The Pocket Wife (26 page)

J
ack is at work when he gets a call from the lab. The reports are back. Extremely interesting, according to George—can Jack come down that morning? He'll be away from his office, he says, in the afternoon, but he'll be there until twelve at least.

Jack drives in with more than a little apprehension. He wonders why George said what he did, presented the thing the way he did. He thinks he knows; he's nearly positive his hunch will pay off, but there's still the nagging doubt he's wrong that makes him take his time driving down to the lab. If the bit of nail is Kyle's, he'll have no choice but to arrest his own son. The thought makes him physically ill; his reaction is visceral. The baby—Joey, they named him—is still in the neonatal ICU, but thank God he's getting better every day, Kyle says, stronger. In fact, he told Jack the doctors think they can take him home today. Kyle has been there, camped out in the hospital every minute he isn't at his new job at the lumberyard. He can't go to jail. Jack can't separate him from his son, but it's too late now. He put things in motion when he dumped his little pile of DNA at George's door, and now he'll just have to wait and see what's turned up, deal with things one step at a time.

He locks the Crown Vic and stretches, takes a deep breath before he walks inside, where he asks the gum-chewing temp to let George know he's here. His initial reaction to the early-morning phone call was to wait until after noon, when George would be out of the office. He would have preferred discovering for himself what it was that George found so interesting, digesting the lab results in a private corner somewhere on his own. No matter how it turns out the case is complicated—has been ever since he found Kyle's prints in Celia's car, ever since the morning Dana marched into his office and perched like a trapped bird at the edge of a wooden chair.

He hasn't phoned Lenora on the labs. Not yet. He wonders if George has called her. She has more clout. Certainly her orders trump Jack's lame request for secrecy. And anyway, she's gorgeous. In fact, he half expects to see her when he opens the door to the lab, but the lobby is dark and cramped and empty as usual.

“Thanks,” he says when George comes out and hands him the manila envelope, sealed and neat, devoid of writing. “I appreciate this.”

“It wasn't all that complicated,” George says. “We already had the Steinhauser body and the labs on it. There were scratches on Celia Steinhauser's arm.”

“Yeah?” Jack is already edging toward the door. He wants to pull out the labs in the privacy of the Crown Vic, with his radio off, his A/C blowing cold air in the parking lot. He wants to take his time unraveling what happened that mysterious evening on Ashby Lane, and he's certain the labs will fill in the blank spaces, answer most if not all his questions. “Well,” he says. His hand is on the doorknob. The temp smacks her gum loudly from behind the desk. George steps forward. His eyes gleam with intrigue.

“Yeah,” he says. “So what we—actually
they
—ran was the fingernail you brought in. The tissue underneath it was Steinhauser's. Celia's. The vic's. You were right about that—I'm assuming that was what you thought when you brought it in.”

Jack nods.

“Plus, Steinhauser actually had some skin tissue under three of
her
nails that matched the DNA on the nail you brought in.”

“No shit.” Jack pauses. His hand is still on the knob, but George is pressing in closer.

“Yeah,” he says. “But listen. Here's the kicker.”

Jack is a rabbit caught in a snare. George is almost touching him. He's so close that Jack can smell his breath. His eyes are wide and bright. “You want to sit down?” He waves in the general direction of the hard plastic McDonald's-restaurant chair.

“Naw,” Jack says. “Naw, I'm—”

“Okay, then.” George turns and drumrolls soundlessly on his Formica countertop. “Both the skin tissue under Steinhauser's nails and the fingernail you brought in were a match with the DNA from the napkin. Sooooooooooo, unless this was a random napkin pickup, it looks like you've got your killer. It was a napkin, right?”

“Yep. And it wasn't random at all,” Jack says. “Thanks again, George. Do you need these labs back after I have a chance to . . . ?”

