by Deborah Reed
“Looks like no one’s home,” Owen says to the crew cuts.
Big ears looks him over, though Owen now sees that one ear is slightly larger than the other. “It must be thirty-five degrees out here,” the man says. “And you’re broke out in a sweat.”
“Can we get your name?” the reporter asks Owen.
Owen has left his jacket in the car. He wipes the sweat from his forehead and shivers. “I’ve had a lot of caffeine,” he says. “I’m not feeling as good as I’d like.”
They look in his car again.
The reporters lean in.
“Get the camera out of my face,” Owen says. “Please.”
He turns to the security guards. “Look, I’m a friend. I was. I actually used to live here,” he says, and the last word catches in his throat making him sound even less convincing than the idea now seems.
They appear unfazed.
“Can we have just a moment of your time?” the reporter asks, the camera rolling in Owen’s face.
“Not now,” he tells them, and turns to the guards. “Come on. I know you know who I am.”
“Why didn’t you call? You’ve got her cell number, don’t you?”
He thinks of all the miles he’s burned to get here. He thinks of Tess having no idea she’s been left behind. He doesn’t want to say that if he’d called Annie she probably wouldn’t have answered. And even if she did she would have told him to stay where he was. She would have said she didn’t need him anymore and that he had no right to be there, which is true. He shivers again. His legs are weak. He hasn’t eaten all day. “I’ll just wait in the car,” he says. “It’s all right. I’ll just wait like everyone else.”
“Do you know Calder Walsh?” the reporter yells.
Owen shuts the door and starts the car. He looks down at the fuel gauge. The red warning light flashes. He turns the heat up as far as it will go and slips his jacket on. Then he digs out a packet of peanuts he’d tossed in the glove compartment months ago and pours them into his mouth. Soft and spongy. They don’t even taste like peanuts.
He turns on his phone for the first time today and dials Annie’s number inside the house. Detour will be looking in the direction of the phone. He has a habit of sitting up and scratching his ears at the ringing.
No answer. He tries her cell. The ringing is cut short. She seems to have answered and then immediately hung up. He leans his head into the headrest and searches the black canvas above him as if for stars.
The phone rings right back. He flicks it open with amazing speed. “Annie,” he says, suddenly out of breath. “I’m right outside. It’s freezing out here. Could you please let me in?”
A long pause.
“Annie?”
“I guess I don’t need to ask where you’ve been all day. Or the reason your phone has been turned off.”
“Tess!”
“Could you please letmein?”
“Wait—”
“What’s the matter? Don’t you still have the key?”
“No. It’s not. There’s a gate. Never mind. Listen—”
“Don’t tell me.”
“Hold on.”
“I can’t believe you would do this to me.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“And to Caroline.”
“I just want to talk to her, Tess. And see Calder. It’s got nothing to do with you or our baby.”
Her silence suspends his soul into a kind of purgatory. He’s finally going to account for his sins. A news crew is ready to broadcast what will be left of him when he rises from this car.
“Tess?” he says. She doesn’t answer. Maybe she’s trying to believe him. Maybe she’s taking stock of what she wants in the divorce. He will give her the goddamn house, no doubt about it.
“I was right,” she says. “It was Magnus I interviewed last year.”
“What?”
“He’s the one who hired the Dutch architect and built the house I wrote about. I found the article in my files. Did you know Calder was sleeping with his wife?”
“Not then. Maybe. I don’t know. About the timing—”
“The timing? Why didn’t you ever mention Calder was having an affair? As many times as you’ve talked about him I can’t believe you’d leave something like that out. It might have made me feel a little less guilty about cheating with someone in a relationship, seeing how your best friend was doing the very same thing. Or is that why you didn’t mention it? So you could keep me feeling guilty?”
“Why would I want you to feel guilty?”
“How many more things haven’t you told me?”
“Come on, Tess.”
“I can think of at least one. The article in your desk drawer. The one with Annie’s picture.”
“What were you doing in my desk?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Is it off limits to your wife?”
“No. I mean. Don’t put words in my mouth. Were you looking for something in there?”
“What difference does it make?”
He has no idea.
“What did you expect me to do?” she says. “At first I thought you were acting so weird because the due date is so close. First Time Father mentions that men can get a little panicky right before the baby comes. But it seemed like more than that. I’ve had this awful feeling you were lying to me. I mean, you lied to Annie, why not me?”
“That’s cheap.”
“You’re cheap! You’re a cheap piece of shit.”
“Whoa! OK. I’m going to chalk that one off to hormones. We read about it. We knew it was coming, and now here it is. I’m not cheating on you, for Christ’s sake. I just need to talk to Annie and Calder. I need to see if there’s something I can do. I can’t sleep.”
“You can’t sleep because you’re thinking about Annie.”
“This can’t be good for the baby.”
“You should have thought about that before you decided to run off.”
“I didn’t run off. Christ. I’ll be home as soon as I have a chance to talk to them.”
