“You already do, with your sticks.”
“That’s hiking.”
“I fail to see the difference.”
“Look at the wiggle in his hips, and his attire. I dare say I wear lycra far better, now I’m in shape.”
She laughed.
“Anyway, my Russian said it’s for old men. He said that a stallion like me needs to gallop. Imagine that, Hen. Me, a stallion.”
“I always thought of you more as a pony.”
He laughed. “Yes, quite. But no, apparently your old husband is a stallion.”
“Well, do you think the stallion might put his foot down a bit? At this rate we’ll miss the first dance.”
He laughed again.
She smiled at him, for a moment feeling glad to have him by her side. They’d stayed up most of the night, lying beside each other and talking, mostly about Thomas, about the kind of man he might have been. Roger liked to believe he would have been a doctor—a man brimming with confidence, popular and funny. She’d been surprised by how much better she felt just by talking to her husband, and listening to him talk about their son. Roger had said he still visited the grave often. Every time he went running he would stop and kneel for a minute. The thought had made her want to cry. And it made her love him. Not in the way that she should, in the way that a wife should love her husband, but in a way that made her see him in a different light. He couldn’t do it again. That’s why they didn’t try IVF. That’s why they didn’t adopt. He couldn’t go through it all again. She understood.
The wedding was a lavish affair. So lavish that the McDermotts, worried about interlopers, had hired a group of ex-Secret-Service personnel to run security. They were so overly thorough that a queue of cars was starting to form from the main gates of the McDermotts’ home halfway back down Cedar Hill.
“Is it really necessary, all of this security?” French John asked from the back of the car.
“You tell us? You’re the one that’s already been inside this morning.”
Elena turned around in her seat to talk to him.
“Well, it is fabulous in there,” he replied.
“You know, you’ve ruined that word for everyone.”
“Who has?”
“The gays. Now straight guys can’t ever say it without feeling self-conscious. Isn’t that right, Jared?”
Jared turned to her. “Sorry, I wasn’t listening. By the way, have I told you how fabulous you look today?”
Elena laughed.
“Well, I think you look fabulous too, don’t you think so, French?”
“Actually, I do. For a straight guy you dress impeccably well, Jared.”
“Thanks, French. And you haven’t even seen the best part yet. When I take the dinner jacket off my shirt is sleeveless. Sleeveless shirt with a dickie bow. How cool is that?”
Elena poked him in the side, jolting him so much that he swerved the car. Thankfully they both laughed, and no one noticed the sweat that was starting to bead on his forehead.
Jared swallowed, and tried to concentrate on making his smile appear natural. He was doing well: charming and funny, and yet to say anything stupid. He just needed to get out of the car and breathe some fresh air.
And then he saw the unsmiling faces of the men at the gate.
“Right, boys, I have the invitations, and you just need to get your IDs out.”
“We need identification to go to a wedding?” Jared said, bristling.
“Yeah, this isn’t just any wedding. We had to supply guest names in advance, and not just for the place settings, rumor has it they ran background checks on everybody too. I just gave Jared Martin, right? No middle name?”
He opened the window. He checked the rearview mirror; there was another car right behind. He was trapped.
“Jared?”
He turned to her, his eyes wild. He blinked a couple of times, trying to remember what she had said.
“Sorry?”
“It’s just Jared Martin? No middle name?”
He nodded. There was only one car standing between them and the checkpoint now. He could say he had left his wallet at home. That might work. He started to calm. And then he saw his wallet on the dashboard. His license was fake. A good fake. It had held up at the Ford dealership. They’d just made a copy and stuck it in his file. But now, on closer inspection . . .
He heard French John say something. And then he heard Elena laughing, so he smiled and tried to join in. But his laugh sounded all wrong, not how he’d practiced. They had to notice that. Then they’d start asking him questions, like why he was sweating so much, and why he didn’t want his identification checked? Was he a fugitive? they’d ask. And then they’d laugh at that, because it was such a ridiculous thought. Imagine that, they’d say. Elena has been dating a wanted man. And then French John would make some joke about dangerous men being sexy, but he wouldn’t mean it, he’d just say it because he wanted to make everyone laugh, especially him, because he looked so nervous.
The car in front drove through the large gates, and he had no choice but to inch forward.
“Good morning,” the agent in the dark suit with the dark glasses said, though it was clear from his expression that he was having a far from good morning.
“Invitations and photo identification, please.”
Jared steeled himself and passed his license to Elena. She placed it at the bottom of the pile and gave it to the agent.
He checked Elena’s license carefully, gave it back to her and then started to check French John’s.
Jared brought a hand to chest, could feel his heart racing. He stared straight ahead, watching a squirrel dart along the street and shoot up the high wall that surrounded the house. He turned his head and sank low in his seat when he saw the agent hand French John’s license back to Elena. And then, just as the agent glanced down at his license, they heard the crunching of metal and the sound of car horns blasting behind them.
The agent looked up.
Jared jumped out of the car and stared back down the hill.
“What’s happened?” French John called out.
