Murder Among Friends

by Karen Ranney

  I located the address on the northwest side of San Antonio. The city was like an amoeba, stretching out north and west. Despite what any of the powers that be in the city decided, people lived where they wanted. Consequently, the city was growing over the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone. I should talk to Antoinette at the next Murder Club meeting, since she was in the City Planning office.

  The thought caught me by surprise. I hadn't planned on attending another meeting, but it was helpful to be able to verbalize - to someone - what I was thinking.

  God knows I didn't have an audience at home.

  I took Bitters over to Fredericksburg, avoiding 410 and 281 completely. Then I turned right, went for about a mile or so and saw Cinnamon Creek Drive. A sharp left, and I was in a complex of townhouses, built as fourplexes when this area of San Antonio was underdeveloped. Each unit had a spacious greenbelt between it and the adjoining building, with a number of mature trees shading the private patios.

  I drove around for about ten minutes before I could find number 14A. There was no parking directly in front of the apartment, so I parked around the corner and down the street in an area marked for visitors.

  The woman who opened the door was short and attractive, with a haircut similar to mine. She wore it much better. She had snapping brown eyes and a wide smile that seemed to encompass most of her face.

  The smile faded a bit when she saw me. Evidently, she’d been expecting someone else.

  “Yes?”

  She stood at an angle, holding a beautiful little boy on her hip. The toddler looked just like his father.

  For the first time, I realized how selfish my theory about Paul’s death had been. How strange I hadn’t thought of a wife or a child.

  “Is Dale here?”

  “No, I’m sorry, he’s not. Can I help you with something?”

  “Do you expect him soon?”

  "Can you tell me who you are?" The smile had definitely faded and in its place a wariness I understood.

  I introduced myself. "I'd like to talk to him about a job he did a few weeks ago," I said.

  “He’s on a job in Laredo. I can have him call you."

  I thought of the pictures in my purse. Most people, however, probably wouldn't want to get involved in murder, and I suspected Bradshaw would be the same way.

  "I wanted him to look at something," I said. "Some pictures." I wondered how much I should explain, and then just decided what the hell, I might as well go for it. I pulled out the three pictures, one of Army and Frank, one of Dorothy, and one of Evelyn and a group of us from the neighborhood. The occasion had been a Labor Day party at Evelyn's house.

  “Would you ask him if he saw any of these people? The day he was installing the skylight?"

  She nodded, making her earrings dance. The little boy reached up and grabbed the lobe of her ear. She gently disengaged his hand.

  I pulled out one of my business cards and scratched through the work number, adding my cell number on the back.

  She took the card, holding it away from the little boy.

  "I'll let him know," she said.

  "When do you expect him?"

  She smiled, then. "Any minute."

  At least I had the answer to the reason for the bright, welcoming smile. I bit back my envy and thanked her.

  24

  Cross, Latten, Baldric, and Roberts took up six floors of an eight story bank building. The entire second floor of the garage was reserved for visitors to the firm. I found a parking space easily.

  For the first time, I wasn't stressed about coming to Tom's office. Normally, everything I said and did would be scrutinized and analyzed as if I was giving off secret Roberts' signals. A slip of the tongue could result in months of gossip, such as the time I'd taken a liking to one of the junior associates at a party Tom and I had given. She and I had giggled together all evening. There was nothing but talk, later, about how she was on the fast track to making partner.

  Tom had not been amused.

  So, from that day to this, I was pleasant but reticent, cordial but cool, judicious in my smiles and my frowns, understanding that the two hundred employees at the firm saw me not as myself but as a conduit to Tom. If they only knew how little we talked lately, they'd ignore me.

  Now, however, I simply didn't care.

  There were bound to be some sidelong looks, some judgments as to my demeanor, the sincerity of my smile. Curiosity makes us human. I probably would have felt the same.

  How's she doing? How did she look?

  I didn't care about that, either.

  The doors opened on a whoosh of air and I was suddenly in front of the clear glass doors.

  The reception area was physically impressive. No lettering marred the heavy glass doors. Only the gold letters over the receptionist desk spelled out the name of the firm. There was hardly a need to announce its presence; those who came here did so with deliberate purpose.

  A great deal of the firm’s business was involved in trusts, acting as executors for some of the largest inheritances in the State of Texas. In addition, with satellite offices in Dallas and Houston, the firm had a growing reputation as defense counsel, attorneys who represented manufacturers against product liability claims. But Tom was not above chasing any business, so a newer division had been formed to handle cases that might have otherwise been viewed as unsavory. When I'd asked him if he was representing criminal cases, Tom had retreated into silence.

  The reception station was new, a curving cockpit of beautifully carved mahogany, in which the receptionist seemed to act as pilot and greeter. Someone else, in a back office, handled the telecom systems. This blue-eyed blond’s purpose was to smile as the elevator opened and be the gatekeeper, a duty she handled with grace and Texas charm.

  “Good afternoon, welcome to Cross, Latten, Baldric, and Roberts. May I help you?” Her voice was husky and low, making me wonder if Tom had hired her personally. He was a sucker for a woman’s contralto voice.

