“Maybe not.” I shrugged. I picked up the fortune cookie, a depressing concession to Anglo confusion about Asian cuisines and traditions. Still, I couldn’t stop myself from opening it with attentive interest, as if I were expecting a personal message from the cookie factory: “Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” or “Le Ly Haslip is a good read.” What it said was “Sing before breakfast, cry before night.” It sounded as if my grandmother had written it.
The bill hovered on the plate between us. More uncertainty: Did the man still pay?
He saw me eyeing it and grinned. “My treat, remember?” He took out his wallet and laid some bills on the plate. Then he looked at me. “So, where do we go from here?”
I studied my hands, searching for an answer. “I’m not sure,” I told him finally. “Before I do anything, I have to figure out what the right thing is—not just the expedient thing, but the right thing. Give me a day or so to sort it out, and then—”
“Caroline?”
“Yes?” I asked, surprised.
“That’s not what I meant.”
I looked up quickly, then down at my plate again. “Oh.” I fiddled with the clasp of my watchband, and then I raised my eyes to his. “Steve has the children this weekend,” I told him.
“Let’s go.”
The house was completely dark. I opened the door hesitantly, turning off the alarm and switching on the light in the hall. I sensed I was half expecting one of the kids or Steve or someone to come out of the darkness and stop what I was pretty sure was going to happen. It seemed inevitable. Even the doorknob had an erotic charge.
“Can I get you anything?” I asked him when we had gone inside. “Coffee? A drink?” My voice sounded hoarse.
“No, thank you.” He smiled and touched a finger under my chin. “Caroline, you look so stricken. If you feel uncomfortable, I’ll go home right now and that will be the end of it.”
“The end of it?”
“For a day or two. I have to go to a conference in Rio in the morning.”
“How early?” I put my arms around him and gave him a small, soft kiss on the mouth.
“Late. Very late.” He pulled me close and kissed me back, a long, deep, fervent kiss. Our bodies seemed to rub together of their own accord. His warm breath was on my ear, my cheek, my throat. I moaned a little. His tongue found the inside of my mouth.
I managed to find my voice before I reached the point of no return. “I was married a long time,” I told him in a whisper, “but I’m not very experienced.” It seemed important, somehow, to say it.
“I’m not interested in experience,” he said softly. “Can we go upstairs?”
Melmoth was dozing on the hand-painted bedspread, an illicit pleasure he accomplished by hiding in the closet when he was supposed to be outside. He blinked at us sleepily, so deep in some feline dream of raccoon-sized rats that he didn’t even make his usual guilty lunge for the door. “Can I put him out?” David asked.
I nodded.
He picked him up, put him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and then set him down gently in the hall. An experienced cat handler.
He closed the door and turned to me, extending his arms. It seemed natural, inevitable, to step into them.
He stroked my hair softly. His touch was very light, and I felt safe and protected. I sensed that he was waiting for me to signal when I was ready for something more.
I took his hands, kissed his fingertips, and lifted them to my breasts.
Then I unbuttoned his shirt, very slowly, and pulled his undershirt up to his shoulders.
He pulled it off and dropped it on the floor. Then he helped me out of my dress and slip and bra. “You’re beautiful,” he told me, his voice husky. At that moment I believed it myself.
I reached for his zipper, but he stopped my hand. “You’d better let me,” he said. “I don’t need much more, and we don’t want to rush.”
I didn’t need much more, either. I savored the delicious sensation of brushing my breasts against his naked chest as if it were the most rare and exquisite pleasure on earth. I clutched him and made small, low noises.
He led me to the bed and pulled down my underpants gently, with two fingers, before taking off his own. I was so moved by his tenderness. I looked at him and thought how foolish I had been to worry.
With his mouth, he traced a feathery line down my chest to my stomach and below. I pulled him up, twisted, and sought him. A wave of sensation caught me, and I stopped analyzing. My defenses were down. And that’s when I learned that there were no tricks, no studied technique that mattered—only the lack of anger, and resentment, and fear. I could have wept with gratitude and joy.
