Hostile Witness (34 page)

I WAS IN MY OFFICE,
working late revising my opinion letters to be appended to the Bishop brothers’ prospectus for Valley Hunt Estates, when the phone rang. I didn’t have time to answer, I was already late for my dinner date with Lauren Amber Guthrie, but thinking it might be Veronica wanting to change our plans for later in the evening, I picked up the receiver and said, “Victor Carl.”

It wasn’t Veronica.

“Victor. I need to talk with you. It is extremely urgent.”

From the soft, rounded tones, from the precise pronunciation, from the lockjawed superiority of the voice, I knew who it was.

“I don’t have time to speak to you now, Mr. Osbourne.”

“You took my car, Victor. My father’s Duesenberg. I must have it back.”

“It was lawfully seized by the sheriff, Mr. Osbourne. There are papers you can file if you believe the judgment we have against you is improper. Otherwise it is going to be sold.”

“My car, Victor. It is a classic, the only memento I have left of a more glorious time.”

“If you want, Mr. Osbourne, you can have your daughter bid for it at the auction.”

“After having the police stomp through her property she has refused to help me any further. I have offered you all the money I have. Victor, you must stop this harassment.
You simply must. You don’t know what you are doing to me. I have prospects, grand prospects, but you are ruining them. You are making me feel like a hunted animal. I am not an animal, Victor.”

“We need to sell the car, Mr. Osbourne.”

“Have you no compassion? I’m a man, Victor. If you prick me, do I not bleed?”

“I believe that is my line,” I said flatly.

“If you poison me, do I not die?”

“I’m not trying to hurt you, Mr. Osbourne. Make me a final settlement offer in writing and mail it to me and whatever it is, no matter how low, I will urge Mr. Sussman to accept it. I promise.”

“If you wrong me, shall I not revenge?”

“Good-bye, Mr. Osbourne. I have to go,” I said, and then I hung up the phone.

It rang immediately afterwards, but I didn’t pick it up again. Since learning from the Bishops that Winston Osbourne was an old school chum of William Prescott’s, I hadn’t enjoyed my moments with him as I had in the past. I think it was the grayness of it all that did it. The dun-colored skies of that bleak autumn, the haziness of my own prickly moral dilemmas, of my own twisted arrangements with Prescott, it had all turned the crisp blacks and whites of the world into a muddle. Things just weren’t as simple as I had pretended them to be when I sat down with Winston Osbourne’s wife and destroyed his life. Though at that moment, with the phone tolling on my desk, I didn’t want to judge myself for what I had done in the now-distant past, I couldn’t help but know I had done something deep within the gray. And I couldn’t help but sympathize with Osbourne’s plight and his attempts to maintain his position in the club that I was still desperate to join. Whatever it was that was working its way through my spine and into the recesses of my intellect, I found I could no longer gleefully despise him.
I would indeed call my uncle Sammy. I would tell him the whole situation. I would advise him to leave it at the car, to cash in the Duesenberg, and then mark the note as satisfied. My uncle Sammy, surprisingly, was what Morris would have called a
mensch.
He would do it if I asked him, and I would ask him. I would let Winston Osbourne off the hook.

Lauren was waiting for me at Restaurant Tacquet, a small bistro nestled in a Victorian hotel smack in the middle of the Main Line. It was suburban chic, large bay windows, almond and blue walls with a stenciled border, pale green ceilings. Charmingly informal and gallingly expensive, it was a very in place for the horsey set, just down the road from the Devon Horse Show grounds. Lauren sat at a trapezoid table by one of the windows. Beside her on the table were long fuchsia flowers in a narrow black vase. She had ordered a red wine and was deep into the bottle already by the time I showed up.

“I was afraid you were going to stand me up, Victor,” she said in her soft, breathless voice, reaching out her braceleted arm, fingers pointing down for me to take hold of. “I was feeling like one of those sad blue-haired ladies who dine alone each night, as if I had jumped into my future. It was too horrible to bear, so I ordered some wine.”

“Chateau Lafite Rothschild, 1984,” I read from the label.

“Appropriate, no? Pour yourself a glass and we’ll toast.”

I did as I was told.

“To the renewal of our…Well, to the renewal of our whatever,” she said with a gay laugh.

