“I know exactly what you mean.”
“Do you?” Maggie asked. She let nothing of the truth bleed into her voice.
“Oh, sure. You do this and that.”
“In bed,” Maggie said.
“Where else?”
“So what do you do?”
Carole shrugged. “What you’d expect, probably. Playacting. Costumes. I don’t want to be crude but, you know, sometimes he ties you up, sometimes you tie him up. Stuff like that. I mean…that is what you’re talking about, right? Oh, God, I’m running at the mouth.”
“No, no,” Maggie said quickly. She put out a hand and touched Carole’s across the table. “That’s it. You want to keep it fresh, and it’s hard to do that when you’re washing baby clothes all day and scrubbing mashed peas off the counter. Karl comes home, we talk a little, we’re both too tired to do anything, and then we fall asleep. Same thing every day. And after a while you don’t even want to look at each other anymore because we’re so familiar.”
Carole looked at Maggie with a careful expression. Maggie thought she saw something glimmer in the other woman’s eye. “You aren’t thinking about having an affair, are you?”
“What? No! I mean, who with? I don’t see any eligible men around.”
Carole shrugged and drank the last of her drink. “Depends on what you mean by ‘eligible.’ Does that mean single? Because that’s usually not a problem. Single or not, if you put the signals out, they respond.”
Maggie leaned in more closely. “You sound like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Maybe I am,” Carole said, and the corner of her mouth curled up only a bit. “But my life is a lot more boring than yours. I don’t even have kids to keep me distracted. I mean, thank God for that, because I’d be a terrible mother, but at least I’d have something to do.”
“I heard some things about Holly Gibbs from the ladies at the gardening club,” Maggie said conspiratorially. “She wasn’t only thinking about it. She was doing it.”
Carole flagged the server down and ordered another Long Island iced tea. Once the girl left, Carole said, “I heard the same thing. But, you know, people talk. Especially housewives with nothing else to do.”
“They say her husband knew.”
Now Maggie saw something else behind Carole’s expression, and when Carole spoke again, her tone was measured. “Who told you that?”
“Somebody. I guess it wasn’t a big secret. I just don’t know how he could let her do it. If he did, anyway.”
“Husbands do a lot of different things,” Carole said. “They like to play around, but they usually keep it a secret, you know? And when wives play around, they keep it a secret, too. But sometimes it’s better to know. Sometimes knowing about it is more exciting than anything else.”
“Do you—?” Maggie started, but she was interrupted by the arrival of their entrees. By the time they were alone at the table again, Maggie sensed the moment had passed. But Carole looked at her differently now, more carefully, and Maggie knew something had come close to the mark.
Chapter 12
She left Carole with more questions than answers, but the answers she didn’t get were bracketed by the things Carole let slip and gave room for examination. Maggie had been a cop for twenty-four years, and a detective for half that time. More often than not, the first things out of a subject’s mouth were lies, and the second things, too. By the third repetition, it was the gaps in the misdirection that told the rest of the story. A good investigator could wedge into those gaps, prize them apart, and finally get at the truth.
Carole didn’t have to tell her what went on with her husband and Bryant Gibbs. She didn’t even have to say it had happened more than once. The hints had been enough. Maggie didn’t understand the desire this fulfilled, but understanding that was not the issue. If two adults, or three adults, wanted to do something in private that was their concern. But when one turned from the arrangement…that was when things turned out in a bad way. It had happened time and again, going all the way back to the Bible.
It was time to get back to her mother and the girls, but Maggie drove aimlessly instead, turning over facts and assumptions in her mind. She had to set aside any judgment. All that mattered was the meaning, and from that meaning a resolution. After an hour and a half, something concrete had begun to form. She pulled over into the parking lot of a Speedway, brought out her notes from her time outside Gibbs’s office, and dialed a number she shouldn’t.
Mike Cooper answered her call. When he heard her voice his tone shifted from business to personal, then immediately dropped into neutral. “I can’t say anything,” he said, unprompted.
