Thomas Perry - Poison Flower

Today he had changed his itinerary to stop in Chicago because he had sensed Wylie and the others needed to be reminded to be afraid of him. He had sent them out to kill Shelby-to finish killing him, really. Shelby was only a mild concern, but Martel hadn't forgotten him. Martel had made sure Shelby was convicted of the death of his wife, but having him in a jail cell was simply not enough. Every year criminals were released on appeals, new evidence was found, lawyers were declared incompetent. There was no reason for Daniel Martel to live with that risk-or any risk. Shelby was like a bee that had been swatted but hadn't died yet. More than one bee like that had staged enough of a recovery to sting.

This woman was something else. Wylie didn't seem to have fully understood what he'd had, and he'd gotten careless enough to let her escape. If there were four people who didn't know each other but knew who she was and wanted to bid millions for her, then there might be eight, or twenty. But Wylie was a man of action-another term for a fool. He had acted to get an auction going without first thinking through all of the implications.

Martel left the hotel and drove toward Midway Airport. He felt depressed when he had to think about men like Wylie. Having just two or three of them was enough to keep all of the pharmaceutical reps and interns and bookkeepers from becoming troublesome. But he had learned that he couldn't stop there. He'd had to hire a second set of three to serve as a threat to the first set. Then he'd needed to hire another six to counter the first six. He had forced himself to stop at a dozen. But he sometimes implied to each of them that there might be another dozen, or an unknowable number, waiting for them to cause problems and be annihilated.

9.

Jane woke at three a.m. leaning against the passenger door and sat up. She looked at Shelby beside her, then at Iris lying behind her on the back seat. "Time for my turn at the wheel," she said. They traded places and she drove for a time, then looked at Shelby. "This is a great time to sleep. In a couple of hours there will be bright sunlight coming through the windshield."

"It's taking me a while to wind down. There are too many days behind me when I would have given anything to be outside and watch the telephone poles going past."

"Iris is asleep. Are you in the mood to talk"

"Sure."

"I'm sorry about bringing Iris without giving you a chance to refuse. Iris is a good person in a lousy situation, and she needs a little help. And she'll help us, too. Unlike us, she can walk in any door without fear of being recognized."

"I understand," he said. "If you trust her, I do. Things happen, and we have to adjust."

"Things happen is right. I had expected that you and I would have to elude the police. I didn't imagine that the people who framed you would be there, too. Tell me what you know about them. Who are Wylie, Gorman, and Maloney"

"I have no idea. I know the names Wylie, Gorman, and Maloney because you told me. I can only guess they must be friends of the man who killed my wife."

"What about him-the man who killed your wife"

"Almost nothing. I know that he was living with her for a while. I saw some of his clothes left in a closet."

"If you don't know about him, let's talk about your wife."

"I met her in college. The University of Texas at Austin. She was beautiful. Long, honey-blond hair, a great smile, a body like a goddess."

"I have an unpleasant question. If I'm being insensitive, please forgive me. But your sister told me Susan cheated on you even then, right after you met her. Is it true"

Jane watched him shrug, and then stay silent for a few seconds. "At the time, I would have sworn she would never cheat. She could have just dropped me and had somebody she liked better. But in the light of what happened later, and what I think happened, I'm not so sure. An attractive woman always has men looking at her. Any day she's inclined to, she can bring the whole thing on and have it over with in an hour or two, including a bit of flirting ahead of time and putting on fresh makeup afterward. There were plenty of times when she could have, and catching her at it would have been the last thing I was thinking about."

"So you proposed and she accepted, and you married. What did you do for a living"

"I was a beginning executive at Cole and Castor, the office supply wholesaler. They started me as a trainee account manager and then moved me around a bit, so the departments and I got used to each other-sales, advertising, inventory, purchasing. Sue was in pharmaceutical sales at Megapharm, working mostly with hospitals and medical groups."

"And when did the problems start in the marriage"

"About two and a half years into it, I sensed that she wasn't quite right. First she was working late and tired all the time. I would get home around seven and she might show up at ten or eleven. She always dressed up with high heels and expensive clothes. She would come in and shed all that stuff on the way into the bathroom to wash off her makeup. When she came out she was in a pair of sweat pants and a big T-shirt. She would hardly talk to me while she had a snack and went to bed. Then we'd get up in the morning and start over."

Jane waited. He was talking steadily, moving in the direction of the crime, the moment when all of these details had made sense to him.

"Then she started having to go to medical conventions to lobby the doctors there to prescribe her company's products. This kept her away for three or four days at a time, with part of it being the whole weekend."

"When did you have time for each other" Jane asked.

"As she got busier, we were together less. Sex was practically nonexistent. She was gone so much, and then when she was home she was always too tired to even think about making love. I tried to be patient with all that. Then I thought I should say something, ask whether there was something I could change to make things better. She said no, the work would all pay off in the long run, and so I should be patient. I told myself she had a right to her career, and if working all those hours would get her somewhere, I should support her."

"So you dropped the subject"

"She said she loved me. We're all brought up to think we have to talk about everything, and that's all that matters. It isn't. What people do is the truth. If she doesn't have sex with you, she doesn't love you. If she isn't with you, it's because she doesn't want to be."

"How did it end"

"It took a while. I still thought that I was seeing things clearly. Then I happened to notice some new things. The first was while she was away at a weekend convention in Atlanta. She had left on Thursday morning. A notice came on her e-mail Friday that said her flight to Atlanta on Saturday morning was going to be delayed about fifteen minutes. I didn't see the e-mail until Saturday afternoon. The e-mail carried the six-digit confirmation number, so I looked up the reservation on the airline's site. Sure enough, the flight was Saturday morning, and the return flight was Sunday night. The flight wasn't charged to her company. It was charged to a credit card in her name, and it was a credit card I hadn't known about. The billing address was her mother's house. Naturally, I was wondering what she had been doing from Thursday morning until Saturday morning, and where she had spent the nights."

"What did you do"

"I called her, but everything went to voice mail. I went to visit her mother, to ask her if she'd heard from Sue. When I asked what she knew about the credit card, she seemed surprised. First it was `What card What do you mean' Then it was `Oh, that card. When you get married, plenty of things still come to you at your mother's house.' I could only pretend to shrug it off. I went home. When Susan came home on Sunday night I didn't say much about any of it. I just looked for signs. I noticed she didn't unpack that night. We both left for work the next morning, and I came back and opened her suitcase. She had a couple of tiny little bathing suits, but she loved to swim, and was at a big hotel, so it meant nothing. She also had business clothes and a cocktail dress, and jeans. Nothing conclusive."