Look Closely (27 page)

“I’ve started it, Lev, but this McKnight case is keeping me so busy.”

He nodded, appeared unconvinced. “It was due overaweekago.Everyoneelsehasturnedthemin.”

“If you could just give me a few more days.”

“Idon’tknow.Theelectioncommitteeputoffour firstmeetinguntilwecouldgetyouressay,butword got out. Some of the other attorneys who are up for partner are complaining about special treatment.”

I didn’t even have to ask who these other attorneys were. I was sure that Paige Amboy had learned I was the holdout and was leading the pack on this one.

“I’d like to work on it today,” I said, “but I’m leaving for Chicago.”

“Depositions?”

“I have a conference at McKnight headquarters first thing tomorrow morning. Then I’m meeting a potential witness.” Amy had tracked down Eden Fieldings, one of the members of the Fieldings family, whose company had been taken over by McKnight so many years ago. Eden had told Amy that her father, the founder of the company, was too incapacitated in his advanced age to speak to attorneys, but she agreed to be interviewed herself. I needed to get the whole story on the Fieldings takeover before the trial. What I didn’t say to Lev was,
ImightgotoWoodlandDunes;Imightfindout what happened to my mom; I might see a man named Ty.

“You’renotgoingtothecocktailparty?”Levsaid.

The firm had a monthly cocktail party in the reception area. It was that night, and I’d forgotten al about it. “I won’t be able to make it,” I said.

Lev shifted in the chair again, and tugged at his tie. “Hailey, I think you need to put in an appearance tonight. You need to convince everyone in this firm that you’re serious about being partner.”

“Isn’t it enough that I make more money for this firm than any other associate?”

Lev raised both hands in the air, a futile gesture. Both of us knew that revenue alone wasn’t enough. An associate had to kiss ass and grovel and attend al the necessary functions, which I had avoided lately, especial y since I received that letter.

“I think you need to postpone your trip and make sure you come to the party,” Lev said. His tone was grave, and I heard the message under his words—
You’d better do something or I
won’t be able to help you. You won’t make partner, at least not this year.

And yet for the first time in my life, I cared about something more than work. It had never happened to me before—boys, vacations, clothes, hobbies (what
were
hobbies, exactly?)—

nothing had ever been as important as work. But now my career was taking an inadvertent back seat to my mother, my siblings, that damn letter.

“I’m sorry, Lev,” I said. “But I can’t be there tonight. I’l get the essay to you as soon as I can. Thanks for coming by.” And then I stood from the chair, signaling the end of our conversation.

21

IwasinChicagobyeight-thirtythatnight.Ichecked into the Ambassador East Hotel on State Street and wondered how to fil the next few hours. I’d already prepared for my meeting and witness interview tomorrow,andwithouttherestofmyMcKnightfiles, there wasn’t much more to do right then. The only peopleIknewwhomighthavealatedinnerwerethe attorneys from the Chicago office.

They were friendlypeople,abunchofcharacters,butIcouldn’t bearthethoughtoftalkingabouttheupcomingpartner elections. Instead, I ordered a salad and a glass of sauvignon blanc from room service.

As I waited for my food, I couldn’t help thinking about Woodland Dunes, right across the lake, just sixty or so miles away. I got out my Palm Pilot and looked up Ty’s number at Long Beach Inn.

“Oh, sorry, he’s not here.” It was Mol y, Ty’s friend, and she sounded decidedly unsorry that Ty wasn’t around to talk to me.

“Do you know what time he’l be back?”

“Who knows? He’s visiting his mom, and those two talk for hours.”

“Okay, I’l cal him tomorrow,” I said. Mol y hadn’t even asked if she could take a message, and I doubted that Ty would get it if I left one.

“Great, thanks,” she said, and she hung up.

I flipped through the channels. I tried to watch Court TV, but they were covering some depressing child-abuse trial. I gave a sitcom fifteen minutes, but found myself more irritated than amused. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that I wanted to talk to Ty. I had his parents’ number, but I didn’t know if I should bother him there. Final y, I decided it was no big deal. At least I could tel him to cal me later.

The phone rang at the Mannings’ house. I felt consumed by an adolescent nervousness, like when I’d cal ed a boy for the first time in high school.

But when I heard a deep, grumbled “Hel o?” I got even more anxious.

