Due Justice

Epilogue

Chief Hathaway marked the Michael Morgan murder closed. O’Connell’s firm was for sale, half a step ahead of foreclosure after over-extended their lines of credit for breast implant litigation. His written confession contained lengthy details of his downward financial spiral, meant to persuade doubters of his guilt. Hathaway and the State’s Attorney accepted.

O’Connell and Pricilla had been the epitome of our society for fifty years, as had their families before them. Public disgrace was more than they could bear.

I chose not to challenge O’Connell’s bluff.

The Worthington’s joint funeral was standing room only. Everybody, including me and George, Kate, the Warwicks, Carly and Grover, and the rest of Tampa, was visibly saddened.

Bill Sheffield told us his bank had been providing Worthington’s financing. The firm declared bankruptcy; lawyers scrambled for new jobs.

CJ occupied in the family pew, sobbing like a child at the death of his only sister and his life-long friend. Would he be more antagonistic toward me, or less, because of the role I’d played in their deaths?

When he couldn’t pin it on Grover, Ben Hathaway gave up and charged Fred Johnson with blackmailing Morgan. Johnson was disbarred, convicted and ordered to make restitution to Morgan’s estate. No one’s figured out what to do with the money. The legal wrangling will likely last beyond our lifetimes.

The package Cilla left for me on her dressing table before she died contained her diary and the four missing pictures from Morgan’s piano. The two nudes were Morgan and the very young, very beautiful Pricilla Worthington. Glory days?

I only read three sections of Cilla’s diary.

First, the passage describing the coincidence placing both of us in Carly’s apartment. She’d been searching for Morgan’s disk; panicked when I showed up. She said she’d never hit anyone on the head before, and thought she’d killed me, but was glad she didn’t.

Me, too.

Not a bowling ball, though. She’d used a Steuben vase. Good to know. Maybe a bowling ball is softer.

The second segment, her account of the night she killed Morgan, contained few surprises. After I’d discovered her name on Morgan’s list of accounts receivable and recognized her nude picture captured in Robin’s video, I’d suspected her. Saving her reputation, the rest of her money, and her husband was plenty of motive. Under the circumstances, many women would have done what Pricilla did. When O’Connell surrendered, my suspicions had been confirmed.

The final pages outlined her plan to kill herself. Sooner or later, she said, Hathaway would have found the evidence to arrest Morgan’s killer even after her husband took the blame. Pricilla knew O’Connell Worthington III would never have allowed his wife to be charged or convicted. Her death, she thought, would set him free.

Before she died, had she known she’d waited too long to save her husband?

A few days after the funerals, I had lunch with Carly at Minaret. Gave her Cilla’s letter. I watched her read it, and watched her cry.

Dear Carly,

I’m sorry, dear, because he was your father. He didn’t deserve a fine daughter like you. You’re better off without him.

He did deserve to die. When I first knew him, he was kind and caring. But he changed. Maybe it was the drugs, or the women, or the success, or the failure. I don’t know why. He became cold, greedy. The world is better off without him, too.

Much too late, I learned he didn’t love me, that I was only one in a long line of women. I broke it off immediately, and then spent the rest of my life trying to buy his silence. He demanded money for years. He took everything but our house. O’Connell never knew. I never wanted him to know, but it took every cent of my inheritance to keep Morgan quiet.

It was the video. He recorded our affair. Others, too. He threatened to show those tapes unless I paid him. I burned every last one after he died.

I paid the money he demanded and other women did, too. I might have paid him forever. But he wanted to destroy O’Connell. That, I would not allow.

 

Pricilla Worthington

Carly cried for a while after losing her father. Maybe it helped that he wasn’t a father worth crying over, but I’m not sure.

Unfortunately, Carly seems quite fond of Grover. Maybe her brothers can handle that catastrophe-in-the-making. Mark’s been promoted and is moving his family to Tampa. Kate, the grandmother, is thrilled. Jason called from Washington last night. He said he’d been in Romania for a couple of weeks and wanted to catch up on the boring stuff happening at home.

George and I enjoyed nightly sunset cocktails. Early February breezes were soft, skies cloudless blue, and the temperatures near eighty. My feet rested in his lap; he massaged achy toes gently. Harry and Bess splashed each other in the salt water.

“How much do you love me,” I asked him one night, eyes closed, totally relaxed.

“More times than you can count,” he replied softly.

“Would you die for me?”

“You mean like Romeo and Juliet?” I could hear the smile in his voice.

“No.”  I said. “Like Cilla and O’Connell.”

THE END