J.C. closed his eyes as they left, but I let him have it with both barrels.
“You bastard!” I snarled. “You filthy bastard! I just got off the phone to Donald Farraday. He still fives in Norwood, Nebraska, J.C. Halfway between Omaha and Lincoln.”
The old man groaned and clenched his eyes tighter.
“He didn’t die. He wasn’t even wounded. Except in the heart. By you.” So much anger roiled up inside me, I was almost spitting my words at him.
“He wrote her every chance he got till it finally sank in she was never going to answer. He thought she’d changed her mind, realized that she didn’t really love him. And every day Beulah must have been coming home, asking if she’d gotten any mail, and you only gave her Sam’s letters, you rotten, no-good-”
“Sam was homefolks,” J.C. burst out. “That other one, he’d have taken her way the hell away to Nebraska. She didn’t have any business in Nebraska! Sam loved her.”
“She didn’t love him,” I snapped.
“Sure, she did. Oh, it took her a bit to get over the other one, but she settled.”
“Only because she thought Farraday was dead! You had no right, you sneaking, sanctimonious Pharisee! You wrecked her whole life!”
“Her life wasn’t wrecked,” he argued. “She had Donna Sue and Sammy Junior and the farm and-”
“If it was such a star-spangled life,” I interrupted hotly, “why’d she take a gun to you the minute she knew what you’d done to her?”
The fight went out of him and he sank back into the pillow, sobbing now and holding himself where the bullet had passed through his right lung.
“Why in God’s name did you keep the letters? That’s what she found, wasn’t it?”
Still sobbing, J.C. nodded.
“I forgot they were still there. I never opened them, and she didn’t either. She said she couldn’t bear to. She just put them in the grate and put a match to them and she was crying. I tried to explain about how I’d done what was best for her, and all at once she had the rifle in her hands and she said she’d never forgive me, and then I reckon she shot me.”
He reached out a bony hand and grasped mine. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
I jerked my hand away as if it’d suddenly touched filth.
“Please, Deb’rah?”
“Donald Farraday has a daughter almost the same age as Donna Sue,” I said. “Know what he named her, J.C.? He named her Beulah.”
Dwight Bryant was waiting when I got back from court that afternoon and he followed me into my office.
“I hear you visited J.C. twice today.” “
So?” I slid off my high heels. They were wickedly expensive and matched the power red of my linen suit, I waggled my stockinged toes at him, but he didn’t smile.
“Judge not,” he said sternly,
“Is that with an N or a K?” I parried.
“Sherry tells me you never give clients the original of their will.”
“Never’s a long time, and Sherry may not know as much about my business as she thinks she does.”
“But it was a copy that Beulah burned, wasn’t it?”
“I’m prepared to go to court and swear it was the original if I have to. It won’t be necessary though. J.C. won’t contest it.”
Dwight stared at me a long level moment. “Why’re you doing this to him?”
I matched his stare with one about twenty degrees colder. “Not me, Dwight. Beulah.”
“He swears he doesn’t know why she shot him, but you know, don’t you?”
I shrugged.
He hauled himself to his feet, angry and frustrated. “If you do this, Deborah, J.C.’ll have to spend the rest of his life depending on Donna Sue and Sammy Junior’s good will. You don’t have the right. Nobody elected you judge yet.”
“Yes, they did,” I said, thinking of the summer I was eighteen and how Mother had told me all her secrets so that if I ever needed her eyewitness testimony I’d have it.
And Deborah was a judge in the land.
Damn straight.
A MAN’S HOME by Shelley Singer
A former journalist, SHELLEY SINGER is the author of the popular Jake Samson/Rosie Vicente mysteries. The latter sleuth is almost certainly the only carpenter detective in the history of the genre. They have starred in such excellent novels as Free Draw, Full House, Spit in the Ocean, Samson’s Deal, and Suicide King. Ms, Singer lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The woman spoke slowly in a deep voice edged with tears; the message she left on the office answering machine was concise. She needed help. Her husband had been murdered. Would I please call her?
The name, Wittles, sounded familiar, I glanced through that morning’s San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune and found brief follow-up stories in both. Of course. Alan Wittles. The Berkeley attorney who’d been shot to death in his living room a couple of nights before. Signs of a break-in, the papers said. I had to wonder-didn’t the dead man’s wife have anything better to do with her money than pay a private investigator for a job the police were already doing?
Still, I dialed the number she’d left on the tape. While the phone rang, I thumbed quickly through the phone book to verify that the number actually belonged to her and not to some stray lunatic who’d seen her name in the paper. The call was legitimate; I found Alan and Julia Wittles in the book, at the right number and at a very right address.
She answered with her name, as though she were an upscale clothing store.
“This is Barrett Lake,” I told her. “I’m returning your call to Broz Investigations. How can we help you?”
“Oh, yes. Thank you for calling back quickly. But I’d rather talk to Mr. Broz himself.”
“I’m sorry, Mr. Broz isn’t available. He’s left me in charge.” Very impressive. I didn’t tell her I was an apprentice, working out my term under Tito’s license. She hesitated for a good ten seconds.
“You’re a woman.”
“Yes. I am.” I was a little surprised that a proper Berkeley matron would be caught dead expressing what sounded like unfeminist thoughts, but she redeemed herself.
“All right. Good. That might be even better. I’d like you to come over right away so we can talk. So you can get started and clear this all up.”
Not so fast, I told myself. “Perhaps first you could tell me a bit more about what you want me to do for you.”
She sighed and spoke in her slow, soft way. “My husband was shot to death here. At home. Three nights ago.”
“Yes. I know. I’m sorry. But aren’t the police working on the case?”
“They are.” Did I have a point, her tone of voice was asking.
“Well, we don’t like to compete with the Berkeley police. They have resources-”
“Oh, they never catch anyone. They’re busy. They have too much to do. Please, just come over here and talk to me about it. I know you can help me.”
Ridiculous, I thought. If anyone could find a homicidal burglar, it would be the police. But she sounded so desperate, and so unhappy.
I glanced at the work sheet on Tito’s desk. According to him, I didn’t have anything to do that day-nothing, really, to be in charge of-except stick around in case something showed up.
And here was a poor, sad woman in obvious distress, certainly needing someone’s help. Wasn’t that the whole point? Besides making a living? Even Tito the semipractical admitted he had thought I was a natural for the investigating business the first time he came to my apartment and saw the suit of armor in the entry.