That Summer (34 page)

I looked at my watch. “We don't have time.”

“Yes we do.” He took the jacket from me and laid it on a chair. “Winning the Triple Crown has made me horny as hell. How about we call John and say we'll be an hour late?”

I looked up into his narrowed blue eyes. I felt that look all the way down in my stomach. “You don't think he'll mind?” I asked weakly.

“I'm sure he won't. I'll call him now.” He went over to the phone on the desk next to the bed. I looked at his back, at his broad shoulders and narrow waist and hips. I listened to the deep murmur of his voice as he spoke to John.

You are like putty in his hands,
I told myself.

He turned away from the telephone and started back toward me. “We have an hour,” he said, still with that narrow-eyed intent look.

I inhaled a little unevenly. “Okay.”

He began to unbutton my blouse. “Let's start by getting the rest of the lucky suit off.”

I let him finish unbuttoning and pull the blouse out of my skirt. When he took it off I had only my bra on. “Let me unbutton your shirt,” I said.

We helped each other get undressed and then we made our way to the king-sized bed. Liam had been telling the truth when he had said he was horny; he was fully erect right from the start. He tried to hold back and wait for me, and I tried to meet him as quickly as I could. When at last he was buried deep within me, we both knew the rushing ecstasy of orgasm and afterward we hung on to each other with the mixture of triumph and gratitude we knew from our other encounters.

He kissed my temple and said, “I don't want to go out to dinner. I want to stay right here.”

“I know,” I murmured. “But we can't stand John up. He just trained Buster to a Triple Crown for you.”

He sighed. “You're right.”

We cuddled even closer.

“I need a shower,” I said.

“Me too.”

“I'll go first.”

“Okay.”

Neither of us moved.

Liam's stomach growled.

“That's it,” I said. “You're hungry. I'm getting up.” I pulled away from him and swung my legs over the side of the bed.

“I guess it is getting late,” he said.

I shook my head and headed toward the bathroom.

CHAPTER 32

W
e stopped by to see my mother on the way back to the farm from the airport. She was having dinner and, after the hugs and kisses and exclamations, we joined her for a cup of tea.

“Midville is going crazy,” she told us. “There are signs and flags all over town.”

“It's great for the whole Virginia horse business to have a Triple Crown winner,” Liam said.

Mom said, “The bar at the Jockey Club has invented a new drink—the Someday Soon.”

Liam laughed.

I said, “I suppose that's a compliment.”

“I'm sure it's meant to be,” Mom said.

She wanted to know all about the Belmont and we told her everything that had happened.

“Some of the papers had picked the Irish horse,” I said. “It was a little scary—they were making him out to be so great.”

“He turned out to be pretty great actually,” Liam said. “He only lost by a nose.”

Mom said, “I thought I would have a heart attack, watching those two horses come down the stretch like that. Then, when Buster stuck his nose out in front! It was just wonderful!”

“Liam kissed him,” I said.

“He deserved to be kissed,” Mom said.

I sipped my tea. “He's coming home tomorrow. Liam's vanning him down from Belmont. He deserves a few weeks off before he has to start training for the Saratoga season.”

Mom said, “I'm surprised your parents weren't there, Liam.”

Liam and I avoided looking at each other.

“I think they were visiting friends,” Liam said.

“But to miss the Triple Crown!”

“I'm sure they caught it on television.”

Mom frowned.

I said, “I'm going to have to go back to work tomorrow. I got a call yesterday on my cell phone from Doug congratulating me on Buster's win and begging me to come back. The extra vet is gone and they're still interviewing for my job. They're swamped.”

Liam scowled. “You didn't tell me that.”

“I'm telling you now.”

“You don't have to go tomorrow!”

“Yes, I do. They need me, Liam. And until they hire someone to replace me, it's my job—my responsibility. I have to go.”

“Damn,” he said.

“That's the way it is.”

“I suppose so,” he said grumpily.

Mom said carefully, “Are you going to continue to practice after you leave this job, Anne?”

“Of course I will, Mom. I didn't go through all that training not to use it.”

