John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to volunteer anything.” Suddenly, running on nerves, she stood up, went over to the sink, wet a sponge, and brought it back to wipe and scour the table-the dried ketchup, a few days’ worth of coffee-mug stains, some petrified oatmeal. “It just worries me,” she said. “That’s all.”

“Well, it’s natural to be worried.”

She stood there squeezing the sponge. “I just don’t want them to see how good a thing it was, really, Dylan being killed. I know you shouldn’t say that about the dead, but…”

Wayne’s eyes went black. “You can say anything you want about him to me. You know that. He couldn’t have been gone soon enough.” Then, with an outward calm, he went on. “They will never in a million years think that you had anything to do with it. Plus, you’ve got Robert and you saying you were both here the whole morning. You’re not a suspect to anybody, hon. And you couldn’t ever be. So just answer the questions you know the answers to and leave the rest of it alone. How’s that sound?”

She lowered herself onto her chair, letting out a breath. “It sounds like a plan, Daddy. I’ll just try to keep remembering that.”

“You do that,” Wayne said, reaching out and putting a hand over hers on the table. “Now, how are you fixed for money lately?”

She gave him a weak smile. “Okay. I’ve been talking to the insurance guy. I got the feeling they were waiting for Maya to get convicted. When that happens, they won’t have any excuse left not to pay me. So we ought to get the check soon after that.”

“After they convict her? Just to rule you out? He didn’t say that.”

“Kind of. Not that anybody thinks…” She let the phrase hang in the room. “He just says if they’ve got the choice, having somebody else convicted makes it cleaner.”

“You’d think somebody else getting arrested would be enough.”

She shrugged. “Maybe not, though.” She pulled her hand out from under his and sat back in her chair, gripping the sponge in the other hand as though it were a tension ball. “I’d bet a lot from what he’s told me that no matter what, they’re going to wait until she’s convicted. On the chance that she might not be convicted, and then it would still be possible that it was me.”

“It was you who what?”

“You know. Killed Dylan.”

“I can’t believe he would actually say that.”

“Not exactly, no. But it’s what it feels like to me.”

Her father’s face closed down. He sat square to the table, fists clenched, glowering. “You got the insurance guy’s name? Maybe I’ll go and have a talk with him.”

But Jansey shook her head. Her father had had a “talk” with Dylan and it hadn’t helped at all. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t think it’s him personally. It’s like the company policy, that’s all.”

“You might be surprised,” Wayne said. “They tell you it’s company policy and then you find out they’re just trying to get a bonus or brownie points or whatever by denying benefits until the last possible moment and even then some.”

“Well, Daddy, I don’t think this is like that. He seems like a nice man.”

“Everybody thought your Dylan was a nice man too.”

She shook her head. “It’s not the same.”

“Well, no, nothing’s the same, really. But I bet I could talk your insurance company nice man into rethinking his position, or his company policy, or whatever it is.”

“I don’t think… I mean, I appreciate you trying to help me, but I don’t think I need it yet with the insurance.”

Wayne took a few breaths, relaxed his fists, and laid his palms flat on the table. “You didn’t think you needed it with Dylan either.”

“Well, as you say, that was different.”

“Maybe not so different, though. Somebody taking advantage of your good nature, thinking they can get away with anything. But I look at you, I see the hurt in your eyes, the hurt in your life…”

“It’s not all hurt. There’s good things too. Ben, and now Robert-”

“But no promises from Robert, yet, either.”

She shook her head. “Let’s not go there again, Daddy. It’s a little soon for promises. He’s still in med school. And he doesn’t treat me at all like Dylan did-”

“He’d better not.”

“He doesn’t, and for now that’s enough, okay? Please.”

Wayne reached out and again covered his daughter’s hand with his own. His voice, rather suddenly, was husky with emotion. “I just see what you’ve been through already. And now here’s another guy who’s essentially living with you and no talk of marriage or responsibility. I don’t get it. I don’t understand why you let yourself get in these situations.”

“This one isn’t bad. I promise.” And repeated, “I promise, Daddy.”

He let out a lungful of air. “All right, if you really think that. And you’re okay with money? You’re sure?”

She nodded. “Dylan left a lot of cash. I’m using that.”

“Drug money.”

“Probably.”

“You know, if you’re spending that to live on and you’ve got no claimed income, the IRS might ask you how you’re doing that. Maybe you should start thinking about a way to claim it.”

“I’m sure. Come on, don’t worry. I’m not spending that much. It’s not like I’m out blowing wads of dollars living high on the hog. All I do is buy groceries and stuff. And the IRS isn’t going to care about somebody like me. I mean, we’re talking probably less than ten thousand dollars.”

This was untrue, and said to palliate her father. In fact, Dylan had put away close to two hundred thousand dollars and they kept it-literally-in a secret place under a couple of loose boards in the crawl space under the house. She checked to make sure it was still there every single night, and several times every day. And no one, not even Robert, knew of the money’s existence. But one thing she’d told her father was true-she wasn’t worried about cash.

“You’ve got that much lying around the house? Do you know how dangerous that could be?”

This finally brought a warm smile. “Daddy,” she cooed at him, “you ought to be a shrink.” She lifted her father’s hand and brought it up to her lips. “When you got over here, I was the one all worried about everything. Now it’s all you. So now I’ll tell you. You don’t have to worry. Not about Robert, or the insurance guy, or money or the IRS. Everything’s going to be fine. I promise. I really promise.”

Craig Chiurco pulled himself up so that his bare back leaned against the headboard of his queen-sized bed. “Maybe I should just find another line of work.”

Tamara, pulling a green silk bathrobe around her as she came out of the bathroom, stopped in her tracks. “Let’s see. Man makes love to his incredibly beautiful and sexually exotic girlfriend, rolls over, and, lost in the afterglow, says he wants to change jobs. The girlfriend is a) bemused, b) confused, or c) flattered? Hint, it’s not ‘c.’ ”

“I didn’t mean it had anything to do with us.”

“Though, as you might have noticed, we work out of the same office, and quitting your job would be more or less leaving me.”

“It’s not you.”

She made a show of turning around, checking the corners of the room. “Is there someone else here I’m missing that you were talking to?”

“No.”

“Good. Okay, that’s settled. So why do you want to change jobs?”

“I was just thinking about this Townshend thing. So far, I’ve embarrassed Hardy and Wyatt by showing up on Vogler’s list, and my total contribution to Maya’s case has been to confirm the worst piece of evidence connecting her to Levon’s murder. It was tons of fun telling the boss, ‘Yep, that’s her. She’s the one I saw there.’ Maybe I’ll become a vet. No, wait, I hate animals.”