“Diamonds?” she asks, that twang again in her voice.
“Better.”
“What could be better than diamonds? So flashy, so bright, so readily turned into ready cash.”
“What about me?”
“You?” She laughs as she lifts her legs and twists them locked behind my back, twists them tight so I can’t move in or out, here or there, trapped. “But I already have you, Victor, and you won’t look half so pretty hanging from my ears.”
Hailey in her normal life is a hard piece of work, flinty, sardonic, infected with a nervous bundle of habits that act as sword and shield to protect her inner sadness. She is both desirable and detached, which of course only makes her more desirable. It is impossible to get a straight answer from Hailey Prouix. Ask her a question and she deftly directs the line to something less threatening or, instead, asks a question of her own that puts you smack on the defensive. She is, remember, a lawyer. But after sex, oh after sex, after the two of us are run over by that charging train of hunger and need with its own strange pulse and rhythms, a train that seems to come from neither her nor me but from elsewhere, after all that, it is as if her defenses fall like the walls of Jericho under Joshua’s horn. The easy, drawly vowels replace the clipped, big-city cadence she has adopted in her adopted city and her flinty defensive manner turns richer, her emotions show through almost unguarded.
“I bought you a phone,” I tell Hailey that afternoon.
“I have a phone. I have too many damn phones.”
“But I’ve been having a hard time reaching you at night. How many times can I hang up when Guy answers?”
“So that was you.”
“Who did you think it was?”
“I was hoping it was you.”
“How come you don’t answer your cell phone after hours?”
“Because my clients call. They call to complain about their pains. They call to say they can’t sleep. They want to tell me they’re taking their medicine, they want to tell me they’re not taking their medicine. They call to have me verify their paranoia. They call because, like everyone else, they’re lonely and scared and know I’m not charging by the hour. I leave my phone in the office with the rest of my workday because if I don’t, my clients will drown me.”
“But I’m not a client.”
“So why do you need to reach me?”
“To say hello. To let you know I’m thinking about you. To ask what you are wearing.”
“In other words, so you, too, can tell me you can’t sleep.”
“Exactly.”
“I’d rather have diamonds.”
“But it’s really cute, and I got it in red to match your lipstick.”
“Red?”
“Shocking red.”
“And who else has the number?”
“Just me.”
“So it’s our own private hot line.”
“That’s right.”
“I feel like the president.”
“And best of all, my number is already number one in the speed dial.”
“For now.” She laughs, her hearty, throaty laugh, but I can tell she likes the gift even though she can’t hang it from her ears, I can tell because after she laughs she starts devouring my mouth the way she does when it is time to end our talking, hungrily, meatily, in a way that still tingled even as I remembered two days after her death.
“THAT THING you were waiting for?” said my secretary, sticking her head in my office door. “Is it from the phone company?”
“Yes,” I said, with more excitement than I meant to show. To cover myself I added, “Thanks, Ellie. Just put it on the chair and I’ll get to it when I can.”
She laid the paper on the seat, closed the door, and I leaped out from behind my desk to get my hands on the three stapled sheets.
I started at the last page, the last call. It was registered at 10:15 the night of Hailey’s death, made to my number. It was Guy, telling me that something horrible had happened. Guy. Why had he used the cell phone to make the call?
I sat down hard on the chair and thought it through. It made no sense. No sense, and that might be the only explanation. So undone by his murderous act, he picked up the first thing he could grab, the bright red phone, left out on the end table by Hailey for some reason. Picked it over the regular phone for no special reason, picked it up and dialed my number and made the call. He didn’t even remember that he had used the cell phone, hadn’t mentioned it when he told me the story, would probably swear he had used the regular phone, but he was mistaken, and here was the proof. It was a simple enough explanation, and it would certainly calm Detective Breger’s concerns, and so all I had to do was give him the fax.
Except I couldn’t. Because then I’d have to explain why a phone registered in my name, with the bills going to my home, was in that house the night of the murder. And I’d have to explain all the calls made to my number, and all the calls registered going from my number to that phone, all also listed and on the record. And with that explanation I’d surely be off the case as an attorney. Off the case as an attorney, yes, but still on as a witness or, more precisely, as a suspect. Ah, there it was, the foul root of the problem. If Guy’s unthinking, nonsensical act was discovered, I’d be a suspect. I’d be a suspect that could be used by any competent defense attorney to raise doubt, maybe even reasonable doubt. Wasn’t it I who was having a deceitful relationship with the deceased? Wasn’t it I who had possession of the gun until I dropped it in the laps of the police? Wasn’t it I who had lied about everything so that I could stay on the case as defense attorney to lay blame at the feet of the innocent Guy Forrest? The closing as much as wrote itself. How ironic that I might, in the end, be Guy’s route to freedom. What I held in my hand was reasonable doubt as to Guy’s guilt, except I knew I didn’t do it, and I knew Guy did, and so I had to be sure that no one, no one, would ever be able to see this record.
I’d have to burn it.
