Puppet (26 page)

“Thank you, Your Honor.” Gwen Price smiles as the officer approaches to lead her from the courtroom.

“I’ll be up later to talk to you,” Ben tells her.

“Not necessary,” Gwen says over her shoulder. “Nice to see you again, Amanda. Have a safe trip back to Florida.”

“Shit,” Amanda swears into the palm of her hand.

The judge shakes his head, as if to say, Now I’ve seen everything. Then he laughs. “Good luck, Mr. Myers,” he tells Ben before instructing the bailiff to call the next case.

“Now what?” Amanda asks as she follows Ben out of the courtroom and down the long hall.

“I think we may have just run out of options.”

“We’re onto something, Ben,” Amanda tells him, feeling it in her gut. “That’s why she’s so eager to wrap this whole thing up. You saw her face when I mentioned the name Turk. That name means something to her, Ben.”

Ben stops before they reach the side exit. “So what?” he says plainly.

“So what?”

“John Mallins, Turk, William Shakespeare. What difference does it make? A man is dead, and your mother is only too happy to take the credit. You saw her in front of that judge. She’s bound and determined to go to jail, and frankly, I don’t see that there’s much we can do to stop her. She doesn’t want our help. Her little performance today proved that.”

“So what do we do?”

“Amanda, I don’t think you’re listening.”

“I’m listening. I’m just not agreeing.”

“I don’t see where we have any choice.”

“There’s always a choice.”

“Yes, and sometimes somebody else makes it.”

“So, what are you saying?” Amanda asks stubbornly.

“You know what I’m saying. I’m saying that maybe it’s time for you to cash in that return ticket and go back to Florida. You didn’t want to come here in the first place. I practically had to drag you down here.”

“Yes, and now I’m here, and—what?—you’re just going to throw in the towel? You’re prepared to let my mother rot in jail for the rest of her life?”

“A few days ago, you were looking forward to letting that happen.”

“A lot’s changed in the last few days.”

“What’s changed, Amanda?”

I don’t think I’ve ever told you how beautiful you are.

“I don’t know.”

You look lovely. That’s a wonderful color on you.

“It’s just that nothing makes any sense.”

I’m sorry I was such a bad mother to you, Amanda.

“I can’t go back to Florida, Ben. I just bought all these clothes. Where am I going to wear them in Florida?”

“What?!”

Amanda begins spinning around in helpless circles. “There’s something wrong with my mother, Ben. She’s different, and you know it.”

“She shot a man, Amanda. That can do strange things to your head.”

“Or maybe there’s already something strange in her head. Maybe she has a brain tumor. We didn’t think of that. Can we arrange for an MRI?”

Ben sighs, looking longingly toward the exit. Why did I ever get involved in this mess? the sigh asks. “I can petition the court, but I doubt your mother would agree, and without her permission—”

“Which you know she won’t give.”

“—our hands are tied.”

“Shit.” The epithet, louder than she’d intended, ricochets off the walls, races down the corridors.

Ben looks nervously around. “Okay, look. Why don’t we grab a cup of coffee.” He doesn’t wait for her response, his hand already on her elbow as he leads her out the side exit and across the street to the coffee shop where they had lunch the previous day.

“We have to find out who this guy Turk is,” Amanda is saying moments later, ripping into a cranberry muffin
and blowing the steam from her coffee. “He’s the key to this whole thing.”

“How do you propose we do that?”

“I have no idea.” Amanda stares across the table at her former husband, feels a slow grin tugging at her lips.

“What are you smiling about?”

“Just that I’m not used to seeing you in a suit.”

“And what’s the verdict?”

“That suits suit you,” Amanda says, her grin widening, stretching across her face.

Ben shakes his head. “Who’d have thought,” he says, a now-familiar refrain.

“Who’d have thought,” she echoes. “What made you decide to become a lawyer anyway?”

“Truthfully?”

“If you think I can handle it.”

“I always wanted to be a lawyer.”

“What? You never told me that.”

He shrugs. “Too embarrassed. I mean, here I was, the classic angry young man with that whole ‘rebel without a cause’ thing going, no way I’m going to be a lawyer like my father. Perish the thought. And what do I really want to be, deep down?”

“A lawyer like your father,” Amanda answers.

“Exactly.”

“How
is
your father?”

“Great. He’s in Paris right now. On his honeymoon, actually.”

