Chapter Seventeen:
There was a surprise waiting for me when I got back home. Well, actually there were two surprises. One good, one bad. One outside the house, one inside. Alexandria was all dolled up and standing on my porch steps. I was so excited to see her, I jumped out of the car, ran to her, and kissed her full on the lips. The kiss lasted for some time. When we finally eased apart, we stared at each awkwardly for awhile before regaining our senses enough to talk. She was dressed to the nines, but her face belied the state of her fancy attire. Her cheeks were sunken, her eyes were shallow, and it hurt like seven hells to see her this way.
“It’s been a long time since anyone was that glad to see me,” she said. “A long time.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Occasion?”
“You didn’t get this dressed up just to come here and see me.”
“Yes, I did actually. We need to talk and I thought we could do it over a late dinner.”
“Oh.”
“Is something wrong?”
I looked down at the manila envelopes under my arm. The last thing Alex wanted to do was talk about the case. She was here on personal grounds, not business. Me, I wanted to go inside, get something hot to drink, and pour over the contents of the envelopes.
“What’s in the envelopes,” she asked in a state of forced curiosity.
“Information.”
“Sonny Winters information?”
“Can we go inside? I’m getting a chill.”
“Sure.”
This is where the bad surprise came in. I unlocked the door, opened it, and the two of us stepped inside. What we saw wasn’t a sight for sore eyes. No, this was a sight that made eyes sore. The housed had been trashed, completely and thoroughly trashed. From one end to the other, upstairs and downstairs, everywhere and everything. The reason for it damn obvious to me. Winters didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t have the diaries. I’d told mayor so. Then this news either went directly from the major to Winters or passed through an unseen, well connected grapevine.
“The diaries. What else could it be?’
“It’s hard to find something that’s not here.”
“I told the mayor I didn’t have them. And I know the news either directly or indirectly got back to Winters.”
“And Winters, not trusting you had to find out for himself.”
“And now he has.”
“What are we going to do about this mess?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Do you want to clean it up?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
“I’ll make a pot of tea then and we‘ll go over what‘s in those envelopes .”
“Thanks, Alex.”
“Only for you, Neal.”
Those were the last words between for quit some time. I guessed within a short period of time that the entire exercise would prove to be a pointless waste of effort. Nothing in these envelopes would give us irrefutable evidence that William ‘Sonny” Winters had murdered his wife. But there was substantial proof that he had committed crimes. A long series of crimes. Embezzling, tax fraud, theft and importation of national antiques and artifacts from a dozen different countries, and arms sales to a dozen more countries.
I stood up after a long bout of reading and analyzing and instantly felt unsure of my balance. At first, I just chalked it up to being rigidly immobile for an extended period of time. But then a deep chill came over me and I began shivering violently from shoulder to shoe. There was a strong, overwhelming queasiness in my stomach and a growing dizziness in my head.
“I don‘t feel so good,” I said.
“You don‘t look so good either,” Alex answered. She touched my forehead with the palm of her hand. ‘You don’t have a fever.”
“Do I have a pulse?”
“Well, your eyes are open.”
“People have died with their eyes open.”
“You’re right, I’d forgotten. Sorry.”
“Forget it.”
“Is there anything I can do? Anything I can get you?”
“There is, as a matter of fact.”
“Medicine? Tea? Name it and I’ll get it for you.”
The entire room began to fill up with a thick, swirling brightness. My body swayed badly as if caught up in a virulent strain of seasickness.
“I know what you can get me,” I said.
“Name it.”
“You can get me -----.”
“I can get you ------.”
“You cane get me a pillow because my head’s about to hit the floor.”
And then there was darkness and after that there was ------ nothing. I passed out right there on the living room floor. When I woke up a short time later, I was propped up against the couch and looking straight into the eyes of Alexandria. I couldn’t tell if she was initially more concerned than angry, but I knew she was feeling both.
“I passed out,” I said.
“I know.”
“How long?”
“A lifetime.”
“You mean this is another life? It looks as pathetic as the last one.”
“Maybe you should go to a doctor.”
“Maybe I should.”
“You don’t look well.”
“I don’t feel well.”
Alex brought her hands up and placed them gently against my cheeks. Then she kissed me. A long, tender, quivering kiss. Was it a goodbye kiss, I wondered. And then, I let the wonder quickly pass. I didn’t want to think about the question. And more importantly, I didn’t want to think about the answer. But right then and there, one thing was certain about the kiss. It had put some strength back into my knees and some life back into my will.
