by Linda Barlow
Jesus! At first Darcy thought she was hallucinating. But everything else around her felt firm and real. It was Barbara Rae, the physical Barbara Rae, going into Sam’s house at nine o’clock at night.
Why?
The pounding in her head was the sound of her blood singing through her veins. Something was up here, something that had nothing to do with her own obsession. And it gave Darcy the courage to do what she had never dared to do before. As Barbara Rae entered the house, Darcy darted up the steps behind her and onto the porch. Crouching down to the side of the front door, she reached out and caught it just before it clicked shut.
“Sam, there’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about for a long time.”
Genial as always, Sam offered her a drink, coffee, a cup of tea. But Barbara Rae wanted nothing. She just wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible.
“If it’s a problem with your funding, you know I’ll do what I can,” Sam said.
“I know. You’re a very generous man, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. But it’s not about funding, not this time.”
Sam took the chair opposite her in the living room. He looked comfortable and casual, wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt and a pair of brown Levi’s.
“Sam, because of my work, people talk to me about many different things. Sometimes these people just want an empathetic ear, sometimes they want advice. I try to listen and be supportive. I try to give them whatever it is they need.”
Sam nodded and smiled. “And from what I hear, you’re exceptionally good at it, too.”
“Sometimes I hear things that are of a sensitive nature. Although I am not a priest, there are those among my congregation who regard me as one. They come to me as they would to a Roman Catholic priest, to make their confession and to seek absolution of their sins.”
“Which is said to be very good for the soul,” Sam said. He leaned forward slightly. “What are you getting at, Barbara Rae?”
“Like a priest or a psychiatrist or a medical doctor, I feel that many of these conversations are privileged. What I hear is subject to the silence of my own personal confessional. It is my sacred duty to keep confidential discussions private, even when revealing them might seem to serve some higher ethical purpose.”
Sam appeared puzzled. He looked at her steadily but said nothing.
“The problem is that, unlike a Catholic priest, I am not sworn to the seal of the confessional, nor am I guided by church doctrine. In a way, this makes it more difficult for me to decide which way my moral responsibilities lie. I must also consider that whatever I am told may be only one side of a complex story. A person could, for example, reveal something to me that is not actually true. Perhaps they believe it to be true, perhaps they only fantasize it to be true. Perhaps it is true. But I cannot swear the truth of what I’m told. The best I can do is make my own judgments, based on what I know about the character of the people who talk to me.”
“I’m with you so far,” Sam said. “But I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make.”
“My point is that someone once confessed to me something concerning you, Sam. I don’t know if it was true—in fact, I found it hard to believe at the time. Still, it was important, and it later became even more so. I’ve tormented myself for many months, wondering if it would have been better, in this instance, to break my rule of silence, and wondering if I should break it now.”
Sam stood, he turned his back to her, and walked to the window. When he turned around again a few seconds later, his expression was perfectly calm. “You’d better be more specific, Barbara Rae, because I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”
Spit it out, she ordered herself.
“Before her death, Francesca Carlyle told me that she was involved in an extramarital relationship that was causing her both anguish and guilt. And she identified her lover as you, Sam.”
His eyes narrowed. “Me?” he said incredulously.
Barbara Rae noted his direct gaze, his steady hands, and his flush of surprise. Either he was conveying his true emotions or he was a very convincing actor.
“That’s what she told me. She felt particularly guilty because you were her husband’s oldest friend.”
“I should think so.” He sounded slightly defensive now, but Barbara Rae had to acknowledge that that would be the case even if the charge was a lie. “Matt and I have known each other since college. I knew Francesca even longer. For me to sleep with her would have been a betrayal of friendship of the vilest kind.”
Barbara Rae nodded. “But we do have reason to believe that she was having an affair with somebody. And it’s curious that the police were never able to identify her lover. One can understand why he chose not to come forward. Perhaps if he had, he would have been put on the list of suspects. But it is surprising that despite an extensive investigation, not only by the police but by Matthew’s private detectives, no trace of her lover was ever found.”
“Is it so surprising? I thought the prosecution argued pretty definitively in court that the reason no evidence of her adultery was found was that there was no adultery. She drank too much, as you know. And she had an active fantasy life.”
Now that last point was something that a lover might know, Barbara Rae thought. But so might a longtime friend.
And it was true, of course. Barbara Rae knew from experience that Francesca had been a dramatic woman with a strong tendency to exaggerate.
Perhaps she had only fantasized about having an affair with Sam Brody. After all, she was not the only woman to be taken with this handsome, pleasant man.
“Annie told me that you believed Francesca’s lover was Giuseppe Brindesi.”
Some hint of emotion darted across his face. Surprise? Had he expected Annie to keep this information absolutely private?
“I’m not going to comment on that,” he said.
“She said you claimed to have actually seen them together.”
“Even if that were true, I would never admit to it in court,” he said. “Particularly now that Giuseppe is dead and Matt’s fingerprints were found on the scaffolding. He’s my oldest friend.”
“But it’s not true,” Barbara Rae said. “Giuseppe was gay.”
