“Diane wasn’t crazy?” I said. “That morning?”
“You’re asking me? I think you’re mixing up our professions.”
“Did Diane have a clear enough head to know what she was doing?”
“I’d like to allow you the comfort that might come with believing that she did not.” She shook her head. “Diane chose a solution that felt rational to her. Sure, the solution was mad. Does that make her crazy? That’s for you to ponder, not for me.
“Raoul had been telling me that he thought she was ‘off.’ Was that day worse than others? I don’t know. That new fire in Boulder Canyon? Wildfires were hard for Diane. Their money problems were bad. Raoul couldn’t win for losing that summer. The financial calamity they were facing was much harder for her than it was for him. Raoul knew he would make more money. It might take him a year. Or three. But he would be wealthy again.
“But the money was Diane’s security. As Raoul spent more time away, at work, with me, and with Lauren, she became more unstable. The less she could count on him the more she relied on the money. When the investments began to fail? It was too much for her, I think.” She waited for me to disagree. I didn’t. Amanda threw out a theory. “Was it possible that Diane being ‘off’ was tactical? The fact that you even ask whether she was crazy says that she succeeded in making you wonder.”
All I could do was nod. My tongue and lips felt disconnected from my brain.
“Later that night? At that condo? Her cocktail dress? The nutty makeup? That STD speech? The whole Mary-Louise Parker thing? I never understood what that part was about. Diane thinks they’re sisters? Are they sisters? Either she was crazy or she wanted us all to believe she was. Which would make her anything but crazy. Yes?”
“Do you think Diane had any concern about getting away with it?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not saying it wasn’t impulsive. Or that it was. I don’t know. All I’m saying is that she had a reason.”
“When did Diane learn about Raoul and Lauren?”
“Raoul suspected she’d known for a long while.”
“She was reading his email,” I said. “Diane is smart.” I was recalling all the things she had done in the months leading up to the shooting that had left me questioning her mental state. I had taken each of them at face value. I never once thought I was being played. Let alone set up.
Amanda was looking at me with kind eyes. I tried to cast aside any remaining doubts about her sincerity. I almost succeeded. “The brain lesion?” I asked.
She shook her head. “They didn’t know about it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am. Diane had been getting headaches. They both thought it was stress. Raoul was losing patience with her. The pressure to sell the house. Her not working much. But they didn’t know about the tumor. If you wish to believe the tumor caused Diane’s instability, it may make you feel better. But it won’t make it true. I guess you get to pick.”
Amanda’s pizza arrived. She draped her napkin onto her lap.
“Do you still love him?” I asked. I was gauging her allegiance.
She took a long pull on her drink. “No. I don’t. Could I be re-smitten? Yes. Raoul is one of those guys. I am glad I’m leaving town. It’s better that I get away. Out of Colorado. Away from him.”
“This is you burning bridges? Telling me what you’ve just told me creates a huge chasm between you and Raoul.”
“That’s my plan. There are other women for him. Less complicated women than me. For men like Raoul there are always other women.” She smiled wryly.
“What was that? That smile?”
Her eyes grew moist. “Each of the new women will have a moment when she is convinced that she has become special to him. That is one of his gifts.” She duplicated the earlier smile. I watched a tear form in one eye.
Her words were piercing me. In my heart I knew that Raoul had made Lauren feel special. The inadequacy I felt as a spouse in that moment had actual mass in my heart, as though a ventricle or two had been filled with a heavy metal. “Go on,” I said. “Please.”
“An occasional woman will be right. For a while a girl might be special to him. Then some will get Geigers, some Louboutins. But in the end, they will all be wrong.”
I still didn’t understand. “Tell me about Lauren.” Was Lauren still special to him when she died?
“Raoul is special to Raoul. Diane is special to Raoul. The rest of us? We’re mirrors. Raoul is addicted to the reflection of his charms. His attractiveness, his seductiveness, his brilliance, his success, his power. When that reflection gets distorted, he moves on. Any distortion is intolerable to him. Diane knows that. It’s how they’ve lasted this long. It’s why he’s so attached to her. She never allows his reflection to remain distorted.”
