“This Mercedes,” he said. “Did you see a bumper sticker on it? Something about the Sierra club?”
A swish of hair. She lifted her head. “Yeah.”
“Shaun Reid,” he said, scared and exultant. “That’s who killed your brother. The guy who owns this mill. Shaun Reid.”
5:10 P.M.
Lisa was expecting the two squad cars that pulled into her drive. After Randy left, she had gone about her normal routine for a Saturday afternoon, showering, a load of laundry, cooking. She had a big pot of stew simmering on the stove, figuring that if she really didn’t know what her husband had done or where he had gone, she’d have dinner waiting for him. She stuck Titanic in the VCR and poured herself a glass of rum and Diet Coke, props to simulate a normal afternoon: hanging out, watching a chick flick, waiting for her husband to get home. She picked up the drink, thinking to calm her nerves, but decided the last thing she needed was to have any of her edges dulled by alcohol. Instead she swilled some around in her mouth and spat it into the sink, following that with half the contents of the glass. Simulation. The illusion of reality.
So she shouldn’t have felt sick to her stomach when she saw the headlights swinging into her dooryard. She did take a swallow of the rum and Coke then, for real, and breathed slowly and deeply before walking to the door. No sense pretending she hadn’t heard anyone driving up the road. She dropped her hand to the doorknob.
I don’t know anything. I didn’t do anything. I’m innocent. I know nothing.
She opened the door. Not surprisingly, it was Kevin again, and some old cop who was, with his brush-cut hair and weight-lifting body, a preview of what her sister’s husband was going to look like in thirty years. She supposed she should be grateful. At least they didn’t send Mark out for this.
“Lisa?” No smiles this time. “May we come in?”
She stepped back, opening the door. “What’s the matter?” She had thought about this, about how she’d first react. Tossing bagged veggies into the stew pot, she’d considered what she would have thought if the police had come to her door last Saturday, a time that was forever now going to be set off as before. Now was after. And she did as she rehearsed.
“Oh, my God.” A hitch of breath. “Is it Randy? Has he been in an accident?”
The old cop smiled as he walked past her, crinkling up his eyes, as if he were playing Santa Claus. “No accident.” He held out his hand. “I’m Lyle MacAuley, Mrs. Schoof.” She took his hand, staring mostly at Kevin the whole while.
“What is it, then? Is it Mark?”
Kevin shook his head.
“Kevin was here earlier, asking about what you might have seen at Haudenosaunee.”
She nodded. Realized she was standing there with the warm air pouring out of the house. Shut the door.
“There’s been another incident today. A young woman was beaten and left on one of the logging roads on Haudenosaunee. Did your husband mention it to you?”
“No,” she said. How would I react to this news? she wondered. I would be scared of it happening to me. She glanced toward the window nervously.
“Why don’t we sit down?” The old guy phrased it like a suggestion, but he was already crossing the room, taking in everything, the movie, the drink, the stack of bills by the phone, the water stain on the ceiling. “Is your husband home?” he asked, sitting on one end of the couch.
“No.” She glanced back toward the door. “Do I need to worry about being alone out here?”
Kevin crossed his arms over his chest. “Where’s Randy?”
Lyle MacAuley patted the couch next to him. “Calm down, Kevin. Let the lady have a seat.”
She couldn’t not sit after that. She wedged herself in the corner opposite MacAuley.
“You certainly don’t have to worry right now,” MacAuley said, smiling again. “And if you’d like, we’d be glad to drop you off at a friend’s or neighbor’s when we go. If your husband isn’t home yet. Do you expect him soon?”
“By dinnertime,” she said. “He didn’t say he’d be gone longer than that.”
“Where’s he off to?”
“Errands, I guess. I was in the shower when he left.”
“When was that?” Kevin said.
MacAuley shot him a look. “I’d hate to leave you alone out here if you feel uncomfortable,” he said. “Do you have someone you usually stay with?”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know. If things blow up and one or the other of you has to cool down.”
“You mean Randy and me? We don’t fight like that.”
