“Are they retired?”
“For the most part. Basically they just went home.”
“Home to San Miguel?”
“Home to Mexico.”
“Didn’t you grow up here?” I asked him, surprised. Everything about him was ostentatiously north of the border.
“Sure,” he said. “But my father’s…um…work meant we had to move around a lot. You understand. So my parents never really had a home of their own to go back to.”
I thought he was deliberately making it sound as if his father had followed the crops and he had grown up in migrant-labor camps. I also had the feeling it was very probably untrue, that this was some kind of test. If I believed his father had been a bracero, I would never in a million years ask what he had done for a living.
“What did your father do?” I asked him.
He grinned. “Actually, most recently he’s been a consultant for the World Bank.”
I knew it had been a trap. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of reacting. “And don’t he and your mother find San Miguel a little quiet?” I asked him. “As I recall, there isn’t much to do there except shop.”
“Well, my mother’s an artist. But really, I think they moved there because my grandparents came from Dolores. That’s nearby.”
“Your grandparents are still alive?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. It’s hard to explain why they would go back. I think they were afraid of losing Mexican values.”
I saw that he was serious. “What are those?” I asked him.
“Family, land, the village—it’s better defined by what it isn’t. Mexico is afraid of becoming too modern, too American. There is too much freedom here. Like the Garden of Eden, after the fall.” He looked up. “Sorry. I don’t know why I’m talking like this.”
“Please, go on. I’m interested.”
He spread his hands wide. His fingers were long and slender. “The other thing is that America is too Protestant.”
I thought of the huge Latin population of Southern California, the missions, and all the Catholic churches. “Even here?” I asked incredulously.
“Sure. In Mexico you’re Catholic just by inhaling. Here, well, the ethic is all different. You are what you do. Work is what’s valued, achievement is what lifts you out of what you are and makes you rise above your father. A Mexican doesn’t necessarily want to rise above his father. Work is a curse. He works very hard, but he isn’t defined by it. His family, his friends, his leisure—those are the things that make him what he is.”
I wondered what it was like for him, growing up with a foot in two camps. “Is it really so different?” I asked him. “It sounds as if you’ve given it a lot of thought.”
He laughed. “I just read Richard Rodriguez, like everybody else. But I think he’s right.”
“What about you?” I couldn’t help asking.
“I got the worst of both worlds. I don’t do anything but work, but I don’t necessarily enjoy it.” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
Over coffee and sorbet, he told me a little bit about his marriage. He and his wife had been introduced by their families, “the old-fashioned way,” he said, but there was nothing forced, only the suggestion that they might be very well matched.
“We were, too,” he said with a distant smile. “We liked the same movies, the same books, the same—” He stopped and shrugged. “Well, we were pretty young, and it’s much easier to mold yourself then. We were happy for a long time.”
“What happened?” I asked him gently.
He sat up straighter on the couch. “We didn’t have children. Elena took it very hard. There were endless tests.” He spoke quickly, as if speeding through the topic would render it painless. “She was coming back from the doctor’s office when she—she was in an accident. The car was totally demolished. She never woke up.” His face was drawn, his eyes filled.
“God, how terrible. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. I used to wonder if things would have changed between us, if she’d lived.” He looked at me. “You understand.”
I certainly did. I nodded.
“I should just be grateful for what we had. But when a relationship ends like that—when someone dies—there’s so much unfinished business. It took me a long time to get over it.”
I wanted to know whether the unfinished business had been strong enough to keep him from getting involved with anyone else. Eight years is a long time, and he was an undeniably attractive man. But the conversation had already gotten far more personal than he might feel comfortable with. David Sanchez had said more about his feelings in one evening than Steve had confessed in a year and a half. Steve had tried introspection once, and he didn’t like it.
David seemed to come to a somewhat similar conclusion. There was a lull, like one of those dramatic pauses in a Chekhov play where the characters mentally take stock and then go off in an entirely different direction. He looked at his watch. “I seem to be talking too much, and we have your papers to get through. Did you want to work here?”
“I’ve set things up for you in my office,” I told him. “There’s better light, and you can close the door. I’ll leave you the coffee pot.”
He grinned. “No distractions.”
“Right.” I thought of the files I had left for him on the desk. Suddenly the thought of exposing someone who cherished loving memories of his dead young wife to the Hamptons’ marital poison filled me with qualms. Worse, I didn’t want him to think I was interested in it because my relationship to Steve had been anything like Eleanor’s to Barclay.
“Look,” I told him as I gathered up the cups, “I’ve put the legal and financial documents on top, but some of the other things in the file are pretty…”
He raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
“Pretty ugly,” I finished, after due consideration. “And personal. I left them for you because I didn’t know what might be important. That’s the only reason all that stuff is in there.”
He nodded. “I know. I saw a sample when you brought the files to the office, remember?” He shrugged. “It makes me glad I didn’t go to law school and become a divorce attorney. Dealing with Wall Street sleazeballs looks a lot easier.”
“Okay. I just wanted to warn you.”
