It was not the kind of declaration you forget, Hailey’s confession of the fearsome love that had singed her soul, but it was not the kind of thing you let get in the way of a healthy sexual obsession either. I wanted Hailey and so I played deaf, assuming her hard stance was merely another attempt to deflect my attempts at intimacy. Who knew better than I all the tricks of the trade in keeping emotional distance? Who knew better than I what soft yearnings lay behind the pose of unconcern? But coming back from Leila’s, after Guy’s wife had spoken to me of the secrets she had learned about Hailey and Hailey’s inability to return Guy’s love, I began to wonder if maybe Hailey had been spilling more of the truth than I had realized. In her lawyer’s garb, in her unimpassioned voice, without the least hint of her cynical smile, maybe she was opening up more than ever I had realized. What had happened in the past, I wondered as I drove through the suburbs and onto the expressway, to wound her so badly? And how did that past intersect with the moment when Guy had aimed his gun and shot her, just as she wished, right through the heart?
11
“SO WHAT do you think?” said Beth.
I was sitting in my office, remembering Hailey as compulsively as if I were worrying a loose tooth, when Beth strolled in and collapsed into the client chair opposite my desk. A document of some sort was clutched in her hand.
“Think about what?” I said.
“About whether Guy killed Hailey Prouix.”
“It’s not our job to figure that out.”
“I know, I know, I know, but still.” Her eyes widened. “What do you think?”
“I think he’s presumptively innocent,” I snapped, pretending to concentrate on something on my desk. “I think we should leave it at that and not act like amateurs.”
“Don’t get snippy about it, Victor. Are you okay? You look like hell. Maybe you need a break. Maybe you should make a date with that mysterious woman you’ve been seeing.”
My head jerked up and I stared at her, bewildered.”Who?”
“I thought you were in the middle of a big romance, sneaking out of the office in the early afternoons, coming back all bleary-eyed and full of sated smiles. You didn’t say anything, but I could tell.”
My nerves contracted in on themselves as I tried to look calm. I had, of course, never told Beth about Hailey, I had never told anyone – there were reasons in the middle of our affair and there were stronger reasons now – but how could I not have figured that she had known I was at least seeing someone?
“It ended,” I said. “Badly. She wants to be friends.”
“Oooh, that’s hard.”
“And not even good friends, more like distant acquaintances who, if we happen to see each other in a theater, nod but make no effort to say hello.”
“That’s really hard.”
“Just to be sure, she changed her number. I think she might have even changed her name. Last I heard she was on a tramp steamer to Marrakesh, which is pretty much a distance record to avoid seeing me again.”
Beth laughed, which was what I wanted. Both of our love lives were in perpetual states of ruin and we liked to comfort one another by detailing our most recent disasters. “Didn’t one of your old girlfriends join the Peace Corps?” she said.
“Yeah, but she was assigned to Guatemala, which is at least in this hemisphere.”
“Maybe that’s why you’ve been acting like you’ve been acting,” she said.
“How have I been acting?”
“A little strange, a little mysterious. Doing things no one would expect from you, very un-Victor-like things.”
“Like what?”
“Like taking this case without a retainer.”
“He’s a friend. He said money would be no problem.”
“Is that what he said? And you believed him?”
“I’ve a trusting soul.”
“Right. And Emily Dickinson was a party girl. And then you up and turned the murder weapon over to the detectives.”
“I was obligated,” I said. “I’m an officer of the court and I held material evidence.”
She leaned forward, stared at me as if she had those X-ray spiral glasses they advertise in the back of Archie comics. “And far be it from you ever to mess with your obligations as an officer of the court.”
“Far be it. What are you getting at?”
“I don’t know, Victor. What should I be getting at?”
I shrugged, but my canary in the mine shaft was making like Pavarotti. If she suspected something, she who knew me best, someone else might, too. I had to get a grip, I had to start assuaging suspicions, I had to start now.
“I’m sorry if I was short,” I said, as sweetly as I could. “I’ve been on edge about this case, but I shouldn’t take it out on you. Maybe I think Guy’s really in trouble. Maybe I’m feeling pressure because he’s a friend. Maybe I’m not handling it as well as I should. You want to know whether I think Guy did it? Well, I think his story about the headphones and the Jacuzzi and hearing nothing is well neigh unbelievable.”
“What about the gun? Maybe it was silenced, maybe he couldn’t hear it.”
“The gun was a revolver,” I said. “You can’t silence a revolver. And anyway, the biggest trouble is that nobody else seems to have a motive.”
“What about his wife? Hailey stole her husband. Is there a better motive than that?”
“Well, she was angry, for sure. She was even suing the victim.”
“Really?”
“Yes, but that works against her doing it, doesn’t it? I don’t think you just off the object of your lawsuit. You already have an outlet for your anger, and it makes it hard to collect damages. But there’s more. I just got off the phone with a Herb Stein. He was with Leila on a date the night of the murder, at a place called Cuvée Notre Dame on Green Street.”
“Good mussels.”
“So he said. I don’t think we can pin it on her and, frankly, I don’t know who else, besides Guy, might have been involved enough to want her dead.” I leaned back in my chair, stared at the ceiling. “Except, of course, Guy doesn’t have much of a motive either. It’s the weakest part of the government’s case. The why. Why would he be so angry at her as to shoot her through the heart? As long as they don’t have an answer, Guy has a chance.” I took a quick glance at Beth. “That’s why I advised him to reject the government’s offer. There is means and opportunity, sure, but you also need motive.”