“Looks like a red Ferrari has run into the back of a black Rolls,” Jared said, a slight tremor in his voice.
He heard the agent curse, thrust his license back at him as he pushed past, and set off briskly down the hill.
Jess brought out two cups of coffee from the kitchen.
She handed one to Jim, and then sat down beside him on the edge of the terrace, her bare feet in the grass.
She turned to him and stared into his eyes—not smiling, just staring. She did that sometimes, without realizing.
He stared back, both content to sit in silence for a while.
He sipped his coffee slowly.
She bit her bottom lip and ran a hand through her hair.
“What are you thinking?” he asked.
“What am I always thinking? I need to be out there now, knocking doors and asking questions. I need to be seen, I need to be doing something, not sitting in the sun drinking coffee.”
She stood, then sat back down, kneading the muscles in her shoulders. She looked over at him. He looked tired.
She looked down at her hands before placing them between her crossed legs to stop the shaking. She wondered if it would ever go away, even if they found him. She stood again, her feet sinking into the grass.
“Why are you here?”
He looked up at her.
“I mean now? Why did you come by? Why do you keep coming by when you’ve got nothing new to tell me?”
Her words sounded harsh. She didn’t mean them to, or maybe she did.
“I . . .” he started to speak but she cut him off.
“Don’t think that there’s more to this, Jim. I still dream of Michael, of him coming back to me. And you can’t compete with that dream. Nobody can.”
“Still dreaming of Michael,” he said, quietly.
She stiffened. “He’s still my husband. Despite all the
things I do, he’s still mine.”
“What about the things he did to you?”
“I know about the women.”
“And when you called us, when he hit you?”
“That was . . .”
“A mistake?”
“Yes.”
“He hit you by mistake.”
“No. I mean, I don’t know. We were drunk, got in a fight. We’ve been through this. It’s a waste of fucking time.”
He shook his head, looked away.
“What?” she said.
He turned back to her, got to his feet.
“You want to say something, Jim? Just fucking saying it.”
“Michael doesn’t give a shit about you, and he doesn’t give a shit about Harry.” He spoke quietly, evenly. “I saw it at the time, when he first came in: the difference. What I saw in your eyes, you were always searching him out, waiting for him to come and sit with you, help you when you needed him most, just like he should have. As you say, he’s your husband, the father of your child. But you know what I saw when I interviewed him?”
She could feel his anger, though he didn’t raise his voice. She wondered why he cared so much, why he wanted her.
“What?”
Jim took a moment, stared up at the sky.
“What did you see? Don’t try and spare me now, Jim, now that we’re really talking. Now that you’ve stopped trying to be my savior.”
He looked down.
She walked over to him and stood close.
“How did you feel that night, when you fucked me? Was it as good as you thought it would be? I doubt it. It couldn’t have been, because you must have felt it.”
“Felt what?” he said, meeting her eye.
“Felt nothing. That there was nothing for you inside of me, because that part of me is dead to you; the part that you want to love you back; the part that belongs to Michael. It will always be dead to you. I could fake it. I could do that, Jim. But you’d know, deep down. You’d know.”
He set his cup down on the table.
“For what it’s worth, when I interviewed Michael, I saw nothing in him. That way you look at him, that way you talk about him . . . he doesn’t feel the same way you do, Jess. He only cares about himself.”
She watched him turn and walk away.
She breathed again.
He could have said more, she knew that. She’d read the file. He could have told her about the complaints Michael’s lawyer had made, about her calls, her visits . . . but he didn’t.
Always trying to protect her.
“Are you okay? You seem quiet. Is it because he didn’t show?” Elena said.
French John smiled at her and shook his head. “It’s nothing. I think I’m just tired, from all of my dealings with Her Majesty over there.”
He glanced at the top table, though he could barely make it out from where they sat. The tables seemed to be arranged by order of importance, so that meant, by his calculation, that they were slightly more important than the lady who groomed the new Louise McDermott-Lodge’s dogs, but not as important as the man that gave the groom tennis lessons.
He looked up at the domed roof of the marquee. It looked spectacular. There was thick carpeting underfoot, and large crystal chandeliers hanging above the thousand or so guests. The chairs were draped in silk, the cutlery sterling silver. An army of staff tended to them.
He had heard that there were some noteworthy names in attendance: former politicians; Republicans, of course.
He felt Elena watching him, worrying about him. She’d noticed how downcast he appeared, even given that his cake stood beside the top table, and drew such admiring glances that it was detracting from the speeches. Some of the guests had even had their photograph taken with it.
He surveyed the table quietly. He met Jared’s eye, who smiled back at him.
“The cake looks great, French,” Jared said.
On occasion he still shuddered when he heard that. French John. It was shortly after his arrival in Tall Oaks that he’d converted the top two floors of a handsome Georgian building into a wonderful living space, and then, once he had sold his apartment in The Castro, moved in and thrown the doors open for a lavish meet and greet with his new neighbors.
