The Blue Journal Page 32

  “Always,” he told her.

  “Then let’s do something about it.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “I think you should find Elizabeth’s real killer.”

  “I’ve been ordered to close my file, to which I have objected quite strenuously. I’ve told my chief that if we find her killer, we’ll find your husband’s murderer too.”

  The sudden look of horror in her eyes made it clear this was something she had never considered. “His murderer?”

  Walker drew a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks and blew the air out slowly. “I apologize. I realize you’ve been through a lot. It never occurred to me . . .”

  “You think Fred was murdered?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She looked away now, shaking her head in response to the latest aftershock of this tragedy. “I thought, I mean, they said it was an accident, right?”

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t think this was an accident. I think your husband was forced off the road. I also believe the murder weapon that was used on Mrs. Knoebel was then planted in his car.”

  She reacted with another of her looks of bewilderment, of which Walker was learning the poor woman had quite a repertoire.

  “Do you have any idea what your husband was doing on that road the day, uh . . .”

  “No,” she interrupted. “That’s one of the things I kept saying to the State Trooper who came here. Fred was supposed to be at work. I don’t know why he left early, or why he’d be driving around up there. It makes no sense.”

  “I’m sorry I have to ask you this, but where were you that morning?”

  “Where was I?” She paused, the day fixed in her memory. “I was running errands. In the market, at the cleaners.” Her eyes began to well up again. “I remember thinking about that, once I heard about Fred. Trying to place exactly where I was at . . . at that awful moment.”

  “Mrs. Wentworth, I tried several times to reach you on your cell phone that morning. There was no answer.”

  Phyllis responded with a sad smile. “You know what Fred used to say? He would say, ‘Phyllis, why do you have a cell phone if you never use it?’ Ah,” she sighed, “it was probably in my purse, as it always is. I never hear it ring. I almost never look for messages either.” Then she hesitated. “Do you think if . . .”

  “No, it wouldn’t have mattered, I just wondered why I couldn’t reach you.” He studied her for a moment, then said, “Let’s get back to why your husband would have been on that road that day. Do you think he might have been meeting someone?”

  “Perhaps. But who?”

  “I was hoping you might have a guess for me.” He paused. “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you some tough questions here.”

  She responded with a tentative nod.

  “Is it possible he was on his way to see a woman?”

  Phyllis gave him as weary a look as he had ever seen. “My husband is dead. People think he was a murderer. You believe he was murdered. What isn’t possible? If you’re asking me if I think it was likely, the answer is no.”

  “Are you aware that there are people who believe your husband had a relationship with Elizabeth Knoebel?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation. “I know he saw Elizabeth.”

  “When you say, ‘saw,’ how do you . . .”

  “Elizabeth was not a good person, Detective Walker. And Fred was a weak man. The sad truth was that nothing came of it except embarrassment for Fred.”

  “And you know this to be true?”

  “I do.”

  “May I ask how?”

  “Not that it matters, but Elizabeth was such a vicious woman . . .” She stopped here to shake her head. “She actually told me. Can you believe that?”

  “She told you that she had seen your husband?”

  “Oh yes. She told me how she mocked him when he, when he couldn’t . . .”

  “I get the picture.”

  “And then she ridiculed me for being married to him. She was a horrible person, Detective Walker.”

  “Did you ever tell that to your husband?”

  “Never. How could I? He’d suffered enough humiliation from Elizabeth.”

  “Mrs. Wentworth, do you believe there is any possibility—and I mean even the remotest chance—that your husband would have murdered Elizabeth Knoebel?”

  “Of course not.”

  Walker managed a slight smile. “That’s the answer of a loyal wife. But if she subjected him to that sort of ridicule, well, there are all sorts of crazy motives for murder. I want you to take a moment and search your heart and tell me honestly. Is there any chance at all?”

