John Lescroart - A Plague of Secrets

The immediate problem was Cheryl Zolotny. No, Biehl now. Sweet sweet girl, and hot hot hot when she’d been younger. In fact, she was still more than easy to look at, and in other circumstances he might have found himself falling into those bedroom eyes-eyes that he’d once known well-over lunch.

But not today.

Today her testimony about all those years ago with Maya simply had made Harlen realize how at risk he still was. This was a woman who’d not only known him, she’d done drugs with him. And so, okay, it had only been marijuana. Lately, and in spite of his long-term support of the medical marijuana laws and parlors in the city, he’d come to appreciate how much trouble a little pot could get people into.

If only Dylan hadn’t been wearing that backpack…

But he had.

And now Cheryl, from out of nowhere, had suddenly returned full-blown into the picture. Not that she was, so far as he knew, out to get him in trouble in any way. In fact, at lunch she’d been nothing if not inviting, even downright flirtatious, in spite of her marital status. Making noises about how flattered she was that he-a very important man now, in his exalted position-that he even remembered her from back when they’d fooled around a little, when she’d been just a kid.

But what if she talked to somebody, some reporter, anybody really? There was nothing more true about Harlen’s business than the fact that you couldn’t hide. He took it as a truism as universal as Murphy’s Law that a politician with a damaging secret somewhere out in the ozone was a finished politician. It would come out-the fact that he’d known Levon too. Hung with him.

He kept asking himself, so what? So what?

And the simple answer was that he didn’t know the consequences-from petty to profound-if the people already hounding him about these forfeiture issues got any more to chew on. No matter what, he thought, it would mean more headlines, and not the good kind. It was one thing to help a poor black kid get a job at ACT after a stretch in prison, but quite another to have partied with him and his doper friends and your own murder-suspect, dope-dealing sister. And even if it wasn’t a career-breaking matter to the general public, it would be to Kathy.

It could finish him.

And Cheryl knew all about it. And, yes, she’d told him that of course if it was important to him, she’d keep all that old stuff to herself. But what if…?

What if?

He looked down at the gun in his hand. What did he think he was doing with that? Had he come down here thinking that his career, his life, was really so close to over, that perhaps he was really going to kill himself? What about Jeannette and the kids? What would they do without him?

He had to relax. After all, nothing had happened yet. Maybe nothing ever would. And Cheryl had promised him that she’d keep it between them forever. Just like their other secrets from when they’d dated. She’d never betray him. She understood everything he’d told her and agreed that it was important.

Super important, she’d actually said. And the insipid, Valley girl adjective had brought back one of the other realities about Cheryl the ex-cheerleader. She had been hot hot hot, no doubt, but also dumb, dumb, dumb. Super dumb.

Was she too dumb to understand what she knew? Or should he try to contact her again? Set up an appointment.

Make it clearer.

Robert Tripp, in his scrubs, came out of the bathroom, peeled off his surgical gloves, and dropped them into the trash can in Jansey’s kitchen. “I think I got it all.” He started running the water in the sink, soaping up his hands. “But that was not a pretty job.”

“Thank you,” she said. She sat at the kitchen table, a glass of wine in front of her. “I owe you. I just couldn’t handle that tonight.”

Tripp turned. “What if I wouldn’t have been here?”

“I would have quarantined the bathroom and forbidden flushing until I could call the plumber.”

“You could always do it yourself.”

She made a face. “I do a lot of good-mother stuff, Robert. I really do. But putting my hands in that-”

Tripp held up his hands. “Gloves, then soap. Does wonders.”

“Did he use the whole roll, you think?”

“Most of it. Looked like it, anyway.”

“Yuck. I’m sorry. But yuck.”

“Lucky you got me.” He dried his hands and came to sit down across from her. “But other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you like the play?”

She drank off about half her glass and shook her head. “It’s been a tough day, if you want to know. Tough all the way. I look at Maya sitting there across from me, and she looks so harmless, really, so pathetic almost. I think she’d been crying before she came into court. Then I feel like such a beast, somehow.”

He reached across and put his hand over hers. “She did it, hon. I thought we were pretty clear about that. No matter what she looks like.”

“I know. I know. But there’s just all this other stuff.”

“What other stuff?”

“You know. The insurance, when they’re going to pay out, whether the cops are still going to come after me for something about the business.”

“Didn’t they say not?”

“Well”-she shrugged-“if you believe them. But I never signed anything, so I guess they still could.”

Tripp stood up and came around the table, pulling up a chair next to her. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her toward him, kissed the hollow of her neck, and held himself there for a moment. “You’re just worrying. I love you.”

“I just think what if it’s not her?”

He pulled away. “But it is her. Who else would it be?”

“I know. I know. But it was just way different actually facing her and saying all that stuff out loud. And I also know-don’t think I don’t-that once she’s convicted, it’s way better for us.”

“Hey,” he said gently, “we’re cool. We don’t have to worry about us.”

“But I do. I mean, if he calls me back again.”

“Who’s that?”

“The defense guy. Mr. Hardy.”

“What about him?”

“Well, he didn’t even ask about us.”

“Why would he?”

“Well, you know, because…”

“Because we’re an item?”

She turned to him. “Not because we’re an item, now, Robert. Because we were an item. I mean, then. That’s never come out, and if it does…”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know. But something, I’d think.”

“Why?”

“Because it gives me a reason…” She blinked back the starts of tears.

He pulled her again to him, his hand on her neck, whispered into her ear. “You’re just worn down, Janz. It’s been a long haul, that’s all. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve got all the reason in the world to have done him-which, by the way, you did…”

“Don’t say that!”

“All right. But the fact remains, it still doesn’t matter, since I said you were here.”

“But I was here.”

“Of course. But me saying it makes you really here, with an actual alibi, as they call it. You know what I mean.” He put a finger under her jaw, gently. Lifted it so that she was looking at him. “We’ve talked all about this. Lots of times.”

“I know. I’m being stupid, I guess.”

“Not so stupid.” He kissed her. “But really really cute, all upset the way you are.”

She pouted, shook her head. “I don’t feel cute.”

“I bet I could fix that in about five minutes.”

She stared past him through the window into the darkness outside. “He never asked me about us at all,” she said.

“That’s because you and me, we’re not what this is about. This is about Maya killing Dylan, and helping the prosecution prove it. That’s all it’s about.”