Clear and Convincing Proof (8 page)

No one voiced any objection to the fact that she had taken over the meeting. Dr. Kelso simply pushed the folder closer to Sid and then leaned back in his chair.

But Barbara was not yet finished with Annie and Darren. She asked the young woman first. “Why do you think they will accuse you?”

“Monday morning they practically told me they would. They said that from what Darren had told them, I was in over my head and I might as well just tell them the details. They said it would go easier for me if I told the truth, things like that.”

“Okay. I know the routine.” Barbara looked at Darren, who nodded.

“Pretty much the same line. They had us in separate rooms, with a guy going back and forth, whispering to the detective who was asking questions, acting as if one of us was confessing or something.”

Barbara tried not to show her anger at that kind of questioning—the prisoner's gambit. Make each suspect believe the other one was talking, confessing, turning state's evidence to get a lighter sentence, maybe a suspended sentence on a lesser charge. She nodded at Darren, who nodded back and shrugged. He knew about that, too, she thought. She was looking forward to interviewing him in private, she realized. If she was reading him right, he knew things that a simple physical therapist generally did not know. She turned her attention back to Sid.

“What we've assembled,” he said, “are copies of various documents that we hope will assist you in understanding the issues at stake here. Mrs. Kelso's will, the articles of incorporation, the petitions to the court, the terms of David McIvey's will, things of that sort. Also, we added the names and addresses of everyone who was on duty the morning of the murder, the groundskeeper, as well as patients….”

Barbara put the folder in her briefcase: weekend reading. “Good. Thank you. Now, just briefly, fill me in on the morning he was discovered dead. The newspaper articles were pretty sketchy, and it was two months ago.”

Their report was almost as sketchy as the news
paper's had been. She didn't pursue it. “Okay. Why are the police concentrating on people connected to the clinic? Why not an intruder, a burglar, someone like that?”

Greg Boardman answered. “Some years back vandals got in and did a lot of damage to the garden, uprooted plants, dumped stuff in the pond, messed things up generally. Afterward we put a padlock on the gate, the only outside entrance there is. I lock up when I leave the clinic every day, around six usually in the winter, and I'm most often the one who unlocks it in the morning. The door from the clinic to the garden is locked at night, and unlocked at seven-thirty in the morning. I gave David the gate key the morning of the murder, and presumably he opened it.”

Barbara nodded. She knew well why the police had homed in on Annie; the surviving spouse was always the first suspect. She wanted to ask Darren why they had singled him out, but she decided that such a question, along with many others, should be asked and answered in private. She arranged with Naomi Boardman to have a tour of the garden the following day—Saturday—and set up appointments with the others. Sid hesitated a moment, then agreed to talk to her on Monday, in her office, after his suggestion that she could come to his office was rejected out of hand.

“Anything else?” she asked then.

“Yes,” Dr. Kelso said. He had been quiet and watchful, listening intently to everything. “If they
decide it was a collaborative murder, what is the usual procedure? Will they arrest both Annie and Darren at the same time, try them together?”

“Possibly,” Barbara said. “But understand that I don't have any real information at this point. I don't know what evidence they have gathered. Did anyone see you two conspiring? Overhear a conspiracy? See one of you pass a gun to the other?” At each question Annie shook her head vigorously. Darren was shaking his head also. “Well, if it's inconclusive, in their minds, I mean, what they likely will do is charge the one they think they can get a conviction for with murder one, and charge the other with being an accessory. Murder one seldom allows release on bail, but the accessory may be granted it. They could go for one trial for both, or first one, then the other. In either event it could be many months before a trial actually takes place. I'm afraid you're in for a long punishing ordeal,” she added sympathetically to Annie and Darren both.

“And from here on out, you absolutely should not answer any questions unless I'm with you, or my associate is. The police may pretend shock, or try to make you feel guilty over wanting your attorney, but it's a charade. It won't mean anything. Insist, no questions without your attorney present.” Although, she added to herself, it was a little late for that bit of advice.

