Lou Mason Mystery - 01 - Motion to Kill (35 page)

“Did you and Richard get back to Rogersville very often?” Mason asked, looking at Pamela as she rocked back and forth on the sofa. Her eyes bore down on the intricate pattern in the Persian rug as if the answer could be divined in the weave.

“Pamela, over here,” he said, breaking her spell. She jerked her head up and raised her lids halfway in his direction. “Did you and Richard get back to Rogersville very often?”

“Not in years.”

Mason found Sullivan’s senior class picture and index of achievements. Crew cut, shiny cheeks, cocked, arrogant smile, head tilted at a jaunty angle. Look out, world, here he comes. Lettered in track and cross-country. Choir. Junior Achievement.

“Why not?”

Flipping through the pages, Mason ran his finger under the names beneath the pictures, stopping at Meredith Phillips’s photograph. Pageboy, wide nose, wider face, crooked smile, square chin. Unremarkable, yet vaguely familiar. Home Economics Club.

“No reason to,” she said to the floor. “We wanted out.”

The girl in the photograph next to Meredith’s had long dark hair tucked behind her ears, bangs pulled across her forehead, oval face with perfectly aligned teeth, dimpled cheeks. Cheerleader, Homecoming Queen. Pamela Phinney. Mason looked up. There was no doubt. Pamela Phinney Sullivan lay back against the couch, her eyes raised to the ceiling.

“You knew Meredith Phillips?”

“We were best friends,” she said softly.

“And you didn’t know about the baby?” Some best friend.

“Best friends in high school—not later.”

“What happened?”

“She and Richard dated all through school. No one could figure it out. Great-looking guy and the homely girl.”

“No competition. Maybe Richard was insecure in spite of his good looks.”

“Maybe. Anyway, she was a small-town girl. Richard and I couldn’t wait to escape.”

“And you ended up with Richard.”

“I chased him for four years in high school. That’s why Meredith and I were best friends. She kept me close to Richard. Back then, he was loyal. But I got him in the end.”

“But not before he and Meredith had one last stroll around the park.”

“No—not before.”

“And you didn’t know about the baby until I told you yesterday?”

She hesitated an instant before answering. “Not before—”

“Not before what?” Diane Farrell asked, one hand on her hip, the other on the entry to the study. She was wearing a half-buttoned man’s pajama top that fell to mid thigh and, nearly as Mason could tell, nothing else.

Pamela paled and shook at Diane’s appearance, growing smaller behind her pillow. “Diane—please don’t do this to me.”

Smiling voraciously, Diane walked toward her. “Pamela dear, I told you last night that I wasn’t like the society lesbians you cheated on Richard with.” She stood in front of Pamela, reaching down and stroking her hair. “You didn’t tell me we were having company for breakfast.”

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Pamela, you’re ruining my new dress under those pillows.” She reached behind a cushion and extracted the wrinkled dress Pamela had given her on her birthday.

“Please, Diane—no,” Pamela managed, her lips barely moving, her face downcast.

“But, Pamela, it’s all I’ve got to put on. After all,” she giggled, “I didn’t pack my overnight bag.”

She shook the wrinkles out of the dress and looked at Mason again. “If you don’t mind, Mason. I’m a little modest around men.”

Nodding, he stood and turned his back, placing the yearbook on the credenza behind Sullivan’s desk. Trusting that Diane had her eyes on Pamela, he set his smart phone down and turned on the voice-recording app.

“Okay, Mason, you can turn around. I’m decent.”

“Not by half,” he said as he pushed Sullivan’s desk chair back, blocking her view of the credenza.

“Mason,” she said, sticking out her lower lip in a mock pout, “I sense your disapproval. How provincial. This is the new millennium.”

“Leaving someone their dignity never goes out of style.”

“Noble horseshit. Now, tell me what you and Pamela were talking about. She seems to have lost her spark. Probably needs a drink to get her motor going.”

“I was asking her if she knew where you worked before you came to the firm.”

