In the foyer, Timothy opened the front door. He smiled grimly at Neiderhoffer. ‘I guess this doesn’t look very good, does it?’
‘Which part?’ Neiderhoffer asked. ‘The girlfriend sleeping over just weeks after your wife’s death? Or the part where she’s wearing the necklace you bought your wife? It is the same necklace, isn’t it?’
Timothy nodded.
‘I suppose it could be worse,’ Neiderhoffer said. ‘There could be blood all over your house, for example.’ His eyes darted around the foyer floor, as if to look for just such a clue. He pantomimed wiping sweat from his brow, and said, ‘Phew.’ He laughed.
Timothy laughed, too.
‘Well,’ Neiderhoffer said, ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. In this line of work, you see a lot of things that don’t look good at first glance. Usually they mean absolutely nothing.’
‘Okay,’ Timothy said. He shook Neiderhoffer’s hand. ‘Thanks.’
Neiderhoffer walked out the door, started down the front steps. Timothy was about to shut the door, when the detective called to him.
‘Mr. Van Bender?’
Timothy stopped the door, held it open.
‘It is sort of early to have a new girlfriend, though, isn’t it? What’s it been? Four weeks?’
‘Five.’
‘Early, right? Unless you were having an affair before your wife committed suicide.’
Timothy did not answer.
Neiderhoffer persisted. ‘So were you? Having an affair?’
Timothy thought about his response. What did Neiderhoffer know? Was he testing him? Wouldn’t it appear worse to admit that he had been cheating on his wife before her death? Wouldn’t that suddenly become a motive for killing her, to get her out of the picture without a messy divorce? Or maybe Neiderhoffer thought he killed her without premeditation, in a violent argument about infidelity.
‘No,’ Timothy said. ‘I was not having an affair. Good day, detective.’ He shut the door.
35
Back in the kitchen, Timothy said, ‘Jesus Christ, Tricia. Did you have to wear that necklace?’
She laughed. ‘You are obsessed with this damn necklace. Here.’ She reached behind her neck, unclasped it, and slapped it down on the kitchen table. ‘Take it.’
‘That’s not my point.’
‘What does he think? That you killed me?’
‘No, he thinks that I killed my wife. You, he thinks I’ve been screwing in my office for the past six months.’
‘Well, have you?’
‘No, Katherine.’
‘Tricia,’ she corrected.
‘Tricia.’ He walked over to the sliding glass doors, looked out into the back yard. A rabbit scampered across the grass. ‘The thing is, it doesn’t look right. None of this looks right. You living here with me, so soon after the suicide.’
‘But I’m your wife.’
‘I know that, and you know that. But who’s going to believe it? To the rest of the world, you’re my twenty-three-year-old secretary. I didn’t think that part through. I should have chosen someone else. Someone older.’
‘Somehow that seems unlikely,’ Tricia said.
Of course she was right. She knew him too well, even better – sometimes – than he knew himself. He would only have chosen Tricia. He knew he would choose her the moment Dr. Ho explained the procedure. And Katherine, now inside Tricia’s body, knew it, too.
Tricia said, ‘Why don’t you just bribe him? Don’t you always bribe police officers that give you trouble?’
Timothy knew what she was referring to: the incident, years ago, when they were driving to the opera in San Francisco, and he was pulled over for doing seventy on Highway 101, and he flashed two hundred-dollar bills along with his driver’s license to the poor working stiff CHP officer who had been demoted to speed trap duty. That had outraged Katherine, offended her sense of fairness and propriety.
‘It’s a little different,’ Timothy said. ‘Speeding and murder.’
‘Will you stop being melodramatic? You didn’t murder anyone. I committed suicide.’
‘But there’s no body. The only evidence is the phone call you made to me. And it’s only my word.’
‘Well, your word has to be worth something, right?’
Timothy turned to look at her. Was that a dig, a little jibe?
She continued: ‘Anyway, the whole thing is absurd. You had no motive for murdering me. You could have just gotten a divorce. We had a prenuptial. Just show him the agreement. It’s only one page long.’
