I awake to my doorbell ringing at four in the morning.
Though my head is pounding and my stomach quivering with last night’s liquor, I am relieved. Knowing it is Sarah, I get up and stumble to the door in my under wear. Brave watchdog that he is, Woogie follows me, barking deliriously. Thank God I didn’t bring what’sher-face home with me. For the life of me, I can’t re member her name. I haven’t drunk that much in years.
So what if Sarah has come home out of guilt? What’s wrong with that? How can we be moral without feeling bad when we screw up? I can feel myself smiling, understanding how the father of the prodigal son felt. I won’t say a word just tell her I’m glad she’s home. If she wants to rant and rave a little, I’ll endure it. For a while.
I flip the porch-light switch by the door and open it to find Leigh Wallace. What the hell is going on? I jump behind the door. In these thin boxer shorts I might as well be standing in the nude. I yell, “Come on in.
I’m going to get some clothes on.” Why in the world didn’t she at least call? Don’t people think I own a telephone?
“I’m sorry about this,” she calls after me, “but I couldn’t stay at my parents’ home any longer.”
It is chilly in the house. I flip on some lights and hit the thermostat. I’ll make coffee when I get some clothes on. When I reappear, dressed in jeans and a sweater, I find her in my kitchen by the pantry, presumably looking for coffee.
“I hope I haven’t awakened your daughter,” she says, staring at me as if I were a ghost. Well, she doesn’t look so great either. Swallowed by shapeless gray sweats and tennis shoes, she seems smaller than I remembered. Her face, devoid of makeup and lipstick, is a little unnerving in its austerity. I have never seen her when she didn’t look perfect.
“She spent the night out,” I say, unable to summon the energy to explain. My mind isn’t quite functioning yet. I find a jar of Taster’s Choice and fill a pan with water.
“Why don’t you have a seat?”
She goes to the kitchen table and sits, apparently convinced I can boil water without her assistance. How odd this is, I think. I wonder if her father knows she is gone.
Our daughters are both in trouble, though Sarah obviously doesn’t think of it like that. Woogie goes to Leigh and jumps up against her legs. A substitute sister. Acceptance is his long suit. Smiling, she reaches down and pets him as if he were some magnificent breed of animal.
“I haven’t been telling you the truth.”
Better late than never, I think. With only five days until the trial starts, it’s nice to think I might know what the hell is going on. Aware that I stink worse than the bottom of a trash can filled with whiskey bottles and cigarette butts, I putter around the sink. If I get too close, she may pass out from the fumes. Woogie smells better than I do.
“So what is the truth?” I ask, prompting her when she doesn’t speak. This is a strange place and time for a murder confession, but maybe not so un usual in this case. Confessing to her father may be just too difficult. I can’t imagine Sarah confessing to me.
Tears begin to slide down her face.
“I wasn’t up at the church in the middle of the morning like I said,” she says, sniffling, and dabs at her eyes with a wadded-up tissue she is holding in her right fist. Woogie nestles against her feet as if he can sense her distress.
Tell me something I don’t know, I think. Still, she has got to start somewhere. My hand is trembling from too much alcohol as I measure out a teaspoon.
“Want some Coffee-mate and/or sugar?” I ask, trying to appear relaxed Finally getting to the bottom of this case has speeded up my heart. After last night, I need all the jump-starts I can get.
She shakes her head and again bends down to pet Woogie. What would we do without animals to comfort us? I pour boiling water from the pan and deliver her coffee to her and then cross back to the sink to pour my own. A little of me goes a long way this morning.
When she doesn’t speak, I prompt her, “As you may realize this isn’t much of a surprise.”
She sips at her coffee and makes a face. Probably too strong. Well, too bad. I would have met her at an I-Hop if she wanted.
“Do you remember asking me if I had been doing something I was embarrassed about?”
I nod, tasting my coffee. God, this stuff could power a tractor-trailer rig.
“Yeah,” I say, as offhandedly as I can. This will be hard enough for her to admit without me starting to pant in front of her.
“The morning of his death. Art had persuaded me to make a video,” she says bitterly, “without any clothes on.” She studies her mug. It is one of those mugs they send you for pledging money to Public Radio. Embarrassed for her, I look away and sip my coffee. She fills the growing silence.
