Sally Berneathy - Death by Chocolate 01 - Death by Chocolate (16 page)

She
paused as if gathering the courage to continue, and I found myself leaning forward, anticipating what I knew must be coming. “They never came home.” Her voice as she spoke those words was flat, without emotion. “Their small plane crashed somewhere in the jungle. I was alone.” Those last three words,
I was alone
, held a hollow echo.

I tried to imagine losing both my parents. They drove me crazy sometimes. Most times. But I didn’t want to think about not having them around. I was devastated when my grandmother died.

Paula drew in a deep breath and went on with her story. “I was pretty much lost for the next two years, but I managed to graduate with a degree in art history. I had no idea what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I got a job at a museum in Dallas, and that’s where I met David Bennett. He was a Dallas police officer, working a second job as security for the museum.” She gave a wry smile. “I thought I’d found somebody to belong to. I thought he was like my father. He was strong. I could lean on him. He took charge of my life, and I let him. We got married two months later, and I was part of a family again. I wasn’t alone.”

This must be the husband she killed. Apparently he was not th
e knight in shining armor she thought.

Sh
e shook her head slowly. “Then I learned what being alone really means. He asked me to quit my job as soon as we got married. He worked irregular hours, alternating shifts from month to month. If I worked, we’d never see each other. That sounded logical. Mother never worked outside the home, and I saw this as a sign that I was going to have the same kind of happy marriage my parents had.”

I wanted to have another bite of pie, more chocolate to get through Paula’s story, but I didn’t move. I was afraid if I distracted her, she’d realize what she was saying and clam up again.

“I thought I’d be a part of David’s family, but his mother barely spoke, and it wasn’t just me. She sat around all the time with her eyes on the floor, only spoke when spoken to. His father, an over-the-road trucker, either ignored me or criticized me. He never had a kind word to say to me or to his wife. And David changed.” She sat straighter and looked me in the eye. “Or maybe I just saw him for who he really was.”

I knew only too well how the t
hings you once loved in a man could turn into the things you hated about him.

“No
thing I did pleased David. The house was never clean enough, the meals were never good enough, I didn’t iron his shirts right, I wore too much makeup, I didn’t wear enough makeup. He shouted at me, called me names, accused me of horrible things. He said I had a lover, that I was talking about him to my friends behind his back, that I was plotting to leave him. When he dressed for work, his anger was worse, as if that uniform gave him the right to abuse me. The sound of his gun belt creaking became a warning.”

That explained why she’d freaked out when Officer Creighton’s gun belt made a noise.

I sneaked another bite of chocolate, fortifying myself for the part where she killed him.

“David
never apologized or admitted he’d done anything to apologize for, but after the biggest explosions, he sent me roses—yellow roses. He said I was his
yellow rose of Texas.
Then for a while, he’d be his old self, treating me like a delicate, treasured child. But he was like a volcano with the pressure building and building until it finally explodes. We never had more than a few days of peace. I tried to do everything right. I tried to make him happy. My mother used to comfort my father when he’d feel overwhelmed by the troubles of the church congregation.” A single tear slid down Paula’s cheek. She made no effort to wipe it away, as if she didn’t realize it was there.

“I tried so hard to be like my mother, but it seemed like the harder I tried, the more angry David became. It was all my
fault, he said. If I was a better wife, he wouldn’t have to blow up.” She touched the scar on her cheekbone. “One day one of the women I’d worked with at the museum called to invite me to lunch. When I hung up, David smashed his fist into my face. I didn’t go to lunch with my friend. I never talked to her again. From that day on, yelling at me wasn’t enough for him.”

Paula rolled up her long sleeves and showed me scars, then lifted her skirt to her knees and showed me more scars. I cringed at the thought of the pain and betrayal those scars meant.

“Did you call the police?” I asked.

She laughed bitterly. “He was the police.”

“Oh.”

“To be honest, I never even thought about telling someone. I guess a part of me believed it really was my fault. Then one night when he was drunk, he told me his father had physically abused him until he became big enough and strong enough to fight back. I recognized that he was doing to me what his father had done to him. I thought I could help him. I thought I could save our marriage. I could show him what real love was, and he’d be able to heal from what his dad did to him.”

“Didn’t work, did it?”

“No. It got worse. Then I discovered I was pregnant.” She looked up the stairs, toward Zach’s room. “That changed everything. I had to leave him. I couldn’t risk his hurting my baby. One night when he was working, I packed a suitcase, called a cab and left. I got a clerical job, found a one room apartment and was able to hide until after Zach was born.” She smiled. “The first time I held that precious baby in my arms, I knew I’d do whatever it took to keep him safe.”

Including murder.
“David found you,” I guessed.

“Zach
was a month old when David found us. He broke down the door in the middle of the night, came in and started screaming at me. He was wearing street clothes, but he had a gun in his jacket pocket. Said he’d bought and registered it in my name, and if I didn’t give him his son, he’d shoot me and claim it was suicide. Then he’d have Zach.”

She swallowed hard and looked at me, her eyes as full of terror as they must have been on that night.

“I couldn’t let him have Zach. I tried to get to the phone, call 911, but he hit me, knocked me down. I got up and fought, hitting him, scratching him, but he just laughed at me. Then Zach started to cry. David threw me against the wall, went to the bedroom and snatched Zach out of his crib. I ran in to see him shaking Zach, bellowing at him to stop crying. I flew across the room and flung myself on him. I had to save Zach. I grabbed that gun out of his pocket and pointed it at him. I told him to put my baby back in his bed and leave immediately or I’d shoot him. He put Zach down and came toward me. He said I wasn’t going to shoot him with the safety on. When I looked down, he lunged toward me and grabbed for the gun, and the whole world exploded. It was a revolver. It didn’t have a safety.”

