24
I got home before the kids were back from school. A woman was waiting on the front porch. She had short, dark hair and a narrow, sharp chin.
I didn’t recognize her. I pulled to a stop beside her black Jetta. The shiny car had temporary plates and looked new. She stood as I got out of the car, tugging iPod buds from her ears.
“I was about to give up,” she said. “It’s starting to get cold out here. I wasn’t really prepared for . . .” She let the sentence drift away.
The day had been mild for November, but the sun was just finishing its final dip behind the Divide, an event that occurred too early in the day in the autumn in those towns, like Boulder, that sit in the near shadows of fourteen-thousand-foot peaks. As a general rule, cold replaces crisp in rapid fashion along Colorado’s Front Range shortly after the late-day shadows begin to spread in the valley.
The young woman was wearing well-aged jeans—I was pretty sure she had purchased them that way—a fleece vest from the Prana store on the Mall, and knit half gloves. Her feet were well protected in a pair of Uggs like ones that Lauren was coveting.
They were on her Christmas list.
The presence of a stranger on the porch meant the dogs were going nuts inside the house. Emily’s bark, in particular, was full of alarm. When she was on edge, the sharpness in her bark was like someone bringing their hands together in a loud clap right beside your ears.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked the woman while my car was still between us. I was feeling a mite wary. Not too many strangers make it to the end of the lane. Even people who are hopelessly lost in Spanish Hills begin to recognize how badly lost they are before they ever stumble across the poorly marked entrance to our dirt and gravel path. If nothing else deters them, the big official-looking DEAD END and NO OUTLET signs by the mailboxes get drivers to reconsider their route.
“I’m Nicole. I was here the other night. With the caterers? Over at the other house.” She gestured across the lane to the big ranch house.
She had told me enough that I knew who she was, but not enough that I would understand why she had come back. I was slightly less wary and a tad more curious.
Nicole stuffed her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. She opened her eyes wide as she lifted both shoulders. “I was in the van. Were you the man on the lane, the one we almost . . . hit? Walking a dog?”
I was wearing my therapist expression. It’s almost reflexive for me when I’m wary. I tend to wear it until I feel the ground beneath my feet stop shifting.
She kept talking. “I’m hoping to find—I actually came out here to talk to that man, the one who was walking the dog that night. The little black and white dog? Was that you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh good. Not good that we almost—I mean good that I found you. I guessed you must live here, since there are no other houses out this way. This far out, I mean, so close to . . . where we were working. Listen, I’m so sorry,” she said. “That’s why I’m here. To apologize. But I wasn’t driving the van. That was—”
“Eric,” I said.
“Eric,” she said as she moved her hands from her jeans into the pockets of her vest. “Yeah. You know his name?”
“I heard you yelling at him.”
“He wouldn’t stop the stupid van. I wanted him to stop to see if you were okay, if the dog was . . . hurt. I was so scared that he had hit the little dog. I wanted to go back and check, to see if you needed any help. But he wouldn’t stop. He just kept on going.”
“You were really yelling at him.”
“I am so sorry. Are you all right? Please tell me you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” I said.
She lowered her voice, as though she were afraid to ask the next question. “The little dog?” she said.
“Would you like to come inside to meet her?”
A big smile erupted on Nicole’s face. She had great teeth, either from enviable genes or fine orthodonture. I guessed the latter. A new car? Fancy clothes? A top-end set of teeth? Expensive boots? Nicole had access to money. I didn’t think catering rich people’s dinner parties would earn her enough to cover it.
“I would love that,” she said.
“Come on in,” I said as I stepped past her. I unlocked the front door. Before I opened it, I tried to prepare her for the onslaught to come. “The big dog is Emily. She can be intimidating at first, but she’s a sweetheart. I don’t think you saw her the other night. The little one is Fiji, like the island. She was the one on the lane with me. Her goal in life is to eliminate prairie dogs from Boulder County. After that, the world. She dreams big.”
