A childlike smile. ‘You can call him Howie. He was definitely more of a “Howie.”’ Then, her body relaxing for the first time, ‘Is it all right if I start calling you sometimes? Just telling you how I’m doing and maybe asking for advice.’
‘Of course you can.’
‘I’m even thinking of moving to Atlanta. I’ve got a cousin there who’s about my age. She’s divorced and has plenty of room in her house.’ Then, ‘He didn’t have to kill him.’
‘I know.’
‘I said that to Detective Farnsworth and he just sort of mumbled something. He’s been very nice. I was hysterical and he sat with his arm around me the whole time and told me that his little daughter had died from cancer when she was three and that he knew how hard it was to lose somebody, but that eventually things get better. But he still didn’t believe me — about Hawkins, I mean.’
‘I believe you.’
‘You do? Thank God. Thank God.’ She reached out and took my hand.
‘But nobody else will believe us unless I can find more evidence and that’ll be tough.’
She squeezed my hand. ‘But you believe it. That’s the main thing for me right now. That you believe it.’
The way she leaned forward I think she was going to kiss my cheek but just then Farnsworth knocked on the back window.
‘Oh, God, I’m so glad we got to talk, Dev. This means so much to me, you can’t imagine.’
I was the one who kissed her on the cheek. ‘Any time, night or day, you call me, to catch up or if you have a question, all right?’
‘I will, Dev. I will.’
When I got out of the car I looked into the eyes of a man who’d lost a three-year-old to cancer. Unimaginable. We just stared at each other and then he walked away and got into his car with Sarah in the backseat. They drove away. Neither of them waved.
Twenty-Three
Mrs Weiderman was smiling when she let me and Jane in and behind her, in the living room most likely, there was the kind of laughter you hear when people are just sitting around getting stiff on good drinks and saying screw it to everything else. Considering everything he was up against, Robert had done damned well tonight.
Mrs Weiderman led us there then stood aside as if ushering us into a temple of pure delight. ‘Just go in and have some fun, you two.’ I wasn’t going to spoil anybody’s fun by bringing up the possibility that one of them might be the person who had done Tracy Cabot wrong.
Maddy flung herself off a divan and tore across the room and gave me the kind of hug a man of less probity and wisdom might mistake for more than a simple excited greeting. But I knew Maddy and I knew better. ‘Sorry, Jane. I couldn’t resist. And by the way, you two make a very cute couple.’
Jane and I realized, about the same second, that little Maddy was a wee bit tipsy. And all the cuter for it. We smiled knowingly at each other and stood there while Robert and Ben and Elise all toasted us. James just stood there trapped in his prison of being James.
I can’t tell you much about the next twenty minutes or so because it was just chatter. Robert and Ben were at least half bombed and filled with the kind of radiant optimism only alcohol can inspire. Or, as Robert put it, ‘Now we know that Ruskin killed the Cabot woman.’
‘And how do we know that?’ I said.
‘Suicide by cop. Or in this case federal investigator. He intentionally ran away from Hawkins so Hawkins would be forced to kill him.’
Ben, who never played along with anything, played along. ‘You have to admit there’s some logic to it.’
Who was I to parse that sentence? ‘Some logic’ can only be used when your blood alcohol reaches a certain illegal limit.
But for all the underpinning of fantasy and desperate hope it was pleasant to see Robert again. The old Robert, the one I liked if not exactly admired, the one who could often be bought for the going rate but who tried not to let his whoring get in the way of taking a stand when the oligarch party (as well as too many members on our side) tried to make life even easier for people who had yachts to worry about and even tougher for people who had impoverished little ones to worry about.
Somebody decided to check on how the talking heads were assessing Robert’s performance. The giant TV screen bloomed to colorful life, presenting us with three dolorous men and one preening woman. Ostensibly this was ‘our’ cable network but with a few exceptions the yakkers were just the usual Beltway boys and girls who bathed in their own imagined importance. But tonight they were pretty good, actually.
They liked the way he’d handled himself but sensibly enough didn’t make any claims about his innocence. I gave them points for that. I also gave them points for having some fun with some of the nastier comments made by the other side, comments I hadn’t caught up with until now.
‘My favorite,’ said the attractive blonde, ‘was when Sheila St Germaine said that Senator Logan should have to hand over his passport because he’s a flight risk.’
‘Yeah and then Lawrence Todd said Logan would head for Cuba where Castro would let him stay.’ The man had everybody laughing with this; even a crew member or two could be heard chortling.
‘And don’t forget,’ the always-breathless host said, ‘the body language expert who said that Logan reminded him of Ted Bundy based on how his right shoulder moves when he changes the subject.’
Even Elise, not the most demonstrative of people, was laughing. She had to lean against Maddy in order to keep from falling off the divan. Maddy had switched to coffee, which was probably a good idea. With her mother finishing an entire wine cooler by herself, somebody had to protect her from destroying the known world with that sweet-sad smile and that small Monet face. If she had another wine cooler she’d probably sign up to be a NASCAR driver or enter a tractor pull. A drinker she was not.
Soon enough an angel appeared in the person of Mrs Weiderman with a tray of hot deli-style sandwiches and two pots of coffee that she rolled in on a hotel-style cart. I wasn’t hungry for food but I was for coffee.
I enjoyed sitting on one of the couches next to Jane and watching Robert and Ben and Maddy making all the smart-ass remarks about the various jabs and counter-jabs going on in television land. None of it mattered, of course. That kind of speculative talk vaporized as soon as it was uttered. But sometimes it was fun, as it was tonight.
Jane sighed and whispered, ‘I could put my head on your shoulder and go to sleep.’
‘Be my guest.’
‘Really?’
‘Sure. Why not? I don’t see how you can sleep with all this noise going on but if you can, do it.’
‘I can sleep anywhere.’
I doubted it but I was wrong. Within ten minutes she was gently snoring on my right shoulder. I was a bit muzzy now so I held her hand, and if anyone found that smarmy I couldn’t give a rat’s ass.
James’ official job was to glower. He hit the bar three or four times to get more of the devil juice then moved back to an armchair where he disappeared inside his iPad. Porno, probably.
Elise had eaten half a sandwich and consumed two cups of coffee, and her earlier ebullience was now slipping into the melancholy we were all familiar with. Ben and Robert had gone to the billiard room and Maddy had disappeared somewhere. Jane, who was obviously not any more of a drinker than Elise, still slept soundly. I eased her into a corner of the divan, slid a throw pillow under her head and stretched her legs out. I pulled my V-neck sweater over my head and laid it across her chest. Better than nothing.