“He said he wanted me to dance for him.” With these words she begins to cry, but it is controlled, as if she has promised herself to get it over with as quickly as possible.
I wait as long as I can to see if she will reveal more without my having to humiliate her by asking questions.
The things women do for men! I think of the performance of those female impersonators. True, they were paid, but I had the impression they would have danced for nothing.
“You must have loved him a lot to do that for him,” I say, coaxing her to continue.
Fiercely, she says, “You have no idea! I can’t believe I was so stupid.”
Woogie, now her protector, glances up from her feet at me as if to say that I should not even look as if I intend to hurt this woman. I have no desire to add to her already considerable distress, but my job is to represent her, not act as her therapist.
“It must have taken a lot of trust,” I sympathize. Art must have been quite the salesman.
As wretched as I feel, I notice I am becoming slightly horny. She must have looked magnificent. What was Art going to do with it? If he had no qualms about serving as a middleman, did he intend to market his own wife’s private video? Surely not. Yet people have done worse things. If Leigh killed him over this, a jury might be understanding. Talk about justifiable homicide.
Leigh wipes her eyes.
“When we first got married, I was so repressed that I wouldn’t let him see me naked.
We made love in the dark for the first month.”
God only knows the guilt she must be feeling. I sip my coffee. It doesn’t seem so strong anymore. No knowing what Shane had told his daughters about the human body. For two thousand years preachers have said that lust is evil. With my experience so far, a good case can be made in their favor. What a battle was being waged! Did Shane, I wonder, have any idea?
“You must have had a pretty strict upbringing.”
Leigh smiles wanly.
“My sisters had it worse.” Her own coffee is untouched. Caffeine is probably the last thing she needs.
“They never even saw a PG movie until they turned eighteen. By the time I was their age, I had seen a couple. But I never was allowed to watch MTV until I was married, and the first time I saw it I was terribly embarrassed.”
I try to imagine the journey she has made since she met Art her last semester in college. Her sisters re belled, so why shouldn’t she? How difficult it must be to try to keep your child from being exposed to lust in an age when toothpaste and sex are marketed together.
I think of that ad with the woman running her tongue back and forth over her teeth. Umnumn, good. So much for “Brusha, brusha, brusha. New Ipana toothpaste.” To make sure I understand, I ask, “Was it Art who filmed you?”
Leigh, even now, blushes.
“I wouldn’t have let some body else do it. What I wanted to tell you is that the film disappeared during the time I went back up to the church and then came home and discovered Art’s body.
I looked for it, but I couldn’t find it.”
Her voice has taken on a slightly hesitant tone as if she is doubtful I will believe her. I don’t know what to believe. The implication is that Art’s killer has the tape.
But how could he or she know Leigh had performed a nude dance on tape unless he or she was there? I doubt if the windows were open while this was going on.
“Art could have moved the tape after you left, which means it might still be in the house and the police never found it.”
She nods.
“It’s possible, but I was only gone forty-five minutes.”
I am buying into this story, I realize. It may be a total crock, designed at the eleventh hour.
“Why have you waited until now to tell this?”
Leigh begins to cry again.
“If this comes out, it will kill my father,” she says, her lower lip trembling.
Trying to think, I choke down some coffee. Is it possible Art called Shane back and told him what he had done with his daughter, and Shane came to the house and killed him? Surely this has crossed her mind.
“It could have been your father. He might have called back, and Art, in anger or hubris, might have told him.”
Her features collapse, and it dawns on me that she believes her father murdered her husband.
“Art treated Daddy with such contempt!”
If this is what happened, I have to take her down this path as far as possible, so she can’t talk herself out of it later.
“Had they argued?” I ask, as if I were talking to her for the first time. Perhaps, in a sense, I am.
Leigh brushes her hair from her face. She has it pulled back in a ponytail, but some of it has begun to escape. If she has gotten any sleep tonight, I can’t tell it by the way she looks. Her normally beautiful skin looks puffy and loose under her eyes. Her voice becomes anguished.
“Art argued with Daddy in a way nobody else dared. Just the week before he died, he told Daddy that anyone who believed the earth was only six thousand years old was an utter fool. That the scientific evidence against the Bible being literal truth was overwhelming.
