Last Lie (33 page)

"That's what I'm saying."

Diane leaned into me. I put an arm around her. "Hake told Raoul that if Mimi is sent to prison, he thought he'd move out of Boulder. Sell what's left in Spanish Hills. He didn't think he could live there."

"Talk about bad memories," I said. Diane had no way to know that the memories I was musing about weren't Hake's.

They were Jonas's.

"You could buy it, you know," Diane said. "Build something new, special, for your family."

"Don't think it's for us," I said. "Any decision we make will be based on what's best for the kids."

"Jonas," Diane said.

"Yes," I said.

ON THE WAY HOME FROM THE OFFICE, I ran two errands. I picked up food for Rafa's family and dropped it at the house. Then I stopped at a framing shop on Pearl and made a special frame for Jonas's wood carving of the interlocking hearts. When I got back home, I hung his treasure at the foot of his bed, where he could see it during those times he was having trouble sleeping.

46

R
aoul's real estate decision deadline was looming, so Lauren and I went out to dinner Sunday night to discuss selling Walnut. It was a conversation we didn't want to risk having with the kids in the house.

Okay, with Grace in the house.

Once we reached a grown-up decision, we'd bring the kids in.

My breath caught in my throat the moment I saw Lauren walk out of the closet after she'd dressed for our night out. Suddenly it felt like a date, not a business meeting. Her outfit was sexy. Her hair was sexy. Her eyes were sexy.

Sexy hadn't happened for us in a while.

I was off balance, in a good way, a way I hadn't felt in many years.

WE RETURNED TO SALT. Lauren's idea. But first we stopped at The Bitter Bar, near my office, for cocktails. My idea.

I marveled as Lauren walked the two blocks between the bar and the restaurant. She set down her menu with certainty. She was going to have the chorizo clams and the lamb shank. She asked what looked good to me.

I said, "Besides you?" She smiled. "You look gorgeous."

"Thank you," she said, doing a good facsimile of demure.

I said, "I think a condo across the street looks pretty good, too."

Instantly, her violet eyes sparkled. Her lips parted just far enough that she could breathe through them. She wet her upper lip with her tongue while she waited for me to say more.

I told her I thought we should sell Walnut.

"Really?" she said. "And buy . . . ?"

"And sell Spanish Hills."

"Both?"

"And I think we should buy a new home for our family in Raoul's new palace across the street." Across the street was the
Daily Camera
site. "It's time for some changes. For us. For the kids. Certainly for Jonas."

Lauren was speechless. I felt that she was waiting for a qualifier. Something to poison the well. To disappoint.

I said, "I've been thinking about it a lot. It's a hard choice, but I prefer the northwest corner, not the southwest corner. I want the mountain view, but I don't want to deal with the southern sun all year long anymore. North is better light, easier to manage, don't you think?"

A solitary tear escaped Lauren's left eye and migrated down her cheek. "Can we get it? Can we do that? What we want? Can we really afford it?" she asked.

"We'll have to see," I said. "I'm thinking we may have some leverage with the developers."

WE MADE LOVE LATER WITH THE LIGHTS ON AND OUR EYES OPEN.

Afterward, her head was resting on my chest. Her weak leg was bent over mine. It was heavy.

I said, "You know, I haven't spent a solitary moment tonight with the deputy district attorney."

"Yeah. That's been nice," she said. "Though I hear she's pretty good in bed."

I kissed the end of her nose. "She's still elsewhere?" I asked.

"Absolutely," Lauren said. Her voice often took on a sandpaper-and-honey tone after sex. It had it then.

I sat up beside her. She remained on her side. I held her free hand in both of mine.

"Get her, please. I need to speak with the DA, now."

Lauren immediately sat up. Every cell in her body was suspicious. She said, "Okay. But you're beginning to make me nervous."

I handed her a pillow. "To cover your breasts?" I said. "I find them kind of distracting when I'm talking to the deputy DA." She blew me a kiss before she hugged the pillow to her chest.

