Eventually, Richard wandered upstairs, eyeballing the bedrooms to make sure that the party hadn’t spread there. He was pretty sure it hadn’t, but he couldn’t be sure. After all, that prick Spencer had been on the second floor. He was under the impression that the police had spent very little time in the bedrooms, because all of the guests had insisted at the station that they’d remained downstairs.
Richard, of course, had told the police—Confessed? It had sure felt like a confession—that he’d been in the guest room with one of the girls, and so he presumed that the investigators had at least taken a quick peek in that room. But it really didn’t matter what they might find there. Obviously his fingerprints were there. This was his home. He lived here. His fingerprints—and the girl’s—were all over the house.
Still, he saw nothing untoward in his and Kristin’s bedroom or in Melissa’s bedroom. The bedspreads were still army-inspection flat. Well, his and his wife’s was. Melissa was nine and usually made her bed pretty quickly before school. But it looked about the way it always did, and there were no glasses or beer bottles in the rooms. There were no ashtrays and no plates that any of the men might have used as ashtrays.
Plates. As ashtrays.
He hated his brother’s friends. He hated Spencer in particular. He hadn’t heard from him since yesterday, but Richard knew if he didn’t call him soon, he would. He hadn’t told anyone yet about the threat except for his lawyer, and that conversation hadn’t been as helpful or as reassuring as Richard would have liked.
“You said that you and the girl didn’t have intercourse. Is that true?” Dina Renzi had asked him.
“Absolutely.”
“And no oral sex?”
“Correct.”
“So there’s nothing criminal on the video?”
“Well, certainly not sexual assault on a minor—if she even is a minor, which I doubt.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m telling you, she had to be eighteen.”
“Look, if you’re sure that’s the case, then maybe you should pay this jerk off. We don’t go to the police. Twenty-five G? Kind of a small price for the peace of mind. It would certainly help ensure marital harmony. And it would be one less reason for the press to write about you. Eventually, this story will go away, Richard—unless we keep feeding it with tasty little morsels like blackmail.”
“But what if he asks for more?”
“You say he’s a friend of your brother’s. As despicable as your brother sounds, I have to believe that he and his pals could shame him into letting this go.”
“After I’ve given him twenty-five thousand dollars…”
“I think the important things we have to accomplish here are to get you back to work and preserve your marriage. Then, just in case, we need to be prepared if those people claiming ‘emotional distress’ decide to come after you, too.”
“Might they?”
“I told you, I think it’s unlikely. It would be groundless. You didn’t bring the girls into your home or call the escort service. You said you didn’t even know for sure there would be a stripper.”
“Quite true.”
“Okay then. Maybe you should just view the twenty-five grand as a fine for your indiscretions and move on.”
It seemed that his initial reaction on the street—the video would devastate Kristin—was the correct one. Dina was female. It was pure fantasy to think that he could diffuse the threat by telling Spencer that Kristin already knew about Alexandra and he should fund his war chest elsewhere. Something about the way Dina had caved so quickly—help ensure marital harmony—made clear that the images on Spencer’s phone might be a last straw in ways that he couldn’t fathom as a male.
And, of course, there was always the reaction of Franklin McCoy to consider. If it got into the tabloids that a managing director was being blackmailed, he’d surely be finished.
Now he went to the guest room, where he had brought Alexandra, and breathed in the smell of the room. Unlike the TV and music room downstairs, the cat would have noticed nothing new here. It smelled fine—which meant it smelled not at all. He stared at the spot on the bedspread where Alexandra had sat. Where they had sat together. He wondered where her father was. Her mother. He tried to imagine how a nice kid like Alexandra wound up in a foreign country, sitting naked in a strange man’s house. He took a deep breath, wondering how long it would be before his memories of this nightmare turned to steam.
…
Much later, he would wander the first floor of his house, noctivagant as his cat. Then he would sit alone at the kitchen table, unable to sleep. Unwelcome in his own bed. He sat there drinking herbal tea, even though he hated herbal tea. He hated all tea. But he still hoped he might somehow get some sleep. Besides, drinking this tea was rather like wearing a hair shirt. He was punishing himself.