“Did you kill Maxie Connolly?”
Cromwell ignored the question. “I loved her once. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t love at all. But she had me under her spell. I lived and breathed her. When I had her I wanted her again while I was still inside her. She was magical that way. And the silly part is, she really, desperately loved me, too. Can you imagine a less likely pair?”
“But you were engaged to Martha.”
“I was, but it didn’t matter. I couldn’t keep away from Maxie. I wrote these silly love letters to her. They were increasingly desperate. I was trying to explain to her how I couldn’t give her up, nor could I break my promise to Martha. And in one letter, the one Wiethop found in his cab, I said some awful and foul things about Martha. I was just so lust-drunk and foolish. I had just never had a woman like Maxie. I was such an idiot. Once Maxie had the letter, she threatened me that if I didn’t find a way to leave Martha on my own, she would show the letter to her and do it for me.”
“You broke it off.”
Cromwell nodded. “God, Jesse, you do understand. What else could I do? Maxie’s threat was like a cold slap in the face, and I suddenly saw what I had done and with whom I’d gotten involved. I broke it off immediately after Maxie made the threat. I didn’t care then if she showed the letter to Martha. It was better, I thought, than getting in any deeper with Maxie. But Maxie said she couldn’t go through with it and that she was so sorry.” He paused, drank directly from the bottle. “She said she was desperate, too. That she never thought she could have a smart man, a man with manners and class.” He laughed joylessly at himself.
“But it was too late,” Jesse said.
“Exactly. I suppose I never stopped lusting after her. I always dreamed about sleeping with her again, but she disgusted me as a human being. She was so coarse. When I wouldn’t have her back, she went wild, trying to hurt me and punish herself by sleeping around with almost anyone. She would call me and tell me about them and the things they would do. It was so low of her, but that sort of thing was all she knew. It was the only weapon she had and she used it. And even then, I...” Cromwell drifted off, lost in the memories of the woman he’d murdered.
“So when Maxie came back for Ginny’s funeral, what? Did she try to blackmail you?”
Cromwell shook his head. “No, she offered to return the letters if I would only see her and be with her. She claimed that she had never stopped loving me. That she would do anything to make up for the mistake she had made twenty-five years before. So I agreed. We met at a spot up in the Bluffs that used to be our rendezvous. I made her believe we were going to have one last tryst and then I snapped her neck like a twig. I drove her farther down the Bluffs and tossed her over.”
“But you took her panties. Why?”
Cromwell stared at Jesse as if he were speaking Arabic. “Haven’t you heard a word I said?”
Jesse moved on. “Did she have the letters with her?”
“Yes. I thought so.”
“Then why did you kill her?” Jesse said. “You didn’t have to kill her.”
“But I did.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t chance Maxie talking, not after all that Martha had risked to buy the paper. She had risked everything for me. I couldn’t let scandal and cancer eat up her last few months of life.”
“Is that what you tell yourself, Stu? Does it help you sleep at night?”
Cromwell’s face reddened, his voice strained. “What are you talking about? Of course that’s why I killed Maxie. I had to.”
“No you didn’t. You had all the letters. At least you thought you did. Martha was in no state to care one way or the other. No, Stu, sorry,” Jesse said. “I don’t buy it.”
The newspaperman bowed his head. “She hurt me, Jesse, in the most profound way I have ever been hurt. Maxie took from me the only obsession I ever had. She ruined that and for twenty-five years I bore what she did to me in my guts like a slow-leaking balloon full of acid. There were times that I thought it would eat me alive. I had to end the pain.”
“How’s that working for you, Stu?”
“I’m ready now.”
Jesse cuffed Cromwell and walked him out. When Peter Perkins got to the porch, Jesse recited the Miranda warning and told Perkins to take Cromwell to the station and book him.
“You coming, Jesse?” Perkins asked.
“In a little while.”
Jesse stood on the porch and watched Perkins load Cromwell into the backseat of the cruiser. The air, which earlier implied the scent of flowers, had turned a nasty shade of raw, smelling now only of chill and the sea. The late-day sun had disappeared behind a sickly gray veil of clouds, and the bare trees on the Parmenter property twisted in the gusts that had kicked up hard and mean. February had come back home to roost. Stepping down onto the granite path, Jesse wondered why victories were always short-lived and why the taste of a win was never quite as sweet as the bitterness of losing. Someday, he would have to ask the devil.
Acknowledgments
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Chris Pepe, Ivan Held, David Hale Smith, Helen Brann, and the Estate of Robert B. Parker. Of course none of this would have been possible without Mr. Parker’s creation of the Jesse Stone novels. A big thanks to Michael Barson.
Thanks to Tom Schreck and Ace Atkins.
As always, my deepest love and appreciation goes to my wife and children. Without Rosanne, Kaitlin, and Dylan, none of this would have happened nor would it have meant a thing.