He said the New Testament merely represents the efforts of some of the followers of Jesus to convince others that He was the son of God, and is no more hard evidence of the Resurrection than a man preaching on a street corner.”
I had prepared myself for much more, but Leigh has spoken in such hushed tones I realize that even this little snit of Art’s must have seemed like someone daring to urinate on a shrine. Art had done no more, as far as I can tell, than espouse, albeit in a forceful way, the view of mainline Christianity. Yet, perhaps to Shane, and obviously to his daughter, he sounded like the antiChrist. Doubtless, Shane had heard much harsher attacks on his brand of Christianity even from within the Bible Belt itself. Still, his daughter’s soul was at stake.
“How did you react?” I ask.
“I take it you were there.”
Leigh’s face flushes, the memory of it too much.
“Daddy had stopped by the house to ask me to come to church to hear one of our missionaries. Art was so rude I thought I was going to faint” Poor Leigh. Rudeness, not false dogma, is the ultimate sin in the South.
“Did you agree with Art?” I ask.
Leigh betrays her feelings by stammering, “Art … knew so much. He read all the time.”
It is Leigh who has betrayed her father. Could his murder of her husband have been directed at her rather than having been on her behalf? I have given up trying to understand my own motives and assume everything I do is selfish these days. I want Sarah back, not for her sake but for my own. The fact is, she seems happier than she has for months. Just because fundamentalism may not serve her for a lifetime doesn’t mean it isn’t meeting some need right now.
“I can understand if Art was trying to persuade you to believe something a little different,” I say gently, “than what you were raised with. It happens to all of us.”
Leigh’s face is full of sorrow.
“Daddy realizes I’m losing my faith, and it is just about to kill him.”
The irony is that my own daughter has traveled in the opposite direction. I tap my empty cup on the kitchen table I’ve loved so well since Rosa and I bought it at an antique sale in Hot Springs. It is oak, weighs a ton, and will outlast us all.
Leigh, exhausted now or perhaps just sad, rests her head on her knuckles. Shane has her body back but not her mind. Yet, if she is acquitted, she may never leave again. After all, the maiden voyage was a disaster. This is one woman I would like to know in five years. I feel a wave of tenderness as I look down on her tousled hair.
From this angle she reminds me so much of Sarah. But I don’t dare comfort her. Even as smelly and gross as I am now, anything I do could be misinterpreted. And as lonely as I feel, I would be quick to misinterpret a gesture from her. Once I slept with a key witness in a big case and almost screwed it up royally. This one is hard enough without doing that. I smile at my own ego. Any shudder I might produce in a woman right now would be from horror, not ecstasy.
“You need to go home,” I say gently, “and try to get some sleep.”
She raises her head and nods.
“Daddy’s probably called the police.”
The irony is too great. In a moment of anger I thought about calling the cops, too, and claiming Sarah had been kidnapped. What a disaster that would have turned out to be. Sarah never would have forgiven me.
Briefly, I tell Leigh what has happened. She listens sympathetically. Sarah is in a place emotionally Leigh may never occupy again, and I sense in some way she envies her.
“You’ve got to come down to Chet’s office today so we can prepare your testimony for Thursday.”
She bites her lip.
“Can I stay here the rest of the night?” she asks, sounding like a little girl.
“I don’t want to go home. I feel too weird now being under the same roof with him.”
I look at my watch. It is close to four-thirty.
“You have to promise to call first thing in the morning and tell your parents where you are.”
For the first time she yawns, her chest swelling under the gray sweatshirt.
“I promise I won’t be any trouble.”
I stand and lead her to Sarah’s room.
“My daughter’s room is going to be a mess,” I apologize, forgetting how bare she has left it. When I hit the light switch, my emotions almost get the better of me and I say in a soft voice, “Or used to be.”
I go find her a clean towel and washcloth and inspect the bathroom. It is passable. It was Sarah’s turn to clean it this weekend. Fortunately, she usually does a little better job than I do, and if Leigh doesn’t inspect it too closely, it will do. Standing in front of my mirror, I am repulsed by what I see. If my eyes had any more red in them, I could donate them to the blood bank. As I pick up the only hair I see on the sink, I can imagine Pearl Norman on her hands and knees scrubbing out the commode in her own home until it gleamed with an alabaster sheen. Her house was spotless, and I realize that Pearl reminds me of my mother, who lived in an age when it was okay if all a woman knew how to do was cook and clean house and take care of her husband and children. At least it was permissible until her husband died. I go to say goodnight, and Leigh thanks me for letting her stay.
