Faithful Unto Death (22 page)

“What?” I said. I could hear soft organ music. Annie didn’t say anything. She didn’t turn around. I pulled her around to face me.

“What is it?” I couldn’t understand her behavior, and if we didn’t hurry, we were going to be Standing Room Only. The auditorium was filling fast. A crowd had turned out for Garcia’s funeral.

Annie took a big breath. She pushed my hand off her arm and smoothed her sleeve. I hadn’t crumpled the fabric.

“You’re hurting me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

Annie shook her head at me and I reached out to smooth back a stray strand of her soft, blond hair but she caught me by the wrist.

“You never mean to, Bear. You tromp all over people’s feelings, brush aside anything that doesn’t fit in with your way of thinking, and if anyone gets in the way and gets hurt, well, you didn’t mean to. You know what, Bear? You’re too big. You take up more than your fair share of oxygen.”

“Annie, all I said was—”

“I heard what you said. I heard what you said because I listen to you. You said you didn’t like Jo sitting with Alex and his family.

“Bear, today isn’t about you or what you like. We are here to pay our respects to Graham Garcia and to comfort his family. Jo is a comfort to Alex. That is the beginning and the end of the story and you aren’t in this story.”

“Sweetheart, I didn’t want Honey to—”

“Honey is two drinks away from falling flat on her fanny. Whatever clear-thinking part of her there is will be grateful as hell that her boy can take comfort somewhere, anywhere at all today.” Annie had tears in her eyes and she dug in her purse for a tissue.

“Well, all right then, let’s go on in—”

“No!” Annie blew her nose and sniffed and shut her purse with an emphatic click. “I want to know why everything Jo does is wrong! Did you see our daughter walk into this church? How you can keep from perishing with pride every time you look at her is a dark mystery to me, Bear. What the hell more do you want from her?”

“Annie!”

“Bear, you are the only adult in the whole state of Texas who thinks it’s a sin to say ‘hell.’ It’s not a curse; it’s not even a vulgarity, and I’m your wife, not your child, so don’t you dare correct my speech.”

“All right, then, fine. Can we please settle down and go—”

“Bear! Don’t you
ever
tell me to settle down, not after some of the fits I’ve seen you throw. And no, we can’t go in, not until you’ve answered me.” She had her hands on her hips now, and that is not ever a good sign in a woman even if the hips in question are Annie’s very comely ones.

I looked around for someplace to sit but there weren’t any benches down this hall and I don’t know the Catholic church well enough to go trying doorknobs.

I said, “First off, you’re entirely wrong about everything. Didn’t I say she could go to New York? Didn’t I say I’d pay the six thousand dollars?”

“No, you said it would come out of her college fund. Which my parents have generously contributed to and I put almost as much money into those accounts as you do.”

“Are you saying that we should have taken six thousand dollars out of our savings so Jo could go to a fancy-pants rich-kid summer camp?”

“If Merrie had been good enough at volleyball for the Olympics, you wouldn’t have thought twice about spending that money. About spending twice that much money.”

I would have, too, because twelve thousand dollars is a lot of money, and in any case . . . “This isn’t the Olympics.”

“It
is
the Olympics, Bear. For a classical ballerina, the American School of Ballet is the goddamn Olympics!”

I had no clue what had gotten into my women, but this new thing with the language was not going to fly. “Okay, now, Annie, you’re out of line here. I’m not going to discuss this with you right now; it’s neither the time nor the place. Let’s quiet down, and go take our seats.”

Annie started to say something; she closed her mouth. I put my hand on her waist and we walked back toward the door of the sanctuary. When we got there, she kept walking across the lobby. She went over to the guest book, signed her name, and then walked out of the church. I watched her get into her car and drive away.

Twenty-eight

I
t wasn’t my finest moment, letting Annie Laurie drive off; I know that. I should have gotten in my car and followed her and made things right, even if I wasn’t in the wrong. That’s what I should have done. Or maybe not, the way things turned out. Or maybe so, the way things turned out.

