Ring of Truth

  “But it didn’t, and you can tell them I came later.”

  “Right, a whole month later, but they’re three and six, and math isn’t their strong point, nor is it their mother’s.”

  “You’re afraid of what Truly will say? Gee”—I can’t help but fall back on sarcasm—“I could have sworn you divorced her.”

  “She can poison the kids against me, Marie.”

  “No wonder you divorced her, a woman like that.”

  “If you had kids, you’d understand better.”

  “That’s such a cop-out. I really hate that particular argument.”

  “Too bad. Kids need time to adjust, and seeing Daddy with a new woman is more than I want them to have to adjust to right now, while they’re still getting used to living alone with Mommy. Hell, they only see me on weekends, Marie, and that’s not enough time to prepare the ground for meeting you, at least not this soon.”

  “Soon? Franklin you’ve been divorced almost a year!”

  I feel mortified to think I’ve been putting up with this for so long. But it didn’t start to bother me until the initial romance wore off and the feelings of a real-life relationship started to settle in. The problem was, they couldn’t settle in, because of our game of seek-each-other-and-hide-from-everybody-else.

  “It’s so unfair when you pit your kids’ feelings against mine, and I know that probably makes me sound like a selfish jerk, but there you have it. Maybe you’re right, Franklin. Maybe if I had kids, I would be more understanding. And maybe not, because maybe this isn’t about them, but about whether or not I can continue to tolerate this behavior of ours. And you know what? I can’t. It’s too damn much work to maintain and it feels a little silly to me now.”

  Suddenly, he’s flinging himself out of bed.

  “Let’s talk about this later, Marie.”

  I hate that officious tone he gets.

  “I know what it is,” I say, trying to joke, “you’re just embarrassed to be seen with a white woman.”

  He feigns dismay and shock. “You’re white?”

  “Only on my mother’s and my father’s side.”

  “That settles it, I’m never taking you home to meet the kids.”

  He’s joking, too, but I’m thinking: That’s probably true, you probably never will. There goes Cancun, or Paris, or Katmandu.

  * * *

  On the way through my living room to the garage, we pass the canvas boat bag and Franklin asks me what I’m going to do with it.

  “You sure you don’t want it, either?” I inquire.

  He shakes his head. “Can’t try her twice for the same crime.”

  “Well, I think I’ll hold on to it, see if anybody calls me.”

  He has already told me there’s nothing his office or the cops can do about the person who called Jenny and then tried to grab the bag off their front porch. Even if they traced a phone call, no crime was committed. As I scoop up the handles to carry the bag with me, he warns, “Don’t be taking any chances, all right? Just because I can’t charge anybody with a crime doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous.”

  “Who do you think wants this stuff?”

  He shrugs as we enter my garage, his mind already on his work. All up and down the line, the official attitude toward the Susanna Wing homicide case seems to be: solved, finished, over, don’t bother me about it anymore.

  “How long do you think your kids will need, Franklin?”

  Taken by surprise, he stops in front of his SUV and looks back at me. “There’s no set timetable for these things, Marie.”

  There’s that officiousness again. I grit my teeth, then say, “All right. Then all I can say is that I know what I need. This has become too much like dating a married man. If you’re not willing to be seen in public with me by the end of this month, I’m out of here, Franklin. I mean no disrespect to you and your kids, but I have to think of my self-respect, too.”

  “You’re making way too much of this.”

  “No, you are.”

  “Okay, I hear you,” he says, unexpectedly.

  “One month. All right?”

  He says nothing, but he looks frustrated, angry.

  Finally, I get a grudging “All right.”

  “As plea bargains go, that was not a very satisfactory answer from the state attorney’s office.”

  “It’s the best I can do at the moment.”

  “That’s good enough for me.”

  But when he walks back over to kiss me goodbye, I can see it in his eyes, the fear of telling his children, his trepidation about his ex-wife’s reaction.

  I hope it’s a good month, if it’s going to be our last.

  In my car, I test my emotions to see what hurts. Maybe I’m lucky,- maybe I haven’t actually fallen in love with the man yet and I can still get out of this without getting badly burned. If that’s the case, I intend to treat this month as if we’re the last two people on earth, and this is our last time together. He wants sexy, I’ll give him sexy. He wants secret, I’ll give him secret. I’ll give the man something to miss, by God. By the time I’ve pulled out of my driveway I’ve almost managed to talk myself into feeling good about the prospect of losing my lover.

  I’m still following his car down the road when my cell phone rings.

  “That’s great about your book,” he says. “I’m not surprised, and I’m glad she likes it so much.”

  “She thinks I need to work on Artemis some more, though. When you read it, did you feel as if you got to know her very well?”

  “Why would I want to? You did her fine, Marie.”

  He really is a very nice man sometimes.

  “Thank you,” I say, and manage not to cry over the phone. What’s a mere book—or a lost romance—in the larger scheme of things? Everybody else seems to like my book. So what if I’m unhappy with it? I’m just the writer, so who cares what I think? And, anyway, I like some of it just fine.

  And he loved me just enough, until now.

