Wakefield College 01 - Where It May Lead (19 page)

“Dad didn’t think I was artistic,” she said suddenly.

Troy turned, not liking her tone of voice.

“I sort of remember Mom putting my drawings and paintings on
the refrigerator when I was little.”

Troy nodded; his mom had done that, too.

“But once I overheard them talking. Dad said ‘I guess we know
one thing she won’t be when she grows up.’ Mom asked what, and Dad said an
artist. We always had to do art projects at school.” She glanced at him and he
nodded. Every kid did. “When my teachers took them down and gave them back to
us, I started throwing mine away. Neither of my parents ever noticed.
Although...” she hesitated “Mom might have been gone by then.”

“Damn,” Troy said. He crossed the kitchen in one long stride
and gathered her into his arms. She let the knife fall with a clatter onto the
cutting board. “Why do you love that son of a bitch?”

She stayed stiff. “He’s not. It isn’t wrong to encourage your
kids to focus on the things they’re good at. That’s what he was doing.”

Was it? Troy didn’t see it that way, but he could tell he’d
violated the unspoken pact. Her dad was off-limits to him.

He slid his hands up and down her upper arms. “Kids should be
allowed to try everything and determine for themselves what pleases them, what
they’re good at, what’s worth doing even if they’ll never set the world on fire
at it. That’s what I’d do with my kids.”

“You’d lie to them?”

“No.” He nuzzled her face then let her go. “You can say, ‘Wow,
look at those colors.’ Or ‘You’re getting a lot better at that.’ You’re proud
they’re trying and happy they’re having fun.”

Her head was bowed, but finally she raised her head and he saw
the turmoil in her brown eyes. “That’s what I’d do, too,” she said quietly.
“But...I do believe he loves me.”

Troy barely hesitated. He’d heard the one phone call. He had
also heard everything she had said about her father—and everything she hadn’t
said.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “I think he does, too.”

Her smile was pained but grateful. “Thank you, Troy.” She rose
on tiptoe and kissed his jaw, which had to be getting a little scratchy. “Hadn’t
you better turn the chicken?”

“Oh, hell!” As he raced for the barbecue grill, the laughter
that followed him sounded happier, more like his Madison.

It didn’t dissipate the ache in his chest or his fear. Because
if it came down to her dad versus him, it would be no contest—Dad would be the
winner hands-down.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

M
ADISON
ASKED
HIM
to take
her home shortly after dinner. He couldn’t tell if she was nervous he’d try to
sweep her upstairs to his bed, or whether she really had things she needed to
do. She had kissed him good-night with all her usual responsiveness and shy
hunger though, so Troy didn’t let himself brood about it even if she was pulling
back a little.

A glance at his watch told him he could still make a couple of
phone calls. He had a suspicion both Senator Haywood and Holly Cromer were
waiting tensely for their phones to ring.

He waited until he’d gotten back to his place and poured
himself another cup of coffee—with plenty of cream. Then he called Ms. Cromer
first.

She answered, voice curt. “What is it you want, Detective
Troyer?”

He’d explained in the message that he was investigating the
murder of Mitchell King. No need to repeat that information. “Answers,” he said
simply.

She gave a laugh that was more of a gasp. “Do you need me to
tell you what a creep he was?”

“You aren’t the first to tell me that. Ms. Cromer, was Mr. King
blackmailing you?”

“Yes. Yes, he was. Are you asking if I was glad to find out he
was dead? I’m ashamed to say I was.” Anguish transferred all too well over the
airwaves. “I can’t tell you how relieved I was.”

“I’d appreciate it if you would share what he was blackmailing
you for.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve long since come out. I’m
lesbian, Detective. I...hadn’t altogether admitted it to myself back then, and
the idea of telling my parents was beyond awful. They are quite conservative. I
dated through high school and college and even giggled about boys when I called
home and talked to Mom. But my junior year I fell for a woman. A senior. We
became lovers, although we were very careful to be sure no one else knew.”

Troy had heard that before. “Yet somehow Mr. King found
out.”

“Yes. I think he must have followed me, which means he
suspected. We met... Well, it doesn’t matter. He described what he’d seen in
enough detail that I believed him. He threatened to let my parents know.”

“Would they have believed him over you?”

“He’d seen a scar on my butt. The idea that he’d seen me naked
at all would have horrified them beyond belief. I could have made up some story
about him walking into the shower room or something, but I couldn’t seem to
think clearly, I was in such a panic. And he wasn’t asking for that much money.
I thought it was worth it, that there was no way he could pursue me after
college. So I paid,” she said bleakly.

She, too, had paid fifty dollars a month. She’d had enough in
her account, she explained, that she had offered to pay the entire amount for
the rest of the academic year right then, up front. She had wanted it to be over
with.