  Phyllis took his admonition seriously. She sat back and closed her eyes for what seemed a long time. When she sat up again she looked directly at him and said, “As I’ve said, Fred was a weak man, much as I hate to say it so soon after we’ve placed him . . . well, you understand. But it’s true. I knew he was a failure at work. He thought he was fooling me about that, but he wasn’t. He was a coward in many ways, and not much of a husband over the past several years. But I loved him, you see, and love is a strange thing. You make allowances. You forgive. You overlook. But it does not render you completely blind.” Now she permitted herself a painful smile. “Fred could never have shot that woman, no matter how she shamed him.” She shook her head. “I knew Fred too long to miss anything, believe me. I knew all about Elizabeth Knoebel and what she did to Fred. And you must know this—whatever she did to him or said to him, he didn’t have it in him to murder her.”

  CHAPTER 58

  Walker realized that Phyllis Wentworth’s insistence on her late husband’s innocence was certainly not enough to keep the case open, even when coupled with his own suspicions. No matter how strong the arguments he presented, Chief Gill refuted every one. More important, the chief had ordered that there be no further investigation. The world believed that Fred Wentworth murdered Elizabeth Knoebel, he was conveniently dead, the media had happily tied a ribbon around the entire package, and so everyone could return to life as usual.

  Even in the face of that opposition, Walker was still in contact with the State Troopers. He also had some other ideas, and First Selectman Robert Stratford was the person he wanted to discuss them with.

  When he phoned for an appointment he found he no longer had direct access and had to negotiate his way through two different secretaries. Now that the Elizabeth Knoebel case had been solved, Detective Walker was yesterday’s news.

  Even so, he pressed the issue, managing to arrange a meeting and suggesting the perfect spot.

  Walker phoned Randi, explained that he wanted to use her office for a private discussion with Robert Stratford that night, and said he wanted her to be there. He was not surprised when she resisted, first telling him it was a bad idea, then suggesting she should not be involved in the discussion. He told her it was important and she ultimately relented.

  So it was that Walker organized one more gathering among the three of them, a sort of post mortem on the Knoebel–Wentworth matter.

  Stratford arrived first and found Randi seated at her desk, alone.

  “I didn’t think you’d actually come,” she said.

  Stratford looked surprised. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  The sadness was evident in her soft brown eyes. “Do you really want to do this now? With Anthony coming?”

  “Anthony?” he said with an amused look. “What exactly is it we don’t want to do in front of Anthony?”

  She stared at him without speaking.

  “Come on Randi, you and I have no secrets.”

  “Don’t we?”

  Stratford turned away and began arranging magazines and newspapers on a side table.

  “Elizabeth,” Randi said, pronouncing the name as if it were toxic. “We need to talk about Elizabeth.” She was staring at his back as she said, “I read the diary, Robert. I read about you. I haven’t said anything to Anthony, but it’s time for you and me to f
ace the truth.”

  “Ah. The elusive truth.” Stratford gave up his busywork and walked past her to the window. The moonless night had grown dark. “I don’t know what the truth is anymore,” he said, still not looking at her.

  “This was more than one of your casual affairs.”

  For a moment Stratford did not speak, he didn’t even move. Then he nodded, keeping his back to her as he stared out the window. “Much more,” he said. “Until I discovered I was just one of her laboratory animals.”

  “She was a troubled woman, surely you saw that.”

  When he finally turned to face her his features were set hard against the backdrop of the ebony night. “Troubled? No Randi. Evil. She was the incarnation of evil, which is something you should know better than anyone. What she did to me, to you, to others. And then, as if all that was not enough, she intended to expose us, to destroy us all.”

  “She didn’t deserve to die, Robert.”

  “Didn’t she?”

  She sat back, staring at him. “What about Fred Wentworth?”

  “What about him?” Stratford asked.

  “Don’t play games with me.”

  “Games? Let me tell you one of the basic truths of life, Doctor Conway. Whatever happens to people, in the final analysis, they’ve brought on themselves. People make choices, you and I included.” Stratford took a few seconds, as if to give her time to contemplate the idea. “I suppose you think you made no choice in all of this.”

