They all climb out of the SUV into a small courtyard dominated by a lush orange tree laden with fruit, and a small tiled fountain with no water in it.
“This way,” says the man Ariel doesn’t recognize, who must be a local operative. She assumes that this place is a CIA safe house, up these stone stairs that wind around the courtyard, and down the cool tiled loggia, and behind the battered old wooden door, a homey-looking apartment. There don’t seem to be any gates or other security on the windows, and Ariel feels relief at this good news. Her bar has fallen pretty damned low. On the other hand, there’s a tripod with a small video camera, which Antonucci now activates.
“Have a seat, please.” Griffiths indicates a dining table. The local guy now leaves the apartment, and Antonucci disappears behind a door.
“What do you want from me?” Ariel asks.
“Have. A. Seat. We don’t have a lot of time.”
Ariel doesn’t know what this could mean, but she’s afraid to ask.
“How did you meet your husband?”
Ariel expected this line of questioning, but still she’s unsure how much to tell this woman, what level of detail the CIA wants, and why. Ariel is prepared to provide as many details as anyone could bear—lines of verbatim dialogue, facial expressions, first-kiss choreography. It wasn’t all that long ago, it was important, it was memorable. But that doesn’t make it relevant.
“He was a customer in my shop.” She begins as simply as possible. If anyone wants embellishment, they can ask. Like Jerry once advised her when preparing for a zoning-board hearing: The answer to the question Do you know the time? should be simply Yes.
“This is Main Street Books?” Griffiths asks. “Clever name.”
The name came with the shop when Ariel bought it, but she doesn’t need to explain this.
“Did he purchase any books?”
“Why do you care?”
“I don’t really need to say this, do I? That I’m the one asking the questions? Because it feels like a hackneyed line from a cheesy police drama on network television.”
“Yes, he bought books.”
“Do you remember which?”
“As a matter of fact I do. Both were new bestsellers in hardcover, one a crime novel, the other a presidential history.”
“Are those subjects that particularly interest him?”
“I assume so.”
“You never asked? Never followed up?”
“No.”
“Because to me? To me, those sound like the types of books that a guy would buy if he had no fucking idea what he wanted to read, and was in a bookstore for another reason.”
“As I said: I didn’t follow up.”
“And he asked you out, right there?”
“No.”
“So the next time you saw him?”
“I ran into him at a restaurant.”
“Did he arrive first, or did you? To this chance encounter?”
“He did.”
“And he asked you out then?”
“No. It was few weeks after that, when I ran into him at a grocery store.”
“That’s a lot of running into one person.”
“It’s a small town.”
“Tell me about the grocery store meeting.”
It’s now that Ariel registers the large wall mirror. “Such as?”
“Such as what section?”
“Seriously?” Here’s another investigator, asking another irrelevant question, to be able to compare Ariel’s irrelevant answer to John’s.
“Tell me the whole story.”
“We were surrounded by big piles of fruit.” This woman wants the whole story? She can have it. “He said hi, asked if I remembered him from the bookstore, introduced himself. We chitchatted—he was new to the area, I was not. He asked me if I went to that restaurant often, and I laughed. He said, Sorry, I guess that sounds like a line. I agreed, asked if it really was a line. He said he guessed so. I said, You guess? He blushed, said, No, I don’t guess, maybe we could go there together sometime?”
“Aw. That’s sweet. You remember that pretty clearly. Pretty specifically.”
“It’s how I met my husband. Plus it wasn’t that long ago.”
“And you said yes? When he asked you out, right there in the fruit section?”
“That’s right.”
“Why’d he choose your town? My understanding is that it’s not really where young Manhattan hotshots tend to vacation. Especially with all the chichi Hamptons nearby.”
“He didn’t want to be with all the chichi people. He doesn’t really like New York.”
“Then why does he live there?”
“Why does anyone live there?”
“And how did he come to be in your town, specifically?”
“Just exploring. Driving around.”
“Are there other people like him, driving around, looking to rent houses?”
“What do I know? I’m not in the real-estate business.”
“How quickly did your relationship progress?”
Ariel narrows her eyes. “What is it you’re asking?”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but when did you start fucking?”
“Excuse me? That’s really none of your business.”
“Everything is my business. You’ve figured that out, haven’t you? Was it the first date?”
Ariel sighs. But what does she care? “Second.”
“Quick work, huh?”
“No one’s getting any younger.”
“Did you investigate him at all? Before you started fucking him?”
“Sure, I snooped around the web. I didn’t find anything that gave me pause.”
“What about his name change?”
“No, I didn’t find that on my own. But he told me about that right before we got engaged. We had a—I don’t know what to call it—a sort of summit. Here are all the skeletons, take a good look.”
“All? So that’s when he told you about his arrest for cocaine possession.”
Ariel’s breath catches.
“No? He failed to mention that, huh? The charges were dropped, eventually. So he doesn’t have a criminal record. But still. It was not a small amount of cocaine.”
“When was this?”
“Six years ago.”
“That’s a long time.” Ariel is trying to sound dismissive.
“Well, yes,” Griffiths says. “But also, no.”
“What do you want me to say?” Ariel asks. “I met the guy barely a year ago, and we’re both adults. I didn’t interrogate him about his youthful indiscretions, because I don’t care.”
“That’s generous of you. So was it at the same summit when he told you about his sister?”
“What about his sister?”
“Her suicide attempt? Or, rather, attempts in the plural?”
This hits Ariel like a punch in the gut. She shakes her head.
“Oh no? Why do you think he failed to mention that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because they’re not that close.”
“Really? You sure?”
Ariel doesn’t answer.
“So you’d be surprised to learn that for years they spoke on the phone basically every week?”
Ariel still doesn’t respond.
“That is, until three months ago, when the calls stopped completely. Do you know why?”
“No.”
“Surely you know what big change happened three months ago. He didn’t say anything about this? Why he stopped talking to his sister?”
“No.”
“But you’ve met her?”
“Just at our wedding. She lives in Morocco.”
“Yeah, Morocco. I sure wouldn’t move to Morocco as a single woman. Not unless I was, well, me. It’s a pretty strange choice, don’t you think?”
“My understanding is that she’s a strange person.”