She was pretty much a Brünnhilde type, just big everything, not overly heavy, still nice-looking with her blonde hair upswept for a professional effect, and more than six feet tall in her high heels. She was wearing a light coat and had her briefcase under her arm, but she troubled herself for a quick smile when he came toward her. He extended his hand.
“Ms. Wisniewski? Name is Tim Brodie. Knew your old man a little bit.”
She stopped moving and her bluish eyes approached absolute zero. Her jaw set like a linebacker’s.
“This is private property,” she said. “Next time you show your face here, I’ll call the cops and you can tell them about the good times you had with my father.”
Driving away, Tim tried to rewind the interlude frame by frame, hoping to determine when the ice storm had set in. Was it mentioning her dad? But he was pretty sure it was his own name that had chilled her. Which meant she knew who he was. Which meant in turn that the story about Paul and her had to be true.
Just on a hunch, he decided to sit on her house. Given how unstrung she’d appeared, she might need some smoothing.
He returned to the library. He put the cell phone listed on the brokerage website into a reverse directory, but the billing went to the office. The Tri-Cities’ white pages online showed a T. Wisniewski on Clyde, which was about three blocks from the realty office. He used the street maps on the assessor’s website to get the property identification number for that address, then confirmed with a different listing that Beata Wisniewski received that real estate tax bill. By 5:30 p.m., he’d driven out to the string of three-story row houses. Daylight saving had started and the young inhabitants were strolling in the mild night, a good half of them walking their dogs.
He circled for quite some time. About 6:30, he saw the Audi go down the side street, and he reached the alley soon enough to see the vehicle pull into a garage. He drove past slowly and glimpsed a splinter of Beata through the rear fence. It took a while until somebody pulled out of a space within sight of her front door, but Tim parked then and waited. He had no idea where Paul had camped out. But he’d seen lots of guys chucked out by their wives, and most didn’t go far from home, not so much to be contrary as to consolidate whatever they had left. About half an hour after the sun had gone down, a little past 8:30, a light popped on in what he guessed was Beata’s living room. Seconds later a car pulled up a few spaces in front of him. It was a gray Acura like the one he’d seen in Sofia’s garage back in February. Leaving the vehicle, a man actually ran the first couple of steps as he made his way down the block. Tim thought he recognized who it was as the fella passed under the streetlights, but the guy was on the move, and Tim saw poorly in the dark. He took a few photos during the instant the man appeared again beneath Beata’s porch light. He was in her house only a second before emerging, lugging a huge suitcase, with Beata right behind him. They jumped in the Acura and were gone.
He tried to follow them, but given his vision, he had little chance. He lost the Acura as it mixed into the swirl of traffic close to the Nearing Bridge.
Tim pulled over to study the photos he’d taken, just to be sure he’d gotten it right. Enlarged, the digital photos turned grainy. Still, they confirmed what he thought.
He’d finally found Cass Gianis.
29
On Sunday night, Tim drove back to Grayson and parked kitty-corner to the Gianises’ orange-brick house. The newsies and the cop stationed in the circular were all gone, probably because their various employers didn’t care to pay double overtime. But the mail carrier’s information meant that Sofia might return now. And there were indeed lights on. He kept his binocs on the place until he saw Sofia move through the kitchen, then he walked across and rang the bell. In a minute, he could hear somebody behind the heavy varnished oak door, and a face flashed in the little viewing panel on top. The dog he’d heard last time was yapping indignantly.
Sofia opened, dressed in blue jeans, the dog bounding beside her. She didn’t look especially well. Without makeup, her skin was lumpy. Her lip actually trembled as she stared at him with her giant eyes.
“Mr. Brodie, please. Please. Can’t you respect our privacy? Please.”
The dog, a young lab, just old enough to have grown into her paws, reared up and clawed the screen. Tim put a hand forward to quiet her down.
“‘Tim,’” he said. “Think you’re old enough to be calling me that.”
“We’ve been through hell and back for twenty-five years now. We’re just trying to put things back together. Don’t we get peace at some point? Hal Kronon is crazy.”
“I hear you, hon,” he said. “I do. Truth is, figuring it all out may mean more to me than it does to Hal at this stage. Here it is, twenty-five years later, and I’m finding out I didn’t do much of a job.”
“I’m sure that’s not true, Mr. Brodie.”
“You know, Lidia’s fingerprints were there in Dita’s room. And what looks to be her blood.”
Sofia didn’t answer. She looked down at the tile floor of the entry.
“Sofia,” Tim said, “I’m thinking you stitched up Lidia’s arm after Dita was killed.”
Her face jerked up like a marionette’s on a string.
“Who told you that? Have you tapped our phones? Would you actually do that?”
“Of course not, Sofia.”
Behind her, Tim noticed a man on the landing of the house’s broad central staircase. It was Cass. Tim hadn’t been in the same room with him for twenty-five years and by now, without that lumpy nose, Cass had become the better-looking brother, a little more vital than Paul had appeared in the latter stages of the campaign. He descended the stairs quickly and circled his left arm around Sofia to ease her out of the doorway.
“Good night, Tim,” he said, and used his free hand to close the door.
On Monday morning, Sofia and Cass were all over the news. Some PR adviser had convinced them to do the equivalent of a perp walk in front of the vipers’ nest of lenses. The Kindle County all-news cable channel covered the event live, which Tim watched from home. The pair emerged from the house shyly, standing together with uncertain smiles, their hands a hairsbreadth apart. The cameras swirled around them, while reporters shouted over each other with questions to which the couple didn’t respond. In the midst of all of that, the dog escaped from the house and Cass had to chase her, whistling and clapping. The pup was a bit wild and raced around for a second, but finally returned, lying at Cass’s feet to avoid further scolding, her tail flapping on the driveway. Cass led her inside by the collar, then exchanged a chaste peck on the cheek with Sofia before raising the garage door with a key. Each departed in a different car.
And where in the heck would he be going anyway? Tim wondered.
Paul, too, was back at work. The cameras got him pushing through the revolving door of the LeSueur Building about 9, smiling but shaking off the requests for comment as he made his way through the Art Deco lobby with its artful brass decorations. Building security guards held back the cameras as Paul reached the elevators.