“I’ve told his secretary,” she said.
“Could you remind her?”
She smiled at me. “She knows. She asked that I have you wait.”
I picked up the Newsweek. I read the review of a movie already out of the theaters. I read of a rising star already fallen. I read of a disaster in China already replaced in our finite capacities for horror by a disaster in Cental America.
The door opened, a small man in a suit stepped through, and I jerked to standing even as my heart sank sickeningly, like the NASDAQ on earnings fears.
“Peale,” I said.
Jonah Peale wore a pained expression like a mask. Behind him, holding the door, stood a smiling Troy Jefferson.
“I’m surprised to see you here, Mr. Peale,” I said.
“Priorities,” said Jonah Peale, nodding brusquely as he brushed by. I was too stunned to say anything, just watched him go.
“Are you ready for me, Victor?” said Troy Jefferson.
“Yes,” I said, though I suspected I was too late, too, too late.
Beth and I followed the prosecutor through the door, down a narrow hall, into his small office. He walked with a slight limp, still. In his office, exhibits and files were piled on the floor, maps were taped to the walls. Among the clutter were two flags, standing next to each another, the flag of the United States of America and the flag of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. All the documents on the desk were facedown. Leaning against a file cabinet were our detective friends, Breger and Stone.
This was not good, I knew. This was not good at all.
“How’s it going there, Victor?” said Troy Jefferson after we all had situated ourselves in the proper seats. “You getting ready to rumble?”
“That’s what I came here to talk to you about.”
“Of course we’ll cooperate to the full extent required by law, give you everything you’re entitled to. But I must say, this case suddenly has my competitive juices flowing. I get the same sense of nervous anticipation before every trial as I had when I played ball. I still play, I suppose. I just play in a different court now. With justice as my goal.”
“We’re not reporters,” said Beth. “Save the patter for the press.”
He grinned and shrugged as if he were already in the statehouse.
“We met today with our client,” I said. “We discussed everything once again. He continues to profess his innocence, but, in light of the overwhelming evidence facing him, he asked I explore further the plea offer you made at the arraignment.”
“Yes, well, I am sorry about that,” said Troy Jefferson.
“Sorry?”
“When I made the offer, it was contingent on our finding no information that would indicate a motive other than the heat of passion.”
“That’s right,” I said. “But we’ve received no notice that you have discovered such information.”
“I faxed notice to your office twenty minutes ago.”
“Twenty minutes ago? We were in your waiting room twenty minutes ago.”
“Were you? We didn’t know.” He reached for one of the overturned papers on his desk, checked it, offered it to me. “Here it is.”
Without looking at it, I said, “We are accepting the offer.”
“I’m sorry, Victor, but it has been withdrawn.”
“You can’t.”
“We have.”
“Offer and acceptance. We have a contract.”
“I don’t think so. All material terms were never spelled out in full, the offer was at all times contingent, the contingency failed, and the offer was withdrawn well before you accepted. Pleas are not governed by the laws of contract but even if they were, your claim would fall.”
“We’ll see what the judge has to say about it.”
“I suppose we will.”
I stared at him. He grinned at me.
“What did you find?” asked Beth.
He leaned back in his chair, webbed his hands and placed them behind his head. “Juan Gonzalez.”
“The ballplayer?” I said, a false confusion in my voice.
“No, not the ballplayer,” said Jefferson.
By the file cabinet Stone laughed lightly. Breger, gazing up at the ceiling, kept his broad face free of expression.
Beth’s features betrayed her shock. I tried to replicate the expression, though it was hard. It was hard. The moment I saw Jonah Peale come out that frosted-glass door, I knew. Of course I knew. I had set the whole thing up.
“Mr. Peale will be added to our witness list,” said Troy Jefferson. “He’s an interesting man, Jonah Peale, with an interesting story to tell.”
“He’ll ruin his practice,” I said.
“Yes, I expect his testimony might do serious damage to his law firm, but still, he feels compelled to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. At one point he wanted to avoid publicity but now he is interested only in seeing that Mr. Forrest suffer the full force of justice.”
“I don’t understand,” said Beth.
“It seems, somehow, that Mr. Peale learned his daughter wants her husband back. Imagine that. Mr. Peale would prefer to lose his business than to allow a murderer to move back in with his daughter and grandchildren.”
I closed my eyes, fought back the nausea. This was all my doing, I had just destroyed my client’s chance to live at least part of his life out of jail. “He didn’t do it,” I said.
“And you’ll have every chance to prove it, Victor. But what we really have now is a simple case of fraud where the co-conspirators fell out over money. Stone here has checked out the finances.”
“Were you aware of the withdrawals by Miss Prouix?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you know where the money went?”
“Attorney-client privilege forbids me from saying anything. But I can say that my client was aware that money had been withdrawn and he had no problem with it.”
Breger snorted.
“Sure,” said Stone. “What’s a million bucks among friends?”
“We believe,” said Troy Jefferson, “that we finally understand what happened. They stole the money together, she transferred it out of the joint account for her own purposes without telling him. In a rage over the stolen money, and her dalliance with another, shown by the DNA, he killed her. It happens all too frequently, a sad tale often told. And we’ll tell it well.”
