The Pocket Wife (25 page)

E
ven though she's called ahead, Jack Moss seems slightly surprised to see Dana standing there in his doorway. “Moss?”

“Come in. Come in,” he says, standing up and ushering her in with his arm. He sounds too jovial for the occasion, and Dana stares down at her feet planted on the cruddy, scratched-up floor. Her father used to talk that way, sitting at his desk at the office or in the little cubbyhole room upstairs where he did his writing. “Come in the house,” he used to say, swiveling his chair around to face the door. “Come in the house,” even though she was either already
in
the house or at his office downtown, impossibly far
away
from the house. He always said it loudly, animatedly, as if he were throwing a party and was afraid no one would come. It was a warning, her father's overzealous welcomes. They told her he would soon be coming home later at night—that the house would smell like spilled gin, that tiny bits of poems would soon be scattered on the rug.

“Thanks for seeing me.” She doesn't sit down. Without her dulling meds, she's restless once again, bright and scattered, walking a thin, slight line.

“Sure.” Jack thumbs through piles of papers on his desk and pulls out a manila envelope.
“Copies,”
it says.
“Dana Catrell.”
“Have a seat. I can let you look at these, but I can't let you take them out of here in case they become part of—”

“It's okay. I just wanted to have a quick—”

“Right,” he says. “Sit. Take a load off. These are copies. The originals are on file.”

She nods. She sits down. She scrutinizes the notes, the handwriting, commits them to memory, so she can bring them back, sharp as tacks, when she closes her eyes.

“So you doing all right?”

“Fine,” she says. “Never better.”

“Yeah?”

“No. God.”

“How's Spot?”

“Fine,” she says.

“So why'd you want these back?”

She shrugs. “I feel naked without them?”

Jack looks up and smiles. Still, Dana knows he's planning to arrest her. She almost doesn't care at this point, but there's Jamie to consider. For Jamie she'll do everything she can to stay on top of things. “I kept them in an envelope,” Dana says. “A self-addressed envelope. Stamped and everything.”

He nods. “I saw that.”

“I figured it was a federal offense to tamper with the U.S. mail, so people might be less apt to—”

“Clever,” Jack says, but he's no longer smiling.

“Paranoid.”

Jack shrugs. “Semantics. Mind if I ask you a couple questions while you're here?”

“Would it matter?”

“Probably not.” He shoots her a little fake smile. “Did you ever figure out who the Tart is?”

“No. I was sure it was Peter's secretary, but I met her at his office yesterday when I went down to work out some things with him. Her name is Ms. Bradley. Very sweet, very demure, but not the woman in the photo. Not the Tart.”

“You sure? People can change, you know. Be completely different when they aren't at work.”

Dana fidgets with her purse strap. “She did seem annoyingly. . .
present
or something.”

“Not all that hard to change the way they look either.”

“And she had on this . . .”

“This what?”

“This wide, knitted turquoise thing that went around her head; I remarked on it. It was really pretty. It did totally hide her hair, though.”

“So, really, she could have been Peter's . . .”

She shrugs. “For all I know, the Tart's one of his clients. But I've got other priorities at the moment. And Peter's . . .”

“Peter's what?”

“Gone,” she says.

“You okay with that?” This is a surprise.

“As okay as I am with anything.”

Jack plays with a little mound of paper clips on his desk.

“Well.” She stands up, eases herself toward the hall. “Time, she fleets.” Another unexpected little father saying.

“Dana?”

“I know,” she says, turning around in the doorway. “I won't go far.”

“Good,” he says. “But I was going to say I'm really glad to see you out and about.”

She wonders, hurrying down the hallway, if Jack Moss questioned her about the Tart because he's worried she might go crazy jealous and kill again. A serial husband's-girlfriends killer. He's hiding something, trying to hide something. He didn't look her in
the eye—he barely even looked up—kept screwing around with his paper clips. It's probably those notes she practically forced on him. He must think she wrote them, as does Peter.
As I'm beginning to,
she realizes. Again she thinks of Jamie, driving in from Boston to visit her, having to see his mother shuffling through a locked-down psych ward, slurring her words, clutching a St. Christopher medal, and she's determined to keep herself together for his sake.

She sits in her front seat and looks around the parking lot. It's nearly dark, much later than she'd thought. It was an impulse, coming here to get the notes back from Moss. Now she wishes she'd never mentioned the damn things. What was she
thinking
? Now they're sitting in a file somewhere waiting to be used against her, to prove she's some lunatic scrawling nasty, cryptic threats to herself in peacock blue—an off-putting color she doesn't normally use, doesn't even remember buying the expensive fountain pen. She found it in the desk drawer by the door when she was searching for clues and figured it belonged to Peter or, more likely, one of his clients. And then she kept forgetting to ask him, even though she'd left it on the desk so she'd remember.

