It was as if he feared someone might have seen what he did.
Anna continued to walk along behind them as they exited the church. As Charlotte and Bill emerged into the daylight, they encountered people who had been waiting for Charlotte so they could offer their condolences. Charlotte found herself in the arms of one person after another. Bill stepped back, gave her some space.
As Anna came out of the church, she moved slowly past those paying their respects to Charlotte, down the steps, and toward the sidewalk. But instead of heading for her car, she stood close to the street and watched.
She thought more about what “It worked” might have meant.
It means nothing.
Yet Anna could not shake the feeling there was something conspiratorial in the way Bill had said it. That it was their secret.
That they had pulled off something.
No, Anna thought. I’m just looking for a way to ease my own conscience.
She’d barely slept since Paul’s death. She had not been able to shake the guilt she felt. Paul’s suicide was proof she’d failed him. She should have pressured him to go into the hospital that night. She should have told him his friend Bill was wrong to talk him out of—
Bill talked him out of going to the hospital.
“It worked.”
The words suggested the successful execution of a plan. What plan? Some kind of plan that would result in Paul’s death?
Could you really make a man take his own life?
No, impossible.
Unless you could somehow drive him to it. Push him to the brink of madness. Make him believe something that was unbelievable.
“It worked.”
Anna had accepted that there was only one explanation for the notes in that old Underwood. Paul was writing them. He might not have known it, but he was. His memory lapses were evidence that it was possible.
There was, however, something about Paul’s typewriter delusion that left her troubled. Simply put, it was insufficiently elaborate. It was not wide-ranging. It was too specific. It did not live up to the standard set by other patients she’d seen over the years who’d endured hallucinations. She’d had clients who’d spun out conspiracies of great intricacy. One man she had seen three years ago was convinced Russian president Vladimir Putin was trying to brainwash him into turning over U.S. government secrets. Putin was communicating with him through various household appliances, including his toaster oven. That part was strange enough, but why would this man be tapped to hand over top secret information, when he worked at Dairy Queen?
That job was just a cover, he explained to Dr. White. He was, in fact, in touch with people from the CIA and the NSA. That’s why it all made sense.
No matter how much she challenged his fantasy with logical questions, there was always an answer. She finally had him see a psychiatrist, who wrote out a scrip to keep his delusions in check.
But Paul, well, Paul was not like that.
His delusion was not immersed in multiple hallucinations and conspiracy theories. It was far from elaborate. It was specific. In every other respect, Paul Davis presented as a completely sane individual.
He didn’t fit the pattern.
He didn’t behave like a delusional man. Believing that Paul wrote those notes required some forcing of the proverbial square peg into a round hole.
What if, Anna wondered, there was no delusion at all?
The notes were real. But they were not coming from those two dead women.
“It worked.”
How would you do it? Anna wondered. How could you make someone believe something so fantastical?
The crowd was breaking up. Word had quietly spread that Paul was to be cremated, so there would be no trip to a cemetery for burial. Everyone who had wanted to pass on a few comforting words to Charlotte was now heading to the church parking lot. Doors opened and closed, car engines came to life.
The minister came out to say a few words to Charlotte. Bill had rejoined her, standing alongside, nodding earnestly as the minister spoke.
And then it was over.
Charlotte thanked the minister and shook his hand, then turned and headed for the parking lot. Bill walked with her. Maybe he was going to drive her home.
No. Charlotte took a key from her purse, unlocked her car. Bill opened the driver’s door for her.
A true gentleman.
They were talking. Bill said something that prompted Charlotte to shake her head. Then she seemed to cast her eye beyond them, as if checking to see whether anyone was looking their way.
Anna feigned disinterest. She glanced at her watch. But from the corner of her eye, she observed.
Before getting behind the wheel, Charlotte rested her hand on the top of the door. Bill Myers placed his over it and held it there for a good ten seconds. Then Charlotte pulled her hand away, sat in the driver’s seat, and closed the door. Bill stepped back as she keyed the engine, and he turned in Anna’s direction.
Quickly, he drew his suit jacket together in front and buttoned it. He then slipped a hand into the front pocket of his pants and started walking across the parking lot toward another car.
Anna was almost certain she knew what he had just done. She couldn’t have sworn to it in a court of law. She’d have been laughed at. She’d have been mocked for professing to have astonishing observational skills.
But she was sure he was struggling to conceal an erection.
Not the usual response at a funeral, Anna mused.
Bill got into a car, fired it up, turned left onto Naugatuck. Charlotte had pulled out seconds earlier, heading right.
Anna rushed to her own car and got behind the wheel. She pondered what, if anything, to do now. To head home, she would have turned left out of the lot but found herself heading right.
After Charlotte.
Did she want to talk to Charlotte one more time? Start by telling her again how sorry she was, how she’d failed Paul? And then ask what Bill Myers had meant when he whispered those two words in her ear?
And if Anna were to do that, what, seriously, did she expect to achieve?
It was a stupid idea.
And then it hit her.
She was following the wrong car. Bill Myers was the one she wanted to talk to.
Anna checked her mirrors, did a quick U-turn, and went after the other car.
Fifty-Two
It would be so much better if he just got hit by a bus,” Bill had said to Charlotte one night a few weeks earlier when Paul believed she was helping a retired couple decide how much their East Broadway beach house was worth. In fact, Bill and Charlotte were sitting naked in the hot tub out back of a nice three-bedroom on Grassy Hill Road that was listed at $376,000.
“What did you say?” Charlotte asked, trying to hear him over the bubbling of the jets.
“Nothing,” he said. “It was stupid.”
“No, tell me.”
So he repeated it.
Charlotte said, “It’s stupid because you can’t wait around for something like that to happen. You can’t wait for the bus driver to take his eyes off the road. You can’t wait for a pedestrian to make the mistake of not looking both ways.” She thought a moment. “The only way it would work would be if you could make someone decide to step in front of the bus.”
Bill rubbed his feet up against hers under the water. “Well, that’s not exactly possible.”
She moved closer to him, reached below the water, and took him firmly in her hand. As she stroked, she said, “It doesn’t have to be a bus.”
She told him her idea. How Paul’s current mental state played right into it. She had just about every detail worked out.
“That’s . . . pretty out there,” Bill said, managing to concentrate despite the distraction.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “But I’m going to need help. A lot of help. Some of it technical.”
“Like what?”
“Can you set up a phone’s ring to be anything you want? Like, if I recorded something, could I turn it into a ringtone?”