“I heard something about a Ponzi scheme,” he said. “It was in the paper. But I thought it was back east somewhere, New York or something.”
I realized at that moment that not everybody in this town would know or care about Jay’s Ponzi scheme. It was of overwhelming importance to the doctors, lawyers, and accountants who were involved but not necessarily to anybody else. Even though the Clarion had covered it in depth, that was way back in October and would have been long forgotten by people who had no reason to give a rat’s ass about the problems all those rich people were having.
“That’s true,” I told him. “Jay’s hedge fund was a feeder fund for that big Ponzi scheme that was in the papers. Just a smaller version, involving local people. Mostly doctors.”
“Ray’s had Pete and me going around asking questions of all these people, who are mostly doctors. They’re all the people involved in this Ponzi scheme, aren’t they?”
“I would guess so. But what I’m getting at is that there may be another motive for murdering Jay besides losing all that money. Some of those ex-wives may be in dire need of money too. Maybe one of them is willing to kill for it.”
“So you’re suggesting we need to be asking the wives questions too?”
“Ex-wives,” I corrected him. “It’s ex-wives who had a baby by Jay who are in the will. Oh, and while you’re at it, maybe someone should talk to Ruthie Brooks too.”
“Is she in the will too?”
“Maybe not,” I said, “but I think she worked in that office, and maybe she knows something that will help. I know she was one of the witnesses to Jay’s first will, the one that benefits only Kathleen and her children.”
“And that would be connected to these fires … how?”
“I’m wondering whether these fires are either to find that will and destroy it or to make sure nobody ever finds it. So that would mean any one of those women would have a motive, assuming they know they’re in Jay’s will.”
“And maybe one of those women killed Jay too.” Bernie rubbed his hands over his face. “Jesus. Thanks for making this investigation even more confusing than it was, Toni. I don’t know what we’d do without you; I really don’t.” He looked at his watch. “Shit. I’ve got to get back. Are you ready?”
While Bernie was paying the cashier at the bar, I glanced around the room and immediately wished I hadn’t. Hal was sitting in one of the booths with a young girl. She had long, blonde hair cascading over her shoulders, nearly to her waist, and she was very pretty. She also had a gorgeous tan. An old Beach Boys tune went through my head: Little surfer, little one, made my heart come all undone … She and Hal were holding hands across the table and appeared deep in conversation, looking into each other’s eyes. They hadn’t seen me.
In spite of having been alerted about Hal and some girl at the college, with whom he’d assured me just last night that he wasn’t having an affair, the stark reality of it struck me like a blow. Damn him. I debated whether to just withdraw quietly and discuss it at home tonight in a civilized manner, or just charge right over to their booth and rip Hal’s throat out with my bare hands.
If I were to ask Mum’s advice right now, she would suggest option number one. Much less messy and less likely to land me in jail than option number two. If I didn’t want people to talk about me and Bernie Kincaid, having a knock-down-drag-out fight in a bar was most assuredly not the way to accomplish that.
Was this how it had been for Kathleen Burke when she caught Jay and Tiffany in bed together? Of course, for Kathleen, Tiffany had been the last of a long line of Jay’s lovers, but without the fleshy explicits, perhaps it hadn’t seemed so bad. And I was seeing them in a relatively platonic setting. What if I had gone home early and caught Hal in bed with this girl?
Why ever not? Jay had done it. Why not Hal? Men are men, right?
Tears came to my eyes and rolled down my cheeks in spite of my efforts to prevent it. I tried to hide it from Bernie, but it was no use. In the car, he grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward him. “Toni, what is it?”
Oh, hell. “Hal’s in there,” I choked. “With a girl.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were.”
“Maybe they’re just discussing grades or something.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. They’re holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. Just like we used to,” and at this I broke down completely, sobbing like a child while Bernie held me and stroked my hair. He rocked me gently, murmuring unintelligible words, while I buried my face in his navy-blue down jacket.
