Crime of Privilege: A Novel

by Walter Walker

  I thought I might leave Barbara’s, too, until she appeared in my office ten days after she had abruptly disappeared. She had her hair brushed long again, the way she’d had it the day she had come to my house. She was more tanned than she was when I had seen her last, but not so tanned as to indicate she had been lying on a beach somewhere.

  “Got a minute?” she asked.

  I rose to my feet. “Of course.”

  She came in and shut the door behind her. She was wearing a pale blue blouse over a black silk sleeveless top. You could see through the blouse and I had the feeling she had just put it on for propriety, because she was coming to the workplace and wearing a sleeveless top would not be appropriate, not even a silk one. Her pants were white and clung to her legs and purposely did not reach her ankles. The pants had little zippers at the bottoms. Then there was bare skin. Then black woven sandals that matched her belt. I watched as she walked to a chair in front of my desk.

  “May I?” she said, putting her hand on the back of the chair.

  I nodded and she sat. She arranged herself gracefully, one leg over the other, and then inclined slightly forward. “We didn’t part on such good terms. I’m wondering if you’re still mad at me.”

  I took my own chair. It wasn’t as big as Mitch’s, but it was leather and it swiveled. “I wasn’t mad at you, Barbara.”

  “Suspicious, then. You doubted me.”

  I admitted as much by flexing my fingers. Then I shrank into my chair, put my elbows on the arms, and clasped my hands in front of my stomach. I was acting like Mitch did sometimes. I wished I wasn’t.

  “I was hurt by the things you said. By what you were thinking. That night, the next day, I wanted to come see you, try to make you understand how wrong you were about me. Then I had to ask myself why you should believe me. And so I decided to prove myself to you.”

  “I heard you went on leave.”

  “They wouldn’t give me a vacation. Not on short notice. So I just said I had a family emergency and I had to go out.”

  “But you didn’t. Have a family emergency, I mean.”

  She shrugged. “My daughter, Molly, is on a tour of Canada with her soccer team, and my parents, for once, agreed to take Malcolm. So, no, I didn’t.”

  She might as well have thrown boiling water on me. “Malcolm is your son?”

  “Whose son did you think he was?”

  “I didn’t think.”

  “Why do you suppose I had to take the job I did? Why do you suppose I have to spend so much time dealing with kid problems?”

  I probably stammered. If I didn’t, I might as well have. Barbara tilted her head and held my eyes while she talked. “I used up a lot of favors this time, George. I told my parents I was going to San Francisco to have it out with Tyler once and for all. To tell him I wanted a divorce. It was the one thing I could say that would get them to help me.”

  I nodded, because it was what she wanted.

  “I got on a plane and flew out there. I found that guy Billy, the one you said knew me. It wasn’t hard. He was living on my husband’s boat. And”—she hesitated before she brought up an old wound—“of course, I had those explicit directions I had given to you.”

  I nodded again. It was a conciliatory nod this time.

  “I didn’t know him, George. In fact, I think, when he found out who I was, I rather scared him.”

  I could see that happening. I couldn’t imagine Billy ran into many women like her at Smitty’s bar.

  “It took me all of about twenty minutes to get the truth out of him.”

  The truth. I felt a tingle go up my spine. It made me bristle. She was going to tell me the truth. Something I didn’t know. Something I hadn’t been able to find out on my own.

  “Did you have to buy him a couple of beers?” I asked. I was only partially joking. I was still chagrined by my misreading of the Malcolm situation. And I was uncomfortable because of the intensity with which she was looking at me.

  “Sushi,” she said. “Over a hundred bucks’ worth. We went to a place on Caledonia Street with outdoor tables. Found out later it had a Michelin star. My mistake, I let him order whatever he wanted. By the end of his first tiger roll he had told me that Peter Martin had known you were coming all along.”

  All along? Since I had questioned Howard in Hawaii? Or since Barbara had suggested it? But all I asked her was, “How?”

