“Okay.” He took a long gulping drag at his cigarette.
“Baby, listen to me. You’ve got to be prepared with your story. You’re a building contractor, and you were working for Ted and me. Ted was never around but I was. I seemed a little bit bored, had my nose in every detail, but other than that I was all right. I never hit on you. You never hit on me. Why would you mess up a sweet deal like the one you had? They were filthy rich. You have no idea who might have killed Ted. You have no idea if Ted and I were happy. We seemed happy when you saw us together, but, honestly, you weren’t paying that much attention. That’s it. That’s all you know.”
“Okay.”
“Repeat it back to me.”
“Jesus, Miranda, I got it.”
“Okay. So tell me about your night with Polly. How’d that go?”
“Fine. We had lunch at Cooley’s, kept drinking and left around three. We went back to my place. She was hammered, passed out before I left.”
“Did you fuck her?”
“Jesus, Miranda.”
“I’m not asking for me. I don’t care. It’s probably best that you fucked her, in case she gets asked about the story.”
“Why would she get asked? I thought you said—”
“She’s not going to get asked, but I’m just making sure. She’s your alibi. I want to know what she’s going to say on the off chance that the police check your alibi.”
“She’ll be good. She’ll probably say I’m her boyfriend, and we did some drinking, then had sex back at my place. She’ll say I was there all night. She’s not going to say she passed out. I know her.”
“She was still there when you got back?”
“Yeah, she hadn’t moved.”
“You woke her up?”
“Yeah, I did just what you said. I woke her up. It was about ten, and I took her back to her car.”
Another car wound by out on Micmac, and Brad watched it again. He’d tossed his cigarette, and with his free hand he tugged a little on one of his sideburns. “Okay,” I said. “I’m going to get going. Tell the crew to take a couple days off, okay, just till I figure out what I’m going to do. I’ll call you, but only for work reasons, okay?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Nothing bad’s going to happen, Brad. I promise. I don’t think the police are ever even going to talk to you.”
“I know.”
I stepped forward, glancing toward the road to make sure it was empty, then took Brad’s big knuckly hand and guided it down the front of the yoga pants I was wearing. I wasn’t wearing any underpants, and on Friday, during the few hours that I was in Miami, I’d gone with my girlfriends to a spa and suffered through a complete Brazilian. I pushed Brad’s fingers down far between my legs. “And when this is all over,” I whispered, “you and I are going to take a long vacation on some tropical island where no one knows us, and I am going to fuck you blind.”
“Okay, Jesus,” he said, pulling his hand away from me and taking a step back. “Someone will see us.”
“You worry too much,” I said. “That’s your problem.”
“Okay,” he said again, and pulled another cigarette from his pack. He glanced back at his truck, probably thinking about the bottle he kept there in the glove compartment.
“Gotta go, baby,” I said, and got in my car. “Stay cool, okay?”
He nodded, and I U-turned out of the driveway. Brad had been a big mistake. That was pretty clear, and all I could do was hope that the police kept their investigation to Boston, and never questioned him.
I got back onto I-95 and settled in for the long haul to Orono. After marrying Ted I’d tried to talk my mother into moving closer to Boston, but she’d insisted on staying up in Maine. I gave her some money and she ended up buying a 1,600-square-foot town house that she fell in love with because of a stainless steel fridge and some granite countertops. I told her that owning a nice house in Orono was like owning half a parking spot in Boston, but she still didn’t want to move down. I think the reason she wanted to stay in Maine was to rub her newfound money in the faces of her friends. Along with the condo, she also got a new wardrobe and a Mercedes.
“Did you tell your father I’m driving a Mercedes now? We had one once, you know, for about five minutes,” she said to me after she’d bought the car.
“Dad doesn’t care what car you drive, Mom.”
“You think because he’s some kind of intellectual he doesn’t care what car someone drives.”
“No, he just doesn’t care what kind of car you drive, Mom.”