Eventually I stopped crying and tried to sit up, just in time to see Hal and his girlfriend emerge from the bar. The girl was talking animatedly, looking up into Hal’s face, her face alight; but Hal wasn’t looking at her. He was looking straight at me.
Chapter 15
Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
—Shakespeare, Hamlet
After an eternity, they moved on, and I began crying again.
“Oh, shit,” Bernie murmured, “I didn’t intend for that to happen,” and he proceeded to dry my tears by kissing first my eyelids, then the tip of my nose, my cheeks, and then my lips, and I felt myself melt into him. It took a major effort to pull myself away and ask him to drive me back to work.
I had no idea if anyone else had seen us. Maybe, I rationalized, everybody who went to that bar was there with someone they didn’t want to be seen with, in which case, anyone who’d seen us after Hal and his girlfriend would keep quiet about it.
Shit. What a mess. What was I getting myself into?
Big trouble, I was pretty sure. What would Hal have to say about it? What could he say? He was doing the same thing himself. Why should he have all the fun? What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or the other way around in this case.
The gander could just suck it up.
When I got back to the hospital I ducked into the nearest ladies’ room to repair my face before anybody saw me. One look in the mirror confirmed the worst. I couldn’t let anybody at work see me like that. I applied paper towels wrung out in cold water to my flushed cheeks and swollen lips and hoped that would do the trick.
I had no idea how I’d get through the rest of the afternoon, and the next two phone calls I got didn’t help.
“Well, young lady,” said Rollie Perkins, “I hate to keep bothering you when I know you must be really busy, but your pal Bernie Kincaid has been over here bugging me every day for the last three days. Usually he just calls, but now he comes over and sits and has coffee with me, and all he wants to do is talk about you. What’s going on with you two? Anybody’d think he was sweet on you or something. Heh-heh.”
Rollie was kidding, but I felt a stab of embarrassment mixed with a twinge of fear and, to my dismay, a thrill of sexual desire. My face got hot, and I felt very glad I was in the privacy of my office where nobody could see me blush. “Rollie, you haven’t said that to anybody else, have you?” I asked anxiously.
“Oho, you mean there is something going on?” he teased. “I was just kidding.”
Damn. “No, of course not,” I assured him, with a confidence I did not feel, “but people talk, and I wouldn’t want it getting back to Hal.” God knows what it would sound like after a few other people had a chance to embellish and distort it. “Please don’t say any more about it, okay?”
Yeah, I know, the gander can suck it up, but I had no desire to rub his face in it.
Rollie assured me he had said nothing and would say nothing to anybody else. I should have felt reassured, but I wasn’t; especially when the next call came from the police—not Bernie, thank God, because I had no idea what I would say to him, but Commander Ray Harris, who wanted a copy of the autopsy report, or at least the preliminary
, since at that point that was all I had.
“Don’t you have it yet? I sent it yesterday.”
“Well, that’s something,” he grumbled. “This case is turning out to be a real bitch, excuse my French. We’ve been tryin’ to interview everybody that was involved in that Ponzi scheme of his. There must be nearly a hundred of ’em! It’s a damn exercise in futility, so far. Nobody knows nothin’. Nothin’ showed up on the toxicology, neither. We’re hopin’ the autopsy might help.”
“Pete and Bernie were there. Didn’t they tell you what I found?” Jesus. I thought communication at the hospital sucked, but these guys had that beat nine ways to Sunday. “He died of carbon monoxide poisoning and a brain hemorrhage.”
The Commander sucked audibly on his toothpick and didn’t answer my question. “Maybe now we can get somewhere,” he said. “I feel in my bones that all’s not as it should be, but dang! There’s no evidence pointin’ to any of those people, and we’ve been keepin’ an eye on his wife too, since she’s the beneficiary of his will and—”
I interrupted him. “You do know, don’t you, that there are two wills?”
