Better Than This (38 page)

My insides lurched but I didn’t give it away. “I probably went to the bathroom.”

She shook her head. Our eyes remained locked, but she was thinking back, trying to remember. “No, the light was off, I remember that because I looked and the door was open.”

“So I went downstairs. Jesus, Sally what difference does it make? I probably just went for a drink or something. What does this have to do with anything?”

“You were gone for a while. I remember now,” she went on, ignoring me. “I couldn’t get back to sleep.” She looked as if there was something gnawing at the back of her mind which she couldn’t quite get a hold of.

“Look, I still don’t know what this has to do with …”

Suddenly it came to her. “You weren’t there in the morning when I woke up. I went to the bathroom and your side of the bed was empty.”

“What are you talking about? I came in when you were coming out of the bathroom remember?”

And it was evident that she did. “Yes. You looked surprised. No, it was more than that. When I came out of the bathroom you froze. Like, I don’t know, like you’d been caught out.”

“Sally…”

“The bed was cold.” Her entire expression altered. Instead of looking puzzled, worrying at a problem she couldn’t quite solve, insight flooded her eyes.

“What are you talking about?”

“I remember thinking your side of the bed was cold.”

Silence again. This time I broke it. I wanted her to know my patience was running out, that I’d had enough of this crap. “What is it you’re trying to say?” I wanted her to stop, to realize this was crazy.

But she paid no attention. “That morning, you used the washing machine. After you’d gone to work I went to take out my dress. I’d put it in the night before because I got wine over it at the restaurant. But it wasn’t there. I remember thinking I must have taken it out but the setting had been changed and I realized you must have used it. I meant to ask you about it, but I forgot.”

I stared at her wordlessly. The damn dress must have gotten tangled up with my own clothes. Black dress, black jeans. Easy enough. When I took them out I didn’t even look, just bundled them into a bag and ditched the lot in a dumpster near the pool that morning.

“Why did you do that, Nick? You never wash your own clothes.”

I broke her gaze and went to the refrigerator for more ice. I needed a drink badly, but Sally came after me.

“Look at me!” she demanded.

I turned on her when I’d poured a stiff scotch. “What the hell are you getting at? What do you want me to say?”

“You went out that night didn’t you?”

“You’re letting your imagination run away here, Sally.”

“DIDN‘“I YOU?”

“NO,” I shouted. I took a deep breath. My heart was thumping like a drum. I went on in a calmer, quieter tone. “I was here all night. I was in bed. Asleep.”

“What about the washing machine?”

“I don’t know anything about the fucking washing machine, Sally. I don’t know what hell you’re driving at. Why don’t you come out with it? Say it. You think I went out, and what?”

She stared at me. I could see her mind working, I could see what she thought, how she was trying to put it together. Waking up and finding me gone. The bed cold. The washing machine. But she couldn’t bring herself to say it, to actually put into words what she suspected. Her expression dissolved into confusion. She shook her head.

“I don’t know what to think any more.”

I took the scotch bottle into my study, where I sat in my armchair hunched over my glass. Sally had fled from the kitchen. She didn’t want to look at me, and when I instinctively reached out to try and stop her she recoiled as if I were some hideous creature. I flicked on the TV for a while and flipped through the news programmes, but there was nothing about Dexter so I turned it off again. For several hours I sat there, steadily drinking, my thoughts spinning first one way then another. The way Sally had looked at me, the silent accusation in her eyes which she couldn’t bring herself to speak out loud was burned into my brain. I looked down at my hands and wondered how things had come to this. Now and then I thought about Detective Morello, trying to remember everything he’d said, his questions and my answers, analysing every nuance of tone, every gesture he and I had made, attempting to second guess what conclusions he had drawn. But it was hopeless. He hadn’t appeared to be suspicious, but maybe that was what he wanted me to think. I knew I should call Alice, and Marcus too, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to anyone and Morello had asked me to have them call him so it wasn’t likely he was planning on paying them a visit.