“What do you mean? You’ve been gone all day.”
“I’m waiting outside Annie’s gate. She isn’t home.”
“Stalkers wait outside gates.”
Owen looks at the guards still standing in the cold. They cross their arms.
“You’re taking this too far.”
“What about Calder?” Tess asks. “You know exactly where he is. Why didn’t you go there first?”
“You need an appointment. I didn’t know. You have to give at least twenty-four hours’ notice.”
“Whatever,” Tess says as if she is fourteen years old.
“Look. I didn’t tell you about Calder cheating with this guy’s wife because I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression. I didn’t want you to think that me and all my friends were assholes.”
“Well, guess what? You and all your friends are assholes.”
“Tess, please. I didn’t plan this. I wasn’t thinking. It was just a spur-of-the-moment decision. I’m sorry. I didn’t think this through. And once I was on the road, I didn’t want to hurt you by telling you where I was going. I was afraid you’d get the wrong idea, and I was right. I thought I could just explain myself after the fact, but now Annie isn’t home and it looks like I’m going to have to spend the night.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
Owen rubs his eyes. His cold fingers feel good against the lids. “Honey. I love you,” he says, though the sound of it rings hollow. “You know that. I left everything I knew for you. Please. It’s not like it looks.”
“You’re not coming back, are you?”
“Of course I’m coming back.”
“I was so stupid. How could I have been so stupid? People warned me and I wouldn’t listen.”
“People warned you? What people?”
“They said, ‘Once a cheater always a cheater,’ and I said they had no idea what they were talking about.”
“Who said tha
t? Your mother?”
“I’m tired of hearing how you married me as some kind of proof that you’re where you want to be. I don’t think you have a clue where it is you belong.”
He doesn’t dare open his mouth. He doesn’t dare take the chance that his voice will give anything away.
It sounds as if she’s muffling a cry with her hand.
“I promise I’ll be home tomorrow,” he says, and in his mind he somehow sees himself doing just that. “I promise you the only reason I’m here is to see if there’s anything I can do. I’ll come home to you the minute I’m through.”
“It wasn’t my mother,” she says, and hangs up.
FIFTEEN
“I don’t give a goddamn who said it.” Calder’s face is hot, his eyes blinking so hard he can barely get a look at his court-appointed lawyer standing on the other side of the table. Ms. Thompson, a thick-armed woman in her thirties with short brown hair, leans forward and sets her briefcase on the table. The veneer beneath it is worn away by the countless briefcases that have come before.
“Let’s go over all this one more time,” she says. “And keep in mind, if you’re not honest with me, I can’t give you fair representation.”
Her bottom row of teeth are crooked, small discolored pegs crammed one against the other, and the appearance, coupled with the way she’s stacking and restacking her papers, leaves him with the feeling that she is new at this, that she tried and failed at some other career, and now she’s taking a shot at law.
“I am being honest with you. I never once said I wanted Magnus dead. I might have thought it. Sure I thought it. Hell yes, there you go, I thought how nice it would be if he would just disappear, but I never said it out loud to anybody.”
“You’ve got Tourette Syndrome, Mr. Walsh. Don’t you blurt things out without meaning to?”
Even though the meeting room is opposite the cafeteria, the smell of burned potatoes saturates the concrete walls and penetrates Calder’s nose. “Now you’re a doctor?”
“Don’t you?”
“No. For your information I don’t blurt things out. I don’t have those kinds of tics.”
“I see.”
“Whose side are you on?”
Ms. Thompson sits across from him and folds her hands together on the table as if she’s praying. “We need to look at this from all angles. The prosecution thinks your inability to control your tics helps build their case. They think you got it inside your head to kill Magnus and just like one of your tics you had to get it out. They’re saying you told a landscaper who works for you…” She pauses and leafs through her notes. “This Gabe Pinckney. How many years has he worked for you?”
“Three. And he’s slobbered after every single woman I ever dated.”
“You’re aware he was one of the men in Hal’s that night.”
“I’ve been told.”
“He says he never saw you there.” She looks through her notes. “But he also says he wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to who was.”
“Well, there you go.”
“He also said that you once told him Magnus was, and I’m quoting here, ‘a mean, giant son of a bitch that someone was going to put out of his misery.’”
“The dumb bastard is not only a lousy landscaper, he’s a liar, too.” Calder leans back in his chair and shakes his head. “That’s not what I said. He’s twisting my words around. What I said was that Sidsel had told me what a big guy Magnus was and had warned me about his temper. She was worried about what was going to happen if he found out about us. She was afraid to leave him. I think that’s more or less what I told Gabe.”
“Was it more or was it less? What exactly did you say?”
“That was it. I don’t remember word for word. All I know is that I never threatened to do anything to Magnus.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t see at all. You don’t understand. My family’s got a long history with the Pinckneys. We’ve known each other our whole lives.”
“Which means?”
