modern conveniences, more entertainment facilities and more nightlife.

  Every year the town council pondered the question of how much money would be needed to create a renaissance in their old summer resort. But funds were never available. So wild grass grew three feet tall beside the boarded-up buildings. And broken bottles and rusting beer cans littered the pebble-strewn “beachfront.”

  Only a small canoe-rental business still survived, and a brisk sale in fresh bait offered daily at lakeside by an old man and his grandson. The canoes were much in demand on weekends, during the day by kids dragging their parents to paddle around in the sunlight. By evening, it supplied a moonlight date for romantics who didn’t object to a few mosquitoes.

  The two bait-stand attendants and three fishermen sitting on the old pier were the only other people around when Case arrived in his newly leased electric blue coupe. He parked beside Peter’s 1954 Oldsmobile. Peter, standing on the sand and dirt and pebble of the lakeshore, with his hands in his pockets, didn’t turn to see who’d arrived. He just kept staring morosely across the placid lake surface.

  Case walked up beside him. “See anything interesting out there?”

  “I used to think that a floating island set way out there in the center of the lake—with boat slips all around it, and maybe restaurants and a couple of souvenir shops, some games parlors like you see at a midway boardwalk at the beach—would make this old marina come alive again,” Peter said. “You know, people renting small paddleboats to sail out there, and then spending the day, and paddling back when they’re through.”

  Case was surprised. He’d never thought of Peter as an “idea man,” or as a businessman, for that matter. But the concept that Peter had just described wasn’t half-bad.

  “Sounds like it has possibilities,” Case said.

  Another car pulled up beside Case’s. Reverend Lightman, in his small black sedan. The car door slammed and Roland Lightman walked briskly across the overgrown path to join them.

  “You know what’s missing in that picture?” Peter asked in bitter amusement.

  “What?”

  “A chapel. A church. Something connected to my faith. I never saw a place for prayer, just for play.”

  “Hell, Peter, it’s a lake. People would come here to relax. Maybe to commit a few sins,” Case added with a sardonic grin.

  Peter looked askance at Case. “Sins. That’s why you wanted to talk to—” he saw his father standing a few feet behind them “—us.”

  Roland Lightman slowly stepped up beside his son. He lifted his arm, as if he were going to put it comfortingly around his son’s shoulders, but a look of painful doubt descended over his face, and he let his hand drop back to his side.

  “What do you want from us, Case?” Roland Lightman asked somberly.

  Case’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He’d decided how he wanted to handle this. However, it all hinged on his having made an accurate assessment of each man’s character and whether or not he would have committed murder in a moment of desperation. He thought of Clare, and what she had told him about Peter’s comments to her! and his extreme agitation. The fleeting expression of fear that had crossed her face in describing her doubts about Peter still haunted Case.

  His jaw hardened angrily. Anyone who tried to hurt her would have to go through him to do it.

  “Yes. I came to talk to you about the sins and sinners of Crawfordsville,” Case said dryly. “Specifically, about the sins committed with the late Lexie Clayton.”

  Peter swallowed and stared out at the lake with a stubborn frown.

  Roland Lightman shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He looked for all the world like a man who had swallowed something that severely disagreed with him.

  “Lexie was involved with several men just before she died,” Case said, opening the subject for them. “You know it. And I know. Because all of us were men she came on to and tried to get into bed with.”

  Roland Lightman’s face turned a deep, embarrassed shade of red. Peter’s, on the other hand, went white.

  “When she was murdered, someone convinced the prosecutor and the police that none of her lovers would have killed her. But that wasn’t the truth.”

  Peter blinked and pressed his lips together until his mouth was a bloodless white. Roland frowned in concern.

  “I think the two of you have some pieces of this puzzle that could help solve the question of who murdered Lexie.

  “So which of you would like to go first?” Case asked casually.

  Roland Lightman closed his eyes, as if in prayer, for a brief moment. When he opened them again, he looked at his son’s face. It was rigid with suffering. The reverend slumped in final defeat and then, by an act of inner will, forced himself to stand straight.

  “I think that I should be first to speak,” Roland said.

  Peter whirled to face his father and, frantically, he intervened. “No! You don’t have to say anything! Case doesn’t know anything—it’s just gossip that he’s listened to.”

  But Roland Lightman shook his head.

  “No, Peter,” Roland said sadly. “I have to speak. I need to tell the truth this time. Not just the portions of it that will not embarrass me or reveal what a weak person I have been. I have carried silence like a cross for fifteen years. I’ve burdened you with my sins… Yes, I guessed eventually that you knew something happened between Lexie and me.”

  Peter shook his head as if to deny it, glancing anxiously toward Case to see if he was believing Roland’s revelations. But Roland kept on speaking, and Peter was too overwhelmed with surprise and anxiety to interfere.

  “I made a mistake,” Roland said. “There. I’ve said it. It’s taken me fifteen years to say’that.” He smiled sadly. “And I
think it’s about time I showed some courage in my life. When I was standing in the cemetery on Memorial Day with Clare, I told her that I often wondered whether I would have had the courage to be a good soldier. And, strangely enough, ever since that day I’ve realized that I have an opportunity to know the answer to that question, in a small way. Because I can use this… this excruciating experience… to show some courage. To confess my sin. To share what I know. And to accept whatever censure I deserve from those I have hurt.”

  Peter had been staring at his father without blinking, his mouth falling open in absolute amazement at what his father said. When Roland finished, there were tears welling up in Peter’s eyes.

  “Father,” Peter said, choking on his emotions. “Father…”

  Roland lifted his arm to cautiously pat Peter’s shoulder in a gesture of affection and understanding. But Peter stepped closer and threw his arms around his father’s shoulders.

  “You have never seemed more perfect to me than you are in this moment, Father,” Peter said, tears streaming down his cheeks. He sobbed and struggled to hold back his grief and suffering.

  Roland embraced his son and tears flowed down his own cheeks. He patted his son on the back soothingly.

  “We need to put this tragedy behind us,” Roland said firmly, although his voice was also choked with emotion. “The town needs to. Case needs to. Justice needs to.” He pulled back and held Peter’s shoulders firmly, man-to-man, looking with teary pride into his son’s stricken face. “And you and I and Paula and… your mother… need to.”

  Peter wept brokenly and covered his face with his hands. “How can we let Mother know? She’s so good… She’ll hate me. She’ll divorce you. Our family will be destroyed….”

  Roland nodded. “That may be true. Or maybe not. We’ll never know what will happen unless I tell her. We should tell Lexie’s parents and, if necessary, the authorities, should a new trial be needed.”

  Peter shook his head. “I won’t let you do this, Father!”