It grew dark, the shadows in the corner of the room creeping outward and up the walls. I didn’t turn on the light. As the scotch took hold of my brain and I started to nod off I fell into a dream. A nightmare that consisted of fractured images. Dexter in my office that night, his twisted smirk as he’d left, and then his mute appeal when he’d lost his footing on the steps. In my dream I reached out to save him and caught his jacket and as relief flooded his expression I gave him a shove and he went cartwheeling backwards into space. Then I saw him crawling on his hands and knees, making pitiful unintelligible sounds as I advanced on him, my shadow falling over him like some great dark insect as I descended to smother the remnants of his life.

I woke with a start, crying out in horror. I spilled my drink and got up to turn on the light, and only then did my heart slow down. It was pounding so hard in my chest I thought it would explode, that I would collapse and die of a coronary.

After a while I made my way upstairs, not knowing what I would say to Sally, only knowing that I needed her. A part of me wanted to throw myself on her mercy and beg her to understand. It was an accident. I hadn’t meant for Dexter to fall, and I hadn’t meant to smother him. I didn’t know what I was doing. It was all so confusing. But I knew I couldn’t ever admit to Sally what I’d done. In fact if I wanted to have any hope of keeping her I had to convince her that she was wrong to suspect me. Outside our bedroom I paused, my hand on the door trying to think what I’d say. From inside I heard the muffled murmur of her voice and I knew she was talking on the phone. I pressed my ear to the door and listened.

‘.. . can’t go on like this. I need to see you.”

There was a long pause. She said something I couldn’t distinguish then I caught a fragment of a sentence.

‘.. . don’t know what I’ll do if he comes… Oh God…”

She broke off into sobbing. I didn’t need to guess who she was talking to. It was Garrison Hunt, standing in the wings ready and waiting with a shoulder for her to cry on. Her knight in shining armour. My anger flared and burned out like a spent match. Suddenly I was exhausted. I went back downstairs and sat down in my chair and eventually I fell into a deep and drink-sodden, dreamless sleep.

In the morning I crept into our room and found Sally in a deep sleep. Her face was red splotched from crying, especially about her eyes. I figured she wouldn’t wake for hours, and there were things I needed to do so I grabbed some clothes and showered and dressed downstairs.

My head was thumping painfully. Breakfast consisted of painkillers with a cup of coffee before I drove into the office. I was the first to arrive. I picked up my phone and called Alice to tell her about Morello’s visit, but she got in first.

“Nick, I was just going to call you. It’s on the news, they found Dexter’s car.”

I asked her which channel then said I’d call her back and I went through to the conference room and turned on the TV. The item was brief. They used a still shot of the road at Devil’s Slide which meant it hadn’t merited sending out a camera crew to get some live footage, which I supposed made sense as by then the car was already gone.

A car was found at the bottom of the cliffs below a dangerous stretch of road on Highway One south of Point Pedro on Sunday,” the woman said. Apparently it had been there for several days, submerged in fifteen feet of water beyond the surf. Police have released the name of the male occupant discovered in the car. He was Larry Dexter, an advertising executive from Fill-more. He was thirty-nine years old and unmarried. Police are speculating at the moment that Mr. Dexter’s car was driven over the edge of the cliff several days ago. A medical examination will take place today to establish the exact cause of death. Sources within the San Mateo County Sheriff’s department suggest that Mr. Dexter’s death may not have been accidental, though we understand suicide has not yet been ruled out.”

That was about it. The traffic report came on, and a piece raising speculation once again that another bridge might be built linking the East Bay with the Peninsula to ease congestion. Brilliant. Encourage more cars onto the roads. That’ll fix it. With grim humour I noted that from now on there would be one less Mercedes to worry about anyway. I channel hopped to see if I could find anything else but when there was nothing I called Alice back. She picked up on the first ring and I told her about Morello.

“Oh my God. Do you think he knows anything?”

The truthful answer to that was I didn’t know, but I didn’t want to worry her any more than necessary. “He’s just doing the basics. Figuring out Dexter’s movements. We don’t have anything to worry about.”

She thought about that. “But if he knows we spoke to Dexter at the restaurant he’s got a connection.”

