“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Angie,” Joanna said awkwardly, “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
Angie looked at Joanna with a questioning, side line glance.
“You mean you believe me?”
“Well, of course I believe you,” Joanna replied indignantly. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because, Angie said in a hushed, hesitant way. “The only other person I ever told was my mother and she called me a liar. Said I made the whole thing up. But I didn’t, I swear to God. And that woman whose father is dead, she probably didn’t make it up, either. I wanted her to win in court, that’s all. That’s why I got the lawyer drunk. You do understand that, don’t you, Joanna?”
“Yes,” Joanna said quietly, getting out of Angies car. “I believe I do.”
BURTON KIMBALL came to work that morning out of habit, because he had no idea what else to do with himself. He sat numbly in his office with the door closed, staring without comprehension at the stack of routine correspondence Maxine had left on his desk. No matter how long he looked at the top letter on the pile, he was unable to make sense of a single paragraph. It could just as well have been written in a foreign language.
It was as though the connections in Burton’s brain had been short-circuited by the knowledge that his father was dead, that he had been dead all Burton’s life. The whole time, the forty-odd years Burton had been waiting for his father to show up, longing for him to come home and reclaim his son, Thornton Kimball had been within ten miles of him, lying dead in the bottom of a hole with his skull crushed to pieces by a chunk of smoothed creek-bed rock.
Burton was living through his first morning without the comfort of his cherished childhood illusion. Burton Kimball was an orphan, had always been an orphan, but with the unveiling of that long-skeletonized corpse, his loss and grief was as new as if his father had died yesterday. In Burton Kimball’s heart, that was the truth.
It should have fallen to him, as the closest surviving kin, to plan whatever funeral service Norm Higgins deemed appropriate, but Burton was too emotionally paralyzed. He simply couldn’t cope.
Instead, he turned the whole thorny issue of arrangements over to Linda and fled to his office, where he sat in his chair and hid out.
Other things that should have commanded his attention barely seeped into his consciousness. The fact that Ernie Carpenter had dared question him with regard to Harold Patterson’s murder was driving Linda crazy, but it hardly mattered to Burton.
He was sorry about the death of Harold Patterson, the only “father” he had ever known. But what he was shaken by today was the sudden loss of that second, unknown father. He was amazed by the depth of the grief he felt. How could that old, scarred-over wound hurt so much?
When the phone on his desk rang, Burton jumped as though someone had just lobbed a rock through the window beside his desk. With a suddenly trembling hand, he picked up the receiver.
“Yes?” he said uncertainly, aware of the sudden catch in his throat.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Maxine Smith said softly, “but Rex Rogers is on the phone. He insists on speaking to you personally.”
“Rex Rogers. What does he want?”
“He didn’t say. Do you want me to put him through or take a message?”
“Take a message. I don’t want to talk to any body this morning, especially not Rex Rogers.”
“You want me to hold all your calls?”
“Please.”
A few moments later, Maxine tapped on Burton’s door. “What did he say?” Burton growled.
“He wanted to let you know that they’ll be filing a brief to amend the suit so it goes against Mr. Patterson’s estate. That is, unless Ivy is interested in negotiating a settlement now, without any more courtroom proceedings whatsoever.”
Burton buried his face in his hands. “I should have known,” he said. “That’s Holly through and through, always more than happy to kick some body when they’re down.”
He got up and took his coat off the hanger.
“Where are you going?” Maxine demanded.
“To see my client.”
“I thought your client was dead.”
“I’ve got a new one now,” he answered grimly.
“She may not realize she needs me yet, but she does. How are the gossip mills working around town?”
“Fine, I suppose. Why?”
“Does anyone know where the honeymooners spent the night?”
“I suppose if anyone did, Helen Barco would be the one.”
“I’m going down the hall to wash my face. Get on the horn and see if you can find out where Ivy and her groom spent the night. It’ll be a whole lot easier to track them down if I have some idea where I’m going.”
As usual, the fact that something threatened Ivy -was enough to jar Burton Kimball out of his funk.
The same kind of lifetime habit that had brought him to his office that morning now propelled him to action. If Ivy was threatened, he had to do something about it.
Even as she dialed Helen Barco’s number, Maxine didn’t understand what had gotten into him all of a sudden. Linda Kimball would have under stood, if she had known about it. Her husband was like that where Ivy Patterson was concerned, always had been.
When Isabel Gonzales finished dusting and straightening the living room, she took the mornings paper out to the kitchen, where she sat down long enough to drink a cup of coffee and read the paper.
Isabel had lived a quiet and fairly sheltered life.
This was the first time a violent death of any kind had touched her life so closely. She tried to imagine how she would feel that morning if she were Holly Patterson.
It was bad enough for Holly to come back home after all those years to bring such awful charges against her own father. Isabel had no idea what had gone on during that stormy afternoon session in the library on Tuesday. Isabel herself had ushered Harold Patterson into the room for the scheduled conference while Miss Baxter and Miss Patterson were still upstairs. She supposed they were some of the last people to see the old man alive. That saddened her, made her feel some how responsible.
Mr. Patterson had been sitting there waiting when Holly came into the room, accompanied by Amy Baxter. Isabel had closed the door behind them and had gone on about her business, doing her best not to eavesdrop, but even in that huge house, she hadn’t been able to avoid the sound of raised and angry voices. When you’re used to a house being peaceful and quiet, it’s hard not to notice when people are yelling.
Isabel had prepared a casserole and a salad for dinner, and she had left the house early -promptly at five-thirty-so she and Jaime could go vote. She had no idea how the library battle had ended, and she hadn’t seen Holly make off with Mr. Rogers’ fancy red car either. But she had certainly witnessed the awful aftermath.
Holly’s appetite had been bad before. After the incident with the car, it was almost nonexistent. She had virtually quit eating altogether. Some times she drank something, but the food on the trays remained almost untouched. Isabel worried about it, but she didn’t mention it to either Miss Baxter or Mr. Rogers. As a Mexican-American housekeeper, Isabel Gonzales knew her place. She kept her mouth shut and tried not to listen to the noise of the rocker creaking away in Holly’s room directly over the kitchen.
Someone would have to be crazy to rock that much, Isabel thought, to sit there rocking and staring out the window at nothing but the dump for hour after hour after hour. Of course, Miss Baxter would never use the word “crazy” or even “loco.”
She said Miss Patterson had “emotional problems.” Poor thing.
And then, just as those thoughts ran through her head, Isabel realized she was no longer hearing the rocker.
Moments later, the kitchen door swung open, and a disheveled Holly Patterson stood there in her robe, leaning weakly against the doorjamb. “I want some more coffee,” she said.