Twenty-Three

Ethan actually got up at six-thirty the next morning to walk Warren, who had miraculously made it through the night without fouling any more of our furnishings, although he did show a preference for our living room sofa over his dog bed. We solved this problem by completely giving in to the dog, and throwing a blanket over the couch in case he shed. So much for my being the alpha dog in his pack.

Now, given three days to come up with five thousand words for ten thousand dollars, I decided to forego the Y Friday morning and concentrate on work. Writing is always the least of the job—it’s gathering the information that takes all the time. And I had gathered information, all right. It just fit together like a jigsaw puzzle put together by a klutzy moose.

What I had was a theory that fit the facts I’d discovered, but no evidence whatsoever that the theory was correct. In fact, the proven information on this story would indicate to any sane person that the theory was ridiculously improbable. Luckily, there were no sane people in my office, only a freelance writer. Our usual motto is: “When the facts don’t fit, make sure you get your money in advance.” Of course, I hadn’t done that, so the facts had to fit.

Preston Burke came by that morning for his check, which I wrote out to “Cash,” and handed to him. Then, somehow Burke managed to convince me that the cast iron railing on my front steps needed to be sanded and painted, and before I knew it, he was back at work, happy as a clam, assuming that clams enjoy physical labor in the presence of the husband of the woman you think you’re in love with. You never can tell with clams.

It occurred to me that the best way to put off worrying about who killed Legs Gibson was to worry about who threw a rock into my since-repaired front window. This would be the same person who called my house periodically to make extremely general threats that were sounding increasingly weak these days. If a threatening phone caller can’t even muster up a good scare in a short Jewish freelance writer, he really should give up the pursuit and take up botany, or something.

I called Barry Dutton to see if the rock-throwing incident was still his Number One crime priority, and amazingly, it had dropped down the list. Barry said a couple of bicycles had been stolen from people’s garages, and there were numerous reports of motorists exceeding the twenty-five mile-per-hour speed limit that infests Midland Heights, so the whole rock thing had faded as quickly as Jean-Claude Van Damme’s fame. Muscles from Brussels, indeed.

After Barry, I called my other law enforcement buddy, but Mason Abrams had chosen a very inconvenient Friday to begin a long weekend. Since we in New Jersey often go to Washington for three-day excursions, I assumed Abrams would be on his way to beautiful downtown Newark, whose reputation is not entirely deserved, but whose reality ain’t exactly Venice, either.

All this, and still no additional producers had called to express interest in buying the script. It was enough to discourage a normal man.

There was only one person left to call for business purposes, and I had admittedly been putting it off until it could no longer be avoided. But that calendar on the wall was showing Monday coming up rather quickly, and there was no avoiding Stephanie Jacobs Gibson any longer.

I hate having to call people when I don’t have good news for them. I especially hate it when they are people who loom large in my past, even if the reason they loom so large is driven less by deep feeling and more by hormones.

Actually, that was no longer true. When I was eighteen years old, Stephanie could easily have held me enthralled simply by showing up in the right T-shirt. But now, she represented less a legitimate erotic fantasy and more a symbol of an era that I, to be honest, have remarkably little affection for. I’d much rather be the person I am today than the one I was then. And while Steph could still wear a T-shirt with the best of them, I was married to the best of them, and didn’t have the same empty longing I’d had in high school. But as symbols go, Stephanie was a pretty strong one, and I hated disappointing her. Giving Steph bad news— which in this case could be characterized as no news at all—wasn’t my favorite thing to do that morning. So, I avoided it.

Instead, I called Mahoney on his cell phone. He was, it turned out, halfway between Atlantic City and Newark, traveling between emergency calls for his rental car bosses. He had the phone on speaker, which was evident from the level of noise on my end of the line. But his hands were free. I imagine one of them was probably even being used for steering.

“There’s going to be trouble tomorrow,” I told him. “You want to come?”

“What kind of trouble? Minor household repairs, or foundation work?” Mahoney is, to me, what Bob Vila is to everybody else. Except he’s not on television.

“Neither. Remember the night you spent in my closet?” Of course he remembered. I’d almost gotten shot, and he’d managed to beat up a kid almost thirty years younger than himself. It was quite an evening.

“I believe I do recall a night like that,” Mahoney said.

“It’ll be more like that,” I said.

“Legs Gibson?”

“One and the same,” I told him.

“What the hell. I haven’t faced death in close to six months. What kind of snacks should I bring?” We discussed the menu, he said he’d drive, and we decided to firm up the rest of the details for our brush with mortality later on.

Finally, I couldn’t put off the call to Stephanie any longer. She was at home, and sounded tired and more subdued than usual.

“What have you found out, Aaron?” No small talk, and the tone was less inviting than it had been since this whole thing began. I was starting to feel like an employee.

“Not a huge amount, Steph. But I do know that Lester was in the room when Louis was killed. I can’t tie him to the crime yet, but. . .”

“Lester? Are you sure?” She sounded truly shocked, which surprised me. Ten minutes with Lester in the most casual circumstances could convince you he was capable of violence. Just the way he smiled when he was trying to look friendly was enough to wake me up in the middle of the night for weeks afterward.

“I’m sure, all right. There’s DNA evidence that can’t be explained any other way. Now, where the connection is, I don’t know, but Lester was definitely there. Also, there’s some evidence that Louis may have been illegally funneling money from his foundation into his private accounts. Did you notice any extravagant spending, any financial things that you couldn’t explain, in the past few months?”

Stephanie thought for some time, and answered, “no.” I waited, but there was no elaboration. Just, “no.”

“There’s more,” I told her finally. “I have evidence that Louis might have been killed standing up, and then laid out on the bed to make it look like he’d been there all along. Can you think of a reason someone would do that?”

Again, “no,” this time sounding smaller and more meek.

“We need to meet, Steph. Are you coming up to Jersey for the weekend?”

I got the impression she had her hand over the mouthpiece, but Stephanie came back very quickly. “I hadn’t been planning on it,” she said, “but it sounds like it’s important we see each other.”

“I have to finish the story by Monday for Snapdragon to print it on time,” I said. “That’s why there’s some urgency in the timing.”

“Okay,” Steph said, starting to sound more normal. “I’ll come up. Do you know the Hyatt Hotel in New Brunswick?”

“Sure. I can practically see it from my bedroom window.”

“I’ll be there tomorrow. I’ll call when I have a room number. We can meet there.”

Stephanie Jacobs in a hotel room—there was a time when that would have answered every prayer I’d ever care to offer up, if I was the prayer-offering-up type. Now, it was not quite as exciting as I would have hoped. It was, in fact, just a little bit scary. After all, the woman had come within inches of being arrested for killing her husband, and for all I knew, she had killed him.

But I didn’t think so.