Blameless (28 page)

Diana closed her eyes, both from exhaustion and the need not to look at Craig. She was grateful for both his love and his willingness to forgive, but it was all too emotionally overwhelming. And it made her feel guilty, not worthy of him. All she wanted was to go to sleep. She pulled herself into a fetal position and pressed a pillow to her belly.

“Sleep. You need sleep.” Craig stood and kissed her forehead. “Is there anything I can get for you?”

She shook her head, keeping her eyes closed.

“I’ll leave the door open and be right downstairs,” he said. “Just call. I’m not going anywhere.” He kissed her again, and to Diana’s great relief, finally left the room.

By Friday Diana was feeling much better, but she was worn out from Craig’s hovering. Laughing, she handed him his briefcase and ordered him to the office. “If you don’t get out of here and leave me alone for a while, I’m packing my bags and moving in with my mother until this baby is born,” she warned him. He agreed to go into work only after she arranged for Gail to come by and keep her company.

“Rumor has it that you did this on purpose,” Gail said from her chair across from Diana, who was ensconced on the couch. “To get out of going to your mother-in-law’s for Thanksgiving.”

“Well, you’ve heard all those overcooked turkey stories.” Diana kept her expression serious as she rearranged the pillows under her knees. “I just couldn’t face it another year.”

“You look damn healthy to me.” Gail narrowed her eyes. “One might even say you have ‘that glow.’”

“Not ‘that glow,’” Diana said, holding her hands up in front of her face as if to ward off a vampire. “Please, please, tell me anything but that I’m glowing.”

“Okay, you may not be glowing, but you do look damn good, sweetie.” Gail leaned over and touched Diana’s foot. “So everything really is okay?”

“The doctor said I can get back to real life on Monday. The ultrasound was normal and the bleeding stopped by the time I got to the hospital.” She shrugged. “Apparently this isn’t all that rare—it just really scared me.”

“Did they say anything about the baby being small? You look more like you’re four months pregnant than six.”

“They said she is on the small side—but not unusually so.” Diana patted her stomach affectionately. “When I insisted, the technician guessed a birth weight somewhere just under seven pounds.”

Gail looked at Diana with envy. “When I was six months pregnant, I was the size of a house. People thought I was ready to drop the babies any minute.”

“Twins don’t count,” Diana said, swinging her legs from the couch to the floor. “Can I get you something? Tea? Diet soda? How about a glass of wine?”

Gail jumped from her chair and grabbed Diana before she could rise. “Don’t you dare move!” she ordered. “I don’t want a thing!”

“You’re as bad as Craig,” Diana muttered, shaking Gail’s hands from her shoulders and pointing to the chair. “I’m not an invalid—let go of me and sit down.” When Gail returned to her chair, Diana said, “So, you promised me some good gossip …”

“This really
is
good. You’re gonna just love it …” Gail rubbed her hands together and wiggled around in her seat. “Guess who’s in major league trouble?”

Diana groaned and looked at the ceiling. “You mean out of every person in the world?”

“Nope,” Gail answered. “Just out of every person we know.” She paused and then added, “Professionally.”

“Every person we know professionally,” Diana repeated. “Got to be someone we don’t like … Especially me.” She looked thoughtfully at Gail and then her face lit up. “Pumphrey?” she asked.

Gail shook her head. “Not quite
that
good.”

“What kind of trouble?” Diana demanded like an overeager child playing Twenty Questions.

“Financial. Personal. Maybe even legal.”

“The only person I can think of is Adrian.” Diana shook her head. “But there’s no way he could be in financial trouble.”

“Don’t be so sure …”

“Adrian Arnold’s in financial trouble? That’s impossible. Not with a thousand courses around the country using his textbook every semester.”

“True enough, Counselor,” Gail acknowledged. “But remember how he was always complaining about Rebecca the Princess driving him nuts with her demands for more alimony and child support?”

“I thought that was just because she was jealous of …” Diana paused. “What did she call them? Oh, yeah, his ‘young tarts.’”

“Apparently it wasn’t only the tarts—although I heard his latest is
less
than half his age and quite a hot ticket.” Gail’s eyes sparkled as she leaned toward Diana. “Because Rebecca just won!”

“Won what?” Diana asked, completely baffled.

