Beyond Suspicion

19

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Jack listened to the audiocassette in the car. Immediately, he knew what it was. The bigger question was, Why was she doing this to him?

Jack had one good friend who’d known the old Jessie. Not in the same way Jack had known her, but they used to hang out together back when Jack was dating Jessie. He’d first met Mike Campbell in Hawaii. Jack spent a summer slumming it in Maui before law school, one last blowout before immersing himself in the study of law. Mike had done him one better, having spent his entire senior year as a transfer student at the University of Hawaii before starting law school in Miami. He’d simply packed up his old Porsche at the landlocked University of Illinois, driven to Los Angeles, hopped on a ship, and finished out his undergraduate degree surrounded by palm trees and beautiful women. They were a couple of young immortals, crazy enough to night-dive in the black ocean beneath the fishing boats, living for the rush of adrenaline that came each time they’d spot holes in the nets that sharks had torn through. Mike was always a bit more fearless, which is why he now lived on the water, with a forty-three-foot Tiara open-fisherman docked in his backyard. He’d second-mortgaged his house and risked everything to wage a ten-year battle against the makers of a polybutylene piping that was supposed to replace copper plumbing in homes across the United States. Turned out that even the minimal levels of chlorine in normal drinking water disintegrated the stuff. Darn. It only ended up costing the big boys 1.25 billion dollars. At the time, it was the largest settlement ever in a case that didn’t involve personal injuries. Mike walked away with twenty-two million bucks, thank you very much.

The best part was, it was still impossible to hate the guy.

“You and Jessie on tape?” said Mike.

Jack had stopped by his house and caught him tinkering with the stereo system on his boat. They were sharing a couple of beers on deck, Mike leaning against the rail and Jack reclining in the hot seat, as they called it, a bolted-down fishing chair that made Jack want to strap himself in and reel in a monster sailfish. It was well past sunset, but the landscape lighting from the expensive homes on the other side of the canal shimmered on the waterway.

“Yeah. On tape.”

“Like, screaming and everything?”

“Mike, you’re not helping.”

“Every good lawyer needs all the facts.”

“The most important fact, buddy, is that this tape is ancient. It was made before I’d even met Cindy Paige.”

“So, was it a high-pitched scream, or more of a guttural-”

“Mike, come on.”

“Sorry.” He swiveled in his chair and grabbed another Bud from the cooler. “So, it’s an old tape. Did you even know she had it?”

“Not really.”

“What do you mean, not really?”

Jack tipped back his beer, took a long pull. “Jessie was a lot of fun, but she wasn’t nearly as promiscuous as people thought. We didn’t jump in bed together, by any means. But once we dated awhile, things progressed. And once we got there, things got kind of… interesting.”

“Interesting?”

“She wanted to make a videotape.”

“What?” he said, smiling.

“I wouldn’t go for it. But for about a two-month stretch, she brought it up almost every time we got naked. One night we were out dancing, got pretty drunk. About thirty seconds after we get back to her apartment, we’re in bed rolling all over each other. She reaches for the remote control on the nightstand, and I think she’s switching on the television to throw a little light on the subject. We’re about five seconds away from doing it when I realize that there’s a tape recorder on the nightstand. She figures that maybe we’ll ease into this with just the audio, then maybe I’ll warm up to the idea and do a video. I tell her to turn it off, but at this point I don’t care if we’re live on National Public Radio. That’s how it happened.”

“You made an X-rated audiocassette?”

“It was awful. It sounded like a couple of drunks going at it in the dark.”

“So, you got rid of it?”

“I told her to, but she kept it. It became a little gag between us. I’d be working late at the office till maybe ten or eleven o’clock. Instead of getting a nagging call to come home, I’d pick up the phone and on the other end of the line would be this tape of Jessie outdoing Meg Ryan in the When Harry Met Sally restaurant scene.”

“Beats all heck out of clanging the dinner bell.”

“It was good for a couple of laughs, and then she dropped it.”

“But she kept the tape?”

“Evidently.”

“For how many years?”

“Seven, closer to eight. I don’t read much into that. She could have just stuffed it in a shoebox somewhere and forgotten about it.”

“And the homicide investigators found it.”

