Sy hesitated, gazing out into space, his face blank. “This is news to me.” Deirdre remembered that her father always said Sy was a brilliant poker player, but a moment’s hesitation was his tell.
Well, if Sy wasn’t going to spill, Deirdre would. “I also found a knife.” Sy’s eyes widened. “A carving knife with a bone handle. Something else that Henry said Dad wanted him to get rid of.”
“And you think—” Sy started. Now he looked genuinely bewildered.
“I don’t know what to think.” Tears welled up behind Deirdre’s eyes. She clenched her jaw to keep them from spilling over. “But I’m starting to wonder. What if the police don’t have the real knife that killed Tito, and what if my father did? And what if I wasn’t asleep when it happened?” She looked from her mother to Sy and back again. “Why won’t anyone tell me the truth?”
“No one is trying to torture you,” Sy said. “We would all like to know exactly what happened. Maybe if your father had written about it, we would know.” He paused for a moment, looking directly at Deirdre, so intently that she wondered if he knew about her father’s memoir.
Gloria got up from the desk and came around to Deirdre. She took her hand and held it between hers. “I’m so sorry that you’ve had to go through so much pain and confusion. And it’s so unfair that it’s all getting dredged up again.”
“I didn’t kill Tito,” Deirdre said in a small voice.
Her mother stood back. “Of course you didn’t.”
“Did I?” Deirdre asked Sy.
This time there was no hesitation. “You did not. Of that you can be absolutely certain.”
“How do you know?” Deirdre said.
“Because I was there,” Sy said.
Chapter 29
Sy returned to the wing chair and sank into it, his face receding into shadows. He closed his eyes for a moment and tented his fingers over his belt buckle. Then his eyes opened and he glanced across at Gloria, who was still standing behind Deirdre with her arms around her. Some kind of message seemed to pass between them.
“All right,” Sy said. “Well then. I was hoping it would never come to this, but here we are and so it is. As you know, I have for a very long time been Elenor Nichol’s personal attorney. I am also her friend. She called me that night. Very late. She called and asked me”—he gave a tired smile and shook his head—“make that commanded me to come over right away. She said something terrible had happened to Tito.
“I told her to call an ambulance. She said it was too late for that. She needed me to be there when she called the police. So of course I dressed and went right over. As I was driving up the driveway to the house, I passed a car pulling out. It was dark, and I could not see who was driving. But it was a sports car with the top down. Naturally I assumed it was your father. And when I learned what had happened, and that you had been in the house, I further assumed that he had come to get you out of there before all hell broke loose. That is what I thought until just now when you showed me the accident report. I still find it difficult to believe that you were driving that car.”
“The dress? The knife? Why did my father have them?”
“I’m afraid that is something I do not know. This is what I do know. When I got there, Bunny took me up to her bedroom. Tito was on the floor. Dead, of course. Bunny said they had had a terrible fight. Worse than usual. Trying to placate him, she had told him that she was pregnant. She thought that would make him happy. Instead, he exploded. Punched her in the stomach. Tried to choke her. Tito knew it could not be his child. He was sterile.”
“Elenor Nichol killed Tito?” Deirdre asked.
“That is what she told me. And right away I thought, ‘self-defense.’ I did not doubt it for a moment, and I am sure I could have persuaded a jury. Police had been called to the house before. Newspapers had printed photographs of them fighting in a nightclub. On top of that, Antonio Acevedo had a long, well-documented history of violence. If Bunny had been charged, I would have tried to make the jury aware of the rumors that he had his last girlfriend disposed of. Elenor Nichol would have come across as a sympathetic victim. Desperate. And—”
Gloria said, “And an accomplished actress.” The bitterness in her tone took Deirdre aback.
“Of course she is,” Sy said. “But this did not seem like an act. She was agitated. In acute distress, emotionally and physically. Her neck was red and her vocal cords were so badly bruised that she could barely speak.”
A chill ran down Deirdre’s back. Why on earth had she and Joelen been allowed to hang out all those long afternoons with just Tito in the house?
“I placed the call to the police,” Sy went on. “While we waited for them to get there, I prepared Bunny for the questions they would ask. I told her that I had seen your father’s car pulling out when I arrived. She said she had called Arthur to come get you. That you had been sound asleep and knew nothing about what happened. We agreed, the police didn’t need to know that you’d been there.
“The police came. Examined the body. They were about to start questioning Bunny when Joelen made a rather dramatic appearance. She staggered into the room, unsteady on her feet, slurring her words. Bunny told me later that she had given Joelen a sedative, but apparently it had not knocked her out. Slurred speech or not, there was no question about what she said. ‘I did not mean to kill him.’ The police took it as a confession.”
“Bunny didn’t contradict her?” Deirdre said.
Sy shook his head and pressed his lips together. “After that, things moved quickly. One of the officers read Joelen her rights. They tried to cuff her but Bunny broke down, sobbing and screaming at them to stop. After all, Joelen was just a child.
“Finally Bunny calmed down and the police let her find a coat for Joelen to put on. And that was classic Bunny—always thinking about how things would look, and she was absolutely right. Photographers were already assembled outside the house, of course, just waiting for her to come out. God knows how they knew.” Sy stood, stepped to the window, and looked out. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. “Very next day, first thing Bunny did was get a security gate. Too bad she had not installed it earlier.”
“What did you think?” Gloria asked. “They can’t both have killed him.”
“What I thought? Pffft. What difference did it make? The police heard Joelen’s confession. I did my job. I told them both to stop talking.” He gave a world-weary grimace. “That is about the best an attorney can do in a situation like that.”
“Why would Arthur have ended up with the knife that killed Tito?” Gloria asked.
Sy pondered for a moment, working his lips in and out. “We don’t know that it’s the same knife.” He turned to Deirdre. “Where is it now?”
“I threw it away.” The lie popped out without a moment’s hesitation.
“You did, did you?” Sy said. Deirdre could see the skepticism in his eyes.
“Day before yesterday. I tossed it into a neighbor’s garbage can.”
“Hmm. And what about the dress?”
“Destroyed in the fire.”
“And—” The sound of the front door opening stopped him.
“Henry?” her mother called out. To Deirdre, she said in a quiet voice, “Let’s discuss this some other time. All right?”
A moment later Henry walked into the den, his motorcycle helmet hanging from his hand. He looked from Gloria to Sy to Deirdre. “Who died now?”
“Just your father,” Gloria said. She and Sy exchanged a look, and they both eyed Deirdre. Later. She’d already gotten the message. “Henry, you’re back in time to help us call around and let people know about the memorial service.”
Henry looked Deirdre up and down. “Wow. So you pulled out all the stops. How’d it go at City Hall? Did you get Tyler to spill?”