Body of Evidence (40 page)

"He introduced you into a conversation right after we heard about Beryl's murder. He said you were the medical examiner, the chief in Virginia. I panicked. I didn't want him messing with you. I decided it would be better if I did it instead."

"I appreciate the chivalry," I said ironically.

"And you should."

His eyes were on mine. "I told him we had dated in a former life. I wanted him to turn you over to me. And he did."

"And that's the whole of it?" I said.

"I would like to think so, but I'm afraid my motives may have been mixed."

"Mixed?"

"I think I was enticed by the possibility of seeing you again."

"So you've said."

"I wasn't lying."

"Are you lying to me now?"

"I swear to God I'm not lying to you now," he said.

I suddenly realized I was still dressed in a polo shirt and shorts, my skin sticky, my hair a mess. I excused myself from the table and went into the bathroom. Half an hour later, I was swathed in my favorite terrycloth robe, and Mark was sound asleep on top of my bed.

He groaned and opened his eyes when I sat down beside him.

"Sparacino's a very dangerous man," I said, slowly running my fingers through his hair.

"No question about it," Mark said sleepily.

"He sent Partin. I'm not sure I understand how he knew that Beryl was ever down here."

"Because she called him from down here, Kay. He's known it all along."

I nodded, not really surprised. Beryl may have depended on Sparacino to the bitter end, but she must have begun to distrust him. Otherwise she would have left her manuscript with him and not in the hands of a bartender named PJ.

"What would he do if he knew you were here?" I asked quietly. "What would Sparacino do if he knew you and I were together in this room having this conversation?"

"Be jealous as hell."

"Seriously."

"Probably kill us if he thought he could get away with it."

"Could he get away with it, Mark?"

Pulling me close, he said into my neck, "Shit, no."

We were awakened the next morning by the sun, and after making love again we slept entangled in each other's arms until ten.

While Mark showered and shaved, I stared out at the day, and never had colors been so bright or the sun shone so magnificently on the tiny offshore island of Key West. I would buy a condo where Mark and I would make love for the rest of our lives. I would ride a bicycle for the first time since I was a child, take up tennis again, and quit smoking. I would work harder at getting along with my family, and Lucy would be our frequent guest. I would visit Louie's often and adopt PJ as our friend. I would watch sunlight dance over the sea and say prayers to a woman named Beryl Madison whose terrible death had given new meaning to my life and taught me to love again.

After brunch, which we ate in the room, I pulled Beryl's manuscript out of the knapsack while Mark looked on in disbelief.

"Is that what I think it is?" he asked.

"Yes. It's exactly what you think it is," I said.

"Where in God's name did you find it, Kay?" He got up from the table.

"She left it with a friend," I answered, and next we were propping pillows behind us, the manuscript between us on the bed as I told Mark all about my conversations with PJ.

Morning turned into afternoon, and we did not step outside the room except to place dirty dishes in the hall and replace them with sandwiches and snacks we ordered sent up as the spirit moved. For hours we said very little to each other as we turned through the pages of Beryl's Madison's life. The book was incredible, and more than once it brought tears to my eyes.

Beryl was a songbird born in a storm, a ragged bit of beautiful color clinging to the branches of a terrible life. Her mother had died, and her father had replaced her with a woman who treated Beryl with scorn. Unable to endure the world she lived in, she learned the art of creating one of her own. Writing was her way of coping, and it was a talent enhanced like artistry by the deaf and music by the blind. She could fashion from words a world I could taste, smell, and feel.

Her relationship with the Harpers was as intense as it was deranged. They were three volatile elements forming a thunderhead of unbelievable destruction when they finally lived together in that storybook mansion on its river of timeless dreams. Gary Harper bought and restored the great house for Beryl, and it was in the upstairs bedroom where I had slept that he robbed her one night of her virginity when she was only sixteen.

When she did not come down to breakfast the following morning, Sterling Harper went upstairs to check and found Beryl in a fetal position, crying. Unable to face that her famous brother had raped their surrogate daughter, Miss Harper battled the demons of her house with troops of denial. She never said a word to Beryl or attempted to intervene, but softly shut her door at night and slept her fitful sleep.

The molestation of Beryl continued, week after week, less frequently as she got older and finally ending with the Pulitzer Prize-winner's impotence, brought on by long evenings of hard drinking and other excesses, including drugs. When the interest from his accumulated book earnings and family inheritance could no longer support his vices, he turned to his friend, Joseph McTigue, who focused his kindly attentions and skills on Harper's precarious finances, eventually making the author "not only solvent again, but wealthy enough to afford the finest whiskey by the case and cocaine binges whenever he pleased."

According to Beryl, after she moved out Miss Harper painted the portrait over the library mantel, a portrait of a child robbed of innocence, intended unconsciously or not to torment Harper forever. He drank more, wrote less, and began suffering from insomnia. He began frequenting Culpeper's Tavern, a ritual encouraged by his sister, who used those hours to conspire against him with Beryl on the phone. The final blow came in a dramatic act of defiance when Beryl, encouraged by Sparacino, violated her contract.

It was her way of reclaiming her life and, in her words, "preserving the beauty of my friend, Sterling, by pressing the memory of her between these pages like wildflowers."

Beryl began her book very shortly after Miss Harper was diagnosed as having cancer. Their bond was inviolable, their love for each other immense.