“We have to talk to Chet today,” I re mind her.
She ducks her head.
“I can’t tell people,” she wails, “that I let myself be filmed dancing without any clothes on. I just can’t do that to my father.”
I try to contain my frustration by glancing around my daughter’s bare room. It is as if I were trying to rent it out. How strange! Leigh is facing life in prison for a crime her father may have committed, and once again she is worried about his reaction. My daughter runs away, and I haven’t done anything.
“We’ll make the jury understand,” I tell her gently, “the kind of influence Art had over you. By the time Chet is through with his opening statement they’ll hate Art as much as your father did.”
Leigh sits down on Sarah’s bed, twisting her hands in her lap.
“I can’t implicate my father!” She begins to cry.
“It’s my fault all this happened!”
I lean against the doorjamb of Sarah’s room and marvel at the guilt on this girl’s shoulders. Our battle isn’t going to be with the jury; it will be with her.
“You won’t be implicating your father,” I say, disingenuously.
“Only he can do that. You’ll just be telling the truth.”
For the first time the words come tumbling out: “I think Daddy killed Art!” she cries, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“I don’t think he meant to, but I think he did it!”
Despite the stench coming from me, I go sit down by her on the bed and put my arm around her shoulders as she sobs against me in gasps that rack her whole body.
How can I not believe her? If this were Sarah, I wouldn’t have a choice, and I have not smothered her nearly as much as this girl has been. Would Sarah risk her life and lie to protect me? I’d be lucky to escape being burned at the stake.
“You know your father wouldn’t want you,” I say, patting her shoulder, “to run any risk of being convicted.” I say it, but not convincingly at all. Despite all the alleged emphasis on the re deeming power of love emanating from within the walls of Christian Life, I am no longer certain that punishment isn’t Shane’s agenda. In his heart perhaps he knew even before she did that Leigh was past the point of no return, and this was his way of keeping her. What did Chet say that Christian Life would have ten people there on visiting day for her?
Leigh wipes her nose on the sleeve of her warm-up but doesn’t speak. I would feel better if she got angry.
I get up and say, “We’ll talk about it later. You need to try to get some rest.”
“Thank you,” she answers, and I leave her sitting in Sarah’s room.
I slip off my pants and get into bed, trying not to think about what she is sleeping in. How can I think of sex at a time like this? I ought to be put to sleep. I lie awake wondering if I am being conned. What happened to the video? Was there one? Maybe we shouldn’t allow her on the witness stand. Up to now, I thought we ought to pick the most conservative jury possible, but how is a Bible thumper going to relate to a woman who dances nude an hour or so before her husband is murdered?
Somebody ought to be punished, and it’s too late to teach her husband a lesson. Did Shane Norman do this?
There is no evidence that he did anything except have a good reason to hate his son-in-law. Chet has got to confirm Shane’s alibi today, or I will. I feel the bed sag slightly, but it is just Woogie, probably confused about the night’s events.
“Welcome to the club,” I say, reaching down to pet him as he curls up beside me.
“Some body’s in Sarah’s bed, but it’s not her, is it, boy?”
For a response, he burrows against me. I’m not much of a substitute. If Leigh stayed another night, he’d be in there with her. Damn. I wonder if I’d try to join him.
Why can’t I think of her like a daughter? For the same reason Art Wallace couldn’t, I guess. Incredibly, when the bed moved, I hoped it was Leigh. Sure. What could be more attractive than a whiskey-breathed, smokestenched, middleaged sad sack? As my old track coach at Subiaco used to say, “Page, if you had a brain, you’d be dangerous.” Still, it is nice to know my self-esteem is still intact. How boring life would be if I couldn’t make a fool of myself.
At six my alarm blasts me out of a sound sleep. How could I have even closed my eyes with all that caffeine?
I stumble into the hall to go to the bathroom and notice Sarah’s door is open. I can’t resist the urge to peek but it is too dark to see anything. After I piss, I go into the kitchen and find a note by the coffee pot from Leigh telling me that she will call my office later. I wait until seven and then call Chet and tell him about my over night visitor.