  “I don’t think Billy was in a position to know that, but I can pretty much tell you from everything else I’ve learned that someone you talked to earlier was in touch with Peter.”

  She waited while I counted off the possibilities in my mind: Cory, McFetridge, Patty, Howard. Her.

  “Only thing was,” she said, “nobody knew when you might be coming, and Peter was sailing in the TransPac, and when I called Tyler to tell him about you, well, I guess Ty saw it as a way to get on the boat. To get into the race itself.”

  “And you know this because …?”

  “I just know Ty, that’s all. He would have done anything to get in a race like that.”

  “Including lie to you?”

  “Oh, like he’s never done that before.”

  Barbara smiled at her own failings, inviting me to smile with her. Barbara Belbonnet. It was hard to see her as a victim.

  “Don’t ask,” she said.

  “You want me to believe you.”

  “What I want is for you to understand what happened.” Her voice had suddenly grown taut. Just like that. As though I, somehow, was making things more difficult than they had to be.

  I gestured, indicating she should go ahead, that I wasn’t going to interfere anymore.

  “When I told Ty you were coming, he must have gone to Peter and claimed he was the one you were coming to see.”

  “Had you told Ty that I wanted to talk to Peter about Heidi Telford’s death?”

  “Yes, probably. Yes, I did. Yes, and I’m sorry.” Barbara Belbonnet wasn’t looking so intense anymore. Her eyes were wavering, blurring, and suddenly she was in tears.

  It was so unexpected I did not know what to do. For a moment, I fought the urge to get up, go around the desk, take her in my arms. Tell her I was sorry. For everything. I could not hold off beyond a moment.

  “No,” she said, sticking her hand out, making me stop, sending me back into my chair. “I want to tell you why.” The one hand stayed up. The other went to the back of her head so that her elbow was aimed at me and her face was hidden. “I wanted to help you. I wanted to do something for you, George, something only I could do. When Ty asked why I wanted him to set up a meeting between you and Peter I should have made something up, but I didn’t. He knew about Heidi. Everyone on the Cape knew about her, and I thought … I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I thought it would help you get what you want. That’s what I’m sorry about, George.”

  “So Peter got him out of there. Took him on the boat.”

  The hand stayed behind her head, the elbow stayed pointed. Her hair seemed to be going out in every direction. “Billy told me that when Ty asked him to boat-sit he also told him you would be looking for him. And he said when you got there he was to call a certain number, find out what to do next.”

  I looked at the hair. Looked at the elbow. Looked at the person who had set this in motion.

  “That story Billy had about running into Jason in the restaurant in Ensenada, it wasn’t true?”

  “I don’t know. I just know that if you asked about Jason Stockover, he was to tell you he was in Tamarindo.”

  Six people have a party of sorts. Four of them Gregorys. Something goes terribly wrong. First bury it, then deny it, then, if somebody has to be thrown under the bus, pick one of the non-Gregorys. Send me to Tamarindo. Where Jason is.

  Except Jason’s not there. Jason has been tipped off. Run, Jason. Run, and he’ll think it’s you. Except we won’t tell you that part. Because you’re not one of us and you’re not even a friend from childhood. Like McFetridge. You’re onl
y a friend from college. Which puts you in an outer circle, Jason.

  First the family. Then lifelong friends. Then other friends. Then all those who want to be friends. Like George.

  Oh, and by the way, do you need anything while you’re running away? A new sailboat, perhaps?

  Barbara was speaking. She was telling me she was sorry she didn’t have every detail right as to what little Billy said and did. “But I didn’t stop there,” she said.

  I looked up, shifting my attention to her again.

  “I went to Tamarindo myself.”

  Another piece that didn’t fit. If she was part of the scheme to get me to go there—Barbara to Ty to Peter to Billy—why would she go after I left?

  Barbara was waiting. She clearly had expected a different reaction from me. I did the minimum. I murmured, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  And then she, nearly six feet of long-limbed powerful female with big yellow-brown eyes and just possibly the disposition of a sadist, said she wasn’t.

