To Love and to Perish

TWENTY-TWO


BY THE TIME CORY and Catherine walked through the door to the showroom together at ten fifty-eight, I had considered and dismissed the theory Celeste presented dozens of times. She said it was the latest rumor around town—and not one of her own making. The source, she believed, was the wife of someone who worked at the sheriff’s office. At first, she thought that might be me. After I ridiculed the rumor, she reconsidered. In fact, she stormed off in a huff, bringing the traffic on Main Street to a screeching halt as she headed back to Talbots in time to unlock the door for business.

Cory also laughed off the rumor as the three of us sat around the conference table in the showroom an hour later. “No way. Take it from me, Wayne Engle was not gay. He was a ladies’ man. Didn’t you see those women working in his office? They told his story.”

Catherine opened a leather binder and ran her pen down a list of names. “Funny you should say that. I’ve got their names right here: Pam Sullivan, Missy Temple, Silvia Porter, and Elizabeth, or Beth as she prefers, Smith. Anyone want to guess who Elizabeth Smith is?”

Cory and I exchanged puzzled glances. “We met an Elizabeth Potter.” A vision of her climbing out of her Honda Accord in her driveway flashed before me, followed by a memory of the same color Accord in the parking lot at Wayne Engle’s office. I recalled Mrs. Potter saying that her daughter had been married and divorced twice. “Are they the same woman?”

Catherine nodded. “It gets better. Guess the name of the witness who claimed Brennan pushed James Gleason into the street at the festival.”

I gasped.

After a moment, Cory responded, “Elizabeth Smith?”

“That’s right. And even though both the surname and the last name are quite common, I confirmed it’s the same woman. She really gets around.”

Cory frowned in my direction. “How come you didn’t recognize her?”

I remembered Evie’s comments about Elizabeth Smith’s new hair. “She had a new hairdo, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t look at her all that carefully on the day Gleason died.” Some detective I made. Ray had been right all along to dismiss my investigative efforts. “So she was blackmailing Brennan, and Wayne knew about it.”

Catherine tapped her pen on the paper in front of her. “Are you referring to the five thousand dollar monthly payments to her father?”

“Yes. She must have known something Brennan didn’t want anyone to know—like the fact he was drinking the night Monica Gleason died. No wonder both Wayne and Elizabeth denied it. Wayne probably got a cut of the money.”

“Actually, Jolene, I spoke to Mr. Potter last night. He claimed Elizabeth didn’t know anything about the payments. Brennan arranged to help pay her medical bills years ago. Mr. Potter didn’t like accepting what he referred to as ‘charity’, but Brennan insisted. Only her father and mother knew where the money came from to pay off all her bills. They didn’t tell Elizabeth.”

Cory leaned forward to rest his forearms on the table. “Okay, but why didn’t Brennan recognize her? She stood right next to him and pointed her finger in his face.”

Catherine reached down into her briefcase, which was on the floor beside her chair, and pulled out a book. “She went through the windshield of the car and needed reconstructive surgery on her face: her nose, her eyelids, her cheekbones. She’s not the same girl she was in high school.” Catherine laid the book on the table. It was another yearbook from Brennan’s graduation class, but this one had an unfamiliar girl’s name embossed on it. She flipped through the pages until she came to Elizabeth Potter’s photo.

I recalled Elizabeth’s mother’s very similar words to Cory and me. “Where did you get this yearbook?”

“I graduated from Albany Law School. It’s a world-renowned school. The partners recruit from there all the time. One of our associates was born and raised in Albany. She attended the same high school as Brennan and was in her freshman year when he graduated. She wanted to help with his first case. She brought in her yearbook so I could see the two other people who were in the car crash with Brennan. Now she’s helping with both cases.”

Cory held out his hand for the yearbook. “May I see it?”

Catherine handed it over.

He turned the pages until he found Monica Gleason’s photo. He studied it a moment, then spun the yearbook to face me. “Jo, look hard at her. Who does she look like that we met?”

