“Good-bye, tiny vein.” Luther reached into the box and drew out a chocolate iced monstrosity that Becca regarded with rapt fascination. To Jo’s surprise, he offered the doughnut to Becca, and his voice changed entirely, warming with courtesy. “Hello, Miss Healy. It’s good to see you’ve grown up into such a strong and lovely lady.”
“I’m Becca. And you’ve just answered my heartfelt prayer, sir.” Becca accepted the doughnut with equal friendliness, not to mention overt greed. She broke the pastry apart and handed half to Pam. “I’d say you’re very good at your retirement, Mr. Emerson.”
“Luther. I am indeed.” He pulled a jelly doughnut out of the stained box and bit into it. Jo supposed that if she wanted one, she’d have to help herself. “I’ve had ten blessed years away from midnight calls to homicide scenes, Becca. Threw my pager in the terlit my last day at the station. I leave all the flatfoot work to this one now.” He waved his doughnut at Pam.
“He thinks he’s insulting me with the flatfoot thing.” Pam edged one dab of icing from the corner of her mouth delicately. “I’ve been almost twenty years on street patrol.”
“Gonna be walking a beat the next twenty, too, you can’t stop playing lesbian avenger at the station.” Luther regarded Becca over his sunglasses. “Miss Thang here thinks she has to be the voice of social justice at every roll call. Gets damn tiresome, and it holds her back.”
“As he still bitches to all and sundry who will hear.” Pam snickered. “He’s jealous I look so good on my bike.”
This had the tone of an old and loved bickering between father and daughter, with no real malice. The man was obviously comfortable enough with gay people to sunbathe in their midst, and there was pride in his voice when he referred to Pam. Which was all nice for them, but Jo had the urge to move them on to actual information. Besides, Pam Emerson was smiling at Becca with a familiarity she didn’t especially appreciate.
“Luther, you performed the preliminary investigation at the house on Fifteenth Avenue that night, correct?” Jo positioned the recorder on the blanket.
“Lord, she’s that Mariska Hargitay woman,” Luther muttered. “Yes, your honor. I’d just made grade. Not easy back in the seventies, a black man making detective.”
“I hear that,” Pam murmured.
“And do you feel you conducted a thorough and conclusive investigation into these deaths?”
“You were one lost little girl, the first time we met.” Luther’s tone mellowed again as he spoke to Becca. “I sure felt bad for you and never forgot your face. Wondered about you, over the years.” He jutted his chin at Pam. “We both have.”
“Thank you.” Becca patted his gnarled hand. “I understand Pam was sweet to me that night, too.”
“In any case,” Jo snapped, flapping a butterfly out of her face. “Luther, did you ever consider the possibility that Madelyn Healy didn’t fire the gun — that there was an outside shooter?”
“Oh, I always liked the sister-in-law for it.”
Jo stared at him. Then she and Becca stared at each other. Becca summoned words before Jo could.
“The sister-in-law. You mean my aunt? My Aunt Patricia? Patricia Healy, that aunt?”
“Patricia Healy, wife of Attorney Mitchell Healy of Kirkland.” Luther’s mouth was brooding now, his eyes hidden by the black glasses. He sucked jelly from his thumb with a wet slurp. “So look. There was no forced entry. There was an outside door giving access to the kitchen, and it was unlocked. The Healys weren’t known to own a handgun. The thirty-eight was unregistered. We never traced it. Yeah, a third party could have come in, fired the shots. I wrote all this in my reports.”
No, he hadn’t. He definitely hadn’t. Jo cleared her throat. “Not in the reports I’ve seen, sir.”
A humorless smile crossed his whiskered face. “Oh, I’m not doubting my words got changed around a bit. I was new on the unit, which made me both green and black. Besides, Mitchell Healy, Esquire, had some powerful contacts, even back then. He was making a run for a state senate seat at the time. We weren’t encouraged to look into things real close.”
He tipped his glasses and looked at Becca. “I’m sorry if that means I did a disservice to you, those many years ago. I guess it bugged me enough for the details to stay clear in my mind. But it’s also possible the call on that case was right on, ma’am. I’m afraid your mama was just not real well.”
“I understand that.” Becca still looked disoriented. “But my aunt?”
“Oh, that.” Luther pulled another doughnut out of the box, frowned at it, and dropped it back in. “That’s just one of them snapshots. Don’t mind me. I’m old.”
“No, tell her, Pop.” Pam was watching Becca sympathetically. “I don’t care if it is far out. You had good instincts, even back as a rookie.”
“Okay.” Luther sighed deeply and hunched lower against the backrest. “So cops get these snapshots in their heads. Just glimpses, fast impressions. And when your aunt and uncle came over to pick you up that night, Becca, Patricia Healy insisted on seeing the bodies. Wasn’t necessary. Her husband already ID’d them. But I took them both back in that kitchen, and that’s when I got that snapshot. Their faces stay with me, almost as much as yours did.”
Jo glanced at Becca uneasily.
“Far as I remember, neither of ’em looked at your daddy, Scott Healy, not even a glance. That stuck with me at the time. Both Mitchell and Patricia zeroed in on Madelyn Healy right away, and that camera went off in my head, pop. I saw this flash of…anguish pass over your uncle’s face, Becca. He couldn’t hide it. And in that same quick second, your aunt? She looked satisfied. Just as pure and strong as her husband’s grief, was that woman’s look of satisfaction.”
“Luther.” Becca folded her legs beneath her, elaborately calm. “Why in the world would Patricia Healy shoot my parents?”
“Are you aware of the fact that Mitchell had romantic feelings for your mother?”
Becca looked at Jo and closed her eyes. “I’ve heard a rumor to that effect.”
“Well, whoever passed on that rumor spoke the truth, I’m afraid.” Luther yawned hugely. “S’cuse me. I did get to dig that far. Gossip with the hired help was that Mitchell Healy’s eye had strayed more than once in his marriage. He’d had several ladies on the side. His wife seemed capable of overlooking this, but then she’s an odd duck. Word was Mitchell had been putting the moves on Madelyn Healy, but she wanted nothing to do with him.”
“So you’re describing a motive for Becca’s uncle for these deaths.” Jo, who distinctly disliked Becca’s uncle, was more than willing to go there again. “He was a spurned lover. A passion killing.”
“Could be.” Luther scowled at the beautiful view. “But I got to go by that snapshot in my gut. Mitchell Healy wasn’t the one looking pleased with himself that night, looking down at that dead woman. That was Patricia.”
They sat quietly for a while, and Jo fought back the urge to break the silence. The birdsong and the sparkling water were soothing, there was friendly laughter around them, and Becca needed this break.
Becca’s gaze was pensive on the distant mountains, and she sat with a stillness that made her seem just as remote. Her fine fingers drifted through the grass, much as they had at the headstone of Loren Perry’s grave. As Jo watched, Pam Emerson’s hand moved exactly as she wanted her own to, and rested lightly on Becca’s hair. Becca looked over her shoulder and smiled at Pam, who winked at her.
Jo understood, clinically, that there was nothing sensual or flirtatious in Pam’s gesture. A snapshot of her own appeared to Jo, of the motherly comfort the Lady of the Rock offered to the weary girl whose head rested in her lap. Pam’s face held only friendliness and a similar maternal warmth. The mild tousling she gave Becca’s hair could have come from Marty or Khadijah. Regardless, Jo found herself mired in a wistful regret, a mild jealousy completely foreign to her, that Becca was smiling into a different pair of eyes.