David Handler - The Bright Silver Star

“How could you let Dodge get away with that, Will? How could you cover for him?”

“I had to.”

“Why, because he was like a father to you? That doesn’t justify it.”

“You don’t understand, Mitch. I had no choice.” Will fell silent, shifting around next to him on the ledge. “I hit a pretty bad patch after my dad died. Got into some real trouble. I-I stole a car and accidentally ran somebody down in East Dorset. An old lady. I almost killed her, Mitch. Dodge was a state senator then. He went to bat for me. Kept the newspapers out of it. Got the charges dropped. My record is clean, and I have Dodge to thank for that. I owe him, okay? And I will always be loyal to him. He’s big on loyalty. He’s big on trust. Can you understand that?”

“I guess I can,” Mitch said, recalling the steely way Dodge had stared at Will on the beach when he’d said the word “trust.”

“Esme could never make Tito happy,” Will went on. “She neverknew why. And it was a source of tremendous pain for her. He felt bad about that, because he was hurting her and he knew it. But there was only one person on the face of the earth who could make him truly happy, Mitch, and that person was me. With everybody else, he was just acting.”

“How do you know he wasn’t acting when he was with you, too?”

“Because it was real, damn it!” Will cried out, enraged. “We loved each other!”

“How long were you two together?”

“We met the day he and Esme arrived in town. The Crocketts had us over for dinner and… and we just stared at each other across the dining table all evening long. Couldn’t take our eyes off of each other. God, Tito had the most beautiful eyes. He made the first move, out on the patio after dessert. I’ll never forget those first words he said to me, not for as long as I live. He said, ‘I’d better warn you-I’ll break your heart.’ I said I’d take my chances. And he did break my heart-because he loved being a star more than he loved me. It wasn’t just the money. It was being Tito Molina. He wouldn’t give it up for anything, Mitch. I was willing to sacrifice my marriage, my business, everything I’d ever worked for. I was willing to throw it all away for him. But he wasn’t willing to do that for me.” Will let out a heartbroken sob. “And now he’s dead and, God, I miss him so much.”

“You should have thought of that before you killed him.”

“I didn’t think, don’t you see? I lashed out in a blind rage. I just couldn’t stand to lose him. Tito was my true soul mate, Mitch. Someone like that… it only happens once in a lifetime.”

“It can happen twice, if you’re real lucky.”

“I loved him, Mitch. And he loved me. Just not enough. He wouldn’t leave Esme for me. He wouldn’t risk his career for me. That’s what he came up here to tell me that night. That he had to b-break it off.”

Mitch uncapped the peppermint schnapps and took a swig. “I didn’t know what he was mixed up in, Will, but he did tell me he felt trapped. I urged him to get clear of whatever it was. So whatever hesaid to you that night-it was partly my fault. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“Don’t blame yourself, Mitch,” Will said to him insistently. “Tito broke it off because he wanted to break it off. And when it came time to do it he was ice cold. Do you want to know what he said to me? He said, ‘This doesn’t have to end badly, it just has to end.’ Like he was talking about a service contract on a kitchen appliance. I wouldn’t listen. I couldn’t imagine not being with him. I begged him. He refused. We argued. And now I’m all alone.”

“Will, how much did Donna know?”

“She knew that I’d been involved with men, if that’s what you mean. Not a big deal, as far as she was concerned. Not until lately, that is.”

“Since you’d met Tito?”

“I started coming home from work later and later. My physical interest in her fell way off. She kept asking me, ‘Who is it?’ And I said ‘You don’t have to worry, it’s nothing.’ And then one night she caught Tito dropping me off at The Works after we’d been up here together. My own fault. It was late. I thought she’d already gone home for the night. I was wrong. She said, ‘What are you doing with him?’ And I said, ‘We’re friends.’ And she said ‘Since when?’ Donna was no dummy, Mitch. She knew what was going on. She was hurt. And she was afraid. She started drinking a lot more than usual. And flirting. Trying to make me jealous. I saw her getting all frisky with you at the beach club.”

“That was the night you killed him. Did she know about that, too?”

“She put two and two together,” Will acknowledged. “She started acting very guarded around me, very uneasy. I didn’t think she’d turn me in. She did love me, after all. But I was afraid that she’d get involved with someone else. You, maybe. And that one night she’d have herself a little too much to drink and blab my little secret. This is Dorset, Mitch. The most dangerous weapon here isn’t a gun, it’s a whisper. I couldn’t risk it. I couldn’t take that chance.”

“So you killed her.”

“I suggested we try to rekindle our romance at the Yankee Doodle. We’d been joking about the place for ages. She loved the idea. She even bought herself some sleazy black lingerie for our little tryst. We made it all into a game. We arranged to meet there a half hour apart, just like a pair of illicit lovers afraid of being found out. She got there first.”

“And she paid for the room with her credit card,” Mitch said. “She didn’t try to keep it off the household books, or disguise her identity. She didn’t have to, because the man who she was meeting was her own husband. Dodge was right about her, you know. He put his finger right on it-Donna wasn’t the type to sleep around.”

“I couldn’t risk it,” Will repeated vehemently. “When I spoke to Des this morning I reversed our roles. I told her it was Donna who was slipping out on me. All a lie, of course. There was no boyfriend. And no catering gig after the Merchants Association dinner. I made all of that up. I parked our van behind a beauty parlor just down the road from the Yankee Doodle. I didn’t want anyone to spot it in the motel parking lot. That was the one thing I couldn’t chance. I brought along a change of clothes as part of our game, and I left nothing behind. Not even the towels I used to wipe the blood off of my hands. I burned it all when I got home. Towels, clothes, my flip-flops-just like you said. And then I got busy acting like the concerned husband. I called our late man, Rich. I called the state police. And I waited there for someone to knock on my door to tell me Donna was dead. Des, as it turned out. I think I was pretty convincing as the grieving widower. I learned a few pointers about acting from Tito. The main thing he told me is you have to believe the dialogue. I believed it, all right. I believed every damned word of it.”

“How could you do it, Will? How could you murder Donna that way? Tito I can comprehend. It was a momentary spasm of anger. But Donna’s death was something that you plotted out really, really carefully. How could you?”

“I told you, I’m not in control of myself anymore!” he cried out. “I loved Donna, don’t you see? And now I’m all alone and I’m scared and I’m desperate and I-I don’t want to go to prison for therest of my life. That’s why I had to kill her. If she’d told anyone, I’d be finished.”

“You are finished, Will. It’s all over now. Come on, let’s go do the right thing, okay? Let’s go call Des. I’ll be by your side the whole way, I promise.” Mitch fumbled around in the dark for his tape recorder, shut it off and stuck it in the back pocket of his shorts. Then he grabbed the schnapps bottle and climbed to his feet, flicking his flashlight beam on Will. “Tell me something-was it any easier?”