“Copies,” George says. “Keep 'em,” and he turns back toward the inner half door, toward the temp who taps her own long purple fingernails against her desktop, who watches Jack through thickly lined eyes, studying him there in the doorway as he stands with one hand frozen on the knob, the other gripping the unopened envelope. A large pink bubble emerges from between her lips, nearly hiding her face for a second before bursting with a resounding pop, breaking the spell, breaking the hold this moment, this news, this office, has on Jack. He turns and heads up the hall, not stopping until he's through the outside door and trudging toward his car. Above him a cloud tears open, spilling rain down on the, pure, unblemished orange of the manila folder, dotting it with dark spots.

He stops at a drive-through and picks up two burgers—half of one he'll give to Molly. He never goes home for lunch, but this day
is different. He wants to study the labs, and anyway, it's a red-letter day of sorts. This afternoon he'll wind up the case, at least his part of it. What happens next is up to the prosecutor's office and the courts.

He takes his time unwrapping the greasy burgers, acutely aware of Molly drooling beside the kitchen table. He takes his time eating, instead of bolting everything down the way he does on the rare occasions he even bothers with lunch. He pores over every detail in the paperwork from the lab. He wants to be dead sure before he makes his next move. He fixes himself a cup of coffee and takes his time with that as well, stalling.

When he's finished his lunch and has nearly memorized the labs, when he's let Molly out and back in again, when there is nothing more to keep him home, he gets into his car, where he sits for a moment in the driveway, tapping his thumbs against the steering wheel. When he's listened to three songs and a traffic update, he scrolls to Lenora's cell-phone number and pushes the little green
SEND
arrow, infinitely relieved to hear it go to voice mail. “Hey,” he says. “It's Jack Moss. Meet me at Harry's Diner at”—he glances at his watch—“at two-fifteen,” he says. “It's important.” He sits in his driveway through three more songs, and then he backs out to the street and heads for the diner.

Lenora isn't wearing the sexy lace top from their breakfast at E.Claire's. She isn't wearing a suede suit with glasses and heels. She's wearing a simple black skirt, a white blouse. She looks almost demure, coming through the door of the diner with her bangs dipping over one eye.

“Hey, Jack.” She sits down. He's found a little table in back, near the kitchen. It's not that big a place, only eight or nine tables and a counter. It's always full, but never really crowded. Harry's is the kind of place where people come in off the street to grab a cup
of coffee, and it's the best around, but Jack doesn't remember ever having to wait to get a seat.

“Hey, Lenora.” He sets down his cup. He looks beyond her left shoulder at the wall; he doesn't meet her eyes.

“Sorry I'm late,” she says. “I was in a meeting when you called.”

“Right. Not a problem.”

“I'm glad we're finally here,” she says, and Jack nods.

He was acting on impulse, picking up her napkin at E.Claire's the day they met for breakfast. At first glance her signature on the bill bore no great resemblance to the tiny script in Dana's threatening notes. It was the slight exaggeration of the loops in her
e
's and
t
's that caught Jack's eye. Even that would almost certainly have gone unnoticed had he not been poring over the notes from Dana's purse only moments before he left to meet Lenora. He looks at her finally, setting the bare-bones coffee mug down on the scarred tabletop. “Why'd you kill Celia Steinhauser?”

Lenora picks up the small, square menu and sticks on a pair of glasses. “That's not my kind of humor, Jack. Why in the name of God would you say something like that? This is crazy.
You're
crazy. I'm leaving now, Jack. I'm going to stand up and walk right out the door and pretend I never heard you say what you just said.”

“It won't work, Lenora. We've got the forensics to prove it.”

She looks away from him. She sets the menu down on the table and stares at it as if she isn't certain what it is. Her face crumples. She looks frightened. She looks as if she might cry. “Off the record?”

“I guess nothing's really off the record,” he says. “Not now.”

“Coffee,” she says to the waiter. “Cream. No sugar.” She watches as he walks back to the kitchen. “I suppose there isn't really any reason
not
to tell you,” she says, and her face is composed once more, tranquil, smooth as silk. “It isn't like I had a choice, really. The woman was a lunatic. Just ask Peter Catrell. He knows all about lunatics—between Celia and his crazy wife.”

“I wouldn't ask Catrell the time of day.”

