Truth Be Told

24

“Keep a secret about what?” Jane tried to predict what Peter was really asking her. He certainly knew she’d lost her Boston TV job by keeping a secret, a heartbreaking lesson about terrible bosses and television’s terror of lawsuits. She’d protected a source-as she had promised. Done nothing wrong. After the jury’s defamation decision, she’d been fired from Channel 11, right when she was making a name for herself in television. That disaster changed her life, but not her devotion to journalism and the sanctity of secrets. Every story had a secret at its core. “Of course I can keep a secret.”

They stood in the Register’s postage-stamp “visitor” parking lot, on the way to-somewhere. Peter said he’d explain as they drove. Jane was also struggling to jettison her envy over Chrystal Peralta’s plum assignment, and focus on her own work. “You’re too competitive,” her mother always told her. Was there such a thing?

“Sorry to be so circumspect,” Peter was saying. He smiled. “It’s a lawyer thing, right? I’m trying to gauge what I can tell you without breaking the privilege. So let’s just go, and then-”

“Go from there?” Jane said. Lawyers. Sometimes you had to be patient.

“Exactly.” He pointed Jane to the passenger side of his silver Jeep, then hopped into the driver’s seat, tossing his briefcase in the back. Jane saw a sleek tennis racket, two of them, on the backseat, next to a battered canvas Adidas bag. Two yellow tennis balls rolled onto the floor, landing on a pile of grimy Boston Registers and a wadded-up towel. “Sorry for the car.” Peter waved at the chaos. “You’re not allergic to dogs, I hope?”

Jane put her iced coffee in the cup holder, clicked on her seat belt, tucked her tote bag at her feet. “Dogs?”

“Dog. At home, luckily for you.” Peter eased the Jeep out of the parking lot, the metal barrier arm creaking up. “Black lab. Named Harley. He’d be trying to sit on your lap if he were here.”

“I have a-” Jane always hated to tell people she had a cat. She loved Coda, and had loved Murrow. But did it sound spinsterish? Single woman with cat. Still, possibly that was her own issue. “Not allergic,” she said.

Peter headed up Dorchester Ave., turned onto the Southeast Expressway, instantly hitting the left lane, passing whenever he could, weaving through the snarl of traffic more aggressively than Jane might have. There was never a moment, even on a Tuesday afternoon, when 93 South wasn’t teeming with cars, headed to the South Shore, or the Cape. Boston had gone crazy over the hot weather, celebrating the ending of another gloomy winter, and anywhere there was water became a magnet to hooky players. Jane bet half the cars on the road were workers who’d banged in sick. Who’d return in a day or so suspiciously sunburned, telling stories of “food poisoning.”

The speed limit was fifty-five, but as the highway passed the JFK Library, the traffic braked to a crawl. The Jeep’s digital speedometer flirted with twenty, and lost. That gave Jane time to find out what the heck was going on.

“Peter? What secret?” She smiled, trying to encourage him to talk. “Did you lure me into the car under false pretenses? I have a cell phone, you know. Or the way this traffic is going, I could easily hop out and walk back to the Register.”

“Sorry, Jane.” Peter edged into the left lane again, swerved back into the middle, sneaked between a minivan and a Subaru with a ponytailed woman texting at the wheel. “I’m trying to decide how much I can tell you. It’s tricky.”

He punched on the radio, AM 1030, the all-news station. Traffic on the threes, it was saying. “Heavy and slow on the Southeast…” He changed lanes again, swerving.

“Hey!” Jane grabbed the strap, steadied her coffee. She never liked being the one along for the ride. “The deal is, you tell me everything. This is the way to Sandoval’s sister-in-law’s house. We weren’t going to talk to them again until there was an arrest. So was there an-”

Jane stopped, mid-sentence. Another possibility. Peter had questioned Chrystal about the woman’s body found in the Arboretum. They could get there this way, too. “Hey. Are we going to the Arboretum? Why?”

