She gave him a no-nonsense look. “Let’s not get all silly now. I’m still a couple of light-years from graceful.”
He shrugged. “Just sayin’. I saw graceful. And so what happened?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“I mean with you. You’re shot twice. What happened? What did they do to you?”
“More like ‘for me.’ They shipped me down to Kaiser in Redwood City, and I’m not even a member, but you probably know that every bed in the nine counties had a shooting victim or three.” She shrugged. “They triaged everybody, and I wasn’t by any stretch one of the priority people. It was a pretty chaotic time.”
“I remember following it all on the news, but it never occurred to me that you . . . I mean, I knew that you were a cop, but it never occurred to me you were one of the victims.” He pulled around a chair and sat on it, shaking his head in disgust with himself. “I tell myself that if I’d have known that, I would have made a bigger effort. I am so sorry I never followed up,” he said. “But the reality of what you were going through never even crossed my mind. I never even looked around for another explanation, when it was right there in front of me. What an idiot.”
“Well, it’s over now. And let’s remember that I could have called you anytime to explain where I was and what had happened, but then I figured you had probably just decided that on reflection you weren’t really interested.”
“That wasn’t it at all.”
“I believe it if that’s what you’re telling me now, but that’s what I told myself then.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Well, we sure make a great pair, don’t we?”
“Fantastic,” he said, breaking a grin back at her, “if just slightly pathetic.”
23
THERESA BOLEYN DIDN’T GET TO sleep until sometime between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m., but at 6:20 she came fully awake. She considered lying back down—someone had poured concrete into her eyes and they didn’t want to stay open—but after fifteen minutes of tossing back and forth, she gave up, put on her bathrobe, and went into the kitchen to make coffee.
Light was just coming up, but after a week of bitter cold and clear high pressure, this morning thick fog blocked any view out her back window.
That suited her.
Though eating was the furthest thing from her mind, she set her regular breakfast on the kitchen island out of habit—orange juice, granola with sliced bananas, fresh blueberries, and nonfat milk. While the coffee dripped, she went out to the front door and got the newspaper.
Back at the kitchen island, coffee cup in her hand, she did a quick scan through the pages. No mention of Peter, of the investigation into his murder. Nothing.
When the first cup was empty, she put it down. She had no memory of having eaten the cereal, but it was gone. Going through the Chronicle a second time, she read more slowly, not really sure of what she was hoping to find. If they had a follow-up story, how would that help in any way? It wouldn’t, of course. She didn’t know why she was looking for it.
She poured another cup, then unplugged the charger from her cell phone on the counter behind her. Turning the phone on, she saw that she had one voicemail—Sergeant McCaffrey had called her last night.
But she’d already turned off the phone on the chance that she’d fall into a deep sleep.
What was with these cops? Was this the harassment you heard so much about? She’d already talked to them several times now and told them everything possibly relevant that she knew about Peter, although of course she hadn’t told them about their true relationship, at least their relationship over the past months, ever since the hug they’d shared after seeing the bullet holes in his office window had led to their intimacy, which she knew had nothing to do with his murder.
McCaffrey’s voicemail asked her to call him at her earliest convenience today. He had just a few more questions that he’d like to clear up.
She really doubted that.
What she did believe was that Inspector McCaffrey was going to try to rile her again by not so subtly dropping more false accusations of some kind about Peter. She was pretty certain that this was the strategy that his partner, Inspector Tully, had attempted with her yesterday by dropping those comments about Peter’s supposed infidelity with other women.
When Theresa didn’t believe for a minute that he was seeing anyone else but her.
She didn’t know what the inspectors hoped to gain by these innuendoes about the man she loved. Maybe they thought that Theresa actually did have something to do with his death. That, she knew, was absurd, but maybe they were getting desperate to solve the murder and just needed to get their hands on a suspect, any suspect.
On the other hand, she did know Peter better than almost anyone else. Why wouldn’t she want to cooperate with the police to help find who had killed him?
What about the mystery woman, anyway? Maybe that’s who the cops wanted to find out about. What had been the real story behind her calls? When she’d asked Peter that very question just after they’d become lovers, he’d not exactly been evasive about her. The woman wasn’t a romantic interest, but clearly something she’d done—he’d hinted at blackmail that would threaten his career—had played a huge role in rewiring Peter’s vision of who he was, including his decision to divorce Jill.
But hell, Theresa told herself, she was a big girl. She didn’t have to let the insinuations of police inspectors get under her skin. As if anything they could imply could be as devastating as the pure fact of Peter’s death. Whatever meaning she’d made out of her life, or hoped to make with Peter, was gone now, thoroughly washed away, but that did not mean she could not be cooperative. That was, after all, how her parents had raised her—dependable, perhaps uninspired, but unfailingly polite and helpful.
She was the perfect secretary.
It was almost 7:30. Still fairly early, but McCaffrey’s voicemail had said to call anytime.
She hit his number on the screen, and he picked up on the second ring. “Ms. Boleyn. Theresa. Thanks for getting back to me.”
“No problem. I’m sorry if it’s early. But you said you had a few questions.”
