“Well, thanks very much, now, after all these years.”
She reached over and took his hand. “Don’t be mad, Stan. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I just don’t know if I’ll ever get over the guilt.”
“Guilt for what? Falling in love with someone else who adored you while your husband fell into the toilet and never came out? And you know what the true irony is? He was right all along. All this agonizing and hand-wringing over how he’d blown the investigation. Give me a break. Rosemary killed Chris. There wasn’t any evidence that pointed to anybody else—not to me, not to anybody.”
Sarah looked up at him. “Why on earth would it have pointed to you?”
Stan shrugged. “It was just… a figure of speech.”
“All right, Stan, all right. As you say, we’ve been through it all a million times.” In a small voice she sighed and added, “Maybe you ought to look at the letter.”
“Maybe I should.”
If for no other reason than to give himself time to calm down, Stan studied the envelope—Tony Olsen’s personal stationery. The address handwritten with a fountain pen in Olsen’s careful script. Postmarked in the superexclusive Seacliff neighborhood of San Francisco, where the well-known venture capitalist had lived for the past twenty-five years.
When he’d finished reading the letter, Stan stood up and walked several feet away from his wife toward the ocean. The beating of his heart threatened to drown out the roar of the surf. He stood, hands in his pockets, numb enough now that the chill of the fog failed to touch him. Finally, his breathing under control, he turned and walked back to where Sarah sat. “What does he hope to get out of this? Why would anybody go?”
“If you don’t go, you might look like you didn’t care.”
This brought a smirk of dark mirth. “Sarah, this just in: I don’t care. All of this happened more than ten years ago. The guilty person got convicted, sentenced, and executed. Now Olsen wants everybody who was there the night Chris went missing to show up and do what exactly? Mourn the loss of Rosemary? I don’t think so.”
“You think it’s really about Jon?”
“What else could it be? He’s still whipping himself for thinking he made such a huge mistake. Which, by the way, he didn’t.”
“Tony never says any of that.”
“That’s because if he did, his motive for this memorial or whatever he calls it would be clear even to the people he invited who aren’t connected to Jon. In any event, I don’t think it’s going to make any real difference.”
“Why not?”
“Because who’s going to go?”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Who would go?”
“Everybody. You all would have to.”
“Or what?”
“Or you’d look… I don’t know. Maybe guilty?”
“Of what? There’s no unsolved crime out there, darling. Unless Tony’s taking this whole thing to the press…”
“Which he’d do in a heartbeat.”
Stan held up a hand. “Even so, so what? I’m a busy guy. So are at least half the people who were there the night of the murder. We can’t make the memorial. We’ll send flowers. End of story, such story as there is. Which is slim and none anyway.”
“So you’re not going?”
“No chance.”
“And what about me?”
“What about you?”
“I pushed Jon when he wasn’t sure. It was… my fault.”
“No. That made you a good wife to a cop, that’s all. Not an accomplice.”
“But I still feel guilty about it.” Sarah stood up and put her hands on her husband’s arms, looking him in the eye. “They executed her, Stan. And say whatever else you will about him, we both know Jon isn’t stupid. He must have come to believe she didn’t do it for a real reason.”
“Okay, I’ll concede that’s what he came to believe. But that doesn’t mean he’s right. I think the rule is that evidence talks and bullshit walks, Sarah. And high up there under bullshit is wishful thinking and second-guessing. You want my opinion, I’ll tell you that Jon got caught up in a little of both.”
Peter Heusen lived full-time on a seventy-two-foot cabin cruiser named Désirée that he moored just off the St. Francis Yacht Club. On this Thursday morning, he had sent his first mate, Roger, over in the dinghy at a little after eleven o’clock to pick up Stan Ballard. The dark pall of the persistent June gloom hugged the headlands at the Golden Gate, but here on the back deck where they’d set out the lunch table, the sun shone unobstructed in a light breeze. It was warm enough for shirtsleeves for Peter, and even Ballard had been persuaded to remove his suit coat.
