Dangerous

by Lee Magner

  Roland’s face glowed then, with the warmth and love and tender pride of fatherhood. “Yes, you will. Because we need the truth in order to go forward and live in a way that we know is right. I’ve thought about this for a long time now. But in the past few weeks, I’ve decided that the only thing to do is to tell Martha. And to ask forgiveness of her. And of Paula. And of Lexie’s parents. And of you, Peter.”

  Father and son gripped each other’s hands and stared into one another’s eyes for a long, agonizing time. Peter finally exhaled slowly and nodded, defeated.

  His eyes, tears receding, began to change. Gradually, a quiet strength and conviction filled them. There was also a kind of peaceful acceptance of what was to come. “You have my forgiveness,” he said humbly. “And I…would beg yours.”

  Roland nodded and smiled.

  The two of them turned toward Case.

  Roland took a deep breath and, with an unwavering gaze, said to Case, “Where shall we begin?”

  Case picked up a pebble and skipped it across the lake surface.

  “What do you remember about Lexie’s activities that spring before she died?”

  “Well,” Roland mused, “she seemed to always be in a hurry. And always somewhere near a male escort—Peter, you, Franklin, some of the other boys…”

  The interview took well over two hours, and still Peter and Roland were recalling more events, more people, more hints of who she had been seeing when she wasn’t seeing any of them.

  Roland checked his watch. “I’m sorry, Case. But I have an appointment in fifteen minutes. And… I’ll want some time alone to… discuss this very difficult matter with Martha.”

  Case nodded.

  “You’ve already explained a few things that I couldn’t,” he stated. “By the way, do either of you remember her making a trip to Dayton, not long before she died?”

  Peter nodded. So did Roland.

  “What reason did she give you?” Case asked with great interest. He’d been told she was visiting a distant cousin.

  “Visiting an aunt or uncle, or something?” Peter ventured, scratching his head.

  “I’m not sure I ever got an explanation of that,” said the reverend. Then his eyebrows darted upward and he brightened considerably. “No. I do remember, because she had an overnight case with her, and she was carrying some health history papers. She dropped them and was very upset that I might see them. She told me they were school enrollment papers. She said she might enroll in a private girls’ school near Dayton, but she needed to visit and drop the papers off personally to meet a very important deadline.”

  “How is it that you remember that?” Case asked.

  “Partly because of all the things we’ve talked about in the past couple of hours,” Reverend Lightman replied. “It’s helped me re-create in my mind all those times…” Looking humbled, he added, a little humorously, “Of course, I made the mistake of mentioning the private school idea at Lexie’s funeral while I was trying to find some consoling words for Walter and Anita. And they looked at me as if I had lost my mind, said they didn’t know what I was talking about, that Lexie had visited some school friend’s cousin in Dayton.”

  Case nodded thoughtfully. “So Lexie told her parents one reason, told Peter a variation of that and told you a third to explain the health forms.”

  Peter looked perplexed. “What’s important about Dayton?” he asked, completely mystified.

  Case smiled and the small flash of his teeth made him seem like a meat eater about to take a bite of his prey.

  “I think that may be our man’s Waterloo,” he replied ironically.

  “If you need us…” the reverend said, extending his hand.

  Case shook it. And Peter’s. He noted that Peter looked a healthier color than he had in a long time. Maybe they were right. Maybe confession was good for you. And not just spiritually, he thought wryly.

  “I think you should keep our discussion to yourselves for a while,” Case said. “And if you break the news to Martha… ask her if she’ll hold the information in confidence.”

  Case felt a twinge of empathy for the daunting task that lay ahead of the two men. What would it be like to have to tell Clare that he had betrayed her? he wondered. No. He couldn’t imagine ever doing something so stupid. But if he did, he’d be living in hell, fearing what she’d say and do and feel if she found out about it.

  “Good luck,” Case said to them. And he said it man-toman. With absolute sincerity.

  Clare perched on the edge of Anita Clayton’s settee, feeling like the worst kind of deceiver. She’d been plying Anita with questions about Lexie, ostensibly to include some colorful stories in a retrospective on high school life in Crawfordsville.

