| |
––––––––
The heels of Erin's shoes made clicking sounds as she hurried across the lobby of the Summerville Hotel and veered to the left toward the coffee shop. Pausing in the entrance way, she looked around. Birdie occupied a booth near the far wall.
Erin made her way across the crowded restaurant, dodging waitresses and walking around tables. As she neared the booth, Birdie spied her and waved. "Hi, come and join me."
Erin slid into the seat across from Birdie. "Mary said you wanted to see me?"
Birdie swallowed the last of a jelly donut and wiped her fingers on the edge of a paper napkin. "You would think a place that charges what this one does could afford decent napkins." She rubbed her fingers with her thumbs before licking them with her tongue. "I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is we've located Cletus Compton."
"That's great." Erin leafed through her memory, trying to recall where she had heard that name before. "Who is Cletus Compton?"
Birdie swallowed the last of her coffee. "He's one of the policemen who investigated the crime scene after Adolph Parker was killed."
"Where did you find him? Did he have anything to add to what you already knew?"
"He lives in a retirement village somewhere in Florida." Birdie shook her head. "All he did was corroborate what the police said all along."
"He didn't see a belt in Steve's office?"
"That's the bad news," Birdie said. "He didn't see a belt and he didn't see any Barbie dolls."
"I'm glad you found Mr. Compton." Erin pulled a menu card from behind a sugar container and perused it. "I hope it helps Steve's case."
A waitress appeared with pad and pencil asking for Erin's order. Before she could respond, Birdie ordered two coffees and three jelly donuts.
In a matter of minutes the waitress returned and set the coffee and donuts on the table. She was slim and young, and very much in awe of the celebrity she was serving. "Would you like anything else, Ms. Laverty?"
"Not now, thank you." As the waitress sped away Birdie pushed a fork through her donut. "There's more. We located the building that was in Steve's drive the night of the murder."
Erin's spoon clattered to the table. "You did, where and how?"
"The where was easy, the how was much more complicated. The building is now The Chapel of Good Hope in El Paso, Texas."
Erin asked in amazement. "Why didn't someone find this out a long time ago?"
"Because nobody realized the building was in Steve's drive in the first place," Birdie replied. "Steve knew it was going to be towed away. Everything was set for it to go the Sunday after Adolph Parker was murdered. And that's what happened. The building was moved on schedule. Steve was arrested the night of the murder. He never went back to the scene of the crime. In the trauma of the next few months, he forgot about it."
Erin struggled to digest all Birdie was saying. "How could movers go into a place where a murder had been committed? Weren't there tapes or ropes or something to mark it as the scene of a crime?"
"None of that was put up until the following Monday when the police came to investigate." Birdie bit into her second donut. "They didn't know anything about the building."
Erin's heart expanded with hope. "We can prove Mavis is mistaken about what she thought she saw that night."
Birdie polished off her second jelly donut. "Two men who were with the movers went into Steve's office that Sunday morning. They were looking for Steve. When they didn't find him, they left a note on his desk thanking him for his thoughtfulness in leaving the gate unlocked."
"If they went into Steve's office they should have seen the belt and the dolls." On the end of a caught breath, Erin asked, "Do you know if they did?"
"It's been eight years and neither of them paid too much attention, but yes, one of them thinks he recalls seeing the belt and the dolls lying on the couch."
"Why didn't he come forward during Steve's trial?"
"The man is a missionary," Birdie explained. "He's been living for the past eight years in the mountains of Mexico. He didn't know what was going on in the states."
Erin took a sip of coffee. "Will he testify in court about what he saw?"
Birdie sank her teeth into the last jelly donut. "He doesn't have a choice, he will be subpoenaed." She pulled another paper napkin from the dispenser and wiped her fingers. "I have to run. I have a ten o'clock appointment."
Erin pushed her coffee cup aside. "If you can spare a few moments, I'd like to talk to you."
Birdie wadded her napkin into a ball and tossed it on the table. "Have you thought of something else to tell me? Some little detail that suddenly popped into your mind?"
"This is not about Steve's case. It's something else."
Birdie's face shaped into a frown. "Does this have anything to do with what happened between you and your ex-husband over the weekend?"
"That's what triggered it." Birdie's piercing gaze made Erin lower her head. "The media have dug up and made public Gabe's divorce petition against me."
It was not often that Birdie Lafferty showed surprise. This was one of those rare occasions. Her jaw went slack and her mouth fell open. "Holy Toledo."
Erin continued, "I'm suing for custody of my daughter. Do you think this adverse publicity will affect my chances of winning that case?"
"Why are you asking me for legal advice?" Birdie shrugged. "I'm not your attorney."
"All I want to know is, do you think what's happened has hurt my chances? Surely answering one little question couldn't be considered giving legal advice."
"That's debatable," Birdie said before adding, "I can't predict what might happen in a court room."