She sits for a moment watching the sunset rage orange across the sky. She wanted to see the notes again so she could compare them to the bits of manuscript she managed to save from her manic episode in college. She has a houseful of things she's written over the years; she was, after all, an English major back at NYU. But these threatening notes were different. They were written in such tiny script, in a way she's never written anything besides the manuscript back then, the hundreds of pages she covered in smaller and smaller writing as the weeks wore on, as her madness gathered, clotting like a cancer in her brain.

Once home, when she'd first gotten off her flattening, uninspiring meds, she'd gone through every room, through every box, looking for the manuscript, phoning Peter in the end; she was that
determined. And he had helped, ironically, remembered where he'd put the things she'd gathered from her mother's house after she died, during the distressing forage through her childhood things.

She starts the car. The sun slides down behind a stretch of grass. She pulls out of the parking lot and trails her hand in a small and unseen wave toward Jack's office.

Come in the house,
she thinks again.
Come in the house
. Her father's voice, an echo down the tunnel of her ear. A warning. Rain pounds, thuds like tiny stones against the windshield, tugs down the night like a great dark curtain. Her foot is heavy on the gas. The Toyota slides a little on the slippery street, and Dana eases up, braking slightly. The car behind her shines its lights too brightly on the narrow road, and Dana speeds up again, but only a little, only enough to satisfy whoever it is riding her tail—far too close for these wet roads. In the rearview mirror, she sees only the bright lights, the high beams, blinding her. She glances in the side mirror, sees an outline, a sedan. The lights are too bright, the night too dark and rainy; she can't see a face. “Slow down!” she shouts, her voice a pin drop in the fury of the rain, the brilliance of the lights. She glares into the rearview mirror as the car speeds up again, comes within an inch of the Toyota, and she thinks about the notes:
“You will pay for what you did—”

The car behind her honks, not quite a blare but more than a tap, and then it speeds up again, looming like a meteor in the rearview mirror. Dana rams her foot down on the gas, stares at the headlights as they grow larger, brighter, in the mirror. She feels a knock as the car behind her hits the Toyota—a tiny ping—or is it the storm? A branch? Dana's heart pounds; the rain falls in sheets. She looks back at the road, but it's too late. Lightning flashes, a quick, blinding zigzag that illuminates a tree branch directly in front of her, and Dana turns the wheel, a violent twist as her tires skid and slip, losing their grip, moving the Toyota in a wild sideways
movement. She turns the wheel sharply back the other way, but she continues sliding, hydroplaning on the rain-slicked road. The Toyota bumps off the asphalt, grazing branches and a small clump of hedges, coming to an abrupt and jarring stop in a shallow ditch beside the road. Dana is vaguely aware of a car above her on the highway, screeching to a stop. Its headlights veer back onto the road as a second car pulls up behind it. A couple sloshes from their car toward her in the pouring rain, and Dana makes two phone calls, one to AAA and one to Jack Moss.

The couple insists on waiting. It isn't safe out here, they tell her, not for a woman alone. Not on a night like this. Not these days with all the crime. They wait inside their car, the windshield wipers swishing back and forth. Their headlights are a beacon for the tow truck, a comfort in the dark, wet night.

Jack picks up on the second ring. “Moss here,” he says.

“I think someone just tried to kill me,” Dana says. Her teeth chatter even though it isn't really cold.

“Who is this?”

“Dana Catrell. I didn't know who to—”

“Where are you?” A chair squeaks, and she pictures him at his desk, working late, his nice, dry office.

“In a ditch,” Dana says. “But I'm fine. I mean, I'm not hurt or anything. The tow truck's on its way.”

“What happened?” The chair squeaks again.

“I was . . . like I said. Someone forced me off the road. It was raining, and the road was slick, and this car just kept getting closer and closer, and there was this tiny whack on the bumper, just a thump, and then there was this branch right in front of me, and I. . . swerved, I guess, to miss it, and my car slid off the road.”

“And the car behind you?”

“Well,” she says. “They stopped, and then this other car pulled over and the first car took off.”

“Did you report it?”

“I
am
reporting it,” she says. “I'm reporting it to you.”

She hears a shuffling sort of sound. She wonders if he's fidgeting with his papers or possibly the mound of paper clips. “Can you describe the car?”

