Tell Me No Secrets (11 page)

She ejected the boxes from the high shelf with one grand sweep of her hand, protecting her head as it rained shoes around her. “Where is it?” she cried, spying something shiny and black beneath some crumpled white tissue paper.

A pair of black patent high-heeled shoes, she discovered, wondering what had ever possessed her to purchase shoes with four-inch heels. She’d worn them exactly once.

Jess finally discovered the small snub-nose revolver hidden behind the enormous cloth flowers that adorned a pair of pewter pumps, the bullets painstakingly lodged inside the shoes toes. Her hands shaking, Jess loaded six bullets into the barrel of the .38 caliber Smith & Wesson that Don had insisted she take with her when she moved out on her own. “Call it my divorce present,” he’d told her, brooking no further discussion.

It had sat in the shoe box for four years. Would it still work? Jess thought, wondering if guns carried the same sort of “Best if used before” warning that came with dairy products and other perishable items. She let the gun lead her back into the living room, tapping its short barrel against the light switch and throwing the room into darkness. The canary abruptly stopped singing.

Jess approached the window, the gun at her side. “Just don’t shoot yourself in the foot,” she cautioned, feeling as foolish as she did frightened, parting the lace curtains with trembling hands.

There was nothing there. No white Chrysler. No white car of any kind. Nothing white except the snow that was gradually peppering the grass and pavement. Nothing but a quiet residential street. Had there been a white car at all?

“Your mistress is definitely going crazy,” Jess told her canary, leaving the room in darkness. She covered the bird’s cage with a dark green cloth and turned off the radio, carrying the gun back to her bedroom, freshly carpeted with shoes. Why couldn’t she collect stamps? she wondered, surveying the mess. Stamps definitely took up less space, were less messy, less subject to the frivolous dictates of fashion. Certainly, nobody would have criticized Imelda Marcos for collecting three thousand pairs of stamps.

She was getting giddy, she realized, squatting on the floor and starting to tidy up. There was no way she’d be able to sleep when the floor of her bedroom looked like it could be declared a national disaster area. Assuming she could sleep at all.

“What a night!” she said, staring at the gun in her hand. Would she have actually been able to use it? She shrugged, grateful not to have been put to the test, and returned it to the shoe box behind the large cloth flowers of her old pewter pumps. Guns ‘n Roses, she thought, immediately lifting the gun back out.

Maybe it would be a better idea to hide it somewhere a little more accessible. Even if she wasn’t ever going to use it. Just to make her feel better.

Opening the top drawer of her night table, Jess tucked the gun into the rear corner behind an old photograph album. “Just for tonight,” she said out loud, picturing herself trying to outrun a pack of bloodthirsty pit bulls.

Just for tonight.

J
ess was the first of her party to arrive at Scoozi, located on Huron Street in River West. Unlike the small, dark bars along California Street, where Jess and her fellow prosecutors were more used to hanging out, Scoozi was an enormous old warehouse that had been converted into a restaurant and bar, with huge, high ceilings, and old Chicago-style windows lined with shelves of wine bottles. A giant art deco chandelier hung down into the center of the ersatz Tuscany-style room. To the back sat a big clay pot filled with bright, artificial flowers, to the front an always crowded bar. The main floor of the restaurant was filled with well-lacquered wooden tables; to either side sat a raised deck with booths and still more tables. Jess estimated the large room could easily accommodate over three hundred people. Italian music played loudly from invisible speakers. All in all, the restaurant was the perfect choice for celebrating Leo Pameter’s forty-first birthday.

Jess hadn’t seen Leo Pameter in the year since he’d left the state’s attorney’s office to go into private practice. She was sure the only reason she’d been invited to his birthday celebration was because the entire eleventh and twelfth floors had been asked. She was less sure why she’d chosen to accept.

It was something to do, she supposed, smiling knowingly when the maître d’ told her no one else from her party was there yet, asking if she’d like to wait at the bar. The bar was already crowded, despite the fact it was barely six o’clock. Jess checked her watch, more for something to do than for the information it could provide, and wondered again why she was here.

