"Or killing him."
A quick breath caused her breasts to tremble beneath
the filmy fabric clinging to them. "I wish you
had loved me enough to kill him." She placed her
hands on his cheeks and ran her thumbs alternately
across his lips. "Do you, Rory?" she whispered urgently.
"Do you love me that much? Please tell me
you do."
As though stretching across the years spent in
heartache and yearning, she leaned over the console
and kissed him. The first touch of her lips was as cataclysmic
as a match striking flint. His reaction was
explosive. His mouth devoured hers in a hard and
greedy kiss that was almost savage in intensity.
But it ended just as abruptly. Reaching up, he
forcibly removed her hands from his face and pushed
her away.
"Rory?" she cried, reaching for him as he pushed
open the car door.
"Goodbye, Davee."
"Rory?"
But he slipped through the hedge of bushes and disappeared
into the darkness. McDonald's had closed.
Everyone had left. The lights had been turned out. It
was dark, and Davee was alone. No one heard her bitter
sobs.
CHAPTER
34
I KNOW WHO KILLED LUTE."
Hammond's statement shocked Alex and Frank
Perkins into silence, but it lasted no more than a few
seconds before each began firing questions at him.
Primarily, Frank wanted to know why Hammond was
here in his home study instead of at the police station.
"Later," Hammond said. "Before we go any further,
I must hear Alex's account of what happened."
Turning toward her, he leaned forward. "The truth,
Alex. All of it. Everything. Tonight. Now."
Before she could speak, Frank held up his hand.
"Hammond, you must think I'm an idiot. I will not
allow my client to tell you a damn thing. I want no
part of this clandestine meeting you have forced me
into. You have behaved in the most reprehensible, irresponsible,
unprofessional--"
"Okay, Frank, you're not a priest, remember?"
Hammond said. "You're not my Sunday school
teacher, or my daddy, either. Both Alex and I have acknowledged
how inappropriately we've handled
this."
"A peach of an understatement," Frank remarked
drolly. "The consequences of your intimacy are potentially
disastrous. For all of us."
"How are they disastrous for you?" Alex asked.
"Alex, less than five minutes ago, you admitted to
doing everything within your power to get Hammond
into bed with you. If you have any defense at all, your
being with Hammond that night is it. But how effective
will that testimony be in light of your background
according to Bobby Trimble?"
"How can that be held against me? It's behind me.
I'm not that girl anymore. I'm me." She looked from
him to Hammond. "Yes, every ugly detail of Bobby's
statement is true. With one exception. I never went
beyond letting them look at me."
She shook her head emphatically. "Never. I safeguarded
a small, private part of myself, in case my
hope for a better way of life was ever realized. There
was a line I would not cross. Thank God I had that
kernel of self-preservation.
"Bobby exploited me in the most despicable way.
But it took years for me to stop blaming myself for
my participation. I believed that I was intrinsically
bad. Through counseling and my own studies, I realized
that I was a classic case, an abused child who felt
that I was responsible for the mistreatment."
She smiled at the irony. "I was one of my first
cases. I had to heal myself. I had to learn to love myself
and consider myself worthy of others' love. The
Ladds were instrumental. They had left me a legacy
of unconditional love. I came to understand that if
they could love me, being as basically good and de
cent as they were, I could bury the past and at least
accept myself.
"But it's an ongoing therapy. Sometimes I have
lapses. To this day, I ask myself if there was something
I could have done. Was there ever a time when
I could have stood up to Bobby and resisted? I was so
afraid that he would abandon me as my mother had,
and I would be entirely alone. He was my provider. I
depended on him for everything."
"You were a child," Frank reminded her gently.
She nodded. "Then, yes, Frank. But not the night I
placed myself in Hammond's path and hoped that he
would respond to me." Turning to him, she said with
entreaty, "Please forgive me for the damage I've
done. I was afraid of just this, of what has happened.
I did not kill Lute Pettijohn, but I was afraid of being
accused of it. Afraid of being considered guilty because
of my juvenile record. I went to Pettijohn's
hotel suite—"
"Alex, again I must caution you not to say anything
more."
"No, Frank. Hammond is right. You need to hear
my account. He needs to hear it." The lawyer was still
frowning his concern, but she didn't heed the silent
warning.
"Let me go back a few weeks." She told them
about Bobby's sudden and unwelcome reappearance
in her life, how he had shared with her his scheme to
blackmail Lute Pettijohn. "I cautioned Bobby that he
was way out of his league, that he would do well to
leave Charleston and forget this ridiculous plan.
"But he was determined to see it through, and
equally determined that I help him. He threatened to
expose my past if I didn't. I'm ashamed to admit this,
but I was afraid of him. If he had been the same loudmouthed,
arrogant, unsophisticated Bobby that he'd
been twenty-five years ago, I would have laughed at
his threats and called the police immediately.
"But he had acquired some etiquette, or at least he
affected good manners and social decorum. This new
Bobby could more easily insinuate himself into my life and decay it from the inside. He did in fact appear
at a lecture, passing himself off as a visiting psychologist,
and my colleague never questioned his authenticity.
"Nevertheless, I called his bluff and told him to
leave me alone. I suppose he got desperate. In any
event, he contacted Pettijohn. Whatever Bobby said
to him must have made an impression, because he
agreed to pay one hundred thousand dollars in exchange
for Bobby's silence."
"No one who knew Lute Pettijohn will believe
that, Alex," Hammond said quietly.
