Chapter 24
Lydia's little flyby threw me into a tailspin. Here, I had thought we had not just a killer but a killer who I didn't like. Sure, it would have hurt Stacie to know her mother was homicidalâbut it also would have been a fitting capper to a lifetime of disappointment.
So the cell phone was lost. Or stolen. I went to the office and called the number. There was no answer.
Crud.
I thought of the only light-fingered cell phone thief I knewâScott Ferguson. He had access, but what was the motive? What could he possibly have against Joe Silvio? Being fired for having sex in a bread truck?
I phoned Grant to tell him the latest. He seemed a little crestfallen to hear it.
“I thought we might have this cat in a bag,” he said.
“Sorry,” I told him.
“Not your fault,” he said consolingly. It was flat, hollow
.
God, was everything he said going forward going to seem bland? What had that sicko Hatfield done to me?
He was going to go ahead with the search warrant, since there was still enough cause to have it in hand.
We opened. Working the cash register, I noticed people passing slowly by the big window that had our name written large in red. They were well dressed, looking in with sour expressions and then moving on. It was like a scene from a Bergman filmâthe one I'd actually stayed awake through, anyway.
Then I realized who they were: Silvio mourners. The funeral home was a few blocks north, and they were passing by to see where it had happened . . . and, perhaps, to brand me with their pissy expressions. I wanted to stick my tongue out at everyone who looked my way.
And then it occurred to me.
There is one person who might have some insight,
I thought. I looked at my watch. I had about forty-five minutes. I should probably wear a Kevlar vest for what I had in mind, but I was going to do this.
I asked Thom to man the cash registerâshe did not seem surprisedâand went out the door without bothering to get my bag. I didn't expect to be gone very long, unless I got myself arrested.
The Dumas Funeral Home was located on Third Avenue South. I literally ran all the way over, feeling like my dad's hero, the New York Giants' scrambling quarterback Fran Tarkenton.
The glum faces didn't recognize me as I overtook them on their way from the parking garage. They merely looked at me like I was crazy, which I probably was. I trotted past the outside usher, stopped to sign the register so I could catch my breath, then looked into the chapel for Brenda Silvio. She was in the front pew with her brother.
This was going to be ugly. Not only wouldn't I be welcome, but I also wasn't dressed for the occasion.
“I need to talk to you,” I said, cutting into a little hemisphere of family and friends.
Jason looked like the embodiment of that demon I said I let loose. He was the kraken made landfall.
“Get out!” he said, grabbing the wrist that was nearest him.
I yanked it hard from his thick grip. “Brenda, I need to talk to you.”
The woman looked up through her veil. Her mouth was so tight, it looked like it might shatter. For all I knew, her teeth already had and she was just keeping them inside.
“Ushers!” Jason called back.
“We need to talk about Lydia Knight.
Now,
” I said.
Two beefy ushers arrived. Brenda held them, and her brother, off with a hand. I envied the power in those five little fingers.
“Is there somewhere this person and I can talk?” she asked an usher. “Alone?”
“Yes,” he said and extended a practiced arm.
Brenda rose slowly, unsteadily, helped by her brother. He walked with her to a small room off the chapelâit probably had an official name, but I had no idea what that was. I had gone past the closed white coffin, semi-oblivious, though the widow slowed to brush her hand across the side as she passed. It was a sweet gesture. I hoped it was sincere. I wanted to believe it. I had no reason not to believe it.
Was I that desperate for romance that I got warm and fuzzy watching a woman I didn't like and her dead husband?
Apparently.
Jason fired a warning-shot look across my bow as he settled his sister into a pale green armchair and backed out of the room. The usher had remained at the door. He shut it with a quiet click. Everything was quiet in here, even the floorboards.
Well . . . funeral home. Death.
Brenda glared up at me. “What do you want?”
“One of the last calls your husband made from his cell phone on the night of his death was to Lydia Knight,” I said.
She looked up at me with a look that was half disbelief, half horror. “I don't believe you.”
“Ask your brother,” I said. “Go ahead. Call him in. He suppressed Joe's cell phone records.”
I could hear Grant swearing at me in my imaginary future; I didn't care, I didn't know why I didn't care, and I didn't care about that, either.
“Why would he do that?” Brenda asked.
“I don't know,” I admitted. “To avoid a scandal? Or the hint of a scandal? To protect you?”
“From what?” she said. “Joe wasn't a philanderer. He was a devoted husband and a devout, churchgoing man.”