“Say what?”
I repeated it and added, “Lance Brooks drew one up thirteen years ago with Kathleen and the kids as beneficiaries, and Elliott Maynard drew up another one a few months ago with a bunch of trusts in it for women whose ex-husbands were involved in the Ponzi scheme and who had children by him.”
“You wouldn’t be joshin’ me now, would you, girl?” the Commander inquired when I had finished. I assured him that joshing him was the farthest thought from my mind. I could hear him riffling through papers.
“Here’s what I’ve got,” he said finally. “The Last Will and Testament of Jay Braithwaite Burke, Esquire, from the Law Offices of Burke, Braithwaite, Burke, Bartlett and Brooks, dated June 26, 1995. Prepared by Lance Brooks, witnessed by William J. Bartlett and Ruthanne Brooks. Being of sound mind I hereby devise and bequeath—well, there’s a lot of legal mumbo jumbo, but the gist is his wife is the sole beneficiary, unless she dies first, and then the kids divide it equally.”
“That’s the first one,” I said. “But Elliott drew up a will too, and Jodi thought it was just last summer.”
“Well, we’ll just see about that,” the Commander assured me. “We can get a copy with a subpoena if we need to. Hell, I should’ve called you sooner,” he grumbled. “Then we wouldn’ta spent the last few days spinnin’ our wheels. Your pal Pete’s gettin’ right testy, and Kincaid …” He paused, and I held my breath.
“Funny thing about Kincaid,” he continued, after audibly sucking on his toothpick for a few moments. “Usually by this stage in an investigation, he’s flat-out obnoxious, ignorant, and ugly, in that order. But he’s been goin’ around with his head in the clouds lately. He must be in love or something.”
“Really,” I commented, trying to sound normal. My heart pounded so hard that I felt sure it was audible over the phone, and I could feel myself blushing again. But the Commander was through speculating about Bernie. “Well, thanks for the tip, Doc,” he said in closing. “I’ll give young Elliott a call.”
The Commander referred to Elliott that way because he’d known him as a child. Elliott’s father and the Commander had been poker buddies back in the day. Small towns are like that. You have to be careful what you say about people, because you could be speaking to someone they know or—God forbid—are related to.
I sat at my desk with my burning face buried in my hands, realizing that I was in an untenable position, what with Bernie Kincaid going around at work acting like a teenager in love and pestering Rollie Perkins with questions about me. How long would it take for somebody to put two and two together and come up with five? How long before someone mentioned it to Hal? Who would he believe: me or the gossipmongers? Especially when the gossipmongers were the police and the county coroner?
Especially when he had already caught me in a police car with Bernie Kincaid’s arms around me? Thank God he hadn’t caught us kissing. That would be difficult to explain away.
I realized that I was now in the same position as Hal—at least his position up until last night. He would assume that I was having an affair with Bernie Kincaid, just as I had assumed he was having an affair with his blonde bimbo. Up until now, I had remained convinced that Hal was innocent, but after what I’d seen today, I wasn’t so sure.
Oh, the fur was going to fly tonight! And I was having a real approach-avoidance conflict about that. How I longed for the days when I didn’t dread going home at night!
With foreboding, I watched the clock and tried to find things to keep me busy so that I wouldn’t have to go home. But eventually, after Mike and all my techs had left and the lab was dark, I knew I had to.
When I got home, the Maynards were there, but the Burkes, Tiffany, and Emily were not. “Ruthie came and took them home with her,” Jodi told me. “She’s got a huge house, and she and Lance never had any kids, so she’s got tons of room.”
Excellent, I thought, and noted that the living room had been neatened up considerably, with pillows stacked at the end of the couch and blankets folded neatly on top of them. Too bad nobody had put them away. Obviously this was a job only I could do. Hal was great at folding and stacking things, but he never put anything away.