“No?” His expression invited confidence. “I’ve been there myself. You’re young, married, money’s tight, one or the other of you is always working . . . you mean to say you never fight?”
“Of course, we have fights. I mean . . . not so’s one of us has to leave.”
“He’s never gotten a little rough?”
She was genuinely outraged. “No!”
He raised his hands in surrender. “Whatever. I don’t like to interfere between husband and wife.” He smiled. “Has your husband ever mentioned a woman named Becky Castle?”
Her heart jumped so hard she knew he must have seen it in her throat. She shook her head.
“I’m sorry?”
“No,” she said. “Kevin asked us if we knew her. Earlier.”
He leaned forward. “I don’t want to upset you, here, but . . . have you ever suspected your husband might be seeing someone else?”
“No!” She glared at Kevin. “Kevin, what’s this about?”
This time, he kept his mouth shut. “Becky Castle was the young woman who was assaulted today,” MacAuley said. “The poor thing was beaten so badly she had to undergo surgery to stop her internal bleeding. Somebody punched her and kicked her and hit her until she was so much raw hamburger.”
The words, the images, were so ugly she wanted to slap her hands over her ears and howl until they burned themselves out of her brain.
“We think your husband might be able to help us in our inquiries,” MacAuley went on. “It’s important we talk with him as soon as possible.”
She forced herself to nod. “Of course. I’ll have him call you as soon as he gets home.”
“Is there anyplace he’s more likely to be? At a bar, or a friend’s house? Time is important. You know, we always say the first twenty-four hours of an investigation are the most important. ‘The golden hours,’ we call them. We want to be able to talk to anyone who may know something as quickly as possible.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “He was at Mike’s earlier. Mike Yablonski.”
MacAuley glanced at Kevin, who nodded once.
MacAuley stood, startling her. “Okay, then. Thanks, Mrs. Schoof.”
She unfolded herself from the couch and joined the two police officers heading for the door. She didn’t understand. She had thought he would keep at her. Ask her more about her husband. “I’ll be sure to have Randy call you as soon as he gets home tonight,” she repeated.
MacAuley smiled at her, eyes crinkling, bushy brows rising. “We’d sure appreciate it.”
“Um . . . is there anything else I can do to help?”
He smiled even more broadly, looking less like Santa and more like the cat who swallowed the canary. “Why, yes,” he said. “Can we have a look around the house?”
5:15 P.M.
Clare looked into the burgundy surface of her wine. If she sat very, very still, she could see her reflection. Or rather, the reflection of her eye. For now we see through a glass, darkly, she thought.
Hugh thumped his glass against the table. They were sitting in the kitchen. The only other spot to sit face-to-face downstairs was in her living room, where she and Russ had been talking. By mutual, unspoken agreement, Clare and Hugh avoided that room when she returned downstairs dressed in a sweater and jeans.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you at a loss for words,” Hugh said.
“There’s
nothing to say.” In a way, she was telling the truth. For close to two years now, she had kept her mouth soldered shut, refusing to even think about the unthinkable. She had cracked and admitted it to herself; eventually, she had admitted it to Russ. It terrified her to think that the truth was so close to her surface that she was on the verge of admitting it to a nice man she saw every six or seven weeks. “There’s nothing to say,” she repeated.
“Is he going to divorce the little woman?”
That made her look up from the depths of her glass. “No.”
“Are you planning on chucking the whole priest thing and living a life of wickedness as a kept woman?”
She couldn’t help it; her lips twitched. “No.”
“Bit of a sticky wicket, eh?”
“You sound like someone in the 1939 version of The Four Feathers. ” She took a sip of the Shiraz. They had discovered, on her first trip to New York, that they shared a common devotion to prewar British films.
“The fellow who went blind and gave up the girl because it was the right thing to do, no doubt.”
She smiled into her wineglass.
He swallowed a gulp of wine. “Where do you think this thing is going? With you and me, I mean.”