Amanda lifted her knife and fork.
“Lauren?” I said. “What about her?”
The wry smile returned. “She was special. Would it have endured? No. He didn’t have to deal with her limitations. Their relationship existed in his head. And in his bed.”
I felt primal anguish. Her words burned at my flesh. I used every bit of my consciousness to mask it. I drank water until the glass was empty.
I said, “Are you aware that Raoul is trying to blame me for shooting Lauren?”
“No.” Her word was defiant. She put the silverware back on the plate. She shook her head. “No. He wouldn’t. Raoul is not vindictive.”
Amanda was being instinctively protective of her ex-lover’s reflection. Old habits.
I said, “I don’t know that he’s being vindictive, but I’m not wrong. He may be defending Diane. Or protecting that view he has of himself. But he is setting me up, Amanda, with the DA. I know that for certain.”
She carved a slice of pizza. She dabbed at the corner of her mouth with her napkin though she hadn’t yet taken a bite. “Makes no sense. What motive does he ascribe to you for killing your wife? How does Raoul explain that to the police?”
I was not unaware of the irony.
I said, “For certain? I don’t know. But I imagine he told the police that my wife was having an affair. Apparently the homicide I committed was a crime of passion.”
She folded a small wedge of pizza that she’d cut from the whole, the bitter rocket a leafy filling in a petite Neapolitan sandwich, a wire of cheese connecting the slice to the pie. She left the food hanging in the air halfway between the plate and her lips.
Her face looked sad.
I said, “Will you be leaving town soon? Is that still the plan?”
“New job. New town. New life. All set. This phase was … good. I’m glad I did it. But I’m going back to the business world. The next phase will be good, too.”
She was a survivor. I knew that about her. “I wish you well, Amanda.” I stood. I put too much money on the bar. “Thank you,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said.
I heard her call my name as I passed by the machine that sliced pork thinner than paper. I didn’t look back. I kept walking.
46
I PHONED KIRSTEN FROM MY CAR. Her greeting was understandably wary.
“You’re not in custody?” she said.
I hoped she was being ironic, but I wasn’t sure. “I should know more after my first meeting with the new lawyer tomorrow. He’s been in touch with Elliot’s office. The reason I’m calling is that I left my shoulder bag in your car the day of the search. I put it on the floor in the backseat when we were on the way to my house. I’m downtown right now—is it possible that I could stop by to get it? I need some papers for the consultation in the morning.”
Kirsten hesitated. I assumed not only that my intrusion might have been inconvenient for her, but also that she would be disinclined to see me after all the difficulties I had caused her. I was prepared for her to instruct me to collect the bag from her office receptionist the next morning.
I said, “If you leave it outside your door, I can retrieve it without disturbin
g you.”
“Fifteen minutes?” she said. “Knock.”
“Thank you,” I said.
I used the fifteen minutes to get noodles and baos for the kids and Clare at Zoe Ma Ma, plus a couple of extra veggie baos in case one of them had turned vegetarian while I wasn’t looking. In Boulder it was always a distinct possibility that someone had gone vegetarian or vegan or pescatarian since I’d last checked in. Gracie changed her dietary preferences with the seasons. Jonas was less mercurial than Grace.
But then mercury was less mercurial than Grace.
As a peace offering I ordered food for Kirsten.
While the order was being prepped I checked The Coloradoan for updates about the death of Big Elias. The paper reported that the Larimer County district attorney was investigating the death as suspicious. Huh. No new details. I wondered what they knew.
My personal Clean Hands Scoreboard wasn’t at all where I needed it to be. I was a principal suspect in my wife’s homicide. Elliot Bellhaven, the Boulder DA, also thought, or at least hoped, that I was somehow involved in Big Elias’s death, a suspicion I had no doubt he had already shared with his counterpart in Larimer County.