“You’re perfect,” I told him afterward.
His lips brushed my forehead in the darkness. “So are you.”
“We’re both perfect,” I said blissfully, extending my toe out through the bottom of the disheveled covers. “At least tonight.”
“Caroline?”
“Mmmm?” I felt luxuriously sleepy and very sleek, like Scarlett O’Hara on the morning after.
“I want to stay, but I have to get up early tomorrow to pack, and I don’t want to disturb you.”
I turned on my side and touched his beard stubble with my finger. “If you want to go, go.”
“I don’t want to go.” His hand drifted down along my hip.
“I’ll set the alarm,” I said.
20
Dear Barclay, Eleanor had written in the last, and saddest, letter in the file, Except for the children, I am all alone. You have taken everything from me. You have destroyed my home, my possessions, and my family. You continue to attack me. My friends are all gone, and my dignity is in shreds. So what more do I have to lose? Your threats mean nothing to me. A law degree does not give you license to destroy, nor does it give you immunity from punishment. And you will be punished…
The letter wasn’t dated, and I didn’t know whether she had ever sent it or not. I could imagine Barclay reading it, shivering with dread despite his manly bravado. It made me shiver, too. The utter hopelessness gave the last line a fateful certainty, an invocation of doom that Jeremiah might have envied.
Still, in the end the doom had been Eleanor’s. Maybe Barclay would be punished and maybe not, but look what a price she had paid. If I was going to take over the role of avenging angel, I would have to be sure it didn’t cost me as much. Unlike Eleanor, I did have something left to lose. I had to decide what to do next, and the next step could be a big one. Did I go to the police with nothing more than circumstantial evidence and a pile of hints? The SEC?
I even considered talking to Steve first, on the grounds that I might owe it to him in spite of everything, but on second thought I figured that would be foolhardy, and I had promised David I would be careful. Still, I’m ashamed to say that it also occurred to me that I might be able to trick him into admitting something. I had been turning the matter over in my mind ever since early morning, when David had kissed me good-bye and extracted my assurance I would not do anything rash in his absence.
“Why do you assume I’d do something rash?” I’d asked him.
To his credit, he forbore mentioning my breaking into the firm’s legal files. “I know you, Caroline; you’re dead set on proving how self-reliant you are,” he told me. “Just swear to me you’ll be careful.”
“There’s nothing wrong with being self-reliant,” I protested, simultaneously flattered and annoyed. Still, I promised prudence. He gave me a number where I could reach him in Brazil, in case I needed him. I thought that a distance of many thousand miles would scarcely make him a very effective savior in the event that, for example, Barclay showed up at my door with a machete, but somehow the gift was still enormously comforting.
I wasn’t sure whether it qualified as rash to try to pump the man I’d been married to for more than a decade, no matter how shabbily he’d treated me. Confronting the killer would be rash. Breaking into Naturcare’s corporat
e headquarters would be rash. Trying to pass myself off as a prospective buyer so I could get a real estate agent to let me into Eleanor’s shuttered house in order to snoop around would be a little rash, although I considered it.
I rejected the idea regretfully because I remembered Barclay had told Eleanor’s brother that after her death the firm had taken charge of all her documents to help “settle her affairs,” so it would be pointless even to look. Besides, what was there left to find? David had said that somewhere there would be additional documentation of the side letter agreements, but I doubted they would be reposing in Eleanor’s attic. More likely they were locked in the wall safe behind Mike and Cindi Meadows’s stunning oversized Natkin (their decorator had good taste in paintings) or in some super-private legal file, safe from secretaries’ prying eyes.
Talking to Steve probably wouldn’t net a thing because I was sure that if he knew anything, he would stonewall it. Still, I was tempted, at least until I remembered that I hadn’t spoken to him since the Three Musketeers had caught me red-handed in his office. Now that was odd. By rights he should have come storming in (well, I’d had the locks changed, but he would have at least pounded on the door) full of righteous ire. Why had I been spared that?
