Best Intentions (32 page)

I
look back up at Alice. I cannot organize my thoughts, everything is out of order. I don't know where to begin.

“Why did you come to me instead of going to the police?”

“I don't know. Maybe I was hoping you would tell me I was wrong.” Her voice cracks. “I've been pretending for so long. Not seeing, not knowing, becomes a habit, a way to live. Sometimes it seems like it's the only way to live. But I saw the newspaper clipping on Jack's desk and I realized that when it came down to it, I couldn't live with myself if I let someone else go to jail for what he did. It's the last bit of self-respect I have left.”

“You have to tell the police,” I say.

Alice's shoulders sink. “I know.”

I get up, stand still until the light-headedness passes and then walk to my bag to get Gibbs's card with her cell phone number out of my wallet. I take the phone into the kitchen to talk.

When I come back to the living room, Alice is curled in her chair like a tired child.

“Detective Gibbs wants us to come to the precinct house to meet her,” I tell her.

“Now?”

“Yes.”

Alice looks up at me, depleted.

“You're doing the right thing,” I reassure her.

“I'm turning in my husband,” she replies bitterly. “How can that be the right thing?”

“You have no choice.”

“Of course I do.” She unfolds her legs, her arms. “It's not really proof of anything, anyway.”

“You wouldn't be here if you believed that.”

I write Sam a note telling him I had to go out, promising to explain later, and grab my coat while Alice rinses her face with cold water in the bathroom. She is buying herself time, one last stand against a future she doesn't want to enter.

The police station has a quiet, desultory air at night, most of the desks empty, the remaining officers gathered in the corner doing their duty, waiting for something bad to happen. It usually does. There is no one in the holding cell. Gibbs leads us to the back, where Callahan is waiting for us.

“Thank you for coming in, Mrs. Handel,” Callahan says with a cool formality.

“Alice, please.”

“All right, Alice.”

We sit in the small gray room and Alice sips the coffee Gibbs has brought her, holding the cup in both hands to warm herself, though the heat is on. The radiators making a creaking rasp at unpredictable intervals. I jump each time, though the detectives don't seem to notice, having long ago absorbed it into the syncopation of their days, their nights. I wonder if it infiltrates their dreams.

“Lisa gave Detective Gibbs a rough idea of what you told her this evening,” Callahan says. “Of course, we'd like to hear it from you. Before we begin, I need to ask you one question. Does your husband have any idea that you are here?”

“No. I told him I was visiting my sister in Rhode Island.”

“And if he should call there looking for you?”

“Linda will cover for me.”

Callahan relaxes, ready to get down to business. “All right. Let's
start at the beginning. What time did your husband come home that Monday night?”

“Around three a.m.”

“But you told us before it was eleven p.m.”

“Yes.”

“Which is true?”

Alice looks from Callahan to Gibbs in frustration and shame. “I'm telling you the truth now. It was three a.m.”

Callahan leans forward. “Why are you changing your story now?”

“I should have told you this before, I know that, okay? I didn't think it was that important. And then when your tests showed that Jack wasn't with Deirdre that night, it didn't seem to matter.”

“Our tests only showed he didn't have sex with Deirdre that night,” Callahan corrects her.

Alice cringes. It still pierces, her husband and another woman, bandied about so casually.

“Go on,” Gibbs encourages.

“I heard that you had made an arrest and I thought it was settled.”

“But here you are,” Callahan says.

“Yes.”

“Alice, Lisa told us you found a necklace. Can I see it?” Gibbs asks gently.

Alice pulls it out of her pocket and puts it on the table.

Gibbs turns to Callahan. “It does appear to be the one Deirdre was wearing in the photographs.”

“It is definitely the one Jack gave her,” I confirm.

Gibbs picks it up carefully with a pen, the chain dangling down like a golden snake, and places it in a plastic bag, though surely there are already so many fingerprints on it I can't imagine why one more set would matter. “We'll send this to the lab. In the meantime, what are the chances your husband will discover it is gone before tomorrow?”

“I don't know,” Alice admits. “He might.”