The dogs, of course, were right behind the door. Emily barked twice more when she saw us but quickly made an assessment about the degree of present danger. Nicole, she decided, wasn’t foe. Fiji kept barking. She wasn’t as adept as Emily at making independent assessments of dangers. Or of the true threat posed by prairie dogs.
Nicole was clearly a dog person. She went right to her knees to greet the dogs. Jonas’s puppy danced and licked at her chin. “I’m so glad this little dog is okay.” Emily shoved the Havanese out of the way to hog Nicole’s attention.
“Me, too,” I said. I led Nicole toward the family room at the back of the house. As we walked down the short entryway, she grew speechless at the view of the Front Range at dusk framed by the big windows. The end of that day was blessed with one of those clear early-evening skies when the vista stretched all the way from Pikes Peak to Wyoming. Boulder was just beginning to sparkle to night-life in the valley below.
“Oh, wow,” she said. “The sky. It’s so pretty. It’s . . . gorgeous. Oh . . . my . . . God.” She pulled off her vest. “The city? No wonder you live up here. The other night was so . . . different. You can hardly see this view from the other house.”
I’m accustomed to the reaction. I naturally give people a minute to adjust, to take in the wonder. I took Nicole’s vest from her. It smelled like smoke and tobacco. I was pretty sure I felt the outline of a pack in the pocket. As I hung it on the coat rack near the door, I spied the top of a pack of Newports.
“You can see the view from upstairs across the lane,” I said. “The view is special from the bedrooms upstairs.”
“We didn’t go up there.”
“Why was Eric in such a rush the other night?”
“Oh, God, five things. Eric is okay, but sometimes he can be such an ass. That’s number one. The party ran late—but they always do, especially when a chef is on site.”
“There was a chef at the party?” I wanted to keep her talking.
“Yeah. Preston something. We just called him ‘Chef.’ Anyway, Eric had plans to meet a guy after—oh, what the hell, I don’t care, Eric’s dealer lives in Lafayette and was heading to Breckenridge and Eric wanted to meet up with the guy before he left for the mountains or he’d be dry all weekend. They were going to try to connect somewhere close by on South Boulder Road. But timing was a problem. He was pissed off at Chef and at his dealer and he was rushing to get back to town in time to score something. He had promised to drop me off on The Hill, which he didn’t really want to do, but it’s not like I could walk from here, right? He acted like it was a major inconvenience. Right after we got in the van he got angry at me because I refused to go meet his dealer with him—I don’t do that kind of thing.” She sighed. “That’s most of it, right there. Really.”
Nicole seemed chatty and lacking in boundaries. I hoped that with some gentle prodding, I could use her predilections to my advantage. I decided to do a little fishing. I said, “Please, have a seat. It was a pretty crazy night, I hear. All around. At the party, I mean.”
“Tell me about it,” Nicole said. She was dividing her attention between the dogs, a pair that would take as much affection as she would offer, and the evening sky, which from her vantage attracted a person’s focus like a magnet finds iron.
I went silent, hoping she would fill in the conversation.
She didn’t. She was too distracted by everything else. I repeated my earlier prompt. “The crazy night? Is that part of why Eric was driving away like such a wild man? I mean, why didn’t he turn on the headlights? What was that about?”
“To be honest, I didn’t notice they weren’t on either, not for a few seconds. I think that woman did get him going, too. She certainly got me going. She’d been so nice to us all night, and then after dessert was served . . . Really, all we had left to do was finish cleaning up after a buffet service for fifty. That’s nothing for us. That’s when the woman suddenly came into the kitchen and started hurrying us out the door like the darn house was on fire. Eric . . . uh, he didn’t handle the change too great.”
Mimi was in a hurry for the caterers to leave? I found that curious. In as light a voice as I could manage, I joked, “Was there a curfew or something? Why the sudden rush?”
“Your dogs are so terrific. What are they?”
Neither of the dogs are common breeds. I went into a familiar, for me at least, explanation of their lineage. After I exhausted her questions, I coaxed her back to her story about Friday night’s hurried exit. “The sudden rush to leave? You ever figure it out?”
