“You already put your name in, right?” she asks. “All that’s left is submitting all the materials. And you have until sometime in September?”
“Yes, yes, and yes,” I say. “But I’m going to withdraw my name.”
She reaches across the table and takes my hand. It still stirs something inside me when she touches me like that, no matter what else I may tell myself.
“You deserve this promotion, Simon. You’re one of the best minds at that school. You love it. It’s what you were meant to do. I hate seeing some pompous jerk stick a finger in your eye, and you’re supposed to say ‘thank you, sir, may I have another?’”
“I know that. I don’t like it, either.”
“Then do something about it. At least make him promise he’ll back you the next time.”
“It doesn’t . . . work that way.”
“Why doesn’t it work that way?” She falls back against the booth cushion. “Sure it works that way. You said this guy’s more a politician than anything else. So make a deal with him. You’ll walk away this time if he promises to support you next time.”
I swipe up my menu, not because there’s any mystery about what I order but because she’s right, I should do something, but I probably won’t, and I don’t want to look her in the eye.
“You have options, you know,” she says, a hint of mischief to her voice.
I peek over the menu. “No, Vick.”
“You don’t even know what I was—”
“I have a pretty good idea,” I say, “and my answer is no.”
The waiter arrives with our drinks—water for me, pinot grigio for Vicky—and pretends he’s not eavesdropping on our conversation.
She picks up her glass and sips her wine.
“Tell me you heard me say no, Vick.”
Her eyes bulge. “I heard you, I heard you,” she says.
9
Friday, July 29, 2022
Maybe it’s best you went on vacation with your girlfriends to Paris for two weeks, Lauren, after we met for coffee. It gave me time to cool off, to think.
And here’s what I’m thinking: I don’t do things like this. I’m an ordinary guy with an ordinary marriage, working an ordinary job, living in an ordinary suburb doing ordinary things. I don’t have affairs. I don’t have mistresses!
And it’s not too late to hit the brakes. Nothing’s happened yet. And who knows, maybe you’ll stop it—maybe you’ll be the one who gets cold feet.
But I know my reason. Vicky. Vicky Lanier Dobias, my bride of almost ten years. I know that, deep down, Vicky isn’t happy in our marriage, and she’d want me to be happy. She would. But she trusts me, and that trust means everything to her. I think I was the first man she ever trusted after that wreck of a childhood she had, and it helped her build a foundation of a life. If I tear that down, I’m not sure what will happen to her. I can’t do that to her.
No, I can’t do this. I have to stop this before it starts.
I’ll tell you in person, Lauren, when you return. And that will be that.
10
Jane
“Mary, Mother of God,” Sergeant Jane Burke whispers to herself as she stares at the body of Lauren Betancourt, dangling from a rope attached to the second-floor bannister. Her first homicide. The first homicide, as far as she knows, in the history of Grace Village.
Her partner, Sergeant Andy Tate, comes down the stairs carefully, avoiding the railing and boot and scuff marks on the individual stairs. “Chief call yet?”
“Any second.”
She’s been on the phone with the chief three times already over the last hour, since the cleaning lady entered the Betancourt house the morning after Halloween and found Mrs. Betancourt dangling here. Jane was still at home, getting ready for work, when she got the call.
“Mr. Betancourt is on his way back now,” says Tate. “We’ll have an officer meet him at O’Hare.”
“Where was he again?” Jane asks.
“Naples. Golf trip with his sons.” Andy walks around the dead body like it’s a chandelier to avoid. “Not a bad alibi.”
Yeah, but if the husband’s involved, and if he has as much money as Jane is hearing he has, he wouldn’t do the dirty work himself.
“She was something,” Andy mumbles, looking her over. Even in death, Jane agrees, Lauren Betancourt was gorgeous, slim and shapely with a delicate, sculpted face and silky blond hair. Her outfit, however garish it seems now in death, left little to the imagination: a formfitting leopard-print bodysuit—a cat costume for Halloween. Her eyes, wide open, look down on Jane, lips parted as if in mid-thought. Her lips are painted black, matching the whiskers painted on her face. She has an expensive manicure, black polish.