Looking for Laura, page 8
“Oh. Well. Let me look.”
Yes, it sounded good. Of course it did. Todd, the intrepid reporter, the muckraker, the only man in Winfield willing to take on city hall in the matter of sewer improvements, had failed in his mission. Sally might not be a newspaper editor with a degree from Columbia University and a shitload of connections in town, but she was obviously a lot smarter than Todd.
Patty put her on hold. She shifted on the desk, smoothing her paisley skirt under her. Sitting on the hard surface, she felt pressure on the bones in her bottom. She’d lost a few pounds in the past couple of months. All those flavorless, well-intentioned casseroles had suppressed her appetite.
Patty returned to the line with a click. “He had two clients named Laura,” she reported. “Laura DelVecchio you probably know. She lives right here in town. She was at the funeral.”
“Of course,” Sally said, thinking, Laura who? She didn’t remember half the people who’d clasped her hand and recited clichés about brilliance-struck-down-in-its-prime and how Paul was in a better place now—which, when Sally had thought about it, seemed kind of insulting, as if being dead was better than being married to her. If Laura DelVecchio had been among those mea-lymouthed mourners, Sally doubted she was the same Laura who had written Paul the letters. A woman having an affair with a married man wouldn’t have been likely to shake Sally’s hand and murmur platitudes in the funeral parlor. She’d have stayed away, or at least not introduced herself to the grief-stricken wife of her lover.
Nonetheless, Sally scribbled Laura DelVecchio’s name on the message pad Greta left beside the phone. “I think it must be the other Laura,” she lied smoothly, “because in her note she said she’d only just heard that Paul had passed away.”
“Well, that would be Laura Hawkes, from Boston.”
“Yes, that’s it,” Sally said with conviction.
Patty read off her address and Sally wrote it down. After abundantly thanking the secretary, she hung up and whooped a laugh. Take that, Todd, she thought. All his sleuthing had come up empty. But Sally’s sleuthing had paid off. He could keep the damn letters as long as he wanted. She didn’t need them to figure out who and where Laura was.
One simple phone call, and she was hot on the woman’s trail.
He was standing on her front porch when she arrived home with Rosie a little after four o’clock.
As Sally steered her car up the street, Rosie spotted him and said, “Look, there’s Daddy’s Friend with the computer games. See, Mommy? On the porch.”
Sally saw. Muttering a few juicy words, she jammed a little too hard on the brakes. But Rosie’s safety seat held her securely in place.
“Did you use a swear, Mommy?” she asked.
“Of course not.”
“It sounded like you said fuck.”
“I didn’t. And don’t you say that word, either.”
“What does it mean?” Rosie asked.
“It means, this is a word I should not say.” Sally coasted to the house and into the driveway.
At least his shirt was buttoned and his hair was dry. It looked as if he had combed it several hours ago and then spent much of the intervening time standing in a wind tunnel. Dark waves tumbled over themselves in a wild mess that needed someone to tame it.
Actually, Sally preferred wild to tame. But not when it came to Todd or his hair. She didn’t prefer anything about him.
She stopped the car and reminded herself to be courteous. He’d been courteous to her when she’d dropped by his home uninvited and interrupted his supper. And anyway, she had nothing to lose by being courteous. She was way ahead of him in the Laura race. She could be generous in victory.
She unfastened the buckle on Rosie’s car seat and helped her out of the cushioned shell. Then she hauled her tote bag from the back seat and smiled politely at Todd. “Hi.”
“Hi,” he said. No sharp edge to his voice, no accusation in his gaze. No hostility in his loose-limbed posture.
He must have come to return the letters. He must have realized that Paul’s betrayal of her was much greater than his betrayal of Todd, and he was going to do the gentlemanly thing and let her be the more aggrieved party.
“I was wondering if I could talk to you for a few minutes,” he said, sounding almost friendly, even a little apologetic.
She liked this. She liked Todd minus his arrogance, Todd kissing up, Todd being obsequious. Not that asking her for a few minutes of her time was the same thing as throwing himself prostrate at her feet, but she liked it.
“Sure. Do you want to come in?”
“Thank you.”
Todd being obsequious would likely grow nauseating after a while, she realized as she unlocked the door and led him inside. He didn’t care for her. Never had, never would. If he was acting nice, it had to be because he wanted something from her.
“Did you win Dark Thunder?” Rosie asked as they gathered in the entry hall.
He peered down at her, obviously bemused. “What?”
“Dark Thunder. The computer game. Did you win it?”
“No.” He must have sensed that Rosie needed a more elaborate answer than that, because he added, “I don’t enjoy computer games.”
“But you have them. That’s stupid, to have things you don’t even enjoy.”
“Those were your father’s games,” Todd explained.
“Did you bring them here? I could teach you how to play them and then you’d enjoy them. I could teach you even if you’re stupid. Lots of stupid people play them. Do you want an animal cracker? That’s one of my favorite snacks, except for scones.”
“Scones?” He shot an even more bemused look at Sally.