Jane turned down the radio. Why was he making her guess? “Peter? You think Elliot Sandoval had something to do with this murder? The new murder?”

Two crazies on motorcycles zoomed past them, weaving flamboyantly though the sluggish traffic.

Peter swore at them, then punched the radio back on. “Listen, I need to see if the cops are-well, let me hear the news, okay? Since you won’t get me the details from your editor, I have to hear it somehow.”

Jane took the elastic out of her stubby ponytail, shook out her hair, opened the window, letting in a puff of crazy-hot May air. This wasn’t how she’d imagined this day. She’d imagined going to the drug store, buying sunscreen. Imagined pink sand and turquoise water and no deadlines. Now she was zero for three.

She waited, twisting her hair back into semi-place, letting Peter hear the newscaster’s voice describing a house fire in Brighton, a state legislator forced to resign after some graphic tweets, and then, a body in Jamaica Plain. A woman, no identification as yet, police say no suspects. Jane saw Peter’s grip change on the steering wheel, saw him flinch, even though he probably didn’t realize it.

“What’s the deal, Peter?” Jane was done speculating. “You get me out here asking if I can keep a secret, then you don’t tell me anything. Now you’re listening to the radio as if someone’s life depends on it. And I’m wondering-whose?”

“Would you confess to a murder you didn’t commit?” Peter asked.

“Confess? To a-?” Jane shifted in her seat, holding on again as Peter accelerated through an obviously too-small gap in the traffic. “Confess?”

This was either a ridiculous coincidence, or a potential disaster. Or both. This is exactly what Jake had mentioned the night before. Jake-Jake-had clammed up when she’d pushed him on it.

For a million reasons, she couldn’t tell Peter what Jake had told her. Even the non-thing that it was.

“You think someone’s offering a false confession?” Might as well go for it. If she was off base, she’d know it instantly.

“Why would you say that?” Peter turned to her, frowning.

“Well, you just asked me if-” Jane fussed with the window, wished she knew what was going on. There’d been a dead woman, Shandra Newbury, killed in a vacant house on Waverly Road. Now another one at the Arboretum, if she had it right. Were they connected? What did Elliot Sandoval have to do with it? Why didn’t Peter-who clearly was involved-simply explain what the hell was up?

“Peter, listen. We agreed I won’t report what you tell me about Sandoval. So why don’t you just tell me?”

“Because it’s not about Elliot Sandoval confessing,” Peter said.

“Then who?” Jane frowned, trying to make sense of it. “What confession?”

“It’ll work, trust me,” Aaron said into the phone. “I’ll switch the Nordstand Boulevard clients to another property. Same size, same everything.”

Though the bank was still open, tonight till five, Aaron’s office was deserted, secretary gone and other VPs pleading “off-site meetings.” Aaron took advantage of the privacy, knowing no one could overhear. “I’ll tell them the old tenants couldn’t be out until tonight so we can’t let the new ones in until tomorrow. I’ll waive the key deposit. They’re kids, they won’t care.”

Ackerman hated when he called, Aaron knew that, but sometimes it was the only way to connect. And so what? There’d be no incriminating record of it, no way to prove exactly what they’d been talking about. If anyone asked, they’d been discussing the bank’s foreclosed properties. Exactly what they were supposed to be doing.

He rolled his eyes as Ackerman responded with his typical semi-cryptic half-sentences, meaningless or explainable if anyone happened to overhear. Ackerman had his own issues to juggle, and Aaron knew the pressures on him were relentlessly unpredictable. Which made Ackerman the same way, relentlessly unpredictable. Aaron was used to it. Didn’t take Ackerman’s arrogant and dismissive behavior personally anymore. It was all part of the deal.

“I’ll make the rounds of the other places, let you know the score,” Aaron said. “Sound good?”

But there was only silence. Ackerman had hung up.

Par for the course, Aaron thought, as he put down the phone. He checked his calendar and spreadsheets. One property’s rent was a few days overdue. He smiled as he grabbed his car keys. College kids. What would he do without them?