“A huge settlement for back payment!” Gail cried triumphantly and sat back in the chair. She swung her leg nonchalantly. “Seems our little friend Adrian got caught hiding almost ten years’ worth of royalties.”

“Ten years?” Diana whistled. “On all those books?”

Gail raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know the specifics, but I heard the number was well over six figures.”

They gossiped some more about Adrian, then the conversation jumped and skipped, as it does between close friends. They discussed how Gail’s two-year-old sons had mashed sweet potatoes into her mother’s new carpet, then switched to the effect of national health care on psychotherapists, the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel they were both reading, and the cover story in the
Atlantic
exploring the significance of divorce on children. Then Diana told Gail the Sandy chocolate-chip cookie story—omitting Sandy’s name, of course. Gail laughed uproariously, making only one passing comment about Diana’s obsession with borderlines. But when Gail’s chortling died down, her face sobered, and she began watching her swinging boot, uncharacteristically silent.

“What?” Diana demanded. “You think this woman’s dangerous?”

“It’s possible—but I doubt it,” Gail said, continuing to watch her foot. Then, with false casualness, she asked, “So how’s everything else?”

“Everything else?” Diana repeated, fear gripping her stomach, although she wasn’t sure why.

“You know.” Gail looked up for a second and then concentrated once again on her boot. She shrugged.

“Fine,” Diana lied. “The police seem to be at an impasse because there’s so little physical evidence.” She had told no one but “her lawyers”—as she now thought of Valerie and Mitch—about Levine’s visit, figuring the fewer people who were aware she was still an active suspect, the better. The lack of an immediate arrest, combined with the Thanksgiving holiday and numerous catastrophes both local and international, had pushed her case from the public eye—and she was going to do everything she could to ensure that it stayed that way. Diana felt a little guilty not confiding in Gail, but knew it was for the best. Swallowing hard, she attempted a laugh. “The police say it’s a shitcan.”

Gail glanced up, her eyes dark with sympathy.

“That means a homicide not likely to be solved.” Diana’s voice was upbeat when she started the sentence, but the expression on Gail’s face caused her words to dwindle off toward the end. Her hands trembled slightly, and she clasped them together. “What?” she demanded. “What is it?”

Gail bit at her thumbnail, and then began to speak. “I might as well just come out and say it …”

Diana swung her legs from the couch and planted them on the floor as if to better brace herself against the impact. She waited silently.

“A policeman came to see me on Monday,” Gail said, speaking quickly. “Asking questions about you and James. He—”

“Tall and skinny with gray curly hair?” Diana interrupted, her voice remarkably calm considering the turmoil that raged within her. “Seems like a real nice guy?”

Gail nodded, her eyes so filled with compassion that Diana felt tears pricking behind her own. “He talked to everyone else in the group too,” Gail continued. She leaned across the table and grabbed Diana’s hands. “But no one told him anything—even Adrian. I know. I grilled them all.”

Diana stood and walked into the front bay. She looked out on the narrow street, watching the college students and tourists and neighborhood people jostling each other for sidewalk space. The Friday after Thanksgiving, she thought somewhat irrationally, was the busiest shopping day of the year. But the creatures outside her window might have been from another planet for all she had in common with them, worrying about what to buy for whom, and which of their charge cards still had a viable credit line. She hated them. Every last one of them.

She hated every person who walked on the earth, who ate dinner with a fork, and who called his mother on Sunday. Every person whose life was still normal. Every person whose concerns were the mundane. Her anger and frustration grew as she watched the preoccupied crowds until she feared her turmoil would burst from her as a living, breathing, hating demon. “Did he ask you if I was a money-hungry bitch who would kill to get her hands on half a million dollars?” She whirled around to face Gail.

“Come and sit down,” Gail said, striding over to Diana and trying to help her to the couch.

Diana threw off Gail’s hands and remained rooted in the bay. She hated Gail too. Crossing her arms, Diana glared at her friend. “Did he ask you if I had sex with James?”

Gail stepped back and said nothing. Then she walked to the chair and sat down. “He wanted to know if you ever discussed having a sexual attraction to James,” she said quietly. “And he did ask if you were aware that James was planning to change his will.” She pointed to the couch. “That’s all he asked anyone.”

