She had never touched a man's hair, never thought about it, or wanted to before now. She bet that Ash's hair was as soft as it looked. Lost in thought, she took several steps after Cabot's chair had stopped moving. Her knee hit the back of his chair with enough force to jolt him and send a sharp pain running up her shin. It also brought her hand down against his head.
Wiry. Coarse. But his hand was smooth and soft as he took hers and removed it from him.
"Are you quite all right?" he asked, holding her as far away as his arm could place her.
"Your hand is really soft," she said before he jerked it away and glowered at her. "I mean your grip is very strong, but your skin is soft."
"I'm sorry," he said, fighting with the knob on the door. It was a difficult maneuver for him, getting close enough to hold the knob and then backing up to make room to open the door without crashing it into his chair.
"For squeezing my hand, or for letting it go?" she asked. "Or for never having held it before?"
He fought harder with the door, backing up against her boot until it was clear that she had him trapped. She reached out and put her hand within inches of his tightly closed fist.
"Am I soft too?" she asked.
"Of course you are," he said, still maneuvering his chair.
"How do you know?" she asked him, offering her hand.
"I don't know," he said, looking at it without taking it.
She swallowed. Pride had left a big lump in her throat, but she spoke around it. "Shouldn't you want to know?"
He grasped the door handle and pulled back again, the door slamming with a resounding crack into knees that felt nothing. "Get my brother," he said while he pushed his chair back against her, the wheel running over the toe of her boot before she could retract it. "We've got work to do."
Her fine kid boot came to a point long beyond her foot, so his brusque movements did it no harm. Her heart, however, was another matter.
"Cabot, wait," she said as he braced his hands against the door frame and propelled himself out of the room.
He stopped and turned to look at her. The corners of his mouth, nearly hidden by his mustache, were turned down. "Do you want to see my brother go to prison?"
The knot that had been in her stomach for days tightened.
"It's in your hands, you know. That's the price of being a lawyer."
***
"Maybe it wasn't even arson," Ash said. He didn't know what had passed between his brother and Charlotte, only that yet another barrier had fallen between them. Charlotte's chair was so close to the wall that the back legs rested on the edge of the molding, and she tottered slightly every time she shifted her weight—which was often enough for Cabot to demand she sit still as if she were some ill-behaved child who was being kept in at recess.
"Of course it was arson," Cabot said, throwing some papers in his direction. "'Two separate and distinct locations,' the report says. 'Accelerant,' the report says. For Christ's sake, they found the cap to the kerosene. Not even arson!" He exhaled hard enough to ruffle the papers on his desk.
"Sam Greenbough sold those coffee beans to someone," Charlotte said. "My guess is for a lot more than he put on those books. There's no question from the way he was living that he's been robbing the company blind."
"And the company was blind, wasn't it?" Cabot asked, staring at Ash as if trusting his partner was now a crime. "But if your theory is right, Charlotte, why bother burning down the place if the books had already been altered? Can you tell me that?"
"Don't take it out on her," Ash said. "How's she supposed to know how someone like Greenbough thinks? He's the scum of the earth, and she's—she's..." He held his tongue. Cabot ought to know what his wife was, damn it! He shouldn't need to be told.
"You don't have to roll in the mud to know how the pig got dirty," Cabot said. "What would Greenbough have to gain if he burned down his own warehouse?" he asked Charlotte.
"For one, he'd be able to get rid of any evidence that might incriminate him were Ash to find it," Charlotte suggested. Her chair inched away from the wall as she continued. "For another, if he were able to frame your brother, he could wind up with the whole business instead of just his half interest."
"Weak," Cabot said, his hands folded on his desk. "Can't you do any better?"
"I don't know," Charlotte said, throwing her pad down onto the desk top and coming to her feet. "If, as usual, you know the answer, why not just tell us and stop playing with me like I'm still a student?"
"You are a student of the law until the day you die, Charlotte. Now, sit back down and learn." Cabot held out her tablet, waiting for her to take it from him.
"I am not your student anymore, Mr. Whittier," she said, folding her hands over her chest. "The sign says I'm your partner. If you have a reason to think it wasn't Greenbough, tell us. If not, I think he's our prime suspect."
"It's common sense," his brother said. His tone was conciliatory; his eyes studied Charlotte's face as if he'd never seen it before. Or perhaps as if there was something new to see there. "The books that burned up would have been the perfect means by which to prove his innocence. Doctored, they would have provided chapter and verse of the fictitious sale. In fact, we're probably fortunate they went up in the blaze."
Charlotte reluctantly took back her notebook and regained her seat.
"You know, Charlotte may still be right," Ash said, hoping to bolster her sagging morale. Should the woman ever give up the law—and he thought the world would be the worse for it if she did—he surely hoped she didn't take up poker playing. He'd have promised her the moon to curve the corners of her mouth up again. He'd have promised her his soul for a smile. "Greenbough isn't any smarter than he is honest. He could have panicked that I was back, feared I would discover his deceit, and set fire to the place to cover his tracks."