"It's a tempest in a teapot." Erin argued, "Just a lot of conjecture and inference."
"Did you ever hear of circumstantial evidence?" Birdie downed the last of her coffee. "It's difficult to separate truth from rumor."
"The newspapers wouldn't take any note of Gabe and me being together in that cabin nor would they have pried into the details of our divorce if it weren't for Steve's upcoming trial." Erin gripped the sides of the table with both hands. "And one of those events has nothing to do with the other."
Birdie's eyes expanded as her expression moved from troubled to contemplative. "Say that again."
Erin declared, this time more emphatically, "Gabe and me being together—'
Birdie waved her hand. "Never mind, I got the gist of it and that's what counts." She slapped the table with her open hand. "Talk about the forest and the trees." Grabbing her handbag, she scooted toward the end of the booth. "I'll be in touch."
Erin called, "Wait, you didn't answer my question."
Birdie stopped. "After what the tabloids have been saying, it's possible." She hopped to her feet. "Thanks for making me open my eyes and see the obvious." She bolted from the booth and trotted toward the exit.
She was out the door before Erin realized she hadn't picked up the tab. Erin was stuck with paying for three coffees and four jelly donuts.
She paid the cashier and drove home, still pondering over the events of the past few days and wondering how she could explain it all to her daughter.
Some hours later she was still wrestling with doubts and misgivings. An old adage her mother had often espoused kept bouncing off the other disoriented contemplations that floated around in her head. Think too long is never act.
The doorbell ringing interrupted her scrambled thoughts. She opened the door to see a grim-faced man and a tense child standing on the other side. She motioned with her hand. "Come in, please."
They entered slowly, Jenny first, sullen and silent. She was followed by an equally taciturn Gabe. "Would you like to sit down?" She wondered if either of them was ever going to speak.
Gabe sank into the nearest chair and laid his hat on the table beside him.
Jenny moved to the other side of the room and perched on the needlepoint seat of a straight-backed chair. She grimaced before breaking her self-imposed silence. "Daddy said you had something to tell us."
How like Gabe to pass the buck. One look at his pained expression and Erin's annoyance was replaced with an emotion that could have passed for pity. "We both want to talk to you. Did your father tell you why?"
Jenny's chin lifted a few inches. "I'm not speaking to him."
Gabe hadn't exaggerated when he said Jenny was unhappy. Erin asked, ever so gently, "Don't you think that's a little childish?"
Jenny's eyes glazed with tears. She declared with sudden intensity, "No."
Erin laced her shaking fingers together and laid her hands in her lap to steady them. "You're jumping to conclusions. I was hoping you could be more broad-minded. What I have to say to you deals with adult emotions and can be best understood if it's looked at from a mature point of view."
"Aunt Maybelle is mature," Jenny argued with youthful tenacity. "She thinks Daddy did bad things. Cora is mature. She says that you did bad things."
Erin's fury at Cora was subdued by her concern for her daughter. "Jenny, darling, age can't assure maturity." She spoke the words that weighted so heavily on her heart. "I know how you feel because something like what happened to you over the weekend happened to me once. Events occurred that tore my world apart."
Much of Jenny's belligerence disappeared. "They did?" After another contemplative pause, she asked, "When?"
"Eight years ago." It was now or never. "I was accused of doing something terrible. I wasn't guilty. I couldn't make anyone believe me and because of that, I lost my most precious possession." With a calm that belied the fear that kicked in her stomach, she asked, "Do you know what that possession was?"
Jenny batted her eyes as tears collected like little jewels along her dark lashes. "I don't care what it was." The catch in her voice said that she did.
Erin's eyes filled with tears. "You should because what I lost was you. I'd like to tell you how it all came about. Will you listen?"
After a long moment of silence, Jenny nodded. "I guess so."
Erin's voice was a bare whisper. "Will you try to keep an open mind?"
Jenny's belligerent tone softened. "I'll try."
Erin pushed aside her last reservation. "Do you know what the word adultery means?"
Jenny wiped at a wayward tear. "You don't have to ask me if I know what words mean."
Because of circumstances beyond anyone's control, Jenny was being forced into adulthood much too soon. "In the future I'll remember that." Erin looked into the confused face of her daughter. "The court took you from me after I was convicted of adultery." If she lived to be a hundred Erin would never feel more degraded than she did at this moment. "That wasn't true. I was never unfaithful to your father."
A tear rolled down Jenny's smooth cheek. "Daddy said there was proof you did something with that man. He said the motel clerk saw you."
"That's not what I said, exactly," Gabe said softly.
Jenny turned her accusing eyes in her father's direction. "Yes it is. You said there was proof Erin was guilty."
It must have been hell for Gabe to be faced with what seemed irrefutable proof of his wife's infidelity. Erin spoke now from the depths of that new understanding. "There was proof."
