Beyond Suspicion

8

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It was their second-favorite indoor activity. Jack was a horrendous cook, but his wife was phenomenal, and as with all their favorite things, he fancied himself a pretty swift and eager learner. Tonight, he was taking total responsibility for dessert.

“What the heck are you making over there?” Cindy asked as she glanced across the kitchen counter. Jack was surrounded by a clutter of mixing bowls, milk cartons, and opened bags of flour and sugar.

“Tres leches,” he said.

“You can’t make tres leches.”

“Watch me.”

It had been an awful week, and goofing off with his wife in the kitchen was a good way to give his brain a rest. They hadn’t spoken about Jessie since the verdict-that was his decision, not hers. In fact, six months earlier, Cindy had seen Jessie as a victim and even encouraged Jack to take her case. That was pretty big of her, given the history between him and Jessie. Maybe she didn’t want to be the one to keep Jack from helping an old friend. Or perhaps she’d simply wanted Jack to realize for himself that representing Jessie wasn’t exactly the thing to do with their own marriage on shaky ground.

“Is it a good recipe?” she asked.

“The best.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“From the woman who invented it.”

“Seriously?”

He smiled, thinking of Abuela. “Maybe.”

Cindy wiped her hands clean and crossed the room to adjust the stereo. Maybe it was the Jessie experience lingering in his mind, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Cindy.

Playing by the rules. Was that what their marriage was about? Lord knows they’d tried to make things work. A string of marriage counselors and more sessions than Jack could count. In the end it came down to how hard they were willing to work at the relationship. When it came to work, Jack was a regular beast of burden.

Cindy was no slacker, either. Even since their last counselor had basically given up on them, Cindy had made it her mission to keep their relationship fresh. It seemed she was always changing something about herself, and Jack couldn’t help but wonder what all the changes were about. Was she really just trying to keep married life interesting, or was she still fighting off demons and struggling to find happiness? Tonight she had her blond hair pulled straight back with a wide headband, her Valley of the Dolls look, as she called it. Even music was an adventure with Cindy. Her tastes were eclectic and ever-evolving, and lately she’d been exposing him to the likes of Peggy Lee and Perry Como. Without a doubt, some of the most romantic tunes ever had come straight out of the 1940s, but the lyrics to this particular song she’d chosen were pretty aggravating. Even if your heart was “filled with pain,” to Jack’s ear it still didn’t rhyme with “again.”

“Jack, what are you doing?”

He glanced into the bowl. His hands were buried in a thick, sweet mixture of flour, sugar, and condensed milk. “Shoot, I forgot the eggs.”

“You forgot your brain. You’ve got tres leches up to your elbows.”

“I’m just following the recipe. It says beat fifty strokes by hand.”

“As opposed to using an electric mixer, Einstein.”

He flashed an impish grin. “Oh.”

She handed him a wooden spoon and rolled her eyes. “Lawyers. You’re so literal.”

“Yeah,” he said, thinking once more of Jessie’s parting words. “Always playing by the rules.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“It wasn’t nothing.”

“I was just kidding around.”

“But you weren’t smiling. You meant something by that.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it.”

She looked away, shook her head subtly and said quietly, “You think I don’t know you?”

“Cindy, let it go, okay? We were having fun here.”

She returned to her end of the kitchen counter. Jack could see the regret in her eyes, the way they’d slipped into their usual pattern. Without thinking, he ran a messy hand through his hair, giving himself an earful of sweet goo. Cindy snickered to herself. He chuckled, too, and sharing the moment helped to shake off some of the unwanted tension. As he snagged a paper towel to wipe it off, she came to him, grabbed his tres lechescoated forearm, and said, “Don’t.”

“What?”

“I think I’m ovulating.”

“Huh?”

She arched an eyebrow, pointing with her eyes toward the bedroom.

He smiled and said, “Now that’s the kind of non sequitur I can live with.”

He started to wipe his face clean. “Don’t,” she said. She gently kissed a gob of the sweet mixture off the corner of his mouth, and the tip of her tongue was suddenly exploring his earful of tres leches.

It tickled, and he recoiled-but only slightly. There’d been times when it seemed their marriage was hanging by a thread. But every now and then, out came the old Cindy and, oh, what a thread. “My, you’re a veritable box of surprises tonight.”

“And you are one lucky boy,” she whispered.

He smiled and touched her face. “Don’t I know it.”

Jack watched her as she slept, soothed by the rhythm of her gentle breathing. Even after a hot shower, the faint smell of tres leches lingered in the bedroom. Nothing like skipping dinner altogether and heading straight for dessert to send you off to dreamland.

Sex wasn’t exactly a strong point of their relationship. In fact, it had been nonexistent when they were first married. What should have been the happiest time of their lives was marred by Cindy’s recurring nightmares. The medical doctors had ruled out sexual assault, but probably no one would ever know the details of what her attacker had done or threatened to do. Five years was a long time; five years was yesterday. At times Jack felt as though he could only guess how long ago it was in Cindy’s mind. The good news was that she’d finally pushed it far enough away to want to try to start a family. It had taken her all that time to convince herself that the world was not such an awful place that a child should never be brought into it.

Jack laid a hand lightly on her belly, wondering if this one would be the one.

The phone rang. It was down the hall in his home office, a separate phone line from the main number. Jack let it ring five times, and the machine got it. The caller hung up. A minute later the phone rang again. On the fifth ring it went to the machine. Another hang up.

Seconds later it was ringing yet again. It was as if someone had his number on redial and was determined to keep calling until a live person answered. If this kept up, Cindy would certainly wake. He knew she hadn’t been sleeping well the last few nights, so he sprang from the bed, wearing only his underwear, and hurried down the dark hall. He caught it on the fourth ring, just before the machine would take it.

“Hello.”

“It’s me. Jessie.”

He suddenly felt more naked than he was. “I’ve been trying to reach you. You didn’t return my calls.”

“That’s because I didn’t want to talk to you.”

“Then why are you calling now?”

“Because you pissed me off.”

“I pissed you off?”

“It’s odd, don’t you think? I was in a lawsuit for months, and the viatical investors never once accused me of fraud. They thought the diagnosis was all just a mistake. Suddenly, the case is over, and they’ve become highly suspicious. They think they were scammed.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because they’re poking around, asking questions. And I think you have something to do with it.”

“I haven’t said a word to anyone.”

“Liar. You and your investigator were on Grove Isle questioning Dr. Marsh’s wife, weren’t you?”

Jack couldn’t deny it, so he steered clear. “Jessie, we should talk.”

“I warned you, don’t ask so many questions. You have ticked me off bad this time.”

He bit back his anger, but he couldn’t swallow all of it. “I’m tired of you acting as if I’m the one who did you wrong.”

“If you blow the lid off this, you are really going to regret it.”

“So you admit it was a scam. You did it.”

“We did it.”

He’d known since the elevator, but her admission still shocked him. “You’ve pushed it too far this time, Jessie.”

“Not just me. All of us. So watch yourself, or I’ll not only have you disbarred, I’ll have you sitting in the prison cell right next to Dr. Marsh.”

“What?”

“The simple truth is, I couldn’t have done this without you. You were a key player.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“No one’s going to buy that. Especially when I tell them the truth-that you were in on the deal all the way.”

“I can’t believe what you’re saying.”

“Believe it. Now watch your step-partner.”

The line clicked in his ear. She was gone before he could say another word.