The Match

Chapter Fourteen

When Wilde’s call came in, Hester was on her back in bed, post flagrante delicto and still catching her breath. Lying next to her, staring up at the ceiling with a smile on his face, was her — was Hester too old to use the term “boyfriend”? — beau, Oren Carmichael.

“That,” Oren said, right before the phone trilled, “was awesome.”

They were in Hester’s Manhattan duplex. Like Hester, Oren had sold the Westville home where he and his ex, Cheryl, had raised their now-grown kids. Oren had been on the periphery of Hester’s life for a long time. He’d coached two of her sons in Little League. He had also been one of the policemen who’d found little Wilde in the woods.

Oren smiled at her.

“What?” Hester asked.

“Nothing,” Oren said.

“So why the big smile?”

“What part of ‘that was awesome’ is confusing you?”

When Ira died, Hester had figured that she was done with men. It wasn’t something she had concluded out of anger or bitterness or even heartbreak, though there was plenty of that. She’d loved Ira. He was a dear, kind, intelligent, funny man. He had been a wonderful life partner. Hester could simply not see herself dating again. She had a busy career and full life, and the whole idea of getting ready for a date with a new someone made her shiver. It just seemed like too much of a hassle. The notion that she would ever one day get naked in front of a man other than Ira both terrified and exhausted her. Who needed it? Not her.

Westville Police Chief Oren Carmichael had been a surprise. Oren, an uber hunk with broad shoulders in a fitted uniform, would never be for Hester and vice versa. But she fell and he fell and now, here they were. Hester couldn’t help but wonder what Ira would have made of this. She liked to think that he would be happy for her, the same way she would have been happy for Ira if he’d ended up with Cheryl, Oren’s still-sumptuous ex-wife who even now posted pics of herself in bikinis — though on the other hand, maybe Hester would have haunted Ira like Fruma-Sarah in the dream sequence in Fiddler on the Roof.

She’d want Ira to be happy with someone new. Wouldn’t Ira want the same for her? She hoped so. Ira could get so jealous, and Hester had been a bit of a flirt back in the day. Still, Hester was deliriously happy with Oren. They were ready to make more of a commitment, but at their ages, what did that mean? Kids? Hahaha. Marriage? Who needed it? Moving in together? Not really. She liked her own space. She didn’t want a man around all the time, even a wonderful one like Oren. Did that mean on some level she loved him any less? Hard to say. Hester loved Oren as much as possible, but she didn’t want to love him like she was eighteen years old, or even forty.

But there was one truth that constantly stung: The relationship with Oren was physical — more physical, though it would never be fair to compare, than with Ira. She felt guilty about that. Her and Ira’s sex life had waned. That was normal, of course. You’re building a life, two careers, you’re pregnant, you’re raising little kids, you’re exhausted, you have no privacy. It was a story too often repeated. But it’d still upset Ira. “I miss the passion,” he had said, and though she’d dismissed it as normal “man wants more sex” manipulation, she wondered about that.

One night, not long before David died in the car crash, Ira had been sitting in the dark with a glass of whiskey in his hand. He rarely drank and when he did, it went right to his head. She had come in the room and just stood behind him. She didn’t think he even knew she was there.

“If I died and you start dating again,” he’d said, “would you want your sex life with a new man to be what we have?”

She hadn’t answered. But she hadn’t forgotten either.

Maybe Ira wouldn’t be happy about what was going on in his old bed. Or maybe he would understand. When you’re young, you expect too much from a relationship; one day, you look back and understand that.

The phone trilled again.

Oren asked, “Verdict?”

Earlier, she and Oren had been discussing the Richard Levine murder case over dinner.

“Either you believe in the system,” Oren, as a law enforcement officer, had commented, “or you don’t.”

“I believe in our system,” she said.

“We both know what your client did wasn’t self-defense.”

“We don’t know anything of the sort.”

“If he gets off, does that mean our system doesn’t work?”