“You’ve got to determine today if Shane could have killed Wallace!” I almost yell at him.
“We’re almost out of time!”
He responds calmly.
“Come on out for breakfast,” he invites me, his voice strong.
“Wynona would love to cook for you.”
“Okay,” I answer. I hang up, nonplussed by his manner How can he be so calm? He has screwed this case up, and all he can think about is breakfast. It must be the medication.
Woogie wanders into the bathroom while I am shaving and looks up at me as if to ask, “Where’s Sarah?”
The few nights she has spent the night out in the past he has wandered from room to room obviously looking for her. This morning has been no exception.
“She’ll be back soon,” I say, without conviction. How could I have slapped her? We’ll both remember it the rest of our lives. I had no business doing that. The phone rings, jar ring me out of my growing self-pity.
“Have you heard from her yet?” Rainey asks, her voice concerned yet determinedly upbeat.
I beat down the feeling that she is ultimately responsible for Sarah’s departure, confident that Sarah is likely to call her before she calls me. It is odd to be estranged from the woman who has meant so much to me. If we had gotten married instead of backing away each time at the last moment, maybe none of this would be happening She wouldn’t have all this time for another “family” if she had areal one. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Christian Life is what people do if there’s nothing good on TV. As bitter as I feel, I man age to avoid delivering myself of this sentiment. Like the comments of a rejected boyfriend, it would be taken as so many sour grapes.
“Not yet,” I say evenly, and tell her I’m going out to Chet’s.
From her tone it is clear that Rainey is hurting for me. Missing from her voice is the accusatory, sanctimonious tone from last night’s conversation.
“She’ll call you today,” she assures me, though she doesn’t sound as confident as I would like.
Still wary of her, I resist the temptation to tell her that Leigh was over here and spilled her guts. Nothing I can say right now would convince Rainey that Shane is involved in his son-in-law’s murder.
“You seem more understanding today,” I say hopefully.
“I want Sarah to come home for you,” she says, “but please realize that if you try to make the jury think Shane killed his son-in-law when you really don’t have any proof he did, I’ll never feel the same about you again.”
So much for biting my tongue.
“I have a job to do!”
I screech into the phone.
“You know that! And since when have you been worried about your feelings for me? Ever since you started going to Christian Life, you haven’t spent five minutes thinking about me, and you know it.”
“That’s not true,” Rainey responds, her voice no longer under control as it was.
“It’s been hard for me.
I’ve loved you, and I know my involvement with Christian Life has hurt our relationship. I know what things cost. There have been times when I wish I could just back things up to a certain point and start over again.
But finding that tumor in my breast changed my life.
Either the world is a random series of events held together and perpetuated by blind instinct, or it is a meaningful place created by a loving God who cares in finitely for us and who commands us to love each other.
My response is the latter, and because it is, I can’t pre tend I’m not affected by your decisions about people important to me, no matter how you choose to justify them.”
Rainey is a bit breathless by the time she has finished She isn’t much for speeches. I am moved by what I have heard. I’ve simplified her just as I have simplified Sarah. But my choices aren’t so easy.
“What if Leigh is innocent and she goes to prison the rest of her life, and I could have done something to prevent it?
How do I live with that?”
“How do you know she is innocent?” Rainey asks, her voice betraying her frustration for the first time.
“How do you know there is a loving God?” I shout into the phone, and hang up, angry and frustrated. Lawyers and preachers aren’t that much different. We are both advocates for our clients. We marshal all the evidence, facts, theories, and arguments, and do our best to convince juries and congregations. After we sit down, you either believe or you don’t. But if I had told Rainey that, she would have said it was blasphemy.
As I pull into Chet’s yard, Wynona and Trey are coming out the door.
“How are you, Mr. Page?” Trey calls from the porch. It is easy to forget this individual’s favorite snack is probably Animal Crackers. Dressed in jeans, a lightweight nylon jacket, and high-top tennis shoes, he looks like an advertisement for the AllAmerican kid. Not for the first time I wonder what it would have been like to have had a son. Now that I’m making a botch of Sarah, I doubt it would have been any different.
