by Stephen Frey
“No, I didn’t. I haven’t taken a vacation in—”
“You didn’t actually travel anywhere,” Sasha says, undaunted. “You stayed in your house and licked your wounds.”
I open my eyes when Sasha’s hands glide from mine. She’s gazing at me steadily, but not into my eyes. She’s gazing at the faded scars on my neck.
Sasha reaches for my right hand and turns it over so that it lies flat on the felt, palm up. She touches each fingertip in slow succession, then puts her hand to her neck. Her upper lip curls slightly, and she stares into my eyes, her fingers gently stroking the soft skin of her throat. I’m left only to imagine what she’s thinking because she doesn’t say another word. A few minutes later Mary and I are back up the stairs and out of Sasha’s cave.
As I guide the Toyota out of its parking space and head back toward McLean, Mary puts her hand on mine as it rests on the stick shift. “Thanks for going with me,” she says. “That was nice of you.”
“Sure. It was interesting. I’ve never done anything like that.” I sense that if I get to know Mary better, I’ll be doing a lot of things I’ve never done before.
“Sasha’s amazing, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, amazing.”
“She picks up on things so fast. She knew I had made that money on Teletekk, and she knew about your poor wife,” Mary says, her voice dropping.
“I’m not sure she—”
“How long were you married, Augustus?”
“Eleven years.”
“That’s a long time to be with the same person.”
“Yes, it is.” I ease the Toyota to a stop at a red light and check my watch. It’s quarter of nine. Mary was right. We’ll be back to Bedford in plenty of time for the New York open. “How long were you married to your first husband?”
“You mean the man I was married to before Jacob?”
“Ah, I guess so.” It never occurred to me that Mary might have been married more than twice.
“Five years, and none of it was very pleasant.”
“Oh?”
“He cheated on me the week after our wedding.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“The son of a bitch thought I wouldn’t find out, but I did,” she says, her voice suddenly trembling. “He gave me the old line about how the other woman didn’t mean anything to him, and how being with her didn’t change how he felt about me. How can men say that with a straight face?”
“Lots of practice in front of the mirror. Were you married before him?” I ask quickly, regretting my flippancy.
“I’ve been married three times and divorced twice.”
“Really?”
“Is that a problem?” she asks, slipping her hand from mine when the light turns green and I start shifting gears.
“No. It’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who was married more than twice.”
“Come on, tell me what you think.”
“No, really.” I don’t know why I reacted like I did. “It’s unusual. That’s all.”
Mary lets out a heavy sigh. “I was married the first time when I was seventeen.”
“Jesus.”
“Right, big mistake,” she admits. “But what you have to understand is that I lived in a trailer park outside of Lexington, Kentucky, with my stepfather.” She swallows hard. “He—he wasn’t … he wasn’t very nice to me,” she says, her voice choking up. “He did some terrible things to me after my mother died and I was all alone with him.” She pauses. “He made me sleep with him.”
“I’m sorry.” I reach for her hand. “That’s awful.”
“The boy I married was willing to stand up to him. He took me away from that place. I was desperate to get out but I didn’t know how. He did.” She turns and looks out her window.
I swing the car to the side of the road and pull to a quick stop. “Come here.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she says, tears now streaming down her face. “I’m all right.”
“No, you aren’t.” I pull her toward me and suddenly she’s wrapping her arms around me and crying loudly, burying her face in my shoulder. I hold her tightly as her body heaves. “I shouldn’t have pried. It’s none of my business.”
“I started it. It’s my fault.”
“That’s not true,” I say compassionately.
“I hate being so weak,” she says, pulling back and taking a tissue out of her purse.
She starts to wipe her face but I take the tissue from her trembling hand. “Let me do that.”
Mary smiles and touches my cheek. “You’re such a good man, Augustus.”
“I don’t know about that.” I dab at the moisture beneath her eyes.
“Yes, you are. I bet you never cheated on your wife, did you?”
“No.”
“See?”
“That doesn’t necessarily make me a good man.”
“It does in my book. Jacob was the only man who was never unfaithful to me.” Mary caresses my face with the back of her fingers. “Sometimes I think maybe it was just because he was too old.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. I’m sure he loved you very much.” I have no idea whether or not that’s true, but it seems like the thing to say.
Her eyes well up again and she hugs me tightly. “We’ve become friends so fast, Augustus.”
“Yes, we have.”
Mary pulls back and looks into my eyes. It’s that same look she gave me at lunch yesterday, but I’m more comfortable with it this time. “Those green eyes of yours,” she says, her voice hushed. “They’re so beautiful.”
Our faces are only inches apart.
She makes a subtle move closer, then the cell phone in her purse goes off with an obnoxious whistle. She pulls back, groans, and digs it out.
As she talks I guide the Toyota back into traffic and head for Bedford.
“I can’t believe it,” Mary says, replacing the cell phone in her purse when she’s finished talking. Her voice has the same quality it did after Sasha told me I’d experienced a terrible loss.
“Believe what?”
