Mystery Writers of America Presents the Prosecution Rests (22 page)

“Don’t you mean good night?”

“No. I mean good-bye.”

Shawnie’s flawless brow wrinkled. “I don’t understand.”

“I wanted to tell you at dinner, but I never got a chance. Jimmy started talking. He’s going to plead guilty.”

Shawnie stumbled back as if I’d just hit her.

“But he…”

“He what, Shawnie?”

“I didn’t really believe he did it. I thought it was just an accident.”

I shrugged. “The attorney from Little Rock’s due here at nine tomorrow morning. I’m going to meet with him and Jimmy, help
them nail down a plea-bargain strategy, then I’m taking the first flight back to California.”

“But you can’t leave yet.”

“Of course I can.”

Eyes wide, she shook her head. “You have to go to Mama’s funeral.”

“No, I don’t.”

She looked as if she could scarcely believe I would say anything but yes to her.

“I’m not going to bad-mouth Mary Shawn in front of you or anyone else, but everybody knows how I felt about her. I’m not a
hypocrite.”

“Well…”

“Well, what?”

“What about me? What am I going to do?”

“The sheriff’s removing the cordon from Jimmy’s apartment in the morning. I took care of the rent until the end of his lease.
And I paid off your car. The bank’s going to mail you the title.” I reached into my coat pocket, pulled out a small wad of
hundreds, and placed it in her hand. “There’s five hundred there, and I had three thousand more transferred into your checking
account. After that, you’re on your own.” I walked away and headed for the stairwell to return to my room on the third floor.
“Good luck, Shawnie.”

The words floated down the hallway after me. “I can’t live on that.”

I kept walking. “Then get a job.”

“But you’re rich! Mama said you could buy half the state.”

I glanced over my shoulder. “I have no idea what Mary Shawn told you, but I’m not rich anymore.”

“You made a gazillion dollars as a lawyer, and then you got that big payoff from…” Her words trailed off.

I stopped and faced her. “You mean the settlement from the trucking company? The settlement they paid me after that semi crossed
the median and killed my wife and son? Is that the settlement you’re talking about?”

She just nodded.

“You want some of that money?”

She nodded again.

It took effort, but I contained my anger. “I gave it away. I gave away almost everything. I kept enough to live on, but I
can’t afford to support anyone else.” I turned and made my way into the stairwell. I stopped at the top of the stairs. The
first flight down was long and steep.

Shawnie ran past me and stopped two steps below, blocking my path.

She turned to face me. “But…”

“But what?”

“What about the insurance money from the fire?”

“It was my house.” I shrugged and looked past her, down at the landing far below. “Not that it matters. There’s not going
to be any insurance money. The policy doesn’t pay in case of arson. Jimmy admitted to starting the fire. So that’s that.”
I stepped to the left.

She moved in front of me again. “What about the trust you set up for Daddy? Can you sign it over to me?”

I shook my head. “The lawyers’ fees will eat up most of it. The state will probably take the rest. If there’s anything left,
Jimmy’ll need it to live on when he gets out. He’s not young and able-bodied… like you.” I stepped to my right.

She blocked my path once more. The skin around her lips went pale, then her cheeks turned bright red. “You can’t just leave
me here like this! I won’t let you!”

“There’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Yes, there is!” She half-spat the words.

“Oh, really? How’s that?”

“I want a million dollars, or I’ll tell everybody the truth!”

“What truth?”

“Mama told me Jimmy’s not really my daddy. She told me what you did to her the night he surrendered to the sheriff.”

I just looked at her.

“You raped Mama, and you got her pregnant with me!”

I started to laugh. I laughed so hard, I could hardly control myself. I laughed so hard, it took a moment for me to realize
that a stream of obscenities had begun flowing from Shawnie’s pretty mouth.

The vile things she said about me I could let pass, but not the disparaging remark about Elizabeth. That’s where I drew the
line with her. It’s where I’d drawn the line with Mary Shawn.

I looked down at Shawnie. As drunk as she was, it wouldn’t take much to tip her off balance. Just one little push, and… But
that wasn’t going to get Jimmy out of jail. I had to stay focused on saving him. I lowered my voice. “I didn’t rape your mother.
I was never with her. I’m not your father.”

“Yes, you are. Mama told me so.”

“Mary Shawn was a liar.”
Just like you.

Shawnie’s face grew so red, her blue eyes seemed to glow. Her hair looked like white flames.