“So I've heard,” I said. “Still, he called Lydia's cell phone a few hours before he was murdered.”
She was clearly struggling to process the implications of what I'd told her. A unified theory eluded her. “Go on,” she said.
“I know this is difficult, but did they have any kind of relationship or friendship or anything? Ever?”
“I don't see how that's any business of yours,” Brenda said hotly.
“Lydia had a longtime affair with my father,” I said.
“That is not news,” she fired back.
“I guess not. Apparently, I'm the only one in Nashville who was unaware of the great Katz legacy. Lydia is also the mother of my half sisterâthough you probably know that, too.”
Brenda did not acknowledge that one.
“That's the âbusiness of mine' that Lydia Knight is. That, and the fact that the call sort of makes her a suspect in Joe's murder.”
“Why drop this in my lap an hour before my husband's funeral? Why don't you ask her?”
“Because I'm not sure I trust her,” I said. “I trust you. We may not like each other, but I've done business with your companyâwith youâfor nearly a year. I believe you're an honest woman.”
That seemed to soften her a little. Not much, but enough to get her to talk to me.
“Talk to me,” I said. “I can call Detective Daniels to come down and ask these questions,
or
we can talk about this woman to woman, I can pass along anything relevant, and you can get on with your mourning.”
“You take a lot upon yourself,” she said.
“Story of my life,” I replied. “Brenda, what was Lydia Knight to your husband?”
She sighed long and deep. There were tears.
For Joe?
I got the feeling they weren't. It was his funeral, but she hadn't been crying before.
“Before Joe and I married, he had a brief relationship with Lydia,” Brenda said. “She had been dating your father, was upset that he wouldn't marry her, and . . . well, she started seeing other men.”
You two-timing bitch,
I thought, ignoring the fact that I was nearly about to do that to Grant, except the other guy turned out to like guys.
“So Joe was one of her revenge dates,” I said.
“I suppose he was. Then he proposed to me. The relationship ended.”
“I'm sorry, but I have to askâ”
“Am I sure it ended?” she said. She laughed a little. “I'm sure. Joe . . . Joe was a man of some innocence.”
What the hell did
that
mean?
“I'm not following,” I said.
“Lydia was his first. I was his second. And his last. I know that.”
“Because he went to church? That's your evidence?”
“No,” she said.
“What, then?”
I was watching her as she wept. There were a
lot
of tears. That was to be expected at her husband's funeral, but I wondered if there was something else. These were coming from her belly, not her chest. She was heaving.
Guilt.
And then it occurred to me.
“Twice a day,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“The calls to Dave. You two dated in high school. You were the one phoning him.”
She cried harder.
“You were seeing him.”
She nodded.
“Did Joe know?”
“I don't think so.”
“Brenda, did Daveâ”
“No!” she exclaimed through the tears. “Dave and I both loved Joe! They loved one another, and they both loved me! Dave would
never
have done anything to hurt either of us.”
Except screw his best friend's wife,
I thought.
“All right, fine,” I said. “Then back to Lydia. How do you know Joe hadn't seen her again, that he was faithful?”
“Because,” she said, “he had cancer a year after we were married.”
I didn't tell her I knew that. I let her continue at her own pace.
“The doctors operated,” she said. “They cured him. But when they were down there, they nicked a nerve.”
“Oh,” I said. The coroner had obviously missed that. “So he couldn'tâ”
“Not after that,” she said.
So good friend Dave stepped in for his impotent friend. Men were so giving.
“We just found out, only a few days beforeâbefore
this
happenedâthat the cancer had returned,” Brenda said. “Joe tried to hide it, but I knew how upset he was. That was why I was so short with you on the phone. It wasn't a good week.”
“I'm sorry,” I said. So they did know about the recurrence. “Brenda, do you think that's why Joe may have been talking to Lydia? To let her know?”
“I don't know,” she said. “Why would he? They hadn't spoken for years. I don't even shop in her store.”
The door pushed open. Jason looked in.
“Brenda? Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she said, taking control of herself.
“We need you out here,” he said, firing eye daggers at me.
“I'm coming,” she said. The woman reached for a box of tissues, pulled out several, and touched the wad to her eyes. She had been expecting to cry. She hadn't worn mascara. “Excuse me,” she said and rose.
“Of course,” I said. “Thank you.”
She didn't respond. She just looked away, not with anger but with sadness. I accepted that. For us, that was something of a breakthrough.
Chapter 25
There was a back door from the secret room, and I took it.