“But that’s all he knows. From his point of view Dexter saw some people and stopped by at their table to say hello and that’s it. He doesn’t have any reason to think any of us saw him again after that.”

“Unless he knows about the program.”

“He doesn’t,” I said, sure of that much. “If he did he would have mentioned it.”

I gave her Morello’s number and told her to call him, adding that if he was suspicious at all he would at least want to speak to her and Marcus in person, which, when I thought about it, made sense and I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me before. It went a long way to reassuring me that for now anyway we were in the clear. What really bothered me was how long that would last once Morello received the coroner’s report. Then he would really start digging.

Alice asked how Sally had taken the news, and I told her she’d been a little shocked but was otherwise fine.

“Then she doesn’t suspect anything?”

“She doesn’t know a thing,” I lied, because I didn’t want her to panic. I knew I had to do something about Sally. I just didn’t know what.

“Have you heard from Marcus?” I asked. I thought he might have seen the news reports and called her, but she hadn’t spoken to him. “Okay, well I have to tell him,” I said. “He should be here soon. Call me back when you’ve spoken to Morello.”

We hung up, and I sat down to think. I wasn’t expecting Marcus to be a problem. He would be surprised to hear about Dexter, but he didn’t have any reason to think I had anything to do with it, at least not unless he talked to Sally.

Sally. What the hell was I going to do about her? One thing was certain, I had lost her unless I could somehow convince her that she had made a huge mistake. A terrible mistake. I just didn’t have any ideas about how I was going to do that.

Apart from Sally the only other person who could be a problem was Brinkman I thought. Over the past few days I’d put him out of my mind. I’d convinced myself that the best way to deal with him was to do nothing, wait until he came to me, if he ever did, but I saw now I couldn’t take the chance and wait for that to happen. What if Morello made a connection to Brinkman and then the detective found out about the program? What if Brinkman heard about Dexter and called the police himself? I decided to play it safe and arrange a meeting with him. At least that way I’d find out if he suspected anything and I could figure out how to handle him. I called his office at nine, and was put through to his assistant, whose name I remembered was Carol.

“Carol, hello, this is Nick Weston,” I said cheerily. “From Carpe Diem? I was trying to reach your boss, is he around?”

“Mr. Weston, yes. Good morning. No, I’m afraid Mr. Brinkman isn’t here.”

“Perhaps I’ll call back later. What time do you expect him?”

There was a pause before she answered. “Actually I’m not sure. Mr. Brinkman didn’t come into the office yesterday. In fact I don’t know where he is. It’s very unusual. He’s missed several appointments and I haven’t heard anything from him at all.”

“Well, could you tell him I called. And I’ll try again later.”

I hung up. She had sounded a little worried. It was kind of a coincidence that amidst everything that was going on Brinkman had apparently vanished, though I couldn’t imagine there was any connection. I made a mental note to try again later. I hadn’t seen Marcus arrive yet, so I went out to reception to ask Stacey if she’d heard from him. She said he’d called to say he would be late. I wondered if he’d seen the reports about Dexter on TV already.

“Did he say anything else,” I asked casually. “Like when he’d be in?”

“He said he’d call later.”

“He sound okay?”

Stacey looked puzzled. “Sure. I think so. Why?”

“You don’t sound certain.”

“Well, it’s just, I don’t know, he was kind of distracted or something. Maybe he was in traffic.”

“Okay, thanks. If you hear from him again, put him through to me will you?”

I went back to my office and tried his cell phone, but he had it switched off, so I left a message for him to call me. The more I thought about it, the more I figured he had heard about Dexter. I wondered where he’d gone. I called his phone a couple more times over the next half-hour but it remained switched off. It occurred to me in the end that he might have gone to see Alice, but when I called I got her answering machine. I told myself that if she had seen him and anything was wrong she would have let me know anyway. I tried to think where else he might have gone. Finally I called Sally’s office. I knew I couldn’t put off talking to her for any longer, but I was told she’d called in sick, which didn’t surprise me. I called home and waited tensely as I listened to the ringing tone. The machine kicked in and I tried to sound as normal as possible.