"On that I agree," Frank added.
"I didn't believe it myself," Alex said. "And apparently
Bobby wasn't entirely convinced, either, because
he approached me again, this time insisting that
I be the one to meet Pettijohn and collect the cash. I
agreed to."
"In God's name, why?" Frank asked.
"Because I saw it as an opportunity to rid myself
of Bobby. My idea was to meet Pettijohn, but instead
of collecting the cash, I was going to explain the situation
and urge him to report Bobby's extortion to
the police."
"Why not go to the police yourself?"
"In hindsight, I see that would have been the better
choice." She sighed. "But I feared the association
with Bobby. He had boasted about his escape from a
loan shark in Florida. There were numerous reasons I
wanted to stay one step removed from him."
"So you went to the Charles Towne Plaza at the
appointed time."
"Yes."
"You couldn't call Pettijohn on the telephone?"
"I wish I had, Frank. But I thought that meeting
him in person would make a stronger impression."
"What happened when you got there?"
"He was courteous. He politely listened as I explained
the situation." She sat down on the edge of
the love seat and stroked her forehead.
"And?"
"And then he laughed at me," she said shakily. "I
should have known the instant he opened the door
that something was out of kilter. He wasn't surprised
to see me, although he should have been expecting
Bobby. But I didn't realize that until later."
"He knew you were coming, not Bobby, and he
laughed at your story."
"Yes," she said forlornly. "Bobby had called ahead
and told Pettijohn I was coming, told him that I was
his double-crossing partner, warned him that I would
probably concoct a sob story, one guaranteed to make
him feel sorry for me, before luring him into bed and
creating my own chance to blackmail him for more of
a prize than Bobby was asking."
"I didn't give that son of a bitch enough credit,"
Hammond muttered angrily. "Trimble doesn't look
that smart."
"He's not smart," Alex said. "Just crafty. Bobby's
got more gall than sense, and that makes him dangerous.
When he sees an opportunity, he takes risks that
no intelligent person would consider taking. He also
knows the advantage of striking first.
"Nothing I said convinced Pettijohn that I wasn't
part of some devious grand scheme involving sex and
blackmail. He suggested that I not squander the opportunity.
As long as we were there, and I had my
heart set on taking him to bed ... You get my drift."
"He came on to you?" Frank guessed.
"I resisted, of course. Knocked his arm aside. I'm
sure that's when the clove got on his sleeve. I'd
spiked the oranges with them that morning. A speck
must have still been on my hand. Anyway, I spurned
him, and he got angry and began issuing his own
threats, specifically that he had an appointment with
a prosecutor from the County Solicitor's Office.
Hammond Cross." She glanced at him. "He said no
doubt you would be interested in Bobby's and my
scam."
After a moment, she continued, "I panicked. I saw
my carefully reconstructed life falling apart. The
Ladds, who had placed such confidence in me, would
be disgraced. Doubt would be cast on my credibility,
rendering my studies worthless. Patients whose trust
I had won would feel betrayed.
"So I ran. In the elevator I started shaking uncontrollably.
When I reached the lobby level, I went into
the bar looking for a place to sit down, because my
knees felt ready to buckle.
"But when my panic subsided, I realized what an
irrational reaction it was. In seconds, I had regressed
to where I'd been when Bobby had controlled my
life. There in the bar, I came to my senses. My juvenile
record was decades behind me. I am a respected
member of my community. I'm acclaimed in my
field. What was I afraid of? I had done nothing
wrong. If I could convince the right person that once
again my half-brother was trying to exploit me, I possibly
could get rid of him forever. Who better to make
a believer than--"
"Hammond Cross, assistant county solicitor."
"Correct." She nodded up at Frank. "So I returned
to the room on the fifth floor. When I got there, the
door to the suite was ajar. I put my ear to it, but
couldn't hear any conversation. I pushed it open and
looked in. Pettijohn was lying face down near the
coffee table."
"Did you realize he was dead?"
"He wasn't," she said, drawing a shocked reaction
from both men. "I didn't want to touch him, but I did.
He had a pulse, but he was unconscious. I didn't want
to be caught with him in that condition when my former
partner in crime was blackmailing him. So once
again I virtually ran from the suite. This time I took
the stairs down. We must have just missed each
other," she said to Hammond. "When I reached the
lobby, I spotted you leaving the hotel by the main
doors."
"How did you know me?"
"I recognized you from your media exposure. You
looked very upset. I thought--"
"That I had attacked Pettijohn."
"Not attacked. I thought you had punched out his
lights, and that, if your meeting had gone anything
like mine, he probably deserved it. That's why I followed
you. Later, if Pettijohn filed a complaint
against Bobby and me, if I was implicated in a crime,
who better to have as my alibi than the D.A., who
himself had had an altercation with Pettijohn?" She
looked down at her hands. "Several times Saturday
evening, I began to feel guilty about what I was
doing, and tried to leave you."
She glanced at Hammond, who guiltily looked up
at Frank, who was scowling at him like the gatekeeper
of hell.
"By Sunday morning I was very ashamed and left
before Hammond woke up," she told her lawyer.
"That evening Bobby came for his money--there
was none, of course. But to my astonishment he congratulated
me for killing our only 'witness.'"
"You didn't know until then that Pettijohn was
dead?"
"No. I had listened to CDs on the drive home, not
to the car radio. I didn't turn on the TV. I was ... was
preoccupied." After a brief, tense silence, she said,