’Cause the sad truth is, life is hard. And the older you get, the harder it gets. And the things that seemed so cut-and-dry when you were young just aren’t so easy anymore.
The thing is, the world’s not perfect, and people aren’t perfect, and you aren’t perfect, and all those intellectual moral values that were so simple in college just don’t work in the outside world. You have to do the best you can.
So, if you want to think of Matilda Mae Smith’s twenty grand as conscience money, well fine, I can live with that. Perhaps it is. Perhaps I had selfish motives in wanting it for her. The thing is, I don’t care. Whatever the reasons, it was the right thing to do, and I’m glad I did it. I feel good about it.
And I’m pretty pleased about how the case turned out, too. True, I had confronted X, and he knew who I was, and I didn’t much like that. But MacAullif had assured me that X was going away for a long time, and the way I figured it, MacAullif’s word was as good as I could get.
And the nice thing was they probably wouldn’t even need me as a witness. After they’d taken him in, X had confessed. As Linda said, he was dumb. He bragged about it.
The cops had it all. How he had let himself into Darryl Jackson’s apartment while he was out, appropriated the knife, waited in ambush, and killed him when he returned at a quarter to one. He’d gotten out of the building just before Celia Brown took up her position on the steps. Just before the Skirt came, found Darryl Jackson dead, and ransacked the apartment looking for something. Before the Parka came, and either found Darryl Jackson dead, or didn’t go in at all.
Just before Gray Hair came and trashed the apartment too.
One of those three, MacAullif figured, probably excluding the Parka, had found and destroyed the book of johns. Because X hadn’t taken it from Darryl Jackson. He said he hadn’t, and he had no reason to lie about it, since he was confessing to everything else. He really was dumb.
And one thing you can be damn sure of, X didn’t confess before MacAullif had advised him of his constitutional rights. It was a clean collar. There were no two ways about it. X was going down.
I felt mighty good about that.
And Pamela Berringer was off the hook. She and dear old Ronnie would probably be reconciled, whether or not they ever acknowledged to each other that she knew that he knew that she knew, etc., etc.
And the car pool would continue, at least for this year. And Tommie would play with Joshua, sometimes at our house, and sometimes at theirs.
And Pamela Berringer would be just another housewife again, just as if it had never happened.
I’m just not sure how I feel about all that.
Books by Parnell Hall
Stanley Hastings private eye mysteries
Detective
Murder
Favor
Strangler
Client
Juror
Shot
Actor
Blackmail
Movie
Scam
Suspense
Cozy
Manslaughter
Hitman
Caper
Stakeout
Puzzle Lady crossword puzzle mysteries
A Clue For The Puzzle Lady
Last Puzzle & Testament
Puzzled To Death
A Puzzle In A Pear Tree
With This Puzzle I Thee Kill
And A Puzzle To Die On
Stalking The Puzzle Lady
You Have The Right To Remain Puzzled
The Sudoku Puzzle Murders
Dead Man’s Puzzle
The Puzzle Lady vs. The Sudoku Lady
The KenKen Killings
$10,000 in Small, Unmarked Puzzles
$10,000 in Small, Unmarked Puzzles
Steve Winslow courtroom dramas
The Baxter Trust
Then Anonymous Client
The Naked Typist
The Wrong Gun
The Innocent Woman
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Books by Parnell Hall