"I don't either. But Rosen's got his eyewitnesses coming up next after my cross on Cuneo, and that's not going to be pretty, either. They all say they saw Catherine, and I'm beginning to think they're saying that because they did."
Glitsky remained quiet for a second or two, then asked, "So you think she's got the ring after all?"
"The ring?"
"Yeah. Missy's ring." At Hardy's questioning look, he explained. "Ruth Guthrie mentioned it today again before I left, and I remembered I'd heard about it way back at the beginning of this thing. And I know it's never showed up in evidence."
"I was going to call Strout about that. You're sure? It wasn't on the body?"
"No possibility. I saw the body, Diz. No ring. No fingers, in fact."
"Okay, but why would I think Catherine's got it?"
"Because if… well, if she's in fact guilty, whoever did it most likely took it off the body. The thing's supposed to be worth, what, a hundred grand? And it hasn't showed up? What's that leave? Somebody took it."
"Or it fell off in the fire."
"Okay, then it would have been in the sweep."
"And maybe Becker or one of his men kept it."
Glitsky didn't like that. "Unlikely," he said. "I've been at some of these things and the arson guys log everything. So why do you think Catherine didn't take it?"
Hardy didn't answer right away. It was a good question. "Mostly," he said, "because she asked about it only yesterday at the trial. I don't think she would have brought it up if she had stolen it. But mostly, it just occurred to her and she blurted it out. That's what it really seemed like. I'm positive it wasn't rehearsed. It was like, 'Where's the ring?' "
"Okay," Glitsky said. "So how bad is her new alibi?"
"No worse than the last one. It's just that it's different. Why?"
"I mean is it plausible? Could it be true? Do you think it's true?"
Hardy brought his hands up to his forehead.
" 'Cause if it's true," Glitsky continued, "even if it's different, she still didn't do it."
Hardy looked up at the ceiling, shook his head, uttered an expletive.
"You need to find the ring," Glitsky said.
Hardy put the little disagreement he'd had with his wife out of his mind. Of course she'd been disappointed that he wasn't coming home after their dinner with the Glitskys, but she knew what trial time was like. She'd get over it, and so would he. But the reality now was that he had to try to talk to Mary Rodman, Catherine's sister-in-law. She'd been in the gallery today, and he'd wanted to get together with her for a few words, but the billing talk with Will had trumped that and taken all of Hardy's time.
But the unusually rapid pace of the actual trial-as opposed to the glacially slow movement of the endless pretrial motions and accretion of evidence over the past months-was outstripping his efforts to keep a step ahead of the proceedings. Now, merely to keep up, he had to effectively utilize every single possible working second in this and the coming days. Even under that pressure, he'd felt he needed to see Abe and Treya tonight, to be there if they needed his support. But now that mission had been accomplished, that message delivered, and he was back on the clock, on his client's time.
He'd made the original appointment, for seven thirty, from his office as soon as he'd come in from his day in court, before he'd even checked his messages. When he got the call from Frannie about meeting at Abe's for dinner, he'd called Mary again and asked if he could change the time to nine o'clock, and at precisely that hour, he rang her doorbell.
The Rodmans lived in a well-kept, brick-fronted house on upper Masonic. Hanover's youngest daughter, Mary, like seemingly every other woman involved in this case, was gourmet arm-candy of a high order. Over the course of his involvement in this case, Hardy had come to realize that Hanover was one of those men who had an enviable penchant for pulchritude. His first wife, Theresa-Catherine's mother-in-law-although in her seventies and with the personality of a domineering tyrant, was still very easy on the eyes, a latter-day Nefertiti. Both of Paul's daughters, Beth and Mary, had carried those genes into the next generation. Catherine, perhaps the best-looking of all of them, had married into the family. And Missy D'Amiens had been about to join it. Beauty everywhere you looked.
After introducing Hardy, again, to her husband, Carlos, and her son, Pablo, she led him back out to a tiny sunken living room, hardly the size of Glitsky's. But what the room, and the house for that matter, lacked in size, it made up for in charm. Comfortable burgundy leather wing chairs and highly placed narrow windows bracketed a functional and working fireplace. In front of it, a dark wine Persian rug covered parquet floors. They'd artfully framed and tastefully hung several original watercolors.
Mary indicated the couch at the far end of the room from the fireplace and sat at the opposite end of it from Hardy. Like the other Hanover women, she wore her dark hair long, a few inches below her shoulders. Unlike Theresa, her mother, though-and Catherine, for that matter-Mary was physically petite, fragile-looking, with somber eyes. She wore the same sweater and slacks that she'd had on in the courtroom today, and little makeup. Catherine had told Hardy that she was the most emotional of the siblings, and the most sympathetic. Somewhat to his surprise, she spoke first. "I have to say, you managed to upset my brother pretty badly after lunch. Is that your approach now that you're in trial? To get everybody all worked up?"
Hardy asked with a mild curiosity, "Who else is worked up? Are you?"
"Well… no. But Will was."
"Will wasn't paying me, Mary. I didn't want to have to abandon Catherine, so I-" "You wouldn't have done that!"
"Maybe not, but let's let that be our secret, all right?"
She flashed a weary smile. "I think he's being horrible-Will, I mean-playing the kids off her. She was always a good mother." She shook her head. "I don't know what to think anymore. I never thought they would arrest her, and then when they did, it just didn't seem real that she would… I mean that it would get to a trial. With all this incredibly weak evidence against her… it just doesn't seem like Catherine could have done…" She trailed off.
Though depressing, it was good for Hardy to hear this from someone who'd been at the trial the whole time. If she was thinking this way, it was a litmus for the jury. "The evidence seems bad to you, then, does it?"
"Well, I know you said that there wasn't any physical evidence, and maybe there isn't too much of that, but the rest of it…"
"The circumstantial evidence?"
"That's it. I mean, that might seem to some people that it points to her, doesn't it?"
"But it doesn't to you." Not a question. "You know Catherine better than that, don't you? She says the two of you are pretty close."
"Why else do you think I'm there in court every day? She's got to know that the whole family hasn't abandoned her." She bit her lip. "I mean, Will and my mother… it just seems so cruel. I don't know why he's doing that."
"Their marriage was on the rocks before," he said. "Now, with this, with her accusations against him, it's a war."
"I don't know why Catherine said all that about Will's secretary and him. She could have just, I don't know, kept it between them. That's one of the reasons Mom is so mad."
"So you don't think Will was having the affair?"
"I don't know. It's just all so sordid, don't you think? I don't want to believe he'd lie to his kids, though. I mean, people have affairs and get divorced all the time."
"Sure, but he doesn't want his kids to think he's the reason for it. He'd rather they think it's her. And especially with this thing now at trial this morning, Cuneo saying she came on to him."
Now the dark eyes flashed. "That was horrible! That man's creepy. You see the way he's always moving, bouncing, jittering, like he's on drugs or something? There's no way Catherine is going to… I mean, just no. But with all these accusations flying, I can see where people might not know what to think anymore."