Vindication Read online

  “That, and the fact that her dad’s a big deal in Georgia politics,” Miss Atlanta said. “I bet he knows the judges.”

  “Maybe so,” Sarah said, “but what’s done is done. It’s out of our control.”

  Miss Atlanta had been right. Polly Norris won the crown and would spend the next year as Miss Georgia. Sarah went back to Berrien County and resumed her life. She wasn’t too unhappy, although there were days when her feet hurt and her back ached from waiting tables, and her thoughts would turn briefly to what might have been. How would her life be different if she’d gone to college, studied voice, made it big in the entertainment field? She’d daydream a bit before snapping back to reality and laughing at herself. She might have worked hard and earned her degree but never made it as a singer. What then? She’d have ended up in Nashville waitressing in a diner and singing in church on Sundays.

  Maybe the degree would have given her entrée to the business world where a good education and inquiring mind could have propelled her to great success. But she had come to understand that sometimes life comes at you hard and you just have to adjust. Maybe she had made wrong choices along the way, choices she didn’t even know she had, and had thereby doomed herself to waiting tables. Maybe one’s life is preordained and nothing you can do will change the trajectory. Maybe pipe dreams are just that. Pipe dreams.

  Sarah had not seen Polly after the pageant. She spent the night in the hotel room alone and assumed that Polly was with her family. The next morning, Bill Perry drove Sarah and her father home to Nashville, and Sarah eased back into the rhythms of life in a small town in South Georgia.

  It wasn’t all bad, she told herself. She was surrounded by friends and family, people she’d known her entire life, and a majority of the customers in the diner were locals, most of whom she knew.

  The local library was full of books about the larger world, and Sarah devoured them with a rapaciousness found only in the hungriest of minds. Over the years, her reading provided her with an education that would be the envy of most college graduates. Her knowledge of current events, literature, philosophy, history, and other liberal arts was wide and deep.

  Sarah Kyle was a happy woman, but still, over the years, the “what ifs” would pop unbidden into her consciousness. What if she’d won? What if she’d become Miss Georgia, maybe even Miss America? What if her singing career had taken off? How would a college degree have changed her life? And she would shrug and tuck those thoughts carefully back into the recesses of her mind, because all the comparisons did was demean the only life she had.

  CHAPTER 2

  NASHVILLE, GEORGIA – JUNE 1985

  SARAH KYLE WAS in her late thirties, but could have passed for fifty. She was waiting tables in the diner where she had worked since she was a teenager. A stranger, a man whom Sarah judged to be in his early sixties, was sitting in a booth next to the plate glass window that overlooked the street. He wore an expensive suit and silk tie. Carefully cut gray hair covered his head and his fingernails looked as if he had a manicurist on permanent retainer. He had finished his breakfast and was dawdling over coffee.

  It was nearing nine o’clock and the place had emptied out. The people who lived in this rural part of Georgia were early risers who ate their breakfast and went to work. There was no time for lingering. The owner stood behind the cash register at the end of the counter, reading the morning newspaper. Sarah took a fresh pot of coffee to the man in the booth. “Refill?” she asked.

  “Yes, thank you. You’re Sarah Kyle, aren’t you?” His voice was tinged with the distinct accent, recognizable to most Georgians as that of a person who’d lived his whole life in Atlanta.

  Sarah was surprised, but nodded. “I used to be.”

  “Can you sit and talk for a few minutes?”

  “I’m on the clock,” she said, a bit wary now.

  “I know. But I wanted to meet with you and I didn’t know any other way to go about it.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you want to meet with me?”

  “Are you still singing?”

  She laughed. “God, no. Who are you?”

  “My name’s John Peters. I own a string of auto dealerships in Atlanta.”

  “And what brings you all the way down to Berrien County, Mr. Peters?”

  “I came to see you.”

  “Okay. I’ll bite. Why did you come all the way down here to see me?”

  “To apologize.”

  “For what?”

  “Ask your boss if you can take a fifteen-minute break to talk to me. I think it’ll be worth your while.”

  “How so?”

  “I was a judge in the Miss Georgia pageant years ago. The one you should have won.”

  That hit her like a jolt of electricity. She stepped back and stood stock still, staring at the man. “I don’t understand,” she finally said.

  “Come talk to me.”

  Intrigued by the man and his mission, Sarah asked her boss if he’d mind if she sat with the guest for a few minutes. He didn’t.

  “Tell me what this is all about,” Sarah said as she slid into the booth across from the stranger.

  “I’ve lived a good life,” he said. “I’ve built a large and lucrative business and I did it by hard work and honest dealings. I’ve raised my children to be men and women of integrity and I’m very proud of the way they’ve turned out. I was recently diagnosed with a rare and untreatable lung disease. It’s terminal and I need to make right the only unethical thing I’ve ever done in my life.”

  “What does this have to do with me?”

  “As I said, I was one of the five judges at the Miss Georgia Pageant. I was responsible for your not winning that year.”

  “I’m confused,” Sarah said.

  “I put out the word to the other judges that you were pregnant and we couldn’t have a pregnant Miss Georgia.”

