She shuddered. “We ended up in the police report in the paper a couple of times when I had to call for help. What an embarrassment! I hated it. But let’s not talk about Randolph anymore, okay? He gives me the chills even now.”
I cleared my throat. “Edie, I’ve got one more question. It’s presumptuous, but I’ve got to ask it as a reporter and as someone who wants to find the truth.”
Edie swallowed. “Go ahead.”
“Your furniture in here.” I waved my hand at the living room, dining room and entry hall. “It’s gorgeous.”
“And expensive, right?” Edie looked relieved. Obviously this was a question she could answer.
“It’s from my father,” Randy said without looking up from whatever he was doing. “When Mom left, Dad sold the house and got an apartment. He wanted all new furniture because he was starting over again. He was going to give all the stuff we had to the Salvation Army.”
“He was going to give away all this beautiful stuff?”
Randy nodded. “He has money coming out his ears.”
I thought of Randy’s silver sports car, wherever it was at the moment. I guessed Randolph did at that.
“I talked him into letting me have whatever I wanted. I took the stuff you noticed and my bedroom stuff.” He glanced at his mother, embarrassed, a kid about to make a confession. “I was mad at Mom then because I blamed her for the divorce, so I refused to get her anything.”
“Oh, Randy,” Edie said, shaking her head. “Don’t worry about that. The last thing I wanted was the bedroom suite I shared with him.” She fluttered her hands rapidly like she was trying to shake something sticky and unpleasant off. “Some days even the living room is a bit much.”
Randy looked at the beautiful furnishings. “You can get rid of this stuff if you want. I don’t care. I don’t need it anymore.” He spoke like it was a revelation to him, this not needing the furniture. “Just keep the pictures.” He looked at the watercolors hanging on the walls. “I really like them.”
“Me too,” Edie said. “And I don’t think we’ll get rid of anything at all. It’s a given that Tom and I will never be able to afford anything this nice.” She ran her hand over the soft arm of the sofa. “I’m glad you asked about the furniture, Merry, what with all this talk about missing money. Our furnishings
are definitely beyond our income level, at least in this part of the house.”
I thought of the plain beige carpet upstairs and the Kmart glasses in the kitchen. There was no question but that the rest of the house was ordinary. Nice enough but ordinary. I was relieved to my toes to know the prosaic origin of the spectacular furniture, though I couldn’t help but wonder what William Poole thought of the opulence when he visited on Friday.
“Okay,” Randy said, “here we go.” He cleared his throat. “Tom worked for the Audubon PD for ten years. He was a sergeant at the time of the drug bust. The Audubon PD cooperated with the Camden PD and the Drug Enforcement Agency to break up a ring that was using the mall on Black Horse Pike in Audubon and the park down the street from the high school like they owned them. Of course they were also working Camden like crazy. They had a DEA guy and woman go undercover, he with the gang, she in the high school. They set up the bust at a drop in an old warehouse in Camden.”
He hit some more keys, and Edie watched him in total fascination.
“The cops surrounded the building and did their usual ‘Freeze—it’s the police’ thing. But one of the drug guys panicked and started shooting. Gunfire was exchanged and when the dust settled, Tom Whatley was fatally wounded and one other guy, named Felix Estevez, was dead.”
He looked at us. “That’s all available in the newspapers and is general knowledge. I got it from the
Philadelphia Inquirer
and
Daily News
sites. Now comes the interesting part.” He went back to his screen. “Tom—our Tom—”
Edie turned to me and mouthed, “Our Tom?” and patted her heart like she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
Oblivious, Randy continued. “Our Tom rushed in with the rest of the force, and when he saw Tom Whatley, he went sort
of crazy. He fell on his knees beside the wounded Tom and kept saying, ‘You aren’t supposed to be here! You aren’t supposed to be here!’ His superiors thought that was an incriminating comment given the men’s history, so they had Tom’s involvement with Tom Whatley and the drug bust investigated. But before they could come to any conclusions, Tom resigned from the force and disappeared.” Randy snapped his fingers. “Just like that.”
“Nobody had any idea where he was?” I asked.
Randy shook his head. “He was just gone.”