The two men were neither exact contemporaries nor close friends, but they had something of a financial and personal history, and as they took their seats and let Roger pour the wine, small talk flowed as effortlessly as the pinot grigio.
But when the mate disappeared back into the hold, Heusen put his wineglass down and leveled his gaze across the white linen, the silver, the crystal. “So, this invitation. I’m afraid I don’t see the urgency around it that you do, Stan. The whole idea strikes me as somewhat eccentric, granted, but Tony’s always had that side of him. Look at how he essentially became Nunn’s protector and savior after Nunn essentially put the noose around Rosemary’s neck. Can you say ‘conflict of interest’? But that kind of inconsistency never seemed to bother him. He was glad enough that somebody had killed Chris, I’m sure. He truly hated the guy. But on the other hand, he didn’t want Chris’s killer to have been Rosemary. Or didn’t want her punished for it anyway.” Peter shrugged. “The guy’s a junkie for drama, that’s all. And maybe things have been slow for him on that score lately.”
Stan sat back from the table far enough that he could cross one leg over the other in a relaxed posture. He held his wineglass by its slender stem and slowly turned it, hoping to convey a casualness that couldn’t have been more at odds with his actual state of mental turmoil. “So, you don’t see Nunn’s involvement here?”
The question seemed to surprise Heusen. “No sign of it. What does he have to do with this? He’d be pretty out of place at this memorial, wouldn’t you think? Having been the one who pretty much made sure Rosemary got convicted.”
Heusen sipped some wine. “I think I’d put Jon Nunn out of your mind. Of course, for you, being married to Sarah, that might be a little more difficult.”
In spite of Stan’s worries, this comment brought a small smile. “Not to put too fine a point on it,” he said, then added, “She’s pretty convinced it’s all about him, wanting to get it right this time.”
“He got it right last time.” Heusen shook his head dismissively.
“That’s what I told Sarah.”
“But she doesn’t believe that?”
Stan took a beat. “She thinks there are still some questions.”
“After a trial and appeals and …?” Peter gulped his wine and poured himself another glass. His forehead was dotted with perspiration.
“It was still the fastest execution in the state in forty years.”
Heusen held up a hand, his mouth twisted in distaste. “Please. I remember, all right. But I’ve got to believe that even if they appealed for another twenty years, it still would have turned out the same way. And you know why? Because my dear departed sister was in fact her husband’s killer—it was proved.” Peter drank the second glass of wine and slammed the glass down.
The talk came to a halt while Roger appeared again, refilled their glasses, and laid their plates in front of them—sand dabs, coleslaw, baby carrots. When the mate had finished and gone back belowdecks, Stan asked, “So you’ll be at the memorial?”
“Well, she was my sister. I couldn’t very well not attend, could I?”
“You don’t feel that, in view of our investments and…?”
Heusen waved away the objection. “Our investments are immaterial. I don’t see what you’re implying. I was t
he estate’s executor. You were my adviser. All we’ve done is make money. It’s benefited the children and it’s benefited us too. No one could find any fault with that.”
“No.” Ballard took a breath, treading softly. He sipped his wine. “But we also made a nice profit for ourselves, didn’t we? I mean, with both Chris and Rosemary gone, all the Heusen money came to—”
“I know where it came. It came to me, Stan, with a good hunk to you as commission. And a goddamned good thing it did too. I refuse to feel any guilt about that.” Peter cocked his head. “Is this why you wanted to come out and have this little chat today?”
“Yes. Mostly, I’d say so.”
Peter’s face darkened. “You think someone, after all these years, will see a motive for one of us to have killed Chris?”
“If someone’s looking,” Stan said, “and I believe Jon Nunn is.”
“Then let him look. He didn’t find anything back when it mattered. He won’t find anything now.”
“But back when it mattered, Rosemary and Chris’s money was in escrow during the trial. It wasn’t until she was executed that it came to you, Peter. That was almost two years after Chris’s murder.”
“Ah. The way you put it, you make it sound like the perfect crime for a patient man. But you can’t think anybody would believe that I would have let my own sister be executed just so I could get access to her money, do you, Stan?”
