Leigh winces as the thought occurs to her.
“Daddy will bury him, won’t he?”
I look at the scores of books neatly lined up on Rainey’s bookshelves. With all the wisdom they supposedly contain, they can’t answer a single question on this case.
“I’m sure he will,” I say, watching for her reaction. My mind has run wild with theories that I can’t begin to confirm.
“It has occurred to me that possibly Chet knew about your father’s involvement and gave him a promise he realized he couldn’t deliver.”
Leigh, who has been rubbing Rainey’s hardwood floor with her tennis shoes like a child, jerks her head up with instant understanding.
“You think Mr. Bracken knew Daddy killed Art but had told him that he could get me off?”
Mr. Bracken again, I note. Chet, who was famous for getting to know his clients better than they knew them selves, never warmed up to Leigh.
“Possibly.”
Leigh’s face becomes stiff with fear. “Why wouldn’t Mr. Bracken tell somebody that Daddy had killed Art?”
Her eyes are enormous. It is as if she realizes for the first time her situation.
“Shame,” I suggest.
“If your father told Chet he was guilty in the context of an attorney-client relationship, Chet should never have agreed to represent you, because he was ethically fore closed from using information that could have exonerated you. But his ego was so enormous by this time, he thought he could get anyone off. He didn’t count on his cancer flaring up again. Don’t you see? Nothing can prevent me from arguing your father is a suspect.”
Leigh takes a deep breath, as if she needs help to absorb what I am saying.
“Maybe if Daddy really did kill Art,” she ponders, “he’ll confess now.”
I write the word “denial” on my pad. If Shane is like most people, he will shut his eyes and hope that a jury could not possibly bring back a conviction. After all, Leigh is innocent, and the case is circumstantial. He doesn’t realize that accusing someone is half the battle.
Regardless of the presumption of innocence, juries start off every trial believing that a prosecutor wouldn’t have charged someone who is innocent. However, if Norman is the Christian he says he is, guilt will turn him inside out. Even if he can rationalize killing Art, he could never let his daughter go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit. And yet, as a way to punish Leigh, perhaps he could. She had turned away from the church, had let herself be debased by lust.
“Don’t count on it,” I say, wondering if it’s worth confronting him again.
“Preachers are more comfortable judging than being judged.”
Though, as I say this, I have the fantasy that the moment the jury comes back with a guilty verdict, he will stand up and confess that he killed Art. If Leigh is ac quitted, he keeps his mouth shut. If Chet went to his grave with that secret, so could Shane.
Leigh nods sadly, as if this quip contained pearls of wisdom. She seems dazed by the day’s events. Join the club, I feel like telling her. Suddenly, Jessie St. vrain and her body mike float into my brain out of nowhere.
“Maybe you should talk to your father, after all. I think I know where I can get a microphone and tape recorder this afternoon you can conceal under your clothes.”
Leigh visibly flinches.
“I couldn’t tape my own father,” she pleads.
“It wouldn’t be right.”
I think of Jessie cooling her heels at the Excelsior.
She’s probably at the bar taping a conversation with some guy right now.
“We wouldn’t necessarily have to use it in court,” I explain, “but if he says something that implicates himself or Chet, I could confront him with it before the trial. This way he’d be more likely to confess what happened.”
Leigh leans back in her chair and closes her eyes. I wonder if she is praying. Finally, she says, looking down at her lap, “I need to pick up some clothes there anyway.”
I suppress a smile. Only a woman would think of her wardrobe when she was on trial for murder.
“We don’t want to tip him off,” I say, looking for Rainey’s phone book to call the Excelsior.
“You might want to begin by asking him why Chet killed himself. Your father might say something about him before he would implicate himself. Don’t accuse your father, but give him the opportunity to talk. You may not get anything, but it’s worth trying.”
Leigh spreads her hands in a gesture of helplessness.
“I’m not going to know what to do.”
As I dial the Excelsior’s number, I smile and say, “I know just the person to teach you.”
Twenty minutes later, in Jessie’s hotel room, I intro duce the two women to each other. If they were from opposite sides of the planet, they couldn’t be more different. In her borrowed tight sweats and sunglasses, Leigh, with her voluptuous body and striking ebony hair, looks like a Hollywood starlet not trying very hard to appear incognito; Jessie, in baggy jeans and a newly purchased Razorback sweatshirt, grins like a twelve year-old boy playing hooky from school. After they have sized up each other like rivals for the lead in a high school play, Jessie winks at me.
“Get out of here for a few minutes, Gideon, while I show Leigh how to wear this thing.” She opens her hand and shows me the equipment. I marvel at the tiny microphone.
“The way you’re built,” she says to Leigh admiringly, patting her own flat bosom, “you could hide an entire recording studio in there.”
Leigh giggles and turns crimson. As far as I am aware, Jessie knows nothing about the video Leigh made. Not even for an instant can I imagine Leigh taking off her clothes before a camera. Her sensuality is essentially unconscious and must be coaxed. Art, I think, not for the first time, must have been quite a guy.
“I’ll go down to the lobby and call my office.”
“You do that,” Jessie says, escorting me to the door.
“We’ll be fine.”
Standing alone in front of the elevators, I feel slightly cheated and wonder again about Jessie’s sexuality. For all I really know, she could be a man. Damn. If I lived in California, I’d be too confused to get out of bed.
From the lobby I call Julia and am told a half-dozen re porters have called. So has Shane Norman. Good.
Shane, my man, I think, we are about to set the hook for you.
“Have you heard the rumor going around,” Julia says, not lowering her voice at all, “that you shot Chet Bracken in your front yard?”
I rub my head. I might as well hire a sound truck and broadcast it all over Blackwell County or simply let Julia ride around in the back of a pickup and talk in a normal voice.
“I’ve heard it,” I whisper. At the next phone, with his back to me, is a guy in a dark suit and sunglasses who is either almost asleep or doing more listening than talking.
“Do you believe it?” I ask sarcastically.
This is the wrong question to ask Julia.
“I dunno,” she booms in my ear.
“What I can’t figure is why you’d pick your front yard. I know you’re the kind of guy who shits in his own nest, but that’s ridiculous.”
“Thanks for that vote of confidence,” I say, exhausted by this conversation.
“Is Dan in his office?”
“Naw, he’s off trying a million-dollar lawsuit,” Julia says, snorting at her little joke.
“Of course he’s here.
He’s too fat to go anywhere. Speaking of heavyweights, there’s this enormous Oriental man wearing a black shroud who insists on waiting for you. I can barely understand him. He’s sitting here crying his eyes out. Poor thing.”
The motel manager. I tell Julia to put him in the empty office across the hall and have him pick up the phone.
“Mr. Page, I’m so sad. So sad. My wife she not coming back. Please help me. I can’t wait no more.”
I don’t even know this guy’s name.
“You’ll be seeing my assistant, Mr. Bailey. He’ll take care of you.” I tell him how to switch me back to Julia.
Julia comes on the line and snaps, “You’ve got to help this poor man. I mean it.”