  And Anita, who’d been saddened at first, had become increasingly animated and happy. She was thoroughly engrossed in her memories of her daughter.

  However, the rose-colored lens of her maternal recollection had so distorted Lexie that Clare barely recognized who they were talking about. How could a mother have been so blind to her daughter’s struggles and anxieties and…well, weaknesses? Clare wondered in consternation.

  “Would you like another cup of tea, Clare?” Anita asked hopefully. She daintily lifted the porcelain teapot with lovely hand-painted roses on it.

  “No, thank you. It’s delicious, though.”

  Disappointed, Anita set the teapot back down on its silver trivet.

  Clare looked around the small garden room, with its plants and skylights and airy, nineteenth-century ambience. No phone. No television. A small bookcase with volumes on butterflies and garden insects and raising roses and shrubs and various decorative plants.

  Anita followed her gaze and looked a little misty.

  “I always loved this room,”Anita confessed with an embarrassed smile. “Walter says I have ten green thumbs and should have become a horticulturist.” She laughed nervously.

  “Did Lexie like plants and flowers?” Clare asked, sliding the conversation back on track a little.

  “No. No, Lexie found it…tedious.” Anita was abashed to admit it. She leaned forward from her own position across the small wicker table and said earnestly, “You know, Lexie was the kind of girl who really should have gone on to the big city. She so loved bright lights and excitement and chic clothing. Crawfordsville was fine through high school, of course,” Anita hastened to say, out of loyalty. “But…”

  Clare nodded and gave Anita an understanding smile.

  “Had she talked to you about places she wanted to go?” Clare asked curiously.

  “Oh, certainly. New York. Los Angeles. Chicago. Paris. London. Rome…” Anita again laughed nervously. “She certainly saw the world as her oyster. And I suppose it’s partly because Walter and I treated her like she was our most precious pearl.” Anita’s expression grew somber and saddened.

  Clare felt a lump in her throat. It had been a long time since Lexie’s death. And Clare had mourned for her as only the young can grieve for the loss of one of their own. So she had thought that it wouldn’t come back to her, all that weepiness and twisting hurt. But seeing Anita’s yearning for her long-dead child brought it back.

  Anita saw the glistening tears in Clare’s eyes and smiled gently.

  “I still have Lexie’s room…more or less the way it was back then. Would you like to see some of her things, Clare?”

  No. Clare wiped a tear from her lashes and thought fiercely, No. She didn’t want to step back into her dead friend’s life. But she had to. She knew she had to.

  “Yes. I’d love to.”

  So she trailed after Anita Clayton and wandered back into the room filled with stuffed animals and school pennants and gauzy curtains and girlish hair curlers and clothes still neatly folded in drawers and hung in the closet, waiting for their owner to return.

  Clare moved slowly about the room and fingered a few things. A charm bracelet, with each silver carving a memory of some person or place. A yearbook for her senior year…and th
e hopes for the future noted under Lexie’s photo. “Most likely to marry a millionaire and have his baby.” Clare grinned. She remembered voting for Lexie to get that traditional joke title.

  Anita held out Lexie’s graduation tassel. It flowed across Anita’s slender, pale hands like strands of raw silk twisted into the finest of cords.

  “She looked so… grown up at graduation,” Anita recalled fondly. A shadow crossed Anita’s face. “I told her the graduation photo made her look like a Madonna, with those round cheeks and soft cheekbones. She almost tore the picture in two. I have no idea what could have upset her so,” Anita whispered.

  Something flickered in the back of Anita’s eyes. As if a small but intense struggle were being waged deep inside her mind.

  Clare remembered how Lexie had looked on graduation day. She had thought her friend looked more tired than usual. And as if she hadn’t been feeling too well. Knowing what Paula had told her about Lexie’s pregnancy made that illness seem like the morning sickness variety.

  And something about the look in Anita’s eyes bothered Clare. Could she be deluding herself about Lexie? Trying to ignore the facts about her daughter that she found too distressing to accept?

