A Plague of Secrets

24

“There’s nothing to be worried about,” Wayne Ticknor told his daughter Jansey.

With her bitten-to-the-quick index fingernail she picked at a little dried blob of ketchup on her kitchen table. The digital clock on the stove read 10:17. “That’s easy for you to say, Daddy. You’re not going to be testifying.”

“True. But they’ve already told you everything they were going to be asking you about, haven’t they? Coached you, even.”

“I know. But what if they don’t just stick to that?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

“Maybe they want to get me on the weed too. I mean, they mentioned that enough. Wasn’t I living off the proceeds? Wasn’t I helping with the business?”

“I thought they guaranteed they wouldn’t. Wasn’t that part of the deal?”

“Well, it wasn’t actually a real deal. More like I was just made to understand that if I could help them, they’d help me.”

“By keeping you out of the dope side of it?”

“I guess. Yeah. I can’t really deny that I knew about it.” She pouted and blew out a breath. “Or the defense guy? What if once I’m up there he starts getting into stuff about me and Robert? I mean, if people know about that, it’s going to look like we got together pretty soon after Dylan. And then, if they find out it was before too…”

“How would anybody find that out?” her father asked.

“I don’t know.”

“And even if they did, then what?”

“Then they might start putting it together that Dylan was hitting me. So here’s a guy who’s hitting me that I’m also cheating on. You see what I’m saying? It wouldn’t look good.”

“Yeah, but, honey, listen. They knew that already and they didn’t charge you or Robert with anything, did they? They charged Maya Townshend. They got her gun.”

“Okay, but everybody knows Dylan just took that from the shop.”

“I don’t think the cops do know that, hon. And I don’t think I’d volunteer it.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to volunteer anything.” Suddenly, running on nerves, she stood up, went over to the sink, wet a sponge, and brought it back to wipe and scour the table-the dried ketchup, a few days’ worth of coffee-mug stains, some petrified oatmeal. “It just worries me,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Well, it’s natural to be worried.”

She stood there squeezing the sponge. “I just don’t want them to see how good a thing it was, really, Dylan being killed. I know you shouldn’t say that about the dead, but…”

Wayne’s eyes went black. “You can say anything you want about him to me. You know that. He couldn’t have been gone soon enough.” Then, with an outward calm, he went on. “They will never in a million years think that you had anything to do with it. Plus, you’ve got Robert and you saying you were both here the whole morning. You’re not a suspect to anybody, hon. And you couldn’t ever be. So just answer the questions you know the answers to and leave the rest of it alone. How’s that sound?”

She lowered herself onto her chair, letting out a breath. “It sounds like a plan, Daddy. I’ll just try to keep remembering that.”

“You do that,” Wayne said, reaching out and putting a hand over hers on the table. “Now, how are you fixed for money lately?”

She gave him a weak smile. “Okay. I’ve been talking to the insurance guy. I got the feeling they were waiting for Maya to get convicted. When that happens, they won’t have any excuse left not to pay me. So we ought to get the check soon after that.”

“After they convict her? Just to rule you out? He didn’t say that.”

“Kind of. Not that anybody thinks…” She let the phrase hang in the room. “He just says if they’ve got the choice, having somebody else convicted makes it cleaner.”

“You’d think somebody else getting arrested would be enough.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not, though.” She pulled her hand out from under his and sat back in her chair, gripping the sponge in the other hand as though it were a tension ball. “I’d bet a lot from what he’s told me that no matter what, they’re going to wait until she’s convicted. On the chance that she might not be convicted, and then it would still be possible that it was me.”

“It was you who what?”

“You know. Killed Dylan.”

“I can’t believe he would actually say that.”

“Not exactly, no. But it’s what it feels like to me.”

Her father’s face closed down. He sat square to the table, fists clenched, glowering. “You got the insurance guy’s name? Maybe I’ll go and have a talk with him.”

But Jansey shook her head. Her father had had a “talk” with Dylan and it hadn’t helped at all. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t think it’s him personally. It’s like the company policy, that’s all.”

“You might be surprised,” Wayne said. “They tell you it’s company policy and then you find out they’re just trying to get a bonus or brownie points or whatever by denying benefits until the last possible moment and even then some.”

“Well, Daddy, I don’t think this is like that. He seems like a nice man.”

“Everybody thought your Dylan was a nice man too.”

She shook her head. “It’s not the same.”

“Well, no, nothing’s the same, really. But I bet I could talk your insurance company nice man into rethinking his position, or his company policy, or whatever it is.”

