Custody of the State (28 page)

But there was something else about the woman's anguished call to Will. She had somehow known that Henry Pencup's confession had a bearing on the accusations against Mary Sue.

That had led Will to Father Godfrey. And from the best of the elderly priest's memory, Mary Sue was the nurse who was in the hospital room at the time of the confession.

One thing was now quite clear. Someone was concerned that she might have overheard Pencup's last words. If that was true, then was that a motivation to try to silence his client? Was that the reason behind the pressure put on the woman—whoever she was—to place a phone call to the Department of Social Services accusing Mary Sue of poisoning her own child?

Will could think of one possible scenario. If Mary Sue Fellows were found guilty of plotting the death of her son in return for life-insurance money, that would certainly destroy her credibility forever—particularly in the eyes of the Delphi community. Her value as a potential witness would then be destroyed permanently. But, potential witness against who? Will knew of no other legal cases that would involve her as a possible witness.
Who was it, then, who was so fearful of what she might know about Henry Pencup?

Will was convinced there was a connection there. There was a picture forming within in the mass of seemingly unrelated factual fragments in front of him—if only he could connect the dots. Will had to ask himself—
Was there a fox somewhere in this picture? And if so, who was that fox?

42

T
HE FOLLOWING DAY
, Will wanted to make a jail visit to Joe Fellows. Since the imprisoned man was now representing himself, that meant Will was ethically free to contact him directly—rather than having to deal through the very unhelpful Stanley Kennelworth.

Before heading over to the jail, Will went on-line for a few minutes to check out news stories on the Eden Lake financial collapse.

He reviewed several of them but gained no new information. The final one he scanned was mildly interesting only because it added one small detail. Jason Bell Purdy—apparently the perennial entrepreneurial optimist—was quoted as saying that, because of recent promises of additional investor capital, he believed he could come up with the additional funding to resolve the contractor lawsuits. All contractor liens would then be removed, thus satisfying the primary mortgage lenders who were all poised to file foreclosure.

But later news articles indicated that the investor capital either never materialized, or it arrived too late to resolve the massive loss of lender confidence in the project that had developed.

A glut of foreclosure suits was then filed, and bankruptcy ensued.

Will then checked his laptop e-mail. As promised, Tiny had transmitted the list of limited partners in the Eden Lake development.

Limited partners, by definition, possessed only very narrow rights in a real-estate investment deal. Their risk was limited to the amount of their financial investment—they had no additional personal liability. But they had no control over decision-making in the project, in a formal sense. Their only interest was in recovering—if all went well—a substantial profit beyond their original investment.

A
general
partner—like Jason Bell Purdy—stood to gain huge profits. But he could also suffer titanic personal losses if the project fell apart and the partnership property was insufficient to cover all debts.

Looking over the list of limited partners, Will was astounded. There were more than one hundred of them. He printed out the list, closed down his laptop, and then sat down with a pen, ready to mark any names that were significant.

He found only two. The first was that of Dr. Parker—the pathologist from the Delphi hospital, who would be testifying for the county that Joshua's blood test showed he had been poisoned. At first, Will thought he'd hit gold. But then he reviewed the list again and saw that, in addition to Dr. Parker, there were seventeen other physicians who had also invested in the project.

The second name was a surprise. Bob Smiley, the insurance agent who'd issued the $100,000 life-insurance policy on Joshua's life, was listed as an investor. But according to the list that Tiny had pulled from the bankruptcy court file, Smiley had put in only six thousand dollars—an insignificantly small share.

As Will drove to the county jail, he called Tiny on his cell phone. Yes, the detective assured Will, he had indeed sat down for a haircut at Delphi's busiest barber shop.

Tiny then reviewed all of the gossip he'd heard when he raised the name of Jason Bell Purdy. Most of it concerned Purdy's notorious divorce from a southern-belle beauty-pageant queen by the name of Magnolia. The general consensus, Tiny discovered, was that Magnolia had been a gold digger who'd landed on hard times. She'd hunted down Purdy like a lioness that hadn't
eaten for a month. Because she'd been only after Purdy's money, so it was thought, the sympathy vote in the crowded barbershop inclined toward Purdy.

There'd also been quite a bit of raucous humor when Tiny had asked about Purdy's dating life since the divorce. Apparently he'd been romantically linked to half the female population between Delphi and Atlanta.

Tiny further discovered that Purdy had two older sisters. Susan Purdy, the middle child, had been committed to a long-term psychiatric hospital in San Francisco.

The oldest of the siblings was Lori Lou Purdy—a flamboyant character now residing with the jet set in Lucerne, Switzerland—but who continuously hopped from there to the French Riviera, to Paris, and to the casinos in Gibraltar and Morocco.

But Tiny was also quick to add that Purdy, his father, and his grandfather were still considered to be of heroic proportions in the greater Delphi area.

As far as Purdy's finances, however, there was a little bit of a surprise. Tiny said it was widely known that most of his money came from a “spendthrift” family trust. The trust kept a tight lock on the money, dispensing a huge annual interest and investment income—but gave Purdy no control over the mammoth “corpus,” or principal, of the trust.

Will immediately understood why Purdy had not been able to use any of his personal fortune to cover the few million dollars he needed to put his real-estate project back on track. It had been locked up tight in the family trust—beyond his control.

