“Who’s that?”
“A venture capital group. Last week Cotter-McCann leased several parcels of land suitable for commercial real estate near Arawa township in Papua New Guinea. What’s that tell you?”
Rachel had drunk too much wine for it to tell her anything. “I don’t know.”
“Well, it tells me Cotter-McCann gave Alden Minerals an infusion of cash probably for a shitload of shares in that mine. When it starts to pay off, they’ll push Alden Minerals aside and clean up. It’s what they do; they’re sharks. Worse than sharks, some say. Even sharks stop eating when they’re full.”
“So Alden Minerals will probably fail.”
“‘Fail’ is not quite the right word. They’ll be subsumed. Either by Vitterman or Cotter-McCann. They went from A ball to the major leagues overnight. I doubt they can handle the pitching.”
“Ah.” She couldn’t put any of it together. “Thanks so much, Glen.”
“Of course. Hey, Melissa told me you’re making your way back out into the world.”
“She did?” Rachel swallowed a scream.
“You’ve got to come out to the house, meet Amelia. We’d love to see you guys.”
A wave of despair hit her. “We’d love that.”
“You okay?”
“Oh, yeah. Just got a cold.”
For a moment it felt like he might press the issue. But then he said, “Take care, Rachel.”
When Caleb rang the bell, she buzzed him up. She’d laid her evidence on the kitchen counter by a scotch glass and a bottle of the bourbon, but he didn’t notice it when he first came in. He looked distracted and worn out.
“You got a drink?”
She pointed at the bourbon.
He took a seat at the counter. He poured himself a drink, didn’t even notice the other items on the counter. “Hell of a day.”
“Oh, you had one too,” she said.
He took a long pull on the glass. “Sometimes I think Brian was right.”
“About what?”
“Getting married. Having a kid. It’s a lot of moving parts, lotta balls in the air.” He glanced at the items on the counter and his tone grew distracted. “So what needs lifting?”
“Nothing really.”
“So why . . . ?” He narrowed his eyes at one of Brian’s plane tickets, the receipt from the shop in Covent Garden, a photo she’d printed up of the selfie Brian had “taken” outside the Covent Garden Hotel, the VHS of Since I Fell for You.
Caleb took a pull from his drink and looked across at her.
“You wrote the date wrong.” She pointed at the receipt.
He gave her a confused smile.
“You wrote it as month, day, year. In Britain, it would read day, month, year.”
He glanced at the receipt, then back over at her. “I have no idea what you’re—”
“I followed him.”
Caleb took another drink.
“To Providence.”
Caleb was very still.
The building was just as still around them. Trust Fund Baby was definitely not home; she would have heard his footsteps. The other tenants on fifteen weren’t there either. It was as if they sat atop an aerie in a forest at the far reaches of the earth.
“He has a pregnant wife.” She poured herself more wine. “He’s an actor. But then you knew that. Because”—she pointed her wineglass at him—“you’re an actor.”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Bullshit. Bullshit.” She downed half her wine. At this rate, she’d be peeling the foil off a second bottle soon. But she didn’t care, because it felt good to have focus for her rage. It gave her the illusion of power. And at this point she’d take illusions if they beat back the terror.
“What do you think you know?” he said.
“Don’t you fucking speak to me in that tone.”
“What tone?”
“The condescending one.”
He held up his hands like a man being robbed at gunpoint.
She said, “I saw Brian go to Providence. I saw Brian at Alden Minerals. I saw Brian go to a camera store and buy flowers and go to a bank. And I saw Brian and his preg—”
“What do you mean, he went to the camera store?”
“He went to a camera store.”
“The one on Broadway?”
She didn’t know how she’d managed to strike a nerve, only that she had. Caleb scowled at his reflection in the marble countertop, scowled at his glass before draining it of bourbon.
“What’s in the camera store?” After a minute of silence, she said, “Caleb—”
He held up a finger to silence her and called someone on his cell. As he waited, she could hear the rings on the other end. She was still back to the finger he’d raised to silence her, the contempt in it. It reminded her of Dr. Felix Browner; he’d dismissed her in the same way once.
He pressed “end” on his cell and immediately tried another number. No answer there either. He pressed “end” again and then squeezed the phone so hard she expected it to shatter.
He said to her, “Tell me some—”
She turned her back on him. She retrieved the bottle of wine from the counter beside the oven, kept her back to him as she refilled her glass. It was petty of her, but that didn’t make it feel any less sweet. When she turned back to him, the glare on his face vanished a half second after she noted it and he smiled a very Calebesque smile—boyish and sleepy.
“Tell me some more about what you saw in Providence.”
“You first.” She placed her wine down on the counter across from him.
“There’s nothing for me to tell.” He shrugged. “I don’t know anything.”
She nodded. “Then leave.”
His sleepy smile turned into a sleepy chuckle. “Why would I do that?”
“If you don’t know anything, Caleb, then I don’t know anything.”
“Ah.” He unscrewed the cap on the bourbon and poured himself another two fingers. He put the cap back on, swirled the liquor in his glass. “You’re one hundred percent sure you saw Brian enter the camera store.”
She nodded.
“How long was he in there?”
“Who’s Andrew Gattis?”
He gave that a touché nod as he took a drink. “He’s an actor.”
“I know that. Tell me something I don’t know.”
“He went to Trinity Rep in Providence.”
“The acting school.”
Another nod. “It’s where we all met.”
“So my husband’s an actor.”
“Pretty much, yeah. So the camera store. How long was he in there?”
She looked across the counter at him for a bit. “About five minutes, tops.”
He gnawed the inside of his mouth. “He come back out with anything?”
“What’s Brian’s real name?” She couldn’t fucking believe the words left her mouth. Who in her life ever expected to ask that about her husband?
“Alden,” he said.
“Brett?”
He shook his head. “Brian. Brett was his stage name. My turn.”
She shook her head. “No, no, no. You’ve been withholding information from me since we met. I just started tonight. You get one question for every two of mine.”
“What if that isn’t good enough?”
She wiggled her fingers at the door behind him. “Then fuck off, my friend.”