The Pocket Wife (23 page)

I
t's after nine by the time Jack gets home. He falls across the bed in the room Ann pretty much stripped that morning. The few “odds and ends” she mentioned picking up involved random, unexpected items—the quilt from Bloomingdale's, the table from her grandmother's farm, the antique lamp beside the bed. Even her pillow is gone. The room is little more now than a bed and a dresser. His dresser—she's taken hers. She had to hire a moving company, she said at dinner, and he wonders how much this will cost him, this spousal burglary. He closes his eyes against the barrenness of the room, of the house, of their ended marriage.

A car alarm goes off somewhere on the next block, and he rouses himself, strips off his clothes, and falls back into bed. At least she didn't take the sheets. Still, tomorrow is another day, so who knows what other “odds and ends” she'll return for, stuffing pieces of their defunct marriage into bags and satchels, tossing them onto the backseat of her car.

Molly nudges his hand with her nose, and Jack moves over on the spreadless bed, taps the mattress beside him. “Come on up, girl,” he says, but Molly only sighs, sprawling loudly on the floor
on the other side of the room. “Do you miss Ann?” Jack says, and Molly's tail thumps hard against the rug.

The dinner had not gone well. Ann was polite but distant, and Jack wonders if she has a boyfriend. She was distracted, checking her watch from time to time throughout the evening.

“Plans?” he'd said. “Don't let me keep you,” but she'd said no. She was worried about the job she was starting in the morning, she'd told him, worried about not sleeping, yada, yada, yada. He wants to believe her, but even if there
was
a lover waiting for her back at the new apartment Jack has not yet seen, it's Ann's business. It's no longer his. He closes his eyes against the pallor of her face, the pallor of the dinner, the pallor of the bedroom he now barely recognizes, and falls into a fitful, dreamless sleep.

When he wakes up, it's still dark. He rolls over and glances at the clock on the floor beside the bed. Five forty-five. Summer ended quickly this year, with no warning, with no transition. One day it was hot, the next night it was fifty-three degrees. He's glad for it, for the ending of a swampy summer, but now he's freezing, lying on the bed with only thin blue sheets to stave off the cold. He pulls them tighter around him, shifts his feet under the dog's warm body, remembers Molly climbing up on the mattress sometime in the night, when the cold fell down outside and came in through the leaky walls. At dinner, Ann mentioned two or three times how much she missed Molly, but Jack will draw the line there. She can take the clocks and bedspreads and antique lamps. He was a lousy husband—he'll eat his crow without complaint—but he won't give up the dog.

He drags himself out of bed and into the shower, emerging red-faced, with his hair standing up like grass on an unmowed lawn. He turns on the coffeemaker and plops a piece of bread into the toaster, scrambles three eggs, and cooks them in the one skillet Ann forgot to take. He smiles, remembering the morning before, the gaunt bodies clustered in the aisles of E.Claire's, the raised
eyebrows and silver-polished nails, Lenora's lacy top, her breasts.

His phone has a missed call.
KYLE
. Eight fifty-six. Where was he then? he wonders. Still with Ann? Still trying to get her to come home with him? He'd pulled out all the stops at the very last, before they left the table, before they reached their separate cars and drove off in different directions. He'd nearly begged her. “Please,” he said. “Let's just try it for a week. Hell, two, three days, even,” but she shook her head.

“We did,” she said. “We tried it for twenty years. At least I did. You—not so much.” Or was he driving home by then, the radio blaring in the cushioned front seat of the Crown Vic? “Bye, Bye, Blackbird.” An appropriate choice, he'd thought at the time, turning it up louder and louder, singing along.
“Pack up all my cares and woes . . .”

He punches in his code, listens to the message: “Hello, Dad.” Kyle's voice is low, quiet, as if he's in a crowded room, as if it's a secret, what he's telling Jack. He clears his throat. His voice wobbles on the word “Dad,” making it sound like two syllables. “I remembered something else about that night,” he said. “I'd forgotten, but when I closed my eyes a minute ago, it was there. Perfectly clear. Whoever it was at Celia's house got into a late-model sedan on the side street that day. It was dark—black or gray. Blue, maybe. The light was really bad. But that's what I saw. I'm sure of that. Hope it helps.” There's a pause, and then he says, “Bye.”