  On my way out, I pause by the gate to have a conversation with Bennie, who’s on duty this morning. With his help, I’m going to set a trap today, and maybe we’ll see who gets caught in it.

  After all, Franklin DeWeese isn’t my only secret.

  Susanna

  9

  Another thing that nobody but Franklin knows about me is that I’ve never actually met Artemis McGregor, the infamous Artie, the notorious “other woman.” Not that I haven’t tried, repeatedly, and by every hook and crook I know. Mail and E-mail, intermediaries, lawyers, fax, and phone, I’ve tried them all, even showing up on her doorstep, just to get the door closed in my face, even loitering in an inconspicuous car across the street from her house—like a cheap private eye—in the vain hope that I might follow her out and waylay her in the grocery store.

  Apparently, her husband, Stuart, does all the shopping.

  She has consistently refused to have anything to do with me or any other member of “the media.” Mr. McGregor has been only slightly less shy. He and I had one strange, stilted dialogue in a hallway at the courthouse—I hesitate to call it an interview, still less a conversation. It consisted of me asking questions about her and him answering politely to each one of them, “I really can’t speak for her. I’m afraid you’d have to check with Artie about that.”

  As if anybody could, I pointed out to him, to no avail.

  He is unfailingly courteous,- she is unremittingly silent.

  Most of what I think I know—and have written—about Bob Wing’s codefendant has come to me secondhand, or from the courtroom. Ask me what other people say about her and I can fill you in. Ask me about her credit rating, her history of real estate transactions, her arrest record (nothing before this), even her genealogy, and I’m a veritable databank. I’ve even had E-mail conversations with her ex-husband on his sailboat in the South Pacific. He seems a nice guy, loyally, even indignantly, supportive of her, and you’d think it spoke well of a woman when her ex-husband had nothing but nice
things to say about her, wouldn’t you?

  All of that is in the book, but it’s camouflage for my dirty little secret, which is that I don’t really know the woman at all. I’ve never run into this problem before; eventually everybody talks to me. Oh, I’ve known murderers who were gun-shy, so to speak, but I can almost always count on their egos to pull their trigger eventually, although what comes shooting out may not be anything you’d want to know. And some survivors—or surviving victims—find it difficult to let it all out, for a while. But most people want—need—to talk to somebody. I’m accustomed to being that person. But not this time, not with this woman.

  Her codefendant, Bob Wing, has talked to me several times.

  But I know her voice only from hearing it in court, recognize her face only from there, too, and from photos her mother showed me. I know her personality not at all, really, because the reports vary so dramatically depending upon who is explaining her to me, her friends or foes.

  Saint or sinner—

  That’s all I’ve ever heard about her. I’ve relied far too much on other people’s opinions of her. It makes me feel uneasily like an historian, because when it comes to Artie McGregor I have relied entirely on secondary sources for my information. Would secondhand reports give an accurate picture of me, or of anyone? Personally, I don’t think so. I need to see faces, body language, responses; I want to hear tones of voice and the exact words that people use.

  But now maybe I have some bait to lure her.

  I use my car phone to try her number one more time, and get their message machine. Of course. “Mrs. McGregor, this is Marie Lightfoot,” I tell the machine. In a carefully neutral tone, I continue: “I have a canvas boat bag that belongs to you. This afternoon, I’m going to take it back where it was found, snap some pictures of it for my book, and then I’m going to leave it there. Nobody else has any use for it. So if you want it back, that’s where it will be.”

  There. Now let her wonder about me, for a change.

  I pull into a “visitor” parking space at the rear of the Bahia Beach Police Department. As I walk up to the metal detector at the back door, I am still thinking about the mysterious, elusive Artemis McGregor. Surely it was for women like her that the phrase “appearances can be deceiving” was coined.

  * * *

  “Is this the missing wedding ring?” I ask Carl Chamblin. “Does this match the engagement ring that you guys found at the scene?”

  We’re in the Homicide Investigative Division of the Bahia Beach Police Headquarters on Twenty-Third; I’m at the side of his desk, in a chair so uncomfortable that I would confess to a crime just to get out of it; Carl’s leaning back precariously in his own black plastic chair that looks two sizes too small for him. Under the glass top of his desk there are photographs of his family: himself, his wife, two daughters, sons-in-law, four grandchildren, all of them smiling. They appear to love him, regardless of what I or my readers may think of him.

  “How’d you get that?” he wants to know.

  “The Carmichaels gave it to me.”

  “Why the fuck’d they do that?”

  “Because you told them you didn’t want it, Carl, and because I’ll collect anything to do with this case. You scared them away.”

  His fierce face cracks a grin and he laughs. “It’s what I do best, Marie. I like to scare the good citizens so they won’t report crimes and force me to do some actual fucking work around here.” He puts out his hand for the ring.

  I hand it to him. “So, is it?”

  “Probably.” He perches the ring atop his right index finger, unable even to slide it past the first joint of his finger. “Whoever wore it, she was a skinny thing,” he observes.

  “Whatever happened to that other ring?”

  “It’s in the evidence room, unless somebody’s stolen it.” He’s not kidding. A diamond ring would be a temptation to a dishonest cop with a little credit-card debt. Almost playfully, he says, “What do you think I should do with them?”