"In law, as in life," his brother began to pontificate, leaning back far enough in his chair to cross his hands over a belly that had added a few annual rings since Ash had been home last, "there are only four basic motives. Naturally, the most common is greed—the crime for profit. We'll skip the second for the moment and come to the 'cover-up' crime—the one committed to prevent the discovery of some other deed, to protect another, or to destroy the evidence that would prove guilt. That's your theory, Charlotte. The last, not nearly as common as we defense attorneys would have people believe, is compulsion—insanity, temporary insanity, the need for the thrill."
Ash shook his head. His brother always broke things down to the point where all other ideas were reduced to the ridiculous. There was a time, when Ash was young, that he'd thought of Cabot as some sort of magician. With a wave of his hand or his wand he could turn black into white or wrong into right. And nothing had changed.
"But the most common motive, the one you've naturally overlooked, is the one that speaks to man's greatest weakness. Anger. Anger that stems from jealousy, lust, or better still, revenge. Revenge is a powerful motive, Charlotte," Cabot said, pulling his eyes from Ash to study quite the sort of woman who could drive a man to the edge of disaster just to keep a smile on her face. "If one man felt wronged by another, his trust violated, his honor impugned, there are no lengths to which he might not be pushed by his need for revenge."
Charlotte shook her head. "Yes, but in this case—" she began.
Ash knew what Cabot was after, knew even why he had chosen to have the conversation in front of Charlotte. The man was no fool. Anyone with eyes in his head could see that Charlotte had begun, like so many other women, to find Ash in need of her special attention and care.
"I've given him no reason to seek revenge," he said simply. He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs. Don't pursue this, he thought. "Ever."
Cabot tapped against the arm of his chair, his fingernails making a clicking sound. "Really?"
Ash nodded. Sam's wife wasn't happy about the fact, but he'd never so much as run a finger through that curly red mane, never brushed against those ample breas
ts, even by accident. He believed, whether Helena Greenbough did or not, in the sanctity of a true marriage. "Really."
Cabot looked at his wife and pulled at his lower lip. "A man, by nature, doesn't like to share. Look at the infant with his rattle, the toddler with his ball. What's his is his, and he wants to keep it. Of course, if everyone felt that way, there would be no need for courts, would there? It's when the bully comes to the park and says, 'What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine, too,' that the penal codes come to be necessary."
"A rather simplistic explanation of mankind and the law. All you've omitted from that park is the serpent and the apple," Ash said.
He did not wish to have a discussion of the purity of his soul in front of Charlotte, any more than he'd like to meet his maker and, right at that moment, explain to him his transgressions.
"I'm not worried about the serpent or the apple," Cabot said. "I'm worried, hypothetically, about what belongs to me."
"If the child leaves his hypothetical ball in the park he shouldn't expect it to be there when he returns. If the ball matters to him, he should cling to it tightly."
"Or leave it at home?" Cabot asked. "Would that keep it safe?"
Ask knew what his answer had to be, for all their sakes. And yet he couldn't bring himself to utter the words.
Maria's knock came to his rescue. "That man is here again," she said to Cabot. "The investigator. You want me to tell him you are busy?"
Ash opened the curtain and studied the back of the man who waited on the front porch. His coat was dirty and rumpled and his shoes worn down at the heels. Beneath the brim of his hat his hair fought for freedom in several different directions.
"Tell him to go around to the back and I'll see him in the conservatory. It's best that you don't meet him," Cabot said to Ash, and began the process of coming out from behind his desk.
"A third wheel—" Ash began, sure that a smaller wheel at the back of Cabot's chair, able to pivot in any direction, would increase his mobility enormously.
"I don't want a third wheel," Cabot snapped at him. "Do you understand me?"
Charlotte and he stared at each other for a moment after he was gone. "Wheels and balls. How clever men think they are," she said with a sigh.
"And do you know so much about men?" he asked as she stood tapping her foot in annoyance.
"Not enough," she said, opening the door she had closed behind Cabot. "And not yet."
She meant it to be the end of their discussion, going out in a dramatic flourish, but he followed hard upon her heels like some lovesick puppy and asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means that a ball can be as abandoned in the cellar as it can in the park. And a doll left on a shelf gets mighty dusty. And how dare he not care whether I'm soft? I'm so soft, I'm rotting! Feel this!" She put her palm against his face and ran her hand slowly down his cheek, turned it over, and ran the back side down against his neck.
And with the gesture all the fight seemed to go out of her, there in her office, with a hundred little ceramic animal statues watching them and papers piled high on her desk and hairpins in a dish on the windowsill.
He didn't answer her question with words. Instead, he ran his own hand against her cheek, imitated her move by caressing her neck, feeling the blood rush beneath his fingertips. Was she soft? Van Gogh's fur was a sisal mat beside her. Rose petals were sandpaper. She was like talc itself, silky and smooth and so soft, you weren't certain it was there at all—that you'd touched anything or just imagined the sensation.
His lips had to make sure of what his hands had judged. Just her cheek, he warned himself. Then just her neck. The smell of her! Clean. Sweet. A hint of something exotic he guessed he'd probably bought her himself on one of his trips. Soft? Oh, no—there had to be another word for her skin, the tip of her ear, the lid of her left eye.
