Jim locked the door behind him, pressed the garage-door opener, and moved across the alley in the gathering evening, toward Raymond’s waiting car. He tossed the briefcase through the open front window, then dodged off into the alley. Raymond nodded and gave him the thumbs-up.
A few minutes later, Weir was standing on the boulevard, deep in the lengthening shadow of a wisteria hedge. His knees were shaking. The patrol car came toward him slowly and stopped. Jim climbed in beside Raymond and turned back to look at Ruff.
Mackie’s red face was beaming, his eyes large with excitement. “Great way to make a living,” he said. “You guys need a few good men?”
Chapter 30
Becky swung into the big house, clomped across the hardwood floors in her heels, and set her briefcase down on the couch. “I’m meeting George Percy in one hour. What did you get?”
Weir, sitting in Virginia’s chair, told her.
“Fantastic. Then where’s the tape?”
“There.” He nodded at the coffee table.
“What’s wrong with you, Weir? I know that look.”
In the lifetime that he had known Becky Flynn, Jim had felt many things for her. There was the draw of childhood friendship, the adolescent awakening to her mysterious otherness, the young adult love and the wild happiness it can bring, and finally the bitter disillusion of watching what he had long assumed was destiny coming apart in his helpless hands.
As Weir had thought back on this life with Becky — sitting alone in the big house, waiting for her to arrive — he knew that what they had failed to create between them for all those years was trust: absolute, unquestioning trust. Somehow it had gone undeveloped, and its absence had gone unacknowledged, in the same way that a three-legged dog hobbles about oblivious to what is missing. In the end, the lack of trust had loomed large, helped to send caving down around them whatever goodwill, friendship, and love might have managed to thrive without it. They had both exploited the lack in order to create power, in different times and in different ways.
Becky stood across from him. “Spill it, Jim.”
“You’ve been ahead of this game from the start, Becky. You’ve been talking with Edith and Emmett — Mom has, too. You were the ones who traced the roses. You were the one who thought Ann was seeing someone. You were the one who made the jump from a Dave Smith who doesn’t exist, to a Dave Cantrell, who does. You were the one who hired me to defend Horton, but all I’ve found is evidence that fingers Cantrell. You used Horton Goins like you used that sea gull — to illustrate a point. You were the one who knew I’d find something in Cantrell’s house. I want to believe you’ve gone on brains and luck. Have you?”
Becky remained standing. She was wearing a navy blue suit and a plain white blouse that clung to her body snugly. He smelled a wash of fresh perfume. For a moment she seemed frozen, then she sat slowly across from him. “Well, it sounds to me like you’ve been talking to Brian Dennison.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“The answer is yes. I’ve gone on brains and luck. But I do know I’ve... been exploitive of some situations. I knew Horton Goins was innocent, and I used him.”
“How did you know?”
“Does it matter to you?”
“Quite a goddamned lot, Becky.”
Becky fastened her dark brown eyes on Weir, then looked down. She sat back and stared up at the ceiling. “Ann told me back in March that she was seeing Cantrell.”
“And you’ve used me to get to him?”
“Is use the right word, Jim? For getting the man who killed your sister? I sure couldn’t go to Brian Dennison. I wouldn’t go to George Percy until we had the goods. Now we’ve got the goods, and Cantrell has staged a suicide and confession that will probably keep him untouchable.”
“You could have come dean with me.”
“And you could have become a conspirator, if I was wrong. I left you free, Jim. I let you find out things in a... realistic manner.”
“A realistic manner. Things you knew all along.”
“Not all of them. Annie had told me under an oath of death — half-joking, I mean — about Cantrell. I was horrified, although I’ll admit the man has his... attractions. She saw him briefly, while she was in high school. I understood. She said it was like being fifteen again. Annie was a lovely, good, strong woman, Jim. She was bored, fed up with Raymond, and wanted a fling. That didn’t take her down a notch in my book — it never will. I opened the door to Cantrell, Jim, but you ran through it.”
“And you guessed he killed her?”
She nodded.
“And you guessed he’d have something in his home — Annie’s purse, for instance?”
Becky nodded again, then looked down. “I was right.”
“What about the tie tack?”
She offered a puzzled expression and said nothing.
“Cantrell’s place was broken into in April — the tack was taken, along with some other things.”
“No. I know what you’re thinking. No. Never.”
The dim light fell on Becky’s face in a way that showed the years, revealed the simple consequences of age. Jim saw what he knew to be only naturaclass="underline" that she was drier, heavier, less adept at dodging the ceaseless punches that life throws. For a moment, she looked almost wasted. But through it all, at its very center, Jim saw again what he had been seeing in Becky for three decades: that the central theme of her character was to accomplish, to challenge, to conquer. Becky was a warrior.
“Where’s Mom?”
“I... she told me she was going to Ohio. But that was all, Jim. It’s got something to do with Goins, but I can’t tell you what.”
“And the roses?”
Becky shook her head and looked away from him. “He ordered them, not me. Please, Jim.”
There was a long moment of silence. The bridge of a massive power yacht came into view through the picture window, slid inaudibly down the bay, heading for the harbor mouth. In the distance, the brilliant reflective glass of PacifiCo Tower dominated the mainland hills.
Jim regarded Becky in the half-light of the living room. “And Sweetheart Deal? Did you put that idea in Raymond’s ear?”
“No. Ray thought of that. I had no idea Cantrell had written her.”
“What about Blodgett seeing Sea Urchin that night? The idea crossed my mind that you and Mom are profiting nicely from the spill.”
A cold, simple anger settled upon Becky’s features. “I’ll forget you said that. Never say it again.”
Becky stood, brushed something invisible from her midriff. She collected the tape and briefcase, and stood before Jim again. “That s almost the whole truth. I’ll tell you the rest now, just to have it out in the open. Since we’ve been apart, I know you’ve had a few women, but I’ve never asked. I imagine you had one or two down in Mexico. You’ve never asked about my men, and I’ve appreciated that. Well, I had a man. His name is George Percy and I cooled him the day after you walked into my house again, because I knew right then I was going to get you back. Anyhow, George isn’t going to be all that receptive to what we’ve got on Cantrell. If I was as smart and lucky as I’d like everyone to think, I’d have stuck it out with him another week or two.”
She leaned down, rested a hand on Jim’s thigh, and kissed him lightly on the lips. “On the other hand — who knows what a guy’ll do to get a girl back. Wish me luck.”
“Good luck, Becky.”
“Trust me, Jim. Trust me all the way this time. I need that from you now.”
He said he would, but even as he spoke, Jim was unsure that he meant it. It struck him then that the real deficit of trust, all along, had likely come from his own traitor’s heart. Faith is easier to come by than belief.