I studied the blond hair, the sparkling eyes and the dimples. It was the dimples that reminded me. “Matthew Gleason.”

“Exactly.”

Catherine glanced back and forth between us. “She was his aunt. It’s not surprising he would look like her. They share a gene pool.”

I leaned back in my chair. “I wish we had met or at least seen his mother. He doesn’t look anything like I remember his father. He had red hair and different features.”

Cory snapped his fingers. “We saw her picture at their home. He doesn’t look anything like the woman in the picture. She had dark-hair and glasses, remember, Jo?”

“I do. Can a dark-haired woman and a redhead make a blond?” I looked to Catherine for an answer.

She made a face. “I’ve had to research questions like that before for cases involving proving parentage. Genetics for hair color are not as firm as eye color. It has to do with the amount of color in the hair as well as the two alleles each parent passes on. It’s certainly possible, but I would expect some red tints to the blond hair. How blond is Matthew?”

“Very. Like white blond.”

Catherine reached for the yearbook and returned to Monica Gleason’s photo. “It’s a black and white photo. Hard to say how blond she was.”

“She was very blond. Like white blond, too. We saw the two- by-three color photo of her. It was in Brennan’s yearbook, remember Cory?”

He nodded. “She was pure blond.”

I tapped the yearbook cover. “So was Wayne Engle. He and Monica had a relationship after high school. Maybe Matthew resulted. Maybe he was the cause of the argument at the reunion. Maybe Wayne hadn’t stepped up to his responsibilities. That wouldn’t go over well with Brennan, would it, Cory?”

Cory thought for a moment before answering. “He takes the law and business ethics very seriously. That’s why he hates the rumor about what he’s hiding in his foundations. He doesn’t like any hint of irresponsibility. He conducts his personal life the same way.”

“Interesting theory.” Catherine made a note. “We’ll confirm Matthew’s parentage. Maybe Wayne Engle was named his godfather for that reason. Matthew might have pushed him in front of the car because he was angry not to be recognized as his child. We’ll consider the possibility.”

I wondered if Catherine knew more about the investigation than us. Perhaps the sheriff’s department had improved the resolution enough on the YouTube video to recognize him. “Do you know for a fact that Matthew was close enough to the scene to do that?”

She shook her head. “It’s still early in the investigation. The sheriff’s department is keeping anything they find out very tight to the vest. That’s why I need to send my own investigator. I’m just surmising from the questions they asked Brennan.”

And she’d surmised Matthew was a suspect, which made sense. He certainly hadn’t seemed too upset by the loss of his father.

She turned to a fresh sheet of paper. “All right, I have some questions for you two. First, I want to know everything that happened while you were in Albany and Binghamton.”

Cory and I retold the story together as a tag team, filling in each other’s pauses. Catherine asked a few questions but mostly just let us ramble along uninterrupted.

When we finished, Catherine wrote for a few minutes, then she scanned pages of notes she must have written on a previous day. “Are you sure Matthew Gleason said he met Brennan once?”

Cory and I glanced at each other to confirm. I nodded slowly. “Positive.”

She made another note. I read it upside down. It said, “Get a picture of Matthew Gleason to show Brennan.”

I shifted my gaze to Cory, who seemed to be reading the same line. His eyes met mine. He opened his mouth first. “Brennan doesn’t know Matthew?”

Catherine closed her notebook and gave Cory a sympathetic glance. “I know it seems unfair, but I can’t tell you anything Brennan said to me. At this point, I don’t recommend you ask him questions, either. I know he calls you, but you don’t want to know anything about this case. You could end up being called to testify against him. You don’t want that, do you?”

Cory swallowed. “Definitely not. Jolene and I wondered if we caused Wayne Engle’s death by asking as many questions as we did. We wanted to help Brennan, not hurt anyone.”