“His honeymoon?”

“My mother died five years ago,” Ben explains. “Cancer.”

“I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

“How would you? We haven’t exactly stayed in touch over the years.”

Amanda takes a sip of her coffee, feels it burn the roof of her mouth, and wishes the numbness in her palate would spread to the rest of her body. “Were you close to your mother?”

He nods. “We got closer as time went on.”

“You mean, you got closer after I left town?”

“Something like that,” he acknowledges.

“She didn’t exactly approve of me, as I recall.”

“She just thought we were too young.”

“Mother knows best,” Amanda says, shaking her head in wonderment. “I can’t believe I said that.”

“Maybe she
does
know best,” Ben says, effortlessly shifting the focus from his mother to Amanda’s. “Maybe the best thing is to leave bad enough alone.”

“I can’t do that.”

“It could get worse, Amanda.”

Amanda laughs, a painful sound that hacks at the air like a machete. “So, who’d your dad marry? Anyone I know?”

“Believe it or not, yes.” Ben finishes the coffee in his cup and signals the waitress for a refill. “Remember Mrs. MacMahon? Grade eleven history?”

“You’re kidding.”

“Her husband passed away around the same time as my mother. Some mutual friends fixed them up about a year ago, and what can I say? The rest is—”

“Don’t say it.”

They laugh, this time easily.

“Can I stay at your place?” The question is out of Amanda’s mouth before she has time to consider either its ramifications or repercussions.

“What?”

“It would only be for a few days. Till we know what’s happening. I don’t know, Ben. It just seems to make sense.”

“It makes no sense at all.”

“I’m not suggesting we sleep together,” Amanda continues quickly. “Obviously, I’d sleep on the couch. And I’d try to stay out of your way if Jennifer—”

“You can’t stay with me, Amanda.”

Amanda nods her head in silent acquiescence. He’s right. Of course he’s right.

“I can have one of the secretaries at my office call around, see if they can find you a hotel room. There might even be something here,” Ben adds, looking past the coffee shop doors toward the lobby of the adjoining hotel.

“No, that’s all right. I’m a big girl. I’m sure I’ll be able to find something on my own.”

“I just don’t think it would be wise for you to stay with me.”

“Of course. I understand. You’re absolutely right. It was a lousy idea.”

“An interesting one though,” he admits after a pause.

“I thought so.”

“Maybe we—”

“Ben!” a woman’s voice exclaims.

Amanda feels a swoosh of fabric beside her, smells the overpowering scent of lemon-based perfume, and turns to see an attractive woman in a dark green overcoat bending over to kiss Ben’s cheek, her chin-length brown hair falling across cheekbones that are high and well-defined.

“You finished in court already?” the woman asks, her voice husky and low.

“I’m finished all right.”

“The judge denied bail?”

“The judge never had a chance.”

The woman smiles as if she understands and turns her penetrating gaze on Amanda. Her eyes are the same color as my coffee, Amanda thinks, knowing this is Jennifer even before Ben introduces her.

“Jennifer Grimes, I’d like you to meet Amanda Travis,” she hears him say as she casually absorbs the details of the woman’s face—the dark eyes, the long, aquiline nose, the coral-colored lips. “Gwen Price’s daughter.”

“And Ben’s ex-wife.” Amanda extends her hand. “In case he forgot to mention it.”

Disappointingly, Jennifer takes her hand, gives it a vigorous shake. “He didn’t forget. I’m so sorry we had to meet under these circumstances.”

“It’s a difficult time,” Amanda says. “Would you like to join us?”

Jennifer Grimes waves to two colleagues waiting by the door. “I’ll see you over there in a few minutes,” she tells them, pulling up a chair from a nearby table and squeezing it up against the table for two. “Actually it’s good I ran into you. I was able to find out some of the things you asked me about last night.” She casts a sidelong glance at Amanda. “We were at the most boring party. Did he tell you?”

“Said it was too boring to talk about,” Amanda says with a smile.

Jennifer’s dark eyes widen. She turns her attention back to Ben. “Seems they got back the initial autopsy reports on John Mallins.”

“And?” Ben and Amanda ask together.

“And there are a number of interesting results.”

“How so?” Ben asks.

“What do you mean, ‘interesting’?” Amanda asks at the same time.

“Well, they’re inconclusive, and so, of course, they have to do further testing.”