Jenny's confusion showed in her puzzled expression. "If it wasn't so, how could there be proof?"
Erin met her daughter's questioning gaze. "The proof was a lie. The motel clerk who said he saw Steve and me together lied, or to be more exact, he bent the truth to fit his own purpose."
"Daddy said you're the one who lied." Jenny's mouth quivered.
The one thing Erin had counted on through all these long, bleak years was Gabe's innate sense of fairness. She said with as much dignity as she could manage, "I don't intend to go on defending myself. If your opinion of me is that low it would be a waste of time."
"I also told Jenny," Gabe cast a tormented gaze in Erin's direction, "I'd never heard your side of the story. I'm willing to listen now."
"But, Daddy," Jenny piped up, "you said Erin didn't have a side to tell."
"I was wrong." His brow furrowed. "I should have listened to your mother a long time ago."
"But Daddy you said—"
Gabe bowed his head. "Do you want to hear what your mother has to say?"
Seeing her father so humble was obviously a new and unsettling experience for Jenny. "Yes sir, I do."
"So do I." Gabe nodded in Erin's direction. "You have the floor."
Suppose Gabe rejected her again? Suppose Jenny refused to believe her story? Erin gathered strength from the knowledge that she had tried one last time to set things right. "The motel clerk had seen me with Steve and often. We met at the restaurant adjacent to the motel lobby for dinner many times. He could look from his desk and see us there on almost any Wednesday night he chose." She couldn't bring herself to look at either Jenny or Gabe. "We went to that out-of-the-way place because we didn't want to be seen together."
"If you weren't doing anything wrong, why did you hide?" Jenny asked.
When Erin promised the truth, she had not realized how painful the telling of it would be. "It was my idea." Her voice faltered and then revived. "Your father didn't want me to see Steve."
By now Jenny was hanging onto Erin's every word. "Why did you?"
How could Erin explain to her daughter behavior that now seemed to her stupid and deceitful? "I had reasons. None of them seem important now."
Jenny was persistent. "I want to hear them anyway."
Gabe's voice was soft. "I do, too."
For the first time since she'd begun her story, Erin looked into the grey of her ex-husband's eyes. There was anguish there and pity, but the doubt she had expected to see reflected in their troubled depths was missing. With renewed resolve she spoke again, this time more slowly and with a rising sense of cautious hope. "I was lonely and scared. I needed someone to confide in, someone I could respect and trust."
Jenny's puzzled expression told of her inner confusion. "You had Daddy and me and Cora and Mavis. Why were you afraid?"
Erin's throat was scratchy and her mouth dry. "Shall I have Mary bring us something to drink?" She was stalling, searching for a way to postpone the telling of what might further alienate her daughter.
Gabe managed a smile, of sorts. "We were a part of the problem and your mother didn't have me. I—"
"Yes, she did, you were her husband."
"I was never a very good husband."
Erin knew the proud man who sat across from her well enough to recognize how much that admission cost him. She couldn't let him take the blame for something that wasn't altogether his fault. "I should have been more sensitive to your needs and feelings."
"I never gave you much of an opportunity to know what my feelings were." Gabe blinked. "I'm sorry for that and for so many other things."
Gabe was apologizing? Erin was amazed. "I'm sorry too."
Gabe closed his eyes then opened them slowly. "We both made mistakes. We did what Jenny is doing now. We listened to what everyone else had to say instead of listening to each other. We can't undo those mistakes. We can learn from them."
What a wealth of potential those words carried. Erin's heart beat high with hope. "Are you talking about forgetting and forgiving?"
Gabe nodded. "What we can't forget, we must forgive if we hope to try again."
For the space of a few unguarded moments, Erin's heart soared with happiness. With impacted force a sobering realization took her. Gabe was being compliant and charitable for Jenny's sake. She had to admit that it was a clever maneuver. If he and Erin appeared to settle their differences, Jenny would be hard pressed not to follow suit and forgive him. She stole a glance in Jenny's direction and was both elated and discouraged by the look of dawning happiness she saw on her daughter's young face. If a reconciliation with Gabe was what it took to set her daughter's world right again, she could do it. "I'll drop my custody suit. I'm sure we can work something out."
"You will?" Jenny asked incredulously. Her high-pitched voice scraped across Erin's nerve ends. "Does that mean I can visit you anytime I please?"
Gabe's ruse had worked. Erin nodded her reply. "We can work out something that's agreeable to all of us."
"I know an even better way." Gabe moved across the floor until he stood directly in front of Erin. Dropping to one knee he took her hand and gazed up into her startled face. Out of the blue he asked, "Will you marry me?"
Erin was shocked to the core of her being. The man had to be out of his mind. The look of anticipation on Jenny's face stopped her from giving a scathing reply. Before she could recover her equilibrium, Gabe said, "Take a while to think about it. You can give me an answer when you reach a decision."
