"Ms. Fargo?"
"Yes?" she responded warily.
"I'm Richard Quinn. I'm a judge. I heard the case against Ellen Crease."
Fargo recognized Quinn from the television broadcasts about the case.
"What do you want from me?"
Quinn smiled to put Fargo at ease. "It would be great if I could get inside. I forgot my umbrella."
Water was running down Quinn's face and beading on his raincoat. Fargo opened the door and let Quinn inside. He ran a hand through his hair to rid it of some of the rain.
"I apologize for coming so late and not calling first. I wouldn't disturb you if this wasn't important."
Fargo walked into the living room and gestured toward the couch. Quinn took off his coat so he would not dampen her furniture. Fargo sat forward on her chair watching Quinn.
"You know that I ruled against the State in the pretrial hearings?"
Fargo nodded.
"Some new information has come to me that I didn't have when I made the ruling. I'm afraid I can t tell you what it is. I hope you understand."
"Certainly."
"I've learned that Lamar Hoyt and his son had an argument shortly before Mr. Hoyt was murdered. It's suddenly become important to find out the substance of the argument, but no one knows what they talked about. I was wondering if Mr. Hoyt mentioned it to you."
"Yes. He did. I ... I never told anyone about it because I didn't think that it was important."
"That's okay, Ms. Fargo. You wouldn't have understood why I need to know about the argument. Can you tell me what Mr. Hoyt said?"
"I don't remember the date."
"That's okay."
"I do remember Lamar visiting in the early evening. He was very angry about Junior."
"Why?"
"He thought he was skimming money from the mortuary business. Profits were down and he was furious. He was having Junior investigated and the investigator had found out that Junior was living way beyond his means. The argument occurred when Lamar confronted Junior with the things that the investigator found."
"Did Mr. Hoyt mention anything specific that the investigator had found?"
Fargo colored. "Most of it had to do with women."
"Dates?"
Fargo shook her head. "There was some of that, but Lamar said that Junior was also paying expensive prostitutes. Lamar also thought that Junior was using cocaine. It was very sordid and Lamar was furious."
[4]
Laura's calls had been on Quinn's mind all day, but he had been either too busy to call her or too afraid. If she wanted a divorce, he did not want to learn about it when he was tired and run-down. But what if she wanted him back? As soon as he returned to his apartment, Quinn poured himself a stiff drink and phoned Laura.
"Dick!" Laura responded with obvious relief when she heard his voice. "Where are you? I've been trying to reach you all day."
"I'm at my apartment, but I was in Seattle earlier today."
"What were you doing there?"
"It would take too long to explain. Fran told me that you called several times. What did you want to talk to me about?"
"I need to see you." Laura's voice wavered. "Can you come home?"
"Now?"
"Yes. Please."
Quinn had rarely heard uncertainty in Laura's voice and this was the first time he had ever heard her plead. If she was anything, Laura was a model of self-confidence, always certain that she was right, always the one who made the demands, never the supplicant.
"I'll come over right away."
"Thank you, Dick."
Quinn hung up the phone and stood quietly for a moment. He had wanted to say something more, to tell Laura that he still loved her, but he couldn't, because he was afraid of what she would say.
? ? *
Laura looked tense when she opened the front door for Quinn. She was dressed casually in a blue warm-up suit, but she had put on makeup and her hair was combed carefully. He hoped that was a good sign.
"Take off your coat. Let's sit down." Laura pointed toward the living room. "I even made you a drink."
Quinn saw a glass of Scotch resting on an end table next to the couch. He shucked his coat and followed Laura. She sat opposite him with a coffee table between them.
"I've been rehearsing this, so let me just talk, okay? When I married you we seemed to have the same goals. Then you left the firm to become a judge. It was hard for me to accept that. I felt betrayed. It wasn't just the money. It was the life I'd planned for the two of us. I couldn't understand how you could walk away from your partnership, something that I coveted so much. I think we started drifting apart after you made that choice. I'm not saying it was your fault. But it's true. Something changed in the marriage. Or maybe I changed. It doesn't matter.
"I really was sorry when the Miami client hired me, but I honestly believed that I owed it to the firm to take him on. Then the job turned out to be a hoax. I was furious. All I wanted to do was to fly back to Portland. I started to phone the airline when I remembered how sad you had been when I told you I couldn't go with you to St. Jerome. I remembered your voice on the phone. You sounded so . . ."
Laura shook her head. "I stopped with my hand in the air. It was ... I don't know . . . like a light going on, like I was suddenly hearing something clearly that had only been a murmur. I realized how much pain you were in and that I was the cause of that pain. I asked myself what I wanted to happen to our marriage and I didn't know the answer to that question. That's why I flew to St. Jerome. I hoped that I could figure out how I really felt about us by being there with you, away from Portland and the law office and my work. I knew that there was something terribly wrong with our marriage and I wanted to try and cure it. But everything fell apart after I arrived."
Laura stopped to collect herself. She was a person who kept her feelings to herself and Quinn could see how painful it was for her to reveal her emotions.
"I was in Los Angeles on business on Wednesday and Thursday. Today, two detectives visited me at the office. They told me about the woman who was murdered at the Heathman. They wanted to know about the woman who disappeared on St. Jerome. They showed me pictures of the two of you on the beach.
"I didn't understand where they were going, at first. The black detective, Dennis, is very smooth. When it became clear that they thought you might have killed the woman at the hotel, I had to make a decision. I asked myself if I truly believed that you could murder someone the way they said that poor woman was killed. I had to decide what type of person I married and I decided that you could never do that."
"Laura, some other things have happened to me this past week that you don't know about. They explain why the woman at the hotel was murdered. I love you very much. The one thing I want more than anything in the world is for us to be together again. But I don't want to hide anything from you."
Laura waited for Quinn to continue. The look of wariness on her face frightened Quinn. By the time he finished explaining about the blackmail attempt by the man in the ski mask, Claire Reston's visit to his chambers and the way he had decided the Crease case, her expression was unreadable.
"After I suppressed the evidence, I prepared for the worst, but I never dreamed that the blackmailers would murder someone to frame me. I've been sick about it. The way that woman died ..."
"Why didn't the blackmailers just carry out their threat and send the photographs to the authorities on St. Jerome?"