Steps to the Altar (37 page)

“I knew it!” I burst out, unable to control myself. “Mitch Warner? Did he—?” I started.

“No, Mitch didn’t kill him either. Mr. Warner helped Maple make her fresh start and was a good friend to her. He lost as much as she did when they ran away that day except he had a rich, powerful family to help him start a new life in Mexico. For years she received checks from him until she told him that she was doing fine, that he no longer was responsible for her. About three years before she died, she said she got a letter from a woman named Maria down in Mexico City who claimed to be his daughter. Said she found her address among his things and wanted Marybell to know he’d passed away. Heart problems.”

“So who killed Garvey Sullivan?” I asked, trying not to grab his arm and shake it.

“He did,” Mr. Laramie said, his voice sad. “He killed himself.”

Then it all made sense. “Maple discovered her husband’s body,” I said, “called Mitch, and between the two of them, they made it appear as murder.”

I looked at Mr. Laramie in amazement, stunned by the enormity of Maple and Mitch’s sacrifice.

“They did it so he could be buried on sacred ground,” I whispered.

He nodded, his eyes closing for a moment. “She knew how much that meant to him, to his family. She said without him, she had no life there anyway. And Mitch was the kind of friend any of us can only hope and pray we have.”

Why hadn’t I seen it before? All the references to Garvey’s sadness, his disappearances, his time in San Francisco. She’d taken the blame for his suicide so he could lie next to his family throughout eternity.

Hugh opened his eyes. “That, among other things, is one of the reasons I left the Church. It’s changed so much these days. Now, many of the priests would, out of kindness to the families, look the other way, allow the person who commits this heartbreaking act against himself to be buried on sacred ground. Suicide is a touchy subject in the Church. I’ve always believed that we cannot be damned when we commit acts we do not realize we are committing. Of course, only God can truly know the heart of a person. In Garvey’s case, he was an extremely depressed man, had fought it all his life. After his death, Marybell said all those trips he made to San Francisco made sense to her then. He was seeking medical help. All those weeks he’d stay at the ranch and not want her to visit him. He tried desperately to hide his mental illness from the world and from his wife. One night, apparently, his sadness became just too much.”

“His father never knew,” I said.

Mr. Laramie shook his head. “No one did, except Mitch Warner and me. And now you.”

I sat back against the sofa, feeling completely drained. “If I tell the truth, even to clear her name, her sacrifice would be for nothing.”

He shrugged. “I doubt that the Church would throw his body out of the family plot, but she told me on her death bed that she never wanted anyone to know what had happened to him, that she wanted his memory to remain as a good, Catholic man. The good, Catholic man she knew he was.”

“Even if it meant she lost her whole life.”

“Even then.”

I sat there for a moment, stunned. Then I remembered something. “Mr. Laramie, there was a baby blanket in her things. Did she ever tell you anything about a baby?”

He nodded, exhaustion softening his flushed face. “She told me the baby died two days after it was born. It was a little boy. He only weighed four pounds. It happened right before she moved here. She was living in Riverside at the time. Their son is buried in a grave there.” He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them. “Maple is buried down in Hemet. And I believe, though they were separated in life, they are all together now, Mrs. Harper, resting in God’s embrace. I truly believe that.”

I nodded in agreement. “Thank you for telling me her story,” I said, standing up. “You can trust that I will honor Maple’s memory, her sacrifice.”

He laid a hand on my shoulder and gently patted it. “I know that, young woman. I sensed that the minute your hand touched mine. Go with God, my dear. I’ll be praying for you and your own troubles. And trust in the power of love. As you’ve seen, it’s more powerful than we humans truly realize.”

Back in my cabin, I made a fire and sat in front of it staring at the flames until they were nothing but embers. Would I have ever been able to sacrifice what Maple had for love? I wasn’t sure. Right then, I wasn’t even sure what love really was. Was it, as Mac pointed out, truly wanting the best for that person, sometimes even protecting them from themselves, being patient and kind and forgiving? I had no idea. Finally, I set my alarm for 6 A.M. Then, too tired to do more than crawl under the covers, I fell asleep in my clothes, my hand touching Scout’s head as he lay on the floor next to me.