“Have you been talking to Karl?”
“Of course. He’s my partner.”
“Did he tell you about Holly Gibbs and her husband?”
“Ye-ess,” Mike said carefully. “And we’re looking into it. Something like that, you don’t want to drive in too quickly. We don’t want to spook him.”
Maggie nodded, though she was invisible to Mike. “So you’re watching him.”
“We have a cruiser go by a couple of times a night. Karl checks in with Mr. Gibbs every day. He makes like it’s a condolence call, but you know.”
“Sure. He wants Gibbs to know he’s paying attention. Listen, Mike, I wanted to get some background on Gibbs.”
“Maggie, I just told you—”
“Hear me out,” Maggie interrupted. “Gibbs runs a business called Kirby Development Leasing. It’s some kind of commercial real estate venture. But here’s the thing: no one works there. His main office is empty. There’s him and there’s his secretary, and nobody else. Don’t you think that’s odd?”
Mike didn’t answer for a beat. “Do I even want to know?”
“I did some digging.”
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“Mike, I don’t need a lecture. I have Karl for that. What I need from you is the Mike Cooper magic, okay? I know you can get anything from anybody, and all I want right now is a look at Gibbs’s financial records. I want to know who he’s doing business with and what kind of money he’s making. Where are his properties? What are they going for? How much is he pulling in?”
She heard him sigh. “That’ll take time.”
“I’m a housewife in the suburbs, Mike. Once the girls are asleep, I have nothing but time.”
“Okay, I’ll do it, but keeping Karl out of the loop is gonna be tough.”
“You never kept a secret from Karl before?” Maggie teased.
Mike didn’t answer the question. “I’ll call you back.”
Maggie put her phone away and left the Speedway. She drove all the way home with her mind ticking over the facts she had thus far. The fact that Bryant and Holly Gibbs were unfaithful to each other wasn’t a secret to anyone, even in a place like the Parish, but three days after his wife has murdered? Twice Maggie had seen a limousine ferrying women involved with Bryant Gibbs, and on one occasion money had changed hands. Gibbs’s offices were empty, but his mortgage was still being paid, while he owned a nice car and wore nice clothes. That raised questions, but if you looked at the obvious, the man wasn’t mourning his wife at all. To Maggie this amounted to more than simple adultery, more than sex games, and became something else. It became a crime.
Chapter 13
She played with the girls in the backyard, then put them down for a nap. When they were asleep, she joined her mother in the kitchen to make dinner. Maggie saw her mother out of the corner of her eye, casting glances, until finally Maggie stopped in the middle of deboning a chicken thigh to ask, “What is it?”
“You didn’t go out to lunch,” her mother said.
“Of course I did. I had lunch with Carole Strickland at DiMaggio’s.”
Her mother’s face tightened with scrutiny. “No, there’s something else. I can read it all over you.”
Maggie turned back to the chicken. “It’s just your imagination,” she said breezily. “It wa
s lunch with a friend and that was it. Girl talk.”
“Oh, please, you never did girl talk even when you were a girl. No, this reminds me of when you first started poking your nose into things back in third grade. Somebody stole somebody’s favorite action figure. Somebody was getting into the lunches in the cubbies. When you went to the academy it was only a formality. You were a cop long before that.”
“Well, I’m something else now.”
“My foot.”
Maggie put down her knife and washed her hands without looking at her mother. “Would you excuse me for a minute? I need to check up on Karl and make sure he’s still on time.”
“I’m sure that’s it, sweetie,” her mother said with false cheer.
She turned away so her mother wouldn’t see her scowl, and she fled into the other room. Standing in the rubble of the twins’ Duplo battlefield, she dialed Mike’s mobile number. Outside on the street it was gathering dark and all the streetlights were on. One by one, the houses’ windows began to glow. Once more, unbidden, the image of Carole with her husband and Bryant Gibbs.
The phone rang for so long, Maggie expected voice mail, but Mike answered. “I was going to call you,” he said.
