“But you got to him,” she said. “Does that make you better than him now?”
“I got to him because he wanted me to,” the bartender said. “Believe me, if he didn’t want to go down, it would have been my body being left under a mound of snow.”
“Why would he do that?” she asked. “Give up the way he did?”
“Maybe he just got tired of the game,” the bartender said. “It’s been known to happen sometimes. Or maybe, he felt he owed you. That happens, too. Or maybe it was something else. Something a guy like him could never allow to happen.”
“What?”
“Maybe Frank fell in love with you,” the bartender said. “You chasing him all these years, he ended up knowing as much about you as you did about him. You get close to a person that way, closer even than to somebody you see every day of your life. You end up feeling for that person. Usually it’s hate. But, on a one-in-a-million shot, it does roll out as love.”
“We’ll never know then,” Joey said.
“You can catch a cab if you need one on the lower level,” the bartender said. “There are buses, too, but you might have to wait the rest of the night for one to take you back to the city.”
“I’m not in any hurry,” Joey said, walking slowly out of the darkness of the bar and into the soft glare of the terminal, lined on both sides by shuttered stores. “I have nowhere else to go.”
WITNESS by J. A. JANCE
What are you going to do about it?” I asked. Refusing to meet my gaze, Mindy Harshaw poked at her salad with her fork but ate nothing. Her lower lip trembled. “What can I do?” she asked hopelessly.
A year ago I’d been matron of honor at Mindy’s wedding. She had been radiant then. A few months later, when she and our other pal, Stephanie, and I met for coffee at Starbucks, she had definitely lost her glow. She had been uncharacteristically quiet then and had hidden out behind a pair of enormous sunglasses, claiming she had an infection related to pinkeye. Now, having heard what she had to say, I suspected the pinkeye story was just that-a story. And the woman sitting across from me bore no resemblance to my lifelong friend who had been a beaming bride only a few months earlier.
I had been shocked when she slipped into the booth across from me. She looked wan and pale, and I thought she had lost more weight than she could afford to lose. I didn’t say, “My God, Min! You look like hell!” although I probably should have. But now, after she had told me at least some of what had been going on, I wasn’t the least bit shy about offering my opinion.
“What you do is blow the whistle on the jerk,” I said. “You’re not the first Cinderella who woke up after the honeymoon to discover she had married a frog instead of Prince Charming.”
Mindy sighed. “It didn’t turn out that way for you and Jimmy.”
That was true. I had been a thirty-eight-year-old “old maid” when I was introduced to James Drury in the lobby before a performance of Angry Housewives, an original Seattle-based musical about a group of frustrated mothers who start a rock band and end up with an unlikely hit entitled, “Eat Your Fucking Cornflakes.” Not being a housewife at the time, I hadn’t much wanted to go, but a friend from school had dragged me along. James Drury had been bullied into going to the play by a friend from the bank where he worked. The moment Jimmy and I met, we clicked. Just like that. Neither one of us had been married before, and our whirlwind courtship had left our friends, Mindy included, shaking their heads. Jimmy and I had enjoyed eleven glorious years together before a drunk driver, going the wrong way on the I-90 bridge, had snuffed out Jimmy’s life and dismantled mine.
It was now three years later. The ache of losing him was still there, but his death was long enough in the past that when Mindy asked me to be her matron of honor, I had been glad to do so. I had known Mindy Crawford since grade school. In high school and college she had always gone for the wrong guys-for the wild ones, the ones living on the edge, for the muscle-bound jocks who played sports, looked great in jeans mid T-shirts but had nothing whatsoever going on upstairs. But in the days and weeks leading up to Mindy’s wedding to Lawrence Miles Harshaw III, I thought for sure she had come up with a winner.
Larry had money, looks and brains, and not necessarily in that order. Obviously, having money isn’t everything, but I was grateful that, after years of hardscrabble existence, Mindy would finally be in a situation where she wouldn’t be living hand-to-mouth. As far as I could see, Larry was crazy about her. Which is one of the reasons I was so provoked with him right now. Larry Harshaw had pulled the wool over Mindy’s eyes and mine as well. She had an excuse-she was in love with the guy. I’ve spent the last twenty-five years working as a high school guidance counselor, and I resented the hell out of being duped. Two and a half decades of working with troubled kids has taught me way more than I ever wanted to know about the realities and pervasiveness of domestic violence. It worried me that Mindy seemed totally oblivious about what was in store for her.
“What do you think I should do?” she asked.
“Let’s go over what you just told me,” I said. “He reads your mail, checks your e-mail. He monitors your telephone calls and checks the mileage on the odometer whenever you use the car. What does this sound like to you?”
“He wants me all to himself?” Mindy asked meekly.
“It’s a lot more serious than that,” I told her. “It’s called isolation. He’s cutting you off from your support network. I’m surprised he let you meet me for lunch.”
“It was spur of the moment,” Mindy admitted. “I didn’t exactly tell him.”
Or ask permission, I thought.
Suddenly I felt much older and wiser than my fifty-two years, and Mindy seemed like an innocent-a babe in the woods. Trying to guide recalcitrant teenagers has taught me that I’m not going to get far by telling anybody what they need to do. If I really want to help, I have to get the students who come to my office to see their problems and difficulties for themselves. Mindy wasn’t one of my students, but the same thing was true for her. If she was going to save herself, she would have to come to terms with what was happening in her life and marriage on her own. Comprehending the existence of a problem is the first essential step in solving it.
“I’ve seen how Larry Harshaw acts,” I said. “In public, he’s the perfect gentleman. What’s he like in private?” My question was followed by a long, awkward silence. “Well?” I prodded finally. “Are you going to tell me?”
“He’s not very nice,” Mindy said in a small voice.
“How so?” I asked. “Does he tell you you’re stupid, for example?”
Mindy nodded. “Yes, and that I’m not good with money.”
“Because…?”
“Because I don’t balance my checkbook.”
“Min, I’ve never known you to balance a checkbook-not once in forty years. But have you ever bounced a check?”
“No.”
“Well then? So much for the money-handling problem. What else?”
“There’s more to it than just the checkbook,” Mindy said. “Even though it’s not true, I’m worried that he thinks I married him for his money. When we were engaged, all his friends kept telling him we needed to have a prenup. I told him at the time that I’d be happy to sign one, but he said not to be silly. That he loved me and that whatever he had he was willing to share.”
Up to a point, I thought.
“Okay,” I said. “He treats you like a prisoner in your own home. He checks on your comings and goings. He belittles you. What else?”
“What do you mean?” Mindy asked,
“Has he ever hurt you?”
“He’s hurt my feelings,” she replied.
“Has he ever hit you or hurt you physically?” I insisted.