Page 62 of Death on Riddle Road
In the corner of the frame someone had slid in what looked to be a class photo from a year or so ago.
We’d reached Beverly’s glossy sedan.She’d popped the trunk and now she watched me looking at the photos of Robbie.
“I had to give Derrick that newer photo or he would have still been looking for the child.In vain, as it turned out.”Perhaps not surprising that she didn’t know Robbie had seen his father, since, according to Sally the aide, Derrick himself might not have known.“As it was, he barely recognized me or his father.”
Yale felt like an afterthought in that concern.
The corners of her mouth pressed tight before she spoke again.“I told him he shouldn’t have kept us away.I did not mince words.”
“What did he say?”Clara asked, straightening from depositing the box in the pristine trunk.
Beverly’s expression this time was neither micro nor ambiguous.It was sharp and deep with sorrow.“He said very little.He did appear surprised, but his disease had progressed such that he had difficulty expressing himself at times.”
“I see you have paperwork—”
“Why Dova didn’t take it...She holds onto every scrap of paper, every receipt.I suppose I can’t complain—” Sure sounded like she was complaining.“—since that habit would have helped if the investigators or jury listened to the evidence of Derrick’s alibi.Thank you.”
The last two words were perfunctory.The trunk was auto-closing and she was getting into the car.
Clara and I started back toward her van.Our path aimed my attention toward the Kentucky Manor doors.
“Uh-oh.”
Emil Dorrio had exited those doors and was headed our direction.
My mutter sent Clara’s attention there, too.She growled low in her throat.“What are the chances he wasn’t inside with her and didn’t purposefully time it so he didn’t have to carry the box for her?”
“Nonexistent.C’mon, let’s go.”
I took a step and a half toward the van.Clara didn’t budge, which put her directly in his path.
He glowered at her.
I moved back to her side.
“What the hell?”He wasn’t the quickest on the uptake, but after his gaze had gone from the departing back of Beverly’s car to us a couple times, he’d put together the pieces.“You two leave the family alone.Derrick brought enough crap down on the family name without stirring it all up again.”
His imagery stirred anewwI quickly suppressed to say, “His parents have been more than willing to talk about him.”
A bit misleading, strictly speaking, but speaking strictly wasn’t my top priority.Sparing Clara from taking the lead in talking to this jerk was.
“Of course they were.They’re still living in a dreamworld where he wasn’t guilty.And they’re old.It doesn’t matter what he does to their reputations.”If there’d been any doubt that Emil wasn’t thinking about them and was thinking about himself, his next words removed it.“As if it wasn’t hard enough to get ahead in business and politics with him all over the news then and now.If he’d admitted it and quietly gone away instead of dragging it out...And then, he has to get out of prison so he can get himself killed and bring it all up again.”
“The unfairness of it all,” Clara muttered.
I quickly inserted, “Did you contribute to getting him out of prison on compassionate leave and into hospice here to be near his family?”
I needn’t have bothered with the diversion from Clara.He was paying attention only to his complaints.
“And then he’shereof all places.Couldn’t even stay a decent distance away.If they’d listened to me, they wouldn’t have—” He caught himself and assumed a mask of sorrow, like the worst example of a bad mime’s face-wipe change of expression I’d ever seen.“Of course, the parents wanted to see their dying son.It’s natural.And now it’s over.”
Except for the small matter of Derrick being murdered.
Here was a thought...If the murderer expected the death would be taken as natural and word would never get out about Derrick’s release or his presence in North Bend County, how did that affect motives?
“Did you go to see him?”I asked.
His gaze sharpened.“No.”