“No,” she says. “It was raining really hard, and the brights were shining in my rearview mirror.”

“Listen,” he says, and the chair is a screech in the background. “Maybe they were just obnoxious people trying to get around you. Trying to get you to speed up.”

“Right.”

“Is it possible? Considering what's been happening lately, you might be a little on edge.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Well, I should go. The tow truck is here.”

“Wait,” he says. “We need to talk again, Dana.”

“When?” She gathers her things and pushes at the car door, and her heart leaps and dives behind her ribs. “My dance card's pretty full these days.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Should I go on in or ask for you at the—”

“No. I won't be in the office in the morning. I'll be out in the field. How about you meet me at E.Claire's. You know it?”

“Yes,” she says. “Why there?”

“Why
not
there?”

“Umm. It's kind of like going down the rabbit hole for tea?”

“Oh.” He clears his throat.

“Hey,” she says, waving to the tow-truck driver as he backs in toward the Toyota. “It's fine. It's great. They've got killer cinnamon rolls. Or—um— What time?”

“Ten-thirty.”

Dana sits for a moment longer in her car, watching as the tow truck rumbles back and forth, positioning itself for rescue. A crazy day, an insane day; it plays across her mind like a bad movie. In spite of what Moss said, she knows that what happened on the
road was not just chance. Her senses are once more alert—far more so, she thinks, than his. Her intuition is sparking back on track. The driver of the car behind her was no stranger, no random driver anxious to make it to a dinner date on time. There was something in the jarring way the car came up behind her, tapped her bumper, the angry lights on high beam, blinding her, the horn puncturing the sounds of rain and night like a snarl. Something very personal. No. This time Jack Moss is wrong.

The tow-truck driver clamps a giant hook to the Toyota. The Good Samaritans wave heartily out their car window and pull onto the road as Dana yells thank-yous to them over the steady rumbling of the truck. She stands on the puddly embankment, clutching her purse, shivering. Her hands are clammy and wet. Her heart pounds. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a car pull over to the side of the road, but when she turns to look, there's nothing there.

W
hen Dana arrives at the restaurant downtown, Jack Moss is already waiting on the sidewalk outside E.Claire's, an odd choice, she thinks again, watching him fidget as he glances up and down the street through glasses so dark they make her think of Ray Charles. She chose her outfit carefully—a flowing skirt and a fitted top with a flowered obi belt, strappy sandals with heels. Even though she's apprehensive about why he's asked to meet with her, she's almost glad to be here. There's something solid about Jack Moss, something portlike in the endless storm of Celia's death. Dana's hair is loose and curly with the cool of autumn, the dampness of impending, ubiquitous rain. A sudden gust of wind comes up from the water, and she ducks her head, grits her teeth against the cold.

He stands outside the front door. It's less crowded this morning than it often is at E.Claire's. He stands awkwardly, checking his phone, amid thin, trim would-be nibblers, as Dana hesitates, catching her breath. She is invisible in the ocean of fluttery arms and scarves as she crosses the sidewalk.

“Moss?”

“Hi,” he says. “Wow! You look— I didn't recognize you at first. Nice cummerbund.”

“We women call them belts.” She smiles. “But thanks, Moss.”

“Ready?”

“Sure,” she says, “I'm ready if you are,” and together they pick their way through the trendy, flowery clientele of E.Claire's.

She orders more than she will ever eat. She orders Canadian bacon and scrambled eggs and an elaborate cinnamon roll. “Scram-Ham Shazam,” she announces to the waitress, “and a cup of green tea.” She notices that Jack Moss orders very quietly. He mumbles his order, and the waitress bends over slightly. “What?” she says. “Could you repeat that? It's so noisy in—” And Jack barks out the silliness, the Jumpin' Jack Black, the stack of Banan-Appeal pancakes.

“So what do you think about the notes?”

“I guess the question is whether you wrote them. I mean, do
you
think you wrote them?”

“I guess I could have, but I don't actually
remember
writing them. That's why I wanted to see them again. To compare them to something else I wrote once when I was at NYU. When I had a sort of nervous brea— I was writing a lot then, a manuscript, very tiny writing all over the pages. I found some of them—some I didn't throw out the window, actually—and I wanted to see if the writing was the same.”

“Was it?”

Dana leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “Well,” she says, “it was hard to tell, but it didn't really look the same to me. Except for the size.”

“I'd like a sample of your writing, too, if you wouldn't mind. I could send it to forensics to compare.”