He did have a fire going in the fireplace, though, and was allowing Jason, Julie, and Cody to toast hot dogs and marshmallows in it. At least he’s not out fucking his college bimbo, I thought uncharitably.
Christ on a crutch. What next? Jay murdered and Jay’s office and Kathleen’s house both burned to the ground. I simply couldn’t believe that this string of disasters was coincidence. They had to be related somehow. Did I dare start asking questions? Was it any of my business? Somebody was after the Burkes, and they were now living in Ruthie’s house. Would someone come after them there?
“We have to talk about this,” I announced, as I settled on the couch with a hot dog, fending off Geraldine with my free hand. With a gusty sigh, she subsided across my lap, ever alert in case of fallout.
“What this would that be?” inquired Hal facetiously.
“Oh, very funny,” I retorted as the children giggled. “What I want to know is, am I the only one who thinks there’s some connection between Jay’s murder and these fires?”
Eight skeptical pairs of eyes gazed at me. Nobody said anything.
“I’m serious,” I went on. “I think someone wants something, and they think they can get it from Kathleen or from Lance. Now Kathleen’s house is gone, and Jay’s office is gone, along with everything Jay left there. What if the person thinks the thing they want is now in Ruthie’s house where the Burkes are? Should we be worried about fire there too?”
“Honey, you’re being melodramatic,” Hal said.
“Maybe not,” Jodi objected. “I think Toni has a point. You’ve got to admit, it’s a heck of a coincidence for someone to target Jay’s office and Jay’s widow’s house, don’t you think?”
“It was a freakin’ close thing too, both times,” Elliott said. “They barely got out with their lives.”
“Kathleen told me they got out of their house with one of those chain ladders—you know, like they advertise on TV,” Jodi said. “They’ve got them at Home Depot. Ruthie said she’d get one tomorrow.”
“Terrific,” I said. “What about tonight?”
“Toni, for God’s sake,” Hal snapped. “Lighten up. Nothing’s going to happen tonight. Nobody knows they’re there except us.”
After a bit more discussion, the Maynards went home and left Hal and me in peace. Or so I hoped.
I closed the door behind them and turned to face Hal. He was looking back at me with a watchful expression on his face. I wanted nothing more than to run into his arms; but then I thought of the girl and decided that what I really wanted was to beat h
im to a bloody pulp. Since neither was a viable option, I did nothing. Striving to maintain an impassive countenance, I waited for him to speak first.
Hal rubbed a hand over his face. “Okay. I know we have to talk, but I don’t know where to start.”
I folded my arms across my chest and leaned back against the door, hoping to look nonchalant. “Try the beginning,” I suggested, a trifle acidly.
“That’s just it. Where is the beginning?”
Unhelpfully, I remained silent.
Hal took a deep breath, got up, and came over to me. “That girl,” he began, “is my lab assistant. I told you that. I also told you that I wasn’t having an affair with her, even though everybody thinks I am. I thought you believed me.”
“That’s before I saw you holding hands with her in that bar.” My voice quavered; I gritted my teeth, like that was going to help.
“I also told you that her boyfriend broke up with her. She came to me for comfort. So now she’s decided that she’s got a crush on me. She made a pass at me today—a pretty unmistakable one. She’s a good assistant, and I don’t want to lose her now in the middle of the school year. I took her to lunch there to try and talk some sense into her. I took her there because I didn’t want to be seen. Or heard. The last thing I expected was to find you necking with Bernie Kincaid in a police car,” he almost spat.
“Bernie Kincaid invited me to lunch,” I said calmly. “I accepted. What’s wrong with that? The last thing I expected was to see you holding hands with a nineteen-year-old girl in a bar. You were looking into each other’s eyes just like we used to when we were courting. It made me cry. Bernie was trying to comfort me. We weren’t necking.” Not yet, anyway.
Hal looked skeptical.
“If I’m going to believe you, you have to believe me,” I pointed out. “It works both ways. We have to trust each other, or our marriage is a sham.”
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