I said, "I try, always, not to tell you how to do your job. You do the same with me."

She nodded. "That's true. We don't interfere. One of our strengths."

"But I
need"
--I stressed the word
need
with my voice and my expression--"to give you some work advice. Advice I hope you will consider seriously, no matter how wrong it may sound at first."

She frowned. "Is this a good idea? For us to--"

"Please. My counsel? No matter how good a case you think you have against her, you need to plea bargain with Mimi Snow about the murder of Preston Georges. You
need
"--I stressed the word the second time--"to offer her a deal, a reduced charge--or something--in order to get her to testify against her husband."

"Against Hake?"

"Yes."

"Why would I do that? Why would Mimi . . . do that?" She reached forward and placed a palm on my cheek, almost dropping the pillow from her chest in the process. "Alan, Hake is innocent. Just between us, we have . . . initial forensic results that clearly implicate Mimi's son in the rape. Reliable evidence. Trust me, the DNA results, when they come back, will clear Hake. I know you don't like him, but--"

I took her hand from my face and held it. "We don't need to argue facts. And I've said all I need to say to the deputy district attorney. For now."

Lauren said, "All right, but before you go on, you know that the homicide at Devil's Thumb is not my case anymore? I'm still on administrative leave, and I won't be returning to that case no matter what happens. You understand all that, right? I shot the accused's son. I . . . killed her son. I won't be involved."

"I know. But I also know how your office works. I know you have influence," I said. "You know you will have influence. This isn't the time for us to argue. I have more to say."

Lauren opened her mouth. She's a lawyer. About some things, she could always find time to argue. I touched a fingertip to the soft cushion of her lower lip. I said, "Shhhh . . . Next I need to say something to our son's mother. As our son's father. My wife can listen in. The deputy DA? She's not welcome in this conversation. Not even a little."

She literally pulled away. "Alan, I don't like where--"

"I preface this with a promise that I will never--
never
--repeat any of what I am about to say with anyone from law enforcement. Relative or not."

Lauren's eyes darkened. Her irises turned almost as black as her hair. She was imagining the walls that I was building. The divisions I was creating between her roles as prosecutor, mother, and wife. The stark boundaries I was insisting upon at that moment in the marital bed.

She took a deep breath. "This is big," she said. "Isn't it? What you're about to say. You know exactly what you're asking of me, don't you?"

"This is big," I agreed. "Huge. So big that if you decide what I'm asking isn't possible for you--if the role definition is something you can't live with--I will, reluctantly, stop right here, where I am. I will keep what I know to myself. I will live with a burden that I would much prefer to share with my wife, and with the mother of my children. For the good of our family, this knowledge should not be mine alone."

She shifted her weight, extending her weak leg out to the side. "I won't guess this, will I? What this is about?"

"No. You won't." She exhaled audibly before she climbed out of bed and walked, without her cane, to the closet. The steps she took were the least hobbled, and most determined, I'd seen from her since she left for Holland. She came back wearing pajamas. She tossed me a pair of sweatpants.

"Let's talk then," she said. "As parents of our children. As mother and father of our son."

I mouthed
thank you.
I pulled on the sweats. Then I reached behind me into the drawer of my bedside table and retrieved Jonas's old mobile phone.

Lauren recognized it. "That's Jonas's. I thought it was--"

I nodded. "Jonas's mom should see some pictures he took."

"When?"

"The night of the damn housewarming."

47

L
auren was the only person to whom I showed all eight photographs.

As she moved through the progression, her eyes filled with tears for the second time that evening. The look in her eyes when she returned her gaze to me was part horrified, part resolved. She asked, "Who has seen these?"

"That's a DA question. Not a mom question. Please."

She didn't vocalize her next thought. Her expression said it all. It was,
Why didn't I know about these before?

