Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (15 page)

Trent threw up his hands.

“Boo boo,” Zach said, pointing to a bruise on the side of his leg.

“You sure do have a boo boo. How’d that happen?”

Zach gave me an earnest though almost completely incoherent description of how his injury came about. The only word I recognized was “paak.” Evidently he’d fallen in the park.

The room seemed awfully quiet when Zach finished speaking. I looked up to see everybody watching us. Rick was obviously frustrated and angry, the way he always was when he somehow lost control of a situation, but the others seemed uncomfortable, too.

“What?” I asked, then an awful thought crossed my mind. “Did something happen to Zach? Did somebody hit him? What’s going on?”

“Someone called the police and told them I was abusing Zach
, that his life is in danger,” Paula said softly.

“What?! That’s ridiculous!” I set Zach on the floor. “Go get your truck, okay?” He toddled off
, and I marched over to invade Detective Trent’s space again. “That is absolutely the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. Paula would never hurt Zach. Paula would never hurt anybody.”

Rick moved up beside me and put his arm around my waist. “Lindsay, I think you should stay out of this.”

“I, on the other hand,” I said without even glancing in his direction, “will hurt my ex-husband right here in front of two police officers if he doesn’t take his hands off me this minute.”

Rick took his arm from around my waist but didn’t move away. “Lindsay, these people don’t want to hear about our marital problems,” he said and then he smiled. Even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could feel that smile. I could see it, too, in
Trent’s expression. His face kind of closed up, like he’d seen something he wanted no part of. Give the boy another point. Maybe I’d cut him a little slack.

“Will a character witness help Paula’s case?” I asked in as sane and rational a voice as I could muster.

Trent didn’t answer immediately. He was probably trying to decide if I’d hurt or help Paula’s case.

“Not with us,” Creighton said, “but because of the complaint and the added complication of the way the boy disappeared yesterday, Social Services will be investigating in a few days. It probably wouldn’t hurt for you to talk to them.”

Zach charged back into the room carrying his orange truck. I sat on the floor to play with him.

“Someone called the police and said Zach was in immediate danger,” Paula said, her voice still soft and almost at the breaking point. “They said I’d been beating him on the porch, then dragged him inside and they could hear him screaming.”

“He does have a bruise—” Creighton began.

Paula interrupted him. “He fell off a swing in the park.”

“But we don’t think he’s in immediate danger,” Creighton finished.

“If he’s in any kind of danger, it’s not from Paula,” I snapped.

“There seem to be a lot of strange things going on,” Rick said, and I cringed. Why had I told him everything? Anything, for that matter! Please, God, he wasn’t going to repeat the things I’d said. The man has been known to do that, just to prove he’s in the know.

“What strange things?”
Trent asked, taking a seat on the coffee table next to where I sat on the floor.

“The mutilated bear is the only thing you don’t already know about,” I said hurriedly, then proceeded to tell him the story. Well, not all the story. Not the raspberry syrup part of the story.

Rick insisted on inserting comments like how the un-Easter basket had special meaning for us as did the bear. Trent and I had another bonding moment as we both strove to ignore Rick. You know what they say about divorce making for strange bedfellows. Not literally, of course. Certainly I wasn’t thinking of Trent in that context. Most of the time I didn’t even like him. But he did have his moments. If he weren’t a cop, we might get along. Some of the time, anyway.

“Do you still have this bear?”
Trent asked.

“Nope. I hung him from a tree in Rick’s front yard. Mr. Kramer has custody of the deceased bear.”

Trent looked up at Rick. “I’d like to have a look if you don’t mind.”

“I’m afraid it went out in the trash,” Rick said smoothly.

“Scared Buffy,” I explained.

“Muffy,” Rick corrected automatically, then clenched his lips as if he’d like to take back the word that put a different slant on his portrayal of the mistreated almost-ex-husband.

“His roomie. She’s very sensitive.”

Trent nodded. “Has your trash been picked up yet, Mr. Kramer?”

“I don’t know.”

“When I lived there six weeks ago it was picked up on Wednesday mornings. If you hurry, you can probably drag out the bear, dust off the coffee grounds, and fingerprint him.”

“Is that true, Mr. Kramer? Your trash doesn’t go out until Wednesday?”

Rick smiled. “Lindsay has a terrific memory. She’s right, as usual.”

Trent stood. “Great. Then let’s go. Where do you live?”

Rick’s smile faltered. “Right now? You want to go get it right now?”

Trent checked his watch. “I got off work an hour ago. I’d really like to get this wrapped up as quickly as possible.”

It was an interesting test of wills, but
Trent had Rick moving toward the door in nothing flat.

“I’ll be back later, Lindsay,” Rick called over his shoulder.

“That wouldn’t be a very good idea! I didn’t get my nap this afternoon so I’ll be going to bed as soon as I get home, and you know what a raving bitch I am when you wake me up.”

I breathed a sigh of relief when the three men left.

“You might as well lock up,” I told Paula. “I’m not going anywhere until we have a talk.”

She didn’t protest. I sensed she was completely drained. A good time to finally break through her defenses.

While she locked the door, I extricated myself from Zach. “Okay, Hot Shot, you’re going to have to play by yourself for a little while. Aunt Lindsay needs to talk to your mommy.”

I sat on the sofa, and he climbed up beside me, trying to entice me with the orange truck and incoherent promises of how much fun we could have. I smoothed back his soft hair and kissed his nose. “You little charmer. Don’t you dare grow up to be like your Uncle Rick.”

