Part 10 (1/2)

He jumped to his feet and paced wildly between the staircase and the server housing. ”I had no choice! There was nothing else I could do, can't you understand? I had no choice about any of it, not from the very beginning nearly twenty years ago. I just paid and paid and paid, anything to keep Mary from being hurt.”

The pieces of his personal dilemma began to sort themselves into a tragic picture in my mind. ”Do you mean Roberta and Patrick, James? Is that what you so desperately didn't want Mary to know? Well, you can let go of that now. Mary knows, and she loves you anyway. Her love is unconditional, James. So you can come out of hiding and go home and let her help you through this, whatever it is.” I spoke firmly in an attempt to penetrate his agitation and got to my feet. He stared at me, thunderstruck. ”Now come downstairs with me and call your wife.” I started down the stairs. Without another word, and to my huge relief, James followed me.

Back on the first floor, James sat quietly at the reception desk while I foraged for something more nouris.h.i.+ng than the ubiquitous pastries. Now that he had been discovered, he seemed strangely at peace. For the moment, it appeared to be enough to be surrounded by warmth and light and to have contact with another human being.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like, hiding like an animal in the attic day after day and coming out to find food only in the dark. He would have had to be silent and nearly motionless after the accounting and development staff arrived on the second floor around nine in the morning and stay that way until the group residence staff left the building between seven and eight in the evening. Even on the weekend, he would have had to be alert, since every staff member had the security alarm code and a key to the building, and they often came in at odd hours to catch up on paperwork.

I settled on a can of chicken noodle soup from the stash Mary Alice kept in her desk drawer. While it heated in the microwave, I fought the urge to call Mary. I knew I should be notifying the police, but which police? The Hartford police, since the death had occurred there, or the Wethersfield police, since the body had been discovered there? Well, they could all wait half an hour until James got himself a bit more together, I decided.

I set a steaming bowl of soup in front of him. The napkin and spoon I put down beside it prompted a small smile.

”Nice,” he said, ”a woman's touch.” His face contorted as he struggled with the powerful emotions he had kept bottled up for more than a week now. My heart went out to him, and I busied myself at the sink to give him time to regroup. When I turned back, he was spooning soup into his mouth steadily, his hand trembling only a little.

When he finished his meal, he placed the spoon neatly in the empty bowl and used the napkin. We regarded one another across the empty reception area. ”Now what?” he asked, and I had to admit I hadn't a clue. ”I did it, of course. I killed my brother Joseph. It was an accident, but I don't think anyone will believe that, especially since I ran away.”

”I believe it,” I told him honestly. Again, the briefest of smiles.

”Thank you. I appreciate knowing that. I've had a lot of time to think about it. I had endured Joseph's cadging and mooching, his endless requests for money and his failed business schemes, for years. Mary and I both had. After that, there was the terrible situation with Roberta, and then Patrick came along.” He dropped his head into his hands.

”I don't need to know,” I hastened to interject. ”It's between you and Mary.”

”The police,” he added. ”Mustn't forget about them. I've screwed up in the past, G.o.d knows, but this time, G.o.d himself can't help me.”

I decided my opinion on that subject wouldn't do anything to rea.s.sure James and kept quiet.

”Joseph lived in California, not far from Roberta. They were actually both members of the local chapter of the National Society of Certified Public Accountants and had met once or twice at functions. I needed a way to get money to Roberta that Mary wouldn't question, so I took Joseph into my confidence.” His face twisted at his folly. ”Major mistake number two. At first, he seemed to do as I asked, although I had my doubts that everything I sent actually made it to Roberta for Patrick's care. Then one year, when I made my annual trip out west and stopped by to visit my son, Joseph answered the door.”

”He had married Roberta,” I said unnecessarily, since we both already knew that to be true.

”How did you know?”

”The police learned it during the missing persons investigation, which is what this started out to be.”

He nodded. ”Of course, I forgot about that. All those years of trying to keep my hideous blunders under wraps, and now the whole world knows that I'm not only a fool but a murderer,” he summed up bleakly.

”You said it was an accident,” I protested. ”That doesn't sound like murder to me.”

”I covered it up, or at least, I tried to. I took my dead brother's body out of a public place in full view of about a dozen witnesses and threw it in the river. I had some crazy idea that if it stayed in the water long enough, it would be so decomposed that the authorities would believe it was me, and Mary could at least collect my life insurance. I just had to stay out of the way, disappear from her life. How is that even possible?” he said in obvious bewilderment. ”I'm a financial professional. That was the thinking of a madman.”

”Very likely,” I pointed out. ”The plea of temporary insanity exists for a reason, James.”

He turned that over in his mind. ”I don't even remember exactly how it happened. One minute, I was in the Education Office at the Wadsworth, where the caterer's staff kept the replenishment hors d'oeuvres and a big container of champagne punch. I was laying out the pieces of my Santa Claus suit. The next minute, there was Joseph, standing right in front of me, threatening to tell Mary everything if I didn't give him yet more money, but there wasn't any more money. He and Roberta had bled me dry. I took a loan against what was left of my retirement fund to give Mary one last trip, one good memory, before I confessed everything to her. I just had to acknowledge my son, you see. I couldn't stand not to do that any longer. But Joseph kept pus.h.i.+ng, kept insisting. Mary was due any minute. I had to make him stop talking, just stop talking.” His expression turned fierce at the memory, then crumbled.