She was here, she told herself, because she’d always liked Leo Pameter, although they’d never had the time to get really close, and she’d been sorry to see him leave. Unlike many of the other state prosecutors, Greg Oliver among them, Leo Pameter was soft-spoken and respectful, a calming influence on those around him, possibly because he never let his ambitions get the better of his good manners. Everyone liked him, which was one of the reasons everyone would be there tonight. Jess wondered how many people would show up if the birthday party were for her.

She grabbed a fistful of pretzels and some kind of cheese crackers in the shape of little fish and stuffed them into her mouth, watching as several of the fish tumbled from her hand onto the front of her brown sweater.

“Let me get that for you,” the male voice said playfully from the seat beside her.

Jess quickly brought her hands to her chest. “Thank you, I can do it myself.”

The young man had a thick neck, close-cropped blond
hair, and a big barrel chest that stretched against the silk of his kelly green shirt. He looked like a football player.

“Are you a football player?” Jess asked without meaning to, picking the wayward fish off her sweater.

“Can I buy you a drink if I say yes?” he asked.

She smiled. He was kind of cute. “I’m waiting for someone,” she told him, turning away. She had no room in her life for kind of cute.

What was the matter with her? she wondered, grabbing another handful of fish crackers. Everyone kept telling her what an attractive woman she was, how smart, how clever, how talented. She was young. She was healthy. She was unattached.

She hadn’t had a date in months. Her sex life was nonexistent. Her
life
, outside of the office, was nonexistent. And here was this nice-looking guy, maybe a little
big
for her taste, but nice-looking nonetheless, and he was asking her if be could buy her a drink, and she was saying no. Was this what Nancy Reagan had in mind?

She turned back toward the would-be football player, but he was already engaged in conversation with a woman on his other side. That was quick, Jess thought, coughing into her hand so that no one could see her blush. What had she been thinking? Had she seriously considered letting some stranger in a bar pick her up because he was kind of cute and she was kind of lonely? “Kind of stupid,” she muttered.

“Sorry?” the bartender asked, although it was hardly a question. “Did you say you wanted something to drink?”

Jess stared into the bartender’s somber blue eyes. “I’ll have a glass of white wine.” She took another handful of fish and stuffed them into her mouth.

“God, would you just look at the crap she eats,” came the voice behind her.

Jess spun around, spilling a small school of fish onto the lap of her brown skirt, jumping off the barstool to her feet. “Don! I don’t believe this.” His arms quickly encircled her, drawing her into a warm, comforting embrace. She was disappointed when he pulled away after only several seconds.

“Once again, it’s not quite the coincidence you think it is,” he explained. “Leo and I went to law school together. Remember?”

“I’d forgotten,” Jess admitted. Or had she? Had she suspected Don might be here tonight? Was that at least part of the reason she had come? Was he the someone she’d told the would-be football player she was waiting for?

“I knew you’d be the first one here. Thought we’d come early to keep you company.”

We? The word fell, like a blunt instrument, on Jess’s ears.

“Jess, this is Trish McMillan,” Don was saying. He pulled a pretty woman with short blond hair and a wide smile to his side. “Trish, this is Jess.”

“Hi, Jess,” the woman said. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

Jess muttered something inane, conscious of the woman’s deep dimples, and the fact that her arm was around Don’s waist.

“What are you drinking?” Don asked.

Jess reached behind her for her drink. “White wine.” She took a long sip, tasted nothing.

Trish McMillan laughed, and Don beamed. Jess felt confused. She hadn’t said anything funny. She surreptitiously checked her sweater to determine whether any
stray fish might be clinging to her breasts. There weren’t any. Maybe Trish McMillan was just one of those sickeningly happy people who didn’t need a reason to laugh out loud. Don had been right. Her laugh
was
wicked, as if she knew something the rest of the world didn’t, as if she knew something that
Jess
didn’t. Jess took another long sip of her drink.

“Two house wines,” Don told the bartender. “My treat,” he insisted when Jess began searching through her purse for her wallet. “You here alone?”

Jess shrugged. The question didn’t require a response. Why had he asked?

“I haven’t seen Leo since he left the department,” Jess said, feeling she had to say something.