“Relax,” he said shrewdly. “I won’t hold it against you; I promise.”
I led him into the office, showed him where the bathroom was, and then I closed the door and left him alone on the theory that hovering would not be productive of insights. I took down an old copy of Pride and Prejudice, which had never, in the eight or so times I had read it, failed to engross me no matter how turbulent my state of mind.
A pleasant hour later I looked up from the party at which Elizabeth exchanged confidences with Mr. Wickham regarding Mr. Darcy to find David Sanchez watching me from the hall, a dazed and inscrutable expression on his face. He looked as if his reading had been considerably less enjoyable than Jane Austen.
“How’s it going?” I asked, trying to keep it light, although in reality I was somewhat panicked because there was only half an hour left on the meter.
“I’m just taking a break,” he said. He rubbed his eyes. “Jesus, the poor woman,” he said, shaking his head. “She was certainly determined, wasn’t she?”
I nodded. I wasn’t sure what to say. I still didn’t know if she was determined and right or determined and wrong, and time was running out.
He went back into the office and I tried to go back to Jane Austen, but this time I couldn’t concentrate. I kept looking at my watch, wondering how he was spending the last few minutes he had promised. Finally I got up and began clearing the table. If all else fails, you can always take refuge in domesticity. The half hour passed. Then another fifteen minutes. He was on overtime. I was on the last piece of silver, putting it into the drawer, when he came into the kitchen, carrying his empty cup and the carafe of coffee. We looked at each other.
“Ummm…” he began.
>
My heart sank. “It’s okay,” I said quickly, to mask my disappointment. “You gave it your best shot. I can’t ask any more than that.”
He took off his reading glasses, folded them, and put them away in his pocket. Then he crossed his arms and looked at me. “You really are a pessimist, aren’t you?”
“If you expect the worst, you won’t be disappointed.”
“You should be in my business,” he said with a smile. “Look, it’s late, and I should be getting home. But if it’s all right with you I’d like to take these with me and finish them up in my office. I need to check on a couple of things. I promise I’ll Fed-Ex them to you tomorrow or the next day. Unless you have a fax machine?”
“Certainly not.” I hesitated. “Are you just being noble because of the ossobuco, or did you really find something?”
He laughed. “Actually, it was the blackberry sorbet. I’m not promising anything, but there are some papers I’d like to take a closer look at. I don’t want to say any more than that until I’ve thought about it. Look, I know you don’t want to let these things out of your sight, but I can’t really do them justice here. If you could trust me with them for just a day or two, I could be much more thorough about investigating them.”
I wondered if he thought I’d forgotten that only a few days before, I’d had to wheedle and bribe him to take a look at the papers at all. I knew something had to be up. “I guess that would be okay,” I told him, “if you’ll promise me something first.”
He looked amused. “What’s that?”
“That you won’t use anything you find in those files without getting permission from me first.”
He seemed taken aback, and then he laughed. “Jesus, you’re a tough one,” he said.
“Yes, I am.”
“Okay,” he sighed. “It’s a deal.” He extended his hand.
I took it. “Great,” I told him. “I’ll help you collect them.”
He stopped me. “Caroline?”
“Yes?”
“Whatever else turns up, thank you for the dinner. I really did enjoy it.”
I helped him put the files into his briefcase. He turned and strode to the door. “Bye,” he said. “I’ll be in touch.” He turned back. “Say good night to Jason and Megan, please. I enjoyed meeting them.”
“I will,” I said. “Good night.”
When the door had closed I went to the window and stood behind the curtain, holding it back with my hand and looking out onto the street, like a character out of Rear Window. He was sitting behind the wheel of his car, looking at papers, with the interior light on. The car was something sleek and comfortable-looking, but I couldn’t tell what it was in the dark. I could ask Jason in the morning. He always noticed people’s cars.
David seemed to stare into space for a few minutes, as if he were thinking. Or maybe he was just tired.
After a while, as I was about to let the curtain fall from my hand, he switched off the light and drove away.
16
The doorbell rang with the persistence of missionaries or Greenpeace. It was eleven o’clock, and I was up to my elbows in laundry. My arms were extended as wide as possible as I tried to subdue the disorder of some clean sheets. My mother could fold them effortlessly into precise rectangles, but I had never, even after so long, gotten the hang of it. The fitted ones were worst of all.
“Coming,” I called as the doorbell sounded again.
I looked out the peephole into another eye, large and malevolent, peering in. I drew back.
“It’s me,” said a muffled voice.
I figured a homicidal maniac wouldn’t announce himself with “It’s me,” so I opened the door. Still, if you think about it, it might have been a clever ruse.
“You certainly took your time about getting to the door,” Rob said, striding past me into the living room. “I’ve got an appointment in half an hour, so I don’t have long.”
Rob’s entrances were rarely self-explanatory, though he usually acted as if they must be. I waited.
“Well?” he demanded.
“Well, what, Rob?”
“Well, how was your date? Your evening. Whatever. Don’t try to be coy. I saw David Sanchez’s delectable ass moving up your walkway last night. How was it?”
