Jeff Abbott - No Rest for the Dead

“But back when it mattered, Rosemary and Chris’s money was in escrow during the trial. It wasn’t until she was executed that it came to you, Peter. That was almost two years after Chris’s murder.”

“Ah. The way you put it, you make it sound like the perfect crime for a patient man. But you can’t think anybody would believe that I would have let my own sister be executed just so I could get access to her money, do you, Stan?”

“No!” Too quickly. Stan sat back, assayed a smile, came at it again. “No, of course not. Although you must admit you’d been in a bit of a skid financially. I’m just saying that Jon Nunn might-”

“Jon Nunn, Jon Nunn, Jon Nunn,” Heusen exclaimed. “The man’s a drunk and a nonentity. If it weren’t for the fact that you’re married to his ex-wife, he wouldn’t even be on your radar, nor should he be.” Peter came forward, eyes shining over the table. “We’ve done nothing wrong over these years, Stan. And quite a bit of good. Rosemary was a gullible woman who turned out to be a victim of her own weaknesses, her own softness, her own inability to make good decisions. She should never have been entrusted with any part of our family fortune. Now, I’m not saying she deserved to die, of course, but there seemed to be a certain karmic justice in having it all come back to me, just at the moment that you and I were becoming positioned to take full advantage of it. In fact”-Peter raised his glass, the alcohol taking effect-“I’d like to propose a toast to our collaboration and to our continued success.”

Having no choice but to comply, Stan Ballard raised his own glass to chime it against that of his wealthiest client.

Justine Olegard, curatorat the McFall Art Museum, reached for the envelope that she’d tucked under the side of the blotter on her desk. She’d had a premonition when the thing had arrived the other day in the mail, and though Tony Olsen had always been a large benefactor and player in the museum’s ongoing development, something about this particular envelope had struck her as somehow ominous, and she’d put off opening the thing.

Now, at her lunchtime on this Thursday, she had locked her door and, using her Navajo dagger, cut open the envelope. Sitting back, she read the letter quickly, then set it down squarely in front of her and read it again.

It couldn’t have been less welcome news.

Tony would be using the museum to hold some sort of a memorial to commemorate the death-by execution no less-of Rosemary Thomas. This was just the kind of distraction that Justine, now on the cusp of the museum’s new season, did not need.

In fact, she never ever again wanted to hear the names Rosemary and Christopher Thomas.

Of course, the demise of both Thomases had been the prime reason for her ascendancy at the museum. Back then, she had been in her early thirties and still liked to believe she had the bloom of youth, that she could be attractive to a charismatic and powerful man such as Chris Thomas for her body and face as well as for her brains, erudition, organizational skills.

She’d been his associate curator. And, yes, he’d been married. He made no secret of that. But he’d told her that his marriage to Rosemary was a sham. They were both working to settle the visitation of the children and some financial details and to move on with their divorce, but in the meanwhile he was virile and powerful, and then there’d been the issue of the fake Soutine painting she’d helped acquire for the museum. If it hadn’t been for Chris, well…

Still, she felt the familiar flush rise in her cheeks at the shame of it.

Shaking her head to clear it of these awkward and painful memories, she cast her eyes back to the envelope. After a moment, a muscle working in her jaw, she picked up the telephone and punched in the numbers she knew by heart. “Hello, Tony,” she said to Olsen’s answering machine, “this is Justine. I know it’s been a couple of days since I got your note about Rosemary Thomas’s memorial, but I wanted you to know that I think it’s a wonderful idea, and it will be terrific to have so many of the museum’s sponsors back in one location again, where I’m sure they’ll be impressed with all of our improvements over the years. I’m sure it will be a wonderful event.”

Her hand shaking, she hung up the phone.

Stan Ballard walkedthrough a small grove of eucalyptus and up a hill through a forest of tombstones to a lone marble crypt. Out in front of him, the Pacific glinted out to the horizon. Without really consciously planning to, he had driven out here to the cemetery in Colma and had parked way down in the lot. Wandering aimlessly at first, he had walked off most of the effects of his lunch with Peter Heusen by the time he arrived at Rosemary’s burial plot, where her remains lay beside those of her parents, her grandparents, and-to the disgust and dismay of some-her husband.

Going down to one knee, he put a flat palm on the slab of marble that had been laid over the bones of Rosemary Heusen Thomas and looked out at the ocean.

Hidden among the tombstones, he crouches beside a crypt large enough to shield his body while providing a bird’s-eye view of the man who kneels in front of Rosemary Thomas’s grave.

Such a stupid move for a man who has made millions off a dead woman , he thinks.

He takes in the man’s expensive suit, shiny shoes slightly dulled by the graveyard’s dirt and dust.

What is he doing here?

He watches the man drag his hand across the marble slab as if cleaning it. And he’s saying something, though his words are lost in the air.

He wouldn’t be surprised if the man started scraping at the grave, digging through dirt and grass and stone in search of some valuable trinket-an earring, a necklace-that he could yank off the bones of the dead woman, something more he could take from her.

Oh, these parasites .

He is tempted to walk up to him and ask, “Tell me, why are you visiting the grave of a woman whose money you have filtered into your own account?”

He would like to hear the answer because he is genuinely surprised and interested to know why some people act so foolishly sentimental, so guilty, after acting so badly.

His knees are starting to ache. He’s tired and needs to stand or stretch but doesn’t dare.

Now the lawyer stands and brushes dust from his pin-striped suit. He smooths his hair. He looks past the grave as if searching for something, then turns, and it’s as if he’s staring directly at the spot from where he is being observed.

The letter came on the first day of summer, addressed to my wife. It was from billionaire Tony Olsen, a man I did not love. The envelope was ivory colored and square-an announcement or invitation maybe. I collected it with the rest of the mail from our box out on Laguna Canyon Road, and I jammed the whole fat handful into a book bag and walked back up the steep street to our house.

The afternoon was sunny and warm, with a stiff onshore breeze that brought the smell of the ocean up the canyon. A few wildflowers were still holding on with the sagebrush. Two hawks circled above. I wondered if that big halibut was still hanging out at Divers Cove and thought I might go down there that evening and have another go at him. A yard long, at least. I missed him yesterday but I don’t usually miss.

As I walked up the road to our house, I passed the homes of the professional surfer, the history professor, the rock singer, the arborist, the patent lawyer. We’ve got a good little ’hood. The gardens are perfect, we get the trash cans off the street pronto. Belle and I are the poor people-the artist and the camera store owner and their two kids.