The Second Mouse - Archer Mayor [109]
“Newell Morgan was after Michelle sexually. He wanted to replace his son in her bed.”
Joe could almost see Linda’s brain analyzing what she should say next.
Finally, she went where he would have in her place. “Am I in trouble here?”
He sat forward and rested his elbows on his knees, so his eyes and hers were on a level. “I don’t think so. But that’s why I’m here. I do think you’ve done things you haven’t told me about—things that normally would get you into hot water. But if I’m right, and if you confirm them, then I’m willing to let things rest as they are.”
“So,” she said, striving to sound natural, “what do you think I’ve done?”
He smiled and straightened. “That would be too easy. I’ve got to find out if the truth and my suspicions are one and the same. My telling you what I think would be a poor way of doing that.”
She pressed her lips together for a moment. “I see what you mean. Puts me in a tough spot, though. If I say too much—more than you suspect—then I land myself in jail for no good reason. You’re asking me to risk suicide.”
He smiled. “Interesting choice of words.”
She stared at him, and he could see at that moment an almost visible cloud lift from her brow.
“He almost pulled it off,” she then said.
“Getting into Michelle’s bed?”
“Yeah. He came by again and again, wearing her down. She started saying she could see maybe making an accommodation. He’s just another guy, you know? Nothing a shower can’t wash off, right? Things like that. But it was killing her.”
“It did kill her,” he suggested.
Linda’s face saddened. “Well, yeah, in the long run. But at least he wasn’t the primary reason anymore.”
“Because of you,” he stated.
She paused before finally nodding. “Yeah. I was there the last time he came by. I gave him hell. Told him that if he kept at it, he’d end up in prison, being put to the same use he was trying to put her to, only by a bunch of hairy guys. I also said I’d tell his wife and everybody else who gave a damn.”
“And that did it?”
“He was a pig. He wasn’t brave. Plus, he was going to get everything else he was after. Michelle didn’t have a legal leg to stand on. The house was his, and she was going to end up on the street. All I did was spare her that last humiliation.”
She sighed deeply and, staring at the floor, added, “At least I thought so.”
“But she did commit suicide,” Joe suggested quietly.
“Yeah,” she admitted. “A while later. Not so much because of him, though. At least I can claim that. It was more the rest of it—Archie, the lack of money, her kids not wanting contact. In a way, it was even Adele and me doing what we could. Our offers of help just highlighted how badly off she was.”
Linda looked up at him, her own burdens and struggle commingling with her sorrow. “Michelle died of a broken heart. She just turned on the gas to make it real.”
“And that’s where you came in.”
She touched her upper lip with her fingertip and stared thoughtfully at the floor.
“You really have figured this out, haven’t you?”
He nodded without saying a word.
“Yeah.” She said the word slowly, dragging it out. “At the time, I was just so mad, you know? I had to blame somebody. And he was so easy. So deserving. I hated it that she would just be allowed to slip away, and that a bastard like him wouldn’t suffer a single thing. It wasn’t right.”
Joe kept silent, letting her work through her story.
“It wasn’t like I really pinned it on him,” she said a little defensively. “Not that I wouldn’t have tried if I’d known how. I would’ve put his fingerprints on her throat, the creep. But all I could do was muddy the waters a little. Turn off the gas, fiddle with the tank, crawl through from outside, open the windows . . . I did what I could to draw your attention to there being someone else involved.”
“You buried Georgia.”
She’d gotten a little worked up admitting all this, and his comment brought her up short. Her face softened. “Poor Georgia. I doubt Michelle even thought about her. Such a sweet old cat. She didn’t deserve being killed without a thought.”
She stopped speaking for a while,