I was. He didn’t have to tell me. He looked over as much of me as he could see from where he was sitting. “You went out yesterday when you left here and you bought that outfit?”
“Yes.”
“Just for me?”
“I certainly wouldn’t have bought it for myself. Clear reds do not look good on natural redheads, but this was the shortest skirt I could find, so I made the sacrifice. And the shirt is two sizes too small.”
His eyes went dreamy. “The shirt is perfect!”
I pinned him with a look. “Talk.”
Morgan leaned back in his chair. “What do you want to know?”
I didn’t let him see how relieved I was. “You were in Central State at the time Vera Blaine was killed. I want to know what the other prisoners were saying, how they felt about what happened. Did anybody have any theories… you know, about Lamar’s arrest and conviction?”
“Theories?” He laughed like maybe I was a bimbo after all. “Nobody’s got any theories in a place like this. They only got secrets.”
“What’s your secret, Mr. Morgan?”
“Mine?” He grinned. “Word is going to spread through gen pop that you visited me two days in a row, and everybody but everybody’s going to be talking about what a fine-looking woman you are. They’re going to be all over it, wondering how Dale Morgan got a babe as gorgeous as you, speculating about who you are and what we’re saying to each other and when you’re coming back. My secret is that I’m never going to say one thing about why you’re really here. That will make them keep wondering, and that will make me look like a big man, you know?”
“And what was Warden Lamar’s secret?” I asked, and at the same time, I hoped he didn’t know the secret that I hoped only I knew. I wasn’t there to gossip, and it would serve no purpose for anyone to know about Lamar’s affair with Vera.
He pursed his lips. “I don’t think the warden was a secrets sort of man. He was up-front. Regulated, you know. He had high expectations for all of us. And he kept them, even when we were released and came back, again and again. The warden was noble, and I let him down.”
“You don’t mean by just ending up back in here. You knew something about Vera Blaine’s murder.”
He hesitated. “Knowing something he shouldn’t know can get a man killed in a place like this.”
I had no doubt of it. I didn’t press the point.
“If Lamar didn’t have any secrets, then who had secrets about him? Reno Bob Oates? Or Bad Dog Raphael?”
Morgan’s eyes widened. We were the only ones in the visitors’ room that afternoon, but he still took a careful look around before he spoke. “Why those two?”
“Why not? They both hated Lamar. Either one could have-”
“They didn’t both have those kinds of connections, if you know what I mean. A man inside, he needs connections on the outside to make something big like that go down.”
“Something big like a murder and then framing the warden for it?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.
I thought about Reno Bob and Bad Dog. “You’re saying Reno Bob didn’t have the chops. He always worked alone. Mack Raphael was the one with the gang connections. You’re saying it had to have been Bad Dog.”
“Didn’t say that. Wouldn’t.” He looked around again. “A man like Bad Dog has friends in lots of places. I know this for a fact, see. I was his cellmate at Central State.”
This was something I didn’t know. I tried not to look too interested. “And you may have heard something. Or overheard something. Is that what you’re saying?”
He shook his head. “I ain’t saying anything of the sort. Like I said, I couldn’t. I value my life too much. Makes me wonder why you aren’t so smart.”
It was a logical assumption. But then, Morgan didn’t know that Helen Lamar had been her husband’s staunchest supporter all these years, and he certainly didn’t know that Lamar had done her wrong and that she deserved something for her misplaced trust in him. He didn’t know that someone was out to get me. He didn’t know about Sammi, either, and I told him about her and about how we’d started out on the opposite sides of a lot of issues (like taste and fashion, not to mention the law), but how Sammi and I had ended up understanding each other. If we had had more time, we might have been friends.
“You can see why I’ve got a sort of personal stake in this,” I said when I was done. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but I had the feeling he understood where I was coming from.
He shifted the phone from his left ear to his right. “I may have overheard something once. A certain cellmate of mine bragging that he’d given the warden a taste of his own medicine. He never mentioned details, but he said he had proof of what he’d done. Said that Bad Dog was sitting on the evidence and laughing his ass off.”
“What does that mean?”
Morgan made a face. “Like I know? I’m just telling you what he said, ‘Bad Dog is sitting on the evidence and laughing his ass off.’ Made no sense to me then, makes no sense to me now. Maybe doesn’t even mean anything.”
“But maybe it does, and maybe you were feeling guilty for never reporting what you’d heard to the cops. Is that what you were trying to tell Lamar by burying that coin at his grave?”
“If that was true, you’d be assuming I had a conscience. You think that’s true?”
“I think Warden Lamar wouldn’t have believed in you if it wasn’t.”
“Yeah. Well. Whatever.” He looked away.
I didn’t want to lose him, or the thread of our conversation. I shifted a little in my chair to attract his attention. “So it’s true? Bad Dog Raphael arranged Vera’s murder?”
“Never said that.” Dale Morgan looked at the clock that hung on the wall behind me. “What I will say is what I said before. Bad Dog, he’s got connections. All kinds of people are on his payroll. You should know that so you can be careful.”
His comment made me think about something that had been bugging me since the night of the ruined art show and our bachelor auction. “How about reporters?” I asked. “Does Bad Dog have some of them on his payroll?”
He sucked his teeth. “Couldn’t say. But I wouldn’t be surprised. You thinking about anyone in particular?”
I was, of course. Mike Kowalski. I wasn’t about to say it. If I was wrong, and if Morgan was somehow allied with Bad Dog, I could be getting Kowalski in a whole bunch of trouble he didn’t deserve. If I was right, and if Morgan was a snitch, I could be signing my own death warrant.
“I’m just asking, that’s all. I appreciate all your help.”
“I haven’t helped you.” Morgan sat back, his right arm thrown casually over the back of his chair. “And if you tell anybody I have, I’ll deny it. If you send any cops here to confirm what I’ve said-”
“I won’t. I swear.” I crossed my heart.
And that little movement of my finger across my chest got him back to thinking about what he’d been thinking about since I walked in the room. “Forty-five more minutes until visiting hours are over,” he growled. “Since you’re going to be staying around, how about you hitch that skirt of yours a little higher and-”
I silenced him with a look that was cold enough to shatter the glass between us, and Morgan got the message.
“So,” he grumbled, “what do you want to talk about?”