Better Than This (36 page)

“Is that so?” the cop would ask. “Could you show me where you were standing at the time.”

Jesus. Get a grip I told myself. Behind me the two women had resumed their conversation. I examined the stairs on my way up, taking care this time not to appear conspicuous. I paid special attention at the foot of the steps on the next landing but I needn’t have worried. My cleaning had been thorough and there was nothing incriminating for the naked eye to see.

Stacey smiled brightly when I went through the door. “Good morning.”

“Hi. Any messages?”

She handed me a couple of slips but there was nothing from the police requesting me to call back urgently. Stacey went back to tapping her keyboard, her eyes intent on the screen in front of her. As I went to my office Karen stopped to ask me about a presentation she was doing that afternoon.

“What do you think?”

I took a look at the notes she handed me without taking in a word. “Looks great.”

“You think so?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. Thanks.” She smiled and went on her way.

Everything had a surreal edge, as if I was in a waking dream. Neil and Susan, a couple of our creative people, were arguing over colours on a graphic as I passed them. Susan shook her head vigorously as she drank from a coffee cup.

“That’s bullshit, Neil!” She caught my eye. “Hey, Nick. Take a look at this.”

I paused to pass my eye over it.

“What do you think?”

I remembered it didn’t matter what I thought because pretty soon Marcus would be the sole owner of Carpe Diem, and anyway I had other things on my mind. I said it looked bright.

“You see!” Susan exclaimed.

I left them arguing and sidled away to my office. I knew Marcus was around somewhere because his car was in his slot but I hadn’t seen him. Inside I closed the door behind me and found myself staring at the seat Dexter had occupied not too long ago, when he’d still been among the living. I tried to reconcile that thought with the fact that he now rested somewhere under the surf at the foot of a rocky cliff. The churning water would wash the blood away. I imagined his normally immaculate hair floating like seaweed tendrils. What I was experiencing was probably the disorienting effect of mild shock. A mixture of fear, nerves and adrenaline had carried me through the night but now that had worn off and the enormity of what had happened was hitting home, filling my mind with strange thoughts and images. It was difficult to accept that life continued as normal. People went about their day, showed me their work, asked my opinion on the colours for an ad, greeted me without recoiling in horror. The world continued to turn. The only changes were in my perception.

Except of course for Dexter. The changes for him were slightly more permanent.

Gradually throughout the morning I managed to function. By the time Marcus looked in I had shut my guilt away and padlocked the door with heavy chains.

“I thought we ought to talk,” he said, coming into my office. He sat where Dexter had.

“About what?”

“About what happened last night.”

I looked at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

“He knows. Nick. Remember? Dexter knows for chrissakes! Or did you forget about that? Nothing would surprise me any more.”

“Forget about him. He’s not going to be a problem.”

Marcus’s brow furrowed. “How can you be so certain. Did you speak to him again?”

“I don’t need to. If he really knew anything we would have heard by now. He was just trying to make us jump. He was fishing.”

“I don’t believe this. You really intend to carry on as if nothing happened don’t you?”

“Of course. Because nothing has happened, Marcus. Nothing’s changed. And what the hell is this all about anyway? This was decided last night. You agreed if I remember.”

He looked uncomfortable at being reminded of the fact. “Well, I’ve been thinking about that.”

“Does Alice know you’re having second thoughts?”

His head snapped up. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know, Marcus,” I said honestly. What the hell was going on between them I wondered?

“I just think if Dexter does know we ought to think about this more carefully,” he said in a slightly more conciliatory tone. “You think he’s going to sit back and do nothing? We could go to prison for this.”

“Nobody’s going to prison, Marcus.” I felt remarkably calm in the face of his agitation. The moment he’d walked into my office I knew one thing with absolute certainty. There was no turning back now. I intended to see this through to the end. He picked up my resolve and he slumped back in his chair.

“It doesn’t matter what I think does it? You’ve already made up your mind and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“We all agreed,” I reminded him again.

