No Accident (29 page)

Three days later: It was morning, and Luke had just finished giving a presentation on the energy industry to a conference of analysts and investors. He stepped down from the stage and took questions from a polite huddle of friendly audience members. The little crowd was laughing softly at a joke Luke made when a man bouncing on the balls of his feet at the periphery of the group called out, “Are you Luke Hubbard?”

“Was it the banner above the stage that gave it away?” Luke said.

The crowd gamely laughed again, and the man tossed a thick, stapled sheaf of papers like a grenade over the heads of the other people. The papers landed at Luke’s feet. “I’ll bet he’s got a mean forehand,” Luke said to an assistant standing next to him.

“You’ve been served,” the man said loudly. Luke’s audience turned its attention to the man, but he quickly walked away.

Luke picked up the papers and scanned the first page. He and Liberty were being sued again. Luke had never heard of Roberta Cummings. He handed the papers to his assistant and said, “Call Alan Matthews now.” Then he looked up and smiled at the people still waiting to speak to him. “Who was that masked man?”

*
* *

It was after lunch, and Sheila was monopolizing the time of a hopeful young jewelry salesgirl whose annual salary, even with commissions, wouldn’t cover any of the pieces Sheila was considering. In the girl’s favor, she was thin and pretty, but so was Sheila.

Sheila was taking her time. She could afford anything in this store now, but wanted to choose the right piece to mark the occasion—the successful closing of one chapter of her life and the auspicious start of a new one. She wanted something to dazzle, something that both men and women would notice.

Finally, from among the array of costly necklaces, she chose a platinum strand studded with diamonds. Laid over her collarbone, it looked like a thread of spider’s silk lined with dewdrops.

Sheila handed the sales clerk her debit card and, as she waited, she twisted her torso by millimeters to watch the diamonds sparkle in the mirror.

Finally, the clerk returned wearing a sheepish expression. “For some reason it’s not taking the card,” she said, and she presented the offending slip of plastic to Sheila.

“That’s impossible,” Sheila said. “I know for a fact that the funds are there.”

“I’m sure they are, ma’am,” the clerk said. “It’s probably just a glitch on our side. Would you like to call the bank? Or maybe try another card?”

The settlement money wired by Luke
was
there, Sheila knew. The funds had cleared yesterday and should have still been there. Something must have gone wrong. Sheila felt her guts knot up. She forced a smile and removed the necklace. “Hold this, please,” she told the sales clerk. Then she picked up her purse and walked quickly from the store.

*
* *

It was late afternoon on what had been a quiet day, and Cindy was in Brad’s office. His office was much cleaner now that the divorce case had settled.

Cindy was pressing him about why the settlement was so hush-hush. Brad explained that confidentiality clauses, applying to both parties, were common in high-profile divorces, and went on and on about other examples he had seen.

“I know what you’re doing,” she said with a smirk.

Brad smiled back at her. “Just complying with my confidentiality obligations.”

“Sheila already said at that awful dinner how much money she got.”

“I’m not going to confirm or deny that,” Brad said with a grin.

“Brad, you’ve gotta give me something. How did you win in the end? At least tell me that.”

Brad thought for a moment, then said, “Well, there were some details—tactical things about how I wound up the case—it’s sort of inside baseball, though, you’d probably be bored.”

“Spill it,” she said.

“Well, I guess we have . . .” Brad’s hands shuttled back and forth over his desktop as if the gesture would generate the words. “There’s . . . implied confidentiality between us.”

“Does that mean you’re asking me to marry you?” Cindy said wryly.

Brad blushed for just a moment, then proceeded to recount, with strenuously understated pride, how he had baited Luke in his deposition to admit a motive to kill his employees, get the insurance money and earn a large bonus. At the end of the tale, he looked at her with a restrained smile, but Cindy wore a look of disgust.

“So
 . . . do you think Luke Hubbard actually killed those poor people?”

“Sure. I mean, probably.”

“If you really think that, then why don’t you turn him into the police?” Cindy said.

“Well, my job is to advance my client’s interest, and
—oh, who knows anyway? I mean, no one really knows if Luke did it or not—and no one will know, because the police didn’t really investigate, and the evidence is stale, and . . . all the rest.”