Bye, bye, blackbird.

Jack calls Lon Nguyen from his desk at work and asks him to get back to him as soon as he can. “You can come down to the office,” he says, “or just call me. The sooner the better.” He leaves his numbers. “Listen . . .” Jack glances at his watch. “I'll be on your street,” he says. “I'm leaving now, so you can catch me on my cell.”

He stops in the break room and grabs a doughnut. Rob lounges against a chair, waiting for the coffeemaker in the corner. It whines
and belches, eventually spitting out some of the worst coffee in the world. Like mud, everyone says—mostly the women in the office—tsk-tsking, smiling.
Men,
they say, since it's usually Rob who makes it. Rob or Jack.

“Doughnuts, Jack? You? What would Ann say?” Rob winks at a rookie officer across the room.

“Oh, I don't know,” Jack says, munching. “‘Eat doughnuts and die'?”

“Huh?”

“Or maybe, ‘I'm cleaning you out. I want the dog, and by the way go screw yourself
and
eat doughnuts and die'?”

“Oh.” Rob stops chewing. “Hey, I'm really sorry, Jack.”

“Yeah. Well . . .” Jack grabs a second doughnut, wraps it in a napkin. “One for the road,” he says.

“I can come along if you want,” Rob says. “We caught a break on the missing-teen case. A tip. Found her in Manhattan with her abusive boyfriend. She's back home now, but who knows for how long.”

“Great,” Jack says. “You did good, partner. Rumor has it you've got another case coming your way. Homicide over on Broadway in the wee hours. We'll both be working it as soon as I wrap things up on Ashby Lane.”

“Yeah. Saw that one when I came in this morning.” Rob's phone rings, a marching ring.
Lenora
, Rob mouths, and Jack waves him away. “I'm okay with this,” he says.

He pulls up in the driveway. It's a sunny day. Cool. A breeze. Leaves are starting to turn color on the trees in front, and the yard looks different. Ronald will be crazed, Jack thinks, when he sees the disarray. Jack opens the car door and steps out onto the lawn, once green and pristine, once rife with Ronald's roses and hydrangeas, but overgrown now with weeds that choke through the grass
and climb across the flower beds. He likes it better this way, with the sidewalk a tangle of uneven monkey grass, the spent hydrangeas with blue flower petals strewn across the lawn, an odd, sporadic carpet, weeds oozing through cracks in the sidewalk. It looks almost Old World, he thinks. Ironically, it looks more like a home now that no one lives here. And maybe never will—not Ronald anyway. Not from what he's said.

Jack steps carefully around the yellow tape and lets himself inside the front door, standing in the middle of the living room for a minute or two. The air is cool; dust drifts and dances in sunlight streaming through the picture window near the couch. The room is still and frozen. There is no life here, no energy. He looks around, but he sees nothing he hasn't seen before.

Because of what his son said, Jack heads for the back of the house—to the kitchen, where, if Kyle told him the truth, Celia first called out to the person coming in the front door, the person who ultimately left her to die. Dishes still stand in the dishwasher. A couple of sponges are stacked near the sink. An empty bottle of sangria is on the counter, but no blood. Not a drop of blood.

He glances at the floor. With the exception of the muddy footprints, it's still clean, despite the time that's passed, despite the boots and heels and stockings that have no doubt walked through or stood, as Jack now stands, staring at a room made all the more eerie by its neat, uncluttered state, a movie set devoid of actors.

His phone rings. “Moss here.” Ann used to tell him he sounded silly answering his phone like that. Like a sitcom cop, she used to say, like a caricature.

“This is Lon Nguyen.”

“Oh,” he says. “Hey.”

Lon Nguyen breathes into the phone.

“Listen.” Jack leans against the counter under the window. “When I drove up here the other day, I noticed you guys have a Neighborhood Watch sign a couple streets over.”

“Yes.”

“Does that go for your street, too?”

“Go for?”

“Are you part of the Neighborhood Watch group?”

”Yes,” Nguyen says. “I am block captain.”

“Great,” Jack says. “That's great—these watch groups really cut down on crime.”