A tiny gasp escaped her lips as she offered them up to him. Those huge hazel eyes begged him to teach her more. Two wayward locks of hair fell across her face—no doubt he'd loosened something with his explorations— and she brushed the locks away with her left hand. The simple gold band on her finger glinted in the sunlight. How much brighter her office was than Cabot's.
Bright enough for the light of day to shine in, and too bright to hide what was growing between them. He backed up, letting his hands drop away from her with more difficulty than he'd have had raising the mainsail on the Bloody Mary single-handedly.
"Oh, please don't stop," she said softly. "I've so much to learn."
"I cut your husband off at the knees once," he answered, wishing he could look away, not watch her lip tremble, not see her bite on it to make it stop. "I can't do it again."
"No, of course not," she said. "I'm married to your brother no matter what you told Kathryn about him breaking his vows. You know, I don't believe he'd ever intended to keep them."
"I'm sorry," he said, shoving his hand in his pocket to keep from touching her again.
"You Whittier men are always sorry," she said sadly. "And I'm sorry too."
She went behind the desk and sat down, reached back for a hairpin, and caught up the wayward locks.
"If you'll excuse me, I've work to do," she said, giving him a sad little smile and bowing her head as if she cared at all about the papers on her desk.
"I'll go see what's keeping your husband," he said, trying to remind them both that they had obligations they shouldn't forget.
"What?" she looked up at him, distracted.
"Where were you, just now?" he asked. What do you daydream about? What time of day is your favorite? What color makes you smile? What song makes you weep?
"I was remembering a line from Whittier," she said, trying to dismiss him with a wave of her hand.
"Ashford?" he joked. Lord, he thought, she was almost as pretty sad as she was happy. And then he corrected himself—happy she took his breath away. When she was sad, he simply didn't want to breathe anymore.
"John Greenleaf. For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these..."
"... It might have been."
She nodded and shooed him off again. "I've work to do."
There was no use arguing with her. She and her poet friend had summed up his life in a couple of lines.
***
"How much?" Cabot said to the man who stood in the shadows.
"Twenty. Thirty if you need physical evidence."
"Just get it lined up, in case. That's all."
"I know my business," the man said. "And it always turns out to be necessary."
"I know you've found a puddle of piss when you promised an ocean of information," Cabot said.
"This your investigator?" Ash asked. The man turned his back so that Ash couldn't see his face and Cabot reached quickly into his breast pocket, pulled out his wallet, and handed the man several bills. "You come to the back door next time," he told the man.
"Yeah, yeah," the man said, counting the money. "And you try to remember I'm not the one on trial and I'm not the one who's done anything wrong, yet."
Yet. The word hung in the air as the man strode purposely to the outer door and slammed it behind him, rattling the glass panes throughout the conservatory.
"Just what does that guy do?" Ash asked him. "Besides ooze pus?"
"Every now and then he saves a neck," Cabot said. "And the less you know, the less Brent can accuse you of. Just leave him to me."
"And leave my investigation and my neck to him? I think not, Cabot."
"I will take care of it." Cabot pounded on the arm of his chair. "You take more reassurance than a five-year-old!"
"Perhaps because you've given me all the authority and discretion of one," Ash snapped back. He'd be damned if he left his fate to some weaselly little man who used people's back doors.
Cabot shrugged as if that was all Ash merited. "Where's Charlotte?" he asked.
"I left her slaving away in her office," Ash said. "As usual. Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have such
a beautiful and dedicated wife?"
"Dedicated?"
"It's Sunday, and the moment she got back from taking your mother to church she was hard at work."
"And that makes me a lucky man?" Cabot played with the spokes on his wheels as if Ash needed reminding. "And she's your mother, as well."
"I've never met a woman like her," Ash said. He kept to himself how soft she was, how good she smelled, how just the thought of her got juices flowing that he had to fight against with all his might.
"And you never will. I made her—shaped her like a sculptor. And while I'll agree I started with the finest marble, without my hand she would be some diplomat's wife dolled up in a fancy dress with a smile pasted on her pretty face and not a thought in that head of hers."
"You sound like Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. But I think you've forgotten the end of the tale."
"You might do well to wipe your drool before you call my wife a monster. It would have a more resounding ring of authenticity that way." Cabot's eyes looked straight ahead, riveted on Ash's row of trouser buttons.
"It was a cautionary tale," Ash said, refusing to let his brother intimidate him. "The lesson being that everyone needs love. So when the monster demanded it from his creator, and was denied... well, you know how the story ends."
"Oh! Am I in mortal danger from Charlotte?" Cabot hunched his shoulders and shivered dramatically, pulling on his suit lapels as if he were freezing.
"If arrogance were fatal, undoubtedly. But I'd say your person is safe. It's your marriage that's teetering on the brink."
"Thanks to a few kicks at the underpinnings, no doubt. Wasn't pushing me off the roof enough for you?"
His memories of the event were hazy. After all, he was six at the time, and the whole incident had happened so fast. And afterward there had been all that commotion, the yelling, the crying, his mother begging to be allowed to see her son, his father's thunderous voice forbidding it, his brother's friends scattering to the winds. But of one thing he was completely sure. He did not, would not have, pushed his brother from the roof.
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