Part 12 (1/2)

”I'll tell you in the car. Let's go.”

Seated in the car beside him, I kept glancing his way but he was intent on driving. ”Well?” I finally asked.

”Lieutenant Peavey wants to talk to you.”

”Again? He's already talked to me, and you said he was satisfied that I didn't bounce those checks.”

”I get the feeling that he's not so sure now.” Sam still hadn't looked me full in the eye, concentrating as he was on driving.

”Well, what's changed his mind? Talk to me, Sam. What's going on?” By this time, I was clutching my pocketbook with one hand and the armrest with the other.

Sam pulled into a parking place beside the sheriff 's office and turned off the ignition. He sighed and finally looked at me. ”I don't know. The lieutenant called me a while ago while I was working at my house. Said something's come up and he wanted to know how much contact you've had over the past few weeks with Richard Stroud.”

”Richard Stroud!” I almost screeched the name. ”I've had no contact with him. The man's been in prison, as Lieutenant Peavey ought to know because he put him there. And as far as I know, he's still there, except . . .” I slumped back against the front seat of the car, recalling Mildred's guess as to the ident.i.ty of the body in the toolshed. ”They have a positive identification, don't they?”

Sam rested his hands on the steering wheel, gazing out the winds.h.i.+eld between them as if the brick wall of the sheriff 's office was a thing of intense interest. ”How long have you known?”

”Known what?”

”That it was Stroud.”

”I haven't known! It was Mildred who made a wild guess, which I have not repeated except to you, because I didn't know for sure and I didn't want to spread gossip. Besides, I've had my mind on a few other things here lately, if you haven't noticed, and simply have not had time for useless speculation.” I turned sideways on the seat and glared at him. ”Now look, Sam, if you have something to say, just say it.”

”They found that fifth check of yours, folded up and stuck way down in the watch pocket of his pants. It's made out to Stroud and signed by you, but without an amount filled in. It all looks like your handwriting, Julia.”

”Well, it wasn't! I've never written a check to him. I haven't laid eyes on that man since the day he was arrested, and it flies all over me that you think I have.”

Sam hadn't looked at me for some little while, but at that moment, he did, his deep blue eyes filled with a ton of hurt. ”What about the little matter of a check for a hundred thousand dollars you gave him before he was arrested?”

”Oh. Well.” I took a turn of looking at the sheriff 's brick wall. ”There is that. But I didn't want you to know about it.”

”They found his records from back when he put himself up as an investment counselor, and there was your name.” Sam's face was drawn and he looked tired, and the longer we talked, the sadder he looked. ”Didn't you trust me, Julia? Or Binkie?”

”Of course I trusted you. I trusted both of you, and I still do. But let me explain, Sam. Please, let me explain because it's not as bad as it sounds. What happened was that a long-term certificate of deposit matured, one that Wesley Lloyd had in an out-of-town bank that n.o.body, including me, knew about. When the maturity notice came to the house, I intended to give it to Binkie and tell you about it. But, Sam, it was like found money because Richard had been pus.h.i.+ng me to transfer the whole estate from Binkie to him, something I wasn't about to do. But because I admired Helen and wanted to help a friend, I invested that money with him. That's all that happened, and it happened years ago and I'd long since given up hope of seeing any of it again. And,” I added, searching in my pocketbook for a Kleenex to wipe my eyes, ”I didn't want you to know how foolish I'd been.”

”He had it down as a payment.”

”A payment! For what?” My eyes suddenly dried up as I stared at him with disbelief. ”Why in the world would you ask such a thing? What would I be paying him for? I barely knew the man. I did it for Helen's sake, and for no other reason.”

”Okay,” he said, but there was no warmth in it.

”If you don't believe me, Sam, what do you believe?”

”I don't know, Julia. He had it down as payment for services rendered, and it just looks strange that he was getting money from you both before and after he was in prison . . .”

”He stole that money from me-both times. You yourself showed me how somebody-and it had to have been Richard-had ripped out those checks from my checkbook. He was a crook, Sam, and I got taken in like a lot of others did.” I reached out and touched his arm. ”I'm telling you the truth, which, I admit, I should've done long ago. But believe me, I did not pay him for any kind of services rendered. I invested with him, thinking I'd learned enough to manage a little money on my own, and I got burned. Binkie put it down as a loss on our tax returns and I thought you'd ask about it, but you never did so I thought . . . Well, I don't know what I thought.”

”We better go in,” he said, opening the car door.

”Sam, wait,” I said, reaching for him again. ”Please. I don't want to go in there with you like this. I need you to understand and not be hurt. I didn't mean to hurt you-I wouldn't hurt you for the world. Just . . . let's just wait a few more minutes.”