After I got up and packed, I dropped my key off in the slot in the office’s front door and started for home. I pulled over once for coffee and once for a taco in Ventura. In spite of the two traffic jams in Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley, I reached San Celina at 3 P.M. I had an hour to take a shower, get dressed, and drive to the mission for Elvia and Emory’s wedding rehearsal.

I was only five minutes late.

“Where have you been?” Elvia said, when I met her in the bride’s room. “I’ve been trying to call you all day and only got your voice mail.”

“I guess I forgot to turn my cell phone on,” I said, hugging her. “I’m here now. How’re you doing?”

I patiently listened to all her last-minute woes about napkins and hand-decorated truffles and the mixup about the cake filling, saying all the proper things and making all the sympathetic noises. But my mind was on Maple Sullivan and what I would or wouldn’t tell Hud. I’d already decided only seconds after hearing Mr. Laramie’s story that I wasn’t going to make the story public. Maple gave her life to hide her husband’s secret—who was I to throw all of that away?

Gabe and I barely glanced at each other the whole rehearsal. When Emory and Elvia stood before the priest and pretended to say their vows, I felt as if I would be sick. I swallowed hard over the cold stone in my throat.

A couple of times, Emory gave me an odd look and finally asked, “Is everything okay with you and the chief?”

“We’re fine,” I told my cousin, patting him on the shoulder. “Just stressed out over this move. You know how irritating escrow can be.”

He nodded, his face not entirely convinced.

“Now, stop it,” I said, punching him gently in the arm. “You have a wedding and a honeymoon you’ve been waiting twenty-five years for. You just quit worrying about me.”

He grinned. “Sweetcakes, I never thought this day would come.”

I gave him a full-on hug. “I know, kiddo. I know.”

After that exchange, I went over to Gabe and asked him to come out to the Mission garden with me. His followed me without a word.

“Look,” I said, before he could speak. “We’re doing a real poor job of hiding our problems here, and my cousin and my best friend deserve better than that. I’ll fake it if you will, okay? Just for tonight and tomorrow. Then we’ll let the chips fall where they may. Deal?” I made my voice as cool and dispassionate as I could. If I could, I wasn’t going to let him see how much I was torn up inside. I wasn’t going to let anyone see it.

Apparently I was successful. His bottom lip stiffened under his mustache. A sure sign he was upset. Had Del told him about our encounter? At this point, I didn’t care. All I wanted was to get through this wedding without falling to pieces in public.

“Deal.” His voice was cool. He turned and walked back into the church.

At Daniello’s Trattoria, a new restaurant out by the mall, Emory had rented the whole back room for the rehearsal dinner. A string quartet played softly in the background as we ate lasagna and eggplant parmesan.

Gabe and I did our best to pretend as if everything were normal between us. I think we succeeded as I didn’t get any troubled looks from either Emory or Dove, the two people who knew me best.

I was passing by the restaurant’s bar area on my way out to my truck when I heard Hud call my name. He was sitting on a black leather barstool at the end of the small, but elegant mahogany bar.

“How was your trip?” he asked.

I slid onto the barstool next to him. “Fine.”

“Do you have anything to tell me?”

I studied his face for a moment, the responsibility of what I knew weighing heavily on my conscience. Hud was first and foremost a police officer. This was an old case, but it was still an unsolved homicide. Would he feel duty bound to report what he knew to someone in authority?

“I don’t know,” I said.

He twirled the golden brown liquid in his old-fashioned glass, then took a sip. “But you know what happened.”

I nodded yes.

“You’re afraid I’ll feel obligated to tell someone, right?”

I nodded again.

“And what was told to you was told in confidence.”

“Sort of.”

“They gave you the discretion to tell who you wanted.”

I bit my bottom lip. Hud was a good detective.

He tipped back his head and drained his glass, setting it firmly on the bar in front of him. The bartender looked at him in question and he shook his head no. “I got to give it to you, ranch girl, you are a loyal one. You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

I shook my head no. “It’s not that I don’t trust you—”

“Except that you don’t trust me.”

“You’re a cop,” I said. We both knew what I meant.

“That, darlin’, is where you are wrong. I am not nor ever have been first and foremost a cop. Someday, you’ll realize that.”