“I’m calling you. You have something?”
“I do. Do you want me to tell you, or do you want me to e-mail it?”
“Both. Give me the highlights now.”
Mike spoke quietly on his end. Maggie couldn’t be sure where he was. She thought she heard voices, but it could have been the bull pen or it could have been somewhere else. “Bryant Gibbs hasn’t made a nickel from commercial leases in four years. Not since he moved into the area.”
“Is that when he bought Kirby Development Leasing from the guy who started it?”
“What guy? Gibbs filed the incorporation paperwork himself.”
Maggie sat down on the edge of a chair. “Wait a minute, that business is all his? There’s no Kirby?”
“No.”
She thought. Why the subterfuge? Why create a man who didn’t exist, and why keep this information from the one woman who seemed to work in the office? The envelope of cash Carole gave him was part of the answer. “Tax returns,” she said. “Did you get tax returns?”
“Those are harder to get hold of.”
“Listen, Mike: this guy is making money, but it’s all off the books. From everything I can tell, he is running women, and one of them was his wife. You hear what I’m saying? He’s a pimp.”
“His wife was a part of his stable?”
“It has to be,” Maggie said. “I knew something wasn’t right when his office was empty. He rents this place and he has a website and he puts in appearances at Rotary Club get-togethers or whatever, but he’s pulling in his income from another source. They say he was out of town a lot. Doing what? Maybe this is something he does in multiple cities. You need to coordinate that. And there’s more.”
Maggie told Mike the rest of it. What she’d seen of Carole, what she’d gleaned from their lunchtime conversation, and the inevitable conclusion she reached.
Mike grunted on the other end. “Suburban pimp,” he said.
“But now we know. And that opens the whole thing up. If it was just a husband and wife situation, I would suspect him for the doer no matter what he said, but this changes everything. Pimps have competition. They get money from bad dudes. Sometimes that blows back on them. People get killed.”
“You know I’m going to have to tell Karl this.”
“I know. He should know. It’s the next step. You have to bring Gibbs in. You have to sweat him. You have to—”
Mike cut in. “Hey, Chief, hold up for a minute. You don’t need me telling you this, but Karl’s the lead. I have to make like I uncovered this on my own, and then I have to make sure he doesn’t put two and two together. We’ll get Gibbs in and we’ll question him, but we got to work through the steps first. You know how these things go.”
“Goddamnit, Mike,” Maggie said. Her voice was rising, but she knew already he was right and she was wrong. She forced herself not to say more.
Mike’s tone was soothing. “This stuff is great. You’ve still got it, Chief. Now let us handle the rest of it.”
“I can get more,” Maggie said before she could stop herself.
“Hey, I know you can. The question is how deep you can get before you don’t have any cover. I can play this so your name doesn’t come up, but if you keep pushing, Karl will find out, and I know he’s already a little hot about how strong you’re coming on.”
Maggie stopped. “He told you?”
“He tells me everything. We’re partners.”
She didn’t know whether to be angry or relieved. She opted for neither, and pushed neutrality into her voice. “Mike, this is happening in my neighborhood. Do you think for a second Karl would let this slide without doing something, even if he wasn’t on the case? Or you? And I can’t sit on my hands. You can’t ask me to do that, Mike.”
“Chief,” Mike said, “I have to tell you no. And if you were still my boss, you’d want me to tell you no. There’s no room in this kind of thing for people putting their noses in. Not even you.”
“Mike—” Maggie started.
“I gotta go. I’m sorry, Chief. I’m real sorry.”
Chapter 14
Maggie and her mother took turns reading silly stories to the girls. Neither Lana nor Becky understood a word of it, but they understood the whimsical tone, and that was enough to make them laugh. Eventually it was bedtime. Maggie bathed the girls herself, dressed them for sleep, and turned out the light.
Karl didn’t come home for dinner. Maggie ate with her mother and checked on the girls, sleeping soundly. She found her mother in the kitchen with an open bottle of wine on the center island and two glasses. Only the light over the sink was on. “You looked like you could use a little nip,” her mother said.