We clinked glasses and I took a sip. True to its name, it was rich and powerful and slightly exotic. I let it linger on the back of my tongue for a moment before I swallowed
and took another mouthful right away. Even with my Rolling Rock palate I could tell it was magnificent.

“So how is your friend Beth doing these days?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said, content to leave it at that, and as far as I knew she was. It was I who was missing her terribly. We still hadn’t talked since she walked out on me from that witness room. But her office now was sadly empty of all her personal effects. Just a file cabinet and a desk and a wastepaper basket.

“It’s too bad about Alberto.” The “r” rolled lightly off her tongue.

“What happened?” I asked.

“She dropped him. It looked like things were going so well and she just up and ended it. And no one knows why. Poor Alberto was devastated. It appears he was in love. He’s a very serious young man but apparently your Beth made him laugh.”

“She has that talent.”

“A simple thing like that and Alberto was lost. If I had known that was all it took, I would have learned to tell a joke.”

“You do all right.”

“But not with the serious ones. I could never have gotten Alberto to laugh.” Lauren stared at me and twisted her head slightly, giving me the impression her eyes were boring into mine. “I could never get you to laugh much either. But I’m still willing to try.”

I broke the moment by dropping my gaze and taking a sip of wine and then another. “Actually, Lauren, I’m here on business.”

“Please, no. Victor. Don’t tell me you are only wooing me as a client. Do you do divorce work now? All right, darling, you can represent me, but only if you promise to forget all about that silly old precept against sleeping with your clients.”

“That would be against the code of ethics.”

“Which would make it all the more fun, no? The best sex is always surreptitious. If nothing else, marriage has taught me that.”

“I don’t do divorce work.”

“Good. I’ve already hired Cassandra. She’s a tiger, I hear.”

“Guthrie deserves something for his years with you, don’t you think?”

“I let him sleep in my bed for a good part of the time, Victor. What more could he want?”

“Money.”

“Don’t be vulgar. Besides, Cassandra says we have a case.”

“Was he cheating on you?”

“Men don’t cheat on me, dear.”

“So it was the violence.”

“Something like that.”

“How violent is he? I was just wondering, you know. What exactly do you think Guthrie is capable of?”

“That’s the second time you asked about Sam’s violent tendencies.” She looked at me with a touch of appraising coldness in her blue eyes. “I’m beginning to see a pattern.”

Lauren was a lot of things, dissolute, depraved, dissipated, but she was far from stupid. If not born with the twin handicaps of being very rich and very pretty there is no telling what she could have accomplished.

The waiter came over to our table before Lauren could say what was on her mind. His accent was French but I suspected it was fake. Lauren ordered the mixed greens and a fish. I ordered lobster ravioli in a vodka cream sauce and a
steak au poivre.
She ordered more wine. When the waiter left, Lauren sat back in her chair, crossed her arms, and frowned at me.

“Frankly, I’m insulted, Victor. Pumping me for information like I was a common street tart.”

“I could never accuse you of being common.”

“Sweet boy. How did you find out about Zack?”

“He took a picture,” I said. “From a remote-controlled camera, I think. The police have it, along with scores of others.”

“It’s a good likeness of me, I hope.”

“Actually, no. The camera was up high. The picture is only of your back.”

“But you recognized me anyway. How encouraging.”

“It was the bracelets,” I said, indicating the diamond studded, rune engraved gold bracelets that lay spectacularly on her delicate forearm. “And a certain way you grabbed at his balls.”

“Darling of you to remember, Victor. You told the police, of course, who the unidentified figure was.”

“No, I didn’t,” I lied.

“My Galahad.”

“I just want to know what happened,” I said.

“You just want to know if my taste for beefcake had something to do with the beefcake’s murder, is that it? You want to know if my husband killed him, is that it? Because if it is my husband, then your grubby little politico client might just get off, is that it?”

“That’s it,” I said.

“Once again, Victor, the girl from Bryn Mawr is going to disappoint you. Pour me some wine, please.”

I poured her the wine from a new bottle the waiter had brought. She drank it quickly, too quickly for its price. She was still drinking it when the salad and ravioli arrived. My ravioli were light and radiant. I sopped up the dregs of the cream sauce with thickly buttered bread. I could feel my arteries clench. Lauren merely picked at her greens between deep drafts from her wineglass.

