The kids and I spent the drive back to Boulder making plans to make plans to go to the Netherlands to visit Sofie. I made it clear that if I was paying, and I would be, I didn’t think the trip would take place in the middle of winter.
Gracie began to lobby. She wanted to see polar bears and windmills and tulips. And the Northern Lights. And canals. And she wanted to have rijsttafel again with Sofie and with Sofie’s other parents. All of them. She really, really liked Joost.
So, I thought, did Lauren. And oddly enough, so did I. Joost, it turned out, was a good man.
We were minutes from home in Spanish Hills when my cell rang. I answered it without taking my eyes from the road to check caller ID. I said, “Hello.”
A female voice replied, “It’s Izza Kane. Remember me?”
Oh yeah, I do. One of my other loose ends.
“I’m in the car. I don’t like to talk and drive. Can I call you back in five minutes?”
“Will you? Really?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ve lied to me before.”
I said, “That is true. Not this time. I will get back to you.” She hung up.
Gracie asked, “Who was that?”
“Someone Daddy knows who wants to talk about your mom.”
All honest. Though not at all forthcoming. Where adult things were concerned, Gracie usually didn’t require forthcoming. Jonas, on the other hand, had learned the hard way about the territory and conventions of adult grief. He had lost more parents than most of us ever have to lose. He looked up from the game he was playing on his phone long enough to say to his sister, “Get used to it. Goes on and on. Phone’s going to ring for months. Don’t answer, ever—they’ll talk to you, too, like they know you. They’ll talk to anybody who picks up.”
Sofie was as transparent a teenager as I’d ever met. Grace was an open book to me. Jonas? I searched for clues about his identity wherever I could find them. And I treasured every scrap he left lying around. Since Lauren’s death, as far as I could tell, Jonas had been listening mostly to early Feist, live stuff I didn’t even know was out there. The songs made me cry. Even the ones that weren’t sad made me cry.
After his birth mother, Adrienne, died, he’d listened to a steady diet of Girlyman. I was trying to make sense of what the musical evolution meant for him. I couldn’t.
I DROPPED THE KIDS at home. I began to walk out the lane. Could I use my cell to call Izza or was it—my tracker—really bugged? What about the landline in the house?
What if her call was a setup? Shit. I returned to the house and told Jonas to watch his sister while I ran an errand. He gave me no indication he had heard me. But he didn’t argue with me. I decided to believe that he had heard me, despite the earbuds in his ears, and that he would watch his sister.
I got back in the car and drove out South Boulder Road until I got to my favorite pay phone outside a convenience store on the outskirts of Louisville, the nearest town to Boulder’s east. Some of my not-so-healthy paranoia also informed me that having a favorite pay phone probably wasn’t a good thing from a security point of view. I made a mental note to find a new pay phone. Or two.
I dropped coins. I dialed with the tip of a key as I tried to keep from imagining what the crusty yellow shit between the buttons of the pay phone might be. “Hi,” I said. “It’s me, as promised.”
“New number,” Izza said.
“Different number. Landline.”
“It wasn’t five minutes.”
“I underestimated. I am sorry.”
“From my end, it’s hard to tell the difference between underestimating and lying.”
Her words, I thought, though accusatory, lacked zeal. I had prepared myself for Izza’s wrath—I had earned Izza’s wrath—but all I was getting was a matter-of-fact recounting of the fact that I’d dissembled. The paucity of zeal left me off balance.
“Guilty,” I said. “I did mislead you.” I allowed her an opportunity to respond. She didn’t. I asked, “How is your father, Izza? I recall that he was ill.”
Five seconds passed before she said, “He died last fall, Alan.” Those words were spoken with no lack of zeal; they were sharpened to a fine edge.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” I said.
“How did you know he was sick? My father?”
“You told me. That first day at the ranch? The day you walked me through the cottage. You were explaining to me that your father and Big Elias didn’t get along well. That’s when you explained that your dad was in and out of the hospital.”
