John Lescroart - The Oath

"And why is that?"

Mrs. Tong was starting to close up. She drew her head down slightly between her shoulders.

Glitsky kept at her. "Did you know Dr. Kensing, Mrs. Tong? Was he a friend of the family?"

"Not exactly a friend, no. I didn't know him, but the name…the name is familiar."

Glitsky hadn't moved his chair, but he somehow seemed to have gotten closer to her. "And you wouldn't have expected him to come by? Why is that?"

Before Mrs. Tong could frame an answer, one of the inspectors interrupted. Bracco, eager to show off what he'd learned, pumped in, "He was on call at the ICU when Markham died. He probably felt he should."

Glitsky's gaze would have frozen flame. He turned mildly, though, back to his subject. "Mrs. Tong, I'm sorry. What were you going to say? Why you wouldn't have expected Dr. Kensing to come and visit?"

"I just…" She'd picked up the tension between Glitsky and his inspectors, and it didn't increase her comfort level. "I don't know," she said finally.

In some ways, Glitsky knew, this interview and their interruptions might someday prove instructive to Fisk and Bracco, but it wasn't any solace at the moment, as a willing and cooperative witness was clamming up before his eyes because he couldn't establish a rhythm, which was halfway to rapport.

But he wasn't through trying yet. She'd opened a different door a crack, and maybe he could get her to open that one. "All right," he said, "but you did say that Dr. Kensing wasn't exactly a friend. I believe those were your words. Didn't you say that?"

"I think so. Yes."

"Could you tell us what you meant by that?" He threw another, apparently benign look at his rookies, but it delivered the message loud and clear: Shut up and let her answer.

"Well, he worked for Mr. Markham."

"So you meant he wasn't exactly a friend because he was more an employee?" When she appeared to be considering that, Glitsky clarified it further. "As opposed to not exactly being a friend because he was more an enemy."

They waited, and this time Mrs. Tong's check around the table revealed a universal and hopeful expectation that prompted a more open response. "His name came up sometimes," she began, "with Carla and her friends. I couldn't help but hear, serving them, you know? Actually, not so much his name as his wife's." Suddenly another thought struck her, though. "Should I be saying any of this? Do I need to have a lawyer with me?"

Glitsky put his finger in that dike immediately. "I don't think so, ma'am. You haven't done anything wrong. You're not in any trouble." Having said that, he came right back at her, hoping a new question would trump the lawyer issue. "Why did Dr. Kensing's wife come up at this coffee group?"

"She talked about divorcing him."

The antecedents hung in the air in an unidentifiable jumble. "Dr. Kensing's wife?" Glitsky asked. "Was divorcing him?"

"No." Mrs. Tong shook her head impatiently. "Carla. Mrs. Kensing was…I think everybody knows this…Mr. Markham had an affair with her."

Fisk brought his baby face forward. It was alight with excitement and possibility. "With Dr. Kensing's wife?" he asked avidly.

No, Glitsky wanted to say with his deepest sarcasm, with the golden retriever. But he bit it back. One more time, though, and he really was going to have to tell them to leave. He kept his own voice uninflected. "Are you saying that Dr. Kensing's wife-"

"Ann."

"Okay, Ann. She and Mr. Markham were having an affair? You mean it wasn't over?"

"It was supposed to be. When it all blew up-"

"When was that?"

"About five or six months ago, just before Thanksgiving. That's when Carla found out. She kicked him out for a couple of weeks then. I didn't think he was ever coming back. But he did. She asked him back. If it were me, I don't think I'd have forgiven…well, but that's me."

"But Mr. Markham did come back?"

Mrs. Tong nodded. "Swearing it was over, of course."

"But it wasn't?"

"I don't know." Now, a shrug. "Carla wasn't sure, I don't think. But she thought…She told the coffee group she was getting a private investigator, and if he was seeing her again, she was leaving him." A silence settled for a long moment, after which Mrs. Tong turned to Glitsky and picked up the thread. "So when I heard Dr. Kensing had been here last night, you're right, I was surprised."

Feigning a nonchalance he didn't feel, Glitsky leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. The information about Ann Kensing and Tim Markham made him reconsider two contradictory possibilities: first, that Mrs. Markham might have been depressed for a long while before last night, which would strengthen the argument for murder/ suicide; but second, here was an apparent possible motive for a murder.

He would consider each more carefully when he got some time, but for now he had one more line of questioning for the maid. "As far as you know, Mrs. Tong, did Dr. Kensing know about the relationship between Mr. Markham and his wife?"

"I think so, yes. When Carla heard that they were getting divorced-"

"Kensing and Ann? They're divorced now, too? Over this?"

"I don't know if it's final yet, but I understood that they'd separated. At least when Carla heard they'd started the proceedings, she tried to make sure Mr. Markham wouldn't get named in any of the papers. So Dr. Kensing, he must have known, don't you think?"

Dismas Hardy was standing on the sidewalk on Irving Street talking with another lawyer named Wes Farrell. The two men had only met once or twice before, but the most recent time had been at Glitsky's wedding last September, where they'd independently and then together explored the limits of human tolerance for champagne. It was, it turned out for both of them, pretty high.

Last night, Frannie had eventually shown up at the Shamrock, and she and Hardy had gone on their date-Chinese food at the Purple Yet Wah. When they got home, he couldn't get McGuire's story about Shane Mackey out of his head. This morning, he'd called around and discovered that Mackey's family had indeed hired an attorney-Farrell-to explore malpractice issues surrounding his death. After all the medical talk recently, then Tim Markham's death yesterday, he was curious to know more. Farrell would be a good source of information. He could also, he knew, be a hell of a good time. So when Wes got to his office at a little after 8:30, Hardy was standing outside on the sidewalk, holding a bottle of bubbly with a ribbon around it.

Farrell greeted him like a long-lost brother, but then, seeing the offering, backed away in mock horror. "I don't think I've had a sip of that stuff since Abe's wedding, which is okay since I had about a year's worth that day if I recall, which I'm not sure I do."

"It's like riding a horse," Hardy said. "You've got to get right back on after it bucks you off. Churchill drank it every day, you know? For breakfast. And he won the Nobel Prize."

"For champagne drinking?"

Hardy shook his head. "Peace, I think. No, wait a minute. Maybe literature."

"It would have been good if it was peace." Farrell turned to let Hardy in past him. "I love how they wind up giving the Peace Prize to these world-class warriors. Henry Kissinger. Le Duc Tho. Yasser Arafat. Churchill would have fit right in. These guys aren't exactly Gandhi, you know."

"Statesmen," Hardy said. "If you're a statesman you can kill as many people as you want as long as you're in a war, and then when you stop, everybody in Sweden is so grateful they give you the Peace Prize."

"Except for the fact that Sweden doesn't give the Peace Prize."

"It doesn't? Who does?"

"Norway."

"When did that start?"

"Pretty early on, I think. All the other Nobel's come from Sweden, but Norway gives the Peace Prize. Don't ask me why?"