  “You went to California, then continued right on to Costa Rica.” I was thinking that meant she had brought her passport, which meant she had been planning to do that all along.

  “I had my mom’s ATM card.”

  “Your mom financed this whole trip?”

  “My parents,” she corrected. Then she unwound her legs. Then she rewound them, switching the one that had been on top. “Remember, they thought I was going to California to have it out with Tyler once and for all.”

  Still, she needed a passport.

  “I get to Tamarindo,” she said, her tone telling me I was going to hear this whether I liked it or not, “and it’s a strange little place. It’s kind of like being at the far end of the universe.”

  She paused, perhaps to see if I would say no, no, no, it’s perfectly normal. Like Orlando or Las Vegas.

  “The other thing is, and I don’t know if this happened to you, but it rained most every day. I mean, what are you supposed to do in a beach town when it rains? I end up going from one bar, one shop, one restaurant, to another, and whenever I see anybody who looks like an American living there, I try to strike up a conversation.”

  “Hi. How are you? You know Jason Stockover?”

  Her eyes flicked, rolled; her mouth grimaced. “Pretty much. Until I get to this one man, owns a restaurant on the beach.”

  “Wouldn’t be the place with coconut pies, would it?”

  “You’ve been there, I see.”

  “That’s supposed to be the place Jason owns.”

  “Well, the real owner’s name is J. T. Bauer. Balding guy, pretty muscular, about forty-five. He comes from Key West.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Jason.” I remembered what Howard Landry had said. I had a flash of Howard flapping his hand under his chin.

  “Nope. What’s more, he claimed never to have known any Jason in Tamarindo. What he admitted, and this is what I’ve been trying to get to, George, is that he did know Leanne.”

  She clearly thought this was going to detonate, bring me flying out of my chair. She was disappointed when it didn’t.

  “Leanne couldn’t have been there by herself.”

  “J.T. said she came into town, met him, hooked up with him, as the kids say these days. Stayed a couple of weeks, even helped him run the restaurant. Then she moved on.”

  It was possible. If someone had told Peter what I was doing enough time before I got to California, he could have called Leanne, gotten her to go down to Tamarindo knowing I would be coming.

  I swallowed.

  “What is it, George?”

  “How do you know it was the real Leanne?”

  “Well,” she said, the word coming out slowly, lingering, “that’s kind of hard for me to say, never having met or seen Leanne.”

  I had to agree and was about to tell her that when she added, “But this much I do know. The girl moved in with J. T. Bauer. He paid her in cash, never saw anything with her name on it, came home one day and she was gone.”

  “No note? No message, no forwarding address?”

  “Nothing. And J.T. didn’t seem all that upset about it, tell you the truth. He says that kind of thing happens down there sometimes. He said same thing used to happen in Key West. People come in, shack up, move on.”

  Barbara’s legs crossed again. The upper one began to bob up and down expectantly. The woven sandal dangled from her foot. I had the feeling she was remembering something that I didn’t. I tried to think what it could be.

  “Key West is kind of a big sailing town, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “This J.T., he didn’t happen to know Peter, did he?”

  One eyebrow went up. Barbara looked at me approvingly. “Bingo, George. You win the prize. What he didn’t know, what he couldn’t tell me, was whether the Leanne who worked for him, moved in with him, had any connection with Peter.”

  “Except they were both from Massachusetts.”

  Barbara shrugged. “I’m not even sure about that. J.T. seemed to think the Leanne who was there was from Rhode Island. And that at some point she had been a cop.”

  It was making perfect sense. Go to another country, look for a man who isn’t there. Get threatened by a woman who isn’t who you think she is. Heck of an effort, George. Keep up the good work. Want a new office?

  5.

  I WAS BEING PLAYED BY PEOPLE WITH A LOT MORE RESOURCES THAN I had. I asked myself if that was the message Barbara had come to deliver. Barbara Blueblood Belbonnet. The game was between the Gregorys and Josh David Powell, and you’re just getting batted back and forth across the net, George.