“How was it?”
“Jesus, Caroline. Don’t make me beg. I’m practically salivating, and you’re playing dumb.”
“What do you do, Rob, watch the neighborhood with binoculars? Get a life.”
“Cute. You’ve made your pro forma protest in the name of good taste. Now are you going to tell me or not?”
I plopped down on the couch. “There’s nothing to tell. It wasn’t a date.” I saw his expression. “Really, it wasn’t. He’s looking over those papers of Eleanor Hampton’s. You remember.”
“Honest to God. You really did it. I didn’t think you’d have the nerve.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked him, alarmed. “It was your suggestion that I get him involved in the first place. All I did was ask him to help.”
“Well, it was a great way to get him to your house,” he said admiringly. “Did you by chance fix him a home-cooked meal, too?”
I blushed. “Rob—”
“Aha!”
“Rob, will you stop it? You make it sound like the opening stratagem in Lovelace’s campaign to seduce Clarissa.”
He made a face. “Must you throw around that English major bullshit all the time? You’re just showing off.”
“I’ll have you know that Clarissa is probably the most boring book ever written,” I sniffed. “If I can’t throw out apt references to it now and then, what’s the point of having had to suffer through more than a thousand interminable pages?”
“Is this the advantage of an expensive education? So you can bore all your friends, too?”
“Are you bored?”
“Exceedingly. Or at least I will be, if you don’t come clean about last night.”
I sighed. Sometimes it was just easier to give him what he wanted. “It was only dinner, Rob. The kids were upstairs. We talked for a while, and then—”
“What did you wear?”
“Pasties and a G-string. For Christ’s sake, Rob, this reminds me of high school.”
“Why should that bother you?” he asked indignantly. “I adored high school. Anyway, you’re deliberately leaving out the good parts.”
“You mean the part where he puts down his violin and I lick champagne off his bare chest as we lie entwined on the dining room table? Grow up!”
He grinned. “You may laugh, but if you don’t make at least a tiny push to interest a man like David Sanchez, you’re an idiot. He’s rich, he’s good-looking, and he’s apparently normal, which has got to make him a hot commodity in the marketplace. He’s certainly better than another glowering workaholic lawyer. Take my advice and don’t go prosing on about Eleanor Hampton all the time, or he’ll run the other way, fast.”
“That’s going to be difficult, since he’s the one going over her papers,” I said coolly, to demonstrate how indifferent I was to whatever direction David Sanchez might run. “Besides, I haven’t told you my latest theory about Eleanor and Barclay. I think he might have killed her.”
His reaction was disappointing, to say the least. “Oh, really?”
“Do you want to know why?”
“Not in the least. Didn’t we have this conversation already?”
“Yes, but that was before I uncovered all the things you don’t seem to want to hear about,” I told him.
“Don’t pout. Tell Uncle Rob all about it, if you can condense it into five minutes or less.” He glanced at his watch.
I did, but he was still unmoved. “Don’t you even care?”
He shrugged. “This is your crusade, not mine. If I saw him stab her with a Henckels Four-Star, I’m not saying I wouldn’t turn him in, but you don’t have a shred of evidence even to suggest she was killed, much less by her husband. So what if the
re was a man in a suit leaning into the hot tub? Maybe it was the meter reader with a hot date. And even if you do find out she was blackmailing him, so what? You still don’t have any proof the police would listen to.”
His casual dismissal deflated me, but I persisted. “Well, actually, I was hoping Kenny could tell me if there was anything the police might have overlooked.”
He frowned. “Look, Caroline, I love Kenny; I really do. Aside from our sleeping together, he was the only one in the tangle of snakes that comprise my successive step-families who behaved halfway decently and didn’t try to take my mother for everything she’s got. He’s sweet. He’s a hunk. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” He sighed. “But you have to realize that intellect is not his strong suit. He may have been there on the day they found Eleanor’s body, but what they mostly have him doing is handling complaints down in the village, like when some hapless tourist spends too long on the benches outside McDonald’s and the Ladies Who Lunch get up on their high horse about uppity riffraff.”
I smiled. The presence of a truncated version of McDonald’s on Prospect, the tony street running along the edge of the sea, was an acrimonious controversy in the village, particularly after the installation of the benches, which presumably would lead to crimes like Loitering with French Fries and besmirching the sidewalk with ketchup smears.
“You can laugh,” he said, “but you don’t want him blundering around the Homicide Department with a lot of impertinent questions. It could get him in a lot of trouble.” He crossed his legs meditatively. “And you, too, for that matter. Let’s just say it would hardly be wise to go around accusing a partner in a major law firm of murdering his wife, particularly when the police have closed the investigation. There are libel laws for situations like that. Barclay could sue you for any little thing Steve leaves behind after he takes you to the cleaners in your divorce. And even if he didn’t collect, your lawyer would. Christ, Caroline, you were married to one for a decade and a half. Didn’t you ever learn to think defensively?”
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