by Thomas Perry
“Find anything besides rubber gloves?”
“Just a laptop computer. We’ll never get into that. Nothing about the client. I think we’re in trouble,” he said. “Don’t leave anything here. We aren’t going to be able to come back.”
16
Sid and Ronnie Abel rode the back elevator down to the lower level of their hotel’s underground garage and got into their latest rental car. Sid drove up the ramp to the ground level and out into the side street that opened onto Calabasas Road. It was a bright, hot morning and the sun was already high in the sky. As they waited at the traffic signal, Sid said, “That was a really good bluff you hit on yesterday with Kirsten Tilson.”
“Do you mean the video?”
“That’s what I mean,” Sid said.
“Think about it. We knew before we called her that she’d had an affair with Ballantine. When we called her, she claimed she barely knew him, and yet she was willing to meet with us privately to talk about it. Something had to be motivating that.”
“Sure. She didn’t want to be embarrassed.”
“She’s a bundle of contradictions,” Ronnie said. “She’s a bit of a racist, but Ballantine’s race gave being with him a titillating edge for her. She says they didn’t like each other, but they were still seeing each other three years later.”
“She’s an ordinary liar, but you made up the imaginary sex tape,” Sid said. “You’re the champ.”
“It’s not imaginary,” said Ronnie.
“It’s not?”
“If a video doesn’t exist, then something like it does. Ballantine was a very secretive man. Why would he tell his ex-wife about the women he was seeing? Hardly. Would she even listen? Doubtful. She had divorced him, taken the kids, and moved to another city. She made a point of saying that they hadn’t spoken in three years. She must have found something among his belongings after he was dead.”
“Whatever the evidence was, Kirsten Tilson didn’t know about the other women. She really wanted to know who else was on the list.”
“Maybe she sees herself as the wronged party,” said Ronnie. “Maybe because she saw him first.”
“Interesting woman.”
“She’d be pleased to hear you say that,” Ronnie said. “She thinks so too. Just remember you’re the same age as the other directors. And her father.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes.” Ronnie smiled. “Probably old age.”
“I’m flattered that you’re so possessive.”
“Let’s go see the next girlfriend.”
They had arranged to meet the next woman on the list in a shaded park in Burbank near St. Joseph Medical Center on Bob Hope Drive. They drove up the street scanning for her, but didn’t see a lone woman sitting in a car, and this morning the park appeared to be nearly empty. A few young women—mothers or nannies—watched small children playing, and a couple of women in hospital scrubs walked briskly along a path together. The Abels stopped and remained in their rental car, studying the surrounding area.
After a few minutes Ronnie said, “You’re looking at the roofs of the buildings on Alameda.”
“I’m looking at everything, and so are you.”
“I’m looking for Linda Bourget. You’re looking for the people who’ve been trying to kill us. You think Linda Bourget is setting us up for them?”
“No, or we wouldn’t be sitting here. But she did choose this as the place to meet with us, and she is late.”
Ronnie looked to the right into the park, craning her neck to look over her shoulder. “Besides the rooftops, there’s a lot of traffic along the street, and there are a few ways of getting in and out of here on foot.”
“I think that might be her coming across the park from the hospital.”
They watched as a slim woman in her thirties walked toward them. She had long dark hair and an olive complexion, and she was wearing a pair of designer jeans and low sandals, with a white top with a V neck and short sleeves. She wore a pair of sunglasses that were large enough to keep much of her face from being seen, and she seemed to be looking down most of the time, studying the path her feet were following.
Ronnie focused her attention on the woman, who was closer now, walking directly toward them. She spoke softly to Sid. “Expensive clothes. Those jeans are hard to find, let alone buy. The purse cost a few thousand.”
“Let’s get out and happen to run into her so this looks social.”
They got out of their car and walked into the park, following the marked path of fine gravel, so their trajectory met hers. “Miss Bourget?” said Ronnie.
The woman didn’t speak, but she pivoted on her heel and walked with them. After a few steps she said, “You’re the Abels?”
“Yes,” said Ronnie. “Thank you for taking the time to see us. I’m Ronnie, and this is Sid.”
“I didn’t really have a choice,” said Linda Bourget. “I’ve expected this day to come, and so I’ve been preparing myself for a long time. If we can make our talk brief, I would appreciate it. I’m supposed to be at lunch with my sister. A sister is the only one you can really trust to lie for you. Anyone else might decide she’s not such a good friend after all. A sister is stuck with you.”
Ronnie began. “As I told you on the phone, we’ve been hired to investigate James Ballantine’s murder. We didn’t know very much about him, so we’re asking people who knew him to tell us what they know.”
“Okay. I’ll try to be as honest as I can,” said Linda Bourget.
“Let’s start with the basics,” said Sid. “When did you begin dating Mr. Ballantine?”
“That’s not as simple a question as you make it sound,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” said Ronnie. “When I called and told you why we wanted to talk to you, I thought you said we’d come to the right person.”