Mom looked relieved.

We talked for another half an hour or so and then left to drive back to the farm.

We said goodbye to each other that night as if we were never going to see each other again. We had become so close in the last few weeks, so used to having each other around, that this coming separation was really painful. When I drove away from the farm the following morning, I had tears in my eyes.

Once I plunged back into my practice, however, I hardly had time to breathe, let alone dwell on missing Liam. The first day I was back we had two colic surgeries. Then we had a horse with an infection that went into the blood and turned septic. The clinic was filled to capacity and on top of that we had all the usual calls for lameness and injuries and runny noses and the like. Plus I was scheduled for two pre-purchase exams. It was crazy.

I talked to Liam every night when I finally got home, or I called him from the clinic when I got a break.

“It sounds to me as if they need two vets to replace you,” he said when I explained to him what was happening.

“I think you're right,” I said. “The practice is really growing.”

It was on the second night I talked to him that he gave me the news. “The police were out to talk to Mary this morning. They brought Mom's medal and wanted to know if she recognized it.”

“Oh no. What did she say?”

“What could she say? She said it looked like Mom's.”

“Oh, Liam.”

He sounded grim. “I suppose it was inevitable that something like this would happen. They must have started asking themselves who I could have been trying to protect.”

“I shouldn't have mentioned Mary as backing me up in identifying your medal. It put her name in the police's mind.”

“You couldn't know that would happen.”

“It never crossed my mind.”

He sighed. “I know.”

“Have you heard anything from your parents, Liam?”

“They called me to congratulate me about the Triple Crown. Mom sounded really happy. Dad was … reserved.”

Screw him,
I thought.

“How is Buster?” I asked.

“He's settling in just great. You'd think he never left.”

“Do you have a lot of people who want to see him?”

He laughed. “Just about everybody from within a twenty-five-mile radius has come calling. If they have cameras, he poses. Otherwise he just keeps on eating.”

I laughed. “He's wonderful.”

We talked for some more and then we hung up without saying anything more about Mary's identification of Mrs. Wellington's medal. But I lay awake for a while that night, wondering what was going to happen next.

The police asked Liam if the medal he had identified as his actually belonged to his mother. Liam said he didn't know. They asked him if his mother had had a medal and he said yes but that he didn't know if the one the police had was his mother's or not.

“It was the best I could do,” he said to me over the phone. He sounded wretched. “They asked me if Mom's medal had been gold and I had to say that it was.”

“It's all right, darling,” I said to him. I wished with all my heart that I was there with him, that I was not so far away. “You did the best you could for her under the circumstances. There was Mary's evidence, and they'll talk to other people who will remember that your mother had a gold medal.”

“I suppose.”

“Have the police talked to your mother yet?”

“I don't think so. I called Dad and told him what was happening here and he got the lawyers involved right away. I don't think the police have been able to talk to Mom yet.”

I said what I could to cheer him up, but I wasn't sure it helped. I wished desperately that this whole business of Mrs. Wellington and the medal would just be over. It was like Chinese water torture for Liam to have it carrying on like this, drip by drip by drip.

Ten days after I returned to Maryland, Doug finally hired a vet to take my place in the practice. Since he could start right away, I was free to return to Virginia. I called Liam and my mother with the good news, called my landlord to cancel the lease on my condo, packed a suitcase and headed south.

I arrived on a hot summer afternoon. The dogs were all stretched out in the shade of the porch, sleeping. They opened their eyes when I arrived, wagged their tails, then closed their eyes again.

“Hello to you too,” I said.

I carried my suitcase into the house, which was empty. Then I went upstairs to Liam's room and plunked my suitcase on the bed. The air conditioning was on in the house and it was cool inside. I went back downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water, then I went to look for Liam.

I found him with the yearlings. The Keeneland sale would be in a week or so and this time of year the farm's focus was on the yearlings.

“Annie!” He grinned when he saw me and held out his arms. He looked wonderful, I thought. He had a baseball cap on over his black hair, he was tanned from being out in the sun, and his knit shirt and jeans clung to his long, fit body. I hugged him, taking in the scent of sweat and sun and horse that clung to him, and was dizzy with happiness.

