Dismas Hardy: Nothing But The Truth Part 13

'And where is that?'

Sitting on the edge of the table, Frannie hung her head and swung her feet back and forth like a child. Finally, she looked back up. 'Abe, he left the house and she was alive. When he came back she was dead. Somebody killed her.'

Glitsky started to respond, but she put her hand on his arm, stopping him. 'I know, I know. You told me, remember? The time of death. Technically, he could have done it before he left to take the kids to school.'

'I like that eye-roll thing you do.'

'Come on, can you picture it? Ron takes the kids down to the car, then says to himself, "Hey, here's an opportune moment. I think I'll just nip back upstairs, kill my wife, throw her off the balcony to make it look like a suicide, clean up the gla.s.s from whatever convenient murder weapon I find up there..." '

She was shaking her head. 'Please. I was with him that morning, and he was fine. He was normal. We just had a cup of coffee and kvetched about life, about children. You know how you do. You've had kids.'

'Still do.'

'You know what I mean. School age. Little guys.'

Glitsky nodded. 'OK, but he told you a secret so important that you're here in jail?'

'No, he didn't, Abe.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean not that morning. That morning was nothing.'

'But Scott Randall gave me the impression-'

'I know. And now everybody a.s.sumes Ron told me something that morning. I'm telling you that's not what happened. I don't even remember if we mentioned Bree at all, not on that day.'

'Then why are you here?'

'Because I wouldn't tell what Ron told me.'

'Which had nothing to do with Bree's murder, so far as you know?'

'That's what I said on the stand.' Frannie had been admonished that revealing anything about what happened inside the grand jury room was a separate contempt of court. At this point, she couldn't have cared less. 'I said I didn't know. I didn't think so, but I wasn't sure.' Finally, she pushed off the table and got back to her feet. 'But I'm telling you, Abe, listen to me.' She had grabbed at his arms, the sleeves of his leather jacket. 'It doesn't matter even if he did have an incredible, compelling reason to kill her, which he didn't. And forget that he's just not the kind of person who would ever, ever kill anybody. Forget that. The point is that even if he wanted to, he couldn't have done it. He wasn 't there. Why is this so hard for everybody to understand?'

Glitsky the cop almost found himself believing her, for the practical reason that what she said, particularly about the timing of the murder, made sense. If Ron Beaumont had killed his wife in the morning before taking the kids to school, while they were still hanging around or even waiting in the car, and managed to hide it from them, he had to admit that had been one h.e.l.l of a party trick. Not that he couldn't have done it - and Abe had only recently argued that it was in fact possible - except that in the real world, possible didn't mean likely.

But there were still questions. There were always questions. 'So why is he on the run?'

'How do you know he is, that he hasn't just gone fis.h.i.+ng or something to get away for a day or two?'

This was the wrong answer and Glitsky clucked in frustration. 'Your husband told me. He went by the school.' A meaningful glance. 'I know that Diz also told you that, which brings up the question of why are you pretending you didn't know. It also brings us back to why he ran.'

'Maybe because he was scared, Abe. People get scared, even when they haven't done anything wrong.'

'That's true,' Glitsky conceded. 'They also get scared when they think they're going to get caught for what they did. I've seen it happen. Also, I notice you didn't answer the first part, why you're pretending you didn't know.'

Suddenly her eyes really flashed. 'Because there's things I don't have to tell anybody, that's why. Even you, even Dismas. I've got a right to a little privacy, Abe, just like you do. How about that?' She took a few steps away, then stopped abruptly and turned back. 'And while we're on questions, I've got one for you - what did you come down here for? It wasn't to check on me and you said it was. Why did you lie to me?'

Glitsky held out his hands. She was right. She was Hardy's wife, one of his closest friends in her own right, and being in jail didn't make her a criminal, a suspect, or anyone he had to deal with professionally. She was still the woman who'd cared for his boys for a month after his wife had died. 'I'm really sorry.'

She relented. A little. Arms still crossed, though. 'Sorry's good. Sorry's a start.' But she wasn't giving up on her questions, either. 'So why did you come down here?'

'I couldn't sleep. I thought maybe you could tell me something I didn't know about Bree. It occurred to me that with everything else going on, n.o.body's thought to ask you.'

'But I don't know anything about Bree.'

'You don't have any ideas about who killed her? Ron didn't have any?'

'I'm sure nothing he didn't already tell the grand jury.'

Glitsky tried to smile. 'I'm on your side, Frannie. Always. How about if I ask you some questions, to see if they point me toward anybody else?'

Her shoulders slumped, the fatigue showing everywhere. 'How about if we sit down?'

They'd been at it maybe twenty minutes, Glitsky feeling that he'd barely begun when the guard knocked and the door opened, and Dismas Hardy appeared. 'Party in Room A,' he said. But he didn't look like he was partying, Glitsky thought. More like he'd been through some kind of sleep torture.

