“No.” He slashed a hand through the air and this close, I felt the ripple of an icy breeze. “I didn’t kill Vera. I told you-”
“You told me you weren’t screwing her.” When I stared into those dead eyes of his, my jaw was so rigid, it felt like it was going to snap. “You told me that. You swore it was true. But you knew. You told me yourself. You said the Lake View was the kind of tacky place with flamingoes on the bathroom wallpaper.”
“Oh.” Right before my eyes, Lamar folded like an origami stork. It was all the proof I needed, and I guess that should have made me feel better.
All it did was make me madder than ever.
“There were no crime scene photographs that showed the bathroom at the Lake View,” I told him. Even though I shouldn’t have had to point this out, I wanted to watch him squirm. “There’s no way you could have known about the flamingoes. Not if you weren’t there.”
He backed away and refused to meet my eyes. “It doesn’t mean I killed her,” he said.
“It means you’re lying.”
His shoulders rose and fell. “You’re right.”
“Well, hot damn!” I laughed, but believe me, there was no humor in the sound. If they bottled sarcasm, they would come to me as the source. “So all this time, you’ve been proclaiming your innocence, and all this time, I’ve been stupid enough to believe you. And now you’re telling me you’re not innocent. That you’re a murderer!”
“No, not a murderer. But not innocent, either.”
The only way I could try to think to steady my rattling heart rate was to take a deep breath. “You admit it? You and Vera-”
When he turned and walked away, I followed right after him. Good thing. If I wasn’t close by, I wouldn’t have heard him when he mumbled, “She was young and pretty and lively. I was a married middle-aged man, and I loved Helen. Believe me.”
“Yeah, like I’ve believed you all this time?”
We were near the beat-up mausoleum, and Lamar stopped. “There was something exciting about being with Vera,” he said. “Something dangerous. She was so prim and efficient in the office, but when we were alone together, she was wild and different, and she made me feel so young! So-”
“So much like the cheat you really were?”
His shoulders sagged. “The guilt was overwhelming. Even so, I couldn’t stop myself. There were nights I told Helen I had to work late. Vera and I, we would head away from Central State to someplace where no one would recognize us.”
“To the Lake View?”
“No, that’s the truth. The night Vera was killed…” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “That was the one and only time we’d ever been to the Lake View. How that clerk said he recognized us… why he would lie like that…”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Seems to be a lot of that going around.”
“I’m sorry.” The way he said it, I almost believed him. “I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. If Helen finds out…”
“Is that a little bit of conscience I hear talking?” Since I thought it was, my anger ratcheted back. A little, anyway. “How could you be so heartless? Not to mention stupid?”
“I’d never done anything like it before. I never would have again. But there was something about Vera…”
“And when you took the stand in court and denied you were having an affair with her?”
He scraped a hand through his buzz-cut hair. “All these years, I’ve second-guessed my decision to keep quiet about the affair.” He dared to look into my eyes. “I’ve second-guessed it,” he said, “but I’ve never regretted it. Sure, it might have helped. It might have done me some good to admit my sins. To explain what I was doing at the Lake View. But maybe it would have just made me look more guilty. And it surely would have broken Helen’s heart. I couldn’t do that. I’d done enough to hurt her.”
I took all this in, processing as I went. “So when you left Vera that night, you’re telling me she was still alive?”
“It’s the God’s honest truth. It was…” He cleared his throat. “It was supposed to be another of our usual dates. But that night, Vera told me it was over between us. She was going back to her old boyfriend.”
“Steve.”
“She said she’d done a lot of thinking and come to realize there was no future for us. She said she was tired of the sneaking around. She wanted me to divorce Helen so we could be together, but… well, I couldn’t do that. I told Vera. I told her I never could.”
“So she gave you the old heave-ho and you-”
“I didn’t kill her.” He looked away. “We fought. I know it’s impossible for you to understand, but Vera… she made me crazy from wanting her. I couldn’t think straight. When Vera said she didn’t want to see me again…”
I thought about the crime scene photos. “You’re the one who gave her that fat lip.” When he didn’t deny it, my anger came back, full force. “You slapped her, you creep.”
He hung his head. “I’ve regretted it. All these years. I wished it had never happened, that her last night on earth wasn’t filled with pain and violence.” Lamar lifted his head to look into my eyes. “You do believe me, don’t you?”
I met him look for look. “What happened after you hit her?”
He swallowed hard. “She cried. And I begged her to forgive me. I told her how much she meant to me, how I couldn’t live without her. She wouldn’t listen.”
“So you…?”
“I left. That’s all. I just walked out. I swear it’s the truth.”
Was I buying his story? Not lock, stock, and barrel (whatever that means). But I wasn’t going to dismiss it, either. At least not until I knew more.
“When you left, what was Vera wearing?” I asked him.
He cleared his throat. “Nothing. Not when I walked out. When we met that evening, she was dressed in the outfit she wore to work that day.”
“That’s why she didn’t care about your blood on her blouse. There was no use her changing clothes. You knew about the bloodstain. She knew you wouldn’t care.”
“The police never picked up on that.” He sounded grateful. “I was so devastated when I left the motel… about Vera leaving me… about how I’d lost control and hit her… I wasn’t thinking straight. I thought… I thought about killing myself. I would have done it, too, if I didn’t realize that Helen would wonder what had gone wrong. She’d never have the answers, and I couldn’t stand the thought of that. I drove home in a fog. The next morning when I got to my office, the police were there to tell me that Vera was dead. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t tell them that when I saw her last, she was getting ready to get dressed.
“So she was getting ready to leave, too. By the time the killer showed up at the door of the room, she was already dressed. And-”
“Maybe when he knocked on the door, maybe she thought it was me.” There was so much hope in his voice, it turned my stomach. “Maybe she opened it because she’d changed her mind and-”
“You’re pathetic. Do you know that?” I was in no mood to spare his feelings. “We’ve got two dead women on our hands, a marriage that self-exploded, and someone who wants to kill me because I’m looking into what really happened, and all you’re worried about is if your little love puppy wanted you back? ”