“Fine,” I tell him, inspecting his mother, who smiles cheerfully in the chilly spring air. It must be at least ten degrees cooler once you get away from concrete and office buildings. I want to tell him that I haven’t been saved yet, surprising myself by the amount of irritation I am feeling. It might be lack of sleep, but it could be a lot of things this morning.
Wynona, in the bib overalls that must be her uniform, tells me, “I’ll be back to cook up some breakfast for you and Chet after I take him to the bus stop. He got up too late to walk.”
Trey grins, pleased at his mischief. It’s not much, but it’s probably all he can get away with, having Wynona as his mother.
“You don’t have to go to any trouble,” I say politely, but the truth is that I am starving. I’ve burned up some calories worrying, not a diet I’d recommend.
Trey marches up to me and sticks out his hand. This kid, I decide, through no fault of his own, could get on my nerves. Like the first time I was out here, his grip is firm, and he looks me in the eyes as if he is deciding whether to offer me a partnership in his law firm. When I was his age I was so shy I wouldn’t answer to my own name.
“Hold your head up, son,” my father used to command me, but with little success. Even when I was little I must have sensed he wasn’t quite right in the head, although he was still making a go of his drug store.
“Dad’s out on the back porch. He likes being out side in the morning.”
It is so peaceful, I wonder if Chet will be buried on his property. Is that against the law? Surely not. We are in the country, but modern life has so many laws and regulations I wouldn’t be surprised if there isn’t a statute on this, too.
“I can see why,” I say, more to Wynona than Trey.
“It’s just great out here.”
“Just go on through the house,” Wynona says as she opens the door to the Mercedes.
“Thanks.” I smile, feeling like the amiable flunky. I am trusted with the silver, but I am increasingly weary of my second-banana status. I know more than Chet does about this case. Who am I kidding? I probably know exactly what he wants me to know, no more, no less. In the kitchen Trey’s cereal bowl has already been rinsed. Wynona probably made him do it himself. I wonder if she and Chet still make love. If he’s in pain, he may not even think about it. Rosa and I stopped making love a month before she died.
I pass through the kitchen door and find Chet sitting on the steps that lead off the deck. With his back to me, he looks like a teenager, but as he turns around, he seemed to have aged since I saw him yesterday. The energy to stay alive seems to be cutting new ruts in his face on a weekly basis. His eyes have the dim look of someone who has insisted on living over a century. He is wearing one of those sleeveless jackets over a blue flannel shirt, jeans, and brown work boots, so I assume he won’t be going into the office today.
“Wynona told me to come on through,” I say, feeling a need to explain my presence in his house. I am less comfortable with this man each time I see him.
He pats a place on the wooden floor by him as if he doesn’t trust his voice to carry.
“Have a seat.”
Though the chairs we sat in last time are in easy reach, I sit down on the step by him and see that he is carving the figure of a woman who bears a remarkable resemblance to Leigh. He holds it up to me, asking nonchalantly “You know who this is?”
“Our client,” I say.
“I wish she were this malleable all the time. That’s an incredible likeness.” The figure reminds me of a stylized totem, yet somehow Chet has captured Leigh the day he first introduced me to her.
All made up, with her hair piled high on her head and jewelry flashing, she looked like a member of the Spanish aristocracy. A far cry from what she was wearing this morning.
Chet grunts and puts the four-inch figure aside. Solemnly he says, “I got Daffy to double-check Shane’s alibi between eleven and eleven-thirty. According to a former secretary who worked in the church office, Shane said he had something to do over at his house and left about quarter to eleven and came back in just before Leigh called, which was about an hour later.
Pearl was off in Benton that day visiting her sister, so unless he has someone else to vouch for him he has some explaining to do.”
I knew it. It is all I can do to keep from thrusting my fist in the air like some demented jock on TV after a touchdown. To hide my feelings, I look toward the woods, hoping, I suppose, to see the rabbit that visited chet’s garden the evening I was here. With spring bursting forth in every direction, the woods seem alive but offer no visible sign of warm-blooded life. It is remarkable to me that Chet, who has no fear of man or beast, is so reluctant to confront the man who has become, in my eyes at least, the primary suspect. Everybody is afraid of somebody. Maybe, it occurs to me, Shane has a lot more on Chet than the other way around. No telling what Chet has confessed to him.