My hand lifted to my throat. “Omigawd. You really did kill him.” Yes, she’d said in the begin
ning that she had, but that’s a hard concept to grasp.

“Yes. I killed him.
He fell backward, blood spurting from his chest, collapsed on the floor and just lay there. I dropped the gun and picked up Zach who was crying at the top of his lungs by this time.”

“The gun was registered in your name
, and he was a cop.” The Brotherhood of Blue. Paula was so screwed.

“My
husband, a police officer, was dead, shot with a gun registered in my name. I’d go to prison and Zach would go to my in-laws. They’d abuse him the way David’s father abused him. I was not going to let that happen.”

I shoved another piece of chocolate in my mouth, trying to wrap my mind around something that horrible. Made my coming home to find Buffy Muffy in my bed seem like a
walk in the park. “So you ran?”

“I packed
one suitcase for myself and one for Zach then called 911 and told them David was dead, that I had accidentally killed him. As soon as I hung up the phone, I ran out of there, went by my bank and used my ATM card to withdraw everything from my checking account. I drove the back roads to a small town south of Ft. Worth, checked into a motel for a couple of hours, cut my blond hair and dyed it brown. Then I drove to the bus station. I figured the authorities would track me that far and think I was going south. I left the car at the bus station and bought a ticket on the next bus going north, to Kansas City.”

“How did you know what to do to change your name?”

“I’d listened to David talk about criminals, so I had had some idea of what to do. I went to a library, got on a computer, and found
the social security number of a child with my first name who’d died young. I became Paula Walters. I bought a clunker car for cash then went looking for a place to live. That’s when I met you.”

And Rick tried to make me turn her away. Thank goodness I hadn
‘t paid any attention to him!

“I’ve lived in constant fear this past year that Lester Bennett would find me and take Zach,” she concluded. “And now that nightmare is coming true. Lester Mackey is Lester Bennett. He wants me to know he’s found me. That’s why he left the bear on the walk. Truckers on the CB refer to traffic cops as bears. He must have been watching when Rick brought the bear to your porch. After Rick left, Lester took the stuffed animal, mutilated it, leaving a hole in its chest the way I left a hole in his son’s chest. Then he left it on my walk.”

“That would explain why Henry kept carrying on the way he did after Rick left. Somebody else was there.” That gave me a really creepy feeling, to think that some nut had come right up on my porch, beneath my open window.

Paula nodded. “Yesterday Lester must have somehow gotten inside my house, taken Zach and left him in the park, then called the police today to say I was abusing him. He’s trying to discredit me as a mother so he can take away Zach before he has me arrested for murdering his son.”

“Why go to the trouble to discredit you as a mother? Sending you to prison for murder ought to do a pretty good job of that.”

“Who knows why? I suppose because he’s like his son. He wants to torture me, make me suffer before he moves in for the kill. And maybe it’s partly because I made that call to 911 and told them the truth
, that his son’s death was an accident. Maybe he’s worried somebody might believe me and he wants to be sure, no matter what happens, that he gets Zach, a new victim for his abuse.”

I wanted to reassure her that everything would be all right, but I didn’t see how it possibly could.

I finished off the piece of Brownie Nut Fudge Pie and the Coke and tried to think.

“We’ll hire you a good lawyer,” I said. “That’s all it takes to get off, even if you’re guilty, which you’re not, of course.”

Paula shook her head. “Lester really doesn’t have any cause to worry. Nobody’s going to believe me. David was a policeman. All his buddies will testify that he was a gentle, kind man who never lost his temper, and they’ll be telling the truth as far as they know it. Nobody but me ever saw his violent side. The rest of the world saw the wonderful man I married, not the monster I lived with.”

“What about hospital records?”

“I never went to the hospital. That’s why I have so many scars.” She lifted her hand to the one on her cheek then quickly lowered it again as if touching the reminder of pain brought a return of the pain itself.

I stood and paced the length of the room. “There’s got to be something we can do.”

Paula wrapped her arms around herself. “I shouldn’t have told you any of this. You’ve got to forget everything I said, and I’ve got to leave here tonight.”

I flopped back down on the sofa. “Are you nuts? You can’t run away again! If he found you this
time, he’ll find you next time.”

“Maybe, but it’s the only chance I’ve got.”

“No, this is not going to work. What about Zach? You can’t keep moving him around and changing his name.”

“What other choice do I have?” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. She was stressed to the breaking point.

“Let me get you a piece of that pie.” I rose to go to the kitchen, but she stopped me.

“Lindsay, there are some things not even chocolate can solve.” But she did give me a weak smile.

“All right,” I said. “You have to leave. I understand. But not tonight. Obviously your house is being watched. Loco Lester is probably across the street right now either peeking through that hole or watching from an upstairs window. If Lester could manage to break into this fortress you’ve created and snatch Zach, he’d have no trouble getting in that vacant house. I could get in with a credit card.”

Panic replaced the weak smile on her face.

“So what you have to do,” I said hurriedly, “is leave from work tomorrow. When you take Zach to the day care, you just head straight for the highway instead of the day care.”

She nodded. “You’re right. That’s what I have to do. I’ll pack as many things as I can get into diaper bags, then go by the bank on my way out of town and close my accounts.”

“Good thinking. I’ll pack the rest of your stuff and ship it to you when you get settled somewhere else.”

Paula’s eyes were wide and sad. “Lindsay, I won’t dare tell anybody, not even you, where I go.”

I started to protest, but decided not to. There was no point since I had no intention of letting Paula leave.

I stood. “I’d better go home so both of us can get some rest and be ready for a big day tomorrow.”