“I think,” Ms. Cunningham said, “that we’re getting off topic.”
Josie, who was there for the session, could not wait to tell Kat and Perri about this development. She raced to find them as soon as class was over, risking a tardy slip for English. She reasoned that it was okay to tell Kat about Eve’s information because she wasn’t saying it was Seth, Chip, and Kenny, whose guilt could not be established. The point was that the perpetrators, whoever they were, were so much more evil than anyone had realized.
But Kat had shook her head, refusing to believe the story even in its generalities.
“Eve Muhly is a slut,” she said, shocking Josie, who had never heard Kat speak so cruelly of anyone. “And a liar. Everyone knows that. She’s just making stuff up to get back at the people who talked about her.”
“Don’t use ‘slut’ just to criticize some girl you don’t like,” Perri said, her voice a dead-on imitation of Ms. Cunningham’s. She switched to her real voice. “Seriously, if anyone is a slut in this scenario, it’s Chip. He went after girls the same way he scored goals in soccer. But everyone thought he was cool, whereas Eve gets in trouble for giving one blow job.”
“He’s dead,” Kat protested.
“And when he was alive, he wasn’t very nice. People don’t become something other than what they were just because they had the misfortune to die.”
“Okay, Chip wasn’t the greatest guy. But Seth was our friend,” Kat said. “And everyone loved Kenny. We’ve known them both since we were five years old, Perri.”
That gap, seldom alluded to, always made Josie feel a twinge of jealousy and insignificance. She hated being reminded of Kat and Perri’s longer history, the three-year difference she could never make up. The three could be friends for eighty years, and yet Kat and Perri would then be friends for eighty-three.
“But what if they really did it?” Perri persisted. “How would you feel about them then?”
“I’m not going to speculate about someone who’s dead.”
“Why not?”
“It’s mean, it’s harmful.”
“To whom? They’re dead and it’s not like their parents are standing here.”
Josie had watched them, anxious, filled with regret that she had brought them what she considered nothing more than a juicy story, only to start this near fight. Ms. Cunningham was right about the destructive power of gossip.
Kat and Perri glared at each other. It all seemed so much angrier, so much more personal, than it had any right to be. But Kat had no talent for anger, and she broke first.
“I can’t be sure of anything. I don’t know, and you don’t know, and Eve Muhly definitely doesn’t know. She was, like, borderline retarded when we were kids, remember? I can’t believe you’re taking her side.”
“I’m not. I’m just being open-minded. There are infinite possibilities here.”
“If someone said anything horrible about you or Josie, accused you of doing something disgusting, wouldn’t you want me to defend you?”
Josie waited, as curious about this answer as Kat.
“It depends,” Perri said. “What if I really did it?”
PART FIVE. There Won’t Be Trumpets
Wednesday
26
Infante liked to say he could smell crazy on a woman-the better to run right toward it. But even Infante seemed skittish around the gorgeous redhead who had shown up at headquarters this morning offering her full cooperation in the Hartigan case. Yet thirty minutes into the conversation, she had managed not to answer a single direct question. This horse has led herself to water, Lenhardt thought in exasperation, but she still doesn’t want to drink.
The woman was Michael Delacorte-estranged wife, registered owner of a murder weapon, Perri Kahn’s former employer. So far she had explained how she came to marry Stewart Delacorte (much too quickly), and the travails of their two-year-old son (rare genetic disorder), which had helped her focus, after much searching (yoga, Buddhism, ceramics) for meaning in her life. The epiphany that she needed to leave her husband arrived, coincidentally, the same week as the news of the SEC investigation into his business affairs.
“I realize now that I was put here to care for my son, that my purpose in life was right there in front of me,” she said, smacking the table so forcefully that her tennis bracelet slid up and down her skinny forearm each time her palm landed. Lenhardt had never understood the origin of that name, tennis bracelet, but he knew that his wife would like one. “Oh, you have no idea how wonderful it is to realize that one’s life has true meaning.”
Mrs. Delacorte smacked her hands a few more times, and Infante twitched, just a little, as each blow landed. She had a cat’s face, a dancer’s body, and, by all appearances, a plastic surgeon’s breasts, high and molded. Lenhardt prided himself on being able to tell. His wife had explained it to him one day, how the artificial ones always pointed straight ahead.
“About Perri Kahn,” he began, and it was far from the first time that he had tried to introduce the girl’s name into the conversation. But Mrs. Delacorte was not interested in approaching anything that might be called a point.
“Yes, exactly. Exactly.”
“Exactly?” Infante seemed to be echoing a word here and there, just to keep himself alert.
“You see, before I really understood my situation, before I accepted the fact that this was part of a higher plan, what my real calling was, Perri used to baby-sit for me every Thursday. I was in denial. I felt I just couldn’t survive if I didn’t have a day, once a week, where I knew I was going to get out of the house. I mean, I had a nanny, of course, but the nanny had Thursdays off, and I just needed a day that was all for me.”
Lenhardt tried to digest this concept, a woman with full-time help who needed part-time help so she wouldn’t feel trapped. Well, rich people had different expectations, he told himself, although he would bet anything that Mrs. Delacorte hadn’t been rich before she met her husband.
“In May I finally saw that I had to leave. I was very aboveboard about it. I told Stewart that I wanted out, that I wouldn’t seek anything more than was fair, under the law. Although, of course, support would have to be calculated differently with a special-needs child. I’m going to need help as long as he-” Her breath caught. “As long as he lives.”
Lenhardt’s heart softened toward the woman, silly and ditzy and spoiled as she was. She had a child with a fatal condition. She had earned her craziness.