“That was an old friend of mine from Kentucky whom I haven’t talked to in years. She got my cell number from another friend.”
“Really?” I ask slowly.
“Yes, and you want to know the really strange thing?”
“What?”
“She said she called me last week at home but didn’t leave a message. Just like Sasha said. That’s incredible, isn’t it?”
I don’t answer. I just stare straight ahead, thinking about Sasha’s comment that Mary had found someone she cared for. And about convenient phone calls.
Mary considerately suggests that we walk back into Bedford separately, so I drop her off in front of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, which is only a short distance from our building. She wants to use the hotel ladies’ room to freshen up so no one on the trading floor will see that she’s been crying, and I want to be by myself when I park the car. I don’t want any rumors starting.
As I come through the firm’s glass doors, Roger is waiting for me in the lobby.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he says, bolting up off the couch. He seems anxious.
I glance at Anna, but she’s focused on a blizzard of papers spread out on her desk. “What’s wrong?”
“I think I really screwed up. Come on! Hurry!”
We walk quickly onto the trading floor and head down the aisle toward his desk. He’s a few steps ahead of me, waving me on. “I inputted a buy order on Trader One, but I entered the wrong stock ticker. Jesus Christ, I put ten thousand dollars into the wrong company,” he says, trotting into his cubicle. “My wife’s going to kill me.”
Slammer is up to his usual thing—beating the hell out of his keyboard and shouting into his phone. He doesn’t even look up as I move into Roger’s cubicle. The young kid, Daniel, is staring at something on his screen. He gives me a nod but that’s all.
“Sit in my chair.” Roger
guides me into his seat, then kneels down beside me, stroking his beard. Tiny beads of sweat dot his forehead.
“How do you know you entered the wrong ticker?”
“Like you showed me last night, Seaver’s clearing firm in New York automatically returned an e-mail showing me that the order was received. I printed out the e-mail when it got to my computer, and that’s when I noticed I had entered the wrong ticker.”
“Where’s the printout?”
While Roger scours his cluttered desk for the order, I notice that there are now several framed photos of a plain-looking woman and two children decorating his cubicle. “This company trades on the New York Stock Exchange,” I point out, perusing the paper he thrusts at me. I can tell because there are only three letters in its ticker. NYSE tickers have three letters or less. All Nasdaq tickers have at least four. “So there’s no problem,” I say checking my watch.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s only nine fifteen. The NYSE doesn’t open until nine thirty. We’ll cancel the order. We’ve got plenty of time.” I watch Mary walk down the long aisle.
“But my damn computer is frozen up. That’s my other problem. I’ve tried rebooting twice and nothing happens. What the hell am I going to do?”
“We’ll send a fax to the broker. There’s plenty of—”
“What is it?” Roger asks when I interrupt myself.
“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I say, scanning the paper once more, then tossing it on his desk.
“Why?”
“It’s an invalid order.”
“What do you mean?”
Over the cubicle partition I hear Anna calling me on the intercom. “You forgot to fill in the number of shares you wanted to purchase,” I point out. “Seaver’s clearing firm will automatically DQ this thing.”
“DQ?”
“Disqualify. If he calls you, just cancel the order verbally. No sweat,” I assure him, rising out of the seat and hurrying to my cubicle, passing Mary on the way. She gives me a pleasant smile. “Yes, Anna,” I say into the intercom.
“Could you come up front, Augustus? Reggie Dorsey is here to see you again.”
I freeze. What does he want this time? “I’ll be there in a minute.”
“He’s waiting in the conference room,” Anna says as I come into the lobby. “What’s the deal with this guy?”
“It’s no big thing,” I say, trying to sound unconcerned.
Reggie’s sitting in the same seat as yesterday—at the head of the table. He doesn’t bother to shake my hand. “Sit down.” He points at the chair beside his, but I leave one seat between us.
“What do you want, Reggie? I’m getting tired of this.”
“Steady, Augustus. Don’t get upset.”
“I’m not upset, but you’ve got to understand. This is my place of business. I would appreciate you at least calling to let me know you’re coming if there’s a next time. People are starting to ask me questions about who you are.”
“Does that bother you?”
I start to snap back at him but manage to control my temper in the nick of time. I know he’s just trying to get under my skin so he can decode my body language more easily. Human beings give away much more about themselves when they’re under pressure, and he’s trying to get me to that point quickly. A friend of mine from college is a Richmond cop, and he told me all about law enforcement’s investigative methods one night when I was there on a business trip.
“You don’t have anything to hide, do you, Augustus?” he asks, pulling out a cigarette and taking a whiff but not lighting it. The same way he did last time. “For my grandchildren,” he mutters under his breath.
“No, I do not have anything to hide,” I say strongly. Suddenly the thought of turning the tables on Reggie dawns on me. As our high school football coach said so many times, the best defense is a good offense. “Have you made any progress at all in the case yet? You don’t seem to be accomplishing much.”
Reggie glances up. “I’ll tell you about any progress when I’m good and ready to—”
“Do you think Frank Taylor murdered Melanie?”
