“I’m sure I can find it. Why don’t I meet you there at noon?”
“Great!” she said, sounding a little bit, Stevie thought, as if they’d just made a prom date. “I’ll see you then.”
Stevie told Kelleher about the conversation. “ Clyde ’s is easy,” he said. “It’s a few blocks from my office. I need to go in for a couple hours today anyway. I’ll drop you off, and then you can walk over there and meet me when you’re finished.”
“When do we talk to Doyle or Felkoff?” Stevie asked.
“Easy there,” Kelleher said. “Let’s see what Miss Morra has to say first.”
Stevie killed the rest of the morning reading the papers-easier to do when he wasn’t a nervous wreck-and, grudgingly, trying to finish The Great Gatsby. Susan Carol reminded him one more time about not being charmed by Morra before he and Kelleher left.
“If she comes on to you, remember to tell her you have a girlfriend,” she said, smiling. She leaned down and gave him a quick kiss as he was going out the door, causing Stevie to climb into the car with what he knew was a goofy grin.
“So all is well in paradise again?” Kelleher said.
“Yup,” Stevie said. “He came on to her, but she told him she had a boyfriend.”
“You see?” Kelleher said. “You should never underestimate Susan Carol.”
“I should know that by now, shouldn’t I?” Stevie said.
The trip downtown passed quickly. Traffic on a Saturday morning was light. As Kelleher pulled up to the restaurant, they could see Morra Doyle waiting outside. The day was warm, and she was wearing a light blue sundress and high-heeled sandals.
“Whoa,” Kelleher said. “She’s come to play. You be careful, now.”
Stevie smiled. “I’m fine,” he said, although he had to admit, if he didn’t know he was being set up and if he didn’t have a girlfriend, he would be pretty fired up about a lunch date with Morra Doyle.
“Call me when you’re done,” Kelleher said as Stevie got out. “I’ll tell you how to get to my office.”
Stevie slammed the door just as someone behind Kelleher honked at him to get moving. Morra Doyle was waiting with a big smile on her face.
“Who was that?” she asked.
“Bobby Kelleher,” Stevie said, remembering that Morra had never met him. “He works for-”
“The Washington Herald,” she said. “I’ve been reading his columns after I read your stories.”
Stevie was almost tempted to laugh. He wondered if pretty girls went to some school to learn how to make teenage boys do their bidding, or if it was just genetic. They walked inside and a moment later they were escorted up a flight of steps into a massive dining room. Clyde ’s had to be the biggest restaurant Stevie had ever been in.
“Nice place,” Stevie said as they settled into a booth.
“They serve everything here,” Morra said with a smile. “Since I don’t know what you like, I figured this was a good choice.”
They ordered, then small-talked about the game the night before and the importance of the Nationals evening the series that night.
“Manny Acta told Dad he might pitch game six or he might pitch game seven, depending on the circumstances,” she said. “Of course, we have to make sure we get to a game six or a game seven first.”
“Wow, game seven of the World Series, that would be amazing,” he said. “Could make for a real Hollywood ending.”
He said it intentionally, hoping to draw a response. If he caught her off guard, she didn’t show it, just smiled again without saying anything. She took a couple more bites of her crab cake and put her fork down.
“So, you probably think I asked you to lunch so I could talk to you about your trip to Lynchburg yesterday,” she said.
He had to give her credit for coming right to the point when she thought the time was right. “It did cross my mind,” he said. “How’d you know I was there?”
“You have to understand something about my dad and David and me. There are no secrets. His new agent told Dad that the first thing any publisher or movie studio will want is to be sure that the story they’re buying is the real deal-especially these days. That’s why he sent his assistant-”
“You mean Walsh?”
“Yes, him-to Lynchburg. Dad didn’t know what was in the police report. I don’t think he really wanted to know. But Mr. Felkoff said we needed to know.”
“But how did he know I was going to Lynchburg too? The cop I went to see-”
“Hatley.”
“Right. He said that Walsh told him I’d be coming.”
“Susan Carol told David you were going.”
Stevie was tempted to call her a liar, but she put up a hand as if anticipating what he was about to say. “She didn’t do it to give anything away. She asked David if there was anything you might find that he hadn’t told her.”
“What did David say?”
“That he didn’t know. Because he didn’t.
“I know what you found out down there now,” she continued. “That there was only one car involved in the accident that killed my mother.”
Clearly, Walsh had carried that information back to the Doyles and Felkoff. Since she had to know he’d looked at the report too, he shrugged and said, “That’s what the police report said.” He stopped there, not willing to tell her anything more.
“Except it’s not true,” she said. “There was another car.”
“But-”
“I know what the report says,” she said, smiling to remind him, he guessed, that they were still friends. “But there was another policeman at the scene first, before Officer Hatley. I’ll bet you didn’t know that.”
Interesting that she would bring up Joe Molloy, he thought, but he decided to play along and see where she was going.
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“His name is Joseph Molloy,” she said. “He’s a big shot down there now, I think a deputy chief or something.”
“And?”
“Dad told him about the other car before Officer Hatley got there. Molloy called him a liar, with my mother lying there either dead or dying.”
“Why would Molloy do that?” Stevie asked. “And why didn’t Hatley mention the other car in the report?”
She was nodding as if to say he was asking the right questions. “Molloy hated my father,” she said. “He and my dad pitched on the same team in Sumter, South Carolina, four years before the accident. Sumter is where my parents met.”
This didn’t jibe at all with what Molloy had said about not being a baseball fan. Stevie was tempted to take out a notebook to write all this down but resisted. He wanted her to keep talking. If she was lying about Molloy, it would be easy enough to check out.
“Go on,” he said.
“Joe Molloy was dating my mom when she and my dad met. She dropped Molloy to go out with my dad. No big deal, she just liked him better.”
Stevie sat back in the booth. He was beginning to wonder if anyone involved in this story was telling the truth.
“My father did not cause the accident,” she continued. “A pickup truck going way too fast swerved into his lane, and he yanked the wheel to avoid hitting him.
“When Hatley showed up, Molloy was screaming that Dad had killed Mom and that he was sure he was drunk. When Dad told Hatley there was another car involved, Molloy kept insisting he was lying. So then Hatley pulled rank and told Molloy he was going to take over the investigation.”
“But if Molloy was convinced your dad was drunk, why didn’t he accuse Hatley of a cover-up after he wrote the report?”
“I don’t know, and neither does Dad. All he knows is Hatley told him not to worry about it, that he’d taken care of it.”
“You realize,” he said, “if it comes out that Hatley covered up for your dad, the movie and the book are probably out the window.”
“He didn’t cover up!” she said, raising her voice for the first time. “My dad’s not a liar. If he said there were two cars, there were two cars. Molloy is the liar.”