“No!” Too quickly. Stan sat back, assayed a smile, came at it again. “No, of course not. Although you must admit you’d been in a bit of a skid financially. I’m just saying that Jon Nunn might—”
“Jon Nunn, Jon Nunn, Jon Nunn,” Heusen exclaimed. “The man’s a drunk and a nonentity. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re married to his ex-wife, he wouldn’t even be on your radar, nor should he be.” Peter came forward, eyes shining over the table. “We’ve done nothing wrong over these years, Stan. And quite a bit of good. Rosemary was a gullible woman who turned out to be a victim of her own weaknesses, her own softness, her own inability to make good decisions. She should never have been entrusted with any part of our family fortune. Now, I’m not saying she deserved to die, of course, but there seemed to be a certain karmic justice in having it all come back to me, just at the moment that you and I were becoming positioned to take full advantage of it. In fact”—Peter raised his glass, the alcohol taking effect—“I’d like to propose a toast to our collaboration and to our continued success.”
Having no choice but to comply, Stan Ballard raised his own glass to chime it against that of his wealthiest client.
Justine Olegard, curator at the McFall Art Museum, reached for the envelope that she’d tucked under the side of the blotter on her desk. She’d had a premonition when the thing had arrived the other day in the mail, and though Tony Olsen had always been a large benefactor and player in the museum’s ongoing development, something about this particular envelope had struck her as somehow ominous, and she’d put off opening the thing.
Now, at her lunchtime on this Thursday, she had locked her door and, using her Navajo dagger, cut open the envelope. Sitting back, she read the letter quickly, then set it down squarely in front of her and read it again.
It couldn’t have been less welcome news.
Tony would be using the museum to hold some sort of a memorial to commemorate the death—by execution no less—of Rosemary Thomas. This was just the kind of distraction that Justine, now on the cusp of the museum’s new season, did not need.
In fact, she never ever again wanted to hear the names Rosemary and Christopher Thomas.
Of course, the demise of both Thomases had been the prime reason for her ascendancy at the museum. Back then, she had been in her early thirties and still liked to believe she had the bloom of youth, that she could be attractive to a charismatic and powerful man such as Chris Thomas for her body and face as well as for her brains, erudition, organizational skills.
She’d been his associate curator. And, yes, he’d been married. He made no secret of that. But he’d told her that his marriage to Rosemary was a sham. They were both working to settle the visitation of the children and some financial details and to move on with their divorce, but in the meanwhile he was virile and powerful, and then there’d been the issue of the fake Soutine painting she’d helped acquire for the museum. If it hadn’t been for Chris, well…
Still, she felt the familiar flush rise in her cheeks at the shame of it.
Shaking her head to clear it of these awkward and painful memories, she cast her eyes back to the envelope. After a moment, a muscle working in her jaw, she picked up the telephone and punched in the numbers she knew by heart. “Hello, Tony,” she said to Olsen’s answering machine, “this is Justine. I know it’s been a couple of days since I got your note about Rosemary Thomas’s memorial, but I wanted you to know that I think it’s a wonderful idea, and it will be terrific to have so many of the museum’s sponsors back in one location again, where I’m sure they’ll be impressed with all of our improvements over the years. I’m sure it will be a wonderful event.”
Her hand shaking, she hung up the phone.
Stan Ballard walked through a small grove of eucalyptus and up a hill through a forest of tombstones to a lone marble crypt. Out in front of him, the Pacific glinted out to the horizon. Without really consciously planning to, he had driven out here to the cemetery in Colma and had parked way down in the lot. Wandering aimlessly at first, he had walked off most of the effects of his lunch with Peter Heusen by the time he arrived at Rosemary’s burial plot, where her remains lay beside those of her parents, her grandparents, and—to the disgust and dismay of some—her husband.
Going down to one knee, he put a flat palm on the slab of marble that had been laid over the bones of Rosemary Heusen Thomas and looked out at the ocean.