Another jibe? Timothy didn’t care anymore. He probably deserved it. He had been a terrible husband to her. It was amazing, really, that she had stayed with him for all those years. He sighed. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
‘Which leads me to what I really want to talk about,’ Tricia said. She rose from the table and joined Timothy at the patio doors. She stood behind him, put her hands on his shoulders and began to massage his tense muscles.
‘That feels good,’ he said.
‘Maybe this isn’t a good time to bring it up. But … we should get married.’
He turned around to face her. ‘Again, marriage. Why is that so important to you, Tricia?’
‘Because,’ she said gently, ‘I’m not Tricia. I’m your wife, Katherine. And because I love you. And because it’s strange to be someone else, and to not be married to you. And I know you don’t understand it, because you can’t. But try to imagine: you look in the mirror and see someone else’s face. Imagine what that’s like. I just feel …’ Her voice trailed off as she searched for the word. ‘Helpless. Like I’m drifting. And I want to go back to how things were. I want to be married to you. At least I can have that.’
‘That’s fine,’ he said. He was still thinking about Neiderhoffer. The detective would subpoena his phone records. That would at least establish that Katherine had called the morning of her death. Maybe there was nothing to worry about after all.
‘We don’t need a big ceremony,’ she said. ‘We can go down to San Jose city hall. It’ll take ten minutes. We can do it as soon as we get a death certificate.’
‘Okay. You’re right. That’s fine.’ He thought about it. Maybe marrying Tricia would look good, would establish to Neiderhoffer that he loved the young woman, and was not simply having a fling with her. ‘I’m meeting with Frank Arnheim this morning. He can throw something together.’
Tricia looked hurt. ‘What? Who’s Frank Arnheim?’
‘My lawyer. We’ll just use the old document. Put your name in instead. Once we get a death certificate for Katherine—’
‘What old document? What are you talking about?’ She was still smiling, but now it was a hurt and brittle smile.
‘The agreement. The prenuptial. Oh, come on, you’re not going to get upset again, are you?’
She shook her head in disbelief. ‘I’ve been married to you for twenty years. You want a fucking prenuptial agreement?’
‘Tricia, you know—’
‘I know what?’ she snapped. ‘I know that you are the biggest … shit I’ve ever met. That’s what I know.’
She turned and walked out of the kitchen. In the doorway, she stopped. She returned to the kitchen table, grabbed her necklace, stuffed it in her pocket. ‘I’ll take that,’ she said, and stormed out.
36
Because of Neiderhoffer, Timothy was late for his eight-thirty meeting.
He pulled out of his driveway at eight-thirty-five and raced up Waverly into downtown Palo Alto. It was a minute-and-a-half commute. He pulled into the underground parking lot of the Bank of America building, grabbed a ticket from the time-stamp machine, and descended two floors to park in the area marked ‘Monthly.’
He climbed out of his car and tapped his remote-control key chain. The BMW alarm chirped. Timothy walked up the steep grade toward the elevators. His heels clicked against the concrete, echoing through the low-ceilinged space. Even though it was eighty degrees outside, the garage was cool and dark, and quiet.
Timothy walked, thinking about Tricia, her insisting on marriage, about his upcoming meeting with Frank Arnheim, about his testimony to the CFTC.
Timothy heard another set of footsteps behind his. They approached rapidly. He turned around.
It was the stringy-haired man, the driver of the Impala that had chased him through Menlo Park the day before. He was heading toward Timothy with a strange smile on his face.
Timothy stopped. He felt a jolt of adrenaline, his heart race, his testicles shrink into cold pebbles.
‘Hey—’ Timothy said. It was a tepid word – a half-greeting and half-warning. His voice was hoarse, his mouth dry.
The young man continued walking toward him with the strange smile on his face. His heels clicked briskly on the ground. Timothy looked down to see steel-toed jackboots.
