Swan Dive

first, so if—”
    ” Roy had the camera rolling when you and he made love, didn’t he?”
    She jerked, like a dog on a short leash.
    I said, ”The video equipment. Roy had it set up in the bedroom of the house in Swampscott so he could tape you and him together.”
    She remembered to breathe, but she had to try hard to get everything else started again. ”You didn’t... you didn’t look at the tapes...”
    ”No, Ms. Kelley. I didn’t and I wouldn’t. Hopefully, nobody else will either. Provided you confirm some things.”
    She looked absent now, away from it all. ”Things.”
    ”The video equipment, the camera and tripod and all, it was gone Monday morning when you woke up, right?”
    ”No.”
    ”No?”
    She shook her head to make me understand. ”No, no. It was... it was gone when I got home from the errands. I went upstairs to take a shower and saw it was gone. We’d... he’d had it set up on Sunday morning in the bedroom and it was gone. I just thought. .
    ”That Roy had gone to see Teri Angel again?”
    ”Whatever her name was.”
    ”According to one of Teri’s friends, Roy was with Teri on Saturday night. He was with you Sunday morning and night, then back again with Teri on Monday night?”
    She lifted a hand, covering her eyes. ”Look, Roy liked... he had a lot of sexual energy. And demands.”
    ”When you saw Roy on Sunday night, he asked you to stay at the house in Swampscott on Monday, didn’t he?”
    Sheilah didn’t answer.
    ”He asked you to be there so he could have an alibi, like on Friday afternoon with the cat.”
    ”You don’t understand... what I was going through. I loved him, and I didn’t want to believe what you said to me at the hospital, about him doing that to her cat and threatening his wife and the girl. So I asked him, and he... he hit me, telling me if I really loved him, I’d trust him on something that bad. That’s when I knew for sure he’d hurt the cat. When he told me I should be trusting him.”
    ”Then he asked you again to cover for him Monday night?”
    ”Yes, but he didn’t say why and I wasn’t about to ask him after the ‘trust’ thing, so I told him I’d be there and then I couldn’t, just couldn’t, I mean, what if it was going to be his wife this time, or the little girl? So I called my dad and came up here, then kept trying to call Roy , and not getting any answer, then I got worried and I drove back down there and the phone rang, the police...”
    She seemed to stall and glide to a stop. She didn’t cry, she just sat there, elbow on crossed knee, face buried in upturned palm.
    ”Ms. Kelley?”
    She stayed put.
    ”Ms. Kelley?”
    No reaction at all. I got up, thinking at least I’d have to be facing only one more woman Roy Marsh had wrecked.

    Stopping at a greasy spoon that looked like a failed Dairy Queen, I ordered lunch. I also ran over what I had.
    Sheilah Kelley’s admission about the camera and tripod being gone before Marsh was killed made everything else come together. I’d been assuming all along that whoever mugged me also murdered Roy and Teri, and no one fit as the framer. That was because only one person had the nerve and the attitude to set me up. Roy himself.
    Marsh has a bad day Friday, Hanna demanding the house, me visiting him in the shower. Not exactly a choirboy, he still doesn’t dare target Hanna or Vickie, especially after the cat episode. So he decides the best way to come out ahead is to blackmail Felicia, who wasn’t able to head Hanna off on the house. But Felicia’s too smart to be tied into the drug buy- ¡ ing in a traceable way, so he needs concrete evidence of something else unworthy. From Stansfield, Marsh knows Felicia refers clients to Teri. Maybe not grounds for disbarment, but enough leverage to pry the price of the house from Felicia. Then on Saturday night, Teri says something that makes Roy realize that Felicia is also one of Teri’s crossover freelancers and that Felicia’s next due to see her on Monday night. That gives Roy all of Sunday and Monday to plan.
    Roy comes to Boston to mug me for the gun and have me as a fall guy if something goes wrong at the Barry. But then old Roy somehow botches the camera/gun confrontation with Felicia and Teri. Felicia grabs the video stuff and the drugs and takes off, leaving me center stage in Roy ’s bungled frame.
    It all made sense if I could prove Felicia knew Teri. Stansfield and probably other divorce clients would do, even if Patch