Mean Streak(100)

His recitation was followed by a lengthy and teeming silence. Then Alice drew a shaky breath. “Jeff, this is a tragic turn of events.”

“You think?”

“Don’t get smart with me.”

“Then say something less banal.”

“Very well.” After a beat, she said, “It’s obvious to me that Emory has lost her grasp on reality.”

He sensed a ponderous footnote left unspoken. “Alice? Dear? Do you know something I don’t?”

“I’m not sure it’s relevant.”

“Tell me and let me decide its relevance.”

“I can’t betray Emory’s confidence.”

“Your loyalty to her is admirable, but if you keep something from me and the authorities, you’re fostering her bizarre behavior. She’s sacrificing her reputation and jeopardizing the future of the clinic. Her career—as well as mine, yours, and Neal’s—are at stake. Not only that, her life could be in danger. This man she’s with is a violent criminal. My God, Alice, screw confidentiality and tell me what you know!”

She inhaled a deep breath. “She called me from the hospital last night. Actually early this morning. She seemed on the verge of hysteria. She was breathing erratically, like she was having a panic attack.”

“What brought it on?”

“Her sunglasses. She asked me if I remembered her mentioning at some point during the day that they’d been broken.”

“She called you in the wee hours to talk about her sunglasses?”

“Because you had asked her about the repair.”

“Jesus, she’s really hung up on that. She brought it up to me tonight.”

“She wondered how you knew they’d been broken when she fell.”

“I didn’t. All I knew was that when she left home on Friday, the stem was intact. Yesterday I noticed it had been glued together.” He waited a ten count, then said, “Alice, what was she… Why did she call you in a panic over something so innocuous?”

“It wasn’t innocuous to her. She thought that your question about them might have been a slip of the tongue. That by asking it, you had implicated yourself.”

“Good Christ,” he exclaimed in a stage whisper.

“I told her that she wasn’t thinking clearly, that she was letting her imagination run wild, but even as we hung up, she sounded uncertain.”

“She’s the one stealing and keeping company with a wanted man, but she implicated me. Unbelievable.”

“I didn’t know about the break-in and all the rest last night when I spoke to her. But even then she seemed irrational, and I told her so. I said that perhaps she was transferring her own guilt onto you.”

“Her guilt over the burglary?”

Alice didn’t respond.

“Guilt over something else?”

“Jeff, I can’t—”

“She slept with him, didn’t she?”

Alice held her tongue.

He sneered, “Ah, the resonate silence of a confidante and friend.”

“Not that good of a friend,” she said with contrition. “I’m sleeping with her husband.”

“She knows.”

“Oh my God,” she wailed.

“Relax, Alice. For God’s sake. I didn’t name you, but I did confess.”

“Why? Why now?”

“Emory backed me into a corner. Even after today’s shocking disclosures, she had the gall to ask me outright if I was having an affair. In anger I admitted it but didn’t tell her with whom.”

Speaking in an undertone, she said, “It might be a relief for her to find out. Keeping the secret has been torture.”

“No one would doubt your loyalty to her, although you should have contacted me immediately after your conversation with her last night. I should have known about her suspicions regarding me.”

“I chalked them up to exhaustion, medication, a residual fear after what she’d been through. Emotional upheaval and—”

“I understand. But you should have told me, Alice. Had I known, things might have gone differently today.”

“How so? What would you have done?”

“For starters, I wouldn’t have been so eager to take her home. I would have recommended that she stay in the hospital and be kept under observation for another couple of days.”

“Seen a psychiatrist, perhaps?”

God bless Alice. He forgave her the previous banalities. She was saying all the right things now. “Yes. I blame myself for not suggesting a psychiatric evaluation yesterday when she seemed unable to remember specifics about how she sustained the concussion and the time she spent in that cabin. Of course, given what we know now, how were we to distinguish between faulty recollection and sheer fabrication?”

“We must get help for her.”

“We have to find her first. I only hope she survives this villain. Connell said he wasn’t a sexual predator, but…well, he’s already seduced her, hasn’t he?” He let his voice crack emotionally on the last two words, and Alice’s response to it was instantaneous.

“It’s difficult to be angry with her and worried at the same time, isn’t it?”

“That describes exactly what I’m feeling.”