  Clare picked up the framed graduation picture of Lexie in her cap and gown and looked at it, as if she hadn’t thought about the event in a while.

  “You know, Mrs. Clayton,” Clare said. “I thought maybe Lexie wasn’t feeling very well…”

  “It was June. Very hot,” Anita Clayton interjected hastily.

  “Yes. But Lexie had never been bothered much by the heat. We all used to take the canoes out on the lake in August and paddle around half the day. Sometimes we even paddled down the Shawnee River, in the blazing sun. Like idiots!” Clare said with a self-effacing laugh.

  Anita was wandering around the room, nervously touching one small memento, then another.

  “It must have been the heat, in that heavy robe,” Anita insisted, but her demeanor had become very somber. All the happy animation was gone. “Lexie was… such a pretty baby. And such a nice little girl,” she said wistfully. “It’s really too bad that she had to grow up…”

  Clare heard the sadness in that comment, and she thought it was a very telling thing for Anita Clayton to have said. Clare decided to push a little closer to the truth and hope she didn’t arouse Anita Clayton’s defensiveness or anger.

  “She was getting a little boy crazy at the end, wasn’t she?”

  Anita stiffened and she opened her mouth immediately to say no. Clare was sure of it. She read the unspoken denial with her eyes.

  “But she was my friend,” Clare added, anguished. “And no matter what problems she was struggling with, I’m sure she was doing the best she could.’’

  The fine muscles in Anita Clayton’s parchment-smooth face worked and tugged and she put her hands over her face, bursting immediately into tears.

  Clare held her breath.

  “She… she was a nymphomaniac,” Anita sobbed, heartbroken. “Walter was beginning to suspect, because she always seemed to have an excuse…why she was wandering back home so late, and sometimes, her clothes were… disheveled…”

  Anita was racked with sobs. Her wholc body trembled violently. The crying sounded like the moans of a mortally wounded animal.

  Clare put her arm around Anita and led her over to sit beside her on Lexie’s bed.

  “Maybe she couldn’t help it,” Clare suggested uncertainly. “I mean, who knows why we do what we do, Mrs. Clayton? Maybe someday they’ll understand what makes us the way we are, but… I’m sure Lexie was doing the best she could.”

  Anita shook her head. “Walter and I never looked at human frailty like that, Clare. You know that.” She sniffled and plucked a tissue from a small box beside Lexie’s bed. “And we were so shocked when she was…”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes. Murdered. We were so shocked when the extent of her… problem was made brutally clear to us…”

  “After the autopsy?”

  Anita looked at Clare, wide-eyed in shock.

  “What do you know of that?” she demanded condemningly. “How could you know about that?” she added in horror. “We were promised that nothing along the lines of… that… would ever be revealed!”

  “I certainly won’t repeat it, Mrs. Clayton,” Clare assured her. Then, very gently, she added, “But… didn’t it seem that it might have had something to do with her death?’’

  Anita stiffened. “Lexie struggled with her very personal demons, Clare, but surely you’re not suggesting that she would have been involved with drunken old Seamus Malloy!”

  Clare ignored the scathing description of Case’s late father, although a part of her ached for Case. This was what he had defended himself from all the years he was growing up. It hurt Clare to think of how many times such words had stung him.

  “No. I don’t believe anyone thinks that she and Seamus had any kind of relationship at all, Mrs. Clayton,” Clare said soothingly. “But…perhaps there was someone who very much wanted to avoid the scandal of her pregnancy… or of the way it ended?”

  Anita began to tremble.

  “I cannot bear to think about this anymore, Clare.” She wrung her hands in anguish. “Please… let’s all just try to forget about it. Seamus murdered her, for pity’s sake. He was found red-handed… literally. Her blood was on his hand that held the knife!”

  Anita’s chin began to wobble and she blinked her eyes rapidly to keep the threatening tears from falling.

  Clare went to the bookcase and removed Lexie’s old photograph album. Riffling through the pictures, she finally found one taken at the end-of-year high school picnic. It was a wide shot, and virtually all of the kids that Lexie had been socializing with frequently were in it.

