“Now that we know Austin was having an affair with someone else at the same time he was having one with Rachel, it pretty much negates his testimony that he was insane about her. That leaves us with the possibility that his main interest in her was financial and that when she blew her financial future by getting caught with him in Zack’s suite, he decided to get rid of her. It’s also possible he never wanted to marry her in the first place, and he killed her because she was pressuring him. Who knows. Furthermore, Austin was the only one who had physical control of that gun during the scene they were filming. Even if Zack hadn’t changed the script so that Austin, not Rachel, fired the first shot, Austin was strong enough to make certain the gun was pointed at her, not him, when it went off.”
Julie shivered at the macabre conversation and its real implications. “Does Zack know this?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say. I mean, is he excited or happy about it?”
“Happy?” he repeated with a bitter laugh. “If you’d been convicted of a crime someone else committed and you were completely helpless to alter the situation, would you be happy to finally discover the person you most despise in the world is probably the person who caused it all to happen to you? There’s another complication,” he added. “We also uncovered some minor information about other people who were on the set in Dallas that could point to them instead of Austin.”
“What sort of information?”
“For one thing, Diana Copeland had a fling with Austin years before, which was supposedly over. However, she was still jealous enough of Rachel to tell people, after the furor of the trial died down, that she was glad Rachel was dead. Maybe she was jealous enough to have made it happen. Then there’s Emily McDaniels, who had to be put on all sorts of medication for a year after the murder, which seems rather an excessive reaction for someone who was supposedly an innocent bystander. Tommy Newton, the assistant director on the film, couldn’t get his act together for a long time after the murder either, although it’s no secret how he felt about Austin. So there you are,” he finished grimly, “new evidence that points simultaneously at everyone and is completely useless because it does.”
“Oh, but it doesn’t have to be like that. I mean, the police or the district attorney or whoever is in charge could be made to check out the new evidence.”
“The legal authorities,” he contradicted scornfully, “decided Zack was guilty and they arrested and prosecuted him. I hate to shatter your illusions, but they are the last people who’d want to reopen the case and make themselves look like fools by revealing that they were wrong. If we uncovered incontrovertible proof that Austin or someone else was guilty, I’d take it to Zack’s lawyers and the media before I’d hand it over to the authorities so they could try to bury it. The problem is that we don’t have much chance of finding out more than we have. We’ve already exhausted every avenue trying to find out who the woman with Austin was. Austin denied there was such a woman. He said the bellboy was mistaken, and whatever voice he’d heard must have been a television program.” Matt softened his tone as if by doing that, he could somehow soften the blow he was about to deal her: “Zack understands all that. He knows the chances are ninety-nine percent now that Austin is the murderer, and he also knows the legal system isn’t going to do a damned thing about it, unless he or I can give them one-hundred percent of the proof, and I’m afraid that’s impossible. It’s important you understand that, too, Julie. I only told you what we’ve learned because you’re determined to go to him, and I thought it might help you, in case you ever begin to doubt his innocence.”
Julie rejected his fatalistic logic with all her heart. “I’ll never stop hoping. I’ll pray and hope and badger God until your investigation turns up the proof you need.”
She looked ready to take on the entire world for Zack, and Matt impulsively pulled her against him for a brief hug. “Zack finally got lucky when he met you,” he said tenderly. “You go right ahead and pray,” he added, releasing her. “We can use all the help we can get.” Reaching into his pocket, he took out a pen and a business card, then he wrote two phone numbers on the back of it and an address. “These are our private phone numbers in Chicago and Carmel. If you can’t reach us either place, call my secretary at the number on the front of the card, and I’ll give her instructions to tell you where we are and how to reach us, no matter where that may be. The address on the back of the card is our home in Chicago. I was also supposed to give you this check from Zack.”
Julie shook her head. “He told me what the check was for in the letter. I won’t need it.”
“I’m sorry,” Matt said gently, “that there isn’t anything more I can do. Truly sorry for you and for Zack.”
Julie shook her head. “You’ve been wonderful. Thank you for telling me what you did.”
When he left to wait in the car with Joe O’Hara, Julie held out the clothes she’d worn home from Colorado to Meredith. “I noticed Matt is the same height and build as Zack, and I’m about two inches shorter than you. Because of that and some other things I learned tonight, I have a feeling you might recognize these.” When Meredith nodded, Julie held them further out and said, “I had to wear these home, but I’ve had them dry-cleaned. I intended to mail them back to the house, but I never found out the address.”
“Keep them,” Meredith said softly, “for the memories they hold.”
Julie unconsciously cradled them protectively to her chest. “Thank you.”
Swallowing over the lump of emotion in her throat she felt at the revealing gesture, Meredith said, “I agree with you that Zack will contact Matt very soon, but are you absolutely certain you should go through with this? You’ll surely be breaking some law, and they’ll hunt for you both. If you’re lucky, you’ll live the rest of your life in hiding.”
“Tell me something,” Julie said, meeting her gaze unflinchingly. “If it were Matt somewhere out there, all alone, loving you—if it were Matt who wrote you the letter you read tonight, what would you do? Honestly,” she added, sensing that her new friend might try to dissemble.