‘Hey,’ Timothy said, louder now. At that moment he had a crystalline realization: that he was helpless. During his entire life he had always been in control, using his wealth and his name and his upbringing to command the society around him, to decide what would happen next, to him and to others. But in that instant, as the long-haired man walked toward him in the parking garage, with a sick smile and a taut body promising cruelty, Timothy understood that his own power was ephemeral; it was an illusion, a confidence game; it depended solely on everyone else’s agreeing to it, and it vanished the moment it was confronted with something cold and hard – with threat and violence.
Timothy thought about what to say. Words had always saved him. He always figured out what to say at the last moment. This would be the same. The words would come to him, sudden and surprising, a gift from heaven.
The long-haired man walked toward him. Now, up close – ten feet away – he didn’t seem like a druggie teenager. He seemed older. He had a long, gaunt face, and sunken eyes. His hair was flat, stringy. He had more serious matters to attend to than hygiene.
He walked to Timothy, and Timothy expected the man to say something, since conflict always began with words, but there were no words. The man simply swung his fist with all his might into Timothy’s abdomen. Timothy bent over, grabbing his stomach. He had never been punched before. His mouth opened in a silent ‘Oh’ – half pain, half shock. The long-haired man grabbed Timothy’s Hermes tie and yanked it downward. Timothy fell to the gray concrete. He held out his hands to break the fall, but his chin still struck the ground hard, and he felt something cold on his face and knew it was blood.
‘If you don’t stop fucking my girlfriend,’ the man said, ‘I’m going to kill you.’
‘Your girlfriend?’ For an instant Timothy was relieved. He had no idea what this man was talking about. So it was all a misunderstanding, after all. He would simply explain there had been a mistake …
The man said, ‘If I see you with Tricia again, next time I won’t use my fist.’ He produced a switchblade from his jeans pocket and snapped it open. He waved it in Timothy’s direction and then turned and walked off. Timothy lay on the ground, listening to the jackboot footsteps grow distant. Then the footsteps broke into a run and disappeared.
Timothy climbed to his hands and knees. A Jaguar pulled around the corner, with its headlights on. The driver saw Timothy on the ground and stopped. The Jaguar door was thrown open and a middle-aged man got out. He wore a fine dark business suit and an expensive red Ferragamo tie. ‘Hey, buddy, are you all right?’ The businessman leaned over Timothy, who was sitting up now, clutching his stomach. ‘Are you okay?’
Timothy nodded.
But the businessman looked helpless. We all are, Timothy thought. Our money and power mean nothing to these men of violence. We are helpless.
Timothy made his way to his office on the thirty-second floor. People in the elevator regarded him curiously. He realized he must have been a sight: his shirt billowing from his pants, his tie loose and disheveled, his chin bleeding. He was a mere step away from the homeless men that visited the Bank of America plaza each afternoon trolling for quarters. Timothy was surprised no one stopped him and escorted him from the building.
He reached the Osiris offices and Natasha, the fat Russian receptionist, greeted him. ‘Timothy! What happened to you?’
‘I was mugged.’
‘Should I call the police?’
Timothy shook his head. He wanted no more interaction with the police today.
The Kid walked into the reception area. ‘Timothy, Frank Arnheim is here for your eight thirty. He’s been waiting—’ The Kid stopped when he saw Timothy. ‘My God, what happened to you?’
‘Nothing,’ Timothy said. ‘Just a little altercation.’
‘With who?’
‘Would you believe an angry investor?’
‘Do you want some ice?’
‘No.’ Timothy waved him off. ‘No, I’m fine. I’m going to clean myself up. Tell Frank I’m going to have to postpone the meeting. We’ll do it tomorrow.’
‘Okay.’
Timothy went to the men’s bathroom. He looked in the mirror. His chin wasn’t as bad as he had feared. Just a scrape. He wouldn’t need stitches. The long-haired man was only trying to scare him.
Timothy splashed cold water on his face, then dabbed his chin with paper towels. Yes, the man was just trying to scare him.
37
That evening, at home, Tricia forgot about the morning’s argument as soon as she saw the dried blood on Timothy’s face. She led him upstairs to the bedroom and told him to lie down on the bed. She sat beside him. He recounted the events that had happened in the parking garage.