If anyone surfaced who had seen Elias Tres’s drawing before my last meeting with my wife, I knew I could also become a suspect in the old murder in Frederick. My vulnerability—only one of the many charges had to stick to annihilate my life as I knew it—left me numb as I drove to Kirsten’s cottage.
She was standing in the open front door as I climbed the stairs, bag in hand. “Comfort food,” I said. “A mea culpa. I am so sorry about what happened. About dragging you into my mess.”
She sniffed the air. Her expression was suspicious—either of my motives, or of my choice of comfort food—as she eyed the bag. She said, “From where?”
“Zoe Ma Ma.”
Eyebrows up. “What do you have?”
“Beef noodles. Vegetable bao. Covering my bases.”
Her accent and her tone changed latitudes. “New Orleans girls don’t tend to lean vegan.” She wrinkled her nose. “Any potstickers?”
“I never leave without potstickers.”
“If I were a troll at a footbridge,” she said, “you would have just solved my riddle.” She stepped aside. “You may cross with your potstickers, sir.”
“If you were a troll I would spend more time crossing footbridges.”
She didn’t smile at that. “Come in. I made tea. But I didn’t know about the potstickers when I made the tea. I have some beer someone left here.”
The guy she is seeing. “A beer sounds great.”
She returned from the kitchen with plates and with two cans of lager from a little brewery on Lee Hill not far from where Raoul and Diane lived. “One of my current favorites,” I said. I assumed that the guy Kirsten was seeing was an Upslope fan, too.
“I’m told they’re good,” she said, shrugging indifferently about the beer. I asked her if she’d looked at the contents of the messenger bag.
She explained she’d glanced at the contents of the file marked “Pending Resolution” and leafed through the contents of the Tyvek envelope labeled “Home, Work,” just to see what was there. “It is mostly stuff that Lauren should not have had at the house. A few of the documents date back ten years, some of it should not have been away from the office at all. Certainly not where a civilian could see them.”
“I be the civilian?” I said.
“Yes. You be the civilian. What was she up to?” Kirsten asked. “Do you know?”
I shook my head. “I was hoping you could tell me.”
“If I read them carefully I might be able to figure it out, but I’m not sure I should. I would need time to do that.” She smiled a rueful smile to let me know it was time she was not planning to invest. “Have you looked at them?”
“No. I’ve been ambivalent about going through Lauren’s papers. Any of them. Every time I dive in I end up discovering things I would rather not know. These? I didn’t want to have to admit to someone later—or lie to someone later, especially under oath—that I’d been reading work product from the DA’s office. Remaining ignorant not only seemed self-protective, it’s also consistent with my current emotional inclination.
“Where Lauren’s life intersected with—” I stopped the thought. “Let’s just say that denial and avoidance have become dear to my heart.” Kirsten’s expression was quizzical. I added, “Until very recently.”
“Yeah? What changed?”
“Elliot. I will take any leverage I can find to thwart Elliot. Maybe I can earn some goodwill by turning those papers over to him. Or maybe there is something inflammatory in there I can use against him. If you have any advice, I’d love it. You know that.”
She dug into the Sichuan noodles. I could tell from her closed eyes that the comfort food was providing comfort. She asked, “Why me? And why now?”
“You mean why not my new lawyer? And tomorrow?”
She nodded. I placed my chopsticks between my teeth—probably not a good look—and reached into the messenger bag. I grabbed the sealed envelope, the one from Lauren’s peacoat, the one addressed to elly-ott. After removing the chopsticks from my mouth I said, “The day Elliot cornered me at my office? I came by here? This is the envelope I asked if I should open.” I provided a capsule history of Sofie’s discovery of the envelope in the peacoat.
“Valentine’s Day,” she mused. “You came here on Valentine’s Day. That’s how it looked when you found the envelope?” she asked.
“When Sofie found it. I assumed that Lauren stuck it in her pocket with the intent of delivering it to Elliot. But that never happened.”
“What makes you think that she intended it for Elliot?”