“You have,” Linda said. “I’ve waited for a year to have somebody come and talk to me about him. I thought the police would come in the first few days, but they didn’t. Then it was weeks, and then months. I kept thinking that they had already figured out who killed James and decided I didn’t matter, but they hadn’t.”
“No, they hadn’t,” said Sid. “We’re trying, and we need your help.”
“To begin with, we weren’t dating,” Linda said. “We didn’t have a regular, ordinary relationship.”
Sid’s and Ronnie’s eyes flicked toward each other and Ronnie said, “How was it different?”
“I was married. If I had been caught with James, I would have lost my husband and my two children. James and I met in secret.”
Ronnie said, “How did you first get to know him?”
“James and I were seated next to each other on an airplane, a red-eye from Chicago to Los Angeles. I was flying home from New York. He was flying from Bloomington, Indiana, where he was a professor. We had to stop in Chicago to change flights, but the weather was bad, so our planes arrived late, and our flight took off without us. We both ended up at the airline desk and they put us on the next flight, which left at ten thirty in the evening. The time went on and the airport started to empty out a bit. We sat and talked a little. Then he asked me if I’d like to have a drink with him. I did, we talked some more, and then our flight was announced. We said good-bye and went to the gate. When I got to my seat, I couldn’t believe it. We were both right at the back of the plane—the last seats to go—and together.”
“It must have seemed as though it was fated,” said Ronnie.
“I dismissed that thought, because I had already picked the fate I wanted,” Linda said. “It sounds crazy, but I loved my husband. We had two beautiful children, a boy and a girl. I had a great life—exactly the life I had grown up wanting—and I didn’t want to lose it. But just this one time, I got tempted.”
“If you loved your husband, why do this?”
“It just sort of happened. The circumstances were perfect. I had already called my husband when my flight came in too late to get to Los Angeles,
and said I’d be staying in a Chicago hotel and take a flight out in the morning. The replacement flight just opened up because another couple hadn’t made it to take their seats,” she said. “And James and I had been talking and we liked each other. He had that quality. He could make a woman know, without any doubt, but without anything embarrassing, that he liked her. When he looked at you, there was no way not to see yourself as he saw you—beautiful.”
“You are beautiful,” Ronnie said. “That can’t have been a surprise to you.”
“Thank you. But there was more than saying I was pretty. He made me feel fascinating. Exciting. Those are not things that I felt at home very often in those days. I was a mother with two young children and a husband who was always at work. He was a unit production manager on a television show. He made good money and had a great future, but his daily life didn’t have much to do with mine. James Ballantine made me feel like a different person. And the way we were thrown together, the universe seemed to be telling me giving in was okay. So I acted like that different person.”
“And you risked everything on a whim?” said Ronnie.
“Not on a whim,” Linda said. “Before James ever touched me I thought about what I would say and do if it happened. That was something else I learned along the way. We’re natural sinners. Nobody had to tell me how to go about any of this. I just knew. I checked to see when the next morning flight from Chicago would arrive at LAX and planned to get a shuttle to take me home from the hotel at the right time. I planned everything I was going to do and say to get away with this before I agreed to it. And then I went with James to the hotel he’d booked for his interview visit. He went to the desk, checked in and got his room key, and I met him there.”
Sid said, “Were you ever discovered?”
“No,” she said. “Never. I did everything I could to make sure there was no way I’d get caught. James didn’t have risks like mine. He was getting rid of the people who would have blamed him. He had given notice that he was leaving the university where he worked, and had begun to let his communications with friends and relatives in the East gradually die out. He wasn’t divorced yet, but he knew he was going to be.”
“Did his doing all of that at once strike you as odd at the time?” asked Ronnie. “Maybe self-destructive?”
“I didn’t think that way,” she said. “While all of that was going on, I was thinking that it was making me safer. Nobody from his world would discover us, and blow things up. I still wanted to keep the life I had.”
Ronnie said, “I understand. There were fewer people to notice anything, so it was easier to keep things a secret.”
“I didn’t really understand it,” Linda said. “Maybe I don’t even now. He was reinventing himself, and I didn’t know why. When we met, we were both people who had lives and relationships to protect, but were just taking an exciting and brief peek into another life—not the life we should have had, or anything like that. It was just a secret world that didn’t bring any responsibilities or failures or boredom. In it we were wild and sexy and glamorous. It was fun to visit that world once in a while, and then go back to reality. I was pretending to go to a therapist once a week, but I was seeing James instead.”
“What changed?”
“He did, and I did, but slowly. Things started going better for me at home. A year made my kids that much older, and keeping up with them wasn’t as grueling. My husband was working on a different show that was shot entirely on studio soundstages instead of two thousand miles away, and he spent more time with me. One morning I woke up and I didn’t want to go see James that day. Then I realized I didn’t want to go again, ever. I was ashamed, and I was afraid, and I knew I had to tell James it was over before I lost everything.”
“And that’s when you learned he had changed?”
“Yes. Or maybe what had changed wasn’t him. Maybe he was always the same, and this was just when I understood. I told him that I wasn’t happy with what I’d done to my life. I wouldn’t be seeing him anymore.”