The first person to seek him out that fateful evening had been retired Army Colonel, Dick Stone. Dick had more than lived up to his name when, after Jean tried to teach him the correct pronunciation of Jean, greeted him with a silence so long, a silence so uncomfortable and unbearable that Jean, to his unending remorse, felt the need to fill it with the immortal line, “It’s like John, only French.”
And now here he was, sat at the same table as the man that had given him the awful moniker.
“A toast,” boomed the Colonel, as everyone grimaced, “to the McDermotts.”
They sipped their wine politely, most hoping that the Colonel’s was laced with something poisonous.
The Colonel turned to Jared, who was the only male close enough to garner attention from him, aside from French John, who the Colonel was making every effort not to engage with.
“What do you do, James?” the Colonel asked, his voice resonating in a way that told everyone within earshot that they were in the presence of a military man.
“It’s Jared. I sell cars.”
Jared felt Elena squeeze his hand beneath the table. He glanced at her and smiled.
“Ah, a fellow car enthusiast.”
“I have a Ferrari. A dented one,” Roger said, somewhat dejectedly.
The Colonel turned to him. “The only good thing to ever come out of Italy is the food. Mark my words, that car will break down on you, probably when it’s pouring with rain.”
The Colonel’s wife, Barbara, a woman who appeared to have applied her makeup in the dark, nodded in agreement.
“What about the clothes?” Jared asked.
“Don’t poke the bear,” Elena whispered.
The Colonel waved him off. “Every nationality has things they do well, and things they don’t. Take the French . . .”
French John sighed.
“A toast,” the Colonel bellowed, “to my new friend, Jarrett.”
Jared had stopped trying to correct the Colonel after the fifth course was served.
Jared lifted his glass and drank. The Colonel had already worked his way through the extensive wine list, and then, after he had dragged Jared outside to stand with him while he smoked a seventy-dollar cigar, he had started to order shorts.
“Are you okay, Jared?” Elena said, patting his arm.
“Yeah,” he replied, though he was starting to slur.
Mercifully, the waitress arrived and began to serve some much needed coffee.
“Are you not drinking, Hen?” Roger asked.
She shook her head. “Not in the mood.”
He reached across and took her hand.
“Are you okay?” he whispered.
She nodded, then squeezed his hand. She felt closer to him. She wondered what the future held for them. She knew, in one way or another, that they’d both be okay. And it was a feeling that warmed her.
“I think I have some crab stuck in my tooth,” he said.
“Ask for a pick. They probably have gilded ones.”
He laughed.
“Are you tired?”
She nodded. She’d finally drifted off as the sun began to rise.
“But you feel better now?”
“Yes.”
“I’m glad,” he said, smiling.
It wasn’t hard to find the realtor. There was only one in town, a guy named Burt Jackson. Jim had expected an old man, but Burt couldn’t have been more than twenty.
He worked out of a rundown office on the highway that ran straight through the center of Echo Bay, carving it in half.
It was hot inside. No one seemed to have air-con.
Burt had a straggly beard. Jim guessed he thought it might add a couple of years to his baby face. Jim glanced around
the deserted office, suspecting they didn’t get many walk-ins, or much business of any kind. Burt seemed a little too keen, no doubt excited that a cop had showed up—something to tell his friends about.
“I know Jared Martin,” Burt said, eagerly.
“He was a client?”
“He rents a big place over at Riverstone. They’re nice the houses there—the nicest in town. Got a pool, air-conditioning too. Viking stove. Sub-Zero. I think we’ve got another available if you’d like to take a look?”
Jim leaned forward. “You mean he rented?”
Burt checked his computer.
“He still does. He paid a year up front. Haven’t seen him much lately though. Not for a long while. I hope the house is okay. The developers pitched Echo Bay as the new Palm Springs, but the bank own it now. They’ll be pissed if he’s trashed the place. We’re supposed to inspect it, but to be honest we never do, not when they pay cash up front and the deposit is two months. That’ll cover the common stuff—cigarette burns and stains and stuff. But sometimes people mess up the . . .”
“Burt,” Jim said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to need the address, and a key.”
“I’m not really supposed to, but seeing as you’re a cop, and the bank aren’t gonna say no to a cop, I could let you have one, as long as you bring it back, and don’t make a copy. Otherwise I’ll have to change the locks, and that’ll cost, ’cause there’s only one locksmith in town, and he’s Irish, and a little . . .”
“You talk a lot, Burt,” Jim said.
Burt laughed. “I’d take you over there myself but my dad said I’m not supposed to close the office until six. Technically, he still owns the business, but with his lungs being so . . .”
“I’m sure I can find it,” Jim said. “Can you run me a copy of Jared’s application?”
Burt nodded. “Sure. You looking for anything in particular, because it’s not too detailed, especially seeing as he paid cash up front?”
“You got a previous address, or any kind of employment history?”
Burt stared at the screen, scratching his chin. “Says here that he worked in construction.”
“Where?”
“Someplace called Aurora Springs.”
Tall Oaks: A gripping missing child thriller with a devastating twist Page 22