“That’s all right. I’ve been keeping some odd hours the past few days myself.” He hesitated. “There is one thing we haven’t covered, but I don’t want it to offend you.”
“I’m not that easy to offend, Inspector. How can I help you?”
“Well, this really falls under the heading of general housekeeping. Do you recall what you were doing last Monday night, say after nine thirty?”
In spite of her resolution not to react to exactly this kind of question, one obviously intended to upset her, she felt her stomach turn over and her head go light. “I did not kill Peter, Inspector,” she said, “on Monday night or any other night.”
“And I don’t think you did, either, Theresa. But it would completely eliminate you from the picture . . .”
“What picture is that?”
She heard his sigh in her ear. “Possible suspects, which I think Inspector Tully told you was pretty much the whole world.”
“Not me, I promise you.”
“And I believe you. But if you were with someone that night . . .” He gave her a short speech about alibis.
Absurd, she was thinking when he finished. “After nine thirty on a work night,” she said, “I was home, probably reading or watching something on television. I’m usually asleep by ten thirty. I’m sure I was that night, too. I did not see Peter after he left work early. I’m sorry if that doesn’t help, but you really shouldn’t be thinking about me. Honestly. And that said, I still may be calling you later on that phone issue.”
“I would appreciate that.”
“But no promises. I’ll try, that’s all.”
“I understand.”
“All right, then. Good-bye.” Fully depleted, perched on her stool, Theresa ended the call. Her hand went to her churning gut. “It doesn’t matter,” she said to herself. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It
doesn’t matter.”
* * *
Bina was at the tiller of their 24-foot sailboat, the Mary Alice, named after Geoff’s mother. She and Geoff were almost out to Alcatraz, close to half the journey on their way to lunch at the Anchor Cafe in Sausalito. They’d left the marina as the fog was starting to lift, and though it still clung to the western side of the city, above them all was blue. A sweet following breeze coming in through the Golden Gate, still cold but balmy in comparison to the past few days, was pushing them along nicely, but in spite of that, the bay itself was a flat pewter plate, a very good day for sailing.
Geoff had told Bina all about his meeting with Beth Tully at the Hall of Justice, his offer to help with the investigation if she could think of something he might be able to do. He didn’t know what, if anything, that might be. She hadn’t called him yesterday with any ideas on that score, though, and now he was telling Bina that he really didn’t think she would reach out to him today or tomorrow or ever because he had nothing specific to give her.
“Maybe,” she said, “that’s all to the good.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’ve been thinking about it, Geoff, waiting for a good time to mention it to you, and I think that now we’ve come to it. Has it occurred to you that you probably don’t really want to let yourself get too involved in a murder investigation?”
“Why not? Back in my DA days, as you’ll remember, I was in murder investigations all the time.”
“Right. But back then you were dealing with guys who were mostly already locked up in jail and weren’t any threat to you.”
“So you’re saying that someone’s a threat to me now? Who would that be?”
“Well, if we knew that, we’d probably know who killed Peter. Wouldn’t you say that’s true?”
“Mostly. Probably. Yes, I suppose so.”
“So this something that you have this vague feeling you might know about—this fact, this clue, whatever it might be—even though you don’t yet recognize its significance, let’s say you suddenly realize what it is. Not the murderer, just some indication that points in a certain direction. What do you do with that information?”
“That’s what I’m saying. I call Inspector Tully.”
“Okay. But just let me play this out a bit. You call Tully, which sets her on the right track. She goes out and questions our suspect, who turns out to actually be a cold-blooded murderer. And somehow in the course of her interrogations of this guy—”
“Or girl.”
“Okay, or girl. Either way, it comes out that you’re the source—maybe the sole source—of this damning information . . .”
“How does that happen?”
“It doesn’t matter. Fluke, luck, mistake, whatever. The point is, it comes out. And in fact, it comes out that you’re the only witness to it, whatever it may be. Then guess what? No, let me go on. All of a sudden this is nothing like the murder cases you were part of back in the day, when your suspect was safely locked away in jail. Instead, you are the only person threatening our killer’s freedom. Which makes you not just a prime witness, but a prime target. Do you not see this?”
Geoff ducked under the spar and shifted to the other side of the boat as they came about. “I don’t think it’s impossible,” he said. “But neither do I think it’s too likely.”
“I don’t think it’s likely either, my dear, but ‘not likely’ is a far cry from ‘impossible.’ And especially since we’re talking about you getting killed here—by, let’s remember, someone who has already killed before—I’d be much more comfortable with the ‘impossible’ scenario. Which is why, really, I’d just let this go. Tully probably won’t call you and that’s a good thing. If the magic something you might know—whatever it is—comes to you, write her an anonymous note, but really really, hon, you don’t want to be part of this thing. It’s too late to help Peter, anyway. Let Tully do her work, and while we’re on this, here’s the flip side of the coin. Let’s hope she doesn’t decide to come looking at you.”
“At me? What for?”
“What else?”
He huffed dismissively. “Get serious.”
“You don’t think I’m serious?”
“How in the world could that happen? Come on. I loved Peter. I came up and sought out Tully on my own so I could tell her what I knew.”