He went back to his story. “The Audubon PD found no evidence to indicate Tom had anything to do with trying to taint the bust. He was cleared in absentia. But the kicker is that the lab tests showed that the bullet that killed Tom Whatley came from our Tom’s gun. It was one of many shots fired, but it was the one that struck. The police kept that bit of information quiet for several months before it was leaked to an
Inquirer
reporter. No one ever admitted letting the report get out, and the reporter refused to talk, protecting his source. But there’s no question. Our Tom accidentally killed the other Tom.”
Randy looked at Edie and blinked. Whatever he had expected her reaction to be to this news, he hadn’t expected a smile. Neither had I. But her face was alight with joy.
“You’ve known this all along, haven’t you?” I accused. “You’ve always known that Tom Whatley was Tom Willis.”
She turned her smile on me. “Do you really think Tom would deceive me?”
Given what I and everyone else said about the depth of their affection, the answer was obvious. But he had deceived the rest of us, including Randy. And so had Edie.
Randy stared at his mother, confusion all over his face. “You knew all this? I did all this work for nothing? I even hacked my way into the Audubon PD system!”
Here was Randy’s great gift offered in love—for the first time in who knew how many years—and it wasn’t wanted or needed, and he was hurt. And ticked.
Oh, Lord, don’t let this revelation undo all the good of the past day or so!
“Honey, you have done me one of the biggest favors of my life.” Edie walked over to him and kissed him noisily on the cheek. “I thank you, I thank you. You have helped me more than you’ll ever know.”
Though still confused, Randy seemed somewhat mollified by her appreciation.
Thank you, Lord
.
“So when did you find out?” I asked.
“Tom told me all about Tom and the shootout before we were married, but he swore me to secrecy. It didn’t really matter until Thursday when he didn’t come home. I didn’t know what to do. What if the truth would sort things out? Though I couldn’t imagine how. I decided I’d just keep quiet until I had to tell. But it was killing me inside. Now, thanks to this wonderful kid who uncovered all our secrets—” and she glowed at Randy “—I can talk about everything with a clear conscience.”
“Would you have kept quiet indefinitely?” I asked, still somewhat peeved that she hadn’t shared what she knew.
“I don’t know. It would have depended on what happened. But it’s a moot point now.” She smiled at Randy. “I’m free.”
He didn’t smile back. “Why did you go along with it at all?” Much of his pique was passed, but there was still a touch of starch in his question.
Edie sat on the sofa and clutched a pillow in her lap. “Tom was already known here in Amhearst as Tom Whatley when I met him. How do you tell people that you’ve been using a false name without them wanting to know why? And then all that pain would be raked up all over again. I mean, who wants to live through that twice?”
“How did he come to be known as Tom Whatley in the first place?” I asked.
“Ah. Now there’s a weird story. I bet you didn’t find that in your magic little machine, did you, Randy?”
“You know I didn’t,” he said. “Come on. Talk. Tell me why I shouldn’t be mad at you all over again.”
“I love you.”
He rolled his eyes and slouched down in the chair.
Edie paused and ordered her thoughts. “You already know that Tom and Tom were best friends and had been for years. The TomTom Twins. My Tom—” she looked at Randy “—
our
Tom had done well, graduating from college and the police academy with honors. He was doing well on his job. Tom Whatley, the golden boy of Audubon High, had done poorly, getting kicked out of the Naval Academy, drifting from job to job, unable to cope when no longer the golden boy.”
“The moral here,” Randy said, “is that I should be glad I’m only second string JV and not one of the popular jocks in the starting lineup?”
His mother smiled at him. “You’re popular with me, kid.” She blew him a kiss.
His expression said clearly that while he might be having a change of heart about many things, being popular with his mother still didn’t cut it.
I’d had enough mother-son bonding. “So Tom Whatley was a failure. I found that out in Audubon.”
Edie looked sad. “He fell into drugs big-time. My Tom was never sure how it began. He asked and asked, but the other Tom was always frustratingly vague. But as the years passed, Tom Whatley became more and more heavily drug dependent. Tom put him in detox programs more than once, but the other Tom would always leave, sometimes before even one day had passed.
“Our Tom knew that the other Tom was going to die soon if something wasn’t done. The problem was that the other Tom didn’t seem to care. Then came the word that Tom Whatley was involved with the ring about to be busted.”