“So we just pretend Dexter doesn’t exist.”

Of course I knew we could do exactly that, and without pretending anything. But I couldn’t tell Marcus that. I said nothing and my silence spoke volumes.

Marcus got up and went to the door. He paused and looked back at me. “You know I wish we’d never heard of this program. I don’t think I know you any more. I don’t think I ever did.”

I had heard that a few times over recent weeks, and now it occurred to me it was a sentiment I might echo myself. I remained impassive, and Marcus hesitated uncertainly as if he expected me to say something. But what was there to say?

When he was gone I went to the safe and removed the program. I took it back to my office and closed the door, then I got out the old cigar box where I kept my dad’s gun and I put the disc inside. I caught sight of my dad’s writing on the note he left me, and his image swam into my mind. Not the photograph, but the way he’d been the last time I saw him. He knew what he was going to do that day. He smiled at me as I left the house, and told me to have a good day. Don’t think badly of me, son, he said. I thought it was a strange thing to say, but I promised him I wouldn’t.

Well, I kept my promise, Dad. So now don’t you think badly of me.

The weekend arrived and there were still no reports of Dexter’s car being found. Three days had passed, and the waiting was making me tense. I was having trouble sleeping and there seemed to be a knot of bunched muscle in the back of my neck that was giving me headaches. Part of me wanted it to happen and get it out in the open, another part began to entertain the hope that Dexter wouldn’t be found for a very long time. Maybe out of sheer luck I’d chosen a place on the cliffs where the water below was deep. I was even tempted to drive out there and take a look though I knew at once that it was the worst possible thing to do. I understood why criminals are said to return to the scene of the crime. It’s a kind of superstition. Not only did I want to see for myself in daylight where I’d sent Dexter’s car over the edge, but I thought by going there I was somehow challenging fate and that if I got away with it I would be strengthened by the experience.

I resisted the urge by keeping busy. On Saturday I started on the back yard, going at it with a rake and spade, digging up the weeds and cutting back the overgrown tangle of bushes. It was a warm day, and by mid-morning I had taken off my shirt and I was streaked with dirt and sweat. The work was hard, but at least for a while I hadn’t thought about Dexter at all. I took a break and went to the house for a drink. Sally was in the kitchen on her knees, emptying out the cupboards. She was dressed in an old pair of denim shorts with one of my old shirts knotted around her middle, her hair held back with a bright red band.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She looked up, her gaze a little vacant. “I haven’t cleaned in here in an age.”

I looked at the inside of the empty cupboard she was working on. The sauces and tins that were normally kept there were piled up behind her, and the cupboard itself was spotlessly clean. I didn’t say anything, but when I went back outside again she had her head down and was working away again with her wipe. I paused, wondering if she too felt the need to occupy her mind.

The plant that Frank had obliquely advised me to spray looked the worse for neglect. The leaves were spotted with rusty marks, and tiny aphids were clustered all over. I gave it a rigorous soaking with a solution I found in the garage that I seemed to remember was for taking care of aphids among other things, though the print on the pack was so faded I couldn’t be sure. When I’d done the leaves glistened wetly with chemical residue. I didn’t know what the rusty marks were. For all I knew my haphazard remedy was both too late and imprecise and I had only made the situation worse.

Around lunch time Sally came out and said that she was going shopping. She asked me if I needed anything. She was wearing hipsters and a “I-shirt that exposed her midriff, and her hair was newly washed. I couldn’t think of anything, so she left, saying she’d be back later. I took a break for a sandwich then I went back to my work until around mid-afternoon I was too tired to continue. When I stood back it seemed that my efforts had made a little difference, but not much, but at least I knew I’d sleep well that night. I was tired and my back ached from bending over so much. I was also hot and thirsty and I had a sudden craving for a cold beer. There was none in the house, since I’m not much of a beer drinker usually so I got changed and drove down to the store in Hillsborough to buy a cold sixpack. As I walked back across the lot outside the mall I saw Sally’s car and I changed direction when I realized she was sitting inside. She was talking on her cell phone. I stopped and watched her speaking and simultaneously shaking her head. She seemed agitated, then she listened for a while and rested her head against her hand with her eyes closed in an attitude that struck me as intensely weary. I wondered who she was speaking to. It seemed as if it was a pretty intense conversation. In the end I felt conspicuous and I turned to leave before she saw me.