“I take it he didn’t like that?” Sid said.
“No.”
“Did he get angry? Hurt?”
“No. He just refused to allow it to happen.”
“What do you mean?” asked Sid.
“I told him it was over, and he said that it wasn’t up to me. I was committed, had made my decision, and I belonged to him now. If I ended the relationship, he would make sure that my husband saw some videos he’d taken. All he had to do was send one to my husband’s e-mail address. He also said he’d send one to each of my husband’s co-workers, and one to each of the friends I’d ever mentioned to him. He seemed to remember all of their names. Later I realized he must have gotten the names off my phone one day while I was at his house.”
“Was he bluffing?” asked Sid.
She took a deep breath and let it out. “I didn’t know anything about any videos, so I assumed he was. I had been seeing him on Thursday afternoons at four, and that Thursday, I didn’t show up. He called my cell phone, but when I saw his number on the screen, I didn’t answer. He called again five minutes later. Then I heard the little signal that I was getting an e-mail. I opened it, and there we were—James and me—on his bed, in a video. It wasn’t as though I were unrecognizable, some woman in a pornographic movie or something. You could see my face clearly, even on the tiny cell phone screen.”
“What did you do?” asked Ronnie.
“I erased the video from my phone and called him.”
“What did you say?”
“I told him he was disgusting and evil. I said I hated him, and hung up.”
“How did he react?”
“He called me back. What he said was that he still expected me that afternoon as always. Then he hung up.”
“What did you do?” asked Ronnie.
“I was shocked. I sat there paralyzed. I had only bad choices. He had already shown me everything that he could show me about my predicament. He had the graphic proof, and he had demonstrated that he had the capability and the malevolence to send the video everywhere—to ruin my life. So I went.”
Ronnie said, “Linda, did you have anything to do with Ballantine’s death?”
She shook her head. “No. I didn’t. I’m not the kind of person who can kill someone. I spent a lot of nights wishing that I were.”
“What did you do?”
“I cried. But I resigned myself to tolerating him for the time being, because I could think of nothing else to do. I went there every Thursday, and did whatever he wanted. Afterwards, I went home to my children and my husband. But for those hours, I was his property.”
“I’m sorry,” said Ronnie. “It must have been awful. Do you think it’s possible that someone else found out what was going on and decided to kill him? Did you tell anyone?”
She shook her head. “I went along with everything. Sometimes he would tell me that I would get over feeling bad about it. This was just the way the world worked, and I had to find out sometime. Everyone was trying to get an advantage over everyone else, to take what the other person had. When he got into that mood it was awful.”
Ronnie said, “If you didn’t tell anyone about it, do you think it’s possible that he did? That he might have tried to blackmail your husband or bragged to someone who decided on his own to put a stop to it?”
Linda shook her head again. “That’s not what happened.”
“Then how did it end?” asked Ronnie.
“One night, after I had put the kids to bed, I was waiting for my husband to come home. I was thinking about him, and how what I was doing to keep my secret was worth it. He came home, and sat down. He sat across from me and put his head in his hands. And he told me some news.”
“What news?”
“He had decided to end the marriage. He had found somebody else. She was a twenty-four-year-old PA on the show where he’d been working, and eventually he got around to admitting that he had been sleeping with her for a year. The times
when he had not been able to come home, he’d been with her. I said, ‘It’s all right. We can get through this. I’ll forgive you, and we’ll start all over again.’ He said he couldn’t. He wanted a divorce, and he planned to file right away. He wouldn’t be a jerk about the property settlement in the divorce, because he wanted to take care of me. And if I wanted full custody of the kids, he would understand. Angela—that was her name—wanted to build her career, and having kids around wasn’t part of her plan. But the one thing that was off the table was staying with me.”
“Wow,” said Ronnie. “That’s tough.”
“Out of curiosity, I asked him if he remembered the time about a year before, when I was in New York for my aunt’s funeral, and my plane got delayed in Chicago. He didn’t remember.”
“Did that make him suspect something had gone on?”
“No. He was consumed by his own guilt. He thought I was asking whether my being away that night caused his cheating. After the divorce papers were filed, I told James Ballantine that the reason for the divorce was that I had finally told my husband the truth. I never heard from him after that.”
“Do you remember the date when this happened?” Sid asked.
“May fifteenth, two years ago.”
Ronnie said, “We really appreciate that you had the courage to tell us what happened. I wish you could have been spared all of that.”
Linda said, “I was sure the police would find whatever he had kept about me, and they’d come to ask me about him.”
“They didn’t know what you’ve just told us, or they would have,” Sid said. “A lot of people have been killed for a lot less than he did.”
“At the time, I did think about killing myself. Not him,” she said. “After that, when I wasn’t in his power anymore, I felt nothing. Whoever killed him, it was for some other reason. I agreed to talk to you because when he died, I heard and read all this stuff about what a great guy he was. I thought somebody would tell the truth, or find the videos, and the police would come. They never came.”
“There was no traceable connection between him and you,” said Ronnie. “Nobody the police talked to even knew you existed.”