I began to wonder if something more sinister were afoot. Maybe he was gathering evidence against me, as he had hinted. Maybe Barclay, Henry, and Jeff (I winced at the thought) would give depositions about my instability. Henry would shake his head sadly, reluctantly disclosing that I had seemed so upset, so irrational on the subject of my husband. Jeff would say that I had developed nymphomaniacal tendencies brought on by excess book lust. Barclay…
The phone rang. I was almost relieved at the interruption. I glanced at my watch. At this hour it was probably too early for the weekly telemarketing blitz, an onslaught that usually drove me to turn on the machine. “Hello,” I said briskly, just in case.
“Caroline James?” The voice was male and not fawning enough for a boiler-room operation. In fact, it sounded vaguely familiar.
“Speaking.”
“This is Barclay Hampton.”
My knees buckled and I sat down on the stool at the bar. My throat was so constricted I could barely squeak out a response. “Yes?”
“I’d like to talk to you.” His voice was heavy with dislike. My blood was slamming in my ears, and I was finding it hard to breathe. The fight or flight syndrome had definitely kicked in.
“Wha-what about?” I asked unsteadily.
“Not on the phone,” he said curtly. “I’d like to see you.”
Flight, definitely. “No!”
“Why not?” He sounded exasperated, as if I were a truculent child. What had he thought I’d say—Sure, come on over; I’ll jump into the hot tub? I wondered how he could possibly think I’d want to see him, knowing what I suspected him of. Well, maybe he didn’t know as much as I thought. That comforted me, at least a little.
“I’m busy,” I said, as firmly as I could. “I mean, I’ve got people here.” A platoon of marines from Camp Pendleton, I wanted to tell him. A squad of jujitsu experts.
“Tomorrow, then.”
“I don’t think—” I began, trying to think of a convincing way to say I was fully occupied until at least the year 2015.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.” I heard a voice in the background, then his hand covered the receiver and he mumbled something. “Somewhere public, I meant,” he said, returning to the phone. His voice lowered. “I can’t talk now. Tomorrow. One o’clock. The Shorebird Café. It’s important.”
He hung up before I could tell him I would prefer to lunch with Jeffrey Dahmer, had he not been permanently indisposed. I held the receiver in my hand and punched in the firm’s number. “Barclay Hampton, please,” I asked the receptionist.
“Mr. Hampton is in a meeting,” his secretary told me when the call had been put through. “Can I take a message or have him return your call?”
I was about to leave a message whose meaning would be unmistakable when I paused. If he meant to fillet me with a boning knife, he would probably not have called first to announce his intentions. I could put him off forever, or I could try to find out what he wanted. Maybe he was on a fishing expedition. Maybe I could learn something useful, something more to document my case…
“Hello?” said the secretary.
“No message,” I told her.
If I were cautious, how dangerous could it be to meet him in a public place? All the same, I wanted backup. David was in Brazil, and I could hardly call Steve or anyone else in the firm. I absolutely refused to involve my children, and anyway, Steve was taking them to their grandparents’. I was entirely on my own, and while that thought didn’t scare me as much as it once would have, it was hardly comforting, either. I looked out my front window, frowning. Across the street, Kenny was shirtless and bent over, apparently applying compost to the flowerbeds in precision doses. Even putrefied plant matter looked tidy at Rob and Kenny’s.
I raced across the street. “Hi,” I said enthusiastically, despite Rob’s warnings not to involve Kenny. “I’m glad I caught you home.”
He straightened and smiled. “As a matter of fact I have the next couple of days off. What’s up?”
I explained about meeting Barclay at the Shorebird Café. “I was hoping you could have lunch there—on me, of course—and just sort of keep an eye on things. Barclay wouldn’t connect us, and I’d feel a lot better if I knew you were there.”
“I guess I could do that,” he said soberly. “Why did you agree to meet him?”
“I’m hoping he’ll let something slip.”
He raised his eyebrows. “It only works that way in the movies.”