“Sure. Here.” She hands him one of the scraps of paper from the bottom of her bag, one of the many names she's scrawled down.

He takes a slug of coffee the moment it arrives—the Jumpin'
Jack Black—pockets the paper. “So who had access to your house?”

“Everyone,” she says. “I had a brunch for the entire street.”

“Wow!”

“I was a little manic.” She shrugs. “I didn't know half the people who showed up. And I was stuck in the kitchen most of the time, so really anyone could have—”

“Any Scram-Ham Shazam involved?” he asks as their breakfast arrives with a loud clatter.

“Nope. Badly scrambled eggs and cold fake sausage.”

“Yum,” Jack says, starting in on his pancakes. “Maybe one of the neighbors was really pissed off about the food?”

“Possibly. Except there's the other note I found on the front seat of my car. I mean, the food wasn't
that
bad!”

“Right.”

“But I don't lock it.”

“Your car? How come?”

Dana shrugs. “I really love it here,” she says. “The ambience.”

“Really?”

“Well,” she says. “No. Actually it's a bit fluffy. I have to say. It's really not my cup of tea. I was surprised you like it so much.”

“Me? I hate it! Thought you'd like it.”

“Really?”

“Well.” Jack wipes his mouth with a floral napkin. “No. I guess not. It was the first place that popped into my head.”

“Which in itself says volumes about you.”

“Right.”

“Do you come here often with your . . . with your wife?”

He shakes his head, chewing. “I was here once with someone from the prosecutor's office, and I felt like I was trapped inside an off-off-Broadway play I didn't quite get.” He leans over the table. “I thought the customers were from some dance company in the area.”

Dana laughs. “I can see that.”

“Actually, my wife left me,” Jack says, but just then there's a flurry of activity behind him, a crowd coming in the door. He turns around to look; everyone turns around to look. The hostess strides across the lobby with menus, obsequious and apologetic. “Right this way, Your Honor. So sorry you had to wait,” even though he hadn't. Or she—Dana can't see who the hostess is talking to. She seats the party quickly at three or four tables pulled together, and they make quite a stir in the already noisy restaurant. Their raised voices, the rustling of garments, the clinking of water glasses being filled and dispensed, and occasional shrieks of laughter momentarily eclipse the clatter of the other diners.

“Cotillion?” Dana takes another bite of her toast. “Prom? Or maybe they're
actual
dancers from one of the—”

“Naw,” Moss says. “They're not skinny enough. I think that's Judge Warner and his little flock of— Oh! There's Lenora.”

“Lenora?”

“Lenora White. The first assistant prosecutor I told you about. The one who—”

“Oh, yes. The one because of whom we sit here feeling dowdy and overweight.”

Jack laughs. “Me, maybe. You, not so much.”

“No. You're wrong there. I think all non-anorexics might feel a little— Hey. Which one's Lenora?”

He turns around in his seat. “The second one from the far end. Left side of the table.”

“You sure?”

Positive,” he says. “Why?”

“She's not what I expected,” Dana says. Her heart flutters and pounds. “Here, I mean. This isn't what I expected. It's her! She's Peter's Ta— She's the woman in Celia's phone!”

“You sure?” he says, but he doesn't sound surprised, and Dana knows this is why she's here, why he's suggested this of all unlikely places.

“Yes,” she says. “I mean, the picture was kind of not clear, and her hair was totally different. Blond. Longer. Same face, though. Yeah. I'm sure.”

Dana stares across the room as Lenora bends forward, her eyes wide behind glasses she wasn't wearing in the picture. She seems to be an all-business kind of person, so unlike what Dana had imagined, so unlike the depiction in the phone, with Peter drooling down her blouse. She looks professional this morning, here in E.Claire's in her pricey faux-suede olive suit, the black blouse peeking out beneath it.

They finish their breakfast, but it's different after Lenora's bustling entrance, less amusing now that Dana knows why they are here. It's heavier between them. The lightness is gone, the banter a flash in the pan. Sizzled. Fried. She ponders what it means, this Lenora White, first assistant prosecutor being Peter's Tart. She plays with the food still on her plate. “So, Moss. Am I under arrest or what?” Her mood has changed; the morning is suddenly drab and dull.

He tosses some bills onto the table. “Just wanted to hit base with you—that whole thing last night with your car and the notes and all . . .”

“That's it?”

“For now,” he says. “Oh, and it gave me an excuse to come back to E.Claire's.”