She was surprised. “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Good Lord. You must be the only single woman over thirty I know who isn’t thinking about how to get herself married off.” He spread his arms and looked down at himself. “Am I not eligible? Not repulsive, don’t drool or pick my teeth in public, ready for housetraining.”
She took another sip, uncertain if he was joking or not. “Hugh, are you proposing? Or just looking for more affirmation that your shirt looks okay?”
“I’m just trying to figure out why you don’t at least eyeball me as potential husband material.”
She sighed. “Because for the past six or seven years, I’ve thought of myself as someone who is never going to get married. It’s not as if I’ve had men throwing themselves at me. Believe me. When I realized my calling, it sort of dovetailed with my spectacular lack of a love life. I figured I was meant to be a celibate.”
“Okay.” He ticked off one finger. “So, aspirations to be bride of God. Anything else?”
“Hugh.” She interlaced her fingers and propped her chin on the back of her hands. “Look at you. You’re urban, you’re trendy, your job involves travel and parties and reveling in the spoils of capitalism. I’m a priest who has settled in a little Adirondack backwater. Can you honestly see any way of me fitting into your life? Or you fitting into mine?”
He ticked off another finger. “Lifestyle differences. Anything else?”
I’m in love with somebody else. Something in her face must have given her thoughts away, because he held up a third finger. “Emotional complications.” He waggled the fingers at her. “It’s rather like choosing a substantial investment, isn’t it?”
“Spoken like a true venture capitalist.”
He took another sip of wine. “You have two candidates vying for your investment.”
“I don’t—”
“One is old enough to be your father, entombed in the same small town where he was born, and, oh, yes, is married.”
She drained her glass and poured herself another.
“The other,” he spread his arms again, showing off the floral shirt in all its splendor, “is handsome, youthful—comparatively speaking—amusing, well educated, has a healthy bank account and a career that gives him some flexibility in relocating as you climb the ladder to ecclesiastical success. Oh, and is single.” He leaned back in his chair. “And,” he stressed, “is Anglican.”
“Your virtues are exceeded only by your modesty.” She slid the bottle toward him. “You still haven’t told me if you’re proposing or not.”
“Not. Not yet,” he amended. “I’m not sure yet if you and I are suited for the long haul together.” His voice sharpened. “But I’d like a chance to find out without the local law enforcement cramping my style.” His chair scraped as he stood up. “I’d better get over to the hotel. I want to check in and freshen up before dinner. Do you want me to come back and pick you up?”
She shook her head automatically. “No, it doesn’t make sense for you to drive in and out of town twice.”
“I could wait for you to get dressed. We could lounge about the hotel together.”
“No. I still have to get to the dry cleaners and pick up my dress after you go. Then I’m going to make a quick hospital visit to a family I was with this afternoon before coming back here to get ready.”
“Right. I’ll see you later, then.”
“Wait!” She stood up. “What about—what about all this?” She waved her hand, indicating the table, the glasses, the remnants of conversation hanging in the air. “What are you going to do?”
He looked surprised. “I’m not going to do anything. We’re still friends, right?”
She nodded.
“And we can keep seeing one another occasionally?”
“Of course.”
“Then I don’t have to do anything. Except wait.” He stepped closer. “Because sooner or later, the choice you’ve made is going to blow up in your face. Bad investments always do. And when it does,” he smiled, “I’ll be here.”
She was still pondering his words when she heard his car pulling out of her drive. She hadn’t dated the whole time she had been at Virginia Episcopal Seminary. Now, in the space of one afternoon, she had two men in her house who wanted her. Who knew a clerical collar was such a turn-on? Of course, neither was exactly what you’d call a healthy, promising relationship. “Is this one of Your little jokes?” she asked. “Because if You’re trying to give me a message about what I should do with my life, I wish You’d be more clear.”
5:40 P.M.
She should have called a lawyer. She should have told them no, they couldn’t look through her house, they couldn’t try to find some scrap of something tying her husband to Becky Castle. But it was too late now. If she said no, if she said stop, if she made Lyle MacAuley come down from upstairs, where she could hear him lumping around in her bedroom, looking at God knows what, they’d know. They’d know she’d folded. That she knew what her husband had done, and therefore that she probably knew where he was and when he was coming back. Her supposed innocence and the fact that Randy had gotten rid of any evidence were the only cards she held now. She had to play them.