“I don’t think… I mean, I appreciate you trying to help me, but I don’t think I need it yet with the insurance.”

Wayne took a few breaths, relaxed his fists, and laid his palms flat on the table. “You didn’t think you needed it with Dylan either.”

“Well, as you say, that was different.”

“Maybe not so different, though. Somebody taking advantage of your good nature, thinking they can get away with anything. But I look at you, I see the hurt in your eyes, the hurt in your life…”

“It’s not all hurt. There’s good things too. Ben, and now Robert-”

“But no promises from Robert, yet, either.”

She shook her head. “Let’s not go there again, Daddy. It’s a little soon for promises. He’s still in med school. And he doesn’t treat me at all like Dylan did-”

“He’d better not.”

“He doesn’t, and for now that’s enough, okay? Please.”

Wayne reached out and again covered his daughter’s hand with his own. His voice, rather suddenly, was husky with emotion. “I just see what you’ve been through already. And now here’s another guy who’s essentially living with you and no talk of marriage or responsibility. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why you let yourself get in these situations.”

“This one isn’t bad. I promise.” And repeated, “I promise, Daddy.”

He let out a lungful of air. “All right, if you really think that. And you’re okay with money? You’re sure?”

She nodded. “Dylan left a lot of cash. I’m using that.”

“Drug money.”

“Probably.”

“You know, if you’re spending that to live on and you’ve got no claimed income, the IRS might ask you how you’re doing that. Maybe you should start thinking about a way to claim it.”

“I’m sure. Come on, don’t worry. I’m not spending that much. It’s not like I’m out blowing wads of dollars living high on the hog. All I do is buy groceries and stuff. And the IRS isn’t going to care about somebody like me. I mean, we’re talking probably less than ten thousand dollars.”

This was untrue, and said to palliate her father. In fact, Dylan had put away close to two hundred thousand dollars and they kept it-literally-in a secret place under a couple of loose boards in the crawl space under the house. She checked to make sure it was still there every single night, and several times every day. And no one, not even Robert, knew of the money’s existence. But one thing she’d told her father was true-she wasn’t worried about cash.

“You’ve got that much lying around the house? Do you know how dangerous that could be?”

This finally brought a warm smile. “Daddy,” she cooed at him, “you ought to be a shrink.” She lifted her father’s hand and brought it up to her lips. “When you got over here, I was the one all worried about everything. Now it’s all you. So now I’ll tell you. You don’t have to worry. Not about Robert, or the insurance guy, or money or the IRS. Everything’s going to be fine. I promise. I really promise.”

Craig Chiurco pulled himself up so that his bare back leaned against the headboard of his queen-sized bed. “Maybe I should just find another line of work.”

Tamara, pulling a green silk bathrobe around her as she came out of the bathroom, stopped in her tracks. “Let’s see. Man makes love to his incredibly beautiful and sexually exotic girlfriend, rolls over, and, lost in the afterglow, says he wants to change jobs. The girlfriend is a) bemused, b) confused, or c) flattered? Hint, it’s not ‘c.’ ”

“I didn’t mean it had anything to do with us.”

“Though, as you might have noticed, we work out of the same office, and quitting your job would be more or less leaving me.”

“It’s not you.”

She made a show of turning around, checking the corners of the room. “Is there someone else here I’m missing that you were talking to?”

“No.”

“Good. Okay, that’s settled. So why do you want to change jobs?”

“I was just thinking about this Townshend thing. So far, I’ve embarrassed Hardy and Wyatt by showing up on Vogler’s list, and my total contribution to Maya’s case has been to confirm the worst piece of evidence connecting her to Levon’s murder. It was tons of fun telling the boss, ‘Yep, that’s her. She’s the one I saw there.’ Maybe I’ll become a vet. No, wait, I hate animals.”

“If your girlfriend thought you really hated animals, she would start seeing other men.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Would too.” Tamara sat down on the bed. “But this trial isn’t over yet. Maybe you could do something good.”

“I’ll take any ideas.”

“Well, for starters, they don’t have her going inside Levon’s, do they? And without that, what do they really have?”

“They have her lying, again, to the cops. They get her established enough as a liar, and it seems like they ought to be able to do that easily, then whatever she says on the stand comes across as untrue. And of course it also leaves the question: Why was she there anyway, at Levon’s, in the middle of the day?”

“He called her.”

“And she just came running? Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe some variation of the blackmail again.” Tamara went into a small pout. “So then when you saw her, it must have been right after she killed him?”

“That’s what I’ve been assuming. And I think everybody else.”

