Part 28 (1/2)
She shook her head. ”Well, if that's true, you're not getting it out of me.”
She was still standing close, closer than a stranger would, closer than a boss's wife should. A sudden breeze came up and blew back her hat. She threw her hand to her head to hold it on and her back arched and there was no longer any doubt about what was and was not under her yellow tank top.
I had a moment, or maybe she gave me a moment, and then she took off the hat and spent some time straightening her hair before she put it back on. Hair that I always thought was mousy was now glimmering in the sun. ”You're a strange man, Mr. Becket,” she said.
Not half as strange as you, I thought.
She went from straightening her hair and her hat to straightening her skirt. ”I have a question for you,” she said. She positioned herself directly in front of me again. She did it deliberately. Everything she was doing was deliberate. ”What do you think is going to happen to my husband if he loses his job?”
”Get another one.”
”Here? On the Cape? He's not from here, you know.”
”Former D.A. He'll have criminal clients flocking to him.”
”Let's not kid ourselves, George. Mitch is not a courtroom lawyer. And he doesn't exactly have a lot of friends in this area.”
”Except the Senator.”
”That's right. And the Senator wants Mitch to stay in his job. So why is it that you, as the Senator's other friend, are trying to keep him from doing that?”
”I'm not. I'm trying to find out who killed Heidi Telford.”
”That's not quite what you told Mitch was your reason for going to Hawaii, was it?”
I was telling so many half-truths these days it was hard to remember what I had said to whom.
”Your reason for talking to Howard Landry wasn't so you could help Mitch and it wasn't so you could put to rest the rumors that he covered up for the Gregorys, was it, cowboy?” Her finger thumped my chest. It left a mark. First yellow, then red. ”Don't think,” she said, her finger lingering, ”we don't know what's going on.”
We? Who was we? She and Mitch?
Stephanie's hand came up and I flinched, remembering what had happened with Leanne in Costa Rica. But this time the touch against the side of my face was gentle. ”So what I want to know is,” she said softly, ”what you've found out.”
I let her hand stay. I looked directly into her sungla.s.ses again and said, ”I've found out that Heidi was at the Gregory compound that night.”
Nothing changed. The hand did not move.
”That she was probably there with Peter Martin. That in all likelihood Jamie Gregory and Jason Stockover and maybe Paul McFetridge and possibly Ned Gregory know exactly what happened to her and how she ended up on a golf course with her head stove in.”
Was there a change now? Did her fingers curl so that her nails were digging into my cheek ever so slightly?
”And I've found out that Howard Landry was just about to put this all together when he was whisked away to Hawaii with promises that his every fantasy would come true. Just, Mrs. White”-I took her hand away, let it drop-”like you are trying to do to me.”
”You flatter me, George.”
I couldn't see behind the dark lenses, but I imagined her eyelids fluttering. There was a hint of that in her voice. She laughed suddenly, and there was a hint of flutter there, too.
”I have a proposition for you, Georgie.”
”No.” I said it quickly.
She laughed again. ”That wasn't what I meant. What I meant was, what if I could get you promoted within the office? What if I could get you promoted to felonies?”
”You?”
”Well, Mitch isn't going to come right out and tell you. It would look too much like what you think he's been doing already. But if you believe Buzzy Daizell has a better position waiting for you, maybe we could head that off. Get you the same thing without changing ad”-she touched my chest-”mini”-she touched me again-”strations.”
”You're making me an offer?”
”It can be made to happen.” She turned her shoulder slightly, moved her chin so that it was aligned with her shoulder. All edges and angles.
”In exchange for what?”
”In exchange for reporting to whoever you're reporting to just what you've found. Which is nothing.”
I leaned down until my face was so close to hers that her lips opened in expectation, and then I said, ”She was just a young girl, Stephanie.”
There was a moment of complete stillness. And then Stephanie White spoke as if we were two adults trying to solve a problem, two adults who just happened to be inches apart from each other. ”It was a horrible thing and n.o.body is trying to say it wasn't. But trying to pin it on the Gregorys is wrong.”
”And is that because none of them did it?”
She heard the taunt and she understood it. ”It's because all you're doing is playing into the hands of some right-wing extremist who's trying to get revenge on the Senator.”
”You know who this extremist is?”
She hesitated. ”You know who it is.”
”Who?” I demanded.
”Josh David Powell. Isn't that who's behind Buzzy's campaign?”
I wondered how so many people seemed to know so much. I wondered, for a moment, what I was doing trying to be involved at any level. But my head was still tilted forward, my face was still nearly against hers, so close that I had only to whisper. ”What do you know about Josh David Powell?”
”I know you're his stooge, George. You and all that guilt you've stored up over what happened in Florida. He's playing you, and I'm just telling you, if you allow this to keep going, everybody's going to get burned-you, Mitch, the Senator, the Gregory kids, your meat-head friend Buzzy. And none of it is going to result in the real killer getting caught.”
”She was at the house, Stephanie. She was there the night she was killed.”
”And then she was gone. Pushed out the side gate because she wouldn't put out, okay? It's not very nice, it's not very pretty, it doesn't look good for the Gregorys, but that's what happened. So yes, one or two of them have some responsibility because they put her in a position where she got picked up by someone on her way home. But they weren't the ones who killed her.”
”And so we should protect them?”
”And so we shouldn't turn this into something more than it is, all right? Gregorys act bad sometimes, but they don't go around killing people.”