“Uck-ick!” he mimicked happily.

“You got that right.” I looked up at Paula. “Maybe he ought to play in the other room for a while. I’m not sure he needs to hear some of this.”

Paula hesitated, then nodded. “He’s already heard a lot more than he should have. People think kids don’t understand just because they can’t talk.”

“Kids and animals understand a lot more than we give them credit for,” I agreed.

She lifted Zach. “Come on, sweetie. It’s close to your bed time anyway.”

Zach protested, of course. He didn’t want to leave the place where all the action was.

“I’ll let you watch your Sponge Bob DVD, okay?” She disappeared upstairs with Zach still protesting. In a few seconds I heard the low sound of a television, then Paula returned and sat beside me, hands clasped in her lap, gaze focused on her hands.

I started to tell her about the hole in the hedge, but she interrupted to say
Trent had already told her. When I brought up her false identity, she looked a little surprised that I knew, but admitted that Trent had also confronted her about that.

“And?” I encouraged.

“And what?”

“How did you explain that you changed your name and your hair color?”

“I told him I just wanted to start a new life and he couldn’t arrest me for using an assumed name as long as I didn’t use it for illegal activities.” She sounded as if she was quoting the last part.

“
What about using somebody else’s social security number?”

She didn’t answer, so I gave it up for the moment. “Okay,” I said, “and we’ve already covered the bear thing, so we’ll move straight to Fred’s and my search of Lester Mackey’s apartment.”

That got her attention.

By the time I concluded with the hair-flushing incident, she was twisting her skirt and looking very agitated and anxious.

“Lindsay, you broke the law!”

“Ah, what are friends for?”

She gave me a weak smile. “You are my friend. You really are.”

“I am. And friends trust each other. I have trusted you not only with my raspberry syrup secret but now the secret of my illegal activities. I’ll do everything I can to help you through this, but you’ve got to trust me with the truth.”

She lowered her gaze to her lap and resumed the skirt-twisting activity. She was well on her way to turning that cotton skirt into a broomstick skirt.

“Is Lester Mackey your ex-husband?” I know she said he was dead, but I wasn’t sure that was the truth and thought I could bluff her into admitting something.

She shook her head.

“Is he somebody hired by your ex-husband?”

She shook her head again. “I don’t have an ex-husband. I told you, my husband is dead.”

“Do you have any idea who Lester Mackey is?”

This time, reluctantly, she nodded. “Maybe.” The word was a barely audible whisper.

“I feel like I’m playing twenty questions! Can you give me a clue? Who
is Lester Mackey?”

She didn’t answer, and for once I didn’t say anything to fill the void. In the silence, I could hear the faint sounds of Zach’s television and a clock ticking. I’d never noticed that clo
ck before, but tonight it sounded very loud.

“Did the apartment manager say what Lester Mackey looks like?” she asked.

I nodded. “He said Mackey’s an older guy with short gray hair and gold wire glasses, a little shorter than Fred, looks like he works out regularly, and he has a mole on his left cheek. Fred thinks the hair is probably phony.”

There was another long moment of silence. Paula’s skirt-twisting had changed to clenching. Her knuckles were white. “That’s a perfect description of my father-in-law, right down to that mole and the hair piece. His name is Lester.”

“Your father-in-law. So this
is
connected to your ex-husband.”

“I’m not divorced.”

“That’s right. You said your husband died.”

“No, I said he’s dead. There’s a difference.” She unclenched her hands, looked me squarely in the face and drew in a deep breath. “I killed my husband.”

Chapter
Ten

Flashbulb memory.

When I’m ninety-seven years old and in a nursing home with no memory of my own name, I will remember the moment Paula told me she killed her husband.

I don’t know how long I sat there just staring at her in total shock. A hurricane roared through my head, making so much noise I couldn’t hear Zach’s television or even that manic clock ticking.

Paula returned my stare unflinchingly, not taking back what she’d just said or admitting it had been a really bad joke.

The room started to blur, and I suddenly realized I’d forgotten to breathe. I figured it would be a good idea to start again.

“Do you have any chocolate?” I asked. I needed a fix to help me deal with this.

She nodded and left the room then returned immediately with a piece of Brownie Nut Fudge Pie and a Coke.

I took a couple of big bites of the pie and tossed down half the soda really fast, then, thus fortified, turned to Paula who once again sat beside me with her hands in her lap. But this time her hands weren’t twisting or clenching. She was strangely calm as if the worst was over. As far as I was concerned, it had just begun.

“Okay,” I said, “so I guess we’re not talking
killing
as in
Killing me Softly with His Song,
or
that joke just kills me
or any of that kind of killing?”

“No. We’re talking killing as in shooting someone in the heart with a
gun, killing as in that person lying on the floor bleeding and not moving.”

I had anoth
er bite of pie. “That’s one heck of an ending. I’d sure like to hear the beginning and the middle of that story.”

She began to talk, quietly but without faltering. The words spilled out, as if she’d h
eld them inside too long.

“I was born
Paula Roberts,” she said. “My dad was a Baptist minister in Ft. Worth. He was kind and gentle, and he always had a smile. My mother took care of him so he could take care of everybody else. They were the only family I had, and it was enough. I was happy. I grew up thinking the world was a beautiful place.”

She wrapped her arms tightly around her knees, and her eyes took on a faraway look. “After high school, I started college at the University of North Texas in Denton. It was close enough I could come home every weekend.
But then during my junior year, my parents went on a missionary trip to South America. I was lost without them and counted the days until they’d come back.”