“Your husband is a very smart lawyer. Don't you think he would have washed the necklace if he thought it might be incriminating in any way?”

“She said it wasn't there before Deirdre died. What other explanation could there be?” I demand.

“He probably assumed no one would find it,” Alice answers more calmly. “He thought that box was secret all these years.”

Callahan turns back to Alice. “What do you think your husband would do if he realized the necklace was gone? Do you think he'd suspect you had taken it and brought your suspicions to us?”

“I don't know,” Alice repeats. She begins to tremble, the reality of being in a neon-lit interrogation room in a New York City police precinct just beginning to dawn on her.

“What I'm asking is,” Callahan continues pointedly, “do you think he'd take off?”

“Take off?”

“Run.”

Alice stares at him. “This is crazy, this is all so crazy.” She looks at him with the worst kind of wonderment. “We're talking about the man I'm married to.”

“We realize that,” Gibbs says soothingly. “We're just trying to figure out the best way to proceed. We don't want to risk Jack eluding us but we will need to establish probable cause to get an arrest warrant.”

“I don't know what he'd do. I don't even know who he is.” She is crying now, sniffling loudly.

I find a crumpled tissue in my bag and hand it to her. The detectives wait while she blots her eyes, trying to compose herself.

Callahan turns to Gibbs. “Call Boston. Tell them to pull Handel in for questioning and hold him for as long as possible.”

“All right.” She gets up to leave the room.

“What happens now?” I ask Callahan.

“If the DNA of the blood on the necklace matches, we have a pretty good shot at getting an arrest warrant and having Jack
brought to New York. It's not a slam dunk, but your testimony about his state of mind that night and Alice's timeline should be enough to get the process going.” He pauses. “There's one other thing. The medical examiner found a mark on Deirdre's neck consistent with a necklace being yanked off. None of our searches turned it up. Until now.”

“What about Ben?”

“That depends. Assuming this pans out, the charges against him will be dropped.”

An hour later, we are done. Alice and I stand on the chilly side street, both of us looking down at the ground disconsolately.

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“I can't imagine ever being all right again.” She wraps her arms around her chest, looking down the street, away from me. “I just want this to be over.”

“I know.”

Even as I say it, I know that can't happen. The past is never really over. Our interpretation of it may shift like a kaleidoscope, it may inform us or lead us astray, it may bring comfort or delusion, an excuse to hate or a reason to love. Some of us race too quickly to try to escape it, some of us cling so tightly it blinds us to the present. But one way or another, it is always with us.

“Do you want to come home with me?” I ask.

“No.”

“Where will you go?”

“Up to my sister's. She's expecting me.”

I put Alice in a cab that will take her to her parked car near the Meeting House and watch as the taxi drives off. I had thought that perhaps she would turn and find me watching after her, but she doesn't look back.

I turn and head home, walking as quickly as I can.

I slip my keys quietly into the front door and stand completely still in the foyer. I hear Sam in the kitchen, boiling water for tea, I hear Phoebe on the phone and Claire playing music while she studies for a bio test and I drink it all in, relish every sound.

I walk up to Sam and put my arms around him, burying my head in the crook of his neck, breathing him in, his touch, his scent, his very being so familiar and so unknown. It is the only place I have ever truly wanted to be.

At ten o'clock the following morning, Detective Gibbs calls to tell me that Jack has been arrested.

A
thousand tiny white lights twinkle in Cipriani's amber banquet hall, draping the balcony overhead in glittering scallops, snaking through the delicate bare white branches of the centerpieces, the simplest form of magic. The hum of between-course chatter, animated by cocktails and vintage wine and the all-too-rare conviction that you are in the right place at the right time, drifts in the air about us, laced with satisfaction and bonhomie. Outside, the city is covered with February's first big snowfall, crusted over with a dangerous icy shell, but within the warm, fragrant dining room the women are wearing strapless dresses and strappy sandals, defying the seasons with their gaiety.