“I bring leftovers home from the café. Blueberry scones are her favorite.” She headed down the hall to the kitchen to get Rosie some animal crackers. She supposed she should offer Todd a drink or something, too. He hadn’t offered her anything at his home yesterday, but she could be more hospitable than he was. “Would you like a beer?”
The question seemed to stun him. He halted in the kitchen doorway, staring at her as if he wasn’t sure who she was. She hoped he’d say no to the beer, because there were limits to how sociable she wanted to be—especially while he had the Laura letters in his possession. But she didn’t regret having offered the drink, because it threw him off balance.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you something.”
She tossed her bag onto the table and pulled a box of animal crackers from the cabinet for Rosie. “Go ahead and ask,” she said, setting the box on the table before Rosie.
His gaze circled the room, taking in the stained-glass ornaments that hung on hooks suctioned to the window, the sun filtering through the tinted glass to spray multicolored light on the opposite wall. He continued his survey of the room, which was larger than his kitchen but furnished with older appliances. Several of Rosie’s drawings were fastened to the refrigerator with magnets. A wicker basket filled with coupons, pencil stubs and scraps of string stood on the counter. The braided rug on the floor was slightly off center. Rosie had probably kicked it out of position when she’d scampered into the room.
“Do you wanna learn how to play DragonKeeper?” she asked before taking a lusty bite of one of the crackers. “I’m real good at that game, too. I’m prob’ly the best computer-game player I know, now that Daddy is dead.”
“I can’t believe your father was much of a computer-game player,” Todd remarked. “He had too much important work to do.”
Oh, yes. Important work, Sally thought, suppressing a snort. Important work like plugging people’s names into boilerplate wills and proofreading real-estate sales contracts. And scheduling rendezvous with his paramour. Very, very important work.
Todd let his gaze settle on the doorway. Sally guessed that he wanted to leave the kitchen. To get away from Rosie, no doubt. If Sally had been feeling vindictive, she would have ignored his hint and made herself comfortable in the kitchen, forcing him to remain there, as well. But he’d been exerting himself to be nice, so she decided to exert herself, too. Kissing the crown of Rosie’s head, she said, “Daddy’s friend and I will be in the living room.”
Todd gestured for her to precede him from the kitchen, and he followed her into the living room. Unlike his, it wasn’t teeming with books and model cars. It was occupied by a collection of stuffed beasts—Rosie’s menagerie—and enough potted plants to reforest large swaths of Brazil. Teeming with life and color, it was a much prettier living room than Todd’s.
Sally settled on the sofa, and he perched on the ottoman in front of what had once been Paul’s easy chair. Paul used to growl whenever anyone else sat in it, and for the first few months after he died, Sally hadn’t been able to bring herself to use it. Once she’d found the letters, however, she’d happily slouched in it, desecrating it by propping sweating glasses of iced tea on the upholstered arms of the chair and resting her feet on the ottoman without removing her shoes first. Who cared? Her husband had defiled their marriage. She could defile his chair.
She watched Todd fold and unfold his thick fingers, tap his foot, scrub a hand through his hair. Then he offered a patently strained smile. “I was going through that list I found on one of the disks from Paul’s office,” he said.
“The list of his classmates from prep school?”
“I don’t think they’re from prep school,” Todd told her. “I called a few of the numbers. I went oh-for-five. None of them prepped with Paul.”
She tried not to look as curious as she felt. She was grateful to Todd for sharing this information with her, and it made her want to know more. “Who were they?”
“Other lawyers, mostly.”
“Really? All those names?” Just a bit more proof that there were too many lawyers in the world. “Why was he storing their phone numbers on a disk?”
“I thought you might know.”
She pondered the possibilities. “He wasn’t serving on any American Bar Association committees,” she said. “Maybe he was planning to run for office in the ABA.”
“One of them said something…” He eyed her, as if trying to decide whether to share his information with her.
She gave him what she hoped was an ingratiating smile.
“He implied that Paul wasn’t satisfied with his current position.”
“You mean, he was thinking of leaving Wittig, Mott, Driver?” Sally fell back against the sofa cushions. A strange lump dug into the small of her back. Reaching behind her, she pulled Mr. Pinko, Rosie’s stuffed baby pig, from where he’d been wedged into the upholstery and tossed him onto the floor with the other animals. “No,” she said. “He would have told me if he’d been planning to leave the firm. He had no reason to want to leave. His home was here in Winfield. His family. His roots.” But not his mistress. Laura Hawkes was in Boston.
Oh, God. Had he been planning to abandon her and Rosie? To move to Boston, join another firm and start a new life with Laura?
That Sally could have been living with him, sleeping with him, building her life with him while he’d been plotting under her nose to run off and join a new practice sent a ripple of horror through her. She already knew she’d been blind when it came to her husband; now she was learning she’d also been deaf and extremely dumb.
“Maybe he wasn’t looking for another firm to join,” Todd suggested. “There were at least fifty names on that list. Why would he be looking into fifty different partnerships? I think maybe the list was for something else.”
She tapped her fingers together to burn off nervous energy. “Maybe it was a list of experts,” she suggested. “Lawyers who’d tried certain kinds of cases. He might have wanted to have a list so if he ever faced a similar case he could call someone for help.” As if he ever faced a case in Winfield that would have taxed his knowledge of the law. Oh, those wills and real-estate transactions! Bring on the courtroom powerhouses!