While I stood there debating whether to go into the sanctuary for the rest of the funeral, or go after Annie Laurie and mend what needed mending, the sanctuary door swung open and the mystery woman slipped out. If she saw me, and I’m hard to miss, I didn’t register on her. She had a hand in her glossy leather purse and she pulled out a pair of oversized sunglasses and a crystal key ring shaped like a Nike running shoe. The glasses went on before she stepped outside, tears streaming from under the lenses; she had her key at the ready. If my stride weren’t twice as long as hers, I would have had to trot to catch up. I was doing that a lot today.

“Miss, miss!” I sounded like an importunate waiter.

She glanced over her shoulder, saw me, scanned the rest of the parking lot, which was full of cars and empty of people, and decided that, yes, the big man lumbering after her was calling her. She stopped.

If women still wore gloves, and if the mystery woman had conveniently dropped one in the foyer, well, that would have given me an opening. But women don’t wear gloves anymore unless they’re golfing or gardening.

Instead I said, “I saw you at the golf course last night. Near where Graham was killed. You’re a friend of Graham’s, aren’t you?” Clear, direct, to the point.

She spun around, sprinted away on those high heels, and held her key fob out to a cream-colored BMW sedan. The locks popped open. Stilettos are not good sprinting shoes. I outpaced her easily and put my hand on her door before she could open it.

I looked down at her and tried hard not to look menacing—that’s tricky when you weigh more than twice what the woman does and you are blocking her from her car.

“His son saw you. That night. With Graham. Alex misunderstood the situation and he’s in a lot of pain about it. I really need to talk to you.”

There it was. I’d done it. Without a thought, I’d broken my promise. The moment I realized it, I slapped my head. Shame rose up in me like a flash flood.

If I was wrong, and this woman was not Graham Garcia’s lover, then I had just let a total stranger in on a very, very personal secret, and I would need to be taken out and shot.

When I opened my eyes, she was studying me.

“You okay?”

I flushed again.

“Yes.” If a promise-breaking idiot can be said to be okay, then yes, I was fine. For a fat-mouthed jackass, I was triple peachy keen.

Big breath.

“I want to clarify things for Alex,” I said. It was too late to wish I hadn’t followed her out of the church. Too late to wish I’d kept my jaws clamped shut. I kept one hand on her car door and fished a business card out of my jacket. She quit tugging at the door handle and took the card from me.

She looked up at me. “Would you back off a little? Take two steps back, do you mind? You’re crowding me.”

She spoke distinctly, but with a strong Asian accent.

I took two steps backward.

“Two giant steps.”

I took two giant steps back.

She opened her car door and slid behind the wheel. I thought she would be off, and if I tried to stop her, I’d end up like that cheating dentist in Clear Lake who got run over four or five times by a very unhappy woman. A fitting punishment for the promise breaker I was.

The mystery woman started her car. Music blasted from the speakers so loudly I had trouble identifying it. She smacked the dashboard and silenced it. I waited while she sat there in the idling car.

I said, “I know where you live.”

She gave a yip of laughter and wiped her face with her sleeve. She left a tan smear on the black jacket.

“You sound like a stalker, you know that, Mr., ah”—she held my card arm’s length from her eyes and peered at it—“Mr. Wells.”

“Okay, that’s fair, I only—”

“Do you know where the Vineyard is?” she said.

“In Towne Center? Right next to City Hall? Yeah, I—”

“I’m going to the Vineyard. We can talk there if you want to.” She shut her door and rolled the window down. She tilted her head inquiringly.

“Oh, sure, or we could meet in my office at the church and—”

“I’m going to the Vineyard. You go wherever you want.”

She backed out and wheeled onto Sweetwater in a manner that indicated she wasn’t thinking “school zone.” Which it was.

This wasn’t going to be any kind of car chase. On Sweetwater Boulevard, you pass through four school zones and five lights in the four miles between St. Laurence Catholic Church and Towne Center, and at two o’clock on a Friday, the SUVs are already lining the boulevard, all the patient mothers waiting to transport their gifted and talented progeny from the award-winning public schools to the after-school enhancement classes of piano, or gymnastics, or Mandarin, or yoga. Nobody was going anywhere fast.