“Not always,” Lon Nguyen says.

“No.” Jack squats down on his haunches. “Not always. So that day,” he says, “the day Celia Steinhauser died.”

“Yes.”

“Did you happen to notice a car that evening?”

“We are in suburbs,” Nguyen says. “Lotta cars.”

“Right. But did you happen to notice one that isn't usually here?”

“No,” Nguyen says. “But there was a car. . . .” His voice drifts off.

“Yeah? What kind of car?”

“I don't know that.”

“Color?”

“Not sure. It was dark.”

“What? The car or the . . . ?”

“Both.”

“What size car was it?”

“Don't know. Medium size, maybe. It was not the car that seem strange,” Nguyen says. “It was where it was park. Not in a driveway.”

“Where?” Jack focuses on a small, clear speck beneath the stove. With all his heart, he hopes Nguyen verifies what Kyle said. With all his heart, he hopes his son told him the truth.

“On side street,” Nguyen says.

“Which side street?”

“The one across from Celia's house.”

“When?”

“Not sure, but it was drive away before the ambulance come. I did not see the driver.”

“At all?”

“No. Not at all.”

“Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“I forget,” Nguyen says. “I forget until just now you ask me.”

“Thanks.” Jack stands up. “You guys keep up that Neighborhood Watch group.”

”Yes,” Nguyen says. “That is all you want to say?”

“Yeah. That's all. Thanks again,” Jack says. “You've been a huge help.”

He slides down to the floor, letting his back rest against the counter. He thinks about phoning Kyle.
Dad,
he'd called him. Jack smiles. That was a keeper. He'd saved the message in his voice mail.

He glances back down at the one tiny piece of litter, and even that's underneath the stove. He wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't squatted down exactly where he did, if he hadn't gotten the phone call the second he did, but even so, they should have found it in the sweep. He frowns. These guys . . . It's not the first time this team has screwed up. He pulls a pair of latex gloves from his back pocket and puts them on, walks across the room, and kneels down to reach under the stove. He isn't sure what it is at first. He rests it in the center of his palm and squints at the jagged thing. A piece of fingernail.

He stands up very carefully so it doesn't roll into a vent. He holds it at arm's length, as if it might reach up and scratch him. He doesn't take his eyes off it as he grabs an evidence bag out of his pocket and seals the thing inside.

Jack sits in the parking lot downtown and stares at the bagged bit of fingernail. He knows it probably means nothing at all, except that at some point Celia broke a nail while she was cooking. She
might have jammed it against a cupboard door or the can opener. Possibly she snagged it on a pot holder or a loose thread on her apron. Or maybe the dog passed through and when she reached to grab him, she got her finger caught in his collar. The possibilities are endless, and he's okay with whatever turns up, as long as the nail's not his son's. He radios down to the station to tell Rob he'll be in after lunch. “I'm meeting with Lenora,” he tells him, “at the prosecutor's office.”

“Lucky you,” Rob says.

“Right.” Jack runs his palms across his hair, remembers the way her hand felt resting on his arm the day before—warmer than he would have thought. He straightens the collar of his shirt and steps out into the parking lot.

“Detective Moss?” Lenora stands in the doorway to the lobby. She looks much more professional than she did at E.Claire's the day before. She's wearing a black skirt that drifts against her legs when she turns to beckon him inside and a gray blouse with lace around the wrists.

“Thanks,” he tells the secretary who's summoned her, and he immediately trips over the doorsill.
Damn,
he thinks.
Get a grip.

“Have a seat.” Lenora's all business this morning. Or mostly business. She smiles. “I enjoyed our brunch,” she says, “although I don't imagine that E.Claire's is exactly your cup of tea. No pun intended.”

“It was fine. Great croissants.”

“I'd guess you're more of a diner kinda guy,” Lenora says. She sits down at her desk.

“Yeah,” he says. “Harry's Diner, actually, not too far from here. How'd you guess?”

She laughs, and her throat curves inward as she tilts her head back. Her skin is smooth and bright in the sunlight coming
through the window. “I didn't get to be an assistant prosecutor without being somewhat observant. Actually, I've seen the place. It
isn't
far from here.”