  She offered no response.

  He sat in a chair across from her. “No matter,” he said pleasantly.

  “No matter?” Anger rose in her voice. “You need help, Robert, and I can’t be the one to give it.”

  “Help? I don’t think so. My problem is solved, and so is everyone else’s. Elizabeth is gone. Fred Wentworth murdered her, and now he’s dead too.”

  “Fred Wentworth did not murder Elizabeth.”

  “Didn’t he? The police certainly think he did. The press thinks he did. Once you confirmed his name to your friend Anthony, you helped to close the circle.”

  She winced. “You were supposed to protect me, not use me.”

  “I did protect you. I did everything I could to stop you from divulging your patients’ confidences, didn’t I? Didn’t I make sure the police kept an eye on you? Maybe not directly, but you had enough attention that you were safe. Then events began to build and, like an old-fashioned pressure cooker, something finally had to give. Once you and your new boyfriend were convinced that it was a matter of life and death—as the police are so fond of describing it—you told him what he needed to know. The anonymous notes. The phone call at the restaurant. The break-in. When you gave him Wentworth’s name the rest was as easy as painting by numbers.”

  A voice came from behind Stratford, startling the two of them. “Painting by numbers? Mind telling me who or what was the subject of this artwork?”

  Stratford spun around to face Anthony Walker. The detective stood in the doorway, waiting for an answer.

  “We were just discussing a theory of the Knoebel case,” Stratford said. “Why Wentworth would have murdered her.”

  Walker looked to Randi, but she turned away.

  “Precisely why I asked you to meet me this evening,” Walker said. “What theory have you come up with?”

  “Nothing solid yet.” Stratford twisted uncomfortably in his seat to face the doorway behind him as he spoke, but Walker wasn’t moving. “Seems clear this fellow Wentworth was the man.”

  “Uh huh.” Walker appeared to be thinking it over. Then he said, “Phyllis Wentworth swears her husband was incapable of murder. For what it’s worth, I believe her.”

  Stratford shook his head. “She’s a grieving widow who can’t bring herself to believe her husband was a cold-blooded killer. Sorry Detective, not a very persuasive witness.”

  “Maybe not,” Walker said. Then he circled behind Randi, dropped a large envelope on her desk, and leaned against the windowsill, facing both of them. “What I’ve learned about Wentworth does not exactly conjure up the profile of a murderer.”

  Stratford nodded amiably. “All right, but what about the woman’s diary? I’m basing this on limited information since I never saw the entire thing, but I am told that her writings include an episode about a man now believed to be Wentworth. Her story indicates things did not go well for him. Perhaps she threatened to reveal his inadequacy. That might provide a motive. Or maybe the shame itself was too great.”

  “Maybe, but then we’d have to explain why Fred Wentworth’s car was run off the road.”

  “Wentworth was run off the road?”

  “Oh yes. His death was no accident. The marks on his station wagon made that obvious, but we decided not to release the information until the other vehicle was found. The troopers have it now. It was abandoned in the woods, ten miles or so from the scene of the crash. Their forensics team is going over it as we speak.”

  “I wonder what they’ll find,” Stratford said.

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  The threesome was quiet for a few moments. Then Stratford said, “Since you have more information than I do, why don’t you go on.”

  Walker folded his arms across his chest. “All right. Let’s say the murderer didn’t know about Elizabeth Knoebel’s journal at the time of the killing. If he had, he would have looked for copies or, at the very least, he would have taken her laptop. But he didn’t, which suggests to me that he simply didn’t know. Whatever his motive for killing her, it had nothing to do with her journal. Later, when the diary was discovered, it created both a problem and an opportunity. Assuming the killer was one of the men identified in her writing, that created an unforeseen risk. On the other hand, the stories about her other playmates offered a chance for him to cast suspicion on someone else. All he had to do was let our investigation play out a little bit, and create some misdirection along the way.”

