Facade

by Susan Cory

  “This was put through my mail slot. I didn't see who left it.”

  Iris hoped that Jasna had been careful about fingerprints. She explained that Budge Buchanan was an old college friend and she had figured the package was some information for a story. She had opened the envelope but hadn't looked at what was on the thumb drive. She assumed now that it was the picture of Lara that The Globe had printed that morning. Sterling nudged her foot under the table and Iris stopped speaking.

  After an hour of rephrased questions and circuitous conversation, the detectives still hadn't been able to shake Iris' story that she had no idea who had dropped off the envelope. They let her go.

  * * *

  A week later, Iris' office phone rang.

  “Martin Taylor just called,” Sterling confided. “Great guy. Class behind me at Yale Law. You didn't tell me he was representing DeWitt.”

  “And great-guy Martin called you because...?”

  “We were setting up a squash game and he mentioned that the D.A.'s dropping the case against DeWitt. Their evidence was always circumstantial, but with DeWitt's attorneys now waving the photo of Lara in front of the cameras, it's become too much of a stretch. I heard from Martin that DeWitt's getting on a plane to Amsterdam tomorrow.”

  Iris took a minute to let that reality sink in. “I wonder what will happen to his career. Are clients going to want to associate with him?”

  “Depends on the client. He's still a brilliant architect.”

  “And a despicable human being.”

  “That's never stopped people from climbing the ladder to fame and glory.”

  Iris felt hollow at the thought. “I can't believe this Lara saga is finally over.”

  “Now your job is to stay out of trouble. I don't want any more of your phone calls from Cambridge Police Headquarters.”

  “I'll keep my head down. Thanks for telling me the news.”

  Iris ended the call and refocused on her drawing. A razor-point pen had rolled to a stopping place halfway across the front elevation. Iris stared. The crossways slash of the pen's barrel broke the perfect balance of the facade. She unrolled a length of yellow tracing paper over the drawing and sketched a new diagonal glass canopy across the building's front. It felt as if she'd just picked the tumblers on a safe, and the heavy door cracked open.

  She examined this change from all angles. Finding that she liked the slight friction between the solid and transparent elements, a new movement between parts, she set about adjusting the CAD drawings on her computer. Iris was lost in her work until the daylight in her office began to soften and dim, with a deep pink glow in the western sky.

  CHAPTER 74

  The next morning, a paralegal from Farrington's office, driving the office Lexus, dropped Xander off at the Howland Street house. The first thing he did was spend a blissful twenty minutes in a hot shower, all by himself. Then, in his silk boxer briefs, Xander set to work packing up his possessions, muttering and cursing as he did so. He had expected Nils to have taken care of this, but the day before, the ungrateful underling had texted Xander his resignation—from both the firm and, most irritatingly, as his personal assistant. Xander had just noticed the message on his laptop when he had scrolled through the hundreds of e-mails that had accumulated, a good portion of them abusive.

  After his two navy blue T. Anthony suitcases and a matching briefcase were properly lined up by the front door, Xander changed into the suit he had laid out on the bed. He secured a pair of understated gold cuff links in his French cuffs before sliding on his favorite charcoal Armani jacket and carefully arranging a bright, perfectly folded square handkerchief in the breast pocket.

  During the twenty minute taxi ride through the scruffy Somerville streets to Logan Airport, he tried not to think about his last trip along this same route. All of that was now behind him. He could finally return to his real life.

  Two glasses of better-than-mediocre champagne in the KLM lounge later, Xander strode toward his seat in the front of the plane. The business class rows were set out as three sets of two seats, and in the seat next to his sat an unappealing, plump teenaged girl with braces, wearing a set of Glow earbuds. She barely registered his presence as he squeezed around her to take his window seat. Xander shook open his International New York Times, scanned the familiar articles, and became immersed in the crossword puzzle. Although the language of the clues was so close to his native Dutch in many ways, the inventiveness of the puzzle creators was always a challenge to him.

  When Xander glanced up to mull over a particularly tricky clue, he noticed a couple sitting across the aisle from the girl, most likely her parents. The woman, blond with eyes set too far apart, looked over at him and immediately froze. She turned toward her husband and began whispering. The man, large and well-tailored, stood up and tapped his daughter's shoulder.

  “Come move to my seat, Amy,” he hissed through clenched teeth, as his wife quickly bustled off toward the galley.

  The startled girl took out her earbuds and opened her mouth to complain, but her father grabbed her arm and hoisted her up.