  It takes me a second to realize he is taking possession of it.

  “I could pawn them, maybe,” he continues, looking at me to see if I’m falling for this. “What do you think this one’s worth, Marie, a few thousand? I wouldn’t get that much, if I pawned it.”

  “And you’d have to split it with me.”

  “Your word against mine.”

  “You better be nice to me, Carl. My book’s not out yet.”

  “Oh, right, I’m gonna be famous. Felons all over South Florida are gonna want my autograph. I guess I’d better behave myself till your literary masterpiece is in print. I hope you told them how handsome I am?”

  “There’s a photograph of you in the book.”

  “Damn.” He looks suddenly disgusted, but not, it turns out, about his appearance. “Do you know we have twenty-seven effing pawnshops in this city alone, Marie? And a hundred and twenty-nine in just this one county? And that I checked every damn one of them, on my own, without a computer, when I was looking for a lead on that engagement ring?”

  “I know you did, Carl. I pray for a big budget increase for the police department, every night.”

  “Right. You could give us your royalties on this book.”

  “Yeah, that’s gonna happen.” He laughs, and so do I. There’s no central computer in Howard County for comparing pawn slips with stolen or lost property reports. That means that cops have to do it manually, and sometimes that means cross-checking literally thousands a day. It’s a source of unending and well-justified complaints, but so far no money has been allotted to lighten the load on them. “So what are you going to do with it?”

  “Check back with me on this, Marie.”

  “Meaning, you don’t know?”

  “No, I just thought you’d want to make sure I really did tag it for evidence, instead of pawning it like I said I would.”

  I give him a wry look. “If you’re not an honest cop, Carl, I’m going to look pretty stupid for turning you into a hero.”

  He looks smug, catches the eye of a cop across the room, and grins at her, before looking back at me. “Is that what you did? Aw. Why didn’t the little girl give us this ring a long time ago?”

  “It’s pretty, and she wanted to keep it.”

  “Also, she didn’t want to get caught stealing.”

  “Also that. You’re not going to get her in trouble, are you?”

  It’s his turn to give me a look. “Yeah, I make it a practice to arrest ten-year-old suburban white girls and charge them with grand larceny.” Suddenly, his expression changes. “Which, now that I think about it, this may be.”

  “If it’s worth that much.”

  “Why are you interested in these rings, Marie?”

  “I am interested in everything about this case.”

  “I thought you already finished your book about me.”

  “About you?” I can’t help smiling. Cops are pretty damned amusing, sometimes. Funny, caustic, quick-witted as hell. My own riposte is less than original. “You wish.”

  “I’ve told all my relatives.”

  “Or course. I make sure I only write about cops with big families. More book sales for me that way.”

  “We’re a library family, sorry to tell you.”

  “Is that right. Well, maybe I’ll have to rewrite my manuscript, and get more about Norm in there, a little less about you.” Sergeant Jill Norman was his partner on some of the investigation, but she didn’t play enough of a role to be as big a star in my book.

  “My family just got bigger. You gonna give me a free copy?”

  “Several, a box load if you want that many.”

  “What if I don’t like what you wrote about me?”

  “So sue me.”

  He laughs, unaware that I mean it. I try like hell to portray the real people in my books accurately, and with some compassion for the fact that after I make use of them they still have to live in the world. But there’s no guarantee that I will write about them as
they want the world to see them. They have no idea the risk they take with their reputations when they put their words in my hands. I smile back at the detective, but I feel queasy, because I know that Carl Chamblin is not a man who will take it kindly if I don’t completely share his own high opinion of himself.

  “If I don’t like it,” he suddenly says, “you better not fucking park on my streets.” At his own supposed joke, Carl Chamblin laughs loud enough to attract the attention of other cops in the room. When I glance around at them, however, it seems to me they are looking at me, and not at him. I spot two of them—two women—talking behind their hands, and when they see I am looking at them, they smile at me in a kind of embarrassed way, and quickly turn away from each other. Hmm. Call me paranoid, but it seems to me there is something in their expressions—

  “Carl, you ever hear any rumors about my private life?”

  He looks surprised, then foxy. “What should I hear? You got a little secret you don’t want us crack detectives to find out about, Marie?”

  I feign innocence, and stand up.

  “You know,” he says, looking up at me from where he’s leaning back in his chair, “now I won’t rest until I find out what it is.”

  I nod in the direction of the two women cops. “Ask them. Maybe they know. And when you find out, tell me, okay? I’m sure it will be as great a surprise to me as it is to you.”

  Carl laughs, and makes a move, as if to escort me to the door.

  “So you don’t think the rings are connected at all?”

  “Oh, let it go,” he advises me, and props his butt on his desk. “It’s over. We got a conviction, you got a book. The fuck else do you want?”

  “Just these loose ends.”

  “Fuck ’em. They’re not important. Somebody stole some rings and that house was where they hid them, and if you go looking for who those people are they may not be real happy if you find them.”

  It sounds as if he is warning me away from my own curiosity.

  “Don’t you want to investigate it, Carl? If they’re stolen?”

  “The sign on the door says homicide, not theft.”