Hidden among the tombstones, he crouches beside a crypt large enough to shield his body while providing a bird’s-eye view of the man who kneels in front of Rosemary Thomas’s grave.
Such a stupid move for a man who has made millions off a dead woman, he thinks.
He takes in the man’s expensive suit, shiny shoes slightly dulled by the graveyard’s dirt and dust.
What is he doing here?
He watches the man drag his hand across the marble slab as if cleaning it. And he’s saying something, though his words are lost in the air.
He wouldn’t be surprised if the man started scraping at the grave, digging through dirt and grass and stone in search of some valuable trinket—an earring, a necklace—that he could yank off the bones of the dead woman, something more he could take from her.
Oh, these parasites.
He is tempted to walk up to him and ask, “Tell me, why are you visiting the grave of a woman whose money you have filtered into your own account?”
He would like to hear the answer because he is genuinely surprised and interested to know why some people act so foolishly sentimental, so guilty, after acting so badly.
His knees are starting to ache. He’s tired and needs to stand or stretch but doesn’t dare.
Now the lawyer stands and brushes dust from his pin-striped suit. He smooths his hair. He looks past the grave as if searching for something, then turns, and it’s as if he’s staring directly at the spot from where he is being observed.
9
T. JEFFERSON PARKER
The letter came on the first day of summer, addressed to my wife. It was from billionaire Tony Olsen, a man I did not love. The envelope was ivory colored and square—an announcement or invitation maybe. I collected it with the rest of the mail from our box out on Laguna Canyon Road, and I jammed the whole fat handful into a book bag and walked back up the steep street to our house.
The afternoon was sunny and warm, with a stiff onshore breeze that brought the smell of the ocean up the canyon. A few wildflowers were still holding on with the sagebrush. Two hawks circled above. I wondered if that big halibut was still hanging out at Divers Cove and thought
I might go down there that evening and have another go at him. A yard long, at least. I missed him yesterday but I don’t usually miss.
As I walked up the road to our house, I passed the homes of the professional surfer, the history professor, the rock singer, the arborist, the patent lawyer. We’ve got a good little ’hood. The gardens are perfect, we get the trash cans off the street pronto. Belle and I are the poor people—the artist and the camera store owner and their two kids.
Belle was in her studio at the far end of our lot. It’s a metal building that was once a machine shop, but it has skylights and plenty of space. She was standing at an easel, working on a painting. Her shorts and hiking boots were covered in paint, her flannel shirt was paint splattered, her blond hair was tied back in a ponytail. She looked a mess, a gorgeous mess.
“You’ve got mail,” I said.
“Any checks?”
“No. And no Victoria’s Secret catalog either.”
“Tragic.”
I fished the Tony letter out of the book bag and set it on a workbench covered with paints and solvents and gesso.
“Open it,” said Belle.
I opened it. “We’re invited to a memorial for Rosemary Thomas. On the tenth anniversary of her death.”
Belle didn’t look surprised, just continued painting for a minute, then looked at me and lowered her paintbrush hand. “Who was it said that the past doesn’t just come back to haunt us, it never really leaves?”
“We can just say no.”
“She was a beautiful person and she helped me. What they did to her is unforgivable. You know how I feel about all of that, Don.”
Yes, I did. Rosemary Thomas had discovered Belle’s paintings at the Laguna Festival of Arts thirteen years ago and had brought them to the attention of her curator husband, Christopher. He was running the shows at the McFall Art Museum in San Francisco. He and Rosemary flew down one summer and Belle spent two days with them, showing them her work and studio, letting them hang around the festival and observe the scene. I was there for some of it. We came back here after the second night and drank. And Rosemary kept talking admiringly about Belle’s work, particularly Waves 27, a small oil on canvas, a ship at sea in big, black waves, both beautiful and terrifying. Ryder, updated—the best of a series. We had it hanging in our dining room until shortly after Rosemary’s execution, when we learned of arrangements she’d made with Olsen to have the painting installed in the McFall as part of the permanent collection.
No Rest for the Dead Page 10