“I don’t remember that part.” She grew quiet. “I remember other parts better. The parts when you were deceiving me.”
My clear disadvantage unnerved me. I didn’t know what to say.
She said, “Did I mention anything else about them? My father? Or Elias Contopo?”
Izza’s questions sounded sincere, not like the questions of someone setting a trap. I remained cautious; I knew I could be misreading her. I was adept at misreading women.
Lauren, not Izza, had told me that Big Elias had been blackmailing Izza’s Irish father about his immigration status. Izza had never revealed that during my visits to the cottage. I reminded myself that I had to be careful with Izza—she had seen the drawing that Elias Tres Contopo had made the night that Sam had visited Frederick to commit murder.
“I think you said that they had been friends at one time. But no longer, that there was some tension between them.” I suspected that Izza’s father died unaware that his wife—raped by his ex-friend—was actually the mother of Big Elias’s son, Segundo.
Izza had learned that part of her family history. But Izza did not know that I knew. That information, too, had come my way via Lauren.
“Yes,” Izza said, as though my words had kindled a memory. “But I don’t think I mentioned anything to you about Elias Contopo and his grandson, Elias Tres.”
I was perplexed. Lauren had told me about Big Elias’s abusive behavior toward his grandson, but I didn’t recall that Izza had ever mentioned it to me. I was wondering if it was important. I considered the possibility that Izza had begun testing me.
“You spoke a little about Elias Tres. I got the sense that you are fond of him. Smart kid? But, no, you didn’t talk about him and his grandfather.” I almost said “not to me.” I didn’t. Whew.
I was eager to believe that the purpose of this call was uncomplicated, that Izza was trying to clarify some things in her mind about our earlier meetings. I was trying to convince myself that I was fine with that motivation.
Then Izza said, “I saw your daughter dancing at your wife’s funeral.”
YouTube. Damn YouTube. My working hypothesis about the purpose of the call required some fine-tuning. Izza had learned I was married. And she knew that Lauren, my wife, was dead.
I fell back on the safe ground of apology. I wasn’t sure what else I had to offer. “I am sorry, Izza. For misleading you about that.”
“Why did you do it? Why did you come out here that day? Why did you lie to me? Why have you continued to lie to me?”
I couldn’t tell her that I had to familiarize myself with the circumstances of the place where my friend had murdered her father’s tenant. So I said nothing.
“It would help me to know. Please.”
Her plea sounded sincere. And a little heartbreaking. I reminded myself that her grief for her father was as fresh as mine was for my wife.
Izza said, “I knew her, you know. Your wife.”
The words had the slightest hint of I gotcha in them.
Yes, I thought. I do know that you knew her.
12
I HAD DREADED THE POSSIBILITY that I might someday arrive at that specific juncture in a conversation with Izza. It was one of many reasons I hoped never to speak with her again. The reality that she wanted to talk with me about her only meeting with Lauren meant I had reached a huge choice point. Do I tell Izza more lies? Do I offer some edited version of the truth? Or do
I hang up, and hope that she leaves me alone?
Lauren had revealed to me that she’d met with Izza immediately before she came to my office the morning the Dome Fire started in Boulder Canyon. The same morning she was shot. But Izza had no way to know that I knew about her meeting with Lauren.
Revealing the truth to Izza would be absurd.
At the time that Izza met with Lauren, Izza didn’t know that Lauren knew me. Let alone that she and I were married. It wasn’t until Lauren and I spoke in my office later that morning that I told my wife about my involvement in the murder in Izza’s cottage. The timing meant that Izza could not have learned anything about my role from Lauren.
Lauren had led me to believe that her conversation with Izza that morning concerned Elias Tres—and his drawing and his memories—from the night of the murder. It was Lauren, not Izza, who had recognized pertinent details revealed in the drawing and the memories, and it was Lauren who reached the—correct—conclusion that her car had been used in the crime, and that the driver of that car had been Sam Purdy.