“You know, I still don’t know what was up. Most of the guests were long gone. A few were still there. After we started packing up the van, she and the couple who hired us moved from the dining room into the big room and started sitting by the stone fireplace—you know where I mean?”
“I do,” I said. I’d been there a few hundred times.
“Then a few minutes later, the hostess just seemed to snap. She hurried into the kitchen and decided that she needed us out of her house. She kept saying, ‘Go, go, finish, finish,’ in this hissing kind of whisper.
“Eric had no patience with her. ‘We’re going, we’re going,’ he kept saying. He doesn’t like to be ordered around. She slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the kitchen counter at one point. She said she’d add another one if we were gone in ten minutes. ‘Not eleven. Ten,’ she said. A tip of a hundred bucks each? For that party? I’ll rush a little, you know?”
“Did you guys make it out on time?”
“Chef got out before we did. But just by a little. He was a handful, too; God, Eric and I were both so glad when he left—what a jerk. I hope you don’t know him. Is he, like, your friend? Tell me he’s not.”
“I don’t know him.”
“Well, we made it. At the end we weren’t really cleaning, but we just packed our stuff up and left. We didn’t get her kitchen that clean. Not as clean as we’re supposed to. But she said it was okay like it was, and we rushed out the door.”
“With your big tips?”
“With the tips.”
“What about the host? Her husband? Was he pushing you out the door, too?” Mattin’s role during the evening remained a question to me.
“No, he stayed away from us, mostly. I mean, all night. She was managing the kitchen. He stayed with the guests during the meal. Oh, he took care of the bar and the bartender. The wine. Earlier, he had told us what wine to pour, that kind of thing. Gave us a sheet, so we wouldn’t screw up. What glasses to use. What he wanted to breathe. The rest? His wife, or significant other, or . . . whatever she was. She has a humongous diamond, so I guess she’s his wife. She’s the one who was in charge of the food and the kitchen.”
I was getting the impression that Nicole hadn’t recognized Mattin Snow. Given her age, and Mattin’s likely fan demographic, that fact wasn’t completely surprising. His media appeal was targeted more to capture the attention of Nicole’s mother than Nicole. “You hadn’t worked for them before? As a caterer? This was a first?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Chef said it was his first time there, too. Do you know how much he makes to do a spread like that? Unbelievable. What, some shopping, a few hours in the kitchen? Jesus, I wish I could cook.” She laughed.
Keeping Nicole on track was taking some effort. “You had never met them before? The hosts?”
“No. Oh, I forgot, one weird thing—the guy? He was a complete Nazi about smells. Personal smells. When we arrived he asked me about perfume, if I was wearing any. He even leaned in and, like, smelled me. It was so . . . creepy. He asked Eric about cologne or body wash. I didn’t tell Eric this, but at one point he was standing behind Eric and he leaned over like he was smelling near Eric’s armpit. I mean, how odd is that? Eric would have gone bat-shit if he knew.
“Earlier? While we were still setting up, he caught Eric and me taking a smoke break outside. Outside. We weren’t even close to the door to the house. He said he didn’t want to see us doing it again. He said he did not want his guests to smell any smoke on our clothes while we served. ‘Not with this wine. Not with this food. No way.’ ”
She was trying to imitate Mattin’s voice and manner. I thought she did a reasonable job of it. I enjoyed the impersonation, which felt petty of me. I forgave myself. “So you guys couldn’t smoke all evening?”
“It’s not a big deal for me, I can go a few hours without a problem. Eric? It was making him pretty uncomfortable, I think. He’s a couple-packs-a-day guy. Sometimes he even chains it. I think that’s part of the reason he was such an ass at the end of the day. Nicotine withdrawal.”
“I could smell the smoke in the van,” I said. “As you guys drove by me on the lane. It was strong.”