”We struggled. I hit him, and he fell. All I remember is bolting out of there. I wanted to find Mary before Joseph did, but I missed her in the crowd. I went back into the office to confront Joseph once and for all. That's when I found him slumped over the edge of the caterer's vat, face down in the punch. I dragged him out, but it was too late. He must have been unconscious when he went down, and he drowned.” He pulled his gaze away from the window and stared at me, his face a mixture of horror and incredulity. ”He drowned in a G.o.dd.a.m.ned vat of Christmas punch.”

Having gotten it all out, he sank back in the chair, his eyes empty and his hands limp on the desk before him. Clearly, it was time for me to take action, but what should I do? So I did what I usually do when I need a clearer head than my own. I waited for James to drag himself into the men's room, and I called Margo.

”Hey, there, Sugar. All ready for the big weddin' tomorrow? John and I will be there to help you cope.”

It was symptomatic of my current state of mind that I had forgotten about the wedding for the moment. ”Hard as it may be to believe, the wedding is the last thing on my mind at the moment,” I told her. ”Is John home?”

”He came in from his racquetball game about an hour ago. He's upstairs as we speak getting' all spiffed up to take his gorgeous wife out to dinner and a movie, the one we didn't get to see yesterday.” She giggled in antic.i.p.ation.

”I'm afraid you might not be seeing it tonight either. Put John on an extension, will you? I need him to hear this, too.”

Margo heard the urgency in my voice and snapped to attention. ”You bet, Hon,” was all she said. Within seconds, the three of us were connected, and I launched into a condensed version of today's events. James returned to his seat and sat quietly until I hung up the phone.

”Now what?” he asked again. ”Are the police coming here, or do I turn myself in? More importantly, who's going to be with Mary while all of this is happening?”

”You are,” I told him and outlined the plan that Margo, John and I had concocted. As he listened, his eyes filled alternately with hope, regret, and finally anguish.

”You are all being so kind to me,” he choked. ”It's overwhelming. You don't even know me. I hardly know myself anymore. This whole thing feels as if it's happening to someone else.” He wiped the welling tears from his eyes roughly.

”You haven't been yourself, James. That's what I've been trying to tell you. By the way,” I added, realizing why I hadn't quite recognized him during the music rehearsal at the Cathedral. ”What happened to your eyegla.s.ses?”

He reached into the pocket of his rumpled raincoat and produced a pair of ruined spectacles. One lens was shattered, and an earpiece was missing. ”I don't even remember where this happened,” he said. He put them back in his pocket. ”Can we go now? I want to get myself cleaned up a little before Mary sees me.”

I smiled inwardly at this rea.s.sertion of personal pride. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

On the way to Hubbard Plaza in Rocky Hill, just south of Wethersfield, we pa.s.sed Catzablanca, which is when I remembered the ginger cat. I pulled into the hotel parking lot and called the vet's office.

”Not to worry,” Cindy a.s.sured me. ”When we couldn't reach you at work, I called the house. Armando collected Gracie about half an hour ago. She's fine, by the way. No feline leukemia.”

”That's great news,” I told her. ”Gracie?”

”Ditzy little blonde, you know, like George Burns' wife, Gracie Allen. She's kind of timid at first, but I think she's going to be a real charmer, just the thing to give Jasmine a new interest in life.”

”Okay, Gracie it is,” I agreed and promised to make another appointment soon.

Hubbard Plaza is one of the nicer conference facilities outside Hartford's city limits. It offers a formal hotel with all the amenities, including a concierge and room service, in one building and extended-stay suites with kitchenettes and exterior entrances in several smaller facilities on the property. It was the latter that John and Margo had suggested for what I had in mind.

We arrived in the parking lot within minutes of each other. John pulled up next to my Jetta, which I'd parked beneath a lamppost to be clearly visible. Although it was not yet five o'clock, dark had descended.

John got out of his car, and James got out of my car to join him. ”We're going to suite fourteen in building three,” John said to me, pointing to the structure at the far right of the lot. ”Margo will be right along. Just knock.” I gave James what I hoped was an encouraging smile, and together, the two men walked across the lot and disappeared inside.

I turned on the all-news station for company but switched off the radio after the first two stories of brutality and senseless mayhem, preferring my own thoughts to the commentator's relentless yammering. I could not bear to think about the errand Margo had bravely undertaken and what Mary's reaction to the news of her husband's discovery must have been. Joy? Anger? Stoic acceptance, perhaps, after all that she had already endured and had yet to face. What would I do if it were Armando in that room with John right now?

Before I arrived at any conclusions, Margo's elegant little coupe slid into the s.p.a.ce next to me on the other side. The imagery of being safely bracketed by Harknesses comforted me. She climbed out and came around to where I still sat behind the wheel, leaving Mary in her car's pa.s.senger seat.

”How did it go?” I asked in a low voice.

”I'm not really sure,” she answered with her usual candor. ”No hysterics, no hissy fit. Not much reaction at all, come to think of it, just this eerie calm after I told her what had happened and where we were goin. ' It was almost as if she had expected this. They would have had to put me in a straitjacket in her place, but she just excused herself and went upstairs to put her husband's shavin' kit and some clean clothes in a suitcase. No muss, no fuss, and distinctly weird.”