Instantly the smile disappeared. “I’m not interested,” she said in a desperate voice and began to close the door.
I quickly put my hand on the door. “I mean it when I say I’m a friend. I work with Edie. Please talk to me. I’m very confused.”
The whole time I talked, Mrs. Willis shook her gray head. “Go away, please. Just go away.”
“But Mrs. Willis, we need to find Tom. Edie’s beside herself with worry. Do you know where he is?”
“Go away,” she pleaded yet again. “I don’t know anything.”
I looked at the small woman, and I saw genuine fear in her face. I sighed and took my hand from the door. “Please.”
Mrs. Willis shook her head, and the door shut in my face with all the finality of the gates of hell snapping shut behind an unrepentant sinner. The only difference was that I was on the outside while the sinner would be on the inside.
I arrived back at the newsroom shortly before four.
“How did Mr. Montgomery’s visit go?” I asked Jolene.
“He never came, and if he doesn’t hurry, Mac’s desk is going to revert to its natural chaotic condition.” She wrinkled her nose, showing her beautiful capped teeth. “We’re all just waiting around practicing our paeans of praise about Mac.”
I cocked my head toward Edie, and Jolene shrugged:
who knows?
“I’m fine,” Edie said tartly. “And I’m not an idiot. I know what this means.” She jerked her head a couple of times.
“Sorry. I didn’t want to bother you. You looked busy.”
“I am. I’m a reporter, and I’m working on a story. And I’m fine.”
“No, she’s not.” Jolene leaned back in her chair. “She wouldn’t go to lunch with me. I even offered to pay.”
Jolene might be a millionaire, but an offer to pay was a rare occurrence and a sign of the depth of her concern.
“I asked you to bring me a cup of noodle soup,” Edie defended.
“Which you carried to the restroom and threw away when you thought I wasn’t looking.” Jolene’s lethal nail pointed straight at Edie’s nose.
“You are one nosy woman,” Edie griped.
“I am,” Jolene said proudly.
I turned to go speak with Mac about my story of a lifetime when William Poole entered the newsroom. The focused look on his shar-pei face as he approached Edie’s desk made me think,
Uh-oh
.
“Edie, may I talk with you in private?” William asked.
Edie, who had watched his approach with trepidation, seemed to shrink into herself. “Is this about Tom?”
William nodded.
“Do I need a lawyer?”
William blinked. “I don’t think so. This isn’t an official interrogation or anything. We just need to talk.”
She looked at Jolene and me in a panic.
“It’s okay, Edie.” I came and stood by her, putting my hand on her shoulder. “You can trust William.” I shot him a look that said he’d better be trustworthy. “He’s a friend.”
But Edie wasn’t having any of it. “Stay with me, Merry. You too, Jo.”
“Like you could get us to leave.” Jolene joined me beside Edie. Her expression dared William to tell her to go.
William looked exasperated. “Edie, I need to talk about some very private things with you. I don’t think you want an audience.”
“I have no secrets. I want them with me.”
“There’s a conference table over there.” I pointed to the scarred collapsible table about the size of two card tables that sat along the far wall. It was so unstable that if Mac got angry during a meeting and pounded his fist, everyone’s beverages jumped and spilled. “Why don’t we sit around it?”
William looked unhappy but resigned. After all, he’d said it wasn’t an official interrogation.
We paraded across the newsroom and clustered about the table, William at the head, Jolene and Edie on one side, me across from Edie. When Mac saw the parade to the table, he came to see what was going on. I’m sure Larry would have come too, but he wasn’t here.
“What’s all this, William?” Mac asked.
“I need to talk with Edie,” William explained again, looking beleaguered.
“Oh, okay.” Mac pulled out a chair and sat next to me. William sighed deeply and cleared his throat. We all looked at him expectantly, me especially. I wondered if he was going to mention Tom Willis or if I had beaten him to the punch.
“Edie,” William began, “do you remember when I questioned you about Tom’s background?”
She nodded. “And I knew very little.”
“Well, we’ve learned a bit more. By tracing Tom’s Social Security number, his birth date and birthplace, we’ve learned a fascinating piece of information.”
We all waited while he paused for dramatic effect.
“Tom Whatley doesn’t exist.”
“Oh, no!” Edie put her hands to her face and began to cry.
