Fatal

by John Lescroart

  That’s the way the Jamesons did things: as a family, working together, talking things out, coming to an enlightened consensus.

  On Sunday night, in their bedroom, Ron asked her, “So what do you think? Was that worthwhile?”

  “Definitely. It will at least keep him in school until the end of the semester and buy some time. Then if it comes to it, he transfers out next year, but he’s still covered with his applications. Plus, I’m proud of you, too.”

  “What for?”

  “I think it’s pretty brave of you to volunteer to go talk to Father Silas.”

  Ron shrugged. “He’s a reasonable guy. My guess is he considers that pastoral letter bullshit, too. I flatly can’t believe that in this town they would even make a small move toward firing any teacher for being gay. Or for preaching tolerance. But they’ve got to pretend they’re on board with all this mumbo jumbo so they don’t piss off the archbishop. It’s a thin line and Silas is probably trying to walk it.”

  “And we know Aidan will be able to make up the missed days and work?”

  “It’s only two days, and there’s no reasonable doubt about that.”

  “Says the lawyer.”

  “Well, yes, I will certainly make an impassioned argument on that score. And God knows, beyond that, we’ve given that school enough money . . .”

  “Maybe it’s not that.”

  Ron frowned. “Don’t kid yourself. It’s at least some of that. And maybe this is a blessing in disguise after all. If Janey also wants to opt out of Catholic education for high school, it’s probably worth looking into. And it could even save us a bundle, which we might wind up needing in a big way if we restructure the firm.”

  “Which is not—”

  He held up a palm to stop her. “Plus,” he said, “last but not least, that was kind of fun up there in the redwoods. It does us all a world of good to get out of the city now and then, don’t you think?”

  “I do. Except I think I must have put on five pounds in lasagna and cannoli.”

  “Well, if you did, they went to all the right places.” He patted the bed. “Why don’t you come on over here and we can check it out, see where everything settled.”

  * * *

  The next morning, the family was up early and ate breakfast together. Aidan was back to his routine, taking Janey to school and then driving himself to SI. Ron had his appointment with Father Silas. Kate had a hair appointment at 11:00.

  As she rinsed the dishes, she was humming Pharrell Williams’s maddeningly addictive song “Happy.” The fog was socking in the backyard out the kitchen window.

  Life was back to normal.

  All that other madness last week. What had that been about? What had she been thinking?

  * * *

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Kate.”

  He didn’t have to identify himself. It could not have been anyone else.

  She went silent, then reached over and put the handheld wall phone’s receiver back into its place above the kitchen counter, cutting off the call.

  In under a minute, the goddamned thing jangled again.

  Once. Twice.

  She picked up, unable to form any words.

  “Kate? Are you there?”

  Finally. “How did you get this number?”

  “Your husband gave it to me at Geoff’s.”

  “You can’t call here. This is my home.”

  “All right. I won’t call there again. Give me your cell, then.”

  “You can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  “Sure we can. We have.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

  Another silence.

  “Kate? Are you still there?”

  “I’m here.” A breath. “What do you want, Peter?”

  “I think that ought to be obvious. I want to see you. Or at least talk to you.”

  “We’re talking now.”

  “Not like this.”

  Her phone’s receiver had a coiled cord that unraveled to twelve feet, and now Kate stepped away from the counter and turned, wrapping herself in it, then turning again, releasing her. This took time. At the end of which, she said, “Peter, listen. I thought we decided that we weren’t going to do this.”

  “And what is it we were not doing?”

  “Anything else. We had the one time and that would be that.”

  “We decided that? I don’t remember deciding that. Didn’t you call my office on Friday?”

  No reply.

  “Didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, then, what was that about?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to hear your voice. I wanted to see you.”

  “But you don’t now?”

  She didn’t answer. Finally, she said, “It’s different.”

  “What’s different?”

  “Everything.”

  He broke a brittle little laugh. “At least we agree on that.”

  “I don’t mean it the way you do.”

  “So how do you mean it? Everything being different?”

  “I don’t . . . I just . . . I think it was a mistake.”

  “Then it was a mistake on Friday, too? Calling me. So now, suddenly, it’s Monday and let’s forget all that?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid so. Yes.”

  “How about if I can’t do that? If I don’t want to do that?”

  “Peter . . .”

  “So what happened over the weekend? Where did you go, by the way?”

  She took a moment. Then, “How do you know I went anywhere?”

  “I know you weren’t home.”

  “You didn’t try calling here, did you? God, tell me you didn’t leave a message on voicemail.”

  “No.” He paused. “I walked by.”

  “You walked by my house?”

  “A couple of times. Saturday and again on Sunday.”

  “Oh my God, Peter. What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking I wanted to see you. Not really visit. Just get a glimpse.”

  “At my house? Not at my house!”

  “I wasn’t going to knock at the door or anything like that. I just wanted to see you again.”

  “Shit, Peter, shit. How were you going to see me if you didn’t knock or anything like that?”

