“We can talk here.”
“We can talk on the road, too. I don’t see why…”
“I don’t like to talk and drive at the same time.”
Toots followed them in.
Several cars parked in the lot. Employees, Toots guessed. A yellow pickup truck with a golden retriever sitting behind the wheel. Man in coveralls walking diagonally across the lot toward the Motor Vehicles Bureau across the street from the arena.
Leona stopped the car.
Toots swung around the lot, drove all the way around the arena, and then parked facing the Jag, some three rows away from it. Risky, maybe, but she wanted to catch every word of this on tape, and if she pulled too close behind them, she might have attracted even more attention. A car parked in plain sight wouldn’t be a suspicious car. She hoped.
“All right, let’s talk.” The doctor’s voice again. “You said you wanted to talk, so let’s…”
And a sudden silence.
Toots turned toward the recorder, thinking there’d been some kind of failure. The reels were still turning, the speaker switch was in the ON position.
“What’s that, Leona?”
The man’s voice. The doctor. Wade Livingston. Whoever the hell. Toots had heard voices like that before. A man trying to sound calm while he was on the thin boil of panic.
“What does it look like?”
Uh-oh, Toots thought.
“It looks like a gun, Leona. put it away right this minute.”
Toughing it out. But the panic bubbling up now.
“No, I want to end this properly.”
Holy shit, Toots thought, she’s going to shoot him!
“You said you wanted to end it. Wade, so let’s end it.”
Toots was already halfway out of the car.
She ran straight for the driver’s side. Neither of them saw her coming. The man, the doctor. Wade Livingston, whoever the hell, was fumbling to open the door on his side, and Leona was holding the gun in both hands now, the way she’d probably seen lady cops on television doing it, and Toots thought Oh, Jesus, don’t shoot him, and grabbed the handle on the Jag’s door and yanked it open, and though she’d never met the lady face to face, she yelled her first name, “Leona!” and then yelled, “Don’t!” and then reached out for her shoulder and pulled her toward her, and hoped the gun wouldn’t go off accidentally and put a big hole in the doctor’s head.
“Toots Kiley,” she said. “Give me the gun.”
She held out her hand. The gun was shaking in Leona’s fist.
“Give it to me, okay, Leona?”
On the other side of the car. Wade Livingston was backed against the door, watching in seeming fascination.
“Who are you?” Leona said.
“I told you. Toots Kiley. Let me have the piece, please.”
Leona hesitated.
“Come on, Leona,” Toots said. “There are better ways, believe me.”
Leona looked into her eyes.
“I mean it,” Toots said.
Leona kept looking into her eyes.
“Okay?” Toots said.
Leona nodded and handed her the gun.
“Good,” Toots said. “Thank you.”
“Are you a police officer?” the doctor said. “If so, I’d like to bring charges against…”
“You think your wife would like that?” Toots asked, taking a shot in the dark.
The doctor’s face went pale.
“I didn’t think so,” Toots said.
The mist on the water was beginning to tear away in tatters. Matthew could almost see the horizon now. Elise sat beside her mother, drained by her bitter diatribe and her equally bitter confession of murder. She had equated her love for Jonathan Parrish with a film of dubious intent, and now she sat with her hands clasped between her mother’s as if the frames of that film were flickering on the screen of her mind all over again.
“Miss Brechtmann,” Bloom said, “I ask you now, did you go back to the Parrish house at any time after the day of the murder?”
A policeman’s voice. Flat. Unemotional.
“I did.”
“For what purpose, please?”
“To look for the photographs.”
“Was there anyone in the house when you went there?”
“You know there was.”
“Miss Brechtmann, could I now have the weapon and the photographs specified in the search warrant? ”
“I’ll show you where they are,” she said, and rose, and slipped her hands from between her mother’s, and then patted her mother’s hands and said, “Its all right. Mama. Really”
She turned to where Matthew was standing beside Bloom.
The sun was almost coming through now.
The panes of glass on the French doors were almost alive with light.
“Nobody counted,” she said, and smiled.
She was looking directly at Matthew. Perhaps because Bloom was a policeman from whom she felt she could expect no compassion. Perhaps because she included her mother among those who had not counted. Looking at Matthew. the smile on her face.
“Do you see?” she said.
“No. I’m sorry, I…”
“The baby was born in August,” she said.
“Yes?”
The smile still on her face.
“I was with Abbott shortly after Christmas. The end of December. Do you see now?”
Her mother was staring at her.
Matthew already knew what she was saying. Matthew had already done the counting.
“The baby wasn’t premature,” Elise said.
“Elise. what are you…?”
“I got pregnant in November, the baby was right on time.”
“What?”
“The baby was Jonathan’s.”
Sophie Brechtmann brought her hand to her mouth.
“He never knew, isn’t that rich? The night I went to tell him… well, you see, that was the night he chose to… to… to tell me it would never work, that was the night he said… goodbye.’ Elise shrugged. She was still smiling. “So I went to Abbott’s shabby little room. In anger and in… in…”
“Elise,” her mother said.
“Such a beautiful child we had,” Elise said. “Jonathan and I.”
“Elise, darling…”
“Such a beautiful family we could have been.”
“Darling, darling…”
“Oh, Mama,” she said, and burst into tears. “I’m so sorry, I’m so terribly sorry, please forgive me.”
“Darling golden girl…”
Matthew watched them.
Mother and daughter.
This is the house that Jack built, he thought.
This is the end of the house that Jack built.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon.
Toots and Warren were in Matthew’s office.
Toots was telling him all about how close Leona had come to shooting Dr. Wade Livingston. She was telling him there was no question but that Leona and the doctor had been intimately involved. No question, either, but that the affair was now over and done with.
“So what do we tell Frank?” Warren asked.
“I don’t know yet. I want to think about it.”
“I mean… it’s over with, Matthew.”
“I know.”
“Well… let me know what kind of report you want.”
“I will,” Matthew said. “You both did a fine job. I hope we’ll be working together again. Miss Kiley.”
“Toots,” she said.
“Toots, yes.”
“You want to go have a beer or something?” Warren asked her.
“Love to,” she said.
“Talk to you, Matthew,” Warren said, and followed Toots out.
The phone began ringing. Matthew picked up.
“An Irene McCauley on five,” Cynthia said.
He punched the button.
“Hello?”
The time was three-ten.
Irene was calling to tell him that Helen Abbott had died in the hospital last night.