“But you and Mr. Beckham remained friends.”
“He’s had so much trouble, poor man, and I suppose it’s partly my fault. I take it you know about his imprisonment.”
“He stole from your husband’s bank.”
“My father’s bank. Well, it was then, but it’s true, Jack, my husband, he was the one who insisted on pressing charges. Now I realize that meant he knew all about us.”
“You mean, if you hadn’t been having an affair with Jake Beckham, he might not have gone to prison.”
“He definitely wouldn’t have gone to prison. My father liked Jake, he would have been perfectly happy to give him another chance. But my husband was determined.”
The detective nodded, looking around the room, seeming to weigh it on some sort of scale. Then she said, “Are there any guns in this house?”
“Yes, one,” Elaine said, and she couldn’t believe what a close call that had been. “I have a pistol,” she said. “I even have a license for it.”
“But your husband has none?”
“No, Jack doesn’t like guns. He says, ‘I can argue, or I can run, but I don’t know how to shoot.’”
“But you know how to shoot.”
“Oh, yes. I took classes, I even used to go to the range and practice every once in a while. Haven’t done that for years.” Smiling, trying for a lightness of tone, she said, “I hope you don’t think I could shoot anybody. Especially Jake.”
“Especially?”
“Well, he’s a friend,” Elaine said, then leaned forward to emphasize the point. “Nothing more than that, not since our sordid story all came out. But we’ve stayed friends. I had a drink with him, oh, two or three weeks ago. When I’m glum, you know, he cheers me up.”
“Yes, I can see where he would,” the detective said, and smiled again.
“Oh, you’ve talked to him, of course you have. How is he? I didn’t think I should visit him in the hospital, I wouldn’t want tongues wagging again.”
“He’s in good spirits,” the detective said. “Could I see this gun of yours?”
“Oh, I have no idea where it is,” Elaine said. Her heart was pounding, and for the first time she was uncertain she could carry this off.
The detective frowned. “You don’t know where it is? A gun is a serious thing, Mrs. Langen.”
“Oh, I know, it’s just— Years ago, I was taking women’s defense classes and things, and the gun was just a part of all that, that empowerment everybody went through. After a while, I just lost interest.”
“Still, to not know where you keep a gun—”
“Well, I used to keep it in a kitchen drawer, near the door to the garage, so it would be handy if I were going to the range or whatever, but then Jack said, what if somebody breaks in, if they come in through the garage that drawer’s the first thing they’ll open.”
And it was true, Jack had said just that, several times, and she’d ignored him every time. She was used to ignoring things she didn’t agree with.
“So then you moved it,” the detective said.
“I think I did. It could still be there, but I don’t think so.”
“Could we take a look?”
“Miss—Ms—what do I call you?”
“Detective is fine.”
“All right. Detective, do you really think there’s the slightest possibility I shot Jake? For what earthly reason?”
“Or your husband,” the detective said blandly. “Or anyone else with access to that firearm. May we take a look, see if it’s there?”
“Well, I suppose so,” Elaine said, and they both stood. As they walked together through the house, toward the kitchen, the detective said, “Is that your Lexus parked out front?”
“No, that’s a landscape man, he’s here to do some measurements outside.” Again with a stab at girlish lightness, she said, “He wouldn’t have access to the firearm, he’s just measuring things outdoors.”
In the kitchen, she led the way to the right drawer and opened it, and there lay a small hammer, two screwdrivers, a small pair of pliers, three pencil stubs, and a box of cartridges for the gun, but no gun.
“You still have the ammunition, I see.”
“Yes.” Her hand shook slightly as she picked up the surprisingly heavy box. “I don’t know how old these are by now.” Opening the box, she said, “About half left. It’s really been a long time.”
Looking around, the detective said, “Would you have moved it somewhere else in this room?”
“Or up to my bedroom, the closet there, I truly don’t know. I’m really very sorry, but I’d stopped thinking about that gun ages ago.”
“It would be better if we could find it,” the detective said. “I mean, just informally, without going through the process of getting a search warrant from a judge or anything like that.”
Feeling increasingly put-upon, Elaine said, “Do we really have to make such a big deal over it?”
“If you’d like,” the detective said, “I could phone for a few officers to just come out and look for it while we chat. They wouldn’t disturb anything, I promise. Of course, if you’d rather check with your attorney . . .”
“No.” Elaine sighed, and that was as honest as the blush had been. “Go ahead,” she said. “Make your call.”
4
When Jack Langen saw the dark blue police van parked at his front door, next to a nondescript tan Plymouth Fury, his immediate thought was, What’s she done now? He just took it for granted, if the police were here, it would be because of something Elaine had done. She was a prickly, difficult woman, and a part of the problem of her existence was the way she would suddenly spurt into action somewhere without the slightest thought for the consequences. So if the police were here, what had Elaine done now?
Thumbing the garage opener on the visor, putting his black Lincoln Navigator into the garage next to Elaine’s white Infiniti, Jack told himself he shouldn’t be hasty in his assumptions. Hasty, half-baked assumptions were Elaine’s specialty, after all, not his. So if the police were here, and say for argument’s sake it was not because Elaine had been stupid or careless, what reason might it be?
The bank move. The date for that had just been settled this afternoon. Elaine didn’t even know it yet, unless the police had just told her. The four armored cars from Boston would arrive here the night of October 4, just one week from today. Rooms for the four drivers and the eight accompanying guards had been taken at the Green Man Motel. The packing of over seventy-five years of correspondence and records and files and all the many kinds of necessary government forms had just begun. The cash reserves in the vault in the basement of the Deer Hill building would undergo a final audit in the two days before the move, being brought up to the bank itself starting after closing time on the fourth.
This was going to be the largest single act of Jack Langen’s life. The company they’d hired to oversee the operation, Secure Removals, the American subsidiary of a British private security corporation, had already been on-site, and Bart Hosfeld, the manager in charge, had told him this afternoon that the closest thing in life to a move of this sort was an invasion in a war. “Well, except,” Jack had said, “there’s no enemy shooting at you.”
“With this much money in cash floating around the midnight roads?” Bart had answered. “Don’t be that sure.”
A happy thought.
But that was why they were keeping the whole move as secret as possible, and why, he told himself as he got out of the Navigator and walked around the Infiniti and on into the house, it might very well be that the reason for the police presence at his house at this moment had something to do with the move.