“It may mean the opposite,” she said.

“Meaning?”

“It may mean our system has the flexibility to work.”

Oren considered that. “Levine had his reasons. Is that what you’re saying?”

“In a sense.”

“Every murderer thinks they have a reason to kill.”

“True,” Hester said.

“And you think it’s okay to kill someone for that?”

“Only when it comes to Nazis,” she said, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “When it comes to Nazis, I have no problem with it at all.”

Hester sat up in bed now and looked at her phone. “Not the verdict,” Hester said. She hit the answer button and put the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“You alone?” Wilde asked.

She didn’t like the quake in his tone. “No.”

“Can you be?”

She mouthed to Oren that she was going into another room. Oren nodded that he understood. When she was in the living room with the bedroom door shut behind her, she said, “Okay, what’s wrong?”

“I have a hypothetical for you.”

“I’m not going to like this, am I?”

“Doubtful.”

“Go on.”

“Let’s say hypothetically I found a dead body.”

“I knew I wasn’t going to like this. Where?”

“In a private home where I was not supposed to be.”

Wilde explained about his search for his cousin and how it ended up on the doorstep of the McAndrews residence.

“Do you know whose body it is?”

“The father. Henry McAndrews.”

“Are you still in the house?”

“No.”

“Any chance the police could figure out that you were in the house?”

“No.”

“You say that with a lot of confidence,” Hester said.

Wilde didn’t reply.

“How long would you say he’s been dead?”

“I’m not a pathologist.”

“But?”

“I’d guess at least a week.”

“Interesting,” Hester said. “You’d think his wife or kids would have called it in or something. I assume you called me for legal advice.”

Wilde didn’t reply.

“Two choices,” she continued. “Choice One: Coming clean and calling it in.”

“I broke into the house.”

“We could work with that. You walked by. You smelled something funny.”

“So dressed all in black with a black mask and gloves, I slid open the back door in a remote house on several acres of private property, nowhere near where anyone would be taking a casual stroll—”

“Could all be explained,” Hester said.

“For real?”

“Might take some time. But they’d know you didn’t kill him because the autopsy would show he was killed at least a week ago. I’ll eventually get you off.”

“Choice Two?” he said.

“Are you worried the police won’t believe you?”

“If I come forward, they’ll dig into me, my past, all of it. They might even relook at the Maynard case.”

Hester hadn’t thought of that. The Maynard case had seemed an “ordinary” kidnapping to the outside world; it was anything but. That had been kept quiet for a lot of good reasons. “I see,” she said.

“And best scenario if I did come clean — who would be their main suspect?”

“I’m not following... oh, wait. Your cousin?”

“Who else?”

“Yeah, but come on, Wilde. Would you want to protect him if he murdered this guy?”

“No.”

“Being trolled isn’t a justification for murder,” Hester said.

“Unless he’s a Nazi.”

“Are you making a joke?”

“Not a good one, but yes. I don’t know if Peter Bennett was involved or not. We don’t have a clue what’s going on.”

“You can’t just leave a body to rot,” Hester said. “My legal advice would be to call it in.”

“What’s Choice Two?”

“That is Choice Two. Choice One was to come clean. Choice Two is to call it in anonymously. I would advise Choice One, but I have a stubborn client.”

“And you see his point,” Wilde added.

“I do.” Hester switched hands. “Tell you what. I’ll call it in. They can’t compel me to say a name. Attorney-client privilege, but this way they might keep me in the loop. I assume there is no way to trace our current call?”

“None.”

“Okay, I’ll let you know what I find out.”

She hung up. When she got back to the bedroom, Oren was getting dressed. She didn’t stop him. She had no trouble with him staying all night, but it was something neither encouraged.

“You okay?” Oren asked, pulling his T-shirt over those shoulders.

“Do you know any cops in Litchfield County?”

“I can find one, why?”

“I need to report a dead body.”