Jolene scowled at William like it was his fault Tom didn’t exist. Mac frowned and reached across the table to pat Edie on the shoulder. You would have thought he had taken patting lessons from me. But he was alert enough to pick up on William’s choice of words. “What do you mean, doesn’t exist?”
I sat still and said nothing because I knew how right William was. A terrible thought struck me and knocked my complacency for a loop. Was he referring to the real Tom Whatley or Edie’s Tom Whatley? “Is ‘doesn’t exist’ a euphemism for ‘Tom’s dead’?” I blurted.
William nodded. “Tom Whatley is dead all right.” He talked right over Edie’s wail. “As a matter of fact, he’s been dead for ten years.”
As a conversation stopper, William’s comment was one of the best I’d ever heard. I looked around the circle and tried not to smile at everyone’s dropped jaws. I looked at William, who was looking at Edie.
She turned her earnest, tear-streaked face to William. “Then you haven’t found my Tom’s body?”
William shook his head, surprised. “Your husband’s body? No.”
Edie looked at the ceiling. “Thank you, God.”
“But Tom Whatley’s body?”William glared at all of us. “Yes.”
Mac was having a hard time assimilating William’s information. He was probably still hung up on
doesn’t exist
. “Tom’s not dead but you’ve found his body?”
“Edie’s husband isn’t dead, to the best of our knowledge,” William agreed. “But Tom Whatley definitely is. We found his death certificate at the Camden County Courthouse dated almost exactly ten years ago.”
Mac narrowed his eyes. “If Tom Whatley’s dead, then who’s Edie’s husband?”
William nodded. “The question of the hour. We don’t know
yet. I’ve sent Jeb out to Edie’s house to get something with Tom’s fingerprints on it. We’ll begin a trace immediately through AFIS.”
“Don’t bother, William,” I said. “I can save you the trouble.”
Everyone looked at me, and I have to admit that I kind of liked the power of knowing what no one else knew. Childish, of course, but fun.
“Edie’s husband is named Tom Willis.”
Everyone looked at me in surprise, including William, who wasn’t happy about being beaten to the punch. Edie dropped her head onto her chest, but was that relief I saw in her eyes before they closed?
“Tom Willis is from Audubon, New Jersey, and he’s an excop.” I acknowledged William with a nod of my head as I passed on that bit of information. “He was somehow involved in the death of his best friend, Tom Whatley, in a drug bust. His mother—that is, Tom Willis’s mother—still lives in Audubon, but she wouldn’t talk to me.”
“Edie,” Jolene cried. “If Tom Whatley isn’t Tom’s real name, are you really married? If he signed the marriage certificate Tom Whatley, are you legal?”
We all turned to Jolene in disbelief. Talk about the least important issue at the moment.
“Well, is she married?” Jolene asked, refusing to back down.
Edie’s married state or lack thereof didn’t interest William. “What I need to know, Edie, is why your husband is calling himself Tom Whatley.”
“I don’t know.”
“But you’ve been married for how long?”
“Five years.”
“And you expect me to believe you don’t know about the false identity?”
“I do not know why he calls himself Tom Whatley.”
“Where would he go if he ran away after committing a crime?”
“He did not commit any crime!”
“Did you know he was using a false identity?”
“I—”
The back door of the newsroom burst open and Randy flew in, startling all of us.
“Mom!” His eyes went to her empty desk.
“Over here, Randy.” Edie waved her hand.
Randy came charging over, his face full of anger. “The cops were at the house again. You’ll never guess what they were after.”
He skidded to a halt beside our table and for the first time noticed William. “Oh.”
“Hello, Randy.” William stood and indicated the chair at the far end of the table. “Would you like to join us? We’re talking about your stepfather.”
“Here,” Jolene said. “Sit next to your mom.” She got up and moved to the seat at the far end.
Randy collapsed into the vacated chair and, full sneer, made one of his patented statements. “That man is not my stepfather.”
Sitting with his back to the room, he didn’t see Sherrie enter to keep her appointment with me. I did, though, since I was facing Edie and Randy. I held up a finger to Sherrie to show I’d be a minute here. Sherrie nodded and sat in an empty chair along the far wall, patiently waiting until I was free.