Catherine pulled her briefcase onto her lap and tucked her notebook and pen away inside. “If it’s any consolation, I think you helped his first case. No way will any judge or jury believe Elizabeth Smith’s testimony against him. She’s too suspect herself. I don’t even know if the DA will take it to trial once he understands all the relationships involved. We might never have uncovered them all if you hadn’t asked questions. Brennan could have sat in the courtroom and watched Elizabeth testify, never realizing who she was. It’s been years since they’ve seen each other, and she’s a new woman.”

I took some comfort in Catherine’s words, but not enough to erase the guilt of possibly contributing to a man’s death. Cory and I would carry that with us for a long time to come.

Catherine snapped me out of my reverie. “Jolene, Danny’s father was arraigned this morning. He pleaded not guilty. His bail was set at five thousand dollars. He had two hundred in his pocket when he was arrested. He said he doesn’t have access to more money, so he’ll have to stay in jail. I got the earliest court date possible, a month from now. I may have questions for you later on regarding his case as well, but right now I have to focus on Brennan.”

Catherine placed her briefcase on the table and stood, smoothing the wrinkles from her navy skirt. Once again today, she wore a stunning suit with matching heels, and I had to admire her sense of style. Sadly, I purchased all my style at Talbots, under Celeste’s direction, another reason for our love-hate relationship. Catherine seemed to come by all her style naturally, as well as her talent and good looks. Everything about her said “Winner,” and I had no real concerns for Brennan’s future now that it rested in her capable hands.

I said as much to Cory after she left.

He hung his head dejectedly. “I went to Brennan’s arraignment this morning. She got bail set for him, but he doesn’t have any more money. He wouldn’t take any from me, not that I have enough savings anyway. He just kept telling me not to worry. He’s banking on Catherine to win, too.”

“Maybe with Catherine’s investigator and the sheriff’s department asking questions now, Brennan will be cleared quickly. I think Elizabeth Potter makes a great suspect. She may have pushed James Gleason and tried to blame Brennan. Maybe Wayne figured that out and called her on it. Maybe he even saw her do it and that’s why he’s dead.”

“But why would she want to kill James Gleason?”

“I can only guess. Something to do with Monica or the accident? I don’t know.” And I hated that I didn’t, because I felt like I should. One of the people Cory and I had met was a killer.

“We’ll go crazy speculating. I’ll have to have faith in the investigators and Catherine for now.” Cory straightened in his chair. “Listen, I saw Mr. Phillips’ arraignment, too. I started to call you, but then I realized Ray was there. Did he call you?”

“No. We’re all barely speaking in our house. Danny’s heartbroken over his father’s arrest and what he sees as Ray’s betrayal. Ray’s defensive, and I’m caught in the middle and, quite honestly, sympathetic to Danny, which only makes Ray more cantankerous. I came to work today to try to keep my mind off it all.”

“Sorry I brought it up.” Cory stood and stretched. “You want to get some lunch?”

“Sure.” Maybe lunch would take my mind off Danny, Ray, and his father. I doubted it, because now all I could think about was whether or not we should pay for Mr. Phillips’ bail. Would Danny expect us to? After all, I’d promised more than once to help his dad. If we didn’t pay his bail, Danny would be visiting him in jail, a place a kid should never have to go, then possibly in prison afterward, a place no one ever wanted to go. If we did pay his bail, Mr. Phillips would most likely jump to avoid prison, perhaps taking Danny with him back into a life no child should lead. Of course, it was possible Mr. Phillips would want Danny to remain with us, but given the current tensions between Danny and Ray, Danny might not want to stay. Would Mr. Phillips yield to pressure from Danny? And why hadn’t Ray called me after Mr. Phillips arraignment? Was he surprised to see Catherine representing him? He must have known I would call her. She represented him the last time Ray arrested him in Wachobe. She got him off, too.

Then it hit me. As the arresting officer, Ray knew Mr. Phillips’ arraignment was this morning. He knew the judge would set bail for Mr. Phillips, yet he told Danny he would take him to see his father after practice today. So clearly Ray knew Mr. Phillips wouldn’t be able to make bail and had no intentions of paying it himself.

And he probably wouldn’t want me to, either.