  “I’m Jennifer Roberts,” I said, smiling at her. “Is my husband available?”

  The polite but distant look slid from her face to be replaced by another, warmer expression.

  “Oh, yes, Mrs. Roberts. How very pleasant to meet you. Let me check with his secretary.”

  In other places in the world, the word secretary had a bad connotation and had morphed to become assistant. Not here at the firm. But then, I doubt if important titles were absolutely necessary as long as salaries kept pace. Claire had only been with Tom for a year and a half, but her annual compensation was approximately twice what I made as a civil servant.

  “She’ll be right with you,” the receptionist said.

  I thanked her and walked around the room. The furniture had recently been waxed, as had the rubber plant's leaves. The brass planters were polished to a high shine, the magazines were new. The only jarring note, and it was pleasant rather than distasteful, was that the room smelled very faintly of cherry pipe tobacco. I've always thought, although Tom never confirmed it, that it was deliberate, the way a real estate agent puts a few cookies in the oven prior to an open house to convey a homey smell. The pipe tobacco might be a way of giving the law firm a masculine air without saying a word.

  Law was still a good old boys’ club at Cross, Latten, Baldric, and Roberts.

  The door opened and Claire came striding toward me with a smile of genuine welcome.

  She and I were the same height, and not appreciably different in weight. Her hair was a beautiful blond, however, worn in an upswept style that suited her and accentuated her gray eyes. As she was every time I saw her, she was immaculately dressed. The gray suit she wore was flattering both to her figure and her coloring.

  “Jennifer,” she said, stretching out both her hands. “How lovely to see you again.”

  I hadn't seen Claire since just after Barbara's funeral, when she'd brought me a stack of condolence cards they’d received at the office.

  “You’re using the cane,” she said, p
leased.

  "It's lovely. Thank you, again."

  Before leaving the house, I’d grabbed the cane she'd given me. It was a beautiful piece of art, a crystal crook with threads of gold topping an inlaid mahogany shaft.

  We entered a door cunningly hidden behind paneling. I followed her and waited as she closed the door behind us. We walked on thick crimson carpet down a wide corridor where she left me at a set of double doors.

  The outer office of the grand poobah.

  "Go on in, Jennifer," Claire said with a smile. "He's expecting you."

  My husband the mogul, king of all he surveyed. As a senior partner, Tom was knee deep in prestige. What had come first, the pomp and circumstance or the pomposity?

  I took a deep breath, rapped on one of the double doors with the head of the cane before turning the brass handle.

  Tom’s inner sanctum had been designed by a conservative decorator, someone who would have hung pictures of hounds and fox hunters if Tom had let her. As it was, the office just barely escaped green tartan and cordovan leather. Still, it had the feel of a masculine library, a place where men might gather in comfort, smoke cigars and pipes, and discuss the market and women without fear of reprisals or such things as political correctness.

  I doubted, however, that Tom ever unbent enough to totally relax and say what he really felt.

  The walls were painted a hunter green, a perfect backdrop for Tom’s diplomas and certificates. One whole wall was given up to photographs, Tom with the President and assorted cabinet officials, Tom’s King Ranch friends, Tom with various legal and political dignitaries.

  Not one of those portraits was of me. The only one on his desk had been of Barbara, but even that was gone now.

  When I'd asked him, once, why he didn't have a picture of me, he'd said, "I don't need a picture of someone who lives in my heart, Jennifer." It had been corny, then, and was corny now. But back then, I'd fallen for it.

  His desk sat in front of the corner window. Filmy green curtains shielded the room from the sun while revealing a view of the undulating San Antonio River.

  To the left of the desk, farther from the window, was a large round table with eight upholstered chairs surrounding it. Forming the third side of the furniture triangle were two facing sofas upholstered in a color of leather they called Moroccan Dusk. It looked like maroon to me.

  It was the office of a supremely successful man. A powerful man, perhaps. There was nothing to mar the pristine purity of Tom’s desk but a leather edged blotter and a pen set that had been a present from the employees last Christmas.

  The credenza behind him was littered with those necessary implements of business. A phone, a leather binder holding what looked to be case files, his briefcase, his laptop.

  Tom looked up as I entered but he didn't smile and he didn't greet me with his usual charm. He stood, but that was Tom, the epitome of courtliness.

  I hesitated about ten feet from his desk and looked him straight in the eye, the first time I’d done so in nearly a week.

  “Do you have prostate cancer?”

  He stared at me. “Of course not.”

  “I was imagining you did. I was envisioning this scene in which you said, ‘Jennifer, I didn’t want to worry you.’ I'd be brave, and fearless, and together we'd overcome this just like we’ve overcome so many other things.”

  He didn’t say a word.

  “But I guess we’ve lost our resiliency, right, Tom?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Jennifer.”

  “You probably don’t,” I said, smiling.

  I went to one of the couches and sat down, placing my purse very calmly beside me. My cane, however, I put across my knees. I hadn’t quite decided whether or not I was going to use it on him.

  “We can either yell across the room, or you can come over here and we can discuss this in a rational, logical way.”

  “I don’t like being threatened, Jennifer.” But he came around his desk and took a few steps toward me.