  “Misdirection?”

  “Sure, the things you just mentioned. The anonymous notes. The break-in of this office. The phone call Randi got when we were at dinner. False clues, all of them, staged to send us in the wrong direction while the murderer created a story around them that was just plausible enough to lead us to a believable fall guy. There were several of Randi’s patients who might have worked just fine. Some that you and I have already discussed. Nettie Sisson. Fran Colello. Thomas Colello. Fred Wentworth just happened to fit the bill.”

  Stratford remained silent.

  “I must say, the Wentworth ploy was risky, especially since he had to be killed to really make the plan work. There was no way to allow him an opportunity to exonerate himself. No, he had to be removed, and there was real danger in the way it was done. I mean, look at the possible flaws. First, there was the risk of being seen switching cars. Then you had to be sure that Wentworth died in the crash. And, of course, since you had to leave the revolver behind, someone could have driven by at the moment you were planting the gun, another chance of being spotted. But the true genius was in engineering things so that Randi gave us his name. Once you learned that Colello suspected Wentworth had been in the Knoebel house, well, the rest was truly inspired.”

  Stratford stared at him wide-eyed “You actually believe I murdered Elizabeth Knoebel and Fred Wentworth.”

  “I do.

  “You’re insane.”

  “Am I? I tell you what, even an unregistered gun like the one they found, it’ll ultimately be traced. Don’t look so skeptical, the State is working that angle. And the car that ran Wentworth off the road. Whatever you did to clean it out when you ditched it, they’ll find something. I know you must’ve been wearing gloves, but maybe you left behind a hair or two, or breathed too hard on the windshield. Or perhaps you left tire tracks from your own car near the exchange point.”

  “You really believe this hogwash?”

  “I do.” Walker stood, picked up the brown envelope on Randi’s desk and tossed it into Stratford’s lap. The lawy
er reflexively caught it as Walker continued. “Unlike Fred Wentworth, you really did have a motive, didn’t you? You have a political career at stake, and you couldn’t afford to have the truth about your relationship with Elizabeth Knoebel made public. Killing her was one thing, but then you had to bring our investigation to an end so the diary would be buried before anyone identified you in there.”

  “You are way off base here, Detective.”

  “Am I? I admit, proof beyond a reasonable doubt is a tough hill to climb, that’s true, but even if you manage to skate on the criminal charge, you’re through.” He pointed at the envelope. “Once we determined that the RSETU file was actually an encoded name for ROBRT, it was easy to fill in the blanks. Personally, professionally, you’re done.”

  Stratford held up the envelope. “Please Detective, not this woman’s deranged fantasies. Please tell me that’s not the basis of these slanderous accusations.”

  “Deranged? Maybe so. But they weren’t fantasies, which we’ve already established from others mentioned in her diary. There’s another piece to the puzzle you didn’t know about, something we didn’t tell anyone. You see, Elizabeth Knoebel kept a schedule in her computer. She recorded all of her meetings, dates and places, chapter and verse. Shouldn’t be tough to get corroborating testimony from bartenders and waiters and motel clerks. You know the drill, Counselor.”

  They stared at each other, waiting. Then Stratford stood up, casually brushed off his suit jacket and smiled. “The day Fred Wentworth died. What time was he found?”

  “Just before noon.”

  “Yes. That’s how I recall it. And the coroner’s report indicated his time of death . . .”

  “Was an hour or so before that.”

  “Exactly what I was told by Chief Gill. So, before you came here tonight with this Alice in Wonderland story, did you bother to check my whereabouts that morning?”

  “I did. You were not in your law office or in Town Hall.”

  “High marks for addressing the obvious. What you did not know, however, was that I was in a private meeting with three representatives of my party from Hartford. We kept our gathering a secret to avoid unnecessary speculation about what you have referred to as my political career. We took a small conference room at the Hyatt in Greenwich, all of which you can easily confirm. I arrived there before ten and did not leave until after one.”