I missed my wife.
Loren Muse had a something-eating grin locked onto her face. No poker player was Muse, that was for certain. “I got all the bills. Computer records too. The works.” Then she turned to my daughter. “Hi, Cara.”
“Loren!” Cara shouted. She jumped out of the car. Cara liked Muse. Muse was good with kids. Muse had never been married, never had any of her own. A few weeks ago I met her most recent boyfriend. The guy wasn’t in her league, but that again seemed to be the norm for single women of a certain age.
Muse and I spread everything out on the den floor—witness statements, police reports, phone records, all the fraternity’s bills. We started with the frat bills, and man, there were a ton. Every cell phone. Every beer order. Every online purchase.
“So,” Muse said, “what are we looking for?”
“Damned if I know.”
“I thought you had something.”
“Just a feeling.”
“Oh, gag me. Please don’t tell me you’re playing a hunch.”
“I would never,” I said.
We kept looking.
“So,” she said, “basically we’re going through these papers looking for a sign saying, ‘Big Clue This Way’?”
“We are looking,” I said, “for a catalyst.”
“Good word. In what way?”
“I don’t know, Muse. But the answer is here. I can almost see it.”
“Ooookay,” she said, managing with great effort not to roll her eyes.
So we searched. They ordered pizza pretty much every night, eight pies, from Pizza-To-Go, directly billed to their credit card. They had Netflix so that they could rent regular DVD movies, three at a time delivered to your door, and something called HotFlixxx, so they could do the same with dirty ones. They ordered fraternity frat-logo golf shirts. The frat logo was also on golf balls, tons of them.
We tried to put them in some kind of order. I don’t have a clue why.
I lifted the HotFlixxx bill and showed it to Muse. “Cheap,” I said.
“The Internet makes porn readily accessible and thus affordable to the masses.”
“Good to know,” I said.
“But this might be an opening,” Muse said.
“What is?”
“Young boys, hot women. Or in this case, woman.”
“Explain,” I said.
“I want to hire someone outside the office.”
“Who?”
“A private eye named Cingle Shaker. Have you heard of her?”
I nodded. I had.
“Forget heard,” she said. “Have you seen her?”
“No.”
“But you’ve heard?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve heard.”
“Well, it’s no exaggeration. Cingle Shaker has a body that not only stops traffic, it pulls up the road and bulldozes highway dividers. And she’s very good. If anyone can get lawyered-up frat boys to spill, it’s Cingle.”
“Okay,” I said.
Hours later—I can’t even tell you how many—Muse started to rise. “There’s nothing here, Cope.”
“Seems that way, doesn’t it?”
“You have Chamique’s direct first thing in the morning?”
“Yes.”
She stood over me. “Your time would be better spent working on that.”
I did a mock “yes, sir” salute in her direction. Chamique and I had worked on her testimony already, but not as hard as one might imagine. I didn’t want her to sound practiced. I had another strategy in mind.
“I’ll get you what I can,” Muse said.
She stomped out the door in her best lick-da-world mode.
Estelle made us all dinner—spaghetti and meatballs. Estelle is not a great cook, but it went down. I took Cara out for Van Dyke’s ice cream afterward, a special treat. She was chattier now. In the rearview mirror, I could see her strapped into the car seat. When I was a kid, we were allowed to sit in the front seat. Now you had to be of drinking age before that was permissible.
I tried to listen to what she was saying but Cara was just yakking pure nonsense the way kids do. It seems Brittany had been mean to Morgan so Kyle threw an eraser and how come Kylie, not Kylie G, Kylie N—there were two Kylies in her class—how come Kylie N didn’t want to go on the swings at recess unless Kiera was on one too? I kept glancing at her animated face, scrunched up as though imitating an adult. I got hit with that overwhelming feeling. It sneaked up on me. Parents get it from time to time. You are looking at your child and it is an ordinary moment, not like they are onstage or hitting a winning shot, just sitting there and you look at them and you know that they are your whole life and that moves you and scares you and makes you want to stop time.
I had lost a sister. I had lost a wife. And most recently, I had lost my father. In all three cases I had gotten off the canvas. But as I looked at Cara, at the way she talked with her hands and widened her eyes, I knew that there was indeed one blow from which I could never rise.
I thought about my father. In the woods. With that shovel. His heart broken. Searching for his little girl. I thought about my mother. She had run away. I didn’t know where she was. Sometimes I still think about searching her out. But not that often anymore. For years I had hated her. Maybe I still do. Or maybe now that I have a child I understand a little better about the pain she must have been going through.
When we walked back into the house, the phone rang. Estelle took Cara from me. I picked it up and said hello.
“We got a problem, Cope.”
It was my brother-in-law, Bob, Greta’s husband. He was chairman of the charitable fund JaneCare. Greta, Bob and I had founded it after my wife’s death. I had gotten lots of wonderful press for it. My living memorial to my lovely, beautiful, gentle wife.
My, what a wonderful husband I must have been.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Your rape case is costing us big-time. Edward Jenrette’s father has gotten several of his friends to back out of their commitments.”
I closed my eyes. “Classy.”
“Worse, he’s making noises that we’ve embezzled funds. EJ Jenrette is a well-connected son of a bitch. I’m already getting calls.”
“So we open our books,” I said. “They won’t find anything.”
“Don’t be naive, Cope. We compete with other charities for the giving dollar. If there is even a whiff of a scandal, we’re finished.”