“How’s Jessie doing?” I ask, not wanting her to ask me too much about what I’ll be doing tomorrow.
“She’s so sweet!” Amy exclaims.
“I hate that crate you make her stay in. It’s terrible, isn’t it sweetheart? Here, I’m putting the phone next to her ear. Say something
nice. She misses you.”
Hoping Betty isn’t listening in, I say, “Jessie, don’t shit on the floor again, okay?”
Jessie doesn’t deign to respond, and Amy yelps, “That wasn’t nice.
She’s done good today, haven’t you sweetheart? I just took her out.”
“I appreciate you taking care of her,” I say sincerely.
“I’ll be by about this time tomorrow to pick her up.”
There is silence on the other end.
“Maybe we can go out to eat or something,” I add.
“That’d be nice,” Amy says promptly. She is still young enough to think of Saturday as “date night.”
“What are you doing tonight?” she asks, sounding more curious than suspicious.
How could she be? Even the most cynical girlfriend surely wouldn’t expect me to bed down after an hour with a woman I haven’t seen in a quarter of a century.
“First, I’m going to call Mrs. Ting and see if she’ll talk to me. I want to arrange to get out to see the plant as soon as possible.” “Well, hurry back,” she says, and adds, her voice suddenly insecure, “I miss
you already.”
“I miss you, too,” I say.
“We’ll have fun tomorrow night.” She knows something is wrong. I do, too.
After I get Amy off the phone, I look up Mrs. Ting’s number and give her a call, but it is Connie, Tommy’s younger sister, who answers. I haven’t seen her since I moved away. My main memory is of a busty, ponytailed girl in a white T-shirt who practiced cheers on the sidewalk while Tommy and I played tennis. Cute as a ladybug, she was even smarter than her brother. She must have already heard the news that I’m representing Bledsoe, for there is an understandable lack of warmth in her voice as she explains that tonight would not be a good time to see her mother. She puts the phone down and then tells me that I can come by tomorrow morning about ten.
“I’m really sorry about your father, Connie. I know he was a good man.” She doesn’t respond. I ask and get Tommy’s number in Maryland before she practically hangs up on me. I wonder what she is doing now.
Surely, she didn’t stay in Bear Creek.
I put down the phone, feeling as if I am a salesman who is accustomed to regarding the rudeness of the human race as normal.
Disappointed that I have not been able to establish any rapport with Connie, I dial Tommy’s number. When I go through that plant, I want the workers to open up and talk to me. If Class has been set up by Paul,
someone out there may know who did it. I recognize Tommy’s voice as soon as he answers the phone. Even after all these years, and despite having been born in the United States, Tommy has never quite managed to sound like he was a Caucasian. There was always a slight burr in his speech, and that is what I hear now.
“Tommy, this is Gideon Page,” I announce.
“I assume Connie’s told you I’ve been retained to represent Class Bledsoe.”
There is silence on the other end while he absorbs the fact that he is getting a phone call from the attorney who represents his father’s alleged murderer. Finally, he says, “She called me this morning.”
I tell him that I am genuinely sorry that his father has been killed.
“I had nothing but the profoundest respect for him. All of you worked so hard and did so well that I drew inspiration just knowing you. I can remember how persistent you were when we used to play tennis. You were Michael Chang before there even was one.”
“Why are you calling me, Gideon?” he asks.
“Shouldn’t you be dealing with the prosecuting attorney?”
I watch as a gorgeous blonde flits all over the national weather map.
What he wants to say, but is too polite, is, if you have such admiration for us, why are you taking the case of the man who murdered my father?
“I am,” I say.
“But I know you want the right person to be convicted of your father’s murder. If my client did it, the jury should convict him, but he swears he was set up, and I think that’s a real possibility.” “Why?” Tommy asks, his voice unyielding.
“My father’s blood was on his knife. He has no alibi, I’ve heard he wouldn’t take a polygraph test.”
“I’m just starting to investigate this. Tommy,” I say, watching the blonde draw squiggles over the Rockies, “but it’s obvious that Paul could have hired any number of people in that plant to murder your father and pin it on Bledsoe, who seems like a decent man but probably isn’t the brightest guy down there.”
“So at least you’re convinced Paul Taylor was behind this,” Tommy says, his voice fading in and out, “because he thought he could buy the plant for a fraction of its worth.”
“I’ve heard the tape,” I say, watching the blonde flash her best Karen Mcguiness smile, and return the program to the black newscaster.
“I know you have. What do you think?” “He threatened my father,” Tommy says, his voice not at all confident, “but I don’t know if there is enough to tie him to the murder.”
“I don’t know how well you knew Paul,” I say, “but that entire family has spent a lifetime cheating people out of their land and property.” I
briefly tell Tommy about my family’s financial dealings with the Taylors.
“You may not be aware of this, but in the last several years they lost a lot of their land. He needed your father’s business to maintain his lifestyle. I understand it was quite profitable.”
Tommy responds, “What’s your point?”
In the background I can hear a child’s voice. I lost contact with him years ago and don’t know if he is married, single, or working in an orphanage.
“That Paul is slick as pig shit and if you let him, he will skate out of this just like he’s done his whole life,” I say crudely.
“My guess is that he’s guilty as hell and hired someone else to kill your father and set up Class Bledsoe. So far his only mistake is that he didn’t realize he was being taped. I know Paul. He plans to be laughing at all of us when this is over.”
His voice sounding as if it is coming over string and a tin can instead of telephone wire, he asks, “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing, really,” I say quickly.
“I could get an order from the judge to let me go through the plant and inspect the murder scene, but what I’d like to do is to have as much cooperation from your workers as possible. I suspect they won’t give me the time of day unless your family tells them that it is all right to be
as candid as possible with me. If I don’t get anything, then fine. But I’d hate to overlook some leads if it can be avoided.
Once a prosecutor files charges, law enforcement gets hunkered down to prove the case, and it’s hard to make them look elsewhere. If you could call your cousin and ask him to talk to your workers after I inspect the plant so that when I begin to interview them, they’ll be more open with me, it would help.”
The phone crackles and snaps in my hand like it is about to burst into flames. If I were paranoid, I would think the line was somehow tapped already.
“Let me think about this,” Tommy says finally.
“I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize the case.”
“They don’t have a strong one against Paul,” I say urgently, leafing through the file in my lap.
“All they can show is Bledsoe has worked for him a long time. The only thing your secretary at the plant says is that she overheard Bledsoe say that he had gotten the money, but nobody knows what that was about.
For all I know, he may have been stealing from the plant, but that doesn’t mean he was the murderer. All they have on Paul is the tape, and Paul can explain it away in five minutes on the witness stand. It’s ambiguous.