That Summer (30 page)
He groaned. “We have to get up?”
“You can stay in bed if you like, but I have to get up.”
“Yeah, and what kind of a heel will that make me look like?”
“The worst sort.”
“That's what I thought.”
“We can catch the news, then.”
“Great.”
I handed him his jeans. “Here you go, buddy.”
He accepted them and sat on the edge of the bed to put them on.
S
enator Wellington hustled his wife away the following day. She didn't want to go, but he bullied her into it. What surprised me was that Liam stood by and made no effort to stop it.
“Will you be coming to the Belmont?” I asked as they stood outside the car.
“Of course,” the senator replied smoothly.
“Anne, dear, come and give me a kiss,” Mrs. Wellington said.
I went over to her. She put her arms around me and said in my ear, “Have you seen that medal, dear?”
“No,” I replied.
“Go and look at it,” she said.
“Alyssa, we're waiting for you.”
She released me. “We're so happy about you and Liam.”
I looked into her face and nodded.
Then they were in the car and driving away. Liam put an arm around my waist. “Dad said he thought he could let me have a few of the mares after all. Isn't that great?”
I thought it was odd. Something about this whole visit was odd. I was going to get a look at that medal the first chance I could.
Jacko and I worked with the yearlings in the morning, then in the afternoon I drove into town to the police station. I was hoping I would see Michael Bates on duty, but someone else was in the office when I walked in.
“Hi,” I said. “I'm Anne Foster. I'm Liam Wellington's fiancée.”
“Hi there Dr. Foster,” the young policeman behind the desk replied. “What can I do for you today?”
“I'd like to see the medal that's the evidence in the case against my fiancé. I've never had a chance to look at it and I'll be testifying about it so I thought I should see it.”
He frowned. “I don't know if I should just show it to you.”
“Why on earth not? It's a matter of public record, isn't it?”
“Well, yes.”
“Do you want to ask someone?”
“The chief isn't here just now.”
“I promise you, I just want to look at it. I'm not going to try to steal it or anything.”
“Well… I guess it's all right.”
“Sure it is.”
“It's in the evidence safe.”
“If you'll go and get it, I'll wait here.”
I waited in the small, bare waiting room, my heart pounding. There was something fishy about this medal. There must be, or why had Mrs. Wellington told me to look at it? After what seemed like an eternity, the policeman came back carrying an envelope in his hand. He brought it over to me. “Here it is,” he said, and slid a medal out onto his hand.
It was gold. That was all I saw. The medal was gold.
Liam's medal had been silver.
What the hell was going on here?
“You can see where the chain was broken,” the policeman pointed out helpfully. I looked at the tear in the delicate chain.
“Yes,” I said faintly. “Yes, I see. Thank you very much, Officer. I appreciate your help.”
I stumbled a little as I went down the front step of the police station and I caught myself at the bottom. My mind was in a whirl.
Liam had lied. He had known that the medal wasn't his and he had lied.
Who did the medal belong to?
I thought of Mrs. Wellington, of how her husband and son had struggled to keep the news of Liam's arrest from her; of how the senator had whisked her away this morning; of how she had asked me to go and look at the medal.
Could the medal belong to Mrs. Wellington?
But that didn't make sense. I certainly couldn't picture fragile Mrs. Wellington killing Leslie.
Nothing made sense.
What was I going to tell Liam?
Clearly, this was the secret he said he couldn't tell me. And now I knew it. Would he be upset if I told him? Would he be angry?
I had to tell him. This was not something I could keep to myself. I walked to my car, my heart thumping.
It isn’t Liam's medal. It isn’t Liam's medal.
But whose medal was it? Who was he protecting?
His father?
I got into the car and drove back to the farm. For almost the first time in my life I had a dilemma I couldn't lay before my mother. This was something that had to stay between Liam and me.