T
hat Friday evening, Erica did not linger at the clinic after reading. She had not worked that day, and although she certainly could use the money, she had been happy to have the day off. It was Todd's weekend with his father, and she had invited them to dinner. She knew about the meeting going on in the directors' room; everyone knew about it. She might have time to prepare most of the meal before Darren got home, have it ready for him when he arrived cold and tired.

Over the holidays, when both Todd and she had been out of school for two weeks, he had spent several days in her half of the house waiting for Darren to get home from work. One day she had taken him shopping, and in a Goodwill store they had found a
bread machine for ten dollars. That afternoon they learned to bake bread. Another day they had gone to the pound for a kitten. Darren had objected: Todd couldn't have a pet when he was gone most of the time.

“We'll go in halves,” Erica had said. “Half his, half mine. When Todd's at his mother's house, I'll keep the kitten here. I've always wanted one, too. Half a kitten is better than no kitten.”

“Which half is mine?” Todd had asked.

“We'll flip a coin. Tails gets the kitty litter box. Heads gets the eating end.” They had all laughed. She ended up with the litter box and most of the feeding, but that was all right. That Friday she had been home when Todd arrived from school, and he had come straight to her door, looking for his end of the kitten. He was still there playing with the kitten when she got back.

It would be a simple meal: fish, spaghetti, bread, salad and brownies for dessert. She had memorized the recipe earlier and shopped for the ingredients that morning. As she got busy at the stove, Todd played with the kitten, dragging a string for it to pounce upon.

“Rikki,” he said, “what happens if you're born on February twenty-ninth? I mean, how do you count birthdays? One every four years? I wish I was born on the twenty-ninth.”

She laughed. “I don't think it works like that. Maybe you celebrate on the twenty-eighth instead of waiting.”

“My birthday is on the twenty-sixth.” He yanked the string hard and the kitten fell on its face. Laughing, he picked it up and stroked it. “I should have named him Clumsy,” he said. He had named it Napoleon and they all called it Nappy. Then, still petting the kitten, keeping his gaze on it, he said, “When I'm twelve Mom said I could choose where I want to live. But she said that if Dad's in trouble, I might have to wait.”

Erica stirred onion and garlic in olive oil. “I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. There's an old saying, don't borrow trouble. It means don't worry about all the things that could possibly go wrong. In a few weeks I'm sure everything will be fine, and you'll get to make your choice.” Todd began to pull the string for the kitten again. She took his silence to mean, What do you know? Or, You don't understand. She added tomatoes and peppers to the skillet.

“Do you know how to play hearts?” she asked then. “I thought maybe we could play cards after we eat.”

“Sure,” he said. “I know how to play bridge, too. Dad taught me.”

She bit her lip. She would have to learn how to play bridge. Someone at the clinic had mentioned that Darren belonged to a bridge club, and she had not given it another thought. But she would learn. Forget hearts, she told herself, and out loud she said, “Or we could play Clue or Monopoly.”

Swiftly Todd said, “Monopoly.”

She nodded. Of course not Clue. Dr. McIvey in the garden with a gun? She shivered and added mushrooms to the skillet.

When Darren came in, flushed from the cold, he stopped at the door to take off his jacket and boots, then stood for a moment sniffing. “Wow!” he said softly. “Just wow! A feast!”

“Garlic, onions, homemade bread. I ask you, how can you go wrong with that?” Erica said. “Five minutes.”

Dinner was a success. Darren and Todd discussed and discarded plans for a shelter for the bonsai, a ten-inch tall weeping cherry that was said to be twelve years old. Erica had gasped at the price tag, then bought it anyway. According to Todd, who had become the authority, it had to be outside, but protected from hard rains and hot sun. And slugs and snails, he had added. In the summer the roots had to be kept cool. The shallow dish that housed the tree would heat up too much and bake the roots.

