A Picture of Guilt (27 page)

“Really?”

“Well, maybe.”

He grinned. I stayed a few more minutes, thinking Sandy might show up, but when she didn’t, Hank walked me to the door. As I took the steps down, I turned around.

“Hey, thanks for the tea.”

“
BRAAAP
.” He saluted.

***

Angry whitecaps roiled the lake as I took the Drive north. Between the afternoon rush, which seems to start around three these days, and an early dusk, it would take over an hour to get home. I was heading west on Peterson when I noticed the SUV following me. At first, I tried to put it out of my mind. If I ignored it, it didn’t exist. But three minutes later, when it was still there, I checked the rearview mirror for plates.

There weren’t any.

At least in front. I pulled over to let it pass so I could spot the ones on its rear. But as I slowed, it did, too. A ripple of unease ran through me. Finally, it turned off onto a side street.

Susan showed up after school, looking chic in black wool pants and a royal blue sweater. I’ve never seen her with a hair out of place, a stain on her shirt, a snag in her pantyhose. I don’t know how she does it. She’s just as busy as me—maybe busier. I brewed coffee, feeling grungy in my sweats.

We took our mugs into the family room. A rerun of
Nova
was on TV. It was a show about sharks and the divers who photographed them off an island near Costa Rica. There were lots of dreamy underwater sequences where hammerheads and manta rays peacefully coexist. I wondered what kind of video equipment the divers were using and how they could shoot film and breathe at the same time.

Susan settled into a chair. “I have a good one for you.”

I flipped off the tube. “Shoot.”

Susan has her fingers on the pulse of village life, a situation for which I’m exceedingly grateful. Without her, I’d be bereft of the giggles and snide comments a good gossip supplies.

“You know Carol Bailey, right? Two small kids, really involved in IAS?”

I nodded. The Infant Aid Society luncheon is an annual September tradition on the North Shore. Over five hundred women, in elegant fall finery, gather inside a huge tent on a palatial Winnetka estate for lunch and a fashion show. The proceeds help provide day care for disadvantaged mothers struggling to get their lives in order. Having gone to the luncheon once or twice, I feel nothing but admiration for the hostess who sacrifices her lawn to a thousand shoes and metal stakes every year.

“Which one is Carol?”

“She’s on the board. Always talking up the Society and the vital services they’re delivering.”

A hazy image floated into my mind. “Tall, thin, blond, I-hate-you-cause-you’re-gorgeous looks?”

“That’s the one.” Susan paused, a twinkle in her eye. “Well, Carol was arrested last week.”

“What?”

She dropped her voice to a whisper. “Child endangerment.”

“No.”

“She left her kids in the car to go in for a manicure, and when she came out, two police officers were waiting for her. She had to beg them not to call DCFS.”

“My God. What happened?”

“Her husband eventually showed up.” Susan tore open a packet of sweetener and dumped the whole thing in her mug. “I guess they worked it out. But still. There’s this new state law, you know. Twelve thousand dollars if you leave your kids alone in the car.”

“You think she paid it?”

She sipped her coffee. “Probably not. Family connections, you know.”

“I know.” I sipped my coffee. “People like that make me mad.”

“People with connections?”

“No. People who are hypocritical about themselves.” I waved a hand. “Like people who drive to an Earth Day rally in their SUVs.”

“Or give money to MADD and then drive drunk?”

“Or get ticked off when a dog poops in
their
yard, but won’t use a pooper scooper on
others
’.”

We both laughed. She raised her mug. “This is good.”

“It’s vanilla.”

There was a clatter from the kitchen. I turned to see Rachel righting a cereal bowl she’d somehow upended on the counter. I watched as she got milk out of the fridge, poured it into the bowl, and grabbed a spoon from the drawer, all the while conspicuously avoiding my eyes.

I turned back to Susan, whose eyebrow was arched so high it could have been in St. Louis. “All is not happy in paradise, I see.”

I shrugged.

“What happened?”

I told her about Rachel’s tantrum.

When I finished, Susan fixed me with a penetrating look.

I braced. “Okay. Let’s hear it. You’re not happy with me, either.”