”He's waiting for us.” Sam walked around the car and opened my door. I climbed out, hoping that that gesture of courtesy portended a change of att.i.tude. It hadn't, for he took my arm without a word and walked with me to see Lieutenant Peavey.

Chapter 23.

Who would've thought that Lieutenant Peavey would be more receptive to my explanations than Sam had been? Sam had sat beside me in front of the lieutenant's desk, acting more like my hired lawyer than my husband. In fact, there had been a decided chill radiating from him aimed in my direction.

In response to Lieutenant Peavey's questions, instead of ”Mrs. Murdoch did not. . . ,” Sam would say, ”Mrs. Murdoch says she did not . . . ,” and so forth. Finally, I decided to answer for myself, realizing that my attorney did not have his whole heart invested in the interview, and I told the lieutenant everything. And I mean everything: that I'd invested with Richard Stroud for charitable reasons, how I'd lost the money and never been repaid, why I had not sued to get it back, how checks had been stolen from the center of my checkbook because I stopped to get gas-he got a little confused at that, so I had to explain how I'd not been able to find the Texaco card and had dumped everything out, obviously failing to replace the checkbook, so that it had been left lying in plain sight on the car seat for Richard Stroud to come along and find. I told him that obviously Richard had copies of my signature on investment papers during our earlier dealings, so he had something to go by when he forged my checks more recently.

”And, Lieutenant Peavey,” I summed up, ”I a.s.sure you that I have not seen Richard Stroud since we were both at a certain party given by Mrs. Allen on the same day he was arrested some few years ago. And furthermore, I've had no contact with him at any point in time since then. I didn't know he was out of prison, I didn't know he was back in town, I don't know what he was doing in Miss Petty's toolshed, and I don't know why he died there.” I gave a firm nod of summation, then added, ”Or why he was killed there, as the case may be.”

Sam gave me a sharp glance as Lieutenant Peavey asked, ”Why do you say killed?”

The whole interview was beginning to get on my nerves. ”Because,” I said, ”I don't know how he died, and because, as Lillian says, it's not exactly a natural death when you do it in a toolshed.”

”Well,” Lieutenant Peavey said, gathering up papers and stacking them neatly before putting them aside. ”As it happens, it was a natural death in an unnatural place. The autopsy confirmed that he had a heart attack, which was probably intensified by hypothermia. That information is being released today.”

I had the wild notion of nudging Sam and saying, ”At least you can't lay that at my doorstep.” But I didn't. I was afraid to touch him, for he was still engulfed in a coldness that kept him stiff and unsmiling.

After signing some papers that transcribed my answers to Lieutenant Peavey's questions, Sam and I walked out to the car. As gentlemanly as ever, he helped me into the front seat, then drove home in silence. And the longer it went on, the more anger I could feel welling up in me. I wanted to shout, ”Lieutenant Peavey, who never believes anybody, believes me. Why can't you?”

But again, I didn't. Because the fact of the matter was, I couldn't figure out why Sam was so put out with me. So I had thrown away a hundred thousand dollars. I hadn't, by any means, done it intentionally, for it had been a goodwill gesture toward Helen, the kind of gesture I knew Sam had made to other people under different circ.u.mstances. He'd just been smart enough to distinguish well-intentioned people from crooks.

Or was he mad at me for not first discussing it with him? Or at least with Binkie? Yet he was always telling me that it was my money and that I had a say in how it was invested or spent. But when, on my own, I took a step-a wrong one, as it turned out-he closed up shop and would hardly look at me.

Or could it be, I suddenly thought as he turned the car into our driveway, that he suspected something had been going on between Richard and me? I almost laughed aloud-a decidedly unhelpful action, given his current state of mind if I'd actually done it.

Surely he couldn't think that. For one thing, Richard was, or had been, some few years younger than I was, and as far as I had known, he'd been happy with Helen and had never strayed-certainly not in my direction. There'd never been a smidgen of gossip about him. Well, except for his various business ventures, the last of which landed him in jail. There'd been plenty of gossip about that, nearly killing Helen with shame in the process.

No, I couldn't figure out why Sam was so distant and so silent and so hurt. I had wounded him deeply, that was plain, but I didn't even know what to apologize for. So I decided to issue a blanket apology and hope it would cover everything.

As he pulled out the keys and started to open the car door, I said, ”Sam, I'm sorry. I am sorry for anything and everything I've done or said or even thought, if any of it hurt you. You know I'd never deliberately and with malice aforethought do anything to upset you, so I ask you to forgive me for whatever it is that has cut me off from you.” I began to choke up, for he didn't immediately respond. ”Please say you forgive me, or at least tell me what's wrong so I can correct it.”

I didn't think he was going to answer, yet he stayed in the car and finally said, ”You were awfully eager to go to Thurlow's the other night.”

”Thurlow's?” I looked up with a frown. ”When?”

”The night they found Stroud's body.”