But it wasn’t right of me to say any of that or to pressure her. If I did, I’d be like everyone else who tried to control her life rather than letting her figure out on her own what she wanted. Besides, any time someone pushed Stacey, she inevitably wanted to go in the opposite direction.
I stopped my mental panic hamster wheel. She’d opened this wanting to know what I planned to do. “I don’t see the link.”
She huffed like it was obvious and I was being intentionally obtuse, making her say something that she didn’t want to say. “If you’re staying on full-time at Sugarwood, then there won’t be a position for me. Since I’m not doing all the jobs Noah did, I can’t expect you to pay me a full-time wage for part-time equipment maintenance. And I need full-time income to support Noah and me.”
She sounded defensive. So much so that I almost missed the little break in her voice when she said for me.
She wasn’t defensive. She was defending herself from the disappointment of not having a place here. She’d decided she wanted to stay, but now that I wasn’t moving to DC—wasn’t even sure I’d continue practicing law—she thought I’d want to take back the roles at Sugarwood that I’d handed over to her.
Even if I went back to working at Sugarwood full-time, I wouldn’t want to take back those jobs. “You have a job here no matter what I choose. I thought you knew that.”
Stacey shook her head, opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, and then shook her head again.
My heart hurt a little with every beat over the thought that she’d been sitting at home worrying over this. Russ and I agreed we wouldn’t talk to Stacey about the job again until she was ready because we didn’t want her to feel pressured. It seemed that had been a mistake.
Stacey wasn’t a hugger, so I didn’t try even though I wanted to. “We’ve been afraid you didn’t want to work here anymore. Both Russ and I want you here, training to take over for him someday, no matter what I decide. Okay?”
Stacey dipped her head. “Then I’d like the job. I’d like to stay here at Sugarwood.”
We ate cookies and chatted about other things for another half hour. Before Stacey left, I couldn’t help myself. I had to hold Noah for a few minutes.
Until he arrived, I hadn’t had much experience with babies, and I hadn’t understood what people meant when they said it was love at first sight with their kids. If I felt this way about Noah, I could only imagine what it would be like when Mark and I had our own children.
It felt like the breath had been sucked from my body. Maybe that was why Darlene tried to kill Clement. Their son. Clement had likely been with him during the fishing trip when he died. He was too young in the photos to have gone alone.
It was possible Darlene blamed Clement for their son’s death and hadn’t been able to take it anymore.
22
I passed the next few days working with Nancy and Stacey to get the new items up on the website, collecting all Clement’s medical records from the specialists he’d seen who’d diagnosed him with fatal insomnia, and researching everything I could find on the condition.
I focused on other cases where people with fatal insomnia had exhibited hallucinations. There wasn’t much information. The condition was so rare. I was able to find a neurologist in New York who’d studied the condition and had published scholarly articles on the topic. He’d agreed to testify if I needed him.
Whether I liked it or not, my trial by fire to see if I should join Anderson in his practice or investigate a new career was turning out to be a case that would have challenged even my parents in the courtroom.
But assuming I could prove that Clement’s condition had been genuine, I might have figured out a way to keep Clement out of prison. There’d been a sleep-walking case a few years ago where a man believed he was fighting with an intruder and accidentally killed his wife. It was so similar to Clement’s case that I could argue it set a precedent for finding Clement not guilty.
This afternoon, I planned to go back to the pharmacy since Saul should have returned to work by now. I wanted him to identify the medications in Clement’s pill bottle. Once I knew what they were, I’d find another expert I could call to the stand to confirm that the pills substituted for Clement’s could cause severe insomnia.
I was on my way to the car to head to Dr. Horton’s when my cell phone rang.
“I have pictures for you, Ms. Fitzhenry-Dawes,” Hal said. “The lady you asked me to tail met twice with the same guy, and they looked awfully friendly. You want to come pick physical copies up or you want me to email you the files.”
Awfully friendly was a euphemism for might be having an affair.
I’d been wondering why Darlene would have waited so long to punish Clement if she blamed him for the death of their son. Perhaps it was because she was so dependent on Clement. It was possible she’d been afraid of being on her own. If she’d found someone to take Clement’s place, that could explain why she’d finally acted on a desire to punish her husband for not protecting their child.
I tapped my phone softly against my cheek. We were only a weekend away from Clement’s preliminary hearing. The best idea seemed to be for me to take a picture of the man to Clement today and see if he recognized him in case it was a family member.
I couldn’t afford to waste time investigating this if it turned out he was Darlene’s cousin or something, consoling with her because her husband was in prison on the charge of murder. I had told her it would be good if she had someone to lean on. She might have called a relative.
If I was showing them to Clement, or later to Darlene to confront her, a larger image than I could bring up on my phone would serve better. I still didn’t want to let Clement know I suspected Darlene, though. “I’ll come get them from you. Did you get any pictures of the man alone?”
“A couple when he was getting back in his car.”
“Do you have his name yet?”
“Naw. Be nice if he offered it up, but he didn’t, and I stuck with my tail instead of following him.”
Technically the right call, but frustrating none the less. “See what you can do for me, okay?”
“Sure thing.”
I arranged to meet him in twenty minutes since his office wasn’t in Fair Haven. It meant postponing my trip to the pharmacy, but Saul wasn’t going anywhere, and this could be the lead that finally solved this puzzle. Even knowing what the pills were meant nothing if I didn’t have a motive to show why they’d been put there intentionally and maliciously.
Before I left his office, I looked through the pictures. They didn’t clear up whether the man Darlene had met with was a lover or a friend. He hadn’t gotten any shots of them holding hands or kissing, but they’d met twice in the span of a week. Hal had taken a couple shots of them hugging.
I headed straight for the prison. If Clement didn’t recognize the man, our next step would be figuring out who he was.
I left all but one clear shot of the man’s face in my car. Soon I’d need to tell Clement what I suspected, but I couldn’t gauge what would happen when I did. Some men, when faced with their wife’s infidelity or sabotage, turned angry. Others sank into depression. If he ended up going to prison for life for the murder of his best friend because of something his beloved wife did, I was afraid of what he might do to himself.
When I sat across the table from Clement, his leg jiggled so hard that the table had a slight vibration to it like we were sitting next to train tracks with a train going by.
“I didn’t expect to see you again before the arraignment.” He moved a hand under the table, and the jittering stopped as if he were holding his leg still. “Has something new happened?”
I handed him the photo. “I’m following every lead I can. Do you recognize this man?”
Clement brought the photo close to him and stared at it. There was no twitch of recognition. His expression didn’t shift at all—no extra swallowing, no downward pull on his lips, no tensing of his eye muscles. Nothing.