  “I didn’t think it out. I thought if I was just there, in the course of your day you might come out. And frankly, I don’t see a big difference between that and you calling me on Friday. I thought after Thursday, I don’t know, we were in each other’s orbit somehow.”

  “That was never the plan, Peter. It was just a thing.”

  “And now it’s not?”

  “I didn’t mean for it to hurt anybody. I mean you especially.”

  “Past tense already? Just like that?”

  “I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.” She waited a moment. When Peter didn’t speak, she said, “I’m going to hang up now.”

  And she did.

  * * *

  “You can’t just . . .” he finally said.

  But she was gone.

  Peter, his knuckles white gripping the receiver, looked down at it until he heard the dial tone kick in, and then he placed it back in the cradle and let go of it.

  He was sitting with his back straight on the front half of his chair behind the desk in his office, his hands now clasped in front of him. The door to the room was closed, and he’d even thrown the deadbolt to make sure Theresa or someone else couldn’t barge in unannounced during the call. Behind him the fog clung to the enormous windows, obscuring the world around and beneath him.

  This was unacceptable.

  Kate had upended his world, his entire vision of who he was. Because of her—or the changes she’d forced him to acknowledge in his psyche—he had put his family and possibly even his career in jeopardy. Had it all really been nothing but a whim on her part? How could he have let her have that much power?
>
  He cast a glance at the telephone as though it might somehow be a living thing. Reaching out, he put his hand on the receiver yet again. He knew, though, that if he reached her, she would simply refuse to talk to him, probably would hang up immediately. Beyond that, he had nothing more, nothing different, to say.

  He stood up and crossed over to the windows, looking out and down into the enveloping whiteness. Turning around, his eyes came to rest on the framed photograph of Jill and the boys on his desk. The shot was unfeigned, the three of them goofing around, their faces alight with joy, all wrapped in each other’s arms on the beach in Kapalua. Peter had taken the picture three years ago, over the Thanksgiving vacation, and at the time it had seemed to capture the very essence of who they all were—solid, together, trusting, happy.

  If he, in so many ways, did not belong in that picture, at least he had been comfortable, complacent, generally satisfied with his life. Most of the time.

  He walked over, closer, and picked up the frame. He had always found Jill’s smile particularly attractive. But looking at that smile now, he felt nothing but sadness and—worse—pity. What he had done would destroy her if she ever found out, and yet he knew that if he managed to keep it hidden from her, he would never be able to think of her in the same way again. She would be someone he was able to fool, to make a fool of.

  In fact, she already was that person.

  Staring at that smile, frozen in time, he realized that it was already too late. He would never truly love her again. Not as his equal; not as his partner in life. The bare fact that she might never know what he’d done, might never figure it out, in a fundamental way diminished her.

  This was unfair to her, of course, but what could he do? He felt the truth of it in his gut.

  And what of the boys?

  In a sudden fury, he threw the picture down and it exploded on the floor.

  He was still standing over the wreckage when Theresa tried the doorknob and, finding it locked, knocked on the door. “Peter, are you all right?”

  “Just a second.” He glanced at his desktop and moved a prop or two. Then, stepping around the broken glass, he got to the door and opened it. “I’m such a klutz,” he said.

  “What happened?”

  “I pushed a binder out of my way on the desk and wasn’t paying attention, and it knocked my favorite picture off.”

  “Don’t worry about that. We can get it reframed, good as new. Are you all right? You look like a ghost.”

  He shook his head. “Just pissed off.” Letting out a deep breath, he said, “Sorry. It’s been a tough couple of days. And now this.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize about. Not to me, anyway. Let me call the janitor and get that stuff all picked up. Meanwhile, why don’t you take a break? I can get you some coffee.”

  “That might be nice. Thanks.”

  But she hesitated, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Not to be nosy,” she asked, “but is this connected to that personal matter you’ve been dealing with? The woman?”

  He flashed her a quick smile. “No. God forbid you’re nosy. She’s a family friend. It’s not that.” He gestured to his desk. “It’s all this.” Then, “Why would you think it’s the woman?”

  “I don’t know. You locked your door, for one thing, which you never do.”

  “I just wanted to discourage interruption. I’m a lot more behind than usual.”

  She held up her hands. “No judgment. Just sayin’. But in all seriousness, maybe you need to take a break. A real break, Peter.”

  “Yes, well, you may remember I took off all of last Friday, which just means I was a day further behind when I came in today. It’ll pass. I’ll get it all done.”

  “There’s never a doubt about that, but you really seem a little bit burned out, and I worry.”

  “That’s why you’re the world’s best secretary. I’m fine, I promise.”

  “All right. But I’ll be watching you. Meanwhile, janitor and coffee. And don’t step on the broken glass.”

  10

  TUESDAY, A REVERSION TO PURE winter.

  The June fog, two weeks early, blanketed the city and knocked the temperature down to the low fifties. With the wind chill, the “real feel” was 41.

