Third Degree (A Murder 101 Mystery)

you.” A single tear dripped down the side of his nose.
    I took the small white envelope from his hand, still sealed, and looked down at it. My name was on the front. “What is this?”
    George shrugged and, with that effort, folded in on himself. “I don’t know,” he said, beginning to sob. “All I know is that it was with the suicide note that she left me. And it’s addressed to you. You’re Bergeron, right?”
    “I’m Bergeron,” I said, now figuring out why Ginny always referred to me by my last name. It was obviously a habit she had picked up from her rough-hewn husband.
    As I turned to walk away, Ginny Miller’s note in my hands, I heard him say one last thing that I hoped would be the last I would ever have to hear him say unless it related to garbage pickup.
    “I would have forgiven her, you know.”
    According to the note she left me, which I read in my car in front of the Millers’ house, Ginny didn’t think he would have.
    And according to the note, Ginny was terrified of George finding out, and clearing his good name was the only way she could atone for her sins.
    According to the note, which had been left under George’s pillow, Ginny Miller had been deathly afraid of George, a fact that surprised me more than anything else I had learned in the past week. I figured it would be the other way around, having gotten to know Ginny as well as I had.
    And according to this note—which I wished I had never seen—not only had Ginny Miller never cared for my mother, she had never even met her. She had only found out about my beloved mother, Giselle, and her death through a memorial note that I published in the local paper every year on the anniversary, in which I expressed my love for my mother and my profound sadness at her passing. After that, it wasn’t hard to figure out that she had been treated at Phelps while Ginny was working there, even though Ginny was working in maternity at the time and had never even considered oncology as a profession. It was all there in Ginny’s handwriting, the words seared into my brain.
    She asked for my forgiveness, but I wasn’t in a very forgiving mood. And the only person who could help me reach full forgiveness was still not talking about his alleged transgressions and was still very angry at those who accused him of things he would never dream of doing.
    I tore the note up into what seemed like a thousand little pieces, and as I drove away, scattered them on the Millers’ street. I had been emotionally blackmailed into helping a woman exonerate her pig of a husband, and if that wasn’t the stupidest thing I had ever done, I wasn’t sure what was.
    The only place I could think to go was a short drive away and flanked by the highway on both sides. This was the place that was supposedly Babe Ruth’s final resting place, as well as that of Miles Davis, so to say that its residents were quite an illustrious and talented group would be an understatement.
    My mother’s grave was under a giant oak toward the center of the cemetery, and even though the day was hot and humid, I was chilled by the time I got there. I wrapped my arms around myself as I knelt before the stone, just to the left of my father’s, and wiped away a year of grime that had collected in the etched letters that showed her name: Giselle Bergeron.
    “I’m getting married, Mom,” I said as if she were standing right in front of me; the tombstone was just her stand-in. “You’d love him. He’s nice, he’s smart, and best of all, he’s tall!” I imagined her beautiful smile and her melodic laugh; she always told me that I was the funniest person she knew but it wasn’t until after she died that I realized that that was a compliment and not a criticism. “And he loves me. I’m not sure why, but he does.” I stared at the words on the stone until the letters blurred together. “I’m going to see if just letting myself be happy for a while works out.” I laughed. “I know! I’m maturing finally. You always hoped that would happen.” I looked around but I was the only person in this section of the cemetery. The trees were still in the mucky humid air. “He would have loved you just as much as I did. Just as much as I do.” I put a hand on the stone which sat beneath an angel that had watched over my mother since she had arrived here. I reached up and touched the toes of the angel, something I did every year while I made a wish for the coming year. I don’t know when that