A little before ten Todd said there was a show he wanted to see. Darren had gone broke minutes before and Erica was very nearly broke; they declared Todd the winner and gathered up the game. Todd collected his belongings and left while Darren was putting on his boots.

As soon as Erica heard Todd going up the outside stairs, she said, “Darren, he needs to talk to you.”

Darren stopped lacing his boot and looked up at her. He was tired, she thought, under a strain and trying not to show it, but here, away from patients,
away from the clinic, the strain showed in worry lines, a guarded expression. The dancing lights in his eyes had dimmed. “He thinks you're in trouble,” she said, “and he's worried.”

“What did he say?” Darren asked.

She repeated Todd's words, then said, “I imagine the police have questioned his mother, and he knows it. Maybe they asked him questions. They've been asking everyone questions, of course. He knows there's trouble and he needs to hear from you how serious it is. There's nothing you can tell him that's worse than what he can imagine for himself.”

He bent over his boot again and finished tying the laces. Then he stood up and regarded her for a moment. He reached for his jacket and slipped it on. “Sometimes there are things you can't tell your eleven-year-old kid,” he said.

She shook her head. “If it's something he'll learn anyway sooner or later, it would be better to tell him now. It's better to tell children as much of the truth as they can handle. It can be devastating to them to hear vicious half-truths and lies from others.”

All of Darren's movements had seemed in slow motion—tying his bootlaces, standing up, putting on his jacket. In the same deliberative, deceptively slow motion he reached out and grasped her shoulders and drew her closer, then kissed her forehead. He released her, stepped back, turned and opened the door.

“Thank you, Rikki. Just thanks.” He left.

In a dreamlike way she crossed her arms and
placed her hands on her own shoulders where his had been, then stood with her eyes closed as a shudder rippled through her, and another….

 

Promptly at ten on Saturday morning Barbara rang the doorbell at Greg and Naomi Boardman's house. It was a cold morning, and the newspaper and TV weather forecast agreed that an inch or two of snow would move in later that day. Barbara did not believe it. It never snowed when they said it would. Snow in the valley came by night, by stealth, unannounced, always a surprise to forecasters and a delight to children.

Naomi opened the door and ushered her inside. “It's freezing out there,” she said. “Come in by the fire. Do you want coffee? I just made it.”

“I'd love some,” Barbara said, following Naomi into a comfortable room where a fire was blazing. The house was almost too warm, but it felt good. The drive had not been long enough for her car heater to take the chill off. The room they entered was cluttered from the floor up: a bold black-and-beige rug in a geometric pattern, with scatter rugs on top of it in bright colors; red cushions on a tan sofa; vases of flowers, a potted plant on one table; books and magazines here and there; a bowl of candy on an end table; the coffee carafe and cups on a table, where it looked as if candles had been pushed aside to make room.

Naomi was wearing jeans and a heavy dark-red sweater, and suede ankle boots. She was also wear
ing dangling parrot earrings. She started to hand Barbara a cup of coffee, frowned at the coffee table by the sofa and put the cup down again in order to clear a space. Then, with both of them seated on the sofa, she said, “Now, do you ask questions or do I just talk?”

Barbara laughed. “Both. I need to fill in exactly what happened the morning Dr. McIvey was shot. And I'll need to fill in a lot of background for everyone here. Let's begin with the morning of the shooting.”

“Well, that morning Annie dropped him off at seven-thirty, and she left. Greg let him in and gave him the key to the gate, and a few minutes after he went out, I came down. I went out to get the car out of the garage to be ready to drive him to his office, and then I sat at the table in the kitchen and had coffee and read the newspaper. I thought it was strange that he didn't come back for his ride, but just assumed he had been held up with his patient or something. I didn't give it much thought at all, to tell the truth. I really wanted to make some breakfast, but I didn't want to be interrupted in the middle of it. Then Carlos came to tell Greg that David had been shot.”

“Did Carlos say he had been shot?”

“I don't think so. He said he was dead.”