Lenora sets her glasses on the table beside her menu. She glances into space, into the shadows of the room, and she looks very young without her prosecutor's face, like a college student wearing grown-up clothes. “I made a mistake,” she says. “I worked my butt off to be where I am—to have the job I have.” Her southern accent is more noticeable suddenly; her roots peep through. “It was a terrible mistake, getting involved with Peter.”

Jack nods. On this at least they can agree. The waiter sets down Lenora's coffee and disappears.

“She caught us together. Celia. She seemed really crazy to me, tailing Peter the way she did, sneaking around, following him, snapping that picture of us in Gatsby's that day. Kissing, maybe. I couldn't remember. I only wanted that stupid photo out of her phone before she put it all over the Internet, the six-o'clock news, before she called my office and ruined any possibility of my—”

“Why
would
she?”

“Revenge? Jealousy? She was clearly
literally
nuts about Peter, and it would have made a tasty little news story: the first assistant prosecutor from East Jesus, Alabama, sleeping with a prominent married lawyer? Why
wouldn't
she? I would have lost everything I'd worked for. I'd lose my chance to—”

“Take over Frank's position.”

She nods. “He was such a pushover. That's what people thought of him, of the whole department. I wanted to make us a force to be reckoned with. I wanted to—”

The waiter comes back with more coffee, and Jack covers his cup with his hand, shakes his head.

“She told me the day she . . . she told me at her house that she planned to run away with him. With
Peter.
Can you imagine? She thought he loved her. Even after she saw him with me. Even after she took that stupid photo, she still thought—”

“Does he know?”

“That she was a bunny boiler? A nutcase? I guess so. I mean, unless he's a total idiot, he must have known.”

“About you, I mean. Does he know what you did?”

“No.” She looks up. Her eyes graze Jack's and drift away, landing on the table next to theirs where three men hunch together. They talk excitedly, their words overlapping. Lenora yawns. “He thought his wife did it,” she says. “He didn't think I even noticed her that day. Celia. In the restaurant snapping our picture with her phone. He's such an egomaniac, I guess he thought I was too focused on him to see anything else, that I somehow managed to miss his crazy neighbor darting around like the paparazzi in those stupid shoes.”

Jack leans back from the table. “Listen,” he says. “I don't think you should say any more.”

“Why not? It was self-defense.” She stirs her coffee even though the cream is already mixed in, even though there isn't any need. She looks up, raises her eyebrows. “She came at me with a butcher knife, weaving in those ridiculous heels. Drunk. Teetering. Totally out of her— She must have thought I was Peter at first. ‘You!' she said when she saw me. She seemed really surprised. ‘You?'” She takes a sip of coffee. “This
is
really good,” she says.

“You were in her
house,
Lenora.”

She takes another sip of coffee and sets her cup down carefully on the table. “I only wanted the phone. I told her that. All she had to do was give me the—”

“How'd you even know where she lived?”

“I followed her. She was hanging around outside the restaurant that day she took the picture. Stalking him. Stalking
us.
I drove around the block when Peter thought I'd gone back to my office, and I spotted her with him out in the parking lot—the two of them yelling, Celia waving her phone around. They were so busy arguing they didn't notice me. Peter was half drunk, and she was so furious I don't think she even realized that all the people in the
parking lot were watching them. I was sure someone would call the cops. She totally lost it out there. He left, finally. Peter. He just got in his car and took off. Celia sat there for a while, and when she pulled out, I followed her. I followed her all the way back to her safe, pretentious little suburban life on Ashby Lane.” She smiles. “So I knew where she lived. I went back a few days later.”

The sun slants in and touches them even in this back corner that Jack picked for privacy, for obscurity. He sighs. He glances at her nails, the pearly polish. “You struggled in the kitchen?”

She nods. “I tried to get the knife. She was totally—”

“And you broke a nail.”

“I guess so. I was leaving; I was headed for the front door. I thought I'd talk to Peter, get him to calm Celia down and make her see how crazy she was acting—but she followed me out to the living room, teetering on these impossible shoes. She had the knife. She was coming right at me with this . . . with this knife, and I just grabbed the nearest thing and—”