Naturally, there were lengthy digressions about the books Beryl had written and the sources of her ideas. Excerpts from earlier works were included, and I suspected this might have explained the partial manuscript we found on her bedroom dresser after she was dead. It was hard to say. It was hard to know what had gone on in Beryl's mind. But I could see that her work was extraordinary, and sufficiently scandalous to have frightened Gary Harper and caused Sparacino to lust after it.

What I failed to see as the afternoon wore on was anything that raised the specter of Frankie. There was no mention in her manuscript of the ordeal that would eventually end her life. I supposed it was too much for her to contemplate. Perhaps, she hoped, it would pass with time.

I was nearing the end of Beryl's book when Mark suddenly put his hand on my arm.

"What?" I could barely tear my eyes away.

"Kay. Take a look at this," he said, lightly placing a page on top of the one I was reading.

It was the opening of Chapter Twenty-five, a page I had previously read. It took me a moment to see what I had missed. It was a very clean photocopy, and not an original typed page like all of the others.

"I thought you said this was the only copy," Mark quizzed me.

"I was under the impression that it was," I replied, mystified.

"I wonder if she made a copy and mixed up two of the pages."

"That's the way it looks," I considered. "But where is the copy, then? It hasn't turned up."

"Got no idea."

"You sure Sparacino doesn't have it?"

"I'm pretty sure I would know if he did. I've turned his office inside out during his absences and I've done the same to his house. Besides, I think he would have told me, at least when he thought we were buddies."

"I think we'd better go see PJ."

It was, we discovered, PJ's day off. He was not at Louie's or at home. Dusk was settling over the island before we finally caught up with him at Sloppy Joe's, by which time he was three sheets to the wind. I grabbed him at the bar and led him by the hand to a table.

I hastily made introductions. "This is Mark James, a friend of mine."

PJ nodded and lifted his longnecked bottle of beer in a drunken toast. He blinked several times, as if trying to clear his vision, while he openly admired my attractive masculine companion. Mark seemed oblivious.

Raising my voice above the din of the crowd and band, I said to PJ, "Beryl's manuscript. Did she make a copy of it while she was here?"

Taking a swig of beer and rocking to the music, he replied, "Don't know. She never said anything about it to me, if she did."

"But is it possible?" I persisted. "Might she have done this when she photocopied the letters she gave to you?"

He shrugged, beads of perspiration rolling down his temples, face flushed. PJ was more than drunk, he was stoned.

While Mark looked on impassively, I tried again. "Well, did she carry the manuscript with her when she went out to photocopy the letters?"

"... just like Bogie and Bacall ..." PJ sang along in a hoarse baritone, slapping the edge of the table in rhythm with the mob.

"PJ!" I cried loudly.

"Man," he protested, his eyes riveted to the stage, "it's my favorite song."

So I sank back in my chair and let PJ sing his favorite song. During a brief break in the performance, I repeated my question. PJ drained his bottle of beer, then replied with surprising clarity, "All I remember is Beryl had the knapsack with her that day, okay? I gave it to her, you know. Something she could use down here to haul her shit around in. She headed off to Copy Cat or somewhere, and she sure as hell had the knapsack with her. So, yeah."

He got out his cigarettes. "She might've had the book in the knapsack. And she might've made a copy of it when she copied the letters. All I know is she left me the one I handed over to you whenever it was."

"Yesterday," I said.

"Yeah, man. Yesterday." Shutting his eyes, he started slapping the edge of the table again.

"Thank you, PJ," I said.

He didn't pay any attention as we left, pushing our way out of the bar to escape into the fresh night air.

"That's what's known as an exercise in futility," Mark said as we began walking back to the hotel.

"I don't know," I answered. "But it makes sense to me that Beryl would have copied the manuscript when she copied the letters. I can't imagine her leaving her book with PJ unless she had a copy."

"After having met him, I can't imagine her doing so, either. PJ's not exactly what I'd call a reliable custodian."

"Actually he is, Mark. He's just a little carried away tonight."

"Fried is the word."

"Maybe that's what my appearance did to him."

"If Beryl copied her manuscript and carried it back to Richmond with her," Mark continued, "then whoever killed her must have stolen it."

"Frankie," I said.

"Which may explain why he next went after Gary Harper. Our friend Frankie got jealous, the thought of Harper in Beryl's bedroom driving him crazy--crazier. Harper's habit of going to Culpeper's every afternoon is in Beryl's book."

"I know."

"Frankie could have read about that, known how to find him, figured it was the best time to catch him by surprise."

"What better time than when you're half crocked and getting out of your car on a dark driveway in the middle of nowhere?" I said.

"Just surprises me he didn't go after Sterling Harper, too."

"Maybe he would have."

"You're right. He never had the chance," Mark said. "She spared him the trouble."

Reaching for each other's hands, we fell silent, our shoes quietly scuffing along the sidewalk as the breeze stirred the trees. I wanted the moment to go on forever. I dreaded the truths we had to face. It wasn't until Mark and I were in our room, drinking wine together, that I asked the question.

"What next, Mark?"

"Washington," he said, turning away to look out the window. "In fact, tomorrow. I'll be debriefed, repro-grammed."

He took a deep breath. "Hell, I don't know what I'll do after that."

"What do you want to do after that?" I asked.

"I don't know, Kay. Who knows where they'll send me?"

He continued staring out at the night. "And I know you're not going to leave Richmond."

"No, I can't leave Richmond. Not now. My work is my life, Mark."

"It's always been your life," he said. "My work is my life, too. That leaves very little room for diplomacy."

His words, his face were breaking my heart. I knew he was right. When I tried to speak again, the tears came.