“It was in her coat pocket. It seemed logical that she put it there at home in anticipation of wearing the coat to work because she planned to give it to him,” I said.
“Why her coat pocket and not her satchel?” I didn’t have an answer. “The alternative makes sense,” Kirsten said. “Someone could have given the envelope to Lauren. She could have put it in her pocket after receiving it. Or maybe your theory is right, but she had a change of heart. Or she forgot about it. Or she left it in her coat intentionally with plans to hand it to someone else. Not Elliot. Or not at work.”
Those were all possibilities.
She asked, “Is that her handwriting?”
“I think it’s Andrew’s. Her assistant.”
“Is it okay if I make a copy of the contents? You can take the originals with you for your meeting. I’ll go over the copies if I get a chance. If I see anything that provides you with leverage I will let you know. Best I can do.”
She left for a few minutes. When she returned she stuffed a freshly sealed envelope back into my messenger bag. “I copied the contents. I put the originals into a fresh envelope along with the original envelope. I’ve signed and dated along the seal. You can explain all that tomorrow. At your meeting.” She leaned back on the deep chair, her feet beneath her, a beer in hand. She said, “So what did you find among Lauren’s things that you didn’t wish to find? Something that hurt?”
I swallowed a potsticker before I said, “Yes.”
“Want to tell me about it?”
“As my lawyer?”
“I will be your lawyer only until tomorrow morning. I hope to be your friend longer than that. You get to decide whether you want to talk to me about things that cause pain.”
I was not a hero in my story. It was a tale of being cuckolded in a grand way. Kirsten sensed my ambivalence about telling it. “Not sure?”
I said, “Do you know anything about Christian Louboutins?”
I could tell that my words hit her ears as non sequitur, not as segue. She said, “They are shoes I can’t afford. Fortunately they are shoes I can’t afford that I don’t run across where I shop.” She smiled at me with her eyes. “When I covet—which isn’t usually, not my thing—I am more inclined toward purses I can’t afford th
an shoes I can’t afford. Bags are my weakness.”
“Good to know,” I said.
“Did you find some pricey pumps? Were designer shoes Lauren’s weakness?”
I put down the food. I put down the beer. I sat back. “She did have a weakness. And I did find some Louboutins. Stilettos.”
Kirsten leaned toward me. “You didn’t know she had a shoe thing? You discovered what—how much they cost?”
I said, “Lauren’s weakness wasn’t for expensive shoes. It was …”
She sighed. “I’m not following. Sorry. If you don’t want to talk—”
“Lauren couldn’t walk in stilettos. She had balance issues from MS. The shoes were a gift to her from a man who didn’t care that she couldn’t walk in them.”
Kirsten frowned. I felt a small stab of ironic comfort that at least one other person in my universe was as sexually naïve as me.
“Oh,” she said suddenly as she got it, her eyes wide. “I am so sorry.”
I told her about the “CL peeps letts.” And about Raoul. And about Diane’s Christian Louboutins. I didn’t tell her about Amanda’s Louboutins. At some point I had to protect my patient’s confidentiality. Along with my professional credibility, or whatever crumbs remained of it.
Kirsten moved from her chair to sit beside me. The chair was plenty big for both of us. She said the right things. I felt a temptation to settle in. I didn’t.
“I have to get home,” I said. “The kids are starving. I have their dinner in the car.” I stood. “Thank you. It helped to say that out loud.”
“Before you go,” she said. “This is me putting on my lawyer hat.” She got up while she pantomimed putting on her lawyer hat. “The triangle—you and Lauren and … Raoul—gives you motive. From Elliot’s perspective Lauren’s murder becomes a crime of passion. Juries understand crimes of passion. They don’t always understand crazy people who think they are movie stars’ older sisters suddenly shooting people for no apparent reason. But a husband in a jealous rage? Juries get that.”
I said, “I didn’t know about the triangle back then.”
“And you think you can convince a jury of that? Good luck.”
Compound Fractures Page 25