By the time Will finished with Tiny he was parked in front of the jail. He felt an eerie sense of recognition as he passed through security and into the lobby. The stocky, bald jailer was reading a crossword puzzle magazine at his desk. He recognized the attorney immediately and made a hasty call.

In a few minutes, deputy jailer Thompson arrived. He came over to Will and shook hands warmly.

“I need to have your driver's license and your wallet before you enter,” the bald jailer called out.

“No you don't,” Thompson barked out. “I'll vouch for him.”

“Regulations say that—”

“Those regulations are about to change,” Thompson replied, cutting him off and then passed Will through the security door.

Once inside a clean, well-lighted conference room, Will turned to Thompson.

“I get a
conference room
with Joe—no glass between us?”

“There are a lot of changes going on here,” Thompson said, lowering his voice.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Ever since I called Harry Putnam and told him you'd been transferred over to the auxiliary jail—or should I call it the overflow pen? Anyway—this is not for public consumption—the head jailer is on the way out. I'm being appointed interim head of the jail. And that goon who was responsible for what happened to you—he's facing criminal charges.”

“Yes, so I've heard. Justice does happen,” Will said with a smile.

Thompson eyed the bandage over Will's broken nose. “Look—I am sorry about what happened. You got a raw deal—you really did.”

“Maybe,” Will said. “But I know a mother out there with a little boy, who may be getting the rawest deal of all.”

Thompson nodded, but added only, “I'll get Joe Fellows. If you need anything, let me know.”

When Joe entered the room he broke into a big grin that took over his handsome, but now slightly gaunt face. But it quickly faded as he studied Will's nose and the black-and-blue streaks under both eyes.

Brushing off Joe's questions about his injuries, the attorney jumped into the facts of Mary Sue's case.

Joe was quick to answer questions about the truck that Will and Tiny had spotted in the farmhouse garage. He explained
that the brakes needed fluid. It really was not a big thing for him to do it—it was just that he was always behind in his work on the farm. He figured it was the older truck anyway, and if Mary Sue ever needed transportation—for her part-time nursing work, or to take Joshua to the doctor, or whatever—he always gave her the newer truck.

“Was the newer truck the one she used to take off the day the sheriff's deputies and social services showed up?”

“Yeah. And then,” Joe added with chagrin, “the engine ends up overheating, and Mary Sue is almost stranded. Figure that one out.”

“But the older truck that was in the garage with the hood up—you're saying you never filled the brakes with fluid?”

“No, never got around to it. It's stupid, really. It hardly takes any time to do it. Looking back, I wished I had. Then maybe they would be saying
I
did the poisoning—rather than going after my wife.”

“But there were several containers of brake fluid in the garage. I saw them myself,” Will said.

“Sure. Along with fuel oil, cleaning solvents, engine oil, oil for my tractor, bar oil for my chain saw, gasoline. There are containers all over the garage.”

“Did Mary Sue add the brake fluid to the truck?”

“No. I never asked her to. She's always got a million things to do. I figured I would get around to it myself.”

“Then how did brake fluid get in Joshua's cup in the kitchen? And how did it end up in Joshua's bloodstream?”

“Look, Will,” Joe said loudly, “like I've said from the beginning, this is a nightmare that doesn't make any sense. None of it. You've asked Mary Sue the same thing…”

“I have. And she told me she doesn't know how the brake fluid got where it did—or why the blood tests indicated what they did.”

Joe just shook his head and ran his strong hands through his greasy, blond hair.

Will decided to change subjects. He asked whether Mary Sue had ever talked about Henry Pencup.

“Sure,” Joe replied, “I think she was on duty when he died.”

“Did she ever tell you anything Henry Pencup said?”

“No. Don't remember that.”

“Anything about being there when a priest—Father Godfrey—took his last confession?”

“No. Never. Is this something I should know about?” Joe said with some concern in his voice.

“Not really.”

“Is there something you think Mary Sue should have told me—but didn't?”

Will looked at Joe and tried to reassure him.

“No, not at all. I'm just trying to put together a puzzle.”

“What puzzle?”

Will then revealed to Joe that he had received a call from an unknown woman who had said she'd been pressured into making the initial child-abuse allegation falsely.

Joe was elated that, at long last, their innocence seemed to be emerging. But his excitement faded as Will explained that the hearsay information he'd received—from a woman he could not identify—was far from a “smoking gun.”

“This woman seemed to believe that somehow the Pencup confession was linked to Mary Sue's case,” Will continued. “Do you know of any connection?”

Joe just shook his head.

Before leaving, Will wanted to touch on one more subject—Jason Bell Purdy.

“Sure, I know him,” Joe said with reservation in his voice. “He dated Mary Sue for a while. A very short while. That was way before we got engaged. Mary Sue—in case you haven't noticed—is beautiful, and is quite a woman. I still wonder, sometimes, why she married me rather than him.”

Will looked Joe in the eye.

“Mary Sue tells me you're the greatest husband to walk God's green earth.”

“She would. That's just like her.”

“You went to public high school in Delphi?”

“Yeah.”

“I hear you were a pretty fine linebacker on the football team.”

“I did okay. I made All-Conference.”

“You were the same age as Jason Bell Purdy?”

“Right. Course he didn't go to the same school. He went to the private school—Exeter Academy. They played us in the playoffs. Jason was their star quarterback.”

“And?”

“They beat us by one touchdown. Jason threw a forty-yard pass. He made All-State that year—I often wonder what would have happened if I'd have blitzed him, rather than hanging back like I did.”