Stephen White - Warning Signs

While I considered the timelessness of Macbeth, we crossed Thirteenth and moved slowly toward Broadway.

I stated the obvious. "So Lucy and Royal were having an affair?"

"Lucy won't talk about it. She continues to maintain that the details of her relationship to Royal will only serve to solidify the notion that she had a motive to kill him."

I tried to think like a prosecutor. It was not a natural act. "The police think they have means-her fingerprints are on the pottery. They think they have opportunity-a witness places her on the scene. And Lucy basically admits that she had motive. This doesn't look great for your client."

"Tell me about it."

"Lucy was having an affair with Roy and she'd decided to break up with him?" I asked. "Is that what she's saying?"

"She's not saying. But that's what I'm guessing. She's recently engaged, you know?"

"I know, she told me. But the engagement predates the wet spot by a couple of weeks. What's your theory of what happened? One last time with Royal? A good-bye fuck?"

She shook her head. "Nothing fits particularly well, I admit it. Pretty night, isn't it?"

"Lovely. Assume you're right, babe. How do things develop that night so that she ends up whacking him on the head with a lamp?"

"Like I said, nothing fits well."

"Self-defense?"

"Cozy and I would love self-defense. Lucy isn't offering, though. She maintains she had nothing to do with Royal's murder."

"What about Lucy's fiancé? If he found out about the affair, he'd have a motive, too, wouldn't he?"

"We're there already. Cozy's investigator has begun looking into that for us, though Lucy doesn't even know we have an investigator looking at him. I'm sure she'd go nuts if she knew what we were doing."

"And the bomb? What about the bomb? What's the theory as to why Lucy would want to blow up the Peterson house?"

"The bomb is our salvation. It's the only thing keeping Lucy out of jail right now. They can't tie her to it. If they found a molecule of evidence that put Lucy and that bomb in the same room, she'd be screwed."

I was amazed at how quickly my wife, a lifelong prosecutor, had adopted the vernacular of a defense attorney. People who were her colleagues days before were now "they."

At Broadway, we turned around and traced our steps back down the Mall toward the car. "How do you and Cozy know about the wet spot? There's no required discovery yet, is there? Lucy hasn't been charged."

"No formal discovery, no." She gave my hand a squeeze. "Let's just say that the politics in the DA's office right now are working to our advantage. Everyone's posturing to take Royal's place. Everyone's scrambling to keep this thing from going to a special prosecutor. Keeping us informed is part of… someone's strategy."

"Who's feeding you? Mitchell? Elliot? I bet it's not Nora."

She said, "No, of course it's not Nora. And that's all I'm telling you."

O n the wayhome from downtown I slowed to a stop at a red light at the corner of Broadway and University by the Hill. As if to prove to me that Boulder really is a small town, Naomi Bigg pulled up in the lane next to us driving a filthy BMW sedan. She was wearing sunglasses and smoking a cigarette. I don't think she saw me and I said nothing to Lauren about her presence next to us.

Just before the light changed to green, Naomi lowered her window about six inches, took a final deep drag on her cigarette, and tossed the still-lit butt onto the road between our cars.

I didn't get it.

People like Naomi, someone who I suspected wouldn't consider tossing a candy wrapper or a pop can onto the street, thought nothing of discarding cigarette butt after cigarette butt onto public sidewalks and thoroughfares.

Was there some statute I didn't know about that exempted cigarette butts from littering concerns? I suspected that what was more likely was that this was smokers' revenge for society's continuing anticigarette bias.

I also suspected that no matter how successful psychotherapy was, Naomi would still be littering her cigarette butts when we were done.

L ater Monday eveningI ran into Adrienne while I was taking the dogs outside for them to do their thing at the end of the day. I'd spotted the lights on in her dead husband Peter's old workshop, a barn he'd renovated into a woodworking facility that would leave weekend hobbyists drooling. When the dogs and I walked over we found Adrienne looking futilely for something that she'd put in the workshop in her version of storage, which as far as I'd been able to discern basically involved moving things to a location where she didn't trip over them on a daily basis. So far, nothing she'd moved into the old barn had been labeled, and as far as I could tell, nothing had been organized.

"Hey," she said as I stood in the open doorway. She spoke to me without looking up from the box in which she was rooting around. "You should keep Anvil away from the fields for the foreseeable future. The momma fox just had some new kits, everybody in the family looks hungry, and your poodle, such as he is, looks suspiciously like lunch."

"I know about the kits. They're cute. And Anvil's tough."

She laughed. "Right, and I'm gorgeous." She mumbled a profanity that I think was intended for the box she was trying to open, not for me, before she addressed me again. "I ever tell you that I have a patient who's going through a sex change?"

I raised my eyebrows.

"No, I'm not doing the operation, if that's what you're thinking. Somebody else is actually responsible for remodeling the plumbing."

"Your patient's a guy?" I asked to buy time. The whole topic of sexual transformation made me uncomfortable. Not philosophically, surgically.

"Yeah. You interested?"

"Interested? You mean-"

"Not in trying it, doofus. In helping. You know, professionally. These guys all need psychotherapy. It's part of the protocol. It's required."

"I don't know, Adrienne. How far along is the… how do you put it… the procedure? Is it like, well-"

"What?"

"Has he, um-"

"You want to know if the hose is still on the fire truck?"

I laughed.

She laughed, too, and returned to rooting in the boxes. She said, "Don't worry, I was just pimping you. I wouldn't send this guy to you. It would make you both crazier than you already are."

"Thanks. I appreciate it more than you know."

She threw a box out of her way and the sound of glass breaking filled the old barn. She ignored the carnage. "So who was the dog snooping around here the other day?"

I'd just recovered from one topic that made me anxious, so I wasn't well prepared for another. "Adrienne," I said. "You know, I disagree with what you said before-you are gorgeous. What, um, dog are you talking about?" Lying isn't one of my best things and I suspected that I'd just succeeded in alerting Adrienne that I was prevaricating.

" 'What, um , dog am I talking about?' While we were at dinner the other night, somebody came by with a dog and they walked all around your place, inside and out, and then they came in here."

"What?"

She stood up and faced me. Adrienne was petite. She was holding a folded blanket that she'd pulled from a cardboard box. Next to Emily's bulky mass, she looked like she was a jockey preparing to saddle up for a ride. "Look," she said. "My latest excuse for a nanny came by while we were at dinner and saw some woman and her dog checking out your place like the DEA thinks you're fronting for some drug lord. She said the woman and the dog came in here, too. This place is mine. That makes it my business. So tell me."

Her hands were on her hips.

Adrienne's history with nannies was not illustrious. I tried to distract her with a feint. "You're not happy with your nanny? I didn't know that."