John Lescroart - The Motive

But he'd hardly digested these impressions when she stepped into his arms. Vaguely aware of the stares of Phyllis and Norma, the office manager, and a pair of paralegals who had stopped at the reception area for something, Hardy held her against him for the briefest of seconds, then turned to the gathered multitudes and introduced her, all business, as an old friend and new client.

A new client.

Back in the Solarium, they got seated and Hardy asked if he could see the subpoena. "You got this this morning?"

"Seven o'clock. I was hardly out of bed."

"They're still hassling you."

"I thought so, too. And they're doing another search. Is that unusual?"

He didn't answer that one. Instead, he asked, "When did they do this, the search? At seven, too?"

"No. Nine or so. They were separate. Cuneo was with the second bunch. I called you again."

"I had business this morning," Hardy said. "I called back as soon as I got in. Was Glitsky with the search team this time?"

"I don't think so. I've never met him, but I'm sure that wasn't the other name. I would have remembered."

"So what were they looking for this time?"

"I don't know. Everything, I think. They went upstairs and just started in."

Hiding his exasperation, Hardy smiled helpfully. "They list specifics on the warrant. Did they show that to you?"

"No."

"What about your husband? Wasn't he there? Did he ask to see the warrant, by any chance?"

She looked down, scratched at the fabric of her pants. "Will's taken a…" She stopped. "He's not home right now."

Hardy waited.

After a minute, she wiped an eye with her finger, then the other one. Reaching down, she opened her purse and removed a small package of Kleenex, brought one of the tissues up to her face. "This is anger, not sadness." She dabbed at her eyes some more, sniffed once, clenched the Kleenex in her fist. "He started having another affair," she said without looking at him. "The son of a bitch."

Hardy said the first thing that came to his mind. "So he wasn't fishing last Wednesday?"

She kept her eyes straight in front of her. "He was in Southern California, though. That's where they met up. On the same goddamn boat as the last one." Finally, she cast a sidelong glance at him. "I'm sorry about the language, and I didn't mean to lie to you about Will and me the other night." Again, a labored breath. "Anyway, after you left on Saturday, it blew up. He made some smart-ass remark about you and me…"

"You and me?"

"All the time we spent talking, just making it sound sleazy."

"I was there as your lawyer, Catherine." Hardy didn't like being cast as the wedge between wife and husband, but he immediately regretted referring to himself as her lawyer. It seemed to be another irrevocable step.

"Of course you were. What else could you be? But you have to know Will. As though he needed a real reason to pick a fight. Anyway, he was slandering you, too, and I just thought, 'How dare he?' and lost it. I threw him out."

"He thought you didn't know about the affair?"

"He must have thought I was an idiot. He even wanted to… to have sex with me when he got home, maybe so I wouldn't suspect he'd been rutting around for four days. The bastard." A bitter little sound escaped. "I thought if I could avoid bringing it up, it might stay hidden from the kids. I used to hope I could hold out until Heather went to college, then I could file for divorce. The kids wouldn't really be in our lives as much, so it would be easier. This last time, though, last week, I realized I couldn't do that anymore. I couldn't go on that way. But I still hadn't really decided, you know?" "Decided what, exactly?"

"When I'd call him on it. Move out or have him do it. Bring it to a head. I didn't want it to just happen the way it did. I wanted to control the timing, at least. Now I'm just feeling so ashamed of myself."

"For what?"

She turned in her chair and faced him. "Don't you see? For ruining our home life. Bringing it out into the open." She shrugged. "But something just snapped. Maybe it's all this being a suspect."

"If your husband was having an affair, how was it that you ruined your home life?"

"I know, it's stupid, but it's how I feel. If I were a stronger person, I could have kept pretending"-she motioned around the room ambiguously-"except for all this. And seeing you, in some way. Remembering how good you were, how sweet a relationship could be. It all broke me down."

"I'm sorry if I had a role in it. I wouldn't have come over if…"

"No, no. It was going to happen sometime."

Hardy let a moment pass, then said, "So that's why you went to your father-in-law's? To talk about this?

Will's affair."

She couldn't hide her startled expression. "Why do you assume that?"

"Because that's what changed, Catherine. You're going about your normal life and your husband goes off with another woman. You're going to do something. I'm glad you didn't decide to follow him down and kill him."

"The thought crossed my mind."

"Let's keep that between us, okay?"

She found half a smile. "I wouldn't have killed him, Dismas. Or his father, either."

Hardy's antennae were all the way up. Without a conscious thought, he noted her use of the subjunctive and wondered if she'd done it on purpose. She wouldn't have killed Paul, except for…

And then something happened, and she'd had to. It was only a small feat of mental legerdemain. A child, Hardy thought, could do it. And they often did.

At the same time, part of him hated himself for realizing the fundamental truth that while what she'd just said sounded like an absolute denial of her guilt, in fact it was not. As a good, Jesuit-trained former Catholic, Hardy was often able to argue himself into a state of tolerable comfort in the outer reaches of moral ambiguity, and he knew that Catherine's education with the Mercy nuns had trained her in the same way. Hell, she'd been the acknowledged master-it was the thing he could never beat her at. And so now he also knew enough not to ask her for clarification; it would only complicate things down the line.

All this in the blink of an eye.

He asked her, "So what did you want to ask him? Paul, I mean?"

"The same thing I said last time, Dismas. I wanted to know what was going to happen to the money." She threw him a glance that he couldn't read. "He was going to marry Missy in the fall and change his will to make her his beneficiary. Maybe he'd leave a few thousand dollars to each of his grandchildren. That was it. They weren't doing a prenup."

"Why not? Did he say?"

"Because Missy wasn't out for his money, and Paul resented the hell out of his family for implying that she was. In fact, before the family had started the campaign, as he called it, he'd been inclined to set up trusts for the kids and all that. But then Will and Beth and Theresa, especially, wouldn't let it go. And the blind greed of it, he said, made him sick. His kids and their families were getting along just fine. And Missy had had a tremendously difficult life, we had no idea. Now it was her turn for comfort and security and he was going to give it to her. And too bad if we didn't like it."

"That sounds harsh."

She lifted her shoulders. "It didn't when he said it, though. He was a straight shooter. He'd worked hard to get his kids set on their way. Now they should do the same with theirs."

"So where did that leave you? Did you tell him about

Will?"

"I didn't need to." She looked away. "He seemed to know, yes. To have known."

"You mean about Will's other affairs?"

She nodded. "Anyway, he gave me what I'd come to find out."

"And what did that mean to you?"

She worried her lower lip. "I wanted to know where I stood. I know it sounds mercenary, but I'd already endured more than a few rather difficult years with Will. If it looked like he was going to inherit several million dollars…" She stopped, unwilling to enunciate it.