I lean against the knobby lattice of the high-back chair and look over at Sam, who has migrated two seats away, so handsome in his navy suit, his face confident and engaged as he speaks with three men who have come to pay court, to curry favor or mine for insider tidbits. Sam, amused, flattered, but not taken in, glances over their shoulders at me, the irony lost on neither of us, and I smile back. In one small corner of one small world, he is the man of the moment. Since his piece broke last week on the Merdale cover-up and all it implies about the nasty undercurrent of sexual harassment coursing through corporate America, he has been on two network talk shows, had his exposé discussed in newspapers, blogs
and radio programs across the country and gotten a surprisingly generous book offer.

An envelope filled with Mick Favata's damning records landed on Sam's desk three weeks ago without a note, though we both knew who it was from. It was David's parting gift to me, and to Sam, his way of trying to apologize. He had kept a copy after all. Perhaps David does have a latent sense of outraged morality, however situational it might be. In my best moods I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, though forgiveness is a different matter. After numerous interviews and a quick trip to London to verify the facts, Sam blew the lid off Favata's violent attack against the woman in his office (there were others as well) and Robert Merdale's willful cover-up. It turns out my flighty assistant wasn't so flighty after all. Merdale had her keeping an eye on me all along and gave her a sizable bonus when she hijacked the London reports from my mail and turned them over to him. Favata was gone from the company within days. Merdale is busy making apologies and reparations to various women's groups as publicly as possible. Some clients have jumped ship but not all.

The story couldn't have come at a better time. Simon, convinced by the efficiency expert's ruthless report, had come to the conclusion that Sam—older, more expensive than those just coming up—must go. Firing Sam before he turned forty next month would save the magazine from one of those pesky age-discrimination lawsuits that are rampant these days. UniProphet's future was also looking bleak, the money Sam had borrowed from Deirdre in all likelihood gone for good. Despite all their fancy beta tests and inflated promises, when UniProphet actually put it into action, it simply didn't perform up to expectations. They, like others before them, discovered that past behavior is not predictive of future actions with anything more than ten percent accuracy. The other ninety percent remains idiosyncratic, unknowable, forever subject to last-minute, inexplicable changes of heart. There are no algorithms that forecast with any certainty what any one of us will want in the end, though people will surely continue to try.

On stage, the auctioneer from Christie's, a brittle woman in a severe black cocktail frock and hair lacquered into immobility, clears her throat to gain everyone's attention. As the bidding begins, Sam returns to his seat beside me.

“Have I told you that you look beautiful?” he whispers.

I smile. “The dress is going back tomorrow.”

“Ah, the privileges of ownership,” Sam teases. “Anyway, it suits you.”

“The dress or the privilege?”

“Both.”

The dress, a lapis silk halter, is by one of the young designers I found earmarked in Deirdre's magazines. I suppose I am still seeking her approval, perhaps I always will. In matters great and small, we wanted to make each other happy. So often we did. Those are the times I choose to remember.

Deirdre's diamond heart necklace is lying in the back of my top dresser drawer. The police returned it to me after Jack pleaded guilty to manslaughter 2. When confronted with all of the evidence, including a witness from Deirdre's building who had finally come forward, Jack admitted that he had gone to her loft that night, arriving soon after Ben had left, the residue of their lovemaking still written all over Deirdre's face. Jack claimed that they had argued and she had pushed him first. He was trying to restrain her when she slipped, landing on her head. He swore that she was alive when he left, leaving the door open so someone would be sure to find her. He settled out of court for a four-year sentence. I was shocked that that was all he got, but Gibbs explained that the case remained largely circumstantial. There were only two people in the room that night, she reminded me, and one of them is gone. Ben was issued a formal apology the following day and all the charges against him were dropped. Though he has said he has forgiven me, I doubt we will ever speak again.

Deirdre left everything to me in her will and I was set on closing the store until Sam convinced me I should try to run it. I will never have Deirdre's taste and discernment when it comes to fashion, nor
am I looking for the sense of identity she found in Aperçu. I am gaining something entirely different—freedom. I can make my own hours and pick the girls up from school two or three days a week. Though they have yet to admit it, I believe that they are pleased with the arrangement. Sometimes, when they don't have too much homework, we go out for ice cream, all the minor domestic skirmishes put aside as we dip into our sundaes that taste so much like a holiday. On Saturday afternoons, Claire helps me in the store, though Phoebe, after trying it once, finds it too boring for words. She has taken up swimming with a newfound passion and spends the time at practices while Sam sits on the other side of a glass wall, looking up from his newspaper to watch her do a flip turn and flash her a thumbs-up.