“It’s not the truth,” I said.
“It’s as close as we need to get. I hope your preparation is moving apace, Victor, because the stakes have been raised. Man one is off the table. Tomorrow we’re filing the Commonwealth’s Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty. The game is on, my friend. Oh, yes, the game is on.”
AFTER THE meeting I stepped out onto the courthouse steps, blinking at the bright sun shining through the perfect blue sky. The air was fresh, spring was strutting its stuff, and for the first time in a long time I noticed it. I noticed it all.
“What are we going to do?” said Beth.
“I don’t know what we’re going to do.” I took a deep breath, let the oxygen soak into my lungs like an elixir, and then loosed a great yawn. “But I think what I’m going to do is go home and take a nap.”
“Victor? Are you all right?”
“I’m just a little tired. Just a little. I haven’t been sleeping. I’ll drop you at the office first and then I’m going home. Could you tell Guy the bad news?”
“Victor?”
“I would do it myself, except I need to close my eyes. Just for a few minutes.”
It was still afternoon when I got home, stripped off my suit, slipped between the covers. It was still bright outside, sunlight was leaking through the gaps between my window and my shade. I stared at the ceiling for a moment. It didn’t break apart, it was inert, safe. I closed my eyes and slept like a dead goat.
When I awoke, it was dark and silent and I knew exactly what I needed to do. I might not have known what the hell I was doi
ng before, I had never before contemplated doing what I had contemplated doing to Guy, but now I was on more comfortable ground. A girl was dead, my lover was dead, and she left me now a mystery to solve, a simple mystery. Who the hell had killed her? To save Guy and enact my vengeance both I needed only to unlock the mystery, ferret out the motive, and find the murderer. And I believed just then I already had the key.
I was wrong, of course. There was nothing simple about the mystery of Hailey Prouix’s death, just as there was nothing simple about Hailey Prouix herself.
But damn if I wasn’t right about the key.
21
“FIRST PHILADELPHIA, Market Street Branch, Allison Robards speaking.”
“Hi, Allison. Tommy, Tommy Baker, over at First Philadelphia, Old City. How you doing today?”
“Fine. Tommy, is it?”
“That’s right. Tommy, Tommy Baker.”
“Tommy Baker, that name is familiar. Did I meet you at the Christmas party?”
“Remember the fellow in the checked jacket dancing that dance?”
“The bald one?”
“I’m not bald, I’m follicularly challenged.”
“I thought the name was familiar. Tommy. Tommy Baker. How are you, Tommy?”
“Great. Doing great, except for our computers. Are you guys up, or is the whole system down?”
“No, we’re up. What do you need?”
“I got a police detective in here asking about one of our accounts. The name is Hailey Prouix.”
“Hailey Prouix? Isn’t she…?”
“Exactly. But with my computer down, and it’s been happening a lot. Someone is screwing up. Who’s the vendor, you know?”
“Not my department.”
“They said her office was near your branch, so I thought you might be able to help.”
“Okay, sure, Tommy. What was the name again?”
“P-r-o-u-i-x. Hailey. With a suburban address.”
“Here it is. Account number 598872. We are the home branch. She opened the account here two years ago.”
“All right, great. What’s the balance?”
“One-oh-three-four-two and fifty-six.”
“Any recent activity?”
“Checks, nothing strange. Except…”
“Go ahead.”
“A wire transfer about two months ago, February eighteenth. Big amount. Whoa. Four hundred thousand.”
“You don’t say. Where to?”
“Don’t know, location isn’t listed here. It’s number WT876032Q. You’d have to check Wire Transfers for specifics.”
“Okay, that’s great, thanks. And as the home branch, you guys have her safe-deposit box, too?”
“Let me look. Hold on a sec, I’ll have to check the cards.”
Long pause.
“No, no, we don’t have a safe-deposit box registered in her name.”
“All right, thanks a load.”
“No problem.”
“And, Allison. Have a nice day.”
THE KEY.
It sat on my desk, the little chunk of metal, one end rounded like a clover, the other jagged like the teeth of one of the winos on North Broad Street. And stamped into its head the words ./. Canton, Ohio, the birthplace of football and home to the pro football hall of fame. Also the home of Diebold, Incorporated. From the moment I first laid eyes on it in Hailey Prouix’s desk drawer, I knew what it was. Diebold didn’t make just any old lock and key. Diebold didn’t make filing cabinets or desks or padlocks or cars. Diebold made vaults, bank vaults. This was the key to Hailey Prouix’s safe-deposit box, the hiding place for her secrets, both personal and financial. A man in black had searched the house after the murder, apparently looking for this very chunk of metal. And in my vomitous encounter with Skink, he had told me that he knew I had it and that he wanted it, wanted it badly enough to let me know he wanted it. I had taken it on a whim but suddenly, in my desire to save Guy’s life, I had a great need to know what was inside its box.
