Laura Lippman - To The Power Of Three

Mrs. Delacorte smacked her hands a few more times, and Infante twitched, just a little, as each blow landed. She had a cat’s face, a dancer’s body, and, by all appearances, a plastic surgeon’s breasts, high and molded. Lenhardt prided himself on being able to tell. His wife had explained it to him one day, how the artificial ones always pointed straight ahead.

“About Perri Kahn,” he began, and it was far from the first time that he had tried to introduce the girl’s name into the conversation. But Mrs. Delacorte was not interested in approaching anything that might be called a point.

“Yes, exactly. Exactly.”

“Exactly?” Infante seemed to be echoing a word here and there, just to keep himself alert.

“You see, before I really understood my situation, before I accepted the fact that this was part of a higher plan, what my real calling was, Perri used to baby-sit for me every Thursday. I was in denial. I felt I just couldn’t survive if I didn’t have a day, once a week, where I knew I was going to get out of the house. I mean, I had a nanny, of course, but the nanny had Thursdays off, and I just needed a day that was all for me.”

Lenhardt tried to digest this concept, a woman with full-time help who needed part-time help so she wouldn’t feel trapped. Well, rich people had different expectations, he told himself, although he would bet anything that Mrs. Delacorte hadn’t been rich before she met her husband.

“In May I finally saw that I had to leave. I was very aboveboard about it. I told Stewart that I wanted out, that I wouldn’t seek anything more than was fair, under the law. Although, of course, support would have to be calculated differently with a special-needs child. I’m going to need help as long as he-” Her breath caught. “As long as he lives.”

Lenhardt’s heart softened toward the woman, silly and ditzy and spoiled as she was. She had a child with a fatal condition. She had earned her craziness.

“About the gun?” he asked, reasoning it was a kindness to distract her from what had to be a painful subject. “Did you know it was missing?”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you-I left earlier than I planned because I noticed it was missing, and I assumed Stewart had taken it. I was terrified. I thought he was going to kill me as I slept. That’s why I had to get out so quickly.”

“But you never asked him directly if he had taken the gun?”

“No. I just plotted my escape.” She gave a strange little laugh, like one that an actress in an old-fashioned radio play might have used. “I mean, I had been thinking about leaving for a while, but when my gun disappeared, I knew I had to get out sooner rather than later. I found a new place for the baby and me, then hired a moving crew that could get me packed and out in twelve hours.” She laughed in the same fashion. “I guess there were some advantages to the hours he worked after all.”

“Back to the gun-you noticed it missing in May, but you never asked your husband about it.”

“No.”

“Did you mention it to anyone?”

“No.”

“And was Perri Kahn still working for you when the gun disappeared?”

“I don’t know when the gun disappeared. I only know I noticed that it was gone in mid-May, when I started packing and I couldn’t find it.”

Great, now she was suddenly Ms. Precise. Lenhardt pictured her in front of a grand jury, dithering for two hours and then taking pains to make clear how hard it was to know exactly when the gun had gone missing.

“You said you realized the gun was gone and started packing to leave. Then you said you were packing to leave, and it was only then that you realized it was gone.”

“Same difference.”

Actually, the two things weren’t the same at all, but Lenhardt decided to drop the subject, for now.

“How long did Perri Kahn work for you?”

“She started last fall and continued through mid-May, when I moved out. But until then she came every week. She was reliable for a high-school girl.”

This was a promising detail. Juries did not necessarily reject coincidence. In fact, they were quite happy to draw inferences from mere opportunity. Perri Kahn had worked in a home where a gun went missing, and that gun was later used in the commission of a crime where Perri Kahn was present, so it was logical to assume that Perri Kahn had taken the gun and used it. But a good defense attorney could make a person doubt that logic.

“You see, Mrs. Delacorte-”

“Michael, please! I hate that name. I can’t wait to be rid of it. I hate anything that reminds me of him. Except for Malcolm, of course. But Malcolm doesn’t remind me of his father.”

“Michael, sure.” Lenhardt wondered again at the parents who gave a newborn girl that name. It was okay, since she had turned out gorgeous. But what if she had been broad-shouldered and hulking? Then the name would have been a death sentence. “What you’ve told us is a help. But it’s better if we can prove that Perri at least was aware of your gun. Did you ever mention it to her? Show it to her?”

“No, no, no, no .”

Infante had slid down in his chair, his posture so bad that his chin was almost on the table. Lenhardt realized that his own shoulders were hunched and rounded, and it was only 10:00 A.M. Mrs. Delacorte-Michael-was exhausting, a reminder of the old adage that no matter how beautiful a woman was, someone, somewhere, was tired of her.

“So you can’t help us link Perri to your gun?”

“Oh, no. That I can definitely do.” She pulled a slender silver rectangle from her purse. “About ten days ago, I found this.”

“It’s a camera,” Infante said. Lenhardt had thought it was a cigarette case.

“I know that. But look at the photos.”

Infante, the more technologically inclined of the two of them, took the camera and began scrolling through the display. “Baby in high chair. Baby at zoo. Baby at zoo.”

“Oh, I forgot there were some photographs of Malcolm there.”

Lenhardt looked over Infante’s shoulder. The boy was huge, plump and pink-cheeked and smiling. If Lenhardt didn’t know otherwise, he would have assumed he was freakishly healthy, not a child whose very DNA was wired against him.

“Baby, baby- whoa! ”

It was a photograph of a thin, dark-haired girl, wearing an emerald green bra and panties while holding a gun, by all appearances the same.22 recovered at the scene.

“Perri,” Mrs. Delacorte said. “In my underwear.”

“Who took these photos?”

“Now, that,” she said, “is the ten-million-dollar question.”

Lenhardt almost literally braced himself on the table between them. He hadn’t liked Delacorte, but he hadn’t picked up a pervert vibe from the guy. Okay, the girl was eighteen, technically legal, not pedophile stuff, but it still disgusted him. Maybe Jessica would be better off getting a mall job when she was old enough to work. Even if the father of the house wasn’t some sicko, Lenhardt wasn’t sure he wanted Jessica free to roam another household. Look what this one girl had found-lingerie, a digital camera, a gun. And that’s just what they knew so far. There could have been more. Unlocked liquor cabinets, drugs, legal or not. How could he control for that? Lenhardt’s wife didn’t know it, but before he allowed Jessica to go on sleepovers, he ran the parents through all the state and national criminal checks.

“So enlighten us,” Lenhardt said. “Because we don’t have ten million dollars, and we don’t have all the time in the world.”

“Maybe my husband didn’t always work late. Maybe he sneaked home early on some Thursday afternoons.”

“Maybe?”