“Granted. But you and I both know that it wouldn’t be the first time somebody’s tried to get up close and personal to an investigation so that he could keep tabs on how close it was coming to home.”
“Tully isn’t going to think that. That was so clearly not what I was doing. I’m still a DA in my heart, and she knows I’m on her side. How could she think I killed Peter?”
“Okay, since you asked. First, she doesn’t have another suspect yet. Second, Peter got dumped in the ocean and you’ve got this boat. Third, let’s say she hears that your best friend Peter came on to your wife . . .”
“Except that he didn’t.”
She pulled her sunglasses down and looked at him over the rims. “Easily rebuffed, with no hard feelings,” she said. “But a different woman might have been a different story.”
“Are you kidding me? When did this happen? Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“Because nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen. I played it that he was joking and he dropped it. But what if he wasn’t joking? Which—not to flatter myself—I don’t think he was.”
“That son of a bitch!”
“Well, my point is . . . you see my point. Watch it,” she said. “Coming back about.”
* * *
“So that’s pretty much the gist of it,” Ron said.
The family was gathered in the television room at the back of the house. Ron sat next to Kate on the love seat, holding her hand in tight solidarity. Aidan hunkered, sulking, on one of the leather ottomans, and Janey had flopped herself into the wicker Papasan chair, which nearly swallowed her whole.
Aidan looked out from under his heavy brows. “I don’t really get it,” he said. “It doesn’t make any sense. Somehow, because you and Mr. Cooke work together, you’re supposed to know something about this other guy, the dead guy?”
Kate cleared her throat. “Let’s not all of us pretend we don’t know who we’re talking about, Aidan. Your father and I have discussed this. We want you both to know that there are no secrets between him and me, and I don’t want there to be any with us, either. The dead man’s name is Peter Ash. And yes, your father and I both saw him socially. We knew him.” She looked at Ron and squeezed his hand.
Janey’s voice carried more than a hint of whine. “Do we have to talk about him? And about this? It makes me feel sick.”
“I’m afraid we do,” Ron said. “It’s the only way we’re going to get this behind us.”
“Why don’t we just forget about it if he’s been killed?”
“Because, Janey,” Ron said, “it looks like it might not be completely over. After Beth’s talk with Mom last night, it looks like we’re going to have to hear more about it. I don’t know what, precisely, but I think we can count on that.”
Aidan looked to his mother. “But I thought Beth was, like, your best friend.”
“She is,” Kate said.
“So why is she hassling you?”
“She’s not. She’s just doing her job, asking some questions. Not even hard ones at that. And what happened last night, I think, is we haven’t been seeing each other too much lately and I suppose we both got off a little bit on the wrong foot.”
“So now she thinks . . . what?” Aidan asked.
“That’s not clear,” Ron said. “She may think nothing about any of this. After all, as you said, so what that Geoff Cooke and I both had social dealings with Mr. Ash? Big deal, right? The only connection with me and Geoff is that we work at the same firm and we’re pals.”
Kate said, “I’m sure that Beth didn’t mean to imply that she had anything as strong as a suspicion. S
he was just following a trail and it seemed to run through your father’s office.”
Janey sighed theatrically. “I hate this. I don’t know why this all started.”
“I know, baby,” Kate said. “It’s confusing. And I’m so sorry we’re all having to deal with this.”
Ron reached over and put a hand on Kate’s knee. “That’s enough. We all just need to turn the page and move on. Do you all think you could do that? Janey?”
Another sigh. “I’ll try.”
“Aidan?”
“Yes.”
“And Kate, you, too. All right. Enough. You getting upset with your friend Beth isn’t the worst thing in the world, even if it might make her feel like she needs to involve us somehow in her investigation. We’re all fallible. We all make mistakes.”
Kate looked from her husband to her children and nodded. However Ron called it, she was on board with him, and the kids needed to be as well.
“Okay, Dad,” Janey pleaded. “Can we just be finished now?”
“Almost, sweetie. But there’s one other thing we have to be crystal clear about as a family. Why we’re having this talk this morning, all together. And that is we tell the truth. Always, about any of this, about everything. If any more questions come up with Beth Tully or anyone else, especially about Peter Ash, we don’t evade, we don’t make up answers. But let’s remember that ‘I don’t know’ is an acceptable answer. We just say what we know, whatever that may be.”
“But we don’t know anything about Peter Ash getting killed.”
“Right,” Ron said. “And that’s why whatever happened between your mother and me and Mr. Ash is irrelevant to his murder. They’re saying he was killed on Monday night, and all of us know where we were when it must have happened, and so it couldn’t have been any of us. Easily proven, with witnesses. Mom and Janey doing that term paper. You, Aidan, at your play practice. Me at my endless deposition.
“So we can’t get in any trouble if we just stick with the truth. And you probably won’t even get asked, but if you do—just remember honesty, honesty, honesty. Though I know that neither of you would ever lie anyway, and your mother and I are so proud of that, of who both of you are.” He looked to his son, then his daughter. “End of lecture. Does anybody have anything else they’d like to say?”
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