Copycat Killing

19

The words hung in the air like a fine haze of smoke from a cigar. Pearl edged forward on the sofa. “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she said. “I shouldn’t have put it so bluntly. It’s just that Tom made a lot of enemies.”

“What do you mean?” Roma asked. There was no emotion in her voice, but I could see her left hand, against her leg, clenched into a tight, knotted fist.

“For a while Tom worked for Idris Blackthorne.”

“Ruby’s grandfather.”

“Idris Blackthorne was the town bootlegger,” Pearl said. “Tom delivered and drove for him. There was some kind of dispute about money.” She shook her head slowly. “Idris wasn’t the kind of man to take kindly to being cheated.”

“Who else?” Roma asked.

“He had some kind of fight—not just words, punches—with old Albert Coyne. Albert had been cutting pulp up beyond Wild Rose Bluff for years. A couple of days later someone put bleach in the engines of every one of his vehicles.”

“Tom,” Roma said.

“No one could prove anything, you understand,” Pearl said. “But it was the kind of thing he’d do.”

Neil picked up his wife’s cup and handed it to her. Then he looked at Roma. “Are you sure you want to hear all this?”

She smiled. It just didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “I do, Dad.”

He nodded and didn’t say anything else but I could see the pain this was causing him in the tight line of his jaw and the rigid set of his shoulders.

Pearl took a sip from her coffee and set it down again. Roma had picked up her own cup. She toyed with it, shot me a sideways glance and then, finally, looked at her mother again. “Do you have any idea why Tom might have ended up buried out at Wisteria Hill?” she asked.

Pearl rubbed the back of her narrow, gold wedding ring with her thumb. “I’ve been thinking about that since you called,” she said. “The only thing I can tell you is that Tom was a day laborer at Ingstrom’s for a little while. I don’t think they were working at Wisteria Hill. I think they were out at the old boat club, but I don’t remember for sure. And then Tom did something, or got in an argument with someone and they let him go. So he wasn’t working when he disappeared.”

She looked away for a moment. “I mean, when he died,” she added softly.

Roma stared at the floor, her lips pressed tightly together. Finally she lifted her head. “Why…why did you accept that he’d just run off so easily? Weren’t you suspicious, even a little bit?”

Pearl took a breath and let it out. She was still fingering her wedding ring. “I probably should have been,” she said. “But Tom was the kind of person who didn’t deal with things head on. He passed the blame or he did something sneaky, underhanded.” Roma was about to say something but Pearl lifted a hand to stop her. “It wasn’t all his fault, either. I want you to know that.”

Neil still had his hand over hers. She gave it a squeeze. “I told you that Tom played baseball,” she said.

Roma nodded. “They were state champions his senior year.”

“That’s right,” Pearl said. “Your…Tom was good. Very, very good. And in those days baseball and hockey were a big deal around here. He’d started playing when he was about six. By the time he was twelve he was a summer league star. There’s no doubt it went to his head.”

“The high school team had never even been to the regional championships,” Neil said. “Let alone state. Tom could belt a pitch into the parking lot.”

“As long as he was hitting, no one cared about how he was behaving or whether he passed algebra,” Pearl added.

“So if he was that good, why wasn’t he playing professional baseball?” Roma asked. She took another drink of her coffee.

“He was invited to spring training by the Milwaukee Braves,” Pearl said. She looked at Neil beside her on the sofa. He smiled, but like Roma’s smile it didn’t go all the way to his eyes. “He only lasted a week and a half.”

“He had the ability,” Neil said with a shrug. “There’s no doubt about that. He just didn’t have the discipline to play pro ball.”

Roma propped an elbow on the arm of the leather chair and leaned the side of her head against her hand. “Why did you marry him?” she asked. “Was it because of me?”

Pearl looked at me. “Kathleen, Neil and I are in the spare bedroom. There’s a small box on the bed, tied with silver ribbon. Would you get it for me please?”

“Of course,” I said. I stood up, gave Roma what I hoped was an encouraging smile, and went down the hall to the room she used as a guest bedroom.

The box looked like an old stationery box, the kind that a set of pretty sheets of writing paper and matching envelopes had come in. It was tied with a wide silver ribbon, more to keep the lid on and the battered box together, than for decoration. I took it back to Pearl.

“Thank you Kathleen,” she said. I sat back down and she untied the satin bow and lifted the top of the box. She took out two documents and handed them to Roma. One was Roma’s birth certificate. The other was Tom and Pearl’s marriage license.

“I know my birthday,” Roma said.

“I know you do,” Pearl said. She sat back a bit and moved just a bit closer to Neil.

Roma studied the marriage license. Then she held it out to me. I did the math in my head. “Nine months and two days,” I said.

Pearl nodded. “There was no shotgun at our wedding, Roma. And you weren’t there either, my dear.”

I handed the document back to Roma. Her gaze went from it to her mother and back again. “I thought that…” She let the end of the sentence trail away.

Pearl reached across the space between them and patted her daughter’s knee. “I’m sorry, sweetie. If I’d realized, I would have shown you that years ago.”

“So why did you marry him if you didn’t have to?” Roma asked. She seemed more relaxed now.

Pearl leaned all the way back against the sofa cushions. “I was the good girl. Tom was the bad boy.” She and Neil exchanged warm smiles and their obvious connection seemed to somehow chase away a lot of the tension in the room.

“I got straight A’s and sang in the church choir,” Pearl said. “He was handsome, charming and just a little reckless. It was exciting at first.” Her smile faded. “Then it got old.”

Roma leaned forward, both elbows on her knees, chin propped on her laced fingers. “Why did you stay?”

“I didn’t,” Pearl said. “The night before Tom disappeared, I left him.”