“Still,” I insisted, “it’s worth a try.”
He shrugged. “Okay, but don’t get your hopes up.”
I looked at my feet. “There’s something else.”
He reached over and plucked his shirt from a low-hanging branch of the melaleuca tree. He put it on. “What?”
“I need a bug, or something like that.” I was afraid to look at him.
“What?” he said again.
“I’ve got to get something down on tape, Kenny. I don’t have enough evidence otherwise.”
“Why don’t you just ask to borrow my gun while you’re at it?”
“Don’t be angry. I’m desperate.”
He sighed. “I’m not angry, Caroline.” He wasn’t, either. He was too good-natured. “But what you’re asking is impossible. I can’t give you police equipment to illegally record a conversation, no matter how justified you think it is, so don’t ask me, okay?”
“All right,” I agreed reluctantly. “Sorry.” I would have to think of something else.
“‘S’okay.” He picked up the trash barrel full of compost.
“The garden looks nice,” I told him. I looked away, across the street at my house. Some of the bushes needed trimming, and the geraniums looked like they had bud worms. I sighed. “Are we still on for tomorrow?”
He grinned. “Sure. We’ll go separately, and afterward I’ll meet you in the parking lot.”
“Thanks,” I told him.
He hoisted the can with one muscular arm and walked toward the side of the house, opening the gate with his free hand. I turned to go home. “Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“Check out Radio Shack.”
He disappeared around the side of the house before I could thank him again.
“I’m writing a mystery,” I told the clerk at Radio Shack, “and I’d like to know how to record a conversation across a restaurant table without being detected.”
His eyes glinted but his tone was pious. “I have to inform you that you are required by law to obtain the consent of the person being taped,” he said.
“Okay,” I told him, “but how would I do it?”
“Well,” he leaned across the counter conspiratorially, his duty discharged. He looked like a devoted reader of science fiction novels. “For
the really advanced technological stuff, you could go to the Spy Factory. They have everything.”
“The Spy Factory?” I couldn’t believe there really was a place with that name.
“Sure,” he said enthusiastically. “Their equipment is very sophisticated. But you don’t really need anything fancy.” He walked over and picked up a tape recorder about the size of a pack of cigarettes off a shelf and handed it to me. It was heavy, but not uncomfortably so. “You could just put this in your pocket, press the button, and—” He spread his hands, palms up.
“No wires, no microphone?” I asked him.
His smile told me I was in the technological Dark Ages. “The microphone’s built in, right there, see? That’s all you need.”
“And how far away will it pick up a conversation?”
He gestured at a partition about ten feet away. “At least to that wall,” he said.
“How much?”
“One hundred fifty dollars.”
“I’ll take it.”
He looked at me oddly.
“I want to study it,” I added lamely, “for artistic accuracy.”
“I’ll ring it up,” he said dryly.
I woke up Sunday morning after a largely sleepless night. I’d spent an unproductive few hours rehearsing various scenarios in my mind, all of them distinctly unattractive. I saw myself with my throat cut by Barclay’s steak knife, strangled with Barclay’s tie (Italian silk, naturally), or pierced by a bullet from Barclay’s hit man (I gave him some credit).
Rational, daylight revision told me what I had told David—that however much Barclay disliked me, I couldn’t quite see him as a stalker or some sort of homicidal maniac. If—when—he killed Eleanor, I imagined it must have been a spur-of-the-moment thing. I doubted he’d marched over to her house with a bunch of tranquilizers to jam down her throat, so maybe Eleanor had done most of the work for him already by doping herself up on booze and pills.
Maybe she taunted him with the side letter. I saw him standing over her in his perfectly tailored suit, disgusted with her bloated body, goaded to fury by all the trouble she had caused him and would cause him in the future. So he stooped…Maybe he grabbed her feet and pulled her under, or just gave her a little shove as she was about to slide in anyway, like Gene shaking Finny off the tree limb in A Separate Peace…Jesus, why was I thinking about literature at a time like this? Maybe David was right.
Making Waves Page 27