The mystery woman would have done better to have taken Austen Parkway, two and a half miles, one school zone, and two lights if you go that way, but whatever.

I’m two cars behind her, keeping her in sight, so I see her doing the whole “woman in a car” thing. Her visor comes down and she’s driving with one eye in the mirror, one on the road. She does powder, lipstick, something over the lipstick that she applies with her pinky, mascara. She pulls pins from her hair and it tumbles down. She brushes it with a brush the size of two fingers. At the next light, she pulls that mass of hair up to the top of her head and twists it through a band into one of those messy knots the high school girls wear. By the time she gets out of her car, she’s lost the suit jacket; she’s wearing a low-cut tank top with her suit skirt and she’s taken the scarf off her neck and tied it around the knot of hair on the top of her head. Women don’t wear scarves that way anymore. They should—it was eye-catching. The stiletto pumps had been switched for high-heeled sandals. I would have been impressed, but I know for a fact that Annie Laurie has exchanged torn panty hose for new ones while she was driving—no mean trick.

The mystery lady set off like a woman who knows the man is going to follow, and I did. She had that quick, purposeful stride I associate with lawyers and CEOs.

The Vineyard is an indoor-outdoor wine bar with tables on the terrace that fronts the Sugar Land City Hall. I’ve heard the city hall’s architecture referred to as Neo-Brutalistic. Don’t ask. I kind of like the thing.

One of the guys Merrie dated in high school had pointed out to me that there was a Freemasons’ Square and Compass carved into the façade.

I said, “And that means?”

He shook his head in disbelief at my base ignorance, and said, dropping his voice as if the KGB might be listening, “What it means, Mr. Wells, is that Sugar Land is run by the Illuminati.”

I didn’t ask. I had asked this fellow for clarification once before and I had gotten way more information than I had been looking for. Instead, I wikied “Illuminati” and, well, I know the kid is spooky smart, but the world he lives in is evidently much more interesting, and dangerous, than the one I live in. I still see him occasionally when Merrie is back from school, but she isn’t dating him anymore and that’s a relief.

At a few minutes after two on a Friday afternoon, only two or three of the Vineyard’s outdoor tables were occupied. A couple of young mothers were sipping chardonnay while their assorted preschoolers lapped up Ben and Jerry’s and teetered on the edge of the cowboy fountain. Some business travelers from the Marriot were enjoying Sugar Land’s mild spring, drinking and texting and shedding layers of clothes.

Graham’s mystery lady laid claim to an empty table by flinging her big black purse on it. I have packed for long weekends in bags smaller than that purse. She picked the menu up and held it out to me.

“I’m having the BV Tapestry, what do you want?”

“Do they have iced tea?”

Her forehead puckered. “You’re going to drink iced tea at a wine bar?”

“I’ll have a pinot grigio. And ice water.”

“Pinot grigio? Any pinot grigio?”

“You choose. I’ll pay.” I reached for my wallet.

“Sit down. I’ll be right back.”

I put my jacket across the back of the chair and looked around the square. I didn’t see anybody I knew. There’s nothing wrong with having a glass of wine with an attractive woman who isn’t your wife. But.

I sat down at the heavy wrought-iron table and tried not to feel self-conscious. Mystery woman emerged from the bar, empty-handed, and sat down before I could stand up and pull her chair out for her.

“I got you the Graffigna. From Argentina,” she said.

She could have gotten me the Wobblies from Australia; I wouldn’t know the difference.

I held my hand out to her.

“Walker Wells.”

She left my hand out there too long for comfort. Finally she took it. Her grip was firm and dry and warm.

“Mai Dinh.”

It sounded like “My Din.”

“Spell it for me.” She did.

The door to the Vineyard swung open and a young man with an abbreviated Kewpie’s curl brought a tray to our table. With a flourish he put two coasters on the table. In front of Mai he set down a crystal globe filled nearly to the top with a dark ruby wine. The stem of the glass looked impossibly long and thin. The glass of wheat-colored wine he set down in front of me. He put a basket of sliced French bread; a plate with six cracker-sized slices of blue, Brie, and Swiss cheese; a pronged cheese knife; and a cheese cleaver in the center of the table. He murmured, “Enjoy!” and left. No ice water.

