“What?”
I look back at her. “Yeah.”
She stares out the window for a long moment, an uncomfortable tightness filling my gut. This started out more as a marriage of convenience for me, but don’t get me wrong—I would kill or die for either of them. I meant my vows to her, and to Owen. Owen might be first in my heart, but I quickly came to love Susa, too. The thought that something like that might have happened to her at such a vulnerable age makes me sick and angry.
“Pet?”
“I’m…thinking, Sir.” But she doesn’t look away from the window.
I give her the time she needs and a few minutes later, she turns back to me. “I’m wondering if that was Rebecca.”
“Rebecca Soliz Martin?” I ask.
“Yes, Sir.” She apparently doesn’t realize she’s dropped into full-on pet mode, and I’m not about to tell her, either. “She stopped going camping with us a few months before he killed himself.”
“Did he ever molest you?”
“No, Sir. Fortunately, that’s one experience I never had. I think people were too afraid of Daddy. I mean, I had boys get handsy in school every so often, but nothing I couldn’t handle. Why?”
Relief fills me. On my phone, I’m already running a web search for the guy’s name, and it takes me no time to hit pay-dirt. “I was just curious. You know me, I hear something, I want to research it. So who did you talk to tonight? Anything juicy to report?”
I let her go on about her discussions while I’m staring at averyinteresting color photo that was run with one of the newspaper stories about the man’s suicide. Rebecca wasn’t named, but the investigation into man’s death was quickly closed as an obvious suicide because of the note and the “young victim’s” age and situation.
Morgan Wheedon was recently divorced, had light blue eyes, pale skin and freckles, and hair so red he could be one of the Weasleys from Harry Potter.
* * * *
Because I can’t leave this alone, I do more digging over the next couple of weeks, until an interesting puzzle starts to untwine itself before me. I have to make sure I don’t disturb any hornets’ nests in the process, but when I go to visit Doris Norman at her nursing home, I take flowers, pastries, and some other gifts I hope the woman enjoys. I haven’t seen her in several months and feel a little guilty that I haven’t been visiting her with Susa.
But only a little.
I wouldn’t be a bastard extraordinaire if I let something like a little guilt slow me down, much less stop me.
She’s eighty-two and David Norman’s widow, in addition to having worked as Benchley’s receptionist during his tenure as county administrator and county commissioner. From that time period, she probably knows where quite a few bodies are buried.
I used to think that was just a metaphorical expression, but now I’m not so sure.
Mentally, the woman is still sharp, even if her frail body fails her. She has severe osteoporosis and has broken her hip twice in falls, along with a heart condition, and she can’t live independently anymore.
We have a lovely visit. I wait until the end, when I know she’s exhausted, to bring it up, after I pull my cell phone out and glance at the time before propping it up on its end on my thigh.
“Ran into Kelly Fortuno the other night at a cocktail party, and he said to tell you hello.”
“Oh, isn’t that lovely? I always did like him.”
“You know, he mentioned something about a camping trip years ago. Someone killed himself, but for thelifeof me now, I can’t remember the guy’s name.”
“Oh, you mean Morgan Wheedon.Phhpt. Good riddance. They did everyone a favor by putting one in his skull.”
“‘They’?”
She looks around as if to make sure we’re alone—which, of course we are, since she has one of those little private apartment suites—before she drops her voice. “Benchley, David, and Chris took care ofthatworthless, perverted sonofabitch.” She nods at me before sitting back in her recliner.
Benchley is the only one left alive from that list of names, that much I know. David and Chris were older than Benchley. Both men died mostly natural deaths, if you count, respectively, lung cancer from smoking and liver cancer from drinking as “natural.”
“‘Took care’ of him?”
She nods. “Helped him along, so to speak. He raped that girl and she got pregnant. When she told her daddy who did it, he immediately told Benchley.”