My head was awhirl with Brenda, Joe, and Dave. It was like the song in
The Mikado
. “Here's a how-de-do!. . . Here's a pretty mess.”
The key to this how-de-do was Lydia's cell phone. Who had it?
I thought of calling Grant or even Robert to see if they could do some kind of triangulation thing, but it occurred to me that if someone had used it to lure Joe to his death, they would have discarded it by now.
Which would also include Lydia, of course.
My brain went to people who had been off to the side of the radar. Jason, for instance. Covering up evidence, maybe looking to clear the way for his sister to be with a guy who could perform. He could've gone to chat with Joe before his own shift, got into an argument with the man, and . . .
Stabbed him with a jeweler's screwdriver?
That didn't seem like Jason McCoy's style. And then there was the dog. He wouldn't have been going to work with Hitch or Macguffin. Or come to the heart of Nashville to walk them.
I was distracted the rest of the workday. There were moments of relief, like when Stacie called to say that despite a concussion, a broken nose, a trio of cracked ribs, and a black-and-blue face, Scott was going to be okay. Another small victory for true love. She asked if we could have dinner. I told her sure, I'd love to, and I'd meet her at the hospital around seven.
I did things by rote. My body was in the game, but my head was on Brenda and Joe, on Dave and Brenda, on Joe and Dave, on Lydia and Joe, on Brenda and Jason. There was a combination there that I believed was not a healthy one.
It was conceivable, I thought, that having gone through cancer once, Brenda might want to spare her husband the agony of a new round of treatments. She knew his route. Maybe she and one of the dogs went with him.
And then she euthanized him . . . with the screwdriver and dog? And took his gloves as a keepsake?
Would Dave have done that? Then there was still the little old phone thief Scott, though he would have had to borrow a dog. All roads led to one place, but I couldn't make it stick. Especially if . . .
“But what if she did?”
It didn't tell me
why,
but it was the only reasonable
who
.
I wasn't going to go over now. I would wait until closing. This was not something you did with people around. Like dressing down a worker, you took them to the woodshed. Otherwise, both of you were just putting on a show.
I worked on cleanup, sent the staff home when we were nearly done, then went to my office to check the address.
Lydia saved me the trouble. There was a knock at the door, and I let her in.
“
Qu'elle
coincidence,” I said, still puzzled by my pseudo-French. I must be longing for the more innocent days of eighth grade. “I was just about to come and see you.”
“I thought you might.” She invited herself into the office.
My
office.
I followed her in. She stood by my chair and faced me. I stood in the doorway in case I had to bolt.
“Why did you think I would come to see you?” I asked.
“Because you have questions,” Lydia said. “You
do
have questions, don't you? You must. I saw you talking to Brenda this morning.”
“You did?”
“Of course. I attended the service. It would have been graceless not to. Why would you, of all people, be talking to her then, there, if you didn't have important
questions?
”
She said the word with a hint of anger. I looked across my desk. There were pencils, pens, and untwisted paper clips on the desk. Any one of them could be a lethal weapon in skilled or maniacal hands.
“So why were you coming to see me?” Lydia asked.
“To tell you that I didn't think anyone took your phone.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because you remembered the number when you wrote it down. I can't remember my own number, and I actually give it out to people. That phone wasn't in your bag just for emergencies.”
She hesitated for the briefest instant, then said, “That is true.”
“Why did you lie?” I asked her.
“Because I didn't know how to explain my conversation with Joe. But then I was thinking, âHere is a woman who told my daughter to speak the truth. She would appreciate the truth.'”
“Which is?”
“Joe was very ill, with cancer,” she said.
“How did you know?”
“He told me,” Lydia said. “That night.”
“Why you? You weren't having an affair?”
“Oh no,” she said. “Joe was a rock. A soft one, pyrite, but a rock nonetheless.”
That was cold. “Isn't pyrite a metal?”
“No, dear. A mineral. You're thinking of gold.”
I smirked. “You seem to know something about jewelry.”
I thought I saw her eyes narrow just a bit. It was difficult to say since they were already pretty slitty.
“So why did you talk to Joe that night?”
“Because he wanted to make a clean breast of things.”
“With you? Why, if that was years agoâ”
“Not with me,” she said through her teeth. “With my daughter. With
our
daughter.”
Whatever you may hear during the course of your life that makes you feel as though you want to throw up a week's worth of meals, it couldn't hit half as hard as that statement hit me. It wasn't just that she had lied to me, to Stacie; it was the implications to both of us going forward. Still, some part of my brain was still on the job.