Dana stands up. “Let's go over there.” She wants to see the woman up close. She wants to scrutinize the face that's made a mess of her entire life, ended her marriage. She wants to meet the Tart who slept with Peter, God knew how many times, who sniveled to him on the phone while he whispered in the bathroom, his voice bouncing off the tiled walls, who made him pull over to talk at rest stops all along the New England coast, his hand cupped around her stupid words, edging Dana into madness.

“What?
Now?
”

“Yeah. I can't
not
meet her after all that's happened,” Dana says, and she starts across the crowded, sunlit room with Moss beside her, his shoulders hunched as if there is no place on earth he'd less like to be than here in this flower-dappled tearoom, wending his way to the Tart's table with her lover's wife. The aisles are narrow and bustling with waitresses and gorgeous people, among whom Lenora is definitely at home. She sits with diffidence at the judge's table. Her hands are folded on the tabletop, her attention riveted on whatever Judge Warner is saying, sputtering—shouting, nearly—at the other end of the table. Dana watches Jack reach out toward her, not without some trepidation.

“Hi,” he says. He touches Lenora's fake-suede-covered shoulder.

“Jack!”

“Back for more,” he says.

“In the mood for Turnover Trios, eh?” She glances at Dana. “Hello,” she says, and she extends her hand. “I'm Lenora White.”

“Yes. I know,” Dana says. “I'm Peter's wife. I've heard so much about you.”

Lenora doesn't change her expression in the least, although her face goes ghostly white and pink blotches pop up on her neck. “Good things, I hope,” she says.

“Let's just say I'm delighted to finally put a face with the . . . well, with the . . . um, rest.” She sniffs. “Nice perfume.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your perfume,” Dana points out. “It's nice. Peter wears it sometimes.”

Jack clears his throat. “Enjoy your breakfast,” he says, nodding toward the judge. He lifts his hand in a little wave and backs away from the table. He steers Dana toward the door, his palm flat on her shoulder, where it remains until the hostess has nodded her good-bye and the heavy door has latched itself in place behind them.

They stand together on the sidewalk in front of E.Claire's. Dana pulls a Marlboro out of her bag and lights it.

“I didn't know you smoked.”

“I don't,” she says. “Not usually. I'm an emergency smoker.”

“And this qualifies?”

“Totally.”

Jack glances at the sky. “Looks like rain,” he says, although for once it's actually clear, with white clouds puffing across a sea of blue. Dana doesn't contradict him; she doesn't even look up.

“You knew,” she says.

“Knew what?”

“Please,” she says. “I'm not having problems with
that
part of my brain. You knew she was Peter's Tart. That's why you brought me here.”

“I thought she might be.”

“Why? Why are you doing this?”

“I'm sorry,” Jack says. He takes a step toward her, but Dana backs away.

“You're really screwing with my head. So what do you want me to say? She's beautiful? And smart, I'm sure. And she can get through a meal at E.Claire's without a Xanax? Of course Peter would prefer her to me. What more could a guy want?”

“A lot more,” Jack says. “Believe me. Sorry if having you run into her seemed like an ambush. I didn't want to mention it to you beforehand because I wanted your initial reaction. Didn't want to muddy the waters.”

She takes a final puff and stubs her cigarette out on the sidewalk with the heel of her sandal. “No worries.” She waves her hand in the air. “It added drama,” she says. “Like dinner theater. What's E.Claire's without a little black humor thrown in? Anyway, I'm glad to see she's real. That she actually exists.”

He laughs, but it sounds forced; it sounds like a cough. “Listen,” he says. “Can I drop you off at your house? I have the Crown Vic.”

“No.” She looks somewhere past him, over his shoulder toward
the sky. “Thanks, though. I think I'll just—I don't know—stroll around for a while. Buy a gun. Shoot Lenora. Catch the bus back home.” He doesn't answer. He looks uncomfortable. She wonders if he might believe her. “Seriously, I've got some things to do while I'm here, but I'll take a rain check on the ride.”

“Rain check it is, then. And thanks, Dana. Thanks for meeting me. I'm sorry if I made you feel— I really didn't want to upset you,” he says, and she waves her hand again in a nonsensical little motion. “I had a good time,” he says, “in spite of everything.”

“Me, too.” Dana turns and walks down the sidewalk. She can feel him watching her until she disappears inside the crowds of people in suits and tweeds and heels and pantyhose and skinny jeans and all the squares of sidewalk separating them. When she reaches the corner, she turns around, and he's still standing in the same spot on the sidewalk. He raises his hand in a wave and leaves it there until she turns and starts across the street.