“I will not allow my family to be ripped apart. Not now. I will not allow Ethan’s name to be dragged through the mud. I swear to God, you’ll have to come back with your gun and shoot me first.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said softly.
After some minutes she sniffled. Coughed and cleared her throat. “Does anyone else know? Have you told anyone?”
“I was about to ask you the same thing.”
The hoarse laugh again, even sadder now. “I’ve lived with my husband’s secrets for a long, long time. I can live with this new one, too. Please don’t call me again, Caroline. I am asking you—I am begging you—to keep your mouth shut. Leave my family alone.”
The phone line went dead.
I wiped tears from my eyes and thought about all the ways we hurt the people we love, and how long those wounds can fester. How had Faulkner put it? The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
Fifty-seven
* * *
The police were not looking for me.
They never had been.
I had embraced the fugitive mind-set so firmly that this would take time to sink in. I found myself doubting, still casting glances over my shoulder. Seventy-nine euros and eighteen cents of credit remained on my phone. I tapped it to make one final call to Atlanta.
“Caroline. I’m glad you decided to call me back,” said Beamer Beasley. “You still in France?”
I was sitting on a low, stone wall overlooking the Seine. Bateaux Mouches glided past on the river below, their giant, open decks dotted with tourists. The Eiffel Tower loomed on the left bank. It was late afternoon and the sun was a low, orange ball, warm on my face and arms. Now I felt myself go cold. It was his use of the word still. Anyone with caller ID could see the +33 country code and divine that I was speaking from a French phone. But still implied that this wasn’t news. Still implied that Beasley had already known I was here.
“Yes, still in France.” No point denying it. “How did you know that?”
“I took the liberty of making a few calls. Once I verified you never got on that plane to Mexico.”
“And why were my whereabouts of interest?”
“Well, originally, to inform you about the death of Ethan Sinclare. I assume you’ve read the news reports by now, though.”
“Yes.” My leg had begun to tremble. “What a . . . a terrible shock.”
“It certainly is. His poor widow is taking it awful poorly. You’ve never met her, have you? Betsy Sinclare?”
I said nothing, waited to see where he was going with this.
“The thing is,” he said. “The thing is, there are a couple of curious details that haven’t made their way into the newspaper. A couple of loose ends, I guess you’d call ’em.”
“Oh?” My leg jounced up and down uncontrollably. I pressed my palm down against my knee, trying to hold still against the stone wall, trying to fight down the panic.
“Mind you, I’m not working the Sinclare investigation myself. So this is only what I happened to overhear in the hallway. Watercooler chitchat.”
“Beamer, out with it,” I heard myself rasp.
“Well, Mr. Sinclare was old-fashioned about technology and whatnot. He did own a cell phone, which we can’t find. But he didn’t keep his calendar electronically. He recorded his appointments in a little, purple leather book. We found it in his back pocket.”
“Ah.”
“And the day he got killed—the day Mrs. Sinclare says he surprised her with a romantic pastrami-and-rye on the good china—he had an entry for Lunch with C. The time slot overlaps exactly with the coroner’s window for his time of death. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Not particularly,” I hedged. “Maybe he canceled lunch with someone, in order to eat with his wife.”
“Betsy Sinclare says C meant her. Says he always called her Carissima, dearest one, ever since their honeymoon in Rome. Sweet, isn’t it?”
I waited. Wary.
“I just mention it in passing. Now, the other curious thing. Two hairs. Two long, dark brown hairs. Caucasian. They were removed from Mr. Sinclare’s sweater sleeve. Tech can’t find a match for them.”
I closed my eyes. The image of Ethan Sinclare’s squeezing his hand around my neck swam into focus. My hair sheeting across my face, covering his arm. Two strands of hair, my DNA, at the crime scene. On the victim’s body. How could I possibly explain that?
“Betsy Sinclare is a blond, as you may be aware. The alleged perpetrator is described as African-American, so the hairs aren’t his. We’ve ruled out the housekeeper.”
“Ethan’s granddaughters?” I asked weakly. “His secretary?”
“Checking all of them. But you know what, Caroline? You know what my theory is? My theory is, once a ladies’ man, always a ladies’ man.”
“What are you talking about?”
Beasley sighed. “When I overheard the guys discussing the hairs, and how they couldn’t find a DNA match in the system, I might have mentioned that Mr. Sinclare had a reputation for occasionally wandering outside the marital bed. I might—Lord forgive me—have suggested that it would be a kindness to the victim’s widow not to make too big a stink about another woman’s hairs being stuck to his sleeve. I might have even gone so far as to strongly advise my colleague in charge of the investigation that we show some compassion and not add to the poor family’s grief.”
“But . . . your colleague’s job isn’t to show compassion. It’s to find out who killed Ethan Sinclare.”
“Mm-hmm. But we have an unassailable witness—a churchgoing, God-fearing grandma—who’s prepared to swear on the Holy Bible that her husband was shot by a big, black guy who broke into their house. So that’s who we’re looking for. My colleagues aren’t going to devote a lot of energy to chasing Caucasian brunettes.”
I took this in.
“Doesn’t mean they won’t match the DNA eventually. All these new advances, every year. Like that Maintenance Man case I told you about. Those hairs from Mr. Sinclare’s sleeve . . . whoever they belong to would want to be awful careful not to find a reason to get their DNA tested. Not ever to end up in the national database.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.