“The adoption,” I said. “That was Joe?”
“That was Joe.”
“Did Brenda know he was trying to adopt his own baby?”
“I believe she did,” Lydia said. “That's why she forbade it. How was she to know she would never be able to have a child of her own? At least, not by her husband.”
“The other night,” I said. “The night of the call.”
“He told me he wanted to tell her. I implored him to let me speak with him face-to-face. He told me he would pick me up in the truck. He had to get here by a certain time. He was devoted to his customers. I went to meet him. I brought the dog he had given Stacie for one of her birthdays. We argued. I tried to explain how I had been working up the courage to come and see you. It wasn't easy, you know. You were the daughter of the only man I ever loved, the man by whom I truly wanted a child.”
“You lied and told my father the baby was his.”
“I did,” she said, as unrepentant as an Occupy Wall Streeter. “I had wanted to meet you ever since you came down here. I was so nervous. You saw that first day I couldn't even cross the street.”
“That had nothing to do with what went on behind the deli?”
The narrow eyes opened a little. Tears formed on the sides, rolled along her cheek. I was unmoved. I was ready to spit fire.
“Joe didn't want to continue with the lie,” I said.
“Give me a moment,” Lydia said. “This isn't easy.”
“I'm sure it isn't. You're about to confess to murder. You sat in the passenger's seat, the dog on your lap, and when he told you his decision was final, you grabbed the nearest sharp object you could find and plunged it in his neck. The dog joined in then, his hands went up to protect himself from
that,
and between the barking and the rage and the years of hurt and concern for Stacie, you just kept punching holes in his throat. You probably don't even remember doing it.”
“I don't!” she wailed. “I truly don't!”
“Until you saw the dog lapping his blood. Then you came around. You took his gloves, the murder weapon, maybe even made sure there was no dog hair on the seat, then left. You went so fast, the dog didn't even have time to pee on the damn truck!”
She cried into her left hand. She reached for me with her right. I took a step back. I didn't want her to touch me.
Lydia looked up from her palm. “I'm so, so sorry! I did it for Stacie! So she could have the family she never had, a better life. Scott will never be able to support her, just as your father was never able to support me. I wanted something better for her. I knew you could show her, help her.”
“Especially if I thought she was my goddamned sister.”
“Yes. I believed that.”
“So you lied and killed, and now . . .
now
you're going to take her on a trip through Robert Reid's tabloid journalism when you stand trial for murder.”
“That's why I came to you,” she said. “I want to go away. She never needs to know the truth. Let her think she's your blood. Joe felt he was going to die. I didn't do anything terribly wrong.”
“You are seriously cracked.”
“I did this for Stacie,
not
for myself!” she screamed. “I want nothing, other than to go away. The crime doesn't need to be solved! She need never know any of this!”
I heard a sound to my right and looked over. The nausea I had felt before returned. Stacie was standing a few feet away, her face like something from the sketchbook of Edvard Munch. She approached slowly.
“Scott was asleep, so I left the hospital early,” she said.
“Stacie?” Lydia cried.
“How is he?” I asked softly.
“Talking when he isn't sipping juice through a straw,” she said. Her mouth was working, but her expression was one of shock.
“Why don't you sit down in the dining room?” I said. “I'll come overâ”
She shook her head firmly and stood beside me. She looked into the office. “Mother, what have you done?”
“No! Go away!”
“You killed . . . my
father?
”
However fallen Stacie's face looked, it was nothing like the vision of utter, contorted horror that overcame the face of her mother. She screamed a sound I hoped I never heard again as she fell in the seat, her head flopping back, still wailing. I put an arm across the doorway to keep Stacie back, and I stepped inâjust as Lydia bent forward, reached for a pair of scissors I had in a pencil holder, and tried to push it into her chest.
Yes, I got between her and the blades and took them in the right arm.
Stacie jumped in after me, pulled her mother's hand away, and pinned it to the wall behind her. I reached up, grabbed the scissors, threw them to the floor, and put my hands around Lydia's other arm, which was clawing at her daughter's back. My right arm ached like I had a muscle cramp, but we managed to immobilize her. Stacie put her knee against her mother's waist, pushed the chair against the wall, and took the arm I was holding.
“I've got her,” Stacie said. “Call nine-one-one.”
I backed away. I couldn't get to the desk phone, and I didn't feel like dragging myself to the cash register, so I fished out the phone nearest me.
The one I saw in Lydia's purse.