I shook my head. "Can we have that conversation later? Please. It was still your case that night. The deputy DA's case. I didn't know if--I didn't think I could risk--"

She held up a hand to stop me. She swallowed before she said, "Okay. Okay. That's between you and me. We'll do that later. Right now? Jonas cannot testify about this. About what he saw. It--He--We can't put him through that. We can't let that happen to him, Alan. Never."

"No," I said. "He can't. We can't."

"How did he--He had a way to get into the house, obviously."

"Yes. I asked him about that. Peter had installed a disappearing latch on one of the awning windows near the basement door. Press on some trim. Pull down on a lever that popped out. Then the whole window, frame and all, opened on a hinge. It was a secret entrance to the house. Jonas has used it all his life when he didn't have his key. And he's been using it to sneak back into the house since he moved in with us. Both before the sale and since.

"I think he's been going over there for a while, using some little handsaw, or some other tool, to try and remove the carved plaque from the wall inside the entrance to the cubby. The panel the carving is on is hardwood--very tough to cut. Without the right tools, it might take hours and hours for a kid to remove it. Jonas must have been afraid we wouldn't let him keep the carving."

"God," Lauren said. "We have so much parenting to do, don't we?" I nodded. She scrolled through the pictures again. The second time through was more deliberate. "These are in order?" she asked.

"Yes. The way he left them for me." I explained how I found the phone with the carving on his bed the night of the fire. "I've not talked with him about the photographs yet. I tried. He's not ready to discuss any of it. Not even close."

She looked me in the eyes. "He's going to need help," she said. "What he saw? My God. We have to get him some therapy. He has to see someone."

"I agree. We probably waited too long already. I misread him. His grief. His coping. I take responsibility for that. I will make those calls--I will find someone good for him." I almost added,
We need some help, too, Lauren. Our marriage.
But that conversation could wait a day. That night, we needed to keep our focus on Jonas.

She tapped the phone with her fingernail. "You have a story? That fits these pictures?"

She was wondering if I had managed to superimpose a narrative over the progression of images documented in the photographs. She wanted the graphic-novel version of the night's events.

Many of the details I knew came from my supervision with Hella. I didn't plan to tell Lauren about my supervision of the victim's therapy. I didn't have a right to do that.

My wife was asking for a story. I could tell her the story. "Yes," I said. "I have a story that fits."

"I would like to hear it," Lauren said.

I hesitated, tempted to seek a final assurance that I was speaking only with my son's mother and not with the deputy district attorney. Lauren made my question superfluous. She said, "I need to know what my son saw. Everything."

AT SOME POINT after almost all the guests were gone, Mimi Snow suddenly transformed herself from charming hostess to pack-up-your-things-now-and-get-out-of-here boss lady.

Her change in demeanor with the caterers was sudden and unexpected. Her cell records will probably confirm that the precipitant for the change was a phone call, or text, from her son. Emerson Abbott called or texted to let his mother know he had arrived on the edge of Spanish Hills. He'd be at the new house in minutes. Fifteen tops.

Maybe she'd argued with him, told him not to come, urged him to go back up to school. But Emerson was not an obedient kid. Discipline had been a growing problem since the divorce. He wasn't supposed to leave campus. Emerson knew he wasn't welcome in Boulder; his stepfather was adamant that he was not allowed in the house. Not until he'd cleaned up his act.

Lauren's eyes were asking me how I knew all that. I said, "Diane."

Mimi panicked at the news her son was somewhere nearby. The bartender had just walked out the door. She rushed the last few guests from the house. Then the chef, the caterers.

Moments before the chef left the house, he made a what-do-I-have-to-lose advance on Eric, one of the caterers. Eric shot him down. Eric was probably a jerk about it. That is Eric's nature.

Lauren asked, "You know all that, too?"

I explained about Nicole, the other caterer.

Preston Georges drove away in his pristine old Camaro. A few minutes later the two caterers followed him out the lane in their white van.