“How did Tom hear that?” I asked. “A source on the street?”
“A comment from his chief, if you can believe that. ‘A hero’s going to fall in this one,’ he said the afternoon before the bust. Tom asked what he meant. The chief was an older guy who had a son named Bobby who had graduated with the Toms. Bobby played football, and he always lost out to Tom Whatley for everything from quarterback to team captain. There may have been a bit of satisfaction in the chief’s comment when he said, ‘Such promise wasted, not like you and Bobby.’ Right away Tom knew what the chief meant. It was his worst nightmare.”
I could imagine. Talk about an ethical dilemma. He couldn’t tell Tom what was going to happen because Tom might tell his associates. Then they would either disappear and set up shop elsewhere, or they would arrange an ambush. But how can you let your best friend get caught up in a situation that could lead to his getting arrested or shot?
“Our Tom went to the other Tom’s apartment, by this time little more than a mattress on the floor in a horrible part of inner-city Camden. ‘Don’t go out tonight, Tom,’was what Tom ended up telling him. ‘I’m worried about you. Promise me you won’t go out and shoot up tonight.’The other Tom didn’t even ask why. He just promised to make Tom happy, then did what he wanted. As Tom has said many times since, he should have realized that druggies will agree to anything, then do what they need to.”
“So Whatley went to the drug drop.” I found the story fascinating. “I take it he was financing his own habit by selling?”
Edie nodded. “He went and got shot, and my Tom still holds himself accountable.”
“But it wasn’t Tom’s fault,” Randy protested. “He told the other Tom to stay home. Besides, the other Tom was killing himself anyway.”
Edie nodded. “Tom knows that, but the other Tom was still dead, and he had been unable to save the friend he loved better than a brother.”
Randy looked thoughtfully at the rug. “Maybe I don’t understand because I don’t have a friend like that. But if something happened to Sherrie and I couldn’t save her….” His face said it all.
I thought of Tom Willis, quiet, unimpressive, kind, living with all this hurtful history while he helped Edie overcome hers. And I looked at Edie, living with all these secrets, protecting the man she loved, helping him learn to cope. How much easier it would have been if they had known that God sent Christ to bear just such pain for them.
Dear God, help me help them
.
Edie wasn’t finished. “I’ll say one thing for Tom Whatley. While our Tom was weeping beside him, knowing his wound was fatal but not knowing the bullet came from his own gun, Tom Whatley looked at him, smiled and managed to say, ‘Thanks. You tried. Love you, man.’”
I thought about that for several minutes. “You tried.” How would I react if someone I loved said that, using his last breath to free me from guilt?
“What?” Edie asked me. “You’re shaking your head.”
“‘You tried.’I was wondering if that would free me. I don’t think it would any more than it did Tom. I think that’s one that only God can set you free from.”
Edie looked at me with something like respect in her eyes. “Tom still has nightmares about that night.”
“But it wasn’t his fault,” Randy said again. “It’s not fair.”
“It’s not,” his mother agreed. “But then life’s not fair.”
That’s sure true, I thought. “By the way…” I smiled at Edie. “I met your mother-in-law.”
She stared at me. “Mom Willis?”
“When I went to Audubon.” Edie stood and began to pace. “I don’t think Mom understands all that happened to Tom. She just knows he’s living here in Amhearst and using a different name. He visits her often, usually at night so there won’t be questions from the neighbors, and he sends her money every month. Without it, she wouldn’t be able to keep her home. I think she talks about him to her friends. I know she brags on Randy a lot.”
Startled, Randy looked at his mother. “Tom’s mom brags about me?”
Edie smiled. “I heard her once on the phone talking about her handsome grandson.”
He blinked. “But I’ve never even met her.”
“That doesn’t stop Tom and me from talking about you. She’s got your pictures plastered all over her refrigerator.”
“If she thinks I’m nice,” Randy looked uncomfortable as he spoke, “then you haven’t been telling her the truth.”
“Let’s just say we’re selective,” Edie said. “You do well in school, you play a mean game of football and you are a computer whiz. We tell her things like that.”
He blinked rapidly a few times. “Can I meet her?”
“When Tom comes home.”