“So how did she seem? Upset? In a hurry to get away? Any of that?”

Chiurco shook his head. “It wasn’t like that, Tam. It wasn’t like she posed for me. She was there at the door, turned around, and we were face to face for about a second, enough for me to notice her, but not much more. Then she was gone.”

“And you were sure it was her?”

“It was her, Tam. She admitted it, remember? And they got her fingerprints on the doorknob. I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“I’m just trying to get you something to make you feel better.” Now with a little heat, “So maybe you could feel like you contributed to casting doubt on what happened. Like if you saw her trying the knob or something, maybe trying to get in, and she couldn’t, just before she turned and then you saw her as she was leaving.”

“I don’t think I’m going to change my story now. I saw what I saw. You want me to commit perjury under oath? I don’t think Hardy would want me helping that way.”

“No. It’s just that you happening upon her just at the one second… anybody would believe if you just got there a minute earlier and watched her trying to get in. I mean, Mr. Hardy could ask you that anyway.”

Chiurco wasn’t warming to this idea at all. His mouth had hardened down to a thin line. “And then I’d just say no.”

“Hey, don’t get mad at me,” she said. “You’re the one who started with how bad you felt about not being able to help her. I’m just saying maybe Mr. Hardy could make it seem as if you’d seen her not getting in. Then they don’t have that assumption anymore. You didn’t see her coming out exactly, did you? I mean, she was just there at the door?”

Suddenly, Chiurco slapped a palm down on the bed between them. “Hey! What’s this interrogation? What are you trying to get at here?”

“Craig! Nothing! I’m not trying to get at anything. I’m just talking to you. What’s your problem? What are you so uptight about?”

After fighting his emotions for a second he gathered himself and let out a sigh. “Maybe I’m uptight because I’m nervous enough about this to begin with. I’m not going to go changing my story, even a little, even if it might help her. That just gets me in trouble. With Wyatt, with Hardy, with everybody. I don’t see how you want me to do that. It’s tricky enough as it is.”

“What’s tricky?”

“Saying what you saw. Keeping it simple. It’s not as easy as it seems, especially when everybody’s all over you with these little details you never thought about. I got my story and I’m sticking to it.”

“The way you say it like that, it sounds like you made it up.”

“I’m not making anything up! Jesus, Tam, I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.”

“Well, I can’t believe you’re so touchy about it. It’s not that big a deal. We’re just talking.”

“No, we’re not just talking.” Now he sat up straight, off the headboard, pulling the blankets up around him. “And it’s way that big a deal! You don’t see that?”

“Not as big as you’re making it.” She stood up and walked across to the chair where she’d put her clothes. She slipped out of the robe and started to grab her underwear.

“What are you doing?” Chiurco asked.

“I’m going home. I think we’re done for tonight.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.” She had her jeans on, pulled her sweater over her head. “And while we’re at it, disagreeing about this and other stuff, I thought we’d decided we weren’t going to be smoking weed anymore.”

Now Chiurco crossed his arms, shaking his head back and forth, and went silent, rage and frustration smeared across his features.

“In case,” Tamara went on, “you think I didn’t notice or smell it or anything.”

“I wasn’t trying to hide it.”

“No? A quick toke in the bathroom with the window open? That’s not exactly lighting up in front of me.”

“I thought you’d be mad.”

“Correct, Craig. Mad at you for using it, and mad that you can’t stop.”

“I don’t want to stop, Tam. I’ve told you. I like it, is the problem. And I could stop anytime I want. Which maybe I don’t.”

“Maybe I’ll believe you when I see it start even a little. And meanwhile, this paranoia problem, don’t kid yourself. That’s the weed too.”

“Now I’ve got a paranoia problem.”

“Your testimony issues? We just had a fight about them? Hello?”

“You’re wrong. You’re just plain wrong.”

“I really don’t think so.” She crossed over to the door. “I really don’t, Craig. And in the meanwhile, I’m just plain gone.”

In the living room of his Marina mansion Harlen Fisk hit the remote switch and turned off the television right after the nightly news. He and Kathy had in fact made quite a splash by showing up today in the courtroom, and the networks had played it up in a gratifying way. The city wasn’t coming close yet to an election cycle, so in spite of the negative connotations being slung around about his connection to Joel’s development deals and his sister’s coffee shop, the general rule of thumb was that the more your name appeared in the media, the better your chances to get elected.

And getting elected was what Harlen was all about.

Still, he couldn’t help but be disappointed in his sister. As a matter of fact, disappointed was hardly the word.