There are a lot of stories about Chet that I’ve pushed aside since I’ve taken this case. A minister is supposed to keep the confidences of his flock, but Chet may be thinking that Shane might not be quite so circumspect if he were doing a stretch in the Arkansas state penitentiary in Cummins. Ministers worth their salt know enough dirt to break up half the marriages in their congregation and send the other half to jail. Chet may not give a rat’s ass what the legal community says about him after his death, but Trey and Wynona are in a different category. Their good opinion is important to him.
“This isn’t much to go on,” I say, squinting in the morning brightness.
“What about his car?”
Chet folds up his knife, which looks surprisingly ordinary to have done so much intricate work.
“Nobody remembers,” he admits.
“It’s been too long.”
My stomach rumbles loudly, either in hunger or in protest against last night’s dinner of alcohol and cheese dip. It needs something hard, as my sister Marty, obese since adolescence, used to say. I hope Wynona cooks some meat.
“Shane could have been working at home in his own house the entire time,” I conclude, wondering if Chet is trying to humor me, since I have been so vehement that Shane is a suspect.
It seems as if we have reversed roles. Why, after all this time, has he finally pinned Norman down? Obviously because of me. But now that I have what I want, I’m not sure I trust it.
Chet pushes himself up from the steps.
“You want some coffee?”
I spring to my feet. He’s the one with cancer.
“I’ll get some for both of us.” Coming through the kitchen earlier, I noticed half a pot. After this morning’s earlier fiasco, I’m glad I don’t have to make it. I thought I had discovered a new energy source. He nods, and I retrace my steps and run into Wynona as I go through the door.
She smiles, her pleasant face growing on me. “Trey tried to get me to let him stay home and listen. He wants to be a lawyer, of course.”
Anticipating my mission, she hands me two coffee cups while I think about her son. More lawyers this country doesn’t need, yet the schools keep flooding the market. Half of us in Blackwell County can probably qualify for food stamps.
“How’s Chet?” I whisper conspiratorially.
“Not so good,” she says, her voice dropping to match my own. Standing next to her, I can detect her scent.
She smells like Palmolive soap.
“He’s living to get through the trial.”
Now is my chance to ask what kind of cancer he has, but before I can, Chet comes through the door.
“Planning my funeral?” he asks, but his voice is gentle, and the way he looks at his wife I can tell there is no malice behind his words.
She bumps up against him, letting him feel her warmth.
“Gideon was saying” she winks at me “that he would like to sing.”
Embarrassed, I try to keep from smiling at the thought, but since they both chuckle, I grin, too. This black humor is contrary to my image of them, but I realize I don’t really know them. When our mother was dying with cancer of the pancreas, my sister and I acted as though she had a stomachache. The doctor surely told her the truth, but, as if it were a shameful odor, we never acknowledged it in her presence. The last time she went into the Baptist Hospital in Memphis (and never came out), we all pretended she was going in for more tests. I let Wynona fill up our cups and begin cooking while I sit down across from Chet at the kitchen table.
Chet reaches out and touches his wife, who responds by bending over and hugging him gently as if he were made of glass. There is a calm sweetness between the two of them that is as real as the smell of frying pork. They have something I don’t have and can’t even imagine. All the scientific evidence in the world can’t destroy the bond between them. Clearly connected to their faith through Christian Life, their love for each other, for this moment at least, transcends pain and memory. The cost seems high to me, but watching Chet’s face as his wife nuzzles him, I can’t say it isn’t worth it.
Our breakfast is conventionally good, and there is plenty of it, though I am really the only one who eats.
Serving us first, Wynona picks at a plate from the stove, while Chet manages only a couple of bites of his eggs and a half a piece of toast. Now is the time to ask him about his cancer, but I lose my nerve. Though he is permitting me to see probably more than anyone ever has, he is essentially a private man, and I am loath to risk upsetting him, now that this case seems to be going somewhere.
We move into the main room of the cabin where we discussed the case for the first time. On the table is a mound of documents, and I am cheered by the impression that he seems to have been working on the case.
Now that Wynona is out of earshot (Chet, I notice, is much more circumspect about talking about the sub stance of the case than I am), it is time to get back to the main issue. I ask bluntly, “Are you willing now to go after Shane?”