Randy kept talking. “Just because he’s married to my mother doesn’t mean I have any relationship whatsoever with him. In fact, he makes me sick.” The last four words were separate and emphatic.
“Randy!” Edie was embarrassed and distressed. She reached for his hand. He pulled it away, crossing his arms over
his chest and tucking his hands into his armpits so she couldn’t grab at him again.
I glanced at Sherrie, noting that her usually bright eyes were clouded with concern. I got up and walked toward her, keeping an ear tuned to the table.
“Hi,” she said to me absently, her attention fixed on Randy just as mine was. “What’s wrong?”
“The police are talking to Randy’s mother about the disappearance of his stepfather.”
“His stepfather has disappeared?”
“He’s been missing since Thursday night.”
Sherrie looked confused. “He said today that he had just gotten rid of a huge problem and was feeling light as a feather in relief.” She turned to me. “You don’t think he was referring to Mr. Whatley, do you?”
I thought the chances were about one hundred percent that he was referring to Tom, but I didn’t want to upset Sherrie. “Maybe he had just finished a huge term paper or something.”
Sherrie hitched her backpack higher on her shoulder. “Nice try, but I doubt it.”
Just then Randy went wild again. He stood up abruptly and his chair, a rickety folding thing about as sturdy as the table, went flying. He glared at Edie.
“How can you defend him, Mom? How can you be so stupid?”
Edie said something we couldn’t hear, her face pleading.
“He’s a thief! And I bet he’s a murderer too.” Randy struck the table with the flat of his hand, the sound reverberating through the room like thunder. “I bet he killed that guy in my car just to make my life miserable.”
I glanced at William, who was listening to the outburst with grave concentration. He was not going to interfere.
Edie’s voice became a little louder in response to Randy’s
harangue. “I doubt that anyone would kill someone just to make your life miserable, Randy. Especially not Tom. That was a very self-centered comment.”
“Self-centered? Me?” He leaned into Edie, his nose mere inches from hers. “You leave my father and marry that man, and you call me self-centered? You’ve ruined my life!”
“Ruined your life? Me?” Edie stood, glaring at her son. “You’re doing that all by yourself.”
“You married a thief and a murderer!”
“I married a wonderful man!” She turned to sit down. But Randy wasn’t finished yelling yet. He grabbed Edie and spun her to face him so fast she lost her balance. She reached out for Randy’s arm to steady herself.
“Get your hands off me!” Randy pushed at her. With her previous loss of balance compounded by the push, she started to fall. She grabbed for Randy more desperately than ever. His face contorted with rage. “I said get your hands off me!”
He shoved her as hard as he could. Her chair flew, striking Larry the sports guy’s desk with a great crash. She staggered, then went down hard, striking her head on the edge of the table as she fell. The table flipped, falling on her and pinning her to the floor where she lay absolutely still.
The incident happened so fast that none of us could intervene. Mac leaped from his seat and rushed to subdue Randy. William lurched to his feet and around the table with the same goal. Jolene screamed and I grabbed the phone on my desk to dial 911 and ask for an ambulance.
But the fastest responder was Sherrie. She raced across the room yelling, “Nooo!” She threw herself at Randy, beating William and Mac by a good five strides. She wrapped herself around him, pinning his arms to his sides. She was panting and crying and screaming, “How could you do that? I thought you were nice! You’re just like my father! You’re just like my father!”
Randy stared at his mother, his face white and his eyes wide with horror. “Mom!” He tried to move, but Sherrie, tears streaming down her face, hung on.
“Don’t you dare touch her again!” the girl screamed. “Don’t you dare! You’re just like my father!”
Randy looked at Sherrie’s tear-streaked face and shuddered. “No,” he whispered. “I’m just like my father.”
Into this chaos walked Jonathan Delaney Montgomery.
TEN
M
r. Montgomery, the epitome of professionalism in his navy blazer, gray slacks, light blue shirt and red-and-blue rep tie, brown leather briefcase clutched in his hand, took one look at the emotional tornado streaking through our newsroom and closed his eyes as if to deny what he was seeing. Then he turned very deliberately on his well-shod heel and left.
Just like that.
No “What’s going on?” No “Can I help?” Not even “Do you need help?” The least he could have done, I thought critically, what with Edie lying there on the floor unconscious, was to ask, “Is she all right?” But nothing. Not one word.