Mai dropped her sunglasses into the purse and held the wine up to see the color with the afternoon sun behind it.

“So.” She drank from her glass. “Alex saw us.” Her eyes filled and she tilted her head back to keep the tears from spilling out. Mai rummaged inside her oversized handbag, pulled out her sunglasses again, and put them back on. She tipped the glasses up and pressed a tissue to the corners of her eyes and then to her nose. “That wasn’t supposed to happen. When did he see us? Where did he see us?”

I asked, “How long have you known Graham?”

She gave a grimace of a smile. “All of my life. For a thousand years. One year two months. It’s not what you think.”

“What do I think?”

“What anyone would think. He wasn’t trawling. We weren’t ‘looking for love in all the wrong places.’ That song.”

The man at the table next to us lit up a cigar. A small aromatic cloud of smoke drifted over.

Mai looked over at him crossly.

“Jesus!” she said. “Grab the wineglasses, would you?”

I picked the glasses up. Mai stood, seized the wrought-iron table edge in both hands, and yanked. Teetering backward in the heeled sandals, she dragged the table five feet, out of the cigar’s draft zone. The plate of cheese traveled to the edge of the table during the trip.

I was impressed. Mai’s biceps and thigh muscles were taut and defined with the effort. She got the table where she wanted it, grabbed the back of her chair, and dragged it to the new location, taking her glass of wine from my hand. She sat down, crossed her elegant legs, and shoved the cheese plate to the center of the table. As I pulled my own chair over to join her, I looked back at the smoker. He was hastily stubbing his cigar out.

I was thinking that any woman who could haul a wrought-iron table several feet over cobblestones had to be strong enough to swing a golf club with enough force to kill a man.

“I can’t stand smokers. I’m a runner. I run marathons. That’s how I met Graham.”

“I didn’t know he was a runner.” I tasted my wine. I liked it. It was cold and clean-tasting, faintly sweet.

Mai shook her head and smiled. “He wasn’t. Graham liked to do his sweating in an air-conditioned gym.” She slid her glasses down to the tip of her small nose and looked at me over the frames. “You a friend of Graham’s?”

“No. Not really. I knew him and we were friendly, but I didn’t know him well enough to call him a friend.”

She nodded. “Umm. He never mentioned you. I would have remembered. He never mentioned any friends much. I’m not sure he had close friends. Acquaintances, colleagues, but not friends. Only me. Graham . . . he was close to me.
I
knew him well enough to call him ‘friend.’”

“What about Honey?” I asked. “Didn’t Honey know Graham?” I hate it when the spouse is completely left out of the equation. It’s another betrayal.

Mai didn’t miss the challenge. She set her glass down and leaned way over the table toward me, even rising a few inches from her chair. She looked me full in the eyes. I looked back into the lenses of those sunglasses.

“No. Honey did not know Graham. She never knew him at all. She never wanted to.”

She held my eyes an uncomfortable while longer, and then slowly settled back into her chair.

“You want me to feel guilty, Mr. Wells? I’m the ‘other’ woman, right?” She gave a snort. “I feel guilty for a lot of things, so don’t you worry. The kids, yeah, about them, I feel guilty.”

Mai rolled her glass of wine on its base, the red liquid rising nearly to the lip of the glass. She pressed her lips together and her smooth forehead furrowed. No Botox there.

“Mostly, I feel guilty that Graham is dead, that we could have had our life together, and I put up these . . . I made him . . . we could have been happy.”

A drop of wine escaped from the glass, fell through the wrought-iron lattice top, and made a star-shaped red splash on Mai’s exposed thigh. “If I had let us.” She took a big breath. The drop of wine on her leg looked like a small birthmark. My hand wanted to reach out and wipe the wine off her tanned leg. I didn’t. It was the sort of impulse you learn to quell if you want to be a happily married man.

“Just so you know, Mr. Wells, life isn’t perfect. Not in the real world. Your stained-glass world, everything all rosy in there, all the happy families. Bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people. That’s what you believe, right? You get what you deserve?”