  Sarah was stunned. “That’s absurd. I was still a virgin when I went up to Macon that year.”

  “Well, obviously, I didn’t know about that, but it wouldn’t have mattered. You were headed for the win, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

  Sarah was confused. It had never crossed her mind that the pageant could have been fixed. She knew, of course, that she’d won the talent event, but she’d always assumed that she just didn’t do well enough in the other areas to even make the final five.

  Her mind was churning. She’d accepted her loss and was thankful for the opportunity to compete. She knew there was life after the pageant, and even if she’d gone on to the Miss America contest, the time for her to enjoy the fame was fleeting. As it was, she had left Macon disappointed that she would not be able to go to college, but still happy enough with her life. She came back to the diner and met a young man that had been four years ahead of her in high school and, after a year of dating, she married him.

  It was a good marriage and in quick succession produced two boys, who were now in their teens. Her husband worked on a ground maintenance crew at the nearby Moody Air Force Base. His work was steady even if it didn’t pay well. Her income from the diner supplemented his salary to the extent that they could live in a small house with a big mortgage, but there was little left over for luxuries.

  Sarah had often wondered how her life could have been different if she’d been able to go to college, if she’d won the pageant and gotten the scholarship money, but it wasn’t in her nature to dwell on disappointments or thoughts of what might have been. She was reasonably happy with her lot in life, loved her two boys, and liked her husband well enough.

  Sarah came out of her reverie. “What are you talking about?” she asked. “Why would you do something like that?”

  “I was having an affair with Polly Norris,” he said, “and she and I cooked up a way for her to win.”

  “You were having an affair with Polly? She must have been half your age.”

  “I don’t think you’d call it an affair, really. We were having sex during the pageant. It started a
week before when I met her at a cocktail party put on by the organization that sponsored the Miss Atlanta Northside contest. She came on to me, and God forgive me, I responded.”

  “How did you pull it off?” Sarah asked.

  “The affair?”

  “I don’t care about the affair. I mean how did you fix the pageant?”

  “You did very well in the interviews on Monday. I thought you were the best and gave you a high score. So did the other judges. But, when I saw you sing in the event on Tuesday night, I knew nobody could compete with that. Polly’s twirling certainly wouldn’t come close. You were beautiful and I thought you’d do well in both the evening dress and swimsuit competition. I had to undo some of the interview scoring and make sure that you didn’t win anything else. I couldn’t touch the talent scores. You were that good.”

  “How did you fix that?”

  “Easy enough. I told the other judges that I’d heard from a medical source in your hometown that you were pregnant. I’d known the rest of the judges for a long time and they trusted my word. Three of them have died, and I’ve fessed up to the one survivor. He agreed with me that I should talk to you.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Mr. Peters,” Sarah said, her anger rising. “It’s too late to change anything, so I’m not sure why you came all the way down here to tell me this. Maybe it makes you feel better, but it just makes me think about what might have been, the opportunities I might have had, if you hadn’t been so morally corrupt. Was your affair worth it?”

  “The affair, if you can call it that, ended when the pageant ended. I think the last night was a kind of thank-you from Polly. The next morning, she told me that we were finished.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I went home to my wife and children.”

  “Did you tell your wife what you’d done?”

  “No. It would have broken her heart.”

  “Did it occur to you that telling me this would break my heart?” The anger was subsiding now and morphing into a sad acceptance that even decent people sometimes do bad things to good people and walk away from the disasters they leave in the lives of those they have wronged. “Knowing that I didn’t win has never been a big deal to me. I just got on with my life. Now, knowing that I should have won and my life would probably have been very different, I have to live with the fact that I got screwed out of a better life. Literally.”

  “I’ve thought about that. I’ve learned a lot about you, your family, and your life since the pageant. I may have robbed you of your best chance for a better life.”

  “Are you going to tell your wife now that you seem to need to make apologies to people you’ve wronged?”

  “My wife died last year. She never knew.”

  “I’m sorry for your loss, but what do you want from me? Forgiveness?”

  “No. I think that’d be too much to ask of you.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know. If I’d won that pageant, I’d probably never have married the man I did, and I wouldn’t have the two boys I love better than life itself. We have to work hard and scrimp to get by, but we live and work among friends. I’ve known most of them for my entire life. It’s not a bad life when you think about it. So, if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll forgive you. I don’t think I’ll be able to forgive Polly. I thought she was my friend.”

  “I’d like to give you some money. Enough to make your life easier.”

  Sarah shook her head. “That’s not necessary, Mr. Peters. I won’t take your money. Certainly not just to assuage your guilt. Maybe that’s your punishment. To end your life knowing you couldn’t fully make amends. Thank you for coming.” She stood, left the booth, and walked into the kitchen.

  John Peters paid his check for breakfast and left the diner. He did not leave a tip.

  Six months later, Bill Perry, the man who had paid for Sarah’s extras at the pageant, came into the diner at midmorning. He stopped at the front and spoke quietly to the owner behind the counter. He walked over to Sarah and said, “Your boss said we could talk for a minute. Can you get us some coffee and sit with me?”

  Sarah came back with two cups of coffee. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “I know you met with John Peters a few months back.”