“You came here at eight o’clock on Sunday morning to ask Pamela about my work history? You can do better than that.”

“Actually, I’ve taken up genealogy. I’m trying to figure out if pathological behavior is a generation-skipping phenomenon.”

He returned to the wingback chair and picked up his jacket. She held her ground by the sofa, warily appraising his comments, calculating her response. Pamela’s muted sobs were buried in her pillow, the undercard to the main event about to begin.

“In that case, my family wouldn’t interest you.”

“Why not?”

“Every generation has been pathological,” she said without a trace of humor.

“Tell me about them. Maybe I’ll change my approach.”

“Oh, Mason, you’re being so coy. Why don’t you ask me what you really want to know?”

Diane sat next to Pamela, draping her arm around her. Pamela froze at the gesture, then shook her off and stood, smoothing her robe and glaring at Diane, who smiled serenely in reply.

“You should leave her alone,” Mason said to Diane.

“She’s a big girl. She can make her own choices.”

Pamela moved to the windows and turned to look at Mason, her eyes searching the room as if to find someplace else to go. Diane smiled at her like a mother encouraging her shy child. Pamela sighed and made her way back to the sofa, accepting Diane’s outstretched hand.

Mason ignored Diane’s triumphant grin. “What did you do before you came to the firm?”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I went to school. Penn Valley Community College. Paralegal degree with distinction.”

“And before that—where’s home?”

“No place special. A little town you’ve probably never heard of.”

“Family?”

“None anymore.”

“So your first job was with Sullivan?”

“You are a quick study, Mason. I’ll bet you’re terrifying on cross-examination.”

“I like to let things build. What did you think of Sullivan?”

“He treated people like dirt, but I didn’t have a problem with him.”

“The two of you must have had a special relationship.”

Her eyes flickered for an instant. She leaned forward, legs crossed, her chin cupped in one hand, elbow resting on her knee. She was studying. Diane was no fool and wouldn’t allow him to trap her easily. But Mason knew more than she could suspect, and he was better at this than she was. And she was living on lies, which made for a foundation with deep faults. Not the kind that would withstand much stress. Her outrageous treatment of Pamela told Mason that she felt safe—beyond his reach. Now doubt was creeping in, filling the faults and pushing them into wider cracks.

“I knew what he wanted and I did it.”

“Including figuring out what Scott and Harlan were doing with Quintex and the phony fees?”

She sat back, leaving her legs crossed at the ankles, arms extended across the back of the sofa. “Including Quintex. Sullivan asked me to check into it. I put it all together for him. Including the Cayman Island accounts. It wasn’t difficult. Scott and Harlan weren’t very clever crooks.”

“But why hide it on the Johnny Mathis CD?”

“That was my idea. Nobody listens to Johnny Mathis. It was the perfect hiding place. All I needed was a scanner and a CD burner. Sullivan didn’t want anyone to know he had the information. Except for the U.S. attorney. But I guess he didn’t get the chance to rat out his partners and poor Vic Jr.,” she added with a quick laugh.

Mason connected the last dot. “You knew Sullivan was going to make a deal with St. John?”

“I figured it out. It was the only way he could avoid going to jail,” she said with a thin-lipped smile.

Pamela tried to shrink farther into the sofa, but Diane clamped her hand on Pamela’s thigh, keeping her close.

“Why did Sullivan revoke his will?”

Diane shrugged. “He changed his mind about the charities. The codicil gave him time to decide what to do with the money.”

It was a practiced reply. The kind that is believed if repeated often enough but doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

“Then why not keep the will and change the beneficiaries? Revoking the will means he dies intestate, the estate pays huge taxes, and the heirs get screwed.”

“There would still be plenty for Pamela.”

“And for any other heirs.”

“They never had children. You should do your homework, Mason.”

“Oh, I have, Diane. I have. They never had children, but Sullivan did.”

“So the kid gets a share.”

“How did you know there’s only one kid, Diane?”

She reddened, stood, and walked toward the bookshelves. Mason gripped the arms of his chair to keep from cutting her off before she noticed his phone. She stopped at Sullivan’s desk and took his seat.