Lisa sat on her couch, facing Kevin. They had spilt up, him and MacAuley, and Kevin was sticking to her like glue, supposedly so she wouldn’t feel so uncomfortable having some old cop pawing through her underwear drawer. She knew the real reason was to make sure she didn’t pick up the phone and warn her husband not to come home.
“Can I get you anything? A soda? Water?”
Kevin shook his head. “No, thanks.”
She stood, stretched. “I think I’ll make myself some coffee.”
Kevin stood as well. “I guess I will have a cup, if you’re going to make one.” He followed her into the kitchen.
She had just pulled the box of filters out when the phone rang. She froze. Oh, no. Not now. Please, no. Before she could recover and lunge for the phone, Kevin crossed the floor and snatched up the receiver. He held it out a few inches, so they could both hear, and beckoned her over. At that moment, she hated him. If she had thought she could get away with it, she would have clawed the receiver out of his hand and clubbed him to death with it.
He motioned again, fiercely. She walked over to his side. “Hello?”
“Lisa? Is that you? You sound like you’re on a speakerphone.” Lisa trembled with the effort of not sagging with relief. “It’s my sister,” she said.
“What?” Rachel said.
Kevin handed her the receiver and went back to the coffeepot as if it were perfectly normal for him to hijack someone’s phone.
“Sorry, Rache.” Lisa glanced toward Kevin. “Kevin Flynn is over, and he mistakenly thought
you were a call he was expecting.”
There was a long pause on her sister’s end. “Is he alone?” Rachel eventually asked.
“Nope.”
“Oh, God, they didn’t send Mark over, did they? He called me just a little while ago. He has to go in to work early.”
“Mark was a real sweetheart to drive me to my job this morning. Will you be sure to thank him for me when you see him?”
There was another pause as Rachel parsed Lisa’s statement. “You need to be careful,” she said. “Mark told me they’re calling everybody in, all shifts, the part-time guys, everybody. The only time they usually do that is when things get really crazy, Christmas week, New Year’s, stuff like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Lisa said. Across from her, Kevin was scooping coffee out of a can. “Why do you think Mom and Dad are doing that?”
“Mark didn’t say, but I’m guessing they’re pulling out all the stops to find your husband. Lise, you need to think about hiring a good lawyer and having Randy turn himself in. This isn’t like ducking out of a traffic ticket. Mark and the rest of them will be searching for someone they think is dangerous. They have guns. People get killed evading arrest.”
Lisa’s throat closed up.
“Look, I’m off shift. I’m going to pick up Madeline from the neighbor’s, and then we’re coming over to keep you company.”
“With what’s going on? Mark won’t like it.” Her sister and Mark were both control freaks. They tended to wrangle a lot.
“He doesn’t get a vote. Besides, he’ll be at work. He doesn’t need to know. The important thing is, will it help, me being there? Or would you rather be alone?”
“I’d love you to come over,” Lisa said gratefully.
“Okay. I’ll see you when I get there. Till then, keep your legs crossed and your mind on higher things, as Mom would say.”
Lisa was laughing as she hung up.
Kevin looked at her. “What’s up?”
Her brief bubble of good humor faded into air. She shrugged. “Our parents.”
“I know how that can be. Coffee’s almost ready, if you want to get the cups.”
Lisa turned over possibilities as she unloaded two clean mugs from the dishwasher and took out the sugar bowl and spoons. She could do as Rachel suggested. Find a lawyer, tell Randy to turn himself in when he called. But then where would they be? If Randy was found guilty, he’d do time, no way around it. They knew a guy who got into a bar fight in Lake George with somebody who’d been messing with his girlfriend. Busted him up. Got sent to Plattsburgh for a year. How would she and Randy survive for a year without his income? They’d have the lawyer’s bills to pay, on top of the loans and the credit cards and everything else.