Guzman smiled. Worse, it was a fatherly smile, sweet and sorrowful and kind. The smile of someone who knows he has no choice but to disappoint you.
"It's not a bad theory," he began, and Tess knew then how bad it must be, that she had missed something crucial, that the devil, as always, lurked in the details. "But there are a couple things you couldn't have known, either of you. You, because you're not from here, and Rick because he was just a kid when some of this happened."
"Fourth grade," Rick confirmed. "I remember the cops coming to school after the kidnapping, reminding us not to get into strangers' cars."
"So you can't know that Gus Sterne was almost destroyed by his cousin's murder," Guzman said. "His business got much worse before it got better, and he neglected his wife, which probably set him up for the divorce that came a decade later. I saw this guy at the funeral-I did the motorcade. He was a zombie, a wreck. He sobbed, and he didn't care who saw him. Finally, he pulled himself together for the kids, for Clay and Emmie, and he turned Sterne Foods around by sheer will."
"You can grieve for someone whose death you caused," Tess said stubbornly.
"Yeah, but not for someone whose death you ordered," Guzman said. "A person who contracts a hit is a strange combination-a cold-blooded wimp. But, okay, let's say Gus Sterne's the greatest actor since Barrymore, that he faked out everyone. You still lose your motive, because he didn't use the insurance money to bail out the company. Yeah, we knew about the Lloyd's policy. It paid off to the corporation, sure-and Sterne used every cent of it to set up a foundation. A foundation in Lollie's name, not his. Neither he nor the business got a penny of it. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think anyone has three people killed because he's itching to set up a scholarship fund."
"Remorse?" Tess offered, but it sounded weak even to her. Guzman shook his head impatiently.
"Now let's talk about that other crime-solving favorite, opportunity, as it applies to the deaths of Darden and Weeks. As you know, the coroner can only come up with a range of time they've been dead. It's pretty interesting, actually, they use the maggots to date the corpse-"
"I've read about this, I don't need all the details," Tess said firmly. She was still planning to eat something after Guzman left.
"So, anyway, all we've got is a range. But the range says one thing: Gus Sterne couldn't have killed either guy. Because, as those who read the Eagle's business section know, Gus Sterne returned Sunday from an international restaurant expo in Tokyo, where he had been for the last two weeks."
"Have you seen his passport?" But it was Rick who jumped in, and he was too quick, too glib, a lawyer falling back on his instinct to match the other side point for point. "For all you know, the paper ran something from a press release. An article doesn't prove he was in Japan."
Rick was given the kind smile, too. "Well, if it comes to that, I'll check the airlines. In the meantime, if your client shows up, please remember I've got dibs." He stood, leaving behind a five-dollar bill for the half-loaf of bread he had consumed, waving Rick's hand away when he tried to push the bill back to him. "Ethics policy, Mr. Trejo. Can't have it get out that I let a criminal attorney stand me to even a slice of bread. I'm sure you understand. Drive safely."
The plunge from cocky conviction to abject humiliation is a fast, sickening one, and it doesn't mix well with alcohol. Tess drank anyway. She drank and she got maudlin, although she tried to disguise it at first.
Rick saw through her and hitched his chair closer, and his attempts to comfort her hurt almost as much as Guzman's fatherly smile. She must have looked very foolish indeed if Rick was trying to be genuinely sweet to her, with none of his usual smart-alecky comments or taunts. She drank bourbon, her appetite forgotten.
"Slow down," Rick said, as she drained her glass for the third time. "It's not a contest."
"Just my luck. This is one thing I do really well."
The Liberty was not quite as bustling as it had been when they had arrived an hour ago and she could hear the music over the speakers. She knew this melody. "That Lovin' You Feeling Again," the voices of Emmylou Harris and Roy Orbison entwined like a bower of wild roses. He gave her his love. She had wanted his heart. And some goddamn 2 percent, most likely. Tess hummed the last few bars as Orbison's yodel faded away.
"See, you do like country music," Rick said. His mouth was close to her ear, but it was all very brotherly and proper. A friend comforting a friend, nothing more. But she could change that. She knew, with a swift and terrible sadness, the power women have in such situations. Most women knew. How a look, a tone, the tiniest change in body language, the slight pressure of a knee or a hand, could transform such a platonic moment.
"I like you," she said. She wondered if this were true. She was in that gray space where she was still aware of what she was doing, but drunk enough so the alcohol could be her excuse if she kept going. Did she want to keep going? Rick had put his arm around her to comfort her, and it was still there. Rick was mad at Kris. Tess wasn't mad at anyone but herself, and she was so sick of her own company. She had not been with someone for such a long time.
"Have something to eat," Rick said. "A slice of chocolate cake, at least."
Of course, Rick belonged to Kristina, so it would be wrong, and she didn't really like him-not that much, not in that way. But if no one knew, if they just went to his car, parked in the shadows at the edge of the lot, and made out like teenagers, would it be so wrong? It would just be between Rick, Tess, and her karma. If no one knew, no one would be hurt.
"You son of a bitch." It was Kristina's voice, coming through the window. What a pretty picture they must have made for her, framed in the red neon that bordered the windows. "You goddamn son of a bitch."
"You're late," he said, confused by her anger. For he, after all, was still innocent, a guy doing nothing more than a good deed, who had no idea how close he had come to cheating on his girlfriend. But if he had yet to gauge Tess's intentions, Kristina had seen through her immediately. "Two hours late. I didn't think you were coming."
"So you start all but making out in public with whoever is convenient? Well, fuck you."
"We weren't making out," Tess said. Just contemplating it.
"You go, girlfriend," a man in a Mae West outfit hooted in falsetto, as the ghosts and witches surrounding Kristina nodded and yelled their support.
"You know, Kris, you're worse than any redneck racist," Rick yelled through the glass. "You see me with my arm around some woman-around Tess, who isn't my type at all, as you damn well know-and you think I'm on the verge of going to bed with her because I'm this hot-blooded Latino who can't keep it in my pants. But if I were to get jealous of you in the same situation, I'd be paranoid. The bottom line is you don't trust me. You don't want to marry me, and you're desperate to find an excuse, any excuse, so you can go running back to Wisconsin and marry some thick-headed Swede like yourself, and have lots of milky white children."
"I'm Norwegian, you asshole."
With that, Kristina ran across the street to her car. Rick bolted from the restaurant, and soon Tess saw his Lexus zipping past the window. She did the only thing she could think of, given the circumstances. She summoned the waiter, asked for the check, then inquired if it was difficult to catch a cab in this part of town.
Five hours later, in the grip of a guilt-induced insomnia, Tess finished Volume 2, Chapter 74, of Don Quixote. Or Don Quijote, as some of the new translations insisted. She had been working on the book so long that her copy was obsolete. Over the years, Kitty had tried to replace this worn, broken-back edition with newer, fresher versions, as if a new version was all it would take to get Tess to finish it. What she had needed was being spared the knowledge that it was so very good for her. The novel's virtue had always been the sticking point, as Don Quixote himself might have said.