I gave half a thought to telling her the truth about her mother and her grandfather, the truth about why Mary Shawn killed
the old man, but I promised Jimmy I wouldn’t. Ever. Some truths were too horrible to be told. Instead, I said, “Mary Shawn
was pregnant when Jimmy turned himself in. My brother took the blame for what your mother did so you wouldn’t be born in prison.”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “Once was too much. I’m not going to let him serve time for you again.”

“Serve time for me?” She seemed to regain her composure. “What do you mean by that?”

“It’s over, Shawnie.” I pointed my finger at her sternum. “I know what you did.”

She put her hands on her hips. She looked so nonchalant, it infuriated me. It would be so easy. Just one little jab, and…

I had to keep my cool. “You came home and found your mother dead. You stashed your car out of sight and you called Jimmy and
pretended to be Mary Shawn and you got him to come over to the house. You were hiding when he walked in. You waited until
he found Mary Shawn’s body, then you sneaked up behind him and knocked him unconscious and set the house on fire.”

A strange sort of calm came over her. “You can’t prove any of this, Robert.”

“If Jimmy had died in the fire, the money in his trust would have been yours.”

Shawnie’s expression showed nothing.

“I have just one question: Why were you so anxious for me to get my brother out of jail? Were you going to try to kill him
again? Or were you just going to try to get your hands on some of the money you thought I had?” I let out a soft laugh. “Sorry.
I guess I had three questions.”

She shook her head and said, “This is ridiculous. I don’t have to stand here and—”

“I had a chat with a certain doctor up in Hot Springs this afternoon. Guy about my age. Wealthy. Married.” I smiled. “Horrible
taste in mistresses.”

The color drained from Shawnie’s face.

“Seems your doctor friend broke off his relationship with you the night Mary Shawn died, the night you were supposed to have
been in Dallas. He said you were very upset when you left the cabin. He was worried about you driving with all you’d had to
drink. He followed you to make sure you made it home safe.”

She stood there looking more like a wax figure than a human being.

“The doctor would be willing to testify that he saw you walk into the house ten minutes before that call Mary Shawn supposedly
made to Jimmy.”

Shawnie’s blue eyes darted from side to side.

“You didn’t really think you’d get away with it, did you?”

A siren blared nearby.

The police were probably just stopping a speeding motorist, but Shawnie must have thought they were coming to arrest her.
She turned to run. When she did, she lost her balance. She began to fall. It was a long way to the landing below. I gave a
fleeting thought to just letting it happen. But I couldn’t. It wouldn’t save Jimmy. I caught Shawnie by the arm, in the nick
of time.
Not at all like her mother.

____

T
HE
P
ACIFIC STRETCHED
to the horizon, smooth as velvet. Jimmy and I sat on my back deck with mugs of coffee and our laptop computers. He’d regained
a few pounds over the past couple of months, and the La Jolla sun had brought back some of his color. He wasn’t fully among
the living yet, but at least he wasn’t mostly dead anymore. He’d stopped drinking. He’d even started running with my group
in the mornings. Everything was going to be okay. I just knew it.

My laptop dinged. I looked down to see an e-mail with
Thanks from Patty
in the subject line. I opened the note and read it. I didn’t even mind the misspellings.

“Hey, Jimmy. Remember Patty Ingram?”

“Sure. Nice girl. Works in the sheriff’s office. Kenny Earl Boyd took all her money and ran off to Houston with some stripper
or something.” He paused. “Why do you ask?”

“I just got a message from her.” I smiled. “Kenny Earl returned all her money… with interest.”

“How did you manage that?”

“I have my ways.” I shut off my computer and said, “Good-deed-doing gives me an appetite. Wanna drive down to the Broken Yolk
in PB and get some breakfast?”

Jimmy took a long drink of coffee, swallowed hard, then said, “Ever since you were a little kid, you never did give up. You
always were a real bulldog. That tenacity made you a good lawyer. That and your willingness to do whatever it took.”

“Thanks… I think.” I stood. “I’m hungry. Let’s go.”

Jimmy didn’t budge. “You know, your running buddies sure are a chatty bunch.” He took another drink of coffee. “According
to them, up until the day Shawnie came out here to get you, you hadn’t missed a morning run in over three months. It was some
kind of record, according to them.”

I shrugged. “What’s your point?”