“He turned me down. He said he thought it was better if I had a
little, regular reminder of what I had at stake. Meeting him monthly was
humiliating.”

That, Troy guessed, had been the point. Maybe King had believed
he could control his victims better if they had to present themselves with their
payments at his summons, but mostly, Troy suspected, he had enjoyed seeing their
helpless frustration and rage. However friendly that monthly exchange had been,
he’d been needling them and they knew it.

Until the night he died, had it ever crossed his mind that, if
you waved a red cape often enough, sooner or later you’d be gored?

Troy asked about the night in question, only to learn that Ms.
Cromer had taken her only two finals for that semester early so that she could
go home to attend her grandmother’s funeral. A friend had called her the day
after the murder, at which point she’d felt the knee-buckling relief.

“It’s none of my business,” he said, “but I hope your parents
accepted you when you did come out.”

“No,” she said. “They didn’t.”

“I’m sorry.” He thanked her for her frankness, ended the call
and shook his head over the grief he’d heard in her voice there at the end.

It reminded him too much of Madison’s and made him think again
that he’d been even luckier with his parents than he’d known. Which made how
he’d been treating his mother seem pretty damn childish, after she’d given him
nothing but unfailing acceptance his entire life.

Frowning, he flipped to a new page in his notebook and dialed
the phone.

The first words out of Senator Haywood’s mouth were, “I met you
at the college president’s reception, didn’t I?”

“Yes, sir. I was attending both as liaison for the police
department and because my father, Joseph Troyer, was a Wakefield grad who had
put something in the time capsule.”

“If you had questions, why didn’t you ask them then?”

He smiled grimly. “Because I hadn’t yet overheard talk about
several people who were at the gym that night and chose not to come forward to
speak to the investigators. There was a lot of gossip that weekend, you know,
some of it quite interesting.”

“You’re implying there was talk about me.”

Troy straightened, finding the quiver of suppressed fury in the
senator’s voice interesting. More than interesting. So far, all the blackmail
victims had talked about Mitch King and their own mistakes with an air of
resignation. Some still felt shame, maybe, and the residue of dislike for the
little worm who’d capitalized on their private actions. But flat-out anger and
fear were long gone, maybe only because of the years, maybe because their long
ago mistakes were now irrelevant.

A U.S. senator, though, was in a different place. Politicians
could mostly shrug off the admissions that they’d smoked marijuana a time or two
in college, had burned a U.S. flag, been unfaithful to their wives. But what if
the young Gordon Haywood had done something different and less likely to evoke
sympathy in his supporters? Cheating or stealing might not go over so well with
the straight-laced far-right crowd. Given the way he ogled women, Troy didn’t
figure it was likely Haywood had flirted with homosexuality, but you never knew.
That
would go over even less well. Or drugs,
something more serious than weed. His crowd wouldn’t like that, either.

“We have become aware that Mr. King was blackmailing fellow
students,” he said flatly. “Your name has come up in that context, Senator
Haywood.”

“What an absurd accusation!” he snapped. “This sounds like a
political attack to me.”

“I can assure you that I have no political agenda, sir,” Troy
said in his best, expressionless cop voice. “As I said, you were seen having
occasional conversations with Mr. King in a way that suggested you may have been
making payments.”

“I think I’m entitled to know who told you something so
ridiculous.”

“I can’t tell you that, Senator. Let me assure you that my only
interest in calling you is to gain a better picture of Mr. King’s character and
habits. Other Wakefield graduates have been honest with me about paying him off,
and even told me why they felt compelled to do so. After thirty-five years, any
lapses they made at the time have become irrelevant. I can assure you complete
confidentiality.”

“I scarcely knew Mitchell King,” Haywood ground out, “and
I
can assure you I committed no offenses that I would
have paid blackmail to keep secret. Good night, Detective Troyer.”

He was gone. Troy ended the call himself and set down his
phone. Once again, he had to do battle with the instinctive dislike he felt for
the good senator. Even accounting for that, though... It was hard not to think
Haywood had responded too vehemently to relatively mild questions.

Even more interestingly, he hadn’t expressed any surprise at
the information that King had been a blackmailer. No “What the hell?” Or “You’re
kidding. Really?” Troy’s gut said Haywood
wasn’t
surprised.

Oh, yeah, he’d been paying Mitch King off, just like all the
others. Troy would have liked to know what his particular peccadillo had been,
but really it didn’t matter. No, what
did
matter was
finding out where Gordon Haywood had been between 1:30 and 2:15, the window
during which Mitchell King had been bludgeoned to death.

Apparently Guy Laclaire wasn’t the only alum angry at any
suggestion he had paid blackmail—or done anything worth hiding.