“Chief Manning,” I said. “It’s Hailey Sutter.”

A long pause. “Are you looking for Ty?” So much for chitchat.

“Yes, the person at the inn said he was here.”

“You just missed him.”

“Oh, wel , I’l try him later.”

Chief Manning grunted in what I assumed was assent.

“Say hel o to your wife,” I said, not wanting to let him off the phone. Why not ask him some more questions about his investigation? He was one of the few people who knew anything.

“Wil do,” he said. “Goodbye then.”

“Wait!” I cal ed out. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

Another pause. “Al right.”

“I was wondering if you’d ever found anything about the man who my mom was seeing before she died.” I knew from his records that no one had been able to identify him, but maybe Chief Manning had learnedsomethingaftertheinvestigationwasclosed.

“You know about that?” he said.

“Yes.” I didn’t add that I knew most of it from hisownrecords,theoneshissonhadcopiedforme.

“We could never identify him.”

“Do you know how long they were together, or even if they were stil together when she died?”

“Wel , if I remember right, she told your father she’d been seeing him for a year, maybe less.” His voice died off quickly as if there was more but he was reluctant to speak.

“Did you talk to other people, like her friends? You must have interviewed someone who saw them together.”

A pause. “There was a neighbor that night who thought she saw someone pul into your driveway. She thought maybe a man was driving, but she couldn’t say any more than that. I real y don’t know anything else.”

A car in the driveway. A man at the wheel. I wanted to ask him why that wasn’t in his records, but of course I couldn’t. And something was tugging at my brain. A car in the driveway. A sound outside the house. The honking of a car horn. I remembered that. The car horn. I could hear it now. Icouldseemyyoungerselfstandingnearmymom.

It was evening, and I had walked out of my room to get a snack. I saw mom on the landing, standing stil , as if she couldn’t decide where to move. She turned and knelt in front of me.

“Hailey,” she said, placing her hands on my shoulders. They felt as if they were pinning me to the ground. “I need to talk to you, and I need you to listen. I need you to act like a big
girl.”

I nodded, staring into her light brown eyes.

She looked down for a second, and I did, too. The shoes she wore were the color of sky in the summer, a powder blue to match her suit. I had rarely seen her in such clothes, even
more rarely in high heels. I was used to her in jeans and T-shirts and brown leather shoes. I thought she looked better in the jeans.

As she stared at the floor, one of her ankles wobbled in the high shoes. The movement seemed to wake her from her thoughts.

She looked at me again and took a deep breath. “I’m going away tonight.”

“Why?” I said.

“It’s just for tonight. I’ll be back in the morning.” But she looked down the hallway, no longer at my eyes, and that look made me think she didn’t mean what she had said.

“But Daddy isn’t home.”

She returned her eyes to me, and I think she knew what I meant. It wasn’t just that he was away at the moment. He’d been away for longer than usual now. He hadn’t come home the
last few weekends. And now she was going to leave, too.

“Caroline is here. She’ll watch after you.” She gave me a warm smile, and for a second I thought maybe everything would be okay, but then came the sound.

My mother jerked her head a little so that her ear was toward the stairs, toward the door. It came again, and I recognized it as a horn from a car, but not Dad’s car. He used to honk
every time he pulled into the driveway on a Friday night. He hadn’t done that in a long time, but I could remember the sound. Three short bleeps. These honks, though, were two
long tones. Deeper sounds.

When my mother turned to me again, her face had changed. Her eyes were wide, her cheeks pink, as if she’d been running in the cold. “I have to go now, but I’ll be back tomorrow,
okay?”

“Sorry I can’t help you more,” Chief Manning said.

“No. Uh…no problem. That’s…that’s fine.” I knew I was mumbling.

Ikepthearingthetwolongtonesofthatcarhorn.

The machine picked up in Maddy’s apartment. “Maddy,” I said, in case she was screening. “It’s me.”

After talking to Chief Manning, I had nibbled at my room-service salad and taken a few halfhearted sips of wine. I cal ed the New Orleans number again, but it only rang incessantly. I talked to my investigator, who told me the number was registered to a management company that rented less than stel ar houses around New Orleans. The tenants rarely stayed more than a month, and so the company didn’t do background checks or even keep good records about who was staying in the apartments, as long as the tenants paid weekly cash. The investigator had found the address, though, a place on a rough little stretch of Magazine Street. He’d asked if I wanted him to fly there and run some surveil ance. It would be very expensive, I knew, and there was no case on which to write it off. I told him I would think about it.

