Elizabeth George - I, Richard

Charlie considered this point and all its implications. “I need to talk to Terry Stewart,” she decided. “Terry must know who Eric was seeing.”

“If he was seeing anyone at all. But why do you need to know?”

“Because I…”Charlie drew a deep breath. “I need absolution. The truth will give me absolution.”

“For what?”

“For not knowing what to believe.”

“There's no sin in that.” “For me, there is.”

Eric's oldest friend, so often declared “my best friend on earth… he didn't desert me… he never would,” Terry Stewart, Charlie knew, had to be confronted without having had the time to prepare a cover for whatever it was he might be hiding about Eric. As he was an attorney-Eric's own lawyer, in fact-she knew how likely it was that he would be set upon taking his clients' secrets to the grave. So she didn't want her visit to him to be official. Which meant she would need to waylay him in a location some distance from his glass-towered office.

The gym turned out to be that location. She saw his car parked in front of it when she was on her way to the tennis courts to check for him, and she recognized its vanity plate: 10s nei. So she pulled into the lot, saw him sweating on the Stair-master through the plate-glass windows of the establishment, and decided to wait for him to emerge. There was a Starbucks next door, and she went there.

She was in a window seat sipping a chai latte when Terry swung open the door of the gym. He headed for his car, straightening his tie as he walked. He looked freshly showered: all damp hair and glowing skin. She knocked on the window. He swung around, saw her, stopped, and smiled. He came in her direction and, in short order, joined her.

“How are you, Charlie?” His face was grave and kind.

Charlie shrugged. “I'm okay. I've been better, but I'll survive.”

“I'm sorry I haven't phoned. I'm a coward, I guess. If I talk about it, she'll cry, I told myself. And I can't avoid talking about it because if I do, it'd be like ignoring an alligator in your bathtub. But I don't want to make her cry. She's cried enough already. She might even be feeling better and there I'd be, making her live through everything again.” He pulled out a chair and sat. “I'm sorry.”

“He was having an affair, wasn't he?”

Terry jerked back against his seat, apparently startled by this frontal attack. “Eric?”

“I'd thought he was at first. Then I'd changed my mind. Well, he convinced me, really. But now… He was having an affair, wasn't he?”

“No. God, no. What makes you think-”

“All the changes, Terry. The Harley and the tattoo for starters.”

“This county's filled with guys in their forties who spend their weekends riding around on Harleys. They've got wives, kids, cats, dogs, car payments, and mortgages and they wake up one morning and say, This is all there is? And they want more. Midlife crisis. They want the edge back. Harleys give it to them. That's it.”

“There were phone calls. Late nights he supposedly spent at work. And a woman came by the house to look through his things. She said she was Sharon Pasternak, a molecular biologist at Biosyn. She said they were working on a report-she and Eric, Terry, why would Eric have been working on a report with a biologist, for God's sake?-and he had some data she said she needed in order to put the report together by herself now he's gone. But when she left, she took nothing with her. What's that supposed to tell me?”

“I don't know.”

“I think it's obvious enough. She was looking for traces.”

“Of what?”

“You know. He was seeing someone. Maybe it was her.”

“That's impossible.”

“Why? Why is it impossible?”

“Because… God, Charlie. He was crazy about you. I mean crazy about you. Had been since the day you two met.”

“Then she was looking for something else. What?”

“Charlie, jeez. Take it easy, okay? You look like shit, pardon my French. Have you been sleeping? Are you eating? Have you thought about getting away for a few days?”

“He lied to me about his family. He had pictures. He used them to pretend… You saw them, Terry. You've been at our house. You saw those pictures and you know his family. You grew up with him. So you must have known…” Charlie clutched the table as a cramp gripped her stomach. Her bowels felt loose. Her palms were wet. She was falling apart and she hated the fact, and the hate made her raise her voice and cry, “I want the information. I have the right to it. Tell me what you know.”

Terry looked puzzled more than anything else. “What pictures?” he asked. “What're you talking about?”

Charlie told him. He listened, but he shook his head, saying, “Sure, I knew Eric's family. But that was just his mom, his dad, and his brother. Brent. And even if I studied those pictures- which I didn't… I mean, who studies family pictures in other people's houses? You just glance at them when you walk by, don't you?-I wouldn't have recognized anyone. Eric's mom died when we were around eight and even before that she was in bed for five years with a stroke. I saw her what? maybe once, so in a picture… No way. I wouldn't even know her. And I haven't set eyes on Brent or Eric's dad for years. At least ten, maybe more. So if there was a picture of either of them or all of them or someone else, I wouldn't have known the difference.”

Charlie listened through a roar in her ears. “Brent?” she said in a whisper. “He died. The accident. And then Eric's mother and his father-”

“What accident?” Terry asked.

“The shotgun. Hunting birds. The desert. Eric tripped and Brent was…” She couldn't finish because Terry's face was telling her more than she wanted to know. She felt her own face crumple. “Oh God. Oh God.”

Terry said, “Jeez. Jeez, Charlie.” Awkwardly, he patted her hand. “Jeez. I don't know what to say.”

“Tell me what you know. Tell me why he lied. Tell me who she is. Tell me who he was.”

“I swear to God-”

She smacked her hand on the table. “He was your best friend!”

Terry glanced over his shoulder to the counter, where the Starbucks clerk was beginning to show more interest in them than in the lattes she was making. He turned back to Charlie. “There was a blowup in his family. This was years ago. That's all I know. He didn't talk about it and I didn't ask.”

“So why didn't he tell me that? Why'd he pretend-”

“I don't know. Maybe it sounded… more glamorous or something.”

“To have shot your own brother? I don't believe that. The only reason a man would tell a woman that tale would be to keep her from wondering why he never mentioned a family, why he never saw them or heard from them. And why would he do that in the first place, Terry? You know as well as I: if he had another life that they knew about. Right?”

“That's not the case.”

“How do you know?”

“Look. Do you know how much planning it would take to have a double life like the kind you're imagining? Jeez. Do you know how much plain old cash it would take? He didn't have that kind of money, Charlie. All he had was pipe dreams like the rest of us.”

“What sort of pipe dreams?”

“He talked through his hat. You know how he was.”

“Talked about what?”

“I need a cup of coffee.” Terry got up and went to the counter, where he placed an order, dug out his wallet, and waited.

Biding his time, Charlie thought. Establishing his story. For the first time since Eric's death, she wondered if there was anyone whom she could trust and at this thought, she sank back in her seat and felt ill to her soul.