  Kate and Beth didn’t make it much beyond their first turn off Washington north onto Fillmore when a couple of biting gusts cut through them and they decided to turn around and give today’s walk a pass. Instead, Beth suggested that they take her car and drive down to the Ferry Building, where they could pick up some specialty groceries and then get a light lunch at the Market Café. Kate, who had after all just been to the same location four days ago—it was where she’d placed that stupidly spontaneous last call to Peter Ash—nevertheless didn’t want to have to explain her reluctance to go there again, so she agreed.

  By 11:00, the women had finished their shopping and were sitting at a warmish inside booth at the Market Café, their coffees on the table in front of them. All of the other seats in the restaurant were taken as well. Though it wasn’t as crowded inside the main building as it had been on Friday afternoon, the place was still filled to near capacity with shoppers and tourists.

  * * *

  Peter waited until it was nearly lunchtime before he got up and told Theresa that he was going down to the Ferry Building for lunch and he’d be back in an hour. He’d come in early to catch up on the work that he’d been all but ignoring, but he had accomplished essentially nothing, whipping his frustration into a near frenzy.

  Five minutes after he’d left his office, he arrived at his destination, entering by the northern doorway, and though it was cold and blustery, he stopped to get an ice-cream cone—salted caramel had become the world’s ubiquitous flavor in the past year or so, not long enough ago that he’d been able to develop a resistance to it. Savoring the taste, he strolled out to the deck area that looked out over the ferry landing gate and the bay.

  The ice cream slowed him down and while he ate it, some of the edge seemed to come off the low-level panic with which he’d been living since he’d left the hotel and Kate.

  He took a breath, let it out slowly. He could beat this thing, he thought. Just put it behind him. Chalk it up to boredom. Temptation was sometimes irresistible, and he’d given in to it once, then again. But that could stop. He could make it stop. It didn’t have to defeat him.

  Last night at home had been proof of that. They’d all sat down to dinner together, him and Jill and the boys, and they’d talked about the Giants and school and the movie Interstellar and afterwards, when the kids had gone out, he had helped Jill with the dishes and then they sat next to each other on the loveseat for two episodes of Blue Bloods, to which they were addicted. He’d had a couple of glasses of wine, and nobody had said a word about alcoholism. They had made love, and he’d thought neither of Kate nor Diane until they were done. But then, almost immediately he’d fallen asleep. No stress, no drama. That could be his life again. He could reclaim it.

  Finishing the ice cream, he threw his wrapper in a trash can and wandered outside down the back of the building until he came to Sur La Table, where he decided to stop in to see if he could find some kind of knickknack that Jill would like for the kitchen. After a couple of minutes, he walked out into the main pavilion with a small low-tech vacuum device that promised to keep opened wine fresh for weeks.

  Crossing the hall and looking in at the Market Café for a free table, he saw Kate—unmistakably Kate—against the back wall and sitting sideways to him, talking animatedly to another woman. Thinking that this must be a cosmic existential test of some kind, he steeled himself and kept walking until he was outside again, at the far end of the building, then across the Embarcadero and on his way downtown.

  * * *

  Kate and Beth had already covered the drama with Kate’s kids and the archdiocese, and after a short lull, Beth drew in a breath and started in on another topic. “So there is one kind of weird thing happening with me,”
she said. “Do you remember that girl I told you about on Friday? The one who got involved with Frank Rinaldi, which in turn got him shot by his wife? Her name is Laurie Shaw.”

  “Sure. I remember. I think that’s maybe the first time you’ve ever really talked about actual details of your work with me. What about her?”

  “Well, it’s not so much her, as she’s got a brother.”

  “She was sleeping with her brother, too?”

  Beth laughed out loud. “No. She was not sleeping with her brother. But she was so upset when I called her on Friday that I went by her place as much to see if she needed anything as to get her statement. I thought maybe she could use some help with coping. Or maybe I could recommend a professional. Anyway, somebody to help her get through this.”

  “You are such a nice person.”

  Beth shrugged. “I don’t know about that. In any event, there was no question of her being a suspect—the Rinaldis were a definite murder-suicide, and she was just this poor mixed-up woman who’d made a bad decision and now she believed—and she wasn’t all wrong—that she was responsible for her boyfriend’s death. Anyway, long story short, I went by to see her when I got off on Friday, and I’m there about fifteen minutes when her big brother, Alan, shows up. Did I say ‘big’?”

  “I believe you did.”

  “He is. Big as Denny was.”

  “And?”

  “And, we didn’t start out so great—he didn’t like that I was there to question Laurie about the murder. But by the end, I’d been there an hour and we were all just talking and getting along and he wound up asking me if I had a card. Which of course I did. Anyway, bottom line is he called me on Sunday and it looks like we’re going out tonight.”

  “Tonight? Moving fast.”

  “Well, I don’t know. We’ll see. But it was just so strange how the whole thing came about. He’s over there to take care of his sister, and I just happen to be there, too. And the next thing you know, no effort on my part, I’ve got my first romantic date in years. How does that happen?”