Half Past Mourning (19 page)

With his persuasion and her own curiosity nagging, Nina managed to eat a portion of her meal. She realized she did feel better for having done so. So often when she was worried or tired she didn’t bother to eat. Thinking back, she realized the past few days she’d probably skipped more meals than she’d eaten. When the knots inside didn’t permit another bite, she pushed her soup bowl away.

“All right, Peter, tell me what you’re suspecting and how you bring Jeff Davis into the picture.”

He made meaningless circles on the table with his water glass and finally put it aside. “Nina, are you sure you want to get into this now? Sweetheart, you’ve had a wrenching day and come to a reasonable but shattering conclusion. We could wait and talk to Hayes about it tomorrow.”

Nina felt the strain of the day draining everything from her. No, she needed to hear his reasoning and see how Peter had pieced the puzzle together. She waited without answering, but her silence was response enough.

Peter shrugged. “Okay, this is how I see it.” He held up one finger. “Remember Borman said that Danny was in a rush to finish up the paperwork when he came in right after his birthday? Said he had a date?”

“Yes, and I suppose at this point I shouldn’t be surprised Danny had a date with someone else. It seems to have been a pattern.”

Peter put his upraised finger over her lips. “Just wait, Nina, and think about this. Danny sold his car to Jeff Davis, and we’ve assumed from the evidence we’ve gathered that he must have sold it some days before your wedding. Andrews bought the car in Dallas from Jeff Davis. It looks to me as if that date Danny had might have been with Davis, a date to sell the car. He was in the city two weeks before your wedding, plenty of time to sell the car to Davis but make arrangements to keep it for a few days until Danny could drive back to Dallas. Danny would need the car to return to Santa Rita, tell you the wedding was off, and collect Paula King. He wouldn’t want to come home in a new car if he was covering up his trip to Dallas in the first place. In a couple of weeks, he could simply drive back to Dallas, turn the car over to Davis, and buy whatever replacement car he’d chosen. With his money, any car was possible, and by buying it after he left Santa Rita, nobody would look for him in something other than the T‑Bird.”

Confusion and protests filled Nina’s mind. “But Danny didn’t go back to Paula. He stayed with me and went through with the wedding. We don’t know that he even went to Dallas the next day.” She gnawed her lip at the contradiction. “But he must have. Otherwise, how did the car get there for Davis to sell? Danny must have driven back to Dallas after he left me. Is that what you’re saying?”

“It’s possible that was the plan, darling,” Peter answered, the planes of his face accented by the half-light. “That was what he intended, at least until the night before the wedding; then something changed his mind. He didn’t elope with Paula, and he did marry you. So if Davis was expecting to collect the car in Dallas—in fact had it all but sold for a decent profit to Andrews—and then Danny changed his mind, perhaps wanted to cancel the deal, Davis lost all the way around. He didn’t have the car and he couldn’t make his sale. He’d probably object, might even object in a violent way. Maybe he came to Santa Rita and took the car, forcing Danny to go with him to keep Danny from reporting the car stolen.”

“And Danny... Danny...” Nina couldn’t go on.

“Think about it this way. Danny comes home and something, probably that night with you, makes him reconsider. He calls Davis after he leaves you the morning of your wedding. He says things have changed and he’s not going to let Davis have the car, or he’s not going to let him have it right away, and tells Davis the T-Bird won’t be in Dallas for Davis to deliver to his customer. Davis won’t go along because he’s made the deal and has to have the car, so he comes to Santa Rita thinking he can talk Danny into going ahead. And perhaps he did, for a while, or perhaps he resorted to some more physical persuasion to get Danny to go along.”

Nina nodded, the picture taking shape in her head. “Then what? Danny couldn’t have defended himself. His heart, his breathing problems, anything might have... It could have happened that way. But where did he leave Danny’s b-body?” Nina choked at the word. “He’d have to do something, if he killed Danny. And how will we ever find Davis?” She shut her eyes at the pictures her imagination supplied. Forcing them out of her mind, she tried to think logically, fighting the black misery that threatened to swallow her. “How did Davis know to cover Danny’s absence with telegrams to Marigold? And how did Danny’s license and pocket knife get into the trunk of the T-Bird? And how...” Peter’s finger over her lips stopped her flood of questions.