As she listened to Gail’s calm words and watched her friend’s quiet movements, Diana went suddenly numb. She felt no more anger, no more hatred. All she felt was a deep, searing emptiness. Perhaps, she thought with some removed, still-rational part of her brain, this was shock. She grabbed the window molding for support, almost as if her anger had been holding her upright, and now that it was gone, she had nothing to support her. Pushing off the wall, she moved from the bay and slumped into the couch. “Sorry,” she said.

Gail nodded her understanding and then continued. “No one told him anything. Everyone quoted him the ‘privileged information’ line, and, to his credit, he accepted my refusal very graciously. Marc said the same thing.”

“Oh, Levine’s gracious all right.” Diana’s voice was without affect. “Gracious as a cobra.”

“I checked with my friend Stacey—she does litigation—after he left,” Gail continued. “Stacey said that the only way we can be forced to break confidentiality is if this cop gets someone in the DA’s office to convene a grand jury.” She paused and took a deep breath. “She said we could be subpoenaed to appear …”

Diana looked up at her friend. “Can they do that before someone’s been arrested?”

Gail shrugged. “Stacey called it pre-litigation deposition, or discovery, or some such thing.” She touched Diana’s knee. “But she said if it happened, we’d have to talk. That we’d be under oath.”

Diana closed her eyes, remembering all the things she had said in peer review. Every concern she had ever voiced, every confidence she had ever shared. About her sexual attraction for James. About her erotic fantasies. About her feelings for him. She remembered the day she had told Gail what James had said about his will, never believing for a moment that he meant a word of it. “Can you believe that one?” she had asked Gail, laughing. “A new way to get rich: knock off a grateful patient.” Diana’s eyes flew open and she stared into Gail’s, fear nibbling at her numbness. “You’d have to tell that I knew about the will?” she said.

Gail nodded miserably. “And what you said when you told me about it.”

Diana closed her eyes again.

“You look tired, sweetie,” Gail said softly. “Would you like me to stay—or would you rather I left?”

Diana was tired. Exhausted. Bereft of energy. She leaned back against the couch and imagined friendly ol’ Detective Levine shmoozing with some assistant district attorney, getting him or her to convene a grand jury. She closed her eyes again. If her peer supervisory group talked, she was a dead woman.

“I’ll let myself out,” Gail said softly. “I’ll call you tomorrow.” Gail’s boots scraped against the floor as she stood. She left a light kiss on Diana’s brow.

Diana sat silent and still, listening to Gail’s footsteps descending the stairs, a dreamlike kaleidoscope of unrelated images shifting across her mind’s eye: Adrian Arnold’s malicious critique of her sampling procedures when she presented her preliminary research results at peer review; Jill stabbing a poker into her living room carpet; Sandy’s stunning face smiling out of the Filene’s ad; Ethan’s hollow, vacant eyes; Craig, pale and scared, standing next to her in the hospital; James, his chiseled face lightly covered with sweat, his shoulders exposed by a blue cotton tank top, shiny and achingly erotic.

She saw Detective Levine laughing uproariously in the great room, and a picture that had run in the
Globe
of an imprisoned mother nursing her baby, separated from the photographer by a seemingly endless row of vertical bars.

24

O
N MONDAY MORNING
D
IANA RESUMED HER FULL
schedule. The first thing she did was call both of her lawyers. Valerie was ecstatic about their progress on the
Inquirer
suit, but Mitch was not so upbeat. “As far as the police are concerned, Molly Arell is an upstanding citizen,” he told Diana. “So, regardless of Jill Hutchins’s actual guilt or innocence, if the aunt can maintain her alibi, they’ll probably look to another suspect.”

They both knew without needing to specify just who that other suspect might be.

He was also concerned about Levine’s aggressiveness. After some deliberation over the cost, Diana authorized Mitch to have his detective, Norman Seymour, spend three hours on the case. Mitch agreed with Diana’s assessment that they needed to focus on Ethan, and he suggested that Norman do just that. Norman would start with Ethan’s rap sheet, following up all the arrests to determine if there were any outstanding warrants or parole violations—or anything the least bit suspicious that might be used to convince the police Ethan was a better suspect than Diana. “And maybe Norman’ll be able to get a lead on Kruse’s whereabouts,” Mitch said, although the tone of his voice suggested that he believed otherwise.