“The issue isn’t whether I’m happy, Ellie. It’s whether you are.”

“Susan, you need to understand something. David was the one who said we needed to take a break. Not me.”

“Why?”

“You know what’s been happening since I testified. Things around here haven’t been what you could call normal.”

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe getting trapped in fires is part of your self-improvement program.”

“David can’t handle it.”

“Can you blame him?”

I fumed. “I know he’s concerned, but if it were up to him, I’d live in a perfect little room with perfect furnishings—you know, like that room Keir Dullea ended up in in
2001
.”

Susan put her mug down. “Ellie, you’re probably my closest friend. You could rob a bank, overthrow the government, and I would still love you. But sometimes I wonder if you know what you’re doing.”

“Susan—”

“No, let me finish. You have this wonderful man who adores you and your daughter. There’s nothing he wants more than to be with you for the rest of your life. So, what do you do? Dredge up some lame philosophical excuse why it’s not working out, push him away, and then go running around with an FBI agent, who—” she made imaginary quotation marks in the air “—you’re suddenly ‘helping’ on an important case.”

“Susan, I told Rachel, and I’m telling you. There’s nothing there. It’s a totally professional relationship.”

“Okay.”

“Anyway, that has nothing to do with David.”

“Except for the fact that he’s not around, and this guy is.” She peered at me over her coffee cup. “Oh yes. And the fact that David loves you.”

I frowned. I thought of the weekend at the Greenbrier. The surprise at the Four Seasons. The way he took care of me after the trial. The plans he was always making. “But he’s always doing nice things.”

“Always doing nice things, huh? As in ‘I love you and I want you to be happy’ nice things.”

I didn’t answer.

Susan flipped up her palm. “Hmm…Let’s see. Here we have a generous man, who wants a loving, intimate relationship.” She flipped up the other. “And here we have an FBI agent who gallops in like the Lone Ranger, and will probably gallop right out after whatever ‘case’ you’re working on is over. But, of course, he’d be glad to give you a ride on Silver first.” She alternated raising her hands, as if weighing the scales of justice. “Gee, I wonder which is the better deal?”

The way I was feeling, a ride on Silver might not be a bad idea. Fast. Fun. No strings attached. But I couldn’t say that. “Susan, you can’t really believe I’d break up with David for an FBI agent who thinks he’s God’s gift to the world at large. He’s out of town anyway. I haven’t talked to him in days.”

She nodded toward the kitchen. “I’m not the one you have to convince.”

I caught a glimpse of Rachel, pretending to do her homework. She had to be listening to every word. “But I will admit to one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s about the only one who’s taking me seriously.”

Susan picked up her coffee cup. “Ellie, do you think you might have a few issues with intimacy? Maybe you should consider seeing someone.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-SIX

Maybe Susan was right, I thought, as I pulled into the gas station the next morning. Maybe I was incapable of sustaining an intimate relationship. I’d never thought of myself as any more or less dysfunctional than the rest of society, but given my problems with Barry, David, and Rachel—even a near brush with Susan—perhaps I should reevaluate.

I wrestled the hose into the tank, imagining a
dybbuk
inside gleefully laughing at me, though whether it was because of my mood or the fact that gas prices were bleeding me dry, I wasn’t sure. While I waited, I decided to clean out the back of the car. It beat watching dollars and cents zoom up at lightning speed. Or dwelling on my shortcomings.

I started with my canvas bag, which was wedged underneath the front seat on the floor. I took it over to a large metal trash container. I set it down on the concrete island and felt around the bag. Two objects seemed to be stuck together. I pulled them out. The silver bracelet from Calumet Park was tangled up around my stopwatch.

As I started picking at the bracelet to unravel it, I thought about the VHS copy of the tape I’d given to LeJeune. If Dad was right, and someone
was
after the tape, they’d been going to extraordinary lengths to get it. Break-ins, arson, and—assuming Brashares’ death was part of it—even murder. But that didn’t explain why Rhonda Disapio was dead. Or Mary Jo Bosanick. They had nothing to do with the tape. Mary Jo Bosanick never knew it existed.

