John Lescroart - The Motive

"But they're sure it's a hole in his heart?" Hardy asked.

"Yes," Treya said. "As of this morning."

"But it could change?" Frannie wanted to know.

"Well, not from being a hole," Treya said. "It's not going to turn into aortic stenosis, if that's what you mean. They don't think," she added.

"Trey." Glitsky trying to keep her accurate. "They're sure of that. It's not aortic stenosis. Right now it looks like a benign murmur. That's what they're saying."

"The hard thing," Treya said, "is that they can't predict anything yet. He could turn blue tomorrow, or today, or in the next five minutes…"

"Or never," Glitsky said, "maybe."

His wife agreed. "Or maybe never, right."

Nat Glitsky, in his eighties, got up and shuffled across the room. "Time to let the kid get to know his grandpa," he said, "if one of you lovelies would scoot over and give an old man some room."

"Who you calling old?" Frannie said, making room.

Hardy gave Glitsky a sign and the two of them went into the kitchen, out of earshot of the rest of them as long as they spoke quietly. Hardy took the large casserole they'd brought out of its brown paper shopping bag, then took the foil off the top. Frannie had made her world-famous white macaroni and cheese with sausages. It was still warm. Hardy slipped it into the oven, then pulled a head of lettuce out of another bag. "Salad bowl?" he asked. Then, when Glitsky got it out of the cupboard and handed it to him. "How you holding up?"

"A little rocky." Glitsky let out a long breath. "It comes and goes. The hospital was pretty bad. When the doc said I should hope it's only a hole in the heart, I wanted to kill him."

Hardy was silent. He'd lost a child once. He knew.

Glitsky was going on. "I just keep telling myself it's good news, it's good news." The scar through his lips was getting a workout, dealing with the emotion. "We go in for some more tests tomorrow. Then we'll see." "Tomorrow?"

Glitsky nodded. "The first days, they like to keep a close watch."

"But they let you go home?"

"He's fine at home, except if things change. I had a few minutes today when I managed not to think about it at all." He went on to tell Hardy about his unsuccessful efforts to locate Missy's car, but getting her address, his talk with Ruth Guthrie.

All the while, Hardy was silently washing the lettuce, rinsing it, tearing it into bite-size pieces and dropping them into the large wooden bowl. After Glitsky had gotten through where Missy had lived, where she'd worked, and that she had paid her rent from her checking account, Hardy dropped the last piece of lettuce in the bowl. "Do you have premade salad dressing or should I whip up a batch?"

"Maybe you didn't hear me," Glitsky said.

"I heard you. I'm glad it gave you something to do and got your mind off all this stuff here, but Missy D'Amiens isn't going to matter."

"Why not?"

"Partly because she never has mattered, but mostly because Catherine changed her alibi today. Again."

"At the trial?"

"No, thank God. Privately, with me." He met his friend's eyes.

"You think she did it?"

"I don't think it's impossible anymore. Let's go with that." He went over and grabbed a dish towel off the handle of the refrigerator. Drying his hands, he said, "So now letting her testify looks like it could be a huge mistake…"

"Why is that?"

"Because they'll ask her about her alibi-they'll have to, since they've already got that she lied about it originally. And to answer them, she'll either perjure herself or change her story again. Either way, a disaster. But if she doesn't testify, there goes the sexual harassment, which was always my theory of why Cuneo got on her in the first place. And more than that, it's one the jury might have believed."

"You don't think they'll believe me?"

"Oh, sure. They'll believe Catherine told you about it. But so what? If I don't have her take the stand and say it herself, then you have nothing to corroborate. Your account is just plain hearsay and inadmissible… you know as well as me. To say nothing of the fact that we've already made a big deal about this and we're committed. So no chance if she doesn't testify. And if she does, we're screwed."

Glitsky was leaning back against the counter, arms crossed, a deep frown in place. "I don't want to believe Cuneo's been right on this all along."

"I don't either. But Rosen's got his eyewitnesses coming up next after my cross on Cuneo, and that's not going to be pretty, either. They all say they saw Catherine, and I'm beginning to think they're saying that because they did."

Glitsky remained quiet for a second or two, then asked, "So you think she's got the ring after all?"

"The ring?"

"Yeah. Missy's ring." At Hardy's questioning look, he explained. "Ruth Guthrie mentioned it today again before I left, and I remembered I'd heard about it way back at the beginning of this thing. And I know it's never showed up in evidence."

"I was going to call Strout about that. You're sure? It wasn't on the body?"

"No possibility. I saw the body, Diz. No ring. No fingers, in fact."

"Okay, but why would I think Catherine's got it?"

"Because if… well, if she's in fact guilty, whoever did it most likely took it off the body. The thing's supposed to be worth, what, a hundred grand? And it hasn't showed up? What's that leave? Somebody took it."

"Or it fell off in the fire."

"Okay, then it would have been in the sweep."

"And maybe Becker or one of his men kept it."

Glitsky didn't like that. "Unlikely," he said. "I've been at some of these things and the arson guys log everything. So why do you think Catherine didn't take it?"

Hardy didn't answer right away. It was a good question. "Mostly," he said, "because she asked about it only yesterday at the trial. I don't think she would have brought it up if she had stolen it. But mostly, it just occurred to her and she blurted it out. That's what it really seemed like. I'm positive it wasn't rehearsed. It was like, 'Where's the ring?' "

"Okay," Glitsky said. "So how bad is her new alibi?"

"No worse than the last one. It's just that it's different. Why?"

"I mean is it plausible? Could it be true? Do you think it's true?"

Hardy brought his hands up to his forehead.

" 'Cause if it's true," Glitsky continued, "even if it's different, she still didn't do it."

Hardy looked up at the ceiling, shook his head, uttered an expletive.

"You need to find the ring," Glitsky said.

Hardy put the little disagreement he'd had with his wife out of his mind. Of course she'd been disappointed that he wasn't coming home after their dinner with the Glitskys, but she knew what trial time was like. She'd get over it, and so would he. But the reality now was that he had to try to talk to Mary Rodman, Catherine's sister-in-law. She'd been in the gallery today, and he'd wanted to get together with her for a few words, but the billing talk with Will had trumped that and taken all of Hardy's time.

But the unusually rapid pace of the actual trial-as opposed to the glacially slow movement of the endless pretrial motions and accretion of evidence over the past months-was outstripping his efforts to keep a step ahead of the proceedings. Now, merely to keep up, he had to effectively utilize every single possible working second in this and the coming days. Even under that pressure, he'd felt he needed to see Abe and Treya tonight, to be there if they needed his support. But now that mission had been accomplished, that message delivered, and he was back on the clock, on his client's time.

He'd made the original appointment, for seven thirty, from his office as soon as he'd come in from his day in court, before he'd even checked his messages. When he got the call from Frannie about meeting at Abe's for dinner, he'd called Mary again and asked if he could change the time to nine o'clock, and at precisely that hour, he rang her doorbell.