Her shoulders slumped. She stared disconsolately into the rain and suddenly began crying. He rose and put his arm around her. Still holding the wheel with his free hand, he pulled her gently close to him.
“Toots,” he said, “let’s go home now, okay?”
She could not stop sobbing.
“Toots? Can we go home now?” he said.
Deep wracking sobs that broke his heart.
“Okay, Toots? Can we please go home?”
She nodded weakly.
“Toots? Okay?”
She nodded again.
He held her close in the rain.
13
“Well,” Bannister said, “that was one hell of a confession, Matthew.”
“Look,” I said, “you know me well enough to...”
“Oh, I know you well enough,” he said.
He was impeccably dressed in a hand-tailored blue tropical suit with a faint green shadow stripe. Blue shirt. Green tie. Highly polished black shoes. He and his wife had been having dinner with a state senator when he took my call. I’d told him I had a confession in the Toland murder case. I’d told him I wanted to do a videotaped Q and A in my office.
So here we were.
And Etta Toland had recanted.
Pete Folger, who looked like Phil Gramm and sounded like Phil Donahue, looked at his watch. His expression said this had been a waste of time and he wanted to go home to his wife and kiddies in time to catch the eleven o’clock news. Skye Bannister, who looked like Dan Quayle and who, in fact, sounded like him, was wearing an expression that said he knew me well enough to realize I was smart enough not to have dragged him down here if I didn’t have what is known in the trade as “real meat,” in which case why the hell was he here?
“Matthew,” he said, “I’m going to assume she told you something you wanted us to hear...”
“Didn’t sound that way to me,” Folger said.
“Pete,” I said, “she recanted. What the hell’s wrong with you?
“What’s wrong with me is we’ve got your lady cold and you’re dragging in somebody you claim...”
“He’s not stupid,” Bannister said sharply.
“What?” Folger said.
“I said he’s not stupid. Make that mistake, and you’re in trouble. What’d she tell you, Matthew? And what do you want us to do about it now that she’s turned her back?”
“He told her just what I said he told her.”
“Who? And what?”
“Bobby Diaz. Said her husband broke off his affair with Lainie Commins this past Christmas.”
“And?”
“You want it exactly the way she told it?”
“I’d be much obliged,” Bannister said.
She doesn’t know quite how to answer Bobby’s accusation.
It’s not something that hasn’t crossed her mind before, the hours Brett and Lainie spend together late at night, poring over designs at the office, the possibility has occurred to her. She supposes Lainie is an attractive woman, in a lost-waifish sort of way, if that kind of thing appeals to you. Brett has always had a roving eye, but his taste runs more to sleek, sophisticated women. Still, it’s entirely possible that what Bobby is telling her is true, though she won’t reveal this to him by even the faintest flicker of recognition on her face, the tiniest glimmer of suspicion in her eyes. Instead, she tells him to get the hell out of her house, and the moment he’s gone she calls the boat.
“This was now about ten to eleven,” I said. “In her earlier deposition, she told me she called the boat at eleven forty-five. That was to cover her tracks.”
Calls the boat at ten to eleven and gets no answer.
Wonders why he isn’t answering the phone.
Wonders if he’s already on the way home.
In which case, why hasn’t he called to say how the meeting went?
Wonders then why he asked Lainie to meet him on the boat in the first place. Instead of here at the house.
Wonders why he didn’t even mention this hot little tape in his possession, his hot little bimbo doing herself for all the world to see, wide open.
Has he been watching his hot little tape in private?
Does it recall memories of his hot cross-eyed little bimbo, wantonly spread and energetically enticing?
Does she excite him to tumescence?
Incite him to action?
Meet me on the boat again, hmmm?
Wonders, in fact, if his cockeyed little bitch isn’t doing herself right there on Toy Boat right this very minute, doing him in the bargain, shouldn’t be a total loss, no wonder no one’s answering the phone.
She decides that if this is true...
If he really did have an affair with Lainie...
If he is still having an affair with her...
She will kill him.
It is a decision she makes in the snap of an instant.
She will kill him.
As simple as that.
In the state of Florida, you do not need a license to purchase and own a gun. Or guns. There is a Colt .45 automatic aboard Toy Boat and there are two guns in the Toland household, one of them a Walther P-38, which Brett keeps in the nightstand on his side of the bed, and the other a .22-caliber Colt Cobra, which Etta keeps in the nightstand on her side. Her gun is fully loaded. Six-shot capacity. She plans to shoot her husband with it, if what Bobby Diaz told her is true.
There is no question about this.
It is a firm decision.
If he is cheating on her, she will kill him.
Toward that end, she dresses for the part before leaving the house. Pulls on a pair of black tights and a black leotard. No bra. Black Nike running shoes. Takes from her closet a black silk cape she wore over a long black gown to the Snowflake Ball last Christmas. Until last Christmas, your husband was having an affair with Lainie Commins. Finds a sassy black slouch hat she bought at Things Amiss on St. Lucy’s Circle not a month ago. Pins her hair up. Puts on the cape and the hat and looks at herself in the mirror-lined wall of the bedroom she may now be sharing with a philanderer. She looks like the Phantom of the Opera. The walnut stock of the Cobra feels cool to her touch. The fifteen-ounce gun is light in her hand. She drops it into a black tote, drops the cassette into it as well, and slings the bag over her shoulder. Gloves. Remembers gloves. Basic black needs basic black gloves. She finds a pair she bought in Milan last September, soft black leather, slips into them. Looks at herself in the mirror again. Yes, she thinks.
Her greenish-black Infiniti J30 is parked in the driveway outside. She loves the name Nissan has given the color: Black Emerald. She fires up the engine.
The time on the dashboard clock is 11:10 P.M.
This time of night, with no traffic on the road, she makes it to the club in ten minutes flat.
Her car is known here. She cannot have it recognized and later remembered, not if what Bobby Diaz told her is true, not if she is going to kill her husband. She plans to confront him with the tape. Ask him why he kept the tape from her. Ask him if it’s true that...
Is it true?
Is it?
Ask him.
She parks the car on the shoulder of the road outside the club. Moves in the shadow of the trees inside the stone wall, black as the night, her hands beginning to sweat inside the buttery-soft silk-lined gloves. The black leather tote bangs against her hip as she works her way toward the parking lot. She is starting across it, out of the shadows, when...
A white Geo.