Frannie got up and walked to him. Glitsky stood, realizing that his interview was over for tonight. He came around the table. 'OK you lovebirds. I can take a hint.'

'Abe, that's OK, we're just-'

But he was at the door. 'I know what you're doing. Diz, I'll be in my office for awhile.' He turned to go, then remembered something. 'Oh, and Frannie?'

'Yes?'

He pointed a finger at her. 'Eat.'

Then they were alone, holding each other. Hardy had come straight from the Airport Hilton, wanting to fill her in. He gave her Ron's note, which seemed to make almost no impression. And really, he reasoned, why should it? It would have no effect, if any, for days. More than that, though, Frannie was far more concerned with another issue. 'Before anything else,' she said, 'this thing about me and Ron.'

'OK.' His breathing had stopped and that was all he could get out.

'We liked each other, like each other.' A pause. 'Maybe a little more than that.'

Hardy tried to keep any hurt or recrimination out of his voice. 'How much more?'

His wife sighed. 'I think for a while I was infatuated with him. He seemed to feel the same way about me.' She read something in his face and let go of his hands. 'Now you're going to hate me, aren't you?'

'No,' he said. 'Nothing's going to make me hate you. I love you.'

She stared at him for another beat. 'We didn't...' She stopped. 'But he was there, Dismas. He was a friend. He listened. I just want you to understand.'

'I don't listen?'

'Yes. I mean no, you know you don't. Not about some things. You glaze over - the kids, school life, all those what you call mindless suburban activities. And I don't even blame you, not really. I know it's not the most exciting stuff in the world, but it's my life, and sometimes it's just horribly lonely and mind-numbing, and then suddenly there was this nice man who didn't think all of this was tedious to listen to.'

'So he'd listen, did he, old Ron?'

She nodded, going on. 'Ron and I, we were just having so many of the same issues with the kids...'

He couldn't hold it any longer. 'Wait a minute, Frannie. What about us? I seem to remember we're doing some of the same things, too - live in the same house, do the kid thing, have friends over, like that. That stuff doesn't count?'

'I know, I know, you're right.' There was pain in her voice, too, perhaps some faint overtones of the desperation she must have been feeling. 'But you know how things have changed with us. We're different. I hope you're still committed-'

'Of course I'm still committed. You think I'd be sitting here listening to all this if I wasn't pretty d.a.m.n committed?'

'OK, I know that. But the romance...' She stopped. They both knew what she was getting at. The romance, and there used to be plenty, had been all but swallowed by the maw of the mundane.

And Hardy knew why. 'We're both working now. We work all the time.'

'Well, whatever the reason, we both know we're not the way we used to be. There's whole areas of each other's lives that we don't have the time or energy for anymore.'

Hardy brought his hand up to his eyes, all the fatigue of the past hours suddenly weighing in. Everything Frannie was saying was true. n.o.body's lives were the way they used to be. But the accommodation he'd reached was to put it out of his mind. He had his job, making the money. She had hers, the house and the children's day-to-day activities. They shared the children's discipline and some organized playtime. They weren't actually fighting; they were both competent, so there wasn't much to fight about. This was adulthood and it was often not much fun. So what?

But she evidently had reached another conclusion - she needed something he wasn't giving her and she'd gone out and found it. 'What are you thinking?' she asked. 'Talk to me.'

'I'm thinking everybody...' He started over. 'I mean, married people... I don't know.' He rubbed at his burning eyes. 'I don't know.'

'We all get further apart?'

He shook his head. 'Maybe. But I've been trying to support us all here for the last few years. It takes a little bit of my time. h.e.l.l, it takes all my time. You think I'm OK with no leisure in my life? You think I don't miss it, too, the fun? But what's the option? Live poor, let the kids starve...?'

'n.o.body's going to starve, Dismas. It's not that. You know that.'

'Actually, I'm not sure that I do know that. It feels like if I stop working, somebody might. The world might end.'

'But you never talked to me about that, did you? That fear?' He shrugged and she pressed him. 'Because you don't talk about those kinds of things, not anymore.'

He shrugged that off. 'I never did, Frannie. n.o.body wants to hear about that, all those nebulous fears.'

'Yes they do. And nebulous hopes, too, and little insignificant worries that just need to get aired out, and the occasional dream that's just a dream, like we used to have all the time. What we were going to do when we got older, when the kids have moved out?'

'Frannie, you're talking a decade, minimum. We don't even know if we'll be alive in a decade. Why talk about it?'

She folded her arms. 'That's exactly what I mean. We don't know something for sure and therefore it's not on the Top Forty list of acceptable topics.'

'But Ron does, is that it? You've got hopes and fears you can share with Ron, but not with me?' He was hurt and mad and starting to swing pretty freely, maybe rock her with a roundhouse. 'So what kind of dreams did you and Ron share and talk about?'

