Burt smoothed his hair with his hand again. He said, “As his attorney, I can see him. I’m going to talk to him this afternoon. At the place where they’re holding him at the moment, they have a funny system. They’re not set up for visitors so friends and family members can’t actually visit him, but they can talk to him on the telephone. They have sort of an intercom setup.”
“Do we have to go to the jail to use it?”
“Yes.”
“May I hitch a ride with you when you go?”
“Of course. And don’t worry. We’ll get Mark out of this. But we should eat first. Are you up for lunch?”
“Always.”
It wasn’t actually a jail. The Bethany Police Station had several holding cells and Mark was in one of these until they sorted out what to do with him. His arraignment hearing was scheduled for Monday.
I only got as far as the waiting room inside the main entrance. It wasn’t the sort of place where you would choose to spend a lot of time. It was clean enough and the walls were painted in pastel colors. Large bulletin boards had notices about the benefits of joining the police force. Computer printouts contained alerts on recent local crimes and several posters had graphic propaganda about the dangers of taking drugs. I didn’t see any of the “wanted” posters that one associates with places like this. Maybe all the known bad guys were behind bars.
People kept coming in and going out. Several uniformed police officers passed through; others not in uniform appeared to be police employees. It was the other people I saw who made the place depressing. Some were there to report problems to the officer at the counter. Others came to talk to inmates, as I did. They looked worried or bewildered or upset. Family members clung together. None of them smiled.
When my turn came the officer instructed me to pick up the phone. I pressed it to my ear and said hello. Although the noise in the waiting room wasn’t overly loud, conversations between the desk officers and civilians created a constant hum and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to hear Mark. My hearing isn’t what it used to be.
“Hello, Lillian,” Mark said. “Burt told me you were here. It was nice of you to come.”
He sounded all right; Burt must have given him encouragement. I said, “I wanted to let you know that we’re working for you.”
“At least you are. You’re my most faithful friend.”
I hoped that wasn’t true. I would make sure that Sandra came here tomorrow. I couldn’t talk long so I had to get to the point. I said, “When do you think the knife was put in the trunk?”
“I don’t know. I had the trunk open the day before-that’s the day you and I went to Bethany-but I didn’t see the knife. However, the police found it in the wheel well underneath the mat so I wouldn’t have looked there unless I had noticed something suspicious, such as the mat being out of place. But everything looked all right to me.”
“Have you kept your car locked for the past few days?”
“I lock it when I’m working at the restaurant. I never lock it at Silver Acres because that’s such a safe place.”
“How about at the college? For example, when you and I were there.”
“No, I didn’t usually lock it there.”
That corresponded with my memory. Donna-or somebody-could have placed the knife in the trunk at the college. Mark had parked the car in the faculty parking lot where it would have been easy to find. He still had a sticker that allowed him to do that.
“What about this new story of Donna’s?” I asked.
“It’s a complete fabrication. I don’t know why she told it, unless she’s trying to protect herself.”
I knew that already, but I wanted to hear Mark say it. We chatted for a few more minutes until our time was up. I promised to get him out and tried to raise his spirits. He thanked me for caring.
As he drove back to Durham in his leased Lexus, Burt told me that the stains on the knife and the towel had definitely been identified as the blood of Elise.
“So that’s the murder weapon,” I said, abandoning a ray of hope I now realized I had been clinging to, subconsciously.
“It appears that way.” Burt glanced at me, having heard the disappointment in my voice. “But don’t let that get you down. There were no fingerprints on the knife. We can use the fact that Mark rarely locked his car as evidence of how easy it would have been to plant the knife in his trunk. The case against him is circumstantial, at best. I hope you wouldn’t mind going on the witness stand to verify that he didn’t usually lock his car.”
“Of course not. But I hope it never gets that far. How did you find out that the blood was Elise’s?”
“I ran into Detective Johnson and waylaid him long enough to get him to tell me that.”
“Speaking of Detective Johnson, I need to talk to him too. But I don’t think he’ll want to talk to me when he finds out what I want him to do. You’re going to have to help me with him.” “Anything for you, Aunt Lillian. And to help prove that Mark is innocent.”
Chapter 21
The temperature soared on Sunday as we gathered at Albert’s farm for brunch. After several weeks of cool and sometimes rainy weather, I welcomed the change. The heat and humidity of the North Carolina summers get to me after a while, but I like an occasional hot day in the spring. Spring had officially sprung, as we had just passed the spring equinox.
I had invited Burt to come, thinking that this was an ideal opportunity to hold a family conference about Mark, with Burt’s input, and hopefully agree that we would do everything in our collective power to clear Mark of the murder charge. Sandra and Albert had driven to Bethany the day before, Saturday, at my urging, and talked to Mark on the internal telephone at the police station. That was a step in the right direction.
After arriving at the farm, I released King from the back seat of my old Mercedes so that she could play with her friend, Romper. Winston trotted down the sidewalk as I retrieved the rolls and pies I had baked from the car.
“Hello, Great Grandma,” Winston said as I gave him a kiss. Always one to keep his relationships straight, he eschewed use of the name Gogi, which is what Sandra called me.
“How are you, Pumpkin?” I asked, wondering how long he would allow me to call him that. He certainly didn’t look like a pumpkin, having lost his baby fat. He would grow up to be tall and thin, like most members of the family, except Sandra, who was short and thin. Albert was tall, but his thinness had thickened in recent years, in spite of his exertions on the tennis court.
“How are your tires?” Winston asked, surveying them with a practiced eye. He had been born at the age of 40 and already had the cares of the world on his shoulders.
“They’re fine. I had them checked recently.” I couldn’t remember how recently.
“Look, there’s a car,” Winston said, pointing to the edge of Albert’s woods, where Burt’s Lexus had just appeared out of the trees. Cars were Winston’s staff of life.
“That’s Mr. Brown’s car. What color is it?”
“White,” Winston said, with the assurance of one who has long known his colors. “There’s another car.”
Sure enough, right behind the Lexus came a less flashy model, one I didn’t recognize. As Winston announced that this car was green, I was more concerned about who was inside it since I had hoped there wouldn’t be any extra people to interfere with our discussion.
We waited for the two cars to negotiate the long driveway and pull up beside mine. Burt got out first and gave me a hug. I introduced him to Winston and they gravely shook hands. A good-looking blond woman, prematurely wearing a short summer dress, got out of the other car. She showed a lot of leg as she did so, but if Burt saw the show he diplomatically didn’t let on. She was somewhere in her thirties, an age range Albert preferred for his women, so I assumed that he had invited her.
“Hi,” she said, brightly, to the three of us. And zeroing in on me, “You must be Dr. Morgan, Albert’s mother. “I’m Daisy Templeton. I work with Albert.”