“Well, you couldn’t have flown commercial. It would have taken too long. You never would have made it back here by morning.
Besides, with all the ID restrictions nowadays, your name would have ended up on the airline’s passenger list. You’re not
that sloppy.”

I was suddenly light-headed. I tightened my stomach muscles trying to keep the blood pumping to my brain.

“What’d you do? Charter a plane using an alias or something?” Jimmy took another sip of coffee. “Better yet, maybe you never
sold your Gulfstream at all. I’ll bet you transferred it to some entity you control. Heck, I’d even wager that you never gave
away your money. A thousand bucks says you still have it all, every penny.”

I just looked at him.

“And the shopping spree in Dallas that Shawnie won… She didn’t really win it, did she? I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if that
entity you control sponsored the ‘contest.’ Stroke of genius, actually. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a surefire
way to get Shawnie out of the house. You just didn’t know about the doctor.”

I eased myself onto the low stone wall that bordered the deck.

“You set it up so Mary Shawn would be home alone that evening. You snuck into town and went to the house. Mary Shawn was already
drunk, of course—she was always drunk by sundown. You got her up to the second floor somehow. You pushed her down the stairs
so it looked like an accident. You snuck out of the house, out of town, back to whatever airport you used. You flew back to
La Jolla without anyone being the wiser. You joined your running buddies the next morning just like you’d never left town.
That’s your style, Robert. Clean and simple.”

I took a deep breath, then let it out. “Jimmy, that’s ridic—”

“Drunk woman home alone falls down a flight of stairs, breaks her neck, dies. It’s the kind of tragic accident that happens
every day. No one thinks anything about it.”

I just shook my head.

“Shawnie coming back unexpected like that, her getting me over to the house and knocking me out and setting the place on fire,
it really threw a wrench in the simplicity of your plan, didn’t it?”

I let out a laugh. “You have one fertile imagination, Jimmy Hicks! Maybe you should use your new computer to write mystery
novels.” I stood and headed toward the kitchen. “Want some more coffee before we go to breakfast?”

“A man spends five years in prison, even an innocent man, he’s bound to learn a lot about the criminal mind.”

I stopped in the doorway and turned to face him.

“The thing is, some things are so obvious, a really smart criminal might not notice them.”

My knees were suddenly weak.

“You know how I first started figuring it out?”

I leaned against the doorframe.

“You knew Mary Shawn was already dead when Shawnie reached the house.”

I fought to stay standing.

“You never once mentioned the possibility that Shawnie might have killed Mary Shawn, even accidentally.” Jimmy set down his
coffee mug, leaned forward, and clasped his hands underneath his chin. “If she was going to try to kill me, why did you never
for a moment think that she might have killed Mary Shawn, too?”

There was nothing I could do or say. It would have been pointless to try to deny it. I just looked at him.

“Your knowing Mary Shawn was already dead didn’t really prove anything, of course. But it did get me to thinking. So I took
my new computer and did a little poking around on the Internet. I found something real interesting. Mary Shawn died three
years after Elizabeth and Riley got killed in that wreck. Three years to the day.”

I drained the last of my coffee. It was cold and bitter.

“What’d Mary Shawn do?”

I looked out over the ocean and thought about the last morning Elizabeth, Riley, and I had had breakfast here on this deck.
Water welled in my eyes. I could have said nothing. I probably should have said nothing. But Jimmy was the only family I had
left.

I walked halfway to where my brother sat. I clasped my hands on top of my head. “A few months after you’d left Mary Shawn
and moved into your apartment, she started calling me at the office asking for money. I kept saying no. While I was up in
San Francisco working on a case, she called my cell phone. I’d had the number a long time, so I didn’t think anything of her
calling me on it—a lot of people I didn’t want having the number had it. I expected her to ask for money again, but this time
she threatened to blackmail me. She said she was going to call Elizabeth and tell her that I’d forced myself on her that night
you turned yourself in to the sheriff. Mary Shawn said she was going to tell Elizabeth that Shawnie was my daughter, and that
the time had come for me to make things right. It was all a lie, of course, but we both know that never stopped Mary Shawn.”
I lowered my arms to my sides. “Elizabeth and I had just changed our unlisted phone at the house, Elizabeth’s cell, all our
e-mail addresses, things like that. I just laughed and told Mary Shawn to go right ahead. I was going home that night, so
I knew I’d be there before any letter would have time to reach her.”