“He said something about it once, a long time ago.”

“What did he tell you?”

Her eyes filled with the memory. “That he’d gotten some girl pregnant a long time ago but didn’t find out until years later. Once he found out, he paid support but never saw the child.”

“That must have been torture for you. To be right there in front of him and realize he didn’t know you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about! Pamela, get him out of here. We don’t have to listen to this!”

Mason glanced up at Pamela, whose face was a furious mask. Diane pushed the desk chair back against the credenza. Her eyes were wild. Mason reached in his jacket and opened the Bible in his lap.

“Pamela, there’s an old man lying in a nursing home in Rogersville. He’s in a coma. His name is Vernon Phillips. This is his Bible. His family tree makes interesting reading.”

“Where did you get that?” Diane hissed, her body taut, ready to spring at him.

“Homework, Alice. When did you take your grandmother Diane Farrell’s name? Were you just being clever or did you want Sullivan to figure it out on his own?”

“My mother loved him, gave herself to him, and he pissed on her—on both of us!” she screamed. A lifetime of venom contorted her face.

“He paid child support.”

“Money! She didn’t want his money! She wanted him! But Pamela, beautiful Pamela, got him. And we got nothing.”

“You couldn’t stand that he didn’t want you—didn’t even want to see you,” Mason said, driving each nail slowly. “When did Meredith tell you about him?”

She was startled at his use of her mother’s name. It was another invasion of her life. Mason was Sherman marching through Georgia, and he was just warming up.

“Did she tell you Daddy was dead or that she didn’t know who your daddy was? Or maybe she didn’t tell you anything at all. Then one day, you found a check from a man you’d never heard of before.”

Diane/Alice bolted from her chair, leaning hard on the desk. Mason had scored a direct hit. The words poured out of her in a torrent.

“When I was thirteen, she wrote him a letter begging him to acknowledge me. He sent it back unopened with a check. My mother left it out where she knew I would find it. That’s how she told me!”

“And working for him was your way of getting even? Wasn’t it worse when he didn’t recognize you or your name? Surely he must have remembered Meredith’s mother?”

“My grandmother died when my mother was young. He’d have never known her.”

“But still, not to recognize you at all. There had to be some family resemblance.”

Mason shook his head sympathetically. Pamela stood as still as Lot’s wife as he moved from his chair to the arm of the sofa. He couldn’t predict what Diane would do if he kept pushing her, and he wanted more mobility.

“When did you finally tell him?”

“Last January.”

“Just before he revoked his will. What was his reaction?”

“He told me to keep my mouth shut and my billable hours up.”

“That’s it?”

“We made a deal. I told him all I wanted was my inheritance. I didn’t care if anyone knew, so long as I got my share.”

“Why not make you a beneficiary in the will?”

“That was too public an acknowledgment. This way, if Pamela died first, I’d get everything as the only heir.”

“How were you going to prove paternity?”

“He took a blood test when I was ten. That’s when he started paying child support. And I made him sign something.”

“Where is it?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Mason remembered that Angela had told Sandra that there was something else she wanted to talk with her about.

“Angela found it, didn’t she?”

Diane’s face softened and then hardened again as she sensed where he was headed.

“Mason, I’m getting tired of this.”

She stepped away from the desk. He stood as she reached behind the Carl Sandburg biography of Lincoln and turned around, holding Pamela’s gun.

“Oh shit,” Mason said.

“How right you are.”

“You don’t need the gun, Diane,” Pamela said.

“Don’t tell me what I need, Pamela. If you’d have left my mother and father alone, none of this would have happened.”

“Richard chose me—that’s not my fault!”

“Not your fault! Ha! Mother told me how you seduced him. How did it feel to be seduced by his daughter, sweet Pamela?”

“I’ve been a greater fool before and no doubt will be again. But there’s no need for a gun.”

“Tell him that,” Diane said, waving the gun at Mason.

“What is she talking about, Lou?”