11

“SO WHAT do you think?” said Beth.

I was sitting in my office, remembering Hailey as compulsively as if I were worrying a loose tooth, when Beth strolled in and collapsed into the client chair opposite my desk. A document of some sort was clutched in her hand.

“Think about what?” I said.

“About whether Guy killed Hailey Prouix.”

“It’s not our job to figure that out.”

“I know, I know, I know, but still.” Her eyes widened. “What do you think?”

“I think he’s presumptively innocent,” I snapped, pretending to concentrate on something on my desk. “I think we should leave it at that and not act like amateurs.”

“Don’t get snippy about it, Victor. Are you okay? You look like hell. Maybe you need a break. Maybe you should make a date with that mysterious woman you’ve been seeing.”

My head jerked up and I stared at her, bewildered.”Who?”

“I thought you were in the middle of a big romance, sneaking out of the office in the early afternoons, coming back all bleary-eyed and full of sated smiles. You didn’t say anything, but I could tell.”

My nerves contracted in on themselves as I tried to look calm. I had, of course, never told Beth about Hailey, I had never told anyone – there were reasons in the middle of our affair and there were stronger reasons now – but how could I not have figured that she had known I was at least seeing someone?

“It ended,” I said. “Badly. She wants to be friends.”

“Oooh, that’s hard.”

“And not even good friends, more like distant acquaintances who, if we happen to see each other in a theater, nod but make no effort to say hello.”

“That’s really hard.”

“Just to be sure, she changed her number. I think she might have even changed her name. Last I heard she was on a tramp steamer to Marrakesh, which is pretty much a distance record to avoid seeing me again.”

Beth laughed, which was what I wanted. Both of our love lives were in perpetual states of ruin and we liked to comfort one another by detailing our most recent disasters. “Didn’t one of your old girlfriends join the Peace Corps?” she said.

“Yeah, but she was assigned to Guatemala, which is at least in this hemisphere.”

“Maybe that’s why you’ve been acting like you’ve been acting,” she said.

“How have I been acting?”

“A little strange, a little mysterious. Doing things no one would expect from you, very un-Victor-like things.”

“Like what?”

“Like taking this case without a retainer.”

“He’s a friend. He said money would be no problem.”

“Is that what he said? And you believed him?”

“I’ve a trusting soul.”

“Right. And Emily Dickinson was a party girl. And then you up and turned the murder weapon over to the detectives.”

“I was obligated,” I said. “I’m an officer of the court and I held material evidence.”

She leaned forward, stared at me as if she had those X-ray spiral glasses they advertise in the back of Archie comics. “And far be it from you ever to mess with your obligations as an officer of the court.”

“Far be it. What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know, Victor. What should I be getting at?”

I shrugged, but my canary in the mine shaft was making like Pavarotti. If she suspected something, she who knew me best, someone else might, too. I had to get a grip, I had to start assuaging suspicions, I had to start now.

“I’m sorry if I was short,” I said, as sweetly as I could. “I’ve been on edge about this case, but I shouldn’t take it out on you. Maybe I think Guy’s really in trouble. Maybe I’m feeling pressure because he’s a friend. Maybe I’m not handling it as well as I should. You want to know whether I think Guy did it? Well, I think his story about the headphones and the Jacuzzi and hearing nothing is well neigh unbelievable.”

“What about the gun? Maybe it was silenced, maybe he couldn’t hear it.”

“The gun was a revolver,” I said. “You can’t silence a revolver. And anyway, the biggest trouble is that nobody else seems to have a motive.”

“What about his wife? Hailey stole her husband. Is there a better motive than that?”

“Well, she was angry, for sure. She was even suing the victim.”

“Really?”

“Yes, but that works against her doing it, doesn’t it? I don’t think you just off the object of your lawsuit. You already have an outlet for your anger, and it makes it hard to collect damages. But there’s more. I just got off the phone with a Herb Stein. He was with Leila on a date the night of the murder, at a place called Cuvée Notre Dame on Green Street.”

“Good mussels.”

“So he said. I don’t think we can pin it on her and, frankly, I don’t know who else, besides Guy, might have been involved enough to want her dead.” I leaned back in my chair, stared at the ceiling. “Except, of course, Guy doesn’t have much of a motive either. It’s the weakest part of the government’s case. The why. Why would he be so angry at her as to shoot her through the heart? As long as they don’t have an answer, Guy has a chance.” I took a quick glance at Beth. “That’s why I advised him to reject the government’s offer. There is means and opportunity, sure, but you also need motive.”

“Interesting, because the coroner’s report came in while you were out.” She waved the document in her hand. “Bullet through the heart, like we knew, a bruising on her cheek, like we knew, tubes tied, like we could have expected.”

“Really?”

“And there was one thing more, one quite interesting thing more.”

I raised an eyebrow and waited.

“They found traces of semen inside her.”

“No surprise. She was living with Guy.”

“Yes, except that they did preliminary tests on the sample pending DNA typing. It turns out the semen came from a secretor, so they could do a quick determination of blood type. Type A.”

“That’s common enough. What is it, a third of the population?”

“Forty-two percent, according the report. But we don’t care about the general population, we’re not representing the general population, we’re representing Guy. And that’s where it all starts looking hinky. Guy is type B.”

I bathed my face in false surprise.

“She was cheating on him, Victor. There was another man.”

I stared at her, fighting to remain impassive. “Did he know it?”

“I don’t know.”

“I suppose we’ll have to find out.”

“I suppose we will. But, Victor, Hailey was cheating on him, that is a fact. He can deny knowing it all he wants, but no one has to believe him. Hailey was cheating on him and there, Victor, on a fine silver salver, is your motive.”

I stared at her, stared at her as the case against my client strengthened immeasurably right before my very eyes, based ironically on my own blood antigens, stared at her as Guy Forrest took three giant steps toward a life sentence, and the whole time I was fighting the urge to smile.