Gus eyed her in that frank, uncompromising way he had. “I almost called the marshals on you.”
Bernadette’s heart jumped at his seriousness. She knew him so well. She remembered the tears and anger and hope she and her friends had felt when he’d left for Vietnam. They’d thought they understood the world, but they’d understood nothing. He didn’t write during the months he was gone. But she didn’t write, either, and only years later did she recognize her fault in that omission. She’d simply tried not to think about Gus Winter and what he was doing, where he was. And when he came back and kept to himself, hiking, working, she’d pushed ahead with her own life and left him to his. Then came his brother and sister-in-law’s deaths, a tragedy so impossible to imagine that it paralyzed everyone – everyone except Gus.
“Gus,” she whispered. “What’s happened?”
“Harris Mayer is dead. Mackenzie and Andrew Rook found him earlier today.”
“Harris? How?” Bernadette tried to grasp what Gus had just said, and pictured Harris, with his bow ties and wingtips, his patrician manner, his compulsions. “I can’t believe it. Did he have a heart attack? It wasn’t -” She paused to catch her breath. “Gus, was Harris murdered?”
Gus wasn’t one to dance around a point. “He was knifed to death.”
Bernadette heard herself gasp, but she couldn’t speak. She stared out at the water, spotting two loons near the opposite shore. They were territorial birds, the only pair on the relatively small lake. They’d had babies in June, and she’d taken delight, as always, watching them ride along on their parents’ backs.
I just want to watch the loons.
“Beanie?”
Years in the courtroom had accustomed her to suppressing her emotions, but she could feel her throat tighten. “Harris got such a kick out of the loons. He and his wife would sit out here for the longest time. I never had the patience.” She blinked back tears and turned to Gus, who didn’t seem to have moved at all since she’d arrived. She tried to pull herself together. “Things change. Harris was flawed, troubled, brilliant, selfish…”
“I’m sorry, Beanie.”
Gus’s simple statement ripped right through the shield she was trying to put up around her emotions. Tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them away quickly, turning from him. “Who told you?”
“Nate called. Mackenzie and Rook found Harris at a rooming house in a rough section of Washington.”
Bernadette nodded. “I know which one. Mackenzie and I – she was with me when I went to rescue him one day. She must have remembered. Is that what Nate told you?”
“Yes.”
“Harris was a friend, and he called me for help. I picked him up and took him home, and I never did it again. He never asked, so it was easy to just…to just walk away.” She turned to Gus. “Do the police have a suspect?”
He shook his head. “Nate asked if I’d seen Cal.”
“Cal? What? Is he a suspect?”
“I just said -”
“I know what you just said.” She immediately regretted her sharp tone. A strong breeze brought out goose bumps on her bare arms, and she shivered. “You’ve never liked Cal.”
Gus shrugged. “I don’t have to like him. I’m not the one who married him.”
“You didn’t approve -”
“Was I supposed to?” He didn’t raise his voice. “He’s out of your life now. Maybe it’s time you stopped looking after him.”
Bernadette grabbed Gus’s arm just above the elbow and squeezed hard. “Gus, what aren’t you telling me?”
“Beanie…”
“We’ve known each other since we were kids,” she said. “I was here when you went off to Vietnam. I was here when Harry and Jill were killed. I’m not a stranger. I know you.” She dropped her hand from his arm. “If there’s something you need to tell me, just do it.”
He squinted out at the lake, the loons gone now, as if they’d sensed the tension across the water on the dock and had taken cover. Without preamble, Gus said, “Cal brought women to the house.”
“Here?”
“Yeah, Beanie.” He shifted his gaze back to her. “Here.”
More to grasp. Harris was dead, and Cal – her husband, she thought, had betrayed her. She couldn’t bring herself to look at Gus. “When? For how long?”
“I don’t know. I first noticed about eight months ago. It was obvious you two weren’t going to make it.”
She felt heat rise into her face, embarrassment and anger boiling up in her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I didn’t want to stick myself between the two of you.”
“Why tell me now?”
“Because I don’t like what’s going on around here, and I figured it’s time to get everything out on the table. Doesn’t matter if it has anything to do with Harris’s death or the attack on Mackenzie and that other hiker last week.”
“They were both knifed,” Bernadette said, almost to herself. “Like Harris.”