Eric was upset about a lot of things as he drove the big van away from Spanish Hills--he was nicotine deprived because Mattin didn't permit smoking in his zip code; resentful about being hassled to hurry to finish work by the party's hostess; offended, or excited, by the homosexual advance from the chef; aggravated at the possibility of entering the weekend without a chance to have his dealer replenish his stash; and irritated by his fellow caterer's insistence on being dropped off across town at The Sink.

Distracted about all those things, Eric almost ran over Fiji and me on the lane just before he entered the first bend of the S-curve.

Seconds later, he almost ran into another pedestrian as the van exited the second bend. The second pedestrian was a man in a hoodie and ski cap who was wearing a day pack.

Lauren said, "That was Mimi's son. That was Emerson."

Only minutes before the catering van almost hit Emerson on the lane, Preston Georges was the first to have spotted him. The chef was determined to find some companionship for the evening. He stopped his Camaro and offered Mimi's son a ride somewhere. Or maybe he invited him out for a drink. Or maybe, who knows, Preston Georges suggested something even more overt than that.

The young man declined. Maybe he, like Eric, was offended by the offer. He was a kid; maybe it even left him determined to prove his heterosexuality at the next opportunity.

Emerson kept walking toward his mother's new house. He lit a cigarette. Smoking was undoubtedly something else his parents didn't want him to do. When he dodged the caterer's van, he dropped the cigarette, which started a small fire adjacent to the lane.

I reached into my bedside table a second time. I handed Lauren a small zipper bag containing a charred cigarette butt and some burned grasses. "For what it's worth," I added.

Emily actually sensed some commotion down the lane before I returned to the house with her and Fiji. The big dog had tried to alert me that something was going on, but I didn't pay attention to her signals.

Only a solitary car, a little SUV, remained parked outside Mimi and Mattin's house as the dogs and I got back home.

I thought Jonas was asleep in bed--I had already checked on both kids before I went out with the dogs. I didn't check a second time. When I climbed into bed after the walk, Lauren reminded me that I had a meeting the next day with Raoul.

"I remember," Lauren said. "That's when Jonas snuck out? After you came to bed? Is that what you think?"

"Yes."

I thought that's how it happened. Earlier in the evening, Jonas had overheard our discussion about the planned renovations, how the guests at the housewarming were being encouraged to offer their two cents' worth. He was curious. He snuck across the lane and entered the house through the special awning window on the basement level. He could still hear people walking and talking upstairs. He waited, hiding out in the basement. That's where he was when the young man with the hoodie and ski cap entered through the basement door. Mimi had probably gone downstairs to leave the door unlocked for her son. Or maybe she had told him on the phone where he could find the spare key under the rock.

The first photo in Jonas's phone is of Emerson Abbott walking through the basement door. Ski cap. Hoodie. Day pack.

Certainly, Mimi had told her son to stay down there and stay quiet. She must have warned him not to come upstairs under any circumstances.

Upstairs, Mattin was already busy trying to convince the sole remaining guest to spend the night in the guest suite. He was unaware his stepson was in the basement.

Mimi knew what her husband had planned with the young widow. Maybe Mattin had given Mimi a sign earlier in the evening. Maybe they'd planned the whole thing out in advance. Probably they'd committed the same felony before with other women.

Mimi might have initially resisted her husband's rape fantasies but at some point she lacked the will or the resolve to fight him. Along the way, she'd learned there were consequences to be paid for not going along.

"Do you know those consequences?" Lauren asked.

"The deputy DA," I told her, "should have no trouble learning that as part of the plea bargain negotiation."

Mimi did her part setting the stage. She prepared the guest room. Found pajamas for her guest, collected fresh towels, and retrieved a bottle of water for the bedside. The woman, the prey, continued to sit by the fire, drinking wine with Hake. Perhaps Mimi took her son a plate of food during the interval she excused herself to prepare the guest suite.