Well, he told himself, I’m not going to think about Maya now-what her future might be like if in fact she got convicted and sent to jail. That wasn’t his fault; it was her doing. Her clueless, stubborn nature.

If she had only kept her mouth shut. That had been Harlen’s intent in putting her in touch with Hardy in the first place. A good lawyer should in theory have kept her from admitting anything that put her near any of the murders. But by the time she’d gotten with Hardy, she’d already told the police that she’d been out at church that morning, and somehow the fear that she’d be caught in that lie had led her to compound the injury by confessing to both the lie and her whereabouts near the time of the murder.

Which put her in their sights.

Stop. Don’t keep worrying this to death, he told himself. Get up. Go to bed.

But his body didn’t respond. He sat there with the reading lamp on next to him, his hands crossed over his comfortable-looking stomach, which tonight felt suddenly knotted with tension.

“Babe?” His wife, Jeannette, looking in. “Are you all right? Are you coming to bed?”

“In a minute.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“This trial. Maya. The whole thing.”

She came into the room, pulled up an ottoman, and sat on it. She was tall, solidly built, athletic, with shoulder-length blond hair encircling a wholesome, all-American face. “I’ll talk about it if you want.”

He smiled at her. “I would have thought you’d have been sick of it by now.”

“I might be sick of it, but I’m not too tired to talk about it if you want to.”

He paused a moment. “I just marvel that she can be so dumb. Sticking with the story that she didn’t know much about the weed. I mean, come on, I knew about it, everybody knew about it.”

Her forehead creased in a look of concern. “I don’t think I knew that. You knew Dylan? How well did you know him?”

He waved that away. “I met him first when he was her boyfriend for a while when they were in college. Then again when Maya hired him, just after he got out of jail. I told her it was a mistake. And of course, she listened to me as much as she always does, which is not at all.”

“Harlen, come on. She listens to you.”

“Maybe listens, but doesn’t hear. I told her this dope stuff could be a problem a couple of years ago, told her to fire him. No chance.”

“Why not?”

“She was saving him, I think. This messianic complex she’s got. She’s got everything and she’s so lucky and so she’s got to help losers to balance the scales or something. Not realizing, of course, about the people who are covering for her.”

“You mean you?”

“Let me just ask you,” he said. “Who’s got her kids right now?”

“I don’t mind that. They’re good kids.”

“No argument. But they’re not ours, are they? And you and me, we didn’t sign on for the little darlings, did we?” Sighing, he went on. “She shouldn’t even be in this at all. I told her not to go down there. Six in the morning? I mean, what kind of hour for a meeting is that? And why do these things with her become my problems?”

“I didn’t know you’d talked to her. When was that?”

Again, he waved off her question. “The night before. She called and asked me what I’d do. I told her to call him back and find out what was so important, but again, naturally…” He turned a palm over, meaning she’d ignored his suggestion. He let out a long breath, his head shaking from side to side. “And then there’s this Levon thing too.”

“The other victim?”

He nodded. “Levon Preslee. Actually not a bad guy.”

“You knew him too?”

He faked a short-lived smile. “Hey, I’m a politician. I know everybody.”

“So what is this Levon thing?”

“He gets out of jail, he comes to my sweet little sister to help him out, since she helped Dylan when he got out. And if you haven’t guessed yet, these guys-Levon and Dylan-still talk to each other. So I know people, right? It’s what I do. So way back then I put him in with Jon Francona over at ACT, and it worked out pretty good until… well, until last fall.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. So, well, the point is, why I might be thinking about this stuff right now, and getting a little edgy about it, is Jon Francona died two years ago, so nobody in the world, besides my sister and you, has got or knows of any connection between me and Levon Preslee, and I’m just a little wee bit concerned that along with this forfeiture stuff we’re all wrestling with, somebody’s going to pull that up and wave it in my face too. And don’t get me wrong, I love the publicity and all, but I think that might actually do me some harm.”

“Well”-Jeannette reached out and put her hands on her husband’s knees-“nobody’s going to fault you for helping the poor man out all those years ago.”

“Nobody’s going to know, Jeannette. Nobody can entertain the thought even for a minute that I knew this guy from Adam.” He let out a last deep sigh. “I mean, I keep telling myself Maya put herself in this position. I’ve got no choice. I’ve got to let her get herself out of it. I can’t cover for her anymore, or else everything we’ve got is at risk.”

“Come on, hon. I think that must be a bit of an exaggeration.”

Harlen chewed at the inside of his cheek and pushed himself up out of his recliner. “Not really,” he said. “Not too much.”