“I don’t know all the answers, Nina. Not even half of them, probably. But as far as finding Davis, that’s a job for Sheriff Hayes, not us.” Peter’s fingers brushed a tender caress over Nina’s cheek. “Danny died, Davis took the car, sold it to Andrews, and faded into the background. Danny probably, almost certainly, is dead, and whatever he may have been—liar or deceiver notwithstanding—his life was worth more than a slick yellow sports car. I know it hurts. You want to go find answers and you hate to hear this, but we have to leave it to the sheriff’s office to figure things out from there.”

Nina wasn’t certain she could agree with Peter on every point. The one certainty she held was that Danny Wilson was dead and probably had been for most of the two years she’d been hoping, believing, he’d come back to her. As she followed Peter out of the restaurant, she looked back at the hours of pain and anxiety she’d endured since the moment Danny walked away from the church. If she’d known him then as she’d come to see him in the last couple of months, would she have wept so many tears? Could she have kept living on the promises he’d made her? Or would she have done the sane, sensible thing and taken the legal steps to end what truly never was a marriage?

“Nina?” Peter turned to take her hand as they crossed the darkened parking lot. “There’s a small family hotel about ten miles down the road. Let’s stop for the night. You’ve got a lot on your mind, and I know it’s been a grueling day. A hot bath and an early night might make things a little better.”

“Sooner or later I have to decide what I’m going to say to Marigold,” she murmured. “But I’d like to put it off for a little while, get my bearings first.”

Peter held the car door as she slid inside. “I don’t think you should tell Marigold anything. Leave it to the sheriff.” He closed the door and came around to the driver’s side. “Let the sheriff handle it; it’s his job.”

She twisted in the seat to face him. “Does Sheriff Hayes think Danny’s dead, too? Is that what you and he were whispering about as we left the lawyer’s office?”

Peter didn’t answer until the car rolled out of the parking lot and into evening traffic. “He’s thought there was a good possibility of it ever since he realized Marigold hadn’t actually heard from Danny. Those telegrams made him suspicious, and nothing we’ve learned since has done anything but raise new questions. That’s why he’s putting more effort, more intensity into the search, Nina. He thinks he may have let a killer walk free for two years because he didn’t push harder when Danny first went missing. He blames himself for allowing Marigold to call the tune back then.”

They rode in silence, the night slipping by in a scattered stream of headlights, while Nina thought of all the things she and Peter had found in the weeks since she first saw the T-Bird in the college parking lot. None of it made much of a statement, taken by itself, but all the bits and pieces, all the details pulled together, painted a dark and somber picture. No concrete proof existed to show Danny lived beyond the moment he left the church. On the contrary, any number of telling points suggested he had died within a short time after he’d waved to Nina. The idea that Danny, the boy she’d loved and married, was gone forever left a dull, throbbing ache in her breast. At the same time she knew, with clear, sharp insight, that the Danny she’d loved was only a piece of the man she’d married. Danny the charming, two-faced, deceitful opportunist was the other side of the picture, and he somehow had put himself in jeopardy. That aspect was Danny, too—self-centered, arrogant, and manipulative—and in some way he’d triggered his own fate. Nina wasn’t certain what she felt for that Danny, the one she’d only come to know after he was gone from her life. Regret, certainly, that a young life had ended with no one aware of it. Maybe a touch of pity that Danny had chosen a path so destructive. A single tear slipped down her cheek, possibly the last she’d ever shed for Danny Wilson.

“Where are you, Nina?” Peter’s firm grip on her hand brought her out of her reverie.

“Here,” she whispered, making a surreptitious wipe at her cheek, “and not here.” She straightened herself in the seat and took a firm grip on her emotions. “I’m wondering whether we ever really know other people or if we only know the side they choose to reveal. And if they show different sides on different occasions.”

He leaned back in the seat, both hands on the wheel, and she caught the wry twist of his mouth in the lights of the passing cars.