  Sarah was surprised. She’d never told anyone about that meeting. She didn’t want to hear a lot of commiseration. What was done was done and she couldn’t change anything, even if she’d wanted to. “How did you hear that?” she asked.

  “John came to see me right after he talked to you. He hired me to represent him as his lawyer and told me what he’d told you. He said it was privileged information and he was depending on the attorney-client privilege to keep me from ever speaking of it to another soul. Ever. He made one exception. He told me he wanted me to talk to you after he died.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Yes. His son just called me. John left written instructions to notify me upon his death.”

  “There’s a part of me, that bitter part I try to keep tamped down, that wants to be happy he’s dead, but I’m doing my best not to think like that. Did he tell you what happened at the Miss Georgia contest?”

  “He did. It was despicable. Nobody can ever make that right for you.”

  “I’m okay, Bill. I was shocked when he first told me about the situation, but I’m not that disappointed about it. My life would have been different, but it might not have been as good. Knowing that if I’d won I probably wouldn’t have my two boys makes me glad I didn’t win. Those boys are my life. It all worked out. Still, that little kernel of bitterness doesn’t go away. I just try not to dwell on what might have been.”

  “John told me he’d offered you money to help make up for what he did. You refused to take it.”

  “Yeah. It wouldn’t have changed a thing, and I thought the only reason he offered me the money was to make himself feel better.” She chuckled. “I guess I didn’t want to let him off. He ought to feel guilty.”

  “He was a very rich man, Sarah, but he told me he would not insult you further by leaving you anything when he died.”

  “Good for him.”

  “However, he did say that he didn’t think it would insult you if he left your children something.”

  “Crap. What did he do?”

  “He had me set up a trust for each of your boys. Enough to pay for a college education for each of them to include room, board, tuition, books, and a generous stipend for spending money. It’s enough to send them to the finest schools in the country.”

  Sarah was stunned. She sat back in her chair. “He was a smart bastard, wasn’t he? He knew I couldn’t turn down something like that for my boys. He knew we’d never be able to afford to send them to college. I can’t turn him down, can I?”

  “I don’t see how, Sarah. It was very generous. I think he was genuinely remorseful about what he did to you. Take the money and give your boys the chances to do what you couldn’t because of his chicanery.”

  “You know what, Bill? In the end, it’s probably a fair trade. Who knows where that other road, the one that would have stretched before me if I’d won, might have taken me?”

  “We’ll never know, Sarah. Take care of those boys.”

  THE INVESTIGATION

  CHAPTER 3

  CONWAY TWITTY WAS singing “Hello Darling,” the mellow tones burrowing into my sleeping brain, goading me awake, and interrupting a pleasant dream that was dissipating even as I shook off the bonds of Morpheus. As awareness displaced the dream, I realized I was in my own bed in my cottage on the north end of Longboat Key, Florida. I’d once paid a buck twenty-five for the ringtone that was issuing from my cell phone. Jennifer Diane Duncan, the police detective known as J.D., the woman whom I loved, thought it a waste of good money, even though I had assigned the ring to her incoming calls.

  The light of a March morning was peeking through the window blinds, the high angle of the sun glaring at me with disdain for sleeping so late on a Friday. I glanced at
the clock on my bedside table. Nine a.m. Most mornings I had already finished my daily jog on the beach.

  I fumbled for the phone, almost dropping it. “Were you afraid I was sleeping too late?” I asked.

  “No. I’ve got a problem,” J.D. said. “Aunt Esther is in the Sumter County jail.”

  “What?”

  “She’s charged with murder.”

  “That’s absurd. What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know. I just got a call from Sue Rapp, her next-door neighbor. She said the deputies took her away about fifteen minutes ago. One of them told Sue that Esther was being charged with murder. Apparently, Esther’s house is crawling with cops. They’re searching the place.”

  “There’s got to be some mistake.”

  “Must be. I’m going to call the sheriff’s office up there and see what’s going on.”

  “No, don’t do that. Let me handle it.”

  “She’s my aunt, Matt.”

  “I know, but I’m her lawyer. Or I will be as soon as I can get to Bushnell. Let’s not interject you into this just yet. If the authorities know you’re a police detective, they might close ranks. They won’t want there to be even a whiff of favoritism to come back and bite them. The sheriff has to face election, you know.”

  “You might be right.”

  “I’ll make a call to the jail and get ready to go up there. Why don’t you come on over. I’ll put the coffee on.”

  I booted up my computer and found the number for the Sumter County Detention Center and called, identified myself as a lawyer, and asked to speak to the supervisor. I explained to him that I had been retained to represent Esther Higgins and that I would be arriving at the jail in a few hours. I insisted that he make a notation in the file that Esther was represented and that there would be no interrogation until I could meet with her.

  The supervisor, who identified himself as Lieutenant Chris Ricks, told me that he expected Esther to arrive at the detention center momentarily. I asked for his email address and he gave it to me. I hung up and emailed him, confirming our conversation. I didn’t want anyone at the jail to conveniently forget that I had called and invoked Esther’s right to silence. And if they did forget, I’d use that email to suppress all the evidence they found as a result of any conversation they had with my client.