I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say. To be honest, I just didn’t know him well enough to know if he was bullshitting me or not. So I couldn’t take the chance.

He smiled sadly, reached inside his tweed Western-style coat, and pulled out an envelope. “If I ever need a secret kept, I’ll sure remember that you’re the one to tell. Found this while you were on your travels. Somehow, in all Garvey’s careful hiding, it wasn’t destroyed.”

I opened the envelope. It appeared to be a unfilled prescription from a Dr. Samuel Crowther in San Francisco. The date scribbled on it was two weeks before Garvey’s death. I could barely make out the word, it was so faded, the handwriting so bad.

I said in surprise, “Lithium?”

“It appears that something caused Garvey not to fill this prescription in San Francisco. He came back to San Celina and two weeks later he was dead. All his books on Abraham Lincoln make sense now. He was trying to find out how he coped with depression. Of course, it wasn’t called that back then. Back then it was called melancholia and there was only two ways to treat it—shock treatments and lithium. I’m guessing neither worked for Garvey Sullivan. I’m guessing he killed himself, and Maple and Mitch covered it up.”

I didn’t say a word, but I knew by the expression on my face that he knew he was right.

“The thing I can’t figure out,” he said, truly perplexed, “was why would they do that? They both threw away their lives to protect his reputation. That is unbelievable. And stupid.”

“Not stupid,” I said. “And not to protect his reputation. It was so he could be buried next to his mother in the family plot in the Mission Cemetery. It was so he could be buried on sacred ground.”

Hud stared at me, his dark eyes angry. He and I had tangled about God before and I could tell he wanted to say something. I braced myself for his tirade, then was surprised when he just inhaled deeply and gestured at the bartender for a refill.

“Want something to drink?” he asked me.

“No, thanks. I have to go home and get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”

“Oh, yes, the wedding of the century.”

“Are you going to tell anyone about what you discovered?”

He thanked the bartender and took a sip of his drink before answering. “What do you think I should do?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

He set the glass down, reached over, and took my hand. My first instinct was to snatch it away, but his anguished expression kept me from it.

He covered my hand with both of his. It made me feel warm and protected. Something I hadn’t felt in the last week and a half. Something I wasn’t sure I’d ever feel again.

“I think we should let these poor people rest in peace,” he said, “even though I cannot come close to understanding why two people would throw their lives away so someone else can be buried in dirt that is the same as anywhere else. See, ranch girl, I do have a heart even if I am a cop and a Texan.”

“I’m still trying to decide what’s worse,” I said, laughing in relief. Maple’s secret would be safe.

He brought my hand up to his lips and kissed it gently.

“Hey,” Gabe’s baritone boomed from behind me. “Would you mind taking your lips off my wife’s hand?”

I jumped at the unexpected sound of his voice and instinctively pulled my hand back. Hud held it tight a second before letting go.

With slow deliberation, he looked up at Gabe, a lazy smile on his face. “With a great and sorrowful reluctance, Chief Ortiz. With a great and sorrowful reluctance.”

Then he stood up, touched two fingers to his forehead in salute, and sauntered right past Gabe, big as you please. The shocked expression on Gabe’s face was worth every irritating thing Hud had ever done or said to me.

“What was that all about?” Gabe demanded. “Isn’t he that sheriff’s detective you dealt with last September with the Norton homicide? What was he doing kissing your hand here where everyone can see? What in the—”

I held up my hand for him to stop. “For someone who has been living in a glass mansion this last week and a half, you’re not in any position to throw even one pebble.
Not one single pebble.
See you tomorrow.” I breezed past him and didn’t look back.

In spite of all the turmoil between me and Gabe, I was sure I would sleep deeply that night, probably because I was just so exhausted. And maybe because I’d found a bit of peace about Maple and Garvey. Though I wasn’t sure where my own marriage was heading, I was glad that my belief in the person I thought Maple to be and the love they’d shared had not been a product of my imagination. I couldn’t help wondering how different it would be now with all the drugs and therapies they have for depression, if maybe he’d have ended up living a long and happy life. Maybe they’d have had children and grandchildren and the house would never have turned into a historical landmark but had remained a real home with birthday parties and Christmas celebrations and anniversaries.