“Yeah. Or, more likely, Jessie’s estate handed it over to them as evidence.”

“As evidence of what? That you and Jessie had sex before you and Cindy even met?”

“I guess it never occurred to anyone that the tape might be from another decade.”

“How could they not see it?” said Mike. “You ever gone back to one of your old cassettes? They look old.”

“But a copy doesn’t look old. Cindy’s looked brand-new. Unless you have the original, it wouldn’t be so obvious that the tape is eight years old.”

“So, where’s the original?”

“I don’t know. The police might have it, but that would be really scummy of them to copy an old cassette onto a new reel and pass it off to my wife as a recent affair.”

“So, presumably Jessie’s estate kept the original, and for some reason they gave the police a copy that makes it look new.”

“Or, I suppose, the original could be gone, and the only thing Jessie left behind was a copy that looks brand-new.”

“Why would she do that?”

Jack paused, as if afraid to come across as paranoid. “Because she wanted someone to think that she and I were having a recent affair.”

“Ah, I see,” he said, smiling. “And which conspiracy theory do you subscribe to on the Kennedy assassination? Would it be the Mafia, the Cubans, or perhaps the cluster of icebergs that got the Titanic?”

“Okay, it’s a little out there. But whatever went on here, it sure convinced my wife.”

Mike leaned forward in his captain’s chair, looked at Jack with concern. “How is Cindy doing?”

“So-so. This doesn’t help.”

“I thought about you two when I saw this on the news. I called you.”

“I know. I got the message. So many people called, I just didn’t have a chance to return them all.”

“I thought about calling Cindy, but I didn’t know what kind of shape she’d be in. Bad enough finding a body in your house. But it has to be especially hard on her, after the nightmare she went through with that psycho former client of yours.”

Jack looked down at his empty beer bottle. “First him, now Jessie. Guess I need to work on my choice of clients.”

“Water through the pipes, as I always say.”

“Polybutylene pipes.”

Their bottles clicked in toast. “God love ’em,” said Mike.

They shared a weak smile, then turned serious. “Tell me the truth,” said Jack. “After all these years, why do you think Jessie had that tape?”

“Could be as you said. She packed it away in her closet and forgot it even existed.”

“Or?”

“I don’t know. You are the son of a former governor. Maybe she thought you’d run for office some day and she could embarrass you.”

Jack peeled the label from his beer. “Possible, I suppose.”

“Or it could be that she’s been listening to that tape over and over again for the last decade, turning away the likes of George Clooney and Brad Pitt, crying her eyes out night after night for Jack Swyteck, world’s greatest lover.”

“You think?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

“Wow. I never would have figured that out on my own. You’re a genius.”

“I know.”

“Seriously,” said Jack. “You’re a plaintiffs’ lawyer.”

Mike glanced around his gorgeous boat. “Last time I checked.”

“Go back in time eight months. On the face of it, Jessie Merrill had an attractive case. Sympathetic facts, a young and beautiful client.”

“I’ll give you that.”

“She could have gone to a zillion different lawyers. Most of them would have taken the case. Hell, some would have signed on even if she’d told them flat-out in advance that the whole thing was a scam.”

“Not me, but some of them, yeah.”

“Yet, she picks me. A guy whose practice is ninety-percent criminal. Why?”

Mike didn’t answer right away, seeming to measure his words. “Maybe she wanted a really smart lawyer who she knew she could fool.”

“Thanks.”

“Or, for some bizarre reason, she wanted you back in her life.”

“But why? After all these years, why?”

He shrugged and said, “Can’t help you there, my friend. You’ll have to answer that one yourself.”

Jack leaned back in the deck chair, watched the moonlight glistening on the little ripples in the brackish water alongside Mike’s boat. “I wish I knew,” was all he could say.

Mike tossed his empty into the open cooler. “You need a place to stay tonight?”

He considered it, then said, “No. I can’t let this fester.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Tell Cindy the truth.”

“That won’t be easy.”

“Cake,” Jack said. “The hard part is getting her to believe it.”

He grabbed an end of the cooler, and Mike grabbed the other. They climbed from the boat, the empties rattling against the cold ones as they walked toward the patio.