  Clare turned the album toward Anita so that she could see it.

  “Why don’t you want to consider the possibility that one of Lexie’s young beaux might have killed her? And then framed Seamus? He died swearing that he didn’t believe he was responsible for her death, and a growing number of people who’ve listened to him, and thought about that summer, have begun to doubt whether he was guilty. Please, Mrs. Clayton… if you could just talk to me a little more—think about any other possibility…even if it seems like a wild and unlikely one…?”

  Anita Clayton’s eyes chilled and she stared in a decided manner at Clare. “Unfortunately, my dear, the one boy that I warned her away from was the one that you seem to be smitten with.”

  Clare blushed, but not because her feelings had become public knowledge. She blushed because she knew that it would be very hard to maintain a relaxed and objective investigation if Case were being smeared and insulted in the conversation.

  “You were afraid that Case would sleep with Lexie, weren’t you?” Clare said. It was an effort to state the question in a calm voice, but she did her best.

  Anita’s pale blue eyes reflected her feelings with brutal clarity. “Oh, yes,” she said acidly. “I knew his kind of boy. All muscle, and swagger and charm. He worked outside on that farm of Luther’s, building muscle and tan and arrogance.” She raised her fragile chin in a contemptuous gesture. “He was dirt. And Lexie was air itself. Unfortunately, some women are foolish enough to wonder whether rolling in the dirt might be thrilling.”

  Clare stared at Anita Clayton, appalled at the venom pouring out of the well-dressed, carefully made-up, flawlessly manicured older woman. It sent a chill of fear down her spine. And she vowed she’d never let Case be around Anita Clayton alone. If she were to unexpectedly snap, Clare thought she might be capable of doing something truly dangerous.

  Anita half closed her eyes and she turned her comments toward Clare.

  “I thought perhaps you would interfere with Case’s interest in Lexie. I saw him watching you once, when Lexie was leaving a baseball game and I had gone to pick her up. He was leaving, too. And you walked past him, laughing at something that Peter and Franklin were saying. Well, t
he look in Case’s eyes would have burned you all to a crisp,” she said, a chilly laughter infusing her words. “I recognized the look. I wasn’t a child, after all. He wanted to toss, you over his shoulder and carry you off to his tent, if he’d had a tent,” she added with amused sarcasm. “And before.he’d gone, he’d have cheerfully squashed those other two boys like unwelcome bugs.”

  Anita smoothed the intense distaste and dislike from her face and covered her feelings with a genteel smile. “Now if you insist on believing that Case has become a gentleman, well, that’s your business, I suppose, Clare. But if you were to ask me who might have fathered that baby…” Her throat moved as if she were choking on the words. With, a grimace of great pain, she said barely in a whisper, “Case Malloy would be a man to highly suspect.”

  Clare hated the small sliver of doubt that Anita Clayton’s suspicions stabbed in her mind.

  He’d sworn to her that he hadn’t slept with Lexie. That Lexie’s pregnancy involved someone else, not him. And Clare believed him. She believed him.

  Clare squeezed her eyes shut and recalled the tenderness of Case’s voice as he’d murmured gentle words to her the night before… the quiet strength of his arms as they’d stood in the moonlight at the lakeshore not so long ago.. .the steady way he looked into her eyes when they struggled with how to unravel who might be involved in Lexie’s death. And she vividly recalled the anguish he’d felt when his father had died, and how he’d trusted her enough to cry in her arms that day by the waterfall.

  Clare took a deep breath, opened her eyes wide and looked straight at Anita Clayton.

  “You’re wrong about Case,” she said defiantly. “And someday, if I’m lucky, we’ll be able to prove that he didn’t father Lexie’s baby. But whether we can ever prove it, I want you to know that I love Case Malloy. And I think he’s one of the finest men I’ve ever met.”

  Mrs. Clayton shrugged her shoulders and looked away, her mind drifting out of the conversation. She obviously did not want to hear any more.

  “Thank you for speaking with me, Mrs. Clayton.”

  The woman nodded and started to lead Clare out of the room.