Meredith breathed a ragged sigh. “I would get on the first plane, boat, car, or truck that would take me to him.” Wrapping Julie in a tight hug, she whispered, “I would even lie and tell him I was pregnant so he’d let me come to him.”
Julie stiffened in alarm. “What makes you think I’m not pregnant?”
“The expression on your face when Matt first asked you if you were and the fact that you started to shake your head no before you stopped yourself.”
“You won’t tell Matt will you?”
“I can’t tell him,” she said with a sigh. “I haven’t kept a secret from him during our marriage, but if I tell him this one, he’ll tell Zack. He’ll do it to protect both of you, because even though he hides it, he’s desperately afraid of what you want to do and what it may cause. So am I.”
“Then why are you helping me do it?”
“Because,” Meredith said simply, “I don’t think either of you are going to have any life at all without each other. And because,” she added, managing a real smile, “I think you would do the same thing for me if our positions were reversed.”
Julie waved good-bye to them from the front porch, then she went back into the house and got Zack’s letter. Sitting down in a chair, she read it again, letting the words warm and thrill her and reinforce her courage.
I love you, Julie. Christ, I love you so much. I’d give up all my life to have one year with you. Six months. Three. Anything . . . I never thought of sexual intercourse as ‘making love’ until you . . . I won’t send another letter to you, so don’t look for one. Letters will make us both hope and dream, and if I don’t stop doing that, I will die of wanting you.
She thought again of his last words to her in Colorado, his condescending amusement when she told him she loved him: “You don’t love me, Julie. You don’t know the difference between good sex and real love. Now be a good girl and go home
where you belong.” And then she compared that with the real truth in his letter: I love you, Julie. I loved you in Colorado. I love you here, where I am. I will always love you. Everywhere. Always.
The sharp contrast between the two made her shake her head in awed amazement. “No wonder,” she whispered tenderly to him, “you won an Academy Award!”
Julie got up and turned off the living room lights, but she took his letter with her to her bedroom so she could read it again. “Call me, Zack,” she ordered him in her heart, “and put us both out of this misery. Call me quickly, darling.”
* * *
Next door, the Eldridge twins were up unusually late, too. “He said to call him,” Ada Eldridge pointed out to her balky twin sister. “Mr. Richardson said to call him in Dallas, no matter what time it is, if we noticed any strangers or anything unusual around Julie Mathison’s house. Now give me the license number of that car that was parked out there half the night, so I can read it to him.”
“Oh, but, Ada,” Flossie protested, holding the slip of paper with the license number written on it behind her back. “I don’t think we should spy on Julie, not even for the FBI.”
“We aren’t spying!” Ada said, marching around her and pulling the slip of paper out of Flossie’s hand. “We’re helping him protect Julie from that—that heathen monster who kidnapped her. Him and his disgusting dirty movies!” she added, picking up the phone.
“They aren’t dirty! They’re good movies, and I think Zachary Benedict is innocent. So does Julie. She told me so last week, and she said so on television. She also said he didn’t do one thing to hurt her, so I can’t see why he would try now. I think,” Flossie confided, “that Julie is in love with him.”
Ada paused in the act of punching out the numbers for a collect call to Dallas. “Well if she is,” Ada declared with disgust, “she is as big a romantic fool as you are, and she’ll end up pining away for that good-for-nothing movie star, just like you’ve pined away for that useless Herman Henkleman, who isn’t worth an hour of your time and never was!”
52
THE PHONE CALL JULIE HAD been waiting and praying for came four days later at the last place she expected to receive it. “Oh, Julie,” the principal’s secretary called out when Julie walked into the office to turn in her attendance report at the end of the day. “A Mr. Stanhope called you this afternoon.” Julie glanced up a split second before the name hit her, and when it did, she froze. “What did he say?” she asked, alarmed by the breathless desperation in her own voice.
“He said something about wanting to enroll his son in your handicapped physical ed classes. I told him we’re full.”
“Why in heaven’s name did you tell him that?”
“Because I heard Mr. Duncan say something about us being overcrowded. Anyway, Mr. Stanhope said it was something of an emergency and that he’d call you back at seven tonight. I told him it was no use because our teachers don’t work here that late.”
In a flash, Julie realized Zack was wary of calling her at home in case her phone was tapped, that he hadn’t gotten through to her when he tried here, and that he might not try again, and it was all she could do to keep her frustration and temper from lashing out at the principal’s lazy, nosy secretary. “If he said it was an emergency,” Julie shot back with unprecedented fury, “why didn’t you page me in my classroom?”
“Teachers are not supposed to take personal calls during school hours. That is Mr. Duncan’s rule. His very specific rule.”
“It was clearly not a personal call,” Julie said, her nails biting into her palms. “Did he say whether he intended to call me here or at home tonight?”
“No.”