Lauren was always circumspect when talking about her work. She never would have revealed to Izza, a potential witness, what the facts she had just learned might make clear about the old murder in the cottage.
Lauren came to my office immediately after her meeting with Izza to warn me that she had reason to have Sam arrested. She told no one else before she told me.
How was I so sure of that? Because if Lauren had told any of her colleagues what she had learned, Sam would have been arrested later that very day.
Where did that leave me? It left me certain—well, almost certain—that Izza and Lauren never spoke about my possible involvement in the death in the cottage on Izza’s family ranch in Frederick. In Izza’s mind, my crime was deception. Not homicide.
But the damn YouTube video meant that Izza had learned I had a personal connection to the Boulder County prosecutor who had been coordinating the investigation of the Frederick murder with the Weld County prosecutor.
That, I decided, was what her call to me was about. My deception. Had to be.
Telling Izza the truth about my subterfuge during my initial visit to her cottage was out of the question. I began juggling the nature of the pretense I might adopt when—
Unless— Christ. There’s another possibility.
What if someone in the DA’s office, like Lauren’s assistant, Andrew, or Lauren’s boss, Elliot Bellhaven, had subsequently informed Izza that Lauren visited me that morning after Izza’s meeting with her? Or what if Izza had worked out the logistics herself from reading news reports? It was possible that sufficient facts were online for anyone assiduous enough, and motivated enough, to piece them together.
What if Izza already knew that I had met with Lauren right after the meeting when she had turned over Elias Tres’s drawing that morning?
Was Izza trying to see if I would lie to her yet again?
My paranoia upshifted. What if Izza was working with the Weld County DA—or, God forbid, with Elliot—to try to discover exactly what Lauren and I had spoken about that morning before Lauren was shot?
What if the phone call I was having that very moment was bugged not from my end, but from Izza’s end?
My pay phone subterfuge in Louisville? It would be laughable.
I had a headache from juggling the consequences of the permutations.
“No comment?” Izza said. “Really? I thought you would find that curious. That I knew your wife.”
No more lies from me. “I know that Lauren had been out to Frederick. Did you meet her on one of those visits?”
“Briefly,” Izza said. “But that wasn’t the only time.”
I said, “I still have a difficult time talking about her.” No lie there. Not too much truth, either. No important truth. Not for Izza.
“Would you like to know about the other time?”
“Sure.” I was thinking that if she tells me about the meeting the morning Lauren was shot, then I don’t have to lie and tell her I don’t know about the meeting.
“I took Tres to meet her. He told her some stories, about his memories.”
I waited. After about ten seconds, she said, “This is when you ask me about those stories. Tres’s stories about the night the tenant died. In the cottage.”
“I was thinking that you would tell me if you wanted me to know. It sounds like you would like to tell me, Izza. If that’s true, I would like to hear. Very much.”
She laughed an unkind laugh. “Ohhh, that’s right—you’re a shrink. I forgot that for a second. But that was something else you neglected to tell me at the beginning.” She paused. “Sins of omission, and sins of commission.”
“Those stories?” I asked. “From Tres?”
“Maybe another time,” she said. “He saw a lot that night. The night the woman died in the cottage. He saw the car. The man. But he was such a little boy. He may have seen too much. Maybe I’ll tell you another time.”
I felt like I could drown in the vulnerability I was feeling. I said, “Are your new tenants working out well? The couple from Wyoming? I hope so.”
She laughed again. “Do you really think I called to chat? You think I want to be your friend? You really don’t want to tell me, do you?”
“Tell you what?” God.
“The reason you came to the ranch pretending to be interested in renting the cottage? That. Tell me that. Or the reason you were so interested in the previous tenant who committed suicide in the living room? That, too.
“Or we could talk about the reason I drove to Boulder with Tres to talk to the Boulder County deputy district attorney. Who just happened to be your wife? How about any of that? Alan Gregory. Doctor Alan Gregory.”