Jonas was likely still downstairs, listening to the interactions between Mimi and her son, watching only some of it from wherever he was hiding.

Mimi probably insisted that Emerson eat his meal in one of the primitive rooms in the back of the basement, where he couldn't be inadvertently discovered by Mattin.

Jonas scooted upstairs during the time period when Mimi was shooing her son into the back of the basement. Once upstairs, Jonas may have gone into the kitchen pantry. He knew that there was a hidden door behind the pantry that led to the shaft of the defunct dumbwaiter. It was another secret place his father had built. A great place for a kid to hide.

Or maybe Jonas went straight to the living room. Regardless, he ended up there, behind the sofa, on the other side of the freestanding fireplace that divided the family and living rooms. His position had him facing toward the family room. That's where he was when he took the second picture.

Mimi is back upstairs by then. The second photo shows Mimi, Mattin, and the young widow, by the fire, drinking wine. They are all still dressed in their party clothes. Mimi is sharing one big chair with her husband.

The young widow is in the other chair. She looks tired.

Mattin appears ebullient. I can easily convince myself that Mimi looks distracted.

The third photo comes a short while later in the narrative. A slightly different angle. Jonas has moved a little, a foot or two. One of the two leather chairs is in the foreground of the frame. It's the one the young widow had been sitting on in the earlier shot, but it's empty. Both chairs are empty. In the background Mimi and Mattin are standing at the kitchen island. On the counter, off to the side near a bowl of apples and a tray of olive oils and vinegars, is an amber prescription bottle. In front of Mimi is a small stone mortar. In her right hand Mimi is holding a pestle. Mattin is at the narrow end of the island. He is cradling a tall bottle. I think it's port. He seems to be waiting for his wife to finish what she is doing with the mortar and pestle.

What she is doing is grinding a tablet or two from the prescription bottle into powder. For someone with even a little imagination, the photo documents that husband and wife, together, are preparing to drug their guest. Their victim. Preparing to dissolve the powder in the thick, sweet port.

"Would it dissolve?" Lauren asked.

I said, "They know. They've done this before."

"The woman is in the guest room at this point," Lauren said. "Changing for bed."

"Yes. She was thinking the night was over. She was content."

Mattin gave her time to get changed and settled before he knocked on the guest room door. He invited her to come back out for one last drink. Maybe she resisted. But he was persistent. Maybe he said the nightcap was Mimi's idea. Maybe he said something about not wanting to disappoint his wife, who was eager for more company.

Jonas's fourth photograph is yet another picture of the two chairs by the fire. Mimi is absent this time. Both Mattin and the young widow are in different clothes. She has changed into pajamas and a short robe. Her ensemble is modest, but her feet are bare. She is holding the sole of one foot out toward the warmth of the fire. Mattin has changed, too. He is dressed as though he's heading to a Pilates session and he's thinking everyone will be impressed with the way he looks in snug clothing.

The picture shows the young widow on the same chair as before. She is sipping her doctored port. The glass is literally at her lips. Mattin is in the adjacent chair. There is fire in his eyes. Anticipation, maybe? All his attention is focused on his victim.

"Mimi is where?" Lauren wanted to know.

I said, "Unclear at that moment."

Perhaps she couldn't bear to watch the setup to the rape. Perhaps she was standing guard at the basement stairs, just beyond the frame. Mimi had to be terrified that her unpredictable son would do something unpredictable. She had to feel that she was in an impossible place, trying to protect her son from her husband and her husband from her son.

She knew she was protecting herself, too, from both of them. She also had to know that no one was protecting her young widowed friend.

The next photo in the series was the first one I showed Mattin the morning after the fire, just after I suggested he consider doing the right thing. I didn't tell Lauren about showing Mattin the picture.

The sedated young widow is still sitting in the big leather chair by the fire. But her robe is open. Her pajama top is unbuttoned all the way. Her breasts are exposed.