“How much do you want to know?”

“As much as you want to tell me.”

“Wonderful. We won’t discuss it at all.”

I shook my head and she reached out a hand and cupped my chin.

“All right then, I’ll tell you everything. It was at that vile little club he put his name on. We went there now and then. Guthrie had run off to the bathroom. He was always running off to the bathroom. They don’t make men with bladders anymore, Victor. It’s true. All the good bladders are gone. While he was away Zack came over and asked if everything was satisfactory. He asked it with a smile that I recognized from my own mirror. So I told him no. Which was the truth, Victor. I had married Sam with the best intentions. My little piece of rebellion. I mean, he wasn’t a Biddle or a Pepper, but then he wasn’t anything scandalous either.”

“Like a Jew,” I said.

“Maybe you should go to the men’s room and straighten yourself, Victor. Your chip is showing.” She smiled at me, a broad, cold smile. “My intentions with Sam were always honorable, but things simply weren’t working out. I had thought him insouciant at first. But that was an act. Underneath he is very earnest. I don’t like earnest, do you?”

“That’s not how I think of Guthrie.”

“Marry him and find out. A very perspirable, very earnest young man. We should have lived together first. I would never have made such a mistake. But Mother wouldn’t have it. So instead I married him and found myself sadly disappointed. I began to dally. Discreetly, while he was at the office. Just minor bits of fun here and there. Decidedly dry, decidedly unearnest fun. So when this very handsome, very well-built man asked me if I was satisfied, I said no. He had the most marvelous apartment, a real bachelor pad. All kinds of wonderful toys.”

“I saw them.”

“Yes, I suppose you did. We had a wonderful few afternoons together.” She laughed in spite of herself.

“How did Sam find out?”

“Oh, so you know that too. A detective, hired by my earnest husband to discover if I was cheating on him.”

“And when he found out he went apeshit,” I said.

“What a pleasant term. Yes, he went apeshit. He hit me in the face with the back of his hand, knocked me clear over the bed. I had a perfectly beautiful bruise. I must tell you, Victor, it was the most passionate I had ever seen him. What a night we had.”

“And then he went off to find Bissonette.”

“No, Victor, I’m sorry.”

“Yes, he did. You’re protecting him now.”

“No.”

“How can you be sure?”

“By the time Sam got the report I was already through with Zack. He had broken it off, actually. Some foolishness about being in love. No, after Zack there was my personal trainer and then a heating contractor, working on our pipes, and then a florist, a sweet Englishwoman named Fiona, and they were all listed in the report too. And they’re still very much alive. By the time Zack was beaten we were in the middle of an earnest but ultimately futile reconciliation. So you see, Victor, it wasn’t Sam after all.”

I didn’t respond. Instead I sort of grunted with disappointment. The waiters whisked away our appetizer plates and brought our main courses. My steak, thick filets in a deep brown pepper sauce, seemed too much to eat just then.

“Suddenly,” I said, “I’m not hungry.”

“Doggie bags are such bad form, Victor. Eat. You look a little peaked. But I must say it is charming that you think me worth a homicide.”

She smiled at me, her impossibly wide, sexy smile, but then it withered into something arctic.

“But it wasn’t me you thought he would kill for, was it, Victor? It was the name, it was the money, it was the slot
at the family firm. You’re a monster, do you know that? Both of you bastards. You belong together. At least poor dead Zack was honest. All he wanted from me was my body.”

I dropped my gaze down and saw my steak sitting there, charred and thick in its sauce, malignant with peppercorns. I cut into the meat. It was blood-red inside and I realized I was more than not hungry. I was nauseous, lost. I was adrift without a clue.

Someone was lying about killing Bissonette: Enrico Raffaello lying to throw us off the scent, or Jimmy Moore lying to save his political career, or Lauren lying in one last gallant gesture to her soon-to-be-former husband. Or maybe no one was lying. Maybe the murderer was someone else, a jealous husband I hadn’t yet stumbled upon. Or Norvel Goodwin, threatening me off the case to try to keep his drug-related murder of Zack Bissonette a secret. It could be anyone or no one, as far as I was concerned, because all my hunches had been all wrong and I had no more hunches to follow. Prescott would have his way with his cabana boy after all and there was nothing I could do about it.