“Why do you ask that?”
I can see by the irritation on his face that Reggie doesn’t appreciate being questioned. He likes to be the one calling the shots. “You went to see him again yesterday. That’s twice that I know of.”
“So what? Taylor was Melanie’s boss. He knew a lot about her. And how do you know I went to see him twice?”
“He told me. He showed up at my house last night very drunk.” Reggie and I stare at each other evenly for a few moments. “So, do you think he killed her?”
“I just had a few simple questions for him.”
“Why did you go back to see him again?”
Reggie’s eyes narrow. “Someone gave me another anonymous call, Augustus. The message was that we needed to investigate Frank Taylor very carefully.”
“Do you think the call came from the same person as before?”
“I assume so. And I assume it was you,” he says firmly.
“Me? That’s crazy! The first message you got was to let you know that I was here at Bedford. Why would I call you anonymously to tell you that?”
“So I wouldn’t think you were the source when the second call came concerning Taylor.”
“Forget it, Reggie. Wrong tree. Stop barking.”
“Would Frank Taylor have had a motive?” he asks.
“You tell me. You’re the detective.”
“Was Taylor having an affair with Melanie?” Reggie wants to know.
“You asked that last time you were here.”
“Well?”
“Did you ask Taylor that question?”
“Yes.”
“What did he say?”
Reggie looks at me thoughtfully. “He didn’t. He said he wanted his lawyer present if I was going to continue interrogating him. I told him not to get so upset, but he refused to answer any more of my questions.”
“I’ve never been uncooperative like that.”
“No, you haven’t.” He pauses. “So tell me. Were Taylor and Melanie having an affair?”
I take a deep breath. “Yes, I think they were.”
“Did you ever catch them in the act?”
“No, Taylor bragged about it to me.” So did Melanie, in her own way, I think to myself, remembering how she slipped her arm into his so comfortably and how she let him touch her in front of me as she was walking away the afternoon before her death. “Taylor told me he had made love to her in my own bed,” I say, gritting my teeth. It’s still revolting for me to remember that.
“You think he was telling the truth?”
“I do.”
Reggie hesitates. “I’m sorry, Augustus.”
“Maybe that was his motive. Maybe she was ending the affair, and he killed her because he couldn’t stand losing her.”
“Maybe.” Reggie loosens his tie and undoes the top button of his shirt. “Somebody else we both know would have had that same motive,” he points out. His eyes narrow. “Do you know who killed your wife, Augustus?”
“No.”
“I’m not asking if you killed her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m asking if you know who killed her. Those are two very different questions.”
“I understand and my answer is no to both,” I say angrily. “Maybe I should have a lawyer present.”
“There’s no need for that.” Reggie strokes his thin mustache with his thumb and forefinger a few times before speaking again. “Did your father ever mention having children by another woman? Did he ever tell you anything like that?”
What the hell is he talking about now? “Children by another woman?”
“Obviously not,” he says, rising from his chair. “Well, I’ll make a point of calling before I visit in the future. I promise.”
“Wait a minute, Reggie! You can’t ask me something like that, then just leave!” I shout, jumping
up from my chair and moving in front of the conference room door to block his way. “What are you saying? Was he married to someone else before my mother?”
“I told you. I’m very thorough with my investigations.”
“What did you find out? Please tell me, Reggie!”
He takes a deep breath. “Law enforcement’s ability to track people down has been enhanced dramatically in the last few years thanks to technology. The ability to share fingerprints and DNA information with other police forces and federal agencies has taken investigative work to a much higher level. It’s hard for anyone with a record to hide anymore.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, my mouth running dry. “Do you know something about my father? Did he have a record?”
“Some things are better left in the dark,” Reggie says.
As if I don’t already know that. “Tell me, Reggie. Tell me what you found out.”
For several moments he stays silent. Finally he motions toward the table. “Sit back down,” he says softly. He sits too, this time in the chair next to mine. Then he begins. “I’m going to tell you a story. So far it isn’t a very happy one, but who knows, maybe it’ll end up okay.”
I stare at him, wondering what in the world he is about to tell me.
“Forty years ago a young man goes to jail in a small town in southern Ohio for raping a fifteen-year-old girl. It’s statutory rape because the girl admits that the sex was consensual and there’s no evidence of a struggle. But it’s still rape under the law. Seems like this young man was a real smooth talker. At least, that’s what everybody around town says.
“The girl runs away from home a few months after the incident, when she starts to show. She’s pregnant with the man’s baby and the townspeople are being damn cruel. She won’t give up the baby and she can’t stay, so she runs.”
“I don’t follow,” I say, my voice shaky.
“The young man is released from jail a year later for good behavior, and he leaves the area. Drops off the face of the earth as a matter of fact. For two years no one knows where he is.” Reggie rests his elbows on the arms of the chair. “Then one day he turns up in Richmond, Virginia. Turns up at a police precinct charged with raping another young girl. This one’s sixteen. Seems he likes them young.”
The story is coming together and the blood is beginning to pound in my brain.