And When She Was Good (20 page)

They were doing that the night Martin died, before the card game. Could that photo be from that very night? But the only person who could expect her to be questioned in Shelley's death would have to be someone who knew what they had in common. And who knew that besides Val?

“I hate not having a dad,” Scott says. There's no self-pity in his voice, but it's such a stark, terrible truth that Heloise again feels that odd sensation she experienced in the police station. Her heart lunges against her rib cage, avid for escape.

To make a clean breast indeed.

But it's the one thing she can never do with her son. Her own mother, whatever her failings, let Heloise see her mistakes. All Scott knows is that he lives in a house of secrets.

“I hate it, too,” she says. For almost thirteen years, from the moment she took that pregnancy test in the diner bathroom, all she has wanted is to give her son everything. But she can't give him a father. A stepfather, maybe, but never a father.

A single word forms in her head:
Out.

She has to get out.

Not because Shelley was murdered.

Not because Sophie is blackmailing her.

She's going to get out so she doesn't have to lie to her son about what she does.

“Scott, how would you feel about leaving Turner's Grove?”

“It depends. Could we go to Florida, where all my cousins are?”

“Well, maybe not Orlando, but somewhere nearby.”

“Do they have soccer?”

“Probably, yes.”

“Could we wait a year, until high school? Because I have to change schools then anyway.”

“Maybe. I'm not sure. I'll do my best.”

“And will Audrey come with us?”

“I hope so.”

Why did anyone need to hope? her mother had asked, or words to that effect. Heloise feels supremely hopeful as she and Scott pat their faces with napkins and then pat the ponies for old times' sake. “I loved doing this when I was little,” Scott remarks, another sucker punch to her heart, but a sweet one. She conceals a smile at his perspective on himself, the idea that he is surveying his childhood from some great distance, and says only, “I love doing it now.” It may be the single truest thing she has ever said. In the fast-falling twilight of an October afternoon, she feels a peace she has never known. She loves her son. She's going to put her past behind her and find a new future, for him.

S
he agrees to let Scott cook dinner, knowing that it will mean a disaster of a kitchen for her to clean and careful supervision of his knife work, now that he insists on using the Wüsthof chef's knife that Audrey gave him. They pick up the groceries he needs to make meatballs—ground beef, pork,
and
veal—and drive home in companionable silence, Scott playing with his iPod in the backseat while she toggles among her news stations—NPR, WTOP, WBAL, soothed as always by the world's events washing over her, a wall of sound and activity that persuades her that things always could be worse, always.

A word, a name, jumps out at her: “Martinez.” She has to wait for the news to cycle around again on WBAL before she hears the full report.

“A Baltimore County woman was murdered in her Catonsville home today in what police say appeared to be a burglary gone wrong. Betty Martinez was stabbed to death in her kitchen while her husband was out with their young son—”

“Mom, why are you pulling off here?”

“Gas. I need gas. Can't risk running out even if we have such a short distance to go.”

She doesn't; she has more than half a tank. But sitting in the full-service lane allows her the time she needs to control her wildly beating heart, which now seems to have broken free from her chest and risen to her throat, where it's on the verge of choking her.

M
ONDAY,
N
OVEMBER 7

H
eloise surveys herself in the mirror. It's odd, worrying that she needs to look her best for Paul, who has seen her in so many lights over the years. Mainly hotel-room light and the light at the Maryland Inn, but metaphorical lights, too.

Now, though, she has to strike his eye as someone new, as someone who is changing, or at least capable of changing. So she is wearing a new suit, a St. John knit, the purchase of which was hard to rationalize, but the creamy beige color is insanely flattering. She has paired the suit with kelly green pumps and a very good fake Birkin. (The years of pretending to shop for luxury goods has made her appreciative of them, if not appreciative enough to pay the full price.) On her wrist is a heavy gold charm bracelet with only one charm, the locket from the necklace that her father gave her when she was fifteen. The chain was cheap—big surprise, Hector Lewis buying something cheap—but the locket is eighteen-karat gold, and she has carried Scott's photo in it since she found the locket in a jumble of costume jewelry, amazed that she still had it, that it somehow survived Billy's most manic pawning phase, when everything went out the door. The heart, with its precious photo and own wily talent for survival, is a talisman, something she needs: a little extra luck.

The radio keeps her company on the drive to the District, although the steady backdrop of news is no longer calming. It has been ten days since the death of the woman that reporters keep calling Betty Martinez, and the story has been featured in almost every local newscast, although it is starting to lose steam for lack of new developments. A burglary gone wrong is the working theory, a theory buttressed by two other break-ins in the neighborhood that same morning. But those houses were empty, whereas Betty had the misfortune to be at home. Caught off guard, the burglar panicked and attacked Betty with a kitchen knife. Everyone seems satisfied with this version of events, and Heloise is still struggling with whether she should contact Detective Jolson. Anonymously, of course.
This is the woman in the photograph with Shelley.
But what if he hasn't shared that photograph with anyone else? He'll know that the note is from her. A tip line has been set up, offering a reward, not that Heloise wants one, but it might be easier to call and inform the operator about the connection between Shelley and Bettina. Jolson will still know it's her. How does she do the right thing without hurting herself ?

