Dismas Hardy: Nothing But The Truth Part 41

'At the time, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. I mean, here's this totally unconventional free spirit in an unbelievable body and she's in love with me and of course, we're both invincible, immortal. Nothing can touch us. We can mix and match with other couples, do every drug known to man, hang out in places I wouldn't go near today.'

He stopped, and seemed again almost to ask Hardy's permission to continue. 'I look back on that now and it seems impossible, like I was another person.'

'How long ago was all this?' Hardy asked. 'Twenty years?'

'Something like that.'

A nod. 'You were another person.'

This seemed to soothe Ron somewhat, and he went on. 'I think what I regret most is that both my parents died during this time, in the first phase when Dawn and I were together.'

'And how long was that, that phase?'

'Five years, maybe a little more.'

'Did they ever know what she did?'

'Oh no. She was a student, like me. But my dad, especially, saw through her, saw what she was. He tried to tell me, but I wasn't ready to hear anything critical from my hopelessly unhip father. I mean, he sold insurance for a living. He was in the Rotary Club, the Holy Name Society. What in the world could he tell me?'

'Only everything,' Hardy said seriously.

The comment made a connection. 'Exactly. But I was out on the s.e.xual frontier and he didn't have a clue. I even thought he was jealous of me.' Again, that distinctive hollow laugh. 'So of course I gave up on them, not her. And then Dad died. And then two years later, Mom.' He looked down at his hands.

'So you were married five years?'

'Not yet. We were free. We didn't need the piece of paper.'

'So what did you do? Were you an actor, too?'

'No.' He thought for a moment. 'I still don't know why. Chicken, maybe. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g on film was too far for me to go. Like some part of me knew I'd outgrow all of that someday. I didn't want any record of it.'

'That wasn't dumb.'

'No. But it wasn't something I planned either. I can't take any credit for it, that I was this virtuous guy. It just happened.'

'So what did you do?'

The question seemed to embarra.s.s him. 'Not much, to tell the truth. Dawn made sporadic but pretty decent money and I had majored in finance, so I managed it. We had enough to get by, and the main thing was we didn't want to be tied down to jobs. We had to live.'

'So what changed?'

'I guess I did.' Hardy didn't want to admit it, but there was a charming, self-effacing quality to Ron Beaumont. As everyone else who knew him said, he seemed to be a great guy. 'It wasn't any increase in wisdom,' he admitted candidly, 'just age. Maybe my conventional background started to catch up with me, I don't know, but I figured we'd done the bohemian thing, and it was time to move on. Frankly, the scene was getting old, not to mention us.

'So she got pregnant. We got pregnant. Then she decided to have an abortion. We had a huge fight over it. She was going to do it anyway. And she did. And I moved out.' He sighed. 'Then I think for the first time she couldn't handle... the emotions. She was thirty-one years old. The biological clock was ticking pretty good. The whole thing just tore her up. She was shocked that she couldn't rationalize some way to handle it, but she couldn't.'

'And you got back together?'

He nodded. 'We got married. I started working as a teller in a bank. We had Ca.s.sandra. A year later we had Max. She hated it.'

'What?'

'The whole thing. Babies. Crying, puking, diapers, no sleep. But mostly the boredom, being with them all day. She hated what I was doing, my job. She hated that we had no money. But you know the funny thing?'

'What's that?'

Hardy recognized serenity in the man's face. 'I loved it. I loved them. It was as though somebody just flicked a switch and suddenly I saw everything differently. It made sense. This was what we were here for. Certainly it was what I was here for.'

This was an incredibly difficult thing to hear. Ron was describing Hardy's own feelings at the birth of his first son Michael, who had died in infancy. That tragedy had plunged Hardy into a cold and dark void from which he thought he'd never escape.

But nearly a decade later, the births of Rebecca and Vincent had rekindled a flame that had burned brightly for several years. More recently, though, it had dimmed to where it now mostly felt to Hardy as if there was no light or heat, only ash covered by other stuff that didn't burn at all. He wondered if under it all, the last embers had truly died and if not, if there was a way to coax a new flame to life. When this was over, he promised himself, he was going to try.

'So what happened next?' Hardy asked.

'About what you'd expect up to a point,' Ron replied. 'Fights, more fights, still more fights. She wanted to go back to work and we fought about that.'