* * *

C
OME
MORNING
, T
ROY
sat down with the chief and his lieutenant to update them on the
investigation.

“The progress you’ve made is impressive,” Chief Helmer said. “I
want you to keep at this with everything you’ve got. I’m authorizing a travel
budget that would allow you, for example, to sit down face-to-face with Senator
Haywood if necessary.” He hesitated. “I hope it goes without saying that I also
have faith you won’t cause a PR nightmare for this department.”

“I’ll be cautious, sir.” A faint smile crooked Troy’s mouth. “I
think it’s safe to say that the senator won’t go to the press. The only danger
from him comes if we go public regarding our desire to talk to him.”

“And will that become necessary?”

“I don’t think so.” Troy explained his reasoning and belief
that he might be able to pinpoint Haywood’s whereabouts the night of the murder
from other sources. “Normally too many students would have been asleep for that
to be possible. But this was the second night of finals week and most were
awake. Unlike many seniors, Haywood lived on campus. In a single, but it was
part of a suite of other singles centered around a common sitting room and
kitchen. I’ll talk to the residents of other rooms.”

He was dismissed with a nod. A couple of hours later, Troy had
completed an ultimately useless interview with a long-time college employee—now
retired—who lived only a couple of blocks from Troy’s childhood home. On
impulse, he decided to stop by for a quick visit with his mother. New guilt, he
supposed, from last night’s reflections.

He was still a block away when he saw her standing outside the
gate on the sidewalk. Maybe the mail had just come. But in the length of time it
took him to cover the short distance, Mom didn’t move. She had her back to him,
as if she was staring at something up the block. Disturbed, he saw how stiff her
posture was and that her arms were crossed so tightly they’d pulled her
shoulders into a hunch.

When he cruised to a stop at the curb and turned off the
engine, she wheeled to face him, her face alight with alarm.

He jumped out. “Mom?”

“Troy?” Her voice shook. “What are you doing here?”

“Just thought I’d stop and say hi. What are you doing?” She
sure wasn’t grabbing the mail or newspaper, because her hands were empty.

She backed away, through her open gate beneath the
white-painted arch covered by picture perfect roses, back into the safety of the
yard. “I... Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

She wore athletic shoes, not her rubber gardening clogs, and
she radiated distress.

“Mom?” He stepped forward quickly enough that she couldn’t
escape him. He gently took her elbows in his hands. “Are you okay?”

“Of course I’m...!” Her mouth worked. “I’m...” And then she
shuddered. Her face crumpled. “I’m...” Her last attempt came out as a despairing
whisper, just before she began to sob.

He wrapped his arm around his mother and held her as she wept
against his chest. God, she was so much more fragile than he’d remembered. When
he ran his hands over her back, he felt her spine and ribs in a way he was sure
he never had before.

His heart spasmed as she kept crying. He doubted she even heard
his comforting, then bracing, words.

“You’re making yourself sick,” he finally said, gently shaking
her. “You’re scaring me, Mom.”

She gradually pulled herself together, but it was a slow
process, painful to watch. The worst was when his dignified, often reserved mom
realized how awful she must look.

She tore herself away from him. “I need to... Oh!” She raced
for the house and disappeared inside. The screen door slammed behind her.

Rueful, he climbed the porch steps and decided to wait outside.
He settled on the glider and set it into motion. Staring at her front garden
through the screen of some kind of vine—a clematis, he thought—gave him too much
time to brood.

What had happened to set her off like that? Was it something to
do with him showing up? Or—damn it to hell—was she having regular breakdowns
she’d never admitted to him?

He remembered his conversation with Holly Cromer and her
too-brief reply when he asked if her parents had accepted her.
No. They didn’t.
Madison’s expression when she talked
about her mother rose in his mind’s eye, the hurt and the knowledge that she
hadn’t mattered to her own mom as much as she should.

He groaned and bent his head back, closing his eyes.

Troy didn’t open them until he heard the squeak of the screen
door.

Mom’s face was still blotchy, but she’d carefully reapplied her
makeup and brushed her hair.

He rose to his feet.

“No, sit down.” She joined him, sitting with her knees together
and her hands clasped on her lap. Her back was very straight. “I’m sorry,
Troy.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” he said gruffly. “I know you’re
still grieving. I hope you aren’t still crying every day.”

Mom shook her head. “No. This...wasn’t about your father at
all.” As he’d done earlier, she stared straight ahead. For a moment he feared
she was going to cry again, but she firmed her jaw. “This time, it was all
me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Since you...confronted me...” She swallowed. “I told myself I
would start taking walks again, if only to prove you wrong.”

Oh, hell. “That’s what you were doing when I drove up. Trying
to make yourself go for a walk.”