“Home for good?” he said.

“Home for good,” I answered.

“Nice to see you, Anne,” Jacko said.

“Nice to see you too, Jacko,” I replied.

We looked at the yearlings, all of whom looked splendid, then Liam said, “Come and have a peek at Buster.”

We got into my car and drove out to the stallions’ paddocks, and there he was, the Triple Crown Champion, turned out in his own black oak-fenced paddock, his chestnut coat bright under the summer sky.

Liam whistled to him and his head lifted and his ears perked up. He looked at us for a long minute, then he went back to grazing.

“He looks great,” I said.

“John doesn't want him to get too fat, so I have to be careful with the grass. But he does look good.”

“He needs a break, mentally and physically.”

“I think so too.”

We stood for perhaps fifteen minutes, just watching our boy enjoy himself. Then we got into the car and went back to the house.

The next morning I went into town to see my mother. She wasn't home so I parked in front of her house and walked up to the main street to pick up some candy. I was standing in front of the confectioner's shop when I ran into Michael Bates. He was wearing his uniform.

“Hi Michael,” I said.

“How are you, Anne?” he replied. “I thought you had gone back to Maryland.”

“I did, but they found someone to take my place in the practice so now I'm back home for good.”

“Liam must be happy about that.”

“Yes,” I said. “He is.”

We exchanged a few more pleasantries, then we parted and I didn't think anything more of the conversation until later in the afternoon when Liam and I got back to the farmhouse to find Michael waiting for us. “Michael,” I said in surprise.

He was looking very grave. “I'm not here in an official capacity, Anne, I'm here as a friend.” His eyes moved to Liam. “I just thought you'd like to know that we arrested your mother this afternoon for the murder of Leslie Bartholomew.”

Liam's face went white.

“What happened?” I said.

“Perhaps we could go inside,” Michael said.

Without answering, Liam opened the front door.

“Come into the family room,” I said, and led the way into the comfortable room that held the television set. We all sat down, Liam and I on the sofa, Michael on a chair facing us.

Michael said, “Chief Brown went up to Washington today to interview her and he took me with him. We met with Mrs. Wellington, the senator and her attorney. The Chief wanted to ask her how her medal came to be at the crime scene.”

Liam and I nodded.

“It was not an easy interview. The Senator and her attorney kept interrupting and refusing to allow her to answer. Finally the Chief lost his temper.‘That medal is yours, Mrs. Wellington,’ he roared.‘Everyone knows it is yours. Your son lied to cover up the fact that it is yours. Your maid and your friends say that it is yours. I want to know what the hell that medal was doing next to Leslie Bartholomew's gravesite.’

“Well, the senator started yelling, the lawyer started spouting law, and then Mrs. Wellington held up her hand. ‘That's enough,’ she said calmly. ‘I will tell you how that medal got there, Chief Brown. It got there because I killed Leslie and it came off when I was burying her body.’”

Liam groaned. “Oh my God.”

My mouth fell open. “She said that?”

“Yes, she did. The senator and the lawyer tried to shut her up but she wouldn't stop. ‘I'm sick of being quiet,’ she said. ‘I've lived with this terrible thing for all these years and I can't live with it any more. It's poisoning me. And it's coming out, Lawrence. The medal has been found. How to explain that except by the truth?’”

Liam dropped his head into his hands.

I said, “So she confessed.”

“She confessed.”

“Did she say why she did it?”

“She said that she was drunk and that she knew Leslie was having an affair with her husband and that she was jealous. She didn't mean to kill her, she just struck out blindly. She was very drunk.”

Liam raised his head. “Surely that is diminished responsibility.”

“I would think so,” Michael said.

I said, “So she's been arrested?”

“Yes. But I'm sure her attorney will arrange bail.”

Liam said flatly, “Did she say she did this all by herself?”

“Yes, she did,” Michael answered. “But I don't think anyone believes that Mrs. Wellington was capable of moving a dead body by herself, let alone burying it.”