“He was looking at the state in general because there were some tax breaks for a new business like his, but I think he chose Mayville Heights because he’d discovered I worked here. He told me he saw a magazine article about me when he was flying home from somewhere. It was one of those inspiring up-from-nothing pieces that I probably shouldn’t have agreed to.” She rubbed her left temple as though she had a headache.
“Wallace was blackmailing you.”
Melanie shook her head. “No. Believe it or not, he considered us friends. As far as he was concerned, friends help one another out.”
“Did you help him?”
“At first I said no.”
“So what changed?”
She leaned back in her chair and her expression turned thoughtful. “In a way, I guess he did.”
I narrowed my gaze at her. “You’ve lost me,” I said.
“The second night he was here, I was working late and as usual Lew was up wandering around. He walked by the office, saw me and we started talking, really talking. Lew was trying to fix things in his life. He’d connected with his mother’s family. They were good people from the way he spoke about them and it seemed to inspire him to make some changes.” She smiled. “I think there was a lot of one step forward and two steps back. He’s always thought he was God’s gift to women and from what I could see he couldn’t seem to get it through his head that he wasn’t. But he said he was trying to fix his mistakes.”
That explained his settling the lawsuits.
“I told him I thought we should come clean and just take the consequences. He said he had more to lose than I did.”
“He took those tests.”
She nodded. “And paid someone else to take the blame. I’d always suspected he had. Lew said if he admitted he’d cheated it would destroy any chance of him having a second chance at football.”
I frowned at her. “Wait a minute. A second chance at football?”
“Lew told me that he had a part-time job lined up as an assistant high school football coach, starting in the fall. I don’t know if he would have been any good, but when he talked about it I could tell how much it meant to him. He swore that he was going to make the supplement business a success and use the money to do good things and become a successful coach and inspire young people. I told him that he would be stuck with the weight of that secret for the rest of his life.”
“Sisyphus,” I said.
Melanie made a face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
“Sisyphus was a king from Greek mythology. A pretty despicable guy. Zeus punished him for his treachery by forcing him to roll a huge boulder up a hill. Just before it reached the top it would roll down again. Sisyphus was left rolling that boulder up the hill for eternity.”
Melanie nodded. “That’s what those lies we told felt like to me: a big boulder that could flatten us both.”
It was impossible not to feel some sympathy for her.
“I didn’t kill him, Kathleen,” she said. “I was upstairs in my old office drinking and writing my resignation letter when Lew died, and I can prove it.” Her voice got a little stronger. “I Skyped my best friend in California and we talked for half the night. You can call her or the police can. You can check my computer.”
I nodded. This time I did believe her.
chapter 15
There was no sign of the guys when I got home. No sign of Owen or Hercules, either. I checked my watch. I had time to call Julie Kendall.
I went upstairs and changed into my tai chi clothes. Then I picked up the phone and dialed Julie Kendall’s number. A woman with just a hint of a French accent answered on the fourth ring.
“My name is Kathleen Paulson,” I said.
“Bridget Lowe said you’d probably be calling.” Julie had a warm, friendly voice. “You, uh, you found Lew.”
I found myself nodding even though she couldn’t see me. “I did . . . I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” she said. “We’ve been divorced for a long time but I never wanted anything like this to happen to him. Even in my angriest moments.”
“Do you mind if I ask when the last time you spoke to him was?”
“I hadn’t heard from Lew in probably five years and then about three weeks ago, out of the blue, he called me, wanted to meet. He said he was going to be in Montreal in a couple of days and it was important. I was just curious enough to agree. We met at a coffee shop and he handed me a check.”
I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “A check?” I said. “He owed you money?”
“I would have told you no,” Julie said. “Lew said it was money he should have given me when we divorced, my half of what I thought was a pretty much useless piece of property in Indiana of all places. I couldn’t believe it.”
“Did he tell you why he was doing this now?”
“He said he’d changed. Then he hit on our waitress.” She laughed. “He may have changed but not completely. We talked for a while. He told me he’d made contact just by chance with a cousin on his mother’s side of the family. I don’t know if you know but he was just nineteen when his mother died. Anyway, they ended up getting together and he met the rest of the family—his mother’s sisters and his cousins. She’d run off, it seemed, with his father and hadn’t been in contact with them. Meeting them all, being welcomed by them all, did something to him. Something good.”
I shifted on the bed, tucking one leg underneath me. “Do you happen to know if he was in touch with anyone else from his past?”
“I think he talked to Chunk,” she said. “Dwayne Parker. They played together—college and pro.”
Dwayne Parker. I leaned over and scribbled the name on the bottom of the grocery list that was on my nightstand. “They stayed in contact?”
“I’m not sure about that. All I can tell you is that Lew said Chunk was married and had five kids. But I got the feeling that they’d talked fairly recently.”
“Do you have any idea how I could find Mr. Parker?” I asked.
“He’s a football scout at Saint Edwin University,” she said. “Lew said neither one of them could really get away from the place.”
I thanked Julie for her time and promised I’d call her again when I had anything new to share.
“Lew could be an ass a lot of the time but he didn’t deserve what happened to him,” Julie said. “And I hate the thought that maybe, finally, he was starting to grow up and he lost the chance.”
When I went downstairs I found Ethan in the living room playing his guitar for a furry audience of two. “Are Milo and Derek coming for supper?” I asked.
He shook his head. “They went to Red Wing to get that guitar of Milo’s. They’ll be back later.”
“So it’s just us.”
He nodded.
“Do you want dumplings with your chicken soup or crackers?” I asked.
“Dumplings, please,” he said with a grin. His enthusiasm was echoed by his audience.
All three of them followed me into the kitchen.
“Want me to set the table?” Ethan asked.
“Please,” I said. I got out a mixing bowl and the measuring cups. The soup was in the refrigerator.
“Are you having any luck figuring out who killed that Wallace guy?” Ethan said.
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
“Yeah, well the guy was a flaming bag of crap.”
I swung around to look at him. “What?”
“C’mon, Kath, you know what I mean,” he said, his voice casual. “The man was a sack of—”
“Stop,” I said.
“Well, he was.” He seemed taken aback by the forcefulness in my voice.
“Don’t talk that way about someone, anyone.”