“That was Eric. I don’t smoke in cars. It stinks up my clothes and hair too much. I opened my window even though it was so cold out. I was going out afterward—meeting friends on The Hill—I did not want to smell like smoke.”
I was trying to think of a way to learn more about Mimi’s motives for rushing the caterers away from the house. The motive that was jumping naturally to the top of the list was that she was aware of what was about to happen, and she did not want any witnesses present when it occurred. But I was having trouble believing that could be true.
Was she really complicit in what happened later on in the guest room? I had not even considered the possibility that she knew in advance what would happen to her friend that night. Could a wife really cooperate with her husband in planning a sexual assault on a mutual friend?
Without any trouble, I thought of a handful of patients I’d had over the years who were battered badly enough in their marriages to agree to participate in something like that. Was Mimi a battered wife? I knew it was possible.
I had to force myself back into the conversation with Nicole. “So, the hostess was hovering in the kitchen, waiting for you guys to finish and drive away?”
“Yeah, basically. Eric wanted to bag everything and go. I was worried that she would end up complaining to our boss about the cleanup we did, or didn’t do. When we were almost finished packing up the van, I even took some pictures of the kitchen with my phone so that if she complained, I’d have some record of exactly what we did and what she told us not to bother with.”
“She didn’t end up complaining to your boss?” I asked.
“Nothing that came back to us.”
“The bartender?”
“She left first. Thirty minutes earlier.”
Fiji spotted an opening. She jumped onto the chair beside Nicole and climbed onto her lap. “Feel free to put her down.”
“No, it’s fine, she’s cute.” She let the puppy chew gently on her wrist—it was a sign of Havanese affection that I’d never quite understood—for a few seconds before she said, “Well, I am so glad that we didn’t hurt you, or this gorgeous puppy. I was so worried.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Would’ve spoiled my night.”
She smiled before she added, “Or that other guy. God, that one was really close.”
25
What other guy?
My breath caught in my throat. I turned my head so I could check the time on the microwave. The carpool would drop off the kids in fifteen or twenty minutes. I didn’t have much time to learn more about the other guy that Nicole had spotted on the lane Friday night.
“Can
I get you something to drink?” I asked.
“Some hot tea?” she said. “That would be great. Whatever you have. I love mint.”
I fixed the cup of tea as fast as I could. I was torn. The news of the presence of another man on the lane left me with a lot of questions for Nicole, but I didn’t want her to perceive my curiosity, nor did I want her to still be at the house when the kids got home from school.
If Gracie knew Nicole was in our house, the world would know Nicole was in our house. Lauren would have no issue with Nicole’s visit. But if Lauren ending up asking me some questions about what else I knew about that night, and more to the point, how I knew what else I knew about that night, I was worried the conversation could go in a troublesome direction.
I had absolutely no right to divulge to Lauren my supervision relationship with the alleged victim’s therapist. I also did not plan to betray Sam’s trust about the Kobe Bryant parable.
“Did you know we almost slid off that cliff? In the van? Could you tell?” Nicole asked. “Oh, this tea is good. Thanks. Is it Celestial Seasonings? Which one?”
“I can go check,” I said. “If it’s important.” I really did not want to go check what kind of tea it was.
“Never mind. After we . . . passed you? Almost . . . hit you. Could you tell we almost flipped?”
“It probably felt like a cliff to you in the dark, but it’s more like a steep slope in that section of road,” I said. “But, yeah, I could hear your tires spinning. I could tell that Eric was going way too fast going into that turn; I did think for a minute that the van might roll over. It’s a tough pair of curves in the dark. I was thinking he didn’t even know the second curve was coming.”
Nicole shook her head. “He didn’t know the first curve was coming. I was barking at Eric to slow down. He was cursing at the road. We had just almost hit you and the puppy and he had just turned the headlights on, and we were just coming out of that second curve—that’s the spot where we came closest to rolling, the end of that second curve—and suddenly there’s this guy on the road. Just standing there. Out of nowhere. I mean, it was like, ‘Hello, what are you doing here?’ ”
The Last Lie Page 20
