“We booked them both, and that was the end of it. Case got dismissed pretty quick.”

“Friends in high places,” Jesse said.

“Well,” the sergeant said, “it was a Mickey Mouse charge anyway. Damn arresting officer should have just shooed them away.”

“Once he brought them in…”

“We had to book them.”

“You know anything about the girl?” Jesse said.

“All I got is her address in 1987.”

“I’ll take it,” Jesse said.

27

Molly came into Jesse’s office with a woman. The woman wore a white tunic and black pants. Her black boots had three-inch heels. Her hair was black with a dramatic silver streak in the front. Jesse could sense Molly’s approval in the way she ushered the woman in.

“Ellen Migliore,” Molly said. “Chief Stone.”

Jesse stood. They shook hands. The woman sat down. Molly left the door open and departed.

“The first Mrs. Walton Weeks,” Jesse said.

“Yes,” the woman said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I live in Italy and I only recently heard about Walton.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Migliore,” Jesse said.

“Ellen, please,” she said. “I have been away from Walton too long for this to be painful. But I was married to him for five years and I liked him.”

Jesse nodded.

“What can I do for you, Ellen?”

“No, Chief, it’s what can I do for you?”

“Jesse,” he said. “That’s why you came here? From Italy?”

“Yes,” she said. “Genoa.”

“Do you have anything specific?” Jesse said.

“No,” she said. “I knew Walton a long time ago. But I knew him well, and I care. Are there funeral arrangements yet?”

Jesse nodded.

“Lorrie?”

“Yes, as soon as the ME released the body. It was a quick and private ceremony.”

“ME?” she said.

“Medical examiner,” Jesse said.

Ellen Migliore nodded and dropped her head for a moment and was silent.

Then she said, “Poor Walton.”

Jesse nodded.

“So alone,” Ellen said.

Jesse nodded.

“He was always so alone,” Ellen said.

“Always?”

“Probably always. Certainly when I knew him.”

“Even when he was with you?” Jesse said.

“With anyone and everyone,” Ellen said.

“Talk about that,” Jesse said.

He was back in his chair now, perfectly still, one foot propped, hands folded. Rain misted on the window behind him. In the month of May there had been five clear days.

“It was as if he knew a secret,” she said. “A sad secret that only he knew, and it kept him a little separate from everyone. He was somehow distant, even in the most intimate of moments, even with the most intimate of companions.”

“Like you,” Jesse said.

“Like me, like every other woman, like every other person.”

“What was the secret?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know how to ask him. He would have said there was no secret, that he wasn’t distant.”

“Maybe he would have been right,” Jesse said.

“No,” Ellen said. “He was distant. There was a silent space around him.”

“Maybe he was just an interior guy,” Jesse said.

“Like you,” she said.

“Me?”

“Yes. You are very interior, and there is a shield of silence around you, too.”

“But do I have a sad secret?”

“I don’t know you well enough,” Ellen said. “But if I slept with you for five years, I would know.”

Jesse smiled.

“Not the worst idea I ever heard,” Jesse said.

“I am too old for you,” Ellen said.

“No,” Jesse said. “You’re not.”

Ellen smiled and bowed her head slightly toward Jesse in acknowledgment.

“I always thought it was connected to the womanizing,” she said.

“Womanizing,” Jesse said.

“Yes. He was compulsive,” she said.

“You think he did it because of his, ah, secret?” Jesse said. “Or that it was his secret?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “What I do know is that no matter how many women he had, his aloneness remained visceral.”

“He was arrested outside Baltimore,” Jesse said. “In 1987, for public indecency.”

Ellen smiled sadly.

“No doubt with a young woman,” she said.

“Yes. In the backseat of a car in the parking lot of a shopping mall.”

“He liked young women,” Ellen said.

“How young did he like them?” Jesse said.

“Sometimes maybe too young,” Ellen said. “I don’t know. If that’s the only time he was caught, he’s very lucky.”

“Girl was Bonnie Faison, she was nineteen,” Jesse said. “Mean anything to you?”

“No. But I wasn’t with him by then. He was Stephanie’s problem in 1987.”

“Did he fool around when he was with you.”

“Jesse,” she said. “He could no more not fool around than he could not breathe. I don’t think it was really a choice for him.”

“So you assume he fooled around when he was with Stephanie?”

“Of course.”

“And Lorrie?”

“Of course.”

“Do you know Carey Longley?” Jesse said.

“The woman who died with him?”

“Yes.”

“No, but I can describe her. Quite young. Quite pretty. Quite amazed to be with a man like Walton.”

“She was young and pretty,” Jesse said.

“I’ve known a hundred of her,” Ellen said.

“She was also ten weeks pregnant,” Jesse said.

Ellen sat silently for a moment.

“With Walton’s child?”

“Yes.”

“Oh,” Ellen said, “my God.”

Jesse waited. As he watched, Ellen Migliore teared up.

“How awful,” she said. “To come so close, to finally come so close…”

“He wanted children?”

“Terribly,” she said. “At least during our time.”

“And you never had any.”

“No,” she said.

“Do you know why?”

“No,” she said. “We never sought medical advice. I guess we were each more comfortable assuming the other one was at fault.”

“Have you had any since?”

“Three,” she said.

“So you figured it was his, ah, fault,” Jesse said.

“I know, fault isn’t the right word, and by the time I was having my children, I wasn’t really thinking much about Walton—but yes, one would have assumed that he was the infertile one in our marriage.”

“Apparently neither of you were,” Jesse said.

“He never had children in either of his other marriages,” Ellen said.

“Maybe this time he got medical help.”

“That would not be the Walton Weeks I knew,” Ellen said.

“People change,” Jesse said.

“Not without help,” Ellen said.

“Psychiatric help?”

“Yes. And Walton would never consider it.”

Jesse smiled.

“Sometimes people change,” he said.

Ellen shrugged slightly.

“Or circumstances do,” she said.

“You think he needed shrink help,” Jesse said.

“The infertility thing bothered him,” she said. “And that distance-around-him thing, and…the womanizing. Yes, he needed help.”

“Do you know the other wives?” Jesse said.

“I’ve met them. I don’t really know them.”

“Do you know why he was in Boston?”

“No.”

“Do you know of any connection with Paradise.”

“Of course,” she said. “You don’t know?”

Jesse shook his head.

“He used to come here as a boy. His parents would rent a place every summer. He and his mother would spend the summers here. His father would come on the weekends.”

“Where was the house?” Jesse said.

“He said it was near the beach. Some college professor went to Europe every summer and rented his house out.”

“Did he ever come here later?” Jesse said.

“Not that I know of. But it was always, pardon the pun, a paradise lost for him. He always talked about it as if it were magical.”

“Do you have any idea who might have killed him?”

“No,” she said.

Jesse was quiet.

“But,” she said, “I’ll bet it was a woman, or about a woman.”

“Do you have an alibi for the time of his death?” Jesse said.

“I know you have to ask,” she said. “Yes, I have an alibi.”

“I haven’t told you exactly when he died,” Jesse said.