“I don’t think there’s enough to warrant an investigation.”
She looked at him bitterly. “Not enough? I suppose you think I’ve imagined the whole thing?”
“No, Kate. But—”
“I didn’t imagine that car parked outside my house, watching me. I didn’t imagine an anonymous letter accusing me of neglecting my daughter. I didn’t imagine that chase around town yesterday. Would an innocent man have fled like that?”
“Perhaps there are no innocent men,” Mac said. “Or women.”
“Oh, stop talking like a wise old philosopher. You’re not old, and you’re not very wise either.”
“Granted.”
“If you had been in that car, would you have run away like that? Answer me truthfully.”
“You seem concerned only with the fact that he ran away. I’m more concerned with the fact that you chased him.”
“I was upset. I’d just received that letter.”
“Perhaps he had had a disturbing experience, too, and was reacting in an emotional rather than a logical manner.”
She let out a sound of despair. “You won’t listen to me. You won’t take me seriously.”
“I do. I am.”
“No. You think I’m a fool. But I feel a terrible danger, Mac, I know it’s all around me. Something awful is waiting to happen, it’s just around the corner, waiting. It can’t be seen or heard or touched, but it’s as real as this house, that chair you’re sitting on, the tree outside the window.”
“And you think Sheridan is behind this danger?”
“He must be,” she said simply. “I have no other enemies.”
Mac thought what a sad epitaph it made for a marriage: I have no other enemies. “I’ll try again to contact Sheridan. As you know, he hasn’t been answering his telephone.”
“Another sign of guilt.”
“Or a sign that he’s not there,” Mac said dryly. “As for Charles Gowen, I can’t go charging up to him with a lot of questions. I haven’t the legal or moral right. All I can do is make a few discreet inquiries, find out where he lives and works, and what kind of person he is, whether he’s likely to be one of Sheridan’s cronies, and so on. I may as well tell you now, though: I don’t expect anything to come of it. If Gowen had a guilty reason for not wanting the green coupé found, it seems to me he’d have taken a little more trouble in disposing of it. There are at least a hundred used-car dealers between here and Los Angeles, yet Gowen sold it right here, practically in the center of town.”
“He may simply be stupid. Sheridan’s friends nowadays are not exactly intellectual giants.”
Mac’s smile was more pained than amused. “One of the things a lawyer has to learn early in his career is not to assume that the other guy is stupid.”
He rose. His whole body felt heavy, and stiff with tension. He always felt the same way when he was in Kate’s house, that he couldn’t move freely in any direction because he was under constant and judgmental surveillance. He could picture Sheridan trying, at first anyway, to conform and to please her, and making mistakes, more and more mistakes every day, until nothing was possible but mistakes.
He knew he was not being fair to her. To make amends for his thoughts, he crossed the room and leaned down and kissed her lightly on the top of her head. Her hair felt warm to his lips, and smelled faintly of soap.
She looked up at him, showing neither surprise nor displeasure, only a deep sorrow, as if the show of tenderness was too little and too late and she had forgotten how to respond. “Is that a courtesy you extend to all your clients?”
“No,” he said, smiling. “Only the ones I like and have known since they were freckle-faced little brats.”
“I never had freckles.”
“Yes, you did. You were covered with them every summer. You probably still would be if you spent any time in the sun. Listen, Kate, I have an idea. Why don’t you and Mary Martha come sailing with me one of these days?”
“No. No, thank you.”
“Why not?”
“I wouldn’t be very good company. I’ve forgotten how to enjoy myself.”
“You could relearn if you wanted to. Perhaps you don’t want to.”
Her sorrow had crystallized into bitterness, making her eyes shine hard and bright like blue glass. “Oh, stop it, Mac. You’re offering me a day of sailing the way you’d throw an old dog a bone. Well, I’m not that hungry. Besides, I can’t afford to leave the house for a whole day.”
“You can’t afford not to.”
“Sheridan might force his way in and steal something. He’s done it before.”
“Once.”
“He might do it ag—”
“He was drunk,” Mac said, “and all he took was a case of wine which belonged to him anyway.”
“But he broke into the house.”
“You refused to admit him. Isn’t that correct?”
“Naturally I refused. He was abusive and profane, he threatened me, he—” She stopped and took a long, deep breath. “You’re always making excuses for him. Why? You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I’m a man. I can’t help seeing things from a man’s point of view occasionally.”
“Then perhaps,” she said, rising, “I’d better hire a woman lawyer.”
“That might be a good idea.”
“You’d like to get rid of me, wouldn’t you?”
“Let’s put it this way: I’d like for us both to be rid of your problems. My going along with you and agreeing with everything you say and do is not a solution. It gets in the way of a solution. Your difficulties can’t just be dumped in a box labeled Sheridan. You had them before Sheridan, and you’re having them now, after Sheridan. I’d be doing you no favor by pretending otherwise.”
“I was a happy, healthy, normal young woman when I married him.”
“Is that how you remember yourself?”
“Yes.”
“My memory of you is different,” he said calmly. “You were moody, selfish, immature. You flunked out of college, you couldn’t hold on to a job, and your relationship with your mother was strained. You tried to use marriage as a way out of all these difficulties. It put a very heavy burden on Sheridan, he wasn’t strong enough to carry it. Can you see any truth in what I’m saying, Kate? Or are you just standing there thinking how unfair I’m being?”
They were face to face, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at a piece of the wall beyond his left shoulder, as if to deny his very presence. “I no longer expect fairness, from anyone.”
“You’re getting it from me, Kate.”
“You call that fairness — that repulsive picture of me when I was nineteen?”
“It’s not repulsive, or even particularly unusual. A great many girls in the same state go into marriage for the same reason.”
“And what about Sheridan’s reasons for getting married?” she said shrilly. “I suppose they were fine, he was mature, he got along great with his mother, he was a big success in the world—”
He took hold of her shoulders, lightly but firmly. “Keep your voice down.”
“Why should I? Nobody will hear. Nobody can. The Oakleys were very exclusive, they liked privacy. They had to build the biggest house in town on the biggest lot because they didn’t want to be bothered by neighbors. I could scream for help at the top of my lungs and not a soul would hear me. I’ve got enough privacy to be murdered in. Sheridan knows that. He’s probably dreamed about it a hundred times: wouldn’t it be nice if someone came along and murdered Kate? He may even have made or be making some plans of his own along that line, though I don’t believe he’d have enough nerve to do it himself. He’d probably hire someone, the way he hired Gowen.”