Cindy’s expression hadn’t changed.

“And anyway,” Brad said, “I’m bound by the confidentiality clause.”

Cindy looked at Brad with eyes as dark as ink. “Some confidentiality clause
—you just told me, didn’t you?”

Brad laughed nervously. “You ask questions like a lawyer.”

“I wish you wouldn’t answer them like a lawyer.”

Brad was stuttering a lame response when the door to the office burst open. A scruffy bike messenger leaned in just far enough to snap a manila envelope like a Frisbee toward Brad’s head. He dodged the missile and avoided a bruise to his neck. The intruder disappeared before Brad had a chance to protest. After he had gone, a woman they had hired part-time to do administrative work rushed to the doorway.

“I tried to stop him, Mr. Pitcher, but he just ran right in,” she said.

“It’s all right, Estelle,” Brad said, waving her away.

“What is it?” Cindy said.

Brad smiled at her as he opened the package beneath his desk with shaking hands. Inside was a single page, a heavy watermarked sheet of paper with the Boswell & Baker letterhead. Brad quickly scanned the letter, and when his eyes reached the bottom, his face went white.

“But I didn’t give anyone anything . . . they can’t do this,” Brad said.

“Can’t do what?” Cindy said.

Brad looked up from the letter with wide, frightened eyes. “Hubbard says we breached the confidentiality clause. He says we gave information from Luke’s deposition to the widow of the guy who drove the sports car in that accident.”

Cindy smiled at Brad as if she understood, then said, “What does that mean?”

“It means Luke’s cancelling the settlement. He says he won’t pay a dime.”

The day was almost over. It was the third day that Alex had ignored Sheila’s voicemails and text messages, and he would be happy to do so forever. It was cruel, but he enjoyed listening to the pain in her voice. Alex had called Del, now that he was out of the hospital, to offer him a place to stay if he still needed one, but Del hadn’t responded. Whatever.

Armed with his new knowledge from the deposition transcript, Alex had restarted in earnest his hunt for Crash and his mission to ingratiate himself to Luke. Alex now knew Luke’s reason for killing the employees in the van, and he wouldn’t rest until he found evidence that proved Luke’s guilt.

Yet his conversations with Crash’s friends and acquaintances had not been productive. None of them knew Crash well enough to give any details of his personal life
—or, at least, none of them would share with Alex anything personal about Crash. From all they had to say, one would think that Crash had never had a girlfriend and didn’t have any outside interests besides exercise and rooting for the Trojans. Alex was hoping that at least one of them would be closer with Crash than that—like Les Frees. But as Alex drove home after a third day of taking various security guys out for beers, he realized he had nothing to show for his work but detailed insight into Crash’s exercise routine and football betting pool strategy. Alex had one idea left: Les Frees’ funeral was the next day, and Alex figured that Crash, one of Les’s groomsmen, would feel duty bound to make an appearance. But even if Alex was wrong, Alex needed to put in the effort to make Luke see him as hard working and trustworthy.

Alex got home as the sun was starting to go down. He sat in his living room, lights out, as the room grew dimmer with the evening. He thought about Sheila, and Pamela, and how they had seemed so different from each other when Alex first met Sheila, but how they had both ended up being the same. Users. Liars. Why did women keep pegging him as a sucker?
Maybe because I’m the kind of guy who sits in a room with the lights off feeling sorry for himself
, he thought.

He stood up. He wanted fresh air. There was a knock at the door. Alex cautiously went to the front door and opened it, expecting another bill collector. He found no one outside. He heard another knock, and realized it was coming from the back. He hoped it was Del, rather than a bill collector.

When Alex opened the back door, he found Sheila holding a bouquet of flowers and smiling sheepishly. “I remembered to come from behind this time,” she said.

Alex didn’t smile back. After stewing in his own bitter juices, seeing her now only made him feel meaner. “We’re through, Sheila.”

“Can I at least come in?”

Alex figured he could at least be civil. Anyway, he already knew what his response would be. He swiveled his body to let her pass into the kitchen. She laid the flowers on the counter.

“Let me explain,” she said. “You found out what happened at the deposition?” When Alex didn’t respond, she continued. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you about what Brad found. But I knew you wouldn’t stop until you found Crash and busted Luke, and I know how the two of them are—how dangerous they are. I was afraid you would keep after them and that you would get hurt.”