Susan Gilcoe was only eighteen years older than Maggie. Unlike her daughter, Susan had children early. Maggie thought of that often as the years went by and there was still no child in her life. And even when Karl entered it seemed like a remote possibility that eventually crumbled into nothing.
They drank together in the shadows. “I’m glad you waited to have kids,” Susan said.
“Are you reading my mind?” Maggie asked. “I was just thinking about how I thought they’d never come.”
“Modern science can do wonderful things,” her mother replied. “And you weren’t quite ready yet, I don’t think. Not until you were able to let go of that job.”
Maggie finished her glass and had another. Her mother watched her carefully. “Sure,” Maggie said, and she smiled. “I’m a happy homemaker now.”
“Hm. Now I’m going to go to bed because a glass and a half does it for me these days. You should get some rest, too. You look harried. Relax and enjoy life a little. I won’t be around to help forever.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Maggie said. “Good night.”
They parted. Maggie lingered in the kitchen alone. Finally she sat down at the table in the breakfast nook and finished off the bottle of wine on her own. She rinsed the glasses, put the bottle in recycling with a reminder to herself to put it on the curb in the morning, then went to bed.
She woke to the sound of Karl’s car in the driveway. A few moments later she heard the garage door open and then close. Karl’s key was in the kitchen door. Maggie sat up in bed. Karl never parked in the garage.
He came up the stairs and Maggie realized he was trying not to be heard. He eased their door open. Maggie saw him as a shadow on shadows.
“I’m awake,” Maggie said.
Karl jumped. “Goddamnit.”
Maggie reached for the bedside lamp and turned it on. “What’s—what the hell?”
He had his jacket off, but the cuff of his right sleeve was deep red with blood. He had blood on his knees and on his hands, though it looked as though he’d tried to wash them clean. He recoiled from the light, clutching at his j
acket; she saw it was bloody, too. “Turn the light off,” he said. “Turn the light off!”
Maggie didn’t obey. “What is going on?”
“Get me a plastic bag, will you?” he asked, and then he retreated into the bathroom. Maggie heard the lock click. Seconds later the shower ran.
She realized she was calm. Her hands didn’t shake. She was alert and awake, but there was no panic. It was the instinct that carried her in her years behind the badge, but at the same time it was the thing already scrabbling at the back of her mind about what she’d seen and what it meant to have seen it.
While Karl showered, she went downstairs and fetched a plastic garbage bag. She sat on the edge of the bed until he emerged, still steaming and wet, with a towel around his waist and his clothes in a ball. The blood was gone from his hands. He stuffed his outfit into the bag when she gave it to him, then cast the bag in a corner. He sat down heavily beside Maggie and stared at the shapeless black plastic.
“What is going on?” Maggie asked, and the calm in her voice surprised even her.
“It’s not what it looks like.”
“It looks like you’re eliminating evidence. I’m calling Mike.”
“Mike already knows.”
“Whose blood is that?”
“Carole Strickland’s.”
Maggie started, and her heart clutched in her chest. She felt electrocuted, breathless, and for a moment she thought she couldn’t see. The moment passed quickly. “How did you get Carole’s blood on you?”
“A call came in,” Karl said steadily, without looking at her. “An anonymous tip about Carole being in danger. I went to her house. I found her husband in the living room, dead. I found her in the master bathroom. You could hardly recognize…And I…”
He covered his face with his hand. Maggie wanted to touch him, but she couldn’t do it until she heard the rest. “What did you do, Karl?”
“I slipped. I came into the bathroom to investigate, and I took one step too many and I slipped. I fell right into it. I contaminated the crime scene. Fibers from my jacket are going to be all over the place. Hairs and maybe skin. By the time backup came, it was too late. They found me like that, with blood all over me. And then Mike came. It was a mistake. It was a rookie mistake. No, it’s worse than that, it was stupid. Stupid and careless.”