“What if it’s true? Is that bad?”

“For both of us. The cops will know that your husband found out we were seeing each other again.”

“But it was almost innocent.”

“Almost,” I said. “That’s a hole big enough to drive a prison van through. It gives us both a motive.”

“So what do we do?”

“Gregor said he’s looking for Miles Cave. The police asked me about the very same name. Do you know this Cave person?”

“No,” she said.

“Ever hear of him before?”

“An old friend who had something to do with Wren’s business.”

“What was he, a patient?”

“No, not a patient. Wren had retired from medicine.”

“A little young for the old-age home, wasn’t he?”

“The retirement was not wholly by choice. Wren was sued. By a bitter transsexual whose sex-change operation went bad.”

“There was a lawsuit?”

“It didn’t go well. After the loss, the hospital suspended his privileges. So Wren, who had been losing interest in penises anyway, found a new profession in money management.”

“What did he know of money management?”

“Not enough, I suppose. The company, called Inner Circle Investments, was having trouble. And one of the names I heard Wren mention in his business conversations was Miles Cave.”

“Was he a partner?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“An investor?”

“I never met him.”

“And you told that to Gregor?”

“He was a bit skeptical, but he didn’t know Miles Cave either.”

“So,” I said, rounding out the vowel as I thought it through, “no one knows who this Miles Cave is.”

“I suppose.”

“A mystery man who might be the key to everything.”

Julia looked at me for a moment, her face a cipher as she worked it out, and then she smiled. “So he might be the one,” she said.

“He might.”

She stepped up to me and grabbed my belt. “How do we find out?”

“We do the most obvious thing.”

She leaned forward, rose on tiptoe, kissed me again. I reached inside the shirt, grabbed her waist, pulled her close, kissed her back. Even as the figure sprawled on the floor stared gape-mouthed at us both, I kissed her back.

You want to know what deceit tastes like? It’s sweet. Like honey. Charged with electricity. Laced with amnesia. It is why adultery will never go out of fashion, why sincerity fails, why sex with strangers is more fun than ever it ought to be. It is the very taste of old love reclaimed, which might be the sweetest deceit of all. The taste of her made me stupid, and the more I tasted it, the stupider I wanted to become.

She pulled away slightly, moved her chin to the side, her lips to my neck. “What do you mean, ‘the most obvious thing’?”

“You want to find the dirt in this world, there’s only one route to take.”

“What’s that?”

“Follow the money.”

I bent her back like a bow and snapped at her ear.

“Maybe it’s time,” I said, “for the grieving widow to claim her marital assets.”

16

I had a moment of clarity the next morning, when I spied Julia Denniston walking up Locust Street to meet me in front of the offices of Inner Circle Investments.

She was well dressed, in widow black, of course, her figure thin, her legs long and well shaped. Her stride was her usual careless glide, but now with the edge of some intriguing sense of purpose. Her head, covered by a black, wide-brimmed straw hat, swiveled easily on her proud neck, her inky black hair was silky and well coiffed, the flow of her arms was loose. She was a lovely woman, absolutely, as lovely as hundreds who walk back and forth on Locust Street each day. But she wasn’t as young as the woman who first caught my eye in that coffee bar, and there was now a brittle disappointment that showed in her tense eyes. Objectively, she was nothing to get all shivery about, nothing to get stupid over. You put her in a lineup and you’d pass her by and pick that one, the other one, with the green eyes and the breasts of a Big Ten cheerleader.

What the hell was I doing?

Then she spotted me and smiled, and I remembered. I remembered the fever I had felt the night before, the fusion of desire and remembrance. She wasn’t just another appealing woman on the street, she was my heartbreak and my history and my hope.

She came up to me, put her hand on my forearm. “Hi,” she said with a lover’s intonation, which meant she had a long memory, because we still hadn’t as of yet consummated our reunion. The night before, she had pushed me away even as her earlobe was pinched between my teeth. It was late. Gwen was still awake. It was too soon after her husband’s death. It was like he was still in the room. “All the better,” I had said, with the tact of a brontosaurus in heat, but still she had pushed me away and still I had let her.

“You ready?” I said now, as we stood outside the building.

“I suppose.” She glanced up at my hair, squinted a bit, looked back into my eyes. “So you think this Miles Cave gambit will work?”

“We’ll see.”

“It would be good, Victor. For us, I mean.”

“For us?”

“It would give us a chance.”

“A chance to stay out of jail, maybe.”

“More,” she said. “If we can send the police off chasing after this Miles Cave, that might give us the time we need to undo all the regrets. He could be our last best chance.”

“Just so long as he can take the fall.”

“Yes,” she said, her chin rising at the flat tone of my voice. “Just so long.” She looked at me, reached a hand to my cheek, and then let her eyes drift up again. “What’s wrong with your hair?”

“You don’t like it?”

“It’s like an oil well vomited on your head.”

“I bought some gel. When we meet this Mr. Nettles in your husband’s office, I want to look just right. Today, in order to find out what I can about our boy Miles Cave, I’m playing the part of your slick, amoral lawyer, out to grab for you everything he can, including the wallpaper and the desks.”

“Don’t you think you overdid it a bit?”

“Absolutely. A little gel looks like you’re trying. A lot of gel looks like you’re trying way too hard. And way too much gel makes you look like a demented grave robber, which, for today’s purposes, I think, is perfect.”

Inner Circle Investments was housed in an old brownstone with a series of metal plaques bolted into the stone by the door. There were lawyers’ offices, there was a psychiatrist, and there was Inner Circle, taking up the whole of the third floor. An almost perfect combination, I figured. First you give your money to a broker, then you get your head examined, then you sue.

“Mrs. Denniston, hello,” said Ernest T. Nettles as he bounded out in shirtsleeves and suspenders to greet us in the deserted outer office. “We are all so sorry for your loss. I’ve only recently come aboard and so didn’t know your husband very well, but I’ve heard much about him.”

“Thank you,” said Julia softly, as if fighting back tears. Nice job on her part, I thought.

“Mr. Carl, it’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” said Nettles. “I’m sorry the secretary isn’t here, she would have wanted to greet you both personally. She is at the courthouse, doing some filing or other. Come, come into my office, both of you. Let’s talk.”

We followed him through the doorway and into a desolate hall lined with empty offices, until we reached his, a nice corner job with dark wood furniture and oil paintings of sheep. Nettles was a cheerful man, short and stocky, with round glasses and shaggy gray hair. He gestured us to sit on a couch, he sat perched on an easy chair beside us.

“Do you know yet when the funeral will be, Mrs. Denniston?” said Nettles.

“As soon as the police release the body,” said Julia.

“Please let us know. We’ve had many calls from those who wish to pay their respects.”