  "Nobody else would dare," I said. "You are, after all, Thomas Roberts."

  This moment had been coming since I woke in the hospital to find Tom looking at me, the expression on his face all too easy to read. He would have preferred that Barbara had survived, and that it had been me lying under that tarp.

  This moment had been coming ever since I went to him after the funeral, wanting him to hold me. Instead, his arms hung lax around my body, reluctance in every one of his movements. Ever since, he'd been miserly with his comfort and if he'd felt any affection for me, he'd hidden it well.

  This moment had been coming ever since he stopped talking to me, stopped wanting to discuss anything. Instead, he'd been holding blame in a glass bubble with my name on it and hated me.

  I didn't hate him. I felt nothing at all for Tom. The absence of emotion bothered me more than any hatred I might have felt. There was nothing in my heart labeled Tom. No words to say, no conversations to have. Nothing I wanted to share.

  Grief had burned away the love I'd felt for him, and that saddened me. Sorrow should have linked us, but it had severed us, instead.

  The message of the last year couldn't be louder or clearer - gather ye rosebuds while ye may. My posy was barren, consisting of rust colored stems.

  The moment was here.

  He stood there staring at me, his blue eyes so like Barbara's, watching me with semi-veiled contempt. I was struck by how very handsome he was in his beautifully tailored suit, with his black hair and silvery temples. I knew the scar near his left eye where he'd tried to put together Barbara's bicycle and nearly blinded himself. I knew that habit of his of smiling to one side of his mouth, giving his amusement a tinge of cynicism. The sound of his laughter was as familiar to me as my own face, and I could never forget the look in his eyes when we'd made love. I knew his sorrows and what made him joyful.

  I knew him, but it had been a very long time since I'd liked him.

  "Our daughter was a drug addict, Tom."

  He didn't speak, but his eyes grew even colder.

  I would mourn Barbara forever. But must I feel guilt as well? Wasn't she a little to blame for what she'd become? Or, if we excuse the addict for his addiction, exactly where do we put that responsibility? On our culture of permissiveness? I'd raised Barbara - or at least I thought I had - with a sense of personal responsibility. Had the drugs taken that away?

  "Barbara made mistakes, Tom. She didn't deserve to die for those mistakes. And I don't deserve to be entombed for mine."

  I forced my hands to unclench. "I don't want to go for the rest of my life feeling as if I have to apologize for every breath I take. You were wrong, too, Tom. You were wrong to willfully ignore Barbara's drug use. But in all this time, I've never heard anything close to those words from you."

  I put my cane down. I was feeling lighter, somehow, as well as amazed at how easy this was.

  "Is that what you came to say?" he said, the words Upper Class Twit precise. When had he become so damn pompous? "You've said it, then."

  "No, I'm not finished. I know you're having an affair, Tom."

  “I don't know what you’re talking about, Jennifer.”

  Deny, deny, deny. Always a wise move.

  “It has to be another woman, Tom. You were always fastidious when it came to sex. Remember in college, when we had that awful fight? I accused you of sleeping with Arden Moore. You were insulted. You said you couldn’t sleep with two women at once. Since you won’t sleep with me, you must be sleeping with someone else."

  “This is neither the time nor the place, Jennifer.” He came a few feet closer. Almost tentatively, as if he was afraid I'd cosh him with the cane.

  "I know you're having an affair," I repeated. "But here's the funny part. I don't care. I really don't. I've tried to care, but I don't. You ought to care when your husband's fucking someone else."

  He flinched, as if he'd never heard the word before. I was tempted to say, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck
," just to get him used to me and profanity. For that matter, I wanted an affair of my own. Unbidden, Talbot's face swam in front of my eyes.

  Not bloody likely, as Evelyn used to say.

  "I want a divorce, Tom."

  25

  I stopped, my head bent, my eyes intent on the richly patterned carpet. Did they shampoo it often? How did the colors remain so vibrant? The cleaning service should be commended. Silly thoughts.

  “Jennifer.” Such compassion in the sound of my name. Such gentleness and regret. Just that. No explanation, no refutation of my suspicions. Just my name.

  I stood, tapping the end of my cane against the plush carpet as I walked away.

  At the door, I turned. "We can sell the house and divvy up the proceeds, or we can agree to whatever you want. I'll get my own attorney next week."

  The expression in his eyes altered a little. Was it relief I saw? Was he going to marry Mary Lynn and have more children? Maybe he wanted another Barbara, so he could prove to the world that he hadn't been the bad parent.

  He had a hell of a lot more courage than I had.

  Either I was too fast or he was too slow, because I didn't hear a word from him as I opened the door and left the room.

  My mother always said a true lady never showed her emotions in public. Of course, my mother also said mascara, which she used every day, made you look cheap, and that you should always wear stockings, even alone in your house.

  My mother had a lot of opinions.

  Still, she had a point. I’d much rather scream and yell and hit a few pillows in the privacy of my own home than make a public spectacle of myself as I headed for my car.

  Once there, I pulled down the visor and stared at myself in the vanity mirror. My eyes were red and so was the tip of my nose. One thing about being sodden with grief, I couldn’t take much more.