“I don’t know,” Todd said. “Someone kind of shitty, I guess.”
“Yeah,” Chloe said. “Someone kind of shitty.”
Thirteen
New Haven, CT
“It’s not true,” Caroline Cookson said evenly. “None of it.
I never talked to anyone at Google or Apple or Netflix or anyone about some app.”
“You didn’t say something to one of the Google representatives that could have been interpreted as a request for money, and that you had Miles’s blessing?” Gilbert asked his wife that evening as they got ready for bed.
Caroline laughed. “Wow. That’s just... I don’t know what to say. You think I’d forget saying something like that?”
Gilbert had been cautious with his tone, trying not to sound overly accusatory. More like he was just hoping to clear up a misunderstanding, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there was a simple explanation for what Miles had disclosed to him. Dealing with Caroline could be like walking on proverbial eggshells. You had to be careful because she could become very defensive in a hurry, and when that happened, watch out.
But Caroline, who gave every indication of being shocked by what Miles had told Gilbert, remained relatively calm. To Gilbert’s surprise, her response bordered on sympathetic.
Caroline blinked her blue eyes at him and slowly shook her head. “I just feel so badly for him. What a terrible thing for Miles to go through. And you. You must be devastated. But honestly, what he told you, it simply did not happen.”
“Why would he lie about that?” Gilbert said.
Caroline, pulling her long blond hair back behind her head and securing it with an elastic, just as she did every night before crawling into bed, thought about that. “Maybe he’s not lying,” she said.
“What?”
“Maybe he believes what he’s saying. After you got home, and told me about Miles’s diagnosis, and went upstairs to give Samantha the news, I did some online research. You know that Huntington’s will affect his mental capacity. That dementia is part of what he’s going to go through. Maybe he’s confused, misinterpreting things, misremembering things, believing certain events happened that never did. For some reason he believes I did this awful thing, when the truth is I did not.”
Gilbert thought about that. It didn’t strike him that Miles was anything less than fully engaged. He had to admit Caroline was convincing in her denials, but then again, that was the sort of thing she was good at.
“I mean, okay, I did talk to some of the Google people at that party,” Caroline said. “But nothing along the lines of what Miles suggested. Let me ask you this.”
“What?”
“Did he show you any proof?”
“Proof?”
“Any documents? Any emails? Recordings of me talking to someone at Google? Anything at all like that?”
“No.”
Caroline nodded with satisfaction. “Well, there you go. Don’t you think, if he’d had any evidence, he would have shown it to you?”
“I... don’t know. Maybe.”
“What Miles is alleging, why, that’s just criminal. Why didn’t Miles call the police?”
“Well, for one, you’re his sister-in-law.”
“Oh, please. You really think that would have stopped him? You know he’s never cared much for me. But seriously, how would I think I could get away with something like that?”
But there was something going on there, behind those eyes. Gilbert could tell.
The thing was, Caroline had plenty of insight into people who got on the wrong side of the law. She worked in the court system, as a court reporter, or stenographer, as the job was also called. Sitting through trials and depositions, listening to thousands of hours of testimony, getting it all down for future reference.
She never failed to come home with a story. People who’d committed murder, tax fraud, kidnapping. A favorite was the story of the hit man on trial for killing some guy’s wife, but he got off when the star witness failed to show up. And not just for his court appearance. He failed to show up anywhere, ever again.
The accused, he actually looked over at me and winked, Caroline had said. Like he was putting the moves on me right in the middle of the trial. When she told that story, she’d actually shiver, although Gilbert could never quite tell whether it was with fear or excitement.
But most of Caroline’s stories were about people who did not get away with it. You know why so many criminals get caught? she would ask. Because they’re stupid.
She would often cite some of her favorite examples. The guy who bragged on Facebook about the goods he’d stolen. The man who’d fatally stabbed his girlfriend, then used a dry paper towel to get the blood off the knife, missing much of it, and not bothering to wipe his fingerprints off the handle. The bank robber who went on a spending spree. The woman who said she couldn’t have killed her husband because she was visiting an aunt in Cleveland, but turned out not to have an aunt in Cleveland.
Gilbert sometimes thought his wife was a classic example of someone who could see in others the faults she could not see in herself. Case in point: that time she backed her car into another at JCPenney, left the scene, and denied ever having been there. She even persuaded Samantha to back her story, to say the two of them had been together at a different mall on the other side of town. When the other car owner managed to obtain, from mall security cameras, video that showed crystal clear images of Caroline causing the damage, she had still continued to deny it.
Which was why Gilbert didn’t believe her denials about the Google encounter for a second.
But he had raised it with her for a reason. It might help her better appreciate Miles’s decision about his estate and his decision to start divvying up his fortune among his biological children, once he had been in touch with them.
The discussions surrounding that had happened earlier, after Gilbert had come home behind the wheel of the Porsche.
Once he’d filled her in on why he had the car, as well as the news about the nine children who had come into the world because Miles had visited a fertility clinic more than two decades ago — he had shown her the picture of the list of names he had taken with his phone — she had not responded well.
“This car is supposed to make things right? You could buy a thousand of these with what he should be leaving to you when he’s gone. After all you’ve done for him?”
Gilbert was conflicted. On some level, he agreed with his wife. But at the same time, he wanted to defend his brother, which led him to relate the Google story. There was a look on Caroline’s face, if only for a second, that persuaded him Miles had not lied. That glimmer of I’ve been caught in her eyes, but she had recovered quickly.
The thing was, he’d found Miles’s story convincing, and Caroline’s denials much less so, because it fit a pattern. How many times over the years had Caroline lamented her husband’s lack of success, at least when compared to his brother? Oh sure, he had a good job in the accounting division and was paid well enough, but it wasn’t like he owned the company. It wasn’t like he was in charge. Gilbert could imagine a scenario in which Caroline might try to dip into her brother-in-law’s pocket, a way of evening the score, if only a little.
It was a case of the old you-reap-what-you-sow, Gilbert figured. You tried to cash in on my brother’s reputation, and now it’s bitten you in the ass.