'I didn't have any dreams with Ron, Dismas. I only have dreams with you.'

That stopped him. Her eyes were beginning to well up. He reached over, pulling her to him. 'I don't want to yell at you,' he said. 'I don't understand this right now. I'm trying.' He pulled back so he could look at her. 'I've been trying with our whole lives, too, you know. I do try to be there for you and the kids. I haven't been distant on purpose.'

'I know. I shouldn't have let Ron even be friends, not that way. That's all it was, really, but I... it seemed innocent, really, starting out. You know, connecting finally to somebody.'

Hardy knew. Just before Vincent had been born, he'd had the same experience - connection, infatuation. Fire that he had ducked away from before it had burned him and Frannie. He knew.

'I shouldn't have let him get important,' she said. 'I should have seen it and stopped, but we were just talking. It didn't seem it would hurt anything.'

'Except it's put you here.'

That brought them back to where they were, although of course they hadn't gone anywhere. It was almost midnight and the next morning their own children would be waking up at Grandma's with neither of their parents around.

Frannie, s.h.i.+vering now, looked down at her orange jumpsuit. This time the tears did well over.

'I'm so sorry, Dismas. I'm so sorry.'

He pulled her back to him, and moved his hand up and down over her back, feeling pretty d.a.m.n sorry himself.

Glitsky was at his desk, sipping from a mug of tepid tea, trying to get a take on what Frannie had told him, which wasn't much that he hadn't already known. Bree and the oil wars. But so what? He'd been a homicide inspector for a long time and the idea that this was some sort of business-related slaying was, for him, almost too far-fetched to consider.

When he got back to basics and asked himself who stood to benefit from Bree's death, he came up with Ron. So regardless of how much he'd prefer Sharron Pratt and Scott Randall to be wrong, he was thinking he'd be wise not to forget entirely about him. It might be nice to find an alternative suspect, but if homicide took the road less travelled and found no one on it after the DA had shown them the way, he had a hunch he'd be hearing about it for a decade or two.

He was vaguely aware of two inspectors writing reports out in the open homicide detail. Suddenly there was a shadow in his doorway and he looked up.

'I was half expecting you not to show.'

'Which half?' Hardy asked. He stepped into the office and crab-walked around the desk, which barely fit into the room, to one of the wooden chairs wedged into the tiny s.p.a.ce that was left. 'Frannie told me you two had a nice talk.'

The lieutenant was twirling his mug around and around, wrestling with something. 'I'm not too happy about what I heard, Diz. I'm thinking it may be Ron after all.'

Hardy was poker-faced, keeping it casual. 'How could he have done it? I mean like when and where?'

'I know. There are problems with it.'

'Like he wasn't there? Would that be one of them?' Low-key. But the last thing he needed now was to get homicide on Ron. Because they would have a good shot at finding him, which would put him and his kids back in the system. It would eliminate Hardy's own private agenda - the only one, he believed, that could produce a satisfactory conclusion to this mess. So he asked, 'What do you have on Bree? What did Griffin get?'

The mug stopped halfway to Glitsky's mouth, then came back down. Glitsky's normal expression was something between a frown and a scowl, and now it moved a few degrees south. 'Carl might have had the case closed in two hours if he hadn't died. Or he might have been nowhere. Either way, he didn't get to writing up his reports. Paperwork wasn't his strong point.'

'What was?'

Glitsky narrowed his eyes. 'What are you getting at?'

'Well, he must have done something. Just because there's not much in the file doesn't mean there's nothing.' He had Glitsky's interest now and he kept going. 'Was Griffin married? Did he talk to his wife? Anybody in the office here? Who supervised at the crime scene? They must have gotten some kind of physical evidence at Bree's place. I mean, Griffin was in this, right? He had to have something.'

Hardy found it a lot easier getting into the penthouse with the key that Ron had given him.

Once inside, he turned and locked the door behind him, then switched on the lights. Nothing obvious had changed since he and Canetta had walked out together last night, but Hardy felt a dim charge as he started for the office with the answering machine.

What was it?

Stopping completely, telling himself that it was probably the difference between being merely tired, which was last night, and semi-comatose, now, he still took a minute getting his bearings, casting his eyes around the periphery of the rooms.

While he'd been visiting downtown with Frannie and then Glitsky, he'd left his gun stowed in his trunk. When he got back to his car he'd tucked it back into his belt. Now, feeling stupid about it for the second time in five hours didn't stop him from pulling it out again.

The paintings, the view, the dining area, all the same. It was nothing, he concluded. He was the walking dead at the moment, seeing ghosts, maybe playing with them.

But suddenly there it was.

He'd gone out to the balcony last night, and to do that he'd pulled the drapes aside a foot or two. He remembered it specifically because from the inside of the house, where he stood now, he hadn't been able to see the French doors leading out to the balcony from which Bree had been thrown. He hadn't known that the doors were there.