She admitted that she had waited until she knew McIvey had left the house to come downstairs. By then Greg had made coffee and had taken his to the study to watch the news.

“I was annoyed,” she said. “I thought it was an imposition for him to ask me to drive him to work. He could have called a cab. I almost said no, that it would be inconvenient, but then I thought, why cause a scene or add to the tension we were all under? I just said fine and let it go at that.”

Barbara asked questions and she answered readily. Annie had told her the day before the shooting that she had to go to Portland and would not be working at the clinic the next day, and yes, others probably heard her. And they knew that the patient was to be sent home, of course, and that meant that McIvey would have to sign him out and leave follow-up orders.

“You didn't like Dr. McIvey, did you?” Barbara asked when Naomi paused.

“I hardly knew him. But I don't think anyone really liked him, at least as far as I could tell. He was not a likable person. He was cold, brusque and impatient with lesser mortals, which everyone else was as far as he was concerned. So, no, I didn't like him, but I had no reason to dislike him personally. I didn't like what he wanted to do with the clinic.”

“Why is Mrs. McIvey living here with you and your husband?” Barbara asked.

For the first time Naomi hesitated. Then she said, “Annie's mother stayed with her for three weeks after David's death, but she had to go back home, and Annie couldn't stay in that condo alone. It's up in the south hills,” she added, as if that explained why.

“Many people live alone. Why couldn't she?”

Naomi stood up and crossed the room to bring the carafe and refill their cups. When she sat down again she said in a low voice, “If they charge her, it will all come out in court, won't it? Whatever the police dig up, I mean.”

“Yes.”

“She has no money,” Naomi said. “He kept her on a niggardly allowance, and she had the illusion of having money when she had little access to it. Every month he put a check in a joint account, and she had use of a credit card, but it had a modest dollar cap, and she didn't know that. When she tried to use it the month following his death, the credit card was rejected, and his estate is being held until there is a resolution concerning his death. She has her old job back, the same work she was doing as a volunteer for nearly five years. It pays very little. Eventually she will want her own place, but for now, she's staying here.” She said this in a defiant manner, as if challenging Barbara to question it further. “He humiliated her repeatedly when he was living, and he humiliated her even more after he died.”

Barbara nodded. It appeared, she thought then, that Naomi did have a reason to dislike David McIvey personally.

“How long have you known her?” Barbara asked.

Naomi told her how Annie had answered their newspaper ad, and had taken her first job out of school at the clinic. “She was innocent in a way. I don't mean virginal precisely, I don't know about
that, but inexperienced. She was exactly how I always imagined my own daughters would be at that age,” she said, and sighed deeply, then explained about her two stillborn babies. “Anyway, when David McIvey set his sights on her, she had no defenses. She was completely infatuated with him, or with the idea of what she thought he was, I guess.”

Not long after that Barbara said, “I hate to ask you to go out in such cold weather, but could you show me the way to the clinic from here, where McIvey was shot, where his body was dragged?”

They bundled up and went through a hall to a bright yellow-and-blue kitchen to the back door and outside. The herb garden was winter-dormant, sleeping under a thick mulch, with a bit of greenery, or more often a gray-green planting of something or other standing in defiance of the weather. Barbara, not a gardener, thought it was dismal.

They passed through the back gate, across a narrow alley, to the gate to the clinic garden, and onto a well-packed path of bark mulch.

“When we came here,” Naomi said, “I mean Greg and me, all this was lawn with a few trees and bushes. Darren said it should be laid out as an archipelago of islands, each one planted in tiers so that the illusion was of privacy, to encourage the patients to walk. Many of them are self-conscious and awkward, reluctant to be seen struggling. Anyway, Darren planned the layout, and Carlos and his employer planned the tiers and what should be planted, how to maintain it, all that. So we have islands of
flowers and shrubs with a mazelike series of paths winding in and out. See, they're miniature terraced gardens. When they're in full foliage they're five feet tall, six feet, some even higher. Some of the vines are like walls, screening one section from another.”