She reached for her orange juice, took a sip and cradled the glass in both hands in her lap. ‘I was married one time. I was twenty-one, going through one of my rebellious phases. He was a musician, a good player. He finally made a couple of albums. Heavy metal, which now I truly hate. I think I despised it then, and I know Daddy did.’
‘Did your father and he get along?’
She started to laugh, then stopped herself. ‘No. Daddy hated everything about him.’
‘Is that why you broke up?’
‘No, not really. He was a jerk, which I suppose I knew all along, but Daddy had him followed when he was on the road and he didn’t act like he was married. So,’ she continued, shrugging, ‘we had it annulled. It’s ancient history now, but it kind of soured me on men for a long while. Plus, there’s being rich. You know, it’s hard to find people you believe. Guys try to pick you up, first it’s your looks, then if they find out you’ve got money…’
Hardy’s club soda arrived. He held it, staring out the window. It seemed to not be getting any darker outside.
‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know exactly. That there’s more than the pickup scene. I mean, didn’t you meet anybody in your regular life?’
She shook her head. ‘Sometimes, once in a while. But my regular life always had Daddy in it.’
‘I think this is where our problem started last time.’
She reached over and took his hand again. ‘We’re not going to do that again. I can’t explain to people about me and Daddy. It was all right, we did everything together.’
‘But he seemed to have a personal life, I mean women friends, and you apparently weren’t allowed to. How can that have been fair? How was it living with that?’
‘I don’t know how to say it or explain it, but it was okay. You did things with Daddy, you felt a certain way. Ask Ken.’
‘But it couldn’t be the same with him. He’s married, he’s got a life.’
She tightened her hold on his hand. ‘I’ve got a life, Dismas, don’t worry about me.’
‘I guess I do,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why, but I do.’
‘I know.’ She let him go and moved her palm up and down over his thigh. ‘You are a very good man, Mr Hardy. I wish…’
She didn’t finish what she was saying. She didn’t have to.
They never got around to mentioning the name of May Shinn.
Hardy got home just at seven. Rebecca was in bed asleep, one of their regular baby-sitters was in the living room talking to Frannie, and Frannie was dressed up, ready to go out.
He was in the house for less than five minutes. He wanted to peek in on the Beck, to feed the fish. Pit stop.
They walked out to the car, parked two blocks away on Clement, holding hands. ‘Are we still fighting?’ he asked.
‘I wasn’t fighting with you.’
‘Neither were you singing my praises.’
‘I didn’t agree with you. I don’t agree with you. I think your job is taking too much of your time and is threatening you and me and our family and I don’t like you not telling me what you’re doing and where you’re going.’
‘You’ve got to learn to speak out, Frannie. Express yourself a little more clearly.’
‘Not funny.’
They walked on another half block without talking. ‘So if you can’t make a joke out of it you’re not going to say anything?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to say something.’
The last of the chivalrous men, Hardy held the door for her, then went around to his side. The sun had at last gone down. He put the sides up on the Samurai, it was warm with the breeze off the ocean.
‘When?’
‘When what?’
‘When are you going to say something?’
Hardy turned in his seat. Confidentiality obviously meant little to Andy Fowler. Since Jane knew, then certainly by now Chuck Chuck Bo-Buck was in on it. And Hardy had never promised Andy he would keep it private – he’d only promised himself.
He’d only promised himself. He liked that.
This was how it started, he thought. This was the kind of rationalizing that people everywhere seemed to be so good at. And once it was okay to break a promise to yourself, then it wasn’t all that big a step to break one to anyone else. Just so you could end a fight.
Or maybe tell a little white lie to keep from getting into a fight in the first place.
All he had to do was give in, tell Frannie about Andy and they would have a pleasant and well-deserved date. And Hardy’s supposed private integrity would only be slightly diminished – he could make it up on the weekend, do some good works.
‘Did you hear about the May Shinn thing today?’ he asked her. She hadn’t yet, and he filled her in on it.
She listened, and when he’d finished, she told him that it was interesting but that it wasn’t what their fight had been about. Did he want to tell her where he’d been last night or not?
‘I went out to meet a guy who’s got a legal problem, which I can’t discuss. Period. If you want to be mad at me about that, it’s up to you.’
She was biting her lip, not so much angry, he thought, as worried. ‘What about the other stuff?’ she said. ‘These hours at work, getting home when it’s dark, leaving in the middle of the night. What’s that doing to us?’
The two front seats in the Samurai were separated by a well, and he reached for her and put his arms around her. She leaned into him. ‘We’re not being threatened,’ he said. ‘The job is not threatening us. I love you, Frannie, okay?’
She nodded against him, her arms around his neck. Her reserve broke. She started to cry.
When they got home there were calls from Ken Farris, Jane apologizing, and Abe Glitsky wondering about the direction the D.A. was going with this thing.
Hardy went into his office while Frannie drove the baby-sitter home and began rereading the file on the now-dead case. At least it was dead so far as May Shinn was concerned.
He didn’t know what the D.A. was going to do, but he thought he personally was going to go back to doing his prelims, earn his stripes, win a lot of cases and eventually move up the ladder to where he might get a couple of righteous homicides.
There was nothing else he could do. He wasn’t an investigator. He knew Glitsky, after the false arrest, would be super-cautious. He wasn’t inclined to stir things up with Pullios anymore. Frannie had been right… he was putting in too many hours, not having enough fun. He was becoming a lawyer, and if he wanted to do that he could get some corporate work and bill sixty hours a week for five or six years and make some money while he did it.
He’d left Celine at Perry’s, thinking what a good man am I. He thought she might be a little in love with him. Although he knew he was infatuated with her on some level, he wasn’t going to pursue it. He’d made his choice, and not only was he going to live with it, he was going to be happy with it.
That settled, he decided to close up the binder and file it away in the cabinets next to his desk. He arranged the yellow sheets from his own private notes at the beginning of the investigation – his initial talks with Ken Farris, impressions from Strout and so on – and laid them on top of the copies he’d made of the official file.
His office was quiet. From the bedroom the bubbling of the fish tank registered subliminally. Not really looking for anything, waiting for Frannie’s arrival back home, he reread the early notes. All of this seemed so long ago, so distant in time and experience.
He flipped pages, the police reports, Glitsky’s interviews, killing time. Elliot’s articles.
And then the bubbling fish tank was gone. There was nothing in his world but a nagging, half-recognized contradiction. He flipped back to one of Jeff Elliot’s first articles.
Ken Farris had told him that he’d last seen Owen Nash on Friday around lunchtime, after lunch. The article, quoting Farris as the source, said Nash had last been seen by his household staff on Thursday night.