Last to Know: A Novel(53)

“You mean—near us?” Diz was stunned.

“Either there or at the Ritz,” Rose said, making a joke of it and scraping the burned bacon into the garbage disposal.

Diz was kind of wishing she could have done the same with Bea, but he simply shrugged and took himself off upstairs, where he climbed out on his branch and focused his binoculars on the Havnel property.

There were no lights. Even Forensics must have called it quits for the night. A woman had been murdered there; a second woman killed right here in their woods. His father had been implicated. Bea had been implicated. Diz needed to know the truth and he meant to find out that truth by watching, waiting for the one wrong move that would give Bea’s game away. Because he was certain now, it must be her. Tomorrow, he could go over there, spy on her, he could follow her, find out what she was up to.

She was sure to make a mistake, criminals on TV always did, and Diz desperately needed to prove his father’s innocence.





40


Harry was sleeping off the booze. In his dream he was in some cold, dark, labyrinthine hole, a place filled with inky water where no sound could be heard except a muffled ringing. It rang and rang. Try as he might, Harry could not get away from it. And then he woke up and it was still there. God almighty, it was his doorbell. Somebody had their finger on it and was not letting go.

Filled with sudden anger, he hurled himself out of the red leather chair and went to open the door, ready to give whoever it was a choice piece of his mind.

“What the f*ck…” he said, then stopped. Rose Osborne was standing on his doorstep, wrapped in a big orange shawl over gray sweatpants and a jacket that said HARVARD in crimson letters across the front. Her thick dark hair was dragged into a bun, she wore no makeup, and her eyes were huge angry brown daggers looking at him.

“It’s three in the morning,” Harry said, knowing it must be at least somewhere near that.

“So what?” She pushed past him and stood in his hallway, looking round. “Where’s the dog?”

“Gone. Er … my friend—er, Rossetti, took him while I’m gone.”

“You are not ‘gone,’” Rose pointed out. Coldly.

“Well, yes, that is no, but I will be gone, tomorrow. That is,” he glanced at his watch one more time. “That is, I mean—today.”

She turned on him then, eyes not “blazing” as he might have described them, but hard, inimical. She looked, Harry thought, ready to kill him.

“Rose,” he said, trying to recapture the picture he’d first had of her in the white gypsy blouse with her bare brown shoulders and flying free hair and that lovely aura of womanliness that so attracted him. Now, she was a virago. Now, he knew, she was here to protect her man.

“Bea came to tell me she was innocent,” Rose said. “Begged me to believe her. I think she even wanted me to take her back, look after her. Again.” She shook her head at such madness. “You arrested Wally,” she said, in a voice of ice. “You accused my husband of murdering that young woman, Jemima. I told you Wally would never have done that, he could not have done such a terrible thing.” She took a step closer, her face in Harry’s. “I know now what he was doing,” she said. “He won’t admit it because of his children, he believes his innocence will be proven and there will be nothing to besmirch his reputation, his family’s reputation, Wally’s children mean everything to him. Except…”

Harry took Rose’s arm and led her into the living room. He sat her down on his red leather chair He hunched on the footstool opposite her.

“Except?”

Rose took a deep breath. “It was drugs. Wally was doing drugs, Detective Jordan.”

It flashed through Harry’s mind that he was no longer “Harry,” chummy over cups of coffee at her long pine table in that peaceful kitchen with the good smell of soup on the stove and the freshness that was Rose. He thought how far they had come in just a few days.

“I’m willing to bet I know who was supplying them,” he said.

Rose shook her head. “Then you know more than I do. I only know what he told me. Perhaps he’s told his lawyers more, they were with him for hours, I don’t know what will happen next.”

“Your husband was being blackmailed. The ‘good family man,’ the ‘famous writer,’ ‘the upholder of clean living,’ ‘the charmed life.’ I’m afraid, Rose, Wally’s ego could not tolerate being exposed as a liar and an addict, it would mean ruin and he knew it.”

She was looking at him, her big dark eyes stunned into blankness. He got up, went to the bar, opened a bottle of wine, actually a decent California Syrah he thought substantial enough to calm shattered nerves, a little bit anyway. He poured her a glass, took it over and put it in her hand, closing her fingers around it so she would not drop it.

Rose glanced down at it, surprised, and, always well mannered, thanked him. She took a gulp, then another. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and said, “What do you mean, Harry Jordan, my husband is a drug addict?”

“That’s not the important issue right now. What’s important is that I believe—I know—your husband is not a murderer. He did not kill Jemima Forester. I’d bet my own life on that.”

Rose began to cry, huge tears running unheeded down her cheeks, over her chin, into her neck. Harry went and got the box of Kleenex from the bar.