Blue Lake by Elizabeth Buhmann

Author:Elizabeth Buhmann [Buhmann, Elizabeth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781094643601
Published: 2019-05-29T22:00:00+00:00

18

What Possible Harm

Al was now quite lost. “Who is Maisie?”

“A girl who killed herself a long time ago.” She waved it off. “Alice was confused, she was in and out of the past. But not when she said she saw him.”

He was beginning to feel stupid, saying over and over, What? Who? So he just waited.

“She said she saw Tiberius the day her daughter drowned. I’m sure that’s what she said.” She turned to face him. “His family said he was at home, but she saw him there. Before and after, she said.”

“She told the police that?”

“I think…” Regina looked away, frowning and biting her lip in concentration. “She said nobody believed her, so I guess so. But she saw him.”

He couldn’t help thinking that if Alice Hannon was as disoriented as Regina described, they might very well not have believed her. But he didn’t say that.

Regina continued, seemingly thinking aloud rather than talking to him. “Well. On second thought. She said she told Robert. And Sophie said that Robert was the one who accused him.” She stopped at the corner of Ninth and Broad. “I went to the library in Lynchburg yesterday and found the old newspaper reports about the investigation. The sheriff questioned him, but he had an alibi. If she says she saw him—was she just outnumbered? Their word against hers?”

He shrugged and shook his head. “No way to know.”

“I wish I knew how it went for real. What the police knew. Anyway, I thought I’d read the Richmond papers.”

He followed her eyes in the direction of the library. “Now?”

She nodded. “I have to get back. I want to go to the hospital. But I’m going to do this first. Just maybe an hour.”

“I wish I could help you, but I have to go back to work.”

“Right, you go ahead.”

Neither of them moved.

Then she said, “Al, do you think, if I asked, that the police would tell me what happened?”

“It was a long time ago, but they probably have some record. For a family member, they might.”

“It was the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office that handled it. The Richmond police were involved too, because of the cases here, but it was the sheriff who was quoted in the paper. If I asked?” She looked at him inquiringly, as if he would know, and he shrugged again. She dropped her eyes. “I don’t have the nerve.”

“I think my dad knows somebody in the sheriff’s office. He knows everybody. I could ask him.”

“Would you do that for me?”

He mimed sweeping off a hat and bowed like d’Artagnan, knowing he looked like an idiot on a busy avenue in the middle of Richmond. “I would do anything for you.”

She rolled her eyes and laughed. Then her face clouded over again. “I just want to know. How can it hurt to ask? It bothers me that she says no one believed her. I know she’d be the worst possible witness, so confused. I wonder if she was that confused then?”

“I’ll ask. Meanwhile, you can call me anytime.

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