'Doing what she'd been doing?'

He shrugged. 'She said it was all she knew. I told her to learn something else, she was a mother now, think of the kids. Did she want them growing up in that environment?'

'And what did she say?'

'She said there was nothing wrong with that environment. It paid well and provided a valuable social service.' He rolled his eyes in frustration. 'I was being inconsistent. I was becoming too conservative. I was a hypocrite. You name it, I was it.'

'So she went back to it?'

'Not right away. Not for a while.'

'Why not?'

'I'd like to believe that it was my strength of will.' A dry chuckle. 'I didn't give in. But she really couldn't stand being at home, and I wasn't putting the kids in full-time daycare, so we switched. Big mistake on my part, as it turned out.'

'Why was that?'

'Because she was then the good working mother, and I was the nearly unemployable dad. The courts like mothers best anyway for custody, and when the dad doesn't have a real career...' He shrugged. 'He's dead meat.'

'So she went to work?' Hardy had to know what had happened.

Ron nodded. 'Some office job, which of course was incredibly boring and didn't pay anything like she was used to. She wanted out, but I kept wanting to make the family thing work.' He sighed. 'Anyway, we made it a couple more years with me not working - bad, bad mistake - but finally I had to get another job, too.' Ron's eyes grew hard. He was sitting on the front inch of the couch again, his hands clenched so hard the knuckles were white. 'Which is when,' he said, 'she started selling the kids.'

Marie and the children finally arrived back at the duplex which, truth to tell, was a great relief to Hardy. Belief in Ron Beaumont and his idealistic, over-the-top, melodramatic, perhaps heroic story had grown in him over the past days. To have it revealed now as false just when he'd come to accept it as the truth would have seemed a joke almost too cruel to endure.

They spent a few moments explaining Hardy's presence and involvement to a skeptical Marie. But Ron and the kids - Ca.s.sandra particularly - convinced her that Hardy was on their side. He could be trusted absolutely. He was Ca.s.sandra's hero. Clearly, she was thrilled to see him again, and so glad it was she who'd finally convinced him to help them. He told her he'd made a lot of progress. He'd give her a final report tomorrow. She loved that.

Otherwise, they were the well-mannered children they'd been at the hotel, although Hardy was delighted when Ron had to tell them to stop bickering over whose turn it was to get to choose the video. They were regular kids, after all. Much like his own. It continued to be a relief.

Marie - a handsome, physically confident yet soft-spoken woman in her late twenties - put on a brave front, but Ron's situation with the children here was precarious enough without the added bonus of a stranger. Even if that stranger was presented as their savior.

And, because life was never simple, Hardy got the strong impression, picking up on the household banter, that the near future of Ron and Marie as a couple was in doubt. If it turned out that Ron decided to relocate tomorrow with the children, it wasn't at all clear to Hardy that Marie would be joining them. Or that she even knew this was a contingency plan.

But after the kids had retired to the television, the two of them unpacked the bags with the practiced efficiency of a long-term couple. When they'd finished, Marie broke out a beer for each of the men.

Hardy stopped her. 'Oh, Marie? Excuse me. Have you all been here all weekend?'

Marie looked to Ron. 'Except just now, to go get groceries.'

'But yesterday? The day before?'

'What is this?' Ron asked. Hardy motioned for silence, then backed him off gently with a palm.

'Marie? Were all of you here all weekend?'

She met his gaze frankly. 'Yes. Ron got here midday Sat.u.r.day and we all got settled. Then Sunday you remember was so bad, the weather. We just stayed inside and played games and watched videos.'

'What about Sat.u.r.day night?'

'What about it? Did we go out? Why would we go out?'

'I don't know. I'm asking.'

'No.' She threw a quick glance at Ron, a small prideful smile. 'Definitely not.' The satisfied lover. 'Then last night Max had night terrors. We were up half the night.' She crossed her arms. 'Ron tells me tomorrow he'll be able to go home. We've kind of been making a game out of this. Is that what you wanted to know?'

'Exactly,' Hardy said.

Marie nodded, the worry back on her face. She spoke to Ron. 'If you need anything, just yell, all right?' She closed the door to the kitchen on her way out, telling Hardy it was nice to have met him.

