“Max would have enjoyed that. He’d have given you chapter and verse on your mother’s sexual preferences.”
“And I’d have blown his balls off.” There is steel in Nadine’s voice. “I need more vodka,” she says, starting down the hall. “Am I crazy, or did I hear somebody sing part of the Chuck Berry song?”
“That was Max on his way out. He knew you were back here. He saw you arrive.”
“Was he following me?”
I don’t want to get into the issue of Jet. “I don’t think so, but I don’t know.”
“Did you ask about his alibi? Who told Sally that he slept with my mother?”
“Tallulah Williams, he claimed. The family maid.”
Nadine stops in the kitchen and turns back to me. “I’ve met Tallulah. I can see her knowing about an affair. I’m not sure I can see her telling Sally something that would hurt her, though.”
“I may go talk to her about it. Tomorrow.”
“Did Max tell you anything else?”
“Let’s get that drink first.”
She goes to the freezer for the Crater Lake, then drinks straight from the neck of the bottle. As I mix myself a gin and tonic, I tell her that Max admitted responsibility for the break-ins at her store and home. Then I give her a quick explanation of Sally’s data cache. Finally I tell her what Max said about the murder of my father’s wife and daughter.
“These guys,” Nadine says, practically grinding her teeth in fury. “Their time is so over. They need to be erased.”
“I thought you were a bleeding-heart liberal.”
She looks up sharply. “Boy, have you got me wrong. I’m for social justice, sure. But I’m for moral justice above all. And those Poker Club bastards belong in jail or in the ground.”
She takes another swig of vodka. “Have you told me everything?”
Everything except the blackmail video of me having sex with Jet Matheson—
“Did Max talk shit about my mother?”
“No,” I lie. “But he did have an affair with her.”
She shakes her head and takes another slug from the frosted bottle.
“Take it easy, now. What do you want to do? Besides get drunk. Are you hungry? I really can fix us something.”
A mocking laugh escapes her lips. “No, thanks. My friend’s expecting me.”
“Well. Let me walk you out to your car. Just to be sure Max isn’t out there waiting for you. He could have doubled back.”
“Okay.”
Pistols in hand, we walk out into the dark and make our way over to Nadine’s Acura, which she parked behind some hedges at the side of my house. She gives me a pained smile, then unlocks the car and gets behind the wheel.
“Drive fast to the gate,” I advise her. “And keep your pistol in your hand while you’re waiting for it to open.”
She nods once, looking impatient to leave.
“Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine.” She looks down at the steering wheel. “Look . . . I found something back in the bathroom. I thought Max might see them if he went through the house, which I assumed would be bad.”
“What are you talking about?”
She sticks her arm through the window, her closed fist turned down. “Open your hand.”
I open my hand beneath hers.
When she opens her fist, two sapphire earrings drop into my palm. A rush of recognition floods through me, and color rises into my cheeks.
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Nadine says.
Then she shifts the car into gear and drives away over the grass.
Chapter 28
After Nadine’s abrupt departure, I sit at the kitchen table with my pistol at my left hand, drinking gin and staring at the Watchman website on my laptop. Ben Tate has been drafting a couple of stories based on the information I sent him earlier, but I’m not sure how far we’re going to be able to go in print. Byron Ellis still hasn’t returned my latest call, and without the coroner backing up my assertions about human bones and blood being found at the mill site, we can’t publish. If Quinn Ferris’s experts come through, we could, but apparently they’ve gotten wind of the controversy down here and have raised chain-of-evidence questions. But these concerns seem secondary now.
The realization that Max can betray Jet and me to Paul whenever he chooses has fundamentally altered my perception of reality. Max could be right: if Paul is confronted with a video of Jet making love to me, he might well flip out and kill me. After all, I do owe him my life. How big a leap would it be for him to decide he has the right to call in his marker? Before Jet left earlier, she instructed me not to call her. But I have no choice now. After pressing the speed-dial button for her number, I sit and stare at my burner phone without much hope of an answer.
After four rings, she hisses, “I said not to call.”
“Max showed up after you left.”
“What?”
“While Nadine was still here. She hid. Max knows about us, Jet. He took pictures.”
“Pictures of what? Us hugging on the patio?”
“Yes, but he was out there yesterday, too. He must have been following you. He filmed us on the steamer chair.”
This time I hear only staticky silence.
“Jet?”
“He didn’t really . . .”
“I haven’t seen the video, but I saw a still shot of us hugging. And he knew details from the patio yesterday. I believe him.”
“We’re dead,” she says flatly.
“No. But we have to start thinking about coming clean with Paul, before Max does.”
“Marshall . . . we can’t tell Paul now. He just lost his mother.”
“Hearing it from Max would be worse. Did you ever really think there was a way for us to be together without confronting Paul?”
“Of course not. But there’s a world of difference between hearing that your wife wants to leave you and watching her screw your best friend in living color.”
“You and Max agree on that. I don’t really think there’s much difference.”
“With Paul there would be. If he sees me strip-walking across that lawn . . . then riding you? He’ll snap.”
“You’re not giving him enough credit.”
“Oh, you don’t know. You don’t live with him. I tell you things, and you just don’t hear me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“His head injuries, for one thing. Remember those? Blast-induced TBIs?”
“Of course.”
“How many IEDs did he survive?”
I have to think about this. “Uhh . . . two direct ones that I know about. He suffered shock impacts from, what, three more?”
“Four more. He gets terrible headaches, Marshall. He’s distracted, irritable, depressed. At Kevin’s baseball games, he gets violently angry. That’s the main reason I don’t go. I’m worried he’ll charge onto the field and assault a referee.”
I have probably tried to minimize Paul’s problems in my mind.
“Could Max have shown the video to him already?” she asks.
“He could have, but I don’t think he has. Sally apparently created some sort of data cache before she died. A bunch of files that could destroy Max and the Poker Club. Information about the Azure Dragon deal. Has Max told you that?”
“No. Did he say he told me?”
“No. But he’s convinced that his partners will kill him over this stuff, and he wants me to find it for him. He’s using the video to motivate me.”
Jet goes silent as she processes this. “Do you think those passwords I found on the necklace could open this cache, or whatever it is?”
“I do. Max said it was mostly digital files. But something just occurred to me. Why would Sally gather a bunch of damning evidence if she wasn’t going to use it? Why go to the trouble if she was just going to kill herself? Or give it to someone else who wouldn’t use it?”
“Maybe it was like my Bitcoin plan,” Jet suggests. “She considered using it, but in the end she went another way. Or Max killed her before she could.”
“For some reason, I don’t think that’s it. He’s really scared.”
“Marshall, it’s time to stop screwing around. It’s time to set my plan in motion.”
“Your Seychelles plan?”
“Yes. We leak to the Poker Club that Max cut them out of a bribe from the Chinese, then use the overseas bank account to back up the story.”