All around us paddles rise and fall. There is enthusiastic bidding for the first-row season tickets to the Knicks, for the Ralph Lauren shopping spree and the seats at the Academy Awards, a giddy roaring splurge of money changing hands, friends outdoing each other with great good humor and affable competition. It is all for a good cause, after all.

When the week at Tara Jamison's house in Beaver Creek comes up I smile over at her, seated across the table with her date, a dark-haired, six-foot-tall lawyer nine years her junior, the topic of much gossip, disdain and envy tonight. When we meet for coffee now and then, Tara still talks about going back to school, though she has made no concrete move in that direction. Maybe next week, or the week after that.

The auction goes on: the party for thirty children at Dylan's Candy Bar, the walk-on part in an upcoming HBO series, the visit to the celebrity dermatologist all add to the impressive grand tally. When the week at a famous director's six-bedroom house in Mustique comes up (he has a daughter in the fourth grade), Georgia Hartman, sitting three tables away, raises her paddle high into the air. The opening bid is a bargain at six thousand dollars. Though it wasn't on her to-do list of countries it is too tempting to pass up. Others feel the same: paddles rise in swift succession as the price goes up in increments of two thousand dollars.

“Must be nice,” Sam mumbles in my ear.

“Must be,” I agree.

I am not jealous, though, not really. There will always be moments when I envy people like Georgia for their ease, their freedom from financial worry, the calculations they do not have to make, but I am at peace with my choices. I have what I want most. I always did.

When the bidding hits ten thousand, Tara raises her paddle with a slow-motion laconic grace. “Twelve thousand,” she says in her husky alto.

Georgia, surprised, shoots her a harsh look. Not to be outdone, she pushes the bid to fourteen.

It is down to just the two of them now, though Tara has not so much as acknowledged Georgia with a glance, which only annoys her further. She keeps her eyes steadily focused on the auctioneer. When the price hits sixteen thousand dollars, Georgia's husband puts his hand firmly on hers and holds it down on the table until the auctioneer says, “Sold.” Tara has won.

“Congratulations,” I say, leaning over.

She shrugs. “I can't stand Mustique.”

“I don't understand.”

Tara smiles. “We can't let women like Georgia win. Why don't you take it?”

“I couldn't do that.”

“I insist. Consider it a thank-you gift.”

“For what?”

She smiles but doesn't answer, distracted by her date, who has leaned over and is enthusiastically nuzzling her neck.

The last item of the evening is the portrait session with Ben Erickson. The minute his name is mentioned an excited murmur fills the room. Since his arrest and subsequent release in the death of that boutique owner whose name no one can quite recall, Ben's glamour has only magnified. He has never been more coveted, personally or professionally. Though his donation had been given an approximate value of ten thousand dollars in the catalogue, the bidding
is spurred on by the scent of danger, sex, talent and celebrity that clings to him. The father of twins in the eleventh grade wins with a final bid of twenty thousand dollars and his wife glows with visions of the imminent social success such close proximity to the photographer is sure to convey, if only for the gossip value.

“I know Ben,” I whisper to Sam. “He'll never go to their dinner parties.”

“Worse,” Sam says, “he won't airbrush her precious portrait. She'll end up stashing it in some closet and pretending the whole thing never happened, though her husband will undoubtedly make that impossible. C'mon, let's get out of here before the rush.”

We get our coats and make our way down the slippery steps to the sidewalk. The narrow winding cobblestone streets of old Manhattan and the shining towers of the new are all deserted now. We pull our collars tight against the bracing winter air, all alone in the dark and silent city. “Thank God we escaped,” Sam says, reaching over to kiss me.

I smile. We are so very lucky and we are old enough and smart enough and shaken up enough to know it. We know, too, how careful we must be.

“Let's go home,” I say, slipping my arm through his.

“Yes, let's.”