“I hired Gabe a few years ago when he came to see me about a job. I had the impression he’d changed after his brother ended up going to college. His brother turned out to be a great guy.”
“What brother?”
“Joshua. Listen, we’re getting off track here. What I’m saying is I hired him knowing he used to be mean as hell when we were kids. But that was a long time ago. He’s got a family to support. He talks all the time about wanting to be a better father to his kids than his own father was to him. I guess I felt a little sorry for him.”
Ms. Thompson writes something down.
“But it turned out that once I hired Gabe he started making comments about every woman I ever dated, like he was jealous. I only kept him on all these years because of his wife and kids.”
“You think he said these things because he’s jealous of you?”
“Who knows? The only thing I have to go on is the look on his face when he saw me with Sidsel.”
“He saw you with Sidsel?”
Calder chews the inside of his cheek and blinks.
“The two of you were open about your affair?”
“Well, no. I wouldn’t say that. Once or twice we met at Hal’s if she was free in the evening, just to get out and be like other people. We knew we were taking a chance. But as far as I know he never saw us there. We had lunch sometimes at Mateo’s on the edge of town. That’s where he saw us. That’s why I told him what I did about Magnus, because he started asking all kinds of questions and I knew he wouldn’t let up until I told him something. Anyway, just so you know, Sidsel and I mostly met at my place. I don’t think anyone ever saw us there.”
Ms. Thompson pushes the sleeves of her suit above her wrists. She is wearing a band on her ring finger that looks like a braided friendship bracelet in gold. “This Gabe Pinckney claimed you assaulted him once. Can you tell me about that?”
“Oh, Jesus Christ.”
“I need to know what happened.”
“Nothing happened. We got in a fight. He was insulting my sister. He tried to kiss her one night at a bar and she didn’t want anything to do with him. She walked out and Gabe was pissed at me cause I wouldn’t talk her into coming back and giving him a chance, and then he made some comment about me wanting to keep her for myself. So I hit him.”
Ms. Thompson lets out a sigh. “Are you prone to that sort of thing?”
“What? No. Of course not.”
“Did he require medical attention?”
“God, no. He hit me back, like I said. It was a fight. We got over it and went back to work the next day.”
“Why would you keep a man on like that? Why didn’t you fire him?”
“First of all, I grew up in the country. Men fight. It’s not the end of the world. They move on in the light of day. It’s as simple as that. And second, it’s like I told you. He’s got a wife and kids. His wife calls up at least once a month and asks shyly if he got paid that week, and I tell her of course he did. He gets paid every week, but she still calls and asks the same question and I know it’s because he’s not regular about bringing money home and those kids are going hungry sometimes because she’s told me as much. What am I supposed to do? He’d be hard pressed to find somebody else to hire him on short notice, and that family of his would be out on the street.”
“Mr. Walsh.”
“Calder.”
“Calder. Can you please relax?”
Calder realizes he’s been banging his knees and stops. “This whole thing is getting the tics out of control.”
“Try not to use the term out of control,” she says.
Calder holds her in a steady gaze.
“When did the tics start getting worse again?”
He thinks for a moment. “Months ago. When I first fell in love with Sidsel. Or when she first fell in love with me. After that they kicked up another notch when she told me Magnus had hurt her.”
“He hurt her? How did he hurt
her?”
“She had bruises on her arm. Ask her about it. She’ll probably tell you more than she told me. And just so you know, he probably had more enemies than you can count. Sidsel said he told her all the time about sleeping with other women. Flat out told her he had just come from some other woman’s bed. The man was crazy. He could have had any number of husbands looking to kill him.”
“Good. This is good to know.” She writes something down.
“When she told me he was murdered the tics got worse. And then after they accused me of killing him, well, let’s just say I’ve been going off like popcorn in hot oil ever since.”
“I’m going to ask you something and I want you to give me a straight answer.”
“They’ve all been straight.”
“Could she have killed him herself?”
Calder laughs. “You’re not serious.”
“You said yourself that he told her all the time about sleeping with other women. It sounds to me like he was taunting her.”
“That’s just…No. How can you say such a thing? It’s not even practical. You know how badly he was beaten. Have you seen the size of Sidsel’s arms?”
“No. It isn’t practical. But the smallest of people can put a fist through a solid block of wood. I’ve seen my nephew do it. Ten years old. A purple belt in karate.”
Calder raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, Sidsel doesn’t know karate.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.”
“How well do you really know her?”
“What is this?”
“Just so you know, they’re investigating her, too.”
“No.”
“Yes. This is a major investigation. The press is digging in deep on this. It’s taken the prosecutor all the way back to Denmark.” She lets out an enormous sigh and places her hands flat on the table and leans in. “I think you may have been framed, Mr. Walsh. And under the circumstances you better hope that’s the case because the prosecutor loves nothing more than an execution. Whether it’s you or your friend Sidsel. It’ll make no difference to her. In fact, if she can get two for one she’ll get a better night’s sleep.”