  Amy stared at Xander, pegging him as the source of her father's concern, then gathered her magazines from the seatback and relocated to her father's seat with a beleaguered sigh.

  A stout flight attendant with a fixed smile marched out of the galley toward Xander, followed with some apparent energy by Amy's mother. The other passengers were beginning to look up from their cocktails to watch the scene curiously.

  “Mr. DeWitt, there seems to be some confusion with your seat assignment,” the flight attendant said. “Would you please come back with me to the galley so we can straighten this out?”

  Xander held up his boarding pass, but the attendant nonetheless gave him a follow-me-now gesture.

  “Please wait right here sir while I speak with the captain,” she said, leaving Xander squeezed between stainless steel carts and the tiny door to the restroom. By now, everyone in the business class section was looking at him with varying degrees of interest. Several of the passengers whispered to each other. Xander tried to maintain his dignity as he stood on full, unwelcome display.

  Five minutes later, the flight attendant reappeared. “Mr. DeWitt, your seat is broken, I'm afraid. You'll have to move to the back. We do have an empty seat in Row 5.”

  She steered him past the other staring passengers to a corner seat as far away from #1A as possible while still credibly within the business class compartment. The seat next to him was empty. The man sitting across the aisle gave him a burning glare before ducking back into his book.

  While the plane taxied down the runway, waited in queue, then finally took off, Xander stewed about this sorry treatment. Is this what his life would be like from now on—being treated like a pariah? Surely it would be different in Europe. Europeans weren't such awful, judgmental Puritans. He focused his thoughts on being back in his office, guiding his grateful disciples on their projects and issuing orders that would be quickly followed.

  After the seatbelt light was finally turned off, Xander opened his laptop and composed a letter to his partner, Stefan, telling him that the whole American fiasco had been straightened out, and that he was now en route to Amsterdam. He would be back in the office the next day to once again assume the helm of Co-op dWa.

  Xander set his laptop on the empty seat next to him and went back to his crossword puzzle. Five minutes later, he heard the chime of an incoming e-mail.

  Stefan had responded: Didn't your solicitor give you our notice? Your partnership in Co-op dWa was terminated two days ago after your confession of rape while in Bosnia appeared in all the international papers. You've violated the firm's morals clause. Since this will seriously impact our ability to attract new clients and keep present clients, we must regrettably sever all ties with you, effective immediately.

  Stefan hadn't signed it, as if he couldn't wait even a few seconds longer to sever ties with his long-time partner.

  Xander stared at t
he screen for a long moment, stunned, before a tear escaped and ran down his cheek.

  CHAPTER 75

  The clang of the mail slot shutting brought Sheba racing on her stubby legs to the entry hall. Iris thought about ignoring what was probably another Greenpeace brochure, but Sheba was practically levitating with excitement.

  “I'm coming, I'm coming,” she muttered.

  As Iris approached the front door, she saw a reprinted page lying face up on the floor, no doubt an announcement for another ethnic restaurant in Porter Square.

  “It's just junk mail, Sheba. Chill!”

  But Sheba kept sniffing the paper with great interest.

  Iris reached down to snatch the circular but Sheba pinned it under her paw and gave her mistress an accusatory look.

  Sliding the paper out from under the dog's weight, Iris barely glanced at it before bringing it back to her office and tossing it in her waste paper basket.

  Sheba barked.

  “Seriously?” she asked the dog. “You consider that worthy of a treat? I don't call that bringing mail to the kitchen.”

  Sheba barked again.

  “I give up.” Iris said, raising both hands. “You win.”

  She retrieved a rolled chicken treat from Sheba's drawer in the adjacent kitchen and placed it on the floor in front of the dog. Sheba ignored it and waddled back to the wastepaper basket and sat down. She barked again.

  Iris lifted out the flyer. “Is this what you want?”

  Giving it a second look, she noticed an embossed seal in one corner and words that she recognized as Italian. It looked like a copy of an official document. She brought it into the living room and perched on the sofa to study it. Two names were placed on their own lines: Luc Alain Cormier and Giovanna Isobel Pagani. Then she noticed a word that was easy to translate: divorzio.

  The page slid out of Iris' hand as she ran out the front door and looked up and down Washington Avenue, Sheba at her heels, sniffing the air.

  Iris scanned the backs of the few pedestrians visible from her elevated front porch and, half a block away, spotted Luc's blond head. Sheba tore off at full speed in that direction.

  Iris grabbed Sheba's leash from a hook in the entryway and raced off after them.

  An Independent Author's Request

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