He didn't completely believe her.

Although he did tend to believe what she'd said about Sat.u.r.day night. And if Ron had been here with her, he hadn't been out shooting Phil Canetta.

But the questions had ruffled Ron's feathers. 'What was all that about?'

Hardy was matter-of-fact. 'That was about proving you didn't kill Bree, which is an issue to more people than you'd like to believe. By the way, do you now or have you ever owned a Movado watch? You know, the museum timepiece, little dot at twelve o'clock?'

Ron was getting sick to death of all the questions. 'By the way, isn't this getting a bit much?' Hardy didn't respond, waiting him out, wearing him down. 'No,' he answered finally.

'Did Inspector Griffin ever ask you the same thing? About a Movado watch?'

'No. Why?'

'No reason,' Hardy said. 'Now, the day of Bree's funeral - tell me about that.'

'Jesus Christ, I don't see...'

'Ron.' Hardy was firm. 'Humor me.'

Frustration showed in his face, but resolve must have shown more clearly in Hardy's. 'What do you want to know?'

'I want to know what you did, what the kids did, where you were.'

For Hardy, it was a fundamental recital. At eight o'clock, Ron and Father Bernardin had hosted a breakfast at the St Catherine's rectory for the pallbearers - four of the other soccer dads - and he'd of course kept the children out of school so that they could be with him. The funeral ma.s.s had been at ten. At around eleven fifteen, accompanied by Marie, the children, the priest, the pallbearers, and a couple of other acquaintances from Ron and Bree's limited social circle, he drove down to Colma, where she was buried.

Both Kerry and Pierce had been to the funeral. Neither had attended the burial.

There was a short graveside service, after which Ron took Marie, Bernardin, and the kids to lunch at the Cliff House. He dropped Max and Ca.s.sandra back at Merryvale at around two, about the time Carl Griffin's body was discovered.

There could no longer be any doubt. Ron hadn't shot Carl Griffin, which meant he hadn't used the same gun to eliminate Canetta. And finally, at long last, it was a near certainty he hadn't killed his sister. As he'd sworn all along, as Frannie had believed, as Hardy had hoped, Ron Beaumont was innocent.

It was a huge load off.

It was galling for Hardy to realize he could have known all this on Friday night, Sat.u.r.day evening at the latest, if only Ron hadn't felt the need to bolt. But there was nowhere to go with that. Ron had in fact called him on Sat.u.r.day, had tried to cooperate. He hadn't known what Hardy was going through. The only thing for Hardy to do now was get his remaining questions answered while he could.

He willed a neutral tone and began. 'All right, Ron, here we go again, OK? Tell me about Bree and Damon Kerry.'

'You've gotten to him, huh? I'm not surprised.' Ron sat back and tipped up his beer.

'Do you think he killed her?'

Ron had given this question a lot of thought, and he gave it some more now. 'The problem I've always had is pure logistics. How could he have done it?'

'That's not so hard. He comes by your place after you've taken the kids to school. They talked that morning, you know. Kerry and Bree.'

'I know.'

This was a surprise. 'Do you know what they talked about?'

'No. Not specifically. I think they just talked. They did all the time. But look, the man's running for governor. He doesn't just stroll down the street and kill somebody.'

'Maybe he drove, parked in the bas.e.m.e.nt...'

Ron was shaking his head. 'And what if somebody sees him down there or in the elevator? And why?'

'She was pregnant.'

'No. They loved each other. They were talking about getting married. That's what Bree and I were having our problems about.' Ron spun his bottle nervously on the formica table. 'This wasn't my finest hour,' he said at last. 'I was upset enough with her when she started hitting the newspapers in connection with Kerry.'

'Why was that, though, exactly?'

'Because Bree isn't the most common name on earth. If Dawn ran across it...'

'How would she do that? Isn't she back in Wisconsin?'

'Why wouldn't she? She reads the paper. California news plays everywhere.'

'I thought she hated the kids.'

'When they were babies. After she saw how lucrative they could be...' He trailed off. 'Certainly she fought like h.e.l.l for the custody judgment. She thought they were her property.'

'And after she got the judgment? After you' - Hardy still had trouble with it - 'took them? I'd think Bree would be the first place she'd look.'