At six forty-five, Julie was sitting alone in the school’s administration office, staring at the telephone on the desk where the main line would light up if a call came through. If she’d guessed wrong, if Zack was going to phone her at home tonight instead of here, she was terrified he might think she’d changed her mind about joining him and then he wouldn’t call back. Beyond the glass walls that surrounded the administration office, the halls were dark and eerie, and when the janitor poked his head in the door, she jumped guiltily. “You’re workin’ awful late tonight,” Henry Rueheart said with a grin that displayed a missing front tooth.
“Yes,” Julie said, hastily pulling a blank tablet in front of her and picking up a pen. “I have some . . . some special reports to write. Sometimes it’s easier to think here than it is at home.”
“You ain’t doin’ much writing, gazin’ off into space like you’ve been,” he said. “I thought mebbee you was waiting for a phone call or somethin’.”
“No, not at all—”
The phone rang shrilly at her elbow, and she grabbed for it, jabbing the button that lit up. “Hello?”
“Hi, sis,” Carl said. “I kept calling you at home and decided to take a shot you were still at school when I couldn’t reach you anywhere else. Have you had dinner yet?”
Julie raked her hand through her hair, trying to remember if Zack would get a busy signal or if the lines transferred automatically. “I have a lot of work to finish,” she said, tossing a harassed look at Henry, who’d decided to shuffle into the office and empty trash cans instead of finishing sweeping the halls. “I’m trying to write some reports, and I’m not making much progress.”
“Is everything okay?” he persisted. “I saw Katherine in town a few minutes ago, and she said you’ve wanted to stay home alone every night this week.”
“Everything is great! Terrific! I’m throwing myself into my work just like you advised me to, remember?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Oh, well it must have been someone else then. I thought it was you. I have to hang up now. Thanks for calling. Love you,” she said and hung up the phone. “Henry,” she burst out in distraction, “can’t you leave cleaning the office for last? I can’t think straight if you’re going to bang trash cans around,” she added somewhat unfairly, describing the minor noise he was making.
His face fell. “I’m sorry, Miss Julie. I’ll just finish sweeping the hall then. Is that okay?”
“Yes it is. I’m sorry, Henry. I’m a little . . . tired,” she finished with an overbright smile that looked anything but sleepy. She watched him shuffle off down the hall and saw the lights at the far end of it come on. She had to stay calm, she warned herself fiercely, and not do or say things that were unusual for her and that might evoke suspicion.
At exactly seven o’clock the phone rang again, and she snatched it out of the cradle and answered it.
Zack’s voice sounded even deeper on the telephone, but it was cold, curt, and clipped: “Are you alone, Julie?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything in this world I can say to dissuade you from your insane idea of joining me?”
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear, it wasn’t the way she wanted him to talk to her, but she concentrated on the words he’d written in his letter, refusing to let him trick or intimidate her with his voice. “Yes, there is,” she replied softly. “You can tell me that the things you wrote in your letter were lies.”
“Fine,” he said. “They were all lies.”
Julie squeezed the phone in her hand and closed her eyes. “Now, tell me that you don’t love me, darling.”
She heard him draw a ragged breath, and his voice dropped to a tortured plea. “Don’t make me say that. Please.”
“I love you so much,” Julie whispered fiercely.
“Don’t do this to me, Julie—”
Her fingers loosened on the phone and she smiled because she suddenly sensed that she was going to win. “I can’t stop,” she said tenderly. “I can’t stop loving you. There’s only one solution I’m willing to accept, and I gave it to you.”
“Christ, that’s not—”
“Save your prayers for later, darling,” she whispered teasingly. “You’re going to wear your knees out when I get there as it is, praying I learn how to
cook better, praying I let you get some sleep at night for a change, praying I stop giving you babies . . .”
“Oh, Julie . . . don’t. God, don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
He drew in a long, labored breath and was quiet for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to reply, and when he finally answered, the words sounded as if they were being wrenched from his chest. “Don’t . . . ever stop loving me.”
“I’ll promise not to in front of a priest, a preacher, or a Buddhist monk.”
That wrung a reluctant laugh from him, and the memory of his dazzling smile made her heart soar as he said, “Are we talking about marriage here?”
“I am.”
“I should have expected you’d insist on that, too.”
His attempt to sound disgruntled failed completely, but Julie went along with the game, eager to lighten his mood. “Don’t you want to marry me?”
He declared the game over with one solemn word: “Desperately.”
“In that case, tell me how to get to you and what ring size you wear.”
There was another torturous pause that strung her nerves to the breaking point, and then he began speaking, and she forgot everything but his words and the incredible feeling of elation sweeping through her as he spoke. “All right. I’ll meet you in Mexico City at the airport eight days from now, on Tuesday night. Early Tuesday morning, get into your car and drive to Dallas. In Dallas, rent a car in your own name and drive it to San Antonio, but don’t turn it in. Leave it in the rental car lot at the airport, they’ll find it eventually. With luck, the authorities will think you’re driving somewhere to meet me instead of flying and they won’t alert the airports as quickly. Altogether, the highway traveling should only take you a few hours. A plane ticket for the four o’clock flight to Mexico City will be waiting for you at the Aero-Mexico ticket counter in the name of Susan Arland. Any questions so far?”