“Sweetheart, my guess is that we can know someone from birth to death, spend every reasonable moment with that person, and still be surprised.” He tapped one finger against her cheek. “Not that we’d get as many surprises or such dramatic ones as you’ve had with Danny,” he added. “Grieve for the Danny you lost, Nina, because that was as much the real Danny as any other aspect. That’s who he was for you, and you’ve given a large part of yourself to the search for him. But don’t let the other side of him, the side you didn’t know and couldn’t have loved, make you doubt yourself or your judgment.”

How did he know what I was thinking?
Nina stared out at the lights that emerged from the darkness and swept past. Somehow Peter had followed the thread of her thoughts and seen that she was weighing her acceptance of Danny against her ability to judge a man’s character.

“It’s hard to think that he fooled me, that he had other women and other plans for his life, and I never knew. I thought I understood every dream he had, every hope, every pain. We’d been together so long.” She bent her head, looking away from the oncoming lights. “I should have seen something, realized... understood... I should have had better sense.”

“You loved, you believed, you trusted, Nina.” Peter’s voice had a rough edge to it. “And in the end, my dear, I believe Danny came face to face with the realization that what he had with you was far more valuable than all the mad, irresponsible plans he’d made. Don’t you see, sweetheart, he gave it all up, he married you, and from all appearances, he’d chosen life with you over anything else. I think you can be sure of that and let go of all the rest.”

“Do you, Peter?” Nina considered the thought. “Maybe he did. Maybe for a night, even for a week, if we’d had a week, Danny would have been the man I thought he was. But sometime, eventually, when life with me wasn’t enough, when Marigold’s chains got too confining, or reality didn’t support the dream, I think he would have reverted, gone back to his other plans, and I would have found myself just where I was when I met you, looking for Danny or trying to face life without him.”

Peter didn’t answer at first. “You can’t know, and there’s no point in playing ‘what if.’ You have to decide to go on from here, because what happened can’t be changed. The past is done; the future is what you make of it.”

In a moment the low lights of the hotel came into view. Peter turned the car into the drive and pulled up under the arching canopy before the entrance. Nina followed him inside. She had a moment of embarrassment when the night clerk took them for a married couple, but Peter smoothly straightened out the situation, arranging for two rooms along the same hallway but with no connecting door.

“The coffee shop is still open, Nina. Would you like something before you turn in? A glass of milk might help you sleep.”

The wall clock indicated the hour was early for retiring, and a glass of milk sounded inviting.

“I think it would help, Peter. Thank you.”

Leaving her overnight case and his bag with the bell captain, Peter and Nina crossed the lobby to the quiet coffee shop at the far side of the hotel. Peter ordered coffee for himself and milk for her, then asked about a slice of pie.

“Apple, pecan, and coconut tonight,” the waitress answered. “And they’re made right here, fresh every day.”

“Oh, apple pie and milk,” Nina agreed. “Sounds like it would send me off to sleep.”

Peter ordered pecan pie for himself and they settled into the shadowy booth.

“Any idea what you’ll do now, Nina?”

“What do you mean? I have to wait for the sheriff to get to the bottom of this before I can decide what to do. While I’m waiting I’ll go home, spend time with Uncle Eldon, get ready for the Fourth of July car show and rally, then get things together for next year at school. Like life, fourth grade goes on, no matter what.”

Peter’s grey eyes went darker, his russet brows arched. “Your future, Nina, your own life, not the day-to-day business. You’re a young, bright, vital woman. You can’t spend your whole life being not quite married and not quite single. It isn’t fair to you to be forever in the shadows of your world. What do you want to do?”

The question hung in the air between them. Raising her eyes to his for a moment, Nina shook her head, then looked down at her ringless hands. “I don’t know, Peter. I never thought beyond the point of finding out what happened to Danny. I’ll have to think, get used to the idea that my life has gone in a new direction. This morning I had one path, one road to follow. Now, I don’t know. I’m not too sure who I am at this point in my life.”

The grave look faded from Peter’s eyes to be replaced by a softer sheen. His voice dropped to a lower tone of concern. “It’s been a maelstrom for a while, hasn’t it, sucking your life right into the whirlpool? And you’ve been valiantly fighting all the way. It will take a while for you to find a new direction, but you’re going to find your path, Nina. You’re resilient and you have courage. That will get you through this.”