A Good Marriage(120)

“I don’t know,” I said. “But Amanda was being stalked by someone, and Kerry Tanner had stalked people in the past, right? Seems like one hell of a coincidence. There’s a couple things I still need to check out, to be sure.”

Paul nodded. “Well, with that guy … nothing would surprise me. I’ve got a whole investigatory file on him. He did follow those women around, showed up places. Sent harassing texts. ‘All you had to do was listen.’ Sick shit. Not to mention all the pictures he took, and the porn we found on his work computer.” He grimaced. “From what we could tell he’d been doing it for years. Five, maybe ten, who knows? I bet some of the other partners would still have let it go if it hadn’t been for the pictures. There was no ignoring those.”

I took another deep breath. There was more I needed to say, too. No more running. No more pretending. Millie was right. None of it was working for me.

“There is something else I need to tell you,” I said. “My financial disclosure form. There were some inaccuracies in it. Intentional ones.” Paul’s jaw tightened, and his eyes narrowed a tiny bit, almost imperceptibly. But otherwise, his face was completely still. “My husband is an alcoholic. He got into a car accident, and we were sued. We settled the case and are in full compliance with our obligation. We will pay off the debt, but it’s a big one. I should have included it on the form.”

Paul frowned more deeply, his brow scrunched. Then he took off his reading glasses and stared at me in silence for what felt like an eternity. I stared right back. It was all I could do. Maude was right: there was no way through but with the truth.

“You should have included it,” Paul said finally. Then he put his reading glasses back on and turned to face his computer once more. “Call Human Resources and get it amended first thing Monday.”

The woman at Blooms on the Slope was locking up for the night when I knocked on the door. Her hair was piled high as before, and she had on a bright yellow blouse and the same sunny expression. She shook her head, smiled sympathetically, and pointed to the store hours written on the door. It didn’t seem like she recognized me.

I held up my phone with Kerry Tanner’s picture on it. “For Matthew,” I said, hoping she’d take pity on me. “I think he’s the circle.”

She peered through the glass at the photo, and then I saw it click. She reached forward to unlock the door. “Come in, come in,” she said, waving me inside and locking the door behind me. “Let me see if I can grab Matthew. I think he’s in back.”

A moment later Matthew emerged, a skateboard under his arm, headphones already on.

“Is this the man you made the card out for?” I asked, holding out my phone.

Matthew smiled. “Nailed it.” He held up a hand until I gave him a high five. “See, this guy’s a perfect circle. And lilacs. I remember now. That’s what he bought. He said all the ones his wife planted in her backyard had died.”

I walked away from the florist up St. Johns, then turned right on Plaza Street, headed past the gracious doorman buildings and, finally, onto Prospect Park West. I walked to the top of Montgomery Place and stopped at a bench along the stone wall surrounding the park. Maybe even the bench that Sam had passed out on. The early evening summer sun was thin and gold as I sat down.

I was not looking forward to the last call I had to make. I found Sarah’s number in my phone log and dialed her back. She answered after a few rings.

“Hi, Sarah,” I began, my voice sounding strangled and foreign. “This is Lizzie Kitsakis, Zach Grayson’s lawyer.”

“Yes?” she asked. “What can I do for you?”

Was there a tone to her voice now? Trepidation? Maude might have already asked Sarah about what Gloria had told her: that Kerry had been fired months ago. But Maude didn’t know why he’d been fired. Honestly, I didn’t think Sarah did either. She didn’t strike me as the kind of woman to keep on sleeping with her husband knowing all that. And I did not believe for one second that she had connected Kerry to Amanda’s death. If she had, I couldn’t imagine she would have been able to pick up the phone.

“I think maybe you were right,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “Right about what?”

“About us being connected from the neighborhood,” I said. “I think our husbands might play basketball together. In that rec league. Thursday nights?”

I’d remembered Sam had said he’d been at Freddy’s with a guy with a big job and a wife and kids. Maybe a lawyer who decided not to mention he’d been fired. And Sarah had said her husband had regular plans on Thursday nights, “trying to break a hip.” Just like Sam.

“Oh,” she said, with the quietest little gasp of relief. Only this I was calling about? Who cared about this? “Sure, he plays basketball. Hard to believe he’s found the time, given what I recently discovered is his voracious appetite for pornography,” she spat out. She was pissed, no doubt. Not shattered, though, not in the way she would be if she knew the rest. “But yes, he does also play basketball. I even went to watch once. Maybe I saw your husband. Let me guess: he’s one of the young, hot ones, right?”

She was angry, but there was a grim humor underneath—like she might forgive her husband even a porn addiction. Like she loved him still. I felt gutted, thinking of how destroyed Sarah would feel once she learned the whole ugly truth about the man she’d built a life with. After all, the mere possibility had all but consumed what was left of my shredded heart.