Now there was definitely emotion on his face. Shock. Denial. Quickly, he turned back to the window.
“He too confided in me. He was exclusively homosexual all his life. He would never have children, of course. That’s why Vico’s future was so important to him—the boy was the son Giuseppe could never have.”
“Well, intriguing though that tidbit is, it doesn’t change the fact that Francesca was pretty tight with Giuseppe. Perhaps all they were was very close friends.”
“Sam, I’m not a lawyer. I don’t want to fence with you. But two people have died violent deaths, and the police seem to think that there’s some connection between Francesca’s death and Giuseppe’s. I would never forgive myself if I believed that an innocent man had died because I didn’t tell the police what I had heard about the possible identity of Francesca’s mystery lover.”
He turned back. “If you’re suggesting—”
Barbara Rae cut him off as effectively as she cut off the teenager troublemakers she dealt with at the youth center. “Sam, please let me finish. I know I don’t have any right to ask this question, and you certainly don’t have any obligation to answer it. But I’m going to put it to you anyway: Weren’t you and Francesca lovers?”
“Yes.”
Barbara Rae felt her eyes open wider. She realized with a certain kind of shock that she had expected him to deny it even if it was true. Which meant, of course, that she did believe Sam Brody was capable of lying.
“Francesca and I were lovers for about six months, twenty-one years ago,” he said. “In fact, that’s how Matt met her. She was my girlfriend until he charmed her right out of my arms. It was a big deal for me at the time. I loved Francesca, or I thought I did at the tender age of twenty.”
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br /> He paused to clear his throat. “It was a tough time for me, and it very nearly wrecked the friendship between Matt and me. But I got over it. I got over her. And since then, since she left me for Matt and married him and lived her life with him, never once were she and I sexually intimate again.” He looked her straight in the eye. “I told Annie that I believed Francesca and Giuseppe were lovers because I saw them together, kissing. Now you tell me he was gay, and I’m left trying to figure out what kind of kissing I witnessed. It looked pretty passionate to me, but hell, who knows? Francesca was always playacting, particularly with men. When all the speculation began about her affair, I naturally assumed I knew who her lover was. But I never went to the cops about it because it would have been one more nail in Matt’s coffin.”
Barbara Rae nodded. So far, everything he’d said had been reasonable. “I have one more question. Sam, where were you at the time of Giuseppe’s death?”
“You sound like a police detective, Barbara Rae. Isn’t there a saying in the Bible, ’Render unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s’?”
“Luke, chapter twenty, verse twenty-five.”
“Yet you still ask me that question?”
“I ask it, yes. You don’t have to answer.”
“As a matter of fact, I was with a woman that night. We went out to dinner, then she came home with me and didn’t leave here until morning. She was here when the call came in from the police. She will testify to that.”
“Thank you, Sam.” After a moment she added, “Forgive my suspicions, please.”
He sighed. “It’s a time of suspiciousness all around. Seems like it has been ever since Francesca died. The repercussions of that just keep going on and on and on.”
“Yes. And they will, I imagine, until justice is done.”
From where she was crouching beside the front door, Darcy heard the whole thing.
Was it true? Francesca and Sam?
He denied their recent involvement. But he was lying. He sounded totally sincere, but he was lying.
He sounded exactly the way he had when he’d whispered passionately to her in the bedroom. And that had been a lie.
She felt a little dizzy. I’ve got to talk to Annie, she thought.
Quickly, she backed across the porch and leaped over the railing to the ground. She landed in the shrubbery just as Barbara Rae came out. Pressing herself against the side of the house, Darcy listened to the pounding of her own heart.
There was something else, she realized. Sam had lied about his alibi for the night of Giuseppe’s murder. True, he’d had a date, and the blond woman had gone home with him afterward. But the woman’s car—a red Mercedes, Darcy recalled clearly—had left sometime before 4:11A.M.
Sam’s alibi was a fraud.
Sam Brody stood perfectly still in his living room. He felt exhausted and wrung out. Had he just blown it? He’d always been good at reading people, and he thought he’d seen a flash of distrust in Barbara Rae’s eyes, although he’d done his best to counter her suspicions.
Had she believed him? Was it possible that Barbara Rae could disbelieve him? He had donated thousands over the years to the United Path Church and its many charities. That ought to make her stop and think.
Maybe he shouldn’t have allowed her to leave. What if she went to the police with her story?
Shit. Things were falling apart.
Calm down, he ordered himself.
Sam could see his reflection in the living-room window. Staring at his face, he reached deep inside him and pulled out a smile. It was a good smile. Genial. Warm. Sincere. It was a smile that had been perfected over the years. It even reached into his eyes, which he could make soft, understanding, empathetic. His eyes were surrounded by tiny laugh lines that seemed to indicate a perpetual lighthearted, easygoing state of mind.
Sam Brody, great boss to work for. Sam Brody, thoughtful and sensitive friend. Sam Brody, excellent architect. Sam Brody, good and decent man.
He reminded himself that he was all those things. And that, as far as he knew, nobody even suspected that he had a darker side. He’d been very careful, over the years, to hide it.