I opened my office window and took an old pack of matches out of my desk drawer. Just a little fire, nothing to set off the sprinklers, I hoped, just a little fire. I lit a match. A breath of wind came through the window and killed it. I lit another and placed the flame at the document’s corner. Just as it was catching, just as the blue flame turned yellow and began to curl the three pieces of paper, I noticed something.
I tried to blow out the flame, but it grew and began to devour the pages. I dropped them to the floor and stamped, stamped, stamped out the fire. The office smelled like a cigar bar. I picked up the now blackened documents. Half of each sheet was gone, on the other halves the printing could barely be discerned. But barely was enough.
There were calls on the phone made to two strange numbers. Calls made every other afternoon or so. To a number in area code 304 and then to a number in area code 702. I grabbed my phone book. Area code 304 was West Virginia, Hailey’s home state. That made sense, calls to family or an old friend. But what about the number in the other area code. 702. Nevada. Who was she calling in Nevada?
“Desert Winds, how can I direct your call?”
“Desert Winds?” I said into the phone. “What exactly is Desert Winds?”
“Desert Winds is a full-care retirement community in Henderson, Nevada, just minutes outside exciting Las Vegas. Are you interested in a brochure? I could direct your call to Sales.”
“No, not quite yet. Do the residents have phones in their rooms?”
“Of course. Do you know the member’s extension?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’m calling about a woman named Hailey Prouix. P-r-o-u-i-x.”
“One moment while I check, please. No, I’m sorry, there is no member by that name.”
“Member?”
“At Desert Winds we treat all our guests as if they are members of a very exclusive club.”
“Are there any members named Prouix?”
“No, not currently.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Are you sure I can’t
direct you to Sales?”
“Do you have shuffleboard?”
“Oh, yes, tournaments and everything.”
“Well, in that case, maybe a brochure would be just the thing.”
9
BERWYN IS the story of American sprawl writ across a rolling suburban landscape. At first it was farm county, supplying the big city with its corn and tomatoes. But early in the nineteenth century a few grand estates were carved out by the aristocratic wealthy as necessary places of refuge from the hurly-burly hoi polloi of the city. Of course the estates needed staff, staff that lived in the city, so the railroad, coincidentally owned by those with just such estates, built a train line to ferry the staff back and forth from their meager urban dwellings. It was the railroad that serviced these estates that became known as the Main Line, a name that soon came to designate the entire area. But the raw plow of progress always follows transportation, and it wasn’t long before developers began to sell neat little houses not far from the stations, promising easy train commutes to the city. As the years went on, the suburban outcroppings grew, some would say metastasized, spreading outward, invading farmland like a heartless disease, until only the original great estates were left intact. But who anymore could afford to maintain an eighty-acre estate in the middle of the ’burbs? One by one the estates were sold, subdivided, developed, and turned into the very creatures they had spawned, but with a difference. No typical suburban split-levels were to be built upon these blue-blooded grounds. It was as if their aristocratic origins infected the new developments, and what was created instead were strange imitations of the great manor houses, with falsely majestic fronts and grotesquely shaped wings all out of proportion to their three-quarter-acre lots.
Welcome to the Brontë Estates, luxury homes starting in the low $800,000s. McMansions for those whose aspirations had outlived their times. The American dream on steroids.
I remember when the Forrests first moved into their new house in the Brontë Estates, showing off the seven thousand square feet of luxurious, state-of-the-art suburban space. The ground was still packed hard from the heavy vehicles, the land barren of all but the youngest, barest twigs planted by the developers, most lots were still construction sites, but Leila and Guy were proud as new parents. They had chosen the Heathcliff model, with the extra bedroom, the cathedral ceilings, the oversize great room, the atmosphere of continual yearning. A house, they said, to grow into. Leila talked of all her decorating ideas, and Guy fiddled with the new lawn mower, though his sod lawn had yet to be laid. They had lived in an apartment in the city until Leila had become pregnant with their second child, so they exuded that special glow of freshly minted suburbanites ensconced in a McMansion of their very own. The grass would arrive on a truck, the skinny trees would grow, how could the future be anything but lush?
“Hello, Victor,” said the former Leila Peale at her front door. “I was wondering when you’d arrive.”
“Mind if I come in for a few moments?”
“Of course not. I always have time for an old friend.”
I thought she was being facetious. When Guy had left his family for Hailey, the family friends were forced to make a choice, Leila or Guy. Leila, being the more sympathetic figure and having the older connection to their social set, seemed to end up with everyone but me. I had known Guy long before his marriage and, though I thought what he had done was despicable, I ended up, almost against my will, on his side of the aisle. That he had told me everything before he left his wife and I had said nothing to her only cemented my place outside her circle. I hadn’t seen her, hadn’t spoken to her, since the separation, so when Leila called me an old friend I thought she was making a joke. But she surprised me by ushering me not into the formal parlor with its stiff French furnishings reserved for painfully polite conversation but through the open kitchen area into the spacious, vaulted informal room used by family and friends.
So there we were, perched in the plush green furnishings, two iced teas on coasters atop the coffee table, chatting like, well, like old friends. I wanted to pat her on the knee and assure her that I was taking care of everything, that Guy would pay for all he had done, but it was better to maintain my secrets. When she looked at me, I supposed she saw the bastard lawyer defending her bastard husband. When I looked at her, I supposed I saw an ally.