“What do you mean, ‘interesting’?” Amanda asks again.

“Well, for one thing, it seems our Mr. Mallins is older than first thought.”

“How much older?”

“Ten, maybe even fifteen years, if his internal organs are to be believed.”

Ben looks at Amanda. “Which would make him about—”

“—the same age as my mother,” Amanda says, finishing the thought.

“Is that significant?” Jennifer asks.

They shrug.

“There’s more.”

“Go on.”

“Well, it seems our Mr. Mallins has had some plastic surgery.”

“What kind of plastic surgery?”

“A nose job. And a face-lift. Apparently both done some time ago.”

Amanda puts her elbows on the table, balances her head in her hands. What does all this mean? That John Mallins was a desperate man, or merely a vain one? That he was trying to keep up appearances or disguise his appearance altogether? “He was trying to look the age on his passport,” Amanda realizes out loud. A passport he stole from the real John Mallins, after he killed him and assumed his identity. Dear God, who was this man?

“That’s the other thing,” Jennifer says.

“What other thing?” Ben and Amanda ask, their words overlapping.

Jennifer looks a bit taken aback. “You asked about his date of birth.”

“Yes?” comes their joint response.

“Well, you were right. According to his passport, it’s July fourteenth.”

“Shit,” says Amanda, her hands dropping into her lap.

“Shit,” echoes Ben, leaning back in his chair.

“How’d you know that anyway?”

Neither Ben nor Amanda says a word.

“What’s going on here?”

Again, only silence.

“Well, I’d love to sit and chat …,” Jennifer says, dark eyes flitting between the two. After a lengthy pause, she pushes back her chair, stands up.

Immediately Ben is on his feet. “Thanks,” he says simply.

“For what exactly?”

“I’m not sure.”

Jennifer touches his cheek with a tenderness that makes Amanda wince. Then she extends that same hand toward Amanda. “Nice meeting you, Amanda. I hope everything works out.”

“Me too.”

Amanda watches Jennifer stretch onto her tiptoes to brush her lips against Ben’s. “Call me later?”

“Absolutely.”

Then she walks to the door, leaving only the scent of lemons behind.

“R
IGHT
here. This is fine,” Amanda says as the taxi pulls to a stop at the corner of Bloor and Palmerston. She hands the driver a crisp, purple $10 bill, tells him to keep the almost $4 in change. What the hell, she thinks, climbing out of the cab into about three inches of freshly fallen snow. It all looks like play money anyway. Blue five-dollar bills, purple tens, green twenties, rose-colored fifties, brown hundreds. Not to mention the one- and two-dollar coins, referred to respectively as loonies and toonies. It’s Looney Tunes, all right, she thinks, deciding the coins provide an apt metaphor for her life.

Throwing her purse over one shoulder and her overnight bag over the other, she proceeds down the wide street, lined with giant oak trees and dotted with wonderful, old-fashioned gas lamplights. Snow coats the branches of the trees like a heavy syrup, causing them to droop like the branches of a weeping willow. She pictures those same branches in spring, crowded with new buds just waiting to burst, and feels her face relax into a smile.

Spring was always her favorite time of year: the gradual transition from frigid to more temperate climes as
winter grudgingly relinquished its hold on the land; that first tantalizing tease of warm air that appeared in late March only to be pummeled into oblivion by an early-April snowstorm; the snow ultimately washed away by rain, the rain falling on bright yellow daffodils and brilliant red tulips that push their thin, yet surprisingly sturdy, stalks out of the wet ground, demanding their time in the sun.

This changing of the seasons is probably the only thing Amanda misses, living in Florida, where the threat of hurricanes is the only thing that differentiates one season from the next. The palm trees are always full of fronds; the sun shines with monotonous regularity. It might be a little more humid in July, a little chillier in January, but by and large, Florida is a land of constant summer.

Which is why she moved there in the first place, Amanda reminds herself, deliberately hammering her boot heel into a patch of thin ice, watching it crack like glass, then shatter. What is she doing? Who gives a shit about the change in seasons? Yes, at one time she might have enjoyed that first invigorating rush of cool air blowing away the stifling August heat, and, yes, at one time she might have marveled at a sudden November storm that carpeted the city in soft white snow, but experience had taught her that cool breezes had a nasty habit of turning into biting winds, and pure virgin snow too quickly degenerated into slush. The seasons had a way of getting old quickly.