I studied the bracelet. I was willing to concede that my theory about drug dealing and gangsters was far-fetched. Even harebrained. But how likely was it that the two women’s deaths were random acts of violence? Two girls, best friends, party at Calumet Park on a summer night. Two men motor into the boat launch. One woman dies, the other makes a narrow escape. A year later, she dies, too. Meanwhile, the men disappear. No one knows or believes they exist. Except me. And the only thing I knew was that one called the other Sammy.

Someone at the next pump whistled. I jumped back, nearly losing my balance. I looked at the pump; it was still. I went inside to pay, the bracelet and stopwatch in my hand. I set them down on the counter and dug out a twenty.

The young man behind the counter looked at his digital readout. “It’s twenty-two fifty, ma’am.”

Damn. I try to keep gas at twenty bucks a pop, purely on principle. Never mind that I make more trips to the gas station; those are the little ways we fool ourselves. As I fished out a few more dollars, the guy behind the counter eyed the bracelet.

“Looks like the one I bought my girlfriend.”

I looked up. “The bracelet?”

He was wearing a striped uniform shirt with his name, Sam, embroidered in red on the pocket. He pointed. “The heart thing. I got the same one for her.”

I picked at some grime on the charm. “I hope your girlfriend’s was in better shape than this.”

“It was.” He grinned as he handed me back my change, and I headed out to the car. I was two steps away when I froze.

I’d found the bracelet in Calumet Park, where one of the men called the other Sammy.

Someone named “Mr. Sam” had called Dale Reedy the day I was with her.

I climbed in the car, threw the bracelet on the seat, and started the engine. Sammy was one of the guys in the boat. Coming into the boat launch the night Mary Jo was killed. According to Rhonda, it was Sammy and his cohort who killed her.

As I swung out of the gas station, my mind started to race. What—exactly—had Rhonda said? A hot, humid night. Mary Jo and Santoro had fought. Mary Jo took Rhonda to the park to drink it off. While they were there, two men came into the boat launch, their boat loaded with gear.

I’d assumed they were running drugs, partly because of Santoro’s background—but also because of the comment Mary Jo made: “What makes you think I don’t know about dealing?”

I had been wrong. But if it wasn’t drugs, what was it? Why would two strangers kill a woman they didn’t know—and then her friend as well? I circled the village park, deserted and bleak in the November chill. Frigid water collected in troughs and depressions around the field.

People kill for many reasons, but one of the biggest is fear. Fear that they’ll be killed first. But Mary Jo and Rhonda weren’t threatening.

Fear of being caught is another. Rhonda thought the men were just fishing, but were they? Or were they doing something else? Something they didn’t want revealed. Something with such high stakes—at least for them—that killing two young women was their only option.

A lone figure struck out across the park. His jacket was pulled close and shoulders hunched against the cold.

What was it? What were they hiding? Something on the boat? The boat was carrying some cargo. Rhonda had said something about it. But what? “A lot of shit” were her words, I recalled.

I turned the corner and headed back to Willow Road. As I passed the drycleaners and hardware store, the sun made a brief appearance, glinting off the Volvo’s hood.

Glinting. Something glinting in the moonlight. That was it.

Metal. Logs. Metal fireplace logs.

I frowned. Something that looked like metal fireplace logs. What was Rhonda trying to describe? I squinted through the windshield.

A metal container of some kind.

Sure.

One of those metal trash containers with a foot pedal to open it up. Maybe they held a stash of drugs.

Or maybe something else.

A fire extinguisher? No. Most fire extinguishers are red; they wouldn’t necessarily glint in the moonlight. And someone would have to be pretty hard up to kill over a fire extinguisher.

Think, Ellie.

The men were coming in off the lake. Late at night. With metal containers. What if those containers had something to do with the water? Maybe they held water. Or you used them in water.

An image of divers filming hammerhead sharks sprang into my mind.

A tank. An oxygen tank.

Scuba diving equipment.

Is that what Rhonda saw? A boat filled with diving equipment?

Why would someone be diving in the middle of the night in Lake Michigan? And why wouldn’t they want anyone to know about it?

I tried to piece it together. A man named Sammy was at Cal Park a year ago. The night Mary Jo Bosanick died. Possibly ferrying scuba diving equipment.