I cooked a pot of pasta for dinner, then Liam asked me if I wanted to take a walk to check on the mares and foals. We put on jackets against the evening chill and walked hand in hand down the path to the big pastures that housed the mares and their babies.
It was a beautiful night. The stars were clear in the sky and the moon gave enough light for us to see our way. The air smelled of grass and horse and earth.
“I'm going to hate to see all this go,” Liam said.
“You'll have a new farm,” I replied.
“We will,” he replied. “And it will be easier now that Dad has said I can take some of the mares with me.”
A bribe,
I thought cynically.
“Which ones will you take?” I asked out loud.
“I'll have to think about it.”
“How many did he say you could take?”
“He didn't exactly give me a number.”
“You'd better pin him down to a number, so you know what you're talking about.”
“You're probably right.”
I looked up at the stars.
If only people were as clear and straight and true,
I thought.
One of the foals decided he wanted to nurse and nudged his mother. She curved her neck to nuzzle him.
Liam said, “I might take Ring Of Kerry. She's had some very nice foals.”
Better say it out here,
I thought.
Under the stars.
My heart began to pound. “Liam,” I said. “When I was saying goodbye to your mother yesterday she asked me to go and look at the medal at the police department. I had never seen it, you know.”
His hand went rigid in mine.
“I went today.”
He didn't say anything.
“The medal at the police station was gold, Liam. Your medal was silver.”
Still he didn't say anything.
“That's not your medal,” I said. “You identified it as yours, but it isn't. That's what you couldn't tell me, isn't it?”
Silence.
I looked up at the sky and let the silence build.
Finally he said, “My mother asked you to go and look at it?”
“Yes. When she was hugging me to say goodbye. She asked me if I had seen it and when I said I hadn't she asked me to go and look at it. So I went.”
“Shit.”
“She didn't know anything about the medal until I mentioned it to her. I let the cat out of the bag, didn't I?”
He dropped my hand and leaned against the fence. “Yeah,” he said. “You did.”
“So what's going on, Liam? Are you going to tell me now?”
He looked at me, his face bleached white by the moon. “How much have you guessed?”
“I've guessed that you're covering for someone, but I don't know if it's for your mother or your father.”
He laughed bitterly. “Try both of them.”
My mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Christ, Annie, I can hardly believe it myself. When I saw my mother's medal I almost fainted.”
“So it was your mother's medal.”
“Yeah. Grandma had given one to her as well and she usually wore it. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I knew it was damning evidence, though, so I thought I would say it was mine until I could find out what was going on.”
The June night was cool because of radiation cooling, but the chill I felt had nothing to do with the weather. He knew it was damning evidence. He had kept telling me it wasn't important.
“So what did you do after you got home from the police station?”
“I called my father and told him what had been found. I told him what I'd done. I told him I expected to be arrested.”
“What did he say?”
“At first he said he had no idea how my mother's medal had come to be at Leslie's grave site. I told him that wasn't good enough, that if that was all he could tell me, I'd tell the police who it really belonged to. After a great deal of heated discussion, he came clean.”
There was silence. Out in the field the horses moved slowly around. I didn't say anything.
“This is so hard for me Annie.”
I put my hand over his on the fence.
He drew a deep breath. “Did you know that Leslie was having an affair with my father?”
“Good God. At the same time she was with you?”
“That's right.”
“Did you know that?”
“Of course not. But my mother did.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. The night of the party Mom was very drunk— and very angry at Leslie. Dad had always kept his affairs away from Midville. At home he played the faithful husband and Mom could hold up her head. She was furious that he had broken that rule with Leslie. At some time during the party she accosted Leslie and asked if she could talk to her in the summerhouse. Leslie went with her. The conversation did not go well. Basically, Leslie said it wasn't her problem if Mom couldn't keep her husband faithful. Mom was drunk and livid and she picked up the baseball bat and bashed Leslie over the head with it.”
I stared at Liam in stunned amazement. “Your mother killed Leslie?”
“That's right.”