Has she ever done the right thing? The thought shoots through her, hot and painful. Bettina is dead, and it's almost certainly her fault. Not that she'll ask Val about it when she sees him tomorrow. For now her only desire is to get through each meeting with Val in a state of cheerful, fake normalcy. By year's end, if everything goes according to plan, she figures she'll never have to see him again.

The sad irony is that Heloise feels safer than she has in years. The shoe has finally dropped; Val has his revenge against his presumed Judas and must be satisfied. Yet a little boy has lost his mother, and that's Heloise's fault. She is not inclined to romanticize Bettina, who was a pretty awful person in her own way, but she apparently was sincere in her yearning for a child, and she was tender with her little boy in the few minutes that Heloise observed. Heloise tries to remind herself that she had no way of knowing what would happen when she dropped Bettina's name to Val all those years ago. She'd assumed that the woman was dead, or as good as; she couldn't prophesy that there would be a husband and a child, a genuine second chance for the junkie-prostitute who had once lunged at her and attempted to pull her hair out at the roots. She was just trying to keep Scott safe, and that required staying alive.

There have been fleeting moments in the past two weeks when she thinks she should find a way to befriend Bettina's widower, marry him, raise their children together. It would be a fitting penance, giving herself to a loveless relationship in order to care for the child she has robbed.

Then the sun finally comes up, and such 3:00
A.M.
thoughts are banished, as they should be.

S
he and Paul have agreed to meet at the Mandarin Oriental, a Washington hotel. She told him she had business in the District and asked if he would meet her there, but that was a lie.
He's
the business. Or will be, she hopes. Although they have sometimes met in D.C. before, it's usually at hotels closer to the K Street corridor. The Mandarin Oriental feels off the beaten path, although it's not that far from downtown. She wonders, as she hands her keys to the valet, at the provisory use of the word “Oriental,” why it's still allowed for hotels and rugs and art.

She is early, by design, and she sips green tea, unaccountably nervous. Why is she so nervous? She's merely following up on the very things that Paul has suggested.

He arrives, his eyes sweeping the room out of habit, but he knows no one here and no one knows him. Is it just her imagination, or does Paul look smaller outside Annapolis, in a room other than the low-ceilinged bar at the Maryland Inn?

“I thought we could do the tasting menu,” Heloise says. “My treat.”

“Really?” Paul is surprised by both her generosity and her hunger. But then, Heloise has never been able to do her job on a too-full stomach.

“I take you to a few meals here and there, so I have something to file.”

“Yes, but it's usually a wedge salad and crab cakes, with dessert if I'm lucky. Okay, I'm in. But no alcohol. Can't afford a DWI on the drive back.”

“None at all?” Paul almost always has a drink with lunch.

“Well—one vodka martini. Is it
just
lunch today?”

“Just lunch,” she says demurely. “I don't have the kind of relationship that would let me take a room here without drawing attention to us. But it is a business lunch. Paul—do you think your . . . uh, associate might still be interested in buying my business? The potential backer that Anna Marie referenced to me when I fired her?”

The question clearly surprises him. Good. That's always an advantage. She's been thinking about this for a while; he probably abandoned the idea after she fired Anna Marie.

“I think the interested party could be cajoled into a negotiation. By business—what do you mean, exactly? What are you selling?”

“The client list, essentially. The current employees, except me. They're under contract. The software I've had developed for billing and bookkeeping, all relevant files—everything but the actual name. I'm keeping that.”

“Why?”

The waiter arrives, and they go through the little dance that the tasting menu requires—no, no known allergies; no, no dislikes. (Paul actually points to Heloise and says, “She'll put anything in her mouth.” It's not the first time he's made a slightly crude joke at her expense, but it's the first time it has annoyed her. She's not on the clock today.) It occurs to Heloise, belatedly, that one is not supposed to eat fish on Monday, at least according to Scott, her little foodie. She's not sure where he's lapped up that particular piece of wisdom. Still, she has to believe that a place such as the Mandarin is invested enough in its reputation to make sure its diners are safe.

Like
you
did?
asks the mocking voice that seems to accompany her everywhere she goes these days. It's Val's voice, even though he doesn't know about her specific problems with Sophie.

“That's part two of what I wanted to talk to you about,” she says, returning to their interrupted conversation. “I thought I would take your advice and become a real lobbyist.”

Paul's just-arrived vodka martini is brimming, and he drinks off a bit—more than necessary to keep the glass from overflowing. “That's a pretty tough transition, Heloise.”

“You were the one who suggested it.”