“Are we done here?,” Alex asked.
I hesitated to answer. I thought she was asking me if our relationship was over. But what she was really asking me was were we finished looking through all of the information my hacker acquaintance had given me.
“What exactly are you asking me?,” I said.
“Whether or not we’ve finished looking through all of these damn papers. What did you think I meant?”
“I don’t know. I guess my brain is still fogged up. We’re done as far as Winters goes. But I still want to go over the papers involving Gina.”
“What are you going to do with all of this information? Have you thought about that?”
“There’s plenty of evidence against him. But who do I give it to? Certainly no one locally. Winters could have ties that run right down to the state capital then takes a hard right all the over to D.C..”
“ Make copies. A lot of them. Send them to different places and see what happens. It’s the best chance you have of making something stick.”
“It’s as good of an idea as any I had. ”
Alex let that remark go by without comment. Instead, she steered the conversation onto a slightly different plane.
“I received an anonymous phone call about Donna Winters’ will,” she said.
“And?”
“The call said Donna had a history of making out wills, then tearing them up.”
“Is this what happened this time?”
“Not according to the caller. The caller said the will was still in the safe when Donna had that big blowup with Sonny and left. If that’s true, there’s no way for Donna to have tore it up.”
“Gina’s a possibility.”
“She’s more than a possibility.”
“The caller give you something about that?”
“Gina was completely cut out of the last will. Evidently, one of the reasons Donna kept changing her will was her indecision about her sister.”
“But how did Gina find out?”
“The most likely answer is that Donna herself told Gina..”
I went to the front window and drifted off into some quiet faraway place. When I came back from that place, Alex was at my side, holding my hand, and resting her head on the edge of my shoulder.
“We should’ve never taken this case,” I said.
“I suppose you’re right. But the money Gina gave us. We’d never seen that kind of money at once in our lives.”
“I laid out a lot of money to get that information on Winters and its useless. When you said you wanted to go eat and talk, we should’ve just got in the car and left.”
“It’s okay Neal, really. We can talk just as easily here as anywhere else.”
“What about food?”
“Pull something out of the freezer and nuke it in the microwave.”
“There’s an oven ready meatloaf I can make. Add French style green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy and we have ourselves a full fledged, home made meal.”
I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d fussed over a meal for anyone other than myself. It might have been as far back as when Sarah and I were still together. Early in our marriage we shared the cooking duties. Which, most of the time, were plain, ordinary, nothing fancy affairs.
Alex and I had our talk while the food was cooking. We talked while walking through the neighborhood. We talked about many things. Life, love and heartache, humor, absurdity, and nonsense. Then we were done talking, we came back inside, sat down and enjoyed a good, quiet dinner together. I would’ve liked it to be a candlelit dinner, but I only had two candles in the house. One was broke down to a nub and the other one had more lean to it than the leaning tower of Pisa. So, that idea was out.
Shortly after the meal was over, Alex said goodbye and left. She agreed to go with me to talk to Covington. The next day, I thought, might the last time I ever see Alexandria. This idea saddened me. But before I descended too deep into self-pity and despair, I called Ty Covington, told him my name, and told him what I wanted. He was a hard sell. A real hard sell. But eventually he agreed to a meeting the next day. He insisted on picking the meeting place. I said fine. But he wouldn’t tell me where right then and there. He said he’d call me back the next day and give me the location. I reluctantly agreed.
On way or the other, I told myself, the Covington interview is where this case is going to end. Tomorrow, then, would be its final day of life. Then it would be burned, turned into ashes, and scattered to the four winds. Lost, but not forgotten. Before going to see Ty Covington the next day, I had one other piece of this Winters business to take care of. Going over the information regarding Gina Wilson obtained by my hacker acquaintance. But that, too, would be taken care of the next day. Sometime in the early morning. I had nothing left in me for this day. Nothing left except go to bed and sleep. Maybe, just maybe, I could find some comfort there.
Just before going to bed that night, I had a short, imaginary conversation with my bedroom mirror.
Me: Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the sorriest bastard of them all.
Mirror: You are, you pathetic Polack son of a bitch.
Me: I thought so.
Mirror: You were a damn fool to even ask.”
Me: Sorry.
Mirror: Well, you ought to be. Now shut the damn light off will you, I’m trying to get some sleep here.
Me: Sorry.
Mirror: You sure are.