By the time she came home I had finished four of my beers. I noticed she wasn’t carrying any packages, and she kept her sunglasses on when she came in the house.

“Hi,” I said cheerily. “How was your afternoon?”

“Fine.”

“Didn’t find anything you liked?”

She looked down as if noticing for the first time her hands were empty. “Oh. No. Not really.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Into San Francisco.”

I smiled and nodded. “Want one of these?” I offered her a beer.

“No thanks. I’m going to take a bath I think.”

“Okay.”

When she’d gone I went over to her bag and found her phone. I pressed the redial button but the battery warning bleep sounded and the phone went dead. I figured she must have been talking for a long time.

On Monday I spoke to Morgan, and he told me that he had to go to New York for a couple of days but when he got back the money would be ready. I wanted to share the good news with somebody, but I wasn’t sure who. In the end it was Alice that I called. She picked up after half a dozen rings.

“Hello?” she said cautiously.

“It’s me,” I said.

“Has something happened? I watched the news earlier but there was nothing .”

“I’m not calling about that,” I cut in. “I haven’t heard anything either.”

“Oh.” She sounded relieved and disappointed at the same time and I imagined her weekend had been no easier than my own. “What is it then? You sound different.”

I told her about my conversation with Morgan. “He’ll be back from New York in a couple of days, then we’ll have the money. It’s all going to work out, Alice.”

She took a moment to absorb what I was saying. I think she could only now begin to believe it. She asked if I’d heard anything from Brinkman.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you think that’s strange?”

I did, although I had no idea what arrangement he had made with Dexter. But I told Alice not to worry about him. We talked for a little while and then I hung up after promising I’d call her if I heard anything.

I left work early that day and on impulse instead of going straight home when I came off the freeway I continued down into the village. At the flower shop I asked the girl who helped me for a dozen red roses.

“Make it two dozen,” I said, again on impulse.

She raised her eyebrows. “Must be for somebody special.”

“My wife.”

She grinned and started arranging the flowers for me. “Is it an occasion or a peace offering? I tell you, if everybody suddenly started getting along together, I’d be out of business in a week.”

“Little of both.”

“Well, hope it does the trick. That’ll be thirty-seven eighty.”

I gave her fifty and told her to keep the change.

“Thanks,” she said with a surprised smile, and as I left she called after me. “If she throws you out, I’m single myself you know.”

I grinned and waved back at her.

As I turned into the street where I lived the roses were on the seat next to me along with a bottle of champagne I’d picked up from the wine store. I’d had the idea that we should go to Europe for a while. Take a long vacation. I had never been there, and yet the more I thought about it the more it seemed like exactly the right thing to do. We would go to Paris and

Rome and maybe we’d rent an old farmhouse near Florence or somewhere romantic where we could sit on a terrace drinking wine and watch the sun go down over the vineyards and olive groves. We could take our time, be away for months. We would forget about everything that had happened.

As I drove past our neighbours’ houses with their well kept lawns and gardens, the houses set back, freshly painted, I thought that it wasn’t so bad there. I regretted in a way that I didn’t know the people around us better, but there hadn’t been time, I was always working. I decided that after we returned from Europe, when we’d moved, I’d join a local tennis club, maybe buy a yacht if we lived near the coast and get involved with people. It would be good for the kids, and Sally would like it. That was what she’d always wanted. A family environment, belonging to a community.

When I pulled into our driveway I didn’t notice the dark coloured Ford parked outside. I gathered up the flowers I’d bought in one hand, and the champagne in the other and I was struggling to get my key in the lock when the door swung open and Sally stood there.