‘He knew you,’ Timothy said. ‘You must know him.’
‘But I don’t.’
‘Well Tricia did. He must have been that boyfriend. She mentioned him a couple times.’ He tried to remember. There had been some vague talk of a boyfriend, and he recalled Tricia saying that she drove with a boy from Los Angeles when she moved north.
But the boyfriend she described sharing a car with was an unambitious, unthreatening, pot-smoking slacker – a bit different from the man in the parking garage. And except for that casual mention, she never spoke of him again. It certainly didn’t seem like Tricia was involved with someone.
And yet … he recalled that drunken evening when he had followed her from the BBC back to her apartment, and they entered the door with the upside-down letter D. Hadn’t she behaved oddly then? Didn’t she seem afraid, as if someone else might be in the apartment, and might find them? Could Tricia have been living with such a dangerous man even back then, and not told Timothy? It seemed hard to believe.
‘Apparently Tricia, my innocent secretary, had a few secrets,’ he said.
She stroked the caked blood on his chin. ‘I don’t think we should criticize people for having secrets.’
They had sex then, which surprised him. Katherine had always been a sex-before-bed kind of woman. The sex was much better now, with Tricia’s body, but the timing and activities themselves had not changed: before sleep, and please-face-and-kiss-me-while-you-do-it.
So it was a pleasant surprise that she initiated. He lay back, his abdomen sore from the punch, and she caressed him, and kissed him, and removed his tie and shirt, and then his pants. She kissed his chest, and then his stomach, softly. ‘Does this hurt?’ she asked.
‘No.’
She lowered her head and kissed his thighs gently. She put her fingers beneath the elastic band of his briefs, and pulled them down to his knees. Then she bent over and began to perform fellatio – and that was something strange, something that Katherine hardly ever did. The first time Katherine did it they were in her parents’ house, visiting Cambridge a few months after their wedding. They were staying in the old room that Katherine used to sleep in as a girl, and it must have done something to her – made her excited, to do something forbidden with her new husband, in the bed where she grew up, under the same roof as her parents.
Now Tricia was using her lips and mouth, licking him, rubbing her dark silky hair against his skin, and – despite th
e ache in his belly – it felt good, and he couldn’t control himself. It was over in a minute, and then she lay down in the bed beside him, and kissed him, and he tasted himself on her lips.
‘Do you remember,’ he said, ‘the first time you did that?’
Tricia smiled.
He said, ‘It seems like yesterday.’
She touched a finger to his nose. It was a gesture that could have meant anything: agreement, happiness, playful naughtiness. It was not, it occurred to him, what Katherine would have done. Katherine would have been matter-of-fact about it, would have recounted the details of that first experience, would have enjoyed dissecting it, explaining exactly how she felt at each moment. Katherine was a diarist, a woman who noted her two pieces of wheat toast and jam, who was aware of every detail in her life.
He tried sitting up in bed, pushing off his elbows, but his stomach ached, so he flopped back down and merely lifted his neck to look at her. ‘Do you remember?’ he asked. His tone had changed, and it was clear he was challenging her now, quizzing her. ‘It seems like something you would remember. Where were we the first time you did that to me?’
Tricia kept her face blank. She did not look nervous or upset. She shook her head and said, simply, ‘I don’t remember.’
‘We were in your parents’ house. Do you remember where?’
She smiled. It was either the smile of a loving wife, or the smile of a poker player ready to bluff. ‘Of course. We were in my bedroom. The bed where I slept as a little girl. The bed where I grew up.’
Which was true, Timothy thought, suddenly relieved.
She leaned over him, and kissed him softly on the lips. ‘Are you going crazy on me?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘sorry.’
‘Do you know who I am?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Who am I?’ She kissed him again. ‘Tell me.’
‘You’re Katherine.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed, and kissed his lips again, softly. ‘I’m your wife. I’m the woman you were married to, and the woman who wants to marry you again. Do you understand that?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
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