“Probably that tramp, Jessie.”
“Not her. You did it when I decided it was time to move out of your house. Cindy decided to come with me, rather than stay with you.”
“You are so wrong.”
“Am I? Then I don’t suppose you’ll mind if I take these knives downtown to have them analyzed. I noticed that one of them has a nice serrated edge. There might even be a few microscopic traces of photo paper on the blade. You’d be amazed by these lab guys and the things they can find.”
Her bravado slowly faded. Her eyes filled with contempt. “This is all your fault.”
“That’s what Cindy said.”
“If you’d truly loved her, you would have stepped aside and made it possible for her to move on and start a new life without you, without the nightmares about that deranged client of yours.”
“The nightmares aren’t about me or Esteban. They’re about your husband. I know. I talked to Celeste.”
“Celeste,” she said, practically spitting out the name. “You two are just alike. But I see through your phony concern. You don’t love Cindy. You love rescuing her all over again every two months, six months, a year-however long it takes for her nightmares to start up again. That’s your kind of love.”
“What do you know about love?”
“I’ve known this much for a very long time: Cindy will never be happy so long as you’re in her life.”
It was like hearing Cindy’s speech all over again, only this time it was coming from the speechwriter. “You fed this to her, didn’t you? You convinced her that I’m the source of all her fears.”
She flashed an evil smile. “It didn’t take much convincing. Especially after Jessie ‘fessed up about you and her.”
“Jessie was a liar. This was how she got even with me when I refused to help her wiggle out of her scam. Ruin my marriage.”
“She did a very convincing job.”
“Are you saying you heard her story?”
“I was sitting next to Cindy in the car when she got the call. I heard everything. Cindy didn’t want to believe it. But Jessie said she had proof. She wanted to meet at your house to deliver it personally to Cindy.”
“The tape?”
“Yes. The tape.”
“So you and Cindy went to our house together.”
“No. I went. Alone.”
Jack paused, stunned by the admission. “You were there waiting when Jessie came by?”
“What decent mother wouldn’t do that much for her only daughter?”
The reference to her only daughter wasn’t lost on Jack. “What did you do?”
She walked as she talked, not a nervous pacing, but more like a professor who was enjoying her speech. “I was extremely polite. I just asked her to remove all of her clothes, get in the bathtub, and drink from a quart of vodka until she passed out.”
“How did you get her to do that?”
“How do you think?”
“The knife?”
“Hardly.” She walked a few more steps, then stopped at the end of the counter. She opened a drawer, then whirled around and pointed a gun at Jack. “With this.”
Jack took a step back. “Evelyn, don’t.”
“What choice have you left me?”
“You won’t get away with it.”
“Of course I will. I came home, you startled me, I thought you were an intruder. What a tragedy. I shot my own son-in-law.”
“This won’t solve anything.”
“Sure it will. Right now, it’s my word against yours.”
“Not quite.”
She tightened her glare, then blinked nervously, as if sensing that Jack had something to spring.
“I’m afraid your timing is really bad,” he said. “You caught me right in the middle of a conference call.”
“What?”
He pointed with a nod toward the wall phone beside the refrigerator. The little orange light indicated that the line was open. “You still there, Jerry?”
“I’m here,” came a voice over the speaker. It was Jerry Chafetz from the U.S. attorney’s office. Jack had dialed him up the moment he’d heard Evelyn put the key in the front door.
“Mike, you there?”
He gave Mike Campbell a moment to reply, then Jack said, “Turn off the mute button, buddy.”
There was a beep on the line, and Mike said, “Still here.”
“You guys didn’t hear any of that, did you?”
“Sorry,” said Mike. “Couldn’t help but listen. Hate to admit it, but I heard everything she said.”
“Ditto,” said Chafetz.
Jack tried not to smile, but he knew he had to be looking pretty smug. “Tough break, Evelyn. I’m really sorry. Your bad luck.”
The gun was still aimed at Jack, but she seemed to have lost her will. Her stare had gone blank, and her hands were unsteady. It was as if she were shrinking right before his eyes.
Jack went to her and snatched away the gun. “You’re right, Evelyn. I do love this rescue stuff.” He took her by the arm and started for the door. “Even when Cindy isn’t around.”
69
•
The message on his answering machine was short and matter-of-fact. Cindy wanted to meet for lunch.
It was their first direct communication in six months, since the shoot-out in their house. Cindy had refused to let him visit in the hospital, and after her discharge they’d separated on the advice of her therapist. From that point forward, Jack’s only way to contact his wife was through professionals, either her psychiatrist or her lawyer.
The blame game was deadly, but Jack found it easy to count up any number of reasons she might hate him for life. Her mother was a biggie. She’d pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, a plea bargain on a slam-bang case of murder in the first degree that at least allowed her to avoid the death penalty. And of course there was the irresolvable Jessie problem. Cindy was never going to believe that nothing had been going on between them. In truth, it didn’t matter anymore.
Jack was through blaming himself.
He waited at a wrought-iron table beneath a broad Cinzano umbrella. It was a humid, sticky afternoon on South Beach, typical of late summer in the tropics. This particular café was one they’d never visited together, and he suspected that was precisely the reason Cindy had chosen it. No memories, no history, no ghosts.
“Hello, Jack,” she said as she approached the table.
“Hi.” Jack rose and instinctively helped with her chair. She got it herself and sat across from him, no kiss, no handshake.
“Thanks for coming,” she said.
“No problem. How have you been?”
“Fine. You?”
“As good as can be expected.”
The waiter came. Cindy ordered a sparkling water. Jack ordered another bourbon.
“Pretty early in the day for you, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Not necessarily. I haven’t slept since I got your message last night, so I’m not really sure what time of day it is.”
“Sorry.”
“Me, too. About a lot of things.”
She looked away, seeming to focus on nothing in particular. A pack of sweaty joggers plodded by on the sidewalk. A loud Latin beat boomed from the back of a passing SUV on Ocean Drive.
“Have you found your son yet?”
Jack coughed into his drink. He’d suspected that might come up, but not right out of the starting blocks. “Uh, no.”
“Are you looking?”
“No. No reason to look.”
“What about the money? Jessie left the entire million and a half dollars to her son, if you can find him.”
“To be honest, I’m not much interested in trying to funnel stolen money to a child who’s probably perfectly happy not knowing me or his biological mother.”
“But what’s the alternative? Give it back to the Russian mob?”
“If I have any say, it’ll go to the relatives of people like Jody Falder, and anyone else Yuri and his pack of viatical investors eliminated in order to cash in on their investments.”
“That’s probably as it should be.”