Now, my mind was like a locomotive, running over new ground with a driving, fierce intensity. That night. Those car horns. It must have been my mom’s boyfriend. She was going out with him that night. She was planning on staying with him. And my seven-year-old self hadn’t believed that she would come back. I could see my mother crouching before me. I could see her holding her head and moving to the door. I could see her in bed the next morning, her hair like a curtain over her face. But what had happened in between those spaces? Had my father come home? Was Dan there? Was he in that house in New Orleans now? And that man with the ring, who was he?

Which brought me back to Maddy.

“Hailey?” she said, picking up in the middle of my message. She sounded distinctly sleepy. Or maybe in the throes of some sexual romp.

“Hi, hon. Sorry to wake you.”

“No problem,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Is Grant with you?”

“No, he’s traveling this week. I’m not even sure where. I didn’t talk to him today.”

“What’s his last name again?” I asked.

“Mercer.”

“M-E-R-C-E-R?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Noreason.So,didyouaskhimaboutthering?”

Maddy made a soft groan. “What would I ask him exactly?”

“Where he got it. How long he’s had it. If he knows who designed it and where it came from. If he ever lived in Woodland Dunes.” I said the last sentence lower, knowing it would probably piss Maddy off.

“Hailey, for Christ’s sake! Grant has nothing to do with your mother. He’s lived in Boston his whole life.”

“Right. Right. How old is he again?”

“Midfifties, I guess. Can we move on?”

“One more question. Where did you tel me he worked?”

“I didn’t tel you, but now that you’re asking, he works for Renley & Associates, the business consulting firm. He’s been there for over twenty years, okay?”

“Al right. Sorry.”

I got Maddy onto another topic, but as we talked, I reached over and grabbed a smal pad of paper from the nightstand.

Grant Mercer, I wrote. Renley & Associates. Boston.

The next morning on my way to the McKnight headquarters, I cal ed the Boston office of Renley & Associates, and asked for Human Resources. Posing as a mortgage officer who needed to confirm employment, I gave the woman Grant’s name.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We have no employee by the name of Grant Mercer.”

“Can you check to see if he was employed there in the past? Maybe I’m reading his application wrong.”

She hummed while she worked. I could hear her fingers ticking against the keys of her computer. “Sorry,” she said. “Grant Mercer has never worked for Renley & Associates.”

22

As soon as I hung up I cal ed Maddy. She would be annoyed at my meddling, and I couldn’t say what it meant that Grant didn’t work for Renley, but I had to tel her.

It was an hour ahead on the East Coast, already after eight o’clock there, so I tried her office. She was at a deposition, her secretary said, she’d be gone the rest of the day. I tried her cel phone, but I could tel it wasn’t switched on from the way it went right to voice mail. I left her a message tel ing her to cal me as soon as she could.

Feeling jittery and anxious, I reached the Mc-Knightofficeandwasshownintoadifferentconference room than last time, a smal er one. Beth Halverson and I were having a simple catch-up meetingaboutthestatusofourcaseandwhatneeded to be done before trial. There were a mil ion things, it seemed, and I felt exhaustion blanket my anxiety.

Beth came into the room, looking more rested than me in a spring peach suit. “Hailey, how are

you? Can I get you some coffee or something?”

“Coffee would be fantastic.”

I got up and paced the room while Beth and I talked, waiting for the coffee to be delivered. I had the feeling that if I al owed myself to slow down, I might shut off completely. The image of that ring on Maddy’s nightstand kept flickering in my mind, along with the fact that Grant Mercer had never worked for Renley & Associates.

Final y, the refreshments were delivered. As Beth cleared a place for the tray, I glanced at the photos hanging on the back wal of the conference room—a series of black-and-white landscapes. A windswept beach was pictured in one, a lake surrounded by tal dunes in the next. It was Lake Michigan, I could tel , probably taken on the other side of the lake, somewhere away from Chicago. I studied them a little closer, moving to look at the next picture in the series, which showed a square, white, monolithic house with a wal of glass.