Alex didn’t trust the meek look on her face for one second. When had she ever been meek? “Ah, so you lied to me for my own good
—how can you even say that with a straight face?”

Sheila took his two hands in hers and led him to the breakfast table, where they sat. “No, Alex. I kept the transcript from you because I didn’t want to lose you. I can’t imagine losing you. We haven’t known each other long, but I know we have something special.” She laughed a little to herself. “When I first met you, I thought you were just a typical slacker.” Alex was a little offended by that, and it must have showed, because Sheila smiled. “A cute slacker, but see how ridiculous that seems now? A relationship doesn’t just happen, Alex
—two people create it. And the strongest relationships are created in hard times.”

She was smooth, all right, but Alex wouldn’t let himself be duped yet again. “So we had a wartime fling,” he said. “So what? The war’s over and now it’s time to go back to our real lives.”

She squeezed his hands. “I know I have to earn your trust. I’m ready to do that. This divorce has been stressful for me, really the most stressful thing I’ve ever been through. You don’t know what it’s like when you’re forced to question everything you took for granted.” Alex thought of his father’s insider trading arrest, and how their respectable, affluent family had become downscale and shunned almost overnight. Sheila must have remembered their conversation about that, because she said, “Sorry, of course you do.”

“Thanks,” Alex said begrudgingly. To her credit, Alex thought, Sheila really was perceptive. She understood him well enough to guess his thoughts and feelings
—but that may also have explained why she was so good at deceiving him.

“What was hardest is that when the divorce started, I realized I’d been lying to myself
—about Luke, about my marriage—for years. And I know I’ve handled it poorly, I’ve been immature. Oh, I wish you could have met me some other time. I feel like this court battle has aged me, Alex.”

“That was never the issue,” Alex said.

“I don’t judge you for your own mistakes, Alex.” She said this sympathetically. “I know what it’s like. That’s what makes us such a match.”

“So now we just run away from our mistakes together,” Alex said. “That’s not love, Sheila. That’s a little girl’s fairy tale.”

She shook her head. “Not run away. Start over. We have a chance to do that together. It’s not the money. Luke’s going to take that away.” That was a surprise to Alex. “Oh, yes,” Sheila said. “That widow is suing him; someone gave her the transcript of Luke’s deposition.”

“Sheila, I was upset.”

“Don’t say anything. I knew it had to be you who gave it to her. I know why you did it and I’ve already forgiven you.”

For the past year, ever since Pamela had left him, Alex had acted like he was owed some payback. Now Alex suddenly felt like he’d overreacted in going behind Sheila’s back and reading the transcript, like he’d punished Sheila for Pamela’s lies. He felt awful. Sheila’s head drooped toward the table, and her hair fell over her eyes.

“I don’t like to beg,” she said. “It makes me feel weak, but I don’t care—I’m begging you.”

She began weeping in soft sobs that she tried to hold in and that came out like a kitten’s hiccups. Alex lifted her chin.

“I don’t think you’re weak,” he said. “Anyway, you’re no weaker than me.”

He leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips were warm and swollen from crying.

* * *

Alex and Sheila made love slowly as night fell. For Alex, it felt like the first honest act they’d done together. There was no lingering prospect of advantage between them. They were past lust. There was no more excitement about the settlement money, or about nailing Luke together. It was just the two of them, with all their faults finally out in the open.

Lying in bed, they listened to the ocean waves rolling onto the sand two blocks away.

“I’ve still got to bust Luke,” Alex said.

“I know,” Sheila said.

“I could try to blackmail him for you, maybe get some of your money back.”

Sheila sighed. “No,” she said. “You couldn’t live with yourself if you didn’t actually send him to jail.”

A couple of waves rolled in.

“Les Frees’ funeral is tomorrow. I’ll show up, see if Crash shows up. After that, I figure I’ll have done enough legwork that I should be in with Luke, have his trust. And at that point, enough chasing after Crash; I’ll start setting up my sting against Luke.”

“OK,” Sheila said flatly. After a moment, she added, “Just don’t let tomorrow be your funeral, too.”