Mr Peanut - Adam Ross [116]
“It sounds to me like you were in love.”
“You’re entitled to your opinion.”
“Doc—”
“Detective.”
“Listen to yourself.”
Sheppard refilled and lit his pipe.
“So much of what you say flies in the face of common sense.”
“With regard to what?”
“Your marriage.”
Sheppard blew smoke toward the cell.
“What’s sensible about any marriage?”
“People can’t share each other like that.”
“I’m not disagreeing with you.”
“People can’t endure that kind of unhappiness.”
“There I think you’re wrong.”
“Really? Look at Susan. She broke things off with her fiancé.”
“He broke it off.”
“But isn’t that just incidental?”
“I don’t see what you mean.”
“Isn’t that too convenient an explanation?”
“I don’t agree with what you’re implying.”
“Come on now, Doctor.”
“Detective.”
“State the facts. Susan Hayes returns to Cleveland from Minnesota and you immediately resume your affair. A year later, she and her fiancé break off their engagement. True?”
“Yes.”
“That February, four months before Marilyn’s murder, Susan moves to California, a place you’d always considered living yourself. Tell me, did you see Susan before she left that time?”
“Yes.”
“Give her a nice send off? Good-bye and good luck?”
“I did.”
“And you made plans, didn’t you? To see each other again.”
“The following month, yes.”
“When you arranged to do surgery training in Los Angeles. But you could’ve done that anywhere, no?”
“Perhaps.”
“Did you give her any gifts before she left?”
“I gave her a suede jacket—”
“Something to keep her warm.”
“—and a signet ring.”
“And something that promised a future.”
“Everything you’re implying is wrong.”
“You get to California and send your wife three hundred miles north to Big Sur with Jo Chapman the minute you land. You go see Susan immediately, true?”
“Yes.”
“And that night you bring her to stay with you at the home of your good friend, Dr. Miller, to a party he’s having, no less, with people who know Marilyn.”
“If I was planning to kill my wife, why do something so flagrant?”
“I didn’t say you were planning to kill her then. I’m saying you didn’t care anymore. I’m saying you did it because it was so flagrant. You wanted Marilyn to find out because then her only option would be to demand a divorce.”
“Wrong again.”
“If she demanded a divorce, what could your father say?”
“It never entered my mind.”
“Where’s the Übermensch in you? Where’s the spine? You never could stand up to the old man, could you?”
Sheppard chuckled.
“Two days later you and Susan move into a hotel in LA. You train during the day and spend your nights with her. As if you two were the ones on the vacation together. As if you two were married.”
“No matter how it looks from the outside, you’re still wrong.”
“And that weekend you even take her with you to a wedding. A little dress rehearsal for the future?”
“Susan and I ended things after that. On the drive home.”
“Just like that?”
“No. Something happened.”
“What?”
“Something terrible.”
“Tell me, Dr. Sam. If it was over between you, why didn’t you tell the detectives about Susan after Marilyn was murdered? Just days after she was killed, you were asked directly if you’d had an affair with Susan Hayes, and you lied. You said you were just friends. You lied then and again at your inquest. If things were over, why bother lying?”
“I lied because it had no relevance. Because it was over.”
“Then why did she lie? When the Los Angeles DA questioned her, she said you two had never had an affair.”
“I had no control over what she said.”
“She had everything to lose by lying. But we know why she lied, don’t we?”
Sheppard took off his watch and wound it.
“She was thinking about the future, wasn’t she?”
“I don’t know.”
“She was your motive. You agreed to break things off in Los Angeles so it wouldn’t look like it was planned.”
“Things ended between us. On that drive.”
Mobius shook his head.
“An affair like that takes commitment, Doctor. It doesn’t just end one night.”
“I’m not talking about commitment,” Sheppard said. “I’m