“I saw you on TV, Victor, giving your little speech as you left the courthouse.”
“It’s part of the job.”
“Well, it doesn’t look as if you hate it.”
“No, can’t say I do.”
“And they do seem to like putting you on.”
“Such is the burden of startling good looks and a winning personality.”
She laughed at that, a deep, good-natured laugh, and curled her legs beneath her on the couch. It reminded me of better times, when Leila and Guy were my mature married friends and I played the part of the unsettled single guy. Leila was a big-boned women with an inviting, if not beautiful, face. Friendly and warm with a lively sense of humor, she had made a nice contrast to the serious and humorless Guy.
Slowly her laughter subsided and her face darkened. “How is he?” she asked.
“Not so good.”
“I didn’t think so. Guy sometimes pretended to be a hard guy, as if the tattoo prepared him for anything, but he is not the prison type.”
“Who is, really? How are the children handling it?” They had two: Laura, a lovely, quiet girl, aged six, and Elliott, a terror who never outgrew his terrible twos, aged four. “Do they know?”
“Not really. It’s not as if he had been much of a presence in their lives after he left anyway. I told them their daddy is in trouble but that it’s all a mistake and he’ll be with them soon.”
“He wants to see them.”
“I don’t think that’s best. After the trial, if he’s convicted, I expect we’ll have to work something out about visitation, but until then I don’t think it healthy for a six-and four-year-old to see their father in prison. I’ve talked it over with the pediatrician and she agrees.”
“I’ll tell him. He’ll be disappointed, but I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“He should write letters. They’d love to hear from him and Laura, at least, can write back. Is there anything else I can do? Anything? I’ll do what I can.”
“That’s sort of why I came, but I’m a little surprised at the offer. I thought a part of you would be glad it turned out like it did.”
“He’s still my husband, Victor, the father of my children. I don’t want him in jail.”
“And Hailey?”
She winced, as if she had just chewed a rotten morsel of beef. “I don’t wish anyone dead, but I won’t mourn Hailey Prouix. Somehow she turned Guy against himself, and that’s a crime. You know, Victor, I was suing her.”
“Suing her?”
“Alienation of affection I think is the legal term, but basically I was suing her for stealing my husband. There have been successful suits just like it all over the country. One woman I heard won a million dollars.”
“Sounds like the lottery.”
“I was suing that witch for every penny she had.”
“What good would that have done, Leila?”
“Other than the money?” She laughed again. “Oh, I suppose in some bitter way it would have cheered me. I wanted to take something from her that she cared about, just like she took Guy from me.”
“He had something to do with it, too.”
“He was bewitched.”
“Leila.”
“Well, it wasn’t love. What Guy and I had together was love, what he had with her was something else. I think love is more than just a one-way obsession, don’t you, Victor? Doesn’t it have to be based on some sort of understanding of the other? Doesn’t it have to be reciprocated in some way to be real?”
“I don’t know,” I said, and in that moment I could have sworn I caught a whiff of jasmine, Hailey’s scent, and I remembered, suddenly, an
afternoon we spent together just a few weeks before her death. I blinked the memory away before it overwhelmed me. “Reciprocated or not,” I said, “the emotion feels just the same either way.”
“Yes, that’s just it. It feels the same either way, but it isn’t the same. One is real, genuine, an emotional coming-together that forms the basis for everything meaningful. The other is a solipsistic delusion, not so different from a teenager with a crush on a rock star or a stalker obsessed with his prey. Whatever those emotions are, no matter how strong, they are not love. Guy was obsessed with her, I know that, and I can understand it, but it wasn’t love. Whatever trouble he’s in, it arrived because in the midst of his obsession he thought she was feeling what he was feeling, when she was incapable of returning what he felt with anything but scorn.”
“How do you know what she was capable of?”
“So defensive, Victor. It’s charming, your trying to defend my husband’s emotional life, but I know her. I know how she met my husband and why. And I had a run-in with her on my own. After the complaint was filed by some young attorney in my father’s office, she called me. Out of the blue she called me, and what she said…Victor, I was third-team all-American as a swimmer in college and let me tell you, a swimmers’ locker room can be pretty raucous—some of the girls could shame a sailor—but still, I have never heard language coming from a woman like I heard over the phone. When she hung up, I was too startled to be angry. What I was, actually, was sorry for Guy.”
“What did she say?”
“I won’t tell you word for word, I don’t use that kind of language in my home, but it was something to the effect that if I wanted him back so badly, I was welcome to him. But then she warned me that with the taste of her still in his teeth there was no way in hell he was coming back to me. I’ll give her this, at least she knew where her power lay.”
“So you hated her.”
“No, it wasn’t so personal. I wanted it to be personal, me against her, then maybe the lawsuit would have given me true satisfaction, but it wasn’t like that. She was more a force of nature, like a sudden raging storm or a tornado. You don’t hate it, but you sure as hell feel sorry for anyone in its path.”
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