“How about coffee?” Gordon said. “I could use a cup.”
“Sure. Why not.” I led him to the kitchen. The bourbon bottle was on the table. Nearly empty. I threw it in the trash. I tripped again as I walked to the counter, spilled coffee grounds as I tried to negotiate the suddenly impossible task of brewing coffee.
Without asking, Gordon took over. “Have you eaten anything?” he asked as he spooned grains into the filter.
“Not hungry.”
Gordon poured water into the receptacle, pressed the brew switch. Then he opened the refrigerator and foraged until he found bread and a jar of peanut butter. He opened drawers until he located a knife, then made a sandwich and set it in front of me. “Here. Eat this.” He poured us both coffee, watched while I drank it. The absurdity struck me. A detective in my kitchen making me a sandwich like it was some kind of after-school snack. I remembered the first time Gordon had been in our home—the night Lucy hadn’t come home—and suddenly was seized with panic that wiped the fog from my brain as it occurred to me why he was there. “Sophie,” I cried. “Has something happened to my wife? Is that why you’ve come?”
“No.” Gordon rested a hand on my shoulder. “No. Nothing like that.”
I could have wept with relief.
Gordon looked around. “She isn’t here?”
I rubbed my hand over my eyes, imagining her reaction when she heard about the events of the evening, wondered if there was a way to keep it from her. “No.”
“Listen, Mr. Light. Will—” In the months since we first met, this was the first time the detective had called me by my given name. “I probably shouldn’t even be here, but I thought you should know. An hour ago a reporter came by the station. She said she wanted to report an assault.”
“Assault?”
“She said she sustained an injury when she fell. She said you pushed her.”
The last traces of haze cleared from my head, like an eraser swiping a board, and I was near sober. “Is that all she told you? Did she tell you what the hell she was doing in my yard? Why she’d come here?”
Gordon’s gaze was not without sympathy. “We didn’t get into that.”
“I just bet the hell you didn’t.”
“According to her, you pushed her so hard she fell. There was evidence of a cut.”
“So what—you’re here to arrest me?”
Gordon gave me a steady gaze. “That’s what she wanted.”
I held my hands out, wrists up, mockingly, as if to be cuffed. “So go ahead. Arrest me.”
“Well, from what she described, what happened here qualifies as a nondomestic assault. A slap, a shove—these are all classified as misdemeanors. They’re not cause for an actual arrest.”
“So why the hell did you come?”
Gordon gave me a steady look. “Like I said, I probably shouldn’t have come. Just wanted to let you know. Give you a heads-up.”
“I see.”
“Will, right now we aren’t involved. Okay? As I told the reporter, because the incident wasn’t witnessed by the police, we can’t do anything. For this to go forward, she’ll have to go to the courthouse tomorrow and file a private complaint for assault and battery.”
I was exhausted, tired of it all. “Then what?”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. With the night to think it over, there’s a good possibility she’ll drop the whole thing. People do that. In the heat of the moment, they want to file charges, but by the next day they’ve calmed down and don’t want to bother following through, going to court.”
I recalled the reporter screaming at me, remembered her sprawled on the ground. I didn’t hold much hope she’d forget. “And if she does go ahead?”
“The court will schedule a probable cause hearing to see if there is enough evidence to justify the complaint. You’ll get a notice of the hearing and the date.”
I pictured her torn slacks, the blood. “She wanted to ask me about Lucy,” I said. “She asked me if Lucy had been pregnant when she was killed.”
Gordon’s eyes widened. He exhaled and again reached a hand out to my shoulder. “That’s tough.”
“Right. Tough.”
“Listen, you screwed up.”
I nodded. No argument there. “So what do I do now?”
Gordon got up, put his mug in the sink, his job finished. “Like I said. Hope she cools off overnight.”
“Okay.”
At the door, we shook hands, as if an agreement had been made. “Thanks,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.”
“No problem.” Gordon headed for his cruiser, then turned. “You might want to take it easy on the booze.”
“Right. I know.”
“And it might be a good idea to get yourself a lawyer.”
A lawyer. Christ. Sophie would be furious when she found out.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In the cool light of the next day, the whole thing seemed overblown, but still, there I was sitting in my neighbor’s law office.
Payton’s room was all chrome, leather, and glass with thick carpeting you could lose a shoe in, far different than the colonial he lived in. He greeted me with a strong handshake. His jacket sleeve inched up, and I noticed the oval gold cuff links. He flashed a smile revealing teeth so white a dentist had to be responsible.
“Thanks for fitting me in,” I said. When I’d called earlier that morning, his secretary had said his schedule was full. I’d been surprised when he had called back minutes later and said he could see me at noon.
“How’s Sophie?” he asked.
“She’s okay,” I said and wondered if from his vantage point next door he had noticed her coming and going, her car absent from the driveway for days at a time. Although I already regretted bothering him. Payton and I had never been particularly close. Sophie and Ellen had made some effort to have, if not a deep relationship, at least a neighborly one limited to a shared barbeque once each summer, cookies exchanged at the holidays, called greetings across the yards when both were outside. When Ellen had sought a divorce, I’d been surprised but Sophie hadn’t. As usual when it came to others, I was pretty much clueless. After Ellen moved, taking their handicapped child with her, Payton had kept to himself, and gradually an odd distance developed between us. As I said, we had never been close, and with Ellen gone, there was even less reason to get together. Still, when Gordon had suggested I get a lawyer, he was the first person I thought of.
He leaned back in his chair, ran a thumb over his chin, over the beard he had grown after Ellen left him. “I’m not a criminal lawyer, Will. Our firm handles probates, trusts, wills. Property and estate matters.”
I knew that. He had drawn up simple wills for both Sophie and me and helped us plan for a solid future for Lucy if the unthinkable happened and Sophia and I both died before our daughter was an adult. Another irony in a necklace of them.
“I can recommend another lawyer. I can give you a couple of names.”