“I was
joking.
”

She's hurt. But this is business. She can't afford the luxury of taking things personally. “Really? I mean, I understood you were teasing, of course, but I thought there was a germ of a good idea.”

“There is. You have the skills. You have the contacts. There's a real overlap. Theoretically, it makes sense.”

“What's the problem in reality?”

“Unless you have a lot of money put away, it will take you years to get the kind of paying gigs that will replace your income.”

She hasn't considered this. “I could sign on with one of the big firms, take a salary.”

“They won't want you. The big boys, Heloise. The hard-core ones, the cutthroats who make a million a year—”

“Yes, I know who they are.”

“And they know who
you
are.”

“I've never dealt with any of them professionally. I've been careful about that.” She has in fact eliminated a few lobbyists through her screening process, inferring that they were trying to get their feet in the door to find out if they could offer her services much as they gave away sports tickets and cases of liquor. Why use a middleman when she had already tapped the source?

“Do you honestly think they don't know about you? Dirt is currency for these guys.”

“I'm not dirt,” she says.

“Of course you're not. It's only—these guys make it a point to know everything. And to use everything they know.”

“Okay, so they've heard about me. Why couldn't one of them hire me, put me on salary while I develop a boutique sideline within the firm, doing the kind of social-justice issues that don't appeal to them anyway? Make the lie of income parity true once and for all.”

Paul sips his miso. “That almost could work. Except— Look, I'm just going to tell you the truth, Heloise. The best guys have rivals, and the rivals would expose you in a heartbeat, if they thought it would work to their advantage.”

The waiter arrives with an extra course, an
amuse bouche
. Heloise doesn't think any part of her can be amused just now.

“Besides, most of these guys would expect you to do for free what you've been charging for. Not out-and-out sex. But you would be hired for your, um, decorative quality, your manners. You'd be like a geisha. Yeah, they'd let you lobby for this little issue or that one, for appearances' sake, but you wouldn't have any effect. They'd want you for the list of men you'd slept with. You'd be sort of an implicit threat of blackmail. ‘Look who works for me, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.' Is that what you want?”

It occurs to Heloise that Paul can't help but be self-interested on this score. He's particularly vulnerable to the very scenario he's sketched.

“I still want to keep the name,” she says. “Do you really have a buyer, or was that another
joke
?”

“I do,” Paul says. “But he has to stay anonymous.”

“That means he wants to pay cash, I assume?”

“Of course. And if he pays cash, you can't report it, Heloise. I know you've always been careful about money, staying legit with the IRS, but this can't be one of those times.”

“I figured as much.” She had, but the idea still makes her stomach flip. She may not fear Val anymore, but she still fears the IRS.

“And by the way”—Paul clears his throat, takes another hearty swig of his drink, coughs when it goes down wrong—“I'd expect a finder's fee. From your end.”

She's pretty sure that Paul is getting it from both ends, but she merely nods in agreement.

“Even without putting anything in writing, it would be good for you to have a lawyer, maybe an accountant, who can review this for you.”

“That I have,” she says, smooth as the tofu that she is fishing out of her miso. She will consult Tyner if needed.

“May I ask why you changed your mind?”

She shrugs. “Time for something new.”

“Is there heat?” Worriedly, his self-interest rising to the surface again. But who is Heloise to criticize someone for being self-interested?

“No, not on the business.” She considers, for a moment, telling him about Shelley and Bettina, about Val. Maybe even Scott, the real reason for the change. The truth is, she's about as close to Paul as she is to any other adult—except for Val. Audrey knows more about her, but she's still an employee, and a little too worshipful of Heloise to be a true confidante. Heloise and Paul are kindred spirits, bound by their pragmatism, she supposes, a willingness to pretend to play by rules they don't endorse. They not only accept the need for appearances, they excel at them.

No, even now she will not tell him about Scott.

“Do you like your wife?” she asks. Blurts, really.

Paul almost chokes on the lovely tuna tartare that is the first course. The dish has become omnipresent in Heloise's considerable restaurant-going experience, but when it's done right, even her mediocre palate can appreciate it. “Where did that come from?”

“I mean—I understand your problems, why you stay. But you loved her, right? The day you got married? You were in love?”

“I was twenty-three the day I got married,” he says. “That young man felt and believed a lot of things that this guy can barely remember.”

“Of course. Yet—you go home to her. Eventually.” She knows that Paul stays in Annapolis whenever he can make the excuse of work and not just because he needs a cover for a meeting with Heloise or one of her girls. Sometimes he simply can't bear to go home, where Heloise knows he is lonelier than he is in a room at the Maryland Inn, watching CNN in his shorts.

“I admire her, as a mother and a person,” he says. “She's been a good partner to me, supportive of what I wanted professionally. As for her—limitations. Well, for better or worse, right? Besides, divorce is expensive. You end up with two households, two sets of bills. I have better uses for my discretionary income.”