Chet pulls a toothpick from his shirt pocket and begins to work at a molar as if I weren’t in the room. If he refuses now, after what he has learned, I have decided I will quit the case. If it leaves him high and dry, that’s too bad. We can’t give Leigh a thorough and ad equate defense without accusing her father. He stares into the fire for what seems an eternity. His voice gloomy, he says, “I want us to confront him first.”
Abruptly, he looks up at me to see if I am gloating.
I pretend to have no reaction, though inside I am about to explode with anticipation. For the first time I feel as if we have areal defense. Before I can respond, I hear the telephone ringing in the kitchen, and Wynona brings Chet a red cordless telephone, saying, “It’s Shane. He says Leigh must have left the house early this morning and hasn’t come back.”
Chet looks as if he has seen a ghost. It is as if Shane had had the place bugged. Chet places his hand over the receiver and waits until Wynona has left the room.
“I’m going to let you talk to him,” he whispers. “Tell him we’re coming to talk to him this afternoon.” I nod, and he says into the receiver, “Good morning. Gideon is here and can answer some of your questions about your daughter.”
I take the phone and awkwardly explain to Shane, omitting the reasons, that his daughter was my house guest for a couple of hours early this morning.
“She wanted to talk about her case, but as you know I can’t discuss that with you,” I say, watching Chet’s face for his reaction.
He nods, but Shane is furious that I didn’t call him immediately to tell him she was all right.
“Her mother and I have been worried sick since seven when we discovered she was gone.”
I know the feeling. I don’t mention my own daughter’s absence for fear of what they will think.
“I assumed she was going home after she left my house,” I explain, not quite truthfully, and do not add that she has become convinced she has been living with the murderer of her husband. I know that Shane is actually angry because I won’t divulge the contents of my conversation with his daughter. I would be, too. I tell him we will be out at four this afternoon to talk about the case with him.
Shane demands to speak to Chet again, and from the expression on Chet’s face, it is obvious that he is receiving a lecture about his choice of a sidekick for this case. As I listen to Chet’s attempt to pacify him, it hits me even harder that Shane considers himself Chet’s client. Chet makes no mention of Leigh’s story about the nude video, which comes as a relief. I don’t know how valuable this information is or even whether it is true, but since Chet doesn’t share it with Shane, at least his loyalties now seem to be clear, which is no small accomplishment
Chet hangs up the phone with a sour expression on his face. I can’t tell whether it is a result of the conversation or of pain. The call has distracted him. I know he is thinking he is betraying the man who saved his life.
He says, “I wish she had told you where she was going.”
I look down at my pad. I have written: Leigh?
“I have the note at home saying she would call. She didn’t say she was going home.” But I had assumed it. Where else would she go? Yet, a woman like Leigh must have had many friends before she and Art quit being so involved at Christian Life. Hell, they still went once a week even up to his death.
“She’ll call.”
But when I check with my office at nine and then ten only to find she hasn’t tried to contact either of us, Chet and I grind to a halt. We can only do so much preparation without Leigh. He tells me to make sure I call Jessie St. vrain today and get her on a plane. Shane isn’t going to be the only suspect in the case. We probably won’t be able to get her testimony in, but if we can, it will give the jury something else to think about. I have an uncontested divorce at eleven, so I leave promising to call him as soon as I hear from Leigh, and he does the same.
“I’ll get a subpoena for the secretary,” I say, standing up.
“What’s her name?”
Chet answers with a sigh, “I already did.”
I suppress a smile. I know he’s serious now.
“How do you want to handle this afternoon?” I ask, afraid he will tell me at the last minute he doesn’t want me present
He remains seated, staring into the fire.
“Let me do the talking. If he’s got something we don’t know about,” he says hoarsely, “I want him to have the opportunity to tell me.”
I touch his arm.
“I know this is tough for you.”
He doesn’t answer, and I go into the kitchen to thank Wynona for breakfast. Chet seems very tired already, leaving me to wonder how he will get through two days of trial. Adrenaline will take you just so far in trying a case. You need stamina to concentrate for two days of trial. The look on Wynona’s face tells me that I will need to be ready. I wonder what Wynona will think of her husband when she finds out he intends to accuse Shane of murder. I know what the women in my life think.