“But she's so fragile …”
“Not apparently with a baseball bat in her hand,” Liam said grimly.
“I can't believe this.”
“It took me a while too.”
“All these years, while people were suspecting you, it was really your mother!”
“The last person anyone would suspect.”
“But how did your father know this, Liam? Did she tell him?”
He looked at me in irony. “Who do you think buried Leslie? Mom?”
My eyes popped. “Oh my God. Your father buried her?”
“That's right. Mom went and found Dad and told him what she had done. They waited until the party was over, then they got one of the farm trucks, loaded up the body and drove it out into the woods. Dad dug the grave and buried the body. Mom was there; that's when she must have lost the medal.”
“I can't believe I'm hearing this.”
“You can imagine how I felt. They're
my
parents.”
“You can't take the rap for this, Liam. It's outrageous that your parents should expect you to.”
“The alternative is that Mom would go to prison for murder and Dad would go for being an accessory.”
“So it's better for
you
to go?”
“Dad said they won't let me be convicted.”
“Great. They'll step forward after we've all perjured ourselves by swearing that your mother's medal is your medal—so we'll go to prison for perjury!”
“Oh God, I don't know. It's all such a mess, Annie. I don't know what I'm doing any more.”
“I'll tell you one thing, Liam. I don't think your mother intends to let you take the fall for her. Once she finds out that the medal is hers, I think she intends to claim it.”
“Dad won't let her.”
“This may be one time when your father can't stop her.”
“Dad can always control Mom.”
“He couldn't control her drinking and he couldn't control her killing Leslie.”
He didn't say anything.
“Where did your parents go?”
“To the Georgetown house.”
There was a stand of trees in the pasture and a bird began to call from them.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked.
He rubbed his hands across his eyes. “I don't know.”
I said quietly, “I hope you're not going to ask me to perjure myself.”
A second bird answered the first.
He sighed. “No, Annie. I'm not going to ask you to perjure yourself.”
“It was always impossible, Liam. The medal was the evidence. You couldn't look at it, and swear on a bible that it was yours. That's just crazy.”
“I was hoping they'd throw the case out before it came to trial,” he said.
“You're the one who said the evidence was damning.”
He sighed again. “I know.”
I said, “I think you and your mother and your father should sit down with this fancy lawyer of Kevin's and tell him the truth. Let him work out a deal for your parents. Your mother certainly wasn't mentally competent when she hit Leslie that night. She might have to serve some time, but I'll bet it won't be very much.”
He shuddered. “To think of my mother in jail!”
It might sober her up.
But this was an unkind thought.
“And Dad. He'll lose his senatorship.”
“He participated in a crime, Liam. Leslie lost her life. Someone has to pay for that.”
“I know. You're right, Annie. It's just… hard. They're my parents, you know?”
“I know. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry it's ended this way.”
His shoulders slumped. “So am I.”
The two birds were now singing together.
I took his hand. “Let's go home, honey.”
His fingers curled over mine. “I'll call Dad tomorrow morning.”
“I think that would be best.”
“Kessler has his offices in New York. Maybe we can see him while we're there for the Belmont.”
“It would be great for you to see the Belmont with this monkey off your back.”
“Yes. It would.”
We started to walk back toward the house.
He said, “Do you know, maybe it will be nice to make a fresh start somewhere else, just the two of us.”
I reached up and kissed his cheek. “I think it will be very nice.”
We went back home, and got into bed, and comforted each other.
L
iam called his father the following morning and spent half an hour on the phone with him. When he hung up he looked grim. “He doesn't want to go see Kessler.”
The selfish bastard.
“What does he expect you to do?”
“He wants me to wait and see if they'll throw the case out for lack of evidence to prosecute.”
“No,” I said. “That's not good enough. Even if they do that—which they won't—you'll spend the rest of your life with people thinking you killed Leslie. Call him back and tell him that I'm going to the police and telling them that it isn't your medal.”