“He’s doing very well,” Don told her. “He went with Remington, Faskin, as you know.” Remington, Faskin, Carter and Bloom was a small, but very prestigious Chicago law firm. “Seems very happy there.”

“What do
you
do?” Jess asked Trish McMillan, trying not to notice that her arm still encircled Don’s waist.

“I’m a teacher.”

Jess nodded. Nothing too impressive about that.

“Well, not just a teacher,” Don embellished proudly. “Trish teaches over at Children’s Memorial Hospital. In the brain ward and dialysis unit.”

“I don’t understand,” Jess said. “What do you teach?”

“Everything,” Trish answered, laughing over the rapidly increasing din of the restaurant.

Jess thought: Everything. Of course.

“I teach kids in grades one through twelve who are hooked up to dialysis machines and can’t get to school, or
kids who’ve had brain operations. The ones who are in the hospital for the long haul.”

“Sounds very depressing.”

“It can be. But I try not to let it get me down.” She laughed again. Her eyes sparkled. Her dimples crinkled. Jess was having a hard time not hating her. Mother Teresa with short blond hair and a wicked laugh.

Jess took another sip of her drink, realized with some surprise that there was nothing left, signaled the bartender for another, insisted on paying for it herself.

“I understand you had a rather heated session this afternoon,” Don said.

“How’d you hear?”

“Word gets around.”

“Hal Bristol has a hell of a nerve trying to get me to go for involuntary manslaughter two weeks before the trial.” Jess heard the anger in her voice. She turned to Trish so suddenly the woman jumped. “Some bastard shoots his estranged wife through the heart with a crossbow, and his lawyer tries to convince me it was an accident!”

Trish McMillan said nothing. The pupils of her dark eyes grew larger.

“Bristol’s claiming it was an accident?” Even Don sounded surprised.

“He says his client didn’t mean to shoot her, only frighten her a little. And why not? I mean, she’d provoked the poor guy beyond reason. Right? What other options did be have but to buy a bow and arrow and shoot her down in the middle of a busy intersection?”

“You know that Bristol was probably just trying to get you to settle for some middle ground.”

“There is no middle ground.”

Don smiled sadly. “With you, there never is.” He hugged Trish McMillan closer to his side.

Jess finished her second glass of wine. “I’m glad you’re here,” she announced in as businesslike a tone as she could muster. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Shoot.”

Jess pictured herself behind the antique lace curtains of her apartment window, staring onto Orchard Street, gun in hand. She wished Don bad chosen another word.

“What kind of car does Rick Ferguson drive?”

Don cupped his hand to his ear. “Sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

Jess raised her voice. “Does Rick Ferguson drive a white Chrysler?”

Don made no effort to hide his obvious surprise. “Why?”

“Does he?”

“I think so,” Don answered. “I repeat, why?”

Jess felt her empty glass start to shake in her hand. She brought it to her lips, steadied it with her teeth.

There was a sudden explosion of sound, voices raised in greetings and congratulations, backs being slapped, hands being shaken, and in the next instant, Jess found herself on one of the raised decks at the side of the room, another drink in hand, a party in full steam around her.

“I hear you really let old Bristol have it,” Greg Oliver was bellowing above the din.

Jess said nothing, searching through the crowd for Don, hearing Trish’s wicked laugh mocking her from the far end of the deck.

“I guess word gets around,” she said, using Don’s earlier
phrase, catching sight of her ex-husband as he introduced his new lady to the rest of the gathering.

“So, what’s the story? Are you going to settle for murder two? Save the taxpayer the expense of a hung jury?”

“I take it you don’t think I’ll get a conviction,” Jess stated, despair gnawing at the pit of her stomach. Did he always have to tell her what she didn’t want to hear?

“For murder two, probably. Murder one? Never.”

Jess shook her head in disgust. “The man murdered his wife in cold blood.”

“He was half out of his mind. His wife had been having an affair. She’d taunted him for weeks about his failings as a man. It got to be too much. They had a horrendous fight. She said she was leaving him, that he’d never see his kids again, that she’d take him for everything he owned. He just snapped.”