Good list. Not comprehensive. But a fine start. “I will listen to whatever you have to say, Izza. You have my complete attention.”
“That’s it? I have your attention?”
Izza had a sarcastic gene. I said, “Yes.”
“Has it crossed your mind that this isn’t about you, you … stupid fool? That it might help me to know what the hell was going on that night? That it might help me to know what that little boy has gone through? That maybe you’re not the only one who is hurting? Who has lost? Who is lost? That maybe you’re not the only one who has a child to worry about? Have you considered that?” She hung up.
… not the only one who has a child to worry about?
The truth was that I had not. Considered those things.
With Izza, from the moment I first made her acquaintance, I had been using almost all of my energy considering ways to cover my ass.
13
I KNOCKED ON THE DOOR of Ophelia’s doublewide. Sam’s Cherokee was outside. It had not been there when I drove away in search of my favorite pay phone.
Ophelia answered the door. I tried not to let my eyes drift south to her almost-always almost-exposed breasts. Experience told me that if her boobs were covered, they were hardly covered. I succeeded in not shifting my eyes in their direction.
Pretty much.
“You looking for my koala?” she asked. She had a variety of endearing names for Sam. Most were variations on the bear theme.
The first time I heard Ophelia employ a bear endearment I found it quasi-cute. But as the range of bears morphed—Sam could be a koala, a teddy, a polar, a grizzly, or a panda—my tolerance diminished. Only someone in love with Sam, sweet romantic love—the kind that distorts senses and judgment—could mistake the man for a koala.
If Sam were a bear, he was the freckled northern pale bear.
“I am, Ophelia. I’m sorry to intrude without calling.” With dismay I realized that Ophelia looked and smelled of sex. She was being gracious even though I had just busted up a nooner. “I, uh, I won’t keep him for long. I promise.”
“Oh don’t be sorry. No matter,” she said, opening her eyes wide as she broadened the smile on her face. “We can just start up again, you know, from scratch. Sometimes that’s better.”
Her eyes sparkled to emphasize her sincerity. “People get weird about mulligan sex, but I don’t know why. Who the hell is keeping score?”
“I couldn’t agree more,” I said, even though I could hardly have agreed less. I was busy shooing away unsavory visual images involving the role that Sam’s naked ass might play in the mulligan erotics. It was possible that for the rest of my life I might suffer unwelcome confabulated images of Sam as an ursine furrie.
A moment later he came to the door in boxers. If I had seen his naked abdomen before, I’d suppressed it. Barring the blessing of fresh traumatic repression I would no doubt recall the present opportunity with unfortunate clarity. Sam had no dearth of body hair—the hue was gray-orange, basically the color palette of a moldy pumpkin—and the sheer size of his belly had me thinking marine mammal thoughts. As earlier, with Ophelia’s bosom, I endeavored to keep my eyes from drifting farther south to whatever bits Sam might have left inadvertently overexposed.
Once again, I succeeded. Pretty much.
“Sorry about the timing,” I said. “Can we talk? Elsewhere? It’s important. Otherwise, I wouldn’t—”
He held up two fingers and closed the door. I couldn’t tell if Sam had flashed me a peace sign or a two-minute warning. Probably not a peace sign.
He was dressed when he rejoined me on the deck. He slammed the doublewide’s door behind him. It didn’t thunk. Not even close. “You want to get a coat?” he asked me.
I hadn’t realized I was underdressed. “I’m not cold,” I said. With the exception of a paltry few storms our winter had been barely recognizable. More days in the fifties and sixties than the twenties and thirties.
“Suit yourself. But at some point soon you will be.” He pointed northwest.
The coming storm loomed. The wind was starting to whip in gusts. We walked out the lane. Sam was right; I should have been colder than I was. I said, “I was surprised to see your car here today. I thought you had Simon this whole week.”
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