They held each other this way. It was to his advantage and to hers that they never let any of the truth become overt and undeniable. For her a divorce would be a demotion, either a reversion to the status of her genteel but declasse family, or the half-life of an aging woman who had some money that wasn’t really hers, a person who could still use the Forrest name, but who was no longer welcome at any of the Forrest estates, and whom the family’s relatives and friends would consider an embarrassment, someone to be forgotten. For Ted Forrest, a divorce would be financially crippling, and would give the same relatives who would ostracize Caroline an excuse to patronize him. For years any woman he cared to date would be scrutinized as the one-the woman whom Caroline must have caught fornicating with Ted Forrest.
He and Caroline lived in Hardinfield but avoided each other as much as possible. They gave the servants nothing tangible to repeat. They gave their friends no hint that when they went home together after a party, they might not speak again until a day or two had passed, and there was some practical reason to talk.
Ted Forrest had made a big mistake once, but he had managed to salvage things and keep Caroline from knowing about it. That was eight years ago, and he had survived. He had held his head high and behaved as though nothing was bothering him, and nobody had ever suspected he was in agony. He had been the same old Ted Forrest day after day, a man who would listen to a friend’s troubles as though he had none of his own, or laugh at a joke about himself.
But there was one part of the mistake that he had not been able to overcome with a simple reassertion of self-control, and that was the private detective, Philip Kramer. Forrest had made a point of doing everything in the most cautious and premeditated way, so that none of his trouble would stick to him or come back later. Hiring the detective had been the first example of his caution. Normally he would never have considered hiring such a person without a recommendation from someone whose judgment he trusted. Usually, he would have had one of his attorneys make inquiries and then act as his go-between in dealing with the detective. Not this time. He had driven down to Los Angeles, chosen a private investigator out of the phone directory, and called him. He had decided in advance to choose one who had his own agency, whose ad said he had been in business for over ten years, and gave a license number. That had led him to Philip Kramer. He met Kramer in his office, told him the story he had constructed, and gave him an advance payment in cash. That day had set off such a monstrous set of surprises that it was sometimes difficult to remember that it was all done for love. All Ted Forrest had ever suffered had been for love.
Now he stopped his car at the top of the driveway where it became a circle, then pulled ahead so he wouldn’t block the front entrance. He didn’t mind. The extra walk would give him another half minute before he had to face the wall of resentment that Caroline kept between them.
Forrest opened his trunk, took out his golf bag, slung it over his shoulder and walked under the high portico, through the courtyard to the big front doors. Caroline hated it when he came in the front way after golf. She was convinced that he would bring pieces of grass and leaves and burrs into the formal foyer, even though he wasn’t wearing his golf shoes, and hadn’t been on the course for three hours.
He opened the door and walked in. The marble floor shone so the reflection brought a blinding replica of the chandelier into his eyes at this angle. He heard a loud sigh.
She was standing ahead and to his left in the entrance to the library. “Ted! How many times have I asked you to come in the other ~” way.
“Not sure. It’s my house and I can drive cattle through it if I want to, so I don’t pay much attention.”
“No, you sure don’t. I just had that floor polished.”
“Then have somebody polish it again, or don’t. I haven’t brought anything alive in.”
“I’m having a dinner party in two hours, remember?”
“No, actually, I didn’t. Remind me who this one is for?”
“It’s the party for the donors to the chamber orchestra,” she said. “Is it coming back, sounding familiar?”
“Vaguely,” he said. “I’m sure you have lots to do, so I’ll head up to the shower.” He climbed the stairs, and she had the sense to stay down there and do whatever it was that a woman with a half dozen servants and another half dozen caterers needed to do.
He reached the top of the stairs and one of his moments-attacks, really-took him. He felt slightly dizzy and weak, looked down at the floor to steady himself, and realized he had been disoriented because there were tears in his eyes. He went into the master suite, locked the door, and set his clubs in the closet. He took a cell phone out of his golf bag, went into the bathroom, locked that door, too, and turned on the shower.
He dialed a number that wasn’t in the telephone’s memory. “Baby? It’s me. I just had to hear your voice. I just got back from the club, and the horror of this place got to me. God, it’s hard to be here without you. I’m about love. I’ve never been about anything but love.”
16
Emily Kramer spent the whole morning repeating the story of her night to the first police officers to arrive, then to others. From nine o’clock on, there were cops all over the house spreading black dust on walls, woodwork, doorknobs, and glass. They gave special attention to the windows because glass held fingerprints better than any other surface.
She spent most of the time with a policewoman about her own age. Emily could tell that she was the one who always had to do the sexual-assault interviews, because she had developed a practiced motherly manner. The policewoman asked Emily “Did he-” questions that didn’t apply to the events of the night, but which reminded Emily that there were a great many things that could have happened and might have if the man had managed to get her to some lonely spot outside town.
During the early afternoon, Dewey Burns left and Ray Hall took his place. The cops didn’t see Ray Hall as a family friend coming to lend support, so much as another source to interview. Two of them took him into the den just off the living room and asked him a lot of questions. Now and then when she was looking in that direction, she would see him. Their eyes would meet and stay locked for a moment, but then one of them would turn away. She knew that was best because if one of the cops thought they were behaving oddly, then dealing with the police would become difficult. She was still a woman whose husband had been shot to death in the middle of the night in a place where he had no known business. Emily knew that any male friend of the widow was always a convenient suspect.
In the afternoon, the cops all packed up and left Emily and Ray alone. She said, “Thanks for coming over. It was good to see one friendly face.”
“I’m sorry I just left you here last night, and didn’t stay around to be sure you were safe. I’ve been feeling terrible since I heard.”
“Don’t be silly. For one thing, I told you to leave me. For another, the man didn’t arrive until something like four in the morning. You would have had to sit outside all night.”
“At least Dewey showed up.”
“He probably saved my life. What am I being uncertain about? Not probably-did save my life. It was just a lucky accident, too. He had gone to the office early and found-“