I used the phone I had given to Hailey, to keep the records off my office line, and geared myself up for the role, shaking my neck, jiggling my arms, breathing like a prizefighter about to enter the ring. What I needed was the right voice. A job like this depended on voice. With the right voice you could work wonders. Tommy, Tommy Baker. With my rumpled suits, my spreading rear, my comb-over. I had risen fast at the start, but then my career had stalled, along with my life. My wife had gained thirty pounds, my daughter had pierced her tongue, my car smelled like a cat, and I was trying to make that new teller but she didn’t seem interested. My weight was high, my blood pressure higher, I drank too much because by my age my father was dead. What I needed was a tone of overt jocularity covering a vast sea of despair. The jocularity I could fake, the despair I didn’t need to.
“FIRST PHILADELPHIA, Ardmore Branch.”
“Hi, this is Market Street. Who am I speaking to?”
“Latitia Clogg.”
“Hi, Latitia. This is Tommy, Tommy Baker. Allison Robards over here suggested I give you a call.”
“Allison?”
“She said she had some questions for you before and that you were a great help.”
“Allison? Oh, yeah, Allison. Pretty little blond girl.”
“That’s the one. Look, I have something you might be able to answer. I have been getting some information requests from Legal about account number 598872, which was opened by a Hailey Prouix in this branch about two years ago.”
“Isn’t she…?”
“That’s right. What was the Daily News headline: SHOT THROUGH THE HEART? What do you think of that, huh? Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“Wonder about what?”
“Fate. Life. The price of bananas. Who knows? But Legal, man. You should see the mess of forms they want us to fill out. It’s going to take a week.”
“I bet. First thing let’s kill all the lawyers, right?”
“Who said that?”
“Wasn’t it like Nixon or somebody?”
“Probably. Look, Latitia, they’ve been asking us, in addition to the account information, whether there was a safe-deposit box in her name. We’ve got nothing here on that, but I understand she was living not too far from your branch, so I was wondering if you could check whether she had a box there or not.”
“Of course, Tommy. Just wait a minute, I’ll check the cards.”
Long pause.
“Nope, nothing. Sorry.”
“No, that’s good, that’s easier. Thanks, Latitia. By the way, I have to check out some other things, too. You know anyone in Wire Transfers I could get to help me out?”
“Kelly Morgan.”
“She knows her stuff?”
“Oh, yes. Tell her Latitia sent you.”
“Thank you, you’ve been great. Did I meet you at the Christmas party?”
“I was there with my husband.”
“Why is it, Latitia, that all the good ones are already taken?”
ALONG WITH the key, I had taken Hailey Prouix’s expired driver’s license from the desk in the room of her murder. It was the only picture I had of her: guilt-ridden lovers don’t take snapshots. In my office, the door closed and locked, I looked hard at the tiny photograph on the card, but it was like looking at a stranger. There had been a wonderful plasticity to her face, her mouth always teetering on the edge of a smile or a frown, her eyes widening or contracting, her face alive with the currents of emotion flowing beneath the surface, but all that aliveness was missing on the photograph. She looked plain, even mousy on the license, her hair pulled back, her glasses hiding the sharp ridges of her face instead of accentuating them. She looked like no one I had ever known. The raw statistics were there, birth date, sex, her height was listed as five-two, her eyes blue, but she was missing.
I closed my eyes and tried to conjure her. I had been haunted by the specter of Hailey Prouix from the moment I discovered her corpse—it had driven me first to exact a punishment from Guy and now, having
discovered his innocence, to search for the real killer—but just then, sitting at my desk between calls, I couldn’t see it. The image was blurry. I thought I knew her, we were intimate in more than one way, I thought I knew her, better than her fiancé, I was sure, but now her image was blurry. What was causing the distortion?
Every damn thing. From the moment of her death I had been learning more and more about her. Detective Stone had said that of all those who knew her, the words “nice” and “sweet” had never been mentioned. Leila had told of her spitting out the most vile slurs. I always thought she was hard, but that hard? And then a slime like Skink thought he knew her better than I did, and I suspected he was right. Wheels within wheels within wheels. The final twist was Guy’s own story, which showed how she had used Guy for her own corrupt purpose and then, for some other purpose, used me. It was as if whatever I thought I knew about her was shattered by the revelations of a darkness deep within her character that I had never before glimpsed. I closed my eyes and tried to conjure her and failed. Who was Hailey Prouix?
I suspected that behind that answer crouched a murderer.
“WIRE TRANSFERS.”
“Hi, I’m looking for Kelly Morgan.”
“One moment, please.”
Soothing music.
“Kelly Morgan.”
“Kelly. Hi. Tommy, Tommy Baker, from the Ardmore branch here. Latitia Clogg said if I had some questions I should get hold of you. Said you were the only one up there who knew what the hell was going on.”
“She’s right about that. How are you doing?”
“Good, better than good. I got—let me see—five hours left and then I’m out of here for a week’s vacation. And let me tell you, Kelly, I could use it.”
“Couldn’t we all, Tommy, couldn’t we all.”
“Here’s my problem. Before I get out of here, I have to finish up a ream of paperwork sent to me by Legal. You ever get mixed up with that crew?”
“I try not to.”
“I hear you, Kelly. Well, there’s this account they’ve got questions about. It’s that Hailey Prouix, you hear about her?”
“Not that I know of.”
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