“Well, here’s what I was wondering,” Todd said, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Maybe Laura is one of those names. I know, they were all men’s names, and the few I called were men. But they could have been covering for Laura, or Laura could have been the partner of one of them. And she could have been on the list. Some of the names had just initials.”
“Was there an ‘L’?”
“No, but…Look, if he was having an affair that he didn’t want anyone to know about, he’d disguise her name, wouldn’t he?”
“By hiding it in a list of fifty other names? Or do you think he was having affairs with all fifty people on the list?” It was an outrageous charge. Paul didn’t have enough energy to have that many affairs. Even as fit as he was, he’d never have been able to juggle fifty tootsies. He’d still been making love to Sally, after all. Sally plus Laura plus fifty more? No way.
“Or maybe Laura was the wife of one of them. Maybe they were lawyers he’d met at parties, and Laura was at one of the parties.”
“If he went to parties, he didn’t take me along,” Sally told him. As happy as she’d been not to have to socialize with his business associates, now she wondered whether he’d been even happier. Without her by his side, he’d been free to hit on other women.
If he went to parties. Which, Sally was reasonably sure, he didn’t. Not very often. Not in Winfield.
“I was really hoping you might be able to help me out here,” he said. She didn’t like the way Todd was looking at her. His eyes were too dark, too beseeching. She could imagine him asking for a bank loan, or wheedling information for a newspaper article out of the mayor, or inquiring if a sweet young thing might consider spending the night with him. With his dark, dangerously beautiful eyes, he probably had an easy time of enticing people into doing his bidding.
She wasn’t a mayor or a loan officer, and she definitely wasn’t a sweet young thing. Yet simply looking at him made her regret that she couldn’t help him out.
She could. She could tell him about Laura Hawkes in Boston. She’d found out about Laura Hawkes herself, outinvestigating the investigative reporter with a fancy degree from an Ivy League school of journalism, the fellow with a million connections in town, the man who knew about everything and everyone, from the mayor to Joey the Crazy Guy, who stood on the corner of Main and East streets, playing a steel drum and improvising calypso songs about the pedestrians strolling past him, from the president of Winfield College to the locals who played pool all night in the neon-lit bars on the south side of town.
But he didn’t know about Laura Hawkes.
Sally did.
He’d come to her hoping she could help him. If she wanted to, she could. If she thought about the fact that they’d both been deceived by Paul, and he did have that list and it might hold some vital piece of information that she might eventually need…
She could help him. If she felt like it. If she forgot how annoying it was to have him staring at her with those deep-set eyes, using them to seduce her into not hating him.
Or she could help him for the extremely selfish reason that joining forces with him might enable her to find Laura Hawkes more quickly and efficiently.
“All right,” she said. She’d probably regret mentioning this once she thought about it, but she didn’t feel like thinking about it anymore. She didn’t feel like acknowledging that Todd had somehow gotten to her. She was tired—it had been a long day—and for some reason, she didn’t have the strength to despise him right now. “I’m going to Boston this weekend to find a woman,” she said. “Her name is Laura Hawkes, and Paul knew her, and maybe she’s the one. If you want, you can come, too.”
Six
Sally stood on her front porch, hands planted on hips, and glowered at his car. “You drive a Snob?”
“It’s a Saab,” he said, clamping a lid on his temper, “and I’m doing the driving today.” He had to remember that she’d been extraordinarily generous in sharing her information with him—and letting him accompany her to Boston. But he’d be damned if he’d travel to Boston in her car. She drove a soup can on wheels, and if he was going to embark on a two-hour drive, particularly with her in the seat next to him, he wanted to make sure his transportation wouldn’t conk out en route.
Her little girl pushed past her and scampered down the porch steps. “What a cool car!” she screeched.
Take that, Sally, he thought smugly. Your daughter has better taste in cars than you. And why shouldn’t she? She carried Paul’s DNA in every cell of her stumpy little body.
Sally descended from the porch at a plodding pace, disapproval emanating from her in nearly palpable waves. Todd stood resolutely beside his silver 900S. Three years old, it took as good care of him as he did of it. Its five-speed manual gave him the power he needed, and its leather seats gave him the comfort he deserved.
She frowned as she circled the car, scrutinizing its slanting hatchback as if it were the devil’s personal ski slope. “Well, if you insist on doing the driving, I’m going to have to get Rosie’s car seat.”
“Her what?” He spun around, searching for the little girl he’d fleetingly liked because she’d said nice things about his wheels.
“Her car seat.” Sally yanked up the garage door and vanished inside.
“She’s not coming with us, is she?” he shouted into the garage’s shadows.
Sally emerged holding an object of molded plastic layered with padding in strategic places. “Of course she’s coming with us. What did you think, I’d leave her home alone?”
“No. I thought you’d leave her home with a baby-sitter.” Like a normal person, he added silently.
“She’s coming with us,” Sally said with finality. “Does that car of yours—” her nose twitched in disapproval when she uttered the word car “—have a tape deck or a CD player?”