Because he’d feared the consequences of allowing anybody to get too close to him, he had deprived himself of what so many people referred to as the joys of human intimacy. No wife, no children, no close friends privy to the secrets of his heart.
The secret, singular, he corrected himself. There was only one real secret, one real sin to cover up.
Sam had realized long ago that in a highly dishonest world, an honest man could make an excellent impression on people. He had been scrupulous in all his dealings, sometimes so much so that he had lost business. But in the process he had established his reputation as an unswervingly honest man.
By now his reputation was so well established that it simply couldn’t be contradicted. Everybody agreed that Sam Brody was one of the guys in the white hats, and 99 percent of the time they were right.
His mistakes had been few and far between. Of course, there had been mistakes. Nobody was perfect. He had some of the needs for intimacy that all humans had. He had been tempted. Darcy had been the most recent temptation—what a wonderful lover she was! But so far, thank God, he’d always come to his senses in time.
Now, though, he had a problem.
Barbara Rae.
So Francesca had talked to her, had she? Goddamn Francesca. Goddamn Matt.
The knot in his belly tightened the way it always did when he thought about Matthew Carlyle. Sam wasn’t sure exactly when it was that he had begun to hate his old friend. Sometimes he thought it must have started the day they’d met.
But more likely it had come later, when he had realized the unique destiny for which the fates intended him: His lot in life was to sit smilingly by while Matthew Carlyle stole from him everything that was rightfully his.
Sam was smart, but Matthew was smarter.
Sam’s business was successful, but Matthew’s was one of the most famous American companies of the second half of the twentieth century—truly a phenomenon.
Sam was wealthy, but Matthew was a billionaire.
Sam had loved only one woman in his life, and Matthew had married her.
It had been on that day—the wedding of Matthew Carlyle to Francesca, a ceremony at which Sam had stood beside Matt in the role of best man—that Sam had made to himself his own most solemn promise:
Someday, somehow, he would even the score.
Because with all his heart and soul, he hated Matt Carlyle. And for more than twenty years he’d nurtured his hatred and felt it grow, black and poisonous, inside him. With each additional success that Matt had achieved, Sam had known new envy, new rage. But he hadn’t shown it. He’d kept on smiling. He’d sworn to hide his feelings even if they choked him, which they sometimes did. When he was anywhere near his nemesis, he literally had trouble getting air into his lungs.
But it was almost over now. He was close—so close—to accomplishing his goal. He wasn’t going to allow anybody to stop him—not Barbara Rae Acker, and not Annie Jefferson, either.
Annie could prove to be even more of a problem than Barbara Rae. She too was suspicious of him. And she was smart, and in love with his enemy.
When he’d put Annie on the cathedral job as project manager, he’d thought that the choice was one of his more brilliant moves. She was essentially an interior designer. Her projects had been limited to corporations—the contemporary office building, mostly. Some retail-space designing. And for the most part she’d worked out of an office in a design firm. She’d spent little time on site, little time around contractors and their subs. She knew nothing, in practice, about managing a large construction site.
In other words, Annie Jefferson would be easy to control.
But, increasingly, it hadn’t worked out that way. Annie had proved to be far more competent a manager than he’d ever imagined. She’d done a terrific job, and he’d be
en absolutely sincere on the occasions when he’d told her so. She’d really come into her own, and he was proud of her.
The tough part of all this was when you truly liked the people you had to destroy.
Chapter Thirty-five
When Annie heard the loud knocking on her front door, she was half afraid it might be the police.
“Don’t answer it,” Matt whispered, pulling her closer. They were trying to get a few hours’ sleep before they had to check on Paolina. But so far neither of them had done much in the way of sleeping.
The knocking ceased, but about a minute later the phone rang. Annie let her machine pick up, and they heard Darcy’s voice: “I know you’re there, Annie. Please open up! It’s me at your door. Sorry if I’m interrupting anything, but I’ve got to talk to you—it’s urgent!”
Annie threw on a bathrobe and rushed to the door.
Darcy came in, breathless. She flung herself into the nearest chair, not even appearing surprised to see Matt Carlyle, in a pair of jeans but no shirt, standing at the threshold of the bedroom.
“Darcy, what’s happened? What’s the matter?”
Darcy’s lip started to tremble. “Annie, you’re so sensible. So responsible. You’re not going to get all carried away with emotion the way I do. I need you to tell me I’m crazy. God! I feel as if my head is about to blow apart!”
“Darcy, for heaven’s sake—”
“It’s Sam.”
“What about Sam?” Matt cut in. “Is he hurt? Dead?”
She laughed wildly. “Dead? Dear God, no! He’s not dead, Annie. He’s the killer!”
Matt stared at her.
“All this time he’s been fooling us. He’s got everybody convinced he’s such a wonderful guy.” She glanced at Matt. “I know he’s your best friend and all. Shit, I don’t expect anybody to believe me. I can hardly believe it myself. Sam Brody a killer? Impossible.” She shook her head. “But it’s the only thing that fits.”
Annie swallowed hard. She thought of Sam and Matt. Old friends. One from a wealthy background, with all the advantages. The other from a broken home, with none of them.