  Except Barbara had cried, hadn’t she? And what was in it for her, protecting Peter, running around the country, two countries, like she was? If, of course, she actually had been doing that. I had no proof that she had. No proof that anything she said was true.

  I called Buzzy. It had been a long time since we had spoken and he seemed to jump when he recognized my voice.

  I told him I needed a favor.

  “Anything for you, buddy.”

  I had to choke back my first reaction.

  “Georgie? You all right?”

  “What can you tell me about Barbara Belbonnet?”

  “Your dungeon-mate? Used to be Barbara Etheridge?”

  “She told me she grew up with you.”

  “Well, she did, sorta. I mean …” Buzzy wanted to be helpful; he was looking for ways to do that. “I mean, she was one of the rich kids. Into sailing and all that shit, and I wasn’t. She was like Hyannisport Yacht Club and I was, like, the public golf course. She was also, I’ll tell you, about the best-looking girl around, so I knew who she was and everything. But as far as us hanging out together, no.”

  He stopped then, thinking he had answered my question.

  “But you did go to school with her, right?”

  “Up to about, I don’t know, age fourteen, maybe. Then she went away to boarding school and, like, next time I saw her, she was married to Tyler Belbonnet. Or at least living with him.”

  “Did that surprise you? Her and Tyler?”

  “Okay, I gotta back up. When we were little, Tyler was, like, legendary. Like I said, I wasn’t into sailing, but everyone knew who he was. His picture was always in the paper, winning this or that race, and he was most definitely not a yacht-club kid. His father was a sailor, and Ty had his own boat and he only competed in the open races, but you’d hear people asking each other all the time, ‘How did you do compared to Ty?’—that sort of thing. And then you’d see him at parties and it was always a big deal for him just to be there. Of course, all of us watching him, admiring him, wanting to be like him, weren’t thinking so much about the fact that he didn’t seem to have any plans beyond sailing and partying. What we were thinking, back then, was that he was the one who had all the girls.”

  “Including Barbara?”

  “Oh, yeah. Early, early on. In fact, I think that was why they sent her away. It wa
s pretty much common knowledge she was banging him.”

  “Sent her away to prep school, you mean?”

  “Yeah, Tabor, I think. Then four years to Sarah Lawrence or someplace like that. I’d see her around in the summers and we’d say hi and stuff, but that was all. And then, what I heard was that she was going to law school at B.U. and she ran into Ty again. By this time he’d been all over the world, and once he starts telling her about Saint Bart’s and the Greek islands and Tahiti, and it was like—fuck law school. That’s, I guess, when it happened.”

  “When what happened?”

  “She got knocked up. Preggers.”

  “But Ty did marry her.” It was a question, really. I was trying to find out if anything she said was true.

  “I don’t know if it was that time or the next. What I can tell you is he signed on to a crew that was competing for the America’s Cup and he was gone to Australia for a year while she was here by herself. Then he returns and everything starts up all over again. I think she and Ty were living in some dump down in Harwich while he was working in a marine supply store, and she was back trying to go to law school at night and you just knew that wasn’t going to last. She has the second kid and the kid turns out to have Down syndrome and Ty sails off to the Azores.”

  “Before or after they had Malcolm?”

  “I don’t know, George. From what I understand, the syndrome is something you can find out about during pregnancy, so they must have known. Or at least she must have.”

  “You think it’s possible she didn’t tell him because she wanted to keep her hold on him?”

  “Jeez, I don’t know, George. I’d like to think she’s not that stupid. I mean, I know she’s not stupid, but sometimes people do things … you know?”

  “I know, Buz.”

  “Look, I was shocked as hell when you told me she was working in your office. She was, like, one of the great tragedies of my lifetime. My lifetime—what am I talking about? Of the Cape … of … of … I don’t know, of all time. Here was this beautiful girl, rich family, has everything going for her, and she lets her life get all fucked up by the local cool guy who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anything but himself.”