Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [108]
“He give a reason why?”
“Why else? He wants to spend more time with his family.”
“And in motel rooms with somebody else’s wife.”
“I feel like such an insider, knowing the real reason he quit the race.”
“Well, keep it to yourself. I’m hoping to wrap things up here in D.C. in a day or two and head back.”
“Good. Your clients are asking when you’ll be available to work on their cases.”
“Great to be wanted. Tell ’em I’ll be back soon.”
Brixton breathed a sigh of relief at knowing that Justin had dropped out of the race. Chances were that whoever ended up with the photos from the motel had provided them to Justin’s opponents, who had put them to good use. Brixton was now off the hook. If the pictures were still floating around, Justin and his attorney would continue to put pressure on him under the assumption that he had copies. Dropped out to spend more time with his family. Brixton laughed. Another political hypocrite. Brixton decided that if Justin had admitted that he was dropping out because he’d been caught with his pants down with the wrong woman, he would have encouraged him to stay in the race and voted for him.
He puttered around his hotel room while deciding how to kill the rest of the day. He felt good.
Eunice Watkins didn’t enjoy that feeling of well-being.
Her son, the Reverend Lucas Watkins, came to her house that morning. She was pleased that he’d stopped by; his visits had become less frequent lately. She warmly welcomed him, poured glasses of sweet tea, and carefully cut a fresh lemon pound cake into identical slices, which she served on her fanciest plates.
“How are things at the church?” she asked. “All the bad news on TV and in the paper these days makes me wonder what the good Lord has in store for us.”
“Times are tough,” he replied. “We’re having trouble making ends meet.”
“Like so many people.”
“People don’t go to church as much these days,” he said. “Even those that do don’t have the money to contribute like they used to. Momma, I have to talk to you about something important.”
“Of course, dear.”
He got up off the couch and went to the window, where he stood gathering his thoughts. Turning, he said in his deep baritone voice, “I think we should stop trying to find out what happened to Louise.”
“I don’t understand,” she said. “You encouraged me to do it. You said that—”
“I know all that,” he said, “and I meant it—at the time. But I’ve been praying a lot for wisdom lately and I now believe that it’s wrong to do what we’re doing.”
“Wrong? What could be wrong to want to clear her name?”
He resumed his seat next to her on the couch. “I know, I know,” he said. “We’d agreed that hiring the detective was the right thing to do. But if the detective is successful the only thing that will be accomplished is to drag Louise’s name through the mud again. She’s gone to her maker, Momma. She’s in the benevolent hands of God, who’s forgiven her sins. We should let her rest in peace. It all happened so long ago. She led herself onto her sinful path and paid the consequences. There’s nothing to be gained by opening her life to public scrutiny and scorn.”
His mother started to say something but he pressed forward, facing her and taking her hands into his. “I know that you believed Louise when she said she hadn’t stabbed that man, and that she’d been paid ten thousand dollars to say that she had. But what if she wasn’t telling the truth?”
“You think that your sister would lie about something like that?”
“I don’t know, Momma, and you don’t know it for sure, either. But what if she was telling the truth? You’ve said so often that she went to prison to atone for her sins and to seek a better life. She gave you ten thousand dollars and—”
“She must have been